It's Always Darkest Page 16

  Parker smiled. He reached behind him and produced a gun of his own. A Glock, probably the one he had given Karin to persuade me with earlier. He didn’t bother to point it at me.

  “You must be very uncomfortable there on the floor, Mr. Mallory.” He gestured with the gun at an overstuffed armchair to the left of the coffee table. “Please come and have a seat. I have business to discuss with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  One hundred meters away, sitting behind the wheel of her rental, Maria Rakosi peered through binoculars—Leica Trinovid 10x50’s—at the Audi as it backed out of the driveway and drove off. In the front seat she could see that a man was driving, with a woman in the passenger’s seat next to him.

  The driver wasn’t Mallory, she was sure of that. Whoever this was had lighter hair, and was much more strongly built across the shoulders. The woman, she thought, could be the same woman he had arrived with almost half an hour ago.

  Glancing down, she saw that the small orange dot on her portable tracking device hadn’t moved, meaning that Mallory—or at least his cell phone—was still in the house. For all she really knew, of course, he could have been dead in the trunk of the Audi, but if that was the case, she couldn’t help him anyway. It was like playing bridge: if the only chance of making your contract was for the cards to lie a certain way, then you had no choice but to play as if they did.

  She picked up the binoculars again. Difficult to tell, but she thought she could see movement near the front of the house. A guard, probably. There could even be two of them—another one concealed at the back of the house, perhaps, each in constant communication with the other. But she didn’t think so: even at half-past two in the morning, there was still enough light in the sky that a nosy neighbor might spot too much activity next door and call the cops on them.

  Maria put the binoculars down on the passenger seat. It’s as simple as A-B-C, she thought. Neutralize the guard; get inside; find Mallory and save him. The young woman had no doubt that she could accomplish the first two items on her agenda.

  The third would be a matter of luck.

  She took off her Yankees cap and undid the ponytail, letting her shimmering auburn hair fall untidily around her shoulders. Then she turned the key in the ignition and moved off down the tree-lined residential street. Nearing the house, she deliberately messed up a gear change and stalled the car about twenty meters away. She popped the hood release, then got out and walked around to lift the hood and peer inside, making sure to bend over a good deal more than was absolutely necessary. After a few seconds of this, she put a worried expression on her face, stood up, and gazed around in dismay, looking for all the world like a twenty-first century damsel in distress.

  The guard had moved into the middle of the front yard, where he stood watching her with undisguised admiration. Maria saw him and gave him a smile that she knew he would remember for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, please, can you help me?” she called out, in English. “I’m absolutely hopeless with cars and I don’t know what to do!”

  She had no idea whether the man understood her, but it wasn’t necessary that he should. It was only necessary that he understood the underlying message: Help me, and I’ll be ever so grateful!”

  He understood that much, all right. He smiled and walked over to her. Maria turned to give him a good look at her profile as he approached. Her left profile.

  Yes, it was her better side (though both were sensational); but more to the point, the Walther was resting on her right hip.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I pushed myself to unsteady feet and crossed the ten-foot expanse of living room floor like one of the Flying Wallendas negotiating the Grand Canyon on a bad day. But I made it without falling down and sank into the chair Parker indicated. He took the other chair and sat down across the coffee table from me, about five feet away. Steady as a rock, he held the gun in his right hand and pointed it vaguely in my direction.

  My head still hurt like a bastard, but the aspirin was starting to take hold and I could function a lot better than I was letting on. Still, there was no way in the world I could surprise him, given our respective positions. He could put three or four rounds into me before I could even think about clearing the chair.

  Parker gazed through his glasses at me for a few seconds, examining me in a way that made me feel like I was the next item up for bids on The Price Is Right. Then he nodded, more to himself than at me, and spoke.

  “I have a proposition to put to you,” he said.

  Then he leaned forward. I leaned forward too, repositioning myself closer to the edge of the chair and getting my feet solidly on the ground. Now I could move on him if I wanted to, but I still had no chance: he didn’t look the kind to make a mistake with the gun.

  “How would you like to make ten million dollars?” he asked casually.

  At current rates, I thought, it’d take me just over ninety-six years to make that much with Cramer. (There’s a math trick involved in figuring that out as quickly as I did.)

  “I’d like it a lot,” I said. “What do you have in mind?”

  He took off his glasses, folded the earpieces closed, and laid them carefully on the arm of the chair.

  “Mr. Mallory, what I am offering you is, what is the term, an exclusive story. An exclusive story that will make you wealthy and me famous, each of us beyond our wildest dreams. It is the story of my life. The story of The Chameleon.” Then he sat back, apparently satisfied that that proclamation would tell me all I needed to know.

  The Chameleon? What kind of shit was this? I stared at him and thought about how best to handle it. I’d start, I decided, by seeing whether I could rattle the guy. If nothing else, it’d make me feel better. Hell, the worst he could do was shoot me.

  “You want me to write your biography?”

  “Exactly. I can provide you with the all the necessary documentation.”

  For about two seconds, I actually considered the feasibility of this foolishness. Apart from the eighty-seven or so possible things that were wrong with it, it sounded like a great idea. I adjusted my posture in the chair microscopically and pretended to give the suggestion serious thought.

  “Chameleon, eh? We already have a reptile in America who’s moderately famous. A gecko. Sells insurance. He might cut into your market share that side of the pond, but let’s give it a try. What do we call it?” I asked him. “Megalomania in Ten Easy Lessons?”

  For a fraction of a second, his eyes blazed. I could even have sworn that they turned almost red and I realized I had gone a bridge too far. Once a fool, always a fool, Mallory. Of course there were worse things he could do to me than shooting me. Just ask anybody who was on the wrong end of the Spanish Inquisition. But in the time it took me to realize my error, the look was gone and his mask was back in place.

  “There is a time and place for humor, Mr. Mallory. This is neither. My offer is a genuine one. Over the past…eleven years, I have committed major crimes in eighty-three countries and on all seven continents. I—”

  The part about “all seven continents” intrigued me.

  “Seven? What did you do in Antarctica?”

  He shrugged.

  “Sabotage, I suppose you could call it,” he said. “Three Russian doctors were killed in an explosion at the kurort approximately eight years ago. It was I who caused the explosion.”

  I mentally translated. “Resort? In Antarctica?”

  “My apologies,” he said. “Kurort is a sort of…nickname for Bellingshausen Station. The Resort.”

  “How in the hell did you manage to swing that? And why did you do it?”

  He smiled. “As to how, I must keep that to myself for the moment. As to why—well, why did George Mallory want so badly to climb Everest?”

  “Because it’s there?”

  “Precisely. I wanted to make, what is the phrase, a clean sweep of the world. None of the other six continents provided very much of a challenge.” His eyes gli
ttered. “Ten million dollars, Mr. Mallory. Ten million dollars, and the secrets of over a decade of unprecedented crime. Fame for me—fortune for you. What do you say, sir? Do we have a deal?”

  “Not until I get some answers.”

  The phrase sounded familiar to me, and I realized with a shock that I’d had almost this identical exchange with Cramer in his office about three and a half weeks ago—in happier times, I thought sourly. I didn’t get any substantial answers then, and I couldn’t see myself doing any better with a soi-disant career master criminal.

  The Chameleon shook his head—sadly, it seemed.

  “It won’t do, Mallory old man, really it won’t. Do you not see that you are in no position to bargain? This is an offer you can’t refuse. And I repeat, it is a genuine one.”

  It was beginning to look as though shooting was going to be the best I could get out with. Try to keep him talking, I thought; then pick a spot, roll the dice, and see what happens. I scooched forward another half inch in my chair.

  “What else can I do but refuse? Sure, you can kill me or whatever, but I’m a journalist, for Chrissake. Look, you’re a reasonable man. Based on what you’ve told me so far, would you buy a used car from you?”

  Incredibly, he actually stopped to think this over.

  “You have a point,” he conceded. “Very well. I have something in mind for this evening. If I tell you about it in advance, will that satisfy you as to my bona fides?”

  “It depends,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Merely this. At 1000 this morning, the Air Zurich flight carrying Karin Fessler will explode in mid-air. She will die…with the new identity and Swiss citizenship I promised her.”

  “And at precisely 1200 today, I will blow up the press box at the Sports Palace.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  From inside what looked to her like the master bedroom, Maria Rakosi, hat and ponytail now back in place, heard the last exchange perfectly. If nothing else, it confirmed her suspicion that Mallory was indeed in trouble, despite Cramer’s claims to the contrary. But she had been unlucky in her choice of ingress. The door was closed. She glanced down at the floor. There was no gap at the bottom that might allow her to see what was happening in the living room. The man Parker could as easily be looking in that direction as any other. The sound of the men’s voices provided no clue.

  And on top of that, there was now a question of the greater good.

  She still had a choice. She could leave the house unnoticed through the bedroom window she’d used less than a minute ago, and then notify the authorities about the two bomb threats, saving hundreds of lives—but almost certainly signing Mallory’s death warrant in the process.

  Maria thought it over. She knew what Mr. Cramer would tell her to do; knew, too, that her dear friend Felicity would tell her the same thing. And they would both be right.

  She grinned to herself in the dark, then, very slowly, very carefully, moved to the door. She could still hear Mallory’s and Parker’s voices. It would provide some cover for any noise she might make, but a single awkward pause at the wrong moment, and it would all be over.

  She reached for the doorknob. The house was a fairly new one, and the hardware seemed to work almost soundlessly. She turned the knob all the way to the right and took fully fifteen seconds to pull the door two inches toward her, then a third. She still couldn’t see anything. Four inches, six, eight. Now she had the door open a full foot—and now she could see Parker’s upper right side in the chair. He was facing almost exactly perpendicular to her line of sight, and he held a gun in his right hand, resting on the arm of the chair. The slightest glance in her direction, and he could not help but see her. To make things worse, the door was a left-hander, meaning that Maria would essentially have to open it all the way in order to get a clear shot with her right hand. There was zero margin for error, and she didn’t trust herself enough to try it southpaw.

  But he hadn’t seen her yet. In the next thirty seconds, Maria pulled the door back another six inches. Finally, she was able to insinuate her body through the opening and bring her gun hand into play. Good! From fifteen feet away, she couldn’t possibly miss. She raised the Walther and took one step forward, her finger tightening on the trigger.

  Then her foot hit the trip wire four inches off the ground and she sprawled, head first and helpless, into the middle of the living room. The automatic flew from her hand, landing a full yard away.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Something—maybe a subtle change in the air pressure—must have tipped me off subconsciously. Or maybe I’d already picked my time. Either way, I know I was out of my chair before the sound reached my ears. I’d never moved so fast in my life, but the Chameleon was even faster. In the less than a second it took me to fly across the coffee table, he had snapped off a shot at the intruder and swung the gun back around on me. My shoulder caught him perfectly under the chin and as all three of us—me, him, and the chair—crashed to the floor. I heard a scream of agony—mine—and the flat report of the Glock firing again somewhere in the vicinity of my left ear.

  Shit, I thought, he’s still got the gun. Taking it from him had to be Job One. My head felt like it was about to explode, but everything else was still working. I threw myself onto his right arm and tried to rip it off at the shoulder. Nothing. For his size—hell, for anybody’s size—he was phenomenally strong. I had four inches and fifty pounds on him, but I couldn’t take that gun away.

  And I couldn’t let go of his arm. He had one free hand to my zero, and he was using it to pound on the back of my head. One of his blows found the same spot as the blackjack and everything went black for an instant before dissolving to dark red and fuzzy around the edges. He caught me there again and this time, a flash-bang grenade of agony went off about two inches in front of my face. I felt myself let go of his arm and roll away, helpless. My head cracked against a leg of the coffee table. I heard the gun fire again.

  Then I didn’t see or hear or feel anything for a few minutes.

  I know it was a few minutes, because when I came to, I checked my watch again. I was flat on my back on the living room floor. Someone had put a pillow under my head and an ice bag behind my ear. It was nice, down there on the floor. I closed my eyes again.

  “Paul? Paul Mallory?”

  A woman’s voice. One I’d heard before somewhere. Back open went the eyes. It was hard work, but when I saw what I was looking at, I was glad I’d made the effort. Now I knew who she was. And a Yankees fan to boot. Better and better.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  I knew from experience to refrain from nodding. “Call the cops. There’s a bomb at the arena,” I told her. “And another one on a plane.” My voice sounded like it came out of a centenarian who’d smoked a pack a day for the last ninety years, and I felt even worse than I sounded.

  “Done,” she said. “And the police intercepted Karin Fessler and Bruno at the airport. There was some trouble, though. They’re both dead.”

  “Suits me. Parker?”

  “Him?” She pointed. “He’s dead too. That’s him over there.”

  For once, I wasn’t curious enough to look. If I didn’t move for the next week and a half, that was okay with me.

  “I’ll take your word for it, Maria.”

  The eyebrows went up. “Oh, so you do know who I am. I was wondering whether you would recognize me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I? I never forget a pretty face. Besides, you’re the one who got me in this mess to begin with.”

  She wrinkled her nose at me. Maria even looked good doing that.

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Three weeks ago, you said ‘Mr. Cramer will see you now,’ and ever since then, it’s been one damn thing after another. I wish you’d thrown me out of your office. But you also saved my life. That gets you off the hook.”

  She took off her Yankees cap, knelt beside me, and brushed my hair back with long, cool, slender fingers.

&nb
sp; “If anybody saved anyone’s life, it was the other way round,” she said. “You kept him occupied long enough to cancel out my stupidity, thank God.” She shook her head. “A trip wire. Something so basic as that, and I missed it. The whole house is booby-trapped like that.”

  I started to say something clever and reassuring, but the sound of sirens outside interrupted us. She bent down and kissed me on the mouth, medium strength and quite unhurriedly. I kissed her back. Fair was fair. The sirens got louder. Maria pulled away. I held on.

  “We have guests, Paul,” she said.

  “Tell them to come back later. We’re busy.”

  She laughed, stood up, went to the door. I closed my eyes again. Time passed; then I heard and felt heavy footsteps coming toward me. I looked up.

  Chief Inspector Dmitri Borzov stared down at me. He shook a cigarette loose from a pack of Marlboros, lit it, drew deeply. Behind him, I could hear and see paramedics coming through the front door with a gurney that I hoped was for me.

  “Mr. Mallory,” he growled, “you have caused me no end of trouble.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Where’s my car?” I asked.

  Bentley Livingston Cramer handed me a cigar and a drink. I took them gratefully.

  “At your apartment. Where else would it be?” He pressed a button and said “Let’s go” into an invisible speaker.

  The chauffeur—chauffeuse, to be precise—drove out through the main gate of the Cramer Press Syndicate, turned right, and headed west on 27. The time was 10:10 p.m. and—thank God—it was dark outside for a change.

  I looked back over my shoulder as we left—carefully, because my head and neck still hurt like hell from Bruno’s ministrations. I’d spent the last three days at Cramer’s mansion, convalescing in what was nothing less than a small private hospital, under the watchful eyes of three competent and extraordinarily beautiful nurses. I had no complaints; but neither did I have any desire to become a repeat customer. Home was the place for me.