“A couple of other people? Who?”
Rubin mulled whether to tell the truth or lie, but decided in favor of the former. Even without the scope on a Barrett, Devlin could spot a liar a mile away. “Secret Service agents. Members of the president’s own personal detail. They were, um, protecting the senator—”
“Son of a bitch,” exclaimed Devlin. “Tyler’ started to speak, then did a double take when he saw Devlin standing there in the uniform of an Army officer. Devlin watched his eyes carefully for any sign of untoward suspicion.
“Hi, Dad,” he said. Rubin looked like he might topple out of his chair. “What the hell is going on here?” he barked.
Devlin looked at Seelye but spoke to Rubin, “General Seelye here is going to give us a little dog-and-pony show. Isn’t that right, Pops?”
Seelye thought seriously about trying to bluff his way through this, even as the look in Devlin’s eyes told him not even to think about it.
Devlin reached in his military attaché case and took out two books, their covers still stained, the stains a dark brown now instead of blood-red.
And then Seelye knew that the game was not only afoot, it was up.
Devlin didn’t wait for Seelye to sit down. “The answer was in here all along. I don’t know why he did it. Maybe to leave a clue. Maybe for me to find some day. Maybe to show both of us that he’s the smartest guy in the room, the smartest guy on the planet. And maybe, Army, he did it to fuck you over, the way you fucked him over. The way you fucked my mother, over, under, and sideways. The way you wrecked my family.”
Devlin spoke very softly, his body coiled. Army Seelye understood that if he so much as moved, tried to call for help, or worse, attack, Devlin would kill him on the spot and take his chances with Rubin later. Wisely, he did nothing.
Devlin opened one of the books. The pages groaned and cracked. “When you grow up the way I did, without parents, well…you don’t have many friends either. But I had these, books my father had given to me in Rome, and one of them was about the movies. So I became a movie fan. They were my escape. They were my family. And those characters played by Cagney and Bogart and Brando became more real to me than anybody real…including you, Dad.”
“Why do you keep—” interjected Rubin, but Devlin paid him no attention.
“So this book of movie stories was a boon companion. But an even greater boon companion was this.” He opened the other book, bloodier, more worn, and flipped it opened. It was covered in symbols, which zigged and zagged their way across the pages—the same dancing men as the symbols on Devlin’s BlackBerry.
“Kids’ stuff,” blurted Seelye.
“Right,” said Devlin. “Childish markings, the kind of basic substitution cipher that a father might teach his son, especially a father in our business. Except you forgot something. You forgot where my father gave me this book.”
“Italy,” muttered Seelye.
“Correctamundo,” said Devlin, his voice mirthless. “Italy. The home of some of the greatest minds western civilization ever produced. Machiavelli—I bet he was one of your special favorites. Michelangelo. And Leonardo.”
There was a mirror on one wall. Devlin pointed to it. “Remember what Leonardo used to do? Mirror-writing. If he wanted to obscure something, he wrote it backward. You had to
Using Hartley’s Watergate phone number as the origination, Devlin punched in the number that Hartley had called and put the instrument on speakerphone, so they could all hear the cutout clicks as the call was rerouted. He let it ring once and then hung up.
“He’ll suspect something.” warned Seelye.
“Of course he will,” replied Devlin. “That’s his job. But he’ll do worse than suspect if he doesn’t hear from Hartley pretty soon. Right now, it’s just a dropped call. The next call he gets from me is going to come in person. One last thing—”
“Name it,” said Rubin.
“I want my mother’s picture down off the Wall of Shame. I want her files erased from the NSA/CSS system—don’t fuck with me on this, because if you don’t do it, I’ll know. I want my father rehabbed and given a star at Langley. And I want your resignation, General Seelye, whenever I ask for it.”
Devlin turned to Rubin. “Good-bye, Mr. Secretary,” he said. “You’ll never see me again.” And then he really was gone.
After he’d left, Rubin looked at Seelye with a mixture of contempt, disappointment, and disgust. “Why didn’t you tell him?” he asked.
“Tell him what?”
“That there is no death sentence. That there is no other member of Branch 4. That, in fact, he is Branch 4.”
“It’s on a need-to-know basis,” said Seelye. “And he doesn’t need to know. Not now, maybe not ever.”
DAY SEVEN
Always remember the dictum of Heraclitus, “Death of earth, birth of water; death of water, birth of air; from air, fire; and so round again.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations, Book IV
Chapter Fifty-three
VILLE-SOUS-LA-FERTÉ, FRANCE
Emanuel Skorzeny drank deeply of the air. This was not his favorite part of France—except for the champagne, it was nobody’s—but if he closed his eyes and projected himself back a millennium, he could appreciate what its Cistercian founders might have seen in it. Troyes was the nearest town; Chaumont was closer, but there was nothing there. Paris itself lay 235 kilometers to the west/northwest. At
Once a cell block, always a cell block.
The guard waved them through on sight. No matter how many times he was here, Pilier never got over an involuntary shudder. Clairvaux Prison was home to some of the toughest convicts in France. It had a high population of violent Muslim immigrants, who had gone from being warehoused in the Paris banlieues to being warehoused in the French penal system with nary a stop in between. It was home to murderers, rapists, armed robbers, the lot. Even terrorists; in fact, one very famous terrorist in particular.
Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez.
Skorzeny’s quarters, made in arrangement with the French government, were hidden away at the back of the complex. Here, he was as secure as the most high-security prisoner, fully protected from the outside world and from any malevolence it might want to visit upon him. But there was also a strange peacefulness about the place. His suite of rooms looked out at some of the ruins. Even across a distance of nearly a thousand years, he could see the outlines of what had once been the fish ponds, so important to a Cistercian monastery. The monks were great gardeners, great tillers of the soil, great husbanders of natural resources, great foresters. They were men of peace.
“And yet their Abbot preached the Second Crusade,” muttered Skorzeny, giving voice to his innermost thoughts as Pilier unpacked his things and laid them out on his bed.
The fact that Skorzeny kept secure quarters in a prison was not as fanciful as it might seem. Conscious of the abbey’s place in French history, the government was excavating and restoring the ruins of the old abbey, so there were nonprisoners living at the site. There was even a short concert series in the fall, at the Hostellerie des Dames, where the music included works by Mozart, Ravel, Debussy, and, of course, Messiaen.
“The musicians are ready?” asked Skorzeny, breaking the conversational silence.
“Everything awaits your presence.”
Skorzeny glanced at his watch. He was one of those men who still wore a watch. Pilier read his mind. “She’ll be here any—”
A soft buzz on the telephone. It was the guard at the front gate. Pilier put down the receiver and said, “She’s here.”
Skorzeny was still looking at his watch. Pilier waited a decent interval and then coughed quietly. “I said, Miss Harrington is here.”
“Excellent,” replied Skorzeny, although the tone of his voice signaled anything but pleasure. He tossed one more glance at his watch, as if calculating something. “Is everything in order?”
Pilier had no idea what he was talking about. “Yes, sir. The musicians—”
“I don’t mean the musicians. I mean the Clara Vallis.”
“On schedule, sir, with no trouble from the authorities. In fact, they’re being quite cooperative.”
The doorbell buzzed even more softly than the telephone. “
Skorzeny cut her off. “Why don’t you shut up?” he said.
The brutality of his tone caught her by surprise. She was just wondering what it was all about when she felt the martini kick in. Except it wasn’t the martini, it was whatever Pilier had slipped into it. Some kind of drug. The glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the flagstone floor.
“That’s better,” said Skorzeny.
Pilier escorted Amanda to a chair and set her down into it. Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t move.
“You’re probably wondering what’s happening to you. Please, don’t be afraid. The condition is not permanent, and there is no lasting damage. You will find it hard to speak, so just nod your head to my questions and everything will be fine. Do you understand?”
Amanda nodded, almost imperceptibly, but it would have to do. She cursed herself for falling for it. Her suspicions had been right all along—the old man thought they were trying to kill him at the London Eye. And maybe Milverton was. She had nothing to do with that.
Then another thought hit her. Maybe Milverton had somehow planted the notion in Skorzeny’s mind that she wished him dead. That she was tired of his importunities, and would shed hardly a tear if something happened to him. That with Skorzeny dead, she, more than anybody except perhaps that creepy Pilier, would have access to all the money until the lawyers kicked in, by which time she could be long gone. After all, she’d got what she wanted out of the deal.
She’d finally got her child.
“Were you trying to kill me in London?” There it was. She shook her head, no.
“Don’t lie to me. I will have independent corroboration of everything I ask you, and if you lie to me, it will go very hard with you. Very hard, indeed. Do I make myself clear?”
She nodded.
“Very well, then, I repeat. Were you trying to kill me in London?”
There was no way to answer the question. If only she could say something. She tried to move her lips and tongue, but no sound came out. She hoped the desperation she was feeling was somehow reflected in her eyes, hoped that the old man would see the flash and understand, take pity on her. But she also knew that was a forlorn hope.
“Are you cheating on me? Having it off with Milverton, that rotter? Plotting against me?”
Amanda tried, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t move, couldn’t answer. Whatever fate he had in store for her, she had to accept it.
Skorzeny turned to Pilier. “I think we are ready for our concert now,” he said.
“Very well, sir.” He picked up the phone and spoke softly to someone. Amanda could hear his voice, barely, but couldn’t make out any words. “On their way,” said Pilier, hanging up.
Skorzeny looked at Amanda, sitting paralyzed in her chair
Workers poured in, setting up folding chairs in semicircles. They finished quickly. When everything was ready, about twenty musicians, both men and women, each attired in formal dress, entered and took their places: a string orchestra.
“What will replace our culture when it’s gone?” continued Skorzeny. Pilier got the sense he was speaking more to himself than anybody else at this point. “What will replace Michelangelo and Leonardo and Bach? The bray of Madonna or the wail of the muezzin?” He was lost in thought for a moment. “Better, perhaps, to end it all now, and spare us the agony of having to eat our own entrails as we die.” He turned to the orchestra. “You may begin.”
From the opening strains, Amanda knew what the piece was: Metamorphosis for Strings by Richard Strauss. A late work, one of his last, a threnody for the German civilization he and his music had once exemplified. It had all the glorious radiance of his early works, but none of their expansive joy. This was the work of an old man, composing his own funeral music. As if to underscore the point, near the end, he even quoted Beethoven’s funeral march from the “Eroica” Symphony.
It was music to accompany the end of the world.
The last mournful strains died away. There was no applause. As one, the musicians rose and filed out of the room. In her delirium, Amanda might have imagined that one of the violinists, a woman, gave her a searching, sympathetic look, but there was no way she could communicate with her. She could only hope.
They were alone. Skorzeny sat slumped in his chair, his mind still on the music.
Amanda’s mind was on the music as well, but in a different way. She had no doubt what was going to happen to her. She was never going to leave this horrible place alive, never going to realize her dream of taking her new daughter, who would learn to love her in time, and moving somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was far away. Never going to realize her dream of leaving Emanuel Skorzeny and all he represented far behind.
Amanda’s turmoil was invisible to Skorzeny. Not that he would have cared. He was long past caring.
“It was all so simple, until you…what is the word you young people use all the time…fucked it up. I do mean that literally. After all I did for you. Sacrificed for you. Risked for you.”
She twitched and tried to blink her eyes, to communicate in some way. It was no use. Her strength was failing her. Just when she needed it most.
“It’s over. Don’t you see? All of this. A cathedral turned into a prison. A culture turned into a cesspool. A continent into a sewer. An entire civilization into a souk. And so, rather than being pissed on…I piss on it. ‘I am become Death, destroyer of Worlds,’ as both Oppenheimer and the Bhagavad Gita famously said. I am the day after Trinity. And which of them was stronger—the Indian poet or the American scientist?”
She couldn’t even move her head to acknowledge the question.
“Once upon a time, I should have sDo you understand?
“But now, even I no longer believe. During the last century, Europe tried twice to commit suicide. Both times America saved it from its own worst instincts—the second time, just barely. We celebrated America for her selfless sacrifice. We created a worker’s paradise of ‘social democracy.’ Six weeks’ vacation, unlimited medical insurance, abortion on demand—why have children if they were going to interfere with your lifestyle? With the rights of women, Western society’s proudest achievement. Other cultures, lesser cultures, scorned us, laughed at us, and…”
He stopped, looked at her, then kissed her one last time. “They were right.” He fussed with something in his pocket. “What was it Louis XV said? Après moi, le deluge. Or was in Madame de Pompadour? No matter: the sentiment still obtains.”
Amanda tried to mouth some words. Skorzeny pretended to put his ear to her lips.
He had played his hand perfectly, calling forth the shade of someone he once thought dead, but knew in his heart had never died. His old friend and rival, Seelye, had covered his tracks very well. “Scrubbed” him, brilliantly.
Which is why everything he’d ordered Milverton to do had been leading to this very moment. Flushing the specter out from the shadows, whipsawing him around the Western world as he ratcheted up the stakes. Keeping him so involved in his own personal vendetta that he would never see the big strike coming. The one man he had to rid himself of, because in him Seelye had created the only person who could stop Skorzeny’s magnificent Götterdämmerung.
Amanda struggled mightily against her own body’s self-imposed bonds. There were so many things she had to say, so much to plead for, to live for. But she couldn’t even move a muscle. She realized it was useless. She stopped struggling. It was over.
“If only you hadn’t betrayed me. Did you not realize that my eyes and ears were everywhere? In your house, in your phones, inside his vaunted ranks of computers? I may be an old man, but certain principles never change. And spies are among the immutables.”
Her mouth managed to form the word, Why?
“I can understand him. He is a man, like me. He has the same desires that I do. The same lusts. A will to power. The will to live. But what, my dear, is your excuse?”
She tried to move her head, but she couldn’t.
“I should have thought better of a woman,” he said.
She didn’t know whether to believe him, that the effects would wear off. She didn’t know if she would ever wake up again, ever see Emma again. She felt herself slipping away…
When she was quite unconscious, Skorzeny signaled to Pilier. “Inhe was ever going to be. CSS had few functional ops in Britain, but SAS and DoD communicated regularly. Devlin liked the SAS guys. They were tough. They were a throwback to the Brits of yore, the guys who set out to make the world England and damn near succeeded. There was, after all, something to be said in favor of an intact gene pool. When you kill off the best, the brightest, the bravest…and leave only the losers, the weak, the objectors, the physically and mentally unfit…well—what would Darwin say?
He checked his messages. Maryam was in place. His hunch, her research. She was a woman of many talents.
Once more, Devlin marveled at the chance that had brought them together. On the surface, she was just the kind of woman he should avoid, if not kill. Her fortuitous appearance in Paris when he was first stalking Milverton, her forbearance through the long silence that followed, her reappearance on the plane to Los Angeles…
And yet perhaps it was time for a play not in the playbook. Maybe it was time to trust your instincts instead of the probability charts. Whoever had sent her to Paris to track him, whatever the reason she had waited so long, however she had managed for their paths to cross again on the way to LA—it didn’t matter.
Could he trust her? Of course not.
Was he going to trust her? Absolutely.
Because, for once in his life, he was going to experience the joys of an absolutely unconditional relationship. Even if it cost him that life.
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