Turn Loose the Dragons

by George C. Chesbro

  “Rick?”

  “Shhh!” Peters reached over and gripped Alexandra’s forearm. “Take it easy. If it were anything serious, it wouldn’t be Raul paying us a visit.”

  Raul, breathing heavily, finally reached them. He squatted down in the aisle, supporting himself by resting a hand on the back of Alexandra’s chair.

  “Hello, Raul,” Peters said easily. “You look like the Lone Ranger. Who busted your beak?”

  Raul flushed even more and self-consciously touched the wide band of adhesive tape holding his broken nose in place. There were huge, ugly blood-bruises around his eyes. “Would you come with me, please? Both of you.”

  “Oh, come on, Raul!” Peters said angrily. “Haven’t we had enough of your fun and games for one day? We’re enjoying the show.”

  “Please.” Raul’s tone was soft but insistent, with a strong undercurrent of quiet dignity and assertiveness Alexandra had not heard before. He stood, and his muddy eyes reflected the same almost sad dignity. “I am sorry to bother you, but you must come with me.”

  Alexandra’s heart had begun to beat rapidly, painfully. “Let’s go, Rick,” she said, flashing a quick, nervous smile at the Sierran. “Raul wouldn’t be disturbing us if it weren’t a serious matter.”

  They followed Raul up the aisle, then to the sidewalk outside the walls surrounding the seating area. Twenty yards away, on the other side of an arbor of roses, two soldiers armed with automatic rifles appeared to be standing guard.

  Alexandra tasted blood and realized with consternation that she had bitten into the soft tissue inside her mouth.

  “What’s the matter, Raul?” Alexandra asked, managing to smile sweetly. She was a dragon, she reminded herself. A professional. All of her fear had to be pushed aside, completely erased from her face and voice. “Is there a problem?”

  “Have you seen your husband, Miss—uh, Mrs. Finway?”

  Alexandra frowned, then offered Raul a puzzled smile that was genuine. “John? My God, he must be back in the United States by now. He’s probably in bed.”

  Raul shook his head impatiently. “We had a breakdown on the road. He ran away from the airport, and I must find him.”

  Alexandra felt the blood drain from her face, sucked from her brain to her heart and stomach like air into a vacuum. Her body began to shake, and she was afraid that she was going to faint. To cover her reaction and steady herself, she quickly reached out and grabbed Raul’s right arm with both hands. “Raul? John did this to you?!”

  “He is a crazy man,” Raul said with a curt, angry nod. “A nut!”

  Alexandra saw Peters eyes narrow. A muscle in his cheek began to twitch.

  “Did he tell you why he didn’t want to get on the plane?” the blond-haired man asked in an even tone. “Did he say anything?”

  “No, no,” Raul said quickly. “He didn’t say anything that made any sense. Just crazy talk. Nut talk. We don’t want him talking to anyone else; it would be very embarrassing and disruptive. I just want everyone to relax and have a good time.”

  Alexandra forced herself to smile. “Raul, is … uh, is John all right?”

  Raul took a few moments to think about his answer. “Your husband is in a great deal of trouble,” he replied at last. “Before he went crazy, he said he wanted to talk to you. I thought he might have made his way here.”

  Alexandra shook her head. Her lips and tongue felt numb. “We haven’t seen him.”

  Raul sniffed, then winced in pain and touched his nose again. “As I said, I am sorry to bother you, but I must ask you to do something for me. Mr. Finway will be arrested immediately if he comes here, so there may be a small disturbance. Please do not try to go to him, and please do not discuss this matter with anyone else in the group. You understand; we don’t want anyone’s evening ruined by this unfortunate incident.”

  “We understand perfectly, Raul,” Peters said in a firm, sympathetic tone.

  The Sierran nodded absently to the two of them, then turned and walked back toward the soldiers, who were talking and smoking.

  “My God,” Alexandra said softly, electric tension flashing through her muscles. “What the hell does John think he’s doing?”

  “Goddamn good question,” Peters replied tersely. “Maybe he really has flipped out. That was some rabbit he pulled out of his head back in Sierras Negras; maybe the bunny had bigger teeth than we thought.”

  Alexandra closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to listen to the winds outside the shell that was threatening to close in her thoughts and feelings. “John isn’t crazy,” she said at last. “He knows what’s at stake; if he broke away, it had to be for a very good reason. Raul said he wanted to talk to me.”

  “Yeah? Well, let’s hope you’re the only person he wants to talk to. Raul said he was ‘talking crazy.’ I’d love to know what that means.” Peters sucked in a deep breath through clenched teeth, then shook his head in frustration. “You go back inside and stay loose. I’m going to walk around a bit. John may be waiting for us somewhere out there.”

  “I should go, Rick. John’s my husband, my responsibility.”

  “No,” Peters said, squeezing Alexandra’s arm reassuringly. “It’s better if I go. You’re too conspicuous; the Sierrans might follow you. Let’s just hope that I see John before they do. From the look on Raul’s face, I think they’ll just shoot the dumb son-of-a-bitch on sight.”

  “Rick, do you suppose John could have found out something about a second assassin?”

  But Peters was already walking away.

  Peters

  Finway knew! Somehow, he knew!

  The assassin had no way of determining what it was—some subtle mistake on his part, a bit of information, or simply phantom intuition—that had ruptured belief in the other man’s mind, but he had to assume that Finway had guessed the truth. It was the only explanation for the explosive act that was so potentially catastrophic for all of them.

  Peters knew that only a sheer stroke of luck could explain the fact that the authorities were after Finway rather than him, and he strongly suspected that he had Raul’s curious and abrasive single-mindedness to thank for his good fortune. He’d already had more than his quota of good luck, Peters thought, and he was not fool enough to look for more. He was running on empty, finished. With things the way they were, he knew it would be a considerable feat just to escape the island with his life and freedom.

  If it were possible to kill Alexandra and leave San Sierra at once, Peters thought, he would. But it was not possible. He had only one escape route, and that was by speedboat. There would be two fifteen-minute “windows,” from eight-forty-five to nine and from ten to ten-fifteen, during the course of the boxing matches. These were the times when Claude Moiret would be prepared to speed into Angeles Blanca’s harbor and pluck him from the sea at the base of the cliffs around Tamara Castle. If he missed these windows, he would be on his own—which was to say that he would be dead.

  Indeed, Peters was certain that he was a dead man if he could not locate and kill Finway before the authorities found him, or before Finway got to Alexandra. Then he would be the hunted man; if the Sierrans did not summarily execute him, Peters thought, he would certainly die in their prisons.

  Wanting to avoid Raul if possible, Peters went back into the amphitheater, walked around to the bar, then out through another exit to the sidewalk ringing the theater. There were soldiers posted at the half-dozen entrances to the amphitheater, but there were a number of other people walking outside, stiff-legged refugees from the cramped seating arrangements, and he was ignored.

  Peters casually strolled away, smoking a cigarette, and started around the perimeter of the club. He did not expect Finway to come to him even if the lawyer were there, but he made the circuit on the off chance that he might see or hear a movement in the surrounding wooded area. He did not, and he stopped walking when he was just short of completing a circuit.

  He wasted no time in making his next decision.

>   He recalled that Raul had described Finway as “crazy,” and he thought it possible that any accusations leveled by the lawyer just might be dismissed as the senseless ravings of an insanely jealous husband, as long as there was no evidence to back up such a story. If he hoped to get out of San Sierra, he knew that he would have to get rid of the radio and the poison-filled plastique barrette.

  He pushed through a row of hedges bordering the sidewalk, then ran low and silently through the surrounding trees until he was outside the park and on the street. He ran a half mile south, then stopped and waited impatiently for the headlights of a car to appear from either direction.

  He would have to move very fast, Peters thought, and he could not risk leaving any tracks; he had to make every effort to be back at the club, going back in the way he had come out, before the group left, or risk arousing suspicion and raising questions he might not be able to answer.

  To his annoyance, he discovered that in Angeles Blanca cars were few and driven sparingly. However, after a five-minute wait Peters saw headlights approaching from his left, on his side of the highway. He waited on the shoulder until the car was less than thirty yards away, then doubled over and staggered into the road.

  Ancient brakes grabbed and finally caught in a banshee wail of protest. The car fishtailed and screeched to a halt, barely missing Peters, who was crouched in the middle of the road, clutching his stomach and moaning. The driver cursed loudly for a few seconds, but his anger faded quickly. He got out of the car and hurried toward the man whom he assumed to be hurt.

  “Que pasa, señor? Yo—”

  Peters snapped erect and smashed the side of his right hand into the man’s trachea. The man’s eyes glazed and he collapsed to his knees. Peters stepped behind him, seized his head, and twisted sharply, snapping the man’s neck. He quickly dragged the body off the road into a thick copse of trees, then sprinted back to the car, got in and sped off.

  He made it to the hotel in nineteen minutes. Not wanting to risk being stopped in a car for which he had no papers by the soldier who stood at the entrance to the hotel driveway, Peters parked the old Plymouth at the curb down the street, then hurried down the block to the rear of the hotel. After waiting in the shadows a minute or two to make certain he was unobserved, he let himself in through a fire exit. He ran up the stairs to the fourth floor, paused behind a thick glass door long enough to assure himself that the corridor was empty, then walked quickly to his room. He reached for the knob—and froze with his hand in the air.

  There was a bloody handprint on the jamb. The door was slightly ajar, and the light wood around the lock was splintered where it had been forced.

  Peters tore his belt off, threw open the door and leaped into the room, ready to attack. There was no one in the room. The radio was still in its place on the nightstand, but his suitcase was open on the bed. His clothes were strewn over the floor, and he did not have to look to know that the plastique barrette was missing.

  There was a hastily scrawled, bloodstained note inside the suitcase, and Peters picked it up with hands that trembled with frustration and fury.

  Peters—

  Your play is finished. Now get lost. Hurt Alexandra and I’ll have both the CIA and KGB tracking you. Leave her alone and we can deal.

  Peters put his belt back on, then deliberately, savagely, tore the note into small pieces, which he flushed down the toilet. He leaned hard against the wash basin, gagged and was almost sick. When the spell of nausea had passed, he went back into the other room, sat down on the edge of the bed, and dug his fingers into the side of the mattress. He closed his eyes and struggled to bring his breathing and heartbeat back to normal. He cursed himself for not booby-trapping the suitcase with his poison needles; it had seemed unnecessary after the death of the CIA agent.

  How?

  At Sierras Negras, in order to save time at the next day’s check-in, the assigned room numbers for the Angeles Blanca Libre had been passed out on mimeographed sheets. Obviously, Peters thought, Finway had seen the list and remembered this room number. The lawyer had somehow managed to get in and out of the hotel, past the soldiers.

  Finway was getting cagy, Peters thought, and he found he was developing a grudging respect for the other man. The lawyer was right not to trust his wife’s fate to the Sierrans, whose only concern would be to remove the threat to Manuel Salva. Finway was making the right moves.

  Finway knew that the barrette was significant, Peters thought, but it occurred to the assassin that the other man might not know why the item was important; he might not know that the material was in fact an explosive impregnated by a deadly poison, or that the barrette was now armed.

  Indeed, it was very possible, Peters thought with a grim smile. Finway obviously had not known, or guessed, that the triggering mechanism was a transmitter inside the portable radio. He was certain that Finway was keeping the barrette to show Alexandra, which meant that the lawyer had pocketed his own death. If so, the assassin knew that he could still escape from San Sierra with at least half his mission accomplished—Alexandra’s death. John Finway’s death would be a small bonus, some salve for his pride, and compensation for the fact that he would lose the greater part of two million dollars. There would be other contracts, other paydays.

  All he had to do was find Finway.

  Or get within a hundred and fifty yards of him.

  Peters felt calmer now—if not supremely confident, at least once again in control of his emotions and with a workable plan to salvage what he could. He took Alexandra’s suitcases from the closet, opened them, and ransacked the clothes inside. He did the same to the clothes in the dresser drawers before picking up his portable radio and leaving the room.

  He paused in the stairwell, set the portable’s tuning dial at the specific frequency that would activate the shortwave transmitter inside the radio, then pressed a small panel on the back.

  There was no explosion. Finway was not hiding in any of the other rooms in the wing.

  Then where?

  The bloodstains were an indication that Finway was hurt, Peters thought, but he had no way of knowing how serious the other man’s injuries were. Finway had to be somewhere close by if he wanted to get to Alexandra. If the lawyer were bleeding, he would need a secure hiding place somewhere near the hotel.

  Or on the hotel.

  Not knowing the layout of the hotel and painfully aware of the passing time, Peters risked using the elevator to go to the top floor. Within seven minutes he had found a maintenance access stairway leading up to the roof.

  In an isolated area the odds shifted radically in his favor, Peters thought with growing excitement. If he could somehow manage to surprise Finway in a place like the hotel roof, the man could be easily killed and the assassination tool recovered.

  Everything would turn once again.

  Buoyed by the faint but intoxicating possibility that he could still carry out the twin killings of Manuel Salva and Alexandra as he had originally planned, Peters employed all of his considerable stalking skills, quietly and stealthily moving out on the roof, avoiding the patches of bright moonlight and keeping low so as not to be silhouetted against the surrounding sea of lights that was Angeles Blanca.

  It took him a half hour to cover the entire area, and he found nothing. He returned to the stairway and, as a final precaution, once again pressed the panel on the back of the radio. As before, there was no explosion.

  Where?

  Finway could very well be at the Coconut Club at that very moment, Peters thought; the lawyer could be talking to Alexandra, or to Sierran security officials. However, Peters dismissed that concern from his mind; he was simply finished if Finway managed to touch base with Alexandra or the Sierrans. Since there was nothing he could do in the event Finway had made it to the Coconut Club, he refused to waste time and nervous energy worrying about it. There was no turning back. He had to find Finway, or die.

  It occurred to him that Finway could be somewhere out in t
he streets, waiting for the buses to return and hoping to intercept Alexandra on her way into the hotel. However, a bleeding American would certainly attract attention, and he assumed that the police were already searching the area around the hotel. He decided that the surrounding streets were too much territory for him to cover in any case.

  By a process of elimination, he could only think of one other place where Finway, looking to intercept Alexandra, might try to hide, and where he had a reasonable chance of finding him. It was a very long shot at best, Peters thought, but it was his last shot, and he had absolutely nothing to lose by firing it. He knew that it was no longer possible for him to make it back to the Coconut Club before the group left. He would have to rely on Alexandra to think of some way to cover for him.

  He needed to get lucky one last time.

  He left the hotel by the same route he had entered and returned to the dead man’s car. He started the engine, made a U-turn, and headed toward the harbor area. Twelve minutes later, he was on the wide concourse in front of Tamara Castle.

  He knew that the castle’s exterior had been lit during the early evening, but now the massive, rough stone structure was cloaked in darkness relieved only by moonlight and a residual glow from the few weak streetlights on the concourse. The castle loomed against the night sky like some great ancient monolith incongruously sprouting steel barnacles that were radar and radio antennas. Although he could not see it from his position, he knew that the opposite side of the castle rested on the edge of a cliff that dropped precipitously to the sea. That would be his escape route, he thought—if only he could find a way to stop things from unraveling.

  Peters parked the Plymouth down by the harbor and walked back up the concourse to the castle. He waited, watching and listening, in the shadows across the street. Despite Manuel Salva’s well-known contempt for elaborate security precautions within his own island fiefdom, Peters thought it likely, in view of the next evening’s event, that some kind of security had been arranged for the castle. While he waited, he once again went over in his mind what he knew of the stone killing ground that loomed before him in the night.