brash and competitive newswoman she’d probably be a trapeze artist or in some other occupation where you could work without a net.
“I understand the risk,” Nina said. “And I really am doing this partly for you. And to get this murderous head case off the street.”
“Whatever you learn that’s pertinent, Nina, I want to know it almost as soon as you do.”
“Of course. The minute anything happens I’ll give you a buzz.”
He wasn’t sure if she was putting him on, so he held his silence. It was obvious that nothing he could say would change her mind anyway.
“Are you worried about me, Horn?”
“Yes,” he said honestly. “And pissed off that you’re making my job more difficult.”
“How exactly am I making it more difficult?”
“I told you I was worried. I meant it.”
“Why, Horn! If you weren’t married I’d be intensely interested.”
“Playful doesn’t become you, Nina. And I’m too old for you. Too beat up. And too sane.”
He hung up, burdened by the sad knowledge that what he’d said was true.
Something else not to think about while he finished his beer.
But he found the beer flat and too warm to drink. It left a bitter aftertaste.
He closed the office door so smoke wouldn’t filter into the rest of the brownstone, then sat back down and got an illegal Cuban cigar from the humidor on his desk. After preparing the cigar, using a cutter fashioned after a miniature guillotine, he fired it up with the lighter he kept in the desk’s top drawer. A cigar that cost what this one did, it burned smoothly and drew well immediately.
As he leaned back in his padded chair and smoked, it occurred to him that the problems in his life, the many unanswered questions, were beginning to hinder and entangle him more and more.
Like a web.
25
The doorbell late that night made Horn sit forward in his chair, then snuff out his cigar in the glass ashtray on the desk.
He left his comfortable den and trod through the hall to the foyer. For a moment he wished he were still carrying his service revolver. His uneasiness surprised him, even though circumstances were certainly conducive to apprehension. Not like him, after so many years of doing what he must despite fear that was sometimes terror. Maybe the Night Spider case was getting to him. And this
Horn put his hand on the doorknob and peered through one of the leaded glass windows. It was still raining. And his caller was a stranger.
He opened the door to a tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark raincoat. He was standing partly in shadow and wearing some kind of cap like a delivery man’s, its cloth top covered by clear plastic to protect it from moisture.
“Captain Thomas Horn?” the man asked with a smile. He had wide cheekbones, a hawk nose, and a broad, aggressive chin.
Horn confirmed he was who the man was seeking, his body poised, his gut telling him something was wrong here.
“I’m Colonel Victor Kray.”
Horn stared at the man. He didn’t recognize him. Didn’t believe he was NYPD.
“United States Army,” the man added, perhaps understanding Horn’s confusion.
“Ah!” Horn said. “Come in, please!” He stepped back, offering his left hand, which the colonel shook. If he really was a colonel. Horn kept his right hand ready to knot into a fist.
Once in the foyer, Kray unbuttoned his long raincoat, and Horn saw the uniform, which featured an impressive array of medals on the colonel’s chest. The colonel removed his garrison cap to reveal a head of iron gray hair, short and combed down in something like bangs that were high on his forehead. If Julius Caesar didn’t look like this guy, he should have.
“I thought we might discuss a list someone gave you,” Kray said, as Horn was hanging his wet coat on a hook. A musty, woolly odor wafted from the coat.
“Do you smoke cigars, Colonel Kray?”
“Only when I have something to celebrate.”
“Do you drink scotch?”
Kray smiled. “More often than I smoke cigars.”
Horn invited the colonel into his den, got him settled in an armchair near the desk, then poured two glasses of eighteen-year-old Glenlivet over ice, which he got from the small refrigerator that was concealed inside a cabinet just for that purpose.
Colonel Kray sat, sipped, and looked longingly at Horn’s dead cigar propped in the ashtray. “Maybe I will,” he said.
Horn supplied him with a cigar and, when it was burning, relit his own. He didn’t mention that the cigars were Cuban and illegal, not knowing quite how a military man would feel about that.
Kray puffed on the cigar and took another sip of scotch. “The pleasures of civilian life,” he said.
“You can smoke and drink in the army.”
“Not in a well-furnished den like this one. You’re a successful man, Captain Horn. Not just a lucky one.”
“That, too,” Horn said.
Kray fixed him with a steady stare that was, in itself, a reason for promotion. “What I do now in my duties wouldn’t interest you, Captain Horn. But you might find what I used to do important. I’ve been following the Night Spider murders, mostly through the
“I could use it,” Horn said, sipping his scotch and watching Kray, admiring his charisma and mannerisms of command that only years in the military could provide.
“In the armed forces of this country there is something called the SSF or Secret Special Forces. Its specialty is fighting in urban settings and mountainous terrain; the two have more in common than many people think. Its purpose is to undertake dangerous missions that must remain top secret whether they succeed or fail. These are brave men, Captain Horn, who can turn the suicidal into the doable, and who are ready to pay the supreme price of death in combat. They’re never captured. We don’t kid ourselves that some people can’t be made to talk.”
“I helped to train these men,” Kray said. “And I’ve led them in battle. They can do what your Night Spider does. There is no vertical surface they can’t negotiate, and they know how to come and go secretly and kill silently.”
“Our killer works silently enough that he doesn’t wake his victims until it’s too late for them. There’s never any sign of a struggle.”
Kray smiled. “I’d be surprised if there were. The men I’m talking about are amazingly gentle and adept, as well as deadly. They’re trained to kill enemy troops while they sleep, one after another. And with this killer you’re chasing, the delicacy might be part of the thrill, the ritual, having them sleep as long as possible, then awaken already trussed up and helpless. Or almost. Certainly beyond escaping. He’d be ready to clamp tape over their mouths the instant their eyes opened. That might be what awakens many of them, the tape abruptly altering their breathing.”
“Like a nightmare,” Horn said.
