David Lindsey - The Color of Night v5

by The Color of Night (mobi)

  In the two years Meret had known Harry Strand—she had been working for him only ten months when Romy died—she had come to admire him immensely.

  Strand had dealt with the sudden disaster no differently than grieving men had always dealt with it, sometimes stoically, sometimes nearly childlike in his helplessness, sometimes pathological in his hopelessness. Since Meret had nothing to compare it to, she didn’t know if Strand’s behavior was what she should have expected. She knew only that it was a painful thing to watch as he passed through all the gates and passageways that opened and closed for him on his journey back from Romy’s death.

  What surprised Meret most of all, and what endeared Strand to her, was that he was as concerned for her as for himself. She had never been close to anyone who had died: though she had known Romy only ten months, the two women had worked practically in the same room for all that time, and she had grown fond of Romy’s brightness and intelligence and affectionate nature. They had become very close in a short period of time.

  Moreover, Meret had only narrowly missed being in the car with Romy. They had invited Meret to spend the weekend with them at their beach house near Galveston Island, and the two women had planned to drive out Thursday night, taking Friday off for a long weekend, and set the place in order before Strand’s arrival late Friday. At the last minute Meret had decided to take her own car and run some errands first. They had decided that Romy should go on and Meret would follow shortly. Meret had found Romy’s Land Rover in the tidewater stream. Death, such an alien idea to her in her youth, had stepped right in front of her face, so close that she could almost smell its breath.

  Strand knew what a dreadful experience this had been for her and took especial care to help her absorb its impact. His response was simply and naturally to treat Meret as family, as Romy’s sister. He talked with her a lot and nursed her emotions through those early awkward weeks when the void that is death’s wake seemed so brutal in its banality. One evening when they had worked late—Strand worked ferociously in those early months—and she was lingering before going home, he asked her if she would like to stay for dinner.

  In his usual manner he made her sit down and visit with him while he quickly made omelets and toast, which he served with apricot jam. It was the first of what became a once-a-week tradition with them, usually on Friday nights. Strand cooked, and sometimes Meret helped him, though mostly it was Strand’s dinner, simple and sometimes offbeat. But it was the conversation that nourished them. During these meals Meret began to realize that Strand and Romy had had a rather more exotic life than she had first believed, from hints he dropped into the conversation, from references that he never followed up on. Once or twice she had asked him about them, but he was always evasive and dismissive. There were, Meret came to believe, dark places in Strand’s past, and in Romy’s, too. Without his saying so, Meret understood that there were closed doors on the far side of their yesterdays, and she was not welcome to approach them.

  The small jet taxied onto a private strip of tarmac at Hobby Airport and proceeded toward a nest of isolated hangars, its night-lights winking from its wingtips and undercarriage, throwing smears of ruby and sapphire onto the wet pavement. The doors of one of the hangars glided open, and the aircraft entered into a clean, bright open space where a dark Cherokee was waiting.

  He had been studying Houston city maps for two weeks. He knew it as well as his own neighborhood in Mexico City. The door of the sleek jet folded down, and he descended to the floor of the hangar and walked briskly to the Cherokee. He opened the door and got in. The wallet was on the car seat. He opened it, confirmed the identification he had required, Texas driver’s license, insurance cards, credit cards. He put the wallet in his inside suit coat pocket, buckled his seat belt, and drove out of the hangar. He had seen no one in the hangar, and no one had seen him. In his rearview mirror he saw the hangar doors slide closed behind him.

  The late night traffic was sparse. He quickly found his way to the Gulf Freeway and headed northeast into the city. The Cherokee was fine. He knew where everything was. He had one exactly like it, down to every detail, waiting for him wherever he worked.

  When the skyscrapers were looming over him, sparkling like pyrite, he turned south on the Southwest Freeway and then very shortly exited on Main. Soon he was turning onto Bissonnet. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Hello?”

  “I am just turning onto Bissonnet.” His accent was very slight.

  “We’re the blue Four Runner a block past the house.”

  “Everything is in place?”

  “Two upstairs in number three.”

  He visualized the number three bedroom.

  After turning off Bissonnet, he drove the Cherokee down the narrow lane without hesitation, dousing his headlights just before he approached the house. He pulled into the driveway, stopped under the porte cochere, and cut the engine. It was a quiet engine, with a customized muffler, softer than a sigh.

  He opened the glove compartment of the car and took out a small automatic handgun with a short, blunt silencer permanently attached to the barrel. He checked the clip of hollow-point bullets and put the gun into his coat pocket. From the floor in front of the passenger seat he picked up an aluminum, vinyl-wrapped canister designed to look like a small fire extinguisher.

  The alarm system had already been deactivated by the team in the Four Runner, so he had no hesitation about unlocking the door with the key on the ring. He set the canister on the floor just inside the door and took off his shoes. He moved quickly and carefully through the dining room and kitchen to the pantry, where he found the breaker box for the electricity. He threw the switch and then pulled the fuses just for good measure. He could not afford an electrical glitch. He went back through the rooms to the foyer and picked up the canister. Carrying it in one hand, the automatic in the other, he started up the stairs. He couldn’t even hear himself moving.

  Once on the second-floor landing he quietly put down the canister and moved ahead with deliberation, walking briskly through the second-floor halls to the number three bedroom. The door was open. He stepped inside and went up to the bed. They were both naked, asleep, the girl curled in her boyfriend’s arms. She was a pretty girl, blond and busty. He looked at her a moment, then shot her in the right temple. He shot her boyfriend before he could even stir out of his sleep at the sound of the silencer. He shot them both again, twice, in the head. The hollow-points made a mess, but he never had to wonder about the results.

  He quickly retrieved the canister and returned to the bedroom. He opened the nozzle, released the lock, pointed the nozzle at the bed, and pressed the trigger. With a loud whoosh a broad stream of jet fuel shot out. He sprayed the bodies liberally and then hosed down the room, the highly pressurized canister enabling him to saturate the bodies and the room in only a moment. He sprayed the other upstairs rooms as well.

  Downstairs he did the same thing, spraying, just for the hell of it, all the drawings hanging on the walls and giving a good shot into the library. By the time he made it through the other rooms the fumes from the jet fuel were almost unbearable.

  He slipped on his shoes and took from his coat pocket a small plastic box the size of a pager. He peeled a piece of paper from an adhesive patch on the box and slapped the box on the wall. He pushed some buttons, and a green digital readout appeared on a screen. At the programmed time the box would produce nothing more than a series of electrical sparks, more than enough to ignite the fog of jet fuel now expanding throughout the house. He gave himself thirty-five minutes. He could almost be back at the airport by then. He would even have them circle the city so he could see the fire. On second thought, with an additional ten minutes he might even be able to see the explosion itself. He changed it to forty-five minutes. By then the fumes would be so dense that even the thought of a spark would set them off.

  Carrying the canister, he went out the front door and dutifully locked it behind him.

/>   CHAPTER 14

  ROME

  Harry Strand sat with his back to the stucco wall in a café in Testaccio and stared in stunned silence at the phlegmatic face of Alain Darras. It was midmorning in yet another working-class neighborhood south of the Aventine, and both men were leaning over cups of steaming cappuccino. The front doors of the café were open to the street, where trucks and motorini buzzed by like insects swarming in the warm morning sun. The bakery in the front of the café was a popular stop for a fast breakfast, and the tin-covered bar where most of the customers stood while they quickly devoured their espresso and roll had been busy since Strand arrived. But in the rear of the café he and Darras had a table to themselves in relative isolation.

  “I told him nothing, of course,” Darras said. “Not even that I had heard from you.”

  Strand felt weak and nauseated, as if he had been hit very hard and was struggling to stay conscious.

  “They must have known that it was likely you would call me at some point.” He stopped. “I don’t like it that I was the one to tell you.”

  It was mind-boggling. What Schrade had done was horrible, incredible.

  “Howard knows you’ve come to Rome with a woman. He knows her name.”

  Strand’s face must have registered suspicion.

  “No, no, they did not get this from me. From the flight information. They have her name from that. That’s what Howard said, anyway. As for me, I couldn’t find anything on her. If she’s working with anyone, I can’t find any trace of it. She doesn’t show up with Schrade. There’s nothing on her anywhere else. I don’t think she is in the business, my friend. Or, if she is, she is very, very new to it.”

  Strand processed this. He had never had bad information from Darras. Ever. He was surprised, but it was difficult to believe, even though he wanted more than anything for it to be true. But if he was going to remain sane, he couldn’t go on playing mind games about her. He had to trust the information he was getting. And he had to trust her. Then his mind went right back to the house and the explosion. The two bodies. God, what had he done?

  “Of course, Howard wanted information on Mara Song, too,” Darras added.

  “You confirmed Howard’s story about the explosion?”

  “Yes, Harry, I did. The FBI is already involved. They are interested in the explosives, of course.”

  “What was it?”

  “They think it was jet fuel. Probably spark ignition.” He paused. “I understand… well, it was very bad. Almost total destruction. As for forensics, there’s almost nothing to work with. The jet fuel… you know, it burns so hot…”

  Darras showed no emotion beyond the momentary hesitations. Strand noticed it and was pained.

  “Do they have anything else?”

  “I don’t know what they have. It’s moving too quickly. My sources are not good on breaking information.”

  Strand knew that Darras’s sources were very good indeed, and he wondered if Darras was holding out on him. If he was, why?

  He quickly calculated the progress of events. No records would be left. Nothing to start from. He was sure that aside from the fuel residue precious little would remain to guide investigators. They would go back to his old ties in Europe from four years before and start from there. Strand still dealt with some of the same people, though not as many since he’d retired. Those dealers and collectors would not know about Mara Song. The only person who would know about the house in Sallustiano would be Aldo Chiappini, and since he had become Strand’s client after Strand left the FIS, his name would not be in agency records. So they would have to work their way to him through Strand’s other contacts. The world of drawing collectors was a small world. It wouldn’t be long. Strand didn’t have that much time.

  Schrade, of course, knew about the Sallustiano house. That was how the tape had gotten there.

  “And Corsier?” Strand could hardly speak. He was forcing himself to be analytical. He didn’t have the luxury to grieve about Meret now.

  “He disappeared several weeks ago. The Bundespolizei in Zurich say he left one day to take some drawings to show a client and never returned. They didn’t know anything. No flight information. No client name. They don’t even know where he went.”

  “Ariana?”

  “She lives here in Rome, actually. When I saw that, I sent someone to her home, but her housekeeper said she left quickly about three or four days ago. She doesn’t know where she went. Ariana is still impetuous. When she wants to go, she goes. So the maid didn’t see anything particularly suspicious about the way she left.”

  “Clymer?”

  Darras told him about the lawyer’s death, and Strand could only regret that he had not been more vigilant. How long had Schrade known? Since before Romy’s death, obviously. How long before? Why hadn’t he come after the rest of them immediately after Romy’s execution? Why had he waited for over a year?

  Whether it was Schrade’s intention or not, he had effectively cut Strand off from Houston. His whole life had been in that house, all that was left of Romy, his library, his personal art collection, the new career he and Romy had carved out for themselves. He imagined it had been methodical; it had probably taken less than fifteen minutes. In and out. He was ashamed about Meret. Whatever in God’s name had made him think he was not putting that young woman in danger? Once Schrade had found out what Strand and the others had done to him, from that moment on, everything that Strand cared about belonged to Schrade until Strand could have a conversation of understanding with Bill Howard.

  “How do I get in touch with Howard?”

  Darras took a manila envelope from the chair beside him and placed it on the table along with contact information for Obando, Grachev, Lu, and Lodato. “It’s all in here. Howard is in Vienna now.”

  Strand pulled the envelope over and put his left forearm on it. “The passports?”

  “In there. And the latest on Schrade is in there, too,” Darras said. “Do you know that he cut his ties to FIS about eighteen months ago?”

  “Eighteen months ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “But they were closing him down when they brought me back to the States. They were shutting him down then.”

  “No. They kept it alive.”

  “The same objectives?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Why did he break it off?”

  Darras shook his head. “No one is saying anything about that.”

  Strand’s thoughts raced ahead to the possibilities.

  Darras studied Strand with his dispirited gaze. “You must have done something terrible to him, Harry.”

  Strand didn’t answer for a moment. The manila envelope was hot under his arm. The smell of fresh espresso wafted from the front of the café and came to them thick and rich, riding on the warm fragrance of yeast. For a moment—an instant, really—he almost forgot Meret, but in a blink she was back. She had no idea what he had been; that he had kept it from her, that he had ever thought it wouldn’t matter, was unforgivable.

  Jet fuel. What a mad conflagration it must have caused on a shady little street that had never known anything more disturbing than the droning of cicadas in the summer heat.

  Darras did not look away.

  “When you think about what he’s done,” Strand said, “what he is, almost anything anyone did to him would be justified.”

  CHAPTER 15

  By the time Strand returned to Sallustiano noon was approaching. He had replayed the explosion over and over and over in his mind until he was sick of it. Then he had concentrated on bringing his blood pressure and emotions under control.

  Schrade wanted two things: revenge and the money. He was getting his revenge. Romy. Corsier. Probably Ariana. Clymer. Meret. Eventually he would get around to Strand himself. But first, the money.

  By now, Schrade’s accountants had discovered that his millions were not going to be easy to retrieve. That, Strand reasoned, was why he was still alive. Schrade wasn�
��t sure he could get to it without him. Romy and Dennis Clymer had done an incredible job with those millions. Schrade had already made a tactical error by having killed them. He was giving too much of the credit to Strand, thinking that Strand was the only one he needed to gain access to his money. How in God’s name had Schrade discovered the embezzlement, anyway? Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised, but he was. He honest to God thought they had covered everything. All of them thought that. All of them had done their damnedest to ensure that not a single speck of a loose end remained after they closed down the operation.

  When he arrived at the house in Sallustiano he went straight upstairs. Mara was just getting out of the shower when Strand walked into her bedroom. He startled her.

  “Whoa,” she said, “you scared me.” She had stopped in the doorway of the large, white-tiled bathroom, still naked, drying her hair with a towel.

  Smiling, she came over to him and gave him a wet kiss. Her mouth was cool. She smelled of shampoo.

  “Now I feel better,” she said.

  Strand just stood there. On the way back from Testaccio his mind had been flying in every direction but this one. Until he’d climbed the stairs just now he hadn’t given any thought to the way he was going to break this to Mara.

  She saw instantly that something was wrong.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, daubing her face as the water dripped off her hair.

  “We’ve got to talk,” Strand said.

  She said nothing, but his manner and tone of voice caused her face to go rigid. Holding the towel bunched up at her waist in front of her, she braced herself, her eyes fixed on him.

  Strand turned and walked to the windows. He sat in a chair and looked out over the rooftops of Rome toward the Palatine. The summer sky was cerulescent and flung with tufts of white clouds floating in from the Tyrrhenian Sea.