Ultimate Weapon

by Shannon McKenna

  As soon as she was decent, briefcase and purse in hand, he dragged her out of the room. Three men were sprawled in the hall outside. All of them unconscious. Val hauled them into the room and left them there in a bleeding heap.

  He dragged her into the stairwell, and they sped down, barely staying on their feet. The ground floor had a door that led out to a side street. A little blue Vespino waited. Val swung his leg over it, waited for her to climb on behind. His eyes dared her to make a snide comment.

  She had to struggle not to laugh. After all the blood, all the drama, a sky blue Vespino? It was an anticlimax, buzzing around the hills of San Vito on a mini-scooter, like a couple of thirteen-year-old innamorati looking for a place to smooch.

  But Val’s thunderous face discouraged laughter.

  András bent over the hotel room door, the lock pick hidden by his big hand. The antique locks of the old hotel were laughably easy to pick.

  He had just arrived in San Vito. Old Novak had gotten nervous, not surprisingly, and sent András to secure the situation. This job would begin with a candid conversation with Ferenc, their spy in Georg’s organization. The man’s usefulness was beginning to erode, despite the generous sums they paid him. Jakab’s bloody delivery in the cardboard box had rattled him. The time was fast approaching when Ferenc would need to be recycled into some fresh use. But not quite yet.

  The man sprawled on the bed with an ice pack on his face sprang into the air when the door swung open. His face was grotesquely bruised and swollen. His reddened eyes widened.

  “Oh, fuck,” he moaned. “No. You.”

  “Me,” András agreed, strolling into the room.

  “You’re insane to come here!” Ferenc whispered hoarsely. “I might not have been alone! The others could come back any time! Do you have any idea what would happen to me if Luksch realized that I am the—”

  “But he hasn’t yet.” As if he gave a shit.

  “You don’t understand,” Ferenc said urgently. “Luksch is suspicious of all of us ever since Jakab was killed! Ever since Novak found out about PSS and the woman, he knows that one of us is—”

  “And did you not take this into account when you cashed the check?” András reminded him gently. “All of the many, many checks?”

  “But . . . but he will kill me,” Ferenc whined. “He will—”

  “Shut up.” András grabbed a chair from the desk, and rested his bulk on its spindly legs. “From the condition of your face, I assume you have met Janos?”

  Ferenc’s face darkened. He struggled to his feet off the bed.

  “He took us by surprise,” he said sullenly. “You should see the other men. Iwan’s ribs and collarbone are broken, Miklós is in the hospital with head and neck injuries. Hegel, too. Hegel’s lucky to be alive at all.”

  “Hegel is in the hospital?” András was startled. That was remarkable enough to stop him from shutting off the man’s prattle with his fist. He knew the man, from Novak’s own dealings with PSS. It would take a great deal to get the better of Hegel. “What hospital?”

  Ferenc’s face furrowed as he struggled to remember. “I Santi Medici,” he said after a doubtful pause. “I think.”

  “His room number?”

  “How the fuck would I know?” Ferenc grumbled. “I didn’t send the man flowers. And you should leave. Immediately, before Luksch—”

  “What name is he using?”

  Ferenc gaped stupidly. “Who?”

  “Hegel, you dickbrained idiot,” András said, with saintly patience.

  Ferenc hid behind the ice pack. “It was an American passport. Mike something. Fowler, I think. Mike Fowler.”

  András filed it all away, his foot tapping thoughtfully on the carpet. “And how did he locate the woman and the PSS agent?”

  “He had a GPS tracer on one of them. Don’t know which one. Christ, this hurts. That bastard broke my nose. I saw Hegel running the program on his laptop a couple times, monitoring them.”

  “Where is his hotel room?” András got up, took a step toward the bed.

  “It’s a floor above this one,” Ferenc said sulkily, hanging his head. “He had to be next to the stairwell. You have to go, before Luksch—”

  Crack. András punched the man’s already broken nose, knocking him to the floor. Ferenc huddled, whimpering and gasping for air. András stared down at him thoughtfully, massaging his knuckles. Ferenc held his nose, choking. Blood streamed through his fingers.

  “If I hear you whine again, I will call Luksch myself and tell him who our spy is,” András said calmly. “Be grateful I did not kill you.”

  He let the door swing shut behind him, and headed to the stairwell, to search Hegel’s room, hoping that the man would not be comatose once he got to the hospital to speak to him. He needed Hegel conscious, at least for a few minutes. That was all that was necessary, for his purposes. After that, well . . . why not? Since Hegel had shown the poor taste and judgment to throw in his lot with Georg . . .

  András just might indulge himself. It had been a very long time.

  The one good thing about the Vespino was that it made conversation impossible. Anything Val could have said to Tamar now would only make things worse.

  Knowing that it wasn’t her fault, that she’d been compelled—ah, God. It did not help. He wanted to kill Georg for doing that to her.

  And not only Georg. It was not enough. Others should die, too, for everything that had led up to it. Years of cruelty and misfortune, of doing what she had to do to survive.

  And in spite of it all, she was so strong. Shining and beautiful.

  The headwind blew tears of rage out of the corners of his eyes. He wanted to slaughter them all himself, all the way back to Stengl. That psychotic prick that had murdered her family, used her for a toy, and abandoned her to fend for herself when she was just a grieving child.

  Just like him.

  Cristo. He’d always congratulated himself for having left his own past behind so completely, for letting it affect him so little. But in the days that he had spent with Tamar, the scab had been torn away, revealing a festering sore he had not even known was there.

  He had never really felt the pain of it, but he felt it now. Oh, yes, he felt it now. For her sake, not for his own, but it hardly mattered.

  It was all the same fucking pain.

  Sex with her was like nothing he’d even known. He was a master of technique, an artisan of pleasure, but Tamar revealed his technique for exactly what it was. Empty tricks, sleight of hand. Forgotten, evaporated in the blaze of white-hot, screaming intensity that she provoked in him.

  The very thought of it stirred him. His dick was hard. Her long hair swirled and stung their faces as they sped into the headwind. Drops of rain stung, too. Her arms held his torso gingerly like she was afraid to touch him.

  She leaned forward and called into his ear. “Where are we going?”

  He shrugged. “How the fuck should I know?” he shouted back, the wind whipping the words away from his mouth. “I am open to any brilliant suggestions you might have.”

  That shut her up. Menacing clouds scudded heavily across the sky. It was starting to rain harder.

  They spotted the rusty metal sign at the same time, full of what appeared to be small bullet holes. It advertised an agriturismo, a farm that sold local foodstuffs, some of which also rented rooms. Le Cinque Querce. Five Oaks. 5.2 km. Tam pointed at the sign.

  He nodded, and slewed the Vespino around onto a narrow dirt road that had a canopy of overhanging trees and shrubs above and a deep, thorn-choked ravine below.

  They bumped and thudded along the road, following crooked hand-lettered signs each time it forked into various orchards until they turned onto what could be called a driveway only in the loosest sense of the word: a winding kilometer and a half of rocky dirt track through an orchard of olives dotted with the occasional fig, lemon, or orange tree.

  The place itself was an ancient casale of a mottled salmon pink streaked wit
h yellow and gray from hundreds of years of weather. Around it sprawled a humble fattoria and a powerful aroma of animal shit. Sheep, goats, and chickens wandered at will, and the sweet smell of raindrops pattering down onto the dust tickled his nose. He smelled pine, the aromatic herbs that clung to the crumbling drywall that lined the road. The flagstoned space in front of the casale was crowded with agricultural equipment, puddled oil spots, rusted-out cars.

  It did not look promising as a hotel.

  They shot each other doubtful looks as a door creaked open. A woman came out, as wide as a refrigerator, with thick, swollen legs like posts. She was a figure from another century, with a stringy salt-and-pepper bun, moles on her cheeks sprouting tufts of coarse hair, a black ankle-length dress with a blood-smeared apron, a heavy crucifix. A dead chicken swung by the neck from her hand.

  “Sì?” she asked, in tones of deep suspicion.

  “Is this the Five Oaks Agriturismo?” Val glanced around, looking for the oaks. None were in evidence. Rain splattered down more heavily every second, plastering their jackets to their shoulders, their hair to their faces.

  “Sì,” the woman said slowly. Her scowling gaze lingered on the handcuff dangling from his bloodied hand.

  “Do you have a room for two available?” Val persisted.

  The woman grunted, eyes sunk deep in squinting wrinkles. “I would have to clean it,” she informed them, chin thrust out. “It is years that no one sleeps there. You must wait until it is cleaned.”

  Val glanced up at the driving rain. “How long would that take?”

  She shrugged. “A few hours.”

  Hours? God help them. “We don’t mind if it has not been cleaned,” he wheedled. “Please, signora, do not trouble yourself.”

  She grunted again, rolling her eyes, and jerked her bearded chin for them to follow her.

  They circled around the casale. Luxuriant weeds grew around the flagstones, and the path was carpeted by drifts of slimy dead leaves and lined with rotting canvas bags of unidentified detritus. Around the back of the sparsely windowed structure was a chicken run, a fallow garden full of heaps of dead brush, and a warped, ancient wooden door that hung upon heavy, rusty hinges that looked medieval. The door was as high as Val’s shoulder.

  The signora wiped chicken blood from her hand onto her apron and yanked. The small door opened with a shriek of rusty hinges and warped wood. A shower of splinters and flakes of ancient whitewash pattered to the ground. There were no locks, just latches, sliding bolts.

  She preceded them into a vaulted room and opened two shutters. The smell of mildew was overwhelming. Tiny transparent scorpions, alarmed by the sudden influx of light, chased each other across the windowsills in a panic. A shutter hung askew on a broken hinge.

  There was a sagging wrought iron bed in the corner, a four-poster with a lugubrious rendition of the Madonna Addolorata painted on the iron headboard. The Madonna’s face was pallid and miserable, shadowy bags under her weeping eyes. She was swathed in black lace as she gazed into the sky and mourned her crucified son. The other three walls of the room were lined with a bizarre assortment of mismatched marble-topped dressers and termite-gnawed credenzas. There was an ancient, rickety table, two mismatched wooden folding chairs. No TV or phone, of course. Val pulled out Hegel’s cell. No coverage.

  “Questo e’ tutto,” the woman said heavily. This is it.

  Val looked at Tamar. She shrugged. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

  He turned back to the signora. “Va bene,” he said. “Can we get some dinner?”

  “You can eat with the family at eight,” the signora announced.

  Val caught the flash of naked fear in Tamar’s eyes, and manufactured a charming smile. “Could we just have something in our room? Something simple is fine. Bread and cheese and wine?”

  The signora cleared her throat, a phlegmy hack of disapproval. “I’ll bring something.” She indicated with the chicken in the direction of an ancient armoire, with enough force to make the dead bird molt pinfeathers onto the cracked tile floor. “There are more pillows and blankets in there. I will bring food later. I am the Signora Concetta.”

  With that information, she stumped out, leaving the door open.

  Gusts of rain and the smell of sheep shit blew in, a welcome burst of freshness and moist moving air in the moldy dimness of the room.

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Well,” Tamar said briskly. “I doubt that anyone will look for us here.” She set her purse and the Deadly Beauty briefcase down and pulled open a small door, peering into what proved to be a tiny bathroom with brown-streaked porcelain fixtures that had to be more than a century old. “At least there are towels in here,” she remarked. “Who needs toilet paper?”

  Tamar’s attempt at lightness made things worse. Val sat down on the bed, releasing a puff of dust that danced in the light from the door. He stared at her. She stared back. The light from the tiny windows was tinted by the foliage outside to a dim, unearthly green.

  Gusts of strong wind whined around the casale, banging the little wooden door open against the outside wall. The rain finally let go in a rushing deluge. Its sweet, heady perfume deepened with every minute.

  Tamar stepped forward, crossing her arms. “Go ahead,” she said. “Say it. I see it in your face, anyhow.”

  “What do you see?” he asked. “What do you expect me to say?”

  “Whore,” she said.

  Val stared down at his own bloodied fists and fingered the dangling handcuff still attached to his wrist, and listened to the rain for a long moment. “I did not think that. And I will not say it.”

  “Don’t make it worse by lying.” Her tilted eyes glittered with unshed tears.

  “You ask a great deal of me,” he said. “I find my woman naked in the arms of a mafiya drug lord, and you scold me for being unhappy?”

  She laughed. “Your woman? Hah! I belong to myself, Janos. I had two options. Kill him or fuck him. My first choice was to kill him. I was a nanosecond away from doing that when he told me his plans.”

  Val swallowed bile. He forced the words out through a constricted throat. “And?”

  “I realized that by killing him, I would be killing Imre,” she said, her voice hushed. “Or at least, killing your best chance to save him.”

  His irrational anger grew with every word she said. “Ah. So you were naked in his arms for my sake?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Your sake,” she said. “And Imre’s.”

  His fists clenched, his jaw tightened. His heart thudded. “And you expect me to thank you for that?”

  Her eyes glowed hotly. “Yes! I do! I expect you to fall to your knees and kiss my ass for that! Why else, Val? Why else on earth would I willingly do that to myself? I had nothing to gain. Nothing! I could have killed him myself without your help, gone to take care of Stengl on my own, and never bothered with you and your complicated, dangerous problems ever again. But I didn’t. God help me, I didn’t.”

  “And his billions?” he asked. “Is that not worth fucking him?”

  She jerked back, her eyes huge with startled hurt. “Would you fuck Georg Luksch for a billion dollars?” she asked. “Or five billion?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then what makes you think I would?”

  He shook his head, denying everything they were saying, everything that was happening, but she went on, her voice tight.

  “You have no idea what was in store for me. He would have passed me around to his men every day for his own entertainment. And to punish me for being female, of course.”

  He put his face into his hands. “Please be quiet. Just stop.”

  “Can you believe it? A selfish bitch like me, struck down by a self-sacrificing heroine complex. I actually thought that saving your friend from death by torture would be worth . . . that. I actually thought that you would understand. That it was a gift.”

  “Tamar—”

  “It’s a mista
ke I won’t make again.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and grabbed her jewelry case. “As of this moment, our arrangement is dissolved. Save your friend on your own. You don’t deserve my help. Good-bye.”

  He was on his feet with his arms around her before she reached the door.

  “Don’t you dare.” She wrenched, spinning in his arms, and he suddenly found a gun shoved under his chin. Georg’s gun.

  “Tamar. No. Do not do this.” He forced the dry sound past the pressure of the gun against his throat.

  “Try to stop me, and I will kill you. Let go of me, Janos.”

  He let his arms slide lower, embracing her. She was as stiff as a wooden statue. “No.”

  The gun dug deeper. “I mean it.” Her voice shook.

  “So shoot me,” he said. “Go on. End it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You used this trick on me before.”

  “It worked before,” he said.

  “I’m wise to you now,” she said. “It won’t work again.”

  “Yes, it will,” he said quietly. “Because this time it is not a trick. I know you now, Tamar. You will not shoot me. Put the gun away.”

  Seconds dragged, oppressive with waiting. Rain rushed, an enormous, diffused sound all around them. Far-off thunder cracked and rumbled.

  Crystalline tears welled up in her eyes, glittering in the gathering darkness. “Damn you,” she whispered.

  He pushed the barrel of the gun away from his chin, took the thing out of her unresisting hand, and put it back in her purse.

  He placed the bag gently on the ground and reached for her.

  Chapter 20

  She struggled, of course. She could not help herself. It was a given, an automatic response. But the fight was a frantic search for some place to put that desperate energy raging inside her. She fought how hard she wanted him, how much she was beginning to need him. She fought that sad, yearning ache that scared her out of her wits.