Michael Walsh Bundle (33 page)

“That's better,” said Skorzeny.

Pilier escorted Amanda to a chair and set her down into it. Her eyes were open, but she couldn't move.

“You're probably wondering what's happening to you. Please, don't be afraid. The condition is not permanent, and there is no lasting damage. You will find it hard to speak, so just nod your head to my questions and everything will be fine. Do you understand?”

Amanda nodded, almost imperceptibly, but it would have to do. She cursed herself for falling for it. Her suspicions had been right all along—the old man thought they were trying to kill him at the London Eye. And maybe Milverton was. She had nothing to do with that.

Then another thought hit her. Maybe Milverton had somehow planted the notion in Skorzeny's mind that she wished him dead. That she was tired of his importunities, and would shed hardly a tear if something happened to him. That with Skorzeny dead, she, more than anybody except perhaps that creepy Pilier, would have access to all the money until the lawyers kicked in, by which time she could be long gone. After all, she'd got what she wanted out of the deal.

She'd finally got her child.

“Were you trying to kill me in London?” There it was. She shook her head, no.

“Don't lie to me. I will have independent corroboration of everything I ask you, and if you lie to me, it will go very hard with you. Very hard, indeed. Do I make myself clear?”

She nodded.

“Very well, then, I repeat. Were you trying to kill me in London?”

There was no way to answer the question. If only she could say something. She tried to move her lips and tongue, but no sound came out. She hoped the desperation she was feeling was somehow reflected in her eyes, hoped that the old man would see the flash and understand, take pity on her. But she also knew that was a forlorn hope.

“Are you cheating on me? Having it off with Milverton, that rotter? Plotting against me?”

Amanda tried, but she couldn't. Couldn't move, couldn't answer. Whatever fate he had in store for her, she had to accept it.

Skorzeny turned to Pilier. “I think we are ready for our concert now,” he said.

“Very well, sir.” He picked up the phone and spoke softly to someone. Amanda could hear his voice, barely, but couldn't make out any words. “On their way,” said Pilier, hanging up.

Skorzeny looked at Amanda, sitting paralyzed in her chair. “The great composers,” he began. “How they reinforce our every emotion. Speak to places in the heart we did not know existed. That is the power of music.”

Workers poured in, setting up folding chairs in semicircles. They finished quickly. When everything was ready, about twenty musicians, both men and women, each attired in formal dress, entered and took their places: a string orchestra.

“What will replace our culture when it's gone?” continued Skorzeny. Pilier got the sense he was speaking more to himself than anybody else at this point. “What will replace Michelangelo and Leonardo and Bach? The bray of Madonna or the wail of the
muezzin?”
He was lost in thought for a moment. “Better, perhaps, to end it all now, and spare us the agony of having to eat our own entrails as we die.” He turned to the orchestra. “You may begin.”

From the opening strains, Amanda knew what the piece was:
Metamorphosis for Strings
by Richard Strauss. A late work, one of his last, a threnody for the German civilization he and his music had once exemplified. It had all the glorious radiance of his early works, but none of their expansive joy. This was the work of an old man, composing his own funeral music. As if to underscore the point, near the end, he even quoted Beethoven's funeral march from the “Eroica” Symphony.

It was music to accompany the end of the world.

The last mournful strains died away. There was no applause. As one, the musicians rose and filed out of the room. In her delirium, Amanda might have imagined that one of the violinists, a woman, gave her a searching, sympathetic look, but there was no way she could communicate with her. She could only hope.

They were alone. Skorzeny sat slumped in his chair, his mind still on the music.

Amanda's mind was on the music as well, but in a different way. She had no doubt what was going to happen to her. She was never going to leave this horrible place alive, never going to realize her dream of taking her new daughter, who would learn to love her in time, and moving somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was far away. Never going to realize her dream of leaving Emanuel Skorzeny and all he represented far behind.

Amanda's turmoil was invisible to Skorzeny. Not that he would have cared. He was long past caring.

“It was all so simple, until you…what is the word you young people use all the time…
fucked
it up. I do mean that literally. After all I did for you. Sacrificed for you.
Risked
for you.”

She twitched and tried to blink her eyes, to communicate in some way. It was no use. Her strength was failing her. Just when she needed it most.

“It's over. Don't you see? All of this. A cathedral turned into a prison. A culture turned into a cesspool. A continent into a sewer. An entire civilization into a
souk
. And so, rather than being pissed on…I piss on it. ‘I am become Death, destroyer of Worlds,' as both Oppenheimer and the Bhagavad Gita famously said. I am the day after Trinity. And which of them was stronger—the Indian poet or the American scientist?”

She couldn't even move her head to acknowledge the question.

“Once upon a time, I should have said the poet. That is how much I believed. That was how I was raised. With civilization failing and falling all around me, I still
believed
. Do you understand?

“But now, even I no longer believe. During the last century, Europe tried twice to commit suicide. Both times America saved it from its own worst instincts—the second time, just barely. We celebrated America for her selfless sacrifice. We created a worker's paradise of ‘social democracy.' Six weeks' vacation, unlimited medical insurance, abortion on demand—why have children if they were going to interfere with your lifestyle? With the rights of women, Western society's proudest achievement. Other cultures, lesser cultures, scorned us, laughed at us, and…”

He stopped, looked at her, then kissed her one last time. “They were right.” He fussed with something in his pocket. “What was it Louis XV said?
Après moi, le deluge
. Or was in Madame de Pompadour? No matter: the sentiment still obtains.”

Amanda tried to mouth some words. Skorzeny pretended to put his ear to her lips.

He had played his hand perfectly, calling forth the shade of someone he once thought dead, but knew in his heart had never died. His old friend and rival, Seelye, had covered his tracks very well. “Scrubbed” him, brilliantly.

Which is why everything he'd ordered Milverton to do had been leading to this very moment. Flushing the specter out from the shadows, whipsawing him around the Western world as he ratcheted up the stakes. Keeping him so involved in his own personal vendetta that he would never see the big strike coming. The one man he had to rid himself of, because in him Seelye had created the only person who could stop Skorzeny's magnificent
Götterdämmerung.

Amanda struggled mightily against her own body's self-imposed bonds. There were so many things she had to say, so much to plead for, to live for. But she couldn't even move a muscle. She realized it was useless. She stopped struggling. It was over.

“If only you hadn't betrayed me. Did you not realize that my eyes and ears were everywhere? In your house, in your phones, inside his vaunted ranks of computers? I may be an old man, but certain principles never change. And spies are among the immutables.”

Her mouth managed to form the word, Why?

“I can understand him. He is a man, like me. He has the same desires that I do. The same lusts. A will to power. The will to live. But what, my dear, is your excuse?”

She tried to move her head, but she couldn't.

“I should have thought better of a woman,” he said.

She didn't know whether to believe him, that the effects would wear off. She didn't know if she would ever wake up again, ever see Emma again. She felt herself slipping away…

When she was quite unconscious, Skorzeny signaled to Pilier. “Inform Mr. Ramirez Sanchez I will see him now,” he said.

L
ONDON

By the time he got to Camden Town, Devlin was as ready as he was ever going to be. CSS had few functional ops in Britain, but SAS and DoD communicated regularly. Devlin liked the SAS guys. They were tough. They were a throwback to the Brits of yore, the guys who set out to make the world England and damn near succeeded. There was, after all, something to be said in favor of an intact gene pool. When you kill off the best, the brightest, the bravest…and leave only the losers, the weak, the objectors, the physically and mentally unfit…well—what would Darwin say?

He checked his messages. Maryam was in place. His hunch, her research. She was a woman of many talents.

Once more, Devlin marveled at the chance that had brought them together. On the surface, she was just the kind of woman he should avoid, if not kill. Her fortuitous appearance in Paris when he was first stalking Milverton, her forbearance through the long silence that followed, her reappearance on the plane to Los Angeles…

And yet perhaps it was time for a play not in the playbook. Maybe it was time to trust your instincts instead of the probability charts. Whoever had sent her to Paris to track him, whatever the reason she had waited so long, however she had managed for their paths to cross again on the way to LA—it didn't matter.

Could he trust her? Of course not.

Was he going to trust her? Absolutely.

Because, for once in his life, he was going to experience the joys of an absolutely unconditional relationship. Even if it cost him that life.

A “22” masquerading as a cabbie picked him up at Heathrow. The London weather was, as usual, miserable, cold, damp, and raw. “What's the Bulgarian bride's lucky number in
Casablanca?”
Devlin asked, leaning in the window, as if he were giving the driver his final destination.

“Twenty-two, black, gov'nor,” came the reply.

Devlin got in. “Louis,” he said, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“I know it is, sir,” said the cabbie. “I can feel it in me bones.”

“Damn right you can,” replied Devlin.

A Glock 31 with a 17-shot magazine was in the back of the cab. Enough to do the job, if he did it right. No knives, though. Oh well. He had the element of surprise and that, plus superior firepower, should be enough to take the job on.

Number 22 Buck Street was not the sort of place a tourist would stumble upon. It was a dead end between Camden High Street and Kentish Town Road, lined with ramshackle dwellings, some of which had been squatters' dumps back in the 1970s, now rehabbed but still unstylish.

The driver dropped him off at the corner of the Camden High Street. A short walk.

Devlin pretended to pay him: twenty-two pounds, on the nose. The cabbie pretended to accept.

“Why?” said Devlin as the driver put the car in gear and made ready to drive off.

“Why not?” said the cabbie. “The malfeasance of one diminishes us all.” He smiled. “But the death of one…fuck 'im if he can't take a joke.” And then he was gone.

The house wasn't much to look at from the street, but that was what he would have expected. They were men who lived in the shadows, would always live in the shadows, and only briefly emerge into the sunlight. But this wasn't going to be one of those times. This was the day that one of them would no longer see the sunlight, ever.

Devlin had retroplanned. What would he do in these circumstances? The FBI team had penetrated even his defenses, but that was thanks to Milverton's man on the inside. He had nobody inside Milverton's OODA loop. There was just one true thing he knew: Milverton was human. Devlin could take this guy out, if he was smart enough and strong enough and brave enough.

What was the attacker's rule of thumb? Three-to-one odds. Overwhelming force, overwhelmingly applied. He was two guys short.

Too bad. One-on-one—plus the element of surprise—would have to do.

Not the basement: too easy. Not the skylight: too easy and too hard, simultaneously. Nor the windows. Assume everything rigged, first principles, what is the thing, in and of itself?

The front door. Easy in, easy out. Everybody had to eat, meet, greet. The safety of the antechamber was the most delusory safety on earth.

He was going to ring the doorbell and see what happened. First principles.

He rang it.

If he were Milverton, he would have been watching himself on the CCTV. Just another deliveryman, FedEx, DHL, the Royal Mail, whatever.

He rang it again. Tried to look ready for his close-up.

Still nothing.

He rang it a third time. The Glock was burning a hole in his pocket.

Footfalls, maybe. Steps, certainly.

The door started to open, slowly, cautiously.

Showtime.

This was the moment of maximum vulnerability. When Milverton most suspected whomever was at the door. When he was most ready.

The door opened. A crack—

And now they were face to face.

Milverton didn't look so formidable in his knockabouts. Devlin's hand stole toward one of his firearms, but Milverton just stood there in the doorway, no sign of alarm on his face, no sign of recognition either, just that same icy calm demeanor. Milverton's hands were at his side, empty. This couldn't be this easy—

The door opened wider.

“I've been expecting you,” said Milverton, “so why don't you come in and we can get this over with?”

Devlin tensed—

“Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you on my own fucking doorstep. Just don't make me stand here with the door open. Do you know what it costs to heat a house these days?”

Devlin stepped across the threshold and Milverton closed the door behind him.

The house was typical for this part of town: lived-in, comfortable, threadbare—the home of a careless intellectual or a Monty Python character.

“Drink?” asked Milverton.

“Little early for me, thanks,” replied Devlin.

“Then sit down and let's talk, before we get down to business.”

Devlin took a seat on a well-sprung sofa. “It can't be this easy,” he said.

“Of course it can,” replied Milverton, “when you want it to be.”

“But your own man gave you up. A fellow SAS officer.”

“Who still works with me from time to time. I sent him to pick you up.” Milverton smiled and Devlin could see the tips of his canines. “It's nice to stay close to HQ, here in the old neighborhood.”

Devlin instinctively inventoried the weapons he had concealed on his person. Milverton picked it up at once. “Don't worry, the Glock's for real, and in good working order. I couldn't very well invite you all the way across the Atlantic and into my home and not give you a sporting chance. Not after all we've been through together, now, could I?”

“What do you want?”

Milverton chuckled mirthlessly. Devlin could practically see the man's scalp through his close-cropped blond hair as his head bobbed involuntarily. He thought about—

“Don't even think about it,” said Milverton. “Even you aren't that good. Neither of us is…you know, the thought just occurred to me, that we don't know each other's names. Our real names.”

“Guys like us don't have real names,” said Devlin.

“Do you even know yours? No, let me rephrase that,” said Milverton. “As a wise man once said, it's a wise man who knows who his father is.” He looked at Devlin directly. “What's your wisdom quotient these days?”

“Fuck you.”

“Neither witty nor wise. But I assure you that there is a man on the Continent who would pay dearly for that information.”

“Emanuel Skorzeny.”

“That's what most people call him, yes. But, as you just so brilliantly noted, blokes like us don't have the luxury of real names. We're shadow people, ‘little noted nor long remembered,' as your Mr. Lincoln once said. But we do what we can. And, like everybody else, we try to save our sodding arses.”

“What do you want?”

“Isn't it obvious? I want you. That's why I invited you here. Fag?” Milverton held out an open packet of Players.

Devlin shook his head.

“I find it calms my nerves,” said Milverton, lighting up. “Nasty old habit I can't seem to break.”

“Where's the little girl? Emma? You took her, didn't you?”

“You liked that bit with the chopper, did you? I was rather proud of that myself, although I was surprised you went for it so easily. Unworthy of you, really…”

“The little girl?”

“Oh, she's quite safe. Better off than she ever would have been in that dreadful American burg.”

“Her mother wants her back.”

Milverton took a long drag on his cigarette. “I would say that's up to you, now. Which is another one of your current disadvantages…Do you trust her?”

“Trust who? The kid?” Throughout their enforced conversation, Devlin had been sizing up Milverton's own weaponry, which he had concealed on his person as skillfully as Devlin had concealed his hardware. He had also scoped out the internal security measures, the redundant systems. Basically, he was screwed.

“No, not Emma. The pretty little sand nigger I almost killed in Paris,” Milverton was saying. “The one who picked you up so inexpertly. That was when I realized that you weren't as good as your reputation, and frankly, nothing you've done since has persuaded me otherwise.”

“Maybe today's my lucky day.”

“I think not. You're sure you don't want a drink? I hate to imbibe alone. In fact, I insist.”

“Bottled beer, then.”

“Very good,” said Milverton, rising. “Please don't get up—the motion sensors are activated, and…well, you know. That ‘X'tal vision' really does work, doesn't it?”

Devlin was trying to decide whether to call Milverton's bluff as the SAS man returned bearing two bottles of Grolsch. “Don't worry—one hundred percent purity guaranteed,” said Milverton as he returned. Nearly simultaneously, they each flipped the metal switch that popped open the sealed top of the beer bottles, which both, satisfyingly,
whooshed
. “Happy days,” said Milverton.

“How do you want to play this?” asked Devlin.

“Simple,” replied Milverton. “I want you to give yourself up. To give me everything I need to get Skorzeny off my back.”

“To sign my own death warrant.”

“That's your problem. Frankly, I don't care what happens to you. I still owe you for Paris, and I just know that you're itching to find out which of us is better. That's something I'd welcome too, but it hardly seems critical at the moment, does it?”

Milverton took another swig of beer. “At the end of the day, I'm a businessman, and right now I'm doing business with a very nasty man whose money and resources command a great deal of my respect. Still, I am eager to get this particular transaction over with, and what happens to my current employer after that…”

And then Milverton did something that caught Devlin completely by surprise: he gave him a sympathetic, man-to-man look, unaffected and unadorned. There was no fear in it, but there was some vulnerability. Imagine that, the “worst man in London,” vulnerable. Or at least honest. “In the end, we both want the same thing, don't we?”

“A woman…” said Devlin. “And that's why you're offering me a deal.”

Milverton shook his head. “No. There's no deal. It's strictly take it or leave it. Skorzeny's been looking for you for a long time, and my job is to deliver you to him.”

There was nothing to lose. “Where is he?” asked Devlin.

Milverton laughed. “He's in France, at his ‘country house.' You know what a history buff the old bugger is, and he's taken it into his head that the safest and most discreet place for him to be at the moment is in the monastery of Clairvaux.”

“The
Clara Vallis
. Latin for Clairvaux. At least he hasn't lost his famous sense of humor. You know, the one that nearly broke the Bank of England.” Devlin didn't mention he'd already figured that out, and had acted accordingly.

Milverton flashed anger. “England is finished,” he barked, “and I'll thank you not to rub it in…anyway, what happens after I deliver you to him is none of my business.”

“You mean, you don't care if I kill him.”

“Shit, as they say, happens. I'm offering you a swap—your life for your country's. If you refuse, I give you an EMP blast that will cripple your country for…for long enough for your enemies to finish you off.”

“What about the little girl?”

“Unfortunately, she's not part of the transaction.”

“Then let's get this over with, then,” said Devlin.