I opened the door to the room adjacent to the room with the fireplace. As I walked in, the light coming through the doorway revealed a giant bear standing on his hind legs, every tooth bared, about to rip my head off with his paws.
I recoiled, then realized the bear was stuffed. A leopard gathered to leap stood on a table in one corner; deer, elk, caribou and antelope heads shared the walls with shelves full of books. There were four stuffed easy chairs, a bar and a table for playing cards. A gun cabinet filled with hunting rifles and shotguns stood between the two exterior windows.
I pulled the door closed and checked in infrared in all directions to ensure no one was marching for this room. Then I hunkered down beside a bookcase and put a stethoscope microphone against the door that separated the two rooms. Fortunately the four people on the other side of the door were making no move to come this way: With only the one wall and some books between us, I could see their figures fairly well.
The earpiece had about ten feet of cord. I unwound it and slipped the earpiece into my right ear. I heard voices from the next room.
“. . . the person who betrayed us. Obviously someone did. We must find that someone.” A man’s voice speaking accented English, the lingua franca of our age.
“It might have been Surkov,” a woman said tentatively. That accent sounded French. Was that Marisa?
“If he had been the one,” the man said positively, “they wouldn’t have murdered him. Why kill your source of secret information? Oh, no! I think the traitor is one of us. Or perhaps Grafton.”
Grafton? Jake Grafton? I thought that Grafton betraying the group, or any of them, was about as likely as me winning the Irish Sweepstakes, considering the fact that I had never bought a ticket.
I stood there amid the stuffed beasts in the Dead Zoo frozen into immobility, wondering what in the world these people were going to say next.
“This undertaking was always hazardous.” That was an older woman speaking, a French accent. I thought perhaps Isolde Petrou. “There are occasionally moments in history when a handful of determined people can make a difference. I do not know if this is one of those times, but I feel it is our moral duty to fight this great evil that is attacking the people of the earth. If they win, civilization will collapse and we will enter a new dark age. If we win, the adherents of Islam will eventually learn, as have the believers of all other faiths, how to live in a secular world, at peace with those who believe differently. The politicians wish to bury their heads in the sand, as usual. They will do nothing until the entire house is on fire. Huntington Winchester was absolutely right—it is the moral duty of those with the courage and means to grapple with this great evil.”
“I had thought,” the man said softly, so softly that I had to strain to hear, “that with the death of National Socialism in Germany, fascism was once and for all defeated. It wasn’t. The Islamic strain is even more virulent than the Italian and German varieties. My parents—you knew them, didn’t you, Madame Petrou?”
“I did.”
“They were Nazis in the thirties, rejoiced when Hitler took over, hated the Jews. Oh, yes, they admitted it later, when I was a boy. They were just children in the thirties, innocent, foolish and proud as all children are, but when they saw the devastation of Germany, when they realized that Hitler had murdered millions of people in concentration camps, then . . . they lived with the guilt of their earlier approval all their lives. I saw that guilt. It haunted them. This stain was on Germany, on Germans, this foul, evil, bloody stain . . .”
He paused and, listening but not seeing, I thought maybe he was trying to regain his composure. “We are all committed,” the man said forcefully. “We are all convinced we are doing the right thing. But there is a traitor among us and we must ferret him out.”
“Or her.” That was a female voice I didn’t recognize. Perhaps the future ex–Mrs. Zetsche.
“I am ready for bed.” Marisa.
“Of course,” the man said. “My bodyguards will be in the hallway all night.” So the man was Zetsche. He apparently rang a bell. In less than a minute I heard and saw someone enter the room. “Werner will escort you to your rooms. We will discuss this matter tomorrow at breakfast. Gute Nacht.”
They rose from their chairs in the living room and made their way toward the hallway as I wrapped up my cord and stowed the stethoscope mike.
I was walking around that trophy room in high dudgeon, tired, wishing I could spend twelve hours in bed, silently cussing and revisiting my decision to stay married to the green paycheck, when I got a glimpse through one of the windows of a man walking across the lawn. Just a dark figure, striding purposely.
Now what?
I thought about calling Grafton and giving him a piece of my mind, then decided against it. I checked the pistol in my waistband.
I’d feel a lot better about all of this if I got busy and shot somebody.
CHAPTER TEN
As I climbed the stairs behind the four people from the living room, staying so far behind them I was out of sight, I was adjusting the gain and contrast knobs on the goggles. I was smack up against the limitations of the technology: I could see the four people in front of me, and I could count two more images of what should be people, faint images, merely blobs of color. In infrared, the lights in the hallways looked like stars.
When the four people in front of me went into bedrooms—at least they looked like bedrooms, with hot water radiators for heat and attached bathrooms with hot water pipes—I looked for an empty bedroom beside them to hole up in. The building reminded me of an old hotel that had been renovated. How this architectural monstrosity survived World War II was a mystery. Maybe it was damaged and restored. I found an empty bedroom and went in.
With the door closed, I tried to find the other people who were in the house. Located three, this time. I was still diddling with the knobs when the goggles died. One second they worked, then the various heat sources faded away to nothing. Didn’t take me long to figure out that the battery was as dead as Adolf Hitler.
I sat there in the darkness cursing my luck. That didn’t do a lot of good, so I installed three stethoscope microphones so I could at least listen to the goings-on in the rooms around me and in the hallway. What I heard was two women in the bathroom.
Zetsche and his girlfriend were in the bedroom beyond the Petrous. All I could hear was murmurs, which might have been conversation or something else, such as television audio. Difficult to say. Of course, even if I did hear them, they would probably be talking in German, which wasn’t one of my languages.
I used the facilities myself, then settled down on a chair with the earphones in my ears. Without the goggles, this was the best I could do.
Before long the Petrou women fell silent. Conversation continued, still inaudible, for about an hour from the room beyond that; then it, too, faded away, leaving the big house in silence.
The night crawled along. Occasionally I heard measured footsteps—one of the bodyguards, I concluded, walking the hallways. Between footsteps there was no sound except the gentle patter of raindrops on the windowpanes. Amazing that the microphones picked that up so well.
One o’clock came and went. I tried to keep my eyes open by debating the issues. Was Marisa an assassin, was this really the line of work for me, and should I punch Jake Grafton in the nose the next chance I got? Unfortunately there were no clear answers; my eyelids got heavier and heavier and I slept.
For Marisa, nights were the worst. When the house was dark and silent her memories came flooding back, and her fears and anxieties and private hurts.
“Why won’t you tell me about my mother?” she demanded of her father during a rare visit. She had been a teenager then, thirteen or fourteen, sure that she knew the difference between right and wrong, sure of her ability to heal a broken world.
“There is nothing you need to know,” he said, in that condescending, self-righteous manner that she had grown to despise.
“I am not a
child,” she retorted hotly. “Tell me the truth and I will live with it, as you do.”
“I am your father and you are still a child, a young woman. You must learn to trust my wisdom. I have made the right choice.”
“You ask for trust and yet you have none. Where is the justice and wisdom in that?” She had been tart in those days, argumentative. Her teachers even wrote notes to her putative parents, Georges and Grisella.
“I am a man and you are a woman. And I am your father.”
“What you are is a misogynist.” If he expected her to surrender, he didn’t know his daughter.
“What I am is a Muslim,” he retorted firmly. “I believe in Allah. I believe that the Prophet set forth the relationship between men and women in the holy Koran, and the relationship between father and daughter. I demand your respect and obedience to my will.”
“You may demand it, but you would be wiser to earn it.”
That was the first time she had seen him angry, out of control. “You would be wise to hold your tongue, child,” he said firmly.
For the first time in her life, she was frightened of him. The beast within had been revealed. He was like a prophet from the Old Testament, a visionary who saw only good and evil, and if you were not among the good, the obedient, then you were evil. It was in his eyes.
She saw it and remained silent.
She had seen the inner man. At that moment she knew the truth, knew him for the righteous, bigoted fanatic that he was.
Oh, her poor mother! To marry such a man! To sleep with him and have his child! And to gradually learn the truth, as she must have. It was like a nightmare from Shakespeare.
Tonight, in Wolfgang Zetsche’s house, she thought of those moments, relived them as she had many times in the years since.
“You are my daughter and will obey me,” he had said with cold steel in his voice. Yet it had been his eyes that held her mesmerized. Eyes are wonderous things: Most people use them to look out at the world, yet the eyes of her father allowed the world to look at the man within. At least, they did on those rare moments when he lost control and his face no longer obeyed his will. Then one could see the raging passions and illogical fanaticism on full display.
It had been a sobering moment for her, a glimpse of the truth at the core of her life. She didn’t know anything of her mother, except that she must have been a woman, and her father was insane. She felt as if she were an alien who had just landed on planet Earth and upon meeting the natives asked aloud, Who are these creatures?
It wasn’t long after that, Marisa reflected tonight, when her father began to discuss Islam, the holy Koran, Allah and the infidels and Paradise and all of that. Her first reaction was amazement. That a man she had known all her life and seen as a pillar of the community should believe this garbage, as he obviously did, was nothing short of astounding. It was as if her roommate had announced she believed the Grimm fairy tales were all true, every word.
Tonight as she stood at the window looking out into a black, wet universe, Marisa wondered yet again, for the ten thousandth time, about her mother. What had her mother thought when her father first told her of Islam and the jihad against the infidels?
Indeed, what had she thought?
Perhaps he killed her, Marisa mused, and not for the first time. Perhaps Mama said something, something that revealed that she didn’t share any of his beliefs or any of his passions. Perhaps the rage was more than he could handle.
I awoke with a start. The house was deathly quiet. Even the rain had stopped. I glanced at my watch, which had hands that glowed in the dark. A few minutes after three in the morning.
What had awakened me?
I listened on each earpiece—there were three.
All silent.
I removed the penlight from my pocket, made sure it was on red light, then clicked it on and shined it around the room.
I came out of the chair slowly and carefully, trying to make no noise. Went to the bathroom, eased the door closed and flipped the light switch on. The room stayed dark. No power.
Back to the door to the room. I eased the lock to the open position and opened the door as slowly and quietly as I could. The hallway was dark as a pharaoh’s tomb and just as quiet.
Standing there, listening, I let the darkness and silence creep over me as I tried to make sense of it.
The power should be on. There should be night-lights. And guards. Those two studly hunks with guns—where were they?
I stepped into the hallway and eased the door closed behind me. Pulled it until the latch began to engage, but didn’t let it click home. Taking my time, staying to the side of the hallway, I worked my way to the Petrous’ door and pressed my ear against it. Someone in there was snoring gently.
On to the next door, Zetsche’s. Couldn’t hear a thing.
Where were the guards?
I went to the head of the stairs and looked downward. It was like looking into the eternal pit. Not even a candle glowed in that vast darkness.
I went down the stairs as slowly and smoothly as I could, alert and listening and looking. And nervous. Something was really wrong . . . and it gave me goose bumps.
Maybe I have an overactive imagination. I can’t sit through a horror movie because it scares me too much. I’m easily overstimulated, as one former girlfriend acidly pointed out.
If the circuit breakers had popped, the emergency generator should have kicked in. If Wolfgang owned one. I was betting he did and it was in the basement. Fortunately I knew how to get there since I had come in that way. I didn’t dare show a light. If the guards were prowling around and saw a light, they might get twitchy and start shooting once they concluded that I wasn’t their employer or one of his guests. At the very least they would try to subdue me one way or another and call the local police.
Working strictly by dead reckoning and feel, I found the door to the stairway to the basement where I’d entered . . . and it was open.
I certainly didn’t leave it that way.
Perhaps one of the guards . . .
I stood there with my eyes closed, every other sense alert. A minute passed, then another.
Reached for the railing and started down.
Right then I would have given a month’s pay to have the agency-issue night vision goggles working properly and riding on my pointy little head. The problem with technology is that when you need it most, it fails you. There must be a deep philosophical lesson lurking in that truth, but I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out just then.
At the foot of the stairs I paused again to listen and feel the darkness. I had a decision to make. Unless I used the penlight, I was going to have to find the power box by feel, which might take all night and would certainly be noisy as I careened around like the proverbial bull in the china shop. It really was no decision at all—I had to use the penlight. Just in case, I pulled the little 9 mm from my waistband and checked that the safety was on. Yep. Cocked and locked.
I scanned the light quickly around the room, which I had seen on my entrance, then scanned every inch of the walls. No box. There were doorways, however, yawning blackly because the doors that would have closed them were blocked open.
Before I went exploring, I looked at the outside door that I had come through. The locks were open. I pulled the door open and saw pry marks on the jamb. The jimmy was lying right there, a tool about eight inches long with a flat end.
Whoever did this was no artist. Now I realized why the house was so quiet: The rain had turned to snow—a skiff lay on the lawn. Snowflakes sifted down even as I scanned the penlight around . . . and saw no footprints. My spine turned to ice; perhaps the person who jimmied the door was still inside.
After pushing the door shut, I crossed the entryway and shined the little light into the first room, trying to shield my body behind the door-jamb as I did so. Washing machines and dryers . . . tables for folding sheets and towels and whatnot.
The second door led to a room full of shelves b
earing what appeared to be bulk food supplies, bags of flour, boxes of cans . . . and another door yawned in the far wall.
I moved that way, holding the flashlight away from my body, just in case someone was in there with a gun and he—or she—got twitchy. I looked into the room and saw the body.
A man . . . on his stomach. He was lying completely relaxed. The walls were lined with stacks of cardboard boxes; his body lay against the left stack.
The far wall had no door, merely an opening. I walked forward, the pistol in my fist leveled in front of me, my heart thudding like a trip-hammer. A glance at the body was enough. I rolled him over. He had been shot in the forehead.
I paused at the edge of the opening, my body as plastered against the wall as possible, and swept the little pool of light from the penlight around. No living persons were there, but there was a body lying under the gray power box mounted on the wall. This man looked dead, too. These men were, I assumed, the guards.
I didn’t enter the room, merely ensured it was empty of living people, then turned and retraced my steps back through the basement.
I didn’t dawdle, nor did I hurry. The two people Grafton sent me here to keep alive, Marisa Petrou and Wolfgang Zetsche, were upstairs and, presumably, so was the killer.
Back up the stairs I went, adrenaline pumping, my heart pounding.
Nothing in the lower hallway, but I could not afford the time to search every room. There was a small stand in the hallway. I grabbed the glass vase on it and placed it on the second stair going down into the basement. Then I headed for the stairs that led to the second floor and went up two at a time, the penlight slashing the darkness.
Outside the door to Zetsche’s bedroom, I paused. Listened at the door. Put my ear against it. Nothing. Not even a snore. Oh, man.
As silently as I could, I applied pressure to the doorknob. It rotated in my hand.
The Assassin Page 15