Two Graves (9 page)

He stood in the middle of that vast, empty, brutal, and alien desert. The darkness crept deeper across his vision, as if he were looking down a dark tunnel, the end of which was moving farther and farther away. The shovel slipped from his nerveless fingers and clattered to the stony soil. With a last, half-audible sigh, he sank to his knees and then—after a swaying pause—fell across the grave of his dead wife.

A
LBAN LORIMER ENTERED THE LOBBY OF THE MARLBOROUGH
Grand Hotel in New York City, his pale eyes hungrily taking in the polished acres of red Italian marble, the discreet lighting, the whispering wall of water cascading into a pool of blooming lotus flowers, the vast hushed space milling with people.

He paused in the center of the atrium, energized by the early-morning bustle around him. He focused on random individuals and followed their trajectories across, around, in, and out of the lobby. Many were heading toward the line at the Starbucks kiosk, from which wafted the heady scent of brew and bean.

New York City…

His smooth hand stroked the lapel of his wool pin-striped suit, his thin but powerful fingers enjoying the give and texture of the expensive wool. He had never worn such a suit before. His shoes were also of the finest quality, and he had groomed himself with care to look his very best, as if he were about to have the interview of his life. And it
was
an interview of sorts: today was an important day, a red-letter day—rather hastily put together and arranged, of course, but essential nonetheless. He breathed deeply. How wonderful it was, what a lovely feeling of security, to be well dressed, with money in your pocket, standing in a hotel lobby in the greatest city in the world. The only thing that marred his appearance was the small white bandage covering his left earlobe, but that of course could not be helped.

Coffee? Maybe later.

With a final smoothing down of his suit front, Alban strode across the lobby marble toward the banks of elevators, entered
one, and pressed the button for the fourteenth floor. He glanced at the brand-new Breitling watch he had been given, which he was so pleased with: seven thirty-one
AM
.

There were others in the elevator, most carrying enormous cups of coffee. Alban wondered at the size of these coffee cups. People in New York seemed to drink large amounts of coffee. He himself preferred coffee in what his people called the Italian style, strong, short, and black. He was also surprised and even mildly shocked that so many tourists to New York City did not dress properly. Even here, in this beautiful and expensive hotel just off Fifth Avenue, they dressed as if they were picking up their children at the playground or going for a jog, in warm-up suits, running shoes, sweatshirts, or jeans. But few of them could actually be contemplating a run, given their physical condition, many of the men with hanging guts and the women slab-sided and heavily made up. He had never seen so many people in poor physical condition. Then again, he was forgetting: this was the common herd.

He exited at the fourteenth floor, took a left, and walked briskly down the hall, taking each dogleg at an easy pace until he reached the far end of the corridor, where an emergency door led to a staircase. He turned and looked back down the hall. There were eight room doors on the right, eight on the left. In front of about half of them, a wake-up newspaper had been folded and placed. Some guests took the
Times
, others the
Journal
, and a few
USA Today
.

He waited, hands clasped in front, all his senses now on alert. He was utterly still. He knew that, from the time he had entered the hotel to this point, his image had been recorded on hidden security cameras. The idea pleased him not a little. Later, looking at those images, people would say things like,
What a superior fellow he is!
and
What taste he has in clothes!
They would all be very, very interested in him. His picture might even be in the papers.

Right now, however, in the particular place he stood, the camera recording that stretch of corridor was directly over his head, and he was in its blind spot.

Still he waited. And then, at the precisely necessary moment, he
began walking back down the hall with a purposeful step. At the very moment he came to the door of Room 1422, it opened and a woman in a bathrobe bent down to pick up the
Wall Street Journal
. Without altering his pace or making any sudden movements, he veered into her, pushed her into the room, at the same time whipping his right arm around her neck and squeezing so tightly she could make no noise. With his left hand he gently closed the door and did the chain.

She struggled mightily as he dragged her into the center of the carpeted room. He enjoyed the flexing of her muscles as she fought him; enjoyed the heaving of her diaphragm as she tried to make a sound; enjoyed the twisting of her torso as she attempted to shake him off. She was a fighter, athletic, not one of those fat old women in the elevator. In this he was lucky. Her age was perhaps thirty, with agreeably blond hair, no wedding ring. Her bathrobe became undone in the struggle, allowing him to see her as God had made her. He continued squeezing her, tightening the choke hold until she got the message and ceased her struggle.

Then he loosened his hold just slightly, enough so she could breathe but not enough for her to scream. He allowed her to draw in a gasp of air, then another, before tightening once again.

They stood there, locked together, her back pressed to his chest, as she trembled all over and finally began to collapse, her legs buckling in sheer terror.

“Stand up straight,” he commanded.

She obeyed, like the good girl she was.

“This will only take a moment,” he said. He needed to do it, he wanted to do it, but something in him also wanted to prolong this exquisite moment of power over another human being, this basking in the vicarious thrill of her terror. It was surely the most wonderful feeling in the world. It was certainly his favorite.

But it was time to get down to business.

With a certain regret, he removed a small, specially sharpened penknife from his pocket. He reached out to the side and, in a quick, almost ritualistic gesture, deftly inserted the blade into her throat. He held it there for a loving, lingering moment, listening to the gargle of
her pierced windpipe. Then he made a quick lateral motion that severed both the windpipe and the carotid artery, exactly as one would stick a pig. As her body began to spasm he quickly released her and skipped back while she fell forward, away from him, the blood erupting in a controlled direction. It would be wrong to get blood on his suit—very wrong. They would disapprove.

She fell facedown on the rug, not too hard, the kind of
thump
that those directly below might ascribe to an overturned piece of furniture. Alban waited, watching with great interest until the death struggle had ceased and the body bled out.

Again he checked his watch: seven forty
AM
. Schön.

Kneeling, almost as if in prayer, he took a small leather-wrapped bundle from his pocket, unrolled it on the rug, and laid out his few essential tools. Then he began to work.

He would be enjoying that Starbucks doppio in the lobby by eight.

…
O
NCE AGAIN, THE MISTS CLEAR, AND THE MAN SMILES.
He thumbs the safety off his handgun and takes aim.

“Auf Wiedersehen,”
he says. His crooked smile widens as he savors the moment.

The young woman, her hand still in her bag, finds what she needs, grasps it. “Wait. The… the papers. I have them.”

A hesitation.

“The papers from… from Laufer.” She recalls a name she glimpsed on one of the papers, plucked out of her memory at random.

“Impossible! Laufer’s dead.” The man, the Nazi, appears taken aback, the cruel confidence on his face changing into alarm, uncertainty.

Her fingers close around some of the papers, curling them up and partially crushing them, and she lifts them from her handbag, just enough to show the black swastika on the letterhead.

Taking an impatient step forward, the man reaches out to snatch them. But hidden in their wrinkled folds, curled around it, lies her can of Mace, which she scooped up as she gathered the papers together. As he glances down, reaching for the bundle, she lets fly with a blast directly into his face.

The man topples backward with an inarticulate cry, the pistol dropping to the floor as his hands fly to his face, the papers scattering. Snatching them back up, she kicks the gun aside and sprints for the door, running through the altar-like room beyond to the staircase and hurtling down to the second floor, taking the steps three at a time, the heavy knapsack like a millstone around her shoulders. This is where it starts to happen: the feeling of drifting, of heaviness in her legs, of semi-paralysis. From upstairs she hears harsh words, German, guttural, the tread of heavy feet.

She runs past the counterfeiting room, past the bedrooms, hearing always behind her the sound of the man’s pounding feet. She races down to the first floor, gasping from exertion, still strangely slowed as if by molasses and fear, but manages to reach the front door, grasps the handle.

Locked. And all the first-floor windows are barred.

As she turns back, a gun goes off behind her, the round taking a hunk out of the door frame. She flings herself into the sitting room, slipping behind a large display case that stands away from the wall of the room as if in preparation for being removed. Pressing her back against the wall for support, gripping the wainscot rail, she raises her feet and cocks her legs; a second later the man enters and she kicks forward with both legs, heaving the case down onto the man. He leaps to one side as crockery, pewter, books, and glass come crashing, again in slow motion; the man only partially escapes being crushed, the top edge of the falling case catching his knee, knocking him to the floor with a howl of fury.