Persuader Part 42

"That was cool," he said. "You beat him."

"No, he beat himself," I said.

There were noisy seagulls in the air. They were fighting the wind, circling a spot in the ocean maybe forty yards away. They were dipping down and pecking at the crests of the waves. They were eating floating fragments of Paulie. Richard was watching them with blank eyes.

"Talk to your mother," I said to him. "You need to convince her to get away."

"I'm not leaving," Elizabeth said again.

"Me either," Richard said. "This is where we live. We're a family."

They were in some kind of shock. I couldn't argue with them. So I tried to put them to work instead. We walked up the driveway, slow and quiet. The wind tore at our clothes. I was limping, because of my shoe. I stopped where the bloodstains started and retrieved the e-mail device. It was broken. The plastic screen was cracked and it wouldn't turn on.

I dropped it in my pocket. Then I found the heel rubber and sat cross-legged on the ground and put it back in place. Walking was easier after that. We reached the gate and unchained it and opened it and I got my jacket and my coat back and put them on. I b.u.t.toned the coat and turned the collar up. Then I drove the Cadillac in through the gate and parked it near the gatehouse door. Richard chained the gate again. I went inside and opened the big Russian machine gun's breech and freed the ammunition belt. Then I lifted the gun off its chain. Carried it outside into the wind and put it sideways across the Cadillac's rear seat. I went back in and rolled the belt back into its box and took the chain off its ceiling hook and unscrewed the hook from the joist. Carried the box and the chain and the hook outside and put them in the Cadillac's trunk.

"Can I help with anything?" Elizabeth asked.

"There are twenty more ammunition boxes," I said. "I want them all."

"I'm not going in there," she said. "Never again."

"Then I guess you can't help with anything."

I carried two boxes at a time, so it took me ten trips. I was still cold and I was aching all over. I could still taste blood in my mouth. I stacked the boxes in the trunk and all over the floor in back and in the front pa.s.senger footwell. Then I slid into the driver's seat and tilted the mirror. My lips were split and my gums were rimed with blood. My front teeth at the top were loose. I was upset about that. They had always been misaligned and they had been a little chipped for years, but I got them when I was eight and I was used to them and they were the only ones I had.

"Are you OK?" Elizabeth asked.

I felt the back of my head. There was a tender spot where I had hit the driveway. There was a serious bruise on the side of my left shoulder. My chest hurt and breathing wasn't entirely painless. But overall I was OK. I was in better shape than Paulie, which was all that mattered. I thumbed my teeth up into my gums and held them there.

"Never felt better," I said.

"Your lip is all swollen."

"I'll live."

"We should celebrate."

I slid out of the car.

"We should talk about getting you out of here," I said.

She said nothing to that. The phone inside the gatehouse started ringing. It had an oldfas.h.i.+oned bell in it, low and slow and relaxing. It sounded faint and far away, m.u.f.fled by the noise of the wind and the sea. It rang once, then twice. I walked around the Cadillac's hood and went inside and picked it up. Said Paulie's name and waited a beat and heard a voice I hadn't heard in ten years.

"Did he show up yet?" it said.

I paused.

"Ten minutes ago," I said. I kept my hand halfway over the mouthpiece and made my voice high and light.

"Is he dead yet?"

"Five minutes ago," I said.

"OK, stay ready. This is going to be a long day."

You got that right, I thought. Then the phone clicked off and I put it down and stepped back outside.

"Who was it?" Elizabeth asked.

"Quinn," I said.

The first time I heard Quinn's voice was ten years previously on a ca.s.sette tape. Kohl had a telephone tap going. It was unauthorized, but back then military law was a lot more generous than civilian procedure. The ca.s.sette was a clear plastic thing that showed the little spools of tape inside. Kohl had a player the size of a shoe box with her and she clicked the ca.s.sette into it and pressed a b.u.t.ton. My office filled with Quinn's voice. He was talking to an offsh.o.r.e bank, making financial arrangements. He sounded relaxed. He spoke clearly and slowly with the neutral h.o.m.ogenized accent you get from a lifetime in the army. He read out account numbers and gave pa.s.swords and issued instructions concerning a total of half a million dollars. He wanted most of it moved to the Bahamas.

"He mails the cash," Kohl said. "To Grand Cayman, first."

"Is that safe?" I said.

She nodded. "Safe enough. The only risk would be postal workers stealing it. But the destination address is a PO box and he sends it book rate, and n.o.body steals books out of the mail. So he gets away with it."

"Half a million dollars is a lot of money."

"It's a valuable weapon."

"Is it? That valuable?"

"Don't you think so?"

I shrugged. "Seems like a lot to me. For a lawn dart?"

She pointed at the tape player. Pointed at Quinn's voice filling the air. "Well, that's what they're paying, obviously. I mean, how else did he get half a million dollars? He didn't save it out of his salary, that's for sure."

"When will you make your move?"

"Tomorrow," she said. "We'll have to. He's got the final blueprint. Gorowski says it's the key to the whole thing."

"How will it go down?"

"Frasconi is dealing with the Syrian. He's going to mark the cash, with a judge advocate watching. Then we'll all observe the exchange. We'll open the briefcase that Quinn gives to the Syrian, immediately, in front of the same judge. We'll doc.u.ment the contents, which will be the key blueprint. Then we'll go pick Quinn up. We'll arrest him and impound the briefcase that the Syrian gave to him. The judge can watch us open it later.

We'll find the marked cash inside, and therefore we'll have a witnessed and doc.u.mented transaction, and therefore Quinn will go down, and he'll stay down."

"Watertight," I said. "Good work."

"Thank you," she said.

"Will Frasconi be OK?"

"He'll have to be. I can't deal with the Syrian myself. Those guys are weird with women.

They can't touch us, can't look at us, sometimes they can't even talk to us. So Frasconi will have to do it."

"Want me to hold his hand?"

"His part is all offstage," she said. "There's nothing much he can screw up."

"I think I'll hold his hand anyway."

"Thank you," she said again.

"And he'll go with you to make the arrest."

She said nothing.

"I can't send you one-on-one," I said. "You know that."

She nodded.

"But I'll tell him you're the lead investigator," I said. "I'll make sure he understands it's your case."

"OK," she said.

She pressed the stop b.u.t.ton on her tape player. Quinn's voice died, halfway through a word. The word was going to be dollars, as in two hundred thousand. But it came out as doll. He sounded bright and happy and alert, like a guy at the top of his game, fully aware he was busy playing and winning. Kohl ejected the ca.s.sette. Slipped it into her pocket.

Then she winked at me and walked out of my office.

"Who's Quinn?" Elizabeth Beck asked me, ten years later.

"Frank Xavier," I said. "He used to be called Quinn. His full name is Francis Xavier Quinn."

"You know him?"

"Why else would I be here?"

"Who are you?"

"I'm a guy who knew Frank Xavier back when he was called Francis Xavier Quinn."

"You work for the government."

I shook my head. "This is strictly personal."

"What will happen to my husband?"

"No idea," I said. "And I don't really care either way."

I went back inside Paulie's little house and locked the front door. Came out again and locked the back door behind me. Then I checked the chain on the gate. It was tight. I figured we could keep intruders out for a minute, maybe a minute and a half, which might be good enough. I put the padlock key in my pants pocket.

"Back to the big house now," I said. "You'll have to walk, I'm afraid."

I drove the Cadillac down the driveway, with the ammunition boxes stacked behind and beside me. I saw Elizabeth and Richard in the mirror, hurrying side by side. They didn't want to get out of town, but they weren't too keen on being left alone. I stopped the car by the front door and backed it up ready to unload. I opened the trunk and took the ceiling hook and the chain and ran upstairs to Duke's room. His window looked out along the whole length of the driveway. It would make an ideal gunport. I took the Beretta out of my coat pocket and snicked the safety off and fired it once into the ceiling. I saw Elizabeth and Richard fifty yards away stop dead and then start running toward the house. Maybe they thought I had shot the cook. Or myself. I stood on a chair and punched through the bullet hole and raked the plaster back until I found a wooden joist.

Then I aimed carefully and fired again and drilled a neat nine-millimeter hole in the wood. I screwed the hook into it and slipped the chain onto it and tested it with my weight. It held.

I went back down and opened the Cadillac's rear doors. Elizabeth and Richard arrived and I told them to carry the ammunition boxes. I carried the big machine gun. The metal detector on the front door squealed at it, loud and urgent. I carried it upstairs. Hung it on the chain and fed the end of the first belt into it. Swung the muzzle to the wall and opened the lower sash of the window. Swung the muzzle back and traversed it side to side and ranged it up and down. It covered the whole width of the distant wall and the whole length of the driveway down to the carriage circle. Richard stood and watched me.

"Keep stacking the boxes," I said.

Then I stepped over to the nightstand and picked up the outside phone. Called Duffy at the motel.

"You still want to help?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said.

"Then I need all three of you at the house," I said. "Quick as you can."

After that there was nothing more to be done until they arrived. I waited by the window and pressed my teeth into my gums with my thumb and watched the road. Watched Richard and Elizabeth struggling with the heavy boxes. Watched the sky. It was noon, but it was darkening. The weather was getting even worse. The wind was freshening. The North Atlantic coast, in late April. Unpredictable. Elizabeth Beck came in and stacked a box. Breathed hard. Stood still.

"What's going to happen?" she asked.

"No way of telling," I said.

"What's this gun for?"

"It's a precaution."

"Against what?"

"Quinn's people," I said. "We've got our backs to the sea. We might need to stop them on the driveway."

"You're going to shoot at them?"

"If necessary."

"What about my husband?" she asked.

"Do you care?"

She nodded. "Yes, I do."

"I'm going to shoot at him, too."

She said nothing.

"He's a criminal," I said. "He can take his chances."

"The laws that make him a criminal are unconst.i.tutional."

"You think?"