'Yes, you will,' disagreed Manny, casually raising the automatic as if studying the trigger housing, no threat at all in his action.
'Good God!' yelled the nurse.
'I'm perfectly safe, my dear, because I'm a cautious man to the point of cowardice… Stop here, please.' The near panicked woman did as she was told, her frightened eyes shifting rapidly back and forth between the weapon and the old man's face. 'Thank you,' said Weingrass, opening the door, the sound of the wind sudden, powerful. ‘I’ll probably find our harmless visitor inside having coffee with the girls,' he added, stepping out and closing the door by pressing it shut. Wheels spinning, the Saab raced away. No matter, thought Manny, the gusts of wind covered the sound.
As it also covered whatever sound he made heading back towards the house, unavoidable sounds as he stayed out of sight on the border of the road, his feet cracking the fallen branches at the edge of the woods. He was as grateful for the racing dark clouds above in the sky as he was for the dark overcoat; both kept his being seen to a minimum. Five minutes later and several yards deeper into the woods, he stood by a thick tree at midpoint opposite the wall of hedges. He again shielded his face from the wind and, squinting, peered across the road.
They were there! And they were not lost. His disturbing thoughts had been valid. And rather than being lost the intruders were waiting—for something or someone. Both men wore leather jackets and were crouched in front of the hedges talking rapidly to each other, the man on the right constantly, impatiently glancing at his wristwatch. Weingrass did not have to be told what that meant; they were waiting for someone or more than someone. Awkwardly, feeling his age physically but not in his imagination, Manny lowered himself to the ground and began prowling around on his hands and knees, not sure what he was looking for but knowing he had to find it, whatever it was.
It was a thick, heavy limb newly blown down by the wind, sap still oozing from the shards where it had been snapped from a larger source in the trunk. It was about forty inches long; it was swingable. Slowly, more awkwardly and painfully, the old man rose to his feet and made his way back to the tree where he had been standing, diagonally across the road from the two intruders no more than fifty feet away.
It was a gamble, but then so was what was left of his life and the odds were infinitely better than they were at roulette or chemin de fer. The results, too, would be known more quickly, and the gambler in Emmanuel Weingrass was willing to place a decent bet that one of the intruders would stay where he was out of basic common sense. The aged architect moved back in the woods, selecting his position as carefully as if he were refining a final blueprint for the most important client of his life. He was; the client was himself. Make total use of the natural surroundings had been axiomatic with him all his professional life; he did not veer from that rule now.
There were two poplars, both wide and about seven feet apart, forming an abstract forest gate. He concealed himself behind the trunk on the right, gripped the heavy limb and raised it until it leaned against the bark above his head. The wind careened through the trees, and through the multiple sounds of the forest he opened his mouth and roared a short singsong chant, one-third human, two-thirds animal. He craned his neck and watched.
Between the trunks and the lower foliage he could see the startled figures across the road. Both men spun around in their crouching positions, the man on the right gripping his companion's shoulder, apparently—hopefully, prayed Manny—issuing orders. He had. The man on the left got to his feet, pulled a gun from inside his jacket and started for the forest across the road to Mesa Verde.
Everything was timing now. Timing and direction, the brief, seductive sounds leading the quarry into the fatal sea of green as surely as the sirens lured Ulysses. Twice more Weingrass emitted the eerie calls, and then a third that was so pronounced that the intruder rushed forward, slapping branches in front of him, his weapon levelled, his feet digging into the soft earth—towards and finally into the forest gate.
Manny pulled back on the thick, heavy limb and swung it with all his strength down and across into the head of the racing man. The face was shattered, blood spurting out of every feature, the skull a mass of broken bone and cartilage. The man was dead. Breathlessly, Weingrass walked out from behind the trunk and knelt down.
The man was an Arab.
The winds from the mountains continued their assault. Manny pulled the gun from the corpse's still warm hand and, even more awkwardly, far more painfully, edged his way back towards the road. The dead intruder's companion was a wild core of misdirected energy; he kept spinning his head towards the woods, towards the road from Mesa Verde and down at his watch. The only thing he had
