The Hungry Blade

by Lawrence Dudley

  “Yes, I do, but how would we make these fakes? As you told me before, the paintings are in the middle of an army camp surrounded by soldiers!”

  “I have good, really good photos of all the works, front and back. We get all your friends together, divvy them up. Make copies. Then switch them.”

  “Oh. I see. Yes …” The possibilities began dawning in her face, eyes darting from one imagined painting to another. “Yes! We can do this! With enough people!” Her expression rising to the heavens like an old retablo of a saint seized by an epiphany, throwing the covers aside, jumping up, excitement building. “Yes! We! Can!” Then she frowned, thinking hard, “What about the real ones?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll talk to Diego and Frida. Maybe the government can take them into safekeeping.” It was dawn outside now. “Wherever they go, this buys us time. Come. Let’s get dressed. We’ll go to the hotel first.”

  “Frida will be up later. Diego may be there. We’ll invite ourselves to breakfast.”

  -65-

  Diego poured Frida’s coffee. They’d arrived a few minutes earlier at Rivera’s house in San Ángel. A phone call had located them there—the two artists had an intense but often tumultuous relationship, Riley had told Hawkins, and they kept separate houses. It was a startlingly modern structure, two pavilions joined by a flying bridge, one azure—Frida’s studio, apparently—the other, white and rose, was Rivera’s. The buildings presented flat angular planes, high square windows, flat roofs, curving outside staircases, every surface stripped of ornamentation, as avant-garde as anything in the world, a conscious architecture of the future. Breathtaking, in its way. There were a surprising number of these modern structures dotted around a city where people prided its cosmopolitan, revolutionary spirit. Riley was back in her suit. She and Hawkins both still had wet hair from a very friendly shower at the Imperial.

  “What is it?” Rivera could sense the tremendous tension in their expressions.

  Riley leaned out, the way an excited student would wave a hand in class—choose me—eager to tell.

  “Go ahead,” Hawkins said.

  “Maybe you first, Hawkins, about Corrialles, then I’ll handle the art part,” Riley said.

  When he heard the general’s name Rivera nervously put his coffee back down, only a sip, clutching the arms of his chair.

  “What’s that bastard up to now?”

  It took Hawkins fifteen minutes to fully cover the story of what was going on, with Rivera and Kahlo quietly interrupting from time to time with a terse question. However, Hawkins carefully evaded who had ordered the paintings shipped to New York and sold. Now it was undefined “outside interests.” Except for Riley, they were lined with worry by the time he was finished. Riley had taken charge of the photos, passing them out, racing around, looking over their shoulders.

  “It’s terrifying,” Kahlo said.

  “I suppose so,” Hawkins said. “The stakes are very high.”

  “So Camarada Trotsky was right,” Rivera said. “You must be a spy.”

  “I am not. I am not spying on this country.”

  “Of course you would say that,” Rivera said. “Señor Hawkins. In honesty. How would you know these things?”

  “Tips get passed along to me by friends in New York. Business associates.”

  “Because you are a businessman,” Kahlo said, slightly tense, smiling again.

  “With a gun. And that funny little camera. Hawkins, show him your little camera, the one that looks like a cigarette lighter,” Riley said, laughing and smiling.

  “No—”

  “Oh, go on, go on—” Rivera said.

  “He has a big expensive camera, too,” Riley said.

  “Please,” Hawkins said. “What does it matter? Do you want to help stop this or sit back and watch whatever happens?”

  “Of course we don’t want that,” Rivera said. “We all must do what we can for our beloved country. That may sound pretentious, but it is true. Why did we become socialists? For the betterment of our country, for the people.”

  Hawkins started to ask a question, but Riley leapt in first, now filled with enthusiasm. “We can find enough artists to help us!” she said. “I know we can!”

  “I’m not sure,” Rivera said.

  “We need to know right away,” Hawkins said.

  “Why the hurry?” Kahlo said.

  “Because if we cannot do this, I may have to find a way to destroy them,” Hawkins said.

  Kahlo gasped, her voice rising in tone to a soft scream, “No! You would not do such a thing! These are treasures! The soul of civilization—”

  “I will if I have to! They are not worth this country’s future or the peace of the world. Think of all the people who would die. Please. Tell me what the alternative is?”

  “Frida, it is up to us to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Riley said. She held out another photo, this one of a Matisse. “Look. Do one, then do another.”

  Kahlo began soberly recounting the math of Hawkins’s proposal.

  “Forty paintings. That’s quite a lot. How many days do we have?”

  “Maybe three or four,” Hawkins said.

  “Please, four,” Rivera said. “If we can get another half-dozen artists besides ourselves, that’s less than one a day per person.” He, Kahlo and Riley began passing the photos back and forth again.

  “And they don’t have to be perfect,” Riley said.

  “We don’t want them to be too good,” Hawkins said. “We want to be caught.”

  “Of course,” Frida said. “That does help.”

  “And we have to swear everyone to secrecy.”

  “We better get going,” Rivera said, “you’ve given us a big job.” He paused. “Mr. Spy.”

  -66-

  Hawkins gave it a good sniff. Yes. There’s a touch of perfume on the envelope. What’s that all about? He smiled and slipped it open with a finger as the desk clerk at the Imperial turned to another guest.

  Report in. Lilly.

  Back at the Reforma, half an hour later, Lilly strolled by, glanced at Hawkins and winked, settling into another booth, dropping pesos into the phone with a white-gloved hand. She had another hat, although more like a visor, open on top with a spray of red leaves around one brim, a little work of art.

  “Your report made quite a mark,” she said. “They apparently are discussing the risks now, you certainly made that clearer, so much so it’s all up in the air. But for now, they want you to proceed on the contingency the plan will go ahead. I say, wait and see.”

  “Very well. I guess that’s a relief. Somewhat. I—”

  “That’s not the big thing …”

  “What?”

  “There’s been a new intercept out of Bermuda, a telex they caught off the cable, only a couple of hours ago. You may be hearing this before he does, depending on the delivery or how often he picks it up. And it’s bizarre. They don’t quite know what to make of it.”

  “How so?”

  “Falkenberg has been ordered to kill Eckhardt.”

  “What?”

  She repeated it. “That’s what it said. From an address in Lisbon, too. General Houghton thinks it was sent in a hurry, possibly out of regular channels so as not to alert Eckhardt. It’s very unusual they are using telex. They have to know those wires pass through our controls. The message was obliquely split between two different cables an hour apart, and it was phrased in such a way one might miss it—obviously that’s what they were hoping. Almost did, apparently. Used the phrase ‘permanently conclude employment per your recommendation,’ so it might seem businesslike and innocuous if you didn’t know the players and context. The second said ‘regrettable he has terminal illness, will perish soon,’ so forth.”

  “Any reason given for the order?”

  “No. That might have been
separate, or the reason might be implicit from an earlier report we missed.”

  “A rather high price for failure, if that’s what it is.”

  “Say, one less Nazi.”

  “Yes. Damn. Eckhardt is a little crazy, maybe they don’t trust him anymore. Maybe they caught him stealing.”

  “Little? From your description—”

  “Fine, he’s barking mad. Risky business for Falkenberg. Eckhardt’s no pushover. And Falkenberg’s got to get away afterward, maybe leave the country.”

  She started to softly laugh. “Hey, one less Nazi …”

  “Ye-s-s …” He started chuckling too. “God only knows. Be good to run him out. I wonder if I could get him to Texas, have him try and go out through New York. That has possibilities.”

  “W would be very interested in that one. Maybe our friends in the Mounties?”

  “Yes. Tell them to start setting up the plane. The paintings should all fit in a Douglas if they take out the seats.”

  “Will do.”

  “That’s it for today, then.”

  “I’ll get that right out. Then I’m going shopping. I found this wonderful hat store near the park, the man’s an artist. Great things here. Dress shops too. Amazing prices.”

  “Enjoy yourself. Watch out for the antiquities, though.”

  She winked across the aisle, hung up and walked back out, wiggling her fingers at him as she passed by his booth. What a great way she has with hats, Hawkins thought, watching her go. Duty brought her here, but there was a you-go-to-hell quality to the hat thing. She could not be a rebel, like Riley, but she could be rebel enough for herself with a wild hat, her way of saying, so there!

  All this is equally excellent, he thought. Whatever the case is, I am shipping something out. And Eckhardt and Falkenberg. What on earth …

  -67-

  The street in San Ángel was sunny, warm and deserted, with inviting pools of dark shadows beneath trees and against the walls. He rang the bell, then knocked. After a long wait he did it again, turning around, watching the street, waiting. Nothing. Odd, Hawkins thought. He hadn’t checked on Aust in several days, what with the frenzy over the paintings and getting ready. They could’ve left, or be out, but still, with all their servants, there ought to be someone here within a few rings. Then a shadow passed over him and the wall. That felt alarming. An instinct, perhaps an atavistic one. He looked up, then back. In the tree where he’d perched with the chickens days earlier were three very large dull gray-black birds with tall red heads. They were dead silent, not happily chirping away like most birds, and hunched over, like worn out and elderly actuaries at a ghostly ledger. Hawkins walked across the street for a closer look. Vultures.

  Something’s wrong. He felt it in his gut. Very wrong, all instinct again now.

  He carefully checked up and down the street—nothing but blank, windowless walls. In seconds he quickly picked the old lock, stepped inside, drawing his Hi-Power as he passed through, pulling and latching the door behind him as fast but as quietly as he could. He cautiously stepped in, pistol high, ready. The only sound was the distant burbling of the fountain. Down on the tile floor. A heavy smear of blood started halfway toward the arched entryway and around the corner. On one of the two small columns at the courtyard entrance was a large red handprint. He stared at it for a long second, going cold inside, in that mode again, in the moment, feeling nothing, allowing himself nothing, utterly focused on the Hi-Power and any target it might find.

  Hawkins stepped into the archway, both hands now grasping the pistol, tensely peering around the columns. On the peak of the red-tile roof across the courtyard were another two vultures, waiting for something. There was a slight, sick, thick, rotting sweet smell, an odor that electrically struck violently at the nerves: the smell of death.

  He carefully edged forward, scanning the courtyard and the colonnade. Stillness in the eerie silence. Moving slowly, carefully, he followed the smear of blood to an old paneled door. It was open a crack. He pushed it farther with one foot, sliding around the corner, watching carefully. It was one of the servant’s rooms. The gardener-doorman was lying barely inside, arms flung wide, his head missing. He probably got hit the second he opened the door, no time to give the alarm.

  Hawkins edged out, closing the door behind him, spinning around, scanning the colonnade, up, down, looking, looking. No one. He pressed his back against the wall, moving along to the kitchen, pushing open the door. The cook was lying on the floor in a large pool of blood. The ingredients of a half-cooked meal were scattered around the kitchen tables, pots on the stove with vegetables in them, waiting to be cooked.

  Hawkins leaned over the counter and looked down. The woman had been neatly decapitated, too, the neck cut at a slightly downward angle, more like a piece of sausage than a human body. Whoever swung the sword or ax was a good foot taller.

  Eckhardt. It has to be Eckhardt, Hawkins realized, and he isn’t using an ax or a sword. He’s using the macuahuitl he made, the cut gleaming so unnaturally clean, it has to be an obsidian blade, a hungry blade, supremely, effortlessly sharp, like no metal blade on earth, a blade that would pass through like a breeze of death.

  Then he realized something else: Where’s the woman’s head? He carefully stepped back out into the courtyard, watching for Eckhardt, for anyone. Then he noticed flies buzzing around a pool of blood at one end of the courtyard. He slipped along the colonnade, checking, looking for another body. But there was no body. The blood was running out of the rainspout. He stepped out from under the colonnade, looked up and nearly gasped, his coolly controlled, careful mode of not feeling breaking for a split second, stomach abruptly heaving, a quick brush on the edge of vomiting before he went cold again. Several heads were lined up on the rain gutter at the edge of the roof: Herr Aust; Elise, her white hair now stained red with blood; a young man Hawkins instantly realized had to be their son at university, he so resembled his mother; the cook; the maid; and the gardener. The gardener’s head had been slashed neatly down the center, a V-shaped gash nearly to the tip of his nose.

  But that was not the worst part. Bobbing in the fountain below them, like apples at a Halloween party, were all six hearts, now washed clean, almost a pinkish white.

  Increasingly confident no one was around, Hawkins began jogging from room to room. Inside the large living room he found the bodies of Elise and her son. Both had been bound and tied, hand and foot, with one of Elise’s arms half severed. Their heads were missing, of course. The bodies were draped over the top of the Austs’ baby grand. Both chests had been gashed from one side to the other, gaping wide, distended, giant mouths of baby birds, open, red and waiting. Blood poured off the piano, soaking the Persian carpet. There were sharp gashes in the top of the piano, by their necks. Eckhardt had taken their hearts first, then their heads.

  The terror they must’ve have known in those final moments … he thought, tied over the piano … watching the blade descend … probably saw their own hearts, too … after the other’s … who did he kill first? Did Elise have to watch her son die? Or him, his mother?

  It was too much for a moment. Hawkins closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, breathing hard, trying to control his reaction, to stay cool and keep his head, steady his stomach, despite every normal human instinct to recoil and flee. That, he realized, is what the Spanish must have felt when they first stood in the center of Tenochtitlan, at the foot of the Temple of Huitzilopochtli next to the Huey Tzompantli, the Great Skull Rack, and its many tens of thousands of heads. No doubt and no wonder hands tightened around their swords as they contemplated their next step.

  Where were the other two bodies? Hawkins raced out again, away from that horror, searching for the next. In a bedroom, with the hem of a bloodstained sheet still grasped tightly in one hand, he found the headless maid. She’d been a big, husky woman, which might have prompted her fate: She’d not only been decapita
ted, but her body had been cut at a diagonal, from her shoulder several inches from the neck, through the torso and out the bottom of the rib cage on the opposite side. From the even, straight angle, it was clear it’d been done with a single clean blow, right through. The hollow lung gaped inside her ribs. At least it was quick for her.

  Eckhardt had wanted to know, Hawkins remembered, could a macuahuitl really cut a horse’s head off? The maid gave her life to settle that question, although it might have spared her from being bound and thrown on the piano with her employers, and the terror of that. The conquistadors hadn’t needed to embellish anything at all, it seemed.

  But where was Aust’s body?

  -68-

  Hawkins jogged back around the colonnade, gun still high, looking for more smears or spatters of blood. None to be found, the rest of the house was as slick clean and well kept as always, including the arched stairway to the second floor, except for the growing smell, of course. Aust’s body had to be somewhere. But Eckhardt’s and Falkenberg’s rooms were up there, too. Need to check, Hawkins thought. He carefully edged up and down the corridor. It was spotless, too. He pushed open the door to Eckhardt’s room with the muzzle of the Browning, looked in, then relaxed and walked around.

  It was absolutely empty, all the drawers pulled out, the closet door open, only a few hangers and a thin layer of dust inside, the bedcovers thrown up to check underneath. Eckhardt had cleaned out his things and was long gone, not even a crumpled receipt or an old newspaper or magazine.

  Of course, Hawkins thought. Either before or after, Eckhardt beat a path out. Did he come to get his things after the chase at the airport? Kill them then? No, probably not, he thought. Corrialles’s soldiers had been at the Austs’ for a day, but then left when neither Eckhardt nor Falkenberg had returned. Eckhardt had probably staked the place out and waited. Hawkins guessed the dead here were fresh, less than a day, the blood was still drying and sticky. But what about Falkenberg?