Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

Chapter Ten

The castle overlooking the western shore of Lake Geneva came complete with all manner of turrets and spires, and looked big enough to house your average army. It was six stories high, constructed of massive blocks of black stone, and was sitting on what looked to be ten or more acres of land in a country where real estate was so precious that it was sold by the square meter. The structure and its magnificently landscaped grounds were most impressive.

The security-if, indeed, this was the CIA's most precious asset-was considerably less impressive. There was a high stone wall around the whole complex, and a massive iron gate at the entrance, complete with television camera and a speakerphone mounted on one of the gateposts; but the television camera was pointed up at the sky, and the gate was wide open. There were no guards at the entrance, at least none that were in evidence. We entered the obvious way, simply by driving in the main entrance; no sirens sounded, and no guards jumped out from behind the bushes to challenge us.

Garth drove slowly up the wide gravel driveway toward the castle, past carefully tended gardens and lush, thick lawns. There were a number of gardeners at work, but none appeared to be security guard types; indeed, only one of them even casually glanced in our direction. We reached the circle at the head of the driveway. Garth drove halfway around, stopped at the foot of a flight of granite stairs leading up to a set of twelve-foot-high carved wooden doors.

"The CIA runs this place?" Harper asked, a note of incredulity in her voice.

"Sometimes the best way to hide something is to pretend there's nothing to hide," Veil said, and when I turned in my seat, I could see that he was looking all around us. I couldn't tell from my angle, but I suspected he had again palmed his throwing knife.

Garth turned off" the car's engine, looked at me. "Now what?"

"I guess I go up and knock on the door."

"Great. You got an opening line?"

"It'll come to me."

"Veil and I will come with you."

"No. Harper, you with me?"

"I'm with you, Robby," she replied, putting her hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently.

"Then I suggest that Harper and I go up to the door. We certainly appear harmless enough. You and Veil make a pretty threatening duo, especially at times like now when you're not wearing your party faces."

Veil said, "Not a good idea, Mongo. The two of you will be exposed and vulnerable when you get out of the car, and Garth and I won't be able to protect you."

"We're exposed right now. This isn't exactly a tank we're driving around in. So far, nobody's come around to say boo."

Garth shook his head. "We don't know what's going to happen when you start asking questions."

"I'll play it by ear. Look, no matter how many people go up there, the folks who run this place will get us all if that's what they want. It's best to start off as low-key as possible."

"Robby's right," Harper declared as she perfunctorily opened the door on her side and stepped out into the driveway.

I got out, took Harper's arm, and together we started up the flight of granite stairs. I looked down to check to make certain there were no bloodstains on my clothes. I had not been wearing my jacket during my joust with Insolers, and that covered my bloody shirt. A bandage and ascot fashioned from Insolers' shirt covered the wound on my neck. I decided I looked quite presentable for a man who'd come close to having his head lopped off a short time before.

"Can I help you?"

We halted on the third step, turned to our right, the direction the voice had come from. There was a large rose garden fifteen yards from the driveway, and now a woman stepped from it through a trellis. She was quite tall and slender, stunningly beautiful, with long brown hair and large, soulful brown eyes. She wore a heavy denim gardener's apron and held a large pair of pruning shears.

"We're here to see Countess Rawlings," Harper said brightly, smiling. She made it sound as if we were no more than neighbors from down the road popping in for a spot of tea. "My name is Harper Rhys-Whitney, and this is Dr. Robert Frederickson, the noted criminologist. We have a matter of some urgency to discuss with Countess Rawlings. Would you be kind enough to inform her that we're here, and ask if she could give us a few minutes of her time?"

The brown-eyed woman set down the pruning shears she had been holding, wiped the palms of her hands on her apron, then brushed back a strand of hair from her face. She glanced uneasily in the direction of the green Saab, where Garth and Veil were watching us intently, then looked back at us. "I'm Jan Rawlings," she said tentatively, her mouth forming a nervous smile. "How can I help you?"

Now, I thought, there was an excellent question, equaled in profundity only by the question of what was going to be the first question I was going to ask. Harper solved the dilemma for me. "We'd like to talk to you about a man named John Sinclair," she said sweetly. "Do you know him, Lady Rawlings?"

The woman's mouth dropped open, and she took a small step backward. She certainly did know him, I thought, and felt my heartbeat accelerate. There was no artifice in the woman; shock- and fear-were clearly evident in her large, expressive eyes. She immediately tried to recover and disguise her initial reaction, but it was an impossible task. She put both her hands to her mouth and turned her head away for a moment, obviously trying to collect her thoughts. Finally, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her gardener's apron, turned her attention back to us. "No," she said in a trembling voice. "I'm afraid the name isn't familiar to me. I'm sorry. Has something. . happened to this man?"

If her first reaction hadn't given her away, her question surely would have. The fear I had seen in her eyes had not been for herself. I strongly suspected that Countess Jan Rawlings and John Sinclair were something more than just good friends. "Lady Rawlings," I said quickly, suddenly feeling sorry for this woman we had so thoroughly shocked by showing up on her doorstep, "nothing has happened to him that we know of, but a great number of things have been happening to us. It's why we have to talk to him. People have been trying to kill my friends and me. I think John Sinclair knows who these people are, and he may know how to stop them. I promise you we can be trusted. If you want, I'll give you the names of some important people you can call to check up on me."

The woman lifted her chin slightly, sniffed. "I'm sorry, sir, but no purpose would be served by checking up on you. I'm sure you can be trusted, but I have nothing to entrust you with. I can't help you. Please leave."

"Duane Insolers told us to come here," I said, watching her carefully.

Her startled reaction was, if anything, even more pronounced than when Harper had mentioned the name of John Sinclair. "No," she said in a strangled voice. "Oh, no."

"No, Duane Insolers wouldn't tell us that, Lady Rawlings?"

"No, I don't know any such person!" she snapped, clearly angry now. "You all have to leave this minute! If you don't, I'll call the police!"

I looked toward the car, motioned for Garth and Veil to present our calling card. The woman seemed numb. She had placed her hands back on her face, pressed against her cheeks, and she didn't protest when Garth and Veil got out of the car. They went to the rear of the Saab, opened the trunk, and pulled out a thoroughly dispirited Duane Insolers. They removed their belts from his wrists and ankles, and each firmly took hold of one of his arms as they marched him across the driveway to where we stood. Insolers seemed very different now from the man who had defied death in an attempt to get us to turn back; he looked defeated, and he averted his gaze as the woman shot him a fiery, accusing look.

"Duane," Jan Rawlings said softly, "what have you done?"

"Jan," Insolers murmured, "I can't tell you how sorry I am. I tried to stop them from coming here."

The woman's initial shock had turned to outrage and seething anger, which now shimmered in her voice. "Duane, what have you told these people?"

"Nothing. Be careful what you say, Jan."

"Four strangers show up at my home to ask about Chant, they pull you out of the trunk of their car, and you tell me to be careful what I say? You've done something terrible, Duane. How could you? He trusted you completely."

I looked at Insolers, who had begun nervously glancing around us, and up at the sky. He, too, had seen the helicopters. "Damn," I said quietly. "So you're a friend of his too, part of the inner circle, just like Bo Wahlstrom, Gerard Patreaux, the Nicaraguan woman, and God knows how many other people in important places. If you'd told me that in the beginning, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble. What the hell are you up to?" When he didn't answer, I turned to the woman. "Is he here, Lady Rawlings? We're not hunting him like the others. We know he's not what most people think he is. We won't betray him, or you, but I have to talk to him. Maybe we can help each other."

"No, he's not here," the woman said coldly.

"Jan-!"

"Shut up, Duane. You've already done enough damage with your mouth, and we're not going to be able to lie our way out of it. I'm not as good a liar as you are."

"Will he be coming here eventually, Lady Rawlings?" I asked quietly, glancing at Insolers, who was continuing to scan the sky.

"I don't know," the woman sighed. "Who are you people? What do you want?"

"It's a long story which I'd love to tell you, Lady Rawlings. I'd very much like to hear your story too."

"They're here, Jan," Insolers said, his voice firmer now, unapologetic, "and they're not going away until they hear what we have to say. It's true that they can be trusted. We all have to talk, and I suggest we go inside. Also, the car should be moved out of sight."

Jan Rawlings sighed resignedly. "I'll have someone put the car around in the back," she said, heading up the stairs and motioning for us to follow her. "Welcome to my home."

"I met Chant in New York," the beautiful, brown-eyed woman said as she poured Earl Grey tea into fine blue china cups. After hearing our story, she no longer seemed angry or shocked, but had become warm and courteous toward us. I suspected that Harper, with her decidedly warm and reassuring presence, had more than a little to do with Jan Rawlings' change of attitude. I was glad my snake-charming love was with us. Also, although it could well turn out to be an illusion, I felt safer within the thick stone walls of the castle.

She finished pouring, sat down next to Harper, across from Veil and me, on the semicircular sofa in the center of the castle's massive, two-story-high library that came complete with two walk-in fireplaces. "Of course, he wasn't using his real name. He told me his name was Neil Alter. Even if he had said who he really was, it wouldn't have meant anything to me. I'd never heard of John Sinclair. I'd been working for the city's Human Services Department, and he'd been referred to me for job counseling."

"And you placed him in the psychological research project at Blake College?" Harper asked, sipping at her tea.

Jan Rawlings nodded. "Yes-as an interim measure that would allow him to make some easy money while I tried to find him a job. I would have done that with any client who had a long-term prison record, which was supposedly the case with this Neil Alter fellow. Chant, of course, knew that, which was why he had constructed Neil Alter's identity that way, and why he was in my office."

Veil asked, "To what end, Jan?"

"A Swedish diplomat who was Chant's friend had been killed by one of those drugged assassins Duane told you about, a killer whose services Blake had sold to somebody. Chant couldn't accept the idea that it had just been a random killing by some maniac, so he did some checking. He found out that within the space of a year there had been seven other incidents virtually identical to the one in which his friend had been killed. The killings had taken place in different countries, but all the victims were people of some importance in one way or another; all of the assassins were described by the police as crazed killers, and they had all subsequently committed suicide; all the killers were Americans who had only recently been released from American prisons. He did some more checking and found something else they all had in common: they'd all participated in the program at Blake College. He wanted to get into the project to find out what was going on. He did, through me, but then somebody recognized him."

"Tommy Wing," Duane Insolers said in a low voice that hummed with disgust. "Hammerhead."

We all turned to look at Insolers, who was standing twenty feet away looking out a window near the base of a staircase leading up to a wraparound balcony on the second floor. Now he pulled a heavy drape across the window, turned to face us.

"They knew each other in Vietnam," he continued as he walked over to the glass table by the sofa and poured himself some tea. "Wing was in Special Forces, and he had a very big reputation as a dangerous street fighter who liked to settle arguments with his teeth. He'd never lost a fight. He was a biter who'd absorb terrific punishment from another man's fists simply in order to get close enough for him to chomp down on an ear or nose, or any other part of a man's body he could reach. He and Chant apparently got into a hell of a battle over something, and the short of it was that Chant beat the shit out of him. They both spent some time in the hospital, but Wing was there a hell of a lot longer than Chant, and Chant was clearly the winner. It wasn't long after that when Wing was thrown out of the service on a medical discharge as a psycho. Then he bit a man to death in a bar fight, and he was shipped off to a hospital for the criminally insane. He was eventually transferred to a maximum-security prison and released on parole twenty-two years later. He was referred to the project. Blake had a decided taste for the bizarre, and Hammerhead was nothing if not bizarre. Blake pulled him out of the project and made him a bodyguard and personal aide. In the meantime, with a little help from me, Chant had made it through the selection process into the final stages of the program. That's when Hammerhead showed up one day and made him."

Veil asked, "With a little help from you? How did you get involved with Sinclair?"

"I didn't know who he really was any more than Jan did when she first met him. I was trying to set up a long-term ex-convict by the name of Neil Alter as a CIA asset I could run. You see, this Neil Alter character Chant had constructed had spent twenty years in prison for murder, but his sentence had been commuted when new evidence had turned up indicating he might be innocent. Only prison time, not guilt or innocence, was the criterion for getting into Blake's program, but the fact that he had been wrongfully imprisoned made me think he might be a likely candidate for my mole.

"By this time the agency had a pretty good idea of what Blake was really up to with this project of his. We'd made a link between the assassins and the college program, but we still didn't know exactly how he was transforming his subjects into self-destructing killing machines. It was my job to find out. Chant and I were, in fact, on the same case, but he was way ahead of me; he was actually going into the program. I knew enough about what kind of man Blake was really looking for to be able to feed Neil Alter the right answers to certain questions on a battery of psychological tests all the subjects were required to take in the early stages. This got him passed through to the final, secret phase of the program where men who would eventually end up as drugged assassins were selected."

"Then Tommy Wing met and recognized him," Jan said, her voice trembling slightly. "That's when the killing started."

Insolers nodded. "Blake and Wing knew the chain of people Chant had used to get into the program, but they didn't know how much any of these people might know."

Jan said, "Assassins were programmed to kill everyone who'd had any contact with Chant as Neil Alter, including me. Chant was to be framed for all of the murders-except, of course, his own. But he escaped from the trap they'd set up for him, and then he risked recapture and certain death to come and rescue me. I stayed with him, because that was the safest place to be; if I'd stayed in New York, Blake would only have sent another assassin after me."

Insolers walked around behind Jan, reached out as if to touch her shoulder, but apparently thought better of it and dropped his hand back to his side. "By this time I'd figured out who Neil Alter really was," the CIA operative with the medicinal smell said. "When I informed my superiors, I was told in no uncertain terms that my primary task was now to track down John Sinclair. While Chant, with Jan, was hunting down Blake, I was to close in on and kill him. Unfortunately, I was the one who ended up being captured by Blake's men, along with Jan. We both wound up in a laboratory at R.E.B. Pharmaceuticals in Texas with gluteathin dripping into our veins."

"Chant came for both of us," Jan said quietly. "Alone, he infiltrated a secure facility guarded by at least a dozen highly trained men." She paused, glanced over her shoulder at Insolers. "He knew by then that you had orders to kill him, but he saved your life along with mine anyway."

Insolers stiffened slightly, nodded. "That he did. We had to reach a truce, an accommodation, to work together to shoot our way out of there. Afterward, we decided to continue the truce until-and only until-Blake's operation was completely put out of business. We had to trust each other for a limited period of time, but our understanding was clear: when our business with Blake was finished, he would be fair game again-I would be too, for that matter, but he'd never shown the slightest interest in killing me."

"He faked me right out of my shorts in the endgame. He dumped me, infiltrated this castle alone, and engineered the neat trick of getting Hammerhead to bite his boss to death. By the time I got there-in fact, he'd summoned both Jan and me-he was in charge of the whole damn place. He'd struck a deal with Blake's overall chief of security, he had control of the computers and all the damning information in Blake's records, and he had me cold." He paused, smiled wryly. "Typical of Chant, he then suggested that he and I cut a deal. He pointed out that we'd learned to trust and work with each other while we were shutting down Blake, and he would take my word on the proposed bargain, if I chose to give it. If, on the other hand, I felt duty bound to decline his offer, he could arrange for me to be shot then and there by the six security guards who were holding guns on me. I decided to accept."

Garth, who had been sitting perfectly still and very attentive across from me on the end of the semicircular sofa, now crossed his legs and spoke for the first time. "What was the deal?"

"I was to get all of the credit for unmasking Blake's assassin program and destroying it. As far as John Sinclair was concerned, he'd simply escaped one more time, and his whereabouts were unknown. However, I was now to act as a kind of super-broker between unnamed-and fictitious-members of Blake's family and various intelligence agencies, including the CIA, around the world. Like I told you in the car, they took care of all the forged documents and legal work that had to be done in order to transfer everything that Blake owned over to Jan. In exchange, they would have access to all of Blake's files in order to remove any items of information they might be uncomfortable with; only minor items of an embarrassing nature would be kept by Miss Rawlings, as a gesture of good faith."

"But Sinclair had copies of everything."

"Sure, but only Jan and I knew that. It made me the guarantor, the watchdog, of the bargain; they got what they wanted, and Jan's inheritance was never to be successfully contested by anyone, anywhere, at any time. And she was to be completely left alone. Needless to say, everyone went for it; as a matter of fact, all of the other parties were ecstatic. They were really anxious to clean out those files."

Garth cocked his head to one side, narrowed his eyelids slightly as he studied Insolers. "And you never mentioned Sinclair to any of these people?"

Insolers laughed. "Are you kidding me? Talk about a deal-breaker! Any one of the parties involved would have bombed the place before they turned it over to anyone at the request of John Sinclair. No. They got what they wanted, and this castle is a free zone as far as all those agencies are concerned. They're not interested in Jan, or the money. That attitude would change very rapidly, to say the least, if they even suspected that this was John Sinclair's principal place of residence. But they don't suspect it- yet. I have to assume that they monitor what Jan does with her power and money, but she's astute; she's done nothing to threaten them, and she's a prime mover behind all sorts of good causes. She is what Cornucopia only pretended to be."

Harper turned to the woman sitting beside her. "How he must love you, Jan," she said quietly.

"And Jan him," Veil said thoughtfully. "Sometimes it takes as much love and courage to accept a great gift as it does to give it."

Jan's only response was to lower her eyes. Harper glanced at me sharply, and I felt my face grow warm. I looked away.

"Obviously," Veil continued, looking at Insolers, then at Jan, "the deal has held up for years. Jan, I have to tell you that Insolers came about as close to dying as a man can get in an effort to try to stop us from coming here. He seems to be a man of his word."

"Which brings us," I said, turning my attention to the CIA operative, "to the question of just why Mr. Insolers is in Switzerland in the first place."

Jan made an impatient gesture with her hand. "It was always clearly understood that Duane had the right to continue hunting Chant. It's his job." She paused to fix her gaze on the rodent-faced man, and when she continued, there was more than a hint of anger in her voice. "But not here; not in our home. Like you said, Duane, it was also clearly understood that this castle is a free zone. You had no right to lead people here, Duane. You have no right to be here yourself."

"I didn't come here to hunt him, Jan," Insolers said evenly. "I came to warn him."

Jan frowned uncertainly, shook her head. "Warn him?"

"I don't have any interest in hunting or killing Chant, Jan, even if it is supposed to be part of my job. You may not know it, but he's been feeding me bits of information over the years, just as he did with Bo Wahlstrom and others. Those bits have proved invaluable, and I might even daresay that the good guys have won a couple of battles because of information he's provided. On paper, if you will, we're enemies, but we're also bound together by the agreement we made. That's all well and good, but the fact of the matter is that I owe the man my life and more, and I know it. Just keeping my part of the bargain isn't enough. Pardon me if I sound less cynical than you've come to expect, Jan, but I came to Switzerland to pay off my debt. I don't want him killed, and I don't want him captured. So I came to warn him."

Jan Rawlings looked decidedly unconvinced. "Of what, Duane?"

"It's an assassin, Jan. The CIA has an assassin in place."

The tall woman's response was to smile thinly, set down her teacup. "Duane, I can't believe you're serious. During the past two decades, when has there ever been a time when Chant wasn't being hunted by assassins sent by a dozen different governments, or hit men from criminal organizations like Blake's? Your own employer has an open contract out on him."

"This time it's different," Insolers said in a low, tense voice. "This assassin is different."

Jan looked up at him. "How different?"

"I'm not sure. I don't even know if it's a man or a woman. I do know that I've never seen the top people in the company so confident about their chances of finally bringing him down. They know something. It may be a very special assassin with certain information about Chant, but from hints that have been dropped I'm afraid it's someone in the inner circle, someone he trusts, and may even go to for help-or someone who knows how to reach him. I think the agency is forcing, or paying, a friend to betray him."

Jan stiffened and turned her face away. "I don't believe it, Duane. Chant has never been wrong about the people with whom he's chosen to share his secrets. In more than twenty years, you're the first person who's ever put him at risk."

"I didn't come here to betray Chant, Jan. I came to help him."

I asked, "Why didn't you just call Jan and deliver your message, Insolers? She'd have relayed your warning, and you'd have accomplished your goal."

"Because that would have posed an unacceptable risk. If I'm right about this assassin being an insider, it could mean the person is a servant. I know Jan and Chant have dozens of people working for them, at different residences around the world. I couldn't take a chance that her telephone might be bugged."

"Then you should have written her a letter."

"Same answer; her mail is possibly being monitored, intercepted. And I didn't want to come here to see her; I'm watched, just as I watch other people. I felt I had to contact him in the field because Sinclair is definitely up to something. In the past, after an operation like the scam he pulled on Neuberger, he'd simply have disappeared-quietly come back here, or gone off with Jan to one of their other homes. But he's still out there, and he's leaving tracks all over the place, playing cat and mouse with Interpol and the Swiss authorities, not to mention all the people who want to kill him."

I shook my head. "What kind of tracks?"

"American spy satellites can not only hear a pin drop, Frederickson, they can usually see it-if they're aimed in the right place. Sinclair knows where they're aimed. He's been making telephone calls he knows will be heard, allowing blind mail drops he's used in his business for years to be exposed just so people will think he's trapped and panicking. He's neither. He's doing it on purpose. I think he may be the one doing the trapping, inviting-or sucking in-his enemies, or one particular enemy, for a showdown." He paused, looked at the brown-eyed woman. "Am I right, Jan? Is that what he's doing?"

Jan, now obviously troubled, slowly shook her head. "I don't know. He hasn't been in touch since this all started."

"Can you get in touch with him?"

The woman didn't reply.

"I considered it an unacceptable risk to try to contact you in any way, Jan," Insolers continued. "I did everything I could to keep these people away. I've been trying the best I could to contact him in the field; I was hoping that if I sent out enough signals, he might contact me, and I could deliver my warning."

"Insolers," I said, "you seem to be forgetting the fact that you pointed me here."

"I did not point you here, Frederickson," Insolers replied tersely, impatience and a hint of anger in his voice. "Not intentionally anyway. I was trying to send a signal through you. When you showed up in Zurich, I was absolutely convinced you were a part of his network, a friend who'd come to help him do whatever it is he's trying to do. With your background, you fit the profile of the kind of person Sinclair has crossed paths with, and befriended, over the years. These people are incredibly loyal to him. I wasn't about to swallow what I considered then to be a cock-and-bull cover story about doing donkey work for Neuberger. I was in a hurry to get in touch with Sinclair, and I made a snap decision that the fastest way was through you. I was wrong, okay, but at the time I considered it vital to convince you I wasn't an enemy. That's why I said the things I did. I figured that by mentioning Blake, I'd prove to you that I was on Sinclair's side. I couldn't imagine that you'd dig as deeply and as fast as you did into something that didn't mean anything to you."

"If you were so certain I was Sinclair's friend, how did you know I wasn't also the betrayer you're so certain exists?"

Insolers laughed. "You're not the betraying type, Frederickson. Your reputation truly does precede you. I was just trying to nudge you in the ribs to get you to see that I could be trusted. I nudged too hard, obviously, and too often."

"What happens now, Duane?" Jan asked quietly.

Insolers sighed, glanced toward the curtained window. "We have to get out of here. Now. I just hope it's not too late."

"Why, Duane? Do you think you've been followed?"

"I don't know for certain that we haven't. If we were seen coming in here by anybody who may have been following us, they could have put things together. They may be waiting, either for Chant to show himself if he's in here, or, if he isn't, simply to show up. But if they decide to move on us, we could all die."

"Where do you propose that we go, Mr. Insolers?" Harper asked. "You may recall that they're after Robby too."

"I'll take you all to a CIA safe house. You'll be protected there until this business is sorted out. Jan, you'll close down the castle, make it obvious to Chant that you're not here."

"I pass," I said. "I can't afford to go into hiding, because there's nothing to be sorted out as far as I'm concerned. If the people hunting Sinclair can't get to him, they may just fade back into the woodwork and wait for another day. But they know where I live. You can take Har-"

"Don't you dare say it, Robby!" Harper snapped. "Don't you dare!"

"We're out, Insolers," Garth said evenly. "But we appreciate the offer."

"Jan?"

Jan Rawlings shook her head. "If you have been followed and there are people outside watching my home, it's doubtful they'll let us leave. If there's nobody watching, I'm as safe here as I would be anyplace else. I won't go anyplace where Chant couldn't find or get in touch with me."

"And if you're being used as bait?"

"Chant will know what to do," she replied, then looked around at the rest of us. "You're all welcome to stay here, if you like. I know you mean Chant no harm, and I believe he'll trust you. I believe he'd want me to extend this invitation. If he does get in touch, then Dr. Frederickson can discuss whatever it is he wants to discuss with him." She paused, again looked at Insolers. "I'll give Chant your message, Duane, but you're welcome to stay too, if you want. I'm sorry I spoke to you the way I did. I know you didn't mean any harm, and Mr. Kendry pointed out that you risked your life to try to keep this secret safe. You don't claim to be a friend of Chant's, but I know that he thinks of you as one. I do too. You've kept your part of the bargain over the years, and I appreciate that. Of all the people Chant has struck bargains with, you're the one who's always been in the best position to betray him. You haven't. Again, I'm sorry for the things I said."

"There's no need to apologize, Jan," Insolers said quietly, "but I do thank you for your words. The reason I came to Switzerland is that I do consider you and Chant my friends. Talking to you is the same as talking to Chant, but I would like to stay a little longer to try to see if there's anyone else hanging around here."

Veil said, "If you wait until nightfall, I'll be able to find out if there are men on the grounds."

Insolers looked at Veil, narrowed his lids slightly. "Are you that good?"

It was Garth who answered. "Oh, he's that good."

Insolers nodded, and I turned to Jan Rawlings. "Lady-"

"Jan, please. In the first place, as you already know, I'm not really a countess at all. Good grief. In the second place, if you're going to be my guests for an indefinite length of time, we may as well be on a first-name basis."

"Then you'd better call him Mongo," Garth said with a wry grin. "He hates 'Robby,' and Harper's the only person who calls him that. But then, she knew Mongo before he was Mongo. There's Harper, Mr. Kendry is Veil, and I'm Garth."

The woman nodded to my brother and Veil, then smiled at me. "Then Mongo it shall be. I believe you were about to say something."

"Actually, I was about to ask something. Jan, I think Insolers is right about John Sinclair purposely using himself as bait to draw in an enemy. It's one enemy, one group, in particular that I think interests him, and it's a bunch of Japanese assassins, possibly all members of a secret society. I believe the ties between them go back many years, and your man may see this as an opportunity to take care of business once and for all. Does what I've just said mean anything to you?"

Jan shook her head. "Chant was born and raised in Japan, as you may know," she answered, looking puzzled, "but I don't know about any secret society of Japanese assassins. But then, I know there are a lot of things Chant hasn't told me. I suppose I really don't want to know. The one incident I was involved in with him was quite enough for me, thank you very much. I still have nightmares about those men."

Her tone had the ring of truth, and she had already demonstrated that she had little skill at hiding her emotions or dissembling, but I looked over at Garth anyway, just to make sure. He nodded slightly. She was telling the truth.

"Jan," I said, looking back into the woman's soft, brown eyes, "does he have a mark on his body? It would probably be on his back, but not necessarily. It would be quite large, a combination of burn scars and a tattoo. It would look like fire burning black."

Jan Rawlings' response was immediate, and as dramatic as when Harper had first spoken John Sinclair's name. Her eyes went wide with shock, and she gave a little gasp. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly right. How do you know that, Mongo?"

"Well, well, well," Garth said quietly. "Bingo."

"Jan, it means-"

I stopped speaking when both Garth and Veil suddenly leaped to their feet. Veil gave a slight shrug of his right shoulder, and I knew that his throwing knife had slipped from the spring-loaded scabbard strapped to his forearm and was now in his palm. I stood up, turned and looked in the direction of their gaze.

To my astonishment, I saw a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties standing on the balcony above me and to my right, casually leaning on the railing. He was looking down at us with what could only be described as a silly grin on his face. He was Japanese and, like many of his generation, quite tall, close to six feet. He was handsome, with piercing black eyes that seemed to have no pupils, black hair, high cheekbones, and smooth skin. He wore black linen slacks, expensive loafers, and a red and gray Harvard sweatshirt.

Veil, the only one among us besides Harper who had a weapon, wasn't waiting for the man to introduce himself. His right arm suddenly came up in a softball fast-pitch motion, and his knife flashed through the air. But the Japanese was just as quick. Without any wasted motion-indeed, without even taking his left foot off the bottom rung of the balcony railing-he merely moved his head an inch or so to his right, and Veil's knife sailed on up past his throat and embedded itself at an angle in the ceiling.

Garth, Insolers, and I moved to protect Harper and Jan, while Veil sprinted toward the narrow stairwell leading up to the balcony. It was a pointless exercise. Six Japanese men wearing expressionless faces and black turtleneck sweaters under steel-gray jumpsuits suddenly emerged from the shadows between the deep bookcases set along the walls around the balcony. Four of the men carried automatic rifles, while the other two held small grenade launchers. One of these fired a grenade at Veil's feet, while the other lobbed a grenade into the center of the sitting area where the rest of us were standing. The grenades exploded with a sound like champagne corks popping, and we were instantly surrounded by a pinkish-yellow mist that had the unlikely smell of sour pickles. There was no time, no place, to run, and Harper and I just managed to find each other in the sour-pickle fog and embrace before the thick mist entered our lungs, and the pinkish yellow around us faded to black.