Made Men (27 page)

T
he
world was peculiar without satellites.

Rickard
paid the driver and hurried to the pay phone. One he’d called at intervals
through the years to assure it still functioned.

One of three they used
.

In
a situation like this, with the Internet disabled and cellular reception
crippled, the plan paid off. Since Ryker was incommunicado, at midnight (London
time), phone calls were made. From a landline elsewhere, calls were placed:
first to a pay phone in Paris, then the Melbourne line, and last, to the booth
he approached on foot in Zagreb.

Osgar’s
dwelling in Croatia was one of many. Though the Aryan showed a preference for
Paris, Rickard had trusted his instincts.

The bear wouldn’t fall on a still arrow.
He had to stay in motion.

The
thin German turned on his heel, changing direction. He watched people on the
street … for the flash of someone’s eyes … for the slowing of someone’s gait,
for a hat he’d seen before. He studied shoes.

No one followed. He was clear.

He
watched the flow of traffic for anything out of the ordinary—any sign
that he shouldn’t approach the booth. He held his mouth open, tasting the air
for fear, for hormonal flux. Pulling a breath from below his tongue, he relaxed
his lower jaw and felt the buzz of the street, the vibrations from the crowd.

Nothing.

Again,
he spun. Head down, he fell in step with a group leaving a restaurant as he
glanced at his watch.

11:59
PM
.

He
ducked into a covered doorway a few meters from the booth to wait. Minutes
passed.

The phone didn’t ring.

At
12:02
AM
he trailed a group headed the opposite direction. Two blocks later the
chameleon peeled away, dropping coins into a different pay phone. He let the
phone ring eight times in Paris then hung up to dial again. On the sixth ring,
he heard a voice from Melbourne: “Hello?”

“Fortune
favors the prepared,” Rickard recited hopefully. If one twin found that their
pay phone was damaged, he’d call the other two from a working line.

A long shot: 11:05
AM
in
Melbourne, but who knew what turns things had taken.

“Sure
does, mate. You looking for someone?” The man had an Australian accent. He
hadn’t said the words.

Just a curious man
who’d answered the public phone.

Rickard
replaced the receiver.

Perhaps tomorrow
.

The
slight, pale German tugged the collar of his coat above his jaw and waved down
a taxi. He gave the address. The driver glanced at him for a moment in the
mirror then back to the busy street, easing into traffic. Rickard rode, silent
and still, taking shallow breaths. He exited the cab with an economy of
movement, tipping the usual amount.

U
pon entering the
building, Rickard took the stairs. Listening, he navigated a carpeted hallway
on the fourth floor and pushed a key into a lock. He glided, without comment,
past the man bound and gagged on the floor to sit near a window and peered
through a telescope focused on a different window two hundred meters away.

No lights. No movement
.

The
German reached into his bag, retrieving the analog telephone he’d taken from a
hotel lobby. None could be found in stores.

There had been a run on them.

Trussed
and uncomfortable, the man on the carpet made muffled noises. Rickard searched
for a phone jack. Finding one, he plugged in the antiquated device.

Dial tone.

He
nodded, turning to the man.

“For
your internet?” His captive nodded. Rickard returned to the telescope. “I will
untie you shortly. You know the rules. I will kill you if you shout.” The
larger man had quickly found that the sinewy foreigner was unusually strong and
brutal. “You won’t have to share your apartment with me much longer,” Rickard
said absently, watching the dark rectangle of a window for movement, a glimmer
of light. “I’ll go soon.” Too weary to nod, jaws sore from trying to chew
through the gag, the owner of the apartment closed his eyes. Rickard made calls
to Scotland and New York.
Then a local call.

“Do
you see this number on the caller ID?”

A
pause. “Yes.”

“Good.
Call me at this number if you see anything. Read back this number to me.”
The man did.

“Call.
No matter how trivial or mundane. Call.”

“I
will,” the man promised. “I’ll be sure to call.”

Rock
solid, Rickard hooked a claw in the slipknot holding his host’s gag tight. “You
are a good listener.”

“Why
me?” the man asked, wiggling his jaw, running his tongue over dry lips. Rickard
gave him some water.

Why me?
An inelegant
inquiry.

Sipping
himself, he returned to the window to look through the scope.

Why not answer him?

“My
brother needs to kill.”

Already, the guy looked lost.

“I
have two brothers…” Rickard waved his hands about, starting from the beginning
“…and suggested to my twin that we should pay our third brother to kill a
Scottish lobbyist who wanted our friend dead, because that is what our brother
does. He kills. We’ve arranged kills for him in the past. It’s like feeding a
lion; we thought it better to decide whom he killed than to let the lion
choose.”

Rickard
glanced at his captive, who was clearly not following along.

“Our
friend killed the lobbyist’s son for good reasons, but the father was not the
type to let that go.” Rickard was reminded of the confessional he first
encountered in the Catholic
church
. Explaining the
situation to this man was a bit like confessing.

A useless gesture but he may as well
finish.

“And
though we knew she would be hunted, she was with us—safe, we thought,
from most similar threats, but the lion was listening.”

Rickard’s
captive strained, eyebrows bunched, trying to understand.

“We
didn’t know our third brother had our laboratory wired—a covert listening
software that he’d emailed through a SPAM file sent straight to junk mail. He
could hear everything we did. He was testing our loyalties and expected us to
call for his help.” Rickard wore a wistful look, and spoke softly. “He used to
rely on us for everything … was really quite frail—”

“So
what happened?” asked the man on the floor.

Jarred
by his captive’s voice, the stern and efficient watcher realized that some time
had passed. He’d been staring, unblinking, through the telescope—had all
but forgotten about the man on the floor. It was easy to do, with the task at
hand.
 

“When
we didn’t call him for help, our third brother sent out feelers. Finding that
the lobbyist WAS seeking to hire a hit on our friend, and feeling as though
we’d betrayed his loyalties and discounted his particular needs, our brother
made himself available to the lobbyist we should have had killed to begin with.
Our brother’s contacts arranged a meeting with the father, who ordered the hit
on our friend, thinking that it was HIS decision.

Rickard
glanced at the flummoxed human on the floor, who would never grasp the answer.

“Somebody
would die. Our friend … the lobbyist … and we, my twin and myself, chose to
defend our friend instead of proactively killing the lobbyist. It was a
too-human mistake. Our third brother is a force of nature and struck out at us
by taking the contract. Now I’m watching our third brother’s place from
yours—to kill him. We should have done so years ago, but … he is our
brother—”

A
short silence stewed as the bound man struggled with the overabundant answer.

He
licked at his lips. “But why me?” he repeated.

Rickard
squinted thoughtfully through the telescope, then stooped to put the gag back
in.

No more questions.

“Act
of God.”

B
y the third day, Vai
felt better. They had pulled out her chest tube and the gash between her ribs
was less red and painful. Her physician had begun to flirt, cautiously, with
her. Bonn couldn’t blame him, but didn’t like it.

She was gorgeous
.

The
doctor carried Vai’s latest X-rays to a light board in her room. They’d had to
revert to physical films and until the world was back to normal, he’d had to
read all of his own images, unable to correspond with the hospital’s contracted
offsite radiologists.

“Your
pneumothorax…” he managed in broken English “…is now small. Keep with the
coughs and the deep breaths.”
He gazed at the X-ray longer
,
it seemed, than necessary
.

Probably admiring the outline of Vai’s
breasts.

Indiscreetly,
the physician traced a finger along one curved shadow of her bosom on the film.
Bonn’s jaw tightened. He began to stand, but Vai held his hand tightly,
whispering.

“I
can handle unwanted admirers. Save your energy.” She pulled him close and with
her hand on his neck, she bit his earlobe playfully then pushed his face away.

“I
will, Doctor.” She winked at Bonn. The creep took time to caress the outline of
her other breast on the film and still had his back to them. “Coughing and deep
breaths—thank you. What remaining concerns, if any, do you have regarding
my health?”

“Well…”
his (already small) eyes became lewd and squinty crescents “…I am going to
change you to an oral antibiotic.” He placed his X-ray-fondling finger
thoughtfully against his lips, scheming as he leered. “In the morning…” he
regarded Bonn with disdain “…early, before I round on my other patients…”
locking eyes, Bonn saw slightest smile jumping at the corner of the doctor’s
mouth
“…before visiting hours, I will complete a …
comprehensive
examination.” The smile
broke loose. He flashed the tiny pegs of his picket-fence teeth at Vai.

Before
he could react, Vai pulled Bonn’s head to her chest and ran her fingers through
his white patch of hair. The hum of her voice tickled his ear.

“I’ll
receive my thorough examinations in New York, Doctor. Thank you for everything.
I’m ready to go home.”

A
fter answering two
hours of questions at the US embassy in Irkutsk, Bonn and Vai were issued
travel visas,
then
met Frau Gitte for lunch at
Rassolnik
, at 130 Kvartal. They shared
fried aubergines, and Vai and Frau Gitte ordered pumpkin soup, frowning
disapproval like sisters as Bonn ordered the rabbit zraza.

“It’s
a bunny!” Vai teased, her hand blocking the offer of a forkful.

The rabbit was amazing.

Minced, stuffed with mushrooms and cheese.
“Try it.”

“Absolutely
not.” Bonn offered it to Gitte next.

“Thank
you.” Gitte smiled, shaking her head as she slipped Vai a thick wad of cash. “I
agree. A goat? Yes, but no bunny for me.” Dressed in Hermes, a smart leather bag
by her side, Bonn wondered where the classy and resourceful lady had found
shops in Irkutsk that sold those things.

Gitte
waved off Vai’s protestation of the gift. “I see them perhaps four times a
year, my boys. Each time, they give me money. I have enough for two lifetimes.”

For
a week, the young lovers stayed in a hotel.

Gitte
had said she planned to charter a boat to take her home, but she certainly
didn’t appear dressed to board a water taxi … To Bonn, she looked ready to fly
on the
Concorde
.

Have a good trip, dears. Travel
discreetly.

“Do
you think she’s going back to the lake?” Vai asked him late at night.

Bonn
wondered that himself. “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “I’ll bet she rode
out on the train.”

“That
would be fun,” Vai whispered, sleepy and content.

They
spent a week making love in a hotel with nice views, though they kept the
shades pulled tightly shut. When the train came through Irkutsk, they boarded.
The fares had tripled since air travel, worldwide, remained on hold. Fingers intertwined,
they watched the world pass from a window in the dining car. They drank vodka
and later nursed each other’s hangovers. Ignoring the stops—Ulan-Ude,
Ulan Bator—they tried to ignore the world outside of their private berth.

They
told each other stories, laughed, and tried new things with their bodies. In
Erlian, they were forced from the train so the crew could change wheels.

The tracks in China were different.

When
they pulled into the station in Beijing, Bonn felt quietly disappointed.

He wanted to get back on the old train
.

They
could travel to Moscow. Bump along, holding each other. Just snake across the
country forever—making love—ignoring everything else.

Still,
he wondered about Henna. Where was her body? Gitte had shared what she’d seen,
but Bonn knew from experience that things weren’t always what they appeared.

He’d taken advantage of that himself.

He
wished Vai could have met his friend. They would have been like sisters. Bonn
wondered if Henna would have ordered the soup. He was so tired of death.

And now he had someone to live for
.