The Coil

by Gayle Lynds

  Sir Anthony said softly, gently, “You needed to make a mark as big as they did. Poor Greg.”

  Simon seemed to rouse himself. Liz studied him as he shifted on the chair and looked around alertly. She put her hand on his shoulder and used a finger to draw an arrow pointing at the French doors. He turned slightly, saw the demonstrators, watched them collecting rocks, then looked up at her. She gazed down at the gym bag. He followed her line of sight. She hoped he remembered that she was no longer a reliable shot.

  Gilmartin snapped, “I’m making a contribution.”

  “Really?” Simon said instantly, proving he was alert enough to follow the conversation. “If your merger made no profit, would you still want it?”

  “That’s not the point,” Gilmartin said, outraged. “Of course it’ll make a handsome profit. Anything of value does.”

  Sir Anthony had been watching the agitators for some time, the groups rushing back and forth, collecting rocks. He stalked forward, his cheeks hot, his anger barely under control. The weight of his responsibilities felt very heavy, the crushing failures and disappointments of the search for the files an indictment of his leadership. He thought about the Browning in the holster under his jacket again. Since he had not detected Atlas’s lack of moral compass, Atlas would ruin the Coil completely. He could see that clearly now. Atlas would expose the Coil, bring down the authorities, end whatever future good it could offer the world. Only he, Cronus, should have the files. Only he could be trusted with the terrible secrets within. He had guessed this but had not yet been willing to admit it. Now he had no choice.

  He accused, “You’re not what the Coil’s about, Atlas. You’ve hurt us badly. You’ve pushed us into behaviors…actions…”

  “You mean setting up Sansborough?” Gilmartin said, rising angrily from his chair. “You mean murder? You old hypocrite. No one made you do anything! You are what you are and have always been. All of the Coil is! And so is Nautilus. If you were really so altruistic, would you have done any of it? No! I’m the honest one. I know the way the world works, and I don’t hide behind illusions. You’re out of date and out of step. You’re—”

  Liz squeezed Simon’s shoulder. Quickly, he glanced across the long meeting room and out the French doors, saw the maddened faces, the fists swinging back, the rocks hurling. There was a sudden explosion of noise, of glass panes breaking, shattering, singly and simultaneously, cascading and reverberating throughout the wing and into the huge old hotel.

  At the same time, rocks and glass crashed into the room, striking the podium and blanketing the far end of the conference table. Fresh air gusted in afterward, cool, smelling of rain. Suddenly, gunshots thundered outdoors, too.

  As Greg Gilmartin whirled to look, Sir Anthony smiled coldly to himself, amused that neither Gilmartin nor his man had thought him sufficiently dangerous to search for a weapon. But then, that was Greg. Too arrogant or perhaps too hungry to assess a situation accurately. Definitely not the man his father was. He must be stopped. Permanently.

  All of that passed through Cronus’s mind in an instant. He yanked the Browning from under his jacket just as Simon dived a hand into his gym bag and Liz sprinted toward Malko. One second later, Gilmartin turned back, realized what was happening, and yanked up the Beretta to aim.

  Sarah’s mind swam, flickering on the edges of consciousness. Nausea and achiness seemed to flow through her veins. Her chin and neck hurt. She forced herself to remember: Malko had kicked her in the chin and knocked her into the water.

  Groaning, she opened her eyes. Tried to grasp where she was.

  There was a coffee table, a lamp, a couch. Farther off, a door. She was in a hotel room, where Malko had tied her to the chair. But everything was different. The lamp, a chair, and a low table lay on their sides beside the window, under a glittering blanket of glass. Rocks sat on top of the mess. She heard gunshots and shouts. Other pieces of furniture were upright still. She studied the door, saw it was horizontal….

  That was it. She was lying on her side, still tied to the chair, a boulder next to her. Now she recalled it all—a howling noise, shouts, bullhorns, the hail of rocks, the explosive shriek as a boulder hurled through the glass door, the shocking impact as she fell. Then emptiness, nothing.

  Bitterly, she complimented herself. Very clever. Oh, yes, so clever that she had allowed Malko to fool her with an obvious old trick like hiding directly beneath a window. At least he still wanted her alive, if only for a short time. She pushed away fear and rolled her head to look at more of the room. But her cheek slapped floor tiling, and new pain radiated out. Her mind swam again. It seemed to her the horizontal door opened and feet floated into the room, moving sideways. A man’s pants and athletic shoes.

  Her chest tightened, and her lungs squeezed with fear. But she kept her voice steady. “Decided to kill me after all, Malko?”

  The man said nothing. His legs limped around her.

  She tried to twist to look up at the face, but he was too close. She fought pain. Then he was behind her. “Malko?”

  Gino Malko was behind Sir Anthony and to the side, listening with genuine respect to his employer. He had never had one as rich or as powerful. For Malko, every word of praise from Mr. Gilmartin had been a gold ingot, to be deposited in his inner savings account, security against the cold winds of poverty and chance. Malko saw nothing unusual about old Sir Anthony’s movements, and Sansborough was simply an irritation he would deal with in time. Instead, his gaze locked on the real threat—Simon Childs, at the hand coming out of the gym bag with his pistol.

  Simon saw that Sir Anthony’s grip on his weapon was steady, the gun trained on Gregory Gilmartin. With luck, they would kill each other.

  Malko swore and raised the Uzi. Too late.

  The gunshots were almost simultaneous, the noise volcanic.

  Simon’s bullet caught Malko in the heart. Blood erupted, misting the air pink. Malko’s Uzi exploded, the bullet bursting into a vase, detonating it like a hand grenade.

  At the same time, Sir Anthony’s first shot went into Gilmartin’s white shirt and the second into his throat.

  Gregory Gilmartin toppled forward, his eyes wide, his finger convulsing on the trigger of his gun and sending a single bullet into the expensive carpet. Blood geysered from his wounds.

  In the room, there was a second of shock, as if the world had tilted. The three left standing—Liz, Sir Anthony, and Simon—were motionless, as if stillness would make the horror acceptable. The hot stench of blood stained the air, while dust from the shattered window floated gently in layers above the corpses of the two men.

  Liz moved first, sweeping up the Uzi from Malko’s lifeless fingers. She pointed it at the Coil’s leader. “Put down your gun, Sir Anthony. Or would you prefer to be called Cronus?”

  Sir Anthony blinked. Oddly, he remembered something George Eliot had written. He had read the book—Adam Bede—one languid summer in Paris: Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. He believed in the future. He had lived his life in that passionate pursuit, and as much as he hated it, he saw clearly everything had led up to this moment. He sensed he had somehow, somewhere made a profound mistake, and that was an admission he could not abide.

  Sir Anthony turned swiftly, his finger pulling the trigger.

  But Liz had seen the movement and guessed what he intended. She squeezed off a burst. The Uzi’s bullets punctured Sir Anthony’s firing arm and slashed into his chest. He jerked up to his toes. His gun fired wildly into the ceiling. As plaster dust showered down, coating the room in white, he rotated, his eyes soft with relief. He fell hard to the floor.

  As she stared down, an odd silence filled Liz’s ears. She felt a sharp stab of failure. And then soaring elation that she was alive. That Simon was alive. She looked at him. He was peering worriedly at her. She smiled, gave a brief nod.

  Joy flashed across his face. He threw an arm across her shoulders, pulled her close, and kissed her cheek. She wrapped her arms aroun
d him and held him tightly, as if all of life were encapsulated in this moment.

  The door opened. Instantly, they released each other and whirled, their weapons raised.

  “Sarah!” Liz sighed a long stream of air and lowered the Uzi.

  “Thank God!” Simon lowered his pistol.

  Sarah walked carefully into the suite, as if she were either weak or injured. She was followed by an older man with a cap on his head. Liz realized she might have seen him around the hotel, one of the many anonymous security people who wore green badges. But as he drew next to Sarah, Liz saw that he limped on his right side. Simon noticed it, too. They exchanged a knowing glance.

  Sarah was staring at the carnage. “My God, Liz. What happened?”

  “In a minute,” Liz said. Then she looked directly at the man: “Who are you? You’ve been helping us, haven’t you?”

  “César Duchesne,” he said simply in a low voice that hinted at a growl. “It was my job, until Brookshire told me to kill you.” His gaze was focused on the green disc on the table. “Is that it?”

  She had a strange desire to trust him. “No. It’s in Gilmartin’s inside pocket. It’s mine now, though.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Duchesne found me,” Sarah explained and smiled at him. “Malko tricked me in the pool area. He knocked me out and tied me up.”

  “Liz! Simon!”

  They turned quickly at the sound of the familiar voice. Stunned, Liz grinned with relief. “Henry!”

  “Yes, it’s me. Turned up like a bad penny.” Lord Henry Percy hobbled into the room, pushing a walker. His old face scanned the bloodbath, and his mouth tightened. He was almost erect, a towering figure, the way she remembered him before his wheelchair.

  “You’re all right then,” he decided, his keen gaze scrutinizing Simon and her and then moving to Duchesne as if to be sure who he was. “Duchesne said you would be. I’m sorry about the trouble at the house. I was worried you might actually check me for a pulse, but Clive handled it well, I thought. Duchesne said you must believe we’d really been attacked. That it was critical to your continuing the job.”

  “Henry!” Simon said, disgusted. “You bastard. We thought you were dead! What are you doing here?”

  Again the look at Duchesne. “He brought me so I could explain to the police when the time came, you see.” He peered down at Sir Anthony’s body. “I can’t believe it. Tony turned out to be such a stupid chap.” He shook his head.

  Sarah was studying Liz and Simon and seemed to see something. “Asher found the agent Langley assigned here,” she told them. “They’ll be up shortly. Henry, we should leave. You need to talk to them, set the stage.”

  He frowned, nodded, and followed her out the door. As they left, Duchesne limped to Gilmartin, knelt, patted him down, and stood, the Zip disc in his hand.

  “That’s the right one,” Simon said instantly.

  Duchesne did not glance at him. He went to Liz and handed it to her, his gaze downcast.

  With a chill, she stared at it. “Thank you.”

  “I think we should burn it,” Simon told her. “No one should ever have that sort of power again.” He gazed at her, waiting for a response.

  She said nothing, watching Duchesne as he silently limped toward the door. With a queasy feeling, she studied his gait. Then, as he stepped outside, she had her answer: The limp vanished, and he walked normally, strongly, with a spring in his step. He turned his head quickly, looked directly into her eyes, and gave a wry smile. The door shut, and he was gone.

  Raw emotion flooded her.

  Simon frowned, studying her intense expression, the hard lines around her mouth.

  “What is it?” he said. “Something else happened. Is it the Zip disc? Would you rather not destroy it?”

  She seemed to come out of a trance. She turned and stared up at him. Her face was stricken, but there was also rage and fear there, too.

  “I don’t have the disc, Simon,” she told him.

  “Yes, you do—”

  She shook her head violently. “No. Duchesne switched discs. He gave me a fake one. He left with the real one.”

  Simon’s voice rose. “You didn’t stop him? Why?”

  “Because I recognized him. He’s had more plastic surgery, and he’s on steroids again. But it was him. I’ve seen him make that sort of switch before. Then he dropped his limp. I wonder how long he’s been working for Sir Anthony. My guess is, he’s been following me all along, probably since before I moved to Santa Barbara.”

  Simon’s blue eyes darkened. There was anguish in his tone. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  Her throat tight, she avoided his gaze. “The disc belongs to him. No, don’t look at me like that, Simon. I couldn’t expose him.” She turned away. “He’s my father. Duchesne’s the Carnivore.”

  Epilogue

  Madonie Mountains, Sicily

  In the distance, the weathered town of Gangi clung to a sharp slope below the sun-dried peak of Monte Marone. The snaking streets and the sandstone steps that connected the medieval town’s levels were invisible from where Liz hiked down a hillcrest. All she could see of it now was the sea of red-tiled roofs faded over the centuries to the color of exhausted flesh. Earlier today, she had gone into Gangi, asking for her father by name and by three of his aliases—Alex Bosa and Alessandro Firenze and César Duchesne. She showed a drawing of what he had looked like at Dreftbury.

  In his proper black suit, the mayor proudly assured her he knew personally everyone in this remote area but did not recognize the face or names. Of course, the Mafia capo did not either, and neither did the carabinieri. Shopkeepers and housewives knew nothing, had seen nothing.

  For her, time had run out. It was September, and she had been in Sicily nearly a month, going first to the beautiful resort city of Cefalù on the northern coast, because it was the ancestral home of the Firenzes and the Bosas, from whom her father, she, and Sarah were descended. That was where he had secretly built a villa, retired, and supposedly died.

  When she found no clue there, she moved inland along the SS286, searching to the east and west among the isolated farms and villages that dotted Sicily’s wild central mountains. Some villages were so small they appeared on no map. According to rumor, Bernardo Provenzano, the Cosa Nostra’s brilliant capo di tutti capi, the “boss of all bosses,” was hiding somewhere among them. Provenzano had avoided police capture for forty years. This being Sicily, the only unusual aspect of his disappearance was the remarkable duration. The capo before him—his friend Salvatore Riina, known as “the Beast”—had hidden for a mere twenty-three years before finally being caught in 1993.

  Liz gave the town of Gangi one last suspicious look and turned off into a cortile that fronted a tumbledown stone building, weathered and gray. In the dirt courtyard stood a dozen tables covered by crisp, blue-checked cloths, waiting for the night’s crowd. She had learned that people gathered here from miles around to eat, drink, and gossip after a day in the fields and olive groves. Sometimes it was called Il Santuario; other times, Il Purgatorio. The owner of the ristorante, who had an encyclopedic memory, was allegedly connected.

  The door was open. From the doorway drifted the odors of garlic, spicy tomato sauce, and wine. She put a pleasant smile on her face and stepped into cool darkness, hiding her eagerness. The stone building was very old, with small windows that gave little light. But the room was large. In it was only one person.

  “Signore Aldo Cappuccio?” she asked.

  A man stood behind a wooden bar. The top was worn smooth by decades of elbows and glasses. He opened his hands over it, palms up, and smiled in return, the gracious host.

  “Buon giorno. Che cosa desidera?”

  Short and wiry, he was around fifty years old, with a black mustache, a swarthy complexion, and green Sicilian eyes. She saw no sign of a weapon. In the dusky room, he looked like a good-natured imp, not a man who commanded respect on both sides
of the law. Still, there was something about his face. It was a mask, she decided.

  She smiled broadly. “Buon giorno. Il vino della casa, per favore.”

  He cocked his head as if to hear better. “Basta così?”

  “Sì, grazie.”

  “Buono. You’re developing a Sicilian accent,” he decided, continuing in Italian as he reached behind for the house wine. “You’re English, yes? Welcome to my home.”

  As he poured three inches into a simple glass, he kept glancing at her.

  Curious, she glanced back. “I’m English and American. Live in California now.” She picked up her wine, leaned against the bar, and scanned the room, controlling her excitement. Since Dreftbury, every time she approached a doorway, every time she walked down a street, every time she met someone new, she wanted to shake them, ask them, Do you know my father? Have you seen him?

  “You’ve come a long way,” he said.

  While Cappuccio’s place appeared near ruin from the outside, the room was gracious, filled with fine antiques, expensive fabric-covered chairs, varnished tables, and old photos in heavy frames. The clothing in the photographs told her they had been taken long ago. Beside them was a tranquil fresco of angels with pipes and harps. It was far older than the photos.