The Wrecker

He worked his way to the thick outer door and unbolted it, leaving one bolt engaged so the door wouldn’t swing in the wind. Then he crossed the courtyard to a small door in the bottom of the tower. Its lock was modern, but Van Dorn’s spies had ascertained the maker, allowing Bell to practice picking it until he could do it blindfolded.

He had no illusions about an easy arrest. They had almost caught Charles Kincaid eighteen years ago, but he had slipped loose in the chaos that wracked Europe at the end of the World War. They had come close, again, during the Russian civil war, but not close enough. Kincaid had made friends on both sides.

As recently as 1929, Bell thought he had Kincaid cornered in Shanghai, until he escaped by coming as close as any criminal had yet to killing Texas Walt. He had no reason to believe that the Wrecker was any less resourceful five years later, or any less deadly, despite the fact that he was now in his late sixties. Evil men, Joe Van Dorn had warned with the grimmest of smiles, don’t age because they never worry about others.

The lock tumbled open. Bell pushed the door on oiled hinges. Silent as a tomb. He slipped inside, closed it. A dim paraffin lamp illuminated a curving stairway that led to cellars and a dungeon below and the Wrecker’s apartments above. A thick rope hung down the center as a handhold to climb the steep and narrow steps. Bell did not touch it. Stretching from the roof to the dungeon, any movement would make it slap the stone noisily.

He drew his pistol and started up.

Light shone under the door that led to the Wrecker’s apartment. Suddenly, he smelled soap, and he whirled toward motion that he sensed behind him. A heavyset man in servant’s garb and a pistol in a flap holster at his waist had materialized from the dark. Bell struck with lightning swiftness, burying the barrel of his pistol in the German’s throat, stifling his cry, and knocking him senseless with a fist to the head. Quickly, he dragged the man down the hall, tried a door, found it open, dragged him inside. He slashed drapery cords with his knife, tied the man hand and foot, and used a knotted cord as a gag.

He had to hurry. The guard would be missed.

He checked the hall outside Kincaid’s door and found it empty and silent. The door was heavy, the knob large. Bell had learned that Kincaid did not lock it, trusting to the walls, the outer door, his guards, and the German solders who blocked the road.

Bell pressed his ear to the door. He heard music, faintly. A Beethoven sonata. Likely on the phonograph, as it was doubtful the radio penetrated these mountains. All the better to muffle the sound of opening the door. He turned the knob. It was not locked. He pushed the door open and stepped inside a room that was warm and softly lit.

A fire flickered and candles and oil lamps cast light on bookcases, carpets, and a handsome coffered ceiling. A wing chair faced the fire with its back to the door. Bell eased the door shut to avoid alerting the Wrecker with a draft. He stood in silence while his eyes adjusted to the light. The music was playing elsewhere, behind a door.

Isaac Bell spoke in a voice that filled the room.

“Charles Kincaid, I arrest you for murder.”

The Wrecker sprang from the wing chair.

He was still powerfully built but looked his full sixty-nine years. Standing slightly stooped and wearing a velvet smoking jacket and eyeglasses, Kincaid might have passed for a retired banker or even a university professor were it not for the scars from his miraculous escape from the Cascade Canyon. A shattered cheekbone flattened the left side of his once-handsome face. His left arm ended abruptly just below his elbow. His expression mirrored his scars. His eyes were bitter, his mouth twisted with disappointment. But the sight of Isaac Bell seemed to invigorate him, and his ma

“You can’t arrest me. This is Germany.”

“You’ll stand trial in the United States.”

“Are your ears failing with age?” Kincaid mocked. “Listen closely. As a loyal friend of the new government, I enjoy the full protection of the state.”

Bell pulled handcuffs from his ski jacket. “It would be easier for me to kill you than bring you in alive. So keep in mind what happened to your nose last time you tried to pull a fast one while I put the cuffs on you. Turn around.”

Covering Kincaid with his pistol, he clamped one cuff around his whole wrist and the other tightly above the elbow of his maimed arm. He confirmed that Kincaid could not slip it over the protruding joint.

The sound of the cuff locking seemed to paralyze Charles Kincaid. Voice anguished, gaze dull, he asked Isaac Bell, “How did you do this to me? The German Geheime Staatspolizei intercept everyone that comes within twenty miles of my castle.”

“That’s why I came alone. The back way.”

Kincaid groaned as he abandoned all hope.

Bell looked his prisoner in the eye. “You will pay for your crimes.”

The music stopped abruptly, and Bell realized that it had not been a phonograph but an actual piano. He heard a door open and a rustle of silk, and Emma Comden glided into the apartment in a stylish, bias-cut dress that appeared sculpted to her curves. Like Kincaid, her face revealed the years, but minus the scars and the bitter rage that ravished his. Her lines of age, her wrinkles and her crow‘s-feet, traveled the route of smiles and laughter. Though tonight her dark eyes were somber.

“Hello, Isaac. I always knew we’d see you one day.”

Bell was taken aback. He had always liked her, before he knew she had been Kincaid’s accomplice. It was impossible to separate the spying she had done for the Wrecker from the men he had murdered. He said coldly, “Emma, fortunately for you I have room for only one or you’d be coming with me, too.”

She said, “Rest easy, Isaac. You will punish me by taking him from me. And I will suffer for my crime in a way that only you could understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“As you love your Marion, I love him … May I say good-bye?”

Bell stepped back.

She stood on tiptoe to kiss Kincaid’s flattened cheek. As she did, she slid a small pocket pistol toward Kincaid’s cuffed hand.

Bell said, “Emma, I will shoot you both if you pass him that gun. Drop it!”

She froze. But instead of dropping the gun or pointing it at him, she jerked the trigger. The shot was muffled by Kincaid’s body. He went down hard, landing on his back.

“Emma!” he gasped. “Damn you, what’s going on?”

“I ca

“How could you betray me?”

Emma Comden tried to say more, and when she could not she turned beseechingly to Isaac Bell.

“She hasn’t betrayed you,” Bell answered bleakly. “She’s given you a gift you don’t deserve.”

Kincaid’s eyes closed. He died with a whisper on his lips.

“What did he say?” asked Bell.

“He said, ‘I deserve everything I want.’ That was his worst belief and his greatest strength.”

“He’s still coming with me.”

“The Van Dorns never give up until they get their man?” she asked bitterly. “Alive or dead?”

“Never.”

Emma sank to her knees, sobbing over Kincaid’s body. Despite himself, Bell was moved. He asked, “Will you be all right here?”

“I will survive,” she said. “I always do.”

Emma Comden retreated to her piano and began to play a sad, slow rag. As Bell knelt to hoist Kincaid’s body onto his shoulder, he recognized a melancholy improvisation on a song she had played long ago on a special in the Oakland Terminal, Adaline Shepherd’s “Pickles and Peppers.”

Bell carried the Wrecker’s body down the stairs and out the tower door and into the snow. Across the courtyard, he opened the single bolt he had left in place, pushed through the massive gate and along the wall to where he had left the sled. He strapped it into the canvas litter, put on his skis, and started down the mountain.