As a KGB officer, Vasily had spent two years in Hanoi conducting classes in the construction of pinfire shotguns, plumber's-pipe pistols, homemade rocket launchers, and other forms of unconventional weaponry. By the end of those two years he had become fluent in the Vietnamese language. He did not, of course, reveal this to Chuc and Van. He was not about to surrender such an advantage, but in return for the edge he found himself forced to listen with a straight face to a boring and unending stream of recollections about the good old days with the Special Forces, the joys of tossing unredeemable Charlies out of low-flying choppers, and those carefree evenings sitting around the fire sharpening up bamboo slivers for the next day's interrogations. In addition, he was the recipient of their loutish opinions on every conceivable subject from the unavailability of American women to the indigestibility of American food. He was also required to listen to himself being described as a one-eyed weasel, a renegade Red, and a number-ten weary old man who didn't have the guts to kill a chicken on his own. By the end of the first day in Taboada, Vasily was cheerfully urging Chuc and Van to drink the clear, refreshing Mexican tap water.
On the afternoon of that first day, with the two Vietnamese in close tow, he drove up into the hills above the town, left the car parked on the side of the road, and worked downhill into a position above the house, the home he once had shared with Eddie Mancuso. It was the only house for miles around. It had been a dry summer, and the Guanajuato countryside was a succession of brown and rounded hills with only an occasional flash of green to mark a grazing spot, a stand of trees, or a hard-earned well. Across this featureless landscape marched the twin lines of rural electrification, the high-tension cables swooping from pylon to pylon in sagging arcs, this imprint of civilization on the countryside as out of place as a hat on a horse.
From a position below one of these cable-bearing towers on the hill overlooking the house, Vasily could view, through high-powered glasses, the top two levels of the building, the garden, and the swimming pool. Using the glasses was an irritant, for it reminded him forcibly that he now had only one eye, thanks to Eddie Mancuso, and the sight of Eddie disporting in the pool below did nothing to lessen the irritation. There were four people in the pool, two men and two women, and he realized that he had in view all four of his targets, as neatly grouped as ducks in a shooting gallery. All he needed now was the means to dispose of them.
"Wide open," said Chuc, who was watching through glasses of his own. "We could walk right in."
"Let's take them right now," Van said excitedly.
"Shut up, both of you," Vasily growled, his glasses still fixed on the scene below. "There's an alarm system, a good one. I designed it myself."
"Can you crack it?"
Vasily did not answer. He watched through the glasses with troubled eyes. The house presented a technical problem to be solved, penetration and execution, but it was also a place filled with memories for him. It was here that he had spent the happiest months of his life with Eddie and Chalice, two men in love with the same woman and living in almost absolute harmony. And then it all had fallen apart, both the brotherhood and the love degenerating into a clawing scramble for survival. Whose fault? There had been a time when his anger at Eddie Mancuso had been so strong and fresh that he would not have bothered to ask the question, much less answer it. But now he was not at all sure. Not that it made any difference. The end result was that Chalice was dead, that Vasily himself had come within a whisker of it, and that now it was Eddie's turn. The thought, which should have filled him with a long-delayed satisfaction, filled him with sadness instead.
That sadness was heightened by the sight of Eddie emerging from the pool to stand dripping on the concrete lip, his hands on his slim hips and his chin jutting out as he surveyed his property with very apparent satisfaction.
"Cocky little bastard," Vasily murmured to himself and lapsed again into memory of the year before. That was the year when everyone was singing "Bailando Loco" and dancing to it in the bars and cafes, the mariachis playing it in the streets and the plaza; and often that last summer they would swing through the night to the tune of it, the three of them laughing and singing and drinking the light, white, fourth-rate Mexican wine.
Bailando loco, dancing crazy to the wild, insistent beat that lit fires in the blood, an idiotic two-step meant to be danced at a lunatics' ball; and Eddie would hop around the floor like a demented cockroach with two broken legs, warbling, "Comomis piernas, estan roto los cojones. Como los cojones, estan roto mi amor" while Chalice laughed delightedly and Vasily tapped the tips of his fingers together in affectionate applause. It had been a crazy time, indeed, for the three of them, and they had danced their way through it, bailando loco, in a crazy two-step all their own.
His reverie was broken by the sight of Ginger, who had come out of the pool to stand beside Eddie with her arm around his waist. Vasily caught his breath as his glasses played over the body of the young woman. Ten months of enforced continence pounded at his temples, and this time he murmured to himself, "Lucky little bastard."
But if the sight of Ginger affected his breathing, the sight of her mother caused a giant hand to squeeze on his heart. Rusty, clad in a white lace bikini, came up the ladder and out of the pool with Emerson close behind her. The lift of her chin, the tilt of her breasts, the casual go-to-hell roll of her walk defined her as his kind of woman, and he knew that he would soon have to do something about his social life.
As he watched, the four people turned and strolled up the path to the house. Vasily followed them with the glasses, parting from them reluctantly as the back door closed. He kept the glasses fixed on that door for a long moment, then shook his head sadly and turned his mind to the problem at hand.
Actually, there were three problems. The first was the alarm system, but the design was his own and he was confident that he could master it. The second problem was that, according to his mandate from Swan, the Emerson deaths had to appear accidental or, at the least, untraceable. It didn't matter how Eddie went, but the Assistant Secretary of Defense and his family had to slip out smoothly and without raising the fuss of an investigation. The third problem was Eddie - he had to be immobilized. The attack had to be mounted at a time when he was vulnerable, stripped bare of his formidable arsenal of death-dealing gadgets. Stripped bare? Vasily stared through the glasses at the swimming pool below him. He twisted to look up at the high-tension wires that curved above him. He did trigonometry in his head, estimating heights and distances, then took a pad and pencil from his pocket and confirmed the figures. He smiled grimly.
In Vietnamese, Chuc said to his partner, "The weasel smiles. He is thinking of his dinner."
Van answered in the same language, "No, he is thinking of women. The women down below. Did you see them through the glasses?"
"I saw them both. Unusual beauty."
"Two blossoms," Van agreed. "Both the mother and the daughter."
"It is a pity they must go."
"A terrible waste."
"Perhaps before . . . ?"
"Perhaps."
Vasily kept his face impassive. He lifted himself from his prone position and looked at Chuc and Van, their ferretlike faces turned up to him. He pointed to the cable-bearing tower that loomed above them.
"Can you climb that?" he asked.
Both of them looked up, then shrugged. Van spat contemptuously and said, "Sure, no sweat."
"A piece of cake," said Chuc.
"Would you need any special equipment? Shoes? Belts?"
"Nothing," said Van and spat again. He pointed to the rubber-soled sneakers that they both wore. "That's what these are for."
Chuc added, "Half monkey, half snake, that's us."
More hyena than either, thought Vasily as he led them back to the car, keeping close to the contours of the terrain. The drive to Queretaro, the nearest city, took less than an hour. On the outskirts, in the barrio behind the bullring, was a strip of automobile repair shops, junkyards, and seve
ral ferreterias. Leaving Chuc and Van in the car, he browsed around until he found what he wanted: two heavy- duty cable cutters. The blued cutting edges could go through all but the thickest cable, and the long handles were heavily insulated. He paid for them, stowed them in the trunk of the car, and drove back to their hotel, arriving there in the early evening.
"Up to my room," he told the others. "We have things to talk about."
Once upstairs, they disposed themselves around the room, Vasily in a wicker chair and the Vietnamese perched on the edge of the bed. Vasily took out his note pad and sketched a diagram of the house and of the high-tension wires that had passed almost directly above it. He handed it across to the others without comment.
Chuc looked at the sketch. "You'll drop the cables?"
Vasily nodded.
"I don't get it. What good does that do?"
"Listen - " First, he explained, during the night both of the high-tension cables had to be weakened, not visibly, but enough so that one final clip would send them flying. Then it was just a question of waiting until the four people in the house were all in the swimming pool. A final cut of both cables would hurtle them into the pool. The result: instant electrocution.
The two Vietnamese listened carefully. Van frowned. "How do you know that the cables will hit the pool? You're guessing."
Vasily shook his head impatiently. "I never guess. It's my job to make sure they hit."
The other two looked unconvinced.
You're pushing them, Vasily told himself. Be patient. . .
keep it simple. He managed a smile and said, "The cut ends of the cable don't have to drop straight into the water."
"Why not?"
"Because those cables are very heavy. Their own weight will drag them across the patio and into the pool in seconds."
"So!" Chuc and Van were smiling now.
"And what's our friend, Mr. Mancuso, doing while all this is happening? Swimming around as happy as a mackerel, and not even Eddie can hide a gadget in his swimsuit."
"Excellent. Ingenious."They were both fascinated. "And who cuts the cables?"
"You do. Both of you."
"And you?"
"I'll be on the ground to give the signal. Watch my left arm. When the arm comes down, cut the cables."
"Not so easy to see straight down from the tower," Van noted.
"I won't be under the tower. I'll be inside the grounds, close to the pool."
Chuc looked startled. "Inside? What about the alarm?"
"I'll be right on top of them before they know it."
"But they'll see you."
"I want Mancuso to see me. I don't give a damn about the others, but I want him to know who's killing him."
Van shook his head. "Bad business. I don't like it."
How do I explain? Vasily wondered. How do I explain a year's worth of anger still bottled up inside me? How do I explain loyalty? They would turn on each other for pennies, so how do I explain betrayal? If I told them the story of Cain and Abel, they would probably giggle and then applaud.
"This is important to me," he said slowly. "This man, Mancuso, tried to kill me. He thinks that he succeeded; he thinks that I'm dead. He gave me this." He tapped his eyepatch. "Now it's my turn. I'm going to kill him and all the others, but before I do I want him to know that it's me. I want him to look up and see me. I want him to fear me before he dies. I have to do this; otherwise, killing him is meaningless to me."
They both nodded solemnly, and Chuc said, "Every man understands revenge. It is part of the blood. But this will be dangerous. You might be hit by the cable."
"I won't be. I'll be watching for it."
He waited. They looked at each other, eyes questioning, then coming to a silent agreement. Van said, "OK, if that's the way you want it."
Vasily let out a breath. "It is."
"Swan said you're the boss, so we do it your way; but if anything goes wrong, we cut the cables anyway. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"Good. When do we go in?"
"Tonight. The first step is to weaken the cables. We'll leave here around midnight, so get some rest before then. You've got a hard climb ahead of you."
They went down to dinner then. Vasily sent the other two into the dining room while he stopped in the lounge for an aperitif. The lounge was almost empty. Most of the hotel guests sat out on the lawn at tiny tables, and beyond them, although the sun was almost gone, an energetic group of teenagers still frolicked in the mineral springs and the warm-water pools for which the inn was famous. Vasily looked around the room. Several couples sat at tables; two business types huddled at the far end of the bar in earnest conversation; and at the near end sat a graceful woman in a simple white dress, masses of raven-black hair to her shoulders. Late thirties, he decided, and he noted the full figure, the good legs casually crossed, and the well-shaped hand that held her glass. He slid onto the next stool and ordered a Pernod from the stolid-faced boy behind the bar.
When the drink came he delicately added drops of water until the pale liquid turned milky, then raised the glass to his lips. He did not drink at once. He closed his eyes and breathed in the sharp aroma, conjuring up memories of other days and other drinks, overtones of roasting chestnuts and autumn smoke in other climes, fantasies of well- remembered flesh, familiar eyes and lips, and tapering fingers. He let the memories flood him indiscriminately, fragments of all his ages converging, and marveled at how many memories could be contained within a single glass. Then he opened his eyes, took the first sip, and sighed.
"Valgame Dios!" exclaimed the woman beside him in soft, unaccented Spanish. "You took that drink the way I take the wafer at communion. Are you praying, or are you drinking?"
Vasily took another sip before turning to face her. "A little of both, I suppose."
"Are you a priest of alcohol, then?" she asked, smiling with white, even teeth.
"Never," said Vasily, trying to appear shocked. "Do I look that holy? I am a priest of nothing, merely a worshiper."
"Very bad of you, senor." Her eyes were smiling as well, mocking him. "Such an elaborate worship should be reserved for a woman, not a drink."
"Ah, that." He waved casually at the room and the people. "That sort of worship one reserves for the private chapel, not the public church."
"Mas mal! she said spiritedly. "Even worse. Is the worship of a woman such an occasion of sin that it must be done secretly?"
"A good point," Vasily conceded, taking another sip. "You called me a priest, but you speak like a Jesuit in disguise. Remember, however, that one must make a distinction between worship and ritual. To worship a woman publicly, well . . . es muy caballero . . . but the ritual must remain private or it loses all of its mystery." He slid from the bar stool to stand erect. He inclined his head slightly. "I am Victor Barnum, and your servant."
"Elena Castelnuevo."
She extended her hand. He took it and sketched a kiss over it, saying, "Encantado." He was tempted to say more, to give gentle pressure to her fingers, to invite her to worship with him either in wine or in any other ritual that might move her. But he did none of these things. He knew what the night held for him.
"This has been delightful," he said regretfully. "Unfortunately, I am occupied this evening. Perhaps we could continue our catechism some other time?"
"Perhaps," she murmured, and as they parted there was surprise as well as regret in her eyes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On the same day that Vasily Borgneff lay on the side of a hill observing the house of Eddie Mancuso, Sasha Ignatiev spent part of the afternoon watching a young woman scrub the kitchen floor of his Washington apartment. The young woman started scrubbing shortly after noon and worked straight through until nearly two o'clock. The kitchen was not a large one and its tiled floor could easily have been scrubbed clean in fifteen minutes, but the girl performed the chore over and over again, working industriously on her knees with a stiff-bristled brush and a pail of soapy water. Just out
side the kitchen door, Sasha lounged in a chair with a cold gin in his hand, observing the scene in comfort. He watched intently but for the most part silently, his only comments an occasional criticism.
"Over near the stove, you missed a spot, Marcella," he would say, or, "Try taking a longer stroke, sweetie."
Marcella's invariable reply was, "Whatever you say Sasha," and on she would go, dipping the brush, scrubbing and rinsing the already spotless floor. Each time she finished the task she would stand up, stretch, empty the pail of water into the sink, and look inquiringly at Sasha. A quick, impatient flick of his fingers would tell her to continue, and she would cheerfully refill the pail and set to work again.
Watching his floor being scrubbed was more than just an exercise in sanitation for Sasha; it was one of his favorite recreational activities, which accounted for three unusual facts about the girl who was doing the scrubbing. First, she was an unusually attractive young woman whose normal line of work was as a dancer at the House of Joy; second, she was totally nude as she worked away on her hands and knees; and third, she was being paid fifty dollars an hour to scrub Sasha's floor.
Since at one time or another most of the dancers at the House of Joy had been employed in this manner, the motivation behind the routine, and the gratification that Sasha derived from it, were a constant source of speculation among the girls. One theory held that Sasha, being gay, enjoyed the sight of a woman debasing herself on her hands and knees. This theory was contested by several girls who claimed that their kitchen sessions with Sasha had concluded with him leaping upon them and using them sexually. One girl, who had paged through Krafft-Ebing, was of the opinion that the man simply had a cleanliness complex; while another, who had picked up a little Freud, had come to the conclusion that Sasha as a little boy had observed his mother scrubbing floors and was only trying to recapture a childhood fantasy. A final group rejected the more overtly sexual explanations and opted for the premise that Sasha was really a frustrated sculptor who was madly obsessed with the female form divine.
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