Turn Loose the Dragons Page 2

  “Sit down, turkey!”

  “First put the gun away,” Peters replied calmly. “You know I’m not armed.”

  The man’s response was to rap Peters on top of the skull with the barrel of his pistol. It was a sharp blow that caused the assassin’s knees to buckle momentarily and his eyes to tear, but its most devastating effect was humiliation; Peters knew he would have to respond. He waited a few seconds for his vision to clear, then slowly turned.

  He found himself looking up into the strikingly handsome face of a young man whom he judged to be no more than seventeen or eighteen. The boy’s wavy hair was close-cropped, his skin the color of very light coffee. Large black eyes mirrored surprise and uncertainty at Peters’ sudden if subtle act of defiance, and there was also the first, small glint of fear at what he saw in the shorter man’s strange, pale eyes. He was a big boy, Peters thought, but nonetheless a boy. Worse, from Peters’ point of view, the boy was obviously a civilian, a crude kiddy-thug swept up off the street and paid a few dollars to play heavy with a gun he’d probably never used in a situation he knew nothing about.

  Peters did not like practicing his skills on civilians; it was unprofessional and too often led to unforeseen complications. But the boy had left him no choice; he knew he could not allow himself to be humiliated in the eyes of the men who had to be watching and evaluating him from somewhere in the theater. And he most definitely would not allow himself to be shamed in his own eyes.

  “Sit down, you son-of-a-bitch, or your brains are going to be running out your nose.” Despite his words, the boy’s voice betrayed indecision. Peters watched the hand holding the gun begin to tremble slightly, dangerously.

  Peters recognized the very real danger of the unreliable weapon firing accidentally and killing him; still, he did not move. He knew he had to make a quick judgment as to whether the boy was simply overplaying his part or was following specific directions. It occurred to Peters that he might have made a serious mistake in not taking out the young Sierran earlier; the boy could represent a test, and he might well be expected to display his skills by disarming or even killing the boy before he would be dealt with seriously.

  He was measuring his angle of attack when his decision was made for him.

  “Enough, Roselle!” The voice, deeply resonant, rich and commanding, came from somewhere above him and at the back of the theater. “Back away, but keep your gun on him.”

  The boy scowled and stepped back a few paces. Peters turned his back on the Sierran and sat down in the chair.

  “I trust you’re the ‘Mr. Jones’ we’ve been expecting,” the deep voice continued laconically.

  Peters squinted, fixing his gaze on the first row of the balcony far at the rear of the theater, but the hot arc spot, while not shining directly in his eyes, created a peripheral barrier of glow he could not see beyond. He nodded curtly, then leaned back and crossed his left ankle over his right knee. He wished to appear relaxed and off balance, but in fact he was keenly alert and prepared to spring out of the chair in any direction in less time than it would take the hulking Roselle to pull the trigger on his pistol.

  “What’s your real name?”

  “I’m no more likely to give you my name than you are to give me yours,” Peters answered quietly but firmly. His voice carried easily in the vast, empty theater.

  “No? Roselle!”

  The boy lumbered forward and eagerly poked the bore of the pistol into Peters’ right ear.

  Peters willed himself to remain motionless, without expression, while he slowly counted off twenty seconds. When he finally spoke, his voice retained its soft, even timbre. “You don’t need my name: you have my face, which is more than you’ve given me.”

  “You’ve been given one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “And you have me here to see and talk to, which is what you paid for with your hundred thousand. You’ve seen my dossier; if you didn’t think I was capable of delivering what I say I can, you should have kept the talk fee and I could have stayed home. I came here to discuss a business matter, but I won’t talk while your man is trying to clean the wax out of my ear with a gun.”

  “You could be CIA!”

  “You could be CIA!” Peters shouted back, calculating that it was time to display some emotion. “There comes a time when people in our circumstances simply have to trust each other! This set-up is chickenshit, and I’m beginning to think that you’re chickenshit!”

  There was almost a minute of near silence, broken only by a low, almost imperceptible rustling sound of men whispering far away in the darkness.

  “You’re not what we expected.” It was a different voice, higher pitched, a tenor to the first man’s bass.

  “You should have gone uptown if you wanted to see a movie. Do you want to talk to an actor or do you want Salva killed?”

  Peters heard a sudden, sharp intake of breath to his right, and he knew that it was a corpse holding a gun on him; if the unseen men in the balcony hadn’t told their young employee what the meeting was about, it almost certainly meant they planned to kill the boy when he was no longer needed.

  There was another whispered exchange, and then the man with the deep voice said, “Your dossier indicates that you have a predilection for explosives. Do you plan to blow up Manuel?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “We want to know your plan.”

  “No.”

  “We insist.”

  “How I fulfill the contract is my business.”

  “The two million dollars you ask us to pay for your services makes it our business!”

  “No.” Peters was sweating heavily from the heat of the arc spot, a warmth accentuated by the thin cold circle of the gun bore in his ear. But it was time to make a move. “Take it easy, Roselle,” he said calmly. He slowly uncrossed his legs and stood up, ignoring the increased pressure of the gun barrel against his head.

  “Shit!” Roselle barked. “You want to die, turkey?!”

  The tenor shouted, “Don’t shoot, Roselle!”

  “It’s a question of security,” Peters said evenly, placing his hand on the boy’s chest and casually pushing him away. “I know I’m not CIA, but any one of you up there could be; your gunbearer here could be CIA, or even DMI. One of you might have some second thoughts later; organizations are penetrated, perceptions change. This condition won’t change: once I leave here, you can be absolutely certain that Manuel Salva is going to die. Assuming, of course, that we cut a deal.”

  “When?”

  “Within six months.” Peters hesitated, carefully considering how much he wished to reveal. Finally, he continued, “I’ll say this: if you’re in the right place at the right time, you’ll know about it almost the moment it happens. In any case, you’ll find out about it within minutes. That’s when you call my representative and arrange to give him the second million.”

  “How do you know we’ll pay?” the second man asked.

  Peters shrugged. “I could have your names in a month. I don’t know who you are, but I know what you are. It’s enough.”

  “What are we?” the deeper voice responded sharply.

  “You’re businessmen, a long time out of Angeles Blanca. You’ve done all right here with the money you made under Sabrito and brought out, but Manuel Salva still sticks in your craws even after all these years. He took away your whorehouses and casinos, he busted up your narcotics operations and white-slavery rings, and then he chased your asses out of the country. So much for patriotism and ideology. You’ve built up a good operational network here, but Miami can never be old Angeles Blanca. You’re still looking to even things up. It’s worth two million dollars to you to see Salva dead, and I don’t think you want to be looking over your shoulders while you’re enjoying your victory. Naturally, I’ll hunt for you if you don’t pay.”

  “We could find many men who would work for cheaper wages.”

  “You do what you want,” Peters replied evenly, “but I know I don’t ha
ve to remind you gentlemen that you’ll get exactly what you pay for. I can get the job done, and I may be able to give you a bonus.”

  “Please explain,” the tenor said warily.

  “I’m betting that you still dream of one day returning to San Sierra, so I’ll tell you this: my plan involves making the assassination look like a CIA operation. All hell is going to break loose in this country as well as in San Sierra when Salva dies, and you people just might be able to parlay the chaos into political gain. Considering what you stand to gain from my work, I’d argue that you’re getting me cheap.”

  There was more whispering; this time the disjointed, ghostly mumbling had a tense, underlying hum of excitement. It was the bass who finally spoke.

  “You say you can make it appear that Manuel has been assassinated by the CIA?”

  Peters shook his head. He was anxious to conclude the deal, and he had been willing to scatter additional chum for the sharks he needed for financing, but he would reveal no more. “I won’t try to lie to you. I can’t guarantee that. It’s a factor in my primary plan, but obviously I have to have a number of contingency plans. I’m contracting to kill Salva. You make of his death what you can.”

  “What?”

  “That’s enough!” Peters snapped, his voice taking on a hard edge of authority. “The meet’s over. You’ll contact my representative within twenty-four hours and make arrangements for the transfer of nine hundred thousand dollars, according to instructions he’ll give you. If that happens, Salva will be dead within six months—at which time you’ll repeat the procedure and transfer another million dollars. If my agent doesn’t hear from you, the deal is off, permanently. Whatever you decide, you won’t have a chance to change your minds.”

  Peters expected more whispering, but there was none. There was complete silence in the theater for almost two minutes, and then a third voice spoke.

  “Very well, Mr. Jones, the bargain is struck. You understand, of course, that you cannot hope to escape with our initial payment. You have exactly six months from this date to carry out your end of the bargain. If Manuel is not dead within that time, you will be hunted down and summarily executed. That contract won’t cost us anywhere near two million dollars, I assure you.”

  “I understand perfectly.”

  “Roselle, you may go. Leave the gun on the stage.”

  The young Sierran glared at Peters for a few moments, but finally put the gun down before turning and walking off into the darkness.

  “Good luck, Mr. Jones.”

  Peters nodded and casually rose from the chair; instead of descending from the stage and going back up the center aisle, he walked slowly, unchallenged, into the wings. Once hidden in darkness, he moved very quickly. He removed his boots and picked them up in his left hand, then ran swiftly and silently along the rear lip of the stage, making his way by the shafts of smoky yellow light that knifed through rips in the rotting backdrop curtain. He came to the end of the stage and leaped down to the pitted concrete floor, landing lightly on the balls of his feet barely a body’s length from the startled Roselle. The Sierran had just lit a cigarette and was about to step through a backstage exit.

  The burly young man spun around and almost tripped over his own feet. Like an actor who had forgotten his lines, he allowed his face to slip into a loose mask of confused emotions. Peters wondered idly if the boy had been thinking of the conspiracy of which he had just learned, or perhaps of a woman he was on his way to meet. It made no difference to the assassin.

  “You forgot to return my knife, Roselle,” Peters said easily.

  The boy swallowed hard and cleared his throat before finally finding his voice. “Get the fuck away from me, turkey. I’ll give you your knife; I’ll stick it straight up your ass.”

  “No, I don’t think so. You got a little too excited, sonny. You should’t have hit me with the gun. Now I have to hurt you in order to even things up.”

  The boy started to reach for his back pocket, but Peters had already leaped into the air. He rolled into a half-turn as his body reached an apogee at the level of the boy’s head, then lashed out with a perfectly aimed side kick that caught the Sierran on the side of the neck, just below the jaw. Both men fell to the floor at the same time, Roselle in a splayed heap and Peters on the four points of his hands and feet, perfectly balanced.

  Peters felt for a pulse and was relieved to find that the boy was only unconscious. He was convinced that Roselle would soon be dead anyway, and he did not wish to perform any service, no matter how small, for his employers without pay. His business with Roselle was a personal matter.

  Peters retrieved his knife from the boy’s pocket, then straddled the massive chest and slowly, precisely, began to slice off the right ear.

  POMONA, NEW YORK

  Thursday, January 3; 4:00 P.M.

  Alexandra Finway

  It had begun to snow heavily. There was no wind, and the thick flakes tumbled down through the still, cold air like chips of weightless white marble, accumulating rapidly, muffling sound and light in the densely wooded residential section of Rockland County where the tall, statuesque woman ran. It was the nadir of an oppressive afternoon, with mothers and their children seeking comfort indoors and workers not yet on their way home. The only sound on the narrow, winding road was the rhythmic squeak of the woman’s running shoes on the fallen snow, punctuated by her heavy breathing.

  The firm, full contours of Alexandra Finway’s body were evident even under the loose folds of her gray warm-up suit, and she ran with the powerful, steady, and confident lope of an experienced runner and trained athlete. She had strong yet sensual features, accented by high cheekbones now blanched ivory by the force of her passage through the freezing air. Her dark brown eyes were focused intently on the roadway at her feet as she tried to concentrate on the strange, almost mystical pleasure of the sensory messages transmitted to her by her extended body. Her long gray-streaked black hair, held back from her face by a crimson terrycloth band that was now stained with sweat despite the frigid air, bobbed in a rippled wave back and forth across her shoulders in counterpoint to the rhythmic sway of her body.

  Alexandra grimaced with effort as she accelerated into the final leg of her daily six-mile run, racing against the rapidly approaching darkness and the now-familiar feelings of bitterness and frustration that had begun to rise in her, snapping at her heart like some great black mastiff rushing from a hidden driveway of the soul.

  Tears came without warning, erupting suddenly through an unsuspected fault in the normally well-tended intellectual membrane surrounding her emotions. Sobbing uncontrollably, Alexandra stumbled off the road into a thick copse of bare trees and sat down on a log. She leaned back against a tree trunk and, still sobbing, raised her face to the sky. The heavy snowflakes melted in her tears, producing a cold, stinging sensation everywhere but on the tiny, star-shaped areas of scar tissue beneath each eye—milky crosses that plastic surgery had been unable to erase and that Alexandra no longer even bothered trying to hide with makeup.

  Her weeping subsided, then finally stopped altogether. She took a deep, shuddering breath that hurt her lungs and made her cough, then shook herself. Tears and sweat were freezing on her face and body, chilling her and threatening hypothermia. She could get very sick, Alexandra thought; she could catch pneumonia, which would solve nothing and would probably be nothing more than a childish, self-destructive attempt to punish John for … for whatever he was doing. And for not talking to her about it.

  “Damn you, John,” Alexandra whispered, suppressing another sob that stirred uncomfortably in her chest. “Why won’t you at least tell me? Can’t you give me that?”

  Shivering, she finally rose and walked stiffly back out of the woods to the road. She was very cold. The snow that had spilled over the tops of her sneakers was melting, chilling her feet. She quickly performed a series of limbering exercises to loosen her muscles, then jogged the rest of the way home.

  The telephone
began to ring as Alexandra entered the house. An attractive, raven-haired teenager stepped out of a small den off the living room, smiled and waved when she saw her mother.

  “I’ll get it, Kara,” Alexandra said to her fourteen-year-old daughter. “Where’s Michael?”

  “Kristen took him sledding on the hill down the street.”

  “Would you get me a big towel, sweetheart?”

  “Sure, Mom,” the girl said, turning and starting to walk away. “I’ll bring you some aspirin, too. You look like you need it.”

  Alexandra picked up the telephone receiver. “Hello?” she said, her voice warped by a shudder.

  There was a brief pause, then a man said softly, “Alexandra?”

  Alexandra’s mouth suddenly felt parched. Her stomach muscles fluttered and contracted painfully, making her feel nauseous. “Who is this?” she asked in a strangled voice, knowing. It had been many years since she had heard that voice, yet Alexandra still found it deeply hypnotic, like the hooded, swaying head of a cobra. It was a voice that was instantly recognizable, a poisonous sound striking at her across a barrier of space and time.

  “C’mon, baby. A lot of things may have changed in fifteen years, but my voice isn’t one of them: you know who it is. Are you free to talk?”

  Alexandra felt light-headed, and it seemed to her that the scars beneath her eyes had begun to burn. Afraid she was going to faint, she leaned forward slightly and braced herself on the phone stand while she concentrated on breathing deeply and regularly. The vertigo passed.

  “Alexandra?” The voice had risen slightly.

  “Hey, Mom? You okay?”

  Alexandra turned to find her daughter standing behind her. Concern showed clearly in the girl’s dark eyes. “I’m all right, Kara,” Alexandra said, muffling the mouthpiece against her shoulder as she took the large, thick beach towel held out by the girl. “Thanks for getting me the towel.”