Columbus (23 page)

I throw the car into drive, spin the wheel, and race at him while he’s reloading. Even while I close the distance, he sits on his bike,
my
bike, in the middle of the road like a goddam matador. Fuck, I thought I was calm under duress but this guy sure as hell doesn’t rattle.

I realize my car isn’t going to get to him before he has his ammunition locked in place and clearly he’s thinking the same thing . . . I’m delivering myself right to him.

At the last possible moment, I open the driver’s door and dive out, abandoning the car to complete the mission for me. I hit the pavement hard and roll up onto a knee.

The motorcycle is roaring away, out in front of the car, easily evading it as the Audi starts to lose momentum and slowly comes to a stop without actually crashing into anything, weak and ineffectual. I stay on the sidewalk a long time, but he never comes back.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE END IS RARELY FINAL. IT IS INGRAINED IN US FROM BIRTH: THE END OF A DAY LEADS TO TOMORROW; THE END OF WINTER LEADS TO SPRING; THE END OF A YEAR BEGETS A NEWBORN, PALE AND INNOCENT AND VULNERABLE.
The notion permeates our literature and culture: the end of a phoenix gives way to a new bird; the end of a king signals the coronation of his offspring; the end of a savior leads to a miraculous resurrection.

It is this singular idea, perhaps more than any other, that there
are
no endings, that there is
always
another sun coming up, another day dawning, a life beyond this life that keeps the machinery of the earth turning. The peasants toil in the fields, the workers grind for their paychecks, the solders sacrifice in battle in the hope that the end is rarely final, that they will have given of themselves so that others will continue on in a somehow changed world.

And what if the end
is
just the end? What if once you’re caught on the hook and pulled into the boat, and you flop around on the deck before breathing your last breath, what if the world never knew you existed, what if you did nothing to benefit this place, what if it is just the same as it was before you came? What if the end is rarely the end, but it is for you and you’re the one erased?

Or what if when you close your eyes, when your heart stops and your neurons quit firing, what if in that moment, the world simply ceases to be?

The sun sits high in the cloudless sky, alone, imperious. The heat is oppressive, like it’s coming both down from the sky and up from the street. Pedestrians move around languidly, like there are weights tied to their ankles. Ladies fan themselves with magazines in a futile attempt to push air away from them, but the heat clings like ticks. Dogs lie in the meager shade of shop doorways, tongues out, panting. It is a hell of a May day in Rome.

Five of them have passed since Ruby died in Siena, and Italian police are looking for two men fleeing the scene, one on a motorcycle and one in a stolen black Audi. Details are sketchy; no one got a good look at the killers so early in the morning.

I spent the last five days on the coast, sitting in a hotel room, staring at the gray ocean, clearing my mind. I’m pissed about the motorcycle; that bike had treated me well. The only treasure of mine Svoboda can puzzle over is a first-edition copy of
The Compleat Angler,
which I’m sure he’ll find in my saddlebag. Maybe he’s flipping through it now. I purchased another copy, a paperback edition, from an English-language bookstore named Feltrinelli in Florence before I fled for the coast. In the five days prior to arriving in Rome, I read the book through twice.

Archibald waits at a tiny table, eyes covered by dark glasses, dressed in black. His expression is as sober and grave as a funeral director’s. The first thing I notice is how gaunt his face looks when his smile is gone. When I take my seat across from him, his fingers stop drumming the table.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

“When I told you before I didn’t have any uncles or aunts or relatives I gave a fuck about, I was lying.”

“I know.”

“She was there— ” he stops, like he’s having a hard time getting his mouth around the words. He steadies himself, then takes another stab. “She was there every moment I needed her, every inch of the way.”

“I know.”

“Was he gunning for her, or did she catch one intended for you?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why didn’t she leave when I told her she was off? Why’d she stick around?”

“She wanted to tell me something.”

He levels his eyes in my direction. They spill over with pain. “What?”

“She told me I should quit the business. Disappear.”

“Now why the fuck would she tell you that?”

“She knew I have a woman waiting for me.”

He takes that in, and, like when he let me in on the secret that he had a sister, he knows I didn’t release that information lightly.

“Tied on that same string, Columbus.”

“Yeah.”

It is true. There is no use denying it. Archibald Grant and I will forever be tied on that same string. A man who goes by Svoboda made sure of that on a quiet street in Siena.

Archibald slides a file to me underneath the table. I place it in my lap and the same weight hits me, the same heaviness I felt when William Ryan handed me a similar file with Jiri Dolezal’s name at the top of the page. When will it be too much? When will the stack of rocks on my chest finally overcome me?

“I haven’t slept in five days,” Archibald says. “Save a nod here or a wink there. Everything I got, I put into that file.”

“Okay.”

“I visited Doriot in a Belgian prison. He turned me on to three other European fences. I’ve been to Madrid, Prague, and Munich. I got tongues to loosen and I got memories to be recalled. Every bit of knowledge about Svoboda is found in those pages. The only one who knows more about him is the Lord Almighty.”

“You know this makes you a target as well. He’ll find out you’ve been sniffing around his background.”

“Let him come.”

I nod. “Well, thank you. You did well.”

Archibald stands like he’s going to leave, then drops his hands in his pockets. He suddenly looks old, like twenty years have passed since I saw him in that subterranean restaurant in Siena.

“Drop him, Columbus. Drop him and then get the hell out like Ruby said. I’ll make sure no one comes for you.”

For a moment, he stands there, a ghost, like these words sucked out the last bit of his energy, like it’s not me who has been crushed by the stones, but him. Then he turns and disappears into the crowd.

I open the file. Tomas Petr Kolar grew up an only child in eastern Czechoslovakia, in a village named Krasnik, long before the country split into two. His father, Petr, was an avid hunter when he wasn’t serving the party in the factories, assembling railroad machine parts to be shipped to Poland. By the age of four, Petr had taught his son how to take apart and reassemble a VZ-24 rifle. Together, they shot wild hares and pheasants and roe deer and the occasional mouflon in the hills surrounding their village.

Kolar’s mother was diagnosed with lung cancer when he was eight years old. He and his father watched her wither away until her face looked like a tight sheet stretched across a skull. She died fourteen weeks after her diagnosis, in a hospital bed, mumbling gibberish.

For two weeks, his father ignored him. For two weeks, he made his own bed, fixed his own dinner, bathed himself, and cleaned the house while his father sat in a chair staring out the window.

At the end of those fourteen days, his father shot himself in the head with the VZ-24 rifle. The man was thirty-eight years old. There is no indication Kolar was there when his old man placed the gun between his knees and pulled the trigger. But no one can say for sure.

There is a large gap of knowledge in the file from that point. No one knows where Kolar was taken after his father’s suicide, where he was raised, where he received his education, who trained him in the art of assassination, when he changed his name to Svoboda. Archibald speculates he was in the military, but wasn’t able to confirm it. However, Svoboda’s early work involved the use of a CZ-2000 short assault rifle, a rarity left over from the Czech army’s special forces missions behind NATO lines in the late nineties. He also carried a CZ-100 handgun, another weapon first introduced to the Czech army in 1995. It’s convincing evidence the boy was scooped up in the military machine soon after his father’s suicide. Maybe he bunked with another soldier named Svoboda and assumed his identity after the man fell in battle? Any guesses would just be speculation, but I’ll pocket the name Tomas Kolar. Knowing it could very well come in handy.

The first true knowledge of Svoboda’s whereabouts as an adult came in March 1999. He completed two contract killings that month, five days apart. One in Prague, one in Amsterdam. The assignments were distributed by two different fences. Two completely unique, unrelated targets.

This information is staggering. Two jobs within five days? Putting aside the psychological ramifications, this act teeters on recklessness, if not outright insanity. How could he plan his hit, or, even more importantly, his escape? How could he be sure he’d get to his target and get away with the kill?

I flip through the file just counting up the hits Archibald was able to uncover. From the three fences plus Doriot, Svoboda has averaged fourteen kills a year for the last half-dozen years. Fourteen! More than one a month. And that’s just the ones Archibald found out about.

I flip further and focus in on one kill Archibald coaxed out of the Spanish fence. The assignment was to eliminate another professional contract killer, a British hit man named Ogle. The two came together in a hotel corridor in Carlisle, in northern England. For some reason, both men lost their guns and ended up fighting hand to hand. Svoboda gained leverage and bit into the larger man’s neck, severing his carotid artery and ripping it out with his teeth. All while hanging on to his back like a lion taking down an elephant.

I flip through dozens of hits for which Archibald was able to carve out a few details, and an interesting story emerges. At least ten of his kills involve contracts on other assassins, maybe more. It seems he’s developed a niche for himself, a specialty, an area where there appears to be steady work. It seems Svoboda has forged a business out of hunting hunters.

I study these closely, the hits specific to taking down men like me. Nearly all of these kills involve close, contact murder, without weaponry. Strangulation, choking, biting, beating, eye-gouging, cracking necks. This must be intentional. He doesn’t want to shoot these men from a distance; he wants to destroy them with his hands. If I can figure out why, maybe I can crack the code on how to defeat him.

Another one of his kills leaps out at me. In 2006, he was hired to eliminate a French hit man named Garrigus. The hit took place at an apartment in Toulouse, a hideaway belonging to the French assassin’s mistress. When the two bodies were discovered, the police made note that the girl was most likely killed first, by a bullet wound to the back of the head, before Garrigus drowned to death in the apartment’s bathtub, his hands restrained behind him with plastic ties.

In one other instance, Svoboda killed a woman along with the mark. Again, she was killed first, by gunshot, and then he disposed of the target with his hands, choking the man to death behind a pub in London. That’s all the information Archibald collected on the kill, but it speaks volumes.

Svoboda is more than a professional hit man. He may be very good at what he does, he may be a top earner, he may never default on a job, but he is no Silver Bear. He’s a goddamn serial killer. He doesn’t care about the contracts, the hunt, the getaway, the strategy, the creation of a connection that can be severed. He gets off on the actual killing.

Svoboda and I are nothing alike. We may have the same job, but we perform it in two different worlds. I thought he was better at this business than me, but now I know that simply isn’t true. He might have skills and courage, but the skills are reckless and the courage is fueled by some sort of tortured madness. He can be beaten. I’m sure of it.

I devour the file, reading it and re-reading it until I have every page memorized. Archibald has outdone himself again. The file is as thorough as any I’ve been given. And all the information leads to one conclusion: Tomas Petr Kolar, also known as Svoboda, wants to work in close so he can kill me with his bare hands.

I think I’ll let him try.

I know the question before it is asked. Why would I go see her? Why am I so heartless, so depraved, so selfish, that I would put her in harm’s way, at this moment, when a killer who lusts for blood is hunting me, has already killed in front of me? A killer who I know likes to rack up as many bodies as possible, who actually thrives on leaving a mess?

She is in the middle of a sale when I enter Zodelli on the Via Poli. Risina’s face lights up as soon as she spots me, her cheeks flushing with blood. If it’s possible, she’s grown even more radiant since I last saw her, like the recent sunny days have knocked out the underlying sadness and brought her beauty right to the surface.

I take a seat in a stuffed leather chair and watch her work.

“. . . a five-volume first edition we will only sell as a set. It contains 367 hand-colored folio lithographs, all produced by Joseph Wolf, who was the leading ornithological artist at the time. You see? Gould personally selected him. Beautiful.”

The man she is speaking with is the size of a bear and has a thick Russian accent. “Remind me about the binding?”

“Of course. Contemporary full green levant morocco, with elaborate decorated spines . . . yes? Marvelous. They contain raised bands, marbled endpapers, and as you can see, all the edges are gilt.”

“The price is still one-fifty euro?”

“Yes, Mr. Bembatov.”

“Hmmph. Thank you.”

He turns, measures me for a moment, then shuffles toward the door like one of those old weeble-wobbles, like his weight needs to list side to side before it can move forward.

The bell above the door is still jingling when she crosses the room and is in my lap, in my arms.