DEVIL’S KEEP

by PHILLIP FINCH

  After the Harvest

  Thirty-three

  Franklin Kwok was waiting the next evening when Mendonza guided Banshee into slip 22 at the Manila Yacht Club. Kwok asked them to stay for dinner, and sat rapt as Favor described in detail all that the boat had done, and what it had meant to them.

  They bought tickets for a return flight to San Francisco the next day, the four of them traveling together, first-class. Favor worried about repercussions from their escape at the bodega in Tondo. They were traveling on their true passports, and he thought that warrants or stop orders might be waiting for them when they checked through Philippine immigration at the airport. But the officer on duty just pounded departure stamps onto the pages, and they walked on board and flew out without a hitch.

  The hitch came in San Francisco. The hitch was saying good-bye. Mendonza had barely enough time to catch his connecting flight to Los Angeles, so with him it was quick and relatively painless: a brief embrace for Arielle, a shake of the hand for Favor and Stickney a few words of thanks, and he was gone.

  Favor’s vehicle was in Oakland, and he hired a limo to take him and Arielle across the bay. Favor wanted to get a limo to take Stickney home to Mendocino, but Stickney just laughed and said no thanks, he had had enough of the high life for a while, it was just too damn stressful. He was going to rent a car.

  So they said good-bye in front of the transportation desks at the arrivals concourse. Stickney gave Arielle a long embrace, and when Favor tried to shake his hand, Stickney grabbed him by the arm and pulled him close.

  He said, “You did good, Ray.”

  “We all did good.”

  Stickney gave a sad shrug and turned and walked away.

  It was the last time they ever saw him alive.

  Six days later, Karel Lazovic stepped from a taxi and went to the pedestrian gate of the residential compound on Amorsolo Street in Manila.

  The gate was unattended, and also unlocked. Lazovic lifted the latch and walked onto the grounds and into the main room of the home.

  The room was empty. The banks of video monitors were dark.

  He was looking through files in a cabinet when the last remaining Russian in the compound came into the room carrying a bowl of soup and a bottle of beer.

  Dmitri Myukin was his name. Of all the Russians in the operation, he was the only one without security training or military experience. He was a lab technician, an expert in the instruments that they had used for protein analysis.

  He was startled when he saw the man standing at the cabinets, and said, “Hey!”

  Lazovic turned without haste.

  Dmitri Myukin saw his face and said, “Oh. Yes.”

  “You know who I am, then?”

  “Definitely, Doctor.”

  “Good. I want to see all the records for the last five days of the operation,” Lazovic said, and added, “I mean the five days preceding the unpleasantness at the island. Can you show me that?”

  “There isn’t much. The usual daily reports and logs. That would all be on the computer. Paper, let me see…”

  Lazovic stepped aside to let him get to the files.

  “Some expense vouchers from the local employees, that’s about it. Oh, and this.”

  It was the sheaf of copies from the hotel check-in records obtained by Totoy Ribera.

  BOUCHARD, Arielle

  STICKNEY, Winston

  Lazovic stared at the papers for a few moments, then folded them and placed them in his shirt pocket. He said, “Thank you very much,” and turned to leave.

  Dmitiri Myukin said, “Uh, Doctor, that’s the only copy. I should make one for the files.”

  “It’s not necessary,” Lazovic said. “This is of use to only one man in the world. And that’s where it’s going.”

  ——

  When he returned to Mendocino, Winston Stickney immediately resumed work on the project that he had suspended when he drove to see Favor at Lake Tahoe. It was a large abstract piece, using seven different metals, intended for the lobby of a school of engineering at a large midwestern university.

  He always worked single-mindedly when he was in the shop, but now he was even more focused than usual. His housekeeper seldom saw him during her three-times-a-week visits.

  On an early afternoon about two weeks after he returned home—a day when the housekeeper wasn’t scheduled—he was grinding the edges of a shaft of high-chromium steel, a job that required all of his concentration to get the precise bevel that he wanted.

  Movement caught his eye: a man walking past a nearby window, wearing the brown jacket of a UPS deliveryman.

  Stickney growled under his breath. He often received UPS shipments, and he had told the local delivery office that he wasn’t to be disturbed in the workshop. The experienced drivers knew this; he told himself that this must be a new one.

  The bell rang at the front door of the workshop. Stickney’s focus was broken now, and he thought that he might as well answer it and clue in the new guy.

  He stopped and took a deep breath.

  Patience, he thought, and he went to open the door.

  About twenty-four hours later, Arielle walked into Favor’s office, the corner room with the knockout view of the lake.

  He was at his desk, intent at the monitor screen.

  She said, “Hey, Ray. I’ll be at home if you need me.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I think I’ll grill tonight. I’m in the mood for some red meat. I picked up a couple pounds of some great-looking fillet tails. Thought I’d do that, grill some peppers. Get into a bottle of Montrachet. Hey, maybe two bottles of Montrachet.”

  He said, “Did you see the files on that Missoula property?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Sweet stuff.”

  She said, “Ray. An invitation just flew over your head.”

  He looked at her, uncomprehending at first. Then he got it.

  He said, “Right. Sorry.”

  He made a vague gesture at the monitor screen, the files from the Missoula property.

  He went back to the screen.

  She went out, got halfway to the stairs, went back to his door.

  Trying not to sound like a female spurned, she said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you lost the key to my place.”

  “No I didn’t,” he said. His voice was serious. ”It’s on my key ring.”

  She said, “See you tomorrow, Ray.”

  She had a house on the Kingsbury Grade. It was the original wagoneers’ route to the lake, winding upward from the Carson Valley to the town of South Lake Tahoe. The home was just a few minutes from the lake, and a few minutes more to her office at the lodge. It sat on thirty acres and lay between two rolling folds of land that cut off all view of any other buildings. Behind the house was a steep hillside. In front, on the other side of the road, was a sharp drop-off to the valley more than a thousand feet below.

  When she got home, she changed into hiking clothes, stuck a liter of cold water into a fanny pack, and went out and up the hillside. A hiking trail ran almost to her home, through the rock garden at the back. If Favor were coming to dinner, she would have skipped the hike to marinate the meat and prepare the vegetables and open one of the bottles of wine.

  But he isn’t, she thought, so screw it.

  She hiked nearly back up to the top of the grade, then started down to be back before dark, covering a lot of ground in a hurry on the way down. Near the bottom of the trail, on one of the last switchbacks, she noticed a dark sedan rolling slowly down the road below. Two men in the front seat.

  One was looking at her, she thought. Or maybe not. It was hard to be sure in the dusk.

  Her house blocked the view of the road from there. The sedan disappeared behind the house, and she waited for it to appear at the other side, continuing down the grade.

  But it didn’t.

  She knew that it must have stopped at the house.

  She slowed but kept walking. She rea
ched the rock garden at the back of the property, and slowed even more.

  She was approaching the back door now, watchful.

  A stranger stepped out from the north side of the house. She was already dropping, rolling, as he raised the pistol and fired. She came up moving, running, with a handful of sand and gravel. He swung the pistol to follow her, and seemed shocked to find her running straight at him, crouched low, flinging the gravel into his face as he fired.

  And missed.

  She hit him low, digging a shoulder into his gut, knocking him to the ground. His head barely missed striking a cantaloupe-size piece of granite.

  She picked up the stone, raised it high with both hands, and drove it down onto his skull with all the force she could find.

  She distantly registered the crunch of bone and the squish of soft tissue, ticking him off as dead, but she didn’t dwell on it. She was looking for the second man as she reached back for the pistol that had to be near the dead one’s right hand.

  Nobody else along the north side of the house.

  She thought, The pistol. Maybe behind me.

  Behind me.

  And there was the second one, no more than five paces behind her, gun coming up, not in a hurry but with the confidence that he had her, that it was all over now.

  A gunshot jerked him off his feet, and he fell.

  It was Favor.

  She recognized the 9mm Beretta that she kept in her nightstand drawer.

  Favor, damn. Waiting for her in bed.

  He looked around and said, “Two?”

  “Two,” she said. “I’m sure.”

  He patted the pants of the man he had shot, came out with a wallet, which he opened. He found the driver’s license. State of New York. Brighton Beach.

  “Russian,” he said.

  They both understood what this meant. Russians coming after her—could be coming after any of them.

  “I’ll call Al,” she said. ”You call Stick.”

  She went to her back deck and called Mendonza. He picked up on the first ring. He said that he was in Minneapolis, in the suite of a boorish actor who wouldn’t need a bodyguard if he weren’t such a twit.

  “I’ll be watching,” he said. “What about Stick?”

  She saw that Favor was talking on the phone. So he must’ve gotten through to Stickney.

  Looks like Stick is fine, she thought.

  But something wasn’t right with Favor.

  He put away the phone.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t him. It was his housekeeper. Stick is gone.”

  Thirty-four

  There were no more attempts against them. Ballistics tests matched the bullet that had killed Stickney to one of the guns that had been used against Arielle in the backyard ambush.

  Stickney’s friends and neighbors in Mendocino organized a memorial service about ten days after his death. They did it among the redwoods behind his workshop.

  Favor and Mendonza and Arielle didn’t know anyone there. Favor almost didn’t recognize the man that they were eulogizing: the kindliness and gentleness and warmth they described. Favor had always seen these things in Stickney, but only as the flip side of something dark and hard and ferocious. Favor realized that Stickney had re-created himself here, becoming the person that he truly wanted to be, putting aside the parts that he no longer wanted to claim and letting the rest flourish.

  Favor thought about Stickney raising the gun on Devil’s Keep to save the lives of his friends. He realized what an act of love and self-sacrifice it had been, summoning all the dark parts he had tried so hard to bury.

  These people had never seen that side of him, Favor thought; they couldn’t imagine him doing what he had done on the island. As much as they liked and admired him, they wouldn’t have suspected the greatness that was in him at that moment.

  Good for them, he thought. Good for Stick.

  Just one other person seemed as out-of-place as they did. It was a young man, maybe thirty, maybe less. He wore a charcoal gray suit and carried a slim leather portfolio. He was tall, straight, with an athletic build. Dark skin that nearly matched the mahogany tone of the portfolio.

  He hung near the back, watching politely as Stickney’s friends took turns talking about him and singing songs, and when the service was finished, he approached Favor and Mendonza and Arielle.

  He said, “I represent a man named Simon. He would have liked to be here, but he knew that you would understand why that’s impossible.”

  Simon. They knew Simon from Bravo. Simon was Bravo, as far as Bravo One Nine could tell. He was their trainer, their guide, their sponsor, their angel.

  He said, “I can tell you who is responsible for the death of Winston Stickney, if you wish. But Simon has instructed me to tell you that this information shouldn’t be used to satisfy idle curiosity. You should ask to see it only if you intend to act appropriately. That’s the message, verbatim.”

  He looked at them, waiting for a response.

  “I want to see it,” Favor said.

  “Yes, let me see it,” Arielle said.

  “Open it up,” Mendonza said.

  Arlo Addison was his name. He was near the end of his first year of training in the Bravo program, long enough to have heard the stories—the legends—about One Nine and its four members.

  Stickney, Favor, Bouchard, Mendonza. Students and trainers often discussed them: not just what they had done, but how. The way they had worked, four personalities meshing and becoming one. It was a model of the Bravo concept.

  Addison brought them to a picnic table, away from the rest of the mourners. He stood across the table from them, looked into their faces. He felt that he knew them.

  He put the portfolio down on the table, keeping his fingertips on it, maintaining possession.

  “The gunmen were working on contract to a man named Feodor Novokov,” he said. “A Russian crime boss, one of the biggest and, for sure, one of the most brutal. The connection has been verified. Recordings exist of conversations. Don’t be surprised; we’re in the realm of national security now. Especially with the death of one of our own.”

  Addison opened the portfolio. Inside was a dossier on Feodor Novokov, and the one known photo.

  “Novokov is a veteran of the Afghan war. So are many of his captains and soldiers. He was badly wounded, disfigured. He has been known to call himself Uncle Teddy—maybe in irony, I don’t know, but he is frankly a creep and a pig, and also an extremely vengeful man. His health has been shaky, but only the good die young.”

  Addison stopped when he saw Favor’s reaction. He was looking down at the photograph, the image of the man with the sunken left cheek and the eye askew.

  Favor was weeping. But not in grief, Addison thought. Something deeper and stronger than grief, and far more terrifying. His body shook with a barely controlled rage.

  Addison suddenly wanted to be far away, anywhere but here.

  Favor was looking at the other two, speaking to them. His voice was cold.

  “Never again,” he was saying. “Never again. Never again.…”

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Harvest Day–10

  One

  Two

  Three

  Harvest Day–7

  Four

  Harvest Day–6

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Harvest Day–5

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Harvest Day–4

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Harvest Day–3

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty one

  Twenty two

&nb
sp; Harvest Day–2

  Twenty three

  Twenty four

  Twenty five

  Twenty six

  Twenty seven

  Harvest Day–1

  Twenty eight

  Twenty nine

  Thirty

  Harvest Day

  Thirty one

  Thirty two

  After the Harvest

  Thirty three

  Thirty four