He was not easily reassured.
The door to his office cracked light.
“Mr. Kontra, sir,” said a voice.
“Have him come in,” Irons said.
Lazlo V. Kontra entered. He nodded and sat down.
“Excuse the dim light, Mr. Kontra,” Irons said. “I find it necessary to rest my eyes now and then. Shall I turn on . . . ?”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Kontra said. He eased his massive frame into a leather chair. He seemed comfortable. Perhaps a little self-satisfied. His face had a certain rugged symmetry. Women found him attractive, and he knew it.
Irons regarded him. One rock cliff regarding another.
“We can do business.”
Kontra nodded. “I think so.”
“Computer business.”
Kontra kept nodding. “One of my businesses.”
“You have the foreign contacts,” Irons said.
Kontra grinned. “You have financing to run big operations.” His accent was thick but comprehensible. “Big.”
“Yes. You can increase your staff, buy capital equipment.”
“More computers. Everything today is computers.”
“Indeed. Little bits of data flowing through the latticework of a massive grid. Pulses of light, throbs of electric charge. Instead of the jingle of gold we have the clicking of a hard drive. Registering dollar signs all over the globe.”
“And what you do, you control the little bits,” Kontra said. “You herd them like sheep, this way, that way, until they come into your barn.”
Irons smiled. “Yes.”
“This is new way of doing business. Forget profit.”
“Rather tiresome thing to worry about, profit. The money left over after doing business. Why not just rake in the money and forget the business?”
“I like that,” Kontra said.
“So do I.” Irons’s chair drifted to the left. “Increasingly, too many stumbling blocks in the way of making money. Too many leaks in the bucket. It’s almost not worth conducting business any more. Why not herd those bleating dollars? There are flocks of them. Swarms. Trillions out in the electronic pastures. What does a few billion of them matter? Who will even notice they are gone?”
“Ah. It is even better. You don’t even have to steal.”
Irons chuckled. “I know. One can even indulge in the creation of money itself, ex nihilo.”
“Eh?”
“From nothing.”
“I see. Yes.”
“Like God touching his finger to the center of the void. I’ve done it for years. I own banks. Banks can create money, within certain governmental limits. But the new ways are even easier and can yield a lot more.”
“No limits.”
“Right, Mr. Kontra. No limits. And as long as your . . . uh, experts . . . stay in—where are they again?”
“Just say eastern Europe,” Lazlo Kontra said. “There they are immune from arrest.”
“Arrest?”
An awkward silence fell.
Kontra sat and waited.
“Whatever would they be doing that they should fear arrest?” Irons wanted to know.
“Not a thing,” Kontra said. “I still need people here. I have people.”
“I understand the need for monitoring your employees. Difficult to maintain control long distance. What sorts of operations have you in this country?”
Kontra shrugged. “I have lots of businesses. Moving vans. Dry cleaning. Home heating oil.”
“I mean the computer experts.”
“They mainly develop software.”
Iron raised his eyebrows.
Kontra’s smile widened. “They study firewalls.”
“Yes.”
“And other things,” Kontra said.
“Firewalls,” Irons said. “I love these metaphors.”
“They describe precisely.”
“Why do you keep your R&D here in the States?”
Kontra shrugged. “More experience in software development here.”
“Yes, the U.S. leads.”
Kontra guffawed. “You always did. I’ll tell you a joke.”
“Do.”
“Old Soviet joke.”
“You’re not Russian.”
“I lived in Moscow for years.”
“However, your name . . . ?”
“Romanian.”
“Ah.”
“I’ll tell you this joke. Two guys meet in Moscow airport. One is pushing huge dolly across terminal, loaded with suitcases. The other says ‘Hello, Ivan, how are you doing?’ Ivan says. ‘I’ve been developing Soviet People’s Pocket Computer.’ The guy says, ‘We have a pocket computer? Ours?’ Ivan says, ‘Yes, it’s ours. We didn’t steal it from West.’ He takes small computer out from pocket. The guy looks at it. Has nice screen, easy keyboard. The guy says, ‘That’s marvelous! I can’t believe we did this.’ Ivan says, ‘I got to go.’ He starts pushing. The guy says, ‘What’s all this?’ Ivan says, ‘Oh, that is power supply.’ ”
Irons’s sudden laughter was genuine. His face cracked like a limestone palisade. “Hadn’t heard that one.”
“Funny, eh?”
“Very. You worked for Russian intelligence for years. Before you defected.”
“First was with Romanian military intel, then went to civilian intel, and then to KGB in Soviet Union. I was with them long time.”
“But you obviously had extracurricular activities.”
“Yes. I did lots of things na levo. On the left hand. Underground. Black market. Only way you could make enough money to live well. Whole country was na levo, or you starve.”
“Then you came to New York.”
“I defect in New York. I like it. I stayed.”
“Still a great city, despite recent tragedies.”
“Yes. So, we can do business.”
“I think so, Mr. Kontra.” Irons’s smile glowed in the shadows.
“Good,” Kontra said.
“You will hear from me soon. Through intermediaries. Does that suit you, Mr. Kontra?”
“Certainly, Mr. Irons.”
“It’s been a pleasure.”
Kontra rose and left the room.
Irons contemplated the silence for a moment. Then he got up and went to the window. He looked out on the city. Oblongs of light speckled a forest of tall shapes. Below, white lights approached, red lights receded. Glowing like a stormy sea, low clouds touched the tops of the highest buildings. At night the city seemed insubstantial and mysterious. The realm of another world.
His thoughts were not on business. They were on the Witchblade.
CHAPTER
THREE
It was late when Kontra got back to Brooklyn and home. The apartment building was quiet. The murmurs of televisions and radios were muffled—insistent voices, barely heard, chattering away on the other side of the walls, as if the building’s roaches had gathered for a political rally.
The hall smelled. The hall always smelled, though it wasn’t a bad one. Faint odors of cabbage. Maybe it wasn’t cabbage. Somebody had cabbage, he decided. It was one of those bad-good smells, cabbage. He had eaten enough of it. He liked it, in fact. But it was not so good in a hall. People should use their kitchen exhaust fans. He was used to odors in hallways. Even now, when he could afford it, he did not buy a single-family dwelling. In this city they were horrifically expensive, but he could have one if he wanted it. That wasn’t the issue. Apartment living was habit, what he was used to.
His stalwart bulk mounted the stairs. He didn’t like elevators. He remembered living in a six-floor walkup when he had a low post in the army.
He was big. There was some middle-age ballast on him, but it covered a spring-steel mass of muscle. He was built like a stout tree, and his arms were long and thick. His legs were a little short, but that made him even more powerful.
Quiet. He stopped to listen. The late evening news? No, it was well after eleven. The Tonight Show? He wanted to sit and loo
k at the Tonight Show. He moved up the stairs.
Ah, the sound was coming from his apartment. His wife was up watching the television. He fumbled in his pocket for his keys. The tuica, plum brandy, was a little sour in his stomach tonight. He wondered if there were any antacid in the bathroom cabinet.
“Good night.”
A voice to his right, a visitor coming out of the neighbor’s. He glanced, and the face was familiar. Ever so faintly . . .
Where was that door key? He wasn’t drunk, but he had downed a few glasses. Just a few.
That man. He turned to look again. The man was aiming a silenced compact semiautomatic.
At him.
“What?” was all Kontra could say. Then a thought occurred: Shit! The neighbors are in Europe.
The pistol snapped once. He felt a poke in the chest, as if a buddy had landed a good punch on him.
The guy was trying to kill him! The rotten, no good . . .
“Bastard!”
The gun went off again. Enraged, Kontra rushed the hit man, who by now had a puzzled look.
“God damn you!” Kontra roared as he lunged.
The man panicked and raised the pistol for a head shot. But he never got it off, for Kontra had the gun in both hands, twisting it upward. He had moved like a striking snake, like a demented bear. The gun fired again into the ceiling, then went flying off, bounced against wallpaper, and fell to the carpet.
Kontra had the guy trapped in the blind hallway, hands around his neck. He squeezed. He had always liked the feeling of a human neck in his hands. He could feel the arteries closing, feel the soft muscles collapse. Nothing could break Kontra’s hold. No one ever had, for all that they beat and flailed and tried to come up between his arms. No routine judo countermove could work. Kontra was too strong.
He did it as he had done it to prisoners. The technique was to strangle them until they passed out, then slap them back to life. They did not expect to wake up again, and when they did, they were cooperative. It made interrogation a lot simpler. True, a few had never revived. But not many.
He would streamline the technique now. He squeezed and squeezed. The terrified man’s face turned red, then changed to a dark shade of purple-green. He kicked at Kontra’s shin. Kontra ignored it.
There was a bell ringing somewhere. He couldn’t figure why a bell was ringing. Like a chime. He ignored it and kept up the pressure on the man’s neck.
But damn that bell. Then he noticed that he couldn’t see much. Everything in his peripheral vision was black. Only the man’s discolored face was visible.
And then he realized that he was losing consciousness, and that, as bull-strong as he was, there was nothing he could do about it.
Sara lay almost naked on her bed. She was exhausted, and she hadn’t done a thing all day. It was night. The apartment was dark.
She sat up on the edge of the bed. Then she rose and went to a television on an entertainment center on the far wall.
She halted as she moved to turn it on; instead, she switched on the compact disc player. The tiny red light seemed like a distant star. She ran a finger over the few CDs she had. No. The red star winked out.
Moving to the kitchen space, she opened the refrigerator: a lemon, a quart carton of milk, two bottles of water, and a long-forgotten Chinese take-out box. Shifting her attentions to the freezer compartment, she found a frozen diet dinner, low-fat fettuccine with clam sauce. A plastic tub of fake butter, filled presumably with leftovers she had frozen, sat beside the fettuccine.
She contemplated the contents of the compartment in a Zen fashion, then closed the freezer door.
Maybe she wasn’t hungry after all.
No, she was, but she wasn’t going to eat the frozen glop, and that Chinese had surely gone bad. And she couldn’t for the life of her remember what was in the plastic tub. Go out?
Alone?
She sighed. “Wouldn’t be the first time . . .”
The phone rang, and she crossed to it almost gratefully. “Yeah?”
“Sara?”
“Jake.”
“Uh-huh. You okay?”
“Sure.”
“You sound glum,” Jake commented.
“I’m fine. Have you eaten?”
“Uh, kinda.”
“Kinda?”
“Why, you wanted to go out?”
“Not really. I was thinking about it, but I’m too tired.”
“I could use some coffee. And some cannoli. Want to meet me at Chez Nunzio?”
“Sounds good. Are you sure you’re well enough?”
“I’m over it. It was a mild flu. Just starting to get my appetite back.”
“Okay. Meet you in, say, half an hour?”
“Give me an hour, Sara.”
“Okay. See you.”
She put on a skirt, black and short. To hell with that. She tried her plaid one. Nope. Putting off the lower-body decision, she tried on some blouses. She had three that were nominally passable. All looked hopelessly wrinkled, hopelessly drab. God, when was the last time she ironed?
She ended up putting on jeans, black T-shirt, leather jacket. Gun. No purse. Badge. No bra.
She regarded her image in the mirror.
Let’s face it, I’m butch.
She looked at her nightstand, on which the Witchblade sat. The stone seemed to glow.
Voices, tiny, distant voices babbled inside it. Or just behind it? Somewhere associated with it.
She picked it up and put it on her wrist. In this world, in its passive state, the artifact was a simple gold wire bracelet set with a puce stone. What it was in its natural habitat, nowhere in the known universe, no one knew. It was a strange manifestation, whatever the hell it was.
It was the Witchblade.
Should she wear it or not? The question always came up when she dressed to go out for a purely social occasion. And this was purely social. It was her day off, and Jake was still officially out sick.
It was still on her wrist as she left the apartment.
Hospital rooms always have harsh florescent light. It shone right in his eyes. Wires and tubes connected him to various mechanisms behind him and at either hand.
Kontra looked around. Lots of machinery. Some of them beeped. Some winked lights at him. Others leaked fluids into his body. There was an oxygen hose.
He hated hospitals. But this was surely one, and he was here.
He remembered being shot at, but that was all he remembered. He had tried to do something about it. Run? No, he hadn’t run. The memory was a blur. How long ago had he been shot? Yesterday? Two days ago?
Life had been a jumble since: Lights blinding him, the faces of nurses orbiting, doctors speaking, things beeping and humming. Needles jabbing in his skin. All a blur, a smear of memory.
“Hello, Mr. Kontra.”
This was another doctor, he believed. Different from the one who had spoken before. At least he thought. This one looked a little older. The first one had been a baby.
“Yes.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
“I’m going to live?”
“Yes, sir. You took two bullets to the chest. Fortunately, one of them only nicked an artery. The other collapsed a lung. You’re very lucky to be alive.”
“So I’ll live.” It was a statement.
“We still have some work to do in there. We got out both bullets, but we found something very strange.”
“Strange.”
“Yes. The bullets we took out were .32 caliber. They hadn’t deformed much. But we found a third bullet. At least we saw it in the X-rays.”
“Yes?”
“One that’s been in your body quite a while. We can tell this by the tissue that’s grown around it. It wasn’t fired from the same gun that was used on you yesterday. It’s an .8mm slug.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“You’ve been shot before?”
“Yes. Long time ago.”
“Remarkable. You must have the constitution of a
bull elephant.”
He shrugged, and it hurt.
“Well,” the doctor went on, “we couldn’t get at it while we were extracting the others. We should go back in at some point and remove it.”
Kontra shook his head. “It’s been in twenty years. It can stay.”
“Not a good idea to leave it in, Mr. Kontra.”
“I will think about it.”
“We won’t be able to do further surgery until you’ve completely recovered, of course. But let’s talk about it. I think we can release you in about a week and a half. Perhaps a little less, if everything stays stable. You’re doing fine, actually. Remarkable. As I said . . .”
Kontra nodded. “Lucky.”
“Um . . . the police would like to come in now and question you.”
“Send my wife in first.”
“Of course. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
“The man, he got away?”
“Man? Oh, the man who shot you? I think the police had better give you that information.”
“I didn’t kill him?”
“Not as far as I know. Your wife found you in the hall, called the paramedics. You lost a lot of blood, but they did a good job on you.”
Kontra nodded. “This country has good medical system. Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“You can tell police I’m not well enough yet. I don’t want to see them. Not yet.”
“I wasn’t enthusiastic about your undergoing questioning right now. I’ll tell them to wait at least a day. That okay?”
“Fine. Thank you. You are good, doctor.”
“I’ll ask your wife to come in now.”
CHAPTER
FOUR
A candle flickered between them. Italian smells hung in the air: oregano, thyme, fennel, garlic. Jake attacked his vanilla cannoli. The dark chocolate flecks in it looked like dead ants.
“This is great. I hate the kind with candied fruit. This is vanilla cream. You only nibbled at your sandwich.”
Sara wished that she smoked. It would give her something to do now that she decided to give up on the avocado, tomato, and alfalfa sprout sandwich. She hadn’t been hungry after all. Surprise. She sipped her coffee.
Jake persisted. “You didn’t eat.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Witchblade: Talons Page 3
