What did they want to know?
What did they think he knew?
Sand relaxed and felt his body go limp. Fighting was useless. The wet rope had cut off his blood circulation, and his hands and feet had lost their feeling.
He was paralyzed.
He wiggled his fingers.
Nothing.
All he could do was wait for the car to stop. Then he would find out who was waiting for him.
And why.
He forced a smile and tasted the blood on his parched, cracked lips.
There was one consolation, maybe two.
They couldn’t hurt him any worse.
And death was as soft as a black pillow on the dark side of a night sky.
Lovely Night 8
ROLAND SAND WAS tied stiffly to a straight-backed chair with a black leather belt wrapped around his chest and arms and locked into a pewter buckle. His throat burned. His mouth felt as though he had been chewing on second-hand cigarette butts. The gauze had been ripped away from his eyes, but he still had trouble seeing through his swollen right eye, hammered shut by Muscles when the short, broad-shouldered government man dumped him into a trunk where only the condemned rode and usually no farther than the burying ground. The tough little bastard held grudges. He obviously didn’t like an elbow in the face or the taste of his own blood.
Sand tried to move his fingers. They were still numb. Ropes – once wet and now dried – cut deep into his wrists and were rubbing his ankles raw. The rope had been looped around his neck, and the knot was lodged against his windpipe. He had not been able to walk when Muscles and the accountant dragged him out of the car, up the front steps, and down a long, narrow hallway to a small room with black walls and shuttered windows.
Sand sat in front of a cold, metallic table, as black as the Bohemian’s soul. He saw the ragged, crimson streaks along the chrome edge and wondered if they were rust or left by someone bleeding, someone who had already given up on life. An Oriental lamp shaped like a Dragon’s head sat on the corner of the desk.
Muscles kept a beefy hand gripped tightly on Sand’s right shoulder. He had not yet spoken, and his eyes were staring without blinking toward a door missing a knob. Sand waited for the footsteps he knew would be coming for him. First the bullet, then the shovel. Quick and lethal. Easy come. Easy go. He heard the distant sound of a buzzer, and the door slid open.
The Bohemian had come to collect his prey.
From all appearances, the only thing distinctive about Bartus Kolinski was his name. He was a man who looked to be somewhere between forty and sixty. It was difficult to tell. His legs were short, his shoulders narrow, and he wore brown suits to match his shoes. No other color quite fit his personality. Even the patch covering his empty eye socket was brown, as was his hair and pencil-thin mustache. Both had been dyed. Sand remembered flecks of gray that had once spackled the Bohemian’s temple. The gray was gone.
Bartus Kolinski was easily lost in a crowd. If two men walked into a room, his was the face few saw and no one remembered. He blended into the background until he was part of the background, just another faint image on the wallpaper. Within the CIA, he was known as the invisible man. Witnesses looked past and through him, but never at him. They saw the gun but not the man who fired it, the knife and never the man who held it.
He was paid by a government slush fund, but no one within the intelligence community claimed him. The NSA needed him. The Office of Counterintelligence used him. The CIA was afraid of him. He was assigned the jobs no one else wanted to do or get caught doing. The Bohemian had one particular skill that earned him millions. He delivered death with the kind of precision and efficiency that made the post office hang its head in shame. His service was lucrative, paid in cash, and tax free. He operated across the street, across town, across either ocean. He had a small team of assassins that, within the last day or two, had grown smaller.
Roland Sand had defied him.
Roland Sand had disobeyed an order.
Roland Sand should have already been dead.
Why had the Bohemian kept him alive?
Sand’s curiosity was greater than his fear of dying.
Within the confines of the hallways at Langley, Kolinski no longer had a file or a name, only a phone number. No one had written it down. No one with the need to know, the need to dial it, ever forgot it.
He was not unlike a chameleon. He was whoever he needed to be and could just as easily be someone else tomorrow. Kolinski ran his operation from the top floor of a warehouse that did not exist in a remote town in Utah that did not exist on the edge of a mountain ridge that did not exist. The aging sign hanging high above the double garage doors said Barksdale Long Distance Trucking. The neon lights burned out twenty-eight years ago. The doors had been locked since the Vietnam War. The road outside could not be found on any roadmaps. On some, it was a dry creek bed. On others, it was the right of way for a power line. No poles. No wires. On the outside, the warehouse was never lit. Only a few entered. Fewer still walked out.
It was said among the mechanics who worked for Bartus Kolinski, God had given him a brilliant mind but had forgotten to include either a soul or a conscience. He seldom laughed, spoke softly, and with a single word, could have a man erased as easily as he could turn a crawling insect into a corpse with the single smack of a flyswatter. He counted his fortune by the number of times his phone rang. It was generally a million dollars a ring.
How much had the last ring offered him?
Sand could only guess.
Got a job?
Doesn’t matter.
Where is it?
Doesn’t matter.
Who dies?
Doesn’t matter.
Has the money been transferred?
It has.
When do you want the deal closed?
Tonight.
The Bohemian had hung up and immediately placed a phone call to Roland Sand.
Have critical assignment?
Need a job accomplished quickly?
Need it done without leaving any mess or loose ends?
Call Roland Sand.
Now Kolinski was standing in the middle of a quiet room, smiling at a man who had worked within the Association for sixteen years, four months, and eighteen days.
It was not a pleasant smile.
Roland Sand had failed.
Roland Sand had been stricken with a soft heart.
Roland Sand was no longer necessary.
Roland Sand must die.
He had made the choice himself.
Sand could not read Kolinski’s mind, but he knew the Bohemian’s protocol as well as if he had written the manual himself, and most of it he had. It was filled with an oath of responsibility and loyalty, as well as a carefully guarded, carefully worded operating procedure that gave an employee only one way to depart the Association. It was never on his own terms and always in a hearse.
His was not a job attached either to a time sheet or a pension. Live high, live free, live above the law, and live like a rich man until the day it all ends. It always ended in a fraction of a second and with a bullet. A mechanic learned early: Never turn your back on the man who makes the rules and calls the shots. Never turn your back on a man with one eye.
Sand strained against the knotted ropes that tied his legs together. He could no longer feel his toes. Maybe he was barefooted, maybe not. “Forgive me if I don’t stand up,” he said.
The Bohemian casually sat down across the table from him. His lone eye was apologetic. Sand knew the man. The man’s eye lied. “You disappoint me, Roland,” Kolinski said softly.
“Differences of opinion,” Sand said.
“Archie Conway violated his terms of employment.”
“He opened the wrong file. That’s all.” Sand tried to shrug. The pain in his shoulders felt as if someone had used his neck for a tire jack.
“What if he told someone?”
“Who would believe him?”
“He worked in int
elligence.”
Sand laughed. “Who knew?” he said.
The Bohemian’s voice dropped an octave. “Now, no one will ever know,” he said.
Sand raised his eyes and stared hard at Kolinski. “You terminated the wrong man,” he said.
The Bohemian leaned forward, grabbed the rope biting into Sand’s neck, and jerked him onto the table. The chair toppled over and fell hard on the metallic floor. “I don’t make mistakes,” he said. It was the quiet hiss of a cobra.
“This time you did.”
Kolinski waited. His round face turned to marble.
“The man who happened to find the file should not have been killed,” Sand said. The rope twisted tighter around his throat. He was choking on his own words. “The man who left the file for Conway to find is the man who betrayed you.”
“It was an accident.” The Bohemian’s voice was defensive.
“Nothing that ever happens in your secret little domain is an accident.” Sand shuddered as the pain ripped through his legs. “You don’t allow it.”
Kolinski loosened his grip on the rope, and Sand slid heavily back into his chair. “How do you know someone has deliberately betrayed an operation?” The question was a bark.
“How long have you known me?” Sand asked.
The Bohemian closed his eye. “Longer than either one of us care to remember,” he said.
“How many wars have we fought?”
“Together?”
“Or separately?”
The Bohemian clenched his fists, then relaxed them. “I don’t keep count.”
“I do,” Sand said. “A wise man once told me that the last war we fight will be the next war we fight. Only the landscape changes. Only the names change. And the man who ultimately kills you is the last man you left standing, the last man you left alive.”
“You are telling me a Judas exists among us.”
“One thing’s for certain.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s costing somebody a lot more than thirty pieces of silver.”
“Can you find him?”
“Not unless you cut these ropes off.”
Kolinski leaned across the table, his face close enough for Sand to smell the fear on his breath. “Maybe I am a fool,” he said.
“Someone certainly thinks so.”
“Maybe you are the one who was hired to steal our little secret.”
Sand forced a grin. “You know better than that, Bartus.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“If I had been hired to steal your dirty little secret, then Archie Conway would still be alive, and some worthless band of forgotten souls would be wringing their hands and drinking whiskey at your wake.”
For a moment, Bartus Kolinski stopped breathing.
His good eye glistened.
Sand knew the look. The Bohemian’s mind was working, moving imaginary pawns on a chessboard, deciding which ones would stay, which ones would go, and which solitary pawn would go to sleep dead without ever having a chance to spend his thirty pieces of silver, broken down into hundred dollar bills.
The tall, lanky government operative with narrow shoulders – still wearing his black suit, his black hat, his sunglasses – stepped out of the shadows and eyed Sand with the kind of smile a mortician paints on the face of the dearly departed. His right hand was buried inside his coat pocket.
“You want me to go ahead and do it?” he asked as easily as he would ask for a cup of coffee at a downtown diner.
“What?”
Sand knew the Bohemian’s mind was still a million miles away, lost in a maze that had one way in and no way out.
“Get rid of the poor bastard.”
Black Hat slipped a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver from his coat pocket and checked the bullets in the chamber.
“I can do it here,” he said, “or in the trunk of the car. Doesn’t make me any difference. Won’t have near the mess to clean up if I do it in the car. Wrap his head in a towel. Won’t leak much blood.”
THE BOHEMIAN ABRUPTLY rose to his feet and walked ten measured paces across the darkened room. All Sand could hear were the sounds Kolinski’s boots made on the metal floor. Each step echoed like a distant gunshot.
The Bohemian’s breath was coming in short, harsh bursts of self-inflicted agony.
Why had Sand betrayed him?
He loved Roland Sand.
Sand was like a son.
Now the prodigal son.
But he would never come back home.
No one would kill the fatted calf.
Sand must die.
Or Sand would kill again.
Dammit.
Someone must die.
Kolinski’s face reddened as he walked back across the room. The bulging vessels in his temple threatened to burst through his skin. His hands were shaking when he reached in his belt and removed a Beretta 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
He leaned his head back and stared at the single floodlight dangling from an electrical cord on the ceiling. The shower of light turned his face an unnatural white as if it had been suddenly captured in the glare of a freight train barreling down a nighttime track.
Sand broke the silence. “If I go to sleep tonight and don’t wake up, the world hasn’t lost much. You know it. And I know it.” Sand’s mouth tasted a soured bile boiling in his throat. “But if I die, then, I fear an assassin will be crawling minute by minute closer toward you. And make no mistake. The assassin is already at the gate. You will surely die, and your wonderful little Association will disappear right along with you. Your empire will crumble in ruins. You, sir, won’t even be a footnote in history. Who is Bartus Kolinski? Does anybody know? Does anybody care? It’s a question no one will ask. Kill me if you must. But you might as well accept my demise as your suicide.”
“I refuse.” The Bohemian’s voice rolled out of his throat like thunder.
“To do what?’
“Die.” His words crackled in the silence.
“Then we have one more fight to fight.”
“Together?”
“Or separately.” Sand was breathing evenly. “Do you trust the man you believe has your back? Or has he been paid to put a bullet in it?”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“A friend as easily as an enemy,” Sand said, “and you have made your share of enemies. Those who fear you would feel a lot better if they were shoveling dirt over your worthless carcass.”
Black Hat stepped toward the table. “No reason to wait, Mister Kolinski. Let’s put an end to it now. The bastard’s waited long enough.” He cocked the hammer on his revolver.
The Bohemian’s eye had not left the floodlight.
A scream tore from his throat, the sound of an animal trapped in the wild, the rage of an animal fighting for survival, the whimper of an animal afraid of dying.
The light washed out his face.
The scream ricocheted off the metallic walls like broken fingernails scraping across a blackboard.
The Bohemian raised the Beretta.
He fired once.
The floodlight crackled.
No one heard the gunshot or the scream.
The room went black.
A shower of splintered glass fell upon his shoulders.
Lovely Night 9
HOW LONG HAD it been since Eleanor had seen Navy SEAL Commander Patrick Hurt? She remembered well the day she had met him. it was the dead of winter, sometime around Christmas, and the weather was appalling. The downtown holiday lights were still aglow. Snow had been falling for days. She shivered slightly whenever she thought about those knee-deep drifts banked against the curb, the bitter winds cutting down through tall buildings sculptured from steel and glass. For reasons other than a cold, dark day in December, the chill had never left her.
The Commander had shown up at the Carson, Jones and Longmire Law Firm late in the day and without an appointment. He appeared agitated, frustrated. He wanted to see an atto
rney. He paced back and forth as though sand in his hourglass was running out for him. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I would like to meet with a lawyer now, if possible,” he said.
The receptionist had escorted him to Eleanor’s small corner office. She was the only lawyer who had not left for the day. Even before he introduced himself, she noticed four crucial things about the man standing before her. The Commander was in full dress uniform. He was tall, probably at least six-two. He had the rugged good looks of a movie star. He was wearing a wedding ring.
She smiled, wondering if he would smile back. His chiseled face was grim, his eyes stoic. “How can I help you, sir?” she asked.
“I’m Patrick Hurt,” he said. “I have a friend who needs your help.”
“A naval commander, I see.”
“A SEAL Team.”
“I’m impressed.” Eleanor motioned toward a straight-backed black leather chair sitting across the desk from her. “Please have a seat and tell me what can I do to help your friend.” She began straightening the folders in front of her
“He’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The police say he killed a man.”
“Did he?”
Commander Hurt pressed his eyes closed for moment. He straightened the cuffs on his white shirt. He leaned forward and placed both hands on the desk “Let me tell you about my friend,” he said.
Eleanor nodded. Through the window separating her office from downtown Denver, she saw the day growing darker and heard the peppering of sleet against the glass. It would be a tough commute getting home, she knew, and the longer the Navy Commander remained, the tougher it would be. Her smile never faded, “Please do,” she said.
“Daniel Burke is the bravest man I ever knew.” Hurt’s words were carefully measured, but she could detect the emotion rising in his voice. “I ran across him in Iraq. Desert Storm. He was officially fighting a war. My team wasn’t. We were there for reasons I can’t disclose. By the time we were able to reach Wadi Al-Batin, his unit had suffered terrible casualties. But Daniel sat there behind a dirt wall that had been torn apart, firing his machine gun until medics were able to carry all the dead and wounded back to shelter. Twenty-seven good men are alive today because he kept fighting the war when they couldn’t. He was still wanting to fight when we took him back down the mountain with us.”
Lovely Night to Die Page 5
