Ratlines Page 16

  “Our informant.” Skorzeny turned to the boy who stood half sleeping against the wall. “Esteban, go upstairs and fetch Monsieur Lainé.”

  The boy stirred, nodded, and ran up the staircase. He returned two minutes later, Lainé coming behind, buttoning his overcoat. His eyes met Ryan’s as he reached the hallway.

  “Come,” Skorzeny said, and led them out into the night.

  Ryan and Lainé followed in silence, across the gardens towards the outbuildings and the halogen lamp that burned there.

  As they walked, something tugged at Ryan’s mind. He looked at the trees around them, searching the pools of darkness.

  “Colonel,” he said.

  Skorzeny halted, looked back to him.

  Ryan asked, “Where are your guards?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  OTTO SKORZENY HAD never submitted to fear or threat. Not as a boy, and certainly not as a man. Even as a student, duelling with sabres at the University of Vienna, his padded tunic stained deep red, he had fought on long after others had conceded. He recalled a photograph, his smile broad and bloodied alongside those of his brethren, a tankard of beer in his hand, all of them toasting yet another brutal tournament.

  So when Luca Impelliteri made his threat, Skorzeny did not retreat.

  Standing over the table outside a Tarragona cafe, he had held his ground, listened, his face expressionless.

  “I will tell the Generalissimo everything,” Impelliteri had said, smiling up at him. “I will tell him you are a liar and a fraud, that your fearsome reputation is built on a propagandist’s story, and that he should not court your company.”

  “And why should he believe you?”

  “Francisco Franco is a careful man. He is always suspicious. He has not held his position for decades by being reckless. If there is doubt, he will remove you from his circle of friends rather than risk being made to appear foolish. Don’t you agree?”

  “I do not,” Skorzeny said.

  Impelliteri shrugged. “Even so, that’s how I see things. Of course, the Generalissimo need never know any of this. I am open to persuasion.”

  Skorzeny waited for a moment, then said, “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand American dollars to start with. After that, well, we’ll see.”

  Skorzeny did not reply. He turned his back on the Italian and walked to the hotel. Once inside his room, he lifted the telephone receiver and asked for an international line. Within thirty minutes, he had made all the necessary arrangements.

  Now this new threat, these murderous barbarians seeking to frighten him with the corpses of men he barely considered acquaintances. Whatever they sought, they would not take it from him by fear.

  The absence of his guardsmen on this dark night did, however, cause him a moment of concern.

  Skorzeny turned in a circle, scanning the tree line. His kept his expression calm, his voice flat. He said, “They’re patrolling the grounds, probably. Come.”

  He set off towards the outbuildings again, unease slithering around his stomach with the pheasant and the Rote Grütze. The others followed.

  He had seen the look Lainé and Ryan had exchanged. The G2 officer had been gone for some time. Had he and Lainé spoken while he was upstairs? Lainé had made his dislike of Ryan clear to Skorzeny. Had they had some sort of confrontation?

  No matter, there were more immediate concerns.

  Such as why no one guarded the building that held Hakon Foss.

  As he drew closer, Skorzeny saw the door stood ajar, a slash of light from within. And the toe of a boot lying inside the gap. He quickened his step.

  “What’s that?” Ryan asked.

  Skorzeny reached the door, pushed, found it blocked. He pushed harder, and again, forcing the dead man’s legs away from the opening.

  “Merde,” Lainé said.

  One of the guards, a neat hole at the centre of his forehead, two more in his chest. Skorzeny stepped over his body, avoiding the blood that pooled around him.

  The rage in Skorzeny’s belly threatened to rise up like a dragon, burn all reason from his mind. He quelled it.

  Hakon Foss remained in his seat, hands still strapped to the table, feet awash with his own urine. He reeked of faeces and sweat. But he was alive.

  Skorzeny approached the table, mindful of the foulness on the floor.

  “What happened here?”

  Foss cried. “Men came. They shoot.”

  Skorzeny leaned on the table. Ryan and Lainé kept their distance.

  “Who?”

  Foss shook his head, mucus dribbling from his nose and lips. “I don’t know. I ask them to let me go. They don’t answer.”

  Skorzeny slammed his fist down on Foss’s splayed right hand, felt the metacarpals give under the force.

  Foss screamed.

  “Who were they?”

  Foss swung his head from side to side, saliva and mucus spilling from him.

  Skorzeny brought his fist down again. Foss’s voice cracked, turned from a scream to a whine.

  “Tell me who they were.”

  Foss’s lips moved, mouthing words no one would ever hear.

  Skorzeny reached down, grabbed Foss’s devastated hand in his own, squeezed, felt the bones grind within the flesh.

  Foss’s eyes fluttered, his consciousness failing. Lainé appeared at his side, a knife in his hand, plunged it into Foss’s neck, tore it across his throat.

  Skorzeny stepped back as the deep red fountain burst from the Norwegian, splashing across the table. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  Lainé tossed the knife onto the tabletop. It skittered through the red. “He should die.”

  Foss choked, his eyes dimming.

  Skorzeny’s rage bubbled up. “Not before he told me what he knew.”

  “He would not talk.” Lainé wiped his hands on his coat. “He was more strong than that.”

  Ryan’s voice from behind. “He knew almost nothing, anyway.”

  Skorzeny turned to the Irishman. “What do you mean?”

  “He was the informant,” Ryan said, a new hollowness in his eyes. “Catherine Beauchamp told me before she died. He knew nothing about them. He never saw their faces. They gave him money. He gave them information. That was all.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Ryan put his hands in his pockets. “I would have if you’d given me the chance. Besides, don’t you have bigger things to worry about right now?”

  Skorzeny looked to the body on the floor. He pushed past Ryan, stepped over the corpse, and kicked the door aside.

  The light from the halogen lamp scorched everything within its reach. Fire all around him. The rage coming up like a shark from the deep.

  “Come!” His mighty voice echoed through the trees. “Come for me now! If you have the courage, come for me now! If you are men, come and face me!”

  He roared at the night until his voice could bear the force of his anger no more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  THE SKY EDGED from black to deep blue as Ryan found himself outside Buswells Hotel. A bristling hush hung over the city, like a breath before a word, the streets about to wake.

  The night porter opened the door. Ryan told him the room number and waited for his key. As the porter handed it over, he gave Ryan a sly smile and a wink. Had it not been for the fatigue, Ryan might have wondered why.

  He climbed the stairs, each step dragging at his feet, his body getting heavier as he rose. It seemed an age between the key settling in his palm and slotting into the hole in his door. He turned it, let the door swing inward, saw the warm light the bedside lamp cast around the room.

  Seconds passed before he made sense of the shape curled on the bed.

  “Celia?”

  She jerked awake, fear and surprise followed by recognition. “Albert. What time is it?”

  Celia turned to the window, saw the creeping dawn. She had used her coat for a blanket. It fell away, revealing bare freckled shoul
ders. The pale smooth skin, the lamplight reflected like a halo.

  “It’s early.” Ryan closed the door. “What are you doing here?”

  She propped herself up on her elbow and rubbed mascara across her cheeks. “I wanted to see you. The night porter let me in.”

  Ryan wanted to cross the room to her, but his feet seemed locked in place.

  “Won’t Mrs. Highland be worried?”

  Celia smiled, lazy creases on her face. “She’ll be having kittens. I didn’t think you’d be so long.”

  “There were … problems.”

  “I don’t want to know,” she said. “Come and sit.”

  Ryan hesitated, then walked to the bed, sat down. Her body swayed with his weight. He saw the shape of her as the dress stretched across her breasts, indecent and beautiful. Her faded perfume laced with her own scent, flowers and spices and the faint warm tang of woman.

  She turned her eyes to the window. “I don’t know what you must think of me.”

  A dozen answers flitted through Ryan’s mind, not one he could utter without shaming himself. Instead, he kept his silence.

  “I was never a pretty girl,” she said.

  He swallowed, a loud click in his throat. “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, it is,” she said, the seriousness of her expression denying any other notion. “I was skinny and awkward and gangly, and this frightful ginger hair. Like a lanky boy. Then one day, all of a sudden, I was different. And men noticed me, like I’d been hiding in plain sight. My father’s friends, their sons, all saying, my, how you’ve grown, and aren’t you blossoming. But when I looked in the mirror, I still saw the same gangly girl, all elbows and knees and buck teeth.

  “I told you about Paris, and that artist coming up and asking me to model. I acted offended when I told him no, but I went back to the little apartment I shared with the other girls, and I looked at myself in the mirror, and I asked, am I pretty?

  “That very same week, a man came to see me in the consulate and asked if I would do something very special. He asked if I would go to a party and strike up a conversation with a particular gentleman. An attaché at the British embassy. See if I could get him to ask me to dinner. And he did. And he was dreadfully dull, talking about trade missions, and policies, and which countries had the most to invest, and I thought I’d fall asleep in my soup.

  “But the man came back to the consulate—Mr. Waugh, his name was—and I told him what had been said, and he was very pleased, and I got a weekend in a very swanky hotel in Nice and a very, very generous bonus. And so it went. A clerk, a diplomat, a businessman. Sometimes even an Irishman. No one got hurt, the gentlemen had a pleasant time, and I was terribly well paid. Mr. Waugh always took care of things.”

  Celia sat up, put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder.

  “What I’m trying to tell you is, I thought this would be the same. We’d have a nice time, we’d talk, and I’d tell Skorzeny what you’d said. I never thought there would be anything more to it than that. Anything … bad.”

  Ryan was certain he should be angry at her. He couldn’t be sure if it was the fatigue or the low heat in his belly that prevented it. His mind should have seized on the betrayal, but instead it dwelled on the pressure of her fingers against his arm.

  “Who asked you to do the job?” he asked.

  “Charlie Haughey by way of Mr. Waugh.”

  “You should contact this Mr. Waugh as soon as you can. Tell him you can’t continue this assignment. It’s too dangerous.”

  Her eyes hardened, told him not to lie. “How dangerous?”

  “Dangerous,” Ryan said. “Six men died tonight.”

  SKORZENY HAD BARRELLED into the trees, his voice torn up by anger. Ryan had followed, leaving Lainé in the harsh glow of the halogen lamp.

  The curses in the dark made waypoints for Ryan to navigate by, roots snagging his toes, bushes grabbing at his thighs.

  “Here!”

  Skorzeny’s voice cut through the night. Ryan headed towards it.

  He found the Austrian in a clearing, crouched, his cigarette lighter in one hand, the other cupping the flame. A man lay dead in the moss and rotten leaves, an AK-47 at his side. The flickering of the lighter seemed to animate his face, the expression turning from surprise to terror and back again.

  Skorzeny hauled himself to his feet and set off again. Ryan tailed him, following the sounds of his crashing through the trees. They rounded the house, walked circles around clearings and thickets. Time stretched, the sound of Skorzeny’s breath a metronome, a rhythm to trace in the dark.

  Ryan tripped on something heavy and pliant. He landed on the moist cold earth, his feet tangling in something he knew to be human.

  “Over here,” he called.

  The answer from a dozen yards away. “Where? Talk. I’ll find you.”

  Ryan spoke to the darkness, words of no meaning, sounds to guide Skorzeny in.

  He knelt down beside Ryan and flicked the lighter. The flame stuttered and caught. The dead man stared at the sky, a piece of his cheek gone.

  They stumbled down towards the gateway that opened on to the road. A few minutes’ searching found the bodies, dragged from the driveway to the black places behind the wall.

  Skorzeny stood panting like a beaten dog, smaller than he’d been before.

  “What do they want?” he asked.

  Ryan knew the question was not for him. He answered it anyway. “You.”

  Skorzeny grabbed Ryan’s shirt front. The fabric stung him where the sword’s tip had pierced his skin. “Then why don’t they come for me? Why this?”

  “Because they want you afraid.”

  Skorzeny released his grip. “Never.”

  Ryan thought of Weiss and his mission. Only one logical thought would stay in his mind, and he knew Weiss would kill him for it.

  “You should leave,” Ryan said.

  “What?”

  “Get out of here. You have friends in Spain. You’ll be safe there.”

  Skorzeny’s laugh echoed through the trees. “Run?”

  “I don’t see any other choice.”

  “Never.” Skorzeny pushed Ryan hard, sending him sprawling in the weeds. “I have never run from anyone. Do you take me for a coward?”

  Ryan got to his feet, dusted off his trousers, careful of the wound on his thigh. “No, I don’t.”

  Skorzeny came close. Ryan smelled brandy on his breath. “Would you run? Would you show them your tail as you fled?”

  Ryan stepped back. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you a coward?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why do you talk like one? You talk of running. Like a woman. Like a child. Where are your balls?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “And why haven’t you fucked that redheaded girl?”

  Ryan turned his back on Skorzeny, walked towards the gravel of the driveway, ignored the taunts.

  “Why not? She’s there for you, a gift. And you haven’t the balls to take her. What kind of man are you?”

  Ryan left him ranting in the darkness.

  CELIA’S FINGERTIP BRUSHED the graze on Ryan’s neck, already dry and scabbing.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  She rested her chin on his shoulder. Her breath on his skin.

  “You’re a strange man, Albert Ryan.” She touched his cheek, skimmed his jowl with the backs of her fingers. “Such a saggy face. If I saw you on the street, I’d think, there’s a nice man. A quiet man. He’s got a job in a bank, or maybe a department store, and he’s going home to kiss his wife and play with his children.”

  Her words caught like splinters.

  “And here you are, bleeding, telling me about all the dead men and how they died.”

  Ryan turned his face to her, every intention to speak, but she silenced him with her lips.

  Soft and warm on his, her fingers woven in his hair, her body pressed against his shoulder. No air, he pushe
d her away, gasped, fell on her, hands hungry and seeking.

  She guided them away from her breasts, said, “No,” and he obeyed. The bed seemed too small for them both. Her body moved beneath his, her thigh between his legs, shying from the hardness it found there, her teeth grazing his lips.

  “God,” she said. “Sweet Jesus.”

  She pushed him away.

  Ryan leaned back on his knees, breathless, confused.

  She shook her head. “I want to. But I won’t. I’m …”

  He understood. “I know.”

  Celia took his hand, brought him down to her. She turned on her side, her back to him, and he nestled there, his mouth against the heat of her neck, his chest against her bare shoulder blades, his arm wrapped around her.

  She did not pull away from the hardness of him now, allowed him to press against her. Her foot hooked around his ankle.

  They lay there, knotted and breathless. Ryan felt her ribcage expand and contract, the rhythm steadying, her body loosening. He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, it was light, and she was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  LAINÉ DID NOT sleep. When Ryan and Skorzeny had disappeared into the trees, he had gone back to the house, taken another bottle from the cellar, and climbed the stairs to his room.

  He listened to the hoarse shouting in the distance, then the sound of Ryan’s car starting and pulling away, and finally Skorzeny entering the house and barking orders into the telephone downstairs. An hour later, perhaps more, two engines approached and stopped outside. Big, coarse engines, like Land Rovers, farmers’ vehicles, built for carrying their loads across fields and streams. The voices of men, instructions issued, commands accepted.

  IRA men, probably, tasked with cleaning up whatever mess had been left among the trees surrounding Skorzeny’s property.

  Lainé lay on his bed, taking the last swallows from the bottle, the puppy dozing at his feet. He pictured the dead being ferried away into the night, buried in the corner of some barren field, or in the dark channels of a forest, or weighed down in the deepest part of a cold lake.

  Among them Hakon Foss, poor innocent idiot, now to be fed upon by foxes or fish.