Dark Chant In A Crimson Key Read online

  "I want you to listen to me very carefully, Inspector," I said, getting up off the suitcase and standing very straight, my arms at my sides. My voice was steady, and my legs no longer felt wobbly. I was certainly still very confused, but I had willed the confusion to contract, back off, and sit quietly in a corner of my mind while I struggled to straighten things out. What was perfectly clear to me, the only important thing at the moment, was that, whether I liked it or not, I had become one of Duane

  Insolers' "players" in a game where I had no rule book. I did not want to be run over and crushed by events over which I had no control, leaving as my legacy a final case where I had ended up pawn and village idiot. "I have not, repeat not, lied to you at any time. I came to Zurich for the express purpose I explained to you, and for none other. I do not know about any meeting or any money. I do know that somebody has set me up; they're using me, or my name, and I don't know why. I propose that we help each other find out the answers. Let me work with you."

  "I simply do not believe you, Dr. Frederickson," Moliere replied coldly. "I find it incomprehensible how a man of your professional stature could have allowed himself to become gratuitously—if you are to be believed—involved in a matter such as this in the first place. Now you choose to lie in an attempt to cover your tracks. I would ask my colleague from the Zurich police to arrest you right now, but I don't care to deal with the furor and distracting attention of the international media I'm sure that would cause. There are already far too many foreign interests meddling in this affair." He paused, knit his brows, and glared at me. "What I will do is take steps to make certain you will remain available should you have a change of heart and choose to cooperate."

  It was the policeman who put out his hand. "I will take your passport, sir. And you will please confine your movements to the city of Zurich. If you do not, you will be arrested, despite Interpol's wishes."

  * * *

  Interpol and the Zurich police weren't the only disgruntled campers in Switzerland. I was seething as I made my way to the elevator. Even another village idiot would have been able to figure out that this village idiot had been set up by the man for whom I had been so willing to stand vigil only a short time before. At the moment I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on Emmet P. Neuberger, but, since John Sinclair had apparently beat me to him, I was going to have to settle for a substitute. It was time for another chat with Hyatt Pomeroy, and if he didn't have some of the answers I wanted, he was going to wish he did.

  I strode through a spacious, marble-floored lobby crowded with American tourists filing off a fleet of gleaming silver and red buses lined up at the curb just outside the entrance. As I headed for the desk to order up a cab, I was surprised—and not displeased—to see a familiar figure in a ridiculously ill-fitting chauffeur's uniform, only partially hidden by a huge potted plant, sitting very erect in a straight-backed chair set against a wall near the main desk. Carlo spotted me, bounced up from his chair, and limped over to me, his untipped wooden cane tapping loudly on the stone floor.

  "Forgive me, signor," he said, gasping for breath as he reached me. "I know you told me I should go, but I was ordered to stay with you until Saturday. I was hoping you wouldn't mind if I just sat here in the lobby during the day in case you needed me after all. I hope you're not angry."

  "I'm not angry with you, Carlo," I said, stepping to one side to avoid being crushed by a large knot of people elbowing their way toward the main desk. "In fact, I'm glad to see you. I have to go back to the Cornucopia offices."

  The big, crippled Italian nodded eagerly. "I have the car parked in back. You wait outside. I won't be a minute."

  As Carlo hobbled off toward a rear exit, I pushed through the glass revolving doors at the entrance, picked my way through more men, women, and children who were standing by their luggage as they waited for the crush inside to ease, and took up a position at the curb behind the last bus in line. Suddenly, a hand roughly gripped my shoulder and yanked me around, nearly pulling me off my feet. I found myself staring up into the craggy, unshaven face of a man, probably American, who looked to be in his early thirties. He also looked as if he hadn't slept in days, and he smelled terrible. There was a look of desperation, even terror, in his wide, bloodshot eyes.

  "What have you done?!" he screamed at me, his foul-smelling spittle flying in my face. "Why didn't you meet us like you said you would! Furie, Henry, and Jacques are dead! Why weren't—?!"

  The terrified man with the haunted eyes stopped in midsentence as he suddenly looked up at something behind me in the driveway. His mouth dropped open and he gagged, as if he wanted to scream but couldn't. The expression on his face had climbed a notch or two above terror; this was a man looking at his own death—and maybe mine. It seemed a good time to part company. Without wasting time to turn to see what had attracted his attention, I dropped to the sidewalk and rolled to my left a split second before a swarm of bullets from a sputtering automatic weapon ripped through the space where my head had been and into the chest of the American I had left behind. The deadly steel spray also cut into the flesh of the men, women, and children from the tour group who had been standing nearby, and my own howl of disbelief and horror mingled with their screams. I stopped rolling, looked back in the direction from which death had so suddenly appeared.

  A gray Peugeot was stopped in the center of the driveway, and a man wearing a black hood and wielding an Ingram MAC-10 machine pistol was standing, legs slightly apart, by the open door on the passenger's side.

  "Nooo!" I screamed as the man swung the machine pistol in my direction, knowing that a single squeeze of the trigger would mean the extinguishing of even more lives in the crowd of hysterical, terrified people milling around on the sidewalk to my sides and behind me, still in the line of fire.

  I rolled again as the gunman fired, howled again with horror, rage, and dismay as the spray of bullets ricocheted off the area of concrete sidewalk where I had been and into more of the screaming people around me.

  Horror upon horror; the cost of my trying to stay alive was the rising death toll of the people around me—including, I had to assume, at least one infant I had seen being carried in its mother's arms.

  I kept rolling until there was a bus between the gunman and me, then sprang to my feet and darted into the narrow space between that bus and the one parked in front of it. The space might well turn out to be a death trap, but I felt I had no choice but to stay there; the logical thing to do was to keep moving in and around the buses until I could make a break for the lobby of the hotel, but that would only make me an elusive target moving against a backdrop of dozens of not-so-elusive targets, and I could not bear the thought of any more innocent people being killed or maimed because of me, simply because they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I inched forward in my narrow, open-ended steel coffin and peered out from between the buses. The gunman immediately saw me, brought the machine pistol around, and pulled the trigger. I dropped to the ground as bullets smacked against the buses, some penetrating the steel skin, others ricocheting back and forth above my head. When the firing stopped, I looked up; the gunman had ejected an empty clip and was reaching into the baggy pocket of his jacket for another.

  The odds were heavily against my being able to get to the man before he inserted the second clip, but that was the only acceptable option I had. I got to my feet and was about to sprint forward when I heard the screech of tires off to my left. An instant later my huge, black limousine with a grim-faced Carlo at the wheel came careening around a corner of the service driveway leading to the back of the hotel. The car hit a speed bump, sailed into the air, landed in a shower of sparks as its frame scraped the concrete. It kept gathering speed as it approached. The assassin's driver must have seen the oncoming juggernaut in his rearview mirror, for the Peugeot suddenly shot forward and veered sharply to the left, bouncing up over a curb and chewing up sod as it sped across the hotel's spacious lawn toward the street bey
ond, abandoning the gunman.

  The assassin realized his peril a moment too late. He had just finished inserting the fresh clip into his machine pistol and was preparing to resume firing when his driver had sped away. Confused, he started to wheel around, and managed to squeeze off one brief burst of fire that went harmlessly into the air just before the limousine hit him. There was a sound like a ripe melon bursting, and then the gunman, minus his gun, shoes, and jacket, was thrown through the air a hundred feet or more, landing down the driveway with a dull thump, shattered limbs pointing in all directions at odd angles.

  Feeling both numb and cold, with the screams of the dead, dying, and terrified echoing in my ears, I slowly walked forward to examine the corpse of the man who had been willing to kill so many others in his effort to kill me.

  The articles of clothing not left behind in the driveway had been shredded by the forces of impact and scraping on the concrete. The man appeared to be Japanese, or perhaps Korean. On his bare back, clearly visible even among the framing carnage of bloody flesh and splintered bone, was what appeared to be a large tattoo that had been applied not only with needles and ink but perhaps with a branding iron as well. The combination of tattooed skin and scar tissue formed a grisly picture of tongues of jet-black flame erupting over his back and across his shoulders.

  And then Carlo was beside me. He laid one huge hand on my shoulder, as if he sensed that I needed some steadying. "Signor, are you all right? I heard the gunfire while I was bringing the car around. I saw what was happening, and ... I did not know what else to do but what I did."

  "You saved my life, and probably the lives of a lot of others," I said in a hoarse stranger's voice as I looked up into the soulful black eyes of the Italian. "I owe you."

  I glanced once more at the assassin's corpse with its burn-tattoo of black flame, then turned around and started back toward the sidewalk to see if there was anything I could do to help the gunman's real victims. The air was filled with a cacophony of wails, both mechanical and human. There was a blur of movement all around me, but off to my right I glimpsed Pierre Moliere and the policeman who had been with him urgently directing the driver of the first ambulance that had arrived toward the bodies that were strewn on the sidewalk near the spot where I had been standing when the gunman had first opened fire on me. I headed toward the two men, suddenly feeling oddly distanced from the horror that was all around me, although I was filled with a bitter sorrow for the people who had died this day simply because they had been standing too close to me. But beneath the sorrow was a deep, white-hot core of abiding rage I knew would now govern my every action, consume every waking moment, and which would not be extinguished until I found a way to do what I now knew had to be done.

  Chapter Six

  Veil, it's Mongo."

  "Mongo! Jesus, I've been trying to reach you for the past three hours. That massacre at your hotel is all over the news here. What the hell's going on over there? Are you all right?"

  "No, I'm not all right," I replied, looking down at the front of my shirt and slacks still spattered and smeared with blood. I had lost track of time. First there had been my feeble efforts to help the victims, and then the hours spent in a police station being grilled as Pierre Moliere had looked on, anger and suspicion in his eyes. I was certain Moliere and the police were convinced, as Insolers had at first been convinced, that I was concealing important information about my role in events, and I had been surprised when they'd finally let me go. But they still had my passport, and I had acquired a not-so-subtle tail comprised of two plainclothes policemen in a pale blue Volvo. "The bullets that killed those people were meant for me."

  "Get out of there now, Mongo," Veil said tightly. "When you hang up, go straight to the airport and—" "The police took my passport."

  There was a short pause, then, "I'll be there as soon as I can, Mongo. I'll bring you false identity papers."

  "You'll bring me nothing, Veil," I replied, noting that I sounded even colder than I'd intended, and I'd certainly intended to sound cold. "False papers wouldn't do me much good, now would they? I'm not exactly inconspicuous. Besides, I wouldn't leave now even if I could. It's too late for that."

  "Mongo, listen to me—"

  "No, Veil, you listen to me, because I have a few things I want to say to you. You may or may not be willing to talk about Chant Sinclair now, but if you are, I don't care to hear any of it. It's also too late for that. I don't know what's going on over here, and I don't know if I would have acted differently if I'd had more information, but it occurs to me there's a possibility that if you'd leveled with me at the beginning concerning what you knew or suspected about Sinclair, instead of giving me a half-baked warning you must have known I'd ignore, a number of men, women, and children would still be alive, and another man wouldn't be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. I don't care how many people have been looking for Sinclair, or how many years they've been looking; I intend to find the sadistic, murdering son-of-a-bitch, and I intend to kill him before he kills me, or kills anybody else who just happens to be in the line of fire. Any information I need, I'll get myself. I no longer consider you my friend, and I want as little to do with you as possible. Is that straight enough for you?"

  "I hear you," Veil answered in a flat tone. "May I say something now?"

  "Not quite yet. Now that you know how I feel about our relationship, I'm going to ask you to do something for me. I'd like you to touch base with Mary, reassure her. I'd call her myself, but she must have heard about the killings by now, and I'm not sure how she's handling this. I'm just not ready to talk to her yet, and I'm not sure she'd be able to concentrate on what I have to say. I need certain things done. I'm in pressure city here, and I'm just a bit strung-out. What I need on that end is someone who can keep a clear head in a heavy emergency, and you have the clearest head under pressure of anyone I know. If you don't want to do it after the things I said, just say so. I wanted to be honest with you up front."

  "I'll talk to Mary," Veil said in the same flat tone. "What else do you require?"

  "I thank you for that," I answered curtly. "Got some paper and a pencil?"

  "Just tell me."

  "After you talk to Mary, get in touch with Harper in Florida. Hold her off. She's supposed to land here Saturday, which I think is the day after tomorrow, and there's no way I want her anywhere near me. Just tell her I'm safe and that I'll call her as soon as I can."

  "Harper's not going to go for it, Mongo." Veil paused, then added drily, "I can hear her now. She's going to call you a recidivist sexist pig for trying to stop her from helping you. You should call her yourself, no matter how strung-out you are."

  "I don't need advice, Veil!" I snapped. "Just action! Simply tell her I don't want her around, okay?"

  "I'll tell her. How long has it been since you've slept?"

  "I really don't know. I'm a little foggy on time right now. I tried to call Garth, but he'd already checked out of his hotel, which means he's probably already in the air. He's due to arrive in a couple of hours at JFK, TWA flight two ninety-one from Brussels. He hasn't heard about what happened, or he'd be here. When he does hear about the massacre and finds out it happened at the hotel where I'm staying, he's going to figure I'm involved, and he's going to hop on the first available flight to Zurich. I would dearly love to have Garth here, but I need him there. I want you to meet him at the airport, be there when he gets off the plane. Mary's supposed to pick him up, so you'll have to coordinate things with her. I'm not sure how you're going to want to handle that, but I'd prefer that you talk to Garth first about the details, so that he understands the situation."

  "I'll take care of it, Mongo."

  "I think he'll want to stay in New York at the brownstone, because he'll need New York's research facilities. He may also have to call in a lot of IOUs to get the information I need, but he'll know to do it. I need absolutely every scrap of information on John Sinclair he can get, and I don't mean just th
e stuff that's been printed in the newspapers over the years. He should call Mr. Lippitt and ask him if he can tell us anything about a secret military operation in Vietnam code-named Cooked Goose, and Sinclair's possible involvement in it. In fact, if he can manage it, he should try to get hold of Sinclair's complete military record. Make certain there's nobody around when you talk to Garth about this, and Garth should make certain he calls Lippitt on a secure line. I think we're talking dangerous data here."

  "Okay."

  "The gunman at the hotel was probably Japanese. He had a big mark on his back that looked as if it had been made by tattooing over and around burn scar tissue. The tattoo was of black flames. It could be a yakuza mark, and I'd like Garth to see if he can identify it."

  "Okay."

  "You don't want me to repeat anything?"

  "That's not necessary. Where can I reach you?"

  "There's one other thing. Tell Garth to find out all he can about a man by the name of R. Edgar Blake, and make a note of any countess he may come across in the course of his research endeavors."

  "I've got it. Anything else?"

  "Not that I can think of offhand."

  "Where can I reach you?"

  "I'm not sure. I plan on keeping an even lower profile than usual. If the police will allow it, I think I'm going to move to a different hotel; obviously, the wrong people know I'm in this one. But until you hear differently, you can call or leave messages for me here. Just be careful what you say, since the desk clerk is reporting my messages to the police. My phone will probably also be tapped, if it isn't already; I'm making this call from a phone in the hotel lobby. I'll get back to you. Leave your-machine on."