The Blood Lance (43 page)

'Why should I tell you what you already know?'

'You don't take me seriously!'

'You are not serious. You are only morose.'

She went to her room in exasperation, but minutes later Kate stormed back out. 'I want to die by falling! That's how I want to do it!'

'Won't work,' he said.

'I don't see why not.'

'Fear of heights. You probably can't even get up a stepladder.' And with that she had exploded with curses. It was
her
suicide, and she could imagine it how she wanted! Then they were suddenly both laughing. She could not remember ever laughing so hard. They had ended up spending the evening proposing the perfect suicide and then finding fault with the method until they had both agreed there was no good way out. Besides one did want to see what came next - bad as it was.

The following morning Kate awakened, quite hung over, but with a feeling that something had broken in her - or the ice in her soul had finally thawed out. 'I want you to teach me how to shoot a gun,' she said as they nursed their hangovers.

'You've shot a gun before, haven't you?'

'Actually, I haven't.'

'There is nothing to it, Katerina. You aim the gun and pull the trigger - like in the movies.'

'I want you to teach me everything you know, Luca. Velocity, calibration—'

'Calibre.'

'You see? I'm desperate for training.'

'Any reason in particular?'

'I promised myself I was going to find Robert's killer. I think it is time I get ready to deal with him, when I do find him.'

'If you want to be
ready
,' he told her, 'you had better do a good deal more than learn how to shoot a gun. What if he is standing on a hill? How are you going to get to him with your fear of heights?'

'I'm serious, Luca!'

'So am I. If you want to fantasise revenge, leave me out of it. There is no point in learning to shoot a gun because it is never going to happen and it is a waste of time for me to teach you. If you want revenge, if you
really
want it, then you must learn everything.'

'I'll do whatever I have to.'

'You are going to have to learn to climb again. You cannot nurse fears and delusions if you are chasing a killer! If something frightens you then you must face it. Do you imagine the person - or persons - who sent those assassins to the Eiger has never seen someone with a gun? There are people in this world, Kate, who see a gun and know what to do! If you go after someone like that you had better know you are stronger, faster, and smarter! And you better know how you intend to do it. People who murder people and get away with it know something about taking care of themselves. In a fight nothing is ever
what we think it is going to be. You cannot think that because you are hurt by this person you will win. Victims stay victims. You must be prepared to win at any cost and by any means. Is that what you want - to win at any cost? Or do you want to feel a gun in your hand and
pretend
you have taken your revenge each time you pull the trigger?'

'I want this man in his grave, Luca.'

Luca studied her expression for a moment, and then retreated to his garage. He returned a few minutes later with a set of throwing knives and a sheet of heavy plywood that he leaned against a wall. He took chalk and drew the rough outline of a man. Then he took two of the knives and stood with his back to the plywood. Taking three long steps away from the target he turned and threw the first knife. The knife buried itself deep in the wood as he stepped forward and threw the second knife with his opposite hand - inches from the first.

Kate stared at the knives for a moment and then looked at Luca. 'Think of the man you want to kill,' he said, 'as being
that
good,' he told her. 'You have to be better - or you must let go of the fantasy.'

Kate returned her gaze to the two knives. Finally, she walked up to the target and took the knives in each hand. 'Show me how to do that,' she said.

Zürich, Switzerland

Tuesday March 11, 2008.

Eleven years later she could still remember the sensation of prying those two knives out of the wood.

'Are you okay?' Ethan asked.

Kate smiled. 'Fine. Just bored.' She snapped two knives toward her target, left, then right handed. The throws were good - dead centre.

'You didn't look bored,' Ethan told her. 'You looked like you were thinking about something.'

'Luca didn't kill Robert. Neither did Giancarlo.'

'Maybe, but they know who did.'

She looked out of the window, wrestling with the incongruities. 'How could they know and not tell me?'

'They're a part of a secret society,' Ethan told her. 'Whatever they're involved in, you can be sure of two things. When they joined the Council of Paladins, they swore a blood oath to keep the secrets of the Order and to come to the aid of each other no matter the risk or cost. When you make that kind of promise, you don't talk about exceptions. Family and friends come second - even favourite god-daughters.'

'But Robert was one of them. Why would the paladins kill one of their own?'

'If it wasn't infighting. . . maybe he betrayed the Order.'

'Why was I part of it? If they wanted him dead for something like that, why include innocent people as well? Luca taught me... everything. And it wasn't so I could make a living as a thief. That came later, after he taught me how to take revenge. He was teaching me to how to kill someone, Ethan! When his brother was killed, he hunted down the people who were responsible. He told me about each man that he found and killed, how they reacted, how they had got ready for him and what he did to get around their defences. He wasn't bragging. He was showing me by example what I needed to know for the time when I found Robert's killer.'

'Or killers.'

'He was making sure I understood everything he knew so I would be ready for the fight. I might be exhausted; I might end up being the one who was hunted down. I might not have a gun when I needed it. I needed to know a great many things. He taught me all the skills he had. Why would he do that if I was going to come for him someday?'

'I don't know, but he knows what happened. He and Giancarlo are keeping the truth from you. You need to face that if you're ever going to find out what really happened.'

'I know, but I won't touch them. I won't! Not unless they killed
Robert, and I don't think they did. It just doesn't make sense.'

*

Kate was moving about the hotel room on crutches when Malloy arrived late that evening. Ethan offered him a drink and this time he accepted. 'Scotch and soda, if you've got it.'

Whilst the ice crackled, Malloy settled in a comfortable chair. 'I had a long look at what they've taken from Chernoff's computer. There's quite a bit of material that is going to produce good intelligence. We're going to be able to figure out her key contacts, and at least some of her finances. The trouble is at this point we're racing against time. I mean if we find a telephone number that takes us into a network of phones, we have to get to it before the owners ditch them. Otherwise, we just end up chasing shadows and picking apart aliases.'

Ethan handed him his drink. 'So we're two steps from locating the guy - and still three or four days from knowing anything?'

Malloy took a sip of his drink. 'We could get lucky, but that's all it would be. Carlisle hasn't shown up, at least not as Carlisle, but if he wired money to Chernoff late last year, or contacted Ohlendorf in the past couple of months we might turn up one of his aliases.'

'If this guy is smart he has to know he's in trouble,' Ethan answered.

'I think he's known he was in trouble for several months. That's why he came after us.'

'But the whole world wasn't looking for him,' Ethan said. 'If your people link him to Chernoff, he's going to have to crawl into a hole. Once that happens nothing you get from Chernoff is going to take you anywhere close to the guy.'

'I know.'

'So what's the plan?' Kate asked.

'I found some files in Dale's computer before I cleaned it. If nothing else I turned up a set of decent surveillance photos of the guy. What they're publishing in the annual report doesn't give us very much. With these we can at least make an ID on him. He pulled a memory stick from his pocket and handed it to Ethan. 'They were taken in Paris three years ago.'

'So our ghost gets out now and then?' Kate asked as she swung over on her crutches and stood behind Ethan.

'He was having a meeting with Hugo Ohlendorf,' Malloy told them as Ethan slipped the key into his computer. 'Dale's people were tracking Ohlendorf, but they did the follow up on Carlisle for the ID.' He pointed at the screen as the files came up. 'Those other folders are for you as well. Once Dale had a name, he put together a dossier on Carlisle. I'm not sure there's anything there we don't already know, but sometimes all it takes is the right eyes looking at something.'

'I'll take anything you've got,' Ethan said as he opened the picture file and hit the Slide Show prompt. The first photograph showed Carlisle and Ohlendorf sitting at an outdoor cafe. Carlisle it seemed had banished his working class roots, looking every bit the social equal of Hugo Ohlendorf.

'A good looking guy,' Malloy remarked.

The third photo came on screen and Malloy glanced at Kate, who stood frozen behind Ethan, staring at the screen as if stricken. 'What's the matter?' he said.

Ethan turned from the computer screen as well. Kate's eyes were fixed oddly on the screen as the sequence ran but she said nothing. 'What is it?' Ethan asked. His voice betrayed his concern. As well it should. Kate looked like she was having a stroke.

'It's. . . Robert,' she whispered.

'What? What are you talking about?' Ethan asked.

'That's not David Carlisle we're looking at. It's. . . Robert Kenyon.

Kate's face grew oddly serene as she seemed to come to terms with the fact that she was looking at her first husband some eight years after his presumed death on the Eiger.

'Cut the rope
,' she whispered at last and only then did Malloy see the first tear forming. 'One of them said something. I didn't really understand. What about
her? What do we do
with her?
Something like that. And Robert said:
Cut the rope.
I was groggy from hitting my head, but I knew Robert couldn't have said something like
that.
I mean. . . I just didn't believe it.'

'It answers a lot of questions,' Malloy said as he began reviewing the odd pieces of evidence that had never made sense.

Finally Ethan stirred. 'It raises a lot more.'

'Not really,' Malloy told him. 'Think about it. Robert Kenyon makes a foolish investment and loses everything - including Kate's money. Who are the beneficiaries of the bankruptcy? His life-long friends. They didn't take the money, they funnelled it - at least most of it - into new accounts in David Carlisle's name. The guy managed the impossible: he died
and
he took it with him.'

'So what happened to Carlisle?' Ethan asked.

Malloy shook his head. 'David Carlisle was a mercenary in the Balkans in 1994. That's the last official record of him anywhere until 1997 when he became Kenyon's successor on the Council of the Paladins. My guess is he got killed and is buried somewhere in Serbia or Bosnia. Kenyon just took his identity because they looked something like each other.'

'Robert climbed out that night,' Kate said, her eyes still fixed on the man she had married almost eleven years ago. 'By the time the moon was up he had got to the Traverse of the Gods. He probably made the summit by three or four that morning and was off the mountain before dawn.'

'I don't get it,' Ethan said. 'Why would Kenyon give up his identity?'

Malloy waited for Kate, but she had no theory. 'There's only one good reason,' he said. 'He was in trouble. Whatever it was, he had time to make financial arrangements, so it sounds to me like some kind of investigation into his activities.'

'Six months,' Kate said. 'That's how long it took for the two of us to fall in love and get married. That's how much time he had.'

'The acquisition of the company was in that same time frame,' Malloy remarked.

'I understand the bankruptcy scam,' Ethan said. 'He needed money and he didn't want to leave a paper trail, but why involve Kate? Why get married?'

Malloy looked at Kate. Her tears were gone. 'Every magician knows the key to a successful illusion involves distracting the audience at the critical moment,' Malloy told them. 'In this case the distraction was the Eiger, more exactly Kate's bad luck with it. A well-publicised honeymoon climb to beat the mountain? What could be better? And when it failed, when the two Austrian climbers described watching Kate, her husband, and their guide going over, that was supposed to be all anyone would talk about. Kate's bad luck with the mountain.'