gleaming. There was a hammer blow to his breastbone, followed by another that almost split him in two. Claws were at work, the nails throwing up a red spray. The killer writhed and fought as best he could, but his best was nothing. The beast’s claws entered his lungs, ripped away the heaving tissue, drove down into the man’s core; and then the snout and the teeth found the pulsing prize, and with two twists of the head the heart was torn from its vine like an overripe, dripping fruit.
The heart was crushed between the fangs, and the mouth accepted its juices. The killer’s eyes were still open, and his body twitched, but all his blood was flooding out and there was none left to keep his brain alive. He gave a shuddering, terrible moan-and the monster threw its head back and echoed the cry in a voice that rang through the house like a death knell.
And then, nosing into the gaping hole, the beast began its feeding, tearing with rampant rage at the inner mysteries of a man.
Afterward, as the lights of Cairo dimmed and the first violet light of the sun began to come up over the pyramids, something caught between animal and man spasmed and retched in the mansion of the Countess Margritta. From its mouth flowed grisly lumps and fragments, a creeping red sea that went under the banister and over the edge to the tiled floor below. The naked retching thing curled itself into a fetal shape, shivering uncontrollably, and in that house of the dead no one heard it weep.
ONE – Rite of Spring
1
Again the dream awakened him, and he lay in the dark while the gusts bellowed at the windows and an errant shutter flapped. He had dreamed he was a wolf who dreamed he was a man who dreamed he was a wolf who dreamed. And in that maze of dreams there had been bits and pieces of memory, flying like the fragments of an exploded jigsaw puzzle: the sepia-toned faces of his father, mother, and older sister, faces as if from a burned- edge photograph; a palace of broken white stones, surrounded by thick, primeval forest where the howls of wolves spoke to the moon; a passing steam train, headlight blazing, and a young boy racing along the tracks beside it, faster and faster, toward the entrance of the tunnel that lay ahead.
And from the puzzle of memory, an old, leathery, white-bearded face, the lips opening to whisper: Live free.
He sat up on his haunches and realized then that he had been lying not in his bed but on the cold stone floor before the fireplace. A few embers drowsed in the darkness, waiting to be stirred. He stood up, his body naked and muscular, and walked to the high bay windows that overlooked the wild hills of northern Wales. The March wind was raging beyond the glass, and scattershots of rain and sleet struck the windows before his face. He stared from darkness into darkness, and he knew they were coming.
They had let him alone too long. The Nazis were being forced toward Berlin by a vengeful Soviet tide, but Western Europe-the Atlantic Wall-was still in Hitler’s grip. Now, in this year of 1944, great events were in motion, events with great potential for victory or terrible risks of defeat. And he knew full well what the aftermath of that defeat would mean: a solidified Nazi hold on Western Europe, perhaps an intensified effort against the Russian troops and a savage battle for territory between Berlin and Moscow. Though their ranks had been thinned, the Nazis were still the best-disciplined killers in the world. They could still deflect the Russian juggernaut and surge again toward the capital of the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gallatinov’s motherland.
But he was Michael Gallatin now, and he lived in a different land. He spoke English, thought in Russian, and contemplated in a language more ancient than either of those human tongues.
They were coming. He could feel them getting nearer, as surely as he sensed the wind whirling through the forest sixty yards away. The world’s tumult was bringing them closer, to his house on this rocky coast that most men shunned. They were coming for one reason.
They needed him.
Live free, he thought, and his mouth curled with the hint of a smile. There was some bitterness in it. Freedom was an illusion, in the shelter of his own house on this stormy land, where the nearest village, Endore’s Rill, lay more than fifteen miles to the south. For him, a great part of freedom was isolation, and he had come to realize more and more, as he monitored the shortwave broadcasts between London and the Continent, listening to the voices speak in codes through the blizzards of static, that the bonds of humanity had chained him.
So he would not refuse them entrance when they arrived, because he was a man and they would also be men. He would listen to what they had to say, might even consider it briefly before he refused. They had come a long way, over rough roads, and he might possibly offer them shelter for the night. But his service to his adopted homeland was done, and now it was up to young soldiers with mud-grimed faces and nervous fingers on carbine triggers. The generals and commanders might bark orders, but it was the young who died carrying them out; that was the way it had been throughout the ages, and in that respect, the future of warfare would never change. Men being what they were.
Well, there was no keeping them away from his door. He could lock the gate, way up at the end of the road, but they would find a way over it, or cut the barbed-wire fence and walk in. The British had a lot of experience in snipping barbed-wire. So it was best just to leave the gate unlocked, and wait for them. It might be tomorrow, or the day after that, or next week. Whenever; he would still be here.
Michael listened to the song of the wild for a moment, his head cocked slightly to one side. Then he returned to the flagstone floor in front of the fireplace, lay down and curled his arms around his knees, and tried to rest.
2
“He picked a damn lonely place to live, didn’t he?” Major Shackleton lit a cigar and cranked down the glossy black Ford’s rear window on his side to let the smoke seep out. The cigar tip glowed red in the gloomy twilight of late afternoon. “You Brits like this kind of weather, huh?”
“I fear we have no choice but to like it,” Captain Humes-Talbot answered. He smiled as politely as he could, his aristocratic nostrils flared. “Or at least accept it.”
“Right.” Shackleton, a United States Army officer with a face like the business end of a battle-ax, peered out at the gray, low clouds and the nasty drizzle. He hadn’t seen the sun for more than two weeks, and the chill was making his bones ache. The elderly, stiff-backed British army driver, separated from his passengers by a glass window, was taking them along a narrow pebbled road that wound between dark, cloud-shrouded crags and stands of thick pine forest. The last village they’d passed, Houlett, was twelve miles behind them. “That’s why you people are so pale,” he went on, like a bulldozer through a tea party. “Everybody looks like a ghost over here. You ever come to Arkansas, I’ll show you a springtime sun.”
“I’m not sure my schedule will allow it,” Humes-Talbot said, and cranked down his window a turn and a half. He was wan and thin, a twenty-eight-year-old staff officer whose closest brush with death had been diving into a Portsmouth ditch as a Messerschmitt fighter screamed past seventy feet overhead. But that had been in August of 1940, and now no Luftwaffe aircraft dared to cross the Channel.
“So Gallatin served with distinction in North Africa?” Shackleton’s teeth were clenched around the cigar, and the stub was wet with saliva. “That was two years ago. If he’s been out of service since then, what makes your people think he can handle the job?”
Humes-Talbot stared at him blankly with his bespectacled blue eyes. “Because,” he said, “Major Gallatin is a professional.”
“So am I, sonny.” Shackleton was ten years the British captain’s senior. “That doesn’t make me able to parachute into France, does it? And I haven’t been sittin’ on my tailbone for the last twenty-four months, I’ll guaran-damn-tee you that.”
“Yes sir,” the other man agreed, simply because he felt he should. “But your… uh… people asked for help in this matter, and since it’s of benefit to both of us, my superiors felt-”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s yesterday’s news.” Shackleton waved the man quiet with an impatient hand. “I’ve told my people I’m not sold on Gallatin’s-excuse me, Major Gallatin’s-record. His lack of field experience, I ought to say, but
