The last delivery truck pulled out from the underground loading dock at 11pm. Sanguineus waited for its red lights to vanish around the maple trees at a corner of the south side parking lot.
He tossed away his half-smoked Sultan, unzipped his shortwaisted black leather jacket to expose his grey dress shirt and brown tie, and went into the lobby of the Millennium Tower.
He negotiated his way through the Saturday night crowd of shoppers to the information counter. Smiling wearily at the receptionist, he took out his billfold and showed her the Universal Works ID card, saying in English, "Good evening. I'm here for the final inspection of the backup system for the elevator fire-guard. I didn't want to hold up any deliveries. It's the freight elevator I'm here to check. Will you be so kind as to inform your boss?"
"Yes, I will be very happy to do that," the peach-cheeked young woman said in stilted English. She spoke rapid German to her desk phone receiver, winking at Sanguineus. He waited in feigned fatigue, giving the impression of a long day's work. She said to him, "You may go on in to the loading area. Through the green door, there, and straight down the path."
"The path?"
She blushed. "I am forgive. I mean to say... What you call the long walk place inside a building?"
"Corridor."
The receptionist wrinkled her brow.
"Or hallway," Sanguineus said.
"Hall Way, ja! Yes. You go straight down the Hall Way."
"Danke," he said, "you are very kind."
He crossed the green tiled floor to the green door and walked down the long green corridor. His heart was beating fast for one reason in particular. When he reached the loading area, a large storage room, he saw no one. His heart pounded. This was the moment of truth. If what needed to be outside on the truck dock was not there, the mission was all but ruined.
The standard steel door next to the corrugated steel roll-up door could be opened from inside only. He pushed on its bar latch and opened it.
It was all right. What needed to be there was waiting for him.
Dolina Galsworthy wore blue workman's overalls. Her blond hair was swept up under a crew cap. She blew smoke through a smile.
"The decoy has been set up," she said in her Scottish accent with just a hint of a Southern drawl, crushing her cigarette under a boot. "The police will be getting the call an hour after the movie ends." She went up to him and lifted her face for a kiss.
"Excellent, but you haven't earned a kiss just yet," Sanguineus said, a caressing hand on the small of her back. "Take the freight lift to the attic and get the access door to the roof open. Here--" He gave her a key. "I want the pulley mechanism set to go. I'll be up with the Subject within thirty minutes after the police call. What's your feeling about the CIA agents?"
"I have them thinking you're taking the Subject to the Fluss Sprite to kill him there, you and Monica Paladin. The police will bust the agents at their ambush location, parked behind the dumpster corral. The police have been led to believe that the agents are rival assassins. Now, isn't that worth a kiss? I had to be pretty convincing when I reported to the field agent team that you had changed the hit site, thinking it might have been compromised after the attempt on your life at the Hotel Antoinette."
"Yes, and whose idea was that?"
"I'll grant you some credit," she conceded, going up on tiptoe, "but until then, you didn't know what I was up to, did you?" She gave him a quick kiss. "Orel Knoughtly couldn't have been happier when his wife fell to her death, not after her affair with the Irish finance minister. She was just a trophy wife anyway. Plenty of those types around."
"And now O'Malley has you to cuddle him, or maybe he just wants you to go rogue enough to see that Knoughtly gets salted along with Sorgensen."
"It's more complicated than that," Dolina said, stepping back from him. "When large sums of money are involved, it always is. No one's cut is big enough, and too many knives are reaching for the pie. But look, this horribly drab outfit of mine is turning you off totally. You go fetch your Subject and his hit-girl, the movie is nearing the closing credits and I have a date with the roof."
"His hit-girl was nearly assassinated tonight, by Welles. And Welles nearly plugged me last night. When I add this up, it doesn't come to two, but to one. And which one is that?"
Dolina stared at him for an unfazed moment. "It's the nature of your profession to be suspicious of everyone," she remarked, "especially of those closest to you. We can protect ourselves from our enemies, but only God can protect us from our friends. We might as well get on with the plan. Suspicions will have to take care of themselves."
Sanguineus made no comment. He went down the steps to the access road. He heard the door click shut behind him.
His heart was still racing. On the walk around to the mall entrance he considered every suspicion he had of Monica. Her "confession" was reasonable. She had been intrigued by Knoughtly's offer, his powerful connections to intelligence agencies and the financial elite, plus he was old and she had a special fondness for elderly men. It had been sensible enough for her to switch "loyalties" from the doomed Sorgensen to the power broker Knoughtly. But she was well versed about Octopussy. Like every country on earth, she did only what was to her own best interests. And what was that? Her finances, of course. She would gravitate to what she considered the most powerful player. And that was the question he had to answer. In her eyes, was Red Rum to her best interests, or was it Knoughtly and his CIA cronies who could do for her what Red Rum could not? Would the plan he had detailed to her, and the safety piece he had given her, turn her dark heart a little closer to him?
Would she choose the octopus, or the shark?
Sanguineus stood by the modern sculpture near the entrance and gazed up at the mezzanine. He would be calling Monica soon, concerning which elevator she and Sorgensen would be standing in front of, on some pretext or other, on their way to the Klockenspiel lagerhaus for drinks and a discussion of the movie; of her feigned hope of getting back into the acting business.
As he walked on through the entrance he wondered why Welles had disguised himself as a woman. Why hadn't he just shot Monica in the back of the head with a silenced bullet? Why the masquerade? Was there more to his relationship with Cornwallis than just smuggling contraband? Was Welles the 'new normal'?
But more to the point, what had been his relationship, if any, with the CIA?
"Just a minute, Phil," Monica said. "Got a call from my sister-in-law, the oaf. She can be such a pain." She put her phone to her ear as Sorgensen leaned on his umbrella cane. He watched the sauntering crowd making its way up the passage from the cinema, his expression pensive. That big to-do at the Musikverein, he was thinking. What had that been about? Luckily it had not interfered with the performance. And THAT had gone quite well. There had been no faults, and the chorale had gone smoothly enough. He could hardly wait to read the reviews in the morning papers.
"I told you, Dorothy, it's October FOURTH. I'm on a date. Gimme a break. Bye."
In the 51st floor hall Sanguineus punched the down button of the fourth elevator. In the right-hand pocket of his leather jacket his fingers gripped the handle of a gas-operated ballistic syringe, 12.7 mm, with a collared needle to ensure complete injection of the paralyzing agent. The velocity valve was set at medium.
The grille opened promptly. He stepped inside and depressed the button to the 1st floor.
"Wait, Phil, I don't know if I want to have a drink here or at the boat. What do you think?"
"Here, my sweet," he said in a rather urgent voice that had Monica wondering.
"Why? Is Dmitri here?" she asked. She saw the floor indicator lights descending rapidly above the elevator door. Already it was at 24... 23... 22...
"He is boorish, I completely understand," said Phillipe, turning, Monica putting a restraining hand on his arm. "But I have a job for him and it is best that I explain it to him in person. Surely you can appreciate that."
"But must you explain tonight?" Floor 16... 15...
"Absolutely. The sooner I explain it, the sooner I get rid of him. Now, shall we be going? We have only an hour before the bar closes. I will make it up to you, I promise. Your favorite position. Number eight, isn't it?"
"Silly. It's sixty-nine." Floor 7... 6....
"Oh, so it's a shower together you want first, is it?"
"You know I do," said Monica, and the smile she gave him intrigued him greatly. Behind him the elevator grille rumbled open.
She heard nothing beyond the soft rattle of the grill folding in its wall slots, the noises of the crowd passing to and fro. But the pinched face of Phillipe Sorgensen told her that the needle had stuck firmly in the nape of his neck, its drug carried by throbbing veins up into his brain.
Sanguineus was there to embrace him with a semblance of a welcoming hug. Monica helped to carry the old man into the elevator car, grabbing his umbrella cane before his numb fingers could let it fall. His shoes slid over the steel threshold. Sanguineus tapped the button to the 51st floor, and the grille returned to its closed position.
"Will he wake up?" asked Monica. "He weighs a ton for such an old fart!"
"He's fully awake, just partially paralyzed. We won't have to gag him, and he won't be fighting the harness. I had a look, and the two engineers are uniformed and in place on the mezzanine. They're putting up the caution tape. Our only worry is that security might get wind of it and put up a shittin fuss."
"The paralysis won't wear off too soon? And you haven't told me the escape plan yet, bastard."
"It might. And you'll learn the escape plan when you've sliced and diced your sugardaddy."
"Ha. What a fucking mess this is going to make! So, he can hear us? Sorry, Phil, but business before pleasure."
In the slack, frozen face the bloodshot teary eyes moved with an effort to focus on the smiling Monica.
The elevator slowed and stopped with a slight sensation of faintness. The grill opened.
"The door to office fifty-one E is unlocked," Sanguineus said. "The saw case is just inside the door. Grab it and get down to the mezzanine. Don't turn the damn thing on until you've got it positioned."
"Yes, master."
Headphones on, Fredrico Rolgo adjusted his desk lamp to shine away from the police scanner and more fully on his open laptop. Its screen showed a hooded black-winged angel with sword. His mind half on the police communications, he typed the following:
'The Celtic chieftain roared with satisfaction at the report of his spies. The Roman legion that was camped behind the mounds of garbage, near the moored boat, had been surrounded and had surrendered without a fight. The Roman general was being interrogated. But the advisor to the chief was puzzled. He knew about the killing of the masked and bewigged saboteur, and how the warrior woman defeated him in mortal combat, but the presence of the legion, and its intentions, was all new to him. However, he was thankful that the tall wooden tower of the Celts, site of the sacrifice to the god of revenge, was not threatened by any aggressor. As for the mysterious blond goddess who seemed all too human, her whereabouts and personal ambitions were still beyond the ken of the advisor.'
Rolgo clicked 'send.'
Five minutes later Sanguineus was carrying over his shoulder the paralyzed Sorgensen. He went up the stairwell at the end of the hall, up its two short flights to the attic door. As expected, it was locked. That was a good sign. He propped the limp billionaire in a sitting position against the green wall. From his back jeans pocket he took a cylindrical detonator device with a thin hollow stem filled with a thermite solution. This he inserted in the steel door's keyhole. Turning the wing screw in three revolutions, he flattened himself against the wall, his face pressed to the shoulder furthest from the door. Not caring what injury Sorgensen might suffer, he closed his eyes.
Moments later the cylindrical cover of the detonator was blown off and hit the far wall. Bits of hot metal sprinkled down to the floor as smoke drifted up to the ceiling from the blackened keyhole.
Sanguineus opened the door, his Glock at the ready.
Across the cluttered room the freight elevator stood open. At the top of the shiny aluminum steps to his right the roof access door was ajar. Putting his gun in his jacket pocket he went back to the stairwell landing and dragged Phillipe Sorgensen to the foot of the steps.
Glock out, he scaled the steps.
The door opened into a weather booth from which he could see the pulley and cable contraption bolted to the roof, a yard from the low squat balustrade of the roof's edge. The harness, lying beside a coil of wire, to which it was attached, was designed to keep the body in a horizontal plane as it was lowered down by the released cable, which was set to unwind at twenty feet per second until the last fifty feet of the distance was reached. It would then slow to ten feet per second. Monica would have just five seconds to place the saw directly beneath the midsection of the descending body.
Sanguineus did not see any indication of Dolina's presence. That she was not where the agreed upon plan placed her was not for Sanguineus a surprise or a too-great difficulty. But it did not yet solve the mystery of her or of Monica. And to that extent his heart and mind remained on high alert.
He returned to the attic for the onerous feat of carrying the Subject up the steps and through the narrow booth onto the roof. Phillipe Sorgensen was no longer a human being, no longer a possible adversary. He was now merely the Subject. Sanguineus had no intention of saying anything to him. Now it was just a job to be done.
He did not look at the face of the old man as he situated the torso and hips in the double-saddled harness of black vinyl. He hooked the two-pronged wire to the harness ringbolts and checked its connection to the quarter-inch cable. Then it was the simple matter of lifting the body out upon the balustrade ledge.
He looked down at the mezzanine 550 feet below, the distance of one and a half football fields. From his height the area marked off by the yellow tape seemed the size of a postage stamp. The two engineers had lined up things perfectly. He could not see them, nor see Monica, but only the sleek building's golden lights shining on the arabesque tiles of the mezzanine; that, and a scattering of indistinct shadows.
He turned to the cable motor. He pushed back the guard bar and flipped the orange switch.
Nothing.
He glanced around and saw that the motor was not plugged in to the 2-foot-high stack of batteries ten feet to one side of it. He remedied the problem and again flipped the switch. As the motor purred like a lion Sanguineus leaned over the balustrade and with only apparent gentleness pushed the Subject off the ledge.
For a few seconds he watched it fall. He did not compare this to the jumps from the Twin Towers, nor did the 9-11 atrocity even enter his consciousness. His overriding thought was to get down to the mezzanine as quickly as possible.
He was halfway to the access door when a flash of light the circumference of a baseball appeared in the booth. A powerful impact hit him square in the chest and threw him onto his back.
Monica knelt beside the opened case. She slid back the safety shield of the jagged saw blade and pushed the case inch by inch closer to the glossy blue wall.
Just moments before, she had been fretting that someone might spot her, though there were no windows within a hundred feet of where the body was to come down, and, behind her, the broad stretch of mezzanine ended at a line of potted hedges. She was as secluded as any marooned sailor, unless someone got past the caution tape that the two Russian émigrées guarded with their hands on concealed firearms. They were both around the curving corners to her left and right. She felt quite alone.
But when she saw the body's shadow slashing across the one-way mirrored windows as it swooped downward (she could not see the body itself) her sole concern was to place the saw blade appropriate to a clean severance.
Now she could see the body of the Subject coming smoothly down about 200 feet above her. She laid on her back for a couple seconds to confirm the right placing of the saw, then turned on her side, wriggled backwards, and pulled the case to the spot in question. She hit the on-switch and was up the next moment, just as a brief series of pops flew across the starry sky, pops that vanished in the grinding squeal of the saw blade.
She glanced all around. No one in sight. Her heart leaped with excitement.
As the body came steadily down she feared suddenly that the blade would ravage the harness rather than the Subject. And she was right. The body jerked and swung madly as bits of vinyl were sprayed over the tiles. Monica cursed, stamping a foot. Then she yelped as blood splattered on her face and blouse. The body was ripped into gorey shreds before the spine was severed.
At sight of that she would have clapped, but a force struck her between the shoulder blades. It flung her forward onto her face, where she lay, twitching for a moment, and then... Stillness.
Dolina Galsworthy came out from behind the hedges and walked across the blood-and-vinyl flecked mezzanine. She put her Remington back in its hip holster and smoothed her blue woolen sweater down over her hips.
It was her last act.
Her blond head, now more red than blond, hit the tiles. She lay as if for a quick nap, but there would be no awakening.
"Tell me you love me," said Monica in a feeble voice.
Sanguineus looked down at her and said, "Shut the hell up and get off your ass. It's time for us to head for the river."
Monica took his proffered hand and was yanked up onto her feet. "It hurt like a sonofabitch!" she complained, following him at a trot.
"The vests are not meant to give you pleasure, but to keep you alive when you should be dead," he answered. He led her down the lawn toward the trees that stood on the farther side of Treppelweg road.
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