The Painted Messiah

by Craig Smith

  Ethan had already tossed Corbeau over his shoulder and was coming to the top of the stairs when he heard Kate ask for help. Dropping Corbeau to the floor, Ethan descended the stairs with his AKS-74 on full auto. 'I'm on the stairs,' he said. 'Man, are you hit?'

  There was no answer.

  Xeno leaned against the wall, holding his weapon close to his chest, the muzzle up, his finger pressing the trigger.

  He heard Brand's voice above him. 'I'm on the stairs.

  Man, are you hit?' And then he was coming down the steps. Like Kenyon he jumped the last two metres and hit the floor hard.

  The moment he did Xeno swung out, his gun level and set on full auto.

  Ethan saw Kate on the floor, her shoulders leaning against the wall. She had one gun but two hallways to cover. Jumping over the bannister he dropped the last six feet. As he did a uniformed guard moved into view in the living room with a handgun. His first shot hit Ethan, but he dropped when Ethan opened fire. A second man came in low, sliding across the floor on his shoulder with a Kalashnikov on full auto and using the corpse of the man who had just fallen as cover. Ethan swept the point of his weapon down across him but the clip emptied out. He heard Kate's firing directly under him, but was not conscious of the Kalashnikov at his back until a spray of bullets slammed him face first into the wall. He dropped across Kate, tossing his emptied weapon aside and pulling one of his Steyrs. The man in the living room came up, having reloaded and opened fire again, but Ethan hit him with a long blast from the Steyr.

  As he spun to cover the other hall way, Kate slumped lifelessly to the floor.

  'Girl is down!' he called, touching the torn armor over her heart. 'Talk to me, Man! Repeat. Girl is down!'

  The moment the shots started Xeno felt a strange stinging sensation close to his hip and another in his arm. As

  he rolled back to cover, half-a-dozen rounds slammed into his chest and side.

  He checked his wounds, one in the arm, one close to the hip below the line of his vest - and one, he realized, in the centre of his chest, the bullet having penetrated his vest.

  That one scared him, but at least he was still standing.

  Malloy sat up like a man pulled out of a deep sleep. 'I'm coming,' he muttered and tried to stand without much success. He could not remember where he was and it occurred to him he might be drunk, at least until he looked around and saw his helmet, headset, and the AKS-74.

  The helmet, he realized, had taken a round - which explained the wooziness and headache. As he collected the gun, like a boy gathering his shovel from the sandbox, he realized the voice he had heard calling him back to consciousness could not have come from the headset. He had lost that when he was hit.

  It must have been the memory of Gwen telling him to wake up. He smiled at the thought of so many mornings coming slowly awake while she coaxed him out of bed and he tried to talk her back in . . .

  He heard a shot fired without understanding its source. Even the distinctive crack as it passed his face and the thunk as the bullet struck the earth several feet behind him made no immediate impression. The next bullet struck him squarely in the chest. That had the effect of awakening him to the fact that he was exposed and someone was still trying to kill him.

  He rolled hard to the left and kept rolling when he heard more shots. When he came up, he pulled his MAC-10, located the man at the edge of house by the muzzle flash of his gun, and leveled his weapon. He felt the hard punch of a bullet strike the heavy padding at his shoulder. The gunman was going for the head. He answered with a burst that hit brick and danced toward flesh. The man spun round once like a dervish, his arms reaching out as he dropped to the gravel.

  Malloy came to his feet slowly, his head throbbing now. Loading a fresh clip, he began a broken-field run toward the house. At the terrace Malloy did not bother opening the door, but crashed through the glass. He saw Ethan squatting protectively over Kate's prone figure, and understood at once something was wrong.

  As the two men recognized one another they both relaxed. Just then a gunman stepped into the open with his Kalashnikov on full auto. Malloy dived across the floor and came up in a seated position firing a full burst as several rounds pounded into his vest. The man went down, and Malloy tossed his emptied MAC-10 aside. The wind knocked out of him, his chest and stomach heaving, Malloy crawled across the room and joined Ethan.

  Xeno staggered back along the wall looking for others, but no one was left. At the front of the house he could see three men down just inside the opened gate. If there was someone still on the roof it would be suicide to try to get to the cars.

  He thought about going over the wall, but with his wounds he realized he couldn't make it.

  He heard glass breaking, weapons firing, the cry of a man hit, and then one of the weapons clattering across the floor.

  His only chance was to get to the tunnel and then make his way down to the boats. From there he could get across the lake.

  He closed the basement door quietly and limped slowly down the wooden steps. He stopped midway and reached under his vest to touch the blood. He checked its colour - dark. That meant the bullet hadn't punctured a lung. He reached under his armor again and felt a piece of the bullet wedged into the bone. Unless it was just a fragment, that was good. It might hurt like he was dying but it wasn't going to kill him. Just a broken sternum, an arm and a hip. Xeno took a long, painful breath and finished descending the steps. Fighting nausea and dizziness he leaned back against the handrail, trying to clear his head. There was still time, but it was running out. He had to move. He had to get out. He just needed to get past the nausea and he was going to be all right.

  He took a deep breath and looked across the basement toward the door to the tunnel. He took a step and the floor seemed to tip out from under him as the room twirled. He was conscious and sucking air when he hit the concrete, but then everything went black and cold.

  'She's dead,' Ethan whispered. His voice was tinged with awe. The possibility of Kate's death seemed never to have occurred to him.

  Malloy touched Kate's vest. Like Ethan's and his own, it had been ripped apart by several bursts of the Kalashnikov's 5.67 millimetre ammo.

  At least there was no blood. Or maybe he just hadn't found the wound yet. He pulled her hood back, exposing her neck and jaw. He stripped his glove off and laid his fingers across her neck, praying he was wrong, but the carotid artery was silent.

  He looked at Ethan, whose eyes behind his hood were wet and dilated, and then made sure Kate's mouth and throat were clear. Pinching off her nostrils Malloy brought his mouth to Kate's cold lips and breathed. He pulled back and then breathed into her lungs again. He heard Ethan praying and whispered his own.

  On his third breath Kate stirred. A moment later her eyes fluttered opened. She coughed and then grabbed for air with a sudden, desperate gasp.

  'We need to get her to a hospital!' Ethan cried.

  'No hospitals,' Malloy answered.

  'What . . . what happened?'

  'You stopped breathing,' Malloy answered. He said nothing about her heart.

  Kate lay back, staring at the ceiling. 'We have to go,' she said after a moment. She took a deep ragged breath. 'Get Nicole and let's get out of here.'

  Ethan hesitated.

  'Go!' Kate told him. 'The police will be here any minute!'

  At the mention of the police Ethan seemed to shake himself out of his trance and stood to leave the room. Before he went he saw Malloy had no weapon. He put a fresh clip in one of his Steyrs and handed it to Malloy.

  He pulled the other from its holster and headed for the basement.

  The lights were on, but it was quiet. Unlike the upper floors of the house, the basement's air was clean.

  So why was there fresh blood on the steps? He studied the drops and smudges on the steps and handrail. On the floor just beyond the staircase he saw a large, glistening stain that had not yet dried.

  He crouched down, looking out farther across the op
en floor, but the trail ended at the bottom of the stairs.

  He came down another step, searching the recesses and shadows of the room. A bloody trail that began and ended on a staircase . . .

  He looked to either side and took another step. That was when he put it together. Under the stairs!

  The Kalashnikov began firing as Ethan leaped over the last six steps and rolled out across the floor. Coming up in a squatting position, he saw the strange popping of splinters as the bullets broke up through the steps. He squeezed down softly on the trigger of his Steyr, his burst ripping into the wooden staircase in a ragged figure eight.

  The AK-47 finished first but only by a fraction of a second. Ethan heard the gun drop to the concrete floor and tossed his own aside, reaching for the combat knife in his boot.

  At the same time the man staggered out from under the stairs. He was holding a pistol, bringing it up slowly toward Ethan. He was hurt and bracing himself on the staircase, but Ethan had no cover. And no choice but to attack.

  The bullet hit his armor like a fist driving into his midsection just as Ethan collided with the man. He kept his knife low and brought it up under the webbing of the vest. He felt the muscles give way reluctantly to the power of the steel. He heard a gasp of pain. He felt the body heave and then the blood pouring over his gloved fist.

  He heard the gun hit the floor and saw the man's eyes darkened. A strangled rattle cracked from deep within the man's throat as he slid across Ethan's chest, hips and legs.

  'Boy! What's going on?' Kate on the headset.

  For a moment Ethan could not find his voice. He simply stared down at the man and the bloodied knife sticking out of him.

  'Boy! Talk to me!'

  He answered. He was fine.

  'Trouble?'

  Ethan picked up the gun. 'Not anymore.' He checked the clip in the pistol and took the weapon with him as he headed toward the tower.

  As he swept the rooms, quick and dirty, just in case, Ethan heard Kate telling Malloy to get Corbeau.

  He pulled the crossbar up and opened the steel door leading into the tower. Nicole North stood in the dark wearing a coat but no clothing beneath. She was shaking, her hair was wild, her eyes wide with apprehension. She had no way of knowing if she was about to executed, traded, or rescued.

  'It's okay,' Ethan said, remembering his hood and what he must look like. 'We're here to take you home.'

  When they heard shots in the basement, Malloy started to move, but Kate held his arm. She still had her headset on and said, 'Boy?' The shots ended, but then they heard a pistol shot. 'Boy!' Kate shouted. Her eyes dilated with fear. 'What's going on? Boy! Talk to me!'

  She listened. 'Trouble?' she asked and then seemed to lose her tension. To Malloy she said, 'We need to get Corbeau.'

  She was still breathing with difficulty, but she was sitting. 'Are you hit?' he asked her.

  'I'm fine,' she muttered, but she didn't look fine. She was moving slowly and her focus seemed to come and go. Like someone back from the dead and still sorting out priorities.

  Her eyes cut around the room nervously. 'There was a woman . . .'

  Malloy shook his head. 'Haven't seen her.'

  Kate tried to reach for one the emptied weapons.

  Malloy handed her the Steyr Ethan had given him and pulled his Sigma .380.

  On the second floor, like the first, the gun smoke still hung in the air and with it the unmistakable stink of the firing range.

  He found the bodies of three men in Corbeau's library, but Corbeau was missing. He went back to the hallway and began searching the rooms.

  'Corbeau's gone,' he shouted.

  From below he heard, '. . . the tower!'

  Malloy entered the library again. He heard someone running up the stairs, a voice shouting. Were the cops

  at the gate? He thought about going back, getting out while they still had a chance, but they couldn't leave Corbeau behind. Better to give up to the cops than that.

  He stepped toward the pocket doors, reaching for one of the raven heads as Ethan came into the room shouting, 'NO!'

  Malloy stopped, his hand inches from one of the raven heads. 'What's the matter?' he asked.

  'Step away,' Ethan told him and grabbed a book. He walked forward and tossed it against the cast iron raven's head. A bright tiny steel needle shot out of the beak half an inch, a poisoned teardrop of clear liquid forming on the tip.

  'Gare le Corbeau!' Ethan told him, his eyes fixed on the raven.

  Malloy translated the phrase in reflex: 'Beware the Raven.'

  'It's on his coat of arms,' Ethan said as he walked over to a painting not far from the doors and pulled it from the wall. Recessed in the wall was a handle which he pulled and turned. The pocket doors opened, and Julian Corbeau stood inside the darkened chamber of the upper tower, his hands still cuffed behind his back, his ankles still tied together. 'How did you get in here?' Ethan asked, but Corbeau was silent, his eyes cold and impassive.

  Ethan tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of grain and headed out of the library.

  Kate was standing up when they got down the stairs, Nicole North beside her. North was barefoot and apparently naked under the coat. As Malloy got closer he saw the burns on her legs and feet - the ruined flesh.

  When she saw Corbeau, North's eyes grew round with terror, but she said nothing. She had Kate beside her and that seemed to give her some measure of courage.

  Malloy, covering their retreat, was the last to the helicopter. As he came he saw the pilot face down in the grass.

  'The pilot took a round,' Ethan said as Malloy scrambled into the cockpit. 'You know how to fly one of these?'

  Malloy shook his head.

  'I downloaded the manual from the internet yesterday. Didn't look too hard, but just to be on the safe side you'd better get in the back and strap-in.'

  Malloy retreated to the cabin and sat down opposite Julian Corbeau. In the distance he heard police sirens coming along the road from both directions. The sky was still open and silent.

  Kate was seated next to Corbeau. Nicole North had taken her place at the other end of the cabin, as far as possible from Corbeau. 'Ethan said he just read the manual yesterday on how to fly one of these things,' Malloy said to Kate. 'Tell me he has a sick sense of humor.'

  'I told you to keep the pilot alive.'

  The helicopter lifted a few feet over the concrete pad, tipped oddly down and then careened wildly toward the cliff. As they shot over the retaining wall, they suddenly had all the altitude they needed, but Ethan's acceleration somehow sent the Bell plunging into the darkness. He was able to pull it up and skim across the surface of the water for several seconds before he finally got a feel for the craft and started to climb. Once a crash was no longer imminent, Malloy checked his watch. The whole thing from the jump to the near- crash had lasted less than twelve minutes.

  'We're headed back to the airport,' Kate told him. 'The Cessna will take Ethan and me with our friend here to Milan. You take the van and make sure Nicole gets to New York.'

  'Everyone have passports?' Malloy asked.

  'We got ours yesterday,' Kate answered. 'Sir Julian isn't going to need one.'

  Malloy looked at Nicole North. She shook her head. Malloy could call Jane and get something arranged for her at the US Consulate in Bern. He didn't have his either but he would call Hasan and get someone to meet him at the airport with it, his luggage and his computer.

  'Before you spend the reward money,' Malloy told Kate, 'I'm going to ask Sir Julian a few questions. If I don't like the answers - we'll dump the body over the lake.'

  Corbeau smiled. He wasn't buying it.

  Malloy drew his Sigma and pointed it at Corbeau's head.

  'How did you know I was going to take the twelve-o-three train from Zürich to the airport?'

  Corbeau's eyes answered Malloy without fear. Finally he offered a sliver of a smile. 'I've been interrogated by experts, sir. Don't think you can brandish a gun and get
what you want.'

  Kate pulled her knife and held it against his ear. 'The US attorney will pay me as long as you're alive. I don't think he cares how many body parts are missing.'

  The blood drained from Corbeau's face. 'What do you want to know?' he asked.

  'How did you find us?' Kate asked.

  'I found you ... on a hunch. Once I had you my people put together your team easily enough. With intercepts and phone taps, it wasn't too difficult to find out the identity of the buyers. At that point—'

  Corbeau's eyes flitted toward some point behind Malloy's shoulder. They grew round in terror and then there was a gunshot.

  The bullet struck between Corbeau's eyes. His head kicked back, and then his body slumped forward. Malloy shifted his Sigma quickly, only to realize that Nicole North had gotten hold of a handgun. She was still holding the weapon and staring wildly at Corbeau's corpse, as if she half-expected him to come at her. Kate sprang across the seats and took the gun from her, but it was over.

  Nicole North had taken her revenge, and there was nothing more to do about it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  New York City Friday

  October 13, 2006.

  Malloy got Nicole North safely to Bern and arranged to meet her, Richland, and Starr late the following evening in New York at an apartment on the Upper Eastside. The Plaza, he said, was no longer safe.

  The apartment belonged to a freewheeling venture capitalist whose private bank accounts in Switzerland Malloy had happened to discover over a decade ago. Rather than reporting his findings to the Treasury people, Malloy had, in the parlance of the agency, turned the man. He travelled widely. He had contacts in Africa and the Middle East and Indonesia. Sometimes he knew things, and what he knew he would pass on conscientiously. Malloy had handled the extortion delicately. His agent considered himself a patriot and a friend. Asking the use of his apartment was a bit unusual, but he made the arrangements on short notice without grumbling. It's what patriots do. The apartment offered any number of refinements including a working fireplace trimmed in Florentine marble. A fire was already burning brightly when Nicole North arrived with her entourage. Jonas Starr was sullen, a man expecting accusations. J. W. Richland wore his TV smile and Mike, the bodyguard, looked well-advised to be prepared for a double-cross. There were others downstairs. Starr and Richland and North had not come this far to lose the painting in the streets of New York, but it would have been unseemly to crowd the room with guards. Besides, Malloy had left specific instructions with Dr North. Richland, Starr and she were all needed for the exchange to take place. In addition, he let them bring one person of their choice. They could come either armed or unarmed - he didn't care - but no telephones and no recording devices.