Eye of the Storm

by C. J. Lyons

  “You never said that this Costello woman was a gypsy. She’s not even French. She’s apatrides, a person without a country or passport.”

  “What happened to her? Is she still alive?”

  Archer didn’t answer his question right away, instead looked past Paddy as if he were invisible. Paddy felt his hopes sink into despair.

  “It appears we have made a miscalculation,” Archer began.

  “Miscalculation? What the bloody hell does that mean?”

  “We thought she was, uh, entertainment for the Gestapo officers,” Hawknose put in. “It wasn’t until we debriefed Lieutenant Carstairs that we learned differently.”

  Paddy narrowed his eyes. “Because she was a gypsy and a woman you assumed she was a whore? That’s why you wouldn’t believe me, Irish bastard that I am—”

  “Now, Hart, there’s no call for—”

  “Just tell me she’s alive, goddamn it!”

  Paddy’s words echoed through the vaulted ceilinged room. Hawknose took a step back as if fearing violence while Archer spread his hands in surrender. “She’s alive. As far as we know,” he qualified. “It’s difficult to obtain accurate—”

  “Where, damn it?”

  “Paris. The Fresnes Prison, best we can tell.”

  Paddy staggered back a step and sank into the chair behind him. Oh god, Rosa. In Marseilles, he’d heard the horror stories emanating from Fresnes. The Gestapo had turned it into their own chamber of horrors where they kept prisoners for interrogation—torture was a better word—before sending them east to an extermination camp.

  “I’m sorry, Hart. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “Send me back. I can save her.”

  Archer looked up at that, his previous look of haughty superiority now replaced with pity. “No one can save her—she’s in the belly of the beast, man. There’s nothing you or anyone can do. But we need to re-establish an escape network in the south of France. Do you think you can tackle the job? It would take me weeks to get anyone else trained and ready and we’ve men desperate to escape. Are you up it?”

  Paddy rose to his feet and looked down on the official who saw the war as a chess game, his pieces sliding about on a board and bearing no resemblance to men and women with hearts and loves and fear and courage. He wanted to spit on the Brit with his manners and polish, but he couldn’t—Rosa needed him. These bloody fools weren’t going to save her.

  So instead, he fisted his hands at his sides and nodded. “When do I leave?”

  <<<>>>

  THIS TIME KASANOV’S call came on Drake’s cell. Drake and Jimmy stepped into the Commander’s office where they could have some privacy. Arrogant bastard knew the FBI would be monitoring it, but he didn’t care.

  Drake answered, putting it on speaker. “I’ve done what you wanted. Alicia Fairstone is being arrested for the murder of Anton Lavelle. She’s going to lose everything: her social standing, her reputation, will probably spend the rest of her life in prison. Now let my mother and Hart go.”

  “That’s not what I asked for,” came Kasanov’s measured reply. “I want her life in my hands. Just as my grandson’s life was in hers. I want her to see my face as she dies, just as my grandson saw hers.”

  “You know I can’t do that. Besides, dying is too easy, too quick. Too private. A woman like Alicia, public humiliation is the ultimate torture.” Drake held his breath, waiting for Kasanov’s reply. Hoped he’d played the psychopath correctly. A man like Kasanov… who knew?

  “Maybe. Still, I asked for a woman’s life and that’s not what you delivered. Hardly worth two lives in return, now is it, Detective Drake?”

  “It’s the best you’re going to get. Release Hart and my mother and you’ll have a chance to get away before the FBI finds you.”

  “Do you really think I care about the FBI? Or even escaping with my life? This is about family, Detective Drake. This is about securing a future. You and me, we are meaningless.”

  Drake blinked in surprise. Psychopaths only cared about themselves, about gratifying their own twisted needs. What kind of game was Kasanov playing?

  “Then let my family go.” The words came out choppy as Drake tried and failed to keep his emotion out of them.

  Kasanov laughed. “I’ll let one go. You choose. Your mother or Dr. Hart?”

  “You sonofabitch—”

  “You have ten seconds, Detective Drake. Who will go free?”

  “I can’t—” Drake’s fist closed so tight around the phone he thought he might crack it. Or hurl it across the room in frustration. Jimmy stepped closer, but Drake waved him off.

  “Your mother or Dr. Hart?” Kasanov’s voice was calm, clinical. As if the choice were obvious.

  Jimmy scribbled a note and held it up for Drake. Don’t play his games. Hang up.

  Drake squeezed his eyes shut, considered it. But no way could he take the chance that they’d lose Kasanov—and with him both Hart and Muriel.

  Hart’s face filled his vision. He knew what she would want, what she would tell him to do. It didn’t make it any easier.

  “Time’s up, Detective Drake. Who will it be?”

  “My mother.” The words emerged strangled and twisted with pain. “Let my mother go.”

  “Very well. We’ll be in touch. I’ll say good-bye to Dr. Hart for you.”

  Kasanov hung up.

  Drake’s entire body trembled with rage as he stared down at the now blank screen. What had he done?

  Chapter 30

  DESPITE PADDY’S PLEADING, the Brits gave him nothing to do as they planned his journey back into occupied France except to sit on his bum and dream of Rosa and what might be happening to her.

  As he tossed and turned later that night, try as he might, he couldn’t banish the image of her face, flushed with emotion, when he last saw her. He’d thought she was angry with him, now he realized it was fear that had colored her features. And yet, still she’d gone, raced through the night into the arms of the enemy.

  For the sake of six hundred strangers. For Paddy.

  He stifled a groan and took another sip of the Laphroaig he’d stolen from Archer’s cabinet. Not as smooth as Jamieson, but it would do in a pinch. Bloody poms sitting here in the lap of luxury compared to what their brethren in Europe or back home had. The war was a game to them, played long-distance; they had no idea what real war meant. He doubted if Archer or any of his staff had ever had a ship torpedoed out from under them, ever been shot at, ever had to run and hide for their lives.

  And these were the men the world was relying upon to stop the bloody Krauts and their madman, Hitler?

  That thought called for another drink. Slowly the whiskey wound its way through his frazzled and frayed nerves, finally allowing him to sleep. In his dreams, he relived the night he and Rosa had—their one and only night. It was only five days ago, but a thousand years could pass and he would never forget it.

  The bittersweet memory lulled him to sleep, tears warming his cheeks.

  <<<>>>

  DRAKE AND JIMMY took turns pacing the Commander’s office. The Commander herself, along with their fellow detectives, worked what little leads they had out in the bullpen, occasionally poking their heads into the office and offering what reassurance they could.

  Bottom line, no one could find Natasha Mulo or even any trace that she or Anton Lavelle had existed before their arrival in Pittsburgh five months ago. More interestingly, it appeared Anton’s death might not be totally accidental. Alicia’s account of the hit-and-run was that Anton was already down, he and his bike sprawled on the ground, when she rounded the blind corner and ran over him.

  Before Drake had time to process that information—had someone discovered Anton’s connection with Kasanov and targeted him?—his phone rang.

  “There’s a package waiting for you,” came a man’s voice. Not Kasanov. “The Coretti warehouse in the strip district.”

  “Let me talk to Hart.” His only answer was the sound of a dial tone. �
�Son of a bitch!” He threw the phone across the room, almost hitting Jimmy as he came through the door. “Let’s roll,” Drake said, moving past Jimmy.

  Jimmy grabbed the cell phone and grimly followed his partner.

  They phoned Prescott and had dispatch send radio cars, but with Drake driving the streets like it was LeMans, not Pittsburgh, he and Jimmy pulled up at the same time as the first RMP. Abandoning standard reconnaissance protocol, Drake was out, sprinting toward the warehouse before Jimmy could stop him.

  The door to the warehouse stood open, an invitation to catastrophe. Drake hesitated only long enough to grab his flashlight from his coat pocket and then he was through it, Jimmy on his heels. They both quickly rolled out of the light of the door, ending up on the right hand side of the dark, cavernous space.

  Keeping their back to the wall, they duck walked along the wall for a few feet until they were surrounded by darkness. The uniforms came in behind them, circling in the opposite direction. Drake tapped Jimmy’s arm and then turned the powerful flashlight on, quickly aiming it through the space in front and to the side of them.

  Drake’s finger tightened on his service piece when the pale flesh tones of a mannequin were illuminated, but he held his fire. The warehouse floor was littered with dozens of the dress dummies, all naked, leering at the two police officers with their plastic smiles.

  A pigeon flew up, breaking the silence and sending Drake’s heart lurching into a tailspin. He kept scanning the room until he found the electric box on the near wall. He covered Jimmy as Jimmy crept forward and flipped the breaker on.

  The overhead lights illuminated a macabre holiday affair. Besides the dummies, there were props for various seasonal displays. Uncle Sam in full red, white, and blue regalia towered over two bunnies carrying Easter baskets. An old-fashioned Saint Nicholas trailing a sled of presents stood beside them.

  And tied to an I-beam with duct tape and silver tinsel was Muriel Drake.

  Chapter 31

  CASSIE HAD NO idea how long she clung to the derrick, but it was long enough for her teeth to start clacking together with the cold. Several times she had to shift position so she could hug her gun hand close to her body and keep it warm enough that she didn’t drop the damn thing.

  Kasanov remained inside but the children and three of his teenaged goons encircled the base of the magnet, jeering at Cassie, rough housing with the dogs, even building a fire, as if this were a party. The children acted almost feral, didn’t seem to understand there were lives at stake.

  One of the teenagers—the oldest, maybe nineteen or twenty—had a cell phone. He got a call then held it up to Cassie. “Can you see? Your friend and Drake, walking away, unharmed.”

  She was too far away to see it, but sooner or later she had to climb down and she hoped she’d given Vincent enough time to alert the police. From her view up on the derrick, she couldn’t see any lights from cars or buildings, so she feared that the highway and store he’d gone to were farther away than she’d thought.

  “Throw down your gun,” the kid ordered. The others came alert, the ones with guns aiming them at Cassie, the younger ones scampering around and calling her name in a singsong as if they were playing Red Rover.

  Cassie hated guns—had seen too many traumas resulting from them in the ER—but Drake had insisted she learn how to handle one properly. Turned out she was actually a pretty good shot and, although she’d never admit it to him, she enjoyed shooting at the range with him. She released the magazine and dropped it down to the men below, made sure the chamber was also empty, then threw the unloaded pistol down.

  “Now, come on down. Don’t keep Nickolai waiting.”

  She swung onto the ladder, one hand sliding the folding knife deeper into her bodice where she hoped it would remain hidden. Teeth chattering from the cold and her feet numb, slipping on the rungs, she climbed down. All she had to do now was stay alive long enough for Drake and the police to get here. If Vincent had made it out.

  He wasn’t among the group waiting for her on the ground. She stopped on the side of the magnet’s control cab. “No dogs.”

  The boys laughed at that, but two of them pulled the dogs back by their collars and held them. She climbed down the rest of the way and stood, hands open at her sides, posing no threat. “Take me to Kasanov. I’ll tell him everything.”

  Everything she knew, that was. Which was pretty much nothing Kasanov wanted to hear.

  Time to see if any of Paddy’s talent for storytelling had passed down to Cassie.

  <<<>>>

  ROSA WOKE TO the sounds of a woman screaming. Lashav, she chided herself. Shame. Because she could not deny her relief that the screams were not her own.

  She wrapped her arms around her body, shivering in the chill air of the unheated room, rolled over, and huddled in a ball. She almost preferred the barren environs of her cell back in Fresnes to being confined here in the excessively opulent hotel on the rue des Saussaies. The Gestapo leadership had commandeered the hotel both for their living quarters as well as their “special” interrogations, calling it their Gasthaus.

  The cold tile floor of the lavatory that comprised her prison gave her little comfort. Often she would awaken to find one side of her body numb and etched with the fleur-de-lis pattern inscribed on the tiles. Her jailers laughed at a gypsy like her being forced to sleep inside one of the most luxurious hotels in Paris.

  They slept in the bedroom beyond with silk sheets and thick duvets. They delighted in bringing their food in on silver-plated trays, the smell of braised beef overwhelming as it perfumed the air, and eating in front of her, purposely dropping crumbs to the ground, just out of her reach from where she sat, her ankle chained to the bidet, letting the food rot as her empty stomach gnawed itself.

  She kept telling herself food would do her no good. As soon as they finished their meals and began to question her, she would inevitably vomit. One of the many messy side effects of near-drowning. Hence the lavatory as her prison cell. All the easier to fill the bath tub with icy water and dunk her into it, never knowing if this was the last time, the time they would miscalculate and hold her under too long.

  Her grandmother had predicted Rosa would die in the water. Now she knew it to be true.

  Rosa tried not to waste precious energy in crying. She was stronger than that, better than that. She was Kalderasha.

  But the tears came anyway. Her only comfort was that she had yet to tell them anything—anything they could understand at any rate. She’d confined herself to speaking Romani, the gypsy language few outsiders understood. Another thing Grandmother always said, “tshatshimo Romani,” the truth is in Romani, not the ugly gaje tongues.

  That thought made her feel better. That and knowing that the longer she hung on, the longer she gave Padraic and the others time to escape to safe harbor. What day was it now? She’d lost track after the first few days—days punctuated by beatings by the prefecture followed by beatings by Patin’s private guard, then a bumpy ride in a panier a salade, followed by more beatings at the Fresnes prison once they arrived.

  Back in Marseilles, after that bastard Bernard betrayed her to the police, they had almost let her go as a mistake when she cursed and shouted at them, the image of a crazed gypsy, a ziegeuner. Her people were often reputed to be half-wits and feeble-minded, so Rosa used their preconceptions against them. Plus, she’d noted that the Germans hated dealing with unpredictable quantities in their prisoners. Even if they did arrest her, usually they’d send someone acting crazy to St. Cyprien, one of the camps south of Montpelier.

  Perfect. From there she could escape and be back in business within a few weeks. A little holiday in the country. She deserved it after all her hard work. Not to mention the beatings she had endured in the name of resistance.

  The only thing she would miss would be Padraic. God, the man was infuriating, the way he’d wormed himself into her mind, into her heart. She was glad she had slept with him—glad she had chosen him to be her fi
rst. Maybe her only the way things were going. But that night he had been gentle, patient with her in a way totally unexpected, as if he cherished her, as if she were precious to him. She had slept in his arms afterward, her first full night of uninterrupted sleep in years. He had earned her trust, her fisherman. And so to him, she had entrusted the fate of her apatrides.

  But then, just as she was about to skive free of the befuddled local police, Petain’s private guards came. Along with Bernard, who denounced her as the leader of the plot to steal the Sinaia, as the one all of Vichy had searched for, for so long, La Tempête.

  They quickly subdued and disarmed her, placing her in manacles. Despite the iron that bound her, she had stormed Barnard, knocked him off his feet, and tried her best to strangle him with her chains. It took three guards to haul her off the bastard.

  Bernard had sat up in stunned amazement, his hand rubbing his bruised neck as the guards beat her into submission. She lay on the ground, hands now chained behind her as the guards manacled her feet as well, when Bernard knelt beside her, his face lowered to hers.

  “Do not fear for your charges, Rosa,” he whispered in a hoarse rasp. “I have found your radio. I will take care of everything for you. And if we find your gaje lover, we’ll take care of him as well.”

  Rosa spat in his face. He stood and kicked her in the head so hard that she blacked out. When she came to, she was face-down in the back of a police wagon, alone in the dark.

  Just like now. She wished the lavatory had a window so she could tell if it was day or night. Even just to see a glimpse of the sky—she’d like to see the sky one last time before she died.

  She had a feeling that might be today. The Gestapo major who led her interrogations was getting bored with his little games—the dunkings, the beatings, the hauling her up to hang by her arms until her shoulders felt as if they would burst free of her skin and her chest grew so tight she could not breathe. She knew soon her stubborn silence would drive him to push her further.