“The gates.”
Greer saw an unmarked solid steel-plated gate, and a door, barely visible between some thick bushes, set into the wall beside it.
“That’s the back service entrance to the Al-Kalli estate. That’s where I’ll pick you up.”
“How do I get out without setting off an alarm?”
“Only the driveway gates are alarmed, and the door can only be opened from the inside,” Sadowski said, driving on. “You see any other car come by, just hide behind the bush.”
“I haven’t seen another car for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, but up here, almost any car you do see is a security patrol.”
Greer nodded, as Sadowski completed the curve, then took them back up around a wide bend — Greer had the feeling that they were basically making a big circle around the top of the hill crest — before entering a long, dimly lighted, dead-end street. Greer hadn’t even seen another driveway gate, on either side, for a while — just ivy-covered walls, with impenetrably thick and high hedges rising right behind them. So all of this was one property? And all of it al-Kalli’s?
“Okay, that’s his gatehouse up ahead,” Sadowski said. “A guy named Reggie’s usually on duty.”
Greer straightened his cap and collar. “You’re doing the talking.”
“Yeah, I’ll get us in,” Sadowski said. “After that, it’s up to you.”
Sadowski flashed his headlights as they approached the lighted gatehouse. It looked like the kind of stone cabin you’d see when you were entering some national park. A black guy holding a magazine in one hand stepped out as Sadowski pulled to a stop and lowered his window.
“What’s up, dude?” Sadowski said in a friendly tone.
What happened to the coming race war? Greer wondered.
“Not much,” Reggie said, resting his hand on the door of the car. He looked into the car. “Who’s this?”
“This, my man, is our sensor expert.”
Greer lowered his head, nodded, but said nothing.
“Your what? Your sensei, like in
Sadowski faked a laugh. “No, this is the guy that checks out all the motion sensors around the house and grounds.”
“Whatever you say,” Reggie replied.
“Anybody home tonight?”
“Everybody.”
“Okay, then, we’ll get this done as fast as we can.”
Reggie stepped back and batted a lever with the end of the rolled-up magazine. The gates swung back smoothly.
Sadowski raised his window again as he steered the patrol car up the long, winding drive. Greer didn’t particularly like the sound of that — everybody home. He always hoped to hear that his targets were away on business or off on vacation. But he would work around it.
But he still couldn’t see any sign of a house. What he did see, standing by the side of the drive and staring silently at the car, was a pair of peacocks. When one of them, suddenly caught in the headlights, cried out, the sound took him right back to Iraq. To those eerie cries, at dusk, when he’d first ventured into al-Kalli’s palace grounds.
“Yeah, those fuckin’ birds are all over the place,” Sadowski said. “I don’t know how anybody gets any sleep up here.”
Greer wasn’t going to worry about it. “Is there a house somewhere, or are we just out for a ride?”
Sadowski snorted. “Yeah, it’s coming.” And then, under his breath, for no particular reason, “Fucking A- rabs.”
The car passed a lighted fountain, with lots of carved figures and water jetting up on all sides. Greer started to feel like he was in an amusement park — but he wasn’t amused. Maybe it was that damned peacock cry, maybe it was just the fact that it was al-Kalli’s place, but he was already getting a bad vibe about the whole mission. He’d had enough bad nights, nights when he bolted up in bed sweating, thinking about endless colonnades, slanting desert sun… and empty cages with bent bars. Just a couple of weeks earlier, he’d actually screamed in his sleep, so loudly his mother had poked her head in the door and asked if he was all right.
At first, he hadn’t been able to answer her; his mouth was that dry. And he hadn’t been able to shake that image… of a black fog, but stronger, and more substantial, rolling toward him, starting to envelop him. He’d been struggling to get free, to get out, before whatever was in that fog — and he knew there was something in it, something terrible — discovered him. He could hear its breathing, a low rumble, and he could smell it — the smell of putrid fur and dung and blood.
“Yeah, yeah,” he’d finally said to her, wiping his damp palms on the sheet. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I said I’m okay.”
“Well, you don’t need to snap at me,” she’d said, before jerking the door closed.
He’d swallowed a couple of Xanax and spent the rest of the night in a stupor in front of the TV.
The wheels of the car had moved off the smooth concrete now and onto a rougher, cobblestoned surface. The car made another turn, and suddenly the house loomed into view. Greer had to lean forward in the seat to see all the way to the top of its spires and gables, silvered in the moonlight.
“They call it the Castle,” Sadowski said.
“No shit.”
To Greer, the place looked like a cliff of stone and timber, with here and there a shaft of yellow light creeping out of a curtained window.
Sadowski stopped the car short of the house and turned to Greer. “Okay, the pool and tennis court and all of that are back behind the house. Off to the left, that’s where the stables and some kind of barn are. That back gate, the one where I’ll pick you up again, is just past that; you can’t miss it, just follow the service drive.”
Greer didn’t move, and Sadowski waited. “Captain?” he said, maybe because they were back in reconnaissance mode.
“Yeah,” Greer replied, still taking in the sprawling house. “I got it.”
“How long you want?”
“Give me an hour, but stay on your cell in case I need you sooner.”
“Affirmative.”
Greer hated that military crap.
He got out of the car, making sure to close the door quietly; no point in emphasizing that you were there. The night air was warm, and a light breeze was blowing. He waved Sadowski off, and the patrol car backed up slowly, then made a slow turn back down the drive. Because the car would exit on the other side of the guardhouse, they were counting on Reggie not to notice that there was now only one occupant. If he did, Sadowski was going to tell him that Greer was working on a broken motion detector and he’d come back for him later.
Once the car was gone, Greer surveyed the house, which had a wide flight of stone steps leading up to a massive wooden door, and big, several-storied wings extending out on either side; dense ivy covered much of the walls. All the way on the left there was a garage with about six bays in it, and a weather vane on top shaped like, what else, a peacock.
What was it with this guy?
Greer approached slowly, but taking care not to look furtive. He straightened his cap, removed the flashlight he’d looped on his belt, and sauntered up the front steps, as if on a routine patrol. He tried the door handle — locked, big surprise — and glanced up at the surveillance camera neatly tucked above a stone gargoyle. This one, a grinning demon with a monkey’s snout, reminded him of gargoyles he’d once seen, when he was a kid, on an old church in downtown L.A. The last time he’d gone by the site, the church was gone and a parking garage was standing in its place.
But where, Greer wondered, did these cameras feed to? Was there some underground command center, with round-the-clock attendants, or did it just feed to Reggie in the guardhouse? Sadowski told him he’d checked the Silver Bear files, and there was nothing to indicate anything more than the usual camera setup. But Greer had been burned by Sadowski before, and knew enough not to rely on his information.
