Corsican Honor

by William Heffernan

  The apartment was empty, as Alex knew it would be. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom, staring down at the bed on which Stephanie must have been held. The apartment was only a block from the Street of Pistols, from the basement where he had found her, and there was no blood here. Ludwig had led her away, walked her through the street, or through one of the tunnels, and had butchered her there.

  Butchered. It was the only word to describe what had been done to her. Hung up and slaughtered like a farm animal. Then left hanging to bleed out like a piece of meat being readied for market.

  He turned back to the main room. The doctor, seated in a chair with men on either side of him, stared back with imploring eyes.

  “Where did they take him?”

  The doctor began to tremble, realizing quickly that the threat to him had not ended. “They did not tell me.” The words were spoken rapidly in a shaky contralto.

  Antoine, who had been standing behind the doctor, moved forward to glare down at him. The image of the hulking Corsican had its effect.

  “I understand just a little Russian,” the doctor began, his voice still high and uncertain. “The men who drove me here, they seemed to dislike the man, and they said something about him going to that madman Kadafy. That’s what they said: ‘that madman Kadafy.’ They said that was where he belonged.”

  “When?” It was Antoine this time, his tone unmistakable.

  “They didn’t say. But Bugayev said they were in a hurry. Bugayev knows. You must ask him. He knows. I am sure he knows.”

  Alex turned his back on the man. “Let him go,” he said, then listened as the man’s hands were untied and he went rushing and stumbling for the door.

  Antoine came up behind Alex and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m a curious man,” he said. “If this fool had not told us what he did, would you have had me cut off his prick?”

  “No,” Alex said. He glanced into Antoine’s face, then turned and started for the door. “I would have done it myself.”

  “I will help you, of course,” Antoine said. “But this is a mistake. And you will pay a great price if you do it.”

  Alex gave him a flat, cold stare, his features showing no hint of condemnation or disappointment. “If you think the repercussions for you and your men will be too great, I’ll understand.” His voice matched the look on his face.

  They were in the back of Antoine’s car, moving slowly through the city’s clogged streets. Antoine shook his head. “There will be no price for me. My faction serves your government for certain considerations. It has been so for thirty-five years now. And you, Alex. You are the representative of that government. Even if you tell them later, that you were acting without authority”—Antoine made a weighing gesture with each hand—“that this was a matter of personal honor, we will simply say we were ignorant of this. We thought we were serving our American friends. The men in Washington will believe that.”

  “Are you sure?” Alex asked.

  Antoine offered a rare smile. Alex decided it was very much like one a bear might give—if bears smiled—upon finding something special to eat.

  “Yes, I am sure. Americans are a very strange people. Especially in matters dealing with others who are foreign to them.” He served up his unnerving smile once again. “They always believe things are as they would have them be. They never let reality get in the way of their thinking. They simply choose to ignore it as an irrelevance.” Antoine shrugged, his eyes offering an apology. “I hope I do not offend your sense of pride in your country,” he said.

  Alex felt a tinge of amusement, something Antoine’s Corsican philosophy always managed to produce. It was a clever insult. And he was sure it was intended as such. If he accepted it, he accepted that his government operated under a principle of naive arrogance. If he took offense, he too was choosing to ignore reality.

  “You have an interesting view of my government, Uncle,” he said. “I hope, for your sake, they see things as you expect them to.”

  “I am certain of it,” Antoine said. “Just as I am certain of the consequences for you.” He reached out and laid a hand on Alex’s arm. “I can protect you from many things,” he said. “But I am not certain I can protect you from all the men the Russians will send if you do this thing. I think even your own country will turn its back on you.”

  “No. They won’t,” Alex said.

  Antoine raised a doubtful eyebrow.

  “They’ll join them and help hunt me down,” Alex said.

  Alex waited, listening to Kolshak’s words of sympathy and outrage come across the telephone. He was in a phone booth on the street, the unparalleled bustle of Marseilles at midday surging about him. He felt like a cork in an angry sea as people pushed past him, jockeying for advantage on the crowded street, nudging him back until he was pressed against the phone, smiling or shrugging apologies as they stepped on his shoes or ignored him completely, considering any intrusion on his person the price to be expected for impeding the flow of humanity.

  Alex turned his back on the crowd, choosing to take the blows from behind, cupping his free hand over the mouthpiece so he could be heard.

  “I appreciate it, Stan. I mean that. But there’s something you have to do now. And it’s an order. I want you to pull everybody off the streets. Nobody works on this thing. Nobody.”

  Kolshak started to object, but Alex cut him off. “I’m going to take an action, Stan. And it’s something the agency can’t be involved in.” Kolshak began to object, rushing to tell him that Pat Cisco had called, urging him to reach out for him before he did anything.

  “I don’t have time,” Alex said. “You’ll just have to trust my judgment on that. But you get back to the general and tell him what I said. And tell him I said this was personal, and he should get the word out on that.”

  Kolshak began to object again, but Alex cut him off. “Just do it, Stan. This is real cover-your-ass time. People will get hurt if you don’t.”

  He heard Kolshak’s muttered epithet, and knew it meant he would do as he was told. He was pissed, but he’d do it.

  “Thanks,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  Sergei Bugayev came out of the restaurant and stood on the sidewalk, picking his teeth as he stared at the fishing boats tied up to the quay of the Vieux Port. The bouillabaisse had been extraordinary, as it always was in this restaurant. And even the price, which was great, had not stopped him from coming there every Friday, a day that many French Catholics still devoted to fish, and which Bugayev believed, inspired the chefs to even greater heights.

  He drew in a satisfied breath of sea air, then turned and started up the crowded street for the walk back to his consulate office.

  The body pressed against his side, and he could feel the pressure of the pistol’s barrel in his ribs.

  “Good afternoon, Sergei. I see you’re still stuffing yourself with bouillabaisse every Friday. Bad habit, that. Don’t your trainers teach the perils of falling into a pattern?”

  Bugayev glanced up into Alex’s face and found none of the chiding amusement that was carried in his voice.

  “You can’t be serious, Alex. This breaks all the rules. You know that.”

  “This is personal, Sergei. There are no rules.” He jabbed the gun barrel firmly into Bugayev’s ribs. “That car up ahead. In the backseat. I don’t mind blowing out your kneecap and dragging you if I have to.”

  Bugayev shrugged and shook his head. “I regret what this will cost you, Alex.”

  “Just make sure you’re around to see it, my friend. It will be a wonderful story to tell your grandchildren, if you live to have any.”

  Bugayev entered the rear seat of Antoine’s car and found himself pressed between the hulking Corsican and Alex. The pistol was still firmly planted in his ribs.

  He looked at Antoine, trying to measure him with his eyes, immediately realizing it wouldn’t work. “So the Corsicans are in this too,” he said.

  “We serve our American friends. It is no
secret, Russian.”

  Bugayev glanced at Alex. He had said it was personal, and now Pisani had indicated it was business. Either Alex had lied to the Corsican, or they were simply covering him from future difficulty. It didn’t matter, really. There was no way the KGB would agree to move against the Corsican milieu. That would only produce a suicidal body count that would benefit no one.

  “Where are you taking me?” Bugayev asked.

  “To a basement in the Arab quarter,” Alex said. “It’s a place your friend Ludwig found to his liking. I thought I might give it a try myself.”

  Bugayev’s wrists were tied to the same rafter where Stephanie’s body had hung only twelve hours earlier. His feet stood squarely on the floor stained with her blood.

  The police had finished their forensic investigation, and the two officers left to guard the crime scene had been persuaded by the Corsicans to make a long, profitable visit to a nearby cafe.

  Alex stood in front of the Russian, far enough back so he was out of the bloodstained circle. It had taken all his strength to return to the basement, and even now he could feel his body trembling with rage as the lingering smells of blood and death assaulted his nostrils.

  “You know what happened here,” he said softly. There was no question, just a simple declarative sentence.

  “I had nothing to do with it, Alex,” Bugayev said. “If I had been here, I would have stopped it.”

  “But you just took a walk,” Alex said. “You washed your hands of your paid killer and let him play out his game.”

  “What choice did I have?” Bugayev’s voice was angry. More with himself than with Alex. “My job was to transport him. Nothing else. These animals we both use, you know how unpredictable they are. It’s why we use them. They will do what no sane man would even consider.”

  “Spare me your philosophy on the evils of contemporary intelligence,” Alex snapped. “I want to know where that sonofabitch is, and I want to know it now.”

  Bugayev let out a long breath. “You know I can tell you nothing. Admit nothing. If I could kill him myself, I would gladly do it. But we all play by the same insane rules, Alex. If I tell you nothing, I can forget what happened here. If you force me to talk, I must make a report. It will be my duty.”

  And your head if they find out you didn’t, Alex told himself.

  Bugayev looked at him, chilled by the mask that had taken over Alex’s face. “And if you kill me, my friend, it will not be difficult for Moscow Center to deduce the purpose and cause of my death.”

  Antoine came out of the shadows, where he had been standing, and walked up to the Russian, bringing their faces only a foot apart. He had stepped into the bloodstained circle on the floor as casually as if it had not existed. The sight of him doing so had made Alex wince.

  “I want to tell you a story, Russian,” Antoine began. “It has become something of a Corsican legend, even though it happened fairly recently. Around the time of the First World War.

  “It is about a countryman of mine. A man called Buonaparte Sartene. He is dead now. But before his death he became the head of a great faction in the milieu. One that virtually controlled Southeast Asia.”

  Antoine waved his hand, dismissing what he had said as irrelevant. “But then, at the time of this story, he was just a young man living in Calvi, content with the simple life.” Antoine paused. His eyes hardened.

  “There were French soldiers in the area, and one of them decided he wanted Buonaparte’s young sister. The child was only fifteen or sixteen, but this didn’t matter to the French pig and two of his friends. They simply took her away and raped and killed her. Buonaparte found her body, and in her hand was the military insignia of her killer. She had ripped it from his collar in an attempt to save her honor.”

  Antoine paused again, his face drawing even closer to Bugayev’s. “Buonaparte was only a young man then, really little more than a child himself. But he tracked the men down and found them sleeping in their tent one night. And he saw the missing insignia on the man’s tunic. He killed the first two men—the friends—simply and quickly. But the man who had killed his sister—the one with the missing insignia—he killed slowly, and with pleasure. They found him staked out to the ground, his arms and legs spread—much the way your arms are spread now. And his eyes were missing. Taken out and replaced with his testicles. While he was still alive, it is said. And his prick was cut off and stuffed into his mouth. The newspapers said the man died from a loss of blood.”

  Antoine stepped back and turned to one of his men. “Get some rope,” he said. “And tie the Russian’s legs so they are spread apart.”

  Bugayev drew a long, trembling breath and stared past Antoine to Alex. “Ludwig is on a ship bound for Libya,” he said. “It is a Russian vessel called the Midnight Sun. It will dock in Tripoli in two days.”

  “Thank you, Sergei,” Alex said.

  CHAPTER

  14

  The men in the gray suits gathered.

  Unlike a meeting of diplomats there were no reporters, no photographers. There was no ballyhoo that members of opposing sides were gathering together. The men who ran the various intelligence agencies operated as they lived: in secret. This was a meeting where rules, and the violation of rules, had to be discussed. And there had to be rules in the community of spies. Otherwise they could not perform their function and would surely cease to exist. And governments could not successfully operate without them. It was simply not possible to have workable agreements among politicians unless each side knew what the other was likely to do. Wars resulted from miscalculations on that basic point.

  Rear Admiral Walter Hennesey entered the large stone house, set far back from the banks of Lake Geneva. The house was owned by the Swiss government, and had been made available—as it often was—for delicate meetings between nations when privacy and secrecy were considered vital.

  Hennesey was a portrait of physical extremes. Tall, overweight, and just turned sixty. Like most career military men, he wore civilian clothes poorly, always appearing slightly rumpled, slightly ill at ease to be out of uniform, very much uncertain about how the various parts should be put together. There were simply too many choices about matching one piece, one color to another. But that uncertainty did not make him unsure of himself. He was the newly appointed assistant deputy director, operations, of the CIA. And only two men in the agency had more power than he, and one of them—the director—was a politician whose true function was to listen to the advice of the professionals beneath him, pass those positions on to the president, when necessary, then close his eyes and hope for the best. That, in truth, left Hennesey’s boss, the deputy director, operations, as the most powerful. And he was a man who believed in delegating authority. That, Hennesey knew, gave him more power than any member of the cabinet and, in some cases, the president himself. For there was no accountability in his job, except on those rare occasions—and they were truly rare, despite what newspapers would have one believe—that the agency screwed up and got caught in the act. Oh, they screwed up often—Hennesey would be quick to admit that. But they only occasionally got caught.

  The man waiting for Hennesey in the building’s foyer was Richard Giordano, Pat Cisco’s right-hand man in the DIA—and fellow wop, Hennesey told himself. But his presence also meant that Cisco was prepared to play hardball to save his agent, and that was not Hennesey’s brief. He would like it to be. He was a longtime friend of Alex’s father, Piers Moran. And he was a firm believer that stepping on Russian toes—stepping very hard indeed—was not something to be discouraged. But that wasn’t a practical position. And that was what the CIA wanted. A practical position. And, after all, Alex Moran was not one of their own.

  “You ready to get this thing over with?” Giordano chirped as Hennesey reached his side. He was a short, swarthy man with a stocky build and an unusually high voice. He was balding badly, but it gave him a somewhat distinguished look, as did the clothing he wore. He was a career intelligence officer
, non-military, and the tailoring was impeccable. It annoyed Hennesey to an irrational degree.

  Hennesey took out a pipe and reamed the bowl before filling it, stuck it in his mouth, and allowed it to remain unlit. The pipe was a tool more than a pleasure. It gave him time to think, and he was constantly playing with it.

  “Seems like we’re rather between the proverbial rock and hard place,” Hennesey said. “What do you propose?”

  “What we don’t propose is selling our man down the river,” Giordano snapped.

  “No one wants that,” Hennesey said. “But, as you know, this has gone all the way to the president. And, while he sympathizes with Moran—finds what happened to his wife inexcusable—he’s not willing to risk open warfare among the agencies. Yours, ours, the KGB, whomever.”

  “I know that. Cisco spoke with him,” Giordano said. “But we want time to bring him in. If possible.”

  “We can agree to that,” Hennesey said. “But we can’t reject a sanction, or any willingness to cooperate. That’s our position. Our government’s position. If we can get him to give it up and accept suitable reprimand, all to the good. But if the Ruskies get to him first, we can’t stop them.” Hennesey paused to light his pipe. “Do you know where he is?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.

  Giordano shook his head.

  “Do the Corsicans have him?”

  “Who the hell knows what the Corsicans have or don’t have? If they do, they’re not saying. Moran’s like family to the Pisani brothers. If he wasn’t, and they had him, they’d give him to us. For a price.” Giordano spoke the final words with contempt.

  Just like any dago bastard would, Hennesey thought. He drew long and heavily on his pipe. “Well, let’s see what our Russian brothers are willing to do,” he said.

  “The KGB can only accept the strictest application of the agreement.”

  Boris Rostoff was a man of equal rank to Hennesey in the KGB, a fact intended as a clear message that Moscow Center placed extreme importance on the matter under discussion. It was the same reason Hennesey and Giordano had been sent. All messages delivered and received, Hennesey thought.