THE DEATH FREAK -- An Eddie Mancuso Thriller (Eddie Mancuso And Vasily Borgneff Book 1)

by Clifford Irving

  "Please let go of my arm," Vasily replied coolly, "and then listen to me. There's nothing you can do to save her life. Chalice is already dead."

  His face paling, Eddie released the grip. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "I mean that while it's possible, just faintly possible, that they might allow you to walk away, that same privilege is not going to be extended to the lady. Don't you see it? Compared with what she knows, you know nothing. When her husband told her about the Squad's operation against us, he signed her death certificate. Over the years, how much else do you think he's told her? You don't know. I don't know either. Perhaps even Crowfoot doesn't know—but he can't take the chance. Chalice is unstable. She could talk to anyone. She could go over to the other side—and I'll remind you that in this game there are more than just two sides. They can't risk that. I don't mean that she's dead now. They want you safely out of the way, so if by some chance they do keep to their bargain, they'll let her come to you. But then one day, one bright sunny day, wherever you are—in Bali or Cozumel or Paris, it doesn't matter—she'll be at the wheel of a car and it will go out of control. Or she'll fall ill, mysteriously. There will be no cure. A heart attack, a touch of botulism. Do I have to tell you the ways they can accomplish it? She's dead, Eddie . . . dead. It's a terminal illness and there's no cure for it. What we do this morning, if she's in that building, will only hasten the inevitable. At the least, it will be more merciful—on you as well."

  "I don't believe any of that," Eddie said.

  "Because you don't want to. You believe what it suits you to believe. You always have."

  Sharing the hotel elevator with two couples who had stumbled in bleary-eyed from the discotheque, Vasily broke into polite chatter about the weather, the idle threat of rain, while Eddie lapsed into a rocklike silence.

  Behind it, his mind churned. If I were smarter, he thought, I'd know what to do, what to believe. But I don't see it. Maybe Vasily was right: maybe Crowfoot was lying. The one obligation these people never had in their whole lives was to tell the truth. So he's lying. Assume that. In which case, we leave them in peace and go away and they come after us. If he doesn't keep his word and they bury Chalice in Williamsburg, I know the score and I go after them again. Crowfoot can't afford to have that happen, so he's got to keep that part of the bargain. Which boils down to this: if I trust him, I get Chalice. And Vasily's wrong— they won't come after her, because if they get her, even the way he described it, I'll know it wasn't an accident and I'll come right back at them. Back to square one, me against them, where they don't want to be.

  Think, dummy. Vasily doesn't give a damn about anyone ex­cept himself. Crowfoot was right; he never did. Chalice is in there. If we go through with this stunt and get away with it, she dies. And all the information is still locked away in the Zhukovka CYBER—maybe even up in the computer bank at Langley by now. Crowfoot would cover himself. Maybe someone else in the Agency knows, some guy who'll never let go. Take out a whole unit like the Colonial Squad and they won't sleep until they find out who did it and then bring him in from the cold to the heat. Zhukovka will tell them. They sleep in the same bed, and they always did. And Chalice dies.

  In the end, there it was: Chalice dies. I can't do that, Eddie decided. Whatever the risk, I can't do it. No way, not for Mrs. Mancuso's little boy from Mulberry Street. Shove it, Vasily.

  Think about Borgneff.

  Oh, the old man was clever. He planted seeds and let them grow. He didn't need a computer to figure this one out. Just that smart old Indian brain, eyes that picked your mind apart like a cheap lock, and let the other guys do the dirty work. But he was wrong there. I couldn't do that. Could I?

  In Vasily's room, the Russian faced him. His leather suitcases were neatly packed, waiting only for the straps to be buckled. A Brown Bess musket stood against the wall. Vasily was ready to go.

  "Well?" he asked.

  "I'm not going," Eddie said. "I'm going to call the old man and tell him it's a deal."

  Vasily frowned, pursed his lips, then slowly nodded his head up and down. "Because of Chalice."

  "That's it."

  "And you expect me to accept that?"

  "You owe her, Vasily."

  "And you owe me. You always pay your debts—you told me that. Now it's time to pay me."

  "If she wasn't in there, I'd do it."

  "Is it useless to argue with you?"

  "Yeah," Eddie said. "Don't waste your time."

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Vasily took out his gold cigar case. He selected one, lit it, and puffed leisurely. His eyes were contemplative, the muscles of his face relaxed.

  "What did Crowfoot tell you to do with me, Eddie?" he asked quietly.

  "Do?"

  "Come, come. He must have foreseen that I might not agree to this so-called amnesty. We're friends, Eddie. We've been through a lot together. Don't lie to me now."

  "He just told me to think about you. That if you wouldn't agree, there was a simple solution."

  "To kill me."

  Eddie grinned. "Yeah. That's what the old guy had in mind."

  Vasily smiled back at him. "And what do you have in mind?"

  "I wouldn't do it," Eddie said. "I couldn't. Like you said, I owe you. And I'm funny that way: I don't kill my friends." He spread his hands. "I haven't got a damn thing on me, tovarich. No camera, no prosthetic. I had a pack of cigarettes with me when I met Crowfoot, in case he tried to pull some stunt. They would have blown him into oatmeal. I left them in the car. I didn't even want to be tempted."

  "I've never known anyone like you," Vasily said softly. "Not in this business, anyway. Chalice was right . . . you're sentimen­tal. It's a dangerous virtue, Eddie."

  "It's the only one I've got."

  "But now you stand in my way. Have you considered that I may not be quite so sentimental? Not as principled as you?"

  "You won't kill me," Eddie said flatly.

  "Why not?"

  "You couldn't live with it."

  "That may be wishful thinking. I told you—you believe what it suits you to believe. I could live with it. The question is whether or not I choose to do so."

  "Why don't you flip a coin?"

  Vasily smiled, and the smile grew into a throaty chuckle, and the chuckle into deep laughter. His bony face looked almost che­rubic. Slowly the laughter subsided, but he was still smiling, and he raised his thin cigar in a salute.

  "A coin won't be necessary," he said warmly. "In such grave matters, one must never let fate decide. One must always choose, and the choice must be founded on enlightened self-interest. That has always been my rule—and, as you see, it has allowed me to survive a great many crises." He sighed. "But one must never be a slave, even to a rule, and so for the first time in my life I intend to break it. I suppose . . . somehow ... we will all sur­vive." He laughed again. "You see? You've converted me, Eddie. You were right. I like you too much, and I couldn't live comfortably after killing you. Friendship has its rewards."

  Eddie grinned at him. "So we'll call it off. We'll take the offer."

  "Yes, yes, but quickly, before I change my mind."

  Tersely, he issued instructions. Eddie was to make the tele­phone call from a public booth in the hotel lobby. Vasily checked his wristwatch. "It's two thirty. No mention of the laser, if you please. We still have to retrieve it in case some innocent fool reaches inside the cannon and disintegrates half the colonial mi­litia and a few hundred tourists. I don't think we would be easily forgiven." He pondered a minute, his eyes growing somber, then laid a hand lightly on Eddie's shoulder. "Arrange for a delivery of Chalice this evening. Just after dark. Pick a crowded street in downtown Washington and tell them to let her out of a car. Tell them that if she's followed, the entire arrangement is cancelled. Tell her to keep walking in a random pattern through the down­town area, and we'll contact her."

  "Tell her?"

  Vasily raised his eyebrows. "You've got to hear her voice, Eddie. You'v
e got to know she's all right, that she's really there. Forgive me if my trust in Mr. Crowfoot is not quite so deep as yours."

  "No, you're right," Eddie said. He put out his hand and clasped Vasily's.

  "I'm a fool. Make your telephone call," said the Russian.

  Squeezed into the booth near the reception desk, Eddie went through the cross-checks of identification, heard the scrambler go into gear, and then Crowfoot's reedy voice was on the line, mur­muring pleasantries, then politely waiting.

  "It's a deal," Eddie said.

  Crowfoot's sigh came through audibly. "Good. I'm very pleased ... for everyone's sake. Borgneff is included?"

  "I said it was a deal."

  "Did you have to go to extremes?"

  "No, damn it, I didn't. And I wouldn't have."

  "I'm surprised. Not that you wouldn't have, but that you didn't have to. You're a very lucky young man. Tell me what you want done with the woman."

  Eddie spelled out the instructions, and then said, "I want to talk to her."

  "She's asleep."

  "Get her."

  While he waited, he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. He had left them upstairs. He drummed his fingers nervously on the table next to the telephone.

  In another minute he heard Chalice's husky voice. He heard the weariness in it, the defeat and the deep anxiety.

  "Listen, kid—are you all right?"

  "I'm all right, Eddie."

  "It's going to work out. Trust the old man. He's going to let you go this evening. Do what he tells you. You understand?"

  "Yes. Thank you, Eddie."

  "I love you. It's crazy, I never said it before, and this is a hell of a time to start, but it's true."

  "I love you too, Eddie."

  "Tell them not to follow you. Remind them that that would be a big mistake. Where's Parker?"

  "Asleep, somewhere in the building. They all are. I'm afraid of him, Eddie. He's gone a little crazy. I think if he could do it, he'd kill me."

  "You just stick with the old man. Tonight it'll all be over. Give me Crowfoot."

  Crowfoot came onto the line again.

  "Two things," Eddie said. "If anything ever happens to her when she's with me, any accident, anything, I'm coming back. After you and everyone else. You got that?"

  "No accident will happen," Crowfoot said. "I give you my word. You said two things."

  "Yeah, I want something else. Call it a gesture of good faith, a little payment in advance. You said you were going to extract Parker. Is that still on?"

  "Yes. That's on."

  "Do it now. Do it so that she—Chalice, Catherine, his wife— knows about it. Sees it, or just knows for sure that it's been done, I don't care which. I want her to tell me tonight that Parker's dead. That's a condition for the deal."

  "I understand," Crowfoot said. "I see no reason why we can't oblige you. Is there anything else?"

  "No. That'll do. That's plenty."

  "Good luck to you, Mancuso."

  "Thanks," Eddie said.

  Crowfoot listened to the empty hum of the line, then gently replaced the telephone on its red cradle. He turned to the woman. A beautiful woman, even now, with tangled hair and the deep shadows under those haunted violet eyes. He could understand her hold on a man. In his own youth he had known such women, had made love to them and allowed them the illusion that they controlled him and that he had irrational need of them; but none had ever held him. Which is why, he thought, I am seventy-two years old, body and soul alike uncrippled. With Eddie Mancuso, he knew it was different. So vulnerable. A miracle that he had come this far unscathed. But he would learn, sooner than he realized, sooner than he wanted to. A pity about that, perhaps. Would there be forgiveness? It was beside the point, Thomas Crowfoot decided.

  "Come with me," he said to Chalice.

  Together they descended in the noiseless elevator to the first floor of the building that housed the Colonial Squad. Andy Wash­ington sat hunched at his desk in the vestibule over a cup of tea. He looked up inquiringly.

  "Our guests are asleep?" Crowfoot asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "You have a man at the door to each apartment?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Who's watching over Colonel Parker?"

  "Heath, sir."

  "Call Mr. Heath and ask him to come up here, please."

  Before Heath arrived, Crowfoot asked, "How are you armed, Andy?"

  "Walther PP nine-millimeter short."

  "Silencer?"

  Andy slid open a desk drawer and took out a slender black tubular silencer. At a nod from Crowfoot, he slipped the Walther PP from his shoulder holster and screwed the silencer firmly onto the barrel. Chalice watched, her tongue sliding over her lips. Heath, a lanky blond young man, stepped out of the elevator.

  "Keep your eye on things, Mr. Heath," Crowfoot said po­litely. "We won't be long."

  A few minutes later, flanked by Andy and Chalice, he stood outside a gray steel door in the basement of the building. Cool air flowed from the noiseless air conditioners. The corridor was bright with yellow sodium light. Crowfoot took a steel ring of keys from his pocket and gave them to Andy.

  "Take them," he said. "Find the right key, please. Unlock the door, and then kill Colonel Parker. Not a head shot. We'll have a public funeral, and he has some friends in Washington."

  Andy nodded impassively. "You'll stay, sir?"

  "Oh, yes," Crowfoot said. "The lady and 1 will both stay to verify."

  Inserting the correct key into the lock, Andy opened the heavy door. He stepped inside. The studio apartment was dark, but Andy flicked a switch and light blazed through the room, illumi­nating every corner. Colonel Parker's clothes, in uncharacteristic disarray, were strewn on a leather easy chair. The colonel himself flopped over in the double bed, then sat up, blinking in the glare. Andy leveled the Walther PP with two hands, and the two shots that struck the colonel's chest made no more sound than that of a fist thumping a plank of wood. Blood soaked the colonel's pa­jamas and the sheets. The dead eyes stared in disbelief.

  Chalice let out her breath.

  Crowfoot held out his hand for the pistol. Andy gave it to him, butt first. The old man said, "Thank you, Andy. Clean up, please. And you, my dear, come with me. We need to have a drink and some conversation."

  He led her to his office and seated her across the desk from himself. He laid the pistol on the desk between them, then reached into a bottom drawer and came up with a bottle of Bell's and two glasses. He poured the drinks ceremoniously. Chalice slugged hers down; Crowfoot sipped at his. Then he unscrewed the used silencer from the pistol and tossed it into a basket. From the same bottom drawer he took out a fresh silencer and laid it on the desk. He refilled Chalice's glass, and took another sip from his own.

  "1 know it's been a trying night," he said, "but there's still one more piece of business we have to discuss."

  Vasily was waiting in the room, smoking a cigar and gazing moodily out the window into the darkness. The drizzle still fell, cloaking the beach in layers of pale-lemon mist. At the light tap, he opened the door.

  Eddie crossed the room and dropped he&vily into a chair.

  "Done. He bought everything."

  Vasily nodded with satisfaction. "You spoke to Chalice?"

  "She was right there."

  "And the others?"

  "Tucked away, safe and sound."

  "How did you arrange the pickup?"

  "Crowfoot will let her out in front of the IRS building on Con­stitution Avenue in downtown Washington. He'll do it himself. Tonight, at ten o'clock."

  "Good, Eddie."

  "Let's get the hell out of here."

  Glancing around, he saw that he had left his lighter and his cigarettes on top of the television set next to an ashtray. He fumbled at the nearly empty pack. The lighter flared, the tip of the cigarette glowing cherry-red. With the first deep puff, as he moved toward the door, he felt weakness in his knees. He stum­bled and turned
. The lamplight was dancing crazily, and the image of Vasily looming over him began to blur. Unaccountably, the carpet struck his knees.

  The Russian's voice came from far away.

  "I'm sorry, Eddie. It won't hurt . . . just a little headache later. You were right ... I couldn't kill you, not unless I had to. And that wasn't necessary. But I couldn't let you stop me. Couldn't let . . . Goodbye, Eddie. . . ."

  Moving smoothly to the bedside table, he took a hypodermic needle from the drawer. Eddie lay on the carpet, legs twitching, eyes still open, trying to move, but his limbs felt like blocks of concrete. The injection, Vasily calculated, would put him to sleep for eight hours or more, and by that time the job would be done. The Colonial Squad and Colonel Fist would be only a memory. Bending, he slid the needle expertly into the vein of Eddie's arm. The dulled brown eyes fluttered once, then closed.

  For what remained of the night, Vasily worked on the Brown Bess musket, stripping it down to its components and interchang­ing parts with the Dragunov and the Sterling L2A3 submachine gun he had carried disassembled in his suitcase. By the time he had put the musket back together, it had become a light semiau­tomatic carbine chambered for 9 mm parabellum cartridges. Any armaments expert would have seen at a glance that it was some­thing more than an antique Brown Bess musket, but there would be no armaments experts in the battle at Williamsburg. He peeled back the covers of the bed in the other room, took off Eddie's shoes, and laid him comfortably beneath a sheet and single blanket. Eddie snored gently, peacefully. "Yes, sleep," Vasily murmured. "And when you wake, it will all be over. One day, my friend, you will be grateful. ..."

  On the door to the room he hung a do not disturb sign. Downstairs in the lobby, under the name of Richard Victor, he paid his own bill and said to the desk clerk, "My friend Mr. Morrison will be staying an extra day. He's had rather a late night and doesn't wish to be disturbed. If you'd be kind enough to make sure of that . . ." Sliding a ten-dollar bill into the clerk's ready palm, he received a gracious smile.