Before the Dawn (15 page)

Moody, in his way, loved his kids . . . but this was a lost cause. He now began to wonder if he himself could survive, and get to the Heart of the Ocean, in its hiding place, and somehow slip out into the night.

Then Tippett aided him in this self-serving effort: the bodyguard threw himself on Moody and took them both down to the floor, shielding the leader with his own body. Wedged to the floor, like that, Moody bitterly watched the massacre unfold. . . .

All around him, bullets were shaking young bodies like rag dolls and then discarding them, flinging them dead to the floor. The Brood fanned out in murderous waves, gunning down anyone who moved, including those who had raised their hands in surrender. Over the gunfire, Moody could make out screams and pleas for mercy and, worst of all, crying. The acrid odor of cordite seemed to singe the air, the gun smoke creating a fog through which the Brood roamed like well-armed homicidal zombies.

Like a crazed Davy Crockett in his last Alamo moments, Gabriel swung a chair back and forth; but furniture was no match for machine guns, and Moody watched helplessly as at least thirty slugs slammed into Gabe, making him do a terrible dance, lifting him off the floor to deposit him in a bloody heap not far from Moody's face.

Gabe's blank eyes stared at Moody accusingly. . . .

The gunfire was subsiding, only an occasional
pop
now, as an occasional living Clan member was spotted, like the last few firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

In his knee-length brown leather coat and snakeskin boots, Mikhail Kafelnikov—his high-cheekboned features looking carved and cruel—seemed to glide down the incline of the auditorium floor, a wraith in a yellow silk shirt emerging from the gun-smoke fog. He surveyed the carnage—they were all dead now, the Chinese Clan . . . almost all, anyway. . . .

One of the Brood, a skinny clear-eyed lieutenant, came up to their leader, who batted the snout of the automatic weapon away.

“Sorry,” the lieutenant said. “No sign of the girl.”

“Check all the corpses—careful! If she's alive, and playing dead, you'll have a wildcat on your hands. Remember the briefing!”

The mention of Max inspiring him, Moody suddenly revealed himself, by pushing his bodyguard off and getting to his feet, (while surreptitiously slipping a knife from his boot, keeping it tucked in his palm and half up his sleeve).

Several Broodsters, eyes glittering with gore and drugs, moved in quickly, raising their guns, but Kafelnikov shouted, “No! You were told!”

Two burly Brood boys latched onto Tippett's arms and hauled him to his feet. The big former linebacker had no fight left in him—his eyes were on the floor . . . the sight of the slaughtered kids, all 'round, appeared too much for him.

Slowly, Moody approached the Russian, planted himself a few feet away, folded his arms, the knife out of sight. He said, “You told them not to kill me. I'm not surprised.”

“And why is that, Moody?”

The Clan leader ignored the question, saying, “I always suspected you were a barbarian.” He glanced around the room at the dozens of dead kids, their blood streaming down the slope of the theater floor like spilled soft drinks. “You've confirmed it.”

The Brood leader let out a small chuckle. “Bravado to the last. . . . I appreciate that, Moody. I'd almost say you've earned a quick death.”

A bitter smile etched itself on the well-grooved face. “You're not about to kill me, Mikhail . . . not yet.”

An eyebrow arched, an amused half smile formed. “You're right. After all . . . we have business.”

Looking around at his slaughtered family, Moody asked, “Really? And why would I bother doing business with a butcher?”

“Because you are at heart a man of self-interest, Moody . . . despite the the ‘loyalty' drivel you fed your ‘family.' And you have two things that interest me.”

“The necklace,” Moody said.

“Yes, and . . .”

“The girl. Max. I heard . . . why?” Moody's eyes narrowed and he studied the Russian's narrow, handsome face. “Revenge? Did she embarrass you on your home turf? How sad for you.”

Kafelnikov snapped his fingers. A circle of Broodsters formed around them—automatic weapons everywhere Moody looked. Not much he could do with the knife . . . perhaps slash the Russian's throat, and maybe try to claim leadership. . . .

Somehow he didn't think that would play, even in a movie theater.

“Where,” the Russian asked, “is the necklace?”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you . . . but I've already sold it. That deal is done. And the money is not on the premises. It was a Swiss bank transfer, and—”

Kafelnikov nodded once and the two burly Broodsters holding on to Tippett released him, stepping away from the bodyguard. Moody frowned, wondering what that was about. . . .

The Russian's hand came up and an automatic was in it; he fired, to the left of Moody, where Tippett stood.

The bodyguard's scream echoed even as the shot rang in the auditorium, as Tippett grabbed for his leg, a red flower blossoming between the fingers that clutched at his right knee.

Moody's fingers tightened, now white around the handle of the hidden knife. He took a tentative step but froze when he heard several guns cock. Tippett was quiet now, his hands still holding his shattered joint.

“I'm okay, Moody,” the bodyguard managed. “Don't you worry 'bout me.”

“You were saying?” the Russian said to Moody.

“I was saying . . . I already dealt the Heart of the Ocean . . . but I can lead you to the buyer. You can get it back from him . . . kill his ass, for all I care.”

Again Kafelnikov raised the gun, fired, and Tippett screamed as another report reverberated in the auditorium and crimson petals bloomed from the other knee. Tippett went down hard on the cement, and he whimpered there, like a whipped dog.

“Moody,” the Russian sighed, “I don't underestimate your intelligence . . . why do you do me the disservice of insulting mine? I know who your
potential
buyer was . . . he negotiated a better price with me, at the same time he was negotiating more time from you, supposedly to raise sufficient funds to meet your outrageous fee. So . . . I need to deliver the Heart of the Ocean to him . . . where is the diamond, Moody?”

“Tell me, Mikhail,” Moody asked. “Don't your men find that yellow shirt a bit . . . effeminate?”

The Russian frowned and fired, bullets stitching across Tippett's groin and thighs and the bodyguard now rolled around in agony, screaming for them to kill him, go ahead, kill him; but no one moved.

“Where is the
necklace?
” Kafelnikov asked over the screams, his voice more brittle now.

By way of an answer, Moody spun and hurled the knife . . .

. . . into his bodyguard's chest.

Tippett whispered, “Got some moves, Moody,” closed his eyes, and slipped away.

Kafelnikov leapt forward, and slapped Moody with the automatic.

A gash ripped in his cheek, Moody went down on one knee, as if about to be knighted by the Russian, who instead grabbed Moody's silver ponytail and yanked him down, smashing the older man's face into the concrete floor. Moody made only a tiny moan as he pushed himself up, his nose broken, blood streaming down the front of his black shirt.

“If you won't tell me where the necklace is,” Kafelnikov said, “at least tell me where the girl is.”

“Who . . . who the
fuck
. . . is helping you?”

“
I
ask the questions. Tell me, and I'll let you live, and we'll go partners on the necklace. You can be my second-in-command, Moody. . . .”

Moody's mind, clouded by pain, tried to parse that:
what made Max suddenly more valuable than the Heart of the Ocean?

“Where is she, Moody? Or do you start losing kneecaps?”

Moody swallowed blood, then sputtered, “Gone. The girl's . . . gone.”

“Don't lie to me, goddamn it!”

“Do you . . . see her? She's gone, I tell you. . . .”

“Where?”

“She . . . she didn't say. Quiet, that one. . . .”

Kafelnikov again slammed the man's head into the floor. Blood exploded in an arc around Moody's face.

That was when Moody, barely hanging on to consciousness heard footsteps—hard soles on the cement floor. Someone new had entered; someone was on the periphery . . . watching. . . .

“Your last chance, Moody—
where is she?
”

Through broken teeth and bleeding lips, Moody managed to say, “Don't worry, Kafelnikov . . . once she finds out what you've done to her family . . . you won't have to look very hard. . . . She'll turn up.”

The boot-heel footsteps started up again . . . moving closer.

Moody turned his head sideways and saw a man in black combat gear approach—blond, late forties, with a face that might have seemed boyish if the slitted eyes weren't those of a snake.

And Moody knew, just
knew:
he could smell the black-ops military on the man; no doubt at all—
this was the devil Kafelnikov had made his deal with.

“This is the leader?” the blond man asked. “This is Moody?”

Kafelnikov rose, leaving Moody in his bloody sprawl.

“Yes, Colonel Lydecker,” Kafelnikov whispered. “What's left of him, anyway. But he says—”

The blonde and the Russian stood near Moody; no one else heard the sotto voce conversation. . . .

Lydecker's mouth twitched in an otherwise impassive face. “I heard what he had to say, Mikhail.”

Looking up sideways, Moody saw the blond in black. smiling innocuously down on him. “If you know where the girl is, and tell us . . . I'll see that you live, and even let you keep your necklace.”

Moody felt unconsciousness trying to move in and take him. He managed, “If I knew . . . I'd tell you. . . .”

Lydecker studied him like a lab specimen. “But you don't?”

Moody shook his head, and flecks of blood spattered the cement. “No . . . much as I'd . . . love to see her . . . kick all your sorry asses. . . .”

Holding out an open palm, Lydecker knelt over Moody, and said to the Russian, “Your gun, please.”

Kafelnikov filled the colonel's palm with the automatic.

Lydecker asked Moody, “Are you a religious man?”

“No.”

“Then you won't need time for a prayer.”

But Moody sent up a quick one, anyway, for Max's safety, in the moment before the colonel fired the automatic, sending a bullet through Moody's left temple, crashing through his right, burying itself in the floor.

“Goddamn it!” the Russian blurted, rushing over. “What's wrong with you!”

Lydecker took Kafelnikov by the arm and whispered, as if to a lover, in the man's ear: “What's wrong with
you,
Mikhail? You made me dispatch him:
He heard you call me by name.
I wasn't here . . . remember?”

Then, lip twitching with disgust, Lydecker placed the automatic back in the Russian's hand and shoved the man away from him.

Brood members, looking on, exchanged glances, surprised to see their leader take such abuse without protest.

As Lydecker walked toward the exit, the Russian called, “With him dead, how the hell am I supposed to find the stone?”

Without turning, Lydecker said, “It's probably somewhere in the building. Look for it yourself. . . . You have several hours before any police show . . . I've seen to that.”

The Russian said, “
You've
got manpower! At least pitch in—”

From the doorway, Lydecker bestowed a mild smile on the Russian. “You've got all the help from me you're going to get today. . . . Let me know if you get a lead on the girl.”

Then the blond man in black glanced around at the dozens of dead Clan members, who lay like discarded candy wrappers on the theater floor.

“Terrible thing to do to a bunch of kids,” Lydecker muttered.

And was gone.

Chapter Eight

ART ATTACK

STERLING ESTATE
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019

Under the cover of a dense fog, Max made her way across Puget Sound in a small battered motorboat, the outboard chugging like a tired vacuum cleaner—she had “borrowed” it from a nearby group of similar craft designated for tourist rental, and a sleeker, faster number would have been preferable, of course . . . but the absence of such a boat might have raised too much attention.

Such tactics were second-nature to the X5-Unit. The night air was windless but cool, almost cold. Vashon Island, her destination—home of her target—lay somewhere in the mist off the port bow. In her black turtleneck, black slacks, and rubber-soled boots—and the new black leather vest with pockets for all her toys—she might have been (but was not) a commando mounting a one-woman raid. The ensemble had been expensive, but even a bandit could be stylin', right?

That brittle chill in the air promised a deeper cold to come, and Max was glad she hadn't had to swim. Just because she'd been genetically engineered to ignore such trivialities as freezing her buns off, she saw no reason to embrace hardship.

As the boat putt-putted into the fog, Max kept the throttle down on the motor, both for safety's sake, on this pea-soupy night, and so as not to advertise her approach. It was possible there was security, in this wealthy part of the world, that she had not anticipated.

Some security she
could
anticipate. The Sterling home, a secluded multimillion-dollar castle on Vashon Island, sat on Southwest Shawnee Road behind a tall brick-and-concrete wall and would undoubtedly boast a state-of-the-art system. Main access to the island was provided by toll ferries—one running to the northern end, one to the southern tip—though Max knew they were not the only avenues of approach.

The precious object she sought might be covered by video, infrared, pressure alarms, and God only knew what else; but Max still had to smile. With no mines and no lasers trying to dissuade her, this time around, a simple home invasion would be a walk in the park . . . or anyway, cruise on the lake.

Even now, as she moved through the fog with single-minded purpose, Max remained in something of a personal fog. She was disappointed that her straight life had required this crooked side trip; she wished that the straight-and-narrow path could have stretched endlessly on for
her. . . .

She liked the idea of
not
being a burglar; even relished the notion of becoming just another straight in a world of straights. But she could only kid herself so long: she was not normal, not straight, merely hiding in that world, behind that facade.

Keeping gas in her Ninja, when fuel was over eight bucks a gallon, having the occasional meal and now and then a beer—and paying off-the-books rent, even with Kendra's help—was about all her pitiful messenger wages covered. And a normal person—a straight person—could put up with that, make do with eking out an existence.

But when you added in buying tryptophan off the street, to control her seizures—one of the genetic drawbacks of her Manticore breeding—and in particular factored in funding her efforts to find Seth and her other siblings . . . well, maybe Max had known all along it was only a matter of time before she'd have to turn back to what Moody had taught her—maybe crime was her true calling.

She just wished it hadn't come back around so soon.

In particular, keeping that private eye on the trail of Seth (and Hannah) would soon require more cash. Sure, Vogelsang may have been a trifle seedy, but Max needed that. An investigative agency higher up the food chain would have cost even more, might have lacked the P.I.'s usefully shady connections, and might be too tied in with the upper-echelon of the city, the very radar she was trying to fly under.

Since arriving in Seattle, Max had been reading the local papers on line, borrowing Kendra's laptop, in an attempt to find out more about Eyes Only and, she hoped, Seth. But in more recent days, she had turned her Moody-trained eye toward potential scores, as well.

Frustratingly, she hadn't learned anything substantial about Eyes Only—he was a “menace,” according to the mayor, and “awards for information leading to yada yada yada”—and had come up with zip on Seth, also . . . no coverage since that scrap with the cops that SNN had covered.

But she
had
stumbled across a story about a billionaire art collector—and political contributor—named Jared Sterling.

The focus of the recent press attention was Sterling's latest “major” acquisition, an original Grant Wood painting called
Death on the Ridge Road.
Color photos showed Sterling in his late twenties, not bad looking . . . thick blond widow's peaked hair with a well-trimmed beard, and piercing blue eyes, short, straight nose, thin decisive line of a mouth, turning up in a sly smile, in this photo, anyway.

Good looking and loaded,
she'd thought as she stared the LCD screen;
maybe I oughta give up burglary and go on the sugar-daddy hunt. . . .

In several of the photos—shown next to Sterling—the painting was a vaguely cartoony illustration of an antique red truck bearing down on a black car turned sideways on a twisting road . . . painted in 1935, the cutline indicated.

Max didn't know the painting, but—thanks to Moody's schooling—she certainly knew Grant Wood, and recognized the distinctive style. And she knew as well that Wood works were fetching as much as ninety to a hundred thousand, now that so much Americana was being sold off.

Due to her particularly warped upbringing, Max had little sense of what America had once meant; but she knew Moody had been disturbed by such things. With the Baseball Hall of Fame sold and moved to Kyoto, Japan—not to mention the Statue of Liberty, purchased by the Sultan of Brunei—it was obvious that America (Moody would rant), and all her possessions, were for sale “to the highest goddamn bidder.”

To Max, however, what this painting meant was one thing: with proper fencing, it would cover Vogelsang's expenses for a good, long while. . . .

Max knew a great deal about art, artists, jewelry, antiques, collectibles . . . hell, she even knew the value of baseball cards. Moody had taught her well—not for altruistic reasons, or to broaden her human horizons (at least that had not been the main purpose).

Rather, her Fagin-like mentor knew that LA was a city of collectors, that even after the Pulse, and after the Big Quake, the town brimmed with valuable artifacts. Anticipating this—knowing the Chinese Clan might from time to time encounter any number of priceless objects on their various larcenous forays—Moody had made sure he was trained to recognize the finer things, and—as he was more and more not accompanying his kids on their capers—had methodically passed this knowledge along to Max.

A quick study, Max had devoured the material given her by Moody and sought out even more; she told herself her motivation was practical, but art nonetheless stirred something within her.

And it got to where she could walk into any antique shop in LaLa-land and know, in a glance, what was worth stealing and what wasn't. She had known, just looking at it, that the Heart of the Ocean was no fake; the level of security alone would have been a tip-off, but the stone itself had spoken to Max, telling her it was the real deal.

She'd done her on-line homework on Jared Sterling, the painting, and the place where Sterling now kept it; much of the information could have been discovered by anyone with a Comsat link. But to a Manticore-trained hacker like Max, the cyberworld was an oyster coughing up one Internetted pearl after another. . . .

Fittingly enough, it seemed Sterling had made his money in resurrecting the post-Pulse computer infrastructure. Almost singlehandedly, ol' Jared had gotten the Internet up and running again, on the West Coast. Only a shadow of its former self in many areas at first, the Net was up, thanks to Sterling, and progress was quickly made.

Being in the right place, at the right time, with the right technology, had given Jared Sterling wealth comparable to the Bill Gates (pre-Pulse, before Gates went famously broke, of course). The hard-hit East Coast states had come sniffing around Sterling, trying to convince him to help them get back into the on-line world; but when they wouldn't (or perhaps couldn't) meet his price, and his terms, he'd left them on the outside looking in.

Sterling's hard-nosed way of doing business—he was often a vicious target of liberal op-ed writers—meant that once the eastern states
did
come crawling back, to avail themselves of his product and his services, the price would double, if not triple. Sterling had a legendary mean streak, and the country's major left-wing political magazine,
Hustler,
had not long ago made him their “Post-Pulse Predator of the Month,” accusing him of having no conscience.

“A lot of businessmen have been called sharks,” publisher Laurence Flynt III opined, “but Sterling is the real thing. Rumor has it, he even has slits tailored into in the back of his thousand-dollar suits, to accommodate his dorsal fin.”

Politics were a blur to Max, of course—all she knew was, Manticore was tied to the federal government; therefore, federal government . . . bad.

As for the painting, Max already knew
Death on the Ridge Road
had been created by Wood in 1935. What she found out online was that the work was oil on a Masonite panel, thirty-two by thirty-nine inches . . . which made it kind of big and unwieldy, for a cat burglar. But the paycheck would more than make up for the hassle factor.

In 1947, Cole Porter, a twentieth-century songwriter, (the online info listed several “famous” song titles, none of which rang a bell for Max) had given the painting as a gift to the Williams College Museum of Art in Massachusetts. After the Pulse, however,
Death
had disappeared for ten years before turning up, unharmed, on that easel next to Sterling.

The Net magnate only laughed when the media asked where he'd purchased the painting, and waved off any suggestion that it might be stolen property. Such ownership issues had become something of a moot point, after the Pulse, of course.

“I acquired it from a private collector,” was all he would say.

Although none of the media had made a thing out of it, two days after Sterling's picture had appeared with the Grant Wood, a Miami collector named Johnson washed ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, the victim of an apparent boating accident.

This Max had not discovered online. In fact, that particular piece of information came courtesy of one of her
other
interests . . . when, at Jam Pony, as she and Original Cindy were waiting for their next assignment, an Eyes Only broadcast had interrupted SNN headline news on the break-area TV. . . .

“This cable hack will last exactly sixty seconds,”
the compelling voice said, as strong, clear eyes stared out from between bands of red and blue at the screen's top and bottom, over which moving white letters (STREAMING FREEDOM VIDEO) were superimposed.
“It cannot be traced, it cannot be stopped, and it is the only free voice left in this city.”

“'Cept for Original Cindy,” Original Cindy said.

Sketchy leaned in. “I dig this guy—he's intense.”

“He's just another scam artist,” Max said, pretending to be unimpressed.

“The mainstream media considers this small news. But Eyes Only wonders if there is a connection between the death of art dealer Harold Johnson and the very much alive-and-well art collector, Jared Sterling. . . .”

After driving the boat onto the sand, sliding it up into some bushes, and securing it, the young woman in black made her catlike way up a rolling landscaped lawn to the wall of Jared Sterling's estate. The fog hadn't dissipated any, in fact was clinging to the earth like a cloud that lost its way; this would make Max harder to detect on video.

The wall—seven feet of brick topped with video cameras at every corner—proved to be little challenge to Max. She jumped to the top, easily got her footing, hopped down, and landed gently on more grass. Listening closely, she heard only silence, saw merely the general shape of the castlelike house in the fog.

Edging low along the wall, she avoided the cameras even though she felt sure they couldn't catch her in this soup unless she was on top of one. It was a hundred yards across a pool-table green lawn—no slope, now, nice and flat—to the looming tan-brick house, and Max covered the turf quickly, making time an Olympic runner would have envied.

She had half expected dogs, but she sensed no animal presence: canines would have made her cat's nose twitch. Her only other real fear . . . make that, apprehension . . . would be motion detectors that might trigger yard lights. Nothing. And the only lights on in the entire immense house were in two windows on the first floor in the back.

Security room,
Max thought.

Up close, the three-story house seemed huge. An article in the on-line
Architectural Digest
said the place had seven bedrooms, two kitchens, and four bathrooms; a carriage house on the opposite side of the estate housed Sterling's full-time ten-man security team (this fact she had hacked from the security company's Web site, having learned their I.D. from info lifted from the Sterling Enterprises official Web site). Eight-foot evergreens stood between the windows like giant green sentinels. Centered on the near side of the house were French doors with two windows on either side, the whole thing wired to that security room in the back of the mansion.

She wouldn't be going in this way.

Most home invaders avoided the one point of entry that wouldn't start sirens screaming and or bells clanging, the moment it got popped: the front door.

That was only because most home invaders lacked Max's singular skills.

Even here, behind the security-up-the-wazooed walls of a paranoid ka-zillionaire like Jared Sterling, Max would have a good thirty seconds to punch in the correct security code, before the ten-man team came scrambling after her. The keypad and its pin did make this a little tougher than taking candy from babies.