“I confess my weakness,” Peter said in a slightly embarrassed tone. “I never could bear splitting a meal into four or five courses. Better to lay them all out at once—then you don’t have to worry about saving room for the next dish.”
Victor met Peter’s eyes, but it was a moment before he took his meaning. Then it came to him. Peter Krieg had set himself up as a feudal king. That was the reason for the castle, the candles, even the deference with which his wife treated him. And for breaking one little rule, which threatened to topple the entire myth, Peter felt the need for confession.
Victor could not recall the last time he had felt so out of his depth.
“Please,” Peter said, “sit anywhere you like.” His wife pulled the chair at the end of the table, and Peter sat down with a satisfied sigh. “Shall we begin?”
“Listen, Mr. Krieg—”
“Peter.”
“Alright, Peter. All of this food looks wonderful.”
“But you have something more important on your mind.”
Victor nodded.
Peter folded his hands together. “Listen, Mr. Gervasio. It has been a long night. Is it too much to ask for me to enjoy a meal in peace?” His tone was pleasant, but his eyes had sharpened somehow, grown predatory. One of the things about feudal kings, Victor reminded himself, was that you didn’t enter their home and try to set the terms.
So he did the only thing he could do: He ate, losing himself in the magic of that strange place, his hunger growing stronger with every delicious smell his nostrils caught. One time he pushed back his chair to reach a custard farther along the table, but Peter cleared his throat and the boy came running, picking up the custard and serving it to Victor with a wooden spoon. Victor noticed that Peter’s wife only served Peter, as if there might be some indignity in her serving another man.
“So,” Peter began as he cut into the breast of a swan, “how did you become a military man?”
Victor skewered a piece of venison. “Joined the army when I was nineteen,” he answered.
“A man willing to get his hands dirty,” Peter said. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I can appreciate that. Have you heard the analogy of the two dogs?”
Victor frowned, surprised by the question. “I don’t think so.”
Peter cleared his throat. “There are two dogs in every man, one good and one bad. These two dogs are always fighting for mastery over one another. Can you guess which dog wins?”
“The one you feed,” Victor answered, realizing he had in fact heard the analogy before.
Peter smiled. “Precisely. It’s a logical fallacy, however, to assume that a person must always choose one dog over the other. Sometimes a man must feed the bad dog as well as the good one. Do you agree?”
Victor had only a vague sense of what this analogy might have to do with joining the military. As much as he felt the enchantment of Peter’s castle, he was also growing wary of Peter, who struck him as both clever and dangerous. He would have to be careful.
“I suppose a man with two loyal dogs is better than a man with only one,” he answered.
“Precisely,” Peter said again, leaning back in his chair. “I have enjoyed this discussion. It’s not often we have guests.” He reached out and took the hand of his wife, who stood beside him. She caught Victor’s glance, her eyes brown and gentle, and looked quickly away.
The room fell silent. It was the first false note of the evening, a quiet pregnant with uncertainty. Victor remembered visiting a friend’s house as a boy and how the friend’s father would see them and never smile, never acknowledge Victor. Victor had been unable to read the man, and it had always made him uneasy when they were in the same room. That was a bit like how he felt now.
“Why were you watching those scientists?” Victor asked.
Peter squeezed his wife’s hand, then released it. Immediately, spurred by this tactile signal, she hurried over to the boy and led him from the room, her dress swishing softly against her legs, the latch clicking as she closed the door behind her.
Chapter 8
They stared at one another across the carnage of the meal.
“Are you a smoking man, Mr. Gervasio?” Peter asked, his lip bulging as he worked to free a piece of swan from between his teeth.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Avoid the elephant in the room. You still haven’t explained who you are or what you mean to do with those scientists.” He could feel the heat rising to his face. He was getting angry—angry he was not on his way back to the States, angry Peter had run interference during the mission, angry he felt like he was the only player on stage who didn’t know the script. It was the impotent anger of a person who wants to be in control but isn’t, and it took a concentrated effort to hold himself in check.
“The elephant in the room,” Peter repeated, drawing the syllables out. “What a peculiar phrase. It is what you call an idiom, correct?”
“Stop playing games,” Victor answered in a low voice. “You know what I’m talking about. People were killed in that chemical attack.”
“Ah, the poor Gypsies. What a hero you are, flying around the world to avenge wrongs perpetrated against the innocent. You really should try wearing a cape.”
“What the hell are you going on about?”
Peter smiled that thin, mocking smile. “I talked with your leader, Mr. Jones. You’re not a humanitarian, Victor—you’re a mercenary. You were given a contract to raid that laboratory, and you did your job. Stop acting so self-righteous.”
Victor blinked, surprised by this sudden change in Peter’s manner. “I may be a mercenary, but I’m not a fool. You’re hiding something—otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me here. You’re worried about what I saw in that bunker.”
Peter did not answer. He stared at Victor, studying him. It was the open, unabashed stare shared by two lovers, except the feeling filling the air between them was not romance but the tension of a coiled snake. Victor found himself wondering if Peter had ever killed a man before. He suspected he had.
Suddenly, Peter broke his stare and rose, wearing a polite smile that Victor now understood to be no more than a mask he took off or put on as needed. “What do you say we take this conversation somewhere else?”
Victor rose and followed Peter into an adjacent room. Unlike some of the other rooms Victor had seen, this one was subtle rather than extravagant, subdued rather than showy. The square room featured shaded lamps, the mounted heads of antelope and lions on the walls, and a wide stone hearth that took up an entire wall. Two halberds crossed one another on the mantel, above which hung a row of polished shields that would have glinted if the shades had been taken off the lamps.
“Throw a few sticks on the fire, would you?” Peter asked, moving toward a table set against the wall. Bottles of liquor rested on the table in rows of amber and green glass. Beside the table stood a glass-fronted humidor cabinet.
Victor opened a small door set in the stone beside the hearth and withdrew a few logs the width of his arm. By the time he had finished laying them in the flames, Peter had selected a cigar from the humidor and started to light it. The lighter was black and gold, wrapped in a dragon’s three-dimensional claws. He didn’t offer a cigar to Victor.
Peter closed the humidor and sat down in one of the upholstered chairs facing the fire. He gestured for Victor to do the same. “So,” he began once Victor had sat down, “you went into the laboratory. What did you see?”
Victor hesitated. Though he was alone in the room with Peter, it was not incredible to imagine a few of Peter’s men might be standing just outside the door, waiting for a signal from Peter. If Victor reasserted his claim that he’d seen everything in the bunker, he might become a threat to Peter—and since nobody in the world knew where Victor was, it would be easy enough for Peter to dispose of him. If he claimed he hadn’t really seen anything in the bunker, however, Peter might see this for the lie it was and decide to get rid of h
im anyway. It was like playing a hand of poker without knowing the stakes.
Peter removed the cigar and blew a cloud of smoke. “You won’t say anything I don’t know already.”
Victor decided to play it straight. “Like I said before, I saw everything.”
“Describe it to me.”
“Describe what? All the insects in the plastic boxes?”
“And it was just you? No one else went inside that room?”
Victor blinked. “No, no one else went in there.”
“Even though two of you came out of the building with the scientists? Your partner didn’t see anything down there, is that what you mean to say?”
“He was wounded. I had to leave him in the hall while I cleared the rooms.”
Peter watched him, a faint smile on his face. “If you say so, Victor. And what do you make of what you saw? Do you think those scientists were developing chemical weapons?”
“I’m not a scientist.”
“Clearly. But based on what you saw, what’s your opinion?”
“Our intelligence was vetted. We have reports of trucks—”
“Circumstantial, as you Americans like to say. No proof.”
“Then what were they doing down there?” Victor asked. “They sure weren’t mixing Kool-Aid.”
Peter sank back into the cushion of the chair, crossed his legs, and stared down his nose at the fire. Victor had the impression he was gathering his thoughts, so he decided to wait him out. At last, Peter took a deep breath and uncrossed his legs. He seemed to have come to a decision.
“I’ll have a room prepared for you,” he said. “You can stay the night, then in the morning I’ll have one of my drivers take you to the airport. I’m sure you’ll be wanting to get home as soon as possible.” His eyes cut to Victor, testing him, measuring his response.
“Why were you monitoring those scientists?” Victor asked.
“Why do you care?”
“Call it curiosity.”
“Curiosity gets people killed in my line of work.”
“And what line of work is that?”
Peter flashed a pale smile. “The kind well above your pay grade.”
“Ah.” Victor glanced at the fire. The logs, thick with smoke moments before, now burst into flames.
“Thousands of innocents were killed in that attack,” Victor said.
“And as I assured you before, the scientists you found in that bunker had nothing to do with it.”
“So I’m supposed to take your word on it?”
“You’re supposed to trust what you saw with your own eyes. Do you have any idea what is involved in developing VX, mustard gas, sarin?”
“Do you?”
Peter chuckled softly. “This may be a tough pill for you to swallow, but you’ll just have to take your curiosity back home with you. You fulfilled your contract, you’ll get your money. In a day or two you’ll hear about an explosion in a remote Kerovian warehouse, then there will be reports about possible connections between the warehouse and the attack on Prievska. You will kiss your girlfriend, remind her she has nothing to fear, and soon you’ll be heading off to interfere with another conflict and you’ll forget all about this conversation.”
“But I’ll know the real perpetrator is still out there,” Victor replied.
“If that’s what you want to believe.”
“It’s what I know.” He knew this was a dangerous thing to say, since it implied he would not simply forget what he had seen, but he was too stubborn to pretend otherwise.
“Some people know there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK,” Peter answered.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Others know the moon landing was faked.” He shrugged. “The truth is what people want it to be.”
“And if I decide to believe that you’re somehow involved in Prievska?”
Peter smiled. “Who would you tell? Better yet, who would believe you?” He stumped his cigar in an ashtray and left it bleeding a thin trail of smoke into the air. Victor studied his face, but he could not tell if there was a veiled threat behind his words. Maybe Peter had simply wanted to learn what Victor knew before Victor had a chance to tell his story back in the U.S. Maybe it was silly he had ever imagined Peter was planning to make him disappear.
As they rose and Peter showed Victor to his room, Victor could still not decide whether his life was in jeopardy.
He paused at the door. “How did you know I have a girlfriend?”
“An educated guess.” Peter smiled. “Sleep well, Victor Gervasio. I expect this will be your last night in Kerovia.”
Victor nodded and slowly closed the door. As the view of the hallway narrowed, there was a brief moment when Peter’s eyes seemed to thin, his lips freezing in the inscrutable grimace of a gargoyle.
___
In the bedroom, Victor unzipped his coat and sat on the bed. He drew his phone, pulled up Camila’s number, and nearly pressed call. He hesitated with his finger inches above the button. After a few seconds of indecision, he opened their text conversation and wrote a quick message:
Just wanted to check in. I’m fine, everything went well. Not sure how soon I’ll be back. Still wrapping up loose ends.
He waited, checked the time. 7:23 AM. 1:23 AM back home.
Five minutes later, she replied:
How long? :(
A few days, he wrote back. No longer.
Three more minutes passed. Then:
Stay safe, okay? I miss you.
Miss you too.
He pictured her sitting on the couch with a book and a cup of chamomile tea, surrounded by candles. She loved her candles. The TV wouldn’t be on (she almost never turned the TV on), and in its absence the house would be wrapped in a heavy silence like the silence that comes to a forest after a fresh snowfall.
Victor felt more than miles away from her. It was as if he had traveled to another solar system.
It’s not the same here without you, Cam wrote.
When I get back— he started to answer, then set the phone on the duvet and stood by the window. The mountain fell beneath him in broken cliffs, the stone white-washed in the moonlight, dusty animal paths plunging through thickets of growth on the mountainside. Lights twinkled in the distance like sunken stars. He felt remote, far removed from everything he knew. Was this how kings felt on lonely nights cut by the howling wind? Did they walk the battlements, staring out over the fires of their people, their shoulders stooped by the weight of the burden of leadership? Is that what drove some of them mad?
His phone vibrated.
Vic??? Still there???
Gotta go, Camila, he responded. We’ll talk soon.
He closed the conversation, then tried calling Washburn. The phone started to ring before dropping the call.
He sighed and began to undress. He was pulling his socks off when another idea came to him. He picked up his phone and Googled Peter Krieg. He found two Wikipedia entries: One for a filmmaker, the other for a billionaire entrepreneur. He clicked the latter link.
He scanned the table of contents: Early Life & Education, Career, Wealth, Personal Life. According to the article, Peter was born in Essen to a single mother, who was away much of the time and left Peter to take care of himself. He later went to a university to study for an engineering degree, but dropped out after one year and went to work at a steel factory owned by the prestigious Krupp family, who served as the leading weapons manufacturer for Germany for the better part of four hundred years before it merged with Thyssen AG to form a conglomerate in 1999.
Peter rose through the ranks in the factory, promoted due to his “sharp eye for detail” and “keen personnel management skills.” He invested his money in early tech startups, and after a string of failures he finally hit gold with several American companies, notably Microsoft and IBM.
It was during this time that Peter met Vanessa Brunner, whom he went on to marry. Tragically, she would be diagnosed with leukemia a few ye
ars later and pass away in a hospital bed, leaving Peter as the sole guardian of their son, Charles.
In the wake of his wife’s death, Peter withdrew from the public eye. The article had almost no further information about him. His net worth was believed to be in the billions, but nothing about his current business dealings, marital status, or whereabouts was known. He had, quite simply, fallen off the map.
Victor closed the article and stretched out on the bed, gazing up at the plastered ceiling and wondering how a man like Peter Krieg had become involved with a mysterious laboratory hidden deep in the forests of Kerovia.
The Shadow Walker (The Last Colony Book 2) Page 6