The Skorpion Directive Part 21

Mandy gave him a look.

"What? You mean scarpered?"

"Looks it. One way to find out," he said, handing her the AK. Mandy stared at it as if he had just handed her a live flounder.

"Oh great. Is this the part where you say, 'Cover me, Tex, I'm a-goin' in'?"

Dalton gave her a quick kiss, turned away and went back to the curve, climbed to the top, his Colt out. He took careful aim. And he blew a large hole in the side of the main house, just beneath a small slit window that dominated the eastern side, right about where a sniper would be hiding if the house weren't really empty.

The sound of the gun rolled away into the hills and died. The large, splintered hole in the white-painted clapboard did not run with blood, and n.o.body opened up on him from another window. His experience with the people back down the road suggested that no one in the house would have the fire discipline to hold off after getting a round like that through the wall.

Empty. Had to be. One way to find out.

He got up and walked slowly across the field, his boots crunching down on the sliced-off stalks of corn freshly harvested. He reached the main gate, checked it for a trip wire or an IED, opened it, and walked slowly through the entire compound, looking for mines, explosives, traps, trying doors and shaking the shutters. He walked up to the back door of the big house, booted the gla.s.s to shards, and stepped inside. He was in some sort of mudroom, filthy boots caked with dried pig s.h.i.+t, coat hooks laden with farm smocks. Equally squalid, the rest of the interior rooms were in semidarkness.

The big house ticked slowly but steadily as the beams cooled in the gathering chill of sundown. Dalton did a quick walkabout through a large main room. Reeking of Russian cigarettes and spilled beer, it was set up like a military mess hall, with scruffy couches and mismatched chairs scattered about, a large stone fireplace, smoke still rising from the coals. There was a huge kitchen, and the trestle tables were bare and the cooking pots clean, but the smell of baked beans and boiled turnips still hung in the musty air.

The house was as empty as the yard, he decided. The noise from the pig sheds was getting louder and more shrill. Maybe they could sense someone was in the area. He went back outside, walked over to the helicopter pad, went out into the middle of it, pulled his gloves off, and got down on one knee to touch a fingertip in a pool of greenish liquid.

It was still warm.

Hydraulic fluid, leaking from the Kamov. He had hit the d.a.m.ned thing, all right. Vukov had flown it back here, patched it up somehow, maybe picked up another pa.s.senger . . .

Kirikoff ?

And then he had taken off again.

Where to?

Kerch?

Or all the way back to Russia?

The grunting and squealing from the sheds was getting hysterical. So was the stench. He walked back to the gate.

"Mandy," he called out, his voice echoing back from the hill behind him. "It's okay. They're gone."

DALTON was using a crowbar to pry a lock off one of the shuttered outbuildings when Mandy reached him, looking nervously back across the yard toward the pig sheds. was using a crowbar to pry a lock off one of the shuttered outbuildings when Mandy reached him, looking nervously back across the yard toward the pig sheds.

"You're not going to let those little brutes out, are you? From the sound of it, they're ready to eat anything. Including us."

"Vukov and his people were growing corn out in the fields. For the pigs," said Dalton. "I think they've stored it in here."

The lock popped off, and the double doors swung slowly open. Inside the low, dimly lit barn was a huge mound of corncobs, along with some open feed bags and a.s.sorted bits of farming gear.

Dalton stood there for a moment, mulling it over, and then said to Mandy, "You might want to go inside. I checked the main house. It's empty, but they've left a lot of stuff behind. Do you feel like taking a look around?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Listen to those poor little guys," he said, grinning, looking at that moment more like a cowhand than a fixer for the CIA.

"I can't leave them to starve."

"I can," said Mandy. "Watch me."

A few minutes later, Dalton pushed his way out of a small stampede of hungry piglets-possibly fifty of them-gathered around the corncob mound, curly tails twitching, snouts buried in the pile. He walked back across the yard in the fading light, his shadow stretching out over the gravel, his boots kicking up stones as he looked up at the sky-Cooling fast, rain or even snow soon-and then he looked down at the house in front of him. Mandy was waiting at the door, the scarf at her nose again, her face bone white.

"The pigs getting to you?" he asked cheerfully.

In the golden light from the setting sun, her face was snow white, and her gray eyes misted. She looked at him over the silk cloth, took it away, and said, "This is where they killed Galan."

THEY did it in the bas.e.m.e.nt, of course. These things are traditionally done in bas.e.m.e.nts. Closer to h.e.l.l. Or just to kill the sounds. And if there's a dirt floor, as there was here, then that just makes it all the more convenient to bury the leftovers. As he and Mandy walked slowly down the rickety wooden stairs, the bas.e.m.e.nt, reeking of mold, raw earth, old sweat, and other things less easily identified, opened up in front of them. It was a low, almost medieval, s.p.a.ce, with ma.s.sive wooden beams running the length of the open area and a dirt floor pounded flat by time and the hobnailed boots of heavy men walking back and forth. did it in the bas.e.m.e.nt, of course. These things are traditionally done in bas.e.m.e.nts. Closer to h.e.l.l. Or just to kill the sounds. And if there's a dirt floor, as there was here, then that just makes it all the more convenient to bury the leftovers. As he and Mandy walked slowly down the rickety wooden stairs, the bas.e.m.e.nt, reeking of mold, raw earth, old sweat, and other things less easily identified, opened up in front of them. It was a low, almost medieval, s.p.a.ce, with ma.s.sive wooden beams running the length of the open area and a dirt floor pounded flat by time and the hobnailed boots of heavy men walking back and forth.

The stone walls were lined with hooks for the storage of gear, and a few of them still had antique harnesses and oxen yokes hanging from them. There were no windows, and the light came from a row of new-looking clear bulbs hanging from wires looped around the beams. Along one wall there was a battered wooden table with a large television set on it and some VHS tapes piled up next to an old Panasonic VCR. Next to that table, set into the corner, was a marble slab set on two carved pillars, the slab draped in white-and-gold cloth with a Greek Orthodox cross set in the center and flanked by six tall gold candlesticks.

In front of the cross was a gold chalice, covered with a silver plate, the plate draped with a white linen cloth.

In other words, an altar for the Christian Ma.s.s.

On the far wall was a banner hanging from an old cavalry lance. The banner was black silk cloth with the image of a large green scorpion in the middle.

And on a side wall, beneath a pair of crossed swords, was the clenched-fist image they had both seen before.

Under this fist banner someone had painted on the stones, in Serbian, three words:

"Blood and fire," said Dalton in a flat, distant tone. "They used to spray it on the houses of people they had killed."

In the center of the room, looking like a cross between a butcher's block and an autopsy table, was a large trestle-style wooden table, maybe ten feet long, stained and gouged, with four large iron eyelet hooks bolted into it, two at each end. Hanging over the table was a green-shaded factory lamp, its large clear bulb protected by a wire cage. The interior of the shade was white yet unevenly spattered with streaks and drops of a dry brown substance. Next to the light was a video camera inside a gla.s.s-windowed box pointing straight down at the table. The window was also spattered with dried brown flecks. Dalton and Mandy stood there and took it in for a while. No imagination was necessary. The table spoke for itself, as did the room.

After a time, Dalton asked Mandy how she knew that this is where they had killed Galan. Standing close beside him, her arms folded under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she spoke without looking at him.

"There was a VHS tape with a label. Two words. The Yid The Yid." Dalton looked over at the television set and the VCR.

"You looked?"

"I looked."

Prague VYSEHRAD PARK EIGHT P.M. LOCAL TIME.

Spring had come late to Prague. The trees that lined the castle grounds had barely turned green, and the pale walls of the cathedral that const.i.tuted the eastern boundary of Vysehrad were streaked with damp. Rain hung in the air, a drifting mist, and the sounds of the old city all around were muted, m.u.f.fled, as if heard through a fogbank. The huge bronze monuments that dominated the park-known simply as the Statues-rose up out of the mist like immense ghosts, silhouetted against a charcoal sky dense with clouds whose underbellies glowed pink from the lights of Prague.

Just inside the flat-topped stone arch that led from the cathedral close into the spare, spa.r.s.ely treed park, on the middle of three very old benches, sat an aged and spidery man with tight gray skin, blue lips, a large black woolen coat, thin gray leather gloves, and a battered gray fedora. He was reading, apparently with close attention, a copy of Prager Zeitung Prager Zeitung, a German-language newspaper featuring all things Praha Praha for expatriates from the old fatherland. His bony ankles, socked in dove gray wool and disappearing into large black brogues polished like marble slabs, were crossed rather primly, at least according to the watcher. The old man's entire aspect suggested precision, exact.i.tude, a cold, dry, bloodless intelligence. He turned the pages with clockwork regularity, his sharp black eyes, huge behind thick wire-framed reading gla.s.ses, flicked over each new page like a crow hunting for prey, for gobbets of the kind of information this man fed on. for expatriates from the old fatherland. His bony ankles, socked in dove gray wool and disappearing into large black brogues polished like marble slabs, were crossed rather primly, at least according to the watcher. The old man's entire aspect suggested precision, exact.i.tude, a cold, dry, bloodless intelligence. He turned the pages with clockwork regularity, his sharp black eyes, huge behind thick wire-framed reading gla.s.ses, flicked over each new page like a crow hunting for prey, for gobbets of the kind of information this man fed on.

The man heard steps on the cobblestones coming closer, and he carefully creased the paper into a narrow rectangular strip, placing it on his bony knees and folding his long-fingered white hands, blue-veined and large-knuckled, on top of it. He moved slightly toward the left side of the bench as the man he was waiting for stopped in front of him, smiling carefully down.

"Gerhardt. Thank you for coming."

Kleinst considered the large man in front of him, his roast-beef face, his bright green eyes and the flicker of anarchic amus.e.m.e.nt around them, his heavy hands shoved into the pockets of his baggy camel-hair coat, under which were tailored jeans and brown cowboy boots. He had a general air of rowdiness with a touch of latent malice. They were not friends, but they were friendly on this occasion, inasmuch as their interests coincided.

Kleinst indicated the seat beside him, s.h.i.+fting to give Fyke room, which Fyke took, being careful not to touch Kleinst as he sat down. Kleinst, a fastidious man, intensely disliked being touched. They sat for a time in silence, both men staring out at but not quite seeing the low rolling parklands, the ancient oaks and lindens, haloed in a green mist. A rivulet of fog was moving along the base of a bronze statue of Siegfried, helm on his lap, broadsword at his booted heel, his cold eyes looking back to glorious ages lost.

"You . . ." Kleinst began, his dry rustle of a voice failing him. He swallowed with difficulty-his health was poor-and tried again. "You . . . have shaved your beard off."

"Yes. I needed a change."

"You made an impression in Tel Aviv, I see."

Fyke grinned, his gaze resting briefly on Kleinst, on his bony hands folded in his lap.

"That I did, Gerhardt."

"Yet, here you are."

"I never go into a place without having a couple of ways to get back out."

"In this case, you had a fast boat down the sh.o.r.eline."

"Yes. How did you know?"

Kleinst made a dry, creaking sound, his version of laughter.

"You are the kind of man who always has a fast boat down the sh.o.r.eline. The woman? This Gandolfo . . . legend, of whom I hear so much . . . This . . . Madonna . . . where is she?"

"In the car. A few blocks away."

"Am I to know who she really is?"

"Do you need need to know?" to know?"

Kleinst considered it for a while.

"Information is always useful. But, perhaps, no. Your friend Joachim was not helpful, as I understand."

"No. The Israelis are convinced that Dalton killed Issadore Galan. They have been offered a proof of some kind."

"An audiotape?"

"Yes. On the tape, Dalton directly threatens Galan."

"Of course he does. Tapes are easily doctored. The Mossad are usually much harder to persuade."

Fyke made a face, rubbed his forehead.

"The new administration has tried d.a.m.ned hard to alienate their affections. Israel no longer feels that it has a . . . friend . . . in the White House. This is having an effect all along the chain."

"Yes," said Kleinst, who, although a Stalinist, was by birth, and even now in spirit, a Jew, and he retained a dream of Jerusalem even though he knew he would never see it himself. "For one thing, Raymond, it virtually a.s.sures that Israel will do something about Iran within a year. For Israel, Iran is an existential threat. They will not wait for this young Hamlet to wake up. Frankly, as he is not a reliable friend, why should they?"

"Hamlet will wake up when they hit those sites."

"By then, it will be too late. Total war will come to the Middle East and soon after engulf the West. Old Europe fails. Islam rises. The West . . . hesitates. We have seen all this before, in different disguises and under different flags. You wished to know something about this offensive against your friend?"

"Whatever you have, Gerhardt. We're at sea, I'm afraid."

"How is he, if I may ask?"

"I haven't seen him in months. Last time we were together was in Southeast Asia. He was . . . effective. A little . . . fey?"

"Pixielated?"

"Yes. Witchy. Like the fairies had got at him."

"This was the affair of Chong Kew Sak," he said, his lips working around the foreign words. "With whom you disagreed so forcefully in Papua New Guinea. Does Dalton still see ghosts?"

"Not when I was with him."

"He is . . . an anachronism, that young man. See these . . . warriors out here?" He indicated the statues for which the park was created, mythical G.o.ds and Valkyries, kings and heroes of the Old Norse tales, knights of the Nibelungen.

"He has visions, he engages in crusades and vendettas. In his heart, he seeks a good death, as these saints and kings and heroes did. As if there were such a thing. Still, I respect the man, and I am prepared to do what I can for him. Much good will it do. He is too good for the people he serves, you know? He carries this new scorpion king across the river because it is in his nature to do so, because he thinks it is the patriotic thing to do. He thinks he serves your country-"

"Not mine mine, Gerhardt. I cleave to the bosom of perfidious Albion. I'm backing the man man here, not the scorpions he works for." here, not the scorpions he works for."

Kleinst sent him a wry look, a bright flicker of his old fire glimmering in his huge wet eyes.

"You cleave to someone's someone's bosom, Raymond, that I do not doubt. You were always a rake. Well, enough of this. I will need a reciprocal gesture." bosom, Raymond, that I do not doubt. You were always a rake. Well, enough of this. I will need a reciprocal gesture."

"Of course. Name it."

"You know I am not well."

"I know you always say so. You are always about to die, yet you go on. And on."

Kleinst led his head go forward slightly, showing his teeth, the skin around his cheekbones pulling tight. It was as if the skull beneath his flesh was trying to break through.