The Art of the Devil (31 page)

The rasp of ladder letting go of silo wall filled her ears.

Adrenalin surged through her veins. Her feet kicked, propelling her up two more rungs. Then she was only four from the top – but the ladder kept groaning, starting to separate both from itself and from the wall.

She scrabbled up, eyes fixed on her goal. A hand seemed to push from below, lifting her. And then somehow she had made it: collapsing across the small wooden platform, praying that the shelf itself did not give way.

With her weight removed, the ladder ceased groaning. Looking down she saw wood hanging out from the wall with several exposed inches of nail showing, right and left side rungs spread apart like legs akimbo.

She repaired the ladder as best she could while hanging half upside-down off her roost, banging it back into the wall until only a centimeter of nail showed, trying to coax the side rungs into something resembling parallel lines. After doing her best to assure a clear escape route, she unstrapped the rifle from her shoulder and prepared to complete her mission. The still, quiet place inside her mind expanded, soaking up everything else like a sponge. She felt calm, able, focused.

Evidently, she was not the first to discover this unused perch – a few discarded cigarette butts littering the platform spoke of time wasted by idling employees. She faced west, toward the Eisenhower home, and from her pocket withdrew the magazine, which thumped solidly home inside the rifle's stock.

Biting her lip, ruffling her pale brow, she raised the rifle. Sticking the barrel through the ventilation slat facing the sun porch, she brought scope to eye.

Shielding his eyes against the glare as he crossed through the Norway spruce, Isherwood fought to make out the silo rising before a lustrous sun.

He could see only a dark silhouette. But in the next moment the sun dimmed, obscured by a tendril of cloud drifting across the sky, leaving an after-image imprinted on his retina. He raised his gaze to the highest extreme of the towering grain silo.

The barrel of a high-powered rifle poked out, like the snout of a steel wolf.

She sighted on the President.

Facing the silo, beside his easel, features set in an attitude of artistic contemplation, he could not have presented a better target had he actively tried. Socking the rifle butt into her shoulder, she moved the stock flush against her left cheek. One hand steadied the barrel. Her thumb formed a spot weld between face, hand, and gun. The rifle was an extension of her body, and vice versa. Beneath her, the platform jiggled threateningly; but it would remain secure for a few more instants, all she needed. The sponge in her mind had soaked away all thoughts of ruses and escape routes and numbered accounts. At this moment there was only target and gun. Target and gun. Target and gun.

From the corner of her eye she sensed a presence rushing toward the sun porch. An intruder; a problem. But too slow, too late.

In the cross hairs she lined up President Eisenhower's familiar face: balding, framed by a fringe of sandy gray hair, and yet boyish, ruddy-cheeked, with uncanny blue eyes focused intently at the moment on his painting.

She closed her own eyes and opened them again. The face hadn't wavered.

Deliberately, her finger tightened on the trigger.

Francis Isherwood pushed into the silo.

He tripped over the bloody, lifeless body of Philip Zane.
Oh God, no.
If not for Isherwood's recommendation, the man would not have been here.
Later.

He plundered Zane's body like any soldier plundering the dead, tearing open the dark jacket, ignoring his savage grief, finding the standard-issue Detective Colt still inside its holster, tearing the gun free. As he turned to look at the figure high above, the figure was also turning, at the sound of his entrance, to look down at him.

As Isherwood took aim, the shooter fired down the length of the silo. He steadied his right hand with his left, ignoring the warning flare from the incision in his side. Pain was gone; confusion was gone. He had ceased breathing.

The slug thudded an inch from his left foot, kicking up a plug of dust. He returned fire, squeezing the trigger three times, fanning the barrel from right to left.

A suspended, timeless instant. Then a slow tumble, as both figure and rifle plummeted end over end off the platform. Instinctively, Isherwood fell back against the wall of the silo, making himself small.

The girl and rifle landed atop him with a heavy, terrible thud.

She writhed with fury, trying to claw at his face. Her turquoise eyes, filled with hate, were just inches from his own. He fought back clumsily, batting her hands away while trying to bring the gun around.

In silence broken only by harsh breathing, they struggled. But she was strong – even wounded, as she must have been, she had incredible strength. And he was weak, more so every moment. The bottomless black pit still yawned open, and now he was slipping into it, powerless to stop his descent.

A fist pumped mercilessly into his side, into the already ruined lung. Air escaped with a weak tea-kettle hiss.

Shadows were folding in, closing around him. The black void just to one side yawned ever deeper, even blacker. He was sliding into it. He felt himself go limp.
Finished.
He could only hope that he had moved with speed enough to save Eisenhower – and that he would not find too many demons waiting in that darkness.

He found not demons but a pleasant vision of a fine young son, with Evy's coloring and frank challenging gaze. The boy took Isherwood's hand with small fingers. Francis Isherwood held the tiny hand with great pleasure, trying to keep up – the lad exhibited the boundless energy of the young – as the boy pulled, tugged, laughing musically, urging him forward, into the gentle dark.

The mission had failed; but she still lived.

Pushing away the agent sprawled atop her, she listened.

Voices spoke, but not from directly outside the silo. Through tiny cracks in the splintery wood, she managed to catch glimpses of the land immediately surrounding her. Agents moved in packs, like flocks of black birds – securing the front gate, searching the herdsman's home, bolstering the perimeter between Farm Two and Farm One. But the path due east, toward the patch of woods she had scoped out long before, where she had hidden the disguise and the bicycle, was empty. The sentries there had been summoned to reinforce the President's position, just as she had anticipated.

And so she recovered the pea coat, pried the Colt from the hand of the agent, and then slipped out into the sunshine, not running, which would attract attention, but certainly not dawdling either. All it would take to defeat her now was a man glancing over his shoulder at the wrong moment. Yet as the seconds passed, no calls rang out. JESUS LOVED HER, after all.

She stalked clumsily – more like her childhood self every moment – becoming aware as she moved of new wounds, fresh insults to her body. A gunshot in the shoulder – but the bullet had apparently passed through. Her leg, injured in the fall, had turned into a doll's leg, stiff and unwieldy.

Awkwardly, she moved past the corn crib, past the bullpen. Atop the section of fence she'd chosen to cross, barbed wire coiled like a sleeping snake. The fence was too high to jump. But a horizontal cross-beam five feet up provided a potential footrest; the fence had been designed to keep intruders out, not in.

She flung the pea coat into the air, watched bloodstained fabric billow and then tangle against barbed wire. Bracing her right hand against a vertical post, she levered herself up onto the cross-beam. Her wounded right side proved unable to support her weight, and she nearly tumbled back to the ground. Instead, using her left hand and her momentum, she grabbed one dangling sleeve of the tangled coat and managed to drag herself up onto the fence top.

Never look back
, she thought.

And yet, before dropping down onto the far side, she did.

Bedlam was already giving way to military order: perimeters established, search parties fanning out. The silo, which marked the scene of her final ignominy, stood awash in brilliant sunshine. The distant porch was empty, offering no sign of Eisenhower. Of course he would have been hustled inside by now, under cover, and surrounded by a ring of armed men. She would have no prayer of reaching him.

She released the coat. Falling to the hard ground outside the property, she found the blighted chestnut she'd chosen as a landmark. The disguise and Huffy were waiting behind it, and in town, the Oldsmobile. But what, she wondered as she maneuvered her dead leg over the bicycle's saddle, came next? She had failed.

The important thing was to put some distance between herself and here. Find proper medical treatment. Change her identity, again and again.

Keep running.

FAYETTEVILLE: DECEMBER 1955

T
he entire table was laughing.

The man who had told the joke leaned forward, glowing with self-satisfaction and Cheval Blanc, and reached for the bottle. He refilled his wife's glass, and then extended himself across the table to refill the glasses of Emmerich and Rudolf Wulff.

‘Believe it or not,' he said, setting down the bottle as the laughter died away, ‘I heard that one from a professor at Harvard Law School, when we were working together in Shanghai.'

Emmerich gave a last chuckle. Plates were cleared; from the kitchen came the rich smell of brewing Arabica beans. ‘Coffee,' a butler announced, ‘will be served in the parlor.' Walking past the elder Wulff, then, he leaned down and added something in a whisper.

Emmerich and his brother made brief eye contact. As they left the dining room, Emmerich veered off toward the library. ‘Rudolf,' he called, ‘might you entertain our guests for a few moments without my assistance?'

‘It would be my sincere pleasure,' said Rudolf solemnly.

Inside the library, Emmerich Wulff failed at first to recognize his old friend; he thought the butler must have given him the wrong name. Then he realized that in fact he was indeed looking at Senator John Bolin. Although mere weeks had passed since their last encounter, the man was almost unrecognizable. He had lost weight. He needed a shave. His suit – a cheap linen ensemble, far less glamorous than his usual outfit of bone-colored silk – was grubby and frayed. His rimless spectacles were marred by a hairline crack. Even more profound was the change in his body language. He radiated pain and uncertainty. Even his cold blue eyes seemed different, two shades darker.

Closing the doors behind himself, Emmerich checked his own composure before speaking. ‘John,' he said then, evenly. ‘What a surprise.'

Bolin shook his head, sighed, and covered his eyes with one hand.

‘Relax, my friend.' Emmerich took Bolin's elbow, leading him more fully into the room. ‘Cognac?'

Bolin managed a stiff nod. His hand lowered; his tongue came out, scraping across dry lips. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘Thank you.'

Crossing beneath antique tapestries, ancient leather-bound tomes, and mounted heads of bucks and tigers, Emmerich reached for a sideboard by a humidor. Splashing brandy into two snifters he asked politely, ‘Cigar?'

‘Yes – yes.'

Equipped with brandy and cigars, they settled down on either side of a dark chessboard inlaid with pearl.

‘I know I'm not supposed to be here,' started Bolin. ‘I can see from the cars parked in the drive that you've got guests …'

Emmerich waved carelessly.

‘… but our so-called friends in Buenos Aires double-crossed us, Emmerich. I had no other way of reaching you. They didn't hold up their end of the deal; so plans must change.'

Sanguine, Emmerich lit both cigars from a vintage brass-capped lighter.

‘They put me in a hovel: a literal hovel. Cockroaches everywhere. Filth … insects … disease.'

Sympathetically, Emmerich nodded. But his eyes remained empty, dull.

‘The problem,' continued Bolin, ‘is that we chose the wrong friends. This two-bit dictator Aramburu – he's no good. He's crooked. He bites the hand that feeds him. And McCarthy – a drunken fool. His day is past. And that operative of yours … everyone said she could do no wrong. But when push came to shove, she fumbled the job.'

‘Unfortunately, I must agree.'

‘Even my faith in my most trusted associate, my lieutenant, proved misplaced.' Bolin straightened, and for a moment a flash of the old hauteur was visible. ‘But with time and patience, Emmerich, another chance will present itself. And if this time we have the right men in our corner—'

‘Our dinner guest at this moment is a candidate for such an honor.'

The senator caught the hint of reprimand. ‘I'm sorry to arrive this way,' he said after a moment; ‘without warning, putting you at risk. I have agreed to be, and I shall remain if necessary,
persona non grata
. But you don't know what it's been like.'

Another nod.

‘Just getting back into this country took everything I've got. They're all crooked down there, the swine. They'll cheat you as soon as look at you, and if they realize that you need them, then God help you. I'm penniless, Emmerich – absolutely without a penny. If not for some old friends who owed me favors, I never would have made it back over the border. They're looking for me, you know. I'm told there's a standing arrest order. One of my staff confessed that the girl never worked for me; the cover story is ruined. Now I'm an accomplice. A wanted man. My accounts frozen, my assets forfeited. Even John Hoover can't help me now.'

Emmerich smoked. ‘Were you recognized, on your way here?'

‘No. Of course not. I took care.' Bolin looked at the brandy in his hand, which he seemed to have forgotten. Raising the glass, he drained it in a draft.

‘
Meinem Freunde
: take a deep breath. You're safe now.'

Bolin made a sound between a laugh and a scoff. ‘Easy for you to say. You've lost nothing. But I—'