Broker watched James smile his deluded smile and fantasize rescue. Watched the shudder of relief go through him when the two men rushed in from the porch. They wore running suits and sneakers. One of them had short cropped hair and a military stoicism to his sunken cheeks. The other was Rasputin.
They carried pistols. Slender automatics with silencers.
Which James may or may not have known would be very unusual sidearms for FBI agents to carry. But that was aca-demic, because James challenged them: “FBI?”
The gunmen shrugged at each other. With the droll expression of a homicidal clown, Rasputin slapped James in the face, unleashed a tirade: “Slyshay vasya, ya pyshy tebya, govnyuk. Na korm moyem sobakam!”
“What? Huh?” James blinked, confused, too off balance to track small crucial details, like the blue tattoos they had on the tops of their hands. Rasputin’s five-pointed star. The thin military-looking one wore a snake.
The Snake placed the silencer tube of his pistol firmly against Broker’s forehead and forced him two steps backward. “Stop,” said a voice behind him. The same precise English he’d heard on the phone yesterday. “Put your hands behind you, Broker.”
Broker did. Carefully, pinned in place by the pistol barrel.
A tearing sound. Then his wrists were efficiently wrapped with duct tape. Once his hands were bound, the Snake lowered his weapon and frisked him. Found a billfold, badge, picture ID.
“Turn around,” said Konic.
Broker turned and saw a lean man with short iron gray hair and a fading golf tan. Everything about him was quiet, expensively understated; his build, the statement of his casual clothes-rain jacket, sports shirt, khakis, loafers. The Snake handed Konic Broker’s ID. Konic inspected the items like a meticulous clerk who adds and subtracts lives.
“Broker, are these guys FBI?” Surging fear distorted James’s voice.
Konic uttered a remark in Russian. The Snake heaved a phlegmy laugh and cracked James across the teeth with his pistol barrel. James sagged to his knees.
It was not pretty. War never is. James looked like a broken piece of meat forked into the tiger house. But Broker felt remarkably calm. All his life he’d listened to his body, and now, his body told him he was not in danger. His experience told him he was in the company of professionals.
Konic gave directions in Russian. The gunmen tripped the now hysterical James and shoved him down onto his freshly sanded floor. Beige sawdust blotted his dirty cheek, his sweaty T-shirt.
Konic took Broker by the arm and led him to the kitchen table. He motioned for Broker to sit. Then he said, “How’s David?”
“David is fine.”
“You know each other?” James screamed.
Konic said, “Excuse me.” He walked to James and said,
“Mr. James, Keith Angland sends his regards. He apologizes for being such a bad shot.”
“Hey. Just a minute,” protested James. “You have this all wrong. Broker, tell them. Angland’s a cop. He set this THE BIG LAW/429
all up, but his wife meddled and it got all twisted.”
Konic smiled. “Some cop. He kills his own wife to protect his comrades.”
“No. No.” James tried to struggle to his feet. “He didn’t kill her. Don’t you get it? I did it. I did it. For the money and I knew he was after her. See. It was perfect. So I pushed her and he saw me. Hey. Listen…”
Konic smiled. “Of course, you’d say anything right now.
But a better choice would be the Our Father.”
Broker shut his eyes. So he’d been right, but he took no pleasure in it-not now, being a witness at this ironic execu-tion that was indirectly sanctioned by the U.S. Justice Department.
“Where’s the money, Mr. James?” asked Konic.
James whined. “It’s mine.”
“Where?” Konic could load a single syllable full of menace.
The gunmen positioned James on his knees. A European legacy of feudalism, Broker supposed. The victim must be seen as subject to authority. Even complicit in his destruction.
Broker resented and admired Keith Angland. A problem he’d always had with powerful men on missions, who crafted their plans out of human flesh.
Konic snapped orders. The gunmen tore off James’s tennis shoes and yanked off his dirty jeans. They manhandled him into the corner. He pressed his back into the crack of the wall, squirmed. His jockey shorts were damp with sawdust, gray sweat. His white legs trembled. His eyes sought Broker’s, pleading.
Konic speculated in a patient didactic voice. “I used to be an advocate of sleep deprivation. Drugs are useful. But in Afghanistan, the mujahideen pried our tanks open with their rifle barrels and killed us with rocks. I learned that techniques are secondary, if the will is present. So. We use what is at hand.”
Curtly, he spoke to his helpers. They immediately went to the belt sander and began to loosen the drum.
James pleaded with Broker. He was sitting in a puddle of urine now. “Do something. You’re a police officer.”
Footnotes, thought Broker. History.
James started to scream. The Snake immediately began to kick him into the corner, raging, vicious.
Konic walked to the TV and turned the volume up to the maximum to drown James’s screams. Irritably, he hectored Rasputin, who struggled with the unfamiliar machine, folding a sheet of the heavy coarse sandpaper into the drum. “Oy Blyad!” Rasputin swore. Sucked a knuckle. Skinned himself on the sandpaper.
They hunkered down side by side. James screamed, drowning out Bernie Shaw’s TV voice. Rasputin’s and the Snake’s practical conversation as they tried to master the unfamiliar mechanism. Drum sanders were tricky, keeping the tension on the sheet of sandpaper while you tightened the drum.
Finally, they had it crimped in place. Rasputin, his eyes merry with experiment, rolled the heavy sander toward James. Blubbering, James drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.
Then Rasputin made the mistake of hitting the switch before he had a firm grip on the sturdy cross-T handle. The slack dust catcher on the exhaust inflated with the shock of an air bag. The machine roared and charged. It was an old model Clark, with an eight-inch drum and as thick as a squat fender off a stainless steel tank. They’d put the coarsest paper on. Looked to Broker like number sixteen-black rock grits.
The runaway sander hit James’s right ankle and ran over his foot cranking around five thousand revolutions per minute. His scream was lost in the snarl of the drum. A fine spray of blood, shredded skin and tissue spattered the wall.
His foot shook violently.
James catapulted beyond fear, swallowed his screams, racked by sick-dog shivers.
Delighted at this serendipity, the two thugs got the sander under control and turned it off. Ignoring James’s screams, they commenced a spirited discussion in their native language on the merits of the tool, pausing to point to various portions of James’s twitching body.
Konic intervened, dropped to one knee and spoke to James in low tones. James jerked his head, shouted, “Closet, in the ceiling, bedroom.”
The two gunmen pulled him to his feet and hobbled him down the hall. A squashed-bug smear of blood soiled his sanded floor.
While they were gone Konic noticed the two cigars in Broker’s Levi’s jacket pocket. Pulled one out, read the label, tucked it back.
“They’re your son’s. I took the liberty,” said Broker.
“Cuba,” said Konic fondly. “Good women; unforgettable cigars.”
They brought James back, far gone in shock. They carried two cardboard boxes, and when one of them tipped slightly, Broker saw it was full of banded currency. He didn’t know how James got it back. Didn’t matter.
Konic pointed to the boxes. “What’s your idea? You can’t carry it. We’ll tie you up and dump you on the beach.”
“Alive,” specified Broker.
“Of course.” Konic smiled. “How about the beach at Haiphong Harbor? I have some old friends in the Hanoi Politburo who would love to find you in that fix.”
“Let’s save that for another time.” Broker removed a slip of paper from his pocket. “Deposit it in this account; you know how, without attracting attention.”
Konic viewed the numbers written under the name of the Hong Kong bank. “No problem. They won’t be fussy. ‘ Pecu-nium non olent,’” he said, smiling thinly.
Broker nodded. Latin-basically: “Money doesn’t stink.”
Swiss banks chiseled the motto over their doors.
Konic put the note in his pocket, moved to the corner, stooped and squeezed James’s bloodless cheeks between his fingers. “You only made one mistake, when you thought you could do it in the first place. You can’t steal from us. We can’t allow it. If you can do it, anyone can.”
Then he heaved James back into the corner and nodded to Rasputin, who grinned and switched on the sander. This time he had a good hold on the handle. A grinding roar chewed up the floorboards. Inched it forward. The churning sawdust caused James’s thighs to pucker and quiver. Shut it off. A test.
The gunmen took a stance, one to either side, bracing, holding the handle and the steering column. Their bodies moved in unison, counting down. One. Two…
James slobbered, “All I ever wanted was to go to Las Vegas.”
They hit the switch for real.
From being in a war, Broker knew the action eye is a high resolution camera of contradictions; the lens is a geyser of adrenaline, and pictures come in slow motion. His only thought was of Keith, desperately trying to pull Caren to safety. Looking into her eyes. Feeling his strength go by inches. How long had he held Caren above the crashing cataract before she slipped from his grasp, leaving him to soldier on.
And Ida.
The roar changed from a gritty snarl to a clogged whine.
As it bit into James’s groin, the gunmen grunted. Rasputin seized the steering column and lifted. The machine drove a red swath up James’s middle, threw chips of sternum, bit into the hollow of his throat. When the drum caught his chin his neck flapped like broken film on a reel.
They tried to dodge the mess, the machine tore from their grip and twisted out of control. It raved in the corner, chewing the wall, caught in a jerky danse macabre with James’s legs.
Someone yanked the cord out of the wall. Cursed. Then just silence. A nauseating rug-burned stench. And the steady patter of El Nino on the roof. Konic turned to Broker.
“What can I say? They are contract men, they’ll be on a plane for the old country before midnight. They delight in savagery.” He shrugged. “One of the enthusiasms Russia is going through at the moment. A growth spurt, not unlike your wild west. But I can tell-you think we’re crude, huh.”
Broker didn’t respond. He had spent worse nights.
But not in recent memory.