Full Circle (33 page)

Andrea’s rush of exultation came slowly, but finally erupted in an inarticulate exclamation, a wordless groan of pleasure more profound than any orgasm. It was as if her will had been transformed into invisible threads that were moving men and machines according to a plan that, even for her, was still unfolding.

By carefully calculated prearrangement, Tate stood against the garage wall, close beside the workbench, on guard. A flick of Paula’s jacket, and the sawed-off would be in his hands. He watched Bernhardt brace himself and lift the fifty-pound duffel bag from the camper and carry it to the rear of the van, where he eased it to the garage floor. Graham and the dark-haired woman had emptied the van of the crated paintings. Working quickly, they’d propped two of the crates against one wall of the garage. Using the hammer and crowbar, Graham had opened the crates and put them flat on the floor between the camper and the garage door. He and the woman were painstakingly sliding one of the two paintings out of its crate.

“My God,” Graham breathed. “It’s
The Three Sisters
.” Minutes later, working just as carefully, with almost reverent care, they exposed another painting. “It’s a Utrillo.” Graham’s voice was hushed. “It’s called
Number Eighty-seven.
It was stolen years ago. Ten years, at least.”

Bernhardt came around the corner of the van. “You’re satisfied?”

Graham’s expression was unreadable. Signifying, Tate sensed, that his hole card had not been turned over. Finally, impassively, Graham nodded, exchanged a long, searching look with Bernhardt, then with Tate. Then he turned and moved around the corner of the camper. As soon as he was out of sight, Bernhardt came close, whispering to Tate, “What d’you think?”

“He’s got someone outside,” Tate said. “Just like we do. He thinks he’s got a kicker.” As he spoke, Tate moved to his right, positioning himself so that he could see Graham loading the camper. The insurance man said something sharp to the woman, who frowned, said something sharp in return, took a fresh grip on the crate they were lifting. As they lifted it high enough to clear the camper’s desk, Graham’s golf jacket rose enough to reveal an automatic thrust into his belt. Tate considered a moment, then decided to draw Paula’s jacket aside and pick up the sawed-off shotgun, which he held cradled across his chest, pointing away from Graham. On the far side of the van, Bernhardt was bending over the duffel bag, still on the garage floor. Thick white nylon rope secured the earth-colored duffel. Bernhardt drew a pocket knife, cut the rope. The bag gaped open as a cascade of bank notes banded into packets spilled out on the floor.

Sitting behind the steering wheel of the BMW, both radios on the seat beside her, Andrea’s gaze was fixed on the mirror. A block behind, the white Pontiac was still parked; a half-block behind the Pontiac, she could see Harry’s Lincoln, also parked. She keyed the walkie-talkie.

“What’s happening, Harry?”

“He’s still sitting with his Dodgers cap on. Just sitting. What the fuck’s happening up there?”

“There’s a van inside the garage. That’s got to be the paintings. And the camper’s in there. That’s got to be the money. There’re two cars blocking the driveway. One car—a Taurus—is empty. Bernhardt drove it, and now he’s inside the garage. There’s a guy in the second car, a blue Accord. He works for DuBois.”

“The big dark-skinned guy.”

“Right.”

“So?”

“I want you to take the one in the baseball cap. Got it?”

“Stick my gun in his ribs, is that it?”

“That’s it. But no shooting.”

“If he tries to shoot me, I’m sure going to—”

“
No shooting,
I said. Not now. You’ll blow everything.” She clicked off the walkie-talkie, switched on the surveillance radio, spoke into the tiny microphone. “Harry’s going to disarm Graham’s backup. He’ll hold him in the Pontiac. So that’s the two of them, together.”

“Yes.”

“Bernhardt and Graham should be finished soon.”

He made no response.

“In a few minutes it’ll be over.”

“Yes.” In the single word, she heard it all: the quiet, utterly implacable determination, the single-minded, rock-solid commitment … his life and hers, inextricably joined.

James switched off the surveillance radio. Leaving the transparent earpiece in place, he dropped the tiny radio into his jacket pocket. In the mirror he could see her BMW, but not the white Pontiac; his view was blocked by a parked truck. On the Accord’s floor, on the passenger side, the Uzi lay loaded and cocked, ready.

A few minutes,
she’d said.

Andrea …

He would always remember the first time he’d seen her; the moment was graven forever on his memory. He’d been fourteen years old, she’d been twelve. There’d been a fire-fight, a carefully planned ambush on the narrow mountain road that connected Cusco and Huanto. The targets had been a convoy of two pickups mounting heavy machine guns and two Toyota Land Cruisers. His parents had led the assault; he’d been told to watch the road to Huanto. He’d had a radio then, too: a hand-held military radio captured in a recent raid on a government armory. The radio was so heavy that two hands were required to manage it. Using missiles just received from the Soviets, they’d knocked out the machine guns on the first assault. One of the two Land Cruisers had gone off the road, tumbling down the mountainside, then struck an outcropping of rock and wedged itself into a crevice. Instantly the vehicle had been engulfed in flames. Moments later, three figures had emerged: a woman, a girl, and a man, with their clothing ablaze. The man stumbled, fell, and burned to death where he lay. The woman, screaming, her own clothing ablaze, had rolled her child on the ground, beat at the flames with her hands, finally succeeded in extinguishing them. She had fallen to her knees, head bowed, as if in penance. Andrea had tried to help, but her mother had blindly pushed her away.

James’s father had been the first to reach the woman. Her hair was ablaze, and her screams were growing weaker. He had scooped up the child to keep her from her mother, whose clothing and hair still burned. Then he had drawn his revolver, taken careful aim, and put a bullet in the woman’s brain.

Andrea had been twelve when her parents had died, and she’d stayed with the guerrilla band for almost three years. Then, in the predawn hours of the second Sunday in May, the government troops had found them. The night before the government attack, for the first time, he and Andrea had made love. As they lay side by side afterward, he’d realized with perfect clarity that he’d just experienced the most important moment of his life.

In the government attack, his parents had died in the first fusillade. He’d been almost seventeen, already a leader in their band. It was expected, he knew, that he must stand and fight beside the bodies of his parents.

Instead, he’d taken his father’s favorite weapon, an M-16, and he’d found Andrea, and they’d escaped. They’d—

On the seat beside him, the walkie-talkie beeped. It was Bernhardt speaking from inside the garage:

“It’ll be another few minutes—fifteen, probably. Are you still in the driveway?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. I’ll call you before I raise the door.”

“Yes.”

“Is everything all right on the street?”

“Yes, sir,” James answered. “Everything’s fine. Just fine.”

“W
HAT I WANT YOU
to do, asshole, is just what you’re doing. You sit behind the wheel. You keep both hands on the wheel. That’s how you might live through the next ten minutes—you keep your hands on the fucking wheel. You understand?”

“I—yes, I—”

“And look straight ahead. Got it?”

“But I—I—”

“First, though, tell me where the gun is. The trunk? Is that where it is?”

“There’s no gun. My God, you—you don’t
understand.
I—I’m trying to
tell
you. I’m an important person. Millions, I’m worth millions. I’m president of my own company. I—”

“Is this your car?”

“My car?” Asking the question, desperately puzzled, Powers involuntarily half turned his head, trying to see the man in the back seat.

“
Hey!
” Harry struck the other man on the side of the head with his nine-millimeter Walther. “
Hey.
Eyes front. Remember?” Once more he struck, felt cold steel bite into warm flesh. Now the Dodgers cap was tilted. Beneath the cap, a trickle of blood began. “
Hey.
I said eyes front, didn’t I? Didn’t you hear me say that, asshole?”

“I—yes, yes, I heard. But I’ve got to tell you, got to make you see, I’m not a—a hoodlum. I’m just here to—”

“
Is
this your car?”

“No. It—it belongs to Graham. John Graham. He’s—he loaned it to me. He’s got my camper. He—they—” Powers broke off, began to shake his head in a slow, helpless arc.

“Yeah? You were saying?” He dug the pistol into Powers’s shoulder.

“I was saying that—”

“Your camper. What’s it doing here?”

“It—it’s—” Suddenly Powers began to sob.

“You carried the money to Sepulveda. In the camper.
Didn’t
you?”

“Yes. But—” With great effort, Powers choked back a sob. “But now I—I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going with them. I don’t want—”

Beside Harry, the walkie-talkie sounded.

“Have you got him?” Andrea asked.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got him. Want to hear him cry? This guy, he’s just about the—”

“Are you in the back seat? And he’s in front?”

“Right.”

“All right. Stay there. Right there. Understand?”

“Sure. But I can’t see what’s happening. That truck, it—”

“Stay right there,” she repeated. “I’ll be with you in a minute. Just a minute.”

Andrea put the walkie-talkie on the seat of the BMW, opened the canvas satchel she’d put on the floor in front, and took out the Woodsman and the silencer. The Woodsman’s front sight had been filed off and the outside of the barrel threaded to receive the silencer. She screwed on the silencer, tightened it, checked the breech. Yes, there was a cartridge in the chamber. In the clip there were ten more rounds, all jacketed high-speed hollow points, .22 caliber. At close range, the .22 hollow point was more destructive than a .38. She put the gun on the floor, started the BMW, then spoke into the surveillance radio: “I’ve got to do Harry. And the other one—I’ve got to do him before he does us.”

She guided the BMW out of its parking place, drove slowly to the corner, made a U-turn in the intersection. In the tiny Lucite earphone she heard James say, “Be careful. Be very careful.”

“Yes.” She switched off the radio, looked in the mirror. In the quiet residential street, only one car was behind her, an orange pickup. She let it pass, then stopped beside the Pontiac, double-parked. She touched the button that lowered the side window, then clambered over the floor console. As the Pontiac’s rear window came down, she grasped the Woodsman, clicked off the safety. As she expected he would, Harry kept his eyes on his prisoner in the front seat, presenting her with a perfect target. She raised the pistol, sighted quickly but carefully, and shot him between his left ear and the temple. The force of the impact drove Harry down across the rear seat. Moving with a predator’s smooth ferocity, she swung the BMW’s passenger door open, got out. In the Pontiac’s front seat, his red Dodgers cap askew, clinging desperately to the steering wheel with both hands, the man wearing the wraparound sunglasses was shouting incoherently. She drove the silencer into his neck just below the skull, and fired. In the back seat, Harry was moving, his whole body twitching spasmodically. She shot him twice through the neck and once through the left eye. Number of shots fired: Harry, four, the other man, one. Total, five. In the front seat, the other man was slumped over the steering wheel, his right cheek resting against the rim. Blood was pumping from his neck; the bullet had struck a large artery. She put the silencer to his left temple, squeezed the trigger. Now his body, too, began to twitch. The sunglasses fell on the floor, but the baseball cap, askew, was still on his head. She reached across the seat back and adjusted the cap. Then she carefully examined her fingers for blood.

“Close enough.” Bernhardt dropped the last bundle of bills into the duffel bag, drew the white nylon cord tight, and knotted it. Mindful of the strain fifty pounds would put on his back, he flexed his knees, squatted, gripped the brown canvas bag with both hands, and heaved it into the van. Then, one last time, transfixed, he stood staring at the amorphous shape resting now inside the van: incredibly, twenty million dollars in thousand-dollar bills, no more than fifty pounds of paper, another pound or two of canvas.

He closed the van’s rear doors, carefully locked them, tested them. He dropped the keys in the pocket of his jacket, buttoned the flap. Graham, too, had finished loading. Standing less than fifteen feet apart, both were acutely aware of the position of the others: the shrill-talking woman who’d come with Graham, sitting in the camper; Paula, flanked by the two dogs, standing between the van and the camper; and Tate, impassive as a sphinx. Cradling the sawed-off in both thick brown arms, Tate had positioned himself so that he could either shoot Graham or shoot out through the garage doors.

“Ready?” Bernhardt asked, directing the question to Graham.

Graham lifted his chin slightly, cleared his throat, finally nodded. “Ready.”

“You’ve got a man outside, in the white Pontiac,” Bernhardt said.

“That’s correct.”

“I’ve got one man outside, and two cars.” He gestured to the walkie-talkie that lay on the cement floor close by; the garage door opener lay beside it. “A man named James is in the blue Accord, blocking the driveway. The Taurus, which is also blocking the driveway, is empty. When I give the word to James, he’ll back the Accord clear of the driveway. At that point, when he tells me he’s clear, I’ll open the garage door with the opener. I’ll go outside and—”

“I think,” Tate interrupted, “that I should be the one to go out.” He spoke very quietly, his broad, muscle-bunched face impassive. Bernhardt knew that look. Tate was making a nonnegotiable demand.