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.
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