Melchior made one man at the entrance. A perimeter check turned up no other guards or trip wires or jury- rigged warning devices. KGB would’ve never been this careless, he thought. He might pull this off after all.
He took the dripping burlap sack with the meat from Eddie Bayo’s body—Eddie Bayo’s house, that is, heh heh —and tied it over a tree branch about five feet off the ground. The bitch watched him curiously. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth and she smacked her chops greedily.
“Shh.” Melchior jerked a thumb at the guard, who was so close Melchior could smell the smoke of his cigarette.
When the sack was secure, he moved out in a wide arc to the guard’s left. Before he’d gone halfway, he heard the branch rustle as the bitch went for the meat. More important, so did the guard. His flashlight jerked in that direction. There was a louder rustle as the dog jumped again. The sound was loud and repeated enough that no one—not even a guard stupid enough to stand around in the dark with a cigarette clamped between his lips like a target—would’ve taken it for a person. But it was still enough to hold his attention, and while the guard peered to his left, Melchior drew himself about thirty feet off the man’s right flank. He pulled his knife out and waited.
After the crashing had gone on for more than a minute, the guard finally went to investigate. Melchior moved in. There was no cover between the edge of the jungle and the barn. If the guard turned around, Melchior was dead. But he also had to wait to strike until the guard was far enough from the mill that no one inside would hear him if he managed to cry out.
He was twenty feet behind the guard. Fifteen. Ten.
The guard was almost at the bush. He’d seen the dog but not the sack of meat. He leveled his gun. Melchior was afraid he was going to shoot her. He was five feet behind the guard.
He felt the branch beneath the thin sole of his sandal even as it snapped. The guard whirled, which actually made Melchior’s task easier. He aimed his blade for the throat, felt the cartilage of the man’s larynx resist a moment, then the steel pushed through soft tissue until it lodged against the cervical vertebrae.
The guard opened his mouth but only blood came out, along with a last wet puff of smoke. Melchior separated the man’s spasming fingers from the stock of his weapon with his right hand even as his left wrapped around the man’s shoulders and, gently, as if he were saving a drunken buddy from a bad fall, eased the guard to the ground. He was still alive when Melchior leaned his head forward to ease the rifle strap around his neck, but he was dead when Melchior set his head back on the ground. As he stood up, he noticed that the bitch was staring at him intently.
“He’s all yours.”
Carbine fire marked the walls of the mill like the jumpy lines of an EEG, and the whole of the east side was scorched black. Melchior peered through the bullet holes, made out six men and a flatbed truck. Two were clearly Russian: the dishwater crew cuts and holstered Makarovs gave them away. One of them stood slightly apart from the group, AK at the ready.
The other three wore gaudy suits and had their own guard posted with his own machine gun—an M-16, which was intriguing to say the least, since Melchior had now made one of the four as none other than Louie Garza, an up-and-comer in Sam Giancana’s3 Chicago Outfit. Lucky, that’s what he called himself. Lucky Louie Garza. How in the hell had he gotten his hands on a U.S. Army weapon, unless—oh, it was a beautiful unless!—the Company’d brokered a deal with the devil.
But that was something he could find out later. Right now he was more interested in what was hiding behind the slatted sides of the flatbed truck. The second Russian had a large piece of paper in his hands with some kind of drawing or diagram on it. Melchior squinted, but the lines on the page were as indistinct as the threads of an old spiderweb. The tailgate was open, however, and he made his way around the corner of the mill and found another hole to look through.
“Ho-ly
Melchior took his eye away from the bullet hole, rubbed it, leaned forward again. He wasn’t sure if he was delighted or terrified to see that it was still there: a metal box whose crudely welded seams were in direct opposition to the delicacy of the mechanism inside it. The word “” was stenciled on the side in yellow letters. Melchior sounded it out.
Suddenly one of the men jumped to the ground, and Melchior snapped into focus. What was in the truck didn’t matter until the six men surrounding it were eliminated. The two machine guns were the real problem. He positioned himself as best he could, having to work with the available chinks in the siding. He started with his pistol since he could re-aim it faster than the guard’s bolt-action Carcano. He drew a bead on the Soviet guard just below the hairline of his scrubbrush–thick crew cut, fingered the crusty hole over his heart, whispered:
Just as he squeezed the trigger, he wondered what would happen if someone shot the bomb.
Cambridge, MA
October 26–27, 1963
As Naz walked past the powder room to the pay phone, a tall figure stepped out of the shadows, his eyes lost under the low brim of a fedora.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You’re some kind of genius at what you do, you know that?”
There was as much jealousy in the man’s words as disgust, and Naz felt a chill run down her spine.
“Agent Morganthau. I didn’t realize you were here.” She jerked her head in the direction of the bar. “I was just coming to call you. I think he’s ready to go.”
“Looks to me like he came and went a long time ago.” Morganthau was shaking his head. “I feel as though I’m witnessing the secrets of the harem.”
There was something wrong, Naz thought. Morganthau was
Beneath the brim of his hat, Morganthau’s thin lips curled into something that she thought was supposed to be a sheepish grin, but came off as a sneer.
