The killer was shocked to be addressed. He sniffled at the cold. "No," he said. He had begun to shake in fear.
"I'm not surprised. Only a handful of people have. They were the group that was supposed to clean up America. Work outside the Constitution in order to preserve it. They drafted me. And I've been a loyal foot soldier for them, more or less, for a long time now. But I've failed, Linus. You want to know how I know I've failed?"
When he turned his attention on Pagget, the scrawny young man froze like a deer caught in headlights. He had been attempting to tiptoe away through the damp night grass.
Linus wheeled, leaning casually against the nearest moss-covered headstone.
"No," he announced. "Uh, no. Why?"
"Because in America now, a piece of slime can break into a convent wielding a gun, Linus. He can steal the prescription drugs from convalescing nuns and hold a one-man party for twelve hours straight while police negotiators try to talk him out. He can rape a nun, Linus. He can get a butcher knife from the convent kitchen and hold it to her throat and force himself on her. Then he can carve up her body like a Halloween pumpkin. In the America I was supposed to be preserving, that sort of thing wouldn't happen."
By this time, Linus could not stop his shaking legs. His ears strained for police sirens.
Where were they? Didn't they miss him by now? They had to be looking for him.
"And no one cares." Remo's voice was somewhere else. Lost in the hazy images of days long past. "You know what, Linus? I wish I didn't care. But I do. And even though I've tried, I don't know what to do to stop caring."
Still sitting atop his stone perch, Remo's head drooped, as if pressed down by both great sadness and awesome responsibility.
That single moment of intense introspection by his captor was the break Linus Pagget had been waiting for.
He turned and ran. Ran for all he was worth. His lungs burned. His raw throat bled.
He ran, and ran, and ran.
The cemetery gate rose up before him. He grabbed the cold iron with shaking hands. As he shoved it open, slipping on the wet grass, a face appeared on the other side.
Linus screamed.
"I can only do what I know is right, Linus," Remo said as he reached through the gates and grabbed the whimpering man by the throat. "But between you and me, I don't think it makes a difference anymore."
"You don't have to do anything!" Linus pleaded. Remo said not a word. Although it would bring him no satisfaction, the decision had already been made.
Two hands reached out for the sides of Linus's head.
The pain was incredible. Brilliant. Blinding. It was a more excruciatingly intense crystallization of sheer agony than Linus Pagget could ever have imagined in his twenty-seven long, but useless years of life. And then it was over.
The official report would eventually say that Linus Pagget had been spirited from the Nashua Police Station by forces unknown. Whoever had liberated him from his cell possessed equipment that was somehow able to exert hydraulic force of incredible proportions. The bones of his skull had literally been fused into a single, tight mass no larger than a baseball. Somewhere in that tight ball of pulverized calcium phosphate, the evil brain of the late Linus Pagget had been compressed into a gray knot the size of a Ping-Pong ball.
But even though a machine of incredible force had to have been used to do such a deed, there were no signs of such a killing device, nor of the tracks it would have left near the spot where Linus's body had been found.
There were many who believed his death was an act of God. But those who had suffered most at his hands, the nuns of St. Jude, did not speculate on the thing that might have brought the man who had terrorized them to his violent end. They merely prayed for Linus Pagget's eternal soul.
AFTER HE WAS DONE, Remo let the lifeless body drop to the cold earth.
He felt nothing about what he had just done. In fact, he felt nothing at all. About anything. And the emptiness within him was almost unbearable.
As he looked down at the body, he shook his head sadly.
"And another hundred will flood in to take your place," he said, hollow of voice.
Remo turned from the twisted remains of Linus Pagget. He left the cemetery, intense desolation slowly flooding the gutted pit that was his very being.
Chapter 3
The Banque de Richelieu was tucked away between a pair of old brick buildings on a small street between the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Avenue du Maine.
The bank was just shy of one hundred years old, and most of its architecture and its interior reflected its long history. Beyond the foyer of gleaming marble and polished wood, however, invisible to the eye of the average customer, the old bank had been forced to make some concessions to the modern era.
There were now motion-sensitive beams that activated a silent alarm. Bulletproof glass had replaced the steel bars at the tellers' cages. Paint bombs set to explode if a single franc was touched improperly were set in bags and vaults and at each teller's drawer.
The main vault of the Banque de Richelieu was a fortress. The walls were three feet of reinforced steel encased in a tomb of poured concrete. It would have taken two hours of sustained cannon fire directed against a single spot in a side wall of the vault to even crack the facade.
Today the thickness of the vault didn't matter. Today the massive door was wide open.
Ordinarily the whirring, remorseless eyes of surveillance cameras scanned the interior of the bank. This afternoon they had been disabled. Every precaution had been taken to ensure that there would be no evidence of what would transpire here today.
Monsieur d'Ailerons, the manager of the Banque de Richelieu for the past thirty years, had seen the last of his employees through the doors at a little after five that afternoon. When he was alone, clucking and fretting, he had moved nervously about the building, disabling security systems with a quick professionalism.
He had finished early.
Taking a seat in a hard-backed chair near the door, Monsieur d'Ailerons waited. Legs crossed sharply, back straight, eyes forward, d'Ailerons was one of those rare people who appeared to be standing at attention even when sitting down.
He was panting lightly, though not from his exertions. Nerves made his heart and lungs thunder in his chest.
It didn't take long before he started to wish he had gone through his routine more slowly. He had nothing more to do now but sit. And wait.
As he studied the front door, Monsieur d'Ailerons drew a precisely folded silk handkerchief from the interior pocket of his impeccably tailored suit bought in a small medium-priced shop on the Rue de la Verriere. Dabbing with slender fingers, he mopped away the sheen of nervous sweat that had formed on his pale, broad forehead.
The cloth came back drenched. He hadn't realized he was perspiring so much. With a crisp snap of his wrist he replaced the handkerchief in his suit pocket. He checked his Swiss watch.
It was time-6:00 p.m. sharp.
Unusual. They were always on time. Perhaps something had happened to them.
Pushing his small bifocals back up his long nose, Monsieur d'Ailerons allowed himself the hope that they wouldn't arrive after all.
His hopes were dashed two seconds later when there came a sharp rap of knuckles on the glass at the front door. It was not yet 6:01 p.m. They were still on time.
A fresh stream of sweat began trickling from beneath his arms. Moving swiftly on short legs, he went to answer the door.
In the hallway between the two sets of double doors, the banker drew a key from the pocket of his trousers. Reaching up, he quickly unlocked the dead bolt at the top of the door frame. Squatting, he flicked open the hand lock at the door's base.
He opened the door, stepping back obsequiously. Nils Schatz and his ragged entourage bustled into the ornate entryway of the Banque de Richelieu. The IV renegade didn't even look at the Frenchman as his group moved into the depths of the bank.
Rapidly d'Ailerons relocked the doors. He hurried back inside the bank. As expected, the men were waiting for him in his office.