The Matarese Circle (22 page)

Using the service elevator had to be ruled out; it was an enclosure too easily immobilized, isolated. The staircase was not much better, but he had an advantage; except for a roof—if there was an exit from the roof—it did not go higher. The sightlines favored the one above. Birds of prey swooped, they rarely attacked from below.

Sharks did, however.

Diversion. Any kind of diversion. Sharks were known to lunge up at inanimate objects, floating debris.

Bray walked rapidly toward the heavy door to the staircase, stopping briefly at the cleaning woman’s cart. He
removed four glass ashtrays, stuffing them into his pockets, and wedged the attaché case between his arm and chest.

As quietly as he could, he pressed on the crash bar; the heavy steel door opened. He started down the steps, staying close to the wall, listening for the sound of his enemy.

It was there. Several stories below he could hear rapid footsteps slapping against the concrete stairs. They stopped and Scofield stood motionless. What followed confused him. There was a slicing sound, a series of quick movements—abrasive, metallic. What was it?

He looked back up the steps at the metal door he had just walked through, and he knew. The staircase was essentially a fire exit; the crash-bar doors opened from the inside, not from the staircase, thus inhibiting thieves. The person below was using a thin sheet of metal, or plastic, stabbing the crack around the lock, pulling up and down to catch the rounded latch and open the door. The method was universal; most fire exits could be manipulated this way, if they were functional. They would be functional in this hotel.

The abrasive slicing stopped; the door had been opened.

Silence.

The door slammed shut. Scofield moved to the edge of the steps and looked below; he saw nothing but angled railings, squared at the corners, descending into darkness. Silently, he lowered one foot at a time and reached the next landing. He was on the fifth floor.

Five-zero-five. A meaningless number, a meaningless verbal complication.

Taleniekov’s strategy was clear now. And logical. Bray would have used it himself. Once the chaos had begun, the Russian waited in the lobby, watching the elevators for a sign of his enemy, and when he did not appear, the assumption had to be that Beowulf was cut off, roving, probing for a way out. Only after Taleniekov was certain that his enemy had not run into the streets, could he begin the final hunt from the staircase, lurching into the hallways, his weapon leveled for his moving target.

But the Russian could not start the kill from the top, he had to begin from the staircase in the lobby. He was forced to give up the high-ground, as deadly a disadvantage on the staircase as it was in the hill country. Scofield put down his attaché case and took out two of the glass ashtrays
from his pocket. The waiting was about over; it would happen any second now.

The door below crashed open. Bray hurled the first ashtray down between the railing; the smashing of glass echoed throughout the descending walls of concrete and steel.

Footsteps lurching. The thud of a heavy body making contact with a wall. Scofield sprang toward the open space; he threw down the second ashtray. The glass shattered directly beneath; the figure below darted past the edge of the railing. Bray fired his gun; his enemy screamed, twisting in the air, hurling himself out of the sightline.

Scofield took three steps down, pressing himself against the wall. He saw a thrashing leg and fired again. There was the singing sound of a bullet ricocheting off steel, embedding itself in cement. He had missed; he had wounded the Russian, but not lamed him.

There was suddenly another sound. Sirens. Distant. Outside. Drawing closer. And shouting, muted by the heavy exit doors; orders screamed in corridors and hallways.

Options were being cut off, the chance of escape diminishing with each new sound. It had to end
now.
There was nothing left but a final exchange. A hundred lessons from the past were summarized in one:
Draw fire first, make the gun expose itself—which means exposing part of you. A superficial wound means nothing if it saves your life.

The seconds ticked off; there was no alternative.

Bray took out the two remaining ashtrays from his pocket and hurled them over the open space above the railing. He stepped down, and at the first sound of shattering glass, swung out his left arm and shoulder, jabbing the air, arcing in a half-circle, part of him in the Russian’s direct line of fire. But not his weapon; it was ready for his own attack.

Two deafening explosions filled the vertical tunnel.…

The gun was blown out of his hand! Out of his
right hand!
He watched helplessly as the weapon sprang out of his fingers, specks of blood spreading over his palm, the high-pitched ring of a still-ricocheting bullet bouncing from steel to steel.

He had been disarmed by a misplaced shot. Killed by an echo.

The Browning automatic clattered down the staircase. He dove for it, yet even as he did so he knew it was too
late. The killer below came into view, struggling to his feet, the large barrel of his gun rising, directed at Scofield’s head.

It was not Taleniekov, not the face in a thousand photographs, the face he had hated for a decade! It was the man from Prague, a man he had used so often in the cause of free-thinking people. That man was going to kill him now.

Two thoughts came rapidly, one upon the other. Final summations, as it were. His death would come quickly; he was grateful for that. And, at the last, he had deprived Taleniekov of his trophy.

“We all do our jobs,” said the man from Prague, his three fingers tightening on the handle of the gun. “You taught me that, Beowulf.”

“You’ll never get out of here.”

“You forget your own lessons. ‘Drop your weapons, leave with the crowds.’ I’ll get out. But you won’t If you did, too many would die.”

“
Padazdit!
” The voice thundered from above, no crash of a door preceding it, the man who roared having intruded swiftly, silently. The executioner from Prague spun to his left, ducking, swinging his powerful gun up the stairs at Vasili Taleniekov.

The Russian fired one shot, drilling a hole in Prague’s forehead. The Czech fell across Scofield as Bray lunged for his gun, grabbing it off the step, rolling furiously down around the bend in the staircase. He fired wildly up at the KGB man; he would not permit Taleniekov to save him from Prague only to preserve his trophy.

I’ll see you take your last breath
.…

Not here! Not now! Not while I can move!

And then he could not move. The impact came and Scofield only knew that his head seemed to have split wide open. His eyes were filled with blinding streaks of jagged white light, somehow mingling with sounds of chaos. Sirens, screams, voices yelling from distant chasms far below.

In his rolling dive to get out of Taleniekov’s line of fire, he had crashed his skull into the sharp steel edge of the corner railing post. A misplaced bullet, an echo, an inanimate shaft of structural steel. They would lead him to death.

The image was blurred but unmistakable. The figure of the powerfully built Russian came running down the staircase.
Bray tried to raise the gun still in his hand; he could not. It was being crushed under a heavy boot; the weapon was being pried out of his hand.

“Do it,” whispered Scofield. “For Christ’s sake, do it now! You’ve won by an accident. It’s the only way you could.”

“I’ve won
nothing!
I want no such victory. Come!
Move!
The police are here; they’ll be swarming up the staircase any moment.”

Bray could feel the strong arms lifting him up, pulling his arm around a thick neck, a shoulder shoved into his side for support. “What the hell are you
doing?
” He was not sure the words were his; he could not think through the pain.

“You’re hurt. The wound in your neck has opened; it’s not bad. But your head is cut, I don’t know how severely.”

“What?”

“There is a way out. This was my depot for two years. I know every inch of the building. Come!
Help
me. Move your legs! The
roof.
”

“My case.…”

“I’ve
got
it.”

They were in a large, pitch-black metal enclosure, steady blasts of cold air causing the corrugated sides to rattle, the near-freezing temperature producing audible vibrations. They crawled along the ribbed floor in darkness.

“This is the main air duct,” explained Taleniekov, his voice low, aware of the magnified echo. “The unit serves the hotel and the adjacent office building. Both are comparatively small structures, owned by the same company.”

Scofield had begun to find his mind again, the sheer movement forcing him to send impulses to his arms and legs. The Russian had torn a silk scarf apart, wrapping one half around Bray’s head, the other around his throat. The bleeding had not stopped, but it was contained. He had found part of his mind, but there was still no clarity in what was happening.

“You saved my life. I want to know
why!
”

“Keep your voice down!” whispered the KGB man. “And keep moving.”

“I want an answer.”

“I gave it to you.”

“You weren’t convincing.”

“You and I, we live only with lies. We see nothing else.”

“From you I expect nothing else.”

“In a few minutes you can make your determination. I give you that.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll reach the end of the duct; there is a transom ten or twelve feet from the floor. In a rooftop storage area. Once down I can get us out on the street, but every second counts. If there are people in the vicinity of the transom, they must be frightened away. Gunshots will do it; fire above their heads.”

“
What?
”

“Yes. I’ll give you your gun back.”

“You killed my wife.”

“You killed my brother. Before that your Army of Occupation returned the corpse of a young girl—a child—I loved very much.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Now you do. Make your determination.”

The metal-webbed transom was perhaps four feet wide. Below was a huge, dimly lit room that served as a miniature warehouse filled with crates and boxes of supplies. There was no one in sight. Taleniekov handed Scofield the automatic, and began forcing the metal screen from its brackets with his shoulder. It sprang loose and fell crashing to the cement floor. The Russian waited several moments for a response to the noise; there was none.

He turned his body around and, legs first, began sliding out of the duct. His shoulders and head passed over the rim, his fingers gripping the edge; he was finding his balance, prepared for the drop to the floor.

The strange sound came faintly at first, then louder.
Step … scrape. Step … scrape. Step … scrape. Step.
Taleniekov froze, his body suspended between transom and floor.

“Good morning, comrade,” said the voice softly in Russian. “My walk has improved since Riga, no? They gave me a new foot.”

Bray pulled back into the shadows of the duct. Below, beside a large crate was a man with a cane. A cripple whose right leg was no leg at all, but instead a limb of
stiff, straight wood beneath the trousers. The man continued as he took a gun from his pocket.

“I knew you too well, old friend. You were a great teacher. You gave me an hour to study your depot. There were several means of escape, but this is the one you would choose. I’m sorry, my teacher. We cannot afford you any longer.” He raised his gun.

Scofield fired.

They raced into the alley across the street from the hotel on Nebraska Avenue. Both leaned against the brick wall, breathing heavily, their eyes on the activity beyond. Three patrol cars, their lights revolving on their roofs, blocked the entrance of the hotel, hemming in an ambulance. Two stretchers were carried out, the bodies covered with canvas; another emerged, Taleniekov could see the bloodied head of Prague. Uniformed police held back curious pedestrians, as their superiors rushed back and forth, barking into handheld radios, issuing orders.

A net was being formed around the hotel, all exits covered, all windows observed, weapons drawn against the unexpected.

“When you feel strong enough,” said Taleniekov, speaking between swallows of air, “we’ll slip into the crowds and walk several blocks away where it will be safer to find a taxi. However, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know where to go.”

“I do,” said Scofield, pushing himself away from the wall. “We’d better get going while there’s confusion out there. Pretty soon they’ll start an area search. They’ll look for anyone wounded: there was a lot of gunfire.”

“One moment.” The Russian faced Bray. “Three days ago I was on a truck in the hills outside of Sevastopol. I knew then what I would say to you if we met. I say it now. We will either kill each other, Beowulf Agate, or we will talk.”

Scofield stared at Taleniekov. “We may do both,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The cabin was in the backwoods of Maryland, on the banks of the Patuxent River, fields on three sides, water below. It was isolated, no other houses within a mile in any direction, accessible only by a primitive dirt road over which no taxi would venture. None was asked to do so.

Instead, Bray telephoned a man at the Iranian Embassy, an unregistered SAVAK agent into hard drugs and exchange students whose exposure would be embarrassing to a benevolent Shah. A rented car was left for them in a metered parking lot on K Street, the keys under the floor mat.

The cabin belonged to a professor of Political Science at Georgetown, a closet homosexual Scofield had befriended years ago when he had torn up a fragment of a dossier that had nothing to do with the man’s ability to evaluate classified data for the State Department. Bray had used the cabin a number of times during his recalls to Washington, always when he wished to be beyond reach of the deskmen, usually with a woman. A phone call to the professor was all that it took; no questions were asked, the location of the house key given. This afternoon it was nailed beneath the second shingle from the right on the front roof. Bray got it by using a ladder propped against a nearby tree.