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. ‘
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.
76
Communication with Victor Konic ended. They wound more tape around his eyes, but sloppy, so he could see. And bound his ankles. Then they threw him in what felt like a van. They drove. After an hour, they stopped. Hands grabbed under his armpits. Took his feet. And heaved.
The rain had stopped. But it was wet sand where he fell.
A beach, because he could hear the deep, regular emptying and filling of surf. Smell the salt. The damp soil seeped into his bones. He ached. Old wounds, old injuries; the doors to all his compartments came unlocked. His living and his dead promenaded in the dark.
The tape cut his wrists and ankles as he slowly, methodically, warred against his bonds. Sometime during the night, animals, dogs he hoped, sniffed near in tall grass. His movements scared them away.
All night he listened to the pounding of surf. There was a fullness to it, a long roll. More resonant than the crash of freshwater on granite.
It did not rain.
Drenched with sweat and dew, it took him until dawn to work through the tape on his ankles. Finally, he freed his legs and stood up. A breath of light nudged the darkness.
Like black fog, it drifted out to sea, toward the west.
Sand dunes, tall wind-bent grass. Ancient rounds of rusted barbed wire. And a vast horizon. Superior made the same picture for the eye. But Broker smelled the sweep of Asia out there.
Kit would still be sleeping in Minnesota. He hoped Nina was well. And that Ida Rain was still with us. He wondered if his daughter, if all the sons and daughters, would ever know about Uncle Keith.
Going deep.
Broker started to walk off the beach, out of the Shadow of Death. Into the thin sunlight. Stumbling, hooded with the tape, hands still tightly bound behind his back, he tried to get his bearings. Grids of soggy green fields stretched inland.
There was a road. And an old house. Once elegant, now its shutters were rotted, the tiles falling from the roof, walls bleached of color by the salt air.
As he approached the dwelling, El Nino marshaled the clouds. His shadow gradually faded on the gummy road, then vanished. A Mexican woman with four kids stood in the yard, behind a rickety fence rigged from wire and driftwood.
She looked hopefully at the sky, debating whether to hang her basket of laundry on the clothesline. The tall Anglo walking toward her gate looked desperate, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
Broker stopped at the edge of the fence.
“I need to use a telephone,” he called from his mask of tape.
She gathered the children to her, glanced around awkwardly. Alone out here. No car in the drive.
“Telephone,” he repeated.
She shook her head.
“Nine-one-one,” he said.
“
A lost pilgrim from the Boreal Forest, he struggled at Spanish. “
“
The sky grumbled. She looked up with a resigned expression, and it began to rain.
77
