Emerson interrupted, asking, "Does it have an oven?"
"It has a stove," said the mystified agent. "And, of course, underneath the stove is the oven."
"Good. I'll take it."
By early evening he was installed in a stucco cube of a house perched among olive trees above the town of Ipsos. With bread and ham and cheese laid by, and a gin and tonic in his hand, he sat on the front porch looking out over the darkening Gulf of Kerkyra. He breathed deeply, savoring the scent of oleander and lemon that was subtly altered, as always in the Mediterranean, by the musty odor of olives. Directly across the gulf lay the Albanian shore and the winking lamps in farmhouse windows that seemed as close to his touch as fireflies. Down the island shore to the south the streetlights of Corfu city cast a disturbingly urban glow against the sky, while to the north he could follow the curve of the gulf by the lights of Pyrgi, then Nissaki, and finally Kalami, the closest point on the island to the Albanian shore. He stared longest at the lights of Kalami, wondering which lamp shone from the house of Peter Andriakis, the man he had come to kill.
After a while his eyes drooped and he began to drowse. He had been traveling for almost twenty-four hours and his body cried out for rest, not only from the activities of the past day, but from those of the two days before that. Those last days in Mexico had been filled with detailed planning, cram-course training, and an ongoing discussion about assignments. In the end they had decided to hit the four men simultaneously on Wednesday, the sixteenth. Emerson had drawn Andriakis in Corfu, Ginger was assigned Krause in Brissago on the Swiss-Italian border, Vasily had elected Wolfe in Barcelona, and to Eddie had gone the responsibility for Swan himself. Which had left them with the question of what to do about Rusty.
"She can't stay here," Vasily had said. "Too risky."
Eddie had agreed. "There's always a chance that Swan makes a move before we get to him. She has to change houses."
"Mexico City?"
"A hotel?"
"Why not? Safest place in the world, a large hotel. What do you think, Jimbo?"
"Sounds good to me," said Emerson. "Is that all right with you, Rusty?"
"Oh, don't worry your heads about little old me," she said breezily. "I adore Mexico City; I'll have a wonderful time there. I'll just lie around in the sun and oil the body while you people go jazzing around the world bumping off the baddies."
Her tone did not reflect her feelings. From the beginning she had been unalterably opposed to the idea of going over to the attack. At first her objections had been angry and resentful, but the others had stood firm in the decision and she soon saw that there was no way of changing their minds. Now she had abandoned anger for sarcasm, but her attitude was still the same. She thought the idea was insane.
"I suppose that sounds very selfish of me. I really should contribute something to the cause. Now, what could I do?" She put a finger to her lips, considering. "I could do some sewing, run up a few shrouds. Feed the rattlesnakes? Milk the tarantulas? Polish your pistols? Anything else I can do to help?"
Emerson sighed. "Not very funny, Rusty."
"Isn't it?" she asked sweetly. "I think the whole thing is hilarious. Actually, my love, I don't give a damn what happens to these so-called professionals, but what about you? A fifty-three-year-old adventurer who hasn't fired a weapon in anger in thirty-five years! That's not funny?"
"I suppose it depends on your point of view. I don't see what choice I have."
"I do, but I suppose you're entitled to your burst of machismo - it goes so well with the male menopause. But what about your daughter? Did you have to get her involved? She can't step on an ant without throwing up. And you two are going to go out and kill people? Tell me again that it isn't funny."
Eddie and Vasily looked at each other uneasily; there was a core of truth in what she said, but Ginger pushed herself in front of her father and stared at her mother with level eyes.
"Let's stop all this crap," she said evenly, all of the girlishness gone from her voice. "We're not talking about ants, we're talking about people. I don't like the idea of killing people either, but these sons of bitches are trying to murder my father, and I'm not going to let them do that. I'll do anything I can to prevent it, including killing, and I promise you, Mother, that I won't throw up when it happens."
"Take it easy," Emerson said softly.
"I'm sore," Ginger told him, "and I don't care who knows it. You should have had a son - he'd be doing this for you now. But I'm all you've got and I'll do what I can. And if my mother loves you as much as she says she does, she'll stop the bitching and moaning and get off her ass and give us a hand."
She had turned away then, but not before she had seen the silent applause in Eddie's eyes; and after that there had been no more arguments.
Sitting on the porch and watching the Ionian waters darken to the deepest blue, Emerson smiled as he thought of that scene. He had never been prouder of his daughter, but the stricken look on his wife's face had brought him to her side, and he had held her.
They each love in their own way, he thought, and I'm the lucky man in the middle.
He breathed deeply again of the oleander and lemons, finished his drink, and went inside to prepare for bed. Sleep did not come easily. There was too much to think about, too many things that could go wrong, and he stared at the unfamiliar ceiling as he fought to order his mind.
Take it slow, he told himself, one step at a time. You have all day tomorrow to survey the ground, and then you hit him on Wednesday.
He smiled in the darkness as he thought of what his Washington colleagues would think of him now.
All those years practicing law, he thought as he finally closed his eyes. All those years in government playing the game. All those good, rich years, and now I'm finally about to do what I was trained for as a boy.
It was an oddly comforting thought.
* * *
On that same Monday afternoon, Ginger drove north out of Milan, leaving behind the permanent cap of brown industrial smog that hung over the city, breathing deeply with relief as she swung the rented Fiat onto the autostrada that led to the lake country and the Swiss-Italian border. The flat, unattractive countryside was strange to her, but the road signs were clear and Vasily's instructions had been explicit. Follow the signs to Sesto Calende, then up the western side of Lago Maggiore and over the Swiss border just north of Cannobio. The first town on the Swiss side would be Brissago, and there she would find Gerard Krause.
As she drove along at a steady one hundred kilometers, a speed that drew derisive toots from passing sportsmen, she reviewed what she had been told about Krause.
"First of all, don't make the mistake of underestimating him," Vasily had told her, "just because he's stuck in a backwater like Brissago. He may not seem to have much power, but he has Swan, and that's all he needs. He's like Andriakis and Wolfe, an extension of Swan, and you can't take him lightly."
"I won't," she had promised. "What does he look like?"
"About fifty-five, short and chubby with a pencil-thin mustache. He has a certain amount of what your mother would call continental charm - the kind she claims doesn't impress her. For a cover he plays at being a retired American insurance executive living the good life in northern Italy and Switzerland." He turned to Eddie. "Frankly, I could never understand the lure of northern Italy. Magnificent scenery, but the people are so dour. What part of Italy are you from?"
"I was born in Manhattan," said Eddie. "In my family, a northern Italian was anybody who lived above Fourteenth Street. What else do you know about this guy?"
"He eats well, drinks well, and he thinks of himself as a ladies' man. Who knows, perhaps he is. I believe that's why he got posted to a place like Brissago."
Eddie had confirmed that with a nod. "Yeah, I heard that. Some kind of scandal in Bangkok. Man, you really have to work at it to cause a scandal in Bangkok. Some kind of kinky sex routine."
"Sounds like a charmer," Ginger had said, then, see
ing the look of concern on his face, had touched him lightly on the cheek. "Take it easy, I'm going there to kill him, not seduce him."
She had seen the look of concern on his face replaced by one of wonder at this newfound attitude of hers, this apparently casual acceptance of the need to kill. She wondered at it herself now as she drove over the noisy, ill-bolted bridge that spanned the River Ticino at the bottom of the lake. Only she knew that it was not casual at all. Tough words and an aggressive stance did nothing to change the hollowness she felt within her whenever she thought of what she had to do. But she also knew that she was going to do it.
"I'm going to drop him in his track," she promised herself, using words on loan from Eddie, as if by using the words she could borrow strength and confidence, too. "He's gonna fly like a bird and drop like a rock."
Beyond Sesto Calende she began to notice the dreary landscape giving way to impressive tree-covered slopes of deep green and silver. She drove with the water below to her right, and rising high on her left the sub-Alpine peaks that pocketed the lake like the setting of a jewel, and beyond them the immense display of the Alpine arc itself. The sun fled fast behind those peaks, and in the late afternoon long shadows lay across the land. Then she was negotiating the hairpin turns above Cannobio with the border coming up ahead.
At the border she produced her passport, the Houston special in the name of Pauline Rausch, first to the Italians and then to the Swiss, and stood by the car showing no apparent concern while both her suitcase and the Fiat were carefully searched. The lack of concern was real. Unlike her father, she carried no weapons, either whole or disassembled, none of Eddie's death-dealing devices, gadgets, or toys. She had made that clear when she had volunteered. No guns or knives, no explosives or gases, or anything like that.
"I'd be helpless," she had told them. "There simply isn't enough time for me to learn about those things. I'd either shoot myself in the toe or stab myself in the butt."
Now she watched with satisfaction as the meticulous inspection was made of her belongings, the examination showing nothing more exotic than a two-pound box of chocolate creams and a box of penicillin-based flu tablets that she had purchased in Mexico City. Told that she could pass, she tossed the guards a jaunty, "Grazie," and minutes later was tooling down the main street of Brissago. She found the Pension Valentina without any trouble on one of the winding side streets that pitched up from the lake at a seemingly impossible angle, registered there with the Rausch passport, and went to her room to unpack. She hung her clothes away carefully, stored the penicillin tablets in the top drawer of the armoire, then turned to the telephone. She breathed deeply several times, then picked up the receiver and placed a call to Gerard Krause.
She heard the sound of ringing, and a man's voice said, "Pronto?"
"Signor Krause?"
"Si."
"Hi there, you don't know me, but my name is Pauline Rausch, and I'm a very dear friend of Mary Jo Betterman. From Mobile, Alabama? I'm sure you remember Mary Jo?"
"Well, actually, I'm not quite ..."
"You mean you don't remember Mary Jo?" She rushed her words, trying for a breathlessness in her voice. "Tall girl with jet-black hair and a terrific figure? Just about my age. twenty-two? Come on, nobody forgets Mary Jo. She certainly didn't forget you."
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. "That's very complimentary but . . . you see, I do meet a lot of people, especially during the tourist season."
"I just can't believe this. Wait till I get back home and tell Mary Jo. As a matter of fact. I won't do anything of the kind; the poor girl would just die of embarrassment after all she said about you."
"What did she say?" he asked calmly.
"I don't know if I should tell you. since you don't even remember her."
"One moment. Mary Jo? Tall girl with a southern accent and big . . . urn?" He broke off, chuckling.
"That's right, big . . . urn." She laughed with him. "At least you remember part of her."
"Rather difficult to forget that aspect. It's all coming back to me now. Dear Mary Jo Betterman. I don't know how she could have slipped my mind that way. Indeed, we had a splendid time together last year."
"Now, that's exactly what she said. She said, Pauline, if you pass through Brissago you absolutely must call that darling Gerry Krause and give him my love. So I just had to call because she'd never forgive me if I didn't and . . ."
Five minutes later, when she hung up. Ginger had a date to meet Gerard Krause at the cafe on the Via Cantonale at eleven the next morning. She offered a thank you to the fictional Mary Jo Betterman, debated having something to eat, and decided that she wasn't really hungry. Like her father, she had had a hard day's journey, and all she really wanted was sleep. She bathed, brushed her hair exactly one hundred strokes, and got ready for bed. As with her father, sleep did not come quickly; but unlike her father, her head was not filled with fears of failure, plots, and counterplots. She considered her task a simple one.
Tomorrow. Tuesday, she would meet Gerard Krause. On the next day, Wednesday, she would kill him. He was one of the men who wanted to murder her father. She would kill him without a gun, without a knife, without any of Eddie's fancy gadgets.
Vasily had been able to provide little information about Krause, only that he was a sensualist, a womanizer, and that there had been a second reason for his transfer from Bangkok. The risk of disease had been too great for him there, and unlike other people he lacked the usual defenses against it. Gerard Krause was abnormally allergic to penicillin. One shot of it was enough to make him comatose. Two shots would kill him.
On that thought, Ginger closed her eyes and slept.
Barcelona was a city of memories for Vasily Borgneff, most of them happy ones, but one of them so sad that even now, ten years after the event, it brought him melancholy moments when recalled. In a way it seemed unfair for the city to be burdened with this memory. He loved the town too much, and what had happened to Josifina Carillo years ago should have happened somewhere else. Madrid, perhaps, or Valencia. He had no feelings for those cities, but Barcelona was a special place to him. The elegant squares and plazas, the tree-lined streets, the busy port, the bustle of hard-working Catalonians, and some of the most chic women in Europe all combined to remind him of another city he once had loved: New York back in the days before the garbage took over the town. The New York of yesterday and the Barcelona of today both were cities that he could happily claim as his own. He still felt that tie to Barcelona, although New York was finished for him, and the comparisons were painful.
On that Monday afternoon when he arrived there he tried to imagine a Barcelona street filthy and littered with trash, but he couldn't. He tried to imagine a Metro subway car covered with inane graffiti, but the image would not come. He tried to imagine a gang of kids roaming the Ramblas de Capuchinas snatching gold chains in the night, but the concept was impossible.
But don't carry the comparison too far, he warned himself. Barcelona pickpockets are the slickest in the world.
Standing at his window in the Hotel Colon, he looked out at the enormity of the cathedral on the other side of the square. He tried to keep his gaze steady, but he knew that he was blinking to compensate for the presence of the artificial eye in his left socket. The familiar eyepatch was gone, sacrificed on the altar of anonymity, and he rather missed it. He fixed his one eye on the cathedral. It was a sight he never tired of. The cathedral was the essence of Barcelona to him; the restless vitality of the mass of gray stone spoke of medieval masons drunk on the logic of form. Later that evening he would touch those stones for luck as he passed by into the barrio gotico, there to have two Pernods before the roast duck at Tinnel's. Then would come a stroll on the Ramblas in search of a coffee, and perhaps even a journey to the other side of town for a night-time view of Gaudi's Catedral de la Sagrada Familia. To call it a cathedral was a misnomer, for no bishop resided there, but half of Barcelona thought of it as such. If the cathedral across
the square was a soaring vault built for the storage of vibrant spirit, the Sagrada Familia was a burning, melting surreal candle offered up daily to God. That Barcelona should have two such monuments to the imperishability of the divine spark often seemed like aesthetic overkill to him, but that was one of the reasons why the city meant so much to him.
"It's a great town," he mused, looking down at the crowds in the square surging in waves that lapped on the great stone steps of the cathedral. But, as always, his warm thoughts of Barcelona were altered by the memory of what had happened ten years before. Again, as always, he wished that it had happend somewhere else. Of course, it never should have happened at all, but before the death of Francisco Franco such happenings were commonplace in Spain.
That was the way he had explained it to Eddie during those last few days in Mexico when the assignments were being divided up. There was no question about where Ginger and her father were going. Krause was the girl's natural target, and the setup on Andriakis was simple enough not to put too much of a strain on Emerson's faded skills. The decision lay with the other two. and Vasily had opted for Wolfe in Barcelona.
"I thought you wanted to take care of Swan personally." Eddie had said, surprised.
"It would give me the greatest pleasure, but it can't be done. For two reasons. It may be necessary to get close to Swan, and he knows my face well. He knows you only by reputation."
"That makes sense. What's the second reason?"
"That one is personal."
Eddie grunted impatiently. "We can't afford personal secrets. What is it?"
Vasily had thought for a moment, sighed, and then had told him.
"You have to remember what it was like in Spain ten years ago. The country was a Fascist dictatorship. There was only one official political party, the Falange, and the Communists were banned, of course. Even a milk-and- water Socialist had to keep his opinions to himself. If he didn't, he wound up behind bars, or worse."
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