The Marble Mask

Chapter 25

I ran back to the railroad yard as fast as I could, slipping on the snow, calling Willy’s name before I even reached our boxcar.

He stuck his head out the door, his gun in hand. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

“We gotta find a phone. Fast,” I said, already heading back out toward the street.

“What about these two?” He shouted after me.

“Take their wallets for the IDs and cut them loose. We can round them up later.”

Willy caught up to me as I was slowing down before a public phone booth mounted to the side of a darkened building.

“What happened?”

I picked up the receiver and began dialing the Stowe police department. “If we’re lucky, nothing yet. The reason I was grabbed was to stall us.”

The dispatcher picked up on the other end.

“This is Joe Gunther. Is the chief there? It’s an emergency.”

“Nobody’s here. The patrol’s out and everyone else is in bed.”

“Roust them out, then. Send a unit to the Roger Scott residence. Somebody’s on the way to kill him, if he hasn’t already. You know the address?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, move on it. I’m in Sherbrooke with Kunkle and heading your way as fast as I can.”

“Who’s trying to knock him off?” Willy asked as I stepped from the booth to the curbside, having just noticed a patrol car in the far distance beginning to turn down a side street.

“Fire your gun a couple of times at that pile of pallets,” I told him.

He did so immediately, filling the night air with noise and two blinding flashes. The car stopped, straightened out, and its strobe lights came to life.

“I think we just got a ride,” I said.

Thirty minutes later we were in a helicopter heading for the American border like a darkened rocket in the night-Willy, Gilles Lacombe, myself, and the flight crew.

Lacombe was on a cell phone, as he had been virtually from the moment we’d left the ground, exchanging information with his people back at headquarters.

Willy and I were wearing headsets, connected to the onboard communications.

“Why in Christ’s name is Michel going after Scott?” Willy asked over the engine’s din.

“To satisfy family honor,” I told him. “The real Scott was killed in battle-something I was told days ago but didn’t follow up on. Another man named Webber-a certified weasel-stole his dog tags, probably for a rainy day, and then later relieved some Italian villa of a zillion dollars’ worth of jewels, art, and gold, killing Antoine Deschamps at the same time.”

“You’re kidding me. A heist?”

“Not surprising, given the people involved. Anyway, my guess is Webber shipped it home somehow-easy if you knew the right people-but then got shot and crippled in southern France. He also was reported killed-probably by himself-which is when I think he put those stolen dog tags to good use. Roger Scott was reborn as a wounded vet, shipped home to meet up with his loot and a future as a rich Stowe eccentric.”

“Did Jean Deschamps know that?”

“No, which is why he was so relaxed when he came to Stowe to interview Scott-eating out on the town and staying at a fancy inn.”

“So Scott killed father and son both,” Willy said.

“Right. The way Marcel’s been polluting his brain, Michel doesn’t think he has anything left to lose. His own father’s all but dead of cancer, he’s killed both Picard and Guidry, the organization’s about to be eaten by jackals, so all that remains is family pride. The final debt must be paid, regardless of the cost.”

Lacombe shut his phone down and put on a headset. “They have just located Marcel Deschamps in a van in his own driveway. The preliminary evidence is telling us he is dead of an overdose.”

“Suicide?” I asked.

“That I do not know. Was he strong enough to do it?”

I considered that, along with the dexterity it would have taken. It was clear to me Didier had followed orders one last time. But I wasn’t sure-had I been in his shoes-that I wouldn’t have done the same thing.

“He might have been-yes,” I told Lacombe. “Did they find the others? Didier and his two pals?”

“Not yet, but they did find Gaston Picard in the basement of the Deschamps home.”

“Tortured to death?”

Lacombe merely nodded as the pilot broke in, speaking English out of courtesy. “You might want to take a look out the port window,” he said. “I’m also switching you over to the police frequency below, by their request.”

We all three craned toward a flickering glow in the left window. I clearly recognized the outline of Roger Scott’s castle-like mansion below us, engulfed in flames like a vision of Hell.

“Joe, you there?”

I recognized Frank Auerbach’s voice.

“We’re right overhead, Frank. Is Scott still alive?”

“We got complications there. We set up an LZ for you upwind to the northwest. I’ll see you after you land.”

From the ground, the fire looked like it was spewing from a volcano, spiraling upward as if propelled from deep below the surface. It roared and crackled with cyclonic energy, pulling oxygen toward it with enough force to make our clothes flap.

Frank Auerbach came running toward the helicopter with Paul Spraiger in tow.

“What complications?” I yelled at him over the rotor noise and fire combined.

He pointed to a small log building precariously near the inferno. “They’re in that garden house-Scott and the guy you warned us about. Sammie’s with them.”

“We were told there was another guy, too.”

But Willy Kunkle grabbed Frank’s lapel in his fist before he could answer me, shaking him as he shouted, “What the hell do you mean, Sammie’s with them? That place is about to go up, you stupid bastard.”

I laid my hand on his and shook my head. “What’s going on, Frank?”

Auerbach had freed himself and was already walking toward the building, circling around to keep it between the flames and us, since the heat was almost unbearable.

He spoke over his shoulder. “Our first units got here just as Scott was being dragged out of the house by what’s-his-name. The other guy got away-he was seen running off and we haven’t been able to find him.”

“So it is Michel Deschamps in there?”

“Right. He had a gun, held them off, and barricaded himself in the garden house. Sammie went in to negotiate before I could stop her, and she won’t come out.”

“God damn her,” Willy snarled. “Typical.”

We were about thirty yards away from the building’s front door, shielding our faces with our hands to avoid being burned by the towering flames beyond it. Frank spoke into his portable radio, and one of the deck guns mounted to a distant fire truck swung over and doused us with a cooling, drenching shower-an incongruous sensation in an otherwise sub-zero night.

“Okay,” he yelled, “let’s go. I talked to the fire chief just before you landed. We’ll be lucky if we have ten minutes before that place ignites.”

Doubled over in our watery cocoon, we headed toward the cottage, straight toward the searing, howling, air-sucking maelstrom over-arching it, straining to see what was happening beyond the doorway. A hundred feet shy of the cottage, however, there was a sudden low rumble, like the sound of a truck entering a tunnel at high speed, followed by a huge, round, boiling bubble of fire that burst from the open door and the two windows on either side of it.

We stopped dead in our tracks, stunned by what we’d seen, utterly and instantly convinced that no human could have survived it.

Willy began running toward the heat, screaming.

Frank and I only hesitated a second before following. Although that one fireball had come and gone in an instant, there was little doubting its effect. We were giving chase to save Willy’s life, and no more.

Inside, the light was red and yellow and orange in a dancing demonic medley, throwing shadows against the walls like a slide projector gone wild, making visibility difficult and confusing. Also, now free of the water’s protective mantle, my skin instantly began to sting in the oven-hot heat.

Willy was on his knees, his back to us, before an upended slate potting table, his one arm flailing as he threw what looked like gunny sacks over his shoulder, finally revealing a startled Sammie Martens lying dazed beneath them.

“Cut it out,” she yelled at him, struggling to sit up. “I need those to protect my face.”

“I thought you were dead,” he said in a half sob, frozen in mid-motion.

After a split-second pause, she reached up and gently touched his cheek with a grimy hand. “It went overhead. I’m okay.” She pulled herself up by the table edge, trying to see beyond it into the room. “What about Michel?”

The rest of us then followed her gaze, suddenly reminded of what had brought us here.

There, against the far wall, leaned a wide-eyed Michel Deschamps-his hair gone, his face blotched red and peeling-crouching behind a wheelchair-bound and slumped over Roger Scott. He had a gun jammed against the crippled man’s temple, although it wasn’t clear the latter was even alive.

We dropped down immediately as Michel screamed in English, “Back off or I’ll shoot him. I swear I will.”

We shuffled up next to Sammie, who, barely glancing at us, shouted, “Relax, Michel. This is a no-win situation. There’re dozens of cops outside and you’re badly hurt. Just put down the gun so we can get you out. You did what you came to do-the house is toast and the treasure along with it. Scott’s a pauper now. Your family’s avenged. Come on, Michel. There’s not much time left. It’s a miracle we’re all still alive.”

“I don’t need time,” he answered above the freight train rumbling of the fire behind the wall. “I need this man dead.”

“Then shoot the son of a bitch and get it over with,” Willy shouted.

Sammie broke her concentration to stare at him.

“I want you out of here,” he told her.

“Michel,” I called out. “It’s Joe Gunther. I just came from Sherbrooke. It’s all over. Your father’s dead. Let’s end this. You put your gun down and we’ll bring that man to justice-hold him accountable for killing your uncle and grandfather both. It’ll be clear to the world what he did. You die in here, nobody’ll know. You’ll just go down as being a madman.”

I could barely breathe because of the heat by now and had stripped off most of my upper clothing despite my burning skin. In the shifting, crimson light, the rafters and window casings were beginning to smoke, building up to a second, perhaps permanent blowout.

“We got to get out of here,” Auerbach warned. “That’s not a request.”

“I can get them out alive,” Sammie said barely audibly, her arm still balanced on the table’s edge, her weapon pointing directly at the two before us.

But it was no longer her call to make. In a gesture as fatalistic as it was born of a survivor’s instinct, Roger Scott suddenly came alive, swept back with one arm and caught Michel on the side of the head, throwing him off balance.

Michel staggered out from behind his human shield just long enough for Sammie to say, “Shit,” and shoot him between the eyes.

As Michel slumped to the floor next to the wheelchair, however, Scott leaned over and snatched the pistol from his dying hand. A hellish smile on his parboiled face, he then pointed the gun at us, yelled, “Get it done!” and began firing.

Willy and Sam both emptied their magazines into him.

Auerbach didn’t hesitate. As the first rafters overhead suddenly burst into flames, he shouted, “Out, out, out!” and started grabbing shoulders and arms, pushing us toward the open door.

As we ran toward the welcoming cool darkness, a muffled roar told us the entire garden house had burst into flame.

We stood in a circle outside the Stowe PD command post a few hundred feet from the flames-a large truck equipped with radios, cell phones, and things to eat and drink-being tended to by EMS people who were trying to cover us with blankets and treat our burned faces and hands, although we weren’t being too cooperative. Everywhere I looked, I could see flashing red and blue lights-all of them made paltry by the towering pyre before us.

“What a way to go,” Sammie said, still shaken by the ordeal.

“Scott chose his,” Willy said simply, pausing to drink from a Styrofoam coffee cup, either recovered from his emotional outburst or working hard to pretend it hadn’t happened. “Took a little trip back to the good ol’ days and died like a Forceman should. I don’t know about Michel.”

“I doubt Michel knew either,” I admitted. “He had so many devils dancing in his head, I don’t think he had a clue anymore. He just plain ran out of options.” I gave Sammie a look. “Nothing you could’ve said would’ve changed that.”

“I suppose,” she murmured, looking both defeated and exhausted.

“That wasn’t true for Scott, though,” Auerbach argued. “We had nothing on him that would’ve stuck.”

Paul Spraiger had been standing on the edge, staring at the blaze, seemingly lost in thought. He turned at Frank’s comment and pointed to the fire. “We weren’t part of his thinking. He’d already died with that… His whole life is in those flames-the life he created from scratch, probably from the day he stole Roger Scott’s dog tags from his corpse, not even knowing why.”

He turned to face me directly. “Sammie told me about the mask you saw when you visited him.”

I nodded vaguely. “Yeah-ugly thing.”

“Ugly maybe, but pretty important.”

I glanced at him. “How?”

“I found a picture of it and showed it to her. If she’s right, it was called Mask of a Faun-believed to have been sculpted by Michelangelo when he was fifteen. A priceless work of art-unique.”

“You think it was the same one?”

“It vanished in 1944, from a hiding place outside Rome.” We all fell silent for a while, contemplating the wreckage we’d witnessed.

“You think the mask could survive a fire like that?” I finally asked.

Paul thought a moment. “If they don’t find it in the ashes-which isn’t likely-we may never know. Real or fake, it’s probably been pulverized by the heat and debris… Unless it vanished just before this was set.”

I glanced at him and he shrugged. “Along with Michel’s mysterious companion.”