Perfect killer

CHAPTER 85

Dan Gabriel stood at parade rest amid a canyon of hand-polished, teak wine racks filled with a priceless anthology of the world's finest wines, including complete vertical collections of every top chateau in Bordeaux. Engraved brass tags marked each bottle with name and vintage.

Clark Braxton's domed wine cellar had been carved out of the conical volcanic extrusion by the same wine-cave contractor who made the vast barrel-aging caves at the base of the hill where Gabriel and Frank Harper had been imprisoned upon their arrival.

The wine-cellar walls had been left in the natural stone and the floor covered in marble. The room and racks, which stretched fifteen feet or more and had rolling ladders with shiny brass fittings, cost far more than the median $500,000 northern-California tract house-not counting the value of the wine.

Two interlocked nylon cable ties bound Gabriel's hands at the small of his back. He tried to ignore the chaffing on his wrists as he looked through an arch of tinted-glass doors, two pairs of half-inch-thick plate glass set like an air lock to avoid fluctuations in cellar temperature.

Massive redwood doors flanked the glass and framed a room beyond with a broad window opening out over the western periphery of Napa Valley. Through this narrow portal, Dan gazed at the jagged volcanic and quake-rift hills and tried to find his calm inner center that had been his salvation many times before.

In the distance, smoke drifted into the valley from a fire on a ridge hidden from view. The California heat had baked the humidity into single digits and made the entire state a tinderbox, as it did every year.

A C-130, painted brilliant international orange, came from the right and made a water drop. As the C-130 flew out of sight, Gabriel focused closer, on the room beyond the door. Braxton was there, out of sight somewhere to the left in a room dedicated to tasting new vintages of wines.

The guards who had brought Gabriel and Harper up the service elevator said Braxton would see them when he was finished tasting a new vintage sent to him by the owner of an ultrapricey wine-cult vineyard in Yountville.

Gabriel turned slowly. The two guards stood beyond his reach. Beyond them, Frank Harper snored in an antique chair his head resting on a polished oak table. A small pool of spittle collected on the polished table. In deference to his frail constitution, Harper remained unrestrained by anything other than his own physical deterioration.

At the back of the room sat a glistening, cylindrical glass elevator, which led up to the main villa level. On the opposite side of a massive stone column sat the shaft for the service elevator carefully concealed lest even its very idea offend the aesthetic sensibilities of those who would gather to appreciate what The Wine Speculator- the influential and oh-so-trendy magazine for wine snobs and wannabes-gushingly called "the most ethereally supreme collection of wines ever assembled in one place at any time in history. If General Clark Braxton's collection were books instead of wine, it would surpass the legendary library at Alexandria."

Braxton reveled in the influence he wielded.

As the C-130 flew back into sight, General Clark Braxton came through the far set of glass doors, then waited for those doors to close and the second set to open. One of the guards moved quickly to position himself between the General and Gabriel.

Braxton held a small digital sound recorder in his hand as he walked into the room and stopped inside the door a dim silhouette against the bright landscape beyond. Gabriel squinted, which, he surmised, was precisely what the General wanted.

The guard nearest Harper jerked the old man upright.

"Let the feebleminded old bastard sit." Braxton's voice ran thick with derision, annoyance, boredom.

Harper's face registered a collage of surprise, pain, and anger.

Braxton shook his head slowly. There was a click from the recorder in Braxton's hand. Gabriel heard his own voice and Harper's.

First came the conversation of Gabriel's phone call to the elderly doctor, then the kitchen conversation. Braxton's face grew deeper shadows until he snapped the recorder off with a flourish.

"Welcome to my 'damned Masada fortress,' as you put it," Braxton said. "Yes, Frank, I have worried about you for quite some time. I had hoped to be wrong about time and guilt loosening your lips, but I have never won a battle on hopes, just on caution and preparation.

"And you-" Braxton's eyes burned with anger as he stared at Dan Gabriel. "You of all people. I trusted you." Braxton's jaw muscles trembled as the General struggled for control.

"You are a traitor." Braxton stepped forward and spit liberally in Dan Gabriel's face. Gabriel grasped for his inner calm and focused on the cedarlike aromas of cabernet sauvignon subliming from the spit. Gabriel's control nearly deserted him when Braxton slapped his face, but a vision of the consequences, being manacled, surrounded by guards, restrained him.

"I was giving you the command of the most powerful military ever assembled in history," Braxton said. "You have pissed away a soldier's ultimate dream."

Braxton turned and made his way over to the wine racks. He ran his fingers lightly over one of the tags. "Patton nearly died the day this bottle was filled and sealed." He looked at Gabriel. "He was a real soldier."

The General turned again to the rack and moved farther down. His hand rested lovingly on another tag. He caressed the brass. "Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill a week or so after the grapes were harvested for this one.

"It shows how wrong I was." Braxton turned again to Gabriel. "I thought you were made of the right stuff to fill their shoes and more!" He shook his head. "I was so wrong, but you must now live with the consequences. You will not preside over the Xantaeus Era. We will use our new weapon preemptively to make sure no one challenges America's might again.

"We'll celebrate this the day after tomorrow," Braxton said "There will be quite a few people here, Dan. In addition to my Defense Therapeutics staff, there will be quite a few friends of yours from the Pentagon; I imagine they will be sad to learn what happened to you." Braxton smiled, then looked at Harper, "And you as well, you old fool. But tragedies happen in the pursuit of peace."

Harper nodded slowly. Then Gabriel caught a malevolent glint in the old physician's eyes.

"So, Clark." Harper managed a smile as he looked around at the massive assemblage of wine. "Why have you collected all this wine and in all these years I have never seen you drink any?"

Braxton offered Harper a superior smile. "Drink it?" He paused, then said louder, "Drink it! Any damn fool can drink it!" He raised his arm and made a complete circle. "It takes discipline, self-control, and the true appreciation of the wine not to drink it, but to have the wine, to possess it, to put it where it, by God, belongs! That's what separates the dilettante from the true collector." Braxton spoke now with a near religious fervor. "To select, acquire, and protect, and most of all to complete the collection, is the mark of greatness. For when the collection is complete, it deserves a reverence transcending material value."

"But do you appreciate it, enjoy it?" Harper persisted.

"You are more pathetic than I ever realized, Frank. When a man rises to my level, possession, not appreciation, counts."

Braxton walked over to Harper.

"And that, you little, broken-down quack, is something you will never comprehend in the few hours you have left to breathe."

Without another word or even a final glance at either man, Braxton strode past and disappeared up in the shiny, cylindrical glass elevator.