Comes a Horseman (15 page)

“Her husband had been unfaithful?”

She hoisted her wheeled suitcase and the larger of the two CSD cases into the trunk.

“That's what a few of the neighbors who were milling around last night said. Who knows?”

She moved aside to let him stow his suitcase. The last thing she put in was the bowling ball bag. Then she unzipped it and spread it open. The quantity of components stored in the bag and the sophistication of their organization surprised Brady. The helmet was upside down. In the bowl it created were a laptop computer and two smaller devices. As Alicia pulled these things out, he could tell they had been held firmly in place by some molding in the helmet. Evidently the designers placed as much importance on secure storage and transportation as they did on performance. If only all engineers were so thorough.

Indicating the hardware in her hands, she said, “This is what you need. Let's go.”

18

S
eeing Hüber seated in the gloom, Pip almost took a step back. Meeting any of the Watchers outside preappointed venues, away from Luco, was stupid . . . taboo . . . imprudent. Meeting this particular director was treasonous.

Turn and go,
he thought.
Just walk away.

Instead, he came fully into the room and selected the chair opposite Hüber. He heard a click and saw the door was closed, the waiter gone. He observed the other man's cordial expression and felt the muscles in his jaw tighten.

“You told me to meet you here . . . or else.”

Hüber shrugged. “I'm sorry for the melodramatics, Pip. I was only trying to stress the importance of this meeting. I'm sure you understand.”

What he understood were people like Hüber. To them, anything they thought was important must be important to everyone else. They were masters at cajoling, threatening, and manipulating people into seeing things their way. Luco had long been such a master. And Pip had been the guinea pig upon whom Luco had perfected his craft.

He realized he was poised on the edge of the seat, betraying his fear. He slid back, letting the chair engulf him. At five feet eight and 130 pounds, he was a small man, made seemingly smaller by his handicap and baby face. Not helping matters was his subservient demeanor, a source of constant internal struggle. He crossed his shorter leg over the other and nervously fingered the edge of the gaffer's tape that held the books to the bottom of his shoe. He raised his gaze.

Hüber was staring at him with calculating eyes, sizing him up. The older man's lips creased into a tight smile, suggesting satisfaction. It was as though he believed he had won a battle that had not yet begun; it only had to unfold the way he knew it would.

Pip wanted to say something witty and stunning, something that would smack that smile right off the man's face and inform him that he had underestimated Pippino Farago. But nothing came to mind. Before he could ask what it was Hüber wanted, two sharp raps came from the door. If it had been kicked open by a SWAT team, Pip would not have jumped higher.

Hüber's smile broadened. “Come,” he called.

The waiter entered with a tray, set it on the table, and left. On the tray were the components of a nargila, a water pipe for smoking a mixture of tobacco and dried fruit. Luco had owned one, but he called it a bong and had used it to smoke substances more potent than cherry tobacco. That was before his current health kick.

Hüber leaned forward and began assembling the pipe. He poured springwater into its amber glass base, then sealed it with a brass manifold. Protruding from the manifold was a gummi pipe, which ended in a flexible cloth-covered tube and plastic mouthpiece. Most people associated smoking tubes like this with the opium dens of the Orient.

“I think we can help each other, Pip.” Hüber didn't look up from his work. He placed what looked like a brass sink strainer on top of the manifold, and a ceramic cup on top of that. “I know you think you and I are on opposing sides. I can assure you that is not the case.”

He leaned back to push a hand into a front pocket of his pants. It reappeared, clenching a leather pouch. He opened it and shook a portion of its contents into the ceramic cup. The tang of tobacco with a hint of apples reached Pip's nostrils.

Hüber looked at Pip. “Your boss is a cruel man.”

“He's my friend.”

“Yes, yes, you say that. But, Pip . . .” He lowered his eyes to Pip's fidgeting fingers, which had worked the edge of the gaffer's tape into an inch-long flap. “Was it not Luco Scaramuzzi who made you a cripple?”

Pip's stomach cramped.

How could he know that?

He felt perspiration form on his scalp, making it itch. He raised his hand to scratch, thought better of it, and returned his fingers to the flap of tape, flicking it, flicking it.

Hüber let the question hang in the air. He picked up a square of aluminum foil, withdrew a pen from a breast pocket, and used it to punch holes in the foil. He shaped the foil over the ceramic cup, forming a small bowl out of the foil.

Pip's eyes were aimed at this activity, but what he saw was a thirty-year-old memory.

Four boys, playing hooky from their fifth-grade class in tiny Raddusa, Sicily. Skinny-dipping in the cobalt water of Lake di Ogliastro. The sun hot on their skin. The rope Enzo lashed to a branch over the surface giving them hours of fun, sailing out, flying off, flipping through the air. Who can make the biggest splash? Who can go the farthest? Who can somersault in the air the most times? The lake is rimmed by a rising and falling ribbon of pine-topped cliffs.

Luco, growing bored, points to one of the nearby bluffs. “Let's jump from up there!” he says.

The other boys look, laugh, shake their heads.

Luco disappears into the trees, reappears through a gap a quarter of the way to the top. “Come on!” he calls. “Babies!”

“We'll watch!” Enzo replies.

“Yeah, we'll watch you break your neck, Luco! Go on!” says Raffi.

“Pip, come here!”

Pip shakes his head. “I like the rope!”

“Pip, come here! Now!”

Pip's heart sinks. Luco has just started to be nice to him, and the boys who picked on him for being small and not athletic have noticed; they have even allowed him to hang out with them, smoking behind Saint Giuseppe's, shop-lifting from Papa Uzo's market, harassing smaller boys. Six months ago, he would have been looking at their empty seats in class, wishing he had the guts to cut school and wishing he had the kind of friends who did. Now he does, thanks to Luco. He isn't going to let him down.

But why does he always want to do the most dangerous, scariest thing?

“Coming!” Pip yells. He hopes the false bravado rings true to the other boys' ears. “Babies,” he calls them for good measure.

When Pip catches up at the top, Luco is leaning over the edge, holding on to a branch.

“No problem,” Luco says. “Look.”

Pip edges forward, realizing how much greater the height appears from up here. It's dizzying. But there's water below, so how awful could a plunge be?

Luco moves out of his way.

Pip grabs the branch and leans. Immediately, he sees there is a boulder a meter under the surface, directly below them.

“Luco,” he says, “there's a—”

He feels the blow to his lower back, a sharp kick. He's falling and spinning, thinking he can grab hold of the branch once again, but he's miles from it now. Luco's face is leaning out over the edge, smiling, receding. There's a millisecond of wet coolness, then searing white-hot pain, and then nothing.

He wakes in a hospital bed. His leg is hoisted two feet off the mattress in a sling attached to wires, pulleys, a metal stanchion. A plaster cast extends from his toes to his groin. Metal pins as thick as his finger protrude from a dozen places. The pain is so great, he can't tell where it's coming from: the leg, his hips, his internal organs—they all hurt unbearably.

The room's walls are stone with sloppily applied grout, like many of the buildings in the one-thousand-year-old town. A coat of whitewash tries vainly to give the room a semblance of sterility and modernity. Pale sunlight pushes through a grungy window set high in one wall. Beeping and clicking monitors watch him from stainless-steel carts. A fat fly buzzes over to greet him. It circles his face. A hand snatches it. Pip jerks his head and sees Luco standing there, holding the fly in his fist, looking squarely at him. He's bearing the same grin Pip saw as he fell, and Pip believes it has never left his face.

“You're awake,” Luco says. “About time.”

“You pushed me,” Pip says. His words come out weak and dry, as if filtered through sand. They hurt his throat.

A fierce hardness, fiery anger, flashes across Luco's face, instantly replaced by jovial patience, the kind reserved for a retarded brother.

“You jumped, silly,” he says. “Enzo and Raffi saw you. Bravest thing they ever saw. You're a hero at school. Swan dive from space.” He raises his palm and slowly brings it down, illustrating a graceful aerial maneuver.

“You—”

“Yes, I saw it too. It was spectacular.”

The hardness comes back to his expression. He extends his fist to Pip's face, squeezing until the knuckles turn white. He opens his hand on to Pip's chest and wipes the fly across his hospital gown.

He whispers, “You're a hero,” and walks out.

So that's what happened—he jumped and became a minor hero for a time. When the other kids inspect the site of his gallantry and ask, “Why didn't you look first?” he says, “Where's the adventure in that?” Just as Luco instructed him. And instead of appearing stupid, he is praised as being braver still.

The upper growth plates of his tibia and fibula are shattered. As his right leg's growth outpaces that of his left, he increases the height of the spacer on the bottom of his left foot. He adjusts, and he never wanders far from Luco's side.

“Pip!”

He is startled to see Niklas Hüber eyeing him curiously. No one in Raddusa had known the truth of his accident. Except Enzo and Raffi, and they had never hinted at anything other than the official story of his heroic leap, even when they were alone together. Pip figured Luco had warned them, as he had warned Pip, probably with a punctuation more substantial than a smashed fly. It didn't surprise him that this nemesis of Luco's had dispatched investigators to dig up every detail of Luco's life, but his unearthing that private truth was genuinely unnerving. What else had he turned up?

“Are you with us?” Hüber said with a smile. A piece of charcoal was smoldering on top of the perforated foil on the nargila. He drew on the mouthpiece as though kissing a snake. He held in the smoke for a few seconds, then let it drift out of his nostrils and a slit between his lips.

Pip watched. Quietly, he said, “Just thinking.”

“Think about this: Scaramuzzi is defrauding the wrong people this time. I know about the petty scams in Italy and Greece, bilking widows out of their grocery money. And the bogus arms deal with . . . who was it, Syria?”

Perspiration formed on Pip's upper lip and forehead. He wiped it away.

He said, “Luco's past doesn't have any bearing—”

“You know it does. But now he's not deceiving housewives or some Podunk cult in Gelnhausen or Stroud or Toledo . . .” Hüber's voice had grown louder. He took a deep breath, and then a toke on the water pipe. He continued to speak without releasing the smoke he had inhaled, so his words, while calmer, appeared to steam out of his mouth. “
Collegium Regium Custodum et Vigilum Pro Domino Summo Curantium
is a global power with infinite resources: wealth, politicians, business leaders . . . assassins.”

He whispered this last word, emphasizing it, then paused only briefly.

“As you know, we take our mandate very seriously. Everything we have ever done has been in service to it. When Scaramuzzi is exposed as the fraud he is, we won't run him out of town or have him imprisoned; we will slaughter him. We will wipe away every vestige of his existence: his family, his associates, his . . . friends. Six months after his grip on my less-discriminating colleagues loosens, the name Scaramuzzi will be gone from the world. There will be no record of it; no tongue will speak it. Do you believe me?”

Pip tried to swallow. His mouth and throat were as dry as scorched concrete. He had already bet on Scaramuzzi to win the terrible game he was playing, so he did not have to scramble to make a decision. All he needed now was courage. It was in him, somewhere. He found a little and said, “I believe you have the power to do what you say. I do
not
believe Luco will ever be exposed as anything other than who he says he is. Why do you doubt him?”

“More importantly,” Hüber said, “why do you believe him . . . if you do?” He leaned forward. Candlelight illuminated his piercing blue eyes. “Why do
you
, Pip, believe Luco Scaramuzzi is the Antichrist?”

19

B
rady was situated in the passenger seat, the computer open on his lap. Cables snaked from its left side down into the foot well and the components Alicia had taken from the helmet case. Brady didn't know squat about digital video rendering, but the images on the screen were stunning. About a dozen men were standing around an open residential garage looking at the camera. He could see the complexion of each face, right down to the whiskers and blemishes. The entire frame was uniformly clear, without the washed-out areas and deep shadows indicative of bright lighting.

Craning to look out the back window, Alicia squealed out of the parking space.

Brady closed his eyes and told himself to just relax. If his doctor could witness Alicia's driving, he'd prescribe a diuretic and a beta-blocker to keep Brady's blood pressure from spiking into the coronary zone. Or more likely, order him to take a cab.