The Art of the Devil (15 page)

At length they turned onto a road flanked by spider-like mangroves and humble bungalows, terminating in an abrupt dead end. Tucked into the farthest remove of the cul-de-sac waited a small house surrounded by leafy croton. The limo pulled into the driveway, and the passengers climbed slowly out.

The grand tour took all of three minutes. On a modest patio hidden from neighbors by a raw plank-board fence, then, Bolin sat with the men as a fat maid served a lunch of lobster
empanadas
, cinnamon
alfajores
, and yerba maté. Afterwards, they shared his Viceroys and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood: children yelling and crying, dogs barking, distant engines revving and falling. As they smoked, Bolin stole glances at the German. The handkerchief made endless ineffective movements to and from sweaty, sunken temples. The cheeks had the burst-vessel look of low-grade heatstroke. After ten years in Buenos Aires, the man looked no more accustomed to the climate than if he had arrived just yesterday. And he had relative youth on his side …

Bolin suppressed a sigh; a muscle leaped in his jaw. He removed his spectacles, polished them carefully against one sleeve, and replaced them. He had known, upon extending himself to get the Wulff brothers' operative onto the farm, that he was opening himself to the possibility of exile. In taking the calculated risk, he had expected as a worst-case scenario luxurious German chalets high in the mountains. But this was dangerously near squalor.

Misreading Bolin's expression, the dark man gave a predatory smile. ‘Never fear,
Señor
.' He lowered his voice to a melodramatic whisper. ‘They say she never fails.'

Bolin looked at the man evenly. He considered suggesting that, considering the support his organization had given this man's cause – supplying funding, materiel, and planning for the
coup d'etat
– he might have expected better lodgings. But surely the relics of the Third Reich, with their nearly-illimitable wealth, had received the best the Argentinians had to offer. And apparently, that wasn't much.

Bolin finished his Viceroy, dropped it to the patio beside a goggling plaster frog, and ground the butt beneath one heel. A plump buzzing fly landed on the back of his left hand. With an irritated flick, he dislodged it. After a few seconds he shook his head, compressed his lips, and reached wordlessly for another cigarette.

Only a few days, he told himself. Then his own
coup d'etat
would be implemented; his allies would be installed in the White House, ready to pull strings on his behalf, and he could safely return home. Only a few days …

He could almost hear Vera laughing.

ANACOSTIA

I
sherwood hung up the phone with more force than he'd intended.

For a moment he considered dialing again. Instead he turned, climbing the stairs, nearly tripping over a cat as he came off the top riser. A quick rest, shower, and change of clothes, and he would be on his way back to Treasury.

The thing to do, he told himself as he stripped off his jacket and unstrapped his holster, was make the most of the separation from Evy while it lasted. He was angry – that she wouldn't even answer his goddamned telephone calls, after all they'd been through, beggared the imagination – but she would come around in her own time, if she came around at all. Meanwhile, he could use the break to get some more sobriety under his belt. He could find a better bottle of perfume – Moonlight Mist, ‘worth its weight in romance', might not do the trick – and he could give some serious thought to just how much more he had to offer. Once upon a time, they had talked seriously of starting a family. If he could bring up the subject again and convince her that he meant it, that might make all the difference …

Just as he was starting on his belt, the doorbell rang. That would be Matilda Thorndike, from down the block, who had been caring for the cats. She must have seen the Mayfair parked outside and wondered if her services were still required.

He was already two steps down the stairs when he decided to turn back and fetch the Colt – a reasonable precaution, all things considered. Looping the holster over his head, he took a moment to swing it around so that the revolver lay in the small of his back – the better to spare young Matilda Thorndike any nightmares tonight – before thudding down the stairs again and answering the door.

Standing on his front stoop was a man decidedly not here to feed the cats. Thirtyish, about six feet tall, he had a boxer's broken nose and a sailor's tattoos encircling a thick forearm—

—and in his meaty right hand, aimed at Isherwood's heart, he held a small silver automatic.

Isherwood slammed the door; at the same moment, the automatic spoke harshly.

Fragments of wood peppered his chest and neck. Ignoring the flaring pain, he tried to work the bolt; but the sailor on the doorstep was smashing a piledriver foot into the door. In the same instant, glass shattered from farther back on the first floor, from the dining room, and Isherwood thought wildly:
Incoming!

Moving on instinct, he found the gun in the small of his back, firing two shots through the flimsy buckling wood of the front door even as he became aware of a flickering shadow to his left, beyond the window of the living room. He threw himself down, thudding heavily onto the floor. One out front, he thought frantically, one out back (if not inside already), and one coming in from the west—

Glass shattered from the direction of the den.

The house had been surrounded.

Rocking up onto his knees, he saw from the corner of his eye the man who had broken the living room window, caught in the midst of climbing over the sill. Isherwood steadied his right hand with his left and fired, taking the intruder in the throat, spinning the man backward.

Gaining his feet again – his knees popped hollowly – he dashed forward, through the living room, toward the kitchen, with broken glass crackling underfoot. In a diamond-shaped mirror hanging above the bar he saw the front door burst open behind him. Turning without slowing, Isherwood snapped off a ragged shot, making the sailor withdraw.

A semi-automatic pistol was lying on the living-room floor, surrounded by broken glass. He scooped it up, barely slowing. The gun's previous owner sprawled half-in and half-out of the window, blood pulsing from his throat in a weakening freshet.

Isherwood's perception had again slowed to a combat-crawl, attaining the consistency of treacle. He felt a strange elation. Here, then, was his peculiar curse: under fire he was his best and worst self simultaneously. Heart pounding, mouth dry but electric, knees rubbery, eyes bulging from their sockets, he became the only Francis Isherwood that didn't crave a goddamned drink.

Skidding into the kitchen, sending cats scattering in all directions, he seemed able to gather a huge amount of information at once—

(two men were moving through the study; and one more, he deduced from a groaning floorboard, came through the dining room as well – plus another came behind the one he had shot in the living room, and the sailor at the door was pressing forward again)

—and his body decided before his brain that the bathroom was the place to be.

Thudding into the lavatory, he set the two guns on the edge of the sink and then closed the door behind himself, turning the lock, extremely aware of the thinness of the plaster walls. But he didn't plan on staying here long. He clawed the cigarette lighter out of his shirt pocket. Clutching the Zippo between clenched teeth, he popped the top off the toilet tank and took out the bottle of Jack Daniels he had stowed months before in anticipation of a very different circumstance. Setting down the bottle, he tore a jagged strip from the bottom of his shirt.

Plugging the neck of the bottle with the strip of cloth, he upended the whiskey briefly to soak the material through. He spent a fraction of an instant holstering the Colt and shoving the semi-automatic – a Smith & Wesson Model 39 – into his belt. Then he raised the bottle, corked by wet cloth, in his right hand, and dropped the Zippo from his clenched teeth into his waiting left palm. He flicked the wheel; the flint sparked; he touched flame to wet cloth; his foot rose and thudded against the bathroom door, rocking it open and popping off one hinge.

Before him in the kitchen stood three men: one facing the bathroom, two facing away.

As Isherwood threw the bottle, the man facing him fired. A powerful hand took hold of Isherwood's left side, somewhere between armpit and pelvis, and shoved backward and down. As he fell, he turned his head reflexively to avoid crowning himself against the sink, at the same time keeping a slice of kitchen in his field of vision – thus he saw the curtain of flame spring up, consuming all three men, two of whom fled screaming, living pyres, as the third, caught dead to rights, simply flagged and folded where he stood, instantly filling the air with the stench of charred flesh.

A blast of heat followed, intense enough that Isherwood had to roll over and protect his head with his left arm, which for some reason – ah, yes, because he'd been shot – didn't want to behave. Still, the arm proved capable of prioritizing, and managed to block at least the worst of the blast, although Isherwood sensed what felt like a very bad sunburn rising on his face and exposed forearm. Looking down, he saw without surprise that the arm was aflame.

Grimly, he found his knees again (
better to die on your feet than live on your knees
, Eisenhower advised) and jammed the burning arm into the water of the toilet, which gave a scabrous hiss. He felt awareness recede tentatively, a tide going out. Through sheer willpower, he pulled the tide back in.

With his right side propped against the wall, he pushed up to his feet. The fire was already flickering down as the alcohol evaporated. Only the body sprawled on the kitchen floor, with clothing just catching, burned with conviction. Gritting his teeth, Isherwood left the bathroom. He emptied the two shots remaining in the Colt into the man burning on the kitchen floor, then dropped the empty gun and drew the Smith & Wesson, cursorily checking its eight-round magazine.

From the direction of the study: scrabbling, crinkling glass. They were in retreat, he thought with a flash of disdain.

Instead of giving chase, he circled around the other way, to the study by way of the dining room. Before exposing himself in the doorway, he closed his eyes for a heartbeat and listened. Six men, as best he could figure, had entered his house. One lay dead on the floor behind him; one lay dead or dying propped in the living-room window frame. Two others were burning.

Raising the Smith & Wesson, he stepped through the doorway. He caught a man retreating, trying to climb back out through the dining-room window without resting weight against incinerated hands.

Near Route 30, Isherwood had shown mercy, aiming repeatedly for the gun arm – and let his assailant escape.

Now he took careful, deliberate aim at the spot where neck met back, and fired once.

The man folded bonelessly onto the parquet oaken floor. Isherwood moved on toward the study. For the first time he became truly aware of the wound in his side – gaping and sucking, a red, wet mouth. The pain was jumbled in with a thousand other imperatives, and he found he could do a sort of magic trick, making the pain disappear, although he had his doubts about how long the trick would keep working.

Outside the study, he listened again. Snuffling, scrabbling. Gathering his courage, he stepped in, catching a glimpse of a dark figure slipping away through a shattered window. By the time he drew a bead, the figure was gone.
Run
, he thought acidly.
Run for your life.

That left two.

Throwing the last vestiges of caution to the wind, he stalked back toward the foyer. Through the thin wall separating him from the staircase he heard a creaking step. He had lived in this house for twelve years. Countless nights he had scaled those same stairs while drunk, trying not to make a noise to rouse his wife. He immediately placed the creaking step as the fourth from the top.

Firing through the wall, he was rewarded by a thump of dead weight, followed by a series of shallow successive thumps as the body slid down from one riser to another.

Two huge strides brought him back to the foot of the staircase: a full turn 'round the house. A dead man sprawled upside-down on the stairs: the sailor.

He found the last one in the living room. Badly burned, the man was having trouble wrestling his dead accomplice out of the windowsill. As he appeared unarmed, Isherwood considered apprehending him for questioning – but the tide was retreating again; better to take no chances.

Coldly, he gunned the man down.

Then he had pushed too far, and his knees were buckling beneath him. Landing on a floor slippery with blood, he cursed loudly. ‘Evelyn,' he called. After drawing a breath, he tried again. ‘Evy – help me.'

He wasn't sure if he had managed to say the words, or only to think them. Then the tide withdrew completely; darkness rushed in to fill the cracks. In his last moment of awareness he felt a cat's rough tongue against his cheek. He remembered that Evelyn wasn't here to help him. Then he was caught up in a violent black undertow and drawn swiftly away.

GETTYSBURG

Miss Dunbarton stood in the kitchen doorway, surveying her troops.

Maybe it was the sherry – but watching the girls hustle about, preparing to serve lunch, she felt a warm, almost maternal glow. After observing for a few moments, she stepped into the room and clapped briskly. ‘Attention,' she called. ‘Attention, please.'

Activity clattered to a stop; half a dozen young faces turned toward her.

‘As we shall labor straight through Thanksgiving,' pronounced Miss Dunbarton, ‘and as we shall then continue to work straight up 'til Christmas, it has occurred to me that perhaps we should pause to celebrate.' Eyes glimmering puckishly, she looked from one girl to another. ‘Therefore I am pleased to announce that tomorrow at six p.m. a holiday party for the staff will take place in the parlor. Curfew will be suspended; there will be drinking and music and dancing and, of course, plenty of food; perhaps we can even invite some special guests. The timing's a bit off, but better early than never.'