Monica lifted her glass, her elbows on the table. Her expression was one of amusement, Sanguineus noted, but it was a thin veneer.
"So, what's the job?" she asked. She watched him over the rim of her glass. "All I was told was that you requested my assistance, in Vienna. I know a guy who owns a beer house here, so I used that as an excuse for taking some time off from my work in Boston. Webber Brothers Investigations. They're with ICS. But I guess you know all that, if you're so knowledgeable of my culinary tastes."
"Who's your boyfriend?"
"Ex boyfriend. An Austrian Jew. Smart guy. He knew me when I was in Hollywood. I'm through with him. He won't be a nuisance, I guarantee you. Now, what am I good for?"
Sanguineus was rolling a smoke. Without looking up he said: "It's a revenge job. A tricky one. The mastermind behind the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. The Pentagon side of it is neither here nor there, so far as the client is concerned. His wife jumped to her death from the first tower to go down. She was torn in two by an architectural protrudence, let us say. The client wants the mastermind to die a similar death. Your job is to lure him to the Millennial Tower. That's where I intend to fulfill the contract. I have three engineers working on the paraphernalia."
"Paraphernalia?"
Sanguineus licked the paper. "It has to be a controlled descent. A circular saw will be waiting for him at the bottom. He'll descend at a rapid speed, to help avoid detection, then slow down as he nears the saw."
"Ooh! And how much is this costing the client?"
Sanguineus lit the cig and said, "Five hundred mil."
"Holy shit. And we're getting--?"
"That depends."
"What do you mean, 'depends'? How much will I be paid if I lure the fucker to the tower? And just hold on a minute. Was this a terrorist attack or a government conspiracy?"
Sanguineus looked surprised by the question. He sipped his vodka tonic, took a drag on his smoke, and replied in an academic manner. "It was a private sector job, a type known as 'Octopussy.' The intelligence agencies and the FBI had some pre-knowledge of it, but it appears that no one in the Bush Administration was aware of it. Octopussy involves elements of organized crime, corporate funding, and the military, specifically black ops in the CIA 'Ghost' apparatus. It has tentacles everywhere, which is why the more ethical intelligence operatives are afraid to blow the whistle on it. It's one of those Jeckyl and Hyde developments that pop up in the world of high finance when something radical needs to be done to solve a dire problem."
"And what was so dire?"
"A state of diminishing returns."
"Oh that's a dire thing, alright."
"It is if you're a big wig in the military industrial complex, which happens to be the lifeblood of economic security. Look, Monica, we don't live in a fairy tale written by the Dalai Lama. This is civilization, not the Garden of Eden. History is a series of biographies of psychopaths. Without them, we'd love each other to death. Which is worse? A long life and a yawn, or a short life and a merry?"
"I'll be merrier if you'll tell me what my fee is going to be," said Monica, her tone serious and not without a small streak of anxiety running through it. "A five hundred million dollar contract is hard to believe. The client must be a billionaire."
"Yes, and that's all you're going to know about him."
"Roll me one if those," she said. "And while I'm eating these chipotles, tell me what you know about ME."
Sanguineus took out his Gambler tobacco pouch and Zig-Zag papers. "Your sugardaddy is the mastermind, Phillipe Sorgensen," he said, casually glancing at her reaction. She did not mean for it to be noticeable. "Your mother is a secretary at Magna's New York offices, in the payroll department. It was through your mother that Sorgensen met you, at an office Halloween party, when you were in high school. Later he arranged to have you accepted into the Actor's Workshop. We don't know exactly what your involvement was concerning the thermite explosives placed in the basements of the Twin Towers, but Guido Geitz was convinced that you were one of several decoys used to distract security agents when the explosives were being smuggled into the buildings. I would have interviewed Guido myself had you not bashed his head in."
Monica was staring at him as she licked her fingers, a cold emotionless stare that rendered her face particularly lovely in the glow of sunset and the limpid breeze that shifted her hair over one cheek, in separate strands, like living tendrils.
Sanguineus gave her the handrolled cigarette, and, when she put it loosely between her pouting lips, set fire to it.
"So, what's the fee?" she asked through puffs of smoke. "Or do I have to inquire into it fifty more times?"
"Let me explain it this way," Sanguineus began. "Sorgensen has no intention of giving you access to the trust fund. He would have you killed first. After all, he can buy any woman he wants for a lot less than three million dollars. And you don't want too much money for your part in the hit. In our line of work, the higher the pay-out, the less value the life of the payee. I'll get sixty-five grand, and you... you'll get thirty-five grand. All our outstanding debts and mortgages will be paid. That's a bonus everyone in the organization will receive."
"And the rest of it?"
"Bribe money. Are you ready to order?"
"You haven't asked me if I'm going to betray Phillipe."
Monica sat back, confident that she had given him a fine riposte. He seemed pleased with her tightly held, stolid demeanor.
"You will betray him," he said with equal confidence, "or you'll be dealing with more than one assassin on your tail. But your act of betrayal will be when I say it's to be, and not before. And by the way, I heard from Rolgo a short time ago that the ICS snitch who quite likely leaked this contract to a CIA informant is a man named Harrison Welles. His son, Lance, was a Red Rum courier who was killed by a bomb intended for our Director. Mr Welles has betrayed his CIA connections for the same reason you will betray Sorgensen. He knows that if he doesn't cooperate with Red Rum, his days will be cut short, in a hurry."
Monica blew a thoughtful plume of smoke. "Sounds like we have tentacles just as long and deadly as Octopussy. Yes, I'm ready to order. And... speaking of sea food... the scalloped shrimp and rice here is excellent."
Sanguineus saw in her eyes a similarity to the ice in his glass. He liked what he saw. There were no regrets, no smoldering coals that might flare up into remorse. He said, "And afterwards?"
"Well, afterwards you'll want to rush off to your hotel and get ready to meet Dolina Galsworthy."
She paused for effect, her Bloody Mary poised at her left shoulder, the cigarette an inch from her carefully crafted smile. "Dolina thinks I'll stay loyal to Phillipe. She was told that by her superior. The 'Octopussy' believes that my bird in the hand is worth more to me than any amount in the bush. They expect me to foil the contract Red Rum has put on Phillipe's head, and to help them kill Bear Claus. See, I know a few things myself. I can play dumb with the best of them. So let me ask you again, do you think I'll betray my eighty-two-year-old wealthy lover?"
Sanguineus caught the eye of the waiter, who came over to their table obsequiously.
"The scalloped shrimp and rice, for the lady and I," Sanguineus said to him, "with a caesar salad, the soup d'jour, your finest white wine, and another round of drinks."
"Very good. That was a Bloody Mary and a vodka tonic on the rocks?"
"Yes."
A ship's horn sounded from under a bridge. The quack of mallards peddling alongside the hull of the Fluss Sprite, the cooing of a green winged teal as it passed overhead, the clink of glasses and gay voices from the nearby tables, reminded Sanguineus that the world was not all dark deadly tentacles, but a world balanced between serenity and the serendipity of the sinister.
He sat relaxed in his chair watching the movement of Monica's hair. The canopy lights lent a placidity to her eyes that was like unexpected starlight after a storm.
"Do you know Dolina's intentions regarding me?" he asked, and immediately regretted the question. What little beauty he had just recognized was now a faded print on the wall of his consciousness.
"No but I can guess," Monica said. She was turning her pack of Turkish Hills around on the table, gazing at the kitchen door. "She's not an enforcer. I think she might offer you something that is designed to be hard to resist. But really..." Monica looked at him with a false tenderness; it could hardly have been genuine, he thought. "But she might offer to help you kill Phillipe. She didn't say anything remotely like that to me, after I told her what happened to Guido. But--" Her eyes widened. "Oh. Wait. You didn't learn about Guido from HER, did you?"
The kitchen door opened.
"No," Sanguineus said.
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