Kiss Me Twice

by Thomas Gifford

  “Scotch on ice.” Cassidy was staring back out into the darkness that lay deep and damp beyond the penumbra of light. He heard the clink of ice in the heavy tumblers. “So, who’s this Elisabeth, Sam? You didn’t tell me about her.”

  More ice clinked and MacMurdo said, “Beg pardon, Lew? My mind was somewhere else. Who’s this who?” He turned from the sideboard and handed Lew a glass heavy as a paperweight.

  “Elisabeth.”

  “I’m not following you, pard.” He touched glasses. “Chin-chin.” He wet his whistle and said, “What Elisabeth?”

  “Karin mentioned the name. When she was telling me how important it was that I find Manfred … she said the name. Elisabeth. I wondered who she is.”

  “Damned if I know. Frankly, it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to do, keeping track of some of the stuff Karin comes up with. At least, that’s been my experience. Elisabeth. New one on me. Did she say anything else about her?”

  “Just the name.”

  MacMurdo shrugged. “She’s a mystery. Karin, I mean. And she’s dangerous. A loose cannon rattling around the deck. A storm at sea. The joker in the deck. The … the—”

  “I get the idea.”

  MacMurdo laughed. “Yeah, I guess you do, at that.” He took another drink, threw himself down in one of the leather chairs, and draped a long leg over the arm. “Seeing you didn’t, you know, trigger her memory?”

  “Nope.”

  “No, I guess it’s deeper than that. Well, if she starts showing any signs of recognizing you, you’ll let me know, right? It could make a difference, she could come back in little pieces and you could find yourself playing Sigmund Freud. And, from Uncle Sam’s point of view, it wouldn’t be so hot if she lost her interest in finding Manfred.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cassidy said.

  “Oh, a healthy worry level is part of my original equipment. Under this happy-go-lucky exterior lurks a fella who feeds on a certain benign worry level. Not anxiety. Just a kind of permanent worry buzz. Keeps me alive and well, has so far, anyway. Anything about Manfred Moller makes me buzz. I look at old Manfred and you know what I see? I see he’s a regular Florentine donkey.” He chuckled softly.

  “I’m afraid that one goes right past me,” Cassidy said.

  “You serious, pard?”

  “Hard to believe, maybe, but I know nothing of Florentine donkeys.”

  “If you say so. Hell, I thought everybody knew that old story—”

  “You plan on telling me, sport?”

  MacMurdo shrugged. “Ain’t exactly a secret. Happened in the thirteenth century so it ain’t classified.” He took another big swallow of scotch, enjoying himself. It was getting late and Cassidy could see him having a drink in any of a hundred officers’ clubs and telling a story. Or maybe in a foxhole somewhere or hiding out in a smoky, bombed-out basement out there in the gap, behind enemy lines. He was the kind of man who could always make himself comfortable. Cassidy saw him as a kind of Warrior King, huge, implacable, king of the rotting corpses. “Just a dim little corner of military history. Siena and Florence at each other’s throats—bunch of nervous, crazy Italians. Some Florentine bigshot decided he was going to put paid to the Sienese once and for all. He built these big goddamned catapults—this guy was fed up. The plague had killed a helluva lot of his donkeys and—well, he must have been pretty desperate, ready to do anything to pull out a knockout at the bell. Do you know how important donkeys were to thirteenth-century warfare? We just finished a war using more trucks and jeeps than you can count. Back then donkeys were the trucks and jeeps. So you know right away that old Florentine was in deep shit; the donkeys were dead, diseased, and worst of all the plague was starting to kill his troops. Well, pard, he sat there thinking, knowing two things—he had to get rid of those donkeys and he wanted to kick Siena’s ass once and for all. So, the other shoe dropped—catapults! He had some of his good ol’ boys load the dead donkeys—lousy job, dead-donkey loader—had ’em load those stinking carcasses onto the catapults and right before your eyes—think of it—beautiful sunny day, the Tuscan sky bluer than your old granny’s hair, and suddenly the air is full of dead donkeys, blood and guts hangin’ out, donkeys flyin’ every which way, over the walls—well, shit, pard, it was quite a maneuver—”

  “Did it work?”

  “Oh, hell, I forget. I don’t suppose it turned the tide of European history. But my point is this, Manfred Moller is a plague-infected Florentine donkey. The plague is Nazism, Lew—oh, maybe I get a little melodramatic on the subject, but if you’d seen what I’ve seen—”

  “I’ve got my own argument with the Nazis,” Cassidy said. “If you recall.”

  “Oh, I know, pard. Forgive this ol’ country boy. But you see what I’m drivin’ at? Göring is my Florentine general, he catapulted his plague donkey all the way to America—only we can’t find him and this donkey’s alive and he could infect every damn one of us.” He drained the scotch and levered himself up out of the deep chair and headed back for the liquor cabinet. “Damn me, but I know this bastard is alive, Lew. And we’re gonna get him and turn him into one dead donkey.” He laughed harshly and splashed more scotch into his glass. “So much for the history lesson. Lemme freshen that up for you.” He brought the bottle back and filled Cassidy’s glass again. “Chin-chin.”

  It was all so comfortable, so seductive, as if there were nothing wrong at all. Just pals sitting around having a couple of belts and shooting the breeze. Good scotch, heavy leaded tumblers, a gleaming ice bucket, portraits on the oak-paneled walls, half the books in the world, and a fair amount of the world’s known reserves of leather furniture. It was a men’s club with two members. And, of course, it was nothing of the kind.

  MacMurdo withdrew two cigars of great length and circumference from the humidor and cut the ends with a gold clipper. He handed one to Cassidy and they lit up. They puffed with deep satisfaction, rolling the smoke with the lingering taste of scotch on their tongues, two gents. They sat without speaking for several minutes, smoking, waiting for the millennium. The only thing missing was an old duffer snoring beneath his Wall Street Journal in a dim corner. Cassidy looked at MacMurdo through the smoke and experienced a surge of fellow feeling. He couldn’t really analyze it, didn’t try. Maybe it was just that Sam MacMurdo was deep down a good ol’ boy.

  “So, you said you had a piece of news for me. Of more recent vintage than the flying Florentine donkeys.”

  MacMurdo smiled. “That was merely a scholarly digression. Yes, I do have something else. I got word from one of my people in Washington who has been talking to another of my people back in Germany. And we’ve learned a bit more about Göring’s escape route. Turns out there was one man Göring trusted to help with the plan at this end. An American. The man Göring sent Manfred Moller to find and link up with … the good news is we have a name.” He eased the ash into the cut-glass boulder beside his armrest.

  “Well?”

  MacMurdo sighed and grinned forlornly, the cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth. He looked like a man chewing on a stick of dynamite. “The bad news is it’s a code name. Vulkan. Our friend Manfred had to find one man and that man was called Vulkan.”

  It was past eleven when MacMurdo consulted his watch and grunted. “What the hell’s going on here,” he muttered to himself. He grappled briefly with the telephone on the desk. He dialed while clearing his throat. Three digits. An internal number. He waited. “Aw, shit,” he exclaimed softly, looked at Cassidy. “My worry buzz. You carrying a heater, Lew?”

  “A what?”

  “A piece. Iron. A gun, for chrissakes. Come on, what would Bogart think of you? Shame, shame.” While he spoke he was going behind the desk, opening a drawer, and removing a holstered .45 automatic. He pulled it out of the leather and made sure it was game ready.

  “Yes,” Cassidy said. “I’m armed, old sock.” He checked the .38 in his shoulder harness. “Why are we playing with our guns?”

  “Serg
eant Minnelli down in the gate house doesn’t answer. And Clyde hasn’t reported back to me from his rounds.” He looked at his watch again. “Eleven twenty-four. Clyde should be back. I gave the other two guys leave until morning. So Clyde and Carlo Minnelli, they’re probably having a beer and doing the perimeter together but …” He grinned. It was his response to danger.

  “You keep four men here? Sam, what’s the scoop?”

  “Precious cargo, pard. We got two people here we’ve gotta protect.”

  “Who the hell from? This is a whole new part of the story, old sock. You haven’t been leveling with me. I don’t like that.”

  “Look, all that matters to you in this equation is Karin. Of course, she’s in danger. You’re in danger. We’re all in danger. A whole shitload of Nazis may jump out of the weeds and bite us. You comin’? Let’s go find Minnelli and have a beer.” He dropped a hand like a shovel on Cassidy’s shoulder. “Cheer up, pard. A-hunting we will go.”

  It was dead still outside on the driveway, the mist and balloons of ground fog clustering around the light poles. The driveway curved slick and black and wet like a river of oil. You could just see your breath in the chill. The wind moved like a stealthy culprit in the forested rise surrounding the great house. There was a sudden noise like a muffled foghorn and Cassidy stopped, surprised.

  MacMurdo said: “That better have been an owl—”

  “Sounded like the advance man of an Iroquois raiding party.”

  “Too many movies for you, old son.” MacMurdo moved easily. The gun hung at his side, engulfed in the huge hand. “Wait’ll I get my hands on Clyde and Carlo, they think this is such soft duty. ’Course it is, compared to what they’ve both been through. North Africa, Sicily, Germany … This must seem like a country club.”

  “It is like a country club, Sam.”

  The stone guardhouse was quiet, the gate looming in the darkness beyond. The owl hooted again and there was a flurry of movement in the woods, a thrashing in the leaves, a mouse dying.

  The door, when they were ten yards from the guardhouse, was seen to stand open. The guardhouse was a squat stone shed, fancied up with a black-and-white gabled roof that made it look like an excessively large birdhouse. The windows shone yellow and a splash of light spilled from the doorway onto the black driveway. There was something wrong. It was too still, too quiet. Cassidy glanced toward the side of the driveway near the gatehouse, looked back, found no shelter at all. They were alone and easy pickings if there was trouble. The door standing open beckoned ominously, looking for a sucker. It was the door that was wrong. It should have been closed.

  Together they moved quickly to the shadow of the shed wall, flattened themselves. MacMurdo leaned along the rough surface and looked in the window. He drew back, turned to Cassidy, whispered: “Empty. This feels like a handful of something wet and brown, pard. You ready to use that peashooter of yours?”

  Cassidy nodded. “Why don’t I take a little trip round the corner?”

  “Okay. Let’s try real hard not to shoot each other.”

  Cassidy edged along the wall, poked his head around, couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But halfway along this second wall he stepped on something squishy that squirmed and croaked and Cassidy swore, leaped back, and had his gun ready. It croaked again.

  MacMurdo said from the darkness: “What is it?”

  Cassidy swallowed, waited, said: “Frog. I hate the country, damn it. I’m a city boy.” He moved along the rest of the back wall, turned the corner to the gate side, and stopped. There was something on the ground, dragged up close to the wall. It was a soldier. It was the late Carlo Minnelli.

  Cassidy knelt, felt for a pulse in the throat, and got his hand sticky just before he touched the piano wire that had pierced the flesh and sunk deep into the bloody pulp. Minnelli’s head rolled toward him, both eyes wide open and staring, the whites clouded with blood as if they’d exploded. Cassidy looked at the eyes and then at his smeared hand. He fought off a wave of nausea and wiped his hand across the corpse’s coat front.

  The door creaked. Cassidy leveled his revolver at the corner and fortunately MacMurdo spoke before he came around. “It’s me. Hold your fire. What the hell’s—” He appeared, huge and enormously tall from Cassidy’s crouch, and said: “Damn!” staring down at Minnelli’s body.

  “Garrotted,” Cassidy said. “Piano wire.”

  “We gotta get back to the house.” He nodded at the body. “How long?”

  “Minutes. He’s warm and the blood’s still running.”

  “Come on. We need some cover.”

  Cassidy followed him, running hard across the driveway, across the slippery grass, to the edge of the trees. MacMurdo kept on, jogging along the tree line, branches flapping wetly. Cassidy was lagging, his leg bothering him. Soon he was limping, gritting his teeth against the pain. It was hard to remember he’d once made his living running into, around, and over men not too much smaller than Sam MacMurdo. He looked up at the house that sat apparently peacefully, the lights glowing from the library windows. He was losing ground, saw MacMurdo pushing on, fading in and out in the darkness. Then there was a crash up ahead and he pulled up, waiting in the wet branches, soaking himself with their accumulated dampness. MacMurdo was down. He slowly edged forward, waiting for another sound. Finally it came.

  “Lew? Where the hell are you?”

  “Back here.” Cassidy hobbled onward, wiping the water from his face and eyes. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Clyde ain’t so good though.”

  Cassidy reached the big man, who was upright, leaning with hands on knees, staring down at the body of the sergeant who had greeted Cassidy upon his arrival a few days before.

  “Tripped over him. He’s walkin’ the streets o’ Glory, pard. Let’s get to the house and pray to God we’re not too late.”

  Cassidy forced himself to keep up as they went back across the driveway and fetched up in the cover of the portico where two of the cars sat side by side. The mist was turning to a fine rain. MacMurdo whispered, out of breath: “I’m going across to the terrace, have a look into the library. You cover me in case we got a guy who thinks he’s a marksman, too. Figure I’m safe from the piano wire out on the terrace. If I draw fire, you get into the house and flush ’em out.”

  Cassidy said: “Not a great plan, but a plan.”

  MacMurdo laughed under his breath. “Ain’t this the shits, pard?”

  MacMurdo took off, loped to the terrace steps, and was up in two bounds. He waited for a moment, crouching on the fieldstones. Cassidy waited, watching the shadows behind him for a man with a third length of piano wire, flicking his eyes back and forth from the shadows to MacMurdo, back again.

  Finally MacMurdo rose and ran along the terrace railing.

  The crack of the shot from the house came as the huge target reached the large concrete planter at the center of the railing’s length.

  Cassidy saw MacMurdo take the slug.

  He pitched forward with a loud oath and Cassidy fired at the general direction from which the shot had come. He heard the ping and splinter from the stone facing.

  He waited in the silence, his breath short, heart pounding. Rain was dripping off the vines, spattering his forehead. MacMurdo lay still, barely visible in the shadow of the railing.

  Then without warning MacMurdo was upright, hurtling over the railing to land with a mighty thud, a muffled fuck!, in the flowerbed.

  It was time to go inside and Cassidy didn’t like the idea. He was taking a couple of deep breaths, checking for the piano-wire man just in case they came in pairs, when the light snapped on in a bedroom on the second floor.

  Karin, wakened by the shot, stood outlined in the window.

  “Go back!” It was MacMurdo shouting like a hound baying at the moon. “Karin, go back! Lock your door!”

  Slowly, as if she were still lost in a dream, Karin moved away from the window.

  Cassidy couldn’t wait any longer.
/>   He went to the side service door, keeping his back to the wall, pushed it open, stepped inside, and hesitated so his eyes might accustom themselves to the darkness. The hallway was narrow, windowless, pitch black. Each step sounded like a cannon shot. He didn’t know the house well enough, had to feel his way as he tried to remember the layout. The shot from the house had come from the row of parlor windows: the parlor had been dark. But as he reached the main hallway, then the foyer with the parquet floor and the wide staircase and the chandelier softly tinkling in a draft—as he heard it he realized that the light in the library had also been extinguished.

  Somewhere in the darkness he heard a movement, someone somewhere bumped into something. Someone with a gun, who knew he was there … or maybe not.

  He crossed the foyer, edging along the wall opposite the parlor, hardly daring to breathe, inching along, not wanting to knock over some goddamn little table full of flowers and get his brains blown all over the wall. He peered into the parlor. The draperies were drawn. Nothing moved.

  He stood stock still, holding his breath, straining to hear another man’s fatal inhalation. Nothing. He’d lost all track of time. He felt as if he’d been in the house forever. Finally he continued along the hallway.

  The draperies in the library were open. The lamps on the terrace cast shadows across the one room in the house whose geography he knew.