The Sky is Falling td-63

by Warren Murphy

  There were looks of horror on all the technicians' faces. Some punk rockers with purple hair and yellow-painted faces even threw up. But one man standing nearby was watching her and the animals closely.

  He alone showed only mild interest. His face stood out like a white mask in a black night. Here was everyone else squinting, and turning their heads away, and there he stood as though watching a curious animal in a zoo. "Doesn't this bother you?" asked Dr. O'Donnell.

  He looked puzzled. "What is to bother?" he responded in a thick Russian accent. He had a face like steel with slits of Slavic eyes. Even through his thick black facial hair, a sure loss for a razor, she could see scars. People had wounded this man. But what, she wondered, had he done to others? He had that sort of face. He was just under six feet tall and carried the massive presence of a tank.

  "It doesn't bother you to see animals suffer?"

  "People make more noise," he said.

  "Really? Have you ever seen one burned like that puppy over there?"

  "Yes. I have seen them cloaked in oil and burning. I have seen them with their bellies on the ground and their heads rolling along gangways as their bodies quivered uselessly above. I have seen it all."

  There was a bit of confusion. First someone told the man that this was not his post. Then someone else said to leave him alone. They were getting results. Kathy O'Donnell didn't care. She had a question she absolutely had to have answered. Where had he seen them like that? "All over," he answered. And she knew without his saying a word that he had been the one who had done those things. She asked him what he was doing here in Malden. He didn't answer. She asked if he would like to go somewhere with her. She saw his eyes undress her. She knew the answer was yes, even though he said he would have to ask someone. She saw him in a little conference with some men. She didn't care. He might be a policeman. He might be anything. The excitement boiled within her, and she felt that for the first time since childhood she did not have to disguise anything. She did not have to say how sorry she was when someone had an accident. She did not have to cluck her tongue at disaster. She could have what she really enjoyed with this man.

  She did not know, of course, that the man was a minor functionary in a larger plan, that he was just there for muscle if it were needed. She did not know that he was being ordered to attend to her, and take her somewhere. She knew that whatever came, she could deal with it. Men were never a problem. Anything involving men was something she could handle, especially this man, and the way his eyes had played first on her breasts and then lowered.

  "Come. Let us go," he said when he returned. "We will have romantic date, yes?"

  "I think so," she said. And then to the technicians she had hired:

  "I'll be back in a while."

  And she was off with the Russian. He drove a car rather clumsily, perhaps because his eyes were only occasionally on the road.

  "Tell me," she said, "about the first man you ever killed."

  Dimitri said it was not a big thing. He said it while churning down a British country road, one of those narrow strips meant for horses or race-car drivers.

  "You are doing experiment there, yes?"

  "Yes. What was it like? How did it feel to know you had actually killed someone?"

  "I felt nothing."

  "Was it with a gun?" asked Kathy.

  "Yes," said Dimitri.

  "A big gun? With a big bullet?" she asked.

  "Rifle."

  "Far away?"

  "No. Close."

  "Did you see him bleed?" she asked. Her voice was a soft sexy breath.

  "He bled."

  "How? Where?"

  "In the stomach. Why does beautiful woman like you care about something like that?" Dimitri did not add that he was chosen for his job precisely because these things meant nothing to him. His was not considered an important job. It did not require brains. The men with brains went on to become thinkers behind desks. He was a foot soldier in the intelligence war. With this beautiful American woman he had lucked out. He might even have a chance at the fun of things instead of breaking arms or shooting off heads. He wanted to get her to a bedroom. He wanted to talk of love, and if not of love then at least unclothed bodies. Still he had been ordered to switch plans and escort her to the safe house instead of providing backup muscle, as it was called.

  He was told that if he could, he should ask questions about the experiment, but not press the matter. There were others who knew the intelligent questions to ask.

  "When the victim bled-was it a lot? Like all over the floor?" asked the woman.

  "No. It was outside. He fell down."

  "And then?"

  "And then he was put down."

  "With a bullet?"

  "Yes."

  "In the head? In the mouth? Did you do it in the mouth?"

  "No. The head."

  "Would you kill for me?" she asked. He could feel her breath on his ear. He thought that if he were to feel her tongue, he might discharge at the wheel.

  "What is crazy question like that?"

  "Would you?"

  "You are beautiful woman. Why do you ask crazy things? Let us talk about what you do back in Malden."

  "I do lots of things. What do you do?"

  "I drive," said the man called Dimitri.

  All the way into London he could get nothing from her, so he did not press. She wanted to know details of his killings. Since he did not mention names or places, he assumed the details she wanted would be all right. They were not anything another intelligence agency would want to know, nothing to do with where, or why. She wanted the intimate details of groans and sizes of wounds and how long something took. Was it big? Was it small? Was it hard?

  In London, he bought tickets to the Tower of London, like any tourist. It was not a tower. It had been a royal castle at one time, and later became the premier prison where the British liked to behead their old enemies of the state, or the crown as they called it.

  Dimitri was not privileged to know exactly how his commanders had done this, but they had taken over crucial points in the many battlements and individual towers of the castle. He was to enter by the Lion Tower, cross the soil-filled moat once deep with water from the Thames, pass the Byward Tower and turn left at Traitor's Gate.

  At the Bloody Tower he was to wait until he got a signal from a window. It could be a hand. It could be a handkerchief. Then he was to walk toward the large Tudor building called the Queen's House. He entered with other tourists and the woman. But where everyone else followed the Beefeater Guards to the right, he went toward an unmarked door to the left, where there was a descending stone staircase.

  Kathy O'Donnell saw all of this. She knew they wanted something from her. But she wanted more from them. The experiment could wait. Life was too delicious at the moment. She did not care about planning. She only cared about this very moment.

  She was left in a stone room with a large bed and a bear rug. It had to be at least fifteen degrees colder in here than it had been outside. Dimitri returned in a bathrobe with a bottle of brandy.

  Immediately she realized that his questions were really a psychological test. He didn't know it but she did. His other questions had to do with the experiment. On the psychological test she told the truth. She wondered if people were watching. She wondered if they would watch her make love. She wondered if she would make them want her, if they would suffer for not having her. She made up stories about the test, leading this Russian fellow on. And the gist of her response was that if he wanted more information, he had better entertain her. He took off his pants. She laughed. That was not what she wanted.

  "What do you want, beautiful lady?"

  "What you do best," she said. It was night. They had been there a long time. She was sure now that people were hidden somewhere in the walls.

  "Kill one of them," she said, nodding to the walls. "If you want me."

  At that point Dimitri might have killed the head of the KGB for this woman. But t
here was still that discipline wrought by years of living in a regime that depended on fear. He did not know that outside the very walls at this moment was Remo-the answer to everyone's fondest wishes. Remo did not care that the Tower of London was closed for the night or that it had been closed at this time for the last four centuries.

  "I'm coming in," said Remo. His carload of British security and military people was parked just behind him. Lord Philliston was clearly blowing kisses. His words were heard as distinctly as he was seen by a command center. A console copied from American football games showed screens to video cameras set all around this old Norman structure. The American was on screen seven, set above an old Plantagenet standard of gold-and-crimson cloth, lion rampant. Lord Philliston was on screen one.

  "Our orders are to put him down now," said someone standing behind the men at the monitors. He had just gotten word back from KGB Moscow. He wore a headset.

  He also got other orders, these from the room where Anne Boleyn had awaited Henry VIII's royal divorce, which separated king from mate, queen from head.

  "We'll have Dimitri kill him, giving the sociopath her bloodshed, and then we'll get our information," came the voice through the headset to the man behind the monitors.

  "Let him find her in the Queen's House. And get Lord Philliston the hell out of there. It would take us years to replace him."

  "He doesn't seem to want to leave the American," said the man on the monitor.

  "I don't care. He'll leave when the American is sausage. The American goes down now," said the KGB security chief to the man on the monitor.

  Outside the gate, with precise British rectitude, an employee of Her Majesty informed Remo that his presence would be perfectly acceptable inside the Tower at this late hour.

  "I've got friends," said Remo, glancing back at the car. "Can they come too?"

  "I'm sorry," said the woman ticket seller. "I'm afraid they can't."

  "That's all right," said Remo just as pleasantly, "they are."

  "I am terribly sorry, but they will have to stay." The woman smiled. She was polite. She politely asked the yeoman warders in red tunics with Her Majesty's seal upon their breasts to escort Remo inside the Tower of London. They wore squarish black hats and were called Beefeaters. Remo didn't quite know why these men in particular got that name because everyone on this island seemed to smell of beef-eating.

  "And I am even sorrier," said Remo, "but I've got to keep one of these guys." He looked back at Lord Philliston. Britain's top secret agent blew him a kiss.

  "Well, sir, I am terribly, terribly sorry but you can't keep anyone. Not in the Tower. These are special instructions I have received from the administration to allow in only you." Remo liked the way the British were always incredibly, cheerfully polite.

  Unfortunately, he pointed out that he had found Lord Philliston and that he was his, and he wasn't going to the Tower complex without him, and he certainly was going in the Tower complex.

  Lord Philliston rolled down his window.

  "I love it when you talk so butch," said Britain's prime intelligence defense. Remo nodded him out of the car and Lord Philliston swished from the rear of the limousine, right to Remo's side.

  "Not so close," said Remo.

  For the first time in three hundred years, the Beefeaters, yeoman warders of the Tower of London, were called into action. Their orders: Keep the American from bringing the Briton inside. In brief, rescue the Briton, who apparently did not want to be rescued.

  The yeoman warders advanced with pike, pick, ax, and bare hand in square formation. Afterward they would all swear the American was a mirage. He had to be. He not only moved through them as though they were air, but dragged the man they were supposed to rescue with him.

  Remo had Lord Philliston by the sleeve. Lord Philiiston was giggling and laughing and trying to skip. Remo did not feel comfortable with Lord Philliston skipping, so he kept him off balance.

  Lord Philliston pointed out each turn. Dark ravens as large as eagles cawed menacingly. A few lights of the keepers shone soft and yellow, little dots of warmth in a cold stone fortress.

  Remo sensed that they were in someone's sights. It could have been a spear or a rifle. The sensation was the same. It was not alarm. Alarm was a function of fear, and that tightened the muscles. It was a quietness about the place. Anyone could feel it, but few would listen to it. Often people would remember how sudden and surprising an attack was, when in reality it should never have been that surprising. Humans were equipped to know these things, unless they were trained to respect their senses, they would never perceive them.

  Now, entering the Tudor-style Queen's House, Remo felt that quietness close in on him.

  Guy Philliston showed Remo the door that led to the absolute safest safe house in all England. The special dungeon of Henry VIII.

  A broadsword came down first, clanging into rock at Remo's side. But he was soon beneath it and beyond it, smoothly, even while he wondered why the large man was using a sword instead of a gun. A second man dropped from a concealed loft just above Remo's head. He dropped, kicking with steel-tipped shoes and stabbing with a sharp dirk, a nasty little dagger good for infighting in tavern and alley.

  Lord Philliston stepped back. He was hoping this wasn't going to be messy. Someone behind him was trying to drag him away. When he saw one of the attackers lose an arm in a gusher of blood, he realized that this was going to make a rather untidy mess. He scampered into a stone doorway adjacent to the passage as another four men came hurtling down into the attactive American.

  Lord Philliston's contact was motioning for him. Quickly, he stepped inside, and closed the door quietly behind him as the battle went on down the steps toward the room where they had the American woman.

  "You almost got killed, Lord Philliston," said a short dark man, squat as a bale of hay. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to you."

  "I suppose it would be useless to ask you to let him live."

  "I am afraid we cannot do that," said the contact. "You must get out of here quickly and let us take care of this."

  "You really are becoming quite British. Do whatever you want and then say you're sorry about that."

  "A thousand apologies, my lord."

  "He was beautiful."

  "There are many beautiful men in your country."

  "He was special," said Lord Philliston with a sigh. The Cold War was hell.

  Remo knew Lord Philliston was gone and did not bother to stop him. He did not stop him because he heard a woman groan just around the curving stone staircase. And he wasn't sure what it was. It was not pain. And it was not fear. It certainly was not joy.

  What he did not realize was that it was practiced. Kathy O'Donnell had been practicing this groan since her freshman year at college. Her roommates had told her how. You made sure you started the groan while the man was working toward his climax. Often, if you groaned properly, that would precipitate his release. And then it would be over sooner. Kathy O'Donnell gave Dimitri this groan as his face contracted and his body tensed, and then he was done. Tragically, he had been no better than the others after all.

  "Wonderful, darling," whispered Kathy to the man who had shown so much potential, and because of that been such a failure.

  She heard a commotion heading toward the room. A man came hurtling in against the stone wall with a knife still in his hand. He hit like old china in a burlap bag. You could feel his bones break. Blood shot out of his mouth in one spurt and nothing moved.

  Now Kathy's body began to tingle the way it had at Malden. Dimitri moved off her, steadying himself, reaching for a lamp. Another body came into the room, headfirst. The body followed an eighth of a second later. She, felt her thighs become hot, sticky hot. Her nipples tightened. Two hard slaps against stone, unmistakably people being crushed. An impossibly tantalizing caress seized her, and drove her beyond control as she lay there alone on the bed.

  A somewhat thin man emerged from the passageway. Dimitri's t
hick muscled body had him by at least fifty pounds. Dimitri squatted, waving the heavy brass lamp, then he charged, a nude man coming in for the kill. She could see Dimitri's muscles perfectly drive the heavy macelike lamp into the thin man, but then, catching all his force, the thin man flipped Dimitri like a frisbee into a wall. The crack made his back into a rubber band and he fell without a twitch. He was dead.

  And then the man spoke to her. "Dr. O'Donnell," said Remo.

  The answer was a groan. Not like the ones before. Kathy O'Donnell, on hearing Remo's voice at that moment, suddenly found out what all her friends were taking about. She had just enjoyed her first orgasm.

  Finally with her body glowing in completed ecstasy, Kathy said, with the most girlish of smiles: "Yes."

  "We've got to get out of here. Are you all right?" said Remo.

  All right? She was magnificent. She was delirious. She was exalted, thrilled, triumphant, ecstatic.

  "Yes," said Kathy weakly. "I think so."

  "What were they doing to you?"

  "I don't know."

  "Can you walk? I'll carry you, if you're having trouble. I've got to get you out of here."

  "I think so," she said. She reached out weakly and thought she was pretending to be unable to stand. But the man said:

  "You're all right. Get dressed. Let's go." So he knew her body, she realized.

  "Yes. I am all right."

  She noticed that his movements appeared slow but he got things done quickly. She thought he might be aroused by her nude body, but she sensed he was only as interested as one might be if a platter of hors d'oeuvres was served to someone nibbling all day. He might take her, but he wasn't thrilled. He said his name was Remo. He said he had come to rescue her. He said terrible things were happening because of an experiment in which she was involved.

  "No," said Kathy. She covered her mouth as though shocked. She knew how to pretend innocence because she had had a lifetime of practice.

  A noise came down the passageway. And then she saw what this man could do. It was no accident of ferocity that had gotten him through all those armed men.