There they lay on a blanket under a nearly full moon and a sky studded with stars. They held hands and talked about the poetry of W.B. Yeats, whom Francis adored, and Vince, a pre-med student, tolerated as best he could. The two men were an unusual couple physically. Vince was just over five foot seven and weighed one-eighty. Most of it was solid, due to his obsessive weight-lifting at the gym, but it was obvious he had to work hard to keep the weight off. He had curly black hair that framed a soft, almost angelic face which wasn’t too different from his baby pictures, one of which his lover carried in his wallet.
Francis could make either sex drool; and that was Vince’s private joke when they were among co-eds, ‘drool fools’. Francis was six foot one, trim, without an ounce of fat. His white-blond hair was cut in the same style he had adopted as a sophomore at Christian Brothers Academy in New Jersey. He adored Vince with all his heart, and Vince worshipped him.
They came for Francis, of course.
He had been scouted, and purchased.
Chapter Sixty-Three
The three burly men were dressed in loose jeans, work boots and dark windbreakers. They were hoodlums. In Russian they were called baklany, or bandity. Scary demons wherever you met up with them; monsters from Moscow let loose in America by the Wolf.
They parked a black Pontiac Grand Prix on the street, then climbed the hill to the main campus at Holy Cross.
‘Ёбаные холмы, ненавижу!’ Fucking hills, I hate them. One of them was short of breath and complained about the steepness of the hill.
‘Заткнись, мудак!’ Quiet, asshole, said group leader Maxim, who liked to call himself a personal friend of the Wolf’s, though of course he wasn’t. No pakhan had real friends, but especially not the Wolf. He only had enemies, and almost never met those who worked for him. Even in Russia, he had been known as an invisible or mystery man. But here in the US, it was even worse. Virtually no one knew him by sight.
The three thugs watched the college students on the blanket as they held hands, then kissed and fondled.
‘Kiss like girls,’ said one of the Russian men with a nasty laugh.
‘Not like any girls I ever kiss.’
The three of them laughed and shook their heads in disgust. Then the hulking leader of the team strode forward, moving very fast, given his weight and size. He silently pointed toward Francis, and the two other men pulled the boy away from Vince.
‘Hey, what the hell is this?’ Francis started to yell, but was stopped by a wide strip of insulating tape pressed over his mouth, cutting off all sound for help.
‘Now you can scream,’ said one of the smirking hoods. ‘Scream like a girl. But nobody hears you anymore.’
They worked together quickly. While one thug wrapped more black tape around Francis’s ankles, the other bound his wrists tightly behind his back. Then he was stuffed inside a large duffel bag, the sort used to carry athletic equipment such as baseball bats or basketballs.
The leader, meanwhile, took out a thin, very sharp stiletto knife. He slit the heavy-set boy’s throat, just like he used to kill pigs and goats back in his home country. Vince hadn’t been purchased, but he might have seen the abduction team. Unlike the Couple, these men would never play their own little games, or betray the Wolf, or disappoint him. There would be no more mistakes. The Wolf had been explicit on that, clear in a dangerous way that only he could be.
‘Take the pretty boy. Quickly,’ said the leader of the team as they hurried back to their car. They tossed the bulging bag into the trunk of the Pontiac and got out of town.
The job was perfect.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Here was the deal as Francis saw it now, as he tried to be calm and logical about it. Nothing that had happened to him could possibly have happened! He couldn’t have been abducted a few hours ago by three absolutely terrifying men at the Arboretum on the campus of Holy Cross. It just couldn’t have happened! Nor could he have been transported in the trunk of a late-model black sedan for four, maybe five hours, to God only knows where.
Most important, Vince couldn’t be dead. That was what he had been told. But it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen.
So all of this had to be an impossibly bad dream, a nightmare of the sort that Francis Deegan hadn’t experienced since he was maybe three or four years old. And this man standing before him now, this absurd caricature with curly tufts of white-blond hair around the side of his balding head, dressed in a tight, black leather body suit – well, he couldn’t be real either. No way.
‘I’m very angry at you! I’m good and pissed!’ Mr Potter yelled right in Francis’s face. ‘Why did you leave me?’ he screeched. ‘Why? Tell me why? You must never leave me again! I get very scared without you and you know that. You know how I am. That was thoughtless of you, Ronald!’
Francis had already tried reasoning with the madman – Potter, he called himself, and no, not Harry. Mister Potter! But reasoning didn’t work. He’d told the raving lunatic several times that he had never seen him before. He wasn’t Ronald! Didn’t know any Ronalds! That had earned him a series of full-handed slaps across the face, one so hard that it bloodied his nose. The dweeby, Billy Idol-lookalike freak, was a lot stronger than he looked.
So out of desperation, Francis finally whispered an apology to the creep. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I won’t do it again.’
And then Mr Potter was hugging him fiercely and he was crying all over him. Wasn’t this too weird? ‘Oh God, I’m so glad you’re back. I was so worried about you. You must never leave me again, Ronald.’
Ronald? Who the hell was Ronald? And who was Mister Potter? What was going to happen now? Was Vince really dead? Had he been killed tonight back at the college? All of these questions were exploding inside Francis’s throbbing skull. So actually it was easy for him to cry in Potter’s arms, and even to hold on to him for dear life. To press his face into the fragrant black leather and whisper over and over again, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Oh my God, I’m sorry.’
And Potter answered, ‘I love you too, Ronald. I adore you. You’ll never leave me again, will you?’
‘No. I promise. I’ll never leave.’
Then Potter laughed, and pulled away sharply from the boy.
‘Francis, dear Francis,’ he whispered. ‘Who the hell is Ronald? I’m just playing with you, boy. This is just a game of mine. You’re in college, you must have figured that much out. So let’s play games, Francis. Let’s go out to the barn and play.’
Chapter Sixty-Five
I received a strange e-mail from Monnie Donnelley at my temporary office. An update of sorts. She hadn’t been suspended, Monnie said. Not yet anyway. Plus, she had some news for me.
Need to see you tonight. Same place, same time. Very important news. – M
So I arrived at the Command Post Pub just past seven and searched around for Monnie. What was this mysterious news she had? The bar area was crowded with customers, but I spotted her. Easy – she was the only woman. I also figured that Monnie and I might be the only non-Marines in the Command Post.