The Curse of Medusa

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Vincent Reno watched with admiration as Kim Taylor fought her way closer to the luxury pool house. It was a hard slog through half a dozen men paid handsomely by Kiefel to defend the drone.

In response, the French mercenary fired a non-stop barrage of rounds into the defensive positions held by Kiefel’s men and kept them pinned down, but he was also being kept busy by Angelika Schwartz and her impressive determination to blow his head off.

Vincent saw a chance to hit the drone and he started to fire. Pauling saw what was happening and ran for cover, leaving the canister behind. A second later Vincent hit the drone and it exploded all over the rear yard, sending a fireball into the night sky.

Then, using the cover of a row of California palms, he sprinted in the shadows until he was across the south lawn and finally joined Kim at the pool house. It didn’t take too long for a very dangerous and angry Angelika Schwartz to snatch the canister and join Pauling. A second later she had picked off another two of Kim’s men with startling ease and accuracy before ordering Pauling in broken English to retreat to the back room of the pool house.

She shoved the Australian through the door and walked backwards, firing lethal shots as she went, pausing only to tear some cloth off her shirt and stuff it into Pauling’s vodka bottle. She lit the end of the cloth with the burning cigarette in her mouth and tossed the bottle at the entrance of the pool house. It struck the arched doorway and smashed, spreading vodka all over the walls and pool chairs. Instantly the burning cloth ignited the spirit and moments later the front of the pool house was ablaze.

“Move forward!” Kim shouted, unperturbed by the flames. “They’re on the back foot.”

Vincent was the first inside, covering his face from the heat of the fire with the back of his arm. He moved forward, gun raised while Kim and her remaining men were just a pace behind. Somewhere in here, he thought, Klaus Kiefel’s West Coast operation was about to come to an abrupt end.

They reached the changing room — a large, expansive affair of polished teak floorboards and fluffy white towels hanging over the backs of wooden pool chairs. Vincent caught a fast movement in the corner of his eye and turned his head to see Angelika blasting the lock out of an external door at the rear of the pool house. She fired two or three shots at them blindly before the two of them exited the pool house and slammed the door.

Then they heard another isolated shot.

Vincent and Kim were there a second later, and while the Frenchman tried to open the door, the American agent used her palm mic to order more of her men to the rear of the building to cut them off.

“Is anyone reading this?”

“What’s the problem?” Vincent asked.

“No response. I think all my men are down. What’s the problem with you?”

“Damned door is stuck,” the Frenchman said. He tried to shoulder it open but it didn’t move an inch.

“They must have pushed something up against it,” Kim said.

Vincent frowned. “Step aside.”

When Kim was safely out of the way the former Foreign Legion man fired a long burst of bullets into the top panel of the door until it was reduced to matchwood. He then smashed out what was left with the butt of the gun and peered through the hole to see the problem.

Alan Pauling was dead and wedged up against the door.

“She must have shot him and used him as a kind of door wedge,” Kim said.

Vincent nodded his head thoughtfully. “Why can’t I find a woman like that?”

In the tense silence of the Oval Office, President Kimble waited anxiously for the telephone to ring. He was almost totally sure that Kiefel would call off the murder of Grant if it meant saving his own life.

Almost.

Now, he watched as the young woman brought the coffee into the room. Her name was Veronika Fischer, but it had become Veronica Fisher when Kiefel had arranged for her to apply for the job six months ago.

“Just put it down there,” Kimble said without a smile. A lot was riding on the next few minutes. If Kiefel didn’t comply he knew he would have to give the order to kill him.

Veronika gently placed the coffee on the small table either side of the couches in the center of the room. “Would you like me to pour the cream and sugar?” she asked in a faultless Maine accent. Her beautiful smile sealed the deal.

“Yes… thanks — one sugar only please.”

The former spy and mercenary gently poured the cream into one of the cups and filled the rest of the cup with hot, fresh coffee until it was almost at the brim. Then, with equally placid movements she spooned one rounded teaspoon of sugar into the warm drink and smoothly stirred until the grains had all dissolved and the coffee was ready for the President.

He watched her as she picked up the cup by the rim of the fine china saucer and stepped slowly over to him. She gave him another one of those smiles. He could get used to those, he thought.

Kimble continued to stare at the phone as she gently placed the cup and saucer on his desk. He barely noticed when she broke protocol and moved around behind him to return to the tray in the corner of the room.

He was about to ask what she was doing when she made things a little clearer by drawing her leather belt off her waist and slipping it around his neck, pulling it as tight as she could.

“Mit freundlicher Empfehlung von Herr Kiefel,“ she said with cold hatred.

Kimble spoke not a word of German, but he knew from the last word what was happening and he knew why — his attempt to blackmail Kiefel had gone badly wrong.

He kicked out against the heavy desk and reached up with his hands, but she was pulling the belt so tight he couldn’t even get his fingers beneath it to pull it away from his neck. It bit into the flesh on his throat and pushed down hard on his windpipe.

He tried to call out, but the constriction just wouldn’t allow it, and now he felt the blood pooling in his head, making him dizzy.

“Margot!” he croaked as the belt crushed down on his windpipe. “Margot, get help!”

With a final burst of energy he managed to stagger up from the chair and drag the woman halfway across the room, where he spun around and fell backwards. They both fell down, the woman first. Her back smashed into the coffee tray and the shattered crockery pushed into her back. She cried out, but never let go off the belt.

Kimble turned again, driven by the base instinct to survive and using his heavier weight to gain some superiority against the woman, but it was too little too late. They tripped back over and this time went forward with Kimble’s face smashing into the small coffee table. It collapsed under the weight of the two of them, its daintily carved mahogany legs buckling outwards and snapping into splinters.

“Margot! Call the Secret Service..!”

They rolled twice more, and Kimble was able to look under the couch through the open door leading to Margot’s office. He strained as he stared out into his executive secretary’s room and realized all hope was gone when he saw Margot’s dead body on the floor. A look of abject terror was frozen on her face by the nascent rigor mortis, and a telephone cord was still digging deep into the soft skin of her throat.

Now, he could feel the weight of the woman as she tightened the slim leather belt around his neck, her knees pushing into the small of his back and stopping him from moving. The blood rushed into his head as he strained for the final breath he would ever take, and then his world began to fade.

His last sounds were that of the woman whispering something in German… “Sie werden als Verräter sterben…”

Her words were drowned out by the sound of his own tortured breathing, and then the room began to go dark. At first, his cortisol-flooded brain told him the lights were fading, but then he realized with a last gasp of horror that he was losing consciousness.

His last sight was that of the Presidential Seal on the rug, now seen up-close with his face pushed into the carpet weave.

An ignominious way to die, he thought, and then it was over.