Hard as Nails

"Will you tell me why?" said Kurtz. He'd been fiddling with the handcuffs, but they were expensive and well made and very tight.

"Why what, old sport?"

"Why everything? Why save the Dodger from the asylum and sic him on the Gonzagas and Farinos so many years later? Why use me as an instrument to kill your friends the Major and Colonel Trinh? Why everything?"

Ke

"At least tell me about Yasein Goba before you go," said Kurtz.

Ke

"The police records show you in the air in your private jet at the time O'Toole and I were shot," said Kurtz. "O'Toole's e-mail records show you responding to her e-mail just forty-five minutes before…" He stopped.

Ke

"You flew in on a second one, earlier," said Kurtz. "You even received and answered O'Toole's e-mail from the other Lear."

"Gulfstream V, actually," said Brian Ke

"You shot us and drove out there to sign in as if you'd just arrived. Where did your real jet—Gulfstream—land?"

Ke

Kurtz shrugged. "Sure. Just one last question then."

"We searched you for a wire when you were unconscious, Mr. Kurtz. We know you're not broadcasting or recording. You're simply wasting your time and ours right now."

"The stud farm," said Kurtz. "Is that yours?"

"Bequeathed from my father," Brian Ke

"Poor Yasein Goba thought he was in the hands of Homeland Security and then the CIA, but it was just your Empire State Security and Executive Protection building in downtown Buffalo and then the farm, wasn't it?"

Ke

"You never worked for the CIA," said Kurtz. "But your old man did, didn't he? He was the third part of the triad back in Vietnam—with the Major and Trinh. They kept the drugs moving after the war ended."

"Of course," said Ke

"And you continued to shake down the Major and SEATCO after your old man died," said Kurtz. "Did they think you were still CIA? Still providing protection the way your daddy had in the seventies and eighties? And now you want it all? Is that it?"

"I'm afraid you've committed the cardinal sin, Mr. Kurtz. You've bored me." Ke

The two bodyguards made sure their field of fire was safe and raised their pistols, aiming at Kurtz's chest and head, bracing their weapons with born hands as if they could miss from eight feet away.

"You look like James Bond," Kurtz said to Ke

Ke

The tu

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Both flashlights dropped and rolled in the shallow water, both ended up with their beams shining opposite directions. The dank air smelled of cordite. Two of the bodies lay still, polished shoes pointing upward. The third body did not move but a strange, terrible whistling came from it.

Kurtz did not move.

The man came silently out of the darkness. He was a tall man, very thin, dressed in a wool suit and a tan raincoat that looked too short and slightly dated. He wore a small Bavarian-style hat with a small red feather in its band. The man had a narrow, strangely kind-looking face, framed by thick, black-rimmed glasses, and had a thin ginger mustache and a slightly prominent lower lip. His eyes looked sad but very alert. He was carrying an unsilenced Llama semiautomatic pistol.

He walked to the first bodyguard, Theodore, stared down at him a few seconds, and then checked the second one, Edward. Both were dead. The man picked up one of the flashlights.

"Three," Kurtz said shakily, mostly to see if he could still speak. "I'll be paying this off in installments for twenty years."

"Not three," said the Dane, turning the flashlight and pistol in Kurtz's direction. "Four."

Kurtz's head jerked up. He braced his feet. "All right," he said. "Four."

The Dane shook his head. "Oh, no, my no. I don't mean you, Mr. Kurtz. I'm speaking of the man Ke

Kurtz felt a sensation that would be hard to describe to someone who hadn't experienced it. Mostly it had to do with the bowels.

The Dane knelt by the first bodyguard, retrieved a small key from the man's coat pocket, and unlocked Kurtz's handcuffs. Kurtz let them drop in the water.

"I didn't hear anything behind us," said Kurtz, rubbing his wrists. "I was begi

"It is best not to be heard," the Dane said in his very slight Northern European accent. He took some keys from Brian Ke

Kurtz went to one knee next to Ke

"That's called a sucking chest wound," Kurtz said softly. "Old sport."

Kurtz pulled the glowing Palm device from Ke

The man in the short raincoat shook his head.

Kurtz set the PDA on Ke

Kurtz grabbed the second flashlight and he and the Dane began walking back through the catacombs.

"I didn't know if you'd get my message," said Kurtz when they'd taken the first turn and left the bodies behind.

The Dane made a motion with his shoulders. He'd tucked the pistol away under his raincoat. "My other work was done. I had the day off."

"Will I hear about your… other work?"

"Quite possibly," said the Dane. "At any rate, today's work will cost you and Countess Ferrara nothing. It is… what is the legal phrase… pro bono."

"Countess Ferrara?" said Kurtz. They moved into the taller tu

"You didn't know that the lovely, former Angelina Farino is married to one of the most famous thieves in Europe and a member of royalty?" said the Dane. "I accepted her request in order to honor the Count. He is not a man one wishes to insult."

"I thought the old Count was dead," said Kurtz.

The Dane smiled his wry smile. "Many people have thought that over the decades. I always work on the premise that it is safer to assume otherwise."