God. He willed the trembling to ease, willed his brain to begin to function, start spewing out the training that had been drummed into him years before. Too many years, he told himself.
The basement. A doorway leading to it somewhere back under the stairway that lay ahead of him. The entry hall was dark, whatever light there had once been now extinguished, the darkness registering for the first time. He slid down the wall, crouching low, lessening the target he offered backlighted against the faint glow coming through the glass door panel, then began to move slowly forward, his heart pounding in his ears.
There was a door ahead of him, but not enough light to check its edges for wires or any other telltales that would indicate an explosive device. He reached into his pocket and removed a penlight that felt slippery against his sweating hand. He held it out to the side, as far away from his body as possible, flicked it on, and played it over the edges of the door.
A thud on the floor above him. A man coughing. The penlight winked off and he froze, waiting, listening.
Another cough—a cigarette smoker’s hack—then quiet again. Alex’s breathing slowed, the tension ebbing slightly, the butt of the pistol slick with sweat from his palm. He turned the penlight back on and finished his search along the edges of the door. Nothing. At least nothing he could find.
He eased himself up, took two quick steps across the hall, and flattened himself against the wall next to the door. Alex could feel the sweat gathering again, running in cold rivulets against his skin, as he reached for the doorknob. Stephanie’s down there, he kept telling himself. Your family. The one you created for yourself. You have to get to her. Have to. Now. He turned the knob, waiting for the explosion from wires he could not see. He eased the door open a crack, then gently played his fingers inside the opening, feeling for the telltales. Again nothing.
Faint light filtered out from the opening, rising from the basement, and he stared into it, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the change. He drew a breath, then swung the door back and spun into the opening, the pistol out in front of him in two hands, the left shoulder slightly forward, the tip of the right index finger applying two pounds of pressure to the trigger’s seven-pound pull, both eyes open, squared over the rear sight, the front sight and the target area a faint blur. Textbook. They teach you everything except how badly your hands will tremble.
Slowly, the weapon still out in front, like a weight drawing him forward, Alex started down the stairs.
Two blocks to the south, Antoine Pisani sat in the rear of a large black bullet-proof car, the tinted rear window lowered six inches so he could see clearly into the street. A World War II vintage Colt .45 automatic lay on the seat beside him—the only personal weapon he had carried over the past thirty-five years, on the rare times he carried one at all. It had been a gift from Piers Moran, Alex’s father, a weapon, he had thought then—with pleasure—that had been pilfered from the occupying U.S. Army.
One of Pisani’s men sat in the front seat, an Uzi across his lap, his left hand holding up a portable field radio so Antoine could hear conversations among his men.
“Tell them to start into the tunnels at both ends,” he snapped.
His man looked at him, then did as he was told. Alex’s instructions had been clear. No one was to go anywhere near the target area until it was over, or until shots were heard and the net for Ludwig needed to be drawn shut. But Antoine didn’t give a shit what Alex had said. If the man wanted to try to get himself killed over a whore of a wife, that was something he couldn’t control. But Pisani men would be there to try to stop it, and the bastard, Ludwig, would not escape. No matter what, that would not happen.
Antoine swung the rear door open and climbed out, dragging the old automatic with him. “Let’s get closer,” he snapped. “We need to be close.”
Alex reached the bottom of the stairs and found himself in a narrow hall that led to a large, open room he could see ahead. Light flooded from that area, bright and glaring, picking up the heavy layer of dirt and scattered debris that littered the stone floor. He moved forward in a crouch, then stopped before a final turn that would take him into the room that spread out, largely unseen, to his right. He straightened, slipping the pistol back in his pocket, his hand still on it.
“Ludwig,” he called. “I’m coming in.”
There was no answer.
He stepped forward, body tense, ready to fall back to the safety of the hall, and turned into the room.
He froze, staring, then sank to his knees.
Stephanie’s naked body hung from a rafter, tied at the wrists, her toes touching the floor. Her head was tilted back and to one side; a second, yawning mouth, where her throat had been, gaped at him; her blood washed over her shoulders, her eyes lifeless slits, as though squinting at something she couldn’t quite see. A single word had been cut across her breasts—Slut—and the incisions had dribbled blood across her belly.
Alex’s mouth hung open, and his body shook in violent spasms. He crawled forward, oblivious to any need for self-preservation. Then struggling up, using her legs to support himself, he clung to her swaying body. A low moan, growing slowly to a howl, flowed from him.
When Antoine and his men came through the tunnels, they found Alex kneeling on the dirt-covered floor, cradling Stephanie in his arms. He was staring straight ahead, seeing nothing other than whatever grotesque scenario played across his mind.
Antoine motioned his men forward, signaling with his head that they should check the area. But he knew it was useless. Ludwig was not there, had not been for hours from the look of the pale, lifeless husk Alex hugged tenderly to his chest. Antoine moved next to him and knelt, gently stroking his head, his voice soft as though comforting a small child.
“We must go, Alex. We must go and call the police. Let them do what must be done for her.” He nodded to one of his men, who knelt and began to lift Stephanie from Alex’s arms. His grip tightened, but his mind didn’t seem to register the fact. Gently the man pried his hands loose and lifted the body up, and Antoine engulfed Alex’s shoulders in one bear-like arm and raised him to his feet.
“We will go now, Alex.”
Alex’s head snapped around, glaring into his “uncle’s” face.
“And then we will find this pig, and we will slaughter him,” Antoine said, his voice still soft, almost as if reciting the words of a lullaby.
Alex’s eyes glowed like coals, and his lips began to move, but no words could be heard.
Ludwig stood at the rail of the ship and watched the pilot boat pull away, headed back to shore. In a few days he would be in Libya and he would force himself to forget his failure. Then he would concentrate on the execution of the American general he had marked for death back in Germany. He raised one hand, gently touching the bandages that again covered the wound on his cheek. But first he would heal. First the wounds he had suffered would be allowed to fade from him. All of them.
The boy ran across the street, straight for the man dressed in the uniform of a Stasi colonel. The man stood tall and rigid, and as the boy drew closer, his body slowed instinctively upon seeing the hard, rigid eyes that dominated the man’s face.
“I have spoken to your teacher,” the man said, his voice low and cold. “I have told you what I expect,” he said. “What I do not expect is for my son to be a disgrace to me. The teacher tells me that others in your class are doing work beyond what you are capable of doing. How do you explain this?”
The boy was seven and his lips began to tremble as he tried to speak. The man glared down at him, and the boy lowered his eyes, staring at the glistening riding boots that stood, feet splayed apart, before him.
“I will do better,” the boy said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Look at me!”
The man’s voice stung him like a whip, and the boy’s head snapped up.
A gloved hand lashed out, stinging his cheek.
“You will do better,” the man snapped back.
&
nbsp; Ludwig’s eyes glared at the sea. How he hated his father, he thought. How he still hated him, even all these years after his death.
He turned away from the rail and walked along the deck, headed aft, where the passageway that led to his cabin was located.
Libya would be warm, he told himself. If nothing else, Libya would be warm.
CHAPTER
13
Alex awoke in a large bedroom on the second floor of the Pisani house. He had been brought there the previous night, although the trip itself existed in a haze: the climbing of the stairs, undressing, falling into bed, all the stuff of somnambulists. Now he was awake, naked beneath the covers, lying on his back, his mind replaying every moment, every vision. And he was still trembling, with fear, or rage, or madness, he was not certain.
There was a small crack in the ceiling that ran wildly for a few feet, then disappeared. It became the yawning wound in Stephanie’s throat and remained. He turned on his side, staring blindly at the furniture on that side of the room. Old and highly polished furniture, older than himself—antiques, he supposed—furniture that would exist long after he was dead. Unless someone destroyed it first.
A tree, to a piece of wood, to a fashioned item of furniture. Something inanimate, something dead, that would outlive the living.
The door to the bedroom opened and Antoine entered, carrying a tray of croissants and butter and coffee. He crossed the room, placed the tray on a bedside table, then pulled up a chair and sat next to Alex’s head.
“It’s good you’re awake,” he said. “It is time we began.”
Alex sat up, swung his legs out of the bed, and reached out for the coffee Antoine had already poured.
He looked thinner, less powerful naked, Antoine thought. But he supposed most men did.
“My men are already working,” he said. “Yours as well. I took the liberty of calling your man Kolshak. He too is hunting.”
“Kolshak won’t be able to do what’s needed.” Alex’s voice was cold and flat, lacking any emotion. It momentarily surprised Antoine, then pleased him. The man had recovered from the previous night, when he had found him sitting like a vegetable, holding the woman’s body. Antoine had been unable to understand it as anything more than a terrible weakness. Now it was gone.
“Why do you say this?” Antoine asked.
Alex gulped the coffee down, then poured another cup. “The only way we’ll find him quickly is to pull in every sympathizer we know about, everyone who’s ever aided a terrorist, been part of a terrorist organization—even on the fringe—everyone who’s ever worked with the Russians, or any other East bloc intelligence agency, and get it out of them by whatever means we have to use.” Alex put the cup down. “And we’re not allowed to do that. We have to work through SDECE, or the police, or both, and by the time that can be arranged, Ludwig will be sitting in Moscow, or any other fucking place he wants to be.” He looked up. “Kolshak won’t break that agreement. He knows one complaint by a foreign national, and the agency’s in the shit.”
Antoine looked straight into Alex’s eyes for the first time, and found them like his voice, flat and without emotion. He thought he could detect pain beneath the surface—was certain it had to be there—but if it was, it was hidden deep, deeper than anyone but the man himself would ever go.
“We have … collected some people,” Antoine said, offering a shrug that seemed to say: What else would we do? “But they will never complain to the police. They understand us—we have made sure of that.”
“Have you gotten anything?” Alex’s body tightened in anticipation, like a spring suddenly coiled.
“Little other than rumors that someone important was in the old city—in the Arab quarter.” Antoine smiled. “But we have someone now, a doctor who is known to do work for the communists. If Ludwig was wounded, as you say, he is the one they would go to.”
“What has he told you?” Alex’s voice showed no trace of excitement. It was like someone discussing the price of beef, Antoine thought. In many ways he was like his father, Antoine told himself. The forced patrician reserve that must never show a crack. But Alex was more human than Piers had ever hoped to be, even if he hid it well. And that was his flaw—a dangerous one for a man disposed to kill.
“I told my men to leave him for us,” Antoine explained. “He is in a room in one of the whorehouses not far from my nightclub. We can be there in only a few minutes.”
Alex stood without speaking and began pulling on his clothes. Cold and calm, like a man readying himself for a day at the office. Yes, very much like his father, Antoine thought. But not enough. Not nearly enough. It was something, he knew, that Alex would not be pleased to hear.
The room was on the third floor of a onetime tenement in the city’s Opera district, reached by a narrow staircase that opened into a small central room that had a simple hotel counter with a bank of numbered keys hanging behind it. The counter—unmanned now—allowed customers to “rent” rooms in which they would just happen to find a beautiful young woman whose official job was that of a chambermaid. It was a simple guise against any police crackdown, something that happened rarely now. But it was a custom from days past, and the “clerks” who ran the desks were faintly disguised bouncers who kept order by whatever means necessary.
A series of numbered doors led off the central room, and as Antoine and Alex approached, a man standing before one opened it for them.
The room was no bigger than a good-sized bedroom, with a bed, two wooden chairs, a low table, a small dresser, and a bidet. A middle-aged man sat in one of the chairs, his arms and legs bound to it with rope. There was a look of abject fear in his eyes, and his jaw trembled. The low table had been drawn up in front of him; his pants were opened, and his penis lay atop the table, held there by a taut piece of string tied to its end. Next to his penis a meat cleaver was embedded in the tabletop. Several scars in the wood indicated the cleaver’s cutting edge had been adequately demonstrated.
Antoine pulled up the second wooden chair and sat before the man. “You know who I am?” he asked without preamble.
The man nodded. “I know,” he said, barely able to get the words out.
“How do you know?” Antoine asked.
“The newspapers,” the man said.
Antoine nodded. “They say terrible things about me, do they not?”
“Yes.”
Antoine shrugged. “Well, they are true.” He tilted his head to the side, studying the man, almost as though he were deciding whether or not to eat him. He suddenly clapped his hands and began rubbing the palms as if to warm them. The sound made the man jump in place.
“Let me tell you what we know,” Antoine continued, seeming not to notice the man’s fear. “We know you are a doctor and a communist.” Antoine stared into his eyes. “I do not like communists. I have never liked communists. Mostly I have killed them when they interfered with my business. But if they haven’t, I have simply ignored them as the unimportant insects they are. Do you understand?”
The man nodded, his jaw trembling too hard to reply with words.
“Another thing we know is that you treated a man recently for a gunshot wound. He also was a communist. Of the German variety.”
Antoine sat back in his chair, folded his hands across his belly, and motioned toward Alex with his head. “Now, this man you see behind me, he is my nephew, a member of my family.” He emphasized the final word. “Last night, this man you treated—this man you offered your help—he murdered my nephew’s wife.”
The man’s eyes darted to Alex, then back to Antoine. “I-I didn’t know,” he stammered. “I had no way t-t-to know.”
Antoine waved an impatient hand before the man’s face. “None of that matters,” he snapped. “This man has offended me. He has attacked my family, attacked its honor. Normally, anyone who helped him would share in that offense, and would pay a price for doing so. And that price would be a heavy one.” Antoine stared down at the man’s penis. “If it w
ere only up to me,” he said, “this pathetic little weapon of yours would already be in a box on its way to your mistress.” He shrugged. “But my nephew will decide that.”
“Where is the man you treated, Doctor?” Alex’s voice came from behind Antoine, and even though he had been standing there throughout, it seemed to surprise the man, causing him to again jump in place.
“I-I don’t know. They never told me.”
“Cut it off! Now!” Alex snapped.
“No. No … please. Monsieur, you must believe me. I was told nothing. Nothing at all. I was only brought there to treat him, and I was told only they needed treatment quickly because they were taking him out of the country.” The man’s eyes had followed Antoine’s hand to the cleaver, and the terror had forced him to speak so rapidly Alex had difficulty following his French. The man began to sob as Antoine—his hand still on the cleaver—turned and repeated what he had said in English.
“Who brought you to the man?” Alex’s voice was low and cold, and it seemed to intensify the man’s terror.
“Comrade Bugayev,” he said, his voice almost a whine. “I believe he is KGB, even though he has never told me so in the years I’ve known him. But he never tells me anything. Nothing of importance. I simply do what I am asked.”
“Where did you treat him?” Alex stared down at the doctor, his eyes boring into him with open hatred.
“An apartment in the old quarter. I will take you there. I will show you.” He looked back at Antoine’s hand still on the handle of the cleaver, then back to Alex. “I will do anything you ask, monsieur. Anything. Anything. Only please—”
“Shut your mouth,” Antoine snapped. “You will show us now. And if we believe you, maybe you will save that useless prick of yours.”
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