Lipstick and Lies

by Margit Liesche

  “So, the entire operation hinged on your ability to finesse things at the Club…”

  Her eyes danced. “You could say that. Especially these past few days when Kiki’s agitation was at its peak. Her every departure from the estate, even under the influence of threats and Shevchenko’s drugs, was a huge risk.”

  The nail polish bottle in Kiki’s desk drawer…invisible ink. “To keep her from spilling the beans to a sympathetic stranger, you befriended her, told her you were with G-2 and that you were there to rescue her. You even gave her phantom ink, devised a code, to use in an emergency.”

  “Bingo!” Liberty ran the tip of her tongue around the edge of her mouth. “Now just what sort of clever method do you think I should devise to get rid of you, Miss Smarty Pants? How about this? Let Dee have the honors. Yes, I can see the headline. Agent shot while trying to break up scuffle between estranged sisters!” She cocked an eye at me. “Maybe your FBI admirer will run it in his faux newspaper.” There was a sharp prick at my midriff. “But first, march.”

  In one smooth move, she gripped me by the elbow, turning me and shoving me in the direction of V-V. The piercing pressure that had threatened my abdomen now jabbed a sensitive spot near my spine.

  Over my shoulder she said to me, “Kiki became quite hopeful, actually. Her trust was her undoing. But you were right earlier. It was a test. In writing the secret message, she signaled her intent to betray us. Her time on the outside was up.”

  There was no mention of the secret bookplate message written in regular ink. Maybe Cardillac wasn’t so smart.

  Beneath my sweater, a bead of perspiration dribbled down my side. “The night watchman clothing in the room next door to mine. Another disguise?”

  “Ha!” Her laugh ricocheted against the stone walls, echoing loudly. “Bent over, picking up a newspaper, the perfect target. You didn’t know what—or should I say, who—hit you, did you? It was me. Halt.”

  V-V was out cold on the floor beside us. Behind me, I sensed Liberty crouch and scoop up the rope.

  She prodded me with the knife, directing me toward the post. Kiki was slouched against the thick wooden beam on the opposite side. Again, before I could react she threw down the rope and with a push, spun me around. My back slammed wood. At my feet, I felt the press of Kiki’s tightly bound fists against my ankles, but she did not react.

  Liberty shifted her stance and the platinum cross she’d converted to an earring swayed with the movement. Her irreverence in dangling a religious symbol from her ear suddenly repulsed me and I stared at the cross, struck by how a universal symbol of hope could look so foreboding.

  I forced an upbeat tone. “So the uniform let you move around freely on the nights when Kiki stayed late or spent the night at the Club.”

  “Yes, but you’re talking about the past, when it was important for her and Dee to remain alive. Now you’ve snuck in here, a witness to their demise.” Liberty shook her head twice, slowly. “Bad timing.”

  My skin crawled and a wave of revulsion washed over me as I rued my naïveté again. How had I missed this side of her?

  I felt pressure beneath my rib. Doing my best to ignore it, I concentrated on the ruby chip at the hub of the cross earring, remembering how I’d thought the necklace was too conventional, too religious for me. I recalled the thrill I’d felt exchanging it for an exotic Chinese bracelet. Pools of tears blurred my vision. Was this my due, then, for being ungrateful? For turning my back on family? On religion?

  I gulped. “But why are you so bent on killing her? Them?” I refused to add “us.”

  “All their money goes to Anastase.” V-V stirred. “Don’t worry, Anastase,” she said, projecting her voice in his direction. “I’ll take care of everything. Just like I took care of that one-armed squealer at Willow Run.”

  “You killed Blount?”

  “You’re surprised? Why? Don’t you think I’m capable?”

  I nodded. “Sure…”

  “Hands behind your back.”

  Slowly, I raised my arms, bending them backwards. Liberty wanted to tie me to the post. But, first, she needed rope. It was on the floor, just out of reach. A possible diversion.

  The knife point was really beginning to hurt. I groped for something positive. “But your mother said you have a boyfriend. That he’s serving in Italy. Ever since we met, you’ve wanted to go there.”

  Liberty laughed. Then her eyes shifted. “You talked to my mother…What else did she say?”

  The strange look in Liberty’s eyes frightened me. I began stammering. “Sh-she didn’t say where, or with what unit, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Idiot! She wouldn’t know which unit. Tazio is not with a U.S. branch of service. He’s with the Abwehr. He’s with me.”

  Liberty’s eyes were blue dots in white saucers. I held my breath. On the floor, V-V groaned softly. The possessed look vanished. I expelled a ragged sigh. “Where did you meet Tazio?”

  She smiled. “Tazio? He was a friend of Sari’s. We met in Europe.”

  I cursed inwardly. Sari deHajek, the Abwehr’s top recruiter, rears her ugly head once again.

  “You love Tazio,” I said. “I can see it in your face. Is that why you turned your back on your country, on everything you always believed in? For him? For a man?”

  At the center of my midriff, I felt serious pressure, then a flash of heat. I squirmed, trying to push away. A warm, wet sensation followed. Clenching my lower lip between my teeth, I froze and bit down hard.

  “You don’t get it, do you? Mother Leach couldn’t bring herself to tell them, could she? I hate America,” she said gutturally. “I hate my father. I hate his snobbish righteous friends. I hate all things religious. I hate God. I hate her.”

  I hated the sight of blood, especially my own. The stiletto had pierced my skin and I was definitely bleeding. I assured myself the puncture was nothing more than a flesh wound, so far, and refused to look down.

  Hands lightly cradling the post at my back, I slid slowly downward, assuming a squatting position as I went. “Tell me about how China fits in,” I said more desperately than I would have liked. “You weren’t born there, so when did you go?”

  Liberty’s once lilting voice erupted with a high-pitched, “China? I was never in China.”

  I felt newly numb. “What? But you grew up there. Your parents were missionaries, you went to the Great Wall…the bracelet…your name is…”

  She seemed to choke. Her eyes blazed. A dull flash, then pinpoint pressure at the center of my forehead.

  Feet spread, she stood above me, squinting down the stiletto’s long, needle-thin blade, its sharp tip perched lightly against my flesh. “Sooo…how does it feel to one day, out of the blue, discover everything you knew was just an illusion? To have everything you believe in turn out to be a pack of lies?”

  I gaped at her from my crouched position. “B-but you speak Chinese, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to—” To dupe all of the government people who hired you, I finished silently. I blinked, wanting to take back my words. She had already proved the impossible was possible.

  She lifted her chin and affected a haughty pose, not unlike the Countess. “I’m multilingual, that much is true. Unlike stupid Americans, the Swiss take pride in knowing several languages.”

  Swiss. Clocks. Flowers. Rhinestones.

  “The cuckoo clocks. Piggy banks to finance boom and bang schemes?”

  She appeared stunned. The pinpoint pressure eased.

  “I know about the clocks,” I told her. “You used them to smuggle in diamonds. My Uncle Chance helped me figure it out.” Big deal. What was I going to do about it? The uniform. “You broke in, took the clock from my room, didn’t you?”

  She did not gloat as I expected. “Get it through your head, Lewis,” she growled. “I believe in Hitler. I believe in what he believes. We’re the chosen race. We’ll rule the world.” She leered at me. “Right after we get rid of the inferiors, that is, including
you.”

  I stared cross-eyed at the pick-like blade with the blood—my blood—on its tip, my desperation mounting. My gaze flicked sideways to the open door. “What about that message a minute ago? Wasn’t something important coming through on the radio?”

  Liberty smiled. She placed her index finger against her temple. “The information we need is all in here—” The gesture was precisely the opportunity I had wanted.

  Shoving her, I dropped to the ground, diving for my gun, rolling then leaping upright. Liberty recovered. Her arm swinging like a pendulum, she lunged, the stiletto carving arcs in the air. I stumbled, collapsing onto one knee. The stiletto rushed toward me. Squaring my arm in a position of defense, I aimed the derringer. A clamoring noise near the boathouse entrance erupted. Men’s voices on the other side of the cave shouted. The light went out. I reached into the dark. My fingers hooked the tiny earring. I yanked; she yowled. A burning pain scored the inner flesh of my arm. I got off a shot. It rang through the boathouse, echoing off the walls.

  I felt suddenly dizzy. There was a pitiful moan. Me? Someone close to me?

  Willing myself to stand, I snapped on the light. It had been V-V’s groan, not mine. The stiletto protruded from his chest.

  “Pucci!” Dante called, rushing toward me, bracing me as I collapsed.

  The clamor of his unit running up behind him revived me. I straightened up. “Liberty?” I asked, tentatively. “What happened? Did you see? Did I hit her?”

  Dante’s hair was damp with perspiration. A bead of sweat dribbled down his forehead, catching the light. He checked me over. “You’re hurt!”

  “I’m okay…Liberty?” I repeated.

  “Can’t say. We’re chasing her.”

  “But V-V was a sleeper spy. So’s Liberty. She’s also an assassin. She killed Blount, now she’s stabbed V-V.”

  He nodded. “We know about Blount. Chaplin told us, back at headquarters.”

  “Good, you got him…” I licked my lips. They were parched and cracked. I teetered.

  “Medic, quick.”

  A G-2 medic appeared at the same time two ONI men rushed over to check on Kiki. V-V was hidden in a shadow.

  “V-V needs help first,” I said, gesturing in his direction. The medic swept a practiced eye over me, then went to check on him.

  “Your hand,” Dante said softly, “You’re bleeding.”

  He was staring at my clenched fist. The tip of my thumb was blood-caked. I opened my palm. “Her earring.” My hand trembled. Dante took the converted cross. He nodded to the crimson stain on my sleeve. “What about that?”

  The gash along my arm was not all that deep, but I’d lost a fair amount of blood. Gingerly placing a hand over the stain, I applied pressure to quiet the throbbing ache beneath. Dante cupped my chin with his hand, lifting it. His lips clamped into a line as he studied the scratches on my neck and along my jaw. My forehead bore a slight wound also, I realized, watching his fretful gaze pause to assess the damage.

  My cheek burned with pain. I raised my hand to cover it. “It’s nothing. But I’m in no shape to help with the search,” I admitted reluctantly. “But you should go…”

  A rivulet of blood stained my sweater below my sternum. He took it in, smiled faintly and released my chin. “Don’t worry about the chase. My men are on it. I’ll catch up. Soon as we get these wounds tended.” He turned back to the medic. “How is he?”

  The medic had been kneeling beside V-V. He shook his head and stood. “He’s gone.”

  The medic, who wore an armband, with a cross parted the rip in my sweater and studied my arm. Dante looked away while he examined the wound beneath my sweater. Next, he scrutinized my neck. “Got everything I need to dress these in my kit,” he announced.

  “Good,” Dante said. “Let’s go into the bunker, find a place where she can sit down.”

  The ONI men were still with Kiki. They had untied her, but she was too out of it to stand. I wanted to go to her, but Dante insisted I get off my feet. He directed the medic to evaluate Kiki, adding that we would wait for him inside.

  We passed through the doorway Dante’s men had sprinted through moments before, into a bunker, a tunnel-like space dug into the deepest part of the knoll. An extension of the boathouse, it had the same low, curved ceiling and stone walls, reinforced with timber. Bare bulbs, strung along the ceiling’s center, washed the narrow room with stark light.

  A quasi bomb shelter and communications planning center, the musty space was stockpiled with weaponry, including an assortment of rifles, machine guns, grenades, and timing devices propped against the sloping walls. Machine guns aimed in the direction of the house were mounted on tripods, their muzzles protruding through three small openings, paralleling the grassy slope outdoors.

  A turret had been carved into the arched ceiling on the dugout’s far end. At its center was a column with a machine gun on a swivel base. A chair for a gunner had also been installed. Built on a principle similar to that used in a bomber’s turret, the chair and its occupant could swivel with the arc of the weapon’s firing range.

  “Zounds,” I said, staring with a mix of shock and awe.

  Dante also looked awed. “A person could mount a small war out of this room,” he marveled.

  “Precisely what V-V had in mind. Cardillac…” I added under my breath.

  Dante had been steering me to a long table in the center of the room. “What did you say?”

  My former friend had confessed to killing Blount; now with V-V’s death she had become a multiple assassin. An exceptional multiple assassin. In a matter of seconds, in a blackened cave, she had found V-V and dispatched him, then vanished.

  Suddenly weak from stem to stern, too wrung out to respond, I slumped into the nearest chair. Dante perched on the edge of the table next to me. I looked up at him.

  “Liberty killed V-V. Why’d she do it?” I whispered uncomprehendingly. “They were on the same side.”

  “He was injured, unable to escape,” he said matter-of-factly. “Maybe she thought he’d crack under questioning, reveal some plans we aren’t aware of yet.”

  I placed my hand over the circle of blood on my sleeve and shook my head. “I always knew Liberty was a good actress. But this level of pretense—how did I miss it?”

  Dante touched my shoulder. “Look at me.” I looked up. “There’s nothing you could have said or done to change things,” he said, softly. “The Abwehr got to Liberty long before the two of you ever met.”

  “I know.” A deep sorrow closed over me while I debriefed myself of everything Liberty had revealed to me.

  Afterward, Dante nodded knowingly. “It all fits.” He ticked off points on his fingers. “At a difficult age, her relationship with the Leaches turns upside down when she finds out she’s adopted. She’s dispatched to a foreign country. A war is brewing. She’s troubled, vulnerable. She feels alone, she’s looking for a palliative. Any shrewd Abwehr case officer would recognize the susceptibility and prey on her instantly.”

  “Yeah, Sari deHajek, for example,” I said bitterly, informing him that besides spending time together in Europe, the two women had attended Vassar in the same year.

  I thought of my boss, Miss Cochran. She too had grown up in an adoptive home, on Tobacco Road, in the South, with a similarly difficult childhood. “Bleak, bitter, and harsh,” was how she had once described it. But unlike V-V and Liberty, whose early hardships had led them to evil, she’d transformed her difficulties into a positive, had turned herself into a striver. What was at the core of such opposite outcomes?

  “Now what?” I asked. “V-V’s been training saboteurs. And they’re not here anymore. They’re holed up somewhere with Tazio. Maybe she went to join them—” My words caught. “Or lead them.”

  Dante was staring at a dark corner where a large patch of moss climbed the wall. Squinting, I saw a slight protrusion on one side and realized the blanket of fuzzy greenery was actually a camouflaged doorway. Blame it on trauma, maybe loss
of blood, but I’d momentarily forgotten about Dante’s men. They must have dashed through the secret door.

  I looked at him. “Would you please go join your team? I’m fine.”

  Lines fanned out from Dante’s eyes as he smiled. “I know you are. But like I said, my men are handling things.”

  The hairs at the back of my neck bristled. I turned to Dante. “There’s a lab on the property. They’re sending a shipment of explosives, disguised in cans of tomatoes to NAS—”

  Dante interrupted. “Shhh…it’s okay. We’re on it. Chaplin broke under questioning. Told us everything. Including about the band of Ukrainian desperadoes based on the grounds. We came prepared.”

  Dante’s unit had arrived at the estate first and intercepted Zerov, Yakutovych, Dr. Shevchenko, and a few others loading the hijacked truck intended for NAS Grosse Ile. Then his men fanned out over the grounds.

  “Leo is with Renner. Did you find them at the lab? Is Leo all right?”

  The medic had entered the bunker and it was he who replied, “Renner is heavily sedated and Leo has a world-class headache. But they’ll both be okay. Same with the lady we moved from here. She was drugged, but she’ll be fine.”

  I removed Personality Unlimited from my pants pocket, placed it on the table.

  “There’s a bookplate inside that explains Kiki’s role in what’s been going here and how V-V managed to get the upper hand. She’s got some patching up to do with her sister, but once you read it, I think you’ll agree Kiki was a genuine victim.”

  Dante did not look completely convinced, but he took the book, slipping it inside his breast pocket.

  “You were at the house,” I said to the medic. “Irina? Is she okay?” He nodded. I turned to Dante. “Your ‘eyes and ears’?” His eyebrow shot up. He looked away. “What about Dee?” I remembered in a panic. “One of V-V’s acolytes went to fetch her.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dante re-emphasized with a smile. “Lieutenant Simmons is on that. She’s at the house.”

  He continued, “The lab has a secret passage. We split up. Some of us went underground. Everyone else fanned out topside. Our trail led us to the river and eventually here.”