The Khufu Equation (7 page)

"Why do you need all that?"

"I see," said Kreis with a smile. "You offer to sit with me late at night, near the warmth of the ocean. A goblet of wine, a cigar, and a woman between us. Money isn't my purpose. I have more than enough of that. But I refuse to live a life of poverty. It only leads to degradation, both physical and spiritual."

"I disagree with you," challenged Salvaro. "Don't you see that your occupation eventually brings suffering to innocent people? As for me, I do it not for drive or ego. I do it only for the sake of money."

"Good," said Kreis. "You hold onto that. In my youth I thought so, too. And I behaved the same way. Later, though, I realized that I didn't deceive people but cured them. I freed them from their own stupidity, pride and self-servitude."

"It seems our baked macaroni pudding has arrived," said Salvaro, gazing at the headlights that flashed in the rear-view mirror.

Giordano left his car, with the engine running, and walked up to the jeep. Inside the vehicle, he could see two men with whom he was quite familiar: a young guy with the muscles of a bodybuilder, and an older man whose face was neatly trimmed in a short, white beard. Giordano opened the passenger door and got in.

"Brought it, Mr. Giordano?" asked Kreis, his lips turned in a smile of cunning. It was his usual practice to speak to everyone politely, regardless of age, status or social circumstances.

"First, the tape," said Giordano in a cold, purposeful tone. Immediately, Kreis snapped his fingers, and Salvaro, from his place at the wheel, moved the case from his lap to Giordano's waiting hands. Giordano unlocked the case. There was a large, blue envelope, and beneath it were several banded packs of fresh bills. Giordano shook out the contents of the envelope. Yes, there was the little digital videocassette. He then turned his attention to the dollars, and based on a quick calculation the amount was satisfactory.

"Fifty," said Kreis laconically. "The tape is the original, and there is no copy. Now, where is the disc?

Giordano grinned.

"Marco Mancini would laugh with me," he said.

"What!?" said Kreis in surprise, his eyebrows arched.

Giordano, cautiously aware of the driver, removed from his pocket the computer disc and extended it toward Kreis in the back seat. Then, as if he had done it a thousand times, he snatched the revolver from under his shirt and directed it point-blank at Kreis' head.

"That's all. Talk over. And you, Salvaro, keep those hands on the wheel! Otherwise, I'll plaster his head all over this car. Quickly! I can see your hands!"

"You'll be sorry, you damned kiddie-porn pervert!" Salvaro cursed.

Giordano, keeping the gun at Kreis' head, closed the case with his other hand.

"Concert's over, gentlemen! It's time to go home! Abruptly, Giordano whacked Salvaro with the revolver handle, taking precise aim at his carotid artery. The man fell unconscious, and his head dropped back over the seat.

"Let him nap till I'm out of here," said Giordano. "And you, you old sack of shit, had better pray that a brick doesn't fall on me. My death or loss will lead the police to your doorstep."

"What do you have in mind, Giordano?" said Kreis, carefully.

"You seem to have forgotten about my specialty," replied Giordano. He stepped out of the jeep and, closing the door, added: "Pray to God, old man!"

It wasn't till he returned to the Buick that Giordano became unnerved.

"I could not have stolen the disc," he thought, as he started toward home. "I could've made an even exchange, compromising materials for compromising materials. But the money . . . . One doesn't find fifty thousand lying on the road."

The money wasn't the problem, though. That was only a justification. Deep in his heart, Giordano considered himself a coward: He had used material collected about the old man not in the form of retribution but as a means to achieve a sheltered retreat.

Everything happened as it should have, though. Giordano didn't know--nor could he have known--that it was all dictated from the heavens, and the Almighty was preparing for a fight! The pieces were being placed on the chess board. If Giordano could have known his own position there--being that of a pawn--he would have felt no need to go home. However, his fate was decided beforehand. A pawn always accepts the first stroke.

Giordano had already passed the city cemetery and was approaching the settlement Mont Fleuri when he was attracted by the southern peak of the Three Brothers massif. There at the height of seven hundred meters could be seen a white cross, a five-meter structure of double wooden laths erected by someone many years earlier.

The moonlight, glowing like phosphorus, softly enwrapped the cross, and the halo around it pulsated to the rhythm of Giordano's heartbeat: first calmly and measurably as the chanting of Gregorian monks, then quickening its pace, foretelling anxiety and fear.

He didn't remember driving the Buick into the garage and entering the house. He was holding his hand to his heart and gasping for oxygen, like a fish thrown onto the shore. His heart couldn't stand the pace and was ready to stop. He felt death coming on.

It was breathing to his back of the head. He stopped in the middle of the room, lighted with weak night-lamp. Suddenly the air was filled with a putrid stench.

"This is death," whispered Giordano.

"Yes, it is me." Thrice the response resounded in the room, as an echo. Giordano turned round, and in the half-darkness saw the burning, poisonously green eyes of death. Soon, Giordano could see the man himself.

"You!" he said, in unfathomable surprise.

"Never take a stranger's things," said the man, dryly.

"But, how did you guess . . . ."

A deft blow to the solar plexus immediately silenced Giordano, after which the sound of stripped-off skin grew into a hellish cry. Then the space filled with the smell of fresh blood and warm meat.

Half an hour later, in a room of Spartan appointments, in a house in a district of Pointe La Rue, Kreis threw out a handful of quartz radio microphones on the table. They are commonly called "chinches." All such surveillance devices operated of frequencies in the range of 138 MHz. These little beasts were well known to Kreis, who was of course a specialist. He knew all their features, advantages and defects. It took just twenty minutes to find all of them. With the help of special apparatus, working in absolute silence, Kreis and Salvaro scanned the entire house. They found one quartz telephone retranslator and seven radio microphones, working on nine-volt battery power. Giordano had set up one chinch even in the lavatory, and Kreis thanked him for the choice of only quartz chinches, because their signals can't be received by ordinary sets. Otherwise, every neighbor within a radius of a hundred meters could be witness to intimacy of all kinds.

Kreis, viewing Salvaro as a conspirator, raked the chinches from the table onto the floor. Then they stomped them to pieces. Kreis had no desire for conversation but instead led his accomplice out toward the garden.

"To my mind, that's all," Kreis said, "but God takes care of those who are cautious."

Rubbing a hand over his aching head, Salvaro nodded and said, "You're absolutely right. The damned fool nearly broke my skull."

"This is your baptism, my friend. Russians have a saying: The head is not a seat, bandage and lie. So, Giordano will run nowhere. The island is small and our hands are long.

"We need to take him away. Who knows what he's collected about us."

"Not about us, but about me," said Kreis in a tone of correction. "We've been working together for just two days. But, be ready. Go to him now, and find out what he has scratched up about me. Take the material. At the worst, offer him money. Do it without fists, as I've instructed you. Politeness is the master key in our profession. Throughout my career I'm managed not to strike anyone, but I've stolen with a smile on my face. Usually, people were subordinated to my word. As the Russians say, even a cat is fond of kind words. If you can't cope, call. I'll come and show you how to get the job done. Now, go ahead."

Salvaro went to his task. Kreis reentered the house, took out of the pocket the computer disc, switched on the computer and inserted the media. A familiar picture appeared on the screen. Then, mysterious lines and circles--the contents of the disc--began to make their complex drawing with its myriad intersecting lines, changing the projection to create a strict, logical chain. For the past three weeks, it had been his most cherished wish to obtain this disc.

Kreis had already passed fifty, but despite the gray beard he was healthy and strong. On Mae Island, he was considered among the top ten stallions, earning the nickname "Casanova." The Creole women would chase after this new "Casanova," besieging his home and making every possible effort to win a place in his heart. As for sex, he refused none. He could drive a woman to such a frenzy of pleasure that everyone on the island could hear it.

Kreis would allow no one into his heart, though. There were too many secrets, the discovery of which would cost him public humiliation at the least, or capital punishment at the worst. However, there had been a woman who was able to win the key to his heart. Her name was Uch Tana, and she had saved his life as the culmination of an episode the details of which were beyond retelling. Prior to that event, he had gifted her with his love in the heat of many nights, and he had named her Lotus Flower. It was the name often given by the detachment of fighters in the battle for independence in that Southeast Asian country.

All that was twenty-five years ago, in a land where the population was soon to taste its own blood. In the country where pregnant women were disemboweled and, with them watching, the heads of their fetuses were broken with hoes. It was a country where anyone who could read and write considered himself dead.

Uch Tana was just sixteen when the flag of independence was raised over the country's torn body. Over the many years that followed, Kreis often asked a question:

"Is Lotus Flower alive? Where is she now?"

If someone on Mae Island had told him that he'd know the answer within twelve hours, Kreis would only have smiled in disbelief.

He had many women. Thanks to one two years earlier, fate brought him to Andrew Krishelje. That one was a hard nut to crack, but he turned out to be the fruit of the same tree.

They were both occupied in fishy business dealings, so they could easily justify the decision to unite their efforts in the illegal saving of capital. In the alliance thus created, Kreis played main role of an intellectual, based on a sufficiency of life experience. The more forceful, "executive" functions were the province of Andrew.

Credits were the general source of their capital, received according to documents, the real cost of which was no higher than lavatory paper. One couldn't doubt the quality of such sources, which never disappointed. The victims of fraud were new, inexperienced banks in Asia, Africa and the reconstituted nations of Europe. As a rule, Kreis and Andrew would enter the field and look around. The mechanism for the withdrawal of money was always very complicated; it was seldom done wholesale for multiple banks. First, the pair would study the market juncture of valuable papers, detect the weak points and, once the necessary information was obtained, they'd determined the time at which to act. Kreis and Andrew were a coordinated team. They never killed, and everything went like clockwork. Their keys were blackmail, bribery and fraud. Whenever a bank was suspected of being stable, they would cut the risk and look elsewhere.

A month earlier, Kreis and Andrew has some luck in a Thai operation. At that point, however, Andrew became different: He avoided his partner. He'd hardly smile at all, and clearly he was worried about something.

"What is happening to you?" Kreis would ask, but never aloud. "Do you have some secret? What are you planning?"

The secret was revealed on the day that Kreis, this new Casanova, made an unannounced visit to his friend. That was the start of the whole story. Andrew's house stood on Francis Rachel Avenue. It was a the typical two-story structure with garrets, scalloped trim and a small garden in front.

Jeanette was conjuring something over the flowerbed. Kreis entered through the gate, and the young woman stood up to meet him.

"Good evening, Jeanette. You look pretty, as always." Though her hands were dirty, he offered his right as a gesture of courtesy. However, the young woman didn't offer her handshake in return. She had a reason to refuse.

"Out of respect for my husband, I will never greet you. You bring such an unpleasant feeling that it causes a pain in my gut. When will you leave Andrew in peace!?" She was resolutely angry.

She wore a white sports shirt over black trousers, and the casual styling said a lot about her state. The Creole woman's stomach had acquired some roundness, and suddenly it dawned on Kreis that she--with the spark of anger in agate eyes, and the wave of chestnut hair cascading over that beautiful Eastern profile--looked even more attractive.