The Essence of Darkness

by Thomas Clearlake

  Jake and Moon, the old man’s two cats, were now near him, licking him with affection, smelling his bloody wounds without daring to taste them, unable to revive him. Two gaping circular holes, one at the level of the heart and the other at the throat, still glistened in the light of the flames. The blood flow had run dry when the heart muscle had stopped beating.

  The killer was far away by now.

  The cats gradually lost interest in their master, deaf to their calls, and went to lap up the puddle of reddish liquid spreading around him.

  *

  Lauren was leaning over Eliott. She held his head in her hands and looked at him with undisguised tenderness. She was completely with him, listening to him breathe as if he were talking to her, answering him with whispers. She put her hand on his overly cold cheek and kissed his lips.

  They had never been so close, and at the same time so far apart, so identical, and so different. He finally woke up, managed to open his eyes a little bit and stammered, “Lauren, you’re here.”

  “I’ve been with you for two hours now. How do you feel?”

  Cooper tried to move his head, but it fell heavily on Lauren’s lap.

  “I feel like my skull is in a vacuum. I can hear you, but you’re really far away.”

  “It’ll be better soon.”

  “Did you think to prepare the second injection?”

  “Yes. It’s ready.”

  “Don’t forget,” he weakly grabbed her arm, “Don’t hesitate to shoot immediately into an artery if you sense anything abnormal in me. Do you understand?”

  She showed him the syringe she was holding in her hand. “I’m on it.”

  “Lauren . . . it feels so good to have you near me.” He moved his hand over her cheek to push away the brown curl covering one of her eyes.

  “You look like a child when you’re sleeping,” she told him.

  He smiled and took her hand in his.

  A wave of heat went through both of them at the same time. He stroked her neck and then her shoulders and pulled himself close to her warm, comfortable belly. The sedatives had plunged him into a painful apathy. He even gave up certain movements that required too much energy. All his senses had lost their sharpness, and his body was nothing more than an unknown mass that no longer responded.

  But he felt so good against her.

  On the other hand, the latent pains of the evil force were no longer there. The voice had stopped. He guessed that the thing inside him was also extremely weak.

  His plan had worked perfectly.

  “You don’t have to worry anymore, Lauren, as long as you keep giving me regular injections.”

  He tried to hug her, but his arms felt like lead. He could only smile at her with resignation. The desire to make love was there, but he wouldn’t have the strength.

  Lauren’s phone rang.

  Ravenwood’s name showed on the screen.

  It was an automated message.

  She answered the call and put the phone on speaker so that Eliott could hear.

  “Natalie, I prepared this message in case of the worst, and if you’re listening to it now, it’s because I’m dead or unable to communicate with you other than through this recording. In any case, I took the necessary precautions to ensure that the translation of the book wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. I’ve attached an access number to my safe deposit box at Morgan Stanley Bank in Rochester. All you have to do is go to the counter with this number and your ID. You will get the document by hand. Even if I don’t know anything about the reasons that got you into this business, I can only advise you to be extremely careful. The stakes involved with the work you own go beyond what you can imagine. I wish you good luck for the future, Natalie, and look forward to enjoying your charming company in another lifetime. May God watch over you.”

  “I knew it,” Lauren whispered. “I sensed a presence around his house when I left last night. I even hesitated to leave him alone. Poor man.”

  “He did things right, at least,” said Eliott.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “Exactly as he planned,” he replied, spurred on by a surge of energy. “We’re going to go to his bank, and you’ll get the translation back. Then we’ll see.”

  “The people who killed him may have tapped his phone line.”

  “We’re going to risk it and stay alert.”

  20

  Berlin. Germany: November 5

  The signs on the brothels and late-night bars lit up the street with outrageously bright red light. Young Slavic prostitutes were waiting for customers to come out of brothels to hang on their necks. Some ushered them into black limousines registered in Russia. Others shoved and peppered them with inexpressible curses telling them to get lost.

  Fournier parked well away from the nightclub where a Berlin police informant had told him that the man named Volodymyr Prazdniev was a regular. The officer left his jacket in the coatroom and made his way through the crowd moving in time to a techno song from the East. He reached the bar and ordered a vodka. He stayed there for a while, nodding his head to the beat that the speakers were spewing at full volume. It was only eleven p.m.; Fournier’s target wasn’t there yet, but for this kind of establishment, it was only the beginning of the night. He finally ordered a bottle and sat down at a table ideally located to offer him discretion and a clear view of the entrance stairs, the bar, and the dance floors. He had sworn off alcohol, his worst enemy, which had ruined his marriage. But tonight, he was drinking for professional reasons; his mission required it. He had a role to play. He was a buyer in search of a very special product: a human being. Drinking apple juice could have hurt the credibility of the character he was playing for this operation. While downing one drink after another, he was sorry about this indiscretion, or maybe all of this was just a pathetic excuse.

  An hour or so had passed when he saw Prazdniev arrive. Fournier had perfectly memorized his description. A tall, fairly hefty guy in his thirties, with a thick, black beard and eyes just as black and little inclined to sparkle with joy. In a word, he looked shady. He was alone. As he passed by, half a dozen hostesses came in turn to wrap their arms around him, whisper in his ear, some even nibbling his neck. But obviously the Ukrainian was not in the mood to fool around. He even looked a bit nervous. In comparison to the picture Fournier had of him, the Ukrainian seemed even darker than usual, so that he almost disappeared into the shadowy corner where he had sat down.

  Fournier had already experienced “an undercover buy” many times. The operation was simple. It consisted of posing as a buyer wishing to purchase a certain illegal product from a seller—the target of the undercover buy. The goal was to catch that seller in the act during the transaction. In this case, Prazdniev was tonight’s unlucky seller, and Fournier was the buyer. The Berlin Interpol service had provided about ten men for the operation. But before catching him in the act and arresting him, Fournier had to approach the target alone and establish a relationship of trust to negotiate the purchase with him.

  He had chosen from the available files to assume the identity of a certain William Laury, a forty-five-year-old London native recently released from three years in prison for a high-level case of fraud involving a diamond dealer in Amsterdam and two Parisian jewelers. In Fournier’s opinion, this profile gave him enough credibility to have some hope of doing business with a big shot like Prazdniev. And the French agent was perfectly fluent in English.

  Fournier downed a last glass of vodka and set off in a calculated, swaying gait toward Prazdniev, who was still leaning in the shadows. But just when he was about to approach the Ukrainian, the latter sat up on his stool. With a surprising smile that revealed bright white teeth worthy of a toothpaste ad, he rushed to greet two guys who had just entered the club. Fournier changed his trajectory pronto. He positioned himself innocently at the bar as if he wanted a drink, which the bartender served him immediately.

  The Ukrainian was now talking to the two newcomers. The
first one looked strangely like Prazdniev, except that he was even bigger in height and build, which made him a real colossus. Next to the giant was a much smaller man, probably about sixty years old, considering his pronounced receding hairline and silvery hair. He was impeccably dressed in a tuxedo. This man was very aware of Prazdniev’s movements and listened to him in a detached yet polite way. The agent concluded that he probably belonged to Berlin’s high society. In any case, he wasn’t Russian.

  Fournier was boiling inside. He had been on the verge of making a serious approach, and now these two were monopolizing his target. And it didn’t seem like they were about to go away. He would just have to wait. He took the opportunity to get another drink. But he suddenly had to get up so as not to lose sight of the trio. They were drifting toward the entrance stairs, pushed along by the flow of excited dancers and scantily-clad, shimmying creatures. He left the bar and crept up behind them. While dancing ecstatically under the multicolored strobe lights, he nearly glued himself to Prazdniev, trying to hear the conversation. It was a waste of time because the Ukrainian was speaking in Russian with the giant, who then translated into the ear of the old man in a tuxedo. At least Fournier was sure of one thing: these three were in the middle of a deal. Performing some appropriate dance moves, he moved away from them to avoid notice. But when he turned around to locate them again, two go-go dancers dressed in transparent plastic and fluorescent underwear—he couldn’t tell if they were male or female—had stepped between the three men and him. When he managed to get away from them, he realized the trio had disappeared. He deduced that they had closed the deal and had probably gone outside to finish it. There was a good chance that the man in the tuxedo was a buyer, a real one. He went to the coat check to get his jacket. He shot out of the club into the street and almost got hit by a big Mercedes that had just pulled out of the parking lot. He recognized the colossus behind the wheel. The two others were sitting in the back. He discreetly noted the license plate number and ran back to his vehicle. He hadn’t sprinted for quite some time. The vodka was heaving dangerously in his stomach. Nevertheless, he found that he was still in good shape when he threw himself into the BMW.

  He turned on the console and called the central traffic police station in Berlin.

  “Central station, this is Interpol Agent Fournier, ID number IFRD5. I need an identification and tracking immediately. Mercedes G Class with license plate number BPA8136.”

  “This is the central station. Copy that, Agent Fournier; we’ll follow up as soon as we locate it. We’ll send you the position on your console.”

  It only took two minutes for a flashing red dot to appear: the Mercedes, on the city map. The vehicle was heading directly north on an expressway. It was traveling within the speed limit. A light rain fell on the sleeping city. The streets were deserted. He had no trouble catching up with it and placed himself at a good distance three cars behind. The Mercedes continued north to Eberswalde and then headed east on a secondary road and traveled to a country town called Nierderfinow. There, it turned onto a private road and stopped in front of a large automated gate. Fournier kept going and parked almost a kilometer beyond, mangling the sedan on an uneven road. On his console, he saw that the Mercedes had driven over three kilometers through the woods and had now stopped. Based on its position, it was on the estate of a Gustav Meyer. Surely that was the man in the tuxedo. The Mercedes the colossus drove also belonged to him.

  The fine rain had turned into flakes that swirled in the icy wind. He grumbled, powerless, helpless in the face of the unpredictability of the situation, so he offered himself a slug of vodka. The BMW’s thermostat indicated an outside temperature of minus four Celsius. He shook the bottle to assess what was left of it and looked at it almost tenderly for a moment, a bit like an old mistress he had run into. It would be useful to him, after all. He needed heat—and more technically, calories—because he hadn’t eaten anything since his sandwich at lunch.

  He took one last swig and opened the door, letting clouds of snowflakes rush into the passenger compartment and settle onto the folds of his jacket. For a few seconds, he watched their crystalline branches melt on the fabric of his clothes. Then he put on his hat and gloves, got up, and walked around to the trunk where his usual equipment was waiting for him. It included a tactical suit, bulletproof vest and shields, equipment for jamming, infiltrating, and neutralizing electronic and computer systems, assault rifles with sights, and long-range rifles.

  After equipping himself heavily, Fournier made sure that the sedan was still hidden from the road. He then set off through the woods in the direction the Mercedes had taken.

  21

  The Jeep was flying down the highway to Rochester. The sky was still gray, and the atmosphere weighed heavy on the endless agricultural lowlands. Lauren was driving cautiously, even if it was an emergency. The four-wheel drive’s roof was bent at the rear deck level, and the first police patrol to cross their path would no doubt find the vehicle’s condition suspicious. The officers would check their papers; she was sure of that. She and Eliott had false documents from the FBI, so they were safe, but they had to avoid notice.

  Eliott was in a second state; he wasn’t sleeping, but he wasn’t awake either. Huddled in a ball, he shivered despite the sleeping bag wrapped around him. A deafening draft of air rushed through the broken rear window and swept through the vehicle’s interior. Lauren saw him reach out to the dashboard. She guessed he wanted to turn up the heat even more, but it was already on full blast.

  “We’ll be in Rochester in half an hour. How do you feel?”

  He made a tremendous effort to straighten up and turn his head toward her.

  “I’m cold . . . a blanket.”

  She reached into the back seat and grabbed her wool overcoat for him.

  “That’s all I have.”

  “That . . . that’ll do,” he stammered.

  Lauren glanced into the rearview mirror, paying attention to the vehicles the Jeep was passing.

  “My princess?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember our dream?”

  A radiant smile lit up Lauren’s face. “The one where we go to the Rockies and build our house there? Yes, of course I remember.”

  “A big, beautiful house built of stone and wood, with a huge fireplace.”

  “Yes,” she added, “eco-friendly with green walls and solar panels, so we’ll be self-sufficient.”

  “Yeah, way out in the woods.”

  “Just the two of us,” she continued with stars in her eyes.

  “As soon as this thing is settled, we’re doing it. No more waiting. Okay?”

  “Okay, my love, we’re doing it.

  Rochester’s buildings were sagging under the still-dark sky, as if the supernatural dimension of the facts they faced had a mysterious hold on the climate. Eliott thought he could count the sunny days in the past month on the fingers of one hand.

  “Here we are,” Lauren announced as she turned the Jeep onto West Main Street.

  It was three p.m., and the early winter’s icy breeze sweeping through the city center had discouraged even diehard shoppers. The streets were deserted. Lauren turned into the entrance to the underground parking lot of the building where the bank was. It was risky because the place was very secure. But they were no longer in immediate danger now.

  Eliott had opened his eyes and was gathering his energy for the effort that walking would require.

  “Are you coming with me?” Lauren asked him.

  “I’ll try, unless I collapse before I reach the elevator. How long ago did you give me the last shot?”

  “About three hours.”

  “That’s why I feel like I can handle it. Listen, we’re going to skip the next one. I’ll pay close attention, and if I have the slightest abnormal sensation, we’ll do an injection in the public restroom or in a stairwell. Take the syringe with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Perfect. Let’s go.”
/>   They left the Jeep and took the elevator to the twelfth floor, where the main branch of Morgan Stanley in Rochester was. Eliott was dragging his feet a little, but he was conscious and able to have a normal conversation.

  “Hello, what can I do for you, ma’am?”

  Behind his glasses, the man sitting at the bank’s reception desk looked over the two newcomers from head to toe. He paused a few seconds on Eliott; then he looked back at Lauren.

  “Hello, I’ve come to remove a document from Sir Wilbur Ravenwood’s safe deposit box,” Lauren replied, very sure of herself. “Here’s my access code.”

  The receptionist took the card Lauren held out to him and examined it closely from every angle, as a jeweler would a gemstone. The man who appeared at least fifty, with a gray mustache, was reminiscent of a muskrat. This employee turned his attention back to them and looked again at Eliott with suspicion.

  “May I see your ID, ma’am?”

  “Yes, of course. Here you go.”

  The man focused all his attention on the ID Lauren handed him, examined it carefully, and gave it back to her with a crinkled smile.

  “Very well. Here is your temporary access card. All you have to do is insert it into the reader to access the box.”

  Lauren took the card and put her arm under Eliott’s elbow to help him walk. She could tell the old teller watched them walk away without taking his eyes off them. In front of the security door, Lauren inserted the card. A few seconds later, the door slid on its tracks, and a green light came on over the aisle where Ravenwood’s box was located.

  “Number 417,” Lauren said. “There it is.”

  They approached the rectangular opening that had another digital lock. Lauren inserted the access card. The box unlocked immediately. She opened it and pulled out the only metal drawer it contained. There was a table and chairs for customers to use. She set the drawer on the table.

  “What do we do now?” she asked Eliott.