The Painted Messiah (39 page)

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Authors: Craig Smith

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BOOK: The Painted Messiah
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On his third breath Kate stirred. A moment later her eyes fluttered opened. She coughed and then grabbed for air with a sudden, desperate gasp.

'We need to get her to a hospital!' Ethan cried.

'No hospitals,' Malloy answered.

'What . . . what happened?'

'You stopped breathing,' Malloy answered. He said nothing about her heart.

Kate lay back, staring at the ceiling. 'We have to go,' she said after a moment. She took a deep ragged breath. 'Get Nicole and let's get out of here.'

Ethan hesitated.

'Go!' Kate told him. 'The police will be here any minute!'

At the mention of the police Ethan seemed to shake himself out of his trance and stood to leave the room. Before he went he saw Malloy had no weapon. He put a fresh clip in one of his Steyrs and handed it to Malloy.

He pulled the other from its holster and headed for the basement.

The lights were on, but it was quiet. Unlike the upper floors of the house, the basement's air was clean.

So why was there fresh blood on the steps? He studied the drops and smudges on the steps and handrail. On the floor just beyond the staircase he saw a large, glistening stain that had not yet dried.

He crouched down, looking out farther across the open floor, but the trail ended at the bottom of the stairs.

He came down another step, searching the recesses and shadows of the room. A bloody trail that began and ended on a staircase . . .

He looked to either side and took another step. That was when he put it together.
Under the stairs!

The Kalashnikov began firing as Ethan leaped over the last six steps and rolled out across the floor. Coming up in a squatting position, he saw the strange popping of splinters as the bullets broke up through the steps. He squeezed down softly on the trigger of his Steyr, his burst ripping into the wooden staircase in a ragged figure eight.

The AK-47 finished first but only by a fraction of a second. Ethan heard the gun drop to the concrete floor and tossed his own aside, reaching for the combat knife in his boot.

At the same time the man staggered out from under the stairs. He was holding a pistol, bringing it up slowly toward Ethan. He was hurt and bracing himself on the
staircase, but Ethan had no cover. And no choice but to attack.

The bullet hit his armor like a fist driving into his midsection just as Ethan collided with the man. He kept his knife low and brought it up under the webbing of the vest. He felt the muscles give way reluctantly to the power of the steel. He heard a gasp of pain. He felt the body heave and then the blood pouring over his gloved fist.

He heard the gun hit the floor and saw the man's eyes darkened. A strangled rattle cracked from deep within the man's throat as he slid across Ethan's chest, hips and legs.

'Boy! What's going on?' Kate on the headset.

For a moment Ethan could not find his voice. He simply stared down at the man and the bloodied knife sticking out of him.

'Boy! Talk to me!'

He answered. He was fine.

'Trouble?'

Ethan picked up the gun. 'Not anymore.' He checked the clip in the pistol and took the weapon with him as he headed toward the tower.

As he swept the rooms, quick and dirty, just in case, Ethan heard Kate telling Malloy to get Corbeau.

He pulled the crossbar up and opened the steel door leading into the tower. Nicole North stood in the dark wearing a coat but no clothing beneath. She was shaking, her hair was wild, her eyes wide with apprehension. She had no way of knowing if she was about to executed, traded, or rescued.

'It's okay,' Ethan said, remembering his hood and
what he must look like. 'We're here to take you home.'

When they heard shots in the basement, Malloy started to move, but Kate held his arm. She still had her headset on and said, 'Boy?' The shots ended, but then they heard a pistol shot. 'Boy!' Kate shouted. Her eyes dilated with fear. 'What's going on? Boy! Talk to me!'

She listened. 'Trouble?' she asked and then seemed to lose her tension. To Malloy she said, 'We need to get Corbeau.'

She was still breathing with difficulty, but she was sitting. 'Are you hit?' he asked her.

'I'm fine,' she muttered, but she didn't look fine. She was moving slowly and her focus seemed to come and go. Like someone back from the dead and still sorting out priorities.

Her eyes cut around the room nervously. 'There was a woman . . .'

Malloy shook his head. 'Haven't seen her.'

Kate tried to reach for one the emptied weapons.

Malloy handed her the Steyr Ethan had given him and pulled his Sigma .380.

On the second floor, like the first, the gun smoke still hung in the air and with it the unmistakable stink of the firing range.

He found the bodies of three men in Corbeau's library, but Corbeau was missing. He went back to the hallway and began searching the rooms.

'Corbeau's gone,' he shouted.

From below he heard, '. . . the tower!'

Malloy entered the library again. He heard someone running up the stairs, a voice shouting. Were the cops

at the gate? He thought about going back, getting out while they still had a chance, but they couldn't leave Corbeau behind. Better to give up to the cops than that.

He stepped toward the pocket doors, reaching for one of the raven heads as Ethan came into the room shouting, 'NO!'

Malloy stopped, his hand inches from one of the raven heads. 'What's the matter?' he asked.

'Step away,' Ethan told him and grabbed a book. He walked forward and tossed it against the cast iron raven's head. A bright tiny steel needle shot out of the beak half an inch, a poisoned teardrop of clear liquid forming on the tip.

'Gare le Corbeau!
' Ethan told him, his eyes fixed on the raven.

Malloy translated the phrase in reflex: '
Beware the Raven.'

'It's on his coat of arms,' Ethan said as he walked over to a painting not far from the doors and pulled it from the wall. Recessed in the wall was a handle which he pulled and turned. The pocket doors opened, and Julian Corbeau stood inside the darkened chamber of the upper tower, his hands still cuffed behind his back, his ankles still tied together. 'How did you get in here?' Ethan asked, but Corbeau was silent, his eyes cold and impassive.

Ethan tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of grain and headed out of the library.

Kate was standing up when they got down the stairs, Nicole North beside her. North was barefoot and apparently naked under the coat. As Malloy got closer he saw the burns on her legs and feet - the ruined flesh.

When she saw Corbeau, North's eyes grew round with terror, but she said nothing. She had Kate beside her and that seemed to give her some measure of courage.

Malloy, covering their retreat, was the last to the helicopter. As he came he saw the pilot face down in the grass.

'The pilot took a round,' Ethan said as Malloy scrambled into the cockpit. 'You know how to fly one of these?'

Malloy shook his head.

'I downloaded the manual from the internet yesterday. Didn't look too hard, but just to be on the safe side you'd better get in the back and strap-in.'

Malloy retreated to the cabin and sat down opposite Julian Corbeau. In the distance he heard police sirens coming along the road from both directions. The sky was still open and silent.

Kate was seated next to Corbeau. Nicole North had taken her place at the other end of the cabin, as far as possible from Corbeau. 'Ethan said he just read the manual yesterday on how to fly one of these things,' Malloy said to Kate. 'Tell me he has a sick sense of humor.'

'I told you to keep the pilot alive.'

The helicopter lifted a few feet over the concrete pad, tipped oddly down and then careened wildly toward the cliff. As they shot over the retaining wall, they suddenly had all the altitude they needed, but Ethan's acceleration somehow sent the Bell plunging into the darkness. He was able to pull it up and skim across
the surface of the water for several seconds before he finally got a feel for the craft and started to climb. Once a crash was no longer imminent, Malloy checked his watch. The whole thing from the jump to the near- crash had lasted less than twelve minutes.

'We're headed back to the airport,' Kate told him. 'The Cessna will take Ethan and me with our friend here to Milan. You take the van and make sure Nicole gets to New York.'

'Everyone have passports?' Malloy asked.

'We got ours yesterday,' Kate answered. 'Sir Julian isn't going to need one.'

Malloy looked at Nicole North. She shook her head. Malloy could call Jane and get something arranged for her at the US Consulate in Bern. He didn't have his either but he would call Hasan and get someone to meet him at the airport with it, his luggage and his computer.

'Before you spend the reward money,' Malloy told Kate, 'I'm going to ask Sir Julian a few questions. If I don't like the answers - we'll dump the body over the lake.'

Corbeau smiled. He wasn't buying it.

Malloy drew his Sigma and pointed it at Corbeau's head.

'How did you know I was going to take the twelve-o-three train from Zürich to the airport?'

Corbeau's eyes answered Malloy without fear. Finally he offered a sliver of a smile. 'I've been interrogated by experts, sir. Don't think you can brandish a gun and get what you want.'

Kate pulled her knife and held it against his ear. 'The US attorney will pay me as long as you're alive. I don't think he cares how many body parts are missing.'

The blood drained from Corbeau's face. 'What do you want to know?' he asked.

'How did you find us?' Kate asked.

'I found you ... on a hunch. Once I had you my people put together your team easily enough. With intercepts and phone taps, it wasn't too difficult to find out the identity of the buyers. At that point—'

Corbeau's eyes flitted toward some point behind Malloy's shoulder. They grew round in terror and then there was a gunshot.

The bullet struck between Corbeau's eyes. His head kicked back, and then his body slumped forward. Malloy shifted his Sigma quickly, only to realize that Nicole North had gotten hold of a handgun. She was still holding the weapon and staring wildly at Corbeau's corpse, as if she half-expected him to come at her. Kate sprang across the seats and took the gun from her, but it was over.

Nicole North had taken her revenge, and there was nothing more to do about it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

New York City Friday

October 13, 2006.

Malloy got Nicole North safely to Bern and arranged to meet her, Richland, and Starr late the following evening in New York at an apartment on the Upper Eastside. The Plaza, he said, was no longer safe.

The apartment belonged to a freewheeling venture capitalist whose private bank accounts in Switzerland Malloy had happened to discover over a decade ago. Rather than reporting his findings to the Treasury people, Malloy had, in the parlance of the agency, turned the man. He travelled widely. He had contacts in Africa and the Middle East and Indonesia. Sometimes he knew things, and what he knew he would pass on conscientiously. Malloy had handled the extortion delicately. His agent considered himself a patriot and a friend. Asking the use of his apartment was a bit unusual, but he made the arrangements on short notice without grumbling. It's what patriots do. The apartment offered any number of refinements including a working fireplace trimmed in Florentine marble. A fire was already burning brightly when Nicole North arrived with her entourage. Jonas Starr was sullen, a man expecting accusations. J. W. Richland wore his TV smile and Mike, the bodyguard, looked well-advised to be prepared for a double-cross. There were others downstairs. Starr and Richland and North had not come this far to lose the painting in the streets of New York, but it would have been unseemly to crowd the room with guards. Besides, Malloy had left specific instructions with Dr North. Richland, Starr and she were all needed for the exchange to take place. In addition, he let them bring one person of their choice. They could come either armed or unarmed - he didn't care - but no telephones and no recording devices.

Richland's bodyguard, the soft spoken Mike, carried the money. Malloy made a show of checking each of them for transmitting devices and noted that both Jonas Starr and Mike carried handguns. There was a degree of exasperation over the show Malloy made of searching them, but at least Dr North and the Reverend Richland recalled treating him to the same indignity and submitted themselves to the inconvenience with a proper sense of irony.

Once out of the foyer, they entered the living room and saw the painting. Malloy had set it on the table, propped up so that they could all see it in the reflected light of the fire as soon as they entered the room. Both Starr and North had examined the painting in Zürich under fluorescent lighting. By firelight the colours shivered, the eyes came alive, and the highlights in the blood danced. It was easy to imagine the thing invested with divine power. It was beautiful and frightening and tempted even a confirmed skeptic to bend his knee in its presence, a thing of such majesty and beauty that it seemed not to have been painted by human hand.

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