The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  He was just starting to pull the trigger on the automatic nine mm. He registered the fact that his target wasn’t there, just as the first burst came stitching across the bar and up the left side of the pillar. Each bullet seemed to take its time showing up. One rip and splinter on the wood, then two, then three. Like that. I could have counted them all. There wasn’t much noise or flash. Obviously, their equipment worked fairly well.

  The Colt kicked like a mule in my right hand, roaring twice as loud as the H&K had, and sending out a longer tongue of fire as well. At the same moment, the nine mm spray stopped stitching its way across the empty portion of the bar, and the automatic rifle dropped flat on the floor, at the ground near his feet.

  As the bullet entered his left eye socket, his head snapped back hard. Harder than they should. Harder than they could. I think because the round had no exit hole it did him more harm than I’d ever done anyone with a bullet. The inertia seemed to have been responsible for snapping his head back, and in so doing, I think it broke his neck. Actually, it did break his neck. Nobody could do that with their neck, even if they were double jointed.

  That would have been the last worry he had at the time though, having just had his braincase contents turned into something that wouldn’t even resemble a human… brain, or whatever. He stood there like that, his head down the back of his body, and then he slowly started toppling forward, like a tree in the forest, when a lumberjack yells ‘Timber!’, and the tree, once majestic, is now killed, and has become something else altogether. Set to be trimmed and de-barked and shaved into boards. One tree, so many board-feet of lumber.

  Well, this guy had changed tonight. From a man, to a problem for the Zurich police, and another statistic for the morgue.

  The first shooter’s death round had entered on more of an angle, and spun him right around, sending him sprawling face down more or less in the foyer. His gun had dropped from his lifeless fingers as he spun, and had hit the ground nose down under the bottom of the door without firing a round. It was propped across one of his boots, still sticking through the interior door, and it was doing a fine job of holding the door open against the pull of the hydraulic closer on the top.

  On the first shot, Big Bob and Terry had pulled the A/C unit from the wall, with Terry exiting first, and Ronnie second. They were through by now for sure, running up the alley towards the high side of the sloping hill that ended at the Limmatquai, next to the Limmat River, and around to the north-east, along the banks of Lake Zurich. The alley was either under control or not, I’d find out soon enough. I had my own work to do.

  I grabbed the pillar with my left hand and leaped over the bar without touching it. When the gunfire had started, everyone with half a mind had hit the floor where they were. Some had turned over the tables and hid behind them. The smarter ones had physically sheltered their wives, or girlfriends, with their own bodies. A much better bet than a Formica tabletop. Some had whipped out cellular phones and were on-line with 9-1-1 even as I moved.

  The timer in my head was still counting. Minus zero point zero point eleven. Eleven seconds since the first shot. Everything I did was still running in my ‘Slow Time’ dimension. I had the H&K in my hand as I verified the kills. I’d seen healthier road-kill in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

  I started stripping the bodies of both men. Too slow. I turned and looked over the crowd on the floor. The businessmen in suits closest to the door were who I picked. I focused my mind, and communicated my orders.

  “You, and you.” I pointed with the red laser targeting dot, picking the first two I saw. “Get over here, NOW! That’s an order, mister!” They both scrambled to their feet and ran to me, but it was all so damned slow! I kept stripping shooter two, the one I’d started with. When they got to me, I yelled, “Follow my lead, on him!” Again, I pointed with the H&K. I didn’t use the laser that time, it was obvious who and what I meant. “Both of you are hereby deputized on a temporary basis by the RCMP and Interpol! Raise your right hands and swear you understand.” They all did, and I kept doing what I was doing. For all their stuffiness, they really hauled in, working together to strip shooter one the way I was stripping shooter two. “When you get to the head, leave it for me.” I didn’t want anyone throwing up on these armoured suits.

  I was done in another forty-five seconds, and then I was working with the two of them. I started with the balaclava, and when it was off, they’d finished with the coveralls and boots. I thought of something on the fly and went with it.

  “You’ll have to be called as material witnesses. I’ll keep this as quiet as I can if you prefer.” They both nodded, slowly. “Fine, then give me your driver’s licenses. Quick, now!” Then I held out my hand, and voila. Two new Swiss driver’s IDs. They went straight into an inside pocket. “All right, get back now!” They retreated as fast as they’d come to my aid, which is to say, slowly.

  I left the weapons where they lay, and pocketed the comms units, sans ear plugs. The boots were wrapped in the bundle made by both sets of coveralls, neck wraps and balaclava’s, which was tied by the arms and legs of one of the coveralls.

  My timer was flashing in my head, minus zero point two point forty-seven. I couldn’t hear the sirens yet, that was something, anyway. I had the time, I knew that, but I changed the plan anyway.

  I ran through the pub from the front to the back room, moving fast. The velvet rope was just a larger step than the others. Big Bob was still lying against the wall. I passed him so fast he didn’t even know I’d been there until I’d called “All clear Bob.” The hole in the wall left by the removal of the A/C unit had turned out to be smaller than I had originally thought, but big enough for my purposes.

  I tossed the bundle out first, then I was through and standing in the alley. I grabbed the armour and headed up the alley as fast as my body would take me, which was pretty fast, being super-charged and all. I had wanted to take out the drivers too, but time was passing me by like a freight train, even in my state. The drivers would have to wait for another time. Maybe when they got too close. Like the others had done tonight.

  I’d told Ronnie, straight up the alley, left on the street at the mouth of the alley, then right on the next street, then left on the next, the right again, and keep going. It took me four minutes to catch up to them, which shocked the hell out of them both. Ronnie was so glad to see me that she almost started a scene. One look in my eyes was enough to bring her back around.

  We turned right on the first side street with parked cars, and low lighting. The third house down had a nice Volvo wagon parked in front. Just what we wanted. My new Japanese blade went through the back-passenger window like butter, and we were in. Terry sat next to me up front, with Ronnie holding her Glock casually in her right hand while she kept one hand on the bundle of armoured clothes in the back.

  I made a fairly wide circle around the Niederdorf, ending up on the Limmatquai, about a mile from the steps we’d used to get there just a couple of short hours ago. I kept my eyes open for a parking spot, and found one two blocks from the steps into the Niederdorf.

  “Colonel, see if you can raise the crew.”

  From the back seat, there was some talking, but too low to catch any details. This was repeated for a few minutes, apparently without luck.

  “There’s somebody around here walking all over the high band, I can reach her, but only static is what I get back. Which means… that the source of the signal is closer to Evie than it is to us.”

  “Fine.” I hadn’t turned off the engine, and I pulled out and headed closer to the steps. The traffic was light. Sporadic. It probably would have been better to have rush hour to hide in, but we’d have to dump this car soon anyway. The Zurich Police are notoriously effective at what they do, and they take their job very seriously. I didn’t want to have to explain anything to anybody tonight. Not tonight. I was having a hard time coming out of my new-found ‘dimension’. Basically, it was the most powerful indulgence in the ‘art’,
that I had ever experienced. Neither of the two shooters had had even a remote chance of surviving past the instant that their eyes met mine. I had done what was to be done, and I’d had all the time in the world to do it in. I could have walked up to them and slapped their faces before killing them. Looking back, I saw that now. I had been deep, so deep.

  At least my ability to start looking backwards as well as forwards was beginning to return. That was a good sign. When I’m in the ‘Slow Time’ dimension, everything is linear. Linear, in the sense that there was one path, it led forwards in time, and it was as clear as sparkling crystal when it’s held under the light. There is always only one direction, and the path is forever clear. Tonight, I stopped before I’d walked the entire path.

  A first for me, but then tonight’s depth had been new for me too. I’d let the drivers live. I’d just walked away from that part of the path. I had restructured my previous clarity into one that hadn’t involved the near-immediate use of incendiary grenades.

  My internal timer had been instrumental in allowing that restructuring to occur, signaling a negative time passed that would have left me short, and complicated my escape from the Zurich Police, who would have been on the scene by the time I’d finished fire-bombing both of the Audi’s that the shooters had arrived in. That wasn’t an integral part of my Mission. So, I had changed the plan for the first time. They say that there’s a first time for everything. Who knew?

  The physically debilitating results of my ‘Slow Time’ were starting to show, as I shed the immediate danger from my mind. It was going to hurt this time. I could feel it coming. I was cold, and starting to shake inside as well. I could feel my strength ebbing even as we tried to wrap this up. The only way to do this would be if I did it, and then the adrenaline would keep the pain at bay until I had Therese safely tucked away again.

  I pulled a left at the Bahnhof bridge, crossing over to the Bahnhof side. The water was black with flickering sparkles from the lights of the city, but it looked uninviting, and I concentrated on my task at hand. I parked in the back of a business park area across the street from the Bahnhof itself.

  We all walked across the street to the train station and I bought two tickets to Weiden, and wrangled with a hot-sausage vendor to buy an empty box from him, which he claimed he needed at the end of the day to pack things in. This of course made the box more valuable to him than any old box, so I fixed it with a fifty franc note.

  Going back to where I’d left Godsen and Terry, I helped her pack the box with the armoured suits. Then I turned to Terry and said, ‘This is for you to carry, at all times. Do not drop it, even under duress, until the Colonel tells you to, or she will drop you.” Terry nodded enthusiastically, as if he were looking forward to the task and responsibility.

  I turned to Ronnie.

  “There’s a coffee joint about five minutes or less from the station. As you come out the front doors, turn left, you can’t miss it. They have espresso and everything, you’ll love it. I’ll be there within one hour maximum at my mark.” I shifted my left sleeve and made ready to synchronize watches, “Mark. At one hour plus two minutes, you go. You leave. Somewhere new, and stay undercover. Don’t walk around being who you really are, Okay? Read the International Edition of the Herald-Tribune, Personals Section. I’ll come to you.” I could read the look of indecision on her face. “One more time, ‘Trust Me!’ Now go, your train boardings. I gave her the tickets and added, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll all be fine, one way or another. I’ll make sure of that.” I watched as Terry hefted the box of wonder-stuff, and Ronnie walked away across the Bahnhof to board her train. I think it was for moments like this one that this was the world’s most filmed train station.

  I headed for the tunnel under the Limmat as soon as she was on the train and being aided by a conductor. The tunnel was great, it had a shopping mall in some parts, and some amazing automated purchase machines through the rest of it. You could buy a brand new one-hundred-watt light bulb if you had the correct change. I thought about that every time I came this way. Once I’d actually needed a one-hundred-watt bulb, and I had had the correct change in my pocket as well. What were the odds.

  All of that ended where the tunnel went under the Limmat River. You had to go down a short flight of stairs, and even though the walk-through was wide, it was low-ceilinged, which always left me with the feeling that the entire Limmat was just waiting for an excuse to flood this tunnel as fast as you could blink. Nonsense, of course, but no less unsettling for all that.

  It took me ten minutes to come up on the other side, on the Limmatquai. I’d stopped for a hot knackwurst on a bun, mustard and sourkrout on top. I’d also used the public men’s room in the shopping area, and in the privacy of a stall, I’d switched my jacket. Reversible clothing is a handy thing in my work. Now the jacket was dark red, nothing like the light tan leather I’d just had on. My hair was somewhat different as well. I had always liked the way Ringo kept his swept straight back, mostly into a pony-tail, but necessity is the mother of all invention. I didn’t have a pony-tail, so I used hair oil. Handily available in the gent’s, and once again, the change in my pocket had been enough to do the trick. It was dark, and slicked right back, like something out of the fifties.

  With my new disguise, I figured if I had a dog, even the dog wouldn’t look at me twice. I strolled along, eating my knackwurst, and headed for the stairway to the Niederdorf. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, I was just putting the finishing touches to my knackwurst.

  I turned to the right, headed for the club. About one hundred meters from the club, I made contact on the comm unit. The place was packed by now, so the background noise was heavy, but fortunately, the band wasn’t on stage at that minute, and Evie could hear me clear as a bell.

  I gave her instructions to settle any bill outstanding, and to leave the club ASAP, and that I would meet her on their way back to the stairs we’d come in by. About five minutes later we were all together again, and headed back the way I’d just come. When they’d popped into view just as I was going up the alley to the next level, my heart had told me something. I don’t know what, but there was this funny feeling that came over me. An emotional one, that I didn’t have the time to try and decipher at the moment. So I didn’t.

  We had all heard the sirens by now, and most of the people who were strolling the cobblestones had either wandered up that way out of curiosity, or were just ignoring it. Those were probably the tourists. The ones who didn’t realize that sirens in the Niederdorf night were rare at best, and usually happened after 2:00 AM if they did at all.

  Evie had us turn our comms units off, until she’d had a chance to go over the transmitter/receivers I’d collected this evening. I showed her one out of my pocket, the rest were with Ronnie, in the box with the armour. We made short work of the walk back to the hotel block, where we’d parked the van around the corner on the quiet side street. We went across the bridge this time instead of using the tunnel. There were more people walking around the district now, and that made us just another group of after-dinner home-goers. The hardy souls out for a night of drinking and revelry were still working on it, and would be for some time to come yet. Except for the survivors of Big Bob’s Pub. They would be questioned extensively before being allowed to wander off anywhere.

  The only minor worry that I had was that someone would have had the presence of mind to actually read the gold shield while I’d had it out. That would narrow it down rather quickly for the Zurich Police. Maybe not tonight, but by the morning, when the report had circulated its way up the ladder. The boss wouldn’t let the Interpol thing slip by, never mind if anyone had gotten the RCMP part. We’d see tomorrow.

  The girls had rated the evening highly, due to the club. Both Evie and Therese had eaten as much of their dinner as they could, which according to Evie, had been just about one dinner between them. Apparently, this was more than either of them ate in a normal day of three squares. They were both high on the outing.
The good food, the good band, the good band asking them to sit at their table, the fact that nobody had tried to shoot them, all of these things count.

  They got on particularly well after Ronnie had left, citing a topic of common interest. This turned out to be me, which they thought was amusing to no end. We walked three across, with me in the middle, Evie on the outside, and Therese on the inside, watching the water of the Limmat River reflecting the lights of the city as it swept its way out of Lake Zurich.

  “It’s so different here, so romantic, so scary. Switzerland is one of the most civilized countries in the world, and Zurich is so beautiful, and yet we could be in Casablanca during the occupation of Europe for all the excitement we’ve seen in two days.”

  Evie looked up at me sideways, and faked a whisper. “Don’t pay any attention to her, she’s sozzled.”

  I looked back at Therese. Sozzled? She giggled, then put her free hand to her mouth.

  “C’est pas vrais, mon chéri. Je m’amuse ici, pour la première fois. C’est tout.” Just having a bit of fun for the first time since her fiancé had been murdered, and her life was changed one hundred and eighty degrees. I understood. I’d been there, too, so I smiled back at her.

  “Ma pauvre petite, c’est rien, je comprends. Just don’t forget to jump if I say jump.”

  Evie piped up. “I speak French too; I’ll have you know. It’s a prerequisite to working with the Colonel.”

  “I see, and…” Evie rode right over any response I might have been about to make. “And yes, I too see this as romantic as well as scary. I guess it’s just a girl thing.”