An Absence of Light

by David Lindsey

  Graver contended they should send Redden alone. After a long private conversation with the pilot in which Graver assured him that if he disappeared—with or without the money—that he, Graver, would hunt him down even if he had to go to hell to get him and, conversely, assured him if Redden helped them he, Graver, would do his utmost to see that he got every break possible when it was over, Graver felt that Redden was worth the risk. Murray swore they would never see his crab-red face again if they let him fly off in the Pilatus.

  Suddenly the Pilatus screamed low over them and shot out into the Gulf.

  “I don’t believe it,” Murray barked.

  “There’s no time to get this thing across the tarmac to the other hangar,” Graver yelled, frantically helping Last and Remberto stand the three men up and cuff their hands together behind their backs. “Cuff them back to back, and get them into the storeroom,” he snapped to Last, and then ran back into the hangar and flipped on the runway lights he had just turned off.

  Remberto was already pulling one of the dead guards around the corner into the darkness and Murray was grabbing the other, both bodies leaving a snail’s slag of blood and dirt. Graver ran to the rear of the plane and lifted the tail as Remberto came back, followed closely by Murray, each man getting on the leading edge of either wing and pushing the plane out onto the tarmac. When the plane was out far enough for the wings to clear the turn, Graver swung the tail around, and they all began pushing from the trailing edge of the wings, rolling the light craft out into the darkness, into the weeds between the two hangars, past the four bodies, all the way down the length of the hangar and around to the back.

  Running to the front doors again, Graver grabbed the garden hose and began washing down the blood. A wet cement skirt in front of the hangar would not raise the immediate questions that a bloody one would.

  Graver felt like he was in a dream. Jesus Christ He could not believe he had just let two men be killed so that he could have a slim chance at catching the man they worked for. Now, washing down the blood, he belched a mouthful of bile and bent over and spat it on the concrete, fighting to hold back the rest of it as he hosed it away from his feet His face was hot, and he fought a persistent, destabilizing nausea.

  He heard the Pilatus approaching from the water, just as Remberto and Murray returned from between the hangars.

  “Murray,” Graver yelled, “the guard with Redden will probably know the other two guards.” He handed one of the Uzi’s to Remberto and slung the other over his shoulder. “We can’t let them see but two of us, and only from a distance.”

  “I’ll get in the dark just around the corner,” Murray said. “It’s a toss-up which side of the plane the guard will get out of, but I want to get to him as soon as his feet hit the ground. We can’t give him too much time to think about what he’s seeing here.”

  Everyone agreed, but as Murray disappeared around the corner they didn’t have time to discuss how to handle it.

  “Do we leave the door of the van open?” Remberto panted.

  “Maybe, only one,” Graver said, checking his clip. “The guard’s going to be looking through the cockpit window. If he gets a good look at the whole inside he’ll know both shipments aren’t in there, not enough boxes. But maybe we ought to let him see some boxes, and the Uzi’s. He’ll be looking for those.”

  Remberto closed one door, leaving open the one that controlled the interior light.

  The turbo-powered Pilatus, sounding sure and powerful, its lights brighter than had been the lights of the other two aircraft, came off the water in a precision approach that allowed no seam of sound or sight to tell them when it had hit the tarmac. One moment it was airborne, and the next it was taxiing as though there were no tactile difference in the two activities. It went slightly farther down the runway than the others had done, and when it turned to come across to the hangar it did so without hesitation or uncertainty, almost as if it were being flown by a computer.

  Graver’s heart was working hard, still crazy from the shooting. It didn’t help any that he now began to worry that the guard on the Pilatus was going to see something he didn’t like and cause a standoff that might get one of them killed.

  “Let’s move across in front of the light,” Graver said, “let them see us, but not too well.” His legs were rubbery, and he hoped to God they didn’t give way unexpectedly.

  Redden, perhaps sensing the situation in front of him, cut the plane lights when he squared on the hangar door, and now the only light that could illumine their faces was the dim one coming from inside the van, which Graver and Remberto were careful to keep behind them.

  The Pilatus stopped as had the others, about a dozen feet from the hangar doorway, and then Redden cut the engine and the turboprop whooshed to a standstill.

  For just a moment nothing happened. Every one of Graver’s pores was weeping perspiration. The Pilatus was large enough to have both a passenger door just behind the cockpit as well as a much wider cargo door behind that But there was only one cockpit door, on the opposite side of the plane from Murray.

  The passenger door opened first, the steps were lowered, and the client stepped into the doorway and started down. Almost to the tarmac, the passenger suddenly turned and looked back to the plane, and at that instant Graver heard shouting from inside and suddenly four explosions—bam! bam! bam! bam!—and a man’s body flew backward out of the door, landing on his back almost on top of the client, half on and half off the stairway.

  The guy in the business suit screamed and lurched back and was instantly grabbed by Graver who dragged him into the darkness a few feet beyond the body.

  “Hold it! Hold everything!” Redden yelled from inside the plane. “I shot him, Graver! Had to, okay? Hear me?”

  “Okay, Redden,” Graver yelled. “Toss out the gun and come down with your arms straight out to the sides, shoulder high.”

  “Okay! Okay.”

  An autopistol flew out the door and bounced and skidded on the tarmac. That didn’t mean a damn thing, of course. He still could be armed. But Redden appeared in the doorway, his arms straight out as instructed as Murray came under the belly of the nose behind the prop and stood at the steps.

  “Son of a bitch smelled a rat,” Redden explained, standing on the top step. “He got spooky from the very start when I showed up without a copilot Watch his goddamn Uzi”—Redden nodded at the body at the foot of the steps—”it’s cocked and off safety.”

  “Come on down,” Murray said, his .45 trained on the considerable target of Redden’s chest.

  At the bottom of the steps Redden had to be careful not to lose his balance when stepping over the guard’s body, and the moment his feet hit the tarmac Remberto was cuffing his hands behind his back.

  “No one else in the plane?” Graver asked.

  “No, that’s it. But the money’s in there, ten boxes of it.”

  Graver felt like a man who had just survived an explosion unscathed; he was doing the psychological equivalent of feeling his body, almost disbelieving the fact that he had been through something so incredible without having one of his limbs blown off. All three loads of money were on the ground. None of his people had been hurt or even fired on. He had two of the three clients. Each of them could be tremendously enlightening about Kalatis’s operations from their own perspectives.

  But even so, standing there in the silence of the aftermath, his relief at having escaped all the tragedies that could have befallen them, he was somberly resentful that Kalatis had escaped. Whatever means Kalatis had arranged to take possession of his money had died with the guards and the van driver. The clients would know nothing about what was to happen to the money after the delivery. And now everyone who did know was dead. Graver was, in effect, cut off from Kalatis by a very neat sectioning away of the middlemen. He hadn’t even laid eyes on him, except for photographs. But like a greedy man, though realizing that fate had been good to him, Graver still was not satisfied. The very thing he had wanted
most had eluded him, and that single deprivation turned all the rest of his good fortune to sour disappointment.

  Then suddenly the darkness began to throb and thicken, and Graver’s nausea instantly leapt to the back of his throat with the chest-pounding, wind-beating, and almost deafening appearance of a sleek, black helicopter that slid over the tops of the trees across the runway. A glistening, pitch airship, it was nearly invisible as it hung in the night air, its lights winking against the stars, its dimly lit windows goggling at them like a giant locust’s eyes from across a hundred feet of tarmac. Its mammoth rotors whipped up an invisible cloud of grit and sand that pelted them as though the chopping blades were hacking the black night into cinders.

  Chapter 80

  Remberto and Murray quickly edged into the hangar with Redden, moving back into the darkness behind the front of the van where Last was holding Landrone and the client who had flown with him.

  Graver uncocked his Sig-Sauer, jammed it into its holster, and waited at the wing of the Pilatus. If this was Kalatis, Graver had no intention of allowing a shoot-out between the two groups of men. There were already too many bodies; he didn’t want to be the cause of any more. Kalatis could have his money—but Graver wanted to talk to him first.

  The huge Bell LongRanger rocked slightly as it descended from the darkness and then settled to the ground, its jet-driven rotors changing pitch of tone as the deceleration relieved them of the weight of their torque and they began a whining, whistling, slowdown.

  Nothing happened in the helicopter for a few moments until the rotors were circling slowly enough for the eye to follow them, gliding, and finally whooshing to a standstill. Graver waited where he was. The doors opened. Graver would not have been surprised to have seen the hairy, black body of Satan emerge, hoofed and horned and goatish and smelling of the stench of his own corruption and of the death over which he reigned always, even this night, lying all about them.

  Instead, the steps unfolded and a middle-aged, middle-sized man stepped out of the helicopter alone. He wore a beige-colored suit without a tie and started walking toward Graver. As the man approached, Graver noted that he was balding, that his suit was wrinkled and carelessly worn and, as Graver moved away from the wing of the Pilatus and started out to meet him, he realized that the face was familiar. When they were thirty feet from each other Graver recognized him and stopped.

  “Geis,” Graver said.

  The man stopped also. He looked at Graver with an unconcerned but serious face.

  “Very good,” he said. “That’s commendable.”

  The photographs from the fountain flipped through Graver’s memory. The man at the fountain. Geis. As Arnette had pointed out, this Geis in front of him was unremarkable in appearance. The slightly rounded nose was indeed familiar. The man exuded… nothing. He was so common in appearance as to have been all but invisible had he been encountered on the street or in a mall or sitting in the car next to you in traffic. He was uninteresting in every way.

  “What are you doing here?” Graver asked.

  “Vested interests, Graver. Vested interests.” He nodded at his own words. He said it wearily, as though he had had a long day but wasn’t going to complain about it “What, uh… Is all the money here?”

  Graver hesitated, he didn’t know why. More than likely Geis knew damn well where the money was.

  “It’s all here,” Graver said.

  “What about Panos Kalatis?”

  “I don’t know anything about Kalatis.”

  Geis sighed and nodded. “Did you know his house blew up about an hour ago?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Big-time. Blew to shit.”

  Geis nodded at his own description of the severity of the explosion and then leaned sideways a little to look around Graver at the entrance of the hangar. His cheap, loose-fitting suit emphasized his rounded shoulders and dumpy stature. Graver noticed that the sleeves of his coat were a little too long, coming down onto his hands.

  “You have people back in there with guns, I guess,” Geis observed blandly. He might have been asking Graver if he had a ride home.

  Graver said nothing.

  “Well, look,” Geis said, straightening up and putting his pudgy hands into the pockets of his baggy trousers, “I’m, uh, I’m going to have to take the money.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, with me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Graver said.

  Pause.

  “Is it all in the hangar there, in the van?”

  Graver said nothing.

  “I don’t think it’s all in the van,” Geis said, almost to himself. “You haven’t had time to unload the Pilatus yet.”

  Pause.

  Graver turned partway to the hangar and called back over his shoulder. “Use the handset and call Westrate,” he said. “Get a tac squad out here. Tell them who’s here.”

  “Don’t do that,” Geis said quickly, but without urgency. “I mean, we’ll be out of here before anybody can get here, but if we leave without the money it will be very, very bad. Just have them hold off on that call. I’ll show you what I mean.”

  There was something about Geis’s sang-froid in the presence of so much death that made Graver take his words seriously. He raised his hand and turned and looked toward the hangar.

  “Hold it,” he yelled. He turned to Geis. “If you’re CIA you’d better produce some proof. I’m not letting you take that money without some very convincing authorization.” He hesitated a couple of counts. “I mean it.”

  Geis waved at the helicopter without turning around. “I’ll show you,” he repeated.

  The door to the helicopter opened again and a man stepped out carrying a telephone and jogged over to them. He gave the telephone to Geis and then stepped back a few steps and waited. Geis pushed a button on the black instrument, listened a moment, and then said, “Put him on.” Then he handed the phone to Graver.

  Graver took it and put it to his ear. “Hello,” he said.

  “Captain, this is Neuman.”

  “Casey? Where are you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean? What’s going on?”

  “Well, they’re holding us somewhere.”

  “You and Ledet?”

  “Yeah.” Pause. “And Lara and Ginette Burtell.”

  Graver almost dropped the telephone. His muscles went limp, as if he had been swimming for hours, as if there was nothing left in him or in them, no strength at all, just quivering muscle.

  “I want to speak to Lara,” Graver said.

  “I’ll see…”

  Pause.

  “Hello?” Lara sounded scared. That was immediately apparent It took only two syllables.

  “Lara, are you okay?” Graver asked, fixing his eyes on Geis.

  “Yes. Yes, we’re okay. They broke into the house…” She started crying, stopped, recovered her voice. “I’m sorry… God…”

  They broke into the house? Graver’s throat tightened. Neuman was back on the line.

  “We’re all right,” Neuman assured him.

  “No one’s hurt… ?”

  “No, no, everything’s fine, nothing like that.”

  “Okay,” Graver said. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right. We’re working it out. Understand?”

  “Yeah. Captain… ‘Geis’ is Strasser…” The line went dead.

  Strasser.

  The dumpy man reached out for the telephone, took it from Graver, and handed it back to the man who had brought it to them from the helicopter.

  “You’re Brod Strasser?” Graver felt like a fool. He had seen no further into this nightmare than if he had been a kid. The surprise was debilitating. Not only that, he knew that Strasser would kill everyone he was holding if he thought he had to.

  “There’s just a lot going on here that you don’t understand, Graver,” Strasser said.

  “I have no doubt of that.” Graver was almost ashamed of his stupid
ity. He had risked everyone’s life. Somewhere along the way he had allowed himself to get sucked into a maelstrom of self-deception. Standing here, facing this powerful, disheveled little man. Graver suddenly realized how terribly wrong he had gone. Now this banal, dangerous creature was threatening four more deaths. Graver was appalled at what he had done.

  “Do you know what Kalatis was doing?” Strasser asked. His voice brought Graver back to the moment.

  “I assumed the two of you were robbing one more grave.”

  “Well, there you have it That’s precisely why we’re standing here. We weren’t doing anything. Panos was taking all of this for himself. I’ve most certainly seen the last of Panos Kalatis. There’s a total of forty million dollars here. A little over. This was the last ‘collection’ of a series of collections that Panos has been making behind my back. He’s already gotten away with over”—Strasser paused and leaned forward toward Graver for emphasis, the hands of his short arms still jammed into his pockets—”one hundred million… in this deal. Our’ money, as it were.”

  Strasser straightened up. “But he would have had one hundred and forty million if I hadn’t stopped the hemorrhage. I’ve got men running my interests all over the world, Graver. Sometimes they manage to steal from me for a long time before I catch them. Panos was better at it than most Silly bastard.”

  “Was he burning his bridges? Is that why everyone died?”

  “Well, not everyone. Tisler, Besom, yes, of course. Faeber, Gilbert Hormann, yes. But Burtell was working for me, and he was catching on that… he was being used.”

  “That you weren’t CIA.”

  Strasser gave a quick shrug.

  “What about Sheck?”

  “Oh, Sheck just happened… you know, to be in the wrong place, wrong time. That happens to people like Sheck. If it hadn’t been there last night, it would have been somewhere else another night.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Graver couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Kalatis,” Strasser said, shaking his head. “Things began to unravel. It’s too bad. There’s this concept, a bourgeois concept you find even in the most un-bour-geois-like people—Kalatis for example—this bourgeois concept, that a person oughtn’t to have to work all his life. That’s just a bizarre concept when you think about it. I mean, where does that come from? That’s what got Kalatis into trouble. He wanted this bundle to ‘retire.’ He just wanted to kick back and screw young girls the rest of his life.”