cover. She washed her face with water from the tap, changed into sweats and sneakers, left the mansion through the rear, and started her run. Five miles later, sweaty and her lungs percolating nicely, she returned to the house. The smells of coffee brewing and bacon and eggs cooking drifted out from the kitchen. She quickly showered, enduring the last minute of rinsing with only cold water as the old pipes muttered and clanked in protest of their usage. She changed into jeans, flats, and a black V-neck sweater with a white tee underneath and headed downstairs.
There sometimes could be as many as twenty people at Harrowsfield, though today she knew the number was closer to ten, some of them historians doing research in the library or in a set of offices set up on both the main and second floors. Their one goal was to identify the next monster the team would go after. There were linguists immersing themselves in some language from lands where new evil lurked. Still other researchers were poring over old cable communications, pilfered diplomatic records, and handwritten accounts of atrocities smuggled out of third world countries. The task was harder now, she knew. The Nazis had been meticulous record-keepers. Subsequent sadists, operating in many different places, weren’t nearly as accommodating in leaving a trail of their pervasive wickedness.
Mallory had used great care in vetting all of the people who worked here. There was no formal recruitment, of course. One couldn’t put an advertisement in the paper seeking justice-minded vigilantes comfortable with killing folks who desperately deserved it.
In her case, Mallory had sought Reggie out at university where he was a visiting scholar. After a months-long courtship of sorts, he’d broached the subject of bringing to justice Nazis who’d fled Germany before the fall. When she’d enthusiastically agreed with the goal, he’d gone a bit further, finally ending with the theoretical possibility of saving the world the price of a trial by also playing the roles of judge, jury, and executioner.
More months had passed while he allowed her to stew on that. When she’d voluntarily returned to him with more questions, he’d answered them, to a certain extent. When he could sense her commitment deepening he’d let her meet with some other folks. Whit was one and Liza another. Another month passed and then Mallory brought her some news clippings of an old man who’d been found slain in his lavish home in Hong Kong. Though it had never been made public, Mallory told her that the fellow had been identified as a former concentration camp commander and one of Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand men. They had talked long into the night of the ethics involved in such an action. It was never explicitly said, but Reggie suspected that the professor and other people she’d met through him had been behind the killing. By then she desperately wanted to be part of it.
It was only then that he had brought her to Harrowsfield. She went through an array of tests to determine if she had the psychological makeup to be a member of the group. She passed that barrier easily enough, demonstrating a rigid coldness that surprised even her. Next was physical fitness. A fine athlete, she was pressed to levels of strength and endurance she never knew she possessed. Her lungs near collapse, she willed her battered body over treacherous terrain she didn’t realize existed in the bucolic English countryside. To his credit, Whit Beckham was next to her every step of the way, though he’d already endured this when he first signed up. After that was the specialized training: weapons, martial arts, and survival skills in myriad challenging conditions.
In the classroom she learned how to research a target and study their background to gain valuable intelligence. She was taught foreign languages and how to lie with aplomb; how to act out roles and discern when other people were doing the same. She came to learn how to trail someone so stealthily that they would only know they were being followed when she walked up to them. These and dozens of other skills were drilled into her to such an extent that she no longer had to think about them.
After her training was complete she’d acted as support on three missions, two where Whit was the lead and another where Richard Dyson, an experienced Nazi exterminator and since retired, had completed the final act. Her first mission in the lead had involved an elderly Austrian living in Asia who’d helped Hitler kill hundreds of thousands of people simply because they worshipped under the Star of David. She’d gotten into his circle by becoming a nanny to his young wife’s child. The monster had been married five times. He had enough wealth obtained through the theft of antiquities during the war that he could keep divorcing and remarrying and still live in great luxury. They had one child, a five-year-old boy conceived through artificial insemination using donated sperm. Reggie suspected that the old Nazi had selected the sperm donor based on the color of his skin, hair, and height—namely, white, blond, and tall.
She’d worked with them for one month, and in that time the husband had made a half dozen passes at her. From what he’d told her once while he was in a drunken stupor, she could easily become wife number six if she played her cards right. One night she came by prearrangement to visit him in his bedroom—by his choice he and his wife kept separate boudoirs. He was again drunk and easily handled by Reggie. When he was tightly bound and his mouth gagged, she pulled the pictures from a hiding place and showed him the faces of some of his victims, a strict requirement of all the missions. At the end of their lives the monsters had to know that justice had finally caught up to them.
The fear he showed had amused her at first. But when the time came to finish the job, Reggie had hesitated. She’d never told anyone this. Not Whit and certainly not the professor. Her encouraging words to Dominic had also left out this piece of personal history. The monster had looked at her with pleading eyes. His gaze begged her not to do it. During her training she’d been told that this moment would come. And she’d also been instructed that no training in the world could fully prepare her for it.
And they’d been right.
Her resolve seemed to pour out of her with each tear shed by what was now a harmless old man. As she lowered the knife, she saw the relief in his eyes. She could just say that her cover had been blown and the mission was a failure. No one would ever know.
There were two things that prevented that from happening. One was the mocking sneer that emerged in the man’s eyes as he saw her weaken. The second was the picture of Daniel Abramowitz, age two, with a bullet hole in his small head. The photo had come from the monster’s own archives, which he’d lovingly assembled over the years he ran the camp.
She had plunged the knife into his chest until the hilt smacked his sternum. She gave the blade first an upward and then a downward jerk, and performed the same motion horizontally, severing arteries and destroying heart chambers, as she’d been taught to do. The sneer was gone from the old man now. For one long second, while life still remained, she saw in his countenance hatred, fear, rage, fear again, and then simply the flat, glassy stare of death.
“May God understand why I do this,” she whispered, the words that had become a ritual for her at the end of each mission.
Reggie had never hesitated again.
CHAPTER
11
FROM THE KITCHEN Reggie grabbed some buttered toast and put it on a plate with fried sausages and a sliced apple. Also juggling a cup of hot tea, she carried it all to the library. As she entered, Professor Mallory looked up from a large book written in Polish, took out his pipe, and smiled. “I thought I heard you come in last night. Your car has a distinctive sound.”
“It’s called a wretched exhaust pipe.” She sat down next to him, lined her toast with the sausages, bit into it, and drank her tea. “Where’s Whit?”
“I don’t believe he’s here yet. But I expect him shortly.”
“I wanted to talk to you about the personnel for the Kuchin job.”
Mallory laid aside his book. His bow tie was still askew, but this morning his shirt-collar points were both directed to where they should be and it looked like he’d actually combed his hair.
“Do you have thoughts?” he asked.
“I believe Whit should play a prominent role.”
“Did he ask you to talk to me?”
“Not in so many words.”
“It’s difficult for you, I know. And him.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve supplanted him as the leader in the field, Regina.”
The professor was the only one among them who referred to her by her proper name.
“I don’t see it exactly that way.”
“But it is exactly that way.”
“You know, Professor, quite frankly, you could use a bit more tact.”
He smiled at this mild reproach. “If you try to gloss over the truth or massage the facts all you’re doing is heightening your chances of arriving at an erroneous conclusion.”
“Whit is a good asset.”
“I completely agree with you. And if it were women we were going after we would probably have greater use of him in the lead role. Unfortunately, our targets trend to the male and heterosexual side.”
“He’s gone after men. Successfully.”
“Successful to the extent that they were terminated, yes. But we like to handle our work under the radar. For example, if we left evidence behind of why we had ended the lives of these people and that became public, you know what would happen?”
“The remaining ones would hide even deeper. But there are no more Nazis.”
“It doesn’t disprove the point. And let me correct you. There are no more Nazis of which we are aware. New intelligence may lead to more work in that arena. But take Kuchin. We dispose of him and word leaks out, other Eastern European mass murderers with new lives—and there are at least a dozen we’re researching at present—would be forewarned.”
“But we don’t broadcast why we’re killing them. It’s never made public.”
“But that’s not the only way to warn someone.”
“I’m not getting what you mean.”
Mallory said, “Your first lead target was the old Austrian married five times. You tied him up and did your job, but you ransacked the house and busted a door lock, so it looked like a robbery. And you didn’t do a bunk and scamper away but rather stayed on during the investigation so no one suspected you of anything. Now, let’s take Whit. This was before your time, but in one lead assignment he killed a former Gestapo chieftain by shooting him in the genitalia. He was supposed to inject the fellow with a poison that dissolves in the body in two minutes and is untraceable. He claims that the bottle the poison was in broke. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that putting a bullet in a man’s private region and letting him bleed out is a revenge-style killing. In fact, it could well have jeopardized future targets.”
“Maybe the bottle did break. Everything doesn’t go smoothly in the field.”
The genial look faded from Mallory’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry, I left out one piece of critical information, didn’t I? Whit painted a bloody swastika on the man’s bloody forehead and had the effrontery to ask me if I thought that was too subtle.”
Reggie suppressed a smile. “Oh.”
“Quite right, oh. The international press had a positive field day and made our future work that much more difficult. Mr. Beckham and I had a row about that one.”
“I’m sure.”
“In Huber’s case we already know that they believe he died after attempting to have sex with the beautiful Barbara, and that she fled in fear of retribution. No one is pursuing it, because the man was ninety-six years old and apparently died extremely happy.” The professor could not resist a smile at this remark.
“But we do have an advantage in this case. The world has no idea Evan Waller is Fedir Kuchin. Even if he is killed under mysterious circumstances, other men in hiding like Kuchin will probably take no note.”
The professor shook his head. “No, no. We can’t count on that. There will be press. There will be inquiries. Someone somewhere may recognize the man. He has kept a very low profile for decades. Even with his so-called philanthropic work, no one gets to see him. It’s all done through intermediaries. But still we can’t draw unnecessary attention to the matter.”
“Well, I can’t fake having sex with the man and then have him conveniently die like I did with Huber. There are limits to what I can do. Perhaps a businessman like him has other enemies and we can foist the blame there. What do we know about other dealings he might have had?”
Mallory shrugged. “Not that much. Our people had other priorities. They were looking for Kuchin, not a possibly dishonest entrepreneur. I agree he might have other interests that would satisfy his evil nature, but I don’t know what they are and we have no time to look for them now.”
Reggie sat back. “I still think Whit should be in on this one. Kuchin looks well capable of taking care of himself. I won’t be able to single-handedly overpower him. It needs to be a total team effort at the end.”
“It’s true, our prey are getting younger and stronger, aren’t they?” He tugged absently at his beard. “I largely agree with you. You will need muscle on this. And whilst he has some shortcomings, Whit certainly has that. You can tell him I said so.”
Reggie looked irritated. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”
Mallory looked bemused. “We don’t get on that well. Now, let’s get down to some details before the meeting officially starts.”
“Why do you do this, Professor?” she said suddenly.
“Do what? You mean smoke this foul-smelling pipe?”
“You’re not Jewish. You’ve never mentioned that anyone you loved ever suffered at the hands of any of these vile creatures. So why?”
He eyed her steadily. “Does a man need a reason to pursue justice?”
“Indulge me.”
“Not today. Perhaps another time. I can tell you one thing. You’ll enjoy your little abode in Provence.”
“Really? And why is that?”
“It’s a five-level villa with extraordinary vistas of the Luberon valley, and you can walk to the quaint village of Gordes in under five minutes. Horribly expensive, the lease payments are more than I paid for my cottage. And that’s not the best part.”
“What’s the best part?”
Mallory’s bushy eyebrows twitched in delight. “It’s right next to where our Fedir Kuchin will be staying.”
CHAPTER
12
EVAN WALLER sat back in his desk chair and read the spreadsheet for the fifth time. He loved numbers; his nimble mind grasped their complexities easily, massaging data into precise conclusions. He made his decision, rose, poured himself a slender finger of Macallan’s, and drank it. He put the glass down, picked up a pistol, and faced the man bound to the chair.
“Anwar, what am I to do with you? Tell me.” His voice was deep, cultured, and overlaid with traces of his Eastern European origins. His tone was that of a disappointed father to a misbehaving child.
Anwar was a short man with a thickened, soft body who slumped in his chair, his arms and legs tightly bound. His face was round and his skin would normally have been a light brown color, but now yellow and purplish bruises clustered on his cheeks, forehead, and jawline. A knife cut traveled from his left cheek to his split nostril. The blood there had congealed and blackened. His dark hair was slicked back solely with the sweat of fear.
“Please, Mr. Waller, please. It will never happen again, sir, I swear.”
“But how can I trust you now? Tell me. I want to find a way. I value your services, but I need to know I can trust you.”
“It was her. She put me up to this.”
“Her? Tell me.”
Anwar let a trickle of blood drop from his mouth and onto his pants leg before answering. “My wife. The bitch spends money like it is water. You pay me well but it is never enough for her. Never!”
Waller sat down in a chair across from the captive. He put the gun down and looked intrigued. “So Gisele put you up to this? To steal from me to cover her spending?” He clapped his hands together. The so
und was like a gunshot and Anwar flinched. “I had my doubts about her from the beginning, Anwar, I told you this, did I not?”
“I know, sir, I know. And as usual you were right. But for her I never would have done this terrible thing. It made me sick to do it. Sick because you have been so good to me. Like a father. Better than a father.”
“But you’re a man. And a Muslim. You should be able to control your woman. It is part of your culture. Your faith.”
“But she is Brazilian,” exclaimed Anwar, as though that would explain everything. “She is a she-devil. A wicked, wicked slut. No one can control her. I have tried, but she beats me. Me! Her own husband. You have seen the marks yourself.”
Waller nodded. “Well, she is much larger than you. But you are still a man, and I despise weakness in men.”
“And she cheats on me with other men. And women!”
“Repulsive,” said Waller in an indifferent tone. “So you know where she is?”
Anwar shook his head. “I have seen nothing of her for a week.”
Waller sat back and spread his hands. “If we find her, what do you suggest?”
Anwar spit on the concrete floor. “That you kill her, that is what I suggest.”
“So you trade her life for yours, in effect?”
“I swear to you, Mr. Waller, I never would have thought of betraying you. It was that bitch. She made me do it. She drove me crazy. You must believe me. You must!”
“I do, Anwar, I do.” Waller stood, walked over, made a fist, and drove it into Anwar’s already swollen face. The little man slumped to the side, his dead weight kept in the chair only by the bindings. Waller grabbed him up by his slicked hair. “Now you have been suitably punished. You are valuable to me. Very valuable. I cannot afford to lose you. But this is your only forgiveness, do you understand?”
Anwar, the blood trickling from his mouth, mumbled, “I understand. I swear that I do. Thank you. I do not deserve such mercy.” He started sobbing.