Code of Blood

by George C. Chesbro

  “Good,” Chant replied perfunctorily as he went back to searching through the dead man’s clothing.

  Jan studied the man with the iron-colored hair and eyes. “You … uh, you’re …?”

  “I am.”

  “The radio …”

  “Never believe everything you hear on the radio or read in the newspapers.”

  “Uh … wow. First impressions can be notoriously misleading, of course, but I liked you the first time I saw you, and I like you even better right now. I must have a thing for big-time crooks.”

  Chant looked up at the woman, laughed easily. “It’ll pass, Miss Rawlings. I’m sure of it.”

  Suddenly Jan’s legs would no longer support her, and she sat down hard on the floor. Chant started to rise and go to her, but Jan shook her head to signal she was all right. Chant returned to his search, and Jan watched as he turned out the man’s empty pockets, then ripped open the coat and shirt collar. The labels in the man’s clothing had all been removed.

  “I don’t understand,” Jan said in a small voice. “The security guard downstairs …?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh,” Jan swallowed hard, trying to raise some moisture in her dry mouth “You’re supposed to be dead, too.”

  “Yeah. Well, remember what you said about first impressions.”

  “He killed the Greenblatts, didn’t he?”

  “Maybe; I’m not sure. This isn’t the man I expected would come after you.”

  “Not the man you expected?!”

  Chant did not reply. He rose, walked to the window, and stared out over the city, apparently lost in thought.

  “Mr. Alt—Sinclair?” Jan continued tentatively. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain to me what’s going on?”

  Chant turned around and stared at Jan for a few moments, then shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, Miss Rawlings, but I don’t have time. Con Ed will have noticed the power surge when you short-circuited the lights, and they may send a man to investigate. I can’t be here.”

  “Why? You can explain it to them, and then—”

  “It’s a long story, Miss Rawlings, and explaining it to anyone isn’t important. What’s important is the fact that you’re alive. Now we want to make certain that you stay alive.”

  “What? Good grief! You mean—?”

  “I don’t want to frighten you, Miss Rawlings, but you could be in danger for … some time; until a stop is put to this thing.” Chant paused, groaned as he arched his back. “Move out of your apartment for a time; stay with a friend. Try not to be alone at all, but especially never work alone at night here again.”

  Jan had seen the grimace on his face when he’d arched his back; now she thought she detected strain in his voice. “You’re hurt,” she said softly.

  “Not really. Just a few scrapes and bruises.”

  Jan walked to him, turned him around so that she could see his back in the moonlight, winced. “My God, it’s raw.”

  “It’s not as bad as it probably looks.”

  “How the hell do you know?” Jan said, still wincing at the sight of the raw, bleeding flesh on Chant’s back. “You can’t see it.”

  “It will heal.”

  “The car—you jumped out before it went in the water.”

  Chant nodded, turned back to Jan.

  “But how did you get away from the police? How did you get here?”

  Chant shrugged, smiled thinly. “The dock pilings; while they were looking for me in the water, I moved back along the struts under the dock and came up behind them.”

  “If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead. I owe you my life.”

  “You don’t owe me anything; I owed you. I allowed a lovely friend with a silver tongue—Martha—to talk me into doing something I was initially against. It cost her her life. If this man had killed you, I’d also be responsible for your death.”

  “You know, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I let her refer me to you.”

  “That still doesn’t explain anything. Why did you want to be referred to me?”

  “I needed a way to get into the project over at Blake College.”

  “Why?”

  “I must go now, Miss Rawlings,” Chant said, heading for the door. “Call the police, tell them exactly what happened here.”

  “But then they’ll start looking for you again!”

  “It can’t be helped, and it really doesn’t matter,” Chant said, pausing in the doorway “I don’t think the people who sent this man after you will try again—too risky Still, you must be cautious Take the steps I recommended.”

  “Wait a minute!” Jan cried, running after Chant as he disappeared down the stairs. She made it down the stairs and across the office in time to block the door. Suddenly she was very angry—without understanding why. She felt as if this man standing before her with a bemused smile on his face was taking something away from her, something irreplaceable which she had only just begun to realize she had.

  “I do have to go,” Chant said gently.

  “Mr Sinclair,” Jan said in what she hoped was a light manner, “this may come as a shock to you, but I’m absolutely petrified right now. Can’t you just stay with me for a little while?”

  “You’ll be all right, Miss Rawlings, if you do what I told you to do. Go back and call the police There’s no one else coming after you, and the police will be here in a few minutes—if they’re not on the way already It’s why I must leave.”

  “Let me come with you!”

  Chant gently pushed Jan out of the doorway. “Good-bye, Miss Rawlings.”

  She had lied, Jan thought as she watched the man with the iron-colored eyes and hair walk out of the office and disappear around a corner. She was not afraid; in fact, she was excited by the sudden conviction that John Sinclair was a gift sent to her by … whatever He was a gift that could either crush her or transform her into a person she had never dreamed she could be. He was leaving, whatever she did now, or did not do, would affect her powerfully until the day she died. And the decision had to be made immediately, for the gift would never be offered to her again With John Sinclair gone, she would be left with nothing but memories of a man who was like some primitive, inexorable force—left with nothing but a sense of mystery that would never be solved, and could only hurt.

  Jan grabbed her shoes and purse. Then, still in her stocking feet, she ran out of the office and turned down the corridor to her left. She caught sight of Chant just as he was stepping into an elevator, and suddenly tears welled in her eyes and she had to choke back a sob; away from her eyes, Chant’s body was sagging with exhaustion and knotted with pain This man had just saved her life, Jan thought, and now he needed help. She intended to make certain he got it.

  “Wait, Mr. Sinclair!” Jan shouted, frantically waving a shoe as the elevator door started to close. “Damn it, I’m afraid! You got me into this! Whether you like it or not, I’m sticking with you until you get me out of it!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Unable to sleep, Jan arose just after dawn and tiptoed down the steps from her bedroom on the second floor so as not to awaken the man she assumed was still sleeping. The delicious aroma of brewing tea was her first clue that Chant was already awake, and she found him sitting at the kitchen table. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt Jan presumed had come from one of the two bulky suitcases he had retrieved from somewhere in Central Park the night before, he was reading a small, leather-bound book, gently turning yellowed pages so old that the printing had faded—another treasure, she thought, from the disinterred suitcases.

  “Good morning,” Chant said easily, closing the ancient book and carefully setting it aside. “How are you feeling?”

  “How am I feeling? How are you feeling? Good grief, you must have some recuperative powers!”

  “I told you my back probably looked worse than it was. It’s still a bit tender, but you did a marvelous job of washing and
bandaging. Also, the ointment is very effective.”

  “God, what was in that stuff?” Jan asked, wrinkling her nose as she remembered the smell of the black, greasy salve Chant had given her to rub into the wounds on his back.

  “Just an herbal concoction I was taught to make some years ago. I’d give you the recipe, but you can’t find the ingredients in this country. I always carry some with me.”

  “Along with disguises, false passports, and wads of cash in six different currencies—which you keep in suitcases you’ve hidden somewhere.”

  Chant laughed easily. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “I’ve been listening to the radio most of the night. You should hear some of the crazy things they’re saying.”

  “I’ve probably already heard most of them—a number of times.”

  “The reports say that some people call you ‘Chant,’ but nobody seems to know why,” Jan said, once again marveling at the big man’s grace of movement as he rose, poured her a cup of tea, brought it to her.

  “It’s just a nickname,” Chant replied, pouring himself a second cup, sitting back down at the table across from Jan.

  “How did you get it?”

  “It’s just a nickname.”

  “Meaning you won’t tell me.”

  “Meaning it’s not important.”

  “I like it. May I call you Chant?”

  “If you’d like.”

  “This is the best tea I’ve ever tasted,” Jan said, sipping at the steaming brew. “From the suitcases?”

  Chant smiled, nodded. “There are some amenities I prefer not to do without.”

  Jan set down her cup, leaned across the table, and touched Chant’s hand “Thank you again for saving my life last night.”

  “I told you there was nothing to thank me for,” Chant replied evenly “Now I’m the one who’s indebted to you Looking the way I did last night, I think I might have had a little trouble getting a cab, not to mention a hotel room And look where I ended up—a lovely house, surrounded by trees, in Rockland County.”

  Jan shrugged. “No big deal. It’s just a good thing for both of us that you happened to save my life on a Friday night. I always come up here on weekends, so I’d already rented a car. I was coming anyway; the only difference is that now I have some interesting company.”

  “Your house?”

  Jan shook her head. “Social workers can’t afford homes on South Mountain Road; this is serious movie star country. The deal is a legacy from a rich ex-boyfriend. We somehow managed to stay friends even after we broke up. He just sees it as a summer house; he can’t be bothered to come up here during the winter, but it’s also a bother to shut a house down. We have an arrangement where I use it on weekends in exchange for watering the plants, making sure the pipes haven’t frozen, that sort of thing. Being able to come out here is about the only thing that allows me to keep my sanity.” Jan paused, added quietly: “Can we talk now? Will you explain to me what’s happening?”

  Occasionally sipping at his tea, Chant began to talk about Vito Biaggi and the Italian magistrate’s investigation. He told Jan about his friend’s murder, and the slaying of a diplomat in Switzerland in a similar fashion. He told her everything, in detail, up to the moment when he had slipped into the darkened conference room and intercepted her attacker, for he knew there was no longer any point in concealing anything from the woman.

  Through it all, Jan listened in wide-eyed silence. “My God,” she said when he had finished. “You were certainly right on target when you suspected something strange might be going on in that research project.” She wanted to say more, but simply ended by reaching out and again touching his hand. She felt short of breath in the presence of this man whose firm, even tone when he had spoken of the deaths of Vito Biaggi and Martha Greenblatt belied the deep sorrow and regret she felt radiating from him like fever heat. John Sinclair, she thought, was not a man who wasted extra words or emotion.

  “Yes, but what I didn’t anticipate was that I’d be recognized—in this case, by an old enemy. Once the people behind the project realized that it had been penetrated, they felt the need not only to dismantle it, but to kill anyone with whom I might have conceivably shared information about it.

  “I was left alive as a smoke screen and in order to have someone on whom to blame the murders. They were certain no one would believe any story I had to tell; because of my reputation in some quarters, my guilt would automatically be assumed. It’s the same principle that was at work in the other two assassinations—and I suspect there may have been even more. I should have found a way of getting into the program without using Martha to deceive you.”

  “I don’t know any other way you could have done it,” Jan said quietly.

  “I should have found a way.”

  “Chant, what is it that these people were doing?”

  “The whole focus of the project was to select the most vicious and physically fit of the ex-convicts who were fed into it; over the years, I believe these men were—are—meant to be used as assassins. But not in the usual sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about the man who attacked you?”

  Jan laughed nervously “I can’t say I paid much attention to anything but the machete in his hands.”

  “Did you see his face at all?”

  “He had just this dull expression—blank, really; he didn’t show any emotion at all He was like a machine that just kept coming at me—until you arrived on the scene.”

  “Right; ‘like a machine’ seems an apt description. The men I’ve been with were many things, but they certainly weren’t unemotional, they weren’t suicidal, and the worst of them wouldn’t take it into his head to hack up a stranger for no reason. I believe that man was somehow programmed to kill you; I believe he may have been sent to your apartment first, then picked up and brought to the office building when you didn’t come home. He seemed to be in a kind of trance, incapable of any real decision. If I’m right—and I’m certain I am—he was a ‘graduate’ of that program at Blake College, a man who’d made it through to the end.”

  Jan shook her head. “But where’s he been all this time?”

  “A good question. Just before I had my rather unpleasant reunion with Tommy Wing, Montsero was saying that he had a proposition for us. I think I know what that proposition was—a quick, secret move away from New York to a place where they’d have secure, well-paying jobs and new identities. That was the ‘reward’ for completing the program. Wherever they ended up, they’d be added to a stockpile of manpower to be used as kind of throwaway assassins, human bullets which are totally expendable, and which may even be programmed to kill themselves if they’re not killed by police. The first thing we do now is look for the place where they may be keeping this human ammunition dump.”

  Jan smiled. “I like the fact that you said ‘we.’ I take it as a hopeful sign you’re not as anxious to get rid of me now as you were last night.”

  Chant studied Jan for some time in silence. “Things are different now, Jan,” he said at last. “Last night, if you’d stayed and reported what happened to the police, I think the people who’ve done these things would have taken the calculated risk of ignoring you. By now, they know you’re with me and that you know everything I know. Now they can’t ignore you. They’ll be hunting you every bit as intently as they’re hunting me. I really don’t want you killed. Considering the power and resources of these people, I consider you as safe—probably safer—with me as you would be anywhere else. Until this is resolved, you can never go back to places you’ve been or contact people you’ve known.”

  “Oh,” Jan said in a small voice, and wondered why she wasn’t upset in the least at leaving everything in her past life behind her. “Where will we start looking?”

  “In the library. We’ll be going through a lot of back issues of business magazines.”

  “What will we be looking for?”

  “The
founder of Blake College is a man by the name of R. Edgar Blake” Chant paused, smiled thinly. “Another old enemy. Knowing Blake, I’d guess that the college was founded precisely for the purpose of running that project; he’s not much of a philanthropist. If Blake is behind the project, it probably means he uses—or controls the use—of these throwaway assassins Attacking Blake is also going to present some special problems, since he’s probably the most well-guarded man in the world What we’ll be looking for is a place—some kind of holding that can be linked to Blake—where he might be keeping these men.”

  “Chant, if what you say is true, then it’s this Blake who’s ultimately responsible for the deaths of Martha and your friend in Italy.”

  “Yes. It makes Blake part of the organization Vito was after—probably the head.”

  “And this Tommy Wing is his chief of security?”

  Chant shook his head “Not likely.”

  “But—?”

  “Tommy Wing isn’t exactly what you’d call a good soldier or organizational type. Blake obviously gives him little chores to do, but my guess is that Blake keeps him around as a kind of pet.”

  “A kind of pet!”

  Chant shrugged, smiled. “I’m quite serious. Some people keep dogs, cats, goldfish, or snakes around as pets; Blake would keep a Tommy Wing. For Blake, evil is a kind of hobby; it would amuse him to keep on his payroll a man who bites other men to death. Also, if you really wanted to put a scare into somebody, Hammerhead would be the man to do it. It’s not the same thing as security, which requires professionals. R. Edgar Blake has the best-equipped and best-trained private army on the face of the earth. Anyway, I know some of his holdings in this country, and I’m hoping the business magazines will help us to pinpoint some others; it won’t be easy, because he controls holding companies within holding companies. We’ll focus on Texas.”

  “Why Texas?”

  “A man by the name of Ron Press disappeared shortly after going through the program. He wrote one letter to his girlfriend after that, mentioning that he’d landed a good job. The letter came from somewhere in Texas. It’s the only lead I have. Knowing where to find Blake isn’t a problem; but I want to destroy this operation, and doing so may give me some idea of how to get to him.”