NINETY
MALONE OPENED HIS EYES AND KNEW WHAT HAD HAPPENED. HE rubbed a throbbing knot on the side of his head. Damn. Dorothea had no idea what she was doing.
He heaved himself up and caught a wave of nausea.
Crap-she may have cracked his skull.
He hesitated and allowed the frigid air to clear his brain.
Think. Focus. He'd set this whole thing up. But it wasn't playing out as expected, so he shook himself free of unwanted speculation and found Dorothea's gun in his pocket.
He'd confiscated Christl's, identical in make and model. When he'd returned it to her, though, he'd taken advantage of the situation to load the blank magazine that had originally come from Dorothea's. Now he popped the fully loaded magazine into the remaining Heckler Koch USP, forcing his foggy mind to concentrate, his fingers to move.
Then he staggered for the doorway.
STEPHANIE WAS IMPROVISING, USING WHATEVER SHE COULD THINK of to keep Charlie Smith off balance. Diane McCoy had played her part to perfection. Daniels had briefed them on how he'd sent McCoy to Ramsey, first to become a co-conspirator, then as an adversary, all to keep Ramsey in constant motion. "A bee can't sting you if it's flying," the president had observed. Daniels had also explained that when told about Millicent Senn and what had happened in Brussels years ago, McCoy had immediately volunteered. For the deception to have any chance at success, it required someone at her level, since Ramsey would never have dealt with, nor believed, subordinates. Once the president learned about Charlie Smith, McCoy had easily manipulated him, too. Smith was a vain, greedy soul, too accustomed to success. Daniels had informed them that Ramsey was dead-shot by Smith-and that Smith would appear, but unfortunately that was all the intel offered. McCoy confronting them had also been part of the script. What would happen after that was anybody's guess.
"Back to the front," Smith ordered, gesturing with the gun.
They walked to the foyer between the two front parlors.
"You have quite a problem," Stephanie said.
"I'd say you're the one with a problem."
"Really? You going to kill two deputy national security advisers and a high-level Justice Department agent? I don't think you want the kind of heat that'll bring. Shooting Ramsey? Who cares? We certainly don't. Good riddance. Nobody's going to bother you on that one. We're a different story."
She saw that her reasoning had struck home.
"You've always been so careful," Stephanie said. "That's your trademark. No traces. No evidence. Shooting us would be totally out of character. And besides, we may want to hire you. After all, you do good work."
Smith chuckled. "Right. I doubt you'd use my services. Let's get this straight. I came to help her"-he gestured to McCoy-"tend to a problem. She did pay me ten million, and let me kill Ramsey, so that buys her a favor. She wanted you two gone. But I can see that was a bad idea. I think the wise thing is for me to leave."
"Tell me about Millicent," Davis said.
Stephanie had wondered why he'd been so quiet.
"Why is she so important?" Smith asked.
"She just is. I'd like to know about her before you go."
DOROTHEA EASED FORWARD TOWARD THE TWO DOORWAYS. SHE pressed herself close to the corridor's right-side wall and watched for any change in the shadows ahead.
Nothing.
She came to the doorway's edge and quickly stole a glance inside the room to her right. Maybe ten meters square, lit from above. Nothing inside except a figure lying propped against the far wall.
A man wrapped in a blanket, wearing an orange nylon one-piece jumper. Dimly illuminated, like an old black-and-white photo, he sat cross-legged, his head inclined left, and stared at her with eyes that did not blink.
She was drawn toward him.
He was young, maybe late twenties, with dusty brown hair and a thin angular face. He'd died where he sat, perfectly preserved. She almost expected him to speak. He wore no coat, but his orange cap was the same from the one outside. US Navy. NR-1A.
Her father, during times when they'd hunted, had always cautioned her about frostbite. The body, he'd said, would sacrifice fingers, toes, hands, noses, ears, chins, and cheeks to keep blood flowing to vital organs. But if the cold persisted, and no relief was found, the lungs eventually hemorrhaged and the heart stopped. Death was slow, gradual, and painless. But the long conscious fight against it was the real agony. Especially when nothing could be done to stop it.
Who was this soul?
She caught a noise, behind her.
She whirled.
Someone appeared in the room across the hall. Twenty meters away. A black form, framed by another doorway.
"What are you waiting for, sister?" Christl called out. "Come and get me."
MALONE REENTERED THE BACK CORRIDORS OF THE BATH HALL and heard Christl call out to Dorothea. He turned left, which seemed the direction from which the words had come, and made his way down another long corridor that eventually spilled into a room forty feet ahead. He advanced, watchful of open doorways to his left and right. He gave a quick glance inside each as he kept moving. More storage and work spaces. Nothing of interest in any of the gloomy alcoves.
In the next to last one he halted.
Someone lay on the floor.
A man.
He entered the room.
The face was of a middle-aged Caucasian, with short rust-brown hair. He lay prone, arms at his side, feet stretched straight, like some human form of petrified rock, a blanket flat beneath him. He wore an orange navy regulation jumpsuit with the name johnson stitched to his left pocket. His mind made the connection. EM2 Jeff Johnson, Ship's Electrician. NR-1A.
His heart gave a sudden leap.
The seaman seemed to have simply lain down and allowed the cold to steal over him. Malone had been taught in the navy that no one froze to death. Instead, as cold air enveloped bare skin, vessels near the surface constricted, reducing heat loss, forcing blood to vital organs. Cold hands, warm heart, was more than a cliche. He recalled the warning signs. First a tingling, a stinging, a dull ache, then numbness and finally a sudden whitening. Death came once the body's core temperature fell and vital organs shut down.
Then you froze.
Here, in a world with no moisture, the body should have been perfectly preserved, but Johnson had not been so lucky. Black scraps of dead skin hung from his cheeks and chin. Mottled yellow scabs caked his face, some hardened into a grotesque mask. His eyelids had frozen shut, ice clinging to the lashes, and his last breaths were condensed into two icicles that hung from his nose to his mouth, like the tusks of a walrus.
Anger at the US Navy swelled inside him. The sorry no-good SOBs let these men die.
Alone.
Helpless.
Forgotten.
He heard footsteps and retreated back to the hall, glancing right just as Dorothea appeared in the last room, then disappeared through another doorway.
He let her go ahead.
Then followed.
NINETY-ONE
Smith stared down at the woman. She lay still in the bed. He'd waited for her to pass out, the effects of the alcohol working as the perfect sedative. She'd drunk a lot, more than usual, celebrating what she thought would be a marriage to a rising captain in the US Navy. But she'd chosen the wrong beau. Captain Langford Ramsey had no desire to marry her. Instead he wanted her dead, and he'd paid handsomely for that to happen.
She was lovely. Long, silky hair. Smooth, dark skin. Beautiful features. He folded back the blanket and studied her naked frame. She was thin and shapely, offering no sign of the pregnancy he'd been told existed. Ramsey had provided him with her naval medical records, which indicated an irregular heartbeat that had required two treatments over the past six years. Hereditary, most likely. Low blood pressure was also a concern.
Ramsey had promised him more work if this job went smoothly. He liked the fact they were in Belgium, as he'd found Europeans far less suspicious than Americans. But it shouldn't matter. The cause of the woman's death would be untraceable.