The Council of Ten (20 page)

The Timber Wolf had not noticed the woman approaching until she was almost upon him. He cursed himself silently for allowing distraction as he rose to greet her in Washington’s Fort Dupont Park. They embraced briefly, Wayman more interested in the manila folders protruding from the woman’s handbag.

“You got it,” he said in what had started out as a question.

“And then some,” she returned tautly. “What in hell are you onto here?”

“Tell me what you learned and maybe I’ll know.”

For reasons he was just beginning to understand, yesterday the Timber Wolf had gone to the police station determined to aid Drew Jordan. He had not been able to put out of his mind the sight of the police piling the young man into a squad car. At the station, however, he had learned not only that Jordan was missing, but that all traces of his ever being there had been erased. Wayman bit his own lip to punish himself. Drew Jordan had been the victim of professionals all along and they weren’t finished with him yet. Now he had been made to disappear, and one way or another it was the Timber Wolf’s fault.

Because he had refused to get involved.

Because he didn’t want to get his hands dirty anymore.

Because he couldn’t be the person Drew Jordan expected him to be.

So, yesterday he had called Jilly. Years before she had been part of the same network as he. She was a courier then and a good one. Their love affair had been silent and subdued, nothing that might attract the attention of their superiors. She left the network shortly before he did and that was the end of their relationship. Business had dictated the rules, and without the business there were none to follow. Jilly went to work for a private intelligence firm known as Beta Group. Free from congressional restrictions, Beta Group was widely known as the finest organization of its kind in the world, providing information-channeling services that Wayman had found himself sorely in need of.

Because she was headquartered in Washington, D.C., Wayman felt it best that he fly up there to meet her. Jilly had chosen Fort Dupont Park for the meet and he approved. The park was spacious and wide. The leaves had begun to change, and Wayman could almost picture the beauty cast over the scene by the winter’s first snow as he sat back down on the bench next to Jilly. The breeze grabbed the long black hair from her face and tossed it off.

“Where do you want me to start?” she asked him.

Wayman recalled that Drew Jordan had asked him a similar question two days before. “With the grandmothers,” he told Jilly.

She pulled the folders from her bag and opened the top one. “Your crystal ball’s retained its sharpness, Peter. The times of increased financial activity you told me to look for correspond directly to the weeks immediately following their returns from those vacations in the Bahamas.”

Wayman nodded, not surprised. He had felt that Drew Jordan had been right from the beginning. “Any links you could draw between the ladies and Trelana?”

“Not directly, but that doesn’t mean a thing, not in the drug world.” She opened another manila folder. “Speaking of which, you seem to have stumbled on an entire distribution chain that is—or was—quite successful. The details are all in these. I’ll just give you the highlights. Lantos was one of Trelana’s couriers, all right, along with a very deadly—now very dead—woman named Sabrina. And those brothers you asked me about are the Riveros. The most feared pair of coke traffickers in Miami until someone knocked them off last week.” She closed the folder, her features stiffening. “Your interest in this is all very strange, unless you’re planning to seize the opportunity to move into a new line of work.”

“No, just get back into my old one.”

Jilly arched her eyebrows. “Did I hear that right?”

Wayman just looked at her. “See, there was this kid, well, young man, who turned up on my doorstep with an incredible story, knowing all sorts of names he shouldn’t have, which could only mean he had stumbled onto something way out of his league. His grandmother was one of the ladies who got killed and I think I believed what he was saying and I still didn’t do anything to help. He was the kind of person I used to fight for, lay my life on the line for. Nobody special, just a poor bastard who’d had the living shit kicked out of him by society’s underlayers. Hell, I didn’t even know the people I fought for back then. They’d been hurt by the fuckers I hunted and that was enough for me.”

“It was more than enough. It was too much.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I think it ate you up, burned you out. I think that’s why you quit. After Corsica—”

“Forget Corsica.”

“I can’t and neither can you,” she said accusingly. “It marked the end because all of a sudden you couldn’t live up to your own standards anymore. But it was impossible to start with because nobody could live up to those standards. They were too damn high, and as the years and the missions went on they got higher. You expected too much of the network, me, and most of all yourself.”

“How can you expect too much? We were fighting for a cause, damnit!”

“That’s the problem. You
became
the cause, Peter, and when you found out you couldn’t win by yourself, that you were prone to mistakes like the rest of humanity, you got out. It took Corbano to finally show you the truth.”

“Fuck Corbano. All he showed me were the bodies of all those kids who died because I fucked up.”

Jilly’s voice softened. “Nobody blamed you.”

Wayman’s expression was placid to the point of being stonelike. “But the trouble was
I
blamed me. You knew me better than anyone back then and most of what you said is right on the mark. The only thing you left out was the fear. After Corsica, I got scared of making a mistake, of not being able to live up to my own legend. I quit because I figured I could run away from those standards you say I set for myself.” His features sharpened and with them his voice. “But I couldn’t. And a couple days ago when I turned that young man away, I violated every standard I’d ever set for myself. I tried to tell myself that the code didn’t matter anymore, that I’d lived without it so long what was the life of one more poor bastard anyway?” He paused. “Plenty, Jilly. Standard number one. And if I violate it, if I don’t help this guy and keep my back turned, then everything I thought I’d accomplished will be meaningless because I’ll be no better than those fuckers I spent all those years hunting.”

For a while neither spoke but then, almost reluctantly, Jilly produced another manila folder from the bag. “This may be what you need, Peter. I ran those thirty addresses you gave me and came up with a direct link with the Riveros—their distribution points no doubt, and the periods of activity correspond directly to the return of those grandmothers from Nassau. But what does it mean?”

“Plenty, Jilly,” the Timber Wolf said. “Plenty.”

It was the ear-blasting whirl of the plant machinery that snapped Elliana all the way awake. It sounded even louder in the night with none of the workers to help absorb it. Her head pounded and throbbed. She forced herself to think, to plan.

Light Hair was dragging her across the floor in the direction of the pressing machine that reduced fish parts to pulp. Since Dark Hair was maintaining an even pace behind them with gun drawn and free hand clutching his wounded shoulder, that meant Lefleur had to be the one who switched on the machines. So, it was three against one, not to mention the machines. Lousy odds.

Ellie kept her eyes drooping and let her feet continue to drag. It was her only chance. The strike to her temple had opened a gash that looked much worse than it was. The blood would serve as a disguise. She could see the pressing machine, what Lefleur had called the grinder, now.

It was a huge apparatus, its opening up a ramp perhaps eight feet off the floor. Feed the fish in and out come the pressed parts ready for freezing or shipment as is. To facilitate large loads, the opening was easily wide enough to handle a human body.

Ellie tried not to think about what a body would look like when it emerged on the lower level conveyor belt en route to the freezing station. God …

The grinder was humming loudly. She smelled grease. Footsteps hurried to catch up with them, no doubt belonging to Lefleur who would want to witness the grisly killing. They had reached the ramp. Light Hair began to drag her up, and she could hear him breathing loudly from the strain. To lift and dump her into the machine was a task she didn’t expect him to be able to handle alone.

At least that was what she was counting on.

They reached the top of the ramp and Ellie’s eyes were now staring straight down into the grinder’s teeth, huge steel bands actually, which formed the start of the pressing process. Her stomach fluttered.

Light Hair started to lift her from the ramp.

Wait!
she urged herself.
Be patient! React now and the other one will have a clear shot at you
.

Ellie felt her feet being raised just a bit off the ramp and she concentrated on making herself as heavy as possible.

“Give me a hand with her, will ya?” Light Hair called to Dark, who started up the ramp.

Ellie blessed her fortune. With both of them occupied with her, she would have a chance. She hoped. Surprise would be on her side. If successful, she would have only Lefleur to deal with.

Patience …

Dark Hair lowered his one good arm to her legs while Light Hair fumbled about her upper body, both searching for the best angle to drop her down into the grinder’s mouth. The teeth moved back and forth, back and forth, back and forth …

“Now,” one of them said, and Ellie took that as her signal.

At the instant they began their final heave, Ellie twisted from Light Hair’s grasp and launched a kick into Dark Hair’s face. Still twisting, she angled her body to the side and crashed an elbow into Light Hair’s midsection because he was closest to her. The blow sent him pitching backward down the ramp.

Dark Hair came in for her fast and hard, reaching with both hands now, forgetting about his shoulder wound as blood gushed from his nose. As he reached out, however, Ellie entered into the force of his strength, joining it and grasping him with both hands. He was off balance, all his weight going in one direction. Ellie kept it going.

Toward the grinder.

He entered head first, a brief, horrible scream replaced swiftly by a mashing, grating sound like a garbage disposal with something wedged in its works. Blood coughed upward, splattered flesh and pulverized bone spraying against the nearest wall and almost reaching the ceiling.

Light Hair was back on his feet, gun drawn, but the awful whining of the grinder unsettled him. He fired three shots, all errant, and by then Ellie was upon him. He kept his focus solely on the gun, struggling to use it. But in close his pistol was virtually useless, too easily jammed against his body, which was exactly what Elliana did. Her free hand rose up in a half fist and swished down into the flesh and cartilage of his throat. She felt it crack and knew he was dying even before he crumbled to the floor.

Behind her, she heard a scrape and a whirling sound. Ellie ducked instinctively. Lefleur’s angry scream rose over even the roar of his machines, as he pulled the six-foot fish spear back for another attack. Ellie leaped over Light Hair’s corpse, as Lefleur came in with a thrust this time. But he aimed too high, for her throat instead of her midsection and she was able to avoid the blow easily. She might have finished him then, but she felt he was just out of her range and she lurched to her feet instead.

They faced off against each other, Lefleur with the spear, Ellie with her hands. He was breathing wildly, his face contorted. Although he had pulled up the zipper of his trousers, they were still unsnapped and sagged low past his hips. He was still naked above the waist.

Ellie looked frighteningly calm. She moved with him step for step, waiting for him to strike again. She could take no chances. This weapon was deadly even when wielded by an amateur. Ellie’s right eye was filling with blood from the blow to her temple. She was vulnerable from that side, but Lefleur seemed unaware or unable to take advantage of it.

Ellie squared her midsection to him and offered it as a target.

Lefleur took the bait and lunged out with a vicious thrust, putting all his vast bulk behind it, his torn cheeks dripping with blood.

Ellie grasped the spear palms down on the hilt as she stepped sideways to avoid it. Turning suddenly and twisting the spear they now both held forced Lefleur into an off-balance stagger backward. The floor was slippery with fish oils and he flew into the air when he tried to right himself.

He landed hard on the conveyor belt leading from the grinder to the freezing machine, atop parts of Dark Hair that were still emerging. Dazed, he nonetheless realized what he was heading for and with a yard yet to go might have leaped off had not one of his feet been caught in the tread.

His scream as he passed into the machine was not as loud as Dark Hair’s had been, but it rang in Ellie’s ears and she raised her hands to cover them as the remains of Lefleur passed through the various stations of the freezing machine.

She did not wait to see what emerged on the other side. She headed for the first exit door she saw and, smelling the thick sea air, ran into the night.

The white-haired man closed his eyes and turned his face back to the sun.

“This whole business surrounding Jordan disturbs me,” he said to the giant hovering over him. “No sign of him you say?”

Teeg grunted. “Not since he vanished from the jail.”

“He vanished because someone wanted him to. But who? And why? The task could not have been easily accomplished, which means we may be facing a new enemy of dangerous potential.”

Teeg grunted again and curled his hook inward. For as long as he could remember, he had been ugly. Before he even knew what the word meant, other kids teased him with it. He was bigger than they were, clumsy and awkward. For a time, they called him Frankenstein and then Lurch after the Adams Family butler.

Then something happened. Teeg kept growing, but he was no longer clumsy and awkward. In seventh grade, a boy called him a name and Teeg calmly knocked all his front teeth out with a single punch he didn’t even throw hard. He became a feared force and could have ruled the school, but he chose instead to remain isolated and a loner. Teeg cared little for his appearance and did nothing to change it, not that he could have. Every adolescent pimple he ever received left a scar, and he gave up on acne creams after three tubes failed to help,