“Wrong day. Wrong road. Wrong firefight. Wrong war.”
Sand laughed.
It was strident.
It was disturbing.
It was the mask that bitterness wore when it tried to disguise itself as humor.
“I thought you were dead.” Pauline’s fingers trembled.
“Some will say you are right.”
Daemon gently touched Pauline’s arm. “These gentlemen have come to take you out of here. You won’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“What if we don’t make it out of Ukraine?” Pauline asked.
Sand took her by the hand and looked deep into her eyes. “Then they will shoot us,” he said in a whisper, “and none of us have to be afraid anymore.”
Pauline laughed. “You were always so pragmatic,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Sand told her, “I will get you out.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“It’s what I do.”
Pauline’s voice softened. “If I remember the morning right, you saved me once before.”
“And then I lost you.” Sand’s face hardened. “You changed your name.”
“It’s what we do,” she said.
“All of these years,” Sand said, “I’ve been chasing a woman who doesn’t exist.”
“Maybe she never existed.” Pauline turned away. “That’s the problem with life,” she said.
“What is?”
“It isn’t fair.”
Sand pulled her to him. “It brought us together again.”
Pauline let out a long breath. “For how long?” she asked. “What about tomorrow?”
Daemon placed an arm around her waist. “If you are alive tomorrow,” she said, “then you can worry about it.”
She handed Reagan a pair of car keys. “You will find a Renault parked around the corner in an alley behind the bakery. It does not look like much, and it does not run well, but it will get you to the departure point.”
“Do you anticipate roadblocks along the way?”
“Usually, but probably not on a night like this.”
Reagan turned and started to leave.
The cold wind had died at the entrance to the catacombs.
The air was musty.
It scratched Sand’s throat.
The dust winnowing down from the ceiling burned his eyes.
Reagan suddenly stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
He was smiling broadly.
“This work becomes more confusing all the time,” he said. “You begin the day never knowing quite how it will end.”
Sand noticed Daemon’s hands were trembling.
Her eyes had turned from green to black.
Her face was as waxen as the dead.
“It is indeed an enigma without all the pieces in place,” Reagan said.
In one swift movement, between one breath and the next, Sand withdrew the black Walther PPK from his belt and fired twice.
Daemon’s head snapped backward.
She folded at the waist.
She crumpled to the floor like a rag doll dressed in black and crimson.
Pauline screamed.
Her agony echoed down the catacombs, moving from one tunnel to the next until the sound had been swallowed up by the darkness.
Roland Sand stared straight ahead, his jaws clenched.
His eyes did not blink.
He slipped the pistol back inside his belt.
This time he knew why he fired the shot.
Pauline fell sobbing on top of Daemon.
She cradled the lady with her arms. “Why?” It was a question asked with another scream.
Sand’s eyes softened. “Our intelligence learned late last week that the one you call Daemon betrayed you,” he said. “Our sources reported the Russians found her out. They planned to execute her, but she had one chance to save her life. She traded your life for hers.”
“And you took it away from her.” Pauline wiped the tears from her eyes.
“That’s why I’m here. We knew what you didn’t know. We were given one assignment, and that job was to take you out of here,” Sand said. “We do what we have to do. Daemon, unfortunately, was in the way.”
“I thought I loved you once.”
“That would have been a mistake.”
“You are nothing but a cold-blooded killer.”
“Someday you may need one.”
“What about today?”
Sand shrugged. “Today, you needed one.”
“But I loved her.” The sobs came again.
“I’m sure she loved you,” Sand said. “I’m sure she regretted giving you to the Russians. But war, even a pitiful little war fought underground and in the back alleys of Ukraine, sometimes makes cowards of us all. Right now, somewhere out on that stretch of roadway between here and the boat, Russian soldiers are waiting for us. She gave them our escape route. Given the chance, they will bring you back to stand trial as a spy. They want to hang you. They want the public to witness your dangling from the rope. For Reagan and myself, a bullet or two will be fine.”
“How can we escape them?”
“We have one thing going for us.”
“What’s that?”
“We know what they plan to do, and they don’t know we know.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
“It never is.”
Sand looked up at Reagan who had not moved or spoken since the explosion of the first shot ricocheted down the tunnel walls.
He was staring down at the crumpled form of Daemon.
Sand took the torch from the lady’s hand and pitched it to the British agent.
“Go get the car and meet us at the gate,” Sand said. “I’ll finish up here.”
Reagan sadly shook his head.
“It’s such a terrible waste,” he said.
Sand watched Reagan hurry down the tunnel until he and Pauline were again shrouded by the darkness of the catacombs.
He turned to her and asked, “You have the sheet music?”
The jazz singer nodded. “It’s more than we can carry.”
“We’ll find a place for it.”
“Where?”
Sand pulled a slender LED penlight from his pocket and swept the narrow beam along the walls of the catacombs.
It touched the piles of bones, the skulls grinning at him, little more than broken teeth and empty eye sockets, the rotting caskets stacked atop each other.
One of the wooden caskets was new.
If he guessed right, it held the body of Pauline’s lover.
If he was wrong, it no longer made any difference.
The casket would work fine.
“We’ll place the sheet music with the dead,” he said.
Rainy Night 19
SAND WALKED ACROSS the floor of the limestone chamber toward the skeletal remnants of the dead.
The lovely jazz singer, shivering slightly as she hugged her arms around her shoulders, followed close behind him.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Nerves,” she said.
The tears had dried upon her face.
“Why does it have to be this way?” she asked.
“We don’t script life,” Sand answered. “We live it. We don’t always like it. Most times, we have no choice.”
“I didn’t want a war.”
“No one did.”
“All I wanted to do was sing.”
“Tomorrow you will be somewhere in Romania. By Monday, you will be singing in London.”
Pauline closed her eyes and a melancholy smile crossed her lips. “I will miss Odessa,” she said.
“The Odessa you love?”
“Yes.”
“That time has come and gone.”
“It will come back again.”
Sand shrugged. “Not in my lifetime,” he said.
He stood above the newest hand-hewn casket, shoved back among the grinning skulls.
He looked at Pauline
, and his eyes narrowed.
“You don’t want to see this,” he said.
She didn’t flinch.
She didn’t turn away.
He pried open the casket and let the lid slide to the floor.
He dumped the rigid body of her lover beside the lid and shoved the remains back among the rocks.
The eyes of the corpse were open, and they stared toward an unforgiving darkness that had already enveloped the remains of the Frenchman.
Sand stepped back.
Pauline’s face was twisted into an evil mask.
She spit on her dead lover.
“He double-crossed me,” she said softly.
“Where is the music?” Sand’s voice echoed through the catacombs.
“I’ll be right back,” Pauline said.
She walked away with her shoulders stiff and her hands clenched at her side.
Her steps were unsteady.
The narrow beam of the penlight marked her path.
Sand knew Pauline had stared death in the face and did not like what she saw waiting for her on the other side.
She returned a moment later with an armload of sheet music, carrying it from inside the abyss of the catacombs and dropping it inside the casket.
Sand picked up the limp body of Daemon and placed her softly and gently atop the sheet music.
He closed her eyes with his fingers.
Pauline spit on the corpse. “She said she was my friend. She was no better than he was.”
Sand grinned to himself.
Love never lasted long in the time of war.
Neither did regrets.
Often, the line between love and hate was merely a whisper in the night.
He hammered the lid shut with the butt of his pistol.
“Here is the scenario,” he said. “Be sure you understand everything I tell you. Our lives may depend on it.”
Pauline listened intently.
“If we are stopped, and we will be stopped,” Sand said, “you are taking your older sister back to Vylkovo for burial. She is an innocent victim of the war in the streets of Odessa. Your mother and father are waiting for us.”
“And you?”
“You can introduce me as the minister you have hired to conduct the funeral.”
Pauline scoffed. “Who will believe you are a minister?”
“Even Russian soldiers, who are cold and tired and weary of the rain, will believe almost anything in the dark.” He took a deep breath. “God have mercy on their worthless souls if they don’t.”
ALISTAIR REAGAN HAD the Renault parked just outside the metal gate when Sand dragged the casket out of the catacombs and into the winter night.
He was leaning against the front fender while thick gusts of wind-blown rain blurred the buildings on the far side of the street.
“Who’s in the box, old boy?” he asked.
“Miss Pauline is on her way home to bury a dead sister.”
“Hate to lose the sister.”
“Rather lose her than Pauline.”
Reagan glanced over his shoulder.
The street on the embankment above them was empty.
“Think the ruse will work?” he asked.
Sand shrugged. “We will bury her sister or the Russians can bury one of their own. We’re running out of time, and somebody will be digging a grave by this time tomorrow. I don’t care who goes in it.”
“Pauline was right.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re nothing but a cold-blooded killer.”
A man who listens to his conscience is the first to die.
Sand had heard the admonition before.
He couldn’t remember where.
Or when.
Or why?
He doesn’t have the time, and the conscience always lies.
Sand ignored the British agent.
“What are you planning on doing with Daemon?” Reagan wanted to know.
“How far do you figure it is to the departure point in Vylkovo?”
“A good four hours, maybe longer in this rain,” Reagan said, “provided, of course, the tires hold out, the engine doesn’t quit running, and the Russians don’t slow us down.”
“We need to be at the channel before dawn.”
“We’re running short of time.”
“The dawn won’t slow down for us.”
Reagan watched the rain cascade from the darkness around him. “The night’s a good place to hide,” he said.
“The night is the only place we have.” Sand’s grin was one of quiet concern. “We have less than two hours to decide what to do with the body of the Daemon lady.”
“Bury her at sea?”
“She won’t argue against it.”
“And the sheet music?”
“It’s in the casket with her.”
“Brilliant,” Reagan said.
He and Sand shoved the wooden casket into the backseat of the Renault.
They placed Pauline in the floorboard, and the British agent cranked the engine, easing his way through the deserted streets of Odessa.
Sand glanced up at a neon clock atop a building at the far end of the street.
The hands were barely visible, but he could make out the time.
It was thirty-eight minutes past three.
Sand removed the clip and replaced the bullet he had fired into the lady who had sold out the jazz singer and thus betrayed them all.
Only the sound of rainwater splashing beneath the tires broke the silence.
“Are you comfortable enough?” Sand asked Pauline.
“I’m alive,” she said.
By the time they reached the edge of Odessa, she was asleep.
Rainy Night 20
VALERY DERNOV HAD grown weary of watching the empty highway as it cut across an open field and headed southwest along a highway hugging the coastline of the Black Sea.
A chilled wind cut across the turbulent waters as they slammed against the Ukraine shoreline, and the rain became imprisoned in a violent wall of thunder and lightning.
The rain kept sweeping across the highway even when the crackle of lightning had died fitfully away.
Dernov pulled the wool collar of his topcoat tighter around his neck and wiped the moisture from his eyes with the sleeves.
His shoulders were tired.
He had not slept for twenty-six hours.
His muscles ached.
He no longer had any feeling in his face.
It might as well belong to someone else, maybe even the embalmed.
The sedan offered no warmth and little protection against the ravages of November on the Ukrainian coast.
The wind was bitter.
The night always grew colder just before the dawn.
He waited, flanked by Colonel Krupin and two of the Soviet Army’s toughest, most reliable, and deadliest shock troops from Putin’s secret mercenary army.
The cold, he decided, was merely an inconvenience.
Time, he knew, was on his side.
Dernov had lost sight of the American after Sand and the Brit departed the docks and disappeared into the deluge that erased the line separating earth from sky and fell like a heavy cloak across the streets of Odessa.
How long ago was that?
Six hours?
It seemed like six days.
It was as though the rain had washed time down the drain and emptied it into the grated sewers flowing toward the Black Sea.
He feared the operation was in disarray, and there would be hell to pay if he failed, and Valery Dernov did not fail, and he would not fail, and he would leave the American in a ditch for the dogs to find before the light of day touched the horizon.
He had received the call sometime after two o’clock.
It came from a drunken bum sleeping off a long night’s battle with cheap rum. The bum served as Dernov’s eyes at the hotel.
What was the cost?
Fifty dollars?
The bu
m would never know how valuable his information had been.
Yes, the American had found the jazz singer.
Yes, he was planning to smuggle her out of Ukraine.
No, they would not be leaving by train.
Yes, they had an automobile, a Renault.
Yes, it was old.
Yes, the car should be able to make the trip without any mechanical failures.
How did he know?
He had seen it.
He had hidden himself behind a stone pillar and watched the car pull away from the catacombs.
The American left on the road toward Vylkovo.
Yes, he and the jazz singer would be escaping by boat.
How did he know?
Trust me, he said.
I find out things, he said.
I know things, he said.
Why Vylkovo?
Vylkovo has boats on every canal and in every channel.
Which one?
Who knew?
Not even the American knew for sure.
Dernov knew he must stop them before they reached the coastal city.
It was an order.
Yes, they had the sheet music.
Yes, that’s where the jazz singer had carefully hidden the Russian military secrets she had learned from Russian officers.
They shared her bed.
They talked in her arms and in their sleep.
Yes, Petrov had talked most of all.
No, Petrov had nothing else to say.
Where was Petrov?
He was sleeping.
He would be sleeping for a long time.
Who had given him the information?
The voice on the phone would not say.
Dernov grinned.
It didn’t matter.
Instinctively, he knew.
The information had come from a trusted source.
COLONEL KRUPIN STEPPED out of the sedan as he saw the faint headlights of a car winding its way down the narrow coastal road.
He motioned for both of his shock troops, armed with their AK-15 rifles, to take their places, lying in the rain-soaked marshlands of the Danube Delta.
No reason to hide.
No reason for camouflage.
The rain was a curse.
The rain was a wall.
The rain would protect them.
They were hooded ghosts fading into the fog that rose against the rain upon the marshes.
Each mile brought the jazz singer closer to the end.
The Colonel suddenly felt much warmer than he had before.
Rainy Night To Die Page 10