The Color of Night

CHAPTER 62

Strand was dripping wet, his arm stretched out, pointing the pistol at a dumbfounded Carrington Knight.

“Wolf Schrade,” he demanded, short of breath, his lungs burning.

“Wha…?” Knight scrambled up against the last tread on the stairs and gaped, trying to collect his ability to think, to speak.

“Where’s Schrade?”

“He’s not here,” Mara blurted.

Strand looked around at her. “Who the hell are you?” he snapped.

They stared at each other. Silence.

Mara said, “Schrade’s not here… He called… he’s late, traffic…”

“Jeffrey?” Strand looked up the stairs.

“I haven’t seen him.”

Strand turned to Knight, who choked, “Not here…”

“Who is here?” Strand’s raincoat was shedding streams of water that puddled around his feet.

“Only us,” Mara said. She was standing with her arms pressed to her chest, a gesture of holding on, of controlling at least herself in this volatile moment.

Strand turned on her. “This is no concern of yours, lady. Get out of here.”

She slowly tilted her head to one side. “No…” It was a plea, not a refusal.

“Get out!” Strand yelled.

“Oh, no, please don’t do this. I can’t… I won’t.”

“Get out!” Strand screamed this time, furious with her, frantic to get her out of there, to get it under control before Schrade arrived. He glanced at Knight, whose eyes were darting back and forth between them. Even in his confusion he was beginning to calculate the meaning behind Mara’s surprising refusal to flee a shocking, dangerous situation.

“You go with me,” she said emphatically, “or I don’t go at all.”

Strand looked at her. She knew very well what she had just done. With that one sentence she had taken them past the turning point. When it was all over, Knight would remember those words. Knight was a witness. It was one thing to kill Schrade… It was over.

“Christ,” Strand said, looking at her. His shoulders sagged. God, what had he done in that fatal moment on Bond Street, when, even against his will, something in his unconscious had frozen his fingers on the trigger of the pistol? He turned to Knight.

“Get up, Carrington.”

This time Knight recognized something familiar in the voice. His eyes narrowed, then he rolled over like a large, awkward child and got to his feet, standing defensively against the newel post.

Strand turned back to Mara. “Okay,” he said, “okay, that’s it, then. It’s over.”

In that instant he could see in her face that she was relieved, that although she had committed herself to him, it had been a commitment she had made in spite of her own deepest feelings, not because of them. God, he didn’t care anymore, he just wanted to be away from it all. He wanted it to be over, and he wanted them to be together and gone and away from it all, even if only for a little while. He would worry about Schrade later. He would treat him the same way most people treated their inevitable last hour of life, by ignoring it entirely until they were unavoidably face to face with it. Why the hell did he think he should be any different?

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. He dropped his arm and turned to Knight. “It’s a long story, Carrington.”

“Harry Strand?!”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“ Bloody hell, Harry… what’s… A mask?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Harry.” Mara interrupted him. “There’s something else. Claude Corsier is alive, and he was just here.”

Strand turned. “He was here?”

“He left just a little while ago. He was already here when I came in. He’d brought two Schiele drawings, new ones that he’d unearthed somewhere. That’s why Schrade’s coming here, not because of my drawings. It was a coincidence, the drawings. Claude left half an hour ago.”

“Coincidence.” He knew there was no coincidence. He turned back to Knight. “What’s going on here, Carrington?”

Knight, stammering, speaking in bursts, quickly spilled out the story of Corsier and his drawings. In his agitation he confused the sequence of the story and went back to explain and then doubled back again to pick up loose ends. He could hardly speak at all. Though he could not even come close to imagining what was happening here, he knew that he had got caught up in an intrigue that was far beyond his world and his experience. And he knew that it was sinister.

“This is not a coincidence,” Strand said to Mara.

“But how could Claude know…”

“The timing, maybe. Probably. No one could have known about us and the drawings, our schedule. But the Schieles…” He looked at Knight. “The anonymity…” He was talking to himself, thinking out loud. “We’ve all sold to Schrade. We all know what he wanted. What he coveted. I could have chosen Schiele. Claude could have chosen the others. Either way…”

“God, Harry.” Mara was following him. She saw it all taking shape, too.

“Carrington,” Strand said, “Claude knew Schrade was coming this morning? He knew the time?”

“Of course. Yes, yes.”

The doorbell rang.

Everything in Strand’s mind turned inside out.

“Carrington!” he snapped, again pointing the gun at the art dealer. “Get over here.”

Knight looked as though he were going to faint, as though if he let go of the newel post, he would fall down.

“Get over here!”

Knight came over, his face pasty.

Strand looked at Mara. “Get around the corner, out of sight.”

“Harry, there’s got to be another door, a back door…”

“Yes, yes, there’s a back door.” Knight had stopped in the middle of the entry, suddenly hopeful that this could all be made to go away, literally, through a back door. “Oh, please, yes, the back door.”

“Get around the corner,” Strand commanded Mara, his mind suddenly jumping track, changing agendas. He waved at Knight, who cowered over to him like a threatened lapdog. Strand grabbed him, speaking hoarsely.

“Just answer the door and get him inside. If you do anything, if you try to run, I’ll step outside and blow off the back of your head. Open the door, but step back, don’t leave my sight.” He looked at the petrified Knight. “Do you understand?”

Knight nodded.

“Hold yourself together just long enough to play the part. Okay?”

The doorbell rang again.

Knight nodded vigorously.

“Just get him inside,” Strand repeated, stepping back behind the door.

Knight was massaging his hands and whispering to himself, “Shit shit shit shit.” He ran his fingers through his silver locks, shifting his weight repeatedly from one foot to the other in a little mambo. He looked at Strand nervously and punched the button for the electric lock on the door. When it clacked, he opened the door.

“Wolf! Wolf! Good of you… good of you… Come in, come in…” He backed away from the door, stretching out his right arm in a magnanimous gesture of welcome.

Wolfram Schrade was inside.

Strand closed the door and in the same movement put the pistol to the back of Schrade’s neck before he had a chance to react.

“Be very careful,” Strand said.

Schrade froze.

“I’ll explain the gun,” Strand said, remaining out of sight behind Schrade, his left hand on top of Schrade’s left shoulder. “It contains a neurotoxin. If it breaks the skin, you’re dead. In less than a minute. There’s no ‘wounding’ with this.”

Silence.

Knight was standing between Schrade and the stairs, his mouth hanging open stupidly.

“Harry Strand,” Schrade said in his heavily accented English, recognizing the voice.

“Is your driver parked in front?” Strand asked.

“Yes.”

Strand took his left hand off Schrade’s shoulder, reached back without turning around, and punched the electric lock.

“We’re going to get away from the door,” Strand said. “Upstairs.”

They stepped forward, and Schrade caught Mara’s figure in his peripheral vision as she waited inside the gallery doorway. He turned to look at her. He stopped.

“Mara Song.” He said it as if he were ticking off the names on a list.

“Mara Song?” Knight was completely adrift.

Strand pressed the gun into Schrade’s neck again, and they all started up the winding staircase.

As they filed into the library, Strand motioned for Schrade to go into the vault, the door of which always stood open. When he did, Strand closed the door and turned the handle once. Schrade never even saw his disguise.

He told Knight to sit in one of the chairs behind the library table. And Knight sat near the two Schiele drawings, as far away from the pistol as he could get.

Strand gave the pistol to Mara and nodded at Knight. “I’ve got to get this shit off my face,” he said.

“What are you going to do, Harry?” She kept her eyes on the mortified Knight as Strand began peeling off the latex features of the man he had been hiding behind.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled as he worked at the elastic bits of mask.

“The choices-”

“I know, ” Strand cut her off. With trembling fingers he peeled away the layers of the stranger’s broad nose. He knew his agitation was noticeable and disturbing to her, but he could do nothing about it. His fingers scrabbled at the bulk of latex over his brow. The adrenaline that had shot through him when he’d heard the doorbell had hit him like a jolt of electricity. He clawed at the ridge along his jaw that had added weight and heft to his head. What had astonished him even more was what he had experienced the moment he’d put the gun to the back of Schrade’s neck. Suddenly he had been suffused with a feral hatred that was the most intense emotion he had ever experienced, and he had almost shot Schrade then, at that instant.

“Good God…” Knight was watching Strand emerge from the rubbery peelings that were gathering in front of him on the table like limp shreds of actual flesh. “ Good God, man, what in bloody hell is going on here!” Knight’s voice rose wildly.

“Shut up, Carrington.” Strand’s hands were still trembling as he raked and rolled away the last bits of latex from his face. Then he took off the wig and removed the eyebrows. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. He was panting. He felt odd, which scared him.

He stood a moment at the far end of the table from Knight, Mara halfway between them. Across the table in front of her was the closed vault. He put his hands on the table to steady himself. The mandarin red walls shimmered, affecting his eyes.

Without saying anything, he turned and walked over to the ebony liquor cabinet near the settee and searched among the bottles for the Scotch. He found it, opened the doors and took out a glass, and poured it half-full. He stood there with his back to them and sipped it, held it in his mouth, and swallowed. He took another sip, did the same.

He returned to the table and looked at Knight.

“Get him out of the vault.”

When Claude Corsier recognized Harry Strand’s voice, he froze. He leaned into the binoculars and pressed against them until the tripod rocked and he had to steady it. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Strand was nowhere to be seen. But he did believe his ears. He knew Harry Strand’s voice. Then the unknown man, incredibly, locked Schrade into the vault, and Corsier watched, spellbound, as the stranger stood at the end of the library table and removed his face.

“Don’t touch anything,” Corsier whispered.

“He’s not even there,” Skerlic said. Despite his aloof attitude about the binoculars, he too was using them, hunched over his own tripod like a beetle.

“It doesn’t matter,” Corsier said. “Everything has changed.”

“What?” Skerlic took his eyes away from the binoculars. “What do you mean, ‘everything has changed’?”

“Everything has changed,” Corsier repeated. “That man who removed the disguise.” He finally pulled his face away from the tripod and looked at Skerlic. “You do not touch a button until I tell you,” he said, and his tone carried a clear note of threat, something totally foreign to Skerlic’s understanding of Claude Corsier.