(5) A Death in Hysterium

The concierge of the Radisson Blu looked at the photo in his hand and then up at the young woman entering the lobby. He smiled. He had just made an easy 100 kronor.

"Miss Jurgenssen, a moment, please," he said in English.

Volanda was startled, but her training, and more especially her nature, kept her nervous surprise hidden. She gazed inquiringly at the grey-haired gentleman with the bad limp who came up to her in an obsequious manner, the photo back in his pocket. 

"The occupant of Room 1513 asks that you wait here in the lobby for fifteen minutes," said the concierge. "He has a personal matter to attend, and asks your pardon."

Volanda wondered, but replied magnanimously, "Of course. It is not a problem."

Fifteen minutes seemed an eternity to her. She was anxious to discover the circumstances behind her summons. At 4:15 precisely she knocked on the door of 1513.

She heard a clicking sound. The door opened barely an inch. She waited, her heart pounding. After a torturous minute she said, "Hello?" and pushed the door fully open. 

An unoccupied room stared back at her. She went in and slowly closed the door while searching the room with her cautious eyes. It was clear that the sitting room had not been lived in. On an impulse she looked back at the doorknob and saw a motorized sprocket encircling it, attached to a small battery taped to the hinge-side of the door frame. Someone had unlocked the door via a remote device.

She stood perfectly still, all her senses heightened. She was confident in believing that she was the only person in the suite. 

An object seen through the window across from her caught her attention; that, and an envelope leaning against the window sill. She went briskly to the window with her heart in her throat and blanched in shock at what she saw on the edge of the annex roof. It was staring at her with dead eyes: the head of her colleague. In her present condition she could not remember his name.

The envelope beckoned her. She snatched it up, slit it open with a fingernail, and read the following:

'You will write on the back of this sheet the most significant facts about Miklos DeGroot, to the best of your knowledge. His hobbies, his primary associates, his activities outside his diagnostic project. If the info you provide is not useful to me, I will encompass your demise and that of your family member whose custody I retain. Give this sheet to the first person who speaks your name, or who approaches you, when you have exited the hotel. Do not converse with this person. Hand over the sheet and leave without a word. I will be watching. You have thirty minutes to fulfill these demands.' 

Volanda considered her options. There were none that appealed to her. Cooperate. That had always been her policy. She took a pen from her cell phone case, sat in the armchair by the window, and, conscious of the dead eyes staring at her from across the alley, began to write.

The first thing about Miklos DeGroot that came to mind was what she herself was involved in. Heathcliffe had introduced her to the 'Coven,' as its members were pleased to call it. In formal discussions and during the rites it was 'Hysterium.' It was the brain child of Miklos, inspired by his love of cynicism and seclusion. Simply put, it was a social philosophy that harped on the futility of life and taught that all things should be laughed at. Nothing was sacred and nothing had value except as an object of ridicule and a source of amusement. To laugh at adversity and tragedy, to laugh in the face of death, was the only healthy way to deal with the fact that life was a joke perpetuated by the grim reapers, the innumerable possibilities of dying that swarm all around us. And this was the motto of Hysterium: 'Non gradus anus rodentum,' which means, 'Not worth a rat's ass.' Life is meaningless, said the philosophy, and good only for a laugh.

Volanda wrote a brief but succinct summary of the rites and membership of Hysterium, careful to note that the meetings were held in the house of Miklos on the first Saturday of every month, beginning at 7pm. She felt that this was the most significant thing she could reveal about Miklos, knowing that the existence of the coven, or, more accurately, the cult, was a tightly held secret among its members.

As she left the room with the folded sheet in hand, she remembered that this day was the last Wednesday of the month, meaning that on the coming Saturday she would find herself in the house of Miklos, in the dark humor of Hysterium, if her mysterious master, this unseen captor, allowed her to be there. 

Sanguineus would not have been able to say which of the two sisters was the most surprised.

"Volanda!" gasped Hyacinth, rising like a phoenix from her crosslegged position on the grass. 

Her sister was too surprised to utter a sound. She came up to Hyacinth like a sleepwalker having a troubled dream, holding out the folded sheet of paper as if it were the key to the mystery. Then finally: "How is it you're here? My God, are you in thick with this business?"

Volanda put a hand to her mouth. She was not supposed to converse. Her eyes darted around for a glimpse of the person responsible for her predicament. There were many people about, but none of them seemed to be the person in question. Aside from her sister, standing gawking at her incredulously, no one paid her any particular attention. She was just another attractive Swedish girl loitering on the greenbelt.

Volanda shoved the sheet of paper in Hyacinth's jeans pocket and strolled away to the parking garage without a backward look.

Hyacinth spied the master standing near the hotel entrance. Their eyes met. He gestured to her to come to him. For a moment she was torn between obeying him and running after her sister. 

"I will explain about Volanda at dinner," Sanguineus said when she had hurried over to him, her blue eyes icy with a demand for answers.

They ate at Scarpetta's.

A private medical jet landed at the Stockholm airport that evening at 9:06pm. Besides the pilot and one stewardess, there were three occupants on board: a doctor, a nurse, and a comatose patient, whom the two medical personnel disembarked on a gurney. The patient's head and face were heavily bandaged. The gurney was equipped with vital-sign monitors and intravenous paraphernalia.

A waiting ambulance received the three, and sped off, presumably to a hospital. But the ambulance detoured to the docks, and there the patient and the nurse went on board a chartered ferry, destined for Gutland. The doctor saw them off, then called a taxi. It was a clear autumn night and the doctor, who was not even remotely qualified to be a physician, enjoyed the city lights and the crowds along the shops. 

In the wee hours of Thursday morning a converted hearse, painted a neutral grey, pulled up to the DeGroot house. Except for the porch lights and a few lighted windows, it was pitch black on this moonless night. The driver got out to assist the nurse in pushing the gurney to the entrance way of the house. 

Two elderly women in fancy dress received them; froggish Annike with an almost hysterical smile, and Angela with a look of grave disgust. The driver was paid a large sum of money and he immediately departed. The house spooked him. It always did. He couldn't get away fast enough.

The patient, attended by Annike and the nurse, was rolled into a freight elevator off the hall and taken to the second floor. At one end of the corridor was a double-leaved door that opened onto the Throne Room.

Miklos, in bathrobe and sleeping cap, shuffled over to the gurney, grinning and winking at his favorite sister. She was busy taking off the bandages, while the nurse removed her starched white nursing cap and combed out her short hair with her fingers.

Miklos stared down at the face of the unconscious patient. "So," he said gleefully, "This is the fellow who outed the Turphy woman. What did you say his name was, Annike?"

"Justin," she replied, "Justin Conner. A courier for a company called Universal Tools. He had a parttime position with Turphy at her art emporium. According to the nurse, the boy has knowledge of Turphy's underworld connections. Isn't that right?" she asked the nurse.

"Correct," said Tanya Wilde. "And what an excellent victim he'll make."

[Continued in the following post.]

(4) A Death in Hysterium

What Sanguineus knew from the Intell files was that Mincie Jurgenssen, the mother of Volanda, 21, and Hyacinth,17, married James Hurley Furies, a Florida real estate broker, in 1999 and took with her to Suwannee City her youngest daughter, leaving Volanda in the care of her ex-husband, Gustav, a computer software salesman.

Hyacinth grew up under the influence of a governess from New Orleans, from whom she got her southern drawl and a taste for Cajun cuisine. From her step-dad she appropriated a love of archery; from her mother a touch of cruelty, with the intelligence and sociopathic predisposition to apply it effectively. 

Her emancipation at 16 was the result of a fierce confrontation with James Furies the day after Mincie died of leukemia; that and the prudent decision of a judge who was anxious to keep his downloaded pics of a very provocative Hyacinth a secret from the world at large. 

As for her older sister, they had frequent Internet contact that painted each other in a deceptive light. Neither wished the other to know what was going on in their private life. There was this astonishing coincidence: Volanda recruited by a certain Heathcliffe Samson, thought to be a lone operator in the assassin trade, and Hyacinth recruited by Red Rum on the recommendation of her archery coach, a former Olympian who moonlighted as the chief instructor of non-explosive projectile weapons at a private training ground in Florida.

Sanguineus found the coincidence to be just a little too far fetched. While Hyacinth had been down in Basement Four, he had the in-house hackers working on whatever info they could get on the former Olympian, Stimson, and on Heathcliffe Samson. 

Stimson and Samson. It sounded so like a partnership. And sure enough, Samson was an archery enthusiast in his youth and had briefly trained under Stimson in 1987. This info was sent to Intell, evaluated, and forwarded to Rolgo, who had by then identified the trigger person as Hyacinth's sister. 

Sanguineus suspected that Stimson was marked for interrogation. In his conversation with Rolgo in the breakfast nook, it was decided that he, Sanguineus, should interrogate Hyacinth. He thought this an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, and with this in mind he took Hyacinth for a walk after her nap.

They went to the Amagerbrogade that parallels a sparkling blue waterway; the spires of churches rising above the trees across the inlet; the shadow of the Radisson Blu hotel in their path. 

Around her neck Hyacinth wore a polygraph collar, connected by a wire to the device carried discreetly in Sanguineus' hand as they strolled leisurely side by side.

Hyacinth knew she was in trouble again, but apparently did not know the cause. She hadn't been told about her sister's involvement in the killings. She inquired forthrightly if this was about her probation. 

Sanguineus was blunt in asking her if she had gone to Sweden during the three days that she was missing from the Florida safe house. She was genuinely shocked by the question, and answered truthfully, according to the polygraph indicator, that she had spent the three days with her former governess, in Gainsburg, an hour's bus ride from the safe house.

Sanguineus gave her the still of the young woman in the patio of the Hard Rock Cafe. "That isn't you?"

"Of course not. She has long black hair."

"Could be a wig."

"But look at her breasts. They're not nearly as large as mine."

"Good point. But her facial features are remarkably similar to yours."

"She's imposturing me! That thingy in your hand proves she isn't me. I'm telling the truth."

"Apparently so," he said, stopping to scan the roof of the hotel annex. The roof was on a level with the floor where Room 1513 was situated. "Someone wanted to point the finger at you. And I don't think that someone is Volanda Jurgenssen."

"What? My sister? What does Volanda have to do with this? She works with our father at Biotech Software. I'm, like, totally lost here."

Sanguineus handed her the polygraph indicator. "Take off the collar. Wait there on the greenbelt where you can watch the roof of that brick building. I'll be back shortly."

"What the hell is going on? Why did you mention my sister?"

"Do as you're told, Three Dash Zero Nine."

The man with silver streaks in his bushy black eyebrows was lying on the roof of the annex softly cursing the pebbled sealant that made his position uncomfortable. He repeatedly adjusted, minutely, his Browning scope, through which he had a commanding view of 1513's sitting room. 

It was 3:47 pm. He expected to see his target any minute now. The door was in the crosshairs.

"Hello," said a deep voice from a short distance behind him. 

He jerked his head around and saw, to his horror, that a man's upper body protruded from the hatch that gave access to the roof, near the air-conditioning units. He glimpsed a black sockcap and shades, a pair of black gloves extended toward him with a Glock automatic steady in their grip. 

He didn't hear the sound of the shot, but was conscious of only a cold numbness that spread instantly from his rectum to his shoulder blades. He couldn't breathe. He tried to speak, to beg for mercy, but could not. The second shot he heard clearly, a muffled pop, which put a numbness in his throat just as his insides erupted in a terrible pain. 

He knew he was going to die, but when death came moments later, he didn't know it.

Annike, in appearance so like a toad, said to her brother, "The invitations have been sent out, and all but one have responded."

They were in the workshop, where Miklos was setting a large glass bell over the instrumentation of his model. "Who is the no-show?" he asked, hoping it would not be the blonde in the perpetual grey and pink sweater.

"It's the gentleman with those big bushy eyebrows, you remember. He was here last month, a friend of Heathcliffe's. He hasn't responded to the invitation. Perhaps he's busy. Oh, and Angela will be in Stockholm the night of the gathering, so we needn't worry about her sticking her disagreeable nose in the festivities. Has the victim been apprehended, do you know? The Mistress of Ceremonies is so slow in telling me anything."

"She has her own ideas on how Hysterium should be run," Miklos said, removing his plastic gloves. His deformed back was troubling him again. "Mix a drink for me, Annike dear. And have my new rockingchair placed on the dais in the throne room. Much easier on my spine. It's the seventh anniversary of the founding of Hysterium, you know, and I want to enjoy it."

[Continued in the following post.]

(3) A Death in Hysterium

Miklos DeGroot, of Dutch descent, lived on the Swedish island of Gutland, in the Baltic Sea, roughly eighty miles southeast of the coastal city of Stockholm. His house had been designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and was therefore starkly modern in style.

The citizens of Visby, the town in which the house stood, were vocal in their dislike of it; it was such a harsh contrast to the walls of the ancient fortress nearby. The house seemed a reproach to the proud history of Gutland.

A reclusive tinkerer in mechanics and in medical science for most of his adult life, Miklos opted not to care whether his fellow townspeople liked his house or not. As is the case with vain persons, he blamed the criticism on jealousy. The house resembled stacks of dishes with misaligned margins; rows and rows of windows and narrow balconies, each a different color; rooms on various split levels, reached by exquisite staircases, the interior nicely warmed in the winter by heating ducts and skylights. But when, just five months ago, he suddenly became a man about town, donating to charities and showing up at all the important social events, he told everyone that, yes, the house was an eye-sore in comparison to the majestic old fortress. He promised that when his latest project was complete and marketed he would have the house totally redesigned.

Miklos' father, from whom he had inherited a modest fortune, had dealt in limestone mines, concrete, and freight lines. Miklos' years as a bachelor recluse had kept the inheritance, for the most part, intact, as had his safe investments. He was a hunchback, bald as a melon, who lived with his two widowed sisters, Angela and Annike, both in their seventies. Miklos was 61, spry for his otheopathic condition, and, unknown to all except his favorite sister, Annike, entirely unscrupulous. 

It was not certain whose idea it was, his or Annike's, to associate with Juris Souder and his wife, Dr Helena Souder, as a means of potentially increasing the family wealth; but associate he did, stealing every secret he could uncover concerning the Souder experiments in diagnostic innovation. He was confident that, before the thaw set in, his project would have produced a working model for incredibly accurate neuropathological diagnoses.

But the project's details and aim were not to be made public. He was aware, of course, that the Souders knew of his pirated work, but the medical journals were quite in the dark about it, as they were about the Souder work as well. It was ironic that just when Miklos DeGroot was debating whether the Souders should meet their end in a fabricated accident, a Whitestone Security agent informed him that a price had been put on his head.

"Telegraphed their sucker punch, have they?" was Miklos's response in his meeting with the agent at the house; specifically, on a balcony that boasted a view of the fortress and beach. "What should be done? Shall we call in the law?"

"In this case, no," said the agent, a brawny fellow with strawy hair and a jutting chin. "We know the identity of the go-between, an American woman with ties to organized crime specializing in art thefts, but we don't know who's behind her. We suppose an underworld figure or syndicate. Calling in the police will not protect you. Whitestone is prepared to remove the source of the threat. That would be Juris Souder. With the loss of the source, the contract will be nullified."

Miklos readily agreed to the hit. He left it all up to the agent, this in-your-face type with the unusual name of Heathcliffe Samson. It was a curious fact, by the way, that neither Whitestone nor Red Rum knew of the other's existence.

And so the hit was duly carried out. It was Heathcliffe's romantic interest, Volanda Jorgenssen, who pulled the trigger; who now sat drinking coffee on the terrace of her other lover's residence, just as dawn was breaking, watching a Scandinavian Airlines jumbo jet slanting down towards the Copenhagen airport. It gave her a queasy feeling, the flashing red and white lights on the belly and wings of the plane, its tardy thunder and the slight see-saw motion as it angled for the landing.

Volanda was an amateur astrologist. Anything in the heavens was a portent. This was confirmed when her cell phone played a slow funeral march.

It was a text message that read: 'You are required at Room 1513 of the Radisson Blu this afternoon at 4. We have a member of your immediate family in our custody. Be prompt, and alone, or this family member, and yourself, will be liquidated. Cooperate and your safety is assured. Confidentiality is demanded.'

Volanda's first thought was to have the caller I.D. checked out. But if this was a professional in the business, the I.D. would certainly be a dead end. 

She sighed and took a sip of her cafe au lait. This development was one of the hazards built into her line of work, like an embedded app that you would kill to get rid of, but can not.

She wondered who the family member was who had presumably been taken hostage. Taken by whom? Well, she would find out, hopefully, and be none the worse for it. Cooperate. Yes, cooperate. That was the cardinal rule, on whichever side you found yourself. Be subservient to the upper hand until the situation changed, if it was going to. She had not been in this situation before, and thought it odd that instead of being frightened by it, she was rather pleasantly excited. Or so she told herself.

While wondering about the identity of the texter she looked at her face in a compact mirror. She had large hazel eyes and a snubbish nose tilted at just the sort of angle that suggested a stuck-up personality; an erroneous impression, really. She was friendly and approachable to anyone whom she had not been hired to kill.

Despite the overnight flight and the jet lag that accompanied it, Sanguineus met with Professor Rolgo at his hotel suite, with a drowsy Hyacinth in tow. 

Rolgo was so surprised to see her that he took off his horn rim glasses for a better look; the narrowed eyes in his vulturish face gleaming with a guarded interest. He 'invited' her to get some sleep in the back bedroom. 

Taking the hint, Hyacinth left demurely, as though feeling a need to appear sweet and innocent. 

Sanguineus was intrigued. He sat in the breakfast nook where a pot of coffee stood beside a tray of danishes. He lit a thin cheroot and unbuttoned his black coat and the collar of his dark blue dress shirt. Through the drifting smoke he watched Rolgo pour the coffee while tapping a folder on the table between them.

"We know the identities of the killers and who it it is who may have outed the negotiator," said Rolgo. "It would seem that our snitch is an employee of Red Rum."

Rolgo took a still from the folder, one of a series of stills provided by the video. It showed the young lady who had dodged into the cafe when the recorder of the scene knelt by the bodies. "Who does this girl resemble?" he asked. He didn't wait for an answer. He could tell that Sanguineus understood the import of the question. 

Rolgo continued: "She was sent to our safe house in Florida, on probation, not far from the town where she grew up. But she was not seen there for the three days that coincide with the killing of Susan Turphy and her client. How fortuitous that you chose her for your assistant. It is entirely possible that Hyacinth Furies is the snitch, and that she flew to and from Copenhagen in the space of those three days, in some way involved in the killings, though clearly enough she was not the trigger person. That person we have contacted. We expect her at the Radisson Blu later today."

Sanguineus blew smoke from his nostrils as he brought the steaming cup to his lips. "You are about to tell me," he said, "that the trigger person is Volanda Jurgenssen, Hyacinth's older sister."

Rolgo arched a brow, reaching for a danish. "You always surprise me, One Dash Zero One."

"I assume I am here because Souder's widow wants the hit on DeGroot to be carried out."

"Yes, but she also wants revenge for the killing of her husband."

"Are you saying that I am to snuff my assistant operative's sister?"

"You may, but you will not be paid for it," said Rolgo with a wry smile. "It would be less trouble for you if we simply inform Helena Souder that the killer of her husband has been removed. We have not been contracted to satisfy her desire for vengeance. So, we will satisfy it with a little white lie. As for the killer in question, do you wish to meet with her at the Radisson Blu? That will be at four this afternoon."

Sanguineus nodded. "I have an idea how to handle that. The situation is similar to the assignment in Instanbul, you may recall."

"That should work, if indeed Volanda Jurgenssen does not come alone to the hotel. But let us first discuss her sister, Hyacinth Furies. Was she the mystery girl at the Hard Rock Cafe?"


[Continued in the following post.]

(2) A Death in Hysterium

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

(1) A Death in Hysterium

Juris Souder left the subway station in Copenhagen carrying his waterproof trench coat over an arm and looking apprehensively at the clouds. They seemed dangerously close to the rooftops of the Vesterbrogade, and they were certainly dark with potential rain. But it wasn't just the inclement weather that made him apprehensive that morning. It was the prospect of meeting a woman in the outdoor dining area of the Hard Rock Cafe that gave him that terrible feeling that everything he hoped would go right would inevitably go wrong. As he crossed the boulevard a drop of rain hit his nose and spotted a lense of his glasses. A bad sign, he thought.

He had been told to look for a woman with a white streak in her jet black hair, who would be sitting at an umbrella'd table, working on a crossword puzzle. She was not young, but neither was she old. She was at that age when a woman has not quite surrendered to the inroads of aging. Her name was Susan Turphy. A New Yorker. She spoke fluent Dutch and German.

She saw Juris stepping up to the red-tiled patio with the rolling gait of the morbidly obese, and worried that he would not fit into the aluminum chair, or, if he did, the chair would not sustain his weight. She frowned, then immediately smiled when she noticed him coming toward her. She could see that he had misgivings. It would not help business any if he caught her frowning.

What she did not know, among the many things she didn't know, was that in just a few minutes she and Juris would be dead. So in the short term it did not matter if she frowned, or if the chair collapsed under her client's weight. In the long term their brief meeting would have no serious impact on the contract they were negotiating for the assassination of Juris Souder's rival. In fact, their conversation, in the eyes of fate, was superfluous. Sitting together at a patio table, as a light rain began to dampen the concrete street, had no significance beyond that of being a target for the killers who were driving slowly past the Tivoli Gardens three blocks away in a plain black sedan.

Juris had transferred one hundred thousand dollars in loans to a Swiss account, as stipulated by Lucretia's Glove, the very secret organization that was to arrange for the murder of his rival, Miklos DeGroot. His meeting with Susan was to settle the negotiator's fee, which was to be his final payment. This was a simple credit card transaction, a private matter between him and Susan. For the record he was buying replicas of Ming Dynasty vases from Susan's art emporium in Manhatten.

After the formality of greetings and a bit of small talk, Juris handed Susan his Visa Gold card and said, miserably, "I shall always feel terrible about this. But it must be done. Too much is at stake. There is no other way, I must agree with you." He continued in this vein, taking off his glasses and wiping his face with a scented handkerchief, as Susan, nodding sympathetically, swiped the card through her portable transaction device. "What is necessary," she commented, "must necessarily be done. Necessity takes precedence over all other concerns."

Juris was a computer technician. His wife was a doctor of biology. Together they were working on a diagnostic machine of such value that, once patented and on the market, was certain of earning them multiple millions of dollars. Their problem was that a former associate, Miklos DeGroot, had stolen their idea and much of their know-how, and, to their great dismay, was on the verge of applying for a patent. If Miklos beat them to the punch with a working model, it would be he who would reap the millions; that, and the accolades.

Whoever the gods of fate may be, they had visited Juris Souder a week earlier in the form of Professor Fredrico Rolgo, a Lucretia's Glove representative who was on sabbatical in Sweden when he met Joris at a medical convention, held at Stockholm. 

Liquor and desperation are potent motivators. Juris had talked of his woes. When Rolgo had deduced what was ailing the man, he recommended Susan. She was exceptionally skilled at overcoming the qualms and scruples of prospective clients.

The black sedan slowed to a crawl as it approached the cafe. It was only nine o'clock and the traffic was sparse. Besides Juris and Susan, there were only three people dining at the patio tables, and they were at the opposite end, grouped together over grilled burgers and fries. Not that it mattered to the woman in the back seat of the sedan whose silencer-equipped Uzi had eyes only for the negotiator and her client. The woman wore a grey pink-striped pullover sweater and an olive green crocheted cap. She looked to be quite young, certainly so in comparison to the man at the wheel, whose thick eyebrows were streaked with white. He pressed a foot on the brake, shifting to neutral.

"The fat boy first," he said over his shoulder.

"Duh, fuck," the woman said.

Susan smiled at Juris and made to shake his hand. His head jerked sideways and he seemed to be making a face at her, as though to downplay the momentous aspect of the handshake. That was Susan's last impression. A moment later the two bodies were lying next to their overturned chairs.

The plain black sedan made a leisurely turn on Vesterbrogade and followed a double-decker tour bus. "Where will we have lunch?" the woman asked.

"In hell," the driver said, as usual.

At that same moment a man wearing an Aloha shirt and white slacks was bending over the body of Susan Turphy. He took a glossy black pendant from her necklace while pretending to feel for a pulse in the jugular vein.

A commotion was developing in the cafe, which was not unexpected. The man went slowly back to his flower stand alongside the curb and put the pendant, which was actually a microphone, inside the wrapping of a bouquet of pink roses. 

He waited, nervously, for a Volkswagen Golf to drive up to the curb. He could see it coming. From the corners if his beetle-browed eyes he watched a small crowd of cafe employees gather near the bodies. He stood at a certain angle to the patio, so that his miniature camera could continue recording the scene. When the car stopped in front of him he handed the bouquet of roses to the driver, apparently a priest.

"A disaster!" whispered the man in the Aloha shirt.

(7) A Death in Hysterium (Conclusion)

The Flying Dutchman cut the engine of his GippsAero, nervously pulled at his shaggy brown beard, and glancing back at the two passengers standing at the fuselage door, gave them a thumbs up. The single engine plane was rapidly slowing to stall speed. It was time to open the door.

In the darkening twilight the aircraft passed silently above the island of Gutland, at 2500 feet. A particular red light on the instrument panel meant that the door was open and the Dutchman was now alone in the plane.

He pushed the steering mechanism forward and with a boot he pressed down on the right wing-flap pedal. The plane angled left in its steep descent. The force of the wind whipped the propeller. Releasing the clutch, he felt the subtle jolt as the engine jumped to life, that sweet vibration running through him. 

For the next thirty seconds he thought about the man and the girl who had parachuted out, wondering, as he always did when hired by Universal Trainers, what they were really up to. He suspected there was more to it than what was specified in the charter agreement, and in what he had been told about the paramilitary training exercises by those he took up in his GippsAero. Something fishy was going on, he felt, but it didn't bother him. He fee was met and there was always a bonus. It paid to keep his mouth shut.

The expert manipulation of the left and right risers of his sport chute brought Sanguineus directly above the roof of the DeGroot house. There were periodic southwesterly gusts, necessitating strong pulls on the left riser once he aligned himself with the peaked central structure. He hoped a gust would not come up just as he was touching down on the level area of the roof, and lucky he was that it didn't. He landed where he intended: near an AC unit that stood at the back part of the tiled roof, that which was above the parlor on the second floor.

He knelt beside the unit, disengaging the body straps of the chute and quickly wadding up the strings and canopy. He stuffed the material in the tubing of an air vent. As he rummaged through his belt pouches for the tools he required, he imagined Hyacinth coming to ground at the back of the property, behind the ornamental waterfall. He had made a point of glancing repeatedly at her descent while he himself was angling for the roof. She was not an expert parachutist but fortunately the gusts favored her line of descent, and, too, her landing zone was spacious and level. He did not worry about her. 

In less than five minutes Sanguineus removed the boxy shell of the AC unit and with some grunting and gritting of teeth he set it aside. He left his portable power screwdriver where he had set it down, and gingerly lowered himself into the aluminum foil duct until his boots made contact with a two-by-eight; one of the ceiling frames of the parlor. Drawing his Swiss Army knife he slit open the duct wall, and, switching on a small flashlight, he examined the lay of the flooring.

Between the crisscrossing beams of Douglas fir were fluffy bags of insulation. From below, in the parlor, came the strains of Oriental music that reminded Sanguineus of a Hong Kong brothel, back when the city was a crown colony.

He stepped out from the torn duct, bending down to accommodate the five-foot headroom, and aimed the thin beam of his flashlight at the center crossbeam. Here is where he would proceed with the final preparations for the hit. This was assuming that Volanda's information was correct; Hyacinth's aim was true; and Tanya's intentions were loyal.

Sanguineus lifted the insulation bag that lay along the center beam and tossed it behind him. A three-foot square of fragile pulp tile was exposed. He penetrated the tile with a circular razor drill, making a hole  the size of a dime and capturing the plug of material inside the tube of the drill, so that not even the tiniest trace of sawdust fell through. Next he inserted a telescopic lense into the hole. The lense, when he looked into the eye piece, gave him a slightly distorted but adequate panoramic view of the parlor below. That is, of the 'throne room.'

He counted fifteen people, and though he was not positive, it appeared to him that only four were men. These included Miklos DeGroot, in a padded rockingchair  that stood on a round dais, between two mullioned windows. Sanguineus had a particular interest in the window constructions, especially the diamond-shaped panes held in place by the darkly varnished muntins with their thin grouting. 

He looked for any sign of weapons, first looking at the walls, which in the distortion of the lense were like curling waves frozen in time. Except for a ceremonial sword lying at the pointed-toed shoes of the medieval garbed Miklos, he saw no weapons. Possibly the jester's scepter that Miklos wielded in his pronouncements was meant to mock the idea of resistance, of weaponry, with its clown head and blood-red collar. In the calculated hubbub that surrounded him--the casual clothes of the revelers offset by the golden circlet that everyone wore on their brow-- he was ignored. Swinging his scepter as he shouted for attention, the coven delighted in showing him no respect. He expected nothing else. 

Aside from Miklos, Sanguineus recognized three persons by sight: Heathcliffe Samson, Volanda Jurgenssen, and the girl with long black hair who was seen in the patio of the Hard Rock Cafe, the girl who so closely resembled Hyacinth. Conspicuously missing from view were Tanya Wilde and Justin Conner.

The black-haired girl particularly intrigued Sanguineus. She wore a plain shift but her circlet was set with gems, unlike the others, and she was the only one of the coven who paid any attention to Miklos, except for an old toad-like woman who went about the room with a tray full of shot glasses, each filled with an amber liquid, and who frequently called to Miklos. He would brandish his scepter at her and shout something in return.

From the pouch next to his Glock holster Sanguineus took a slim 2-way radio headset and put it on, adjusting the channels until he could hear heavy breathing. "Are you in position?" he asked.

"Nearly," said the voice of Hyacinth.

"Let me know when you are."

"Duh, fuck."

Sanguineus settled down to wait, occasionally bending his head to the eye piece of the telescope. The mindless frivolity continued. Volanda seemed to be enjoying herself. Heathcliffe looked like an introvert compared to the others, but he was always smiling. The room's double-leaf door was just visible, and it was this that Sanguineus most often examined. He was quite sure that before long it would open. It was a question of who, exactly, would enter, and for what purpose. He noticed that one of the cultists had as much interest in the door as he did: the girl with the long black hair.

Hyacinth had quickly disposed of her chute, to crawl the twenty yards across wet grass and sediments to the back of the artificial waterfall. 

It was as large as the wall of a one-storey building, made of lath and plaster decked out to resemble mossy stone, a facade of simulated geology twelve feet high. 

When she had climbed to the top in her skin-tight black outfit, she encountered a low cave-like tunnel that channeled water to the front of the edifice. The depth of the water was barely an inch. There were seven other tunnels paralleling this one, so that if seen from the front the effect would be that of multiple falls; seven tumbling streams that splashed into a pool at ground level. 

Hyacinth, bow and quiver slung on her back, slithered her way down the tunnel that would align her perspective with that of the mullioned windows; windows bright with the glow of chandeliers, and shadowed at intervals by the frolicking figures in the room beyond.

"I'm in position," she said.

"Nock the red-bulbed arrow. We may have a bit of a wait."

"Right," she replied, and took the six arrows from her quiver, setting them in a line on a narrow shelf of the cave wall on her left, just above the stream of water. 

The red bulb contained a powerful triflic acid, one of the most corrosive substances available. She was to send the red-bulb arrow at one of the diamond-shaped panes directly across from her, about thirty yards distant. Ordinarily it would be an easy shot, but the weight of the bulb, and its aerodynamic mischief, made the shot extremely difficult. 

If she missed the pane, there was a chance that the arrow would strike one of the other panes; in fact the odds were a satisfactory 8 in 10 that one of the panes would be hit. Should she miss by striking a muntin, there was still a chance, albeit a small one, that the acid would do its job: dissolve the grouting that held the pane in place, so that the next shot, using an arrow tipped with a blue bulb of nitrous oxide, would punch out the pane and release the gas into the room; followed by the five remaining blue-bulbed arrows.

That was the trick. The six nitrous oxide arrows would have to be sent through the one target: the pane loosened by the acid shaft. It was hoped that at least two of the six would make it through into the room. If not, Hyacinth's master would have to improvise in the face of challenges that she, in her ineptitude, had forced upon him. She swallowed hard, nocking the red-bulbed arrow with exaggerated care, her bow held crosswise. And waited.

Through the lense the double-leaf door seemed to balloon outward, comically, and the two people who entered the room, one behind the other, looked like elongated clay sculptures. 

Within a few steps, however, Sanguineus saw clearly who they were: Justin, with Tanya behind him pressing the hilt-end of a dagger against the small if his back. The young man wore baggy trousers and nothing else. His bare chest was thin, narrow, and hairless. His face was a study in panic that was barely under control. His gaze darted about the room as though expecting to find a friend, someone who would save him from the awful fate that all the other faces in the room personified. But if Justin was expecting Heathcliffe Samson to sucore him, he had badly misjudged the man's character.

Tanya pushed him toward the dais. Sanguineus could not hear what was spoken by Miklos and his coventers, only a garble of voices above the monotonous music and tweets of laughter. He did hear distinctly the slap that the black-haired girl aimed at Justin's cheek, and Tanya's response: a barking laugh. The young man reacted bravely at first. In his outrage he backhanded the girl, sending her hair fanning across her shoulders. But when Tanya's dagger sliced across the nape of his neck he bent forward, shaking, and nearly fell to his knees. At this the crowd of sociopaths gathered in a circle around the dais, a circle that encompassed Justin and the angrily cursing girl. 

"Fire when ready," Sanguineus said.

"Here goes."

At that moment of truth Hyacinth's anxiety vanished. She aimed the arrow as her hours of practice had taught her to do. Normally the spine of the arrow fish-tails past the bow handle, and for a lefthander like Hyacinth this meant aiming to the right of the target. But the bulb-tipped arrows had tended to rise like a flying fish, so she aimed a little below the pane she had targeted.

On the exhale she released the fletched nock and watched the pale blur cross the thirty yards to the chosen window.

The red bulb splattered in the exact center of the pane. There was a faint cracking sound when the blunt arrow tip hit the glass. 

Hyacinth nocked a blue-bulb arrow and waited the few seconds for the acid to do its damage to the grouting; wisps of acrid smoke drifting across the rows of muntins, while beyond the panes, in the brightly lit room, a carousel of shadowy figures danced.

She loosed the arrow. Pausing just long enough to see the corroded pane pop out of its frame, she nocked another nitrous oxide arrow and fired; then a third... a fourth...a fifth..

Sanguineus saw the third and following arrows zip over the heads of the crowd and hit the opposite wall. The gas was invisible, but had a slightly sweet smell. Without waiting to see the effect it would have on the tormentors of Justin Conner, he pried loose the tile and flung it aside. From around his neck he extended the elastic band of a gas mask and fitted the mask securely over his nose and mouth. Then gripping the edge of the crossbeam he swung down until his grip arrested his fall. For a moment he dangled by his hands, then let go and landed on his feet with the agility of a cat.

For half a minute he stood there, watching the nitrous oxide take effect. At first there was a general impression of elation among the cultists. Then the silliness set in and they began guffawing at one another, their faces registering the beginning of hilarious hallucinations. It was as if they were becoming a troupe of insane clowns.

Sanguineus pushed his way roughly past them. He went around to the back of the rockingchair, knocking a man and two women, including Annike, to the floor; kicking the man in the temple, which effectively stopped his idiotic laugh. Then he drew a braided length of wire from his back pocket, clutching it by the wooden handles at its ends, and wrapped it around the throat of the giggling Miklos DeGroot.

As Sanguineus steadily choked the life out of Miklos, and as the bald hunchback's followers laughed at the strange things they were seeing in their bemused and twisted minds, he, the assassin, stared into the eyes of Tanya Wilde. 

She was trying to think coherently; trying to grapple logically with her predicament. She had hold of Justin's arm; Justin, who teetered on his heels, sobbing with a mix of terror and frivolity, his face and torso streaked with the bloody scratches the clowns had inflicted on him. 

Tanya's right hand was waving around to her back with uncoordinated efforts, her expression showing how desperately she was trying to gain some semblance of normality. At sight of a sudden flash in her eyes Sanguineus released the garrote and drew his Glock. The body of Miklos DeGroot fell forward, rolling off the dais and into the chaotic circle of feet.

The instant he saw the oddly-shaped instrument in Tanya's hand he fired his gun. It happened that at that same moment Tanya depressed the trigger that propelled at great speed a jet of black viscous liquid at Sanguineus' face.

He put his left hand up and jerked his head to the side; an instinctive action as involuntary as a blink. The black gunk struck the palm of his hand and turned it permanently black. A few drops of it caught his left cheek, just below the eye. He fired blindly, even as he flinched. 

Justin, hit square in the chest by the bullet intended for Tanya, fell dead into the arms of Volanda, who in her uncontrollable hilarity tried to dance with him. It was Heathcliffe, shoved violently aside by Sanguineus, who broke up the dance, as the assassin ran to the doorway through which a staggering Tanya had fled.

But Sanguineus did not chase after her. An arrow struck and quivered in the doorframe just inches from his neck. He wheeled around, crouching, and fired his remaining rounds through the window from whence the arrow had come.

At eight o'clock Sunday morning, the hostess of the Gutland hostel in Klintehamn knocked on the door of Room 2C.

She held a covered breakfast tray in one hand as she patted her upswept hair with the other. When the door creaked open she put on her most alluring smile.

"Breakfast, Mr Cruor?"

"You are very kind," said Sanguineus, wearing the bathrobe that had been left for him by the previous occupant. He took the tray. "I am expecting a visitor later this morning," he added. "Would you be so kind as to send him up when he arrives? He is a university professor. You need not worry over his character."

The hostess promised to send up the visitor, and offered to make them both a lunch, with vegetables from the hostel greenhouse and fresh cheese from the she-goats. 

Sanguineus replied that her offer was very kind. Then he closed the door and stood staring at the bed with its single pillow.

(6) A Death in Hysterium

Sanguineus, all in black, stood on a battlement of the fortress ruins, his high-powered night goggles focused on the hearse and the activity that came from it. He had expected only to case out the house from different angles and video the possible entrances. He had the layout of the structure and details of its security wirings. What he had not expected was the arrival of the hearse and its sequel: Tanya, a Red Rum assassin, dressed as a nurse. He was as stunned as his stoic nature permitted.

He walked over to the ruins of the battlement steps and sat down. From his backpack he removed a small ham radio and connected it to a brick-size power base. He put on a pair of Bose headphones. Tuning the radio to the proper frequency, so that the ether made that hollow sound indicative of reception, required several minutes of patience. At last the watchman in the Intell room answered (actually a watchwoman): "Four dash seven seven, over."

"One dash zero one. Inform, repeat, inform Thirteen dash eight eighty-eight that employee One dash eleven, repeat, One dash eleven, is at home with Subject A zero zero A sixty-three. Repeat all, over."

When confident the message had been received correctly, Sanguineus indulged in a thin black cheroot and a flask of brandy. For a quarter hour he sat there ruminating on the possible explanations for why his former assistant operative was engaged in his assignment. Or did Tanya Wilde have an assignment of her own making?

At 2am Sanguineus returned to the beach below the jagged silhouette of the fortress. The Wave Rider 950 'tuna boat' lay like a beached baby whale on the broken lime rock and shale, the Baltic waters eddying about its aft section. He pushed it out over the sandstone shallows and mounted it.

At 3:30am, weary from the crossing and lack of sleep, Sanguineus dismounted on the strand of the estuary southeast of Copengagen proper, where a youth with a whiskery rat-face approached from the night shadows carrying a long canvas case. "O'Shannon singing at the Jane tonight," he said happily. "I caught the tail of her act. Did she run well? I see I gave you enough fuel. Did you use up all the reserve?"

Sanguineus said nothing. He took possession of the case and handed the youth a packet of money sealed in plastic.

The rising sun was blood red on Hyacinth's eyelids.

Her first thought upon opening her eyes was to turn to the pillow beside her, with its tell-tale indentation and the musky man smell of the still-damp sheets. She was not surprised that he was gone. She knew about his planned excursion to Gutland. After the news regarding her sister, which even now had her gasping in amazement, he had ordered another bottle of Chianti at their corner table in Scarpetta's and spoke of the need to check out the DeGroot house; to determine the means of entry, the disfunctioning of the security system, and the egress to the hit site, which he had already decided would be the rear parlor on the second floor. This decision was based on the information that Volanda had supplied. Where the woman was now was of no great concern. She would behave herself, he felt sure, at least until the hit on Miklos DeGroot was an accomplished fact.

In a moment of time Hyacinth experienced again the ride back to the Hilton in the silver grey Jaguar; the cacophony of brake and clutch, the racing change around corners and roundabouts, the squeal of rubber and the growl of the cams, the smooth G force of the stop in the parking stall. This, on top of the Italian dinner, and the vodka tonic nightcap, put her in gear. It was more than a mood. It was like her mental health depended on it. 

She came out of the bathroom in a short black negligee so sheer that it seemed a vagrant little cloud of dark smoke had been caught by the curves of her body. Her eyes said it all. And the assassin, who routinely told himself to save his energy for the mission, dismissed the objection.

Hyacinth had never liked the idea of being submissive to a lover. When Sanguineus had stripped in the dark and put a knee on the bed, against her hip, and a commanding hand on her shoulder, bending over her like the first rebellion of a fallen angel, she dug an elbow in his ribs and gripped his throat, attempting to push him onto his side. It was like trying to move a mountain without a god to help her. He bared his teeth in a wicked smile of appreciation. She was crushed down on her back as his other knee pried her thighs apart in a bruising action. Her nails laid red tracks down his back, her mouth clamped over the rush of breath from his snarling lips; and though far from surrendering, she gave in to the rod that drove into her, swift and deep, retreating and returning in a rhythm that mined one orgasm after another from her twisting loins.

She sighed at the memory of it. She ached in almost every part of her body, a curious karma that said 'paid' to the ecstasy she had claimed.

The bedroom door opened. Sanguineus set his backpack on the dresser, the long canvas case in hand. He paused just a moment to acknowledge Hyacinth's lazy sultry smile. "Put something on," he said, "and meet me in the sitting room."

"I smell like the Great Whore of Babylon."

"Understandably," he remarked, turning to the doorway. "It's time you practiced your archery."

She sat bolt upright, her pink-tipped breasts heaving. "I'm going to be in on the hit!"

"That remains to be seen. You have to consistently make a shot at a very small target with a weight on the arrowhead, from a prone position, holding the bow horizontally. You have today and tonight to hone your skill. If you are not satisfactorily proficient by tomorrow morning, I'm leaving you behind."

"Like hell!"

"Then get your tight white ass out of bed."

Professor Rolgo paid a visit at mid-afternoon, and nearly took an arrow in the ankle. He did not appear to wonder about Hyacinth lying on her stomach at the end of the long hallway, holding her recurve bow crosswise and smiling a facetious apology. He merely nodded as if impressed by her diligence. In the bedroom he found Sanguineus just up from a nap, seated by the window, in boxer shorts and a black t-shirt, stripping the cellophane wrapper off a cheroot.

"What about Tanya?" asked Sanguineus, flicking his lighter.

"Her presence at the DeGroot house is legit," said Rolgo, seating himself at the round walnut table, patting the armrests. "It concerns the Internal Security Rotation, an obligation for the one-dashers, as you know. This past Friday it was One dash eleven's turn to spy on an employee. She was given a four-dash, a failed apprentice who was assigned a courier position until, or if, he is reinstated in the trainee program. So Tanya let herself into Justin Conner's dorm and hacked into his computer. She looked for decoy apps and encrypted files, the usual routine. It turns out that young Conner was in despair of ever being reinstated. He was doing some odd jobs for Susan Turphy at her gallery in Manhatten. He knew she was a recruiter and negotiator, so he decided to search her background, her contacts, her occasional affiliations with the underworld crowd. He discovered Heathcliffe Samson, a lone operator. Or so we believe. Well, Conner contacted him and cut a deal. For the opportunity to be Samson's understudy, he agreed to provide him with the names of targets. To his credit he did not reveal the existence of Red Rum."

"Not surprisingly," said Sanguineus. "That unforgivable sin brings death by slow torture. I suppose he used our cover firm?" 

"Yes, the Cement Mixers Guild. Funny how well the cover works when one must utilize it. Anyway, Samson took him to heart and asked Conner if he knew of any contracts out on DeGroot. Samson, you see, was hired by DeGroot. A bodyguard, we suppose. To make a mess a little cleaner, I'll just say that Conner fingered out Turphy and Souder. Samson arranged for Volanda Jorgunssen and her unknown partner to rub them out, if you don't mind my Mob lingo."

Sanguineus smiled. "Tanya earned some Brownie points, but what is she doing at the DeGroot house?"

Rolgo poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee. "We have her explanation, and though it does appear to be legitimate, Bear Claus has some suspicions about it. I'm not sure if I agree with them. Tanya took it upon herself to work in partnership with Heathcliffe Samson. She drugged Conner and whisked him away on a private jet supplied by Samson and his associates, ending up, as you know, at the DeGroot house. Well, Tanya is on a two month leave and can go where she likes. Now here's where it gets sticky. Nine months ago she became a member of Hysterium. No reason other than she just wanted to. She had heard about it from the man she assassinated on assignment, back in February, in Amsterdam. But it's not Hysterium that she, nor we, are interested in, as concerns the Conner problem. Tanya has some evidence, she says, that Heathcliffe Samson is in with a killer-for-hire organization every bit as sophisticated as our own enterprise. Samson is a member of Hysterium and that's why Tanya is there, to try finding out more about Samson."

"Does she know about my assignment?"

"We are quite sure she does not. Assignments are known only to the operatives involved, you know that, and to the Prime Director and his staff."

"Hyacinth Furies knew," Sanguineus remarked. "From the grapevine."

Rolgo shrugged. "She's been assigned clerical duties in the Staff room, or 'grapevine,' if you prefer. But there's no reason to think that a courier would get wind of assignment particulars, not as regards operatives."

"Hyacinth is friends with Justin."

Rolgo thumped an armrest with the hand that did not hold the coffee cup. "Are you trying to build a case against her?" he asked in an amused voice.

A slow stream of smoke issued from the nostrils of Sanguineus. "Just thinking," he said.

[Continued in the following post.]

(7) The Woman in the Red Vinyl Raincoat (conclusion)

Signora Vicenti had taken her knitting out to the garden patio, her one hobby outside of bridge, and a special one, because she didn't have to rely on a partner for success, or be blamed by her partner for bad play. Knitting had a usefulness beyond the relaxation and satisfaction it gave. It filled up all the silent moments during morning coffee with her husband when he lapsed into a reverie concerning some to-do at the office. Signora Maria Francesca Vicenti hated shop talk. She was glad of the silences, when only the clicking needles spoke; spoke of fidelity and peacefulness.

And here it was, a good morning. Giorgio, who came out to the patio just then, still in his pajamas, sipped his coffee as if it were hemlock, expressing sadness over the incredible death of his step-sister, which Maria Francesca felt to be a false sadness. But it was a good morning because it was nice of her husband to feign sorrow over Isabel's demise, rather than express his true feelings and gloat over it.

"You are not reading the paper this morning, Giorgio?" she asked. He always read the business section before their conversation.

"I have mislaid my reading glasses," he replied. "But I would not be able to concentrate. Not this morning."

"I know, dear. Should we go up to Rome? Would it be seemly, so soon after poor Isabel's passing?" Then she voiced what she had determined not to think about. It would ruin the good morning. But she could see that the subject was haunting Giorgio's eyes. "Do you think the police will want to ask you questions?"

"No," he said firmly, "unless it is about the robbery."

"Oh those guards. The people they hire these days. No sense of right and wrong. You mustn't worry. They will not damage the collection. There would be no sense in them doing so. And it would lower the value of it to sell the miniatures separately, to different buyers. Isn't that true?"

She went back to her knitting. Giorgio had gone to daydreaming about something. By the look of him, a pleasant something. That was good. It was bad luck to think of unpleasant things in the morning.

Sanguineus rolled over on his back, on the pine needles beneath the stunted tree whose twisted branches looked like a modern sculpture of a tortured man. It stood on the brow of a hill one hundred and forty yards from the garden patio.

He had removed the custom designed double-barreled rifle from the tennis racket case and was now turning the screw just forward of the twin triggers. The barrels gradually seperated to a width of two and a quarter inches. From his jacket pocket he took the pair of glasses. There was a translucent dot in the exact center of both lenses. He held the glasses in front of the rifle barrels and adjusted the screw until the bore of each barrel was aligned with the dots. Satisfied, he rolled back over on his stomach. He took aim through the dual scope at the man who had seen him with his own two eyes.

"Perhaps we should go to Rome," said Maria Francesca, knotting a length of yarn. "Shameful it is that we have yet to see the Fountain of Tripoli together."

"True," said Giorgio, lifting his cup. "The two pennies I have saved to be put on my eyes when I die, I will toss into the Fountain."

Maria Francesca had no idea what to make of the two parallel streaks of bright red that suddenly appeared on the glass top of the table; no idea, that is, until her husband fell over backwards in his wrought-iron chair.

Above the rim of his glass of red burgandy Sanguineus observed the dinner hostess of the Azur Amore leading the prettiest girl in Palermo toward his table. He set down his glass and stood. Their eyes met. He sensed the girl's heart racing. Her ears turned pink and her eyes a deeper shade of blue.

"How very kind of you to come," he said, as the hostess placed a menu against the basket of hot buttered bread.

"The pleasure is entirely mine," said the girl, whose name Sanguineus had inconveniently forgotten.

He made no move to assist her in being seated. She liked that. She liked how he stood there appraising her. She sighed a laugh then and sat down across from him. They both opened their menus. Now she liked his coolness as he scanned the entrees, while the waiter, a starched white towel over the sleeve of his tux, asked her, "What may I get you to drink?"

She had not taken her eyes off the stranger whom she had been thinking about for four long days.

"I will have what he is drinking," she said.

(6) The Woman in the Red Vinyl Raincoat

It was just after midnight when the assassin reached the yellow metal railing near the edge of the bluff.

He attached one end of his rope to a stanchion of the railing. He began to repell down the face of the cliff with a ballet-like grace. Dressed all in black, he looked rather like a black spider dropping down about ten feet at a time, pushing off with his steel-toed black boots and letting the rope slither quickly over the leather palm of his right hand held at his hip, while his left, above his head, helped to steady his descent. In less than thirty seconds he was standing on a ledge above the craggy rocks where the sea sloshed, and swung, in eddies colored a bluish silver by the moon.

Sanguineus took a drill and a pick from his backpack. When he had made six large cavities in the rock face, each spaced exactly twelve feet from its neighboring holes, he removed packs of C-4 plastique explosive from the backpack, and a coil of electrical wire. He worked with precision, wasting no time or energy. Within the hour he was scaling the cliff hand over hand, thankful for the plentiful footholds. By 2am he had finished what he had set out to do. As to whether his work was satisfactory,  the morrow would tell.

The limo rolled smoothly to a halt just past the line of closed vendor booths. It was Sunday afternoon and the beach was almost deserted. The tide was in and the seagulls were hoping for sand crabs. This was a poor substitute for the scraps of food left by the battalions of bathers on all the other days of the week. The mewing of the gulls, as Tony Bertolucci stepped out of the limo, seemed plaintive and weary. But Tony didn't notice. He was in high spirits. He had reaped a good deal of scraps from Isabel Consuela Manzini. The yacht he had coveted for longer than he could remember would soon be his.

He felt so carefree that he took off his white serge coat and slung it over a shoulder. Today the steep walk up the path along the rising bluffs was invigorating. He hardly sweated at all. On an impulse he unbuttoned his shirt down to his belt buckle and rejoiced in how the sea breeze ballooned the fabric. It made him think of the yacht running before the wind, its jib sail swelling like a white breast. He was lost in such thoughts until he saw Signora Manzini unfolding her red-vinyl self from the backseat of a Volvo, perhaps a hundred yards ahead.

Tony smiled broadly. It was not that he despised the old bitch any less, but that the sight of her raincoat glaring redly in the sun brought thoughts of bloody marys in the yacht's forward cabin, the glossy lipstick of bikini'd girls sprawled on deck, and a rich tomato sauce on the square-panned pizza that was his speciality on 'cheat days,' when he set aside his stringent diet.

He watched Isabel cross the stretch of ground to the railing, the yellow railing that looked like crime-scene tape strung tightly along the edges of the bluffs. She saw him, and stopped to give him a wave, her rings flashing like the sunglasses of the bodyguards. Was he imagining that joyous smile on her face, a smile so full of anticipation, or was it true that this horrid creature really did constitute his worst fear, the fear that his job, his career, would depend on satisfying the lust bubbling in the veins of Isabel Consuela Manzini?

He waved back. It occurred to him then that The Bambino, breaking with tradition, was a male concept. How ironic, he thought, that it was a female who had made it possible for him to own a boat with a male name. It was a reversal of roles. But this did not amuse him. It was not a small price he had to pay to possess the yacht, not if making love to Signora Manzini was the price involved.

Isabel put her hands on the yellow metal railing and breathed deeply of the salty air with its tang of seaweed, while Tony's smile, as he trudged up the path, grew progressively more sour.

A quarter mile away, on a rise above the residential colony, Sanguineus sat comfortably in the driver's seat of the Peugeot, smoking a cheroot, watching the bluff through binoculars. When Isabel placed her hands on the railing, he set the detonator with its thin aerial on Tanya's lap. "You are allowed," he said.

Eagerly she snatched it up. "You won't regret this!"

The railing gave way. The smallest smile appeared on the lips of Sanguineus.

An object falls at 32 feet per second, squared. In roughly two seconds the Signora Manzini would strike the ledge above the drenched rocks. Sanguineus counted to four, in case the woman in the red vinyl raincoat slowed her fall by glancing off the uneven surface of the cliff. "Now," he said.

Tanya pressed the clacker. Moments later the sound of the explosion rushed up to them. The five bodyguards and Tony Bertolucci staggered, and two of the men lost their balance and fell to a knee. The inshore breeze brought the smoke and rock dust swirling up over the edge of the bluff, temporarily fogging the place where the yellow metal railing lay like a fallen hitching-post.

Sanguineus looked at the brightly smiling face of his assistant operative. Without emotion he said to her, "Habits can be deadly, if read by an enemy."

(5) The Woman in the Red Vinyl Raincoat

Tanya had said, "Exhaust me."

The lunch that Sanguineus ordered was brought to the door while Tanya still lay asleep, the damp sheet tangled between and around her bruised legs; her mouth open and breathing in shallow gasps, her short hair like a discarded handful of red silk sticking to scalp and pillow; her neck and shoulders purpled with bite marks, a streak of dried blood on her chin and throat. To see her like that, abused by a cruel ecstasy, roused the assassin's appetite.

On the table by the sunny curtains were the contents of a portfolio. Sanguineus ate his lasagna and garlic sticks as he contemplated all that was known of the personalities, skills, and duties of the five bodyguards assigned to Isabel Consuela Manzini. There was one thing he was not certain of, and that was Isabel's habit as regarded her walks to the bluff. He required precise information. An hour earlier he had phoned 'Universal Tools' and requested extension 13-888. He had explained his need to Rolgo couched in cryptic terms. The professor, who was preparing an exam paper for Political Theory class at the Evangelista Giovanni Di Cortu, promised to have the required informant brought to the Provincial by nightfall.

Sanguineus showered, dressed as he had that morning, and left a note on the lampstand, for Tanya. Ten minutes later he was driving his rented Peugeot to the ferry landing.

When the 4pm ferry from Naples arrived, a young man with a whiskery rat-face came out from the crowd of passengers and rows of cars carrying a tennis racket case and a large paper sack. He spotted a tall man wearing a black fedora and shades, standing to one side of the ticket booth. With some hesitation he walked up to him. "I am looking for a Signor Ricklen Cruor."

"What is in the sack?"

"My dinner. The prices here are so much higher than on the mainland."

"Will twenty-five thousand lire help to balance things out?"

The young man grinned. "I am grossly underpaid, you know."

"Aren't we all," said Sanguineus, taking the tennis racket case and handing the young man a yellow envelope.

When he returned to the hotel at 6pm a middle-aged woman of Greek descent was sitting in a chair at the table with a rush handbag in her lap. She wore a white paisley scarf over her greying hair and a long woolen sweater over her drab smock. She had been talking to Tanya Wilde. The assistant operative was lounging on the bed with a neglected magazine open on one thigh and a cigarette in a limp-wristed hand that smelled like roasting chestnuts. She winked at Sanguineus, meaning he should notice that she wore his bathrobe.

He introduced himself to the informant as Signor Cruor of Interpol, showing her his identification. She confirmed herself as Agnes Sarkos, a housekeeper in the employ of Signora Manzini. In regards to Tanya, Sanguineus said, as he set the case upright against the chest-of-drawers, "She is my understudy," at which vague statement Agnes smiled coyly.

Sanguineus asked to know about the walking habits of the Signora, which Agnes had been paid to determine. The pay was substantial. She had been told to keep the money in her possession until after the investigation. At first she had questioned why, but quickly acquiesced when her contact offered her a bonus if she did what she was told, efficiently and with alacrity. There was no time for questions. The investigation had to be concluded within a week. And so Agnes found excuses to be outdoors, along the front of the property, usually engaging a gardener in small talk, when the Signora took her daily walks to the bluffs. They were visible from the gates.

Concluding the talk, Sanguineus got up from his chair. Tanya was at his side so quickly, and with such a pleading look in her pinkening face, that he paused with a hand at his waistband, under his coat, at the lower curve of his back.

"Allow me," she whispered, on tiptoe, the bathrobe parting seductively. "After all, you called me your understudy."

"I see no necessity for your direct involvement," Sanguineus said coldly, and drew his muffled .22 Beretta. "No, allow me," said Tanya, her arms around his neck, now playfully attempting to misdirect his aim.

With his free hand he grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back so that her mute laughter, seen in her cheeks and eyes, shone full in the light of the ceiling fixture. Meanwhile Agnes, confused and trembling, tried to stand but had no strength in her legs.

The bullet entered her heart and lodged there. Had it been a millimeter short Agnes would have had to be shot again, and one muffled sound from the blued muzzle was all that Sanguineus wanted to risk. He lowered the gun and watched Agnes crumple to the floor at Tanya's feet.

"Retrieve the money from her bag," he said. "As budgeted, it will more than cover my expenses tonight."

"Fine," said Tanya, digging her fingernails into the nape of his neck and spreading panting kisses over his face. "Where do we dispose of the body?"

"Put the tennis racket case in the boot of your Audi. Follow me to my room in Terrasini. My equipment is there. It is time to prepare the hit."

"Yes, fine, but what about this corpse on the floor?"

"If you will untie yourself from around me I will explain," he said.

She blew a last soundless laugh into his face and stepped back. "You see what you do to me. You have an unfair advantage. Now, um, the body?"

"I'll drop it down the laundry chute at the end of the hall, when we leave."