“Trudging through ass-deep snow, leaving tracks, and carrying a kid. You couldn’t catch her?”
“It was a hell of a storm—couldn’t see more’n a few feet. I didn’t have the gear I’d have needed to chase her down.”
Faust nodded, trying to look reassuring. “You screwed up, but it isn’t fatal.”
Not until we’re back in Peru, he thought, as the bodyguard took a deep breath and visibly relaxed. Dominga saw the man as a loose end, and that was it for him. When she had no further use for people, she tossed them away like used condoms.
Tension surged through him at the memory of her tone when she questioned his assessment of Frederick’s fate: “You’re certain of that?” She wanted to be her husband’s sole heir, and her single-minded focus put to shame the determination of battle-hardened military commanders Faust had served under. Now that the kid was history, her husband’s days were numbered. That thought had pushed into Faust’s head when, two hours earlier, he’d sat with the couple in their suite at the Denver Ritz-Carlton, listening to a detective from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation explain about finding Frederick’s limo.
“The driver and the bodyguard were still inside,” the detective said. “The driver was dead, the bodyguard dazed but not seriously injured. He says another vehicle brushed the limo, and the crash knocked him unconscious. He came to, found your son and the nanny gone.”
“A second vehicle?” Koenig raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Hit-and-run?”
“It’s possible. The nanny might have thought both her driver and the bodyguard were dead and headed out cross-country with your son. To be safe, however, we’re handling it as a suspected kidnapping.”
“The kidnapping idea doesn’t wash,” Faust said after the detective left. “Anything like that would have gone down closer to Denver. More potential escape routes, harder for cops to track them.”
Koenig agreed. “A kidnapper would not have known Frederick was traveling to Silver Hill by auto.” The elderly financier’s grim expression clashed with the calm in his voice and hinted at his fury over the prospect of losing his sole living offspring, the child on whom he had based his plans for perpetuating his family name and business empire.
“It’s the girl,” Faust said. “She must have taken off on foot after the crash. She’s wandering around with Frederick somewhere in those mountains.”
“You are authorized to expend whatever resources you need to find them. Lease every available helicopter, hire all the snowmobiles in that area. Scour every inch of surrounding territory.”
The old man was clinging to the delusion that the kid might have survived a night out there. Faust decided the best strategy was to humor him. “I’ll get on it, sir. They can’t have gone far.”
“Madam Koenig and I will delay our plans to visit the resort, but I want you up there as quickly as possible. Use it as a base of operations for the search.”
“Yes, sir.” A furtive glance at Dominga, and Faust headed for the door. He knew she would call as soon as she had privacy.
To keep the bodyguard quiet, he had picked the man up in the company helicopter before heading for Silver Hill. Glancing at him while digesting the phone call from Dominga, Faust thought about her comment: “He doesn’t need to make long-range plans.” She wanted the man dead, so Faust would arrange it. Just as he had arranged the kid’s “accident.”
Engineering the death of a one-year-old had galled him, but it was nothing compared with sacrificing Pia, the only woman he’d ever cared a rat’s ass about. Losing her was like slicing off a piece of himself. For now, however, he had to stay in Dominga’s good graces, no matter what it took. Without her, he would still be eking out a living by ram-rodding a motley security team guarding her husband’s Peruvian pipeline properties.
Fresh out of the Army after recovering from combat wounds, he had been on the pipeline security job less than three months when fortune intervened in the form of labor strife. Local peasants who were laying pipe through a remote valley in northern Peru went on strike. Led by village elders, they shut down the project.
Koenig ordered Faust to beef up security at the site. “We’ll find new workers, and I don’t want labor organizers anywhere near them.”
Dominga issued different instructions. She summoned Faust to her office—their first face-to-face meeting—and quizzed him about his Special Forces background. She was especially interested in his time assisting the Peruvian Army with search-and-destroy missions against remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.
“We chased them all over Northern Peru,” Faust told her. “Eleven months of slogging through jungle and over mountains. We got shot at, killed a few, then dogged them some more.”
“You pursued them, exchanged gunfire. Did you ever talk to them?”
“Probably. It’s hard to say.”
A quizzical expression. “Why is that?”
“I interrogated people in every village we came across.” He shrugged. “I’d guess a third were Shining Path sympathizers. The rest were too scared to talk.”
“Go back to those villages. Tell the headmen you’ve switched sides and have a job for what’s left of the scruffy bandits. A well-paying job.”
Faust studied her while she gave instructions. Good-looking, well-groomed. The way she wore her blonde hair pulled back gave her flawless face a hard edge. From his research before going to work for her husband, he knew her to be forty-two, approximately half her husband’s age. But she had the smooth, taut skin of a pampered thirty-year-old.
“What can I offer them?” he asked.
“Whatever it takes.” No change of expression, except for a slight squinting of her eyes. “But make sure they understand that the striking pipeline workers must cease to exist.”
She wanted a massacre? “Mr. Koenig okay with this?”
“My husband is very busy. Let’s not bother him with petty details.”
Faust considered telling her to shove it. But she probably had enough influence with the old man to get him fired, and he had not been inundated with job offers. He commandeered a company helicopter and flew deep into the northern Andes, to the region where Peruvian security forces still hunted Shining Path stragglers. The vision he painted for the rebels proved irresistible: cooperate, and relive your glory years. He demonstrated his sincerity by showering them with pickup trucks, automatic weapons, and rocket-propelled grenades. They showed their gratitude by slaughtering the recalcitrant pipeline workers and their families and burning their village. In the poverty-stricken region, recruiting new workers and relocating them to the construction site proved quick, simple, and inexpensive.
Dominga also showed her gratitude. She arranged a hefty salary bump for Faust and summoned him to her bed. “Give your bandits a steady trickle of toys,” she told him while they recuperated from a sweaty bout of sexual gymnastics. “Weapons, vehicles, cash. Who knows what else they may be able to do for us?”
He agreed to do her bidding but insisted on more than bedroom privileges and higher wages. A month later, he was promoted to his current position as director of security and intelligence for Variant Corporation, Koenig’s holding company. It was a world removed from his childhood, spent in rented shanties and rundown mobile homes on the outskirts of Waycross, Georgia, and he understood that keeping the job meant taking orders from Dominga.
Over the ensuing two years, the orders had been frequent, sometimes outrageous. None, however, had matched her command that he arrange for the “accidental” death of Frederick during this trip to America. He had handled it, just as he had everything else she demanded. But her period of keeping him on a leash was coming to an end, and none to soon.
The thought coincided with another call from her on his cell phone. She continued their previous conversation as if there had been no interruption: “Didn’t you have a meeting set for tomorrow?”
“I told them we would reschedule.” Faust had planned a get-together with black-market vendors to negot
iate for state-of-the-art missile guidance chips that would enable his Shining Path sidekicks to down the Peruvian military’s helicopter gunships. “They aren’t happy, but they agreed. Said their price would have to include a sweetener for the additional risk.”
“All right, Theo.” Dominga’s voice turned soft again, a sweet little female consort twisting her big, strong lover around her delicate fingers. “I should have known you would handle everything. Finish this . . . this issue with the child. I’ll see you when you get back to Denver.”
She’s concerned about the chips, Faust thought as he pocketed his cell phone, but her main focus is the kid. For Faust, the boy was a diversion, the guidance chips a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They would enable his Shining Path flunkies to control Peru’s Ancash and La Libertad provinces, the only sites outside of China with major deposits of lanthanum, cerium, and neodymium, rare-earth minerals essential to the production of high-tech gadgets and weaponry. With the Chinese limiting exports of the minerals, Shining Path could name its own price. As their advisor and negotiator, Faust would never again have to worry about money, never again be just a face in the crowd. In the rebel’s lexicon of Great Men, he would rank nose-to-nose with Che Guevara.
When that happened, Faust could stop catering to the vicious, power-hungry bitch. Until then, he had to watch his step. He stole another glance at the bodyguard, the only other passenger in the helicopter. One stumble, and his future would be the same as that poor bastard’s.
* * *
As the helicopter approached Silver Hill’s helipad, Faust began working his cell phone. Exercising his authority as right-hand man to the resort’s new owner, he gave local employees thirty minutes to vacate the top floor of the two-story office building that housed administrative functions. He set up his command post there and, two hours after landing, briefed key players on the planned search for Frederick Koenig. That included helicopter pilots, the leader of Silver Hill’s ski patrol, and Howard Flanagan, the resort’s security honcho.
To control media exposure, he needed to find Frederick’s and Pia’s bodies and get them out of the country before someone else stumbled over them. Once they were in Peru, media management would be easier.
The search began immediately. Six hours later, however, another storm threatened, forcing them to suspend operations. Pia and the kid had now been missing for twenty-four hours. The search would resume tomorrow, with no chance of finding anything but frozen corpses. It was a clean way to get rid of the kid, but it would take him a long time to get over losing Pia.
Chapter 6
Alex tensed, every muscle on high alert, when Pia’s image appeared on the cabin’s television screen. The cops wouldn’t suspect a kidnapping just because the boy and his nanny were missing. Without some evidence to the contrary, they would assume she had wandered away from the wreck in search of shelter.
“The person of interest is Pia Ulmer,” the newscaster said. “As recently as two years ago, she was a member of a rebel militia active in Colombia and Peru, a group that routinely uses kidnapping and ransom demands to finance their rebellion.”
His brain cycling madly, Alex processed the information. Pia had mentioned past association with rebels but obviously hadn’t told him the whole story. She might have gotten separated from her cohorts during a melee after they intercepted Frederick’s limo and forced it off the road. If she was kidnapping the Koenigs’ child, she had practically made Alex an accomplice.
What was she doing in the kitchen? Lots of potential weapons there, and if she was a kidnapper and realized he was on to her, killing him was the obvious solution.
He eased his knife from its sheath. Holding it tight against his thigh so she couldn’t hit it with a makeshift club, he crept to the kitchen door.
She could be waiting, her body flattened against the wall just inside, ready to lash out in ambush. He hesitated for another moment and then sprang forward, diving through the doorway, and executed a shoulder roll to come back onto his feet in a crouch. Spinning, he took in all quadrants of the room.
No Pia, no Frederick. The kitchen had a door to the outside, and his cold-weather gear was missing from the corner where he had piled it.
He found them on the back stoop. Frederick, blanket-wrapped from head to foot but with his mitten-sheathed hands poking through holes, played with the big wooden spoon that had become his favorite toy. Pia concentrated on fitting Alex’s snowshoes onto her boots. Frederick saw him and gurgled a baby-talk greeting that alerted Pia. She reached for the boy, but the snowshoes hampered her movement.
Alex lunged and snatched Frederick away. Hugging the child close, he stepped back.
With a feral shriek, Pia charged.
Using a fistful of her coat as a handle, Alex jerked in the direction of her momentum. He swung her around and flung her into the snow.
Her fall knocked a snowshoe loose. Panting, she regained her footing and stood with one leg buried in a snow bank, the snowshoe-clad foot planted on the surface.
Frederick howled. He squirmed and flailed his arms and legs. His frantic twisting made him hard to hold.
Pia renewed her attack. Silent this time, her face a frozen mask of determination, her fingers curled like a cat’s unsheathed claws, she went for Alex’s eyes.
He landed an open-handed blow to the side of her head. It knocked her onto her backside in the snow.
Sitting with sprawled legs, she glared up at him. The fight seemed to drain out of her.
Alex nestled Frederick to his chest. “It’s all right, tiger.” He poked gently at blanket-wrapped little ribs and put as much cheer in his voice as frothing emotions permitted. “It’s just a game.”
Frederick’s screaming diminished to a fret, and Alex signaled to Pia with a nod toward the cabin door. To Frederick he said, “Let’s go inside, little man.”
Pia labored to her feet. Limping on the single snowshoe, she trudged into the cabin.
Following close behind, Alex patted Frederick’s back and made cooing sounds that the boy didn’t seem to hear. Inside, he balanced the youngster on one arm and reached back with his other to close the door.
Pia grabbed the cast-iron skillet in which they had pan-fried their steaks. Grasping the handle with both hands, she swung at his head.
Twisting, Alex took the blow on his shoulder. The shoulder and arm went numb. With Frederick squirming in his one good arm, he couldn’t lash out or even defend himself.
Pia swung again, bringing the heavy skillet down in an overhead arc. Alex dodged, and it hurtled toward Frederick. She jerked it back just in time. The narrow miss left her off balance.
Alex tried to grab her, but his arm refused to obey his brain. Rubbery legs buckled. His shoulder slammed into the wall. The kid!
A blurred, squealing bundle of fabric and flesh, Frederick slid from his arms and plummeted to the kitchen floor. No movement from him. No sound.
Trying to focus, Alex stared at the crumpled child. A quick glance at Pia. Still grasping the skillet, holding it at her side, she too stared at Frederick.
A fresh bellow from the boy split the frigid air. Never had Alex heard a more welcome sound.
Pia hefted the cast-iron skillet again, holding it like a baseball bat. Brow furrowed, eyes glinting, she tensed for another swing.
Alex lashed out with his good arm, putting all the power of his legs and shoulders, all the energy of his frustration and anger, into a fist aimed to pulverize her face.
Stepping closer as she swung the skillet, Pia tripped on her single snowshoe. The fall saved her nose from being destroyed. She toppled toward Alex, and his fist slammed into her forehead. The blow connected squarely in the center. She crumpled to the kitchen floor. Twitched once. Went limp.
Alex cocked his boot for a kick to her head but caught himself. Corralling his rage, he stepped back.
Her features softened and smoothed. Except for her position, one leg twisted under like a broken doll, she might have been napping.
Alex hoisted Frederick in his arms. Cuddling the boy, he crooned softly until the wailing tapered off. “Sorry little man. Have to leave you on your own for a bit.” He eased the wriggling, fretting bundle to the floor and experimented with his aching shoulder, shrugging, raising the arm, rotating it. Pain, but everything worked.
In his backpack he carried a fifty-foot length of strong but lightweight rope, a safety tether for when he scaled bluffs or crossed frozen streams. He used one end of it to bind Pia’s wrists. None too gently, he looped the rope around her neck, pulled her bound hands close to her throat, and tied them there.
Frederick had resumed crying. Alex cuddled him again and peeled away the insulating blanket to check for injuries. He took the boy into the living room, sat him by the web belt and canteen, and handed him the big wooden spoon. “Have fun, tiger.” Back in the kitchen, he thumbed Pia’s eyelid and pried it open. Satisfied that she wasn’t faking, he posted himself in the doorway between the two rooms so he could watch both her and Frederick. He had overreacted, let his temper take control. She’d been dangerous—murderous—but she was already beaten by the time he punched her. She would have fallen on her own, probably stayed down. What kind of man was he, aiming his fist to destroy her face?
The Descent From Truth Page 5
