The Wind Chill Factor (32 page)

No answer.

Peterson stared at the doorknob, which rattled when you leaned on the door, but would not turn. Then he grabbed the knob, gritted his teeth, and with a short, stiff yank ripped it through the door, held up both knobs for me to see, and pointed to the jagged rip in the door. “Strong, huh?” he said with a nasty grin. “Come on, MacDonald, you old sumbitch, how you keeping in there?” He pushed the door open and the first thing I saw in the dim light was the muzzle of a revolver pointed at my guts.

Keepnews was sitting on the floor, which was a damp layer of dirt accumulated since Shakespeare’s youth. He was wedged between the filthy toilet bowl and the wall, his arm resting on the excrement- and urine-stained receptacle. One fat leg was thrust out before him, the other bent under him. Vomit—and food and the foam from stout—covered the front of his coat. His round face had a greenish touch to the pallor and was sunk into the folds of the muffler. The tiny room reeked. Keepnews’ eyes rolled, trying to keep us in focus, the gun wavered. I stood still. Peterson closed the door and told me to lean on it.

“Going to shoot us are you, Milo? Well, pull the trigger.” Peterson stepped closer and the gun tried to track him but fell short, wound up pointing at the wall between us. “Ought to be ashamed of yourself, Milo. Really.” Savagely, from an excess of energy, Peterson kicked the gun out of Milo’s hand, the toe of his shoe pinning the hand backward against the washbasin. A strangled cry from Milo, vomit foaming at the corners of his mouth, speckling the muffler. The sight and the smell made me want to vomit: I didn’t know if I could hold it back.

“Who you working for, Milo?” Peterson asked conversationally, reaching down and calmly lifting the round man to his feet, which flailed hysterically for a foothold. Peterson held him against the wall, the round head lolling forward into the muffler. There was something. … I moved closer, my hand over my nose. Something. …

Peterson’s hands ripped the coat all the way back, buttons popping against the walls. He fumbled in another inside pocket, then another, came out with a worn-looking passport case.

“Why, Milo,” he said. “You have so been to Buenos Aires, you little devil.” Milo’s head hung lower. Again, without warning, Peterson slammed him against the wall and the tiny mirror jumped off its nail and shattered in the basin.

“Wake up, Milo,” Peterson said. His hand swished past Milo’s cherubic face and when it came away the nose looked funny and a gout of blood spread along the upper lip, outlined the corners of his mouth. “Who do you work for, Milo? Do you work for Brendel?” His hand flashed again and the lip split open, a row of bloody teeth showed. I turned into the corner and threw up, trying to lean away to keep it from getting on my clothes. “Or do you work for the Agency?” Peterson harped.

Finally he said, “Oh, shit,” and I heard Milo collapse down the wall. I turned and immediately recognized the face, round and sunken against the navy blue scarf, the hair plastered down with sweat like a tight-fitting beret.

“I know him,” I said.

“What?” Peterson was rinsing his bloody hands, beginning to curse because there was nothing to wipe them on.

“I said I know this man,” I repeated. It was almost the same land of shock as when I recognized Lee’s picture in the clipping.

“So?”

“He’s the man on the highway. He was with the gaunt man when they tried to kill me on the highway.”

Peterson looked at me and then down at the man.

“He was wearing a navy blue coat that night and I remember its collar coming up around his chin—and now, look at him, the muffler, the way it frames what’s left of his face. It’s the same guy.”

“God, he must have been confident you wouldn’t recognize him.”

“Well, it’s him.”

Keepnews groaned, his hands fluttered briefly in his lap like birds too heavy to fly. Peterson watched him. Finally he said: “He’s had it, Cooper. He’s broken. I’ve seen it happen before. Go back to the bar and bring me a mug of stout.”

Not knowing why, I went and got one and returned to the toilet. Peterson was leaning against the wall going through the wallet and the passport. “Buenos Aires. He was there when Dolldorf was killed. Glasgow. He was there when Campbell was killed and somebody tried to kill you. United States. He was there when your brother got it. He’s been moving fast lately. Dangerous man, Milo Keepnews. I wonder where he’s from? London, maybe. I wonder what he was like as a little boy?”

“He didn’t seem so bad,” I said. “He was frightened on the plane.” But he was the gaunt man’s companion. No doubt now.

Peterson was grinding a powder between his fingers, letting the stuff sift into the stout. When he finished, he set the mug down on the washbasin, crunching bits of mirror. He handed me a piece of folded newspaper. “Look at this.”

I unfolded it, the creases greasy, the newsprint smudging back on itself.

It was the photograph of Lee from the Glasgow paper. Everybody seemed to have them. And this one tied Milo Keepnews tighter than Peterson’s vest.

“It was in his wallet.” Peterson leaned down by the inert, crumpled figure, so helpless tubby, inoffensive-looking. One of Peterson’s blows had smashed Keepnews’ round spectacles and driven a spoke of metal into the bridge of his round and now shapeless jelly of a nose. I’d never seen anything like that happen to a man.

And then I remembered what I’d done to the gaunt man that night in the snow.

“Come on, Milo, old boy,” Peterson said, lifting the mug of stout to the limp mouth. He cradled Milo’s head and leaned him forward. “Down the hatch.” He tilted the mug and the stout ran down the vomit-caked chin. Reflexively Milo sucked some of the stout into his dry mouth with a gasping, wheezing sound.

Eventually the mug was empty and Milo had sagged back against the wall, groaning softly, eyes closed. The stench was stomach-turning. I went into the dim, chipped hallway. A door at the back stood open a crack. When I peered back into the little room to see what was taking Peterson so long, I saw him sponging at spots of vomit on his coat where he’d brushed against Keepnews. Finally he finished his dabbing, folded the damp handkerchief, and replaced it in his pocket. He appraised himself in a long, thin splinter of mirror. He touched his hairpiece, adjusting a lock or two at the front, and stood back to look down at the body. One of Milo’s sleeves had slipped off the toilet bowl and his hand was amorphous, a blob, in the scummy water. His eyes were open. He stared unblinking at the floor, mouth drooping.

“Good-bye, Milo,” Peterson said matter-of-factly as he pulled the string on the one bulb.

A wet fog had come up outside, scurried along the pavement. I followed Peterson numbly, unsure of what to say. We were walking away from the river.

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Oh, yes, I’m sure of that.” Peterson was calmly puffing on a cigar, hands in pockets.

“Something in the stout.”

“Mmm.” He nodded.

“My God.”

I felt myself getting queasy again and Peterson, sensing it, pulled me into a brightly lit coffee bar and got us two hot cups of coffee. I sipped coffee and listened closely, because he was speaking very softly.

“Milo Keepnews was our enemy, John.” I could not recall his ever using my name before. “I’m sure he killed several people—probably including Paula and your brother. He killed Professor Dolldorf, set fire to Maria’s apartment, and killed Alistair Campbell. At least twice he tried to kill you, both times very nearly succeeding.” He paused and dripped cream into the coffee. “He was not a nice man. He was setting you up for something. He was following you—he was following you while you were traipsing around after Brendel’s wife and he was probably following us today. He was carrying a gun and I found the silencer in his coat pocket and tonight he would almost certainly have killed us both. So, please, try to see this thing the way it is. Naturally, normal people don’t go around having this sort of thing happening to them. But you’re not normal, not anymore, and my normality is not even a faint memory.” He sipped the coffee, his dark eyes boring into mine, his voice strong and reassuring. “Our lives are out of kilter, John. There’s nothing left for us now but to see it all the way through, survive or die. It’s very basic—but we can’t remain passive. That’s terribly important. We can’t let things happen to us anymore. We have got to start happening to other people. Keep them wondering what’s going on.” He sighed into his muffler and put his hand briefly on my arm. “Tonight we happened to Milo Keepnews. And that’s going to bother hell out of them. The idea now is to keep the pressure up. They know you’ve been watching Lee—Milo certainly got that word to them. And they may know I’ve been to Scotland Yard. And they may know that we’ve deciphered most of what was in those boxes. And they know we’ve been to see Steynes. And I expect they’re nervous about all of it. The one point of strength we have, John, is speed and surprise. The fact is, I don’t believe they’re ready for our full-fledged counteroffensive.” He patted my arm again. “Now, come on, we’ve got to keep moving. We can’t slow down to think about it now.” He was smiling at me, but I kept seeing Keepnews gaping at the floor.

Peterson talked all the way back to the hotel and I heard his voice, the tone and enthusiasm and thrust of it. He was happy, almost bubbling over, and I was sick. Sick of what I had just seen, sick of what Peterson had done. But, God knew, sick of what Milo Keepnews or MacDonald or whoever the hell he was had done. I was confused and nauseated and whatever happened to right and wrong? More casualties, I supposed, just more of the night’s dead. …

Peterson uncorked a bottle of Courvoisier and settled back on the bed, pillows plumped up behind him. He splashed some brandy liberally into a snifter, rolled a mouthful around on his tongue, and gave me a grin. The knuckles on his right hand, which he had clamped around the snifter, were raw where Keepnews’ glasses had sheared through the skin. He crossed his boots at the ankle and lit another cigar.

A happy man.

I woke up and heard his voice: “What?” Incredulous, cigar ash dribbling on the flyfront of his forty-dollar shirt. “What are you saying to me?” He was whispering at the top of his lungs. I blinked and shook myself, stiff from napping in the chair. He saw me and pointed at the other telephone.

A thin, metallic voice was speaking on a crackling, snapping line. It was Colonel Steynes.

“Calm yourself, Mr. Peterson,” he said patiently, “calm yourself and listen while I explain it again. It will be of rather considerable interest to you.” He chuckled bleakly and there was a pause. “In the early hours of this morning, during one of our incessant foggy rainstorms, alarms were tripped alerting us to an invasion of Cat Island. Dawson and I, of course, have several systems of defensive action—and the alarm system in our War Room kept us informed as to the invaders’ stealthy movements. For the better part of three hours Dawson and I sat in the War Room, having secured the house itself, and considered our situation.” I could hear Peterson breathing. I glanced up and saw him staring at his cigar, which had gone dead on him.

“We knew there were three of them and damned if they weren’t taking their time about it. They were advancing with impressive care. By plotting their progress on our alarm map we knew when one of them had entered a clearing visible from the wall of the keep. I dispatched Dawson with a rifle, silencer-equipped, and a quarter of an hour later, in relative quiet, one of the three died. Dawson returned and we waited. Light had come and our intruders had stopped, doubtless confused by their inability to raise the third on their wireless devices.

“Then, while Dawson was preparing us a breakfast, we heard an explosion, which we discovered blew a hole in the wall of the keep. A rather large explosion, too. We did not realize that it was a diversion, unfortunately. When Dawson positioned himself in a second-floor window to shoot the man, he was himself shot by the third man, who had gotten to the top of the keep wall on the opposite side. Even as he took the bullet, Dawson fired on and killed the man coming through the hole in the wall.” He paused again. He sounded like a written report of an action in another war, another time.

“With Dawson wounded we had to rethink our plan. It was an unforeseen event. I stanched the flow of blood, once we realized it was a flesh wound, administered a painkiller, sterilized the area, and considered our options. It would have been interesting to take the third man alive. But it seemed a luxury which we could not perhaps afford. We did not know for certain the intent of our guests, or our one remaining guest, but their operation seemed a radical one. We presumed that the mission was to kill us and thereby put an end to our Nazi hunting. Without us, without me, the apparatus would die. The remaining Nazis would live. Do you follow our thinking, Mr. Peterson?”

“Yes, of course. I follow you.”

“The rest turned out to be very simple. I wheeled myself out onto the wall of the keep. I was protected by the fog, you see. I sat and waited. A matter of nerve. Nothing more. And I have more nerve than you could possibly imagine. You see, the third man was trapped on the top of the wall. Dawson was covering the wall with a machine gun. We sat there for three hours, fog all around us, no sound. Waited. Quiet. And then the breeze freshened and began to blow the fog away and I saw him in front of me, about forty feet away, crouched along the parapet, and he saw me, raised his gun in a kind of wild-eyed fright, and I shot him. I am an excellent marksman and instinctively I shot to kill and killed.”

There was silence on the line, the crackling stopped, as if the connection had been broken. Peterson stared into his brandy.

“We identified two of the three from our files. Nazis, of course, men in their fifties.” He sighed. “And I thought you and Mr. Cooper should be informed.”

“I appreciate that, Colonel,” Peterson said. He was more shaken by Steynes’ story than by what he’d done to Milo Keepnews, and there must be, I thought, a moral somewhere in that.

“Specifically, I thought you should be informed,” Steynes pressed on, “because of the identity of the three men. Two—the two we were able to identify—were associated with Gunter Brendel,
your
Gunter Brendel. One was employed by Brendel’s firm as a security man at the time of his death. The other actually appears in a photograph we have of Brendel taken a few years ago in the Tirol. The connection seems rather marked—”