Turn Loose the Dragons

by George C. Chesbro

  He had memorized every detail of the layout of the castle and, coincidentally, learned a great deal about the mysterious tidal phenomena constantly occurring in the massive rock formation beneath the structure. He knew that, despite the castle’s medieval facade, much of the building’s interior was used for military and civil service offices. It was, he thought, certainly not a particularly convenient place to stage a sporting event, especially in view of the fact that the Sierrans had built a huge People’s Sports Palace not far away. But he had to agree that the castle was picturesque and symbolic of San Sierra; the site had obviously been chosen to capture the attention and appeal to the collective imagination of an American television audience.

  It was a site perfectly suited to his purposes, Peters thought, the cornerstone of his plan. Anxious—for whatever unexplained reason—to impress the Americans, the Sierrans had not only provided him with an opportunity to assassinate their president, but chosen a site that afforded him a fast and relatively easy escape route. It was evident that Salva and the Sierrans were going to enormous trouble and expense, and Peters, although he did not consider it important, could not help but wonder why they were doing it.

  Platforms for television cameras had been erected at key positions on the concourse around the building, and Peters knew that in a few hours platoons of ABC and Sierran cameramen and technicians would be swarming over and around the site as they made final preparations for the evening’s telecast. According to the information he had obtained months before, many of the offices inside had been gutted. Banks of bleachers with a seating capacity of perhaps fifteen thousand had been erected around the interior courtyard, rising from virtually the lip of the boxing ring to a cantilevered stone balcony that ringed the courtyard. In attendance would be a carefully planned mix of government officials, workers, tourists—and Manuel Salva.

  Peters was concerned that the one man who could stop him had arrived early.

  Twenty minutes later a black, Russian-built police car pulled around the corner and stopped at the curb in front of the castle. A powerful searchlight mounted on the side of the car threw a sharp cone of light on the main entrance to the castle. The large circle of light moved over the stone, sweeping back and forth over the facade, momentarily erasing the night shadows, which then rushed in to fill its passing wake. The light went out, a door opened, and one of the policeman got out and walked up the steps to the castle. He turned on a flashlight, checked the door, then began playing the light on the windows as he walked around the castle.

  Ten minutes later the policeman had completed his circuit of the castle. He got into the car, which moved slowly away.

  Doubt began to gnaw at Peters, burning the lining of his stomach like acid. While the security precautions he had witnessed were certainly loose enough to allow someone with the necessary skills to break into the castle without leaving a trace of his passing, Finway did not have such skills.

  If Finway was not here, Peters thought, he would have to run—hide somewhere in the city, then try to make it to the harbor area when his first escape window opened. But he could not leave without checking.

  Clutching his radio, Peters hurried across the street and up the broad flight of stairs to the outer courtyard in front of the castle’s main entrance. To his left was a row of windows looking in on what had been architectural offices. He walked slowly in that direction, testing each window, then expelled a small, pent-up puff of breath through pursed lips when he found what he had been looking for.

  One of the windows slid open; the pieces of the broken lock that had been carefully arranged on the sill to make it appear undamaged clattered to the floor inside. The window had been jimmied.

  How and where Finway had obtained a tool to open the window did not concern him; he was certain that the lawyer was inside.

  He opened the window and stepped over the low sill into the castle. Then he closed the window and repositioned the pieces of the broken lock on the sill, as he assumed—hoped—Finway had done. There was sufficient moonlight spilling in through the windows for Peters to see that the office he was in had been cleared to make room for television monitors and other electronic equipment. According to the floor plans he had studied, the newly constructed boxing arena would be to his left, at the end of a narrow stone corridor.

  With his right hand pressed against a rough-hewn stone wall, Peters groped his way down the passageway until he came to a Y. He followed the dim glow of moonlight in the branch to his left and emerged a few moments later in the arena.

  Now actually standing in the Tamara Castle courtyard, Peters was even more impressed by the work the Sierrans had done. He was in the mouth of an entrance tunnel on the north side of the castle, just below the overhang of a section of the balcony. The boxing ring, bathed in moonlight, was directly below him. There was considerably more space in the courtyard than he’d assumed there would be from studying the floor plans. Relatively wide aisles formed grids between banks of freshly painted bright-red bleachers. The whole was now spotted with scattered blotches of cold moonlight that made the alternating areas of shadow seem even blacker.

  As far as Peters could tell, the normally ubiquitous posters of Manuel Salva were conspicuously absent from the arena, and the assassin once again speculated on Salva’s motives for staging the televised spectacle. Salva, he thought, was certainly not going to earn any points with his shaky Third World coalition for this blatant “pandering to capitalist interests.”

  He smiled as an amusing thought occurred to him: it was almost as if the fable he had told Alexandra about Salva and the United States negotiating for rapprochement between the two countries were true. The spectacle of the Goodyear Blimp floating over Manuel Salva’s San Sierra was most certainly not a sight most Americans had ever thought they would see in their lifetimes.

  But Salva’s motives were not his concern, Peters thought. All he cared about was arranging for the American television audience to see the killing of the dictator and Alexandra Finway. One man stood in his way, and he was very sure the man was close by.

  In the time he had, Peters knew that it would be impossible to find Finway if the man did not want to be found; the castle was simply too big, its corridors too labyrinthine, and now every minute that was slipping away put him in ever greater danger.

  He had no choice but to offer himself, Peters thought, and hope that an opportunity to kill him would be sufficient motivation to draw the other man out of the depths of the castle. If he were there.

  “Finway,” Peters said as he stepped out of the tunnel. He had not spoken loudly, but his voice carried clearly in the thick night filling the empty arena. He walked down to the floor of the arena and stood in a patch of moonlight next to the apron of the boxing ring. “Where the hell are you, you chickenshit bastard?” There was no response.

  Peters had not really thought there would be; even if Finway were in earshot, there was no reason why the other man should respond. It had been only a faint hope. Peters had learned that the seasoned lawyer was far too thick-skinned to be goaded by personal insult. Still, Peters thought, if Finway did have any button that could be pushed, he was going to have to discover it soon.

  He slowly circled the raised ring, absently slapping his palm against the padded canvas above his head, then climbed halfway up a steeply banked aisle on the north side. He stopped and slowly turned, trying to see into the shadows.

  There was no movement, no sound.

  “You said we could deal if I didn’t hurt your wife.”

  He thought he heard something behind him. He spun and crouched, aware that Finway could have some kind of weapon in his possession, but the sound had only been the faint echo of his own voice. He sucked in a deep breath and held it, listening for nervous breathing, a scrape—any sign that he was not alone in the castle.

  Then he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye; but it was a shadow, not a man. Far to his left, an elongated stick of shadow spun lazily across a luminescent
screen of moonlight on a stone wall.

  He cried out and ducked as an iron bar flew a half inch over his head, brushing against his hair. The bar bounced off the padded canvas of the ring with a muffled thud, skittered across the stone floor, and crashed into the first row of ringside seats.

  “Peters, you just keep on popping up like a bad penny. Someone should take you out of circulation.”

  Close, Peters thought as a cold film of sweat broke out on his body. But Finway was in the castle, which was all that mattered. Also, the man had courage and pride—which could prove to be his liabilities.

  “All right, Finway,” Peters said, still crouching in the aisle. “Come on down and we’ll talk.”

  There was a long pause, and then the voice came again. Peters tried to fix its direction, but the echoes in the large space made that impossible; Finway’s soft voice seemed to come from everywhere.

  “Fuck you, Peters. Let’s play hide and seek. The sun’ll be up in a couple of hours, and then we’ll have a lot of company. Maybe you’ll even get to wave to your mother on television.”

  He was right, Peters thought. Finway had time on his side, and the lawyer knew it. It was impossible to find the other man in the darkness, and the assassin made the decision not to waste another minute.

  Peters suddenly leaped to his feet and brought the radio close to his chest. “Here’s a tune for you, Finway,” he said, and pressed the panel on the back of the radio.

  John

  He lay panting in the grass for almost a minute, desperately trying to suck air into his lungs. He was still out of breath and his back hurt, but he knew he could not stay there; soldiers and police would be pouring out of the terminal at any moment, swarming over the field, searching for him.

  He assumed the first place they would look for him would be in the surrounding countryside or on the access roads leading to and from the airport. He decided that his only chance to escape was to do the unexpected; he had to head back in the direction of the terminal building.

  He could feel the blood on his forehead, hands, and right thigh, but could not tell in the darkness how severe the cuts actually were. He knew he did not have time to concern himself with his injuries. He rose to his feet and began trotting to his left, describing a wide arc around the glowing nimbus of the terminal building on his right. Each time he came to one of the lighted runways he got down on his stomach and wriggled across the macadam, then got up and started running again when he was on the other side.

  He had made three quarters of a circuit around the terminal when he saw a small, brightly lit parking lot at what appeared to be the rear of the building. Now he paused, knelt down on the grass and watched an ancient, clanking Pontiac wheeze into the lot and stop in a line with four other cars in the lot. The lights went out, the engine chattered, clanked, and died. A bald man in a green maintenance man’s uniform got out, casually slammed the door shut behind him and went into the building.

  John rose and, keeping low, ran to the lot.

  He waited for a few moments on the blacktop just outside the perimeter of light; when he saw no one, he lowered his head and walked briskly to the Pontiac. The door was unlocked and the keys were in the ignition. In the back seat was a long tool box and a crumpled, grease-stained uniform identical to the one the man had been wearing.

  John quickly opened the door and got in behind the wheel. It took him almost a full, nerve-racking minute of grinding the starter before the engine finally turned over. With a kind of cold, eerie calm born of his training, his battles, and his knowledge that all his bridges were burned, he put the car into gear, then headed out of the parking lot, following the airport signs indicating the direction to Angeles Blanca.

  He knew it was dangerous to stop, but blood was continuing to flow freely down his wrists and through his fingers, making it difficult to grip the steering wheel. He realized that he would have to take time to inspect his wounds and apply tourniquets if it appeared that any veins had been severed. He pulled off to the side of the road, but left the engine running as he stripped down to his shorts.

  He looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the cuts on his forehead were minor and had already stopped bleeding. He found he had suffered a series of slashes on the backs of his wrists and forearms, and one long slice on his right thigh. These wounds were still bleeding, but as far as he could tell they were relatively superficial. However, the bleeding had to be stopped.

  He tore his shirt and undershirt into strips, then wrapped the improvised bandages tightly about his thigh and hands, leaving his fingers free to grasp the steering wheel. He dressed in the workman’s dirty uniform, then put the car back into gear and continued toward Angeles Blanca.

  He did not dare to stop and ask directions, and it took him some time to find the Angeles Blanca Libre. However, he was relieved to see that there were no guards posted at the hotel’s entrance, and he speculated that the authorities were still concentrating their search for him in the area around the airport. If so, he thought, he just might be able to get to Peters’ and Alexandra’s room. He did not speak Spanish, and he knew there was always the danger that he could be stopped and questioned. However, he felt that he had no choice but to make an effort to get the unexplained extra barrette from Peters’ luggage. He was almost certain that he knew what it was, but he would need it in his possession if he hoped to get Alexandra to listen to him; if he were right about its composition, the barrette was proof of who and what Peters really was, and what he planned to do.

  He parked the car on the street across from the hotel, reached over the seat and picked up the tool box from the back. He pulled the worker’s shapeless cap down low over his forehead, then got out of the car and walked quickly across the street, angling away from the main entrance; with his bandaged hands and dirty uniform, he knew he could not risk going in the front door. He walked slowly around the block, looking for another way to get in. There was a double door on the hotel’s east side, but it was locked from the inside.

  He waited. Five minutes later a couple dressed in formal evening clothes entered the small vestibule just inside the door, and came out. John quickly walked forward and just managed to catch the door before it closed and locked again. He immediately turned to his left and headed up a stairway. There was no one else on the stairs, and he made it to the fourth floor unchallenged.

  He hurried down the corridor, checking the room num-against the door. The wood cracked on the first try, then gripped the knob and without hesitation threw his weight splintered and gave around the lock on the second. John bers. When he found Peters’ and Alexandra’s room, he stepped into the room, quickly closed the door behind him, then leaned against the wall to catch his breath and wait for his heart to stop pounding. He could hear no sounds outside, no indication that anyone had heard him breaking in the door.

  He heaved Peters’ leather suitcase off a luggage rack and onto the closest bed. He jimmied the small locks with a screwdriver from the tool box, then opened the case and rummaged through the clothes inside, throwing them on the floor. He finally found the ivory-colored barrette in a cloth bag taped to the bottom of a side pouch. He put the barrette in his pocket, started to leave, then hesitated as it occurred to him that Peters might well kill Alexandra when he discovered that the barrette was gone.

  He could wait in the room and try to ambush Peters, John thought, but soldiers or police might well come to search the hotel before the tour group returned; he was probably running on borrowed time already. If he were caught now, he would almost certainly be beaten, and probably locked away in solitary confinement. It could be a long time before he was able to get anyone to listen to him. By then, Alexandra could be dead.

  He decided to leave a note, which he wrote using one of Alexandra’s eyebrow pencils and hotel stationery he found in a desk drawer. He placed the note inside Peters’ suitcase, reasoning that even if Alexandra and Peters saw the note at the same time, his wife had shown more than an adequate capacity
to defend herself.

  He knew he needed to take time to wash the sticky, caked blood off his fingers and change the bandages on his hands. The sheets on the bed were old and of poor quality. He chose the most threadbare and easily tore it into wide strips. Then he removed the blood-soaked bandages, washed his hands, and rebandaged them. He considered rebandaging his thigh, but decided he could not risk staying in the room any longer. He picked up the tool chest and left the hotel the same way he had come in.

  John knew that he had no way of determining what Peters would do when he found the barrette gone. The only thing of which he was certain was that he had to remain free if he hoped to be able to exert any kind of control over the situation. He needed some form of sanctuary that would also give him a chance to contact Alexandrda, however briefly; all things considered, Tamara Castle seemed to him the best place to wait, assuming he could find a way to get in without being caught. Even without the barrette, John thought, Peters would almost certainly be forced to come to the castle; if he wanted to maintain his credibility with Alexandra, Peters would be hard pressed to come up with a reason not to attend the boxing matches in order to “protect” Salva.

  If they did not come, John thought, he would then contact the authorities.

  He drove to the harbor area, left the car two blocks away, and, keeping to the night shadows, walked the rest of the way to the castle. He waited for a time, watching. Then, satisfied that the castle was not regularly patrolled, at least on the outside, he went up the stone steps at the front. He found it surprisingly easy to break in, using a crowbar from the tool chest to pry open one of the windows. After he had entered, he closed the window and replaced the pieces of the broken lock on the sill, then squatted in the darkness, listening, for almost ten minutes. When he heard no one moving inside the castle, he used a book of matches from the tool chest to light his way through a maze of corridors until he finally found his way into the boxing arena.