The Black Sun
Page 7
Then he ran his binoculars along the two SWAT teams in their helmets, gas masks, and bulletproof vests. Against the whiteness of the snow they looked like large black beetles, the visors on their helmets winking in the afternoon sun. In addition to submachine guns and pistols, one man in each unit was also equipped with a large metal battering ram.
“Okay,” came Vasquez’s voice over the radio. “Still no sign of activity inside. Alpha team, stand by.”
A voice amplified through a bullhorn rang out. “This is the FBI. You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”
“I said to keep it low-key, Vasquez, you macho idiot,” Viggiano muttered under his breath.
Silence from the farmstead.
Again the amplified voice blared out. “I repeat, this is the FBI. You have ten seconds to show yourselves.”
Still nothing.
Viggiano’s radio crackled. “Nothing doing, sir. It’s your call.”
“Make the breach,” Viggiano ordered. “Now.”
At each entrance the man with the battering ram stepped forward and slammed it into the
lock.
Both
doors
splintered
71 the black sun
on impact and flew open. A second man then lobbed a teargas canister through each open doorway. A few seconds later, the canisters exploded, sending dense, choking clouds of gas billowing out of the front and rear of the building.
“GO, GO, GO!” yelled Vasquez as the men disappeared into the house. From their vantage point, Bailey could hear muffled shouting and the regular pop and fizz of further tear-gas grenades being let off, but nothing else. No screams. No crying children. Certainly not a gunshot. The seconds ticked by, then turned into minutes. This was going better than any of them had expected.
The radio crackled into life. “Sir, this is Vasquez . . . There’s nobody here.”
Viggiano pulled himself up into a crouching position and grabbed the radio. “Say again?”
“I said there’s nobody here. The place is empty. We searched every room, including the attic. It’s deserted and it looks like they left in a hurry. There’s half-eaten food on the table. The whole fucking place stinks.”
Bailey swapped a confused look with Viggiano and then with Hennessy, who looked genuinely concerned.
“There must be someone there, Vasquez. I’m coming down,” Viggiano said.
“Negative, sir. Not until we’ve secured the whole area.”
“I said, I’m coming down. You and your men stay put till I arrive. I want to see this for myself.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BLOOMSBURY, LONDON
January 5—9:29 p.m.
Coffee?” “I need a drink.” Tom went to the decanter on the side table and poured himself a large glass of cognac. He took a mouthful, swilling it around before swallowing it, and then sat down heavily in one of the armchairs and glanced around him. This was only the second time he’d been to Archie’s place. It was a realization that brought home to Tom how little he knew about his partner—who he was, what his passions were, where his secrets lay—although he now saw that, after the evening’s revelations, he could say the same of Dominique. Perhaps that said more about him than either of them.
Despite this, he was able to detect in the room itself some hints of Archie’s character. Immediately apparent, for example, was his love of Art Deco, as evidenced by the Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann furniture and the various pieces of Marinot glassware that adorned the mantelpiece. And a collection of Edwardian gaming chips displayed in two framed cases on either side of the door betrayed his fascination with gambling. More intriguing was the teak coffee table, which Tom immediately identified as a late nineteenth-century Chinese
73 the black sun
opium bed. The brass fittings around its edge would once have housed bamboo poles to support a silk canopy that preserved its occupant’s anonymity.
“Sorry about your game,” Tom said, his gaze returning to Archie as he settled into the chair opposite him.
“Don’t worry.” Archie dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand. “I was losing anyway. Is she all right?” He tilted his head in the direction of the closed bathroom door in the hallway.
“She’ll be fine,” Tom said. If what he had learned about Dominique’s past had confirmed anything, it was her ability to tough it out.
“What the hell happened?” Tom handed him the rolled-up canvas. “What’s this?”
“Take a look.” Archie unscrolled the painting on the coffee table. He looked up in surprise. “It’s the Bellak from Prague.” Tom nodded. “Where did you find it?” Archie ran his hands gently over the painting’s cracked surface, his fingers brushing against the ridges in the oil paint, pausing over a series of small holes that punctured its surface.
“It was a gift. Somebody kindly left it in my freezer.” “In your what?” Archie wrinkled his forehead as if he
hadn’t heard properly. “In my freezer. And it wasn’t the only thing they left.” Archie shook his head. “I’m not sure I even want to
know.” “There was a human arm in there too. In fact, come to think of it, it’s still in there.”
For once, Archie was speechless, his eyes bulging in disbelief. When he did manage to get a word out, it was in a strangled, almost angry voice.
“Turnbull.” “What?” “It’s that two-faced bastard Turnbull.” Tom laughed. “Come on, Archie. You said he checked
out.” “He did. At least according to my contact. MI6, originally 74 james twining
on the Russian desk at GCHQ. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. Think about it. He shows up wanting our help. We refuse, and a few hours later the missing forearm miraculously shows up amongst your frozen peas. It’s a bloody setup. I expect he’s round there now, waiting for you to get home so he can nick you.”
“You’re assuming the arm belongs to Turnbull’s Auschwitz survivor.”
“Too right. How many severed arms do you think there are floating around London?”
“Not many,” Tom conceded.
“Well, there you are then.”
Tom stood up and moved over to the window. Below, a couple of taxis rattled past, their gleaming black roofs flickering with pale orange flames each time they passed under a streetlight. On the other side of the street, sheltering behind thick iron railings, the somber façade of the British Museum peered through the night with patrician indifference, the granite lions flanking the main entrance standing permanent guard.
“I’m just saying that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Tom continued. “Besides, there is another option . . .”
“Here we go,” Archie muttered.
“. . . whoever is behind the murder of that old man is also behind the theft of the painting.”
“You think it’s Renwick, don’t you?”
“Why not? We know he’s working with Kristall Blade, and we know they killed that man. Given that, thanks to me, he only has one hand, he of all people probably appreciated the irony of dropping off someone else’s limb as his calling card.”
“And the Bellak paintings?”
“Stolen by them at his request,” Tom said with a shrug.
“Bellak?” Unnoticed by either of them, Dominique had emerged from the bathroom and slipped into the room. Her earlier shock had been replaced by a calm resolve, and there was something almost ethereal about her as she stood there, a slim silhouette framed by the open doorway. “The painter?”
Tom
and
Archie
exchanged
uncertain
glances.
75 the black sun
“You’ve heard of him?” Even Tom was impressed by this latest example of Dominique’s ever-expanding mental database of the art market.
“Only by name.”
“How come?”
“Because your father spent the last three years of his life looking for Bellak paintings.”
“What?” Tom said disbelievingly.
“Don’t you remember? It became quite a big thing for him. He had me scanning databases and newspaper files and auction listings to see if I could find anything. I never did. By the end, I think he had almost given up.”
“That’s where I’d heard the name before,” Tom said, snapping his fingers in frustration at not having remembered this. “Now you mention it, I think he even asked me to see if I could come up with anything.”
“But why on earth would he want to collect them?” Archie asked, disdainfully holding up the painting of the synagogue to prove his point.
“He wasn’t collecting them,” Dominique corrected him, sitting down cross-legged on the hearth rug. “He was looking for one in particular—a portrait of a girl. He said it was probably in a private collection somewhere. He said that it was the key.”
“The key to what?” Archie asked.
“He never told me.” Dominique sighed. “Remember what he was like with his secrets.”
“Well, whatever it is, clearly Renwick knows,” Tom said bitterly. “That’s why he’s put this here—to show me how close he is to finding it.”
“Which is precisely why you shouldn’t let him get to you,” Archie said firmly. “He wants to get a reaction. We’ll just dump the arm and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“Never happened?” Dominique countered, her eyes shining defiantly. “You can’t just ignore something like this, Archie. They killed someone—I heard you say so. They killed someone and we might be able to do something about it.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Archie protested. “Look, I know Cassius. This is just another one
of
his
sick
games.
It’s
too
76 james twining
late to help the old man that arm belonged to, but we can still help ourselves. Tom?
What are you doing?”
“Calling Turnbull,” answered Tom, picking up the phone and extracting the slip of paper with Turnbull’s number from his wallet.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” pleaded Archie.
“I heard what you both said, and Dominique’s right—we can’t ignore this.”
“He’s playing with you. Let it go.”
“I can’t let it go, Archie,” Tom snapped, before taking a deep breath and continuing in a gentler tone. “If you want to stay out of this, fine. But I can’t. This involves my father. And if Renwick’s after something my father spent years looking for, then I’m not just going to stand by and watch him get it first. I’m not having him make a fool of me. Not again.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BLACK PINE MOUNTAINS, NEAR MALTA, IDAHO
January 5—2:19 p.m.
Viggiano and Bailey set off downhill through the trees as fast as they could, stumbling awkwardly as their legs disappeared into snowdrifts or their feet snagged on camouflaged undergrowth. Eventually they emerged, breathless, on the far right-hand side of the compound. Leaving fresh tracks in the snow, they both clambered over the wooden fence and made their way to the front entrance, where they were met by one of Vasquez’s men, his mask and helmet discarded, his face blank.
“This way, sir.”
He led them through an entrance hall piled high with sneakers and boots and old newspapers. Several pairs of antlers had been nailed to the wall, grimy baseball caps and odd socks hanging off them like makeshift Christmas decorations. Vasquez was waiting for them in the large kitchen. The long oak table was set for dinner, roaches scuttling across the worktops and over a joint of beef that had been left out, its sides bristling with fungus. The air was thick with flies and a heady smell that Bailey recognized only too well.
The
smell
of
rotting
flesh.
78 james twining
Vasquez nodded toward a door. “We haven’t checked the basement yet.”
“The basement?” Viggiano frowned as he scrabbled to retrieve the plan of the compound from his jacket. He smoothed it out, borrowing tacks from an out-of-date NRA calendar to pin it to the wall. “Look—there is no basement.”
“Then what do you call that?” Vasquez threw open the door to reveal a narrow staircase leading down into the darkness below, a blast of warm, noxious air rushing up to meet them.
Guided by Vasquez’s flashlight, they negotiated the stairs. At the bottom was a narrow, unlit corridor. Vasquez lit their way with a series of green chemical flares that he cracked into life and threw to the ground at regular intervals.
Bailey felt himself beginning to sweat as they approached the end of the passage. The temperature was noticeably higher here than upstairs, the smell making his stomach turn. Vasquez signaled for them to wait as he entered a doorway. He reemerged, grim-faced, a few seconds later.
“I hope you guys skipped lunch.”
Viggiano and Bailey stepped inside. A massive oil-fired boiler hugged the far wall, the heat radiating off its sides. The stench was unbearable, the buzzing of the flies so loud it sounded like the revving of a small engine. The center of the room was taken up by a large German shepherd, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, its brown fur matted with blood and rippling with maggots. Next to it were two blood-soaked pit bulls and a scraggy-looking mongrel whose head had been almost blown off.
“Guess now we know why no one had seen the dogs,” commented Vasquez drily. He pointed his flashlight down at the floor near where they were standing. The gray concrete was peppered with brass shell casings, their shiny hides glinting like small eyes.
“M16 casings. Couple of mags’ worth. They weren’t taking any chances.”
“But where is everyone?” Bailey asked. “Where have they gone?”
“Sir?”
Another
of
Vasquez’s
men
appeared
in
the
door
79 the black sun
way behind them. “We got something else.”
They followed him back along the green flare-lit corridor into another, smaller room that was empty apart from a desk pushed up against one wall. Here the floor was covered not with dog carcasses and shell casings but with small heaps of discarded paper. Bailey knelt to pick up a printout. It was a list of flight times to Washington, DC. He stood and made his way over to the far side of the room. Here, a large architectural drawing had been pinned to the wall, with various parts of the building circled in red. In the bottom left-hand corner was an inscription: National Cryptologic Museum—Plans; Structural Drawings; Heating/Venti-lation System—1993. He pointed it out to the others.
“Looks like these were our guys.”
“What’s through there?” Viggiano pointed to a rusty metal door set into the facing wall.
Vasquez approached and shone his flashlight through a small glass inspection panel set into the door.
“We got ’em!” he exclaimed. “They’re in here. This opens onto a second door, which opens into another room. Jesus, they’re squashed in tight.”
“Let me see.” Viggiano peered in.
“Are they still alive?” Bailey asked.
“Yeah. One of them has just seen me.”
He stepped back and Bailey took his turn at the window. “She’s waving her arms,” he said with a frown. “Like she wants us to leave.”
“Let’s get these doors open,” Viggiano urged.
“Are you sure?” Bailey asked cautiously. “She sure doesn’t look like she wants it opened.”
“Screw what she wants,” Viggiano fired back.
“Sir, I really think we should check it out first,” Bailey insisted, sensing from the woman’s desperate expression that she was trying to warn him of something. “There must be a reason they’re signaling. Don’t you think we should at least make contact and see what the hell they’re doing in there?”
80 james twining
With a shrug, Vasquez unbolted the first door and pulled it open. But as he reached the door on the other side, a shout stopped him in his tracks.
“Look!” Bailey pointed his flashlight at the inspection window of the second door. It was almost entirely taken up by a scrap of white material on which a message had been hastily scrawled in what appeared to be black eyeliner.
You’ll kill us all.
“What the hell . . . ?” Viggiano began, but he was interrupted as Vasquez began to cough loudly, his body doubling over with the effort.
“Gas,” he gasped. “Get out . . . gas.”
Bailey grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him toward the exit, his last sight the woman’s face pressed to the inspection panel, her eyes large and round and red. As he watched, she collapsed out of sight.
“Get everyone out of here,” Bailey shouted, shoving a convulsing Viggiano back up the stairs, into the kitchen, out through the hall, and back outside. The rest of the SWAT team spilled out onto the snow ahead of them.
“What happened?” Sheriff Hennessy came running up as they emerged, his sweaty face creased with alarm.
“The place has been booby-trapped,” Bailey said, panting, releasing Vasquez into the care of a team of paramedics, then bending to rest his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.
“Booby-trapped?” Hennessy looked in bewilderment at the farmhouse entrance.
“How?”
“Some sort of gas. It must have been rigged to the door. They’re all still inside. They’re dying.”
“They can’t be,” Hennessy cried out in an anguished voice, his desperate eyes wide with fear and confusion. “That was never the deal.”
Bailey looked up, his exhaustion and revulsion momentarily forgotten. “That was never what
deal,
Sheriff?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FORENSIC SCIENCE SERVICE, LAMBETH, LONDON
January 6—3:04 a.m.
The stump was bloody and raw, with strips of muscle, nerve fiber, and severed blood vessels hanging loose like wires, and the tip of the ulna peeking out from under the loose skin with a white smile.