Call After Midnight

by Tess Gerritsen

  But when she raised her head and looked down at the other side, she saw there was nowhere else to go. She had reached the end of the line. No other rooftop lay below to catch her. There was only a drop to the street.

  Tears of despair streamed down her face. She lowered her head and sobbed into the slate, sobbed like a terrified child at what she could not escape. The sound of her own cries drowned out everything else.

  Then gradually she was aware of another sound, faint at first, but growing louder: two notes piercing the dawn, over and over. A siren.

  Kronen heard it, too. He stared up at her like a man possessed. Pacing back and forth, he searched for some other way up. There was none. Cursing, he grabbed the wire and started up the roof. He was coming after her.

  In disbelief she watched him climb. He was long and wiry; he moved like a monkey up the slate roof. Frantically she worked at the wire, trying in vain to disconnect it from the antenna. She’d never get it loose in time. With nowhere else to go, she backed away from the edge. She could already hear his breathing, loud and harsh, as he neared the top. She tried to stand. Tottering on bruised feet, she waited for him. The siren grew louder. Just a few moments more! That’s all she needed!

  Kronen’s fingers closed over the top. Frozen, she watched as his head rose above the peak. His eyes locked on hers. She saw no anger or hatred; what she saw was infinitely more terrifying: anticipation. He was looking forward to her death.

  “No!” she screamed, her voice piercing the mist. “No!”

  She lashed out at him. Her fingers clawed at his eyes, forcing him backward, toward the edge. He grabbed her wrist, twisting it so hard she cried out. Wrenching free, she stumbled and almost lost her balance. He scrambled onto the top. Slowly he came toward her.

  For a moment they stood staring at each other, the wind making them sway uneasily on the wet slate. It had come to this—the two of them alone on a rooftop. One of them would not survive. She would not let him take her alive.

  His hand slid into his jacket. A knife appeared. Even in the dull gray dawn, the blade seemed to glitter. He held it easily, almost casually, as if it were nothing more than a toy.

  She took another step backward. How far did she have left? How far until retreat took her to the other edge? The blade moved closer. Taking her alive was no longer his goal. He was going to kill her. Through a curtain of mist, she saw him coil for the spring. She saw the blade, thrusting toward her. Her arms crossed in front of her, an automatic gesture of protection. Pain shot through her forearm as the blade came down on naked flesh. She crumpled to her knees. His shoes creaked as he came to stand over her. His heel planted itself heavily on a fold of her dress, trapping her against the roof. She could not escape now. She couldn’t even stand. In silent dread she watched the blade rise again in a deadly arc.

  All her feral instincts rose to a last, desperate act of survival. With a cry she hurled herself at his knees. He staggered backward, tottering on one leg, struggling for balance. She didn’t let him regain it. She lunged at his foot.

  The blow swept his ankle out from under him. He twisted, clawing to hold on. The knife clattered down the slate. As he started to drop toward the street, he caught the top of the roof, but only for a second. His eyes met Sarah’s; it was a look of infinite surprise. He slid away, his eyes still staring upward, his arms reaching toward the sky. She shut her eyes. Long after he hit the street below, his scream was still echoing in her ears.

  She was going to be sick. The world seemed to spin around her. Dropping her head, she pressed her cheek against the cold, wet slate and fought off the nausea. There she huddled, shivering, as the sound of sirens and voices rose up from the street. She was too cold, too exhausted, to move. Only when she heard Nick’s shout did she stir.

  It’s not possible, she thought. I’m imagining things. I saw him die....

  Yet there he was, standing on the street, waving wildly at her. Tears sprang to her eyes. She wanted to shout that she loved him, that she would always love him, but she was crying too hard for anything sensible to come out.

  “Don’t move, Sarah!” shouted Nick. “We’re calling for a fire truck to get you down!”

  She wiped the tears away and nodded. It’s all over, she thought, watching three more police cars pull up with sirens blaring. It’s all over....

  But she had forgotten about Magus.

  A loud slam made her turn and look down. A door had opened and closed. Magus emerged on the graveled roof just below. He carried a rifle. Only she could see him. From the street where Nick and the police stood, Magus was invisible. He was a lone man, trapped on a rooftop. A man about to make one last gesture in the name of vengeance. For a moment he stood staring at her, like a man longing for the one thing he cannot have. Then slowly he raised his rifle. She watched the barrel point up at her and waited for the fatal blast.

  The rifle’s crack thundered over the rooftops. Where is the pain? she thought, Why don’t I feel the pain…?

  Then, in wonderment, she saw Magus stagger backward, his shirt splattered brightly with blood. The rifle thudded to the gravel. He made a sound, a death cry that might have been only a name. With his eyes wide open, he collapsed on his back. He didn’t move.

  On another rooftop something glittered. It drew Sarah’s attention away from the bloodied body, beckoning her gaze with the brightness of spun gold. The sun burst through the last veil of mist. It fell in a brilliant beam upon the head and shoulders of a man standing on a high roof two buildings away. The man lowered his rifle. The wind whipped his shirt and hair. He was looking at her. She could not see his face, but she knew, in that instant, who he was. In a trance she tried to stand up. As he faded from view, she tried to reach out to him, to call him back, to thank him before he disappeared forever.

  “Geoffrey!” she screamed.

  The wind swept her voice up and carried it away. “No, come back! Come back!” she screamed, over and over. But all she saw was a last glimpse of golden hair, and then there was only a wet, empty roof, sparkling beneath the morning sun.

  * * *

  ON THE STREET below Sarah, the rifle crack echoed like thunder over the rooftops. A half dozen cops immediately dived for cover. Nick froze in alarm. “What’s going on?” he cried.

  Potter turned and barked to Tarasoff, “Who the hell’s shooting up there?”

  “Not one of ours, sir. Maybe the cops—”

  “That was a rifle, dammit!”

  “It was not my men,” said a Dutch police officer, peering out from the safety of a nearby doorway.

  Nick looked up and saw immediately that Sarah was still alive. Frantically his eyes searched the surrounding windows. Who had fired the shot? Was Sarah the target? Down here, on the street, he was totally helpless to save her. Panicking, he shouted at Potter, “For God’s sake, do something!”

  “Tarasoff!” yelled Potter. “Get your men up there! Find out where the hell that shot came from!” He turned to the Dutch cop. “How long till the ladder gets here?”

  “Five, ten minutes.”

  “She’ll be dead by then!” said Nick, taking off toward the buildings. He didn’t look twice as he passed the dead body lying on the blood-spattered sidewalk. He had to get to Sarah.

  “O’Hara!” shouted Potter. “We’ve got to clear the building first!”

  But Nick was already across the street and heading for the door. The building was unlocked. Inside, he took the stairway two steps at a time. All the way up, he was terrified he would hear a second rifle shot, terrified that he’d emerge on the roof and find Sarah dead. But all he heard were his own footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  Somewhere below, a door slammed shut. Potter’s voice shouted, “O’Hara?”

  Nick kept going.

  The wide steps led to a small staircase that spiraled to the roof. He dashed up the last steps and scrambled through the door at the top.

  Outside, the sun was shining. Nick halted, stunned by the sudden burst of light
and by the horror of what lay in the gravel at his feet. The dead eyes of a faceless man stared up at him. A red silk scarf fluttered in the wind, as bright and alarming as the blood seeping slowly from the man’s chest. Beside him lay a rifle.

  The roof door flew open. Potter rushed through and almost collided with Nick.

  “My God!” said Potter, staring at the body. “It’s Magus! Did he shoot himself?”

  From a roof above them came a sudden wail, a ghostly sound of despair. Nick looked up in alarm.

  Sarah was reaching out helplessly, as though pleading with the wind. She didn’t notice Nick or Potter; she was gazing into the distance, at something only she could see. What she screamed next made Nick shudder. It didn’t make sense; it was the cry of a terrified woman, driven to hysteria. He turned and looked in the direction of her gaze. He saw only rooftops, wet and sparkling in the sunlight. And echoing off the buildings, he heard Sarah’s voice, over and over, screaming to a man who did not exist.

  When they finally brought her down from the roof, she was quiet and composed. Nick was right beside her as they lowered her onto the stretcher. She looked so small and weak and cold. There was so much blood on her arms. He was scarcely aware of what he said or did at that moment; he only knew he wanted to be near her.

  Down on the street, the ambulance was waiting. “Let me ride with her,” Nick muttered, brushing off Potter’s restraining hand. “She needs me.”

  “Just keep out of their way, O’Hara.”

  Nick climbed in beside Sarah’s stretcher. She was awake. “Sarah?”

  She turned her head and gazed at him in wonder. “I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispered.

  “Sarah, I love you.”

  Potter stuck his head in the ambulance. “For God’s sake, O’Hara! Give ’em some room to work in!”

  Nick glanced around and saw the two attendants scowling at him.

  “No, please!” Sarah pleaded. “Let him stay. I want him to stay.”

  Potter gave the attendants a shrug of helplessness. Grumbling, they went on with their work. From the looks they exchanged, it was obvious what they thought of this extra passenger. But they decided it was better to leave Nick alone. From experience they knew that frantic husbands could be stubborn, unreasonable creatures. And this one, obviously, was very, very frantic.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WITH AN OVERWHELMING sense of relief, Roy Potter watched the ambulance pull away from the curb. Even after it had turned the corner, he could still hear the siren’s two notes piercing the quiet Sunday morning. As the sound faded into the maze of Amsterdam streets, Potter stifled a yawn and walked toward the other ambulance, which was parked a few yards away. For the first time in twenty-four hours, he could allow himself to feel tired. No, exhausted was a better word. Exhausted and triumphant. The operation was over.

  Mentally he tabulated their gains. Magus and his key associate were dead. Four other men were in custody. And last, but not least, Sarah Fontaine was alive.

  She would need hospitalization, of course. She had sustained nasty lacerations on her arms and feet; they’d probably require a surgeon’s skill. More important, she would need immediate psychiatric attention. She’d been hallucinating, seeing ghosts on rooftops. Under the circumstances, hysteria was perfectly understandable. It might take weeks, even months, to recover from the ordeal she’d just survived. But she would recover. He had no doubt about it. Sarah Fontaine, he’d decided, was made of sterner stuff than anyone had suspected.

  Potter watched as the next stretcher was loaded into the waiting ambulance. The siren would be silent this time; both men were dead. He shuddered, remembering the sight of Kronen’s body on the sidewalk. Thank God the ambulance crew had cleared it away so quickly. After a night of nothing but black coffee, Potter’s stomach was just waiting for an excuse to puke. Would have been damned undignified, to say the least, especially with a dozen Dutch cops standing around as witnesses.

  The second stretcher was now being placed in the vehicle. It was Magus. Potter frowned, wondering at the irony of the old man’s suicide. After all these years of evading capture, Magus had chosen to take his own life. Or had he? The ballistics lab would surely confirm it. Suicide was the only explanation. There had been no other gunman. None, that is, except for the one seen by Sarah Fontaine, and she’d seen nothing but a ghost.

  “Mr. Potter?”

  He turned. A Dutch policeman was coming toward him through the knot of bystanders.

  “What is it?”

  “There is a man inside who wishes to see you. An American, I think.”

  “Have him talk to Mr. Tarasoff.”

  “He said he’d only talk to you.”

  Potter stifled a curse. What he really wanted to do right now was crawl into bed. But he grudgingly followed the officer through the police line, into the F. Berkman building. The smell of coffee was everywhere; it reminded him he’d hardly eaten since the previous afternoon. Breakfast would taste good right now. Bacon and eggs and then an honest-to-God hot shower. Hell, he deserved it. They all deserved it. He made a mental note to put in a commendation for Tarasoff and the others. They’d held up well.

  The officer nodded toward the front office. “There he is.”

  Potter glanced through the doorway and frowned. The man standing at the window had his back turned. He was dressed completely in black. There was something disturbingly familiar about the golden color of his hair, which was sparkling in the window’s light.

  Potter went in and closed the door. “I’m Roy Potter,” he said. “Did you want to see me?”

  The man turned and smiled. “Hello, Mr. Potter.”

  Potter’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t speak. He could only stare like a dumb animal. What the hell is going on? he thought. Am I seeing ghosts, too?

  It was Simon Dance.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER Simon Dance—the man once known as Geoffrey Fontaine—finally turned and wandered back to the window. For a moment he stood there motionless, his face silhouetted against the sunlight. “So that, Mr. Potter, is what happened,” he said softly. “Rather more complicated than you suspected. I thought you might appreciate hearing the facts. In return I ask only that one favor.”

  “If I’d only known—why the hell didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “It was instinct at first. Then the explosives appeared in my hotel room. That’s when I was certain. I knew I couldn’t trust you. Any of you. There’d been a leak all along. High level, I’m afraid.”

  Potter said nothing. Somehow he’d already guessed who it might be.

  “Van Dam,” said Dance.

  “How can you be sure?”

  Dance shrugged. “Why does a man leave his warm hotel at midnight to use a phone booth?”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night, right after I tipped O’Hara.”

  “That was your call?” Cursing softly, Potter shook his head. “Then it’s partly my fault. I told Van Dam about the tip. I had to.”

  Dance nodded. “I didn’t understand his little walk to the phone booth. At first. Then I heard that Kronen and his men appeared at Casa Morro shortly afterward. That’s when I knew who Van Dam had called. Magus.”

  “Look, I need more evidence. You don’t expect me to proceed on the basis of one phone call?”

  “No, no. The matter has already been taken care of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll understand. Shortly.”

  “What about his motive? A man doesn’t go bad without a good reason!”

  Calmly Dance lighted a cigarette and shook out the match. “Motives are funny things. We all have them. We all have our secrets, our hidden agendas. Van Dam was a wealthy man, I understand.”

  “His wife left him millions.”

  “Was she old when she died?”

  “In her forties. There was some kind of crime involved. A burglary, I think. Van Dam was out of the country at the time.”
>
  “Of course he was.”

  Potter fell silent. There it was. Motive. Yes, if you looked deep enough, you might find it, hidden in the shadows of a man’s life. “I’ll begin an internal investigation,” he said. “Immediately.”

  Dance smiled. “No hurry. I doubt he’ll be vanishing any time soon.”

  “What about you?” asked Potter. “Now that it’s over, will you surface?”

  Dance slowly blew out a cloud of smoke. “I don’t know what I’ll do yet,” he said, staring off sadly. “Eva was the only thing that ever mattered to me. And I’ve lost her.”

  “There’s still Sarah.”

  Dance shook his head. “I’ve caused her enough pain.” He turned and looked out the window again. “Your ballistics report will reveal that Magus was killed not by his own rifle, but by a bullet fired from a distance. Promise me Sarah will never learn this fact.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what I want.”

  “You won’t even say goodbye to her?”

  “It’s kinder if I don’t.” Dance squinted out at the street. The last police car had just driven off. The bystanders were gone. Except for the bloodstains on the curb, it looked like any Amsterdam street on a Sunday morning. “Mr. O’Hara seems like a good man,” he said softly. “I think they’ll be happy together.”

  Potter nodded. Yes, he had to admit, Nick O’Hara wasn’t so bad after all. “Tell me, Dance,” he said. “Did you ever love Sarah?”

  Dance shook his head. “In this business love is always a mistake. No, I didn’t love her. But I did not want her harmed.” He gave Potter a hard look. “Next time, avoid the use of innocents in your operations. We cause enough misery in this world without making those who are blameless suffer.”

  Potter was suddenly uncomfortable. The whole operation had been his idea; if Sarah had been killed, he’d be the one responsible. Thank God she’d survived.

  “Someday,” said Dance, “I’ll tell you how the operation should have been run. You’re still amateurs. But you’ll learn. You’ll learn.” He took one last puff and stubbed out his cigarette. “Now I think it’s time I be on my way. I have a great deal to do.”