Eric van lustbader, p.49
Eric van Lustbader, page 49
“Where are they?” Cornadoro said with a twist of his wrist that caused Djura terrible pain. “Give me the information or your passage to Paradise will not be assured.”
* * *
Chapter 29
Bravo, staring at the white-on-green squiggles, rubbed his temples with his fingertips. He was all too aware of time passing, time when he and Khalif should have been at the Sumela Monastery. Had he been wrong, was he going down another dead end? Was he doing what he’d accused the Glimmer Twins of doing? Was he making an emotional decision? No, he couldn’t let this go. His father sat at his side, his energy pinning Bravo to his seat. There is an answer. Use what you know, Bravo, Dexter Shaw whispered inside his head.
“Play the frequencies again, both at once,” he instructed Khalif. “But this time turn off all the readouts.”
“What?”
“I want to listen—only listen. Do you understand?”
Khalif set the two frequencies to running simultaneously. A complex melody of beeps, hisses and squeals filled the room. At first, the cacophony sounded like a longed-for response to a SETI transmission—communication in an alien language—or the aural equivalent of the incomprehensible scrawling of an autistic child, both of which contained a message, no matter how deeply buried.
Bravo closed his eyes. If the electronic animal remained dumb, it was up to the human senses to solve the riddle of where the rogue cipher was going. The ear filtered sound and noise day in and day out. It was created to decipher the important sounds from the background wash of the world.
For him, it was only a matter of time before the layers of noise were stripped away and the melody presented itself. This was his business—or, at any rate, part of what he was good at. He could coax out the hidden with his senses—in manuscripts, in human speech, in the feel of forgeries purporting to be genuine archeological finds, in the scents of age and reason, despair and dissolution.
Now, in Khalif’s postmodern bunker, having begun the process of winnowing the wheat from the chaff, he discerned the melody. And having defined it, listened to it, locking in its mathematical pattern, its sine-wave rise and fall, he heard the anomaly.
“Stop,” he cried. “Stop it right there.”
Opening his eyes, he had Khalif turn on all the readouts, even the ones that seemed irrelevant or spurious. And there it was: the dumb animal went “Moo.”
“Why are we following Michael Berio?” Jenny said from her seat beside Camille in the small red sports car. It was a Soviet-made vehicle, and therefore wasn’t a sports car at all but a Russian travesty. “Your own man.”
“His real name is Damon Cornadoro. You know it, don’t you?”
“My God.” Jenny’s face had drained of color. “The Knights’ hired assassin? I’ve seen more than a dozen photos purporting to be him, all of different people. Christ, how could I not have known?”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Camille said. “He fooled me as well.” Of course this wasn’t true, no one fooled Camille, but from the moment she had understood the connection between Jenny and Bravo, she knew she’d have to change her plan. Isolating Bravo was no longer the object; co-opting him was. For that, she knew she’d need Jenny’s help, which required her to spin a whole new web of lies.
Camille tossed her head. “You’re the expert, you tell me—how dangerous is this Cornadoro?”
Jenny glanced at her nervously. “How about eleven on a scale of one to ten.”
“That bad?”
“You heard the backfiring before, the squeal of tires? And then, a bit further on—”
“The accident that delayed us, yes, what about it?”
“I took a long look. That was no accident,” Jenny said grimly. “So I doubt those sounds were backfires.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think Kartli’s men attempted to attack Cornadoro—an ambush, perhaps. I’d bet anything they were rifle shots we heard, and the squeal of tires was the target ramming the attacking cars. I’ve read Cornadoro’s dossier—that sounds like him.”
Camille considered. Trust was what she was soliciting from Jenny, and empathy was the path she had chosen to that trust. If she didn’t feel it, Jenny wouldn’t either.
“If, as you say, Cornadoro was the target, then it’s safe to assume that Bravo was involved in the ambush,” Camille said. She had had time to reason out her course of action during the bumper-to-bumper that led up to the police swarming like ants around the aggressively wrecked cars. She had craned her neck to see the blood, without any luck. “He needs to know that Cornadoro escaped and is still on his tail.” She thrust her cell phone at Jenny. “Call him and tell him.”
Jenny didn’t move a muscle. “Me?”
“Why not?”
“You know why not. He still believes I murdered his Uncle Tony, still believes I’m working for the Knights.”
“Then now’s the time to show him that you’re on his side.” She gave Jenny a small smile. “My dear, listen, he hasn’t believed a word you’ve told him. He told me so himself.” She nodded. “Look, there’s Cornadoro’s truck up ahead. We haven’t a moment to lose, he’s already left it. Courage is what’s required now. Number three.”
“All right.” Jenny nodded, took the cell phone. Heart hammering in her chest, she punched in the speed-dial number.
“Camille—”
The sound of his voice struck her like a physical blow. “It’s Jenny, Bravo.”
“Jenny, I—”
“No, don’t hang up.” A certain terror gripped her at the thought that she would blow this one chance to prove herself to him. “Listen, listen, I’m with Camille,” she said in a rush. “We’ve been following Cornadoro—”
“You what?”
She winced at his shouted response but pressed on, determined. Courage. “There was an ambush, two cars were involved, I don’t know how many men, though you probably do.”
“It was a total screwup, Kartli’s idea, not mine, but he’s dead now—Cornadoro killed him just like he killed Father Mosto and Father Damaskinos.”
An indrawn breath was all she could manage. Her head was swimming.
“I know Uncle Tony was the traitor.”
“Bravo, Bravo!” She bent over, almost ill with relief. “But how—?”
“Jenny, I have to go. Really.”
“Wait, wait! Cornadoro is coming, he’s still coming.”
“Where are you now?”
“At some huge high-rise housing complex.”
Sinope A Blok.
“It’s a number,” Khalif said, staring at the readouts. “A phone number.”
Bravo, his cell phone still cradled in one hand, said, “Cornadoro is here.”
Khalif pointed. “Take a look at it while I go tell Bebur.”
As he went through the refrigerator door, Bravo took a close look at the number. It wasn’t a London number, not even an English number. There were two prefixes: a country code and a city code, and he recognized them both: Munich, Germany. A warning bell went off in his head, a deadness was growing inside him, a sick feeling, intimation of a new and monstrous reality.
Khalif returned, pulling the hidden door shut behind him. “He hasn’t seen anything suspicious,” Khalif said as he retook his seat. “He said he’d call Djura to warn him.”
Bravo hardly heard him. “Give me the overseas code for Munich, Germany,” he said, because they would be different here than in England.
He dialed the number, and when he heard the deep male voice on the other end of the line, he felt as if the floor had given way beneath him. Nightmare came rushing at him with a ghoulish grin.
It was Karl Wassersturm’s voice he heard in his ear. It was to the Wassersturm brothers that Uncle Tony had been transmitting the rogue code. From his eidetic memory he unspooled part of the conversation he’d had with Camille on their way to St. Malo:
“The Wassersturms were in a rage when their deal was terminated,” Camille said in his mind. “Jordan is worried that they’re out to take their revenge on you. What’s gotten him so upset is that he spent three days in Munich working on another deal with them simply to calm them down.”
“He shouldn’t have done that; there’s no reason to trust them.”
Camille laughed. “You know Jordan. If he can get his terms, he’ll make a deal with the devil.”
But the thing was, what had stuck in Bravo’s mind, what he hadn’t been able to make sense of, was that Jordan should have known better than to do business with the Wassersturms no matter what kind of terms they offered. They were bad news—tied into illicit arms dealers and, possibly, terrorists—bad to the bone.
“Karl, it’s Jordan.” He spoke in German, summoned up Jordan’s intonation, his French vocal quirks.
“Why are you using this line?” Wassersturm said in his gruff, no-nonsense manner. “We agreed to leave it solely to relay the… information.”
Here was the reason, the connection between the Wassersturms and Jordan, revealed in all its ghastly glory.
Grimly, Bravo said, “You missed this month’s, didn’t you?”
“You know, like clockwork always.” The anxiety in Karl Wassersturm’s voice was palpable. “You get the information minutes after I pull it off the transmission, almost no delay, that’s how you set things up. It isn’t my fault, I swear. No transmission came through this month.”
“If you’re holding out on me, Karl, I swear—”
“But, no, Jordan, absolutely not. The thought never entered my mind. You told me, didn’t you? It’s your cipher. I don’t understand it, you warned me it couldn’t be broken, what good would holding out do me?”
“None at all,” Bravo said in Jordan Muhlmann’s sternest voice. “See you remember that, Karl. I’ll be in touch.”
He threw the cell phone across the room. Overwhelmed by the personal horror—the unimaginable betrayal—staring him in the face, he put his head in his hands.
Cornadoro’s truck was empty when Jenny and Camille pulled up behind it. Jenny, the Witness handgun she had bought from Mikhail Kartli at the ready, got out, made a thorough search. By the time Camille joined her, she had found something interesting.
She hauled the battered metal box out of the well below the truck’s front seat. “Look at this,” she said, flipping open the too Inside were three layers of theatrical makeup; bits of hair in different colors for eyebrows, mustache, beard; small plastic cases containing colored contact lenses.
Camille fingering the selection of prosthetic noses, chins, cheeks and ears, said, “What does this mean?”
Jenny had already grabbed her phone, was pressing the speed dial over and over, without success. “Shit, he’s not answering.” She began to sprint toward the high-rise.
Camille knew exactly what the contents of the box meant—she’d seen Damon in a number of his disguises and knew he was an expert at changing his appearance, the reason the Order had never been able to obtain an accurate photo of him. Hurrying after Jenny, Camille considered her options. She could, of course stop Jenny right now, just as she had done in the corridor of the Church of l’Angelo Nicolò, just before she’d murdered Father Mosto. But that would be the height of folly. She needed Jenny now as the lure to bring Bravo to her. What she didn’t need was Damon tramping around, killing people right and left Up to this point, he had been useful, that was true enough but the situation in the field had changed drastically, and any general unable to alter the plan of battle as the fighting saw fit would inevitably go down to defeat.
“My best friend is an actor. I’ve seen those kits before, Camille said, coming up on Jenny’s right shoulder. “I saw what was missing, I think I know what he’s going to look like.
Camille had been right, Bravo realized, though in a way she couldn’t possibly know. Jordan had, indeed, made a deal with the devil. He hadn’t been scammed by Damon Cornadoro—he’d asked for Damon Cornadoro. Jordan, his best friend was a Knight of St. Clement—not simply a Knight but the leader, because he was the architect, he was behind everything—Dexter’s murder, the concerted attack on the Haute Cour the pursuit of the Order’s cache of secrets.
Bravo groaned. To top it all off, he’d been working at Lusignan et Cie, for Jordan, toiling away for years in the enemy’s shell corporation. What if Jordan had given him tasks that destroyed businesses secretly owned by members of the Order? Oh, God, had he himself been doing the devil’s work?
He didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it wholly, not yet—it was too huge, too terrible, it was unthinkable. And yet, the evidence was irrefutable. This couldn’t be happening, not to him. But, in this instance, denial was lethal. Bravo knew that, and he shook himself, urging himself to come to terms with a truth he never could have imagined he’d one day be forced to face.
How to understand the nature of a human being who could be so false, so two-faced: your best friend, your most implacable enemy. It was as if the sun had suddenly begun to rise in the west or the oceans had turned to stone. But when he took a mental step back, like it or not, he was struck by Jordan Muhlmann’s brilliance: what better place for Jordan to camp than on his enemy’s doorstep, what better vantage point from which to observe and to plot the order of battle?
And with this realization came the beginning of acceptance—a sadness so piercing it left a pain in his chest.
He lifted his head, a sudden terrible thought bubbling up to the surface: what if Camille knew everything, what if she was part of Jordan’s scheme? Why not? They were close, she worked at Lusignan et Cie, she would do anything for her son, she had told him so herself. Even the devil’s business? He didn’t know. Her shocked reaction to learning of Cornadoro’s identity seemed genuine enough, but how could he know with any certainty?
He felt the swift, bitter flood of paranoia. He heard his father’s voice, as if from far away, coming nearer with each beat of his heart. “Paranoia is a skill to be developed in certain professions,” Dexter Shaw had told his son. “The most useful thing about being a paranoiac is that you won’t be shaken by failure.”
What profession had his father been talking about? the young Bravo had wondered. Now he knew. He’d have to be wary of Camille, gauge her reactions in a different light until one way or another she proved her loyalties.
A tremendous percussion shook the walls and rattled the electronics on their steel shelves. It sounded as if a bomb had gone off in the part of the apartment beyond the hidden door. He jumped and Khalif leapt to his feet. Ominously, three reports followed one upon the other—shots from a handgun, there was no mistaking the sounds, no doubt at all. A moment later, something hard slammed into the front side of the refrigerator.
Khalif hurried to the bank of electronics and, as the pounding started up rhythmically, quickly and methodically pressed a series of buttons.
“I’m wiping all the hard drives,” he said, as much to himself as to Bravo. “I have all the critical data backed up elsewhere.” Then he drew back one of the blackout curtains. Pushing two raw metal levers up freed the plywood panel he had attached over the window. Together, he and Bravo took the panel down.
Khalif threw open the window to a blast of noise and a mini-tornado of concrete dust from the sandblasting. Below was a sloping concrete ledge, no more than a decorative stripe on the milk-carton facade. It was so narrow there would be no room for error. One misstep would send him hurtling to his death below.
The crashing on the other side of the refrigerator was louder, more immediately threatening.
Bravo hesitated only a moment before he followed Khalif out onto the ledge. Khalif had already begun to edge to his right, toward the corner of the building. To Bravo, it seemed like a long way away, though it couldn’t be more than a hundred meters. Where was Khalif headed? To a window in another apartment on the floor? That would only postpone the inevitable.
Bravo watched Khalif and, like him, refused to look down. Instead, he concentrated on keeping one hand against the concrete block of the building facade, putting one foot in front of the other in the straightest line possible. A sudden gust of wind swirled up the sheer building face, rippling against his left flank, causing him to stop and steady himself until it died back.
Khalif reached the corner and vanished around it. Screwing up his courage, Bravo followed, his hands gripping the corners, and he slid around it.
Beyond, he could see the workers’ bamboo scaffold. His view was distorted by the shroud of plastic sheeting the workers had erected in a futile effort to keep the concrete dust at least marginally controlled. Bravo could make out two figures in overalls, faces goggle-eyed behind masks that kept their lungs clear. One of them was hunched over, wielding the heavy sandblaster, working slowly and deliberately. The other, just beyond him, was bent over the rope railing of the scaffold, presumably calling to the workers below down. They looked like old men; their hair was white with dust.
Khalif had reached the edge of the scaffold. He swung the plastic sheeting out of the way. As he stepped over the rope barrier, the worker nearest him turned, awkwardly waved one arm, warning him away. Khalif ignored him and the worker put down the sandblaster.
Khalif was trying to explain the situation, but the generator that powered the sandblaster was still pumping out noise at deafening decibels, and it was clear the worker couldn’t hear him. By this time Bravo, too, had swung onto the scaffold. The two men were now so close that Bravo lost sight of the worker behind Khalif’s broad back. It was natural then for Bravo’s gaze to fall on the second worker. He was still bent over the railing, but now, without the interference of the plastic sheeting, Bravo could see his bloody hands, his bloody mouth, his bloody neck, ripped from one side to the other.
Bravo leapt forward. The first worker was removing his mask, a natural gesture as far as Khalif was concerned. Obviously, the man wanted to hear what Khalif was saying. But Bravo knew the movement was a ruse—a misdirection—for while Khalif’s gaze was drawn to his face, the worker had produced a push-dagger from a pocket of his overalls.
