"Did you get Arteaga?" he asked.
"Him and two others."
"Marchenko's dead. Plus three more Russians in the jungle and a couple on the beach."
"Russians? Jesus, what the hell hit us?"
"A combined operation. Six CIA and six KGB. We were mousetrapped. I tried to warn you, but—"
"How did you find out?"
"Chalice."
"Chalice? How the hell did she know?"
"I tried to warn you, but by the time I got the word—"
"From Chalice?"
"Exactly. You had already left for the boat and there was nothing I could do. After that, things got rather hectic."
"But how did Chalice know . . . ?"
Vasily waved the question aside and lowered himself to the deck with a weary grunt. He sat cross-legged on the planking and told Eddie what had happened in the jungle. He told it quietly, and without dramatics, but his face showed the strain that his voice ignored. Eddie listened soberly, nodding.
"You could have split," he said when Vasily had finished. "You didn't. Thanks."
"A moment of weakness." Vasily smiled faintly. "A sign of advancing age. Don't count on it happening again."
"About Chalice. Are you going to tell me?"
"All in good time." Vasily closed his eyes in concentration. "Right now the important thing is to figure out how we get back to the mainland."
Eddie stared at him peculiarly. "Have you had a hard day at the office, dear?"
Vasily opened his eyes and said impatiently, "Come, come, start thinking. What do we do? Those people are bound to have the ferry and the airport covered."
"How about using a fishing boat?" Eddie asked quietly.
"A boat? Ah, yes ... a boat." Vasily flushed, and tapped the decking with his fingers. "Apparently I'm more fatigued than I thought. Well, don't act so superior. I would have figured it out eventually."
"Sure you would have," Eddie said politely. "I just saved you some time. Any idea which way is Mexico?"
Vasily waved a languid hand toward the west. "Turn left at the corner and go that way. Then open up a couple of beers while I tell you about Chalice. It's about time you knew, and there's a lot to tell."
17
The Eastern Air Lines L-1011 began its descent at Tampico, winged down through the blue air over the central Mexican plateau, penetrated the brown layer of smog that hung suspended over the valley of Anahuac, and then rolled to a smooth halt at Mexico City airport. The colonel's lady smiled and charmed her way through Customs without so much as a handbag being opened for inspection, picked up her thirty-day tourist card at Immigration, then threaded through the jostling crowd toward the exit gate and the car-rental counters. Fifteen minutes later, as she tipped the porter twenty pesos for loading her luggage into the trunk of the Volkswagen, she felt a light touch on her arm. She turned to face Eddie Mancuso. A tight little smile of greeting played upon his lips, but when he raised his sunglasses under his sombrero, his dark eyes—puzzled, a little wary, and filled with a childlike sadness—betrayed him. He looked tired, as if restful sleep had eluded him for too long a time.
"Hello, Chalice."
"I didn't expect you, darling. Was it wise to come?"
He shrugged slightly. "Maybe not. But I blend in. And I had to talk to you first. Before Vasily."
She nodded her acceptance of that. "Do you want to drive?"
"You drive. I'm a little beat."
Their route crossed the southern fringe of Mexico City on the Viaducto Aleman and then joined the ring road, passing through the miles of slums and brightly colored housing projects. One thousand Mexicans from the provinces arrived in the city every day, looking for work that wasn't there, and the result was a suburban world they called el cinturon de miseria—the belt of misery. Once past it, the four-lane highway lanced through rain- washed desert and gently sloping mountains northward to Que- retaro. Chalice drove smoothly, while Eddie smoked one cigarette after another, snugged deep in the cocoon of his thoughts. Finally he broke his silence.
"Vasily told me about it. He didn't have much choice. You're a hell of a woman, Chalice. Or do you prefer Catherine?"
"Chalice will do. My cup doesn't runneth over, but I keep hoping. I knew he'd tell you," she said lightly. "It was just a matter of timing."
"How long has he known?"
"Didn't he tell you that too?"
"Sure," Eddie said, managing a chuckle. "I'm just checking up on him. I'm the dummy. You can tell me anything and I'll believe it. At least, I used to believe it."
"He knew from the beginning," she said. "It didn't matter to him. As a matter of fact, I think it amused him more than anything else, once he'd decided the Agency wasn't behind it. You know how he is. He realized I couldn't hurt him, and I suppose he thought that one day I might be useful. He was right. It worked out that way, didn't it?"
"But you never told me."
"Why should I, Eddie? You would have run like a deer. And I didn't want you to run. I wanted to have it all, and you were a big part of my all. You still are."
She looked straight ahead as she drove, speaking quietly, and he wanted to believe her.
"What does your husband know?"
"Just that I go away. That there are probably other men. That there's no other way for me."
"And if we kill him?"
"I've accepted that," she said.
There was a flat finality in her words that chilled him.
"You might say," she went on, "that he dug his own grave. He broke all his own rules. Freddy's the most discreet man in the world, except with me. I suppose that's how he thinks he can hold on to me. He told me about you four years ago, and once he told me, I knew I had to meet you."
He remembered: a fine late-September day in Central Park, playing touch football with the Sunday-morning gang, and after the game the girl with the smiling violet eyes who had clapped her hands with delight when he threw the final touchdown pass. It had all seemed so natural, accidental and yet fated.
Chalice. That's an odd name. Yes, I chose it myself. My father had a pet name for me; he called me Cupcake. He had eyes just like yours. But you can't be a grown woman with a name like that, can you?
"I arranged all that," she said now. "I met Vasily the same way at Gstaad, skiing."
"I don't understand you."
"Does it matter? I never asked you to understand me. I just asked you to let me live my life and take me as I am. If you couldn't have done that, I wouldn't have stayed around. I wouldn't be here now. And you'd probably be dead. You and Vasily both."
He mulled the truth of that, then said, "Okay. But it's not quite good enough. Not anymore. I need to know who you are. I need to know what makes you tick."
"Oh, Eddie," she said, and her sigh was a whisper of sadness. "I spent nearly five years on the couch trying to figure that one out. It cost me a fortune, but it was worth it. And do you know why? Because after five years I finally realized that understanding yourself really isn't all that important. Because you never can, not fully. All you can do is pick a convenient position, a half- truth you can live with. Then, if you're lucky, you can con yourself into believing that you're a free human being, and not just a freak."
"I never called you a freak, Chalice. It's not the kind of word I use."
"The word doesn't bother me. Underneath the masks, everybody is a freak about something. Vasily says that I'm a freak about death. Well, maybe I am. People start to die as soon as they're born. It's the one sure direction in life. My father taught me that. He was a soldier, and he knew."
"I'm not exactly ignorant on the subject myself."
She heard his words, but they drifted past her. They were driving through flat desert now, country like the deserts of her youth, and against the backdrop of the arid land she saw the figure of her father, the general, the warrior. General Malcolm Ripley, Jr., The Ripper. That's what the men had called him, half out of love, half out of fear. The Ripper, leading a tank b
attalion in Europe before she was born. The Ripper, with a regimental combat team in Korea when she was a child. Korea, with her mother dead, and little Catherine living at the post near El Paso, passed along through a series of housekeepers she hardly remembered. Waiting, just waiting for the warrior's return, waiting for him to come back and soothe her, laugh with her, stroke her hair and smile out of his dark eyes surrounded by the tiny wrinkles and call her, "My sweet Cathy, little Cupcake ..." And tell her that whatever she wanted she could have. "A horse? A white horse with a black mane? Oh, I don't know if I can arrange a black mane, unless I get a bucket of paint, but a white horse, yes. For Christmas, my darling ..."
The men loved him, but not as much as she did. That love was special, and perfect. "There's no one but you, little Cupcake. You're what I come home to. You're the only one." The only one . . . the only one. And later she knew that she had never loved anyone as much as she had loved that man.
How long does such love last? He gave her the white horse, and she loved him. Then he gave himself a new wife, and for a time the love died. A wife? It seemed impossible. Those wrinkled eyes, that steel-gray hair, belonged to a patriarch and a warrior, not to a lover with a young wife. If the horse had been intended as a balm to soothe her, then it failed. No balm could ever soothe the sadness of her loss.
But she accepted it, and tried to be the quiet, obedient stepdaughter who kept out of the way. That's what he wanted: a good girl. "My good little girl, my Cupcake. You know I still love you too. You know that, don't you?"
Love you too?
It wasn't enough. The woman, Grace—dark-haired, slight of body, almost frail—was kind to Catherine. No one could fault her. They would shop in the PX together, go to the movies, ride through the desert and the trails above Shadow Mountain. But when the bedroom door closed, Catherine knew it was all a lie. There's no one but you, Cupcake. That was a lie. And he had never lied to her before.
The panorama of the Mexican desert, as she drove north now with Eddie through the state of Hidalgo, the green plain that would turn to brown dust when the rains ended, and the blue- purple mountains that bulked to the west in a never-ending, rippling line, brought it back to her easily—the morning that she and Grace had ridden up Shadow Mountain into the backcountry.
How strange, that such things happened on fine days, under a warming sun, a cloudless sky, rich shadows streaking the earth that sloped off the narrow trail. Grace rode well, sitting an English saddle with ease, comfortable with her chestnut gelding. At peace with her world, she laughed as they rode—a silvery laugh that echoed back from the canyon wall—and perhaps it was the laugh that lit the fuse. The happiness that rode on the wings of that laugh was a challenge to Catherine, and in that moment it seemed to her that Grace was the possessor of everything worth having, everything as yet denied to her: a fragile beauty, a contented life, a womanhood beyond the reach of a teen-age girl, and an adoring husband. Not just any husband, but General Malcolm Ripley, Jr. Grace had it all, Catherine had so little, and so she killed her.
Not badly, not bluntly, but at a place where the trail skirted the lip of the canyon, the gelding shied. Perhaps a lizard, perhaps a snake—Catherine never knew. But what she never forgot was the sight of Grace checking at the reins, sawing as the chestnut slid on loose shale. Catherine, up in the stirrups, reached over to help, to catch at an arm, a rein, anything to hold in case the chestnut plunged.
'’ I tried. Daddy. I tried.''
The flanks of the horses touched, and the girl grabbed hold of the woman's arm. For a moment she pulled, helping, saving. And then, in a savage reversal, she pushed with all her sinewy young strength, shoved outward, and at the same time kicked at the chestnut's belly with her boot. Grace opened her mouth to scream, but no sound broke above the scraping of hoofs and the chestnut's frantic whinny; so surprised—and then the horse and rider were tumbling, cartwheeling, down through the brush and rocks into the canyon fifty feet below.
"Daddy, it was horrible."
He held her in his arms when he got there, spiraling up the trail in a jeep following the ambulance, the old warrior weeping, crushing her to him tightly, for now she was all he had left. When she was smothered that way, all the pain ebbed away, replaced by a pleasure that her mind could not define. Her body quivered; her spirit soared. In time the edges of the memory crumbled, the images faded, and although she could recapture the pleasure at any time she pleased, even now she was no longer sure if she had pushed or pulled that day on the trail high on Shadow Mountain.
Just past Queretaro, they turned off the four-lane highway onto the narrow road that twisted through the mountains toward San Miguel de Allende.
"I'm tired too," Chalice said. "I'm very tired."
"You want me to drive now?"
"Not tired that way. When this is over . . ." She hesitated, then glanced at him for the first time in an hour. "What happens now?"
"Good question. That's all we've been talking about. Well, not quite all, but it's the big thing. Since Cozumel, everything's changed."
"Because they know."
"That's right, because they know. And it's all been programmed into the computer. So ..." He let it hang there, turning to light another cigarette, avoiding looking at her. The desert sped by: a laden burro, children playing in the dust, a clutch of adobe huts. "I want to quit," he said finally. "And Vasily wants to go to war—all or nothing. I can't see it. For me, it's the end of the line."
"If you run, they'll find you."
"I suppose so, sooner or later. I'll take my chances. I didn't go into this to make it my life's work. The other thing, what I did before, that was bad enough. It was a job and they paid me well and I didn't ask too many questions. I didn't think ahead. I didn't see that I could never get out of it. And I made this deal with Vasily because there was no other way. But where does it end?"
"You can end it," she said softly. "That's what I came to tell you. There's a new man running things in Williamsburg. His name is Crowfoot."
"Tom Crowfoot?" Eddie was momentarily roused out of his lethargy. "An Indian?"
"That's the one. He and Freddy went over to Zhukovka to set up the Cozumel operation."
"Crowfoot. He's the best, and we beat him. Not bad for two amateurs." He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Of course, we had some help."
She smiled. "They still don't know how you did it. Crowfoot is furious, and Freddy has no idea that he's the leak. Now they're scared, and they have to meet again. Crowfoot, Freddy, and Fist."
"Where?"
"Williamsburg. They're back to using CYBER again, so it had to be either Williamsburg or Zhukovka. This time it's the Agency's turn to play host."
"Do you know when?"
"Yes." She slowed the speed of the car and touched his arm lightly. "All three of them together. You'll never get a better chance."
"We could never get inside. You know their security."
"From the outside, then."
"Blow it all away? The whole unit? Christ, you're getting to sound like Vasily. He had an idea for Zhukovka, a miniature atomic bomb planted in a can of tennis balls. Did you ever hear of anything so crazy?"
"It doesn't sound crazy to me. Could you use it at Williamsburg?" Then she frowned, and shook her head slightly. "No good—Freddy doesn't play tennis. Could you do the same thing with golf balls?"
"You're not listening to me," he said, depressed again, the weariness back in his voice. "Do you have any idea how many people have died so far in this operation? I counted them up the other night. I make it twenty-one, although maybe I missed a stiff
or two somewhere. Twenty-one fucking bodies, and now you want me to take out an entire office complex. Forget it!"
"All right, I'll forget it," she said slowly. "And you'll run. And they'll find you. And whatever future you and I might have had together will go down the drain. Wasted. Just like you."
"Future? You and me? What future?"
"The two of us t
ogether. Wherever you want to go. Once this is all over."
"Say that again."
"You heard me right the first time."
"Stop the car."
She braked in a long deceleration that brought them to a stop at the side of the road. She switched off the key and half-turned on the seat to face him. He took her into his arms.
"You and me?" he asked. "Just the two of us?"
"If you still want me that way. All to yourself."
"And Vasily?"
"He won't object. Not if it's what I really want. He's probably guessed it already."
He stared at her for a long moment, reading her face intently. Then he released her from his arms and said, "Start the car."
"What is it?"
"I don't know. I have to think. I just don't know."
"But we can do it," Vasily said calmly, although his gray eyes were glittering with resolution. "Not with the tennis balls. With the laser. I told you a time would come when we'd need something big and we could use the laser. We can do it."
They were alone in the shed behind the house on the hill, Vasily straddling a chair, Eddie pacing back and forth on the tiled floor. Outside, the afternoon rain beat down on the earth as a parade of thunderheads moved in from the mountains to the west.
"You have to be out of your mind," Eddie said. "I mean, if we could do it—I'm not saying we could, but if we had a way— do you know how many people work in there? Lower-level people, secretaries, clerks, technicians. There must be more than a hundred."
"Chalice says that the meeting will be on a Sunday."
"So it's half-staff, then. Fifty people. Fifty people who never did anything to me. Do you realize how many people have died so far . . ."
Vasily restrained him with a raised finger. "Spare me the statistics, please. Chalice told me of your conversation in the car. Twenty-one, you said? I hadn't counted them up, but I take your word for it."
"And it doesn't bother you?"
Vasily slid by the question. "Look at it this way. With the score already so high, what difference will a few more make? Keep your mind on basics, Eddie. You have to get rid of Parker and Crowfoot."
THE DEATH FREAK -- An Eddie Mancuso Thriller (Eddie Mancuso And Vasily Borgneff Book 1) Page 22