Hostile Intent

Chapter Forty-seven

It was well after midnight by the time Amanda Harrington unlocked the door to No. 4 Kensington Park Gardens. The big house yawned, silent, nearly empty. She liked it that way, which was why she had lied about the sitter.

“I’m home, darling!” she shouted up the stairs; despite what had just happened, the humiliation she felt, she tried to sound cheery, motherly. The past few days had been very difficult, with the traveling and the treatments. Sometimes she wondered whether it was worth all the trouble. And then she remembered the look in the girl’s eyes, and realized that the question had answered itself.

Not for nothing was No. 4 known as one of the finest private homes in London. Backing up onto the park, with a stunning solarium parkside, four spacious, elegant floors of living space, plus a basement and an attic, it had been featured in every social and architectural magazine in Britain over the past quarter of a century. And it was hers, all hers.

The first thing she did was take a shower, to wash every trace of him off her and out of her.

She was still shaking as she wrapped herself in her bathrobe and padded into the parlor. A 1927 Hamburg Steinway was the featured attraction, along with the collection of first editions, many of them signed, by Graham Greene, T. E. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, and T. S. Elliot.

There was a bar on a side shelf near the piano, well stocked, and she poured herself a whiskey before sitting down at the keyboard. Even if she only played ten minutes a day, it was better than all the therapy in the world. She choose something from memory, one of the Brahms Op. 116 piano pieces, the soulful and autumnal A minor intermezzo, because that was the way she was feeling right now.

This couldn’t go on much longer.

Amanda Harrington was thirty-nine years old, unmarried, and had lived alone since her parents died.

Her hands sank into the keys. You couldn’t play Brahms by pounding the keyboard. Instead, you had to become one with it, ease into it, practically have sex with it, so that the tips of your fingers touched the strings, atomizing the keys and hammers and dampers and flanges and whatever else Cristofori had devised to come between the player and the played.

She wasn’t sure if she really liked Milverton, or whatever his name really was. SAS men, she had found, rarely made good boyfriends, much less husband material, and at her age a girl had to think ahead. Especially now, in modern Britain, where the native population would be a minority in its own country in less than two generations unless the women of England stepped up to the wicket. At least she was doing her part.

Still, the more she thought about it, the more useful Milverton became. He had been freelancing, or perhaps just testing the waters, at the London Eye, but…there was always a next time.

She caught herself. Skorzeny, she was quite sure, had bugged her house, maybe even her brain. Despite what he had done for her and her daughter, there was no plumbing the depths of his malevolence.

She finished the piece and looked around the room, at the books on the bookshelves, at the names of long-dead authors who had believed in Britain, who thought its ideals would never die, who had lived, and sometimes fought and even died through the first and second Somme, and Dunkirk, and Singapore. And what had they given their lives for? New Labour? Posh and Beck? The Finsbury Park mosque?

She closed the keyboard, protectively. There was something about the purity of the ivories — ivories that were now illegal, perhaps even a hanging offense, in modern Britain. The country of Burton and Speke and Stanley, of the greatest hunters and explorers and scientists, had become a nasty little island of guilt, shame, and political correctness.

Fuck them, the sob sisters and the nancy boys and the chinless wonders who nattered about morality while they rutted with the commonest whores of the old Empire. Fuck the politicians who sold out their old constituencies in anticipation of the constituencies to come. This instrument was hers. This house was hers. The child upstairs was hers. She tossed back her whiskey and headed upstairs, to check on her daughter.

The girl was lying in her bed, where Amanda had left her. She didn’t believe in nannies or any of that claptrap. Besides, the bindings were not too onerous and hardly left a mark.

The drugs were wearing off, but still working. Good. That made things easier, just the way the doctors had said they would.

“I’m home, darling,” she whispered, brushing the girl’s fevered brow. “It’s all right now.”

“Mama?” muttered the girl from her deep sleep.

“I’m here.”

“I want to go home.”

“You are home. This is your home. You’re safe here. Safe in my arms.” How she loved her, despite all the adoption troubles.

The girl’s eyes fluttered open briefly. But they were still blank stares, wide pupils, unfocused irises. The doctors had told her that this was natural, that after the shock and the trauma, it would take time. Days, a week, maybe a little more.

Amanda loosened the restraints, which were for the girl’s own good. They left no visible marks. “I’m hungry,” the girl said.

“Dinner’s on its way.” Thank God she had called ahead for delivery. Sometimes, without meaning to, she forgot. A lot had been going on this week. “Indian, just the way you like it.”

One of her phones buzzed. She glanced over: him. She decided not to take the call.

“Mama,” whispered the girl, “I’m scared.”

“Mummy’s right here,” she said, stroking her daughter’s hair.

“What happened?” said the girl, her voice still weak.

“Nothing, darling,” soothed Amanda. “Nothing.”

“There was a man. He hurt me. Then fire…” Totally normal post-traumatic stress reaction; at least that was what the shrinks had said.

“There was no man, and no fire, my darling,” she said. “It’s all in your head.” She wondered if she should call Dr. Knightley, just in case a needle was needed, instead of the array of pills he had prescribed. But her soothing hand quickly had the desired calming effect, and the girl fell back asleep. Once again, the combination of Morpheus and morphine was irresistible.

The phone buzzed again. Milverton, this time. Once more, she didn’t answer. Everybody had down time, even her. She’d call him back later, when she had poured herself another whiskey, when she got downstairs, when she had slipped out of her clothes and stood naked in the solarium, with all the lights out, staring into the darkness of Kensington Park, stripped bare and alone not with her thoughts, which were for sale, but with her emotions, which weren’t. She might even invite him over, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted another man’s hands on her just now. Better to keep him on the hook, interested, pliable…useful.

Amanda rose and tiptoed away from the bed. She didn’t want to risk the chance of waking the girl. The phone buzzed once more. It wasn’t a call, it was a text message, from Skorzeny. She ignored it for now. The girl stirred. She must have heard the buzz. “What is it?” she said in her sleep.

“Nothing, darling,” replied Amanda.

The girl might have smiled. “Are we going home?”

“We are home,” replied Amanda. “Remember?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Never better. Now go back to sleep.”

“Good night, Mom,” said the girl.

“Good night, Emma.”

Her phone buzzed once more. She let it ring and turned on the telly. The president of the United States was announcing that he had closed down the stock and commodities markets until further notice. Betting on the bears, the Foundation had just made another 40 million pounds sterling.

Maybe, for once in her life, everything really was right with the world. Maybe she had done her job well. Maybe she had finally got her reward.

She turned off all her phones. Beeb-2 was rerunning highlights of Beyond the Fringe. The world could wait, for a change.

Chapter Forty-eight

The taxi pulled into the parking lot of the Griffith Park Observatory and a woman and a boy got out. “Eddie Bartlett” had been watching them all the way up the hill, to make sure they weren’t being followed, but the cab checked out and there was no tail. He put away his binoculars and sprinted down the steps from the roof to meet them at the entrance.

What he was about to do he would never have done under ordinary circumstances. But these times were hardly ordinary. Since the nightmare at the Grove, his world had been turned upside down, and he knew that for this woman, this Hope Gardner, the nightmare had started a day earlier, and had been even worse. At least Jade was going to make it.

Still, he was going to have to turn her down.

They were standing on the outside steps as he walked right past them, heading for his car. He eyeballed them both and the woman’s visual matched up to her driver’s license photo. He started his car and pulled around toward the front. The radio was still nattering on about the Stella Maris, the ship that had gone to the bottom in Long Beach Harbor. Danny didn’t buy any of the bullshit story they were putting out, about how some explosive gases had reached critical mass in one of the compartmentalized holds, and had ignited with a random spark. Somebody had put that ship down, and part of him wished that he had been in on the operation. But he was still too wrapped up in his own grief. Maybe that — his grief — was why he had agreed to this meeting. To assuage his own by imbibing somebody else’s.

The woman and the boy were mesmerized by the view, as all tourists were. Back in the days before smog, this had been one of the great observation posts in southern California, not Mt. Palomar caliber, but close. California must have been something back then.

“Mrs. Gardner?” he called out. She turned. “Get in, please. You in the front, Rory in the back.” They got in. He drove off quickly.

At first nobody said anything. She had already told him plenty on the phone. He knew the story, she knew the drill.

“Where are we going?” she finally asked. Brave woman — getting in a car with a total stranger. Brave him, opening up to a civilian. But he felt guilty — he had been ready to sacrifice her and the boy and now here they both were, no thanks to his judgment. He and Devlin had saved them both, but had cost Diane her life.

They were heading deep into the park, over the crest and onto the side that looked toward Glendale and Burbank. There were riding trails and golf courses and the Los Angeles Zoo on this side, but plenty of solitude as well.

There was a fire trail he knew, one of the roads the fire department used as access in case of trouble. A few years ago, there had been a big fire up here and even at a distance you could easily see which parts of the park had burned and which hadn’t.

He ignored the warning sign to keep out and entered the access trail. If any cops bothered them, well, he knew all the cops from Hollywood Station. It was little more than a dirt road and the car bumped heavily. Sometimes dirtbags hid up here, kids fucked in their cars, illegals hid out, and the occasional dump job wound up under six inches of dirt. Those were the chances he had to take.

He found a clearing and parked. They were hemmed in all sides by pine trees; the only thing he could see was the sky.

“Rory, you stay inside for now,” he said, leaving the air conditioner on. It was blazing hot, still fire season, and the pine needles cracked under his feet as he and Hope got out of the car.

“All right, Mrs. Gardner,” he said. “It’s your meeting.”

At first, she didn’t know what he meant. That was what he got for using Hollywood-speak; even if you weren’t in the Industry out here, you talked like you were. “I mean, you asked to see me.”

Hope nodded. It looked like she hadn’t slept a wink in three days. “Yes. Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.” She took a deep breath. “As I said on the phone, I want to hire you.”

“And as I told you, you can’t afford me,” he replied.

“I don’t care. Jack had a sizable insurance policy, with a rider for accidental death, and I’m prepared to spend every penny of it if you can help me find my daughter.”

“I told you. She’s probably dead.”

“Probably is not good enough for me.”

Danny kicked some dirt. “Ordinarily, I would never have taken your call. Never agreed to see you. Never would have invited you out here. But I cremated my wife this morning and…”

“We had our service yesterday,” she said, simply. “Then we got on the plane.”

“I’m sorry. Sorry for your loss, sorry for your trouble. But I don’t see how I can help you. Why don’t you take your kid and go home. Start over. Rebuild your life. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Hope was surprised that it was so easy to hold her emotions in check. She was so much stronger than she ever would have thought, before all this happened. She had come all this way. And she wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

“You’re a liar,” she said. “That’s not at all what you’re going to do. You’re never going to rest until you get revenge.”

She was uncomfortably under his skin. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I saw you chop that man’s arm off…with a smile. You’re a killer, so don’t try to pretend otherwise.”

Danny felt his heart racing. This little woman had just rocked him back on his heels in a way no man could. “Like I said, it’s your meeting.”

“The 160th. You guys are supposed to be the best.”

He looked back at the car. There was a video player built into the backseats, and he had put a movie on for Rory. “We’re pretty good.”

She took that as a yes. “So’s Xe, I hear.”

Danny was impressed; this lady had done her homework. “We try. We take a lot of bum raps, but whenever any Congress critter or media nitwit needs to keep his ass safe, we keep his ass safe. Not that we get any thanks for it.”

“I know she’s alive.”

“I already told you—”

“I don’t care. A mother knows these things…Besides — I know about the other man. And I want to hire him too.”

“What did you say? About another man?” That part she hadn’t mentioned on the phone. She had his full attention now.

“The man who saved Rory’s life when the bomb went off. An angel, he called himself.”

“Can Rory describe him?”

Hope was confused. “I thought you might know him.”

“I might,” said Danny. “But I need to hear from Rory first.”

“Okay.” Hope had thought to keep Rory out of this, but she realized that would be impossible. They walked back to the car. As they did, she said, “So does this mean you’ll help us?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” said Danny.

They got into the car, feeling relief from the heat, dry or otherwise. Danny glanced at the temperature gauge on the dashboard — well over 90. A red-flag day. “Tell me about the man you saw, Rory,” he said. “The angel.”

Rory threw his mother a look and she nodded: go ahead. “I didn’t get a real good look at him,” he began. “All of a sudden, he just grabbed me and we both dove in the big trash can. I was scared — you know…”

“But he said he was an angel. What kind of angel?”

Rory shrugged. “I asked him if he was a missionary. Like in cannibals and missionaries. I like to play that game. Do you?”

Danny looked at Hope and Rory, a woman and a child. Not helpless, exactly, but as vulnerable as the missionaries to the cannibals. “Looks like I’m going to have to,” he said.

He knew what he had to do.

He had to keep them safe.

He had to help Hope find her daughter.

He had to avenge Diane and give himself and Jade something to live for.

How he was going to do all this, he had no idea. He’d already missed three calls from “Tom Powers,” but somehow he had to track him down.

“Are you in or are you out?” Hope asked him. An hour in LA and she was already speaking the local lingo.

“Let’s go,” he said, slamming the car into gear and roaring down the dusty trail toward Hollywood.

Twenty minutes later they were flying down Highland Avenue. The Kodak Center was the new fresh underbelly of the entertainment beast, where the Oscars were now held, a vast, sprawling complex that took in everything from the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, west to what used to be Grauman’s Chinese Theater, now owned by the Mann group. The one with the hand-and footprints.

Just before the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard, Danny turned right into the parking garage and headed to the lowest level.

There wasn’t much to subterranean Los Angeles, not like New York or even Seattle, but he had a small piece of it. The Red Line ran right under the complex and where subways traveled, so also did clandestine offices flourish.

Instead of punching the button, Danny slapped an ID card up against a plate on the elevator bank. The doors opened. Then he pushed a key into the console. “Security code, please,” said an electronic woman’s voice. Using the floor keys, he punched in a five-digit number. “Going down,” said the synthesized voice, even though there were no “down” floors visible.

After what seemed an eternity, the doors slowly slid open. Even three stories beneath Hollywood Boulevard, it looked like a normal office floor in anybuilding, anywhere, USA.

Danny led them down a private hallway. Hope caught a glimpse of people in some of the offices — cops, guys in suits talking quietly into telephones. He unlocked a door and ushered them into a small office. At once, Danny set to work, firing up computers, flicking switches, checking voice mails. Video screens flickered to life, audio streams came online; from a tomb, the room was suddenly alive with activity.

Furiously, he punched numbers into a keyboard, from time to time consulting old-fashioned black loose-leaf code binders, flipping through pages of what to her eye looked like gibberish. It wasn’t gibberish to Danny. Every keystroke, every glance, had a purpose.

Nothing. He had mined every database, run every kind of tracking software, done a dozen concentric-circle relationship charts, and he still couldn’t find out who the hell Tom Powers was, or how to contact him. One-way streets were a bitch, especially when they were blind alleys.

He was about to turn to Hope and tell her that he was sorry, that he couldn’t help her after all, when suddenly Rory said—“Cool. An iPhone.”

There it was, in his bag. It had been there all along.

Fucking Skipjack. That was how he was going to get in touch with Powers, whether he liked it or not. Walk the dog backward…

Its contract with the U.S. government stipulated that Xe had to be ready to put a team on the ground anywhere within twenty-four hours. Sub rosa, untraceable. Just enough men to do the job, but not one more than necessary. He couldn’t roll without the kind of authorization that Powers could pull, but with it, in a heartbeat, he could have a full complement of men who had served in the 160th: in, up somebody’s ass, out. The Night Stalkers.

The Stella Maris. That had to be what “Powers” had been calling him about. Somehow, it must be related to what had happened at the Grove. And, in his grief, he had blown the assignment. Nobody could blame him for that, but—

Thank God Jade was going to make it. When he’d visited her today, she was awake, barely. Her eyes had lit up at the sight of him, and for a long time he said nothing. He just sat there, stroking his little girl’s hair and telling her everything was going to be okay. He didn’t say anything about Diane. He didn’t know whether she knew, whether she remembered. She’d learn soon enough.

He thought of Diane and all the pain and rage and guilt and blame came flooding back. And yet, she was gone and no amount of remembrance could bring her back. It could only honor her, passively—

“Stay a little longer, Daddy,” came a weak little voice. Danny looked down at Jade and squeezed her hand.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can and not one second less. And then we’ll go for that chopper ride…all of us.”

But maybe it was more appropriate to honor her memory actively. Proactively.

What the hell was Powers up to? Whatever it was, it was big. Whatever had started in Edwardsville, it was time to finish it. For the sake of his family — for the sake of all their families — he had to be a part of it.

Well, that was what he had this office for. Up to now, he had abided by Powers’s rules. But this was no time to stand on ceremony.

It wasn’t simply a matter of a last-number call-back. Powers’s contacts went through multiple cutouts. But however many there were, in the end his call would have to be vetted by the Skipjack chip embedded in Jade’s iPhone, a chip that Powers himself had placed there. He could reverse-engineer the sequence, and one of those cutouts, no matter how many there were, would have to be real, and would accept the handshake from its very own mole, inside a little girl’s cell phone. He had no idea how long it would take, but there was no time like the present to start.

He said a silent prayer. The hamsters started spinning.

He was in luck.

The last call had been recent, fresh. The sequencing logarithms weren’t that old, and he was high on Powers’s priority list.

He didn’t get a ring-through, but he got a punch-through. Good enough for government work.

As he waited for the response, he realized that he was biting his own tongue.

Come on, damn it…come on…

There—

HOW’S YOUR FRENCH?

UP TO SNUFF.

SOAR, CLARA VALLIS, SOAR.

He got it. NSDQ.

Danny turned to Hope. “We’ve got a plane to catch.”

That brought a smile to Rory’s face. “Where are we going?” he cried.

“Van Nuys, for starters.” said Danny, shutting down the office and gathering up his stuff, as if that explained everything.

Chapter Forty-nine

With stock and property markets around the world collapsing in fear, Emanuel Skorzeny doubled down on his bets, short-selling like mad, snapping up whole companies for ten cents on the dollar. Through a series of shells, he had already taken a majority position in General Electric, whose stock price was at a depression-era level. He worked the phones, ordering shipments of relief supplies to Illinois, Los Angeles, London. He even gave interviews to selected friendly media, by Internet video. Four days after Edwardsville, Skorzeny International was nearly ten billion dollars richer than it had been a week earlier. One more disaster and he would practically own the U.S. Treasury.

“What news of Miss Harrington?” Skorzeny inquired of Pilier. “I have not heard from her in several hours. I suspect alienation of affection.”

Inwardly, Pilier frowned. The old man was already besotted; now, he was bordering on obsession. The Harrington woman, while spectacular, was young enough to be his daughter.

“Busy, sir,” replied Pilier. “Making a fortune for us. For the Foundation. That is her brief, I believe.”

“A woman of many and variegated talents,” observed Skorzeny. He was standing by his desk, staring at the Alps in the fading light. “And no less than what I expect of her. Still, I am distressed that she hasn’t called.”

Typical Skorzeny, thought Pilier: no matter what the situation, it was always about him. And yet that selfishness, often masked as selflessness, was what made him great. And richer every day. Not bad for a boy who started with nothing.

His back to Pilier, Skorzeny said, “What of the news?”

“Im Westen nichts neues,” said Pilier, in German. All Quiet on the Western Front. It was, he knew, one of Skorzeny’s favorite books and motion pictures.

Skorzeny looked at his watch and raised an eyebrow. “Really?” he said. “I have found throughout my life that bad news begets more bad news. The panic of the mob. The extraordinary madness of crowds. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And in times of mass hysteria—”

“If sir,” Observed Pilier. “If you keep your head when all about—”

“You dare quote Kipling to me?” he said.

Pilier backtracked as fast as he could. “Purely for referential purposes, sir,” he said. “After all, Kipling is—”

“An imperialist and an Englishman,” said Skorzeny. “As the Americans say, that is two strikes against him.”

“Yes, sir,” admitted Pilier in defeat. Best not to try and trade literary witticisms with his superior.

“This woman…” mused Skorzeny.

Oh, no, thought Pilier.

“She is remarkable, is she not?” inquired Skorzeny.

“Are you soliciting my opinion, sir, or merely stating a fact?”

“Both, I should say.”

“Then I absolutely agree.”

The Glare, for just a fleeting moment. Then, “When the American markets reopen,” said Skorzeny, blessedly changing the subject, “what will be our position?”

“Aggressive, sir. Stocks, commodities, real estate. We also snap up the ancillaries — tech stocks, defense industries, shipping, the lot.”

“Good. What about the public utilities? The banks?”

“The utilities can wait a bit, but we will be taking a very strong position in Bank of America and Citicorp and I expect we should be able to push that toward majority status should we wish to. In fact, with any luck, we can own them outright tomorrow.”

“What about Credit Suisse? J.P. Morgan Chase?”

“Proxies will take care of both of them. Also Barclay’s. And, of course, Société Générale we already own. Last but not least, we’ve taken a very bearish stance against both the dollar and the euro, and I believe events are bearing out our wisdom of the plan adopted by the board at your suggestion.”

“Sell our holdings in Universal and Paramount. Parent companies too. Might as well make a clean divestiture. Clear out the rot and start over.”

“What ‘rot’ might that be, sir?” wondered Pilier. “The company has done very well with its Hollywood investments. Not to mention by its friends in the industry.”

Skorzeny shot him an irritated glance, a warning that he was overstepping his servile boundary. “I am bored with movies about comic books,” he said. “What is this world coming to? Jejune juvenilia, elevated to the level of art. What would Shakespeare say? Goethe? Rimbaud? Tolstoy? Ne kulturny. Given the demographics, we will first run out of children and then run out of comic books…Now, what of our ship?”

Pilier wondered whether the old man was going senile. “Sir, you know that the Stella Maris sank two days ago under mysterious circumstances in Long Beach Harbor. And despite our protestations, the United States government has not yet seen fit to—”

“I am not interested in old news, Monsieur Pilier,” said Skorzeny coolly. “I am referring to the Clara Vallis. How is she making?”

“On schedule.”

“And our experiments?”

“Ready to launch.”

“Good.” Skorzeny glanced over at the eternal television screen. “Shut that infernal thing off and sit down so we can have a proper talk.”

Pilier clicked the remote and the TV winked off. He took the nearest chair and sat. It wasn’t very comfortable, but that was the way the boss liked it. The only congenial chair in the room was Skorzeny’s; everybody else had to suffer. It was like being at Bayreuth without Wagner’s music. Death without Transfiguration. Skorzeny stared at Pilier for an uncomfortably long time before he spoke.

“There is a mighty wind coming, Monsieur Pilier. Perhaps you have not noticed it, but rest assured that I have. For years, decades, I have felt its approach, smelt its dragon breath. And when it blows through, when it has wrought what it was sent to wreak, who will be left to mourn what it leaves in its wake?”

Pilier had no idea what the old man was talking about. He almost wished he was still on the subject of the lovely Amanda Harrington — a woman, he had to confess to his inner chaplain, who had often figured in his erotic fantasies, some of them quite exotic. She embodied, he supposed, what the late Roman Catholic Church meant by “an occasion of sin.”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

“I will. I and those closest to me.”

Skorzeny fell silent for a while, contemplating the art on the walls, from time to time humming some small snatch of music to himself. To Pilier, he seemed in the grip of a great agitation, which even his iron will could not quite control.

“I have not been able to reach her by telephone or text.”

So it was back to Amanda again. “Sir, you saw her last night, in London.”

Skorzeny seemed to struggle back to his senses. “Yes,” he said. “London. The last piece of our little puzzle. What of our representative there?”

Pilier checked the time. “He is due to report in to you by teleconference shortly. I am led to believe that you will be very happy with his report, sir.”

Skorzeny folded his hands together. “Then everything is in order. And now it is in the hands of God, if He has any interest in us left…One last thing. Please make ready our holiday home for occupancy.”

That caught Pilier by surprise. Although he had multiple residences in many of the world’s garden spots, Skorzeny only ever used that phrase, “holiday home” to refer to one place in particular. “Yes, sir.”

Skorzeny reached for one of the remotes and switched on some music. Usually, he waited until he had retired for the evening’s concert, but on this night it was as if he wanted to share it with Pilier, with the world.

The music sounded. A soft, mournful, cello line above a contemplative piano accompaniment, slow, very slow, but steady, like the beating of a broken heart. Pilier was about to ask what it was, but Skorzeny anticipated his question and held up his hand peremptorily for silence. Pilier obeyed.

For more than eight and a half eternal minutes, the music continued, unchanging on its infinitely slow, ecstatic course.

“Do you know what that was, Monsieur Pilier?” asked Skorzeny, when the last, dying note could no longer be heard.

“No, sir,” he replied, truthfully.

“And yet you are a graduate of the Sorbonne. Amazing. You might as well have attended Harvard and emerged no less an ignorant, though perhaps more ideologically blinkered, savage.”

Skorzeny signaled for the ablution bowl. “‘I saw a mighty Angel descending from heaven…and the Angel swore by Him who lives forever and ever, saying: there will be no more Time…the mystery of God will be completed.’ The Book of Revelation, written by John the Evangelist on Patmos, as the Christians believe. Now can you tell me what that music was?”

Inwardly, Pilier seethed. Outwardly, he remained as placid as the music had been. “No, sir,” he said.

“‘Praise Eternity.’ The fifth movement of Messiaen’s Quatour pour le fin du temps. ‘The Quartet for the End of Time.’ Written in seven movements and an interlude, and premiered by its composer in a Nazi prison camp at Görlitz during the winter of 1940–41, for the instruments he had on hand: piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. Do you know what Messiaen said about it?”

The shame of ignorance was burning Pilier’s cheeks. He couldn’t compete with Skorzeny’s all-embracing, omniscient Weltanschauung.

“Of course you don’t. He said, ‘Never have I been heard with as much attention and understanding.’ In a concentration camp. Thus focusing the mind and concentration wonderfully. As I know from bitter experience.”

“It’s beautiful, sir,” mustered Pilier.

“It’s not beautiful,” barked Skorzeny. “It’s radiant. ‘Seven is the perfect number.’ But he wrote one extra movement, the interlude, so as not to compete with Creation. Le 7 de ce repos se prolonge dans l’éternité de devient le 8 de la lu-mière indéfectible, de l’inaltérable paix. ‘The seventh of his day of repose prolongs itself into eternity and becomes the eighth, of unfailing light, of immutable peace.’ Do you understand that? Unfailing light. Immutable peace.”

“Yes, sir. No, sir.” Pilier had no idea which the correct answer was, so he tried them both. How he wished the old man would just go to bed one night, and never wake up. All this blather about useless culture gave him a migraine.

“Messiaen believed it was his faith that got him safely through the camps, and made him one of the greatest composers of the benighted twentieth century. Do you agree, Monsieur Pilier?”

That was no way to answer that question, except honestly. “No, sir. I don’t. Religion is superstition, dressed up in vestments and perfumed with incense.”

Skorzeny contemplated him for a long time before he spoke. “We are, all of us, in need of salvation, Monsieur Pilier,” he said at last.

The huge video screen suddenly flickered to life; despite his fashionable atheism, Pilier breathed a silent prayer of relief, for having spared him whatever was to have followed. “That would be our London member, sir,” he said, switching on the private video feed.

The face of Charles Augustus Milverton filled the screen. Skorzeny contemplated it with equanimity; this was no time to give voice to his suspicions, nor let them color the business they needed to transact. There would be plenty of time for that later, after the great event. “Report,” he said.

“Our Washington friend has been most helpful — I got the final confirmation yesterday. Not in so many words, of course, but in actions. Hidden signals. Emanations of penumbras. He’s the one you’ve been looking for. And, sir—

“What’s his name?” Skorzeny could hardly contain his excitement.

“And may I say that he’s the one I’ve been looking for as well. Ever since that night in Paris—”

“What’s his name?”

“He doesn’t have a name, sir.”

“Then how do you know it’s him?”

“I know.”

This was the moment Emanuel Skorzeny had been waiting for nearly a quarter of a century. The one thing, the one man, that could interrupt his plans, the one person who could link him to that unholy triangle, to the days when he learned firsthand how deadly the female of the species could be, how the weakness of men would always be their undoing, how the passions of the moment always trumped reason. As Blake had foretold.

The thing that had first put fear into him.

Love.

He had vowed then that he would not become what he had beheld. He had failed.

But perhaps it was not too late. A moment of vengeance, and t’were best done, especially t’were it done quickly.

“Kill him. Launch the experiment.”

Milverton paused. He was used to impossible missions. But this…

Skorzeny heard, no, make that sensed, his hesitation—“You know who he is?”

“I only caught a glimpse of him in Edwardsville.”

Skorzeny saw his play. It was perfect. Solved all his problems at one stroke. “And did he see you?”

Milverton’s face betrayed no emotion. There was no right answer. “I don’t know.”

“A profession of ignorance is not an answer.”

“Perhaps. I think so.”

Skorzeny smiled and reached once more for the ablution bowl. If it worked once, it would work twice, even in one night. “Then let him come to you. Make him come to you. Draw him to your home turf and kill him. What could be easier? You have the defender’s advantage.”

For once, there was silence at the other end of the line. Milverton’s face betrayed no emotion, but nothing came out of his mouth.

“It’s perfect, don’t you see?” said Skorzeny, pausing a little longer than necessary for effect. “One last misdirection, while the real work occurs elsewhere.” Milverton wasn’t sure if he liked this idea, but stayed silent. “While you two settle an old score…In the meantime, if by any chance you should see Miss Harrington, please ask her to call me immediately. I require her presence tomorrow at the country house in France.”

Amanda. So that was what this was all about. The old bastard was on to them. Had he wrung a confession out of her when he was in London? Milverton realized that he hadn’t been able to get ahold of Amanda, either, that she hadn’t answered his calls. “The country house?”

“Yes. With the insurance policy.”

The insurance policy. This was getting worse by the second.

“I’m not sure I understand, Mr. Skorzeny.”

Milverton knew that, had they been face to face, Skorzeny would have looked upon him as if he were an idiot child. Or worse, that iron mannequin holding out the begging bowl on Regent Street with the sign saying SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SPASTIC, or whatever politically correct thing it said these days.

Skorzeny chuckled. “Of course you do.”

He was being set up. Even at this distance, Milverton could smell the stench of desperation on Skorzeny, even as he could smell the scent of Amanda Harrington on him. That was what this was all about.

Her. With the biggest, most audacious play of his life right in front of him, Emanuel Skorzeny was losing focus over a woman.

So unimportant to a man of Milverton’s age and experience. So vitally important to a man of Skorzeny’s age and experience. And he never saw it coming. What a fool he had been.

“It’s him, isn’t it? The man whom I seek.”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

Milverton could feel the excitement radiating from the other end of the continental trunk line. Skorzeny had overplayed his hand. He had given something away. His need. He had never seen that before. His lust — for money, power, women — of course. But never need. Never desperation. Skorzeny’s need, if Milverton played his cards right, would be the thing that kept him alive.

“Then make us both happy. Draw him to you and kill him.”

Even though he knew it was a trap, even though he knew that Skorzeny was setting him up, even though he knew that it didn’t matter to the old man which of them killed the other — because in the aftermath it wouldn’t really matter — Milverton could feel his own excitement rising. His own lust for combat. His own need to pay back this man for the indignity he had inflicted on him in Paris, and for the countless other frustrations he had had to endure during their long cold war in the darkest shadows of cyberspace.

Which meant that he would get to face him. The shadow. The man who wasn’t there. This child whom Skorzeny sought. Protected by the NSA. Given up by Hartley. Very well, then. Bring him on.

And bring on Skorzeny too. He had put up with Caligula long enough, with his barely disguised contempt, with the way he had treated Amanda. He had not survived the training camps of the SAS, not run to ground the deadly operatives of the Provos in Spain, not cut the throats of the IRA men on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry, not dealt with the worst Soviet Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Jewish gangsters to kowtow to a man whose only real claim to fame was that he was a victim. He would show Skorzeny what the word victim really meant.

Not a symbolic victim.

Not a possible victim.

Not a putative victim.

Not a potential victim.

A real victim.

A dead victim.

“Yes, sir,” he said, hanging up.

Nobody hung up on Emanuel Skorzeny.

Milverton didn’t care. He called Amanda Harrington again.