The Death Trust Read online

  The drunken backpackers I’d encountered the day before were giggling and guffawing in the foyer when I went in—stoned, by the look of them. They must have read the sign out front and obviously, although they weren’t U.S. servicemen, were hoping to get laid. I considered spoiling their fantasy and explaining that the only thing getting screwed at this hotel was the English language, but thought better of it. They were on life’s adventure. Let them discover its idiosyncrasies on their own.

  I went up to my room, showered, shaved, popped more painkillers, rolled the toothbrush around two-thirds of my mouth, and crawled into bed. I lay there for a time, staring at the ceiling, considering my last conversation with General Gruyere. She wanted hard facts, evidence—things in short supply. I could tell she wasn’t interested in what my gut was telling me. And I had a fair idea why. Harmony Scott’s dear old dad lived just up the road from Andrews AFB. There’d be enormous pressure to get the case of Abraham Scott’s death resolved, and a suicide verdict was neater than murder. And so it goes. I closed my eyes and for some reason the parade of Peyton Scott photos on the workbench and in Scott’s study drifted through my mind.

  Many combat vets have a recurring dream that takes them back to events they’d rather forget, only imagination has made the memories even worse, twisting them into a frightening parody of reality. I’m no exception. Mine goes something like this: The sky is dark blue when I look up into it because I’m at altitude, close to space, and the air is as brittle as thin ice. I’ve come in by C-47, a massive twin-rotor helo that’s about as big as a shipping container and slightly less aerodynamic. I’m perched on a hilltop inside the Pakistan border with half a dozen infantrymen. My mission is to plant a pineapple tree, which our pilots will use to help them line up on so that they can bomb a nest of scorpions. (For the pineapple tree, read radio beacon, and those scorpions are Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents. I don’t know why a pineapple tree, but the scorpions at least make some sense.) I dig the hole required to plant the tree with a pick, breaking through the frozen rocky sand, and the infantry guys are crouched in a ring around me, their weapons pointing out.

  The next time I look up, the infantry are being ripped apart by these scorpions, big fuckers, which suddenly morph into ragheads with eight arms and legs wielding steel blades. Heads are parted from shoulders; my men are being quartered by these creatures of subconscious gene-splicing. The helo is circling, trailing a thick gray rope I realize is smoke. It has been hit. I see a man in a hatch firing a machine gun and the glowing red tracers accelerate as they close the distance between us, smashing into these “talibugs.” Some are hit and they roll around squeaking while yellow stuff oozes out of them. I lift up my foot and there’s one squashed into the tread under my shoe. Don’t ask me how this can be, given the man-sized dimensions of the creatures—this is a dream, right?

  So anyway, the helo attempts a landing but is driven off by enemy fire. And then suddenly, from a neighboring hillside, a fusillade of incoming lead. I somehow know it’s half a dozen Australian Special Air Service soldiers over there, across the valley. Snipers. They’ve worked their way into a position that gives them a clear line of fire and are picking off the scorpion/Taliban creatures. The helo circles before landing on the hill and the machine-gunner in the hatchway is shot and tumbles, dangling out the back of the aircraft from his safety harness like a tea bag. The C-47 touches down. The four of us still alive and capable of walking drag our dead and wounded to its ramp, shooting as we go. A head comes off the man beside me and rolls away down the hill, gathering speed as if it’s a bowling ball. A scorpion is among us. I turn and empty my clip into the freak show.

  I take a bullet in the chest and another under my arm an instant later. The pain burns and I feel like I’m being dismembered alive with a blowtorch. I drag two more bodies up onto the ramp and collapse.

  The next thing I know, I’m lying on the open ramp, flying between the hills, but the helo is out of control, bucking and diving. I’m rolling around, close to falling off, out the back. I know I’m going to die, but I always wake up alive.

  I sat up in the dark, sweating and shivering. There was noise from the main street finding its way through the closed window. My conscious mind went over the blanks in the dream, filling them in. Just two of us escaped the scorpions’ nest we’d been set down on. But fate hadn’t finished with us. Our helo took more hits. The pilot was killed instantly, the copilot was fatally wounded. The C-47 made a crash landing on the valley floor and somehow managed not to burst into flames. The Aussie SAS guys on the hill sniped at the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, picking them off one by one as they tried to reach us, scrabbling across the scree, knives flashing in the sun, bent on separating more heads from their rightful owners. A Cobra gunship arrived after twenty minutes, shot up the remainder of the enemy, and then flew overwatch till another C-47 came by to pick up the survivors. Or, should I say, survivor. Me.

  I needed air. The bedside clock said it was just after ten P.M. I made my way to the window and opened it. It’d been raining. I breathed deeply in the hope of ridding my mind of the scorpions and getting my heart rate back under control. The night smelled of wet road and car exhaust. The street below was a procession of slow lights reflecting on its mirrored surface. I recognized one of the vehicles parked opposite the pensione: a purple Mercedes. I’d seen only one of those in this town. Was Special Agent Masters staking me out? There was a soft tap on the door. I was naked. I threw on a pair of boxers. Who else could it be? I opened the door. “Hey, what are you doing he—” I said. The words caught in my throat.

  It took a moment for my brain to adjust and recognize the woman silhouetted in the light of the hallway. Perhaps it was because she was dressed so differently this time, in a fashionable raincoat that ended above the knee and was cinched tight around her waist. The delicate silver high heels on her feet made her taller than I remembered. Her straight black hair was tousled with that postcoital unruliness, and, instead of a gun, this time she pointed a retractable umbrella in my direction.

  “So, are you asking me in?”

  “Sure,” I said, stepping aside. I felt underdressed in my boxers.

  Varvara closed the door behind her and removed her coat. It crumpled to the floor. The Latvian woman stood naked in her high heels in front of me, and my concerns about whipping on some extra clothes evaporated.

  “It’s cold in here,” she whispered, stroking an erect nipple with her fingertips.

  “Is it?” I said.

  She took a step forward and slipped a cold hand inside my shorts, instantly finding what she was looking for. It would have been hard to miss. My endocrine system was going nuts, dumping a pharmacopeia of hormones into my bloodstream, and the ability to think rationally was rapidly going down. A part of my brain said, Give in to it, pal. It’s been a long time and you’re in danger of reclaiming your virginity. Another part said, No! She’s part of an investigation and you don’t do that kind of thing, remember? To which the first part hit back, The investigation’s over, pal.

  Varvara led the way to the bed, in total control. She pushed me down and knelt beside me, her hair tickling the skin of my lower belly. Any resistance I might have had dissolved when I felt the heat of her mouth close around me. The question of why Varvara had decided to come here and fuck the daylights out of me was intriguing, but I was convinced to put it on hold, at least for a little while.

  “What happened here?” Varvara asked, her head on my shoulder as her fingers traced the puckered scar of the bullet wound on my chest.

  “A birthmark,” I said. I was feeling light-headed, filled with a warm, sleepy glow. I sensed her slip out of bed.

  A light came on, throwing a wedge of yellow onto the bedroom floor. My mind wandered. Maybe the promise in the Pensione Freedom’s slogan was accurate after all. Varvara had just provided me with landmark sex, sex I would happily build a monument on and conduct tourist buses to.

  She padded back to the bed. “I li
ke the lights on, don’t you?”

  “Only when the scenery’s spectacular,” I said, my eyes watching her. Her body was disturbingly spectacular, almost too good to be real, like that of a life-size Barbie doll.

  “Do you like what you see?”

  “Yes,” I said, calling it as I saw it. Her legs were long and smooth and her breasts were on the large side, although perfectly in proportion to her height. They were firm as only a young woman’s can be, the nipples large, pink, and permanently hard, apparently. But it was her waist that was truly extraordinary. It was tiny; my fingertips almost touched when I wrapped my hands around her.

  She pulled back the sheets and straddled me. “Did you know that in Riga there are eight women for every man?”

  “Sounds like paradise,” I said.

  She laughed. “Yes, if you are a man. But if you are a woman, you need a…a…I think it’s called a gimmick?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are too many women, many of them beautiful. I am also Russian. My grandparents were resettled in Riga by Stalin after the war. In their day, life was okay. The Russians were the rulers. But today,” she shrugged, “it is a different story. The Russians are no longer welcome in Latvia. So, I was a Russian and a woman—I needed a gimmick to survive there. I am luckier than many. I have good genes and men find me attractive. I learned to dance, and then I met a man, a Chechen, called Alu Radakov. They say he is a separatist leader. A powerful man in Riga. He liked the way I danced and promised to make me rich.”

  “How was he going to do that?”

  “He owned clubs where women dance on tables. Alu had me improved so that men would find me more attractive.”

  “What?” I asked, unable to completely expunge the horror from my voice. “What do you mean by improved?”

  “Implants here and here,” she said, pointing to her cheeks, chin, and then playfully giving her bare butt a slap, “collagen injections, breast aug…aug—”

  “Augmentation.”

  “Yes, that’s it—and liposuction. My face is my own, but I have been body-sculpted, an implant here and there. And, of course, I’ve had ribs removed.”

  “This Alu guy had your ribs removed?” I said, now fully aghast.

  “Yes. Don’t you like my waist? See how narrow it is.” Varvara tracked the curves of her upper body, moving her hands slowly down and over her breasts, cupping them, and then down her midriff.

  My mind was struggling with this. Varvara’s body had been scarred, but not in the name or pursuit of some greater cause as mine arguably had been. She’d been surgically remodeled by some monster so that fat businessmen and politicians would slip more dollars in her G-string. That was not all I was struggling with. My problem was that Varvara was completely unperturbed by it. Indeed, she was so unconcerned that she had started to rock gently against me, and, God help me, I was hardening. I watched her breasts move rhythmically to the thrusts of her pelvis as I found my way inside her.

  SEVENTEEN

  I want to tell you why I came here,” Varvara said when our breathing had slowed and the muffled sounds of the traffic in the street below penetrated our consciousness. She lifted her head from the crook of my arm.

  “Aside from sampling the delights of the love god,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.”

  “If I tell you, you promise you will not get cross?”

  “I swear, I don’t have a cross bone in my body,” I said. “Or any bones, for that matter. I think they’ve all turned to Jell-O.”

  “It was wrong what happened this afternoon in my apartment. I thought you had come to kill me. The gun. I nearly shot you. I wanted to make up for that.”

  “Make-up sex. A worthy reason.”

  “Also, I want you to find Abraham’s killer. He was murdered. I came here to convince you not to give up.”

  “Oh,” I said. That presented a problem. Varvara obviously didn’t know about the suicide note. How could she? Now I wished I’d listened to the “no” vote in my head and kept my pants on. I’d taken advantage of this woman, abused my position of power. Varvara hadn’t come here because she was attracted to me, but because she wanted something done, and she’d paid for it in the world’s oldest currency. I worked my way out from under her body and sat up in bed, feeling like shit. “Varvara, there’s been a development in the case.”

  “Yes?” Her voice was expectant.

  “General Scott left a suicide note,” I said. There was no other way to tell her but to give it to her straight.

  “No! Abraham did not kill himself. Don’t you see? She just wants you to believe that!” Varvara sat up beside me, her chest heaving.

  “Who? Who wants me to believe that?”

  “She! His wife. That Harmony bitch. She found this suicide note, didn’t she?”

  “Well, yes…”

  “You see. It’s a forgery. Abraham would never kill himself. You can’t let them win.”

  Them? “There’s nothing I can do, Varvara. The case is closed. I’m going back to America tomorrow.”

  Varvara leapt out of bed, yelling at me at the top of her voice in a language that was probably Russian. She put her heels on and jammed her arms through the sleeves of her raincoat. Then she turned and shouted something unpleasant, waving a finger at me. She spun around, and I thought she was looking for something to throw at me but, no, she was searching for her umbrella. She scooped it up and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her with a bang that echoed in my ears.

  I stood, not quite knowing what to do. And then the door flew open. “Show me letter!” she demanded.

  I owed her at least that much, but the letter was back at OSI, Ramstein, wasn’t it? Maybe not. I picked my jacket up off the chair. It was heavy. I felt the deep pockets and they were stuffed full. “Could you step out of the light so I can take a closer look, please?” I asked nicely. The request calmed Varvara. I emptied the contents of the pockets onto the bed. I had my notebook, a wad of the mysterious printout packed with columns of figures. I also had Peyton Scott’s toe tag, the photograph of him from Scott’s garage, a copy of the Veitch autopsy performed on the sergeant in Baghdad, the cell phone and pager, the nickel-plated Colt, a bag of cloves, a box of codeine, and a clear plastic evidence bag with General Scott’s handwritten note inside. The events at the OSI building had thrown me off my game and I’d forgotten to hand all this to Masters so that she could return it to Harmony Scott. I remembered we’d also intended to put a security detail on Varvara, but that too had fallen by the wayside. I handed the bagged note to Varvara. “Don’t open it,” I said. “Fingerprints.” In fact, I was more interested in whose saliva would be found on the envelope’s seal, or whether minute fibers might have been captured. Had the letter even been examined by forensics?

  “It is fake,” she said after barely a few seconds’ examination.

  I knew she was going to say that, but I was intrigued nonetheless. “Why?”

  “I show you,” she said, “but you must come to my apartment.”

  “Your apartment?” I said.

  “Yes, I have other letters from Abraham. You will see the difference. This is not even a good copy. You cannot trust her.”

  “What kind of relationship did you have with Scott?” I asked, sidestepping another diatribe about Harmony.

  “I told you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “He took care of me. He was a good man. Not like others I have met.”

  “In the dance club.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who or what is the establishment?” I asked, taking a stab in the dark.

  “Bad people,” she said. “You don’t believe me about this?”

  “Which bad people?”

  “People who would kill Abraham.”

  Round and round we go… “Look, Varvara, no matter what happened between us tonight, I want you to know that I also believe General Scott was murdered. But you and I are the
only people I know who do, with the possible exception of Special Agent Masters. But proving he was killed is not going to be easy, even if this note does turn out to be a forgery—” I stopped. Scott’s death had been executed with precision, and anyone even remotely connected with it seemed to be chewing a dirt sandwich. That thought got me thinking about Harmony Scott. Either she was in real danger and the crone was making it almost impossible for us to protect her, or she was every bit as evil as Varvara believed her to be. I hadn’t warmed to her, but that didn’t make her a cold-blooded killer. I checked the time. It was getting on to 0200, and my plane back to the States was departing at 0830. If I was going to keep this case alive, I needed to get moving and find something solid I could wave in front of the big cheese to show that a crime had been committed. Proof that the suicide letter was a forgery was a start, but that’s all it was, especially if his wife and any handwriting experts she could muster begged to differ. “Okay,” I said, throwing on some clothes. “Let’s go.” I picked up the cell, the cloves, the Colt 45, and the bagged note and threw the covers over the rest of the evidence. I hung the do-not-disturb sign on the door. We took the elevator to the lobby. Out on the strip, I noted that Masters’s Mercedes had gone. So had most of the traffic, except for the cabs prowling for late-night fares. We grabbed one and headed across town.

  “You have a toothache?” she asked.

  “Yeah, how’d you guess?”

  “I saw the cloves, and I smelled them on your breath. Much better than dentists. I hate dentists.”

  Varvara had one of those perfect smiles that were a little too good to be true, and I wondered what the teeth she was born with would have been like.

  “You should try Russian tarragon. Good for teeth, and tastes good on meat.”

  “Okay…I’ll give it a go next time I’m doing a roast,” I said, hoping to close down the subject. I popped a codeine tablet and chewed on a couple of cloves in lieu of Russian tarragon. To take my mind off my mouth, I went back to thinking about Harmony Scott. I wondered what the Toe Cutter would make of his little girl being a person of interest in her husband’s murder investigation. As far as I knew, no U.S. Vice President had been placed in a similar position. But I knew enough about this one to know he’d fight hard if cornered, and that I’d be considered the enemy.