In any case, Harry concluded, it was fantasy for him to believe that Finway would accept anything he had to say without first checking with his wife, who would certainly discuss the matter with Peters. Exposed, Peters would kill the Finways and disappear. Salva’s death would be postponed, but Finway and his wife would be dead. And he himself would be blown, Harry thought. Harley Shue wouldn’t like that.
There was no reasonable alternative. He was simply going to have to do his job and kill Finway.
Harry was across the room in three quick strides. He slammed the door shut, then reversed his body motion and aimed at Finway’s throat with a blow that, had it landed, would have crushed the other man’s larynx and snapped his neck, killing him almost instantly.
But the lawyer had good reflexes, and Finway recovered from his initial shock in time to duck away and raise his left arm. Harry’s hand glanced off the other man’s forearm. However, Harry could see that the blow had partially paralyzed the man’s arm; Finway’s body was hopelessly turned, and he was defenseless. Harry spun clockwise to gain momentum and slammed the side of his fist into the other man’s chest, over his heart. Finway fell backwards to the floor and Harry was instantly on top of him, straddling his chest with his knees. He raised his fist, the knuckle of his middle finger extended to deliver a killing blow to the esophagus of the man who lay prone and stunned beneath him.
Seconds passed, and Harry realized with growing astonishment that he simply wasn’t going to do it.
It occurred to him that much of the fear that had constantly plagued him over the years had always been fear of a situation like this: being forced out of terrible necessity to kill a civilian he liked, a man like Finway, who would look into his eyes at the moment of death and never have any idea why Harry was killing him.
But now that fear was gone. He didn’t want to kill John Finway, Harry thought, and he just wasn’t going to do it. He would try an unreasonable alternative; he was going to have to be very, very persuasive.
Finway’s gaze flicked to something over Harry’s left shoulder. Harry saw the eye movement and plunged backward a second too late. The leather strap slipped over his neck and began to tighten. Harry clawed at the strap and twisted to the side, trying to anticipate and neutralize the sharp, neck-snapping tug he knew would come at any moment.
Peters
Peters waited thirty seconds with his ear pressed to the wood panel. When he heard no warning fit of coughing, he stepped out into the corridor, quickly closing the door behind him. Alexandra was leaning on the protective railing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. Peters tugged at the front of his beige sleeveless sweater, walked over and stood next to her.
“Well?” Alexandra said anxiously.
“Nothing.”
“So much for the Katzmans,” Alexandra said resignedly, referring to an attractive, middle-aged Jewish couple. “I thought we might be on to something there; there’s such a thing as being too nice.”
“They’re clean, unless they plan to beat Salva to death with five cans of Campbell’s Chicken Soup.”
“Maybe the cans are dummies,” Alexandra said seriously. “They could be bombs.”
Peters smiled thinly as he shook his head. “It’s chicken soup. Besides, did you ever meet an assassin with a sense of humor?”
“Most of the killers I ran into were low-grade types. Let’s hit the writer next. We know he’s in Peleoro.”
“All right, but I don’t think we’re going to turn up anything there either. He is a writer; I’ve seen his stuff. Writers sit on their asses all day thinking up plots, but they don’t carry them out. Besides, he comes on as too much of a weirdo. His act’s too abrasive to be a good cover.”
Peters watched Alexandra out of the corner of his eyes, saw her frown with uncertainty. She was reacting the way he wanted her to, he thought. He wanted her paying attention to him, while at the same time always remaining slightly off balance psychologically.
“I don’t agree with your logic,” Alexandra said tightly. “Who says an abrasive weirdo can’t be an assassin? You sound like you’re getting discouraged, Rick. It’s not like you. We’ve only done seven rooms. You stand lookout, and I’ll take the next seven.”
“Okay,” Peters replied wearily, leaning his elbows on the railing. “You’re right; I could use a break. Go ahead.”
He waited until Alexandra had slipped into the writer’s room, then glanced at his watch and saw that they had been out slightly more than an hour. It was more than enough time, Peters thought, for the man hunting him to try to search his room, if he were going to, and Peters was intensely curious as to whether his poisoned needles had found a mark. He knew it would take Alexandra at least ten minutes to search the writer’s room, and he needed only three minutes at most to check their own room. If there had been a searcher there, he would now be a corpse that would have to be disposed of. If so, Peters knew that he would have to tidy the room and decide how to handle Alexandra. The first step was to determine if the trap had been sprung.
He walked quickly to the end of the corridor, hurried across a marble-tiled foyer to the B wing. When he was fifteen feet from his room he heard the unmistakable sounds of struggle coming through the door. Puzzled and alarmed, Peters whipped his belt with its razor-sharp buckle from his belt loops. He peeled off the grooved leather strip that shielded the sharp steel edges, then gripped the weapon by its tongue end. He slipped the key into the lock and let himself into his room.
Taking in the bizarre scene at a glance, Peters immediately rejected the multitude of questions that were unanswerable and focused all of his attention on the only thing that mattered: the giggler, the same man he had seen by the bus and on the beach, was the hunter. The CIA operative was about to kill Finway—which was fine with Peters as long as he could get his own timing right.
Peters could see that the men, in the heat of their struggle, had not heard him enter. He pushed the door closed and pressed back against the wall out of their sightlines, waiting anxiously for the giggler’s fist to drive into Finway’s throat or across the bridge of his nose. When seconds passed and it did not happen, Peters knew he could wait no longer.
He had entered the room prepared to wield his buckle-blade despite the ineradicable carnage that could have resulted. Now he was relieved to see that he would not have to; Swarzwalder’s back was to him, and Peters saw that he could easily garrote the man. Gripping the length of leather at the tongue and behind the buckle, he quickly stepped forward and up behind the kneeling man. He dropped the belt loop over the head of the man who called himself David Swarzwalder and started to drive his knee into the man’s right kidney.
Peters was extremely quick, but he wasn’t prepared for the unexpected speed of the bigger man. Swarzwalder exploded backward, and Peters moved his head aside just in time to avoid being butted. As it was, Swarzwalder managed to twist his body halfway around and ram an elbow into Peters’ ribs. Peters grunted with pain, but he managed to maintain his grip on the ends of the belt. He sprang off the floor with his left foot, once again getting behind Swarzwalder and pulling as hard as he could on the belt.
Swarzwalder suddenly thrust his arms out to his sides and again leaped up and back, carrying Peters into the air with him. Peters knew he had two choices: hold on to the belt and risk breaking back or ribs when the man’s body fell on him, or loosen his grip and try to get out of the way. He tried to compromise, twisting in the air and attempting to control the other man’s body with the belt so that they would both land on their sides. But with his body in the air he had no leverage, and the belt slipped loose. Peters tried desperately to slip the loop back into position and tighten it, but he was too late.
Swarzwalder was free.
Now Peters knew he had no choice but to go for any kill, no matter how messy. He backed off, gripped the belt tightly by its tongue, and began to swing it in an arc over his head as he crouched and inched forward, looking for an opening.
The CIA age
nt was incredibly strong, Peters thought, but not superhuman. The man staggered and clutched at his throat as he got to his feet, obviously hurt.
But Swarzwalder made no move to run or to defend himself. Instead, Peters was astonished to see the big man turn toward Finway, who had managed to get to his feet but seemed frozen with indecision, white-faced and stunned. The big man made gagging sounds, at the same time jabbing a finger in the direction of the open suitcase. Peters looked at the bed and was startled to see that the plastique barrette lay exposed to view on the bedspread, next to the suitcase.
Peters swiped at Swarzwalder with the belt buckle, then lunged sideways. He grabbed the barrette, shoved it into the case, and slammed the top down.
As Peters moved to the suitcase, the CIA agent came to life. Whatever was broken in his throat did not prevent him from suddenly ducking under the whistling arc of the belt buckle and striking upward with an explosive side kick aimed at Peters’ jaw. Off balance and out of position due to the necessity of moving for the barrette, Peters was only partially able to avoid the blow. It caught him solidly on the chest; Peters’ head snapped forward and he sailed backward, landing hard on the floor.
He was going to lose it, Peters thought; after all the preparations, he was going to fail and die. The woman he had planned to destroy had inadvertently destroyed him. He opened his mouth to scream a last curse of defiance before the killing blow he knew would come and against which he could not defend.
Suddenly the radio blared. Swarzwalder, poised above Peters, half turned in time to see Alexandra come hurtling across the room at him. Her forehead drove into Swarzwalder’s chest at the same time as she drove the rigid needle of her barrette into his back, over his right kidney. Swarzwalder cried out in agony, clawed at his back, then crumpled to the floor beside the bed.
“John! Don’t!”
“Enough, Goddamnit! You’re killing him!”
Warned by Alexandra’s shout, Peters, who had scrambled to his feet and started after the fallen agent, sidestepped the lawyer’s rush. When Finway tried to shove him away, he brought his knee up into the man’s stomach, then knocked him unconscious with a rabbit punch to the back of the neck.
Now Peters once again looped his belt around Swarzwalder’s neck. The big man clawed at the leather, but his strength was gone. Peters put a foot in the small of the man’s back and yanked on the ends of the belt. The man’s neck cracked with a loud pop. His body convulsed crazily, like some drunken puppet, then slumped to the floor and was still.
Peters looked up to find Alexandra kneeling over her husband. She listened to his chest, felt his pulse, then glanced up at Peters.
“Is he all right?”
Alexandra nodded, smiled. “Just unconscious. Thanks for not … really hurting him.”
Peters nodded in return. In fact he would have liked to kill Finway, but it was not the time or place; one corpse was more than enough to handle, and Alexandra would certainly have crumbled. He found he was giddy with the realization that he was still alive. He took a deep breath, finally managed to say, “Better turn off the radio.”
“Wait a second,” Alexandra said. “The desk has to call. With the racket you guys were making, they must have heard you in Miami.”
As if on cue, the telephone rang.
“You look a little worn out, Rick,” Alexandra continued wryly as she got to her feet. “I’ll handle it.”
Alexandra went to the telephone and picked up the receiver. She shouted a few words, and only then turned off the radio. She apologized profusely to the man on the other end of the line, slurring her words slightly as if she were drunk. Peters watched admiringly as she finished the conversation by exchanging a few pleasantries and telling the desk clerk how much she and her friend were enjoying their stay in San Sierra.
She was the best, Peters thought. She had always been the best, and she’d hardly lost a step over the years; he considered it only fitting that she should be his instrument for one of the most significant assassinations in history.
Alexandra hung up the receiver, looked at him and shrugged. “All set,” she said tightly. “We’ve received a polite request to hold things down.”
“Bless you, child,” Peters said. “I must say, you made a timely entrance.”
Alexandra frowned. “Where did you go, Rick? I came out, saw that you weren’t there, and got worried. Then I heard all this crashing around. Thank God the place is deserted.”
Peters jerked a thumb in the direction of Swarzwalder’s body. “I saw him come out of a room that wasn’t his. I ducked back, followed him, and saw him let himself into our room.”
“But why should he do that, Rick?”
“I don’t know. A very careful assassin, I suppose. We were searching rooms; he was searching rooms.”
“Strange he should go to our room.”
“Yeah,” Peters replied evenly. “Strange. I guess we were next on his list. Then again, maybe the Company sprang a leak.”
“Stupid,” Alexandra said after a thoughtful pause. “He should have left well enough alone. I was beginning to think we’d never find him.”
Peters said nothing, but he continued to study the woman. Flushed with excitement, she seemed to have crossed over some invisible boundary and almost to have forgotten her unconscious husband. Peters had not. Finway was just starting to come around, and Peters watched him carefully. He knew he was not out of trouble yet. The plastique he planned to switch with Alexandra’s barrette had been found by Swarzwalder, and it had been lying on the bed, exposed to view. Peters had no way of knowing what had happened before he’d entered the room, but he was fairly certain he would know as soon as he saw Finway’s face whether or not the lawyer had seen the barrette and, if he had, whether he had any idea what it was.
Finway groaned, stirred. He rubbed the back of his neck, then slowly got to his feet. Obviously shaken, he looked back and forth between Alexandra and Peters, then glanced at Swarzwalder’s still, twisted body. Finway grimaced, then quickly looked away.
He didn’t know, Peters thought, and bowed his head to hide the exultation he was afraid might show on his face. If Finway had seen the fake barrette, he hadn’t made the connection, at least not yet.
“Well!” Alexandra exclaimed. Her voice was high-pitched, quavering on the edge of hysteria, and her movements were jerky and hyperactive, like a badly handled marionette. She threw her arms around her husband’s neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. “My husband, the hero! This time you almost blew it, darling, but I forgive you. Imagine finding you in my room! I like that!”
Peters watched Finway turn his head slightly. The lawyer gripped his wife’s arms, then gently but firmly pushed her away.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Alexandra?” Finway asked softly. “A man’s been killed.”
Alexandra’s laugh was harsh and ironic, so jagged that even Peters looked at her with surprise. “Yes, John, I noticed. A man has been killed—despite your interference. I’m sorry if his death offends your delicate sensibilities, darling, but that big guy just happens to be the kindly gentleman who was trying to kill Rick and who would have killed you and me, not to mention the bearded fellow who runs this island. The man whose life you wanted to save was the joker we came here to get.”
“Take it easy, Alexandra,” Finway said slowly. “You’re higher than a kite.”
“Bullshit! Bullshit, John! You don’t know what you’re talking about! The man was a killer!”
John Finway stared hard at his wife for a few moments, then turned his back to the man and woman and walked to the window. “David Swarzwalder was the man who saved my life,” he said quietly.
“All right,” Alexandra said coldly, after a long pause. She was still obviously very angry, but seemed more in control of herself. “I hope it’s not necessary to say that I’m damn glad he did. He happened to be in the right place at the right time, and he did you a favor. He was feeling magnanimous.”
“He was i
n a no-risk situation,” Peters said carefully to the other man’s back. “When he saved you he became a hero, and hero is the best cover there is.”
“It doesn’t change the reality of the situation,” Alexandra snapped impatiently. “Think, John!”
There was a prolonged silence. Finally the lawyer turned from the window. “You didn’t have to kill him,” he said to Alexandra. He looked at Peters, continued, “He was finished.”
Peters arched his eyebrows. “Was he?”
“You could have handed him over to the Sierrans.”
“Could we? You think maybe they’d declare a national holiday in our honor? Do you want to go home with your wife, Finway, or would you like to hang around in San Sierra for the next forty years trying to explain our situation to the DMI and the Sierran courts?”
There was another long silence, then Finway said tersely, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Peters said easily. He put his belt back on, then strode over to the other man and extended his hand. He had seen anger and something approaching disgust in Alexandra’s eyes, and it occurred to him that Finway had lost his wife in the past fifteen minutes. Now, Peters thought, Alexandra might come to him of her own accord, and that would make everything perfect. “This isn’t exactly your line of work.”
Finway’s grip was firm, but Peters noticed with satisfaction that the other man would not meet his gaze. “That’s no excuse,” the lawyer said tightly. “Swarzwalder was trying to kill you. I had no right to do what I did.”
Peters shrugged. “It doesn’t make any difference. It’s over now.”
“It’s over!” Alexandra shouted, throwing her head back and laughing. “Over! We’ve done it!”
“Well, not quite,” Peters said cautiously, noting with interest and some concern the accelerating trill of hysteria in the woman’s tone and manner. She might be his now, he thought, but she was still far away, very high. He was going to have to reel her in. “We have to play it out to the end, just in case our friend Swarzwalder has someone else along with him on the trip.”
Turn Loose the Dragons Page 18
