The Dragon With One Ruby Eye

by Paul Moomaw

  “Where are you staying, by the way?” he asked as he opened the door.

  “In Salzburg. At the Monchstein.”

  “Your taste in hotels rivals your taste in women.”

  Pray laughed, making it a little too hearty. “At the moment it’s my ability to indulge those tastes that concerns me.”

  Meissner nodded. “One does what one can, I suppose. Perhaps we’ll meet again, Herr Pray.”

  “I would be delighted,” Pray said. “Guten Tag, Herr Meissner.” Bingo, I hope, he thought.

  As he turned toward his car, another vehicle, a silvery Porsche, growled softly across the gravel and parked next to Pray’s BMW. A man leaped out and strode rapidly toward Meissner. Pray had the impression he had seen the man before, but couldn’t decide where. They passed on the driveway, and the other man, large, with pale, almost colorless eyes, gave Pray a curt nod and moved on without speaking. Pray tried once more to place him, then gave his head a small shake and continued toward his car.

  * * *

  At the door of Meissner’s house, Facundo Hesse paused to watch Pray climb into his car. As the BMW pulled away, Hesse turned back to face Meissner.

  “Are you cultivating the CIA, Herr Meissner?”

  Meissner cocked an eyebrow. “The CIA?”

  Hesse pointed a thumb over his shoulder as the two men walked into the house. “The man, there. His name is Adam Pray, I believe?”

  Meissner led the way into the sitting room. “Help yourself to a drink, if you wish. There’s cognac, scotch and vodka in there.” He pointed to the metal table. “There’s a little ice in the bucket, too.” He poured himself three fingers of cognac and settled into a chair next to the window. “How is it you know his name?”

  Hesse half filled a glass with vodka, tossed it off, then refilled the glass and sat down across from Meissner.

  “I saw him in the United States. He was in my back yard, practically, at Coeur d’Alene. And he was being very cozy with a man called Larry Biven, who I happen to know is CIA.”

  “Even CIA agents have friends.”

  Hesse grinned. “But always other CIA people.” He drained the glass again. “May I ask what he wanted?”

  “Business.” Meissner refilled his own glass with cognac. “He claimed to represent interests who are seeking arms. He hinted that payment could be made in cocaine.”

  “I had Rafael check on him,” Hesse said. “All he could find out is that Pray is supposed to be wealthy, and lives in Seattle. That alone makes me uncomfortable—a man who lunches with CIA agents and who has no past.”

  “I’ll have Ilona do some digging around with her pet spook.” Meissner laughed. “Now there’s an exception to your rule. Ilona Horthy is certainly no CIA agent, and she is getting to be good friends, to say the least, with Herr Chester Tarbell.”

  “Who’s to say she’s not CIA herself?”

  “Ach, Facundo. You trust no one, isn’t it so?”

  “I trust you, Herr Meissner.” Hesse leaned forward, his eyes suddenly soft. “I trust you before myself at times. And I owe you a great deal. Without you, I would still be a two-bit dealer in contraband and whores, getting drunk and knifing pimps in Buenos Aires.”

  Meissner shook his head. “You grant me too much. I may have opened a few small doors here and there, Facundo. But you have made your own success. Your father must be proud of you.” He leaned forward and reached a hand out, let it hover briefly over Hesse’s knee, then pulled it back without touching. “And call me Reinhardt.”

  “My father doesn’t know the meaning of pride,” Hesse said. He ducked his head, and looked at Meissner under beetled brows. “Sometimes I wish you could have been my father.”

  “You would be a son a father could be proud of.”

  “Not today.” Hesse pounded his right fist against his forehead. “Today I am a bungler. I have left something unfinished. Something important. And it’s botched so badly, I may have trouble putting it to rights.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It was to do with the Hanford thing. I bribed a government man to get me a car. He got caught, so I decided he needed to be taken out.” Hesse hit himself softly in the head again. “I should have taken care of it myself, but I left it for Rafael to handle. He got the man, and the man’s wife. What he didn’t know was, there was a kid who saw the whole thing and who got Rafael’s license number, my fucking license number, unfortunately.”

  “Was he arrested?”

  Hesse shook his head. “Not that, at least. He woke up with police everywhere around my house, but he managed to hide until dark and then slipped out across the lake.” Hesse laughed. “Nearly froze his ass off, and serve him right. At the moment he is, I trust, safely hidden with friends in a small town near the Canadian border.”

  “But the police are looking for him?”

  “And for me. I suppose I can claim the car was stolen, but sooner or later they will match the boy’s description of the driver with Rafael.”

  “Then the boy must die.” Meissner’s voice was mild, matter-of-fact.

  Hesse stared through the window, seeing nothing. “I don’t like to kill a boy.”

  Meissner’s hand extended again, this time patting Hesse’s knee briefly while he watched the younger man’s face. “I’m sure you don’t,” he said. “Sometimes terrible things are necessary. As der Furhrer said so long ago, superior people are cruel.” He poured himself more cognac, and filled Hesse’s glass with vodka. “I may be able to help find someone to do the job.”

  Hesse shook his head violently. “No!” He rubbed his hands together. “A dirty job like this, I don’t pass on to someone else. It’s my problem.” He looked at Meissner. “But I will need a way of getting back into the States without being seen, and then back out again. What happens in between is between me and the boy.”

  Meissner stood up. “I’ll arrange the documents, for you and for your man. Now come to the kitchen with me and watch me make a fool of myself over the stove. Hannes and Peter are gone, and I’m fending for myself. I won’t blame you if you refuse to eat.”

  Chapter 29

  Charlie Oates pressed himself into a doorway, hunching his shoulders against the drizzle that had begun to fall. He removed his spectacles and wiped them dry, even though he knew they would be streaked and spattered with raindrops as soon as he put them on again.

  Pray and Villani were across the way, inside the Nordsee, one of the row of shops that lined the narrow Salzburg street known as the Getreidegasse, Corn Alley.

  “Bon bons,” Oates muttered morosely to himself. “They go inside and eat bon bons; and I stand in the rain with a cold.” Oates knew the anger was misplaced. If anyone needed scolding, he did. He had blown his assignment twice, badly enough the first time, and worse the second. Only dumb luck had prevented his two wards from being blown to pieces by a bomb someone had managed to place in their rental car. Oates was sure it had been on his watch. Worse, his partner on this assignment, Ben Carmichael, was also sure, and managed to mention it every time they spelled each other.

  And last night at the restaurant, he had apparently managed to blow his cover completely. He didn’t understand how, but the woman had spotted him, and then Pray as well; and if Carmichael hadn’t shown up a few minutes early, and had the quick wits to place his pudgy body into Pray’s path, Oates would have looked a fool for sure.

  He straightened up. Pray and Villani had emerged from the sweet shop, and the crowd in the street already obscured Oates’ view of Pray. Lifting his coat collar against the rain, Oates started after them, then stopped.

  Across the way, someone else began to move—a man, with dark hair, blue jeans, and a heavy, black turtleneck of oiled wool. With a vague shock of recognition, Oates realized that he had been seeing the other man, subliminally, as he stood there, and that he recognized him—didn’t know him, but had seen him before, and recently.

  The other man turned, and his eyes crossed with Oates, who made a sudden point of
studying his wristwatch, while the shock of recognition grew from vague to distinct. It was the look that did it, or the eyes, perhaps—a wariness, and a set of the face that said the man did not use his eyes merely to look, but to watch. But Oates knew at that instant where he had seen the other man; it had been in the parking area for the Schloss Monchstein, perhaps an hour before Pray’s car had blown up.

  When Oates looked up from his watch again, Pray had vanished in the crowd; but as Oates began to move, he saw the woman’s bright red hair, unprotected and glowing in the gray drizzle.

  “Thank God for female vanity,” he murmured. He scanned the crowd and had no trouble locating the other man, the stranger, who drifted in the same direction, halfway between Oates and the Americans, on the other side of the narrow street. Oates’ guess that the stranger was following the same quarry grew to a certainty as the Americans wandered from shop to shop, and street to street, through the pedestrian-only market district between the Monchsberg and the River Salzach, everyone moving in consort, as if invisibly chained, Oates and the stranger waiting in the rain each time the others went into a store.

  At length, Pray and the woman returned to the base of the Monchsberg, and vanished into the lift that would carry them to their hotel. Oates and the stranger gazed after them; then Oates busied himself with a shop window as the other man turned and marched quickly past him and down the street.

  Oates checked the time again. He should be calling Carmichael at that moment, and Carmichael was big on doing things by the book. But looking for a telephone would mean letting the stranger in the dark sweater vanish. Oates glanced once more at his watch, then shrugged and started after the other man. Carmichael would have to wait.

  The crowds were thinning out, and Oates had no trouble keeping his target in view as the other man led him away from the Monchsberg and across the Salzach on the little footbridge known as the Moellnersteg, the trashman’s bridge, then along the Rainerstrasse paralleling the river, across the Linzergasse, and into the wooded park around the old Capuchine monastery at the base of the Kapuzinerberg.

  Then the other man vanished. Oates stopped at a bench and pretended to tie a shoe while he scanned the area out of the corner of his eye. There was no sign of the other, and darkness was beginning to spread.

  Past the monastery, a footpath led into the park proper, winding through trees and carefully tended shrubs. In there, Oates decided. He had to have gone into the park. Between the growing darkness and the rain, the park was practically deserted. Oates strode rapidly toward the trees, and realized as he did that his footsteps were suddenly loud, crunching in the gravel of the path. He moved onto the grass and kept walking. He wondered briefly where the other man could be going. The trail led ultimately through the park and into a residential area on the other side.

  Or maybe the guy’s meeting someone in the park, he thought. He might wind up with something to shut Carmichael up before he could start giving Oates a hard time for not calling.

  Or maybe I’ll let him rate me out for a few minutes first, just to make him feel foolish. He smiled as he quickened his pace.

  Gravel crunched behind him, and Oates froze. He heard the sound again, and looked over his shoulder to see a pale face, less than a foot away. He started to run, and then stumbled as a torch of pain shot through his left kidney. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the flash of a fist just before it clubbed against his neck and drove him, stunned, into the ground. Then the torch came again, higher this time, through the back of his ribs and into his heart, which felt like it had to burst, and then did.

  Jules Moreaux wiped the blade of his knife on the grass. He rolled the bearded man’s body over. The corpse stared blindly up at him, eyes glazed in death, his spectacles skewed across his nose.

  Moreaux checked the man’s pockets and found a wallet. He struck a match and examined the contents briefly. A few schillings, an American Express credit card—he could sell that easily enough on the black market—and an American State Department identification card. Someone named Oates.

  Moreaux tucked the wallet into a pocket. On impulse, he reached down, brushed the dead man’s eyes shut, and arranged the glasses on his nose. Then he stood up, glanced up and down the path, and walked quickly back the way he had come.

  Chapter 30

  The Kafe Zauberwinkel faced the lake, its tables in the open air behind a low, stone wall, and sheltered from the worst of the weather by a glass canopy. Pray approached on foot. The man on the telephone, who had identified himself in a high, thin voice as one Facundo Hesse, emissary of Herr Reinhardt Meissner, had insisted that Pray meet him alone, “Without the woman.” Gabriela had driven Pray to within striking distance of the restaurant, and then gone off to explore.

  A man sat alone at one of the small metal tables, gazing out over the water at the few small craft which had braved the cloudy, windy afternoon. It was the man Pray had encountered in front of Meissner’s house. He looked big, even sitting down.

  The man saw Pray and rose smoothly to his feet, handling his bulky body with a grace that surprised Pray, made him think of a Seahawks linebacker.

  Or a grizzly bear. Pray had stumbled into a grizzly once, fishing in the Mission Mountains of western Montana. The bear had charged halfway across the water, bluffing, then turned and stalked away disdainfully into the lodgepole and undergrowth. It had demonstrated the same controlled power shown by the man at the table, who was now holding out a hand in greeting.

  “Please join me, Mr. Pray.”

  Pray shook the extended hand and settled into a rickety looking chair, looking up at the other man, who stood poised above him for a long moment, then seated himself across the table.

  “You’re Mr. Hesse, I assume?”

  “Facundo Hesse. At your service.” Hesse smiled, revealing small, even teeth.

  Too many teeth, Pray found himself thinking. He imagined more rows of them, lurking shark-like behind the ones that showed.

  “I knew who you are, of course,” Hesse went on, “As I have seen you before.”

  “At Herr Meissner’s the other day.”

  Hesse shook his head and renewed the grin, which looked no more comforting than before.

  “At the Inn at Coeur d’Alene. You sat in the company of a very beautiful woman with red hair.” He paused, still grinning and looking at Pray. “But, sadly, most of your attention was not on the lady, but on a man who was also sitting with you. The man’s name is Larry Biven, and he is an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “You don’t say?” Pray shook his head and clucked. “Why am I always the last to know these things?”

  Hesse shook his head slowly from side to side. “No, Mr. Pray. We shouldn’t waste time playing silly games.” He leaned on the table, his weight tilting it slightly, and laced his fingers together. “I know you appear, at least, to lead the life of a wealthy idler. But I also know that you were, until a couple of years ago, supposedly employed by the United States Department of State. I say supposedly, because your title was that of a reserve status political officer, which is a very common cover for CIA agents.” Hesse stared across his knuckles at Pray. His almost colorless eyes had the uncanny stillness of people who do a lot of target shooting.

  Pray leaned back and spread his palms, fingers extended toward the gray sky. “You’ve done your homework, obviously. But why waste time talking about the sins of my past.”

  “I’m more interested in the sins of your present, Mr. Pray. Once a spy, always a spy. Admit it. CIA people don’t stray far from home.”

  “Then why are we sitting here?”

  “I need to decide whether to do business with you, or kill you.” The smile had vanished, and the odd eyes burned cold. Pray had to fight an urge to look away from them.

  “People have tried both,” he said. He hoped he sounded cooler than he felt. “The ones who wanted to do business have had better luck.”

  Hesse nodded. “I’m sure that’s true.” His eyes s
hifted to Pray’s cheek. “That’s an interesting scar.”

  “I like to think of it as my beauty spot.”

  Hesse laughed, his high, thin voice, which didn’t go at all with the body, becoming even more shrill.

  “Very good,” he said. “I also have such a beauty mark, but it is only visible in situations much more intimate than this one. I got mine practicing with the cape, on a young bull that was a little quicker than I. Where did you get yours?”

  “At the end of a dish towel that was too short.”

  Hesse cocked an eyebrow. “Am I to hear the story?”

  “Sure.” What are you doing, Adam Pray? What is this line of bullshit about? “It was in Vietnam, during the war. I made a mistake about a woman.” He shrugged. “I tend to make that kind of mistake, unfortunately.” A smidgen of truth there, at least.

  Hesse nodded slowly. “I can understand. I have made a few of those myself.”

  “In this case, the woman had a husband who called the mistake to my attention. He was a wild Cajun from the bayou country of Louisiana, and he introduced me to a Cajun way of resolving disputes. You take a rag and two knives. Each of you holds an end of the rag in your teeth, then you go at each other with the knives. If you let go of the rag, the other fellow gets a free slice—sort of like a foul shot in basketball or soccer.”

  “And, I gather, you lost?”

  “No, Mr. Hesse. I won.”

  “A wonderful story, I will say that,” Hesse said.

  It sure as hell is, Pray thought. He had no idea if any Louisianan, Cajun or other, had ever held such a duel. But it sounded great, and he felt pleasure at its telling at the same time that he wondered why he had felt the need to come up with such a lie. He stared out over the lake. The wind was sharper, and had driven all but a couple of boats to land. A sailboat, its canvas reefed, headed toward the opposite shore, powered by a small outboard engine, its bright blue and yellow hull periodically obscured by the spray which appeared to be giving the lightly dressed man at the tiller a soaking. Closer by, a small power boat, half-decked, with no one visible at the wheel behind the short windshield, moved in the general direction of the Kafe Zauberwinkel. Pray assumed another wheel must lie! below the deck, and wondered how well anyone could see through the tiny, rectangular windows spaced along the forward section of the boat’s hull.