Catacombs (31 page)

"I don't think your lover will be of further use to us." he told Hecuba. "I'm going after Landreth myself."

KIALAMAHINDI HOSPITAL

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

May 15

M
ichael Belov, his left arm in a sling supplied by the Emergency Department of Kialamahindi Hospital, walked through the grounds at nightfall with the air of a man resigned to waiting many hours for his X rays to be developed.

He paused in the center garden to watch the tropical fish in a saline pool. The sun was setting, profusely reflected from the bronzed windows of the inverted pyramid that dominated the upper end of the dogleg hospital grounds. He nodded pleasantly to a bored guard, one of three patrolling with a .22-caliber submachine gun over one shoulder; he knew their patterns well by now. Toby Chapman hadn't reported seeing any guards the day before, so apparently he'd thrown quite a scare into Landreth, who had then complained to the head of the hospital: Dr. Kumenyere. A fourth guard was now permanently stationed by the padlocked gate of the hedge-enclosed compound fifty yards or so beyond the pyramid.

Belov moved on, in the direction of the pyramid and the helicopter landing pad.

He'd spent most of his afternoon at the hospital. An imaginary sprained wrist was his excuse. He had a permanent bump caused by a long-ago but harmless leak of synovial fluid from the wrist joint that lent credence to his complaint of injury. When he wasn't being examined, Belov prowled the grounds until he knew every path and doorway by heart. Having looked over the big generator shed, he briefly considered a blackout to cover his anticipated snatch of Henry Landreth. But to do it properly, while he was making good use of his time elsewhere, required plastic explosives and a timing device. The tools he had available were limited: a pair of heavy-duty wire clippers which could be concealed in one of the big cargo pockets of his bush jacket, a roll of filament tape. Also it was obvious that any kind of explosion would disturb the drowsy guards, inspire them to take some sort of furious, impetuous action that would surely be to his disadvantage even with the lights out. It was better to know where they were at all times, and work around them.

Just an hour ago he'd had a good look at his quarry. Landreth, deep in conversation with Dr. Kumenyere, had emerged from the pyramidal building and walked to the compound gates with him. Landreth seemed to be trying to convince his host of a course of action, which the doctor rejected with a solid shaking of his bent head. Landreth then produced from a pocket of his jacket what looked to be a letter.

Kumenyere glanced at it and shook his head again, smiling. Then he made an attempt to placate the Englishman. They stood face to face outside the gate, Kumenyere with a hand on Landreth's shoulder. Landreth shouted "We'll let Jumbe decide!" He turned on his heel and disappeared through the gates, which the guard promptly locked behind him.

Kumenyere remained in place for several seconds, stiff and erect as if he'd received a pole up his backside, staring after the departed Landreth. Then he shook his head wearily and returned to the pyramid, looking through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard as he walked.

With the light fast disappearing from the hospital grounds, Belov took off his sunglasses with the heavy French frames and reconnoitered once again. The guard on the compound gate was accustomed to seeing him by now and didn't rise from his campstool when Belov came within twenty feet of the fence.

He'd already picked his spot, where the fence made an abrupt angle away from the main hospital grounds. There, after dark, he couldn't be seen by guards or anyone else, unless they came around the corner. The fence wire was like cheap baling wire, and rusty. There was an overhead light in a metal shade where the fence made almost a right angle. But jacaranda trees grew in wild profusion along the shell path, the branches arching over the fence, a natural canopy that would all but eliminate the light from the low-wattage bulb.

Beside the path workmen had begun a slit trench for the installation of sewer pipes that were stacked nearby and loosely covered with a tarpaulin. The path, wide enough to accommodate a small sedan, jogged another hundred yards through the deserted, heavily planted back acreage of the hospital to an isolated gate with a guard post that would probably be attended at night. But it didn't matter.

Belov had worked out all the details but one–how to quickly remove the Englishman from the hospital grounds once he pried him out of his bungalow–when a blue Toyota hatchback drove toward him through the lower hospital grounds.

The black girl at the wheel skidded the Toyota to a stop, parked it a few feet to the right of the gate and parallel to the fence. She had her own key to the padlock on the gate, which she opened, chattering in Swahili with the guard.

So this was Nyshuri, Landreth's girl friend. Her presence would be a minor complication. But the hatchback, already headed in the right direction, was like a gift. Now it wouldn't be necessary to leave Landreth in the slit trench with a tarp over him while he brought a car down from the back gate.

There was little he could do until well after dark. He went back and sat for a while in the crowded anteroom of the Emergency Department, where no one paid attention to him. Then he dawdled over a meal in the cafeteria. About nine o'clock he saw Nyshuri in the kitchen of the cafeteria putting together a tray for herself and Henry Landreth. She left by a back door.

Belov had a second cup of coffee and read his horoscope in the Daily Mail, which promised him extravagant returns for diligent effort. Just what he wanted to hear. Five minutes before the cafeteria closed he strolled outside again.

The Toyota hatchback was still parked by the fence. The guard on the gate had been changed, from a young man with a ewe neck to a pot-bellied old man enjoying a cigarillo. Belov heard recorded music from Landreth's bungalow which he identified as Brahms' B-flat piano concerto. The dazzling beauty of the allegro non troppo flowed through his mind. Obviously, given the grandeur of the technique, the pianist was Russian, but which Russian? Then he had it: who else but Gilels? He hoped Landreth and his mistress were having a relaxing evening together.

To avoid the scrutiny and challenge of the new guard, whom he soon would have to kill, Belov circled around behind the massive inverted pyramid and dropped the sling he no longer needed in a dustbin. The path here was a mix of finely ground shell and dirt, which made for a more quiet approach to the compound fence at the point where he planned to break through.

The cutters were in the big cargo pocket on the right side of his bush jacket. In the left-hand pocket he had his sunglasses and a familiar-looking, small plastic bottle with a label identifying it as a common type of nasal decongestant spray manufactured in Switzerland. But the bottle contained something altogether different, a spray that removed the fatty acids from the nerve endings of the face (or
 
the genitalia, if one preferred), producing, for about the next thirty minutes, a condition of helpless agony. If the face was sprayed, then the victim also felt as if he were suffocating as the sinuses drained continually into the throat.

As he'd anticipated, Michael Belov had no difficulty reaching the fence unobserved. He paused for a few moments, gently pushing aside the broad leaves of the croton plants that covered the outside of the fence.

The virtuoso piano of Emil Gilels was louder. The bungalow was only about twenty feet away, at an angle. One story, overhanging roof, long front porch or verandah, with a smaller porch that might have been used for servants' quarters attached to the back of the bungalow. Belov heard a toilet flush. Inside a couple of lamps were lit, casting their light from the windows onto ground that was barren except for outbreaks of scrub palmetto, motley bougainvillea.

There was just enough light filtering down from the pole overhead to assist him in cutting a good-sized opening in the fence. The only trouble was, somebody had been there before him.

Belov suppressed his annoyance and dismay and stood perfectly still looking at the fence, ignoring the nighttime bugs whirling around his head. The wire had been cut to a height of six feet, bent inward, bent back again so that the intrusion wouldn't be readily noticeable. He let his own clippers fall back into the side pocket and took a longer look at the bungalow, at the possible places of concealment around it. There weren't many, so it didn't take him long to find his adversaries.

Two men crouched side by side in a clump of palmetto not far from the steps of the sagging back porch. His first thought was of the Americans, of Matthew Jade, perhaps; They had somehow come across the trail of the enigmatic Englishman. Not that it really mattered who they were. He knew they were up to no good, and had to be prevented from getting their hands on Landreth.

The piano concerto ended, and was too soon replaced by a shrill female vocalist who wanted to be taken to Funky Town. Nyshuri could be seen boogeying by a window. The bathroom light snapped on and Henry Landreth's spindly torso was visible in sections through the opaque glass louvers until he sat down. In the yard there was a tiny gleam of light as one of the waiting men exposed too much of the crystal face of his wristwatch.

Amateurs, Belov, thought; even so he wasn't anxious to tangle with them. But it had to be done.

One of the men, tall and lean, rose from the ground and moved swiftly to the back porch. He eased the screen door open and crept inside. But the rock music was loud and would have covered any incompetent moves on his part.

Belov slowly bent the cut wire of the fence inward again until there was enough of an opening for him to pass through. He took his large sunglasses from his pocket and disassembled them. One earpiece became a sheathed steel blade about three and a half inches long, thin and sharp. He waited until he was sure the tall man was occupied within the house, then squeezed through the fence and approached the man waiting on the grounds.

When he was just three feet behind the man, Belov cleared his throat softly.

Instead of diving forward out of the palmetto and rolling away in an immediate evasive move, the heavyset man looked up and around, rising instinctively on the balls of his feet and showing the whites of his startled eyes. He also exposed his throat. Belov could have cut it for him, but it might have taken the man thirty seconds or more to lose consciousness. He had already grunted once, in alarm. Belov thrust the blade through the outside corner of the man's left eye and rammed it into the brain while restraining with a fierce grip the pocketed hand that held an automatic. He let go of the knife and caught the man by the necktie with his free hand, lowered the dead weight silently to the ground. Then he retrieved his knife and went after the other one.

He was halfway to the back porch of the bungalow when a loud bang sounded on the hospital grounds, and the lights went out. The generator had been blown.

They are doing absolutely everything wrong, Belov thought with a mixture of fury and impotence. Which meant they weren't Americans, who could be trusted to show some professional competence in these affairs. For an instant he considered retreating before he was swept up in the inevitable chaos that would follow the act of sabotage.

But he'd come too far to quit now, and he couldn't afford to lose Henry Landreth.

Belov entered the house, hearing screams, shouts, the sound of a struggle. He knew what was happening; the man he was after had kicked open the bathroom door and dragged Landreth out.

"Nyshuri! Help!"

The black girl wasn't capable of lending much help. Apparently she was still in the living room of the bungalow, frozen in fear, crying out in Swahili. Belov pictured the guard at the gate fumbling with his keys in the dark, trying to get the padlock open. He heard the solid thunk of a blunt instrument against thinly padded bone and the aspirated groan of Henry Landreth lapsing into unconsciousness.

It sounded like too hard a blow. He turned a corner into a hallway and saw a pencil-thin beam of light shining on Landreth's pallid face. There was blood oozing from one nostril. He was slumped against a wall, his trousers down around his knees. His assailant, hunkered beside him, couldn't decide whether to pull them up or yank them all the way off before carrying Landreth down the back steps.

Belov made a neutral sound, neither word nor grunt. The other man turned his blond head and spoke sharply to Belov in Afrikaans, a language he recognized but didn't speak.

"You've got the right string, baby, but the wrong Yo-Yo," Belov said, sounding a lot like John Wayne.

He was unsure of the strength of his blade in a close struggle, so he jetted the man with spray from the bottle he was holding in his other hand. But this one was better trained, or a better athlete, than the man he'd killed outside. The spray missed his face as he threw himself over the partially supine body of Henry Landreth and somersaulted through a doorway at the end of the short hall.

Belov was afraid he'd come up out of his tuck-and-roll with a gun in his hand, which would complicate matters. But apparently as he rolled to his feet in the living room he became entangled with Nyshuri, knocking her flat, provoking fresh screams of terror.

To add to the confusion there was a burst of machine-gun fire outside, as if the guard had decided to shoot his way through the gate. Belov glanced once at the dim form of Henry Landreth slumped in the hall. Was he breathing? Nyshuri was still screaming, but he heard the slap of a screen door as the interfering South African escaped from the bungalow.