White Death

by Daniel Blake

  Tartu picked up his cellphone and dialed Patrese.

  Patrese felt the BlackBerry vibrate in his pocket, but whoever it was and whatever they wanted, it could hardly be more crucial than what was happening in the Veritas’ suite.

  Patrese had his gun trained on Unzicker. Unzicker had his gun trained on Nursultan. Nursultan didn’t have a weapon to complete the stand-off triangle, and Patrese was glad: at least he knew that he and Unzicker knew how to fire the damn things.

  ‘Put it down, Thomas,’ Patrese said, for what felt at least the fifth time. ‘Put it down, and we can sort all this out.’

  ‘You saw me kill them, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So I’m screwed anyway.’

  ‘You could plead self-defense.’

  ‘He came to blackmail me!’ Nursultan shouted. ‘That not self-defense! Man break into your house and you attack him, he not claim self-defense!’

  Actually, Patrese thought, there were plenty of places where he probably could: but there was a time and place for the political-correctness-and-human-rights-gone-mad debate, and this wasn’t either of them.

  ‘Just give me the gun, Thomas,’ he said.

  ‘You know what I am?’ Unzicker’s eyes flitted between Patrese and Nursultan, but his gun hand was very still, no wavering or shaking. ‘I’m a genius. A solid-gold genius. I’ve invented the first proper AI in history.’ He focused on Nursultan. ‘And now you want to cheat me out of my share.’

  ‘This is no way to sort things out,’ Patrese said.

  Unzicker jerked his head toward Nursultan. ‘I bet it is where he comes from.’

  ‘Mr Nursultan,’ Patrese said, ‘you’re going to honor your word, yes?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The same Mr Nursultan, Patrese remembered, who’d at various stages in the past few weeks made thinly veiled threats against Patrese, even more thinly veiled offers of bribes to him, and had just been prepared to let his goons loose on Unzicker. In Unzicker’s position, Patrese thought, he probably wouldn’t have believed Nursultan either.

  Patrese took a step toward Unzicker. ‘Give me the gun.’

  Unzicker swiveled round to aim at him. ‘No. Don’t. Back.’

  Patrese could wait, should wait, for the cops to arrive. They’d realize sooner or later, surely: the two guys downstairs in the lobby, Anderssen when he didn’t hear from Patrese, someone in the hotel who must have heard the shots, suppressed though they’d been. And then it would be a hostage situation: they’d bring in the negotiators and talk Unzicker ragged till he gave in. That’s what they did; that’s what they were good at. It would last a few hours, it wouldn’t be fun, but they’d all get out of it alive.

  All this went through Patrese’s head in a flash; and in that very same flash Nursultan lunged for Unzicker’s gun, and Unzicker must have seen him out of the corner of his eye because he whirled back toward Nursultan again, gun hand coming round and trigger finger already taking up the pressure, and Patrese had taken the shot too soon against Samantha Slinger in Pittsburgh, and he hadn’t taken the shot against the bank robber with the crazy Hollywood mask, and he’d taken the shot against the suicide bomber in Heinz Field and got that one right, and he was going to take the shot here and get that right too.

  The olive-drab Glock 22 kicked twice in his hands. Double tap to the head. Unzicker couldn’t have done it better himself. His body spun round on itself with the force of the impact, crashing over the back of a chair and on to the floor.

  Nursultan looked wild-eyed at Patrese.

  ‘You kill him!’

  ‘It was him or you.’ Patrese wondered briefly whether he’d taken the right option.

  ‘How the fuck I get Misha now? You know how much it worth?’

  There’s gratitude for you, Patrese thought. Save a man’s life, and watch him bitch about all the money you might have cost him.

  ‘Try his office,’ Patrese said, and in the same moment remembered that Anderssen was already there. He pulled his BlackBerry out of his pocket, and it started vibrating the moment he did so. TARTU, said the screen. He hit the ‘answer’ button.

  ‘I’ll call you right back.’

  ‘They’re the same person,’ Tartu blurted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘killerinstinct32 and sequinedberg. They’re the same person.’

  ‘But that means …’

  ‘Yes. Kwasi’s been playing against himself, over and over.’

  Playing the game. Against himself. Over and over.

  The game. The Game.

  Anderssen. Stata Center. Unzicker’s office. Keycard.

  Patrese ended Tartu’s call and dialed Anderssen. Two rings, and then the pick-up.

  ‘Franco. Hello.’

  Not Anderssen’s voice.

  Kwasi’s.

  They found Anderssen’s body in Unzicker’s office. Kwasi was long gone, of course, and with him all the Misha stuff: Nursultan confirmed that none of what they’d been working on was in Unzicker’s office anymore, or in his room in Tang Hall.

  The security guard at the Stata Center was adamant that only a white man had come in this morning. Patrese thought of what Anderssen had told him about the bank robber with the mask, and remembered that the mask in question had been made by a company based out in Van Nuys. Patrese borrowed the security guard’s computer terminal – this was MIT, so if you breathed, you were online – and googled ‘Van Nuys masks’. The first result returned was the SPFX website: SPFX Masks, Silicone Masks, Movie Quality.

  Patrese clicked on the list of the masks they offered. He recognized one of them, the Player, as the black guy he’d seen at the bank robbery in Cambridge.

  ‘There.’ The security guard was pointing. ‘That’s the guy, right there. The white guy who checked in this morning.’

  Handsome Guy, the mask was called. SPFX’s idea of handsome was clearly different from Patrese’s, but if they were charging close on two grand per mask, SPFX’s bank balance was probably different from Patrese’s too.

  Patrese rang the number on the website. No answer. Thanksgiving vacation. Back Monday. Thanks for your enquiry. Please e-mail your order. Not that it would do anything other than confirm what they already knew: Kwasi had ordered one of these masks, and he’d used it while going out killing in the Boston area. There’d never been two killers. There’d only been one: Kwasi, playing against himself.

  He’d left two things by Anderssen’s body. One of them Patrese had expected: the Chariot card. Whether the Tarot meant anything any more, Patrese had no idea. Perhaps Kwasi had gotten the idea off of Anna, when he’d been going out with Inessa. Perhaps he’d gotten it off of Unzicker, who’d made a tarot costume for MIThenge, and just used it to throw Patrese off the scent, add another layer of obfuscation.

  The second was a copy of The Royal Game, a novella by Stefan Zweig.

  Inessa had told Patrese about this, he remembered. Zweig had been an Austrian writer who’d achieved the height of his fame during the interwar years, and The Royal Game – only published after his suicide – was about a man, Dr B, who’d been jailed or something like that, with only a book of grandmaster chess games for company.

  He’d read this book so often, and memorized all the games so thoroughly, that in the end he’d become consumed by chess and, still kept in total isolation, had begun to play against himself. But chess is a game of perfect information, so to play it properly, White cannot know for sure what Black is thinking, and vice versa. Wanting to play chess against yourself is a paradox, like jumping over your own shadow.

  So to do this properly, Dr B had been forced to split his psyche into two personas, White and Black. To take this to its logical absurdity, he had to literally switch his brain on and off. So Dr B had at once known everything and known nothing: he’d been totally his White personality while thinking as White, but the moment White had moved, he’d switched to his Black personality, as thoroughly and immediately as though he’d pressed a chess clock. M
ove, switch. Move, switch. Move, switch.

  And he’d studied the board anew after every single move, looking for traps or pitfalls that he himself had set in a psyche now totally forgotten for the next few minutes, and yet totally recalled when the move was made and he switched back. Inevitably, he’d had a breakdown, hovering over the abyss: and after every game, whichever half of his self had been defeated instantly wanted revenge against the other half.

  So too, it seemed, with Kwasi. When he donned the mask, he put on with it the persona of the White killer: organized, methodical, calculating, in the way that on the chessboard White plays to press home the advantage of the first move. And at other times he was Black: vicious, frenzied, forever complicating things to negate the advantage of that first move.

  But Kwasi wasn’t only playing against himself. He was playing against Patrese too. And Patrese prided himself on always getting his man.

  PART THREE

  Endgame

  ‘Play the endgame like a machine.’

  Rudolf Spielmann

  57

  It’s not hard to preserve human skin.

  First you soak it in water to clean and soften it. Then you take a sharp knife or hacksaw blade and scrape all the crap off the inside, all the flesh and fat and that. Next you put it back in liquid – not water this time, but piss. Leave it here for a bit. That loosens all the hair fibers. Human skin isn’t as hairy as animal skin, obviously, but if you want it to look good, you can’t have stray follicles everywhere. Once you take it out of the piss, you can remove the loose hairs one by one with tweezers.

  Now you’ve got to dry it out. Cover it all over in salt, about three-quarters of an inch thick, and leave it for sixteen hours. Salt blots up the moisture like a motherfucker. When you come to take it off, the salt’ll be all damp, but the skin’ll be dry as a bone.

  Think you’re finished here? Not even close. You’re only just getting started. ’Cos here’s where the tanning starts. Not tanning as in suntanning, fool people lying on UV beds or sizzling their honky skin in the sun – next stop skin cancer, doesn’t really seem worth it, no? – but tanning, as in curing and preparing skin, the way they’ve done it for centuries with animal skins.

  And before you get all squeamish, what’s human skin except animal skin? You see these things about the Nazis making lampshades out of human skin, or some Wild West outlaw who’s now a pair of shoes, or books bound with the skin of slaves back in the day, and you know what? I don’t see no difference between that and the shoes on your feet, the purse you’re carrying, the belt round your waist, the seats of your car, you know? It’s all the same thing. It’s all just skin. You don’t have no use for it after you’re dead.

  Anyhows. First thing you do after drying the skin is wet it again. Contrary, I know, but that’s how it is. Just got to make it a little bit flexible once more. You boil up some water and put bran flakes in it. Let this sit for an hour, then strain the water through a colander. Keep the brown water, throw the soggy bran flakes away. Then boil up some more water, dissolve some salt in it and add this all to the brown water.

  Next bit’s tricky. Be careful. Make sure you’re wearing gloves and a long-sleeved shirt. Maybe a cloth round your mouth and some safety goggles too if need be. Get some battery acid – every motor store from here to Detroit sells it – and pour it into the water. Don’t let it splash. You get any of that on you, you’ll sure know about it. Stir it all up, then put the skin in the solution, pressing it down and stirring with a long stick till it’s fully soaked. Leave it there for three-quarters of an hour, making sure you stir it every now and then so every part of the skin gets exposed to the solution just the same.

  Take the skin out and put it very gently in some clear, warm water. Rinse it here for about five minutes. Add a box of baking soda to the rinse water to neutralize some of the acid in the skin. Then you take the skin out and hang it over a fence or somesuch to drain. When it’s damp – no longer soaking wet, but not yet bone dry either – take it off the fence and paint it with oil. Then lay it flat on a wood pallet to dry properly before you cut it.

  Like I said, not hard. Not hard at all.

  58

  Saturday, November 27th

  Cambridge, MA

  It was the endgame now, cold and clinical. Just Patrese and Kwasi, one-on-one: the dizzying complications and legerdemain of the middlegame gone, distractions now down to a minimum. But the simplicity of the endgame is also its difficulty. It requires nerveless calculation, boundless patience, and the ability not to get spooked by the knowledge that your first mistake in the endgame is usually your last too.

  The Bureau held a preliminary investigation into the death of Unzicker, as they always do when one of their agents kills a suspect in the line of duty. Agents deemed to have acted inappropriately are suspended on full pay pending further inquiries. There’d be a fuller hearing in due course, but at this stage there was no question of Agent Franco Patrese being suspended.

  Quite the opposite, in fact: his behavior had been exemplary, entirely in keeping with the standards the Bureau demanded of its employees. There was no doubt that in killing Unzicker, Agent Patrese had saved Nursultan’s life, and no blame could be attached to him for failing to prevent Unzicker from killing the two bodyguards. Indeed, only Agent Patrese’s resourcefulness in getting himself to the balcony in the first place had prevented a catastrophe of even greater proportions.

  Nursultan might have faced charges for inciting his bodyguards to beat Unzicker up, but it was his word against Patrese’s – the other three witnesses to the incident were dead – and Nursultan maintained (or rather, Levenfish maintained on his behalf) that he hadn’t intended his men to harm Unzicker, but had simply hoped that the threat of it would be enough to persuade Unzicker into dropping his absurd blackmail demand.

  Truth was, Patrese didn’t fight too hard to have Nursultan charged. He knew Nursultan was as keen to find Kwasi as he was, since Kwasi had all the Misha material. Now Unzicker was dead, perhaps Patrese could use Nursultan to help flush Kwasi out. Exactly how he was going to manage this, he had no idea: but at this stage he wanted to keep as many of his options open as possible.

  In any case, Nursultan wouldn’t be remanded in custody whatever the charge: he’d be granted bail, which would be chicken feed to someone like him, and all that Patrese would have done would be to have pissed someone off that he might yet need.

  Patrese had lit a fire under the asses of the department responsible for issuing subpoenas, but their butts were clearly made out of heat-resistant material: they sent back a stock e-mail saying that his request was still being considered. The Bureau’s Los Angeles field office was trying to get hold of the company in Van Nuys that made the masks, and secure a copy of their mailing list. No subpoenas, Patrese had said. Break some limbs if you have to.

  He went to the Cambridge police HQ and told them, hand on heart, that he would not rest until he’d found the man who’d murdered their colleague Max Anderssen. That was three cops Kwasi had killed already: three reasons why Kwasi better pray that Patrese rather than another cop found him, as cops don’t take too kindly to those who kill their own. Not, Patrese thought, that he could guarantee being much more sanguine about it than they were. He’d been a cop once, and in his heart he still felt more a Pittsburgh boy who liked beer and football than he did a shiny-shoed Hoover man.

  When he’d finished with the Cambridge police, he rang Dufresne and reminded him to be alert. The next victim was bound to be in New York, right? That had always been Kwasi’s pattern, alternating moves. His MO had been a little off with Anderssen – he’d killed Anderssen on the spot, rather than taken him away as he’d done the other white victims – but that entire murder seemed to have been opportunistic. Kwasi had gone to the Stata Center to get the Misha stuff: he couldn’t have known for sure that Unzicker’s keycard would trigger an alert, let alone that Anderssen would be the one to respond to that alert.

  Then he went r
ound to Dudley House and knocked on Inessa’s door.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called out from inside.

  ‘It’s me. Patrese.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I came to say I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Please. Just hear me out. Things have changed.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘With the case. With Kwasi. Listen – I can’t stand here like a lemon shouting through a door. Please let me in. Let me say my piece, and then I’ll go if you still want.’

  Silence stretched behind the closed door: then Patrese heard footsteps, and Inessa opened the door. She was wearing a faded Harvard sweatshirt, and her hair was pulled back. She nodded to the room beyond: come in.

  When she’d closed the door behind them, Patrese explained what had just happened. Inessa knew that Anderssen and Unzicker were dead, of course – it had been all over the news – but the public story was that Unzicker had been mentally disturbed. The networks knew nothing of Misha, and Patrese imagined that Nursultan for one would want it to stay that way for as long as possible. And of course Inessa knew nothing about what Tartu had discovered on the ICC.

  ‘Wow,’ she said when Patrese had finished. ‘Wow.’

  ‘So I’m sorry for asking you, er, what I did the other day, but …’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘… I had to do it, you know? As a Bureau agent, I had to do it.’

  ‘I know. I was so mad at you for a while that I couldn’t even think past that. But then, when I began to calm down, I realized how hard it must have been for you, and I realized that you really didn’t have that much choice. So let’s forget about it.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Even though you didn’t seem that keen to see me just now, making me wait before you opened the door.’

  Inessa laughed. ‘Gotta make a man sweat sometimes, no?’ She eased herself up on to tiptoes and kissed Patrese lightly on the mouth. ‘You staying here awhile, or you going back to New Haven?’