City of Iron

by Williamson, Chet

  Kerr lifted the wine decanter and opened it. He poured the ruby liquid into the dark interior of the vessel until it reached nearly the brim. Then he set the decanter down and lifted the cup. He spoke again in Latin, and the others responded. Then he brought the wine to his lips.

  But instead of tilting the cup back to drink fully, Kerr suddenly stiffened. The cup slipped through his fingers and clattered onto the table, spilling the wine in a dark red wound across the surface of the white tablecloth. Kerr's eyes went wide, his lips pressed back from his teeth in a snarl of pain, and his hands clutched his stomach.

  He gasped for air as his face purpled, and he fell, his chin striking the surface of the table, his head lolling as he slipped to the floor.

  Ferguson would have run to help Kerr, but by then the pain had hit him as well. A fire blazed in his stomach, and his only thought, irrational as it was, was that if he could but tear through his flesh he might be able to extinguish it.

  Between then and the moment he died, never once did he, nor did any of the ten other agonized men, think of poison. They thought only of the excruciating pain, how they wanted to stop it, and finally, how they wanted to be dead. Their mission, their enemies, their god, all were obliterated from their minds. All that remained was pure agony.

  In less than two minutes after Kerr had dropped the cup, the assembly was dead. They lay on the floor, across the table, or with limbs askew where they had fallen against their chairs. Each face was frozen in a rictus of torment. Every finger was hooked and clawed. Some had actually ripped through a coat or shirt and the flesh beneath. The smell of urine and feces, spilled wine and death, hung heavily in the air.

  All was silent for a very long time. Had there been any living thing left inside the lodge, it would have heard only the wind wheezing outside, and the windows rattling. But if anyone had been left alive to see, he might have noticed, an hour after the last of the men had stopped twitching, a white face at the window.

  Chapter 2

  When the assassin looked through the pane, the expression on his gaunt face was one of incredulity, as though he could not believe that the men inside were truly dead. Then it relaxed as his finger thoughtfully traced a long, thin scar down his right sideburn to his chin. "Eternal life, my ass . . ." he whispered, and gave a soft chuckle.

  He tried to count the bodies but could see only eight. The other four, he suspected, were hidden behind the table, where they must have fallen. He didn't go into the lodge. He'd been told to make sure they were all dead and then report back, and that was all he was going to do.

  It had been touch-and-go, and he had been afraid he wouldn't get a chance to juice the flour at the grocery store in Malone. But the guy who'd bought it had turned at just the right moment, and he'd been able to push the cyanide capsule right through the plastic grocery bag and into the flour sack. Amazing crap the labs turned out, the plastic and paper sealing behind the capsule as sweet as anything. Then the capsule broke down to let the motion of the man carrying the flour scatter it throughout the bag. God bless the USA.

  He walked around to the window at the other side and peered in, looking for the four missing bodies. Yeah, there they were . . . one, two, three. . . .

  Three? He carefully looked again but came to the same conclusions: only eleven men lay dead inside the lodge. Then there must be another one somewhere.

  The assassin drew an Ingram from under his nylon parka and went around to the back door. His footsteps crunching in the snow sounded painfully loud to him, and he could feel the sweat pooling in his armpits. He liked wet work best when there was little or no risk to him. His victims looked a whole lot better at the end of a telescopic sight. These sonsabitches were warriors who made the assassin look like a goddamned beginner. He had thought of them as occidental samurai.

  Yet he had killed them, all of them, except for one stubborn bastard.

  The assassin turned the knob of the back door but found it locked. He took a deep breath, pulled back his foot, and kicked hard where the lock met the jamb. The frame splintered with a sharp crack, and he hurled himself through, falling prone on the floor, his weapon aimed at whatever might be there.

  But there was nothing. The kitchen was empty. He stood up and went into the main room, but found only the bodies. Wrinkling his nose at the sour smell, he explored the other rooms, the muzzle of his weapon nervously preceding him. No one was there.

  Back in the main room, the assassin looked at the papers, the dossiers, the spilled wine, the wooden cup that lay overturned on the table. He didn't notice the twelfth portfolio, Mackay's, under Kerr's, where Kerr had left it when the man hadn't arrived.

  The hell with it, he thought. He had been told to kill them, that was all. Nothing had been said about bringing back any souvenirs.

  But when he was halfway to the front door, he stopped and looked back. The bread, the wine, the men around the table . . . it made him think of something, something religious he had learned about when he was a kid.

  The Last Supper. There was a picture of it on his grandma's bedroom wall, with Jesus and his disciples, and the bread and the wine. This was a last supper, sure enough. This bunch would never eat and drink together again.

  The assassin glanced at his wristwatch and realized he would have to hustle if he was going to be at the pickup point in time. He went through the door, pulled it shut behind him, and started running down the lane in the moonlight, looking apprehensively about him.

  After all, that twelfth man was still alive somewhere.

  Fifteen hours later, in bright afternoon sunshine, Andrew Mackay drove down the snow-packed lane toward the lodge. He was cut and bruised and battered, and a cane was propped on the passenger seat of his Jeep.

  Three miles east of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, he had bailed out of his plane. It had crashed several miles away in a heavy patch of woods and had not yet been discovered. After he'd landed heavily in a cornfield, he had made his way to a road, where he had flagged down a snowplow driver. In Eau Claire, he'd paid cash for a four-wheel drive utility vehicle and begun the slow trip back to St. Paul, where he'd taken a train east.

  The traveling had been slow everywhere, for the storm that was moving steadily west had already blanketed the States all the way back to Connecticut. It was not until the morning after the meeting of The Twelve that Mackay had finally arrived in New York's Penn Station. There he had taken a train to Plattsburgh, where he'd bought a Jeep with cash and driven to the lodge.

  Mackay knew, as he came up the long drive, that something was wrong. Their cars were still there, but they would not have waited for him. After the reports were given, the new missions distributed, and the bread and wine shared, The Twelve would have left immediately.

  The first thing he suspected was some crisis that had made his brothers remain and plan through last night and today. But as he drew closer, there seemed to be no sign of life within. He could see that the interior was lit, but he could sense no movement.

  He parked and took a pistol from beneath the seat, then shrugged off his topcoat to improve his mobility. He left his cane in the Jeep. He could walk without it, though the pain was greater. But if what he now feared had come true, his pain was as nothing.

  He could smell death through the closed door. Neither the crisp air of the mountains nor the thick snow melting in the afternoon sun could disguise it. He knew that no one was alive in the lodge, and he lowered his weapon as he opened the door.

  They were all there, all dead; and as he walked around the table, he didn't know if he grieved more for the loss of his brothers or the threat to the world. But his eyes remained dry, for he had lost so many people he'd loved over the centuries that his tears had dried up long ago.

  Still, it was harrowing to see those with whom he had worked for so many years cut down. Kerr, Douglas, Murray . . . all of them, the only people he'd ever been able to safely call friend. Had it not been for the storm that had nearly killed him, he would be lying here, too.


  But there would be time enough for grief . . . and for vengeance. Now he had to determine what had happened, and how.

  He immediately surmised that poison had been the culprit, and from the contortions of the bodies he suspected cyanide. He first thought of gas, since they all seemed to have died within minutes, but dismissed that theory when he examined the bodies more closely. The dried froth on the lips and the corpses' hands clawing at their stomachs told him the poison had been ingested.

  The level of wine in the decanter was where Mackay would have expected it to be if the wooden cup had been filled, but from the amount of dried wine on the tablecloth, he knew that they had not yet drunk when they were stricken. It had to be the bread, then.

  He picked up the remaining piece and sniffed it, but smelled only the spilled wine that had saturated it. Ferguson must have baked it, as he usually did.

  Mackay went into the kitchen and saw the broken door, immediately realizing that someone had kicked it in. He pushed it shut, and the room felt warmer. Then he began investigating the baking materials.

  He found nothing in the box of baking soda, but when he poured the flour out onto the sideboard, he saw several very small white flakes of what might have been a gelatin residue. When he examined the flour bag, he discovered a small puckered area on its surface. If he hadn't been looking closely for it, he never would have found it.

  He smiled grimly. It was a concept so simple that it indicated extremely high-tech equipment, something no cult had access to. It must have come from higher up, a government job. But whose government? And why? Mackay would have to find out before he could take care of those responsible.

  But for now there was work to be done, and quickly. Kerr had made the arrangements for the lodge, so Mackay did not know how soon anyone would come out to learn why the eleven men had neither left nor returned to town.

  He limped into the main room and gathered all the papers, many stained with wine, that lay on the table. Together they made a stack nearly a foot high. He also removed all the cash from the pockets of his dead brothers, but did not bother looking for any personal identification. Like Mackay, they carried none.

  He took the papers and money to the Jeep, then returned to the lodge, where he picked up the overturned wooden cup, wiped it as clean as possible with the end of the tablecloth, and replaced it in its box.

  After he had stowed the box safely in the Jeep, he carefully searched the basement of the lodge and found an empty can that had once stored kerosene, and an old garden hose. He cut off a length of hose with a pair of rusted shears and took it and the can outside, where he siphoned gasoline from a car. Back inside, he splashed the gas over the bodies, up the sides of the walls, and all over the floor, repeating the siphoning until the room was saturated.

  From his valise he took a battery-powered fuse box and a small charge of white phosphorous, set it on the floor beneath the table, rose, and for the last time looked at his brothers. "Rest well," he said softly. "God knows you've worked hard enough for Him."

  Then he went outside, where he wiped all of the smooth surfaces of the cars, inside and out. When he felt he had obliterated all the prints and picked up any trace evidence from the seats, floors, and trunk interiors, he climbed into his Jeep and drove down the road several hundred yards. He stopped, pushed a remote button, and watched as the door and windows of the lodge burst outward from the instantaneous heat. There was no sound of an explosion, only a low, rolling rush of air and the sound of broken glass. The splintering shards sparkled like huge snowflakes in the setting sun, flames chasing them from their casements.

  Sir Andrew Mackay watched the pyre as it consumed the earthly shells of his brothers, and prayed hard and long. Then he drove on. There was much to tell, and much to learn.

  And there was vengeance to take.

  Chapter 3

  "Vengeance, death, love, jealousy, deceit, mystery, precision, order, chaos—they're all there, Adam, you don't hear them?"

  The voice, thickly accented with the heavy tones of Scandinavia, could barely be heard over the sound of Davitt Moroney's harpsichord, which filled the studio with Bach's The Art of Fugue. Adam Guaraldi shouted back, "I hear a dozen cats pissing on a tin roof, that's what I hear!"

  Peder Holberg sighed in mock exasperation and waved a hand toward the CD player. "Turn it down, then," he said. "Go ahead, I can receive inspiration at a lower volume, it's all right."

  The two men, both stripped to the waist and wearing gym trunks, were working in Holberg's studio. Large iron structures dominated the room, some completed, others in progress. A bare wooden floor showed hundreds of burn marks, and various lengths of iron, both hollow pipe and solid rods, lay in heavy metal troughs along the high walls.

  Holberg climbed down from the stepladder on which he had been working and took two plastic bottles of Evian from a minifridge, tossing one to Guaraldi. "That was very good, by the way," he told him. "Cats pissing on a tin roof."

  "Not original," Guaraldi answered, twisting open the bottle and taking a long swig. "Beecham, I think."

  "Well, this Beecham didn't know what he was talking about. Or anyway, he didn't use it like I use it. It's the sound of metal, you know? I like to hear it when I work. The sound of metal while I work in metal, yes?"

  "Yes, yes, whatever you say, Peder—you know best." Pretending irritation, Guaraldi grabbed a towel and began wiping the sweat from Holberg's well-muscled shoulders.

  After a few moments Holberg stopped him. "Ah, ah—that feels too good, and I have yet work to do." He looked up at the construction of black iron towering over them, a nightmare orchard of iron, branches projecting outward from vertical trunks, some smoothly curving down, some jutting up like spears. Several curved skyward, pronged at the end like satanic phalluses. "You know what I need?" Holberg mused.

  "I have a hunch."

  "Later, baby. Now I need you to cut more of those feathers." He pointed to a series of small curled and twisted iron pieces that ran the length of one of the trunks. "You do for me?"

  "Whatever," Guaraldi said, shrugging. He tossed back the rest of the Evian and went to a trough. "Shit . . . we're out of three-quarter."

  "So, you go get some, huh?"

  "Peder, that's thirty blocks downtown—you know what the traffic is like right now?"

  "So walk, do you good. Go on, Adam, I really need this now."

  "Oh, hell . . ." Guaraldi said, but he picked up his blue chambray shirt from a wall hook and put it on. Then he slipped on a pair of jeans and a down-filled jacket. Holberg draped a scarf around his neck and gave him a short kiss on the cheek. Guaraldi looked at him suspiciously. "You gonna be here when I get back?"

  For a moment Holberg looked uncomfortable, but then he smiled. "Of course."

  "Wouldn't be the first time you disappeared. I can't leave you alone anymore."

  "Baby, you could never leave me alone. Now go, yes?"

  Guaraldi had been right: the streets of Manhattan were in what looked like a state of permanent stasis, so he began to walk briskly down the street, enjoying the sight of his breath puffing out in front of him. He was glad to get out of the warm studio. Peder liked it that way, keeping it heated to at least eighty degrees. The acetylene torches they used made it even hotter. "If you had lived in Norway all your life," he had told Guaraldi when he'd complained, "you'd like to feel like a hothouse flower, too!"

  He just hoped he wouldn't disappear again. Guaraldi had been with Peder for nearly two years, first as an assistant, doing the basic cutting for Peder's assembly, and then as his companion. Guaraldi loved the lifestyle the relationship had allowed him to enjoy, but he also loved Peder, a feeling he feared was not entirely mutual. Peder's brief disappearances over the past few months had only added to his suspicions.

  Often Guaraldi had awakened in the middle of the night only to find that Peder was neither in the apartment nor working in the studio that adjoined it. At other times the disappearances took place in broad daylight.
Once he and Peder had been shopping at Barney's, and when Guaraldi turned back from the neckties he'd been looking at, Peder had vanished.

  At last he'd found a clerk who'd seen Peder walk out of the store, but Guaraldi couldn't find him on the street, and Peder had not returned until the following morning, tired and haggard looking. As before, he'd sworn to Guaraldi that he didn't know where he'd been, that in fact he remembered nothing since he'd been with Guaraldi in Barney's.

  At first Guaraldi hadn't believed him. How could you lose up to twelve hours of your life and not know what had happened to them? He had thought it was a lame excuse to cover up a liaison with another lover, and it infuriated him; he'd been faithful to Peder ever since they'd been together.

  But he'd finally concluded that Peder's concern and confusion were too sincere to be feigned. Besides, Peder had never lied to him before, and there was no reason for him to start now. As frightening as it was to consider, it seemed Peder really was undergoing experiences he couldn't remember.

  Guaraldi had tried to follow him several times, but Peder had always lost him. Once, when Guaraldi had actually accosted him as he was walking out into the street at three in the morning, Peder had acted as though he'd just woken up from a dream, and been astounded to find himself outside at such a time. He'd never walked in his sleep before, Peder claimed, at least that he could remember.

  Ever since his arrival in America and his quick success, Peder Holberg had had a certain mystique about him. It was true that he was eccentric in both his work and his private life, and he made what Guaraldi felt was a huge mistake with the art press when, in an interview with Art and Artist, he had mentioned his mysterious blackouts:

  PH: There are times, you see, when I don't know what I'm doing.