The Matarese Circle (54 page)

Grooved into the flat surface of the concrete was a crisscrossing network of wire-coated plastic tubing through which air and current flowed. The electricity was of sufficient voltage to inhibit animals from gnawing at the plastic, and the air pressure was calibrated to set off alarms the instant a given amount of weight fell on the tubes. The alarms were undoubtedly received in a scanning room in the compound, where instruments pinpointed the place of penetration. Taleniekov knew the system was practically fail-safe; if one strand was shorted out, there were five or six others to back it up, and the pressure of a knife across the wire coating would be enough to set off the alarm.

But practically fail-safe was not totally fail-safe. Fire. Melting the plastic and releasing the air without the pressure of a blade. The only alarm set off in this way was that of malfunction; the trace would begin where the system originated, which had to be much nearer the house.

He estimated the distance between the edge of the tree limb and the top of the wall. If he could loop his leg as close to the end of the limb as possible, swing underneath, and brace himself with one hand against the ridge of the wall, his free hand could hold his lighter against the plastic tubes.

He pulled out his cigarette lighter—his American lighter, he reflected with a certain chagrin—and pushed the tiny butane lever to its maximum. He tested it; the flame shot out and held steady; he lowered it slightly for the light was too bright. He took a deep breath, firmed the muscles of his right leg, and dropped to his left, his left hand making contact with the edge of the wall as he arched downward. He steadied himself and began breathing slowly, orienting his vision to the upside-down view. Blood raced to his head; he revolved his neck briefly to lessen the pressure, then snapped on the lighter, holding the flame against the first tube.

There was a crackling of electricity, then an expulsion of air as the tube turned black and melted. He reached the second in the immediate series; this one exploded like a small, wet firecracker, the sound no more than that of a
low-gauge air gun. The third grew into a thin, outsized bubble. A
bubble.
Pressure! Weight! He pushed the flame into it and it burst; he held his breath, waiting for the sound of an alarm. It did not come; he had punctured the tube in time, before the heat and the expansion had reached the weight tolerance. It taught him something: hold the flame closer at first contact He did so with the following two strands, each bursting on touch. There was a final tube.

Suddenly the flame receded, sinking back into its invisible source. He was out of fuel. He closed his eyes for a moment in frustration, and sheer anger. His leg ached furiously; the blood in his head made him dizzy. Then he thought of the obvious, annoyed with himself that he had not considered it immediately. The one remaining tube might well prevent a full-malfunction alarm; he was far better off leaving it intact. There were at least fifteen free inches on the surface of the concrete, more than enough to place a foot on and plunge over the wall to the other side.

He struggled back up to the limb and rested for a while, letting his head clear. Then slowly, carefully, he lowered his left foot to the wall, setting it securely on top of the burnt-out tubes. With equal caution he raised his right leg over the limb, sliding down until the limb was in the small of his back. He took a deep breath, tensed his muscles, and leaped forward, pressing his left foot into the stone, propelling himself over the wall. He fell to the ground, rolling to break his fall. He was inside the Verachten compound.

He got to his knees, listening for any sounds of an alert. There were none, so he rose to his feet and started threading his way through the dense woods toward what he presumed to be the central area of the property. The fact that he was half-walking, half-crawling in the right direction was confirmed in less than a minute. He could see the lights of the main house filtered through the trees, the beginning of a large expanse of lawn clearer with each step.

A glow of a cigarette! He dropped to the ground. Directly ahead, perhaps fifty feet, stood a man at the edge of the lawn. Instantly, Taleniekov was aware of the forest breezes; he listened for the sounds of an animal.

Nothing. There were no dogs. Walther Verachten had confidence in his electronic gates and sophisticated alarm
system; he needed only human patrols to make the darkness of his compound secure.

Vasili inched forward, his eyes on the guard ahead. The man was in uniform, a visored hat and a heavy winter jacket pinched at the waist by a thick belt that held a holstered gun. The guard checked his watch and stripped his cigarette, shaking the tobacco to the grass; he had been in the army. He walked several paces to his left, stretched, yawned, proceeded another twenty feet, then strolled aimlessly back toward where he had been standing. That short stretch of ground was his post, other guards no doubt stationed every several hundred feet, ringing the main house like Caesar’s Praetorian Guard. But these were neither Caesar’s times nor Caesar’s dangers; the duty was boring, the guard given to openly smoked cigarettes, yawns and aimless wandering. The man would not be a problem.

But getting across the stretch of lawn to the shadows of the drive on the right side of the house might well be. He would have to walk briefly in the glare of the floodlights that shot down from the roof.

A hatless man in a dark sweater and trousers doing such a thing would be ordered to stop. But a guard dressed in a visored cap and a heavy jacket with a holster at his side would not cause so much concern. And if reprimanded, that guard could always return to his post; it was important to bear that in mind.

Taleniekov crawled through the underbrush, elbows and knees working on the hard ground, pausing with every snap of a branch, blending what noise he made into the sounds of the night forest. He was within five feet, a spray of juniper between himself and the guard. The bored man reached into his jacket pocket and took out his pack of cigarettes.

It was the moment to move.
Now.

Vasili sprang up, his left hand clutching the guard’s throat, his left heel dug into the earth to provide backward leverage. In one motion, he pulled the man off his feet, arching him down into the juniper bush, crashing the guard’s skull into the ground, his fingers clawing the windpipe, tightening around it. The shock of the assault combined with the blow to the head and the choking of air, rendered the man unconscious. There was a time when
Taleniekov would have finished the job, killing the guard because it was the most practical thing to do; that time was past. This was no soldier of the Matarese; there was no point in his death. He removed the man’s jacket and visored hat, put them on quickly and buckled the holster around his waist. He dragged the guard farther into the woods, angled the head into the dirt, removed his own small weapon and smashed the handle down above the man’s right ear. He would remain unconscious for hours.

Vasili crept back to the edge of the lawn, stood up, breathed deeply, and started across the grass. He had watched the guard walk—a slight casual swagger, the neck settled, the head angled back, and he imitated the memory. With each step he expected a rebuke or an order or an inquiry; if any were shouted he would shrug and return to the man’s post None came.

He reached the drive and the shadows. Fifty yards down the pavement there was a light streaming out of an open door and the figure of a woman opening a garbage can, two paper bags at her feet. Vasili walked faster, his decision made. He approached the woman; she was in the white uniform of a maid.

“Excuse me, the captain ordered me to bring a message to Herr Verachten.”

“Who the hell are you?” asked the stocky woman.

“I’m new. Here, let me help you.” Taleniekov picked up the bags.

“You
are
new. It’s Helga this, Helga that. What do they care? What’s the message. I’ll bring it to him.”

“I wish I could give it to you. I’ve never met the old man and I don’t want to, but that’s what I was told to do.”

“They’re all farts down there.
Kommandos!
A bunch of beer-soaked ruffians, I say. But you’re better looking than most of them.”

“Herr Verachten, please? I was told to hurry.”

“Everything’s hurry this and hurry that. It’s ten o’clock. The old fool’s wife is in her rooms and he’s in his chapel, of course.”

“Where?…”

“Oh, all right. Come on in, I’ll show you.… You
are
better looking, more polite, too. Stay that way.”

Helga led him through a corridor that ended at a door opening into a large entrance hall. Here the walls were
covered with numerous Renaissance oil paintings, the colors vivid and dramatic under pinpoint spotlights. They extended up a wide circular staircase, the steps of Italian marble. Branching off the hall were several larger rooms, and the brief glimpses Taleniekov had of them confirmed Heinrich Kassel’s description of a house filled with priceless antiques. But the glimpses were brief; the maid turned the corner beyond the staircase and they approached a thick mahogany door filled with ornate biblical carvings. She opened it and they descended steps carpeted in scarlet until they reached some kind of anteroom, the floor marble like the staircase in the great hall. The walls were covered with tapestries depicting early Christian scenes. An ancient church pew was on the left, the bas-relief examples of an art long forgotten; it was a place of meditation, for the tapestry facing it was of the Stations of the Cross. At the end of the small room was an arched door, beyond it obviously Walther Verachten’s chapel.

“You can interrupt, if you want to,” said Helga without enthusiasm. “The head
Kommando
will be blamed for it, not you. But I’d wait a few minutes; the priest will be finished with his claptrap by then.”

“A
priest?
” The word slipped out of Vasili’s throat; the presence of such a man was the farthest thing in his mind. A
consigliere
of the Matarese with a priest?

“His fart-filled holiness, that’s what I say.” Helga turned and started back. “Do as you wish,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t tell anybody what to do.”

Taleniekov waited for the heavy mahogany door above to open and close. Then he walked quietly to the door of the chapel, his ear against the wood, trying to pick up meaning from the sing-song chant he could hear from within.

Russian.
The language being chanted was Russian!

He was not sure why he was so startled. After all, the congregation inside consisted of the sole surviving son of Prince Andrei Voroshin. It was the fact of the service itself that was so astonishing.

Vasili placed his hand on the knob, turned it silently, and opened the door several inches. Two things struck him instantly: the sweet-sour odor of incense and the shimmering flames of outsized candles, which caused him to blink his eyes, adjusting to the chiaroscuro effect of
bright fires against the moving black shadows on the gray concrete walls. Recessed in those walls everywhere were icons of the Russian Orthodox Church, those nearest the altar raising their saintly arms, reaching for the cross of gold in the center.

In front of the cross was the priest, dressed in his cassock of white silk, trimmed with silver and gold. He had his eyes closed, his hands folded across his chest, and out of his barely moving mouth came words of a chant fashioned more than a thousand years ago.

Then Taleniekov saw Walther Verachten—an old man with thinning white hair, strands of which fell over the back of a long, gaunt neck. He was prostrate on the three marble steps of the altar, at the feet of the high priest, his arms stretched out in supplication, his forehead pressed against the marble in absolute submission. The priest raised his voice, signifying the finish of the Orthodox
Kyrie Eleison.
The Litany of Forgiveness commenced; priestly statement followed by sinner’s response, a choral exercise in self-indulgence and self-delusion. Vasili thought of the pain inflicted, demanded by the Matarese, and was revolted. He opened the door, stepped inside.

The priest opened his eyes, startled, his hands surging down from his chest in indignation. Verachten spun on the steps, his skeletal body trembling. Awkwardly, painfully, he struggled to his knees.

“How dare you interfere?” he shouted in German. “Who gave you permission to come in here?”

“An historian from Petrograd, Voroshin,” said Taleniekov in Russian. “That’s as good an answer as any, isn’t it?”

Verachten fell back on the steps, gripping the edge of the stone with his hands. Steadying himself, he brought them up to his face, covering his eyes as if they had been clawed or burned. The priest dropped to his knees, grabbing the old man by the shoulders, embracing him. The cleric turned to Vasili, his voice harsh.

“Who
are
you? What
right
have you?”

“Don’t talk to me of rights! You turn my stomach. Parasite!”

The priest held his place, cradling Verachten. “I was summoned years ago and I came. As my predecessors in this house I ask for nothing and I receive nothing.”

The old man lowered his hands from his face, struggling
to compose himself, nodding his trembling head; the priest released him. “So you’ve come at last,” he said. “They always said you would. Vengeance is the Lord’s, but then you people do not accept that, do you? You’ve taken God from the people and given so little in return. I have no quarrel with you on this earth. Take my life, Bolshevik. Carry out your orders, but let this good priest go. He’s no Voroshin.”

“You
are
, however.”

“It is my burden.” Verachten’s voice grew firmer. “And our secret. I’ve borne both well, as God has given me the vision to do so.”

“One talks of rights, the other of God!” spat out Taleniekov. “Hypocrites!
Per nostro circolo!
”

The old man blinked, no reaction in his eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me!
Per nostro circolo!
”

“I hear you, but I don’t understand you.”

“Corsica! Porto Vecchio!
Guillaume de Matarese!
”