The Scorpio Illusion (45 page)

“Here!” Cathy was at the window, holding out a crystal pitcher filled with water. Then she saw the face below at Hawthorne’s side. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, turning away, as if she might vomit, instantly forcing herself to turn back. “What happened to her?” she asked, more of a plea than a question.

“You’d know if you smelled the odor down here—or maybe you wouldn’t. The more macho chemists call it crash gas; you inhale it for a moment or two and it spreads like a lethal fungus in your lungs, choking off all exhalation. Unless it’s washed out instantly—literally
washed
out—a person will die within an hour, usually less.”

“And unless an experienced doctor handles the flushing process,” said Poole, emerging out of the shadows, “the patient drowns. I’ve read about that stuff; it was a max-priority in Desert Storm.… Who is she?”

“Mars and Neptune’s loyal factotum and once-celebrated hostess,” answered Tyrell. “She just got her pension while praying for them all at their chapel. A cylinder in the air ducts is my guess.”

“Nice fellas.”

“Top drawer, Jackson. Come on, give me a hand. Let’s put her in the library next to her beloved employer and get out of here.”

“Get out?” Catherine Neilsen was stunned. “I thought you wanted to tear this place apart.”

“lt’d be a waste of time, Cathy.” Hawthorne reached down for the bloodied gatehouse entry log and shoved it awkwardly under his belt. “This lady may not have
been playing with a full deck, but she was a damned efficient robot for Van Nostrand. If she said the place was cleaned out, it was.… Get that shipping receipt, I want to take it with us.”

The chauffeur was still naked, bound, and unconscious, and for convenience would stay where he was, so Poole drove the limousine, in deference, he said, to the extreme physical stress placed upon an aging former naval officer. “All that runnin’ and leapin’ in and out of windows—mah word!”

“Your execution is not yet out of the question,” said Tyrell, alone in the back seat, stretching out his unacknowledged painful legs. “Major, check the telephone up there,” he ordered Neilsen, who was in front with her lieutenant. “See if there are any instructions or numbers to reach the other limo. Look in the glove compartment too.”

“There’s nothing,” said Cathy as Poole raced down the entrance road after raising the gate under Hawthorne’s instructions. “Maybe I can call the operator, ask her to trace it.”

“You’d have to have the number, or at least a license plate,” said Jackson. “Otherwise they won’t give it to you.”

“Are you sure?”

“More than sure, it’s FCC regulations.”

“Shit!”

“What about Captain Stevens?”

“I’ll try anything!” exclaimed Hawthorne, reaching for the back seat phone attached to the strip between the doors. He pressed the numbers rapidly, telling a navy subordinate that he was in a car nearby and his call was urgent. “Four-zero emergency, sailor!”

“What are you doing up here?” shouted the head of naval intelligence. “You’re in Puerto Rico, goddamn it!”

“No time, Henry! There’s a limousine owned by a
Nils Van Nostrand, Virginia license plate, but I don’t know the number—”

“
The
Van Nostrand?” an astonished Stevens interrupted.

“That’s who. I’ve got to have the telephone number of that limo.”

“Do you know how many limousines there are in the state of Virginia, especially this close to Washington?”

“How many are carrying Bajaratt?”

“What
?”

“Do it, Captain!” shouted Tye, trying to read the jiggling digits on the phone. “Call me back—here’s the number.” Hawthorne gave it to him and hung up the phone, twice missing the cradle in his anxiety.

“Where to, Commander?” asked Poole.

“Drive around for a while. I don’t want to stop anywhere until he calls back.”

“If it’ll make you feel a bit relieved,” continued the air force lieutenant, “that Gulfstream is headed straight through to Charlotte. It’ll land in an hour and a half, plus or minus for a few thunder-bumpers.”

“I can’t wait to hear who cleared that bastard. Five’ll get you twenty it’s someone in this gatehouse log.”

“Are you feeling all right, Tye?” Neilsen turned, looking over the partition at Hawthorne’s stretched-out legs and the hands that were massaging them.

“What does that mean? I’m perfectly fine, except I’m a charter, not a commando.”

“I can stop and get some ice,” said Poole.

The telephone rang; Tyrell grabbed it. “Yes?”

“This is the cellular operator, sir. Is this number—”

“Never mind, operator, I’d know that bark anywhere,” said the overriding voice of Henry Stevens. “We’ve got the wrong limo.”

“We’re very sorry, sir, please excuse the inconvenience—”

Hawthorne hung up. “At least he’s moving fast,” said Tyrell.

They drove around the Virginia countryside, seeing little because of the darkness, and passing the large estates of the hunt-country millionaires, only innocuous comments filling the void of pertinent conversation. The tension was driving the three of them to the point of babbling. Then exactly eighteen minutes later, the limousine phone rang again.

“What have you walked into,” asked an ice-cold Captain Henry Stevens.

“What have you got for me?”

“Something neither one of us wants to hear. We traced the cellular number of Van Nostrand’s limousine—his other limo—and had the operator verify for line interference. All we heard on the override was the usual, recorded ‘driver has left the vehicle.’ ”

“So? Keep trying!”

“No reason to. Our crossover computers picked up a state police report with the identical license plate and registration—”

“They were stopped?
Hold
them—”

“They weren’t stopped,” Stevens broke in, his cool manner becoming frigid. “Have you any idea who Van Nostrand is?”

“Enough to know he went around you to reach me, Henry.” As an astonished Stevens started to reply, Tyrell cut him off. “You were out of the loop, Captain, and you’d better bless your stars you weren’t in it. If you had been, I’d have cut your throat with your eyes wide open.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I was summoned to my own execution—fortunately, I survived.”

“I don’t believe this!”

“Believe me, I don’t lie where my life’s concerned. We’ve got to find that other limo, find Bajaratt. Now, where is it?”

“At the bottom of a ravine off a back-country road
in Fairfax,” said the stunned chief of naval intelligence in a quiet monotone. “The driver’s dead.”

“Where are the others? There were two, one of them Little Girl Blood!”

“You say—”

“I
know
! Where are they?”

“There was no one else, just the driver—shot in the head.… I ask you again, Tye, do you know who this Van Nostrand is? The police are on their way to his place right now!”

“They’ll find him in the library, stone-cold deep. Good-bye, Henry.” Hawthorne hung up the phone and leaned back in the seat, his legs and arms in pain, his head throbbing from the anxiety and the tension. “Forget the limousine,” he said, bringing his hand to his leaded eyes. “It’s totaled, the driver’s dead.”

“Bajaratt
?” Neilsen whipped her head around. “Where is she?”

“Who knows? Somewhere within a hundred-mile radius is as good a bet as any, but we’re not going to find her tonight. Maybe we’ll learn something from the gatehouse log, maybe more from the Charlotte airport … or perhaps even more from a combination of both. Let’s find a place where we can rest and get something to eat. As an old trainer once told me, both are weapons.”

“We passed a pretty nice-lookin’ place a while back,” said Poole. “Actually, I don’t know where we’d find another; it’s the only motel I’ve seen, and we’ve been drivin’ all over the area. As a matter of fact, Cath and I were supposed to be registered there, courtesy of Van Nostrand. Of course, we weren’t—never meant to be.”

“The Shenandoah Lodge, wasn’t it?” asked the major.

“That’s it,” replied the lieutenant.

“Turn around,” said Tyrell.

20

N
icolo Montavi of Portici paced rapidly back and forth, trembling from fear and exhaustion, rivulets of sweat rolling down his face, his eyes wide and darting this way and that at nothing, betraying his panic. Less than an hour before he had committed not only a terrible crime but a mortal sin in the eyes of God! He had assisted in the taking of a human life—not the killing itself, thanks be to Christ—but he had not stopped it in that swift second or two when he saw Cabrini take the gun from her purse. He had been confused, still appalled, horrified by the gunfire that accompanied their escape from the huge estate. The signora had ordered the chauffeur to stop the limousine, that was all! Then she withdrew her gun and shot him in the back of his head as coldly as if—as if she were swatting a fly, that was it! Moments later she had commanded her dock boy to push the car off the side of the road, where it plunged down the embankment into a ravine. He could not disobey, for the weapon was in her hand, and he knew in his heart—for it was in her eyes—that she would kill him if he refused.
Madonna della tristezza
!

Amaya Bajaratt sat on the couch in the minisuite at the Shenandoah Lodge, facing a hysterical Nicolo. “Is there anything else you wish to say, my dear? If so, please lower your voice.”

“You are a madwoman, completely insane! You shot that man for no reason at all—you will send us both to
hell
!”

“I’m glad you understand that you’re included on the journey.”

“You shot him just as you shot that black servant on the island, and he was only a driver!” interrupted the young Italian feverishly. “The lies, the clothes, this
juego
we play with such important people … ah,
bueno, che cosa
? games for the rich who pay money, it is not so different on the docks in Portici … but not killing two such people. My God, a simple driver!”

“He was not a simple driver. When I told you to search his pockets, what did you find?”

“A gun,” the dock boy replied quietly, reluctantly.

“Do simple drivers carry weapons?”

“In Italy, many do to protect their employers.”

“Possibly, but not here in the United States. Here there are laws we don’t have.”

“I know nothing of such laws.”

“I do, and I tell you that man was a criminal, an
agente segreto
sworn to destroy our great cause.”

“You
have
such a great cause?”

“The greatest, Nicolo. There is none like it in the world today, a cause the Church itself silently blesses us for dedicating our lives to it.”

“
Il Vaticano
? But you are not of my church! You
have
no faith!”

“In this area I do, I give you my solemn word, and that’s all I’m permitted to tell you. So you see, your concerns are not that important. Now do you understand?”

“No, I do not, signora.”

“You don’t have to,” Bajaratt broke in firmly. “Think how rich you are in Napoli, and of the great family that welcomes you as its own in Ravello. While you’re doing so, go into the bedroom and unpack us.”

“You are a very difficult woman,” said Nicolo in a monotone, his eyes unblinking.

“Ever so. Quickly now, I have calls to make.” The young Italian retreated into the bedroom as the Baj reached for the telephone on the side table. She dialed
the number of their hotel and asked for the concierge. She identified herself, giving instructions for the luggage she had left behind, and inquired as to her messages, for which she had handsomely tipped the concierge.

“Thank you for your generosity, madame,” said an unctuous voice at the hotel in Washington, “and be assured that your needs are being looked after with utmost care. We’re sorry you had to leave so abruptly, but hope to have you back when you’re again in the nation’s capital.”

“The messages, please.” There were five, the most important one from Senator Nesbitt of Michigan; several others were in varying degrees helpful but not vital, and the last enigmatic. It was from the red-haired young political consultant they had met in Palm Beach, the oped contributor to
The New York Times
who had steered them to the dangerously inquisitive reporter from
The Miami Herald
—so dangerous Bajaratt had had to eliminate him quickly, with a jab of her lethal bracelet. She called the senator first.