Beloved Enemy (27 page)

“Krofft believes absolutely in McClure’s guilt.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m naturally suspicious of airtight cases. Life is a messy affair, I’ve found. A veritable shit-box.”

“Too true.” It seemed clear Marshall was thinking of his own personal situation. “What are you proposing?”

“An alliance of sorts.”

He looked at her askance. “Krofft will surely see that as a betrayal.”

“That’s why we won’t tell him.”

“I have to say, Midwood, betrayal is behavior unbecoming.”

She leaned forward. “Listen to me, Director. We have entered the labyrinth; without me, you’ll never get out.”

Marshall shook his head. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“To be honest, life has never allowed me a choice.”

Marshall considered her for some moments. “Continue,” he said at length.

Jonatha nodded. “I’ve been thinking that Paull’s murder might be an attempt to stop Atlas’s deployment.” She stared out the window for a long moment. “If that is, in fact, the case, then the Syrian knows less about Atlas than he needs to.”

“Yes,” Marshall said thoughtfully. “On the other hand, the threat still exists, and with time passing and Atlas continuing its rollout, the Syrian is likely to become desperate.”

Jonatha turned back to him. “Maybe that will lead to a mistake.”

*   *   *

With arms like iron bands, the faceless male continued to solidify his grip on Annika’s neck by increasing the torque. At that point, she realized he was about to break her neck. She knew the technique—it had been taught to her by an Israeli spymaster years ago. She also knew that if he managed to lock the grip in place, she would never get out of it. She arched her back, but he pulled her off her feet. She used her elbows, the heels of her feet, knowing she was expending her last reserves of energy. But even as her elbow struck her assailant she knew it was useless; his side was as hard as corrugated steel.

The smell of his wintergreen breath wafted over her as he laughed softly, strangely, deep in the back of his throat.

“You’re done, darlin’,” he said in the slurry accent of the American South. “Dead’n’buried.”

Annika’s vision grew spotty, her lungs were desperate for oxygen, and a terrible weakness invaded her extremities, negating any counteraction. The trouble was she wasn’t thinking clearly. Her thoughts had been muffled in the past, in the ritual of placating the Jewish undead. She had allowed the present to slip away, her usual vigilance subsumed by a superstition she only half believed.

She was fast losing consciousness. Her fingers felt cold and unresponsive. A sharp pain gathering in her neck pointed to her life being over within seconds.

And then she heard something—a sound only a golem could make—inhuman, undead. A gout of hot blood drenched her right shoulder and cheek, stuck in her hair like sleet. An evil, retching sound invaded her right ear, then was just as quickly ripped away. Bones cracked from behind her. More blood fountained, and then the terrible weight of her assailant fell away, as if he had been a cardboard cutout set aflame. She turned, despite the sea of pain in her chest and neck, and saw the face of her savior—her golem, risen from the dead.

It was Rolan.

*   *   *

All along, Nona had her suspicions about who had committed the triple murder that included Senator Herren’s aide. When the autopsies came back, she was certain. By the pattern of the mutilations, which happened postmortem, Nona had her perp. He hadn’t been after Herren’s aide—the aide had been collateral damage. The murders weren’t political in nature, as everyone including Dye suspected and feared, but they were just as inflammatory. The perp, a neo-Nazi who went by the street name Hella Goode, had been after the two men with Herren’s aide. They were gay; Hella Goode had a history of involvement in hate crimes, though no one had been able to pin anything on him, save being drunk and disorderly or pissing on the front door of a police precinct.

Now, however, Nona had Goode. A partial fingerprint had been recovered from the eyelid of one of the men. It was a match with Goode’s. Nona, knowing Goode better than she would have liked, took with her a squad from Tactical, fully armed and armored. These precautions were critical; Goode did not go easily or well. Half-a-dozen of his men were either killed or severely wounded before Nona, with a pair of Tactical, dragged Goode bodily from his headquarters along a burned-out street in the dangerous southeastern quarter of D.C.

Downtown, as she was processing Goode and what was left of his gang, Dye appeared, trailed by a larger than usual posse. She noticed newspeople from all the local media trailing after him.

“Good work, Chief.” He pumped her hand, his telegenic smile broadcast throughout the ground floor. “Go get yourself cleaned up and then join me back here for a press conference.”

Nona spent no more than ten minutes in the restroom. She looked in the mirror and congratulated herself on a job well done. She wondered if she would get a commendation for keeping Dye’s nuts out of the fire lit by Senator Herren.

Returning to the headquarters rotunda, she found the press conference already under way. Dye was in the eye of the media storm. She was further stunned to see Senator Herren standing by his side. She heard Senator Herren’s sanctimonious eulogy to an aide he scarcely knew or cared about. She heard Dye in full political smear mode talk about the successful wrap of the case. He made no mention of the two gay men with the aide or that the murders were hate crimes. Instead, without stating it outright, he implied that the murders were politically motivated, that the perpetrator was in custody, and that justice would be performed to the full extent of the law.

“This is the heart and soul of the democratic process,” he wound up his web of omissions, misleading statements, and outright lies. “We cannot, we
will
not allow those who seek to attack our great system of government to go undiscovered or unpunished. Write that in large type. That is the unyielding backbone of my administration.”

Nona turned around, pushing through the throng, making her way back to the restroom, where she made it into one of the stalls just in time before she vomited.

*   *   *

How do you look for a needle in a haystack? This is what Redbird sometimes did. While it was true that the bulk of his assignments were what he called “straight shots,” where Dickinson sent him the identity, location, and movements of his target, there were times, as now, when it was up to him to find the target and liquidate him.

So how do you look for a needle in a haystack? Redbird chose to magnetize the haystack, so that the needle he was searching for would be drawn north. This was an inexact analogy, to say the least, nevertheless it best described Redbird’s methodology.

Having arrived in Zurich, his first stop was his armorer, a man named Heinrich. Redbird didn’t know his surname, and didn’t care to. Heinrich was a technician at an upscale watchmaker on Bahnhofstrasse. Redbird had become aware of him in the usual manner of his kind—through a personal recommendation, in this case, a very dangerous Welshman of Redbird’s acquaintance. Over the years, Heinrich had proved absolutely reliable.

He was a rotund, affable German-Swiss with ruddy cheeks, huge blue eyes, and ginger side whiskers that made him look like he’d stepped out of a previous century. He was always pleased to see Redbird because, as he once put it, “you arrive with the most unusual requests.”

“And what is it this time, my friend?” Heinrich said, when he had led Redbird into his cramped workshop in the rear of the store. “How can I help?”

Redbird set out a thick wad of Swiss francs.

“Must be something special.” Heinrich eyed the pile, but did not touch it. To do so would violate propriety and his image as a gentleman of the old school.

“I want to be police,” Redbird said. “Someone high up—an inspector, perhaps.”

“But not from around here.”

“Indeed not.”

Heinrich nodded. “Geneva, then. The other side of the country.”

“How soon?”

Heinrich eyed the thick wad of francs. “Three hours.”

“Fine. I need to be armed.”

“You will be,” Heinrich said.

“Also, I need the name of the dirtiest detective in the city.”

Heinrich laughed. “This is Switzerland—we have no dirty police.” He gestured with his head. “Now go get cleaned up or have something to eat or pray—whatever it is you people do in the silences between acts of violence.”

Redbird grinned and strode out of the shop.

Bahnhofstrasse was a whirl of regimented energy. There was something about the Swiss that rubbed Redbird the wrong way. They were such hypocrites—wallowing in their reputation as upright law-abiding citizens, detached from the petty rivalries, conflicts, and antagonisms infecting the rest of the world. But underneath that facade, they could be as devious, underhanded, and treacherous as anyone else he could think of, possibly more so.

Checking his mobile, he found a nearby branch of the bank he used. He was running low on cash—he had mostly euros, anyway. While he was on an assignment he used local currency to pay for everything. Cash was impossible to trace, unless it was counterfeit. Accessing the account Dickinson had set up for him, he withdrew approximately a third more than he thought he’d need. Early in his career, he had been caught short, and he’d vowed it would never happen again.

Outside, he watched the trams wheeling by like stately nineteenth-century women in their extravagant bustle dresses. He strolled down the wide boulevard until he came to the large corner building whose second-floor iron balcony was festooned with pink flowers. Its large street-level plate-glass windows were filled with chocolates of every variety. He turned into Sprüngli, Zurich’s most famous chocolatier, bought himself far too much, and began eating even before he had left the shop.

Down at the lake, he watched a young Italian woman laughing as her lover fed her ice cream. He instantly thought of how deeply Dandy had loved ice cream, and this reminded him of how everything had gone to shit in Bangkok. Abruptly sickened, he threw the remaining chocolate in a trash bin and walked away.

Three hours, to the second, after he had left the watchmaker’s establishment, he returned. Heinrich was waiting for him.

“Everything in order?”

Heinrich, beaming, set before him the complicated ID.

“Florian Birchler,” Redbird said as he picked it up. “Inspector, Federal Criminal Police, Einsatzgruppe TIGRIS.” He looked up at Heinrich. “Nice touch. You’ve outdone yourself.”

“And as a member of the special operations unit, you’re required to carry a sidearm.” Heinrich slid a 9mm Glock in its sleek black leather holster over to Redbird, along with a Ka-Bar Marine knife. “Just in case,” he added.

Redbird nodded. “And the last?”

Heinrich smiled thinly. “That would be Detective Quentin Gensler.” He showed Redbird a xeroxed photo of a man who looked like a baked potato. “Quite a character is Herr Gensler. Runs an illicit gambling and prostitution ring on the side, maybe drugs, too, I’m not sure about that.” He spun across a sheet. “Here’re some interesting facts about him.” Heinrich shrugged. “As you can see, he’s as dirty as they come.”

“You’ve earned your pay, Heinrich,” Redbird said, gathering what he had come for. “Be seeing you.”

*   *   *

Pyotr Legere, staring at his face in the hotel room mirror, saw someone he did not recognize. He had peeled off the bandages, despite Dr. Scheiwold’s express orders to keep it undisturbed for at least three days. He was confronted by the thoroughly unpleasant sight of his swollen cheek, black and blue, the black stitches like railroad tracks keeping his flesh from bursting through the inflamed skin.

How was he ever going to recover from this? How could he ever look at himself in the mirror again? He’d have to live the rest of his life like a vampire, all mirrors banished from his residences, both temporary and permanent.

Then he began to laugh, not only at his situation but at himself. Over the years, Legere had discovered laughing at himself was often the best medicine. In the darkest hours it put his mind in a place of calm that allowed him to think his way back into the light.

And this was a very dark hour, indeed. He had warned his father not to involve himself with the Syrian, but the elder Legere had been dazzled by the promises of riches the Syrian had dangled. Not that the Syrian had lied. In the five years of their business marriage, riches had, indeed, come the Legeres’ way—more even than the Syrian had promised. But at what cost?

Swollen with money and power, his father pushed him down even further, keeping secret key elements of the partnership that, try as he might, Pyotr could not ferret out. This humiliation was what he saw when he stared into the mirror. His wound was the cost writ large and right across his face. No matter how skilled Dr. Scheiwold was, Pyotr would know what was there, as if each separate affront, each abasement was written there under his skin, like the multiplied arms of an unwanted tattoo.

He had borne the humiliations while the money was rolling in, but starting eight months ago, the gravy train had jumped the tracks. He had contacted the Syrian numerous times since then but had gotten only nonanswers in reply. They all amounted to one thing: have patience.

It was about six weeks ago when Pyotr’s father had called.

“We have a problem with our major supplier.”
He meant the Syrian.

“How serious?”

“I think he’s running out of money.”

“How is that possible?”
Pyotr had asked.
“He’s richer than we are.”

“Two possibilities,”
his father had replied.
“Either he’s not as rich as we believed—which I doubt, considering the vastness of his organization—or he’s run into a problem accessing his cash hoard.”

“What about continuing cash flow from his businesses?”

“That’s sufficient to fund his organization, his purchases of guns and war materiel, and the
baksheesh
involved in the intricate planning of his terrorist raids.”