David Lindsey - The Color of Night

When the skyscrapers were looming over him, sparkling like pyrite, he turned south on the Southwest Freeway and then very shortly exited on Main. Soon he was turning onto Bissonnet. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

“Hello?”

“I am just turning onto Bissonnet.” His accent was very slight.

“We’re the blue Four Runner a block past the house.”

“Everything is in place?”

“Two upstairs in number three.”

He visualized the number three bedroom.

After turning off Bissonnet, he drove the Cherokee down the narrow lane without hesitation, dousing his headlights just before he approached the house. He pulled into the driveway, stopped under the porte cochere, and cut the engine. It was a quiet engine, with a customized muffler, softer than a sigh.

He opened the glove compartment of the car and took out a small automatic handgun with a short, blunt silencer permanently attached to the barrel. He checked the clip of hollow-point bullets and put the gun into his coat pocket. From the floor in front of the passenger seat he picked up an aluminum, vinyl-wrapped canister designed to look like a small fire extinguisher.

The alarm system had already been deactivated by the team in the Four Runner, so he had no hesitation about unlocking the door with the key on the ring. He set the canister on the floor just inside the door and took off his shoes. He moved quickly and carefully through the dining room and kitchen to the pantry, where he found the breaker box for the electricity. He threw the switch and then pulled the fuses just for good measure. He could not afford an electrical glitch. He went back through the rooms to the foyer and picked up the canister. Carrying it in one hand, the automatic in the other, he started up the stairs. He couldn’t even hear himself moving.

Once on the second-floor landing he quietly put down the canister and moved ahead with deliberation, walking briskly through the second-floor halls to the number three bedroom. The door was open. He stepped inside and went up to the bed. They were both naked, asleep, the girl curled in her boyfriend’s arms. She was a pretty girl, blond and busty. He looked at her a moment, then shot her in the right temple. He shot her boyfriend before he could even stir out of his sleep at the sound of the silencer. He shot them both again, twice, in the head. The hollow-points made a mess, but he never had to wonder about the results.

He quickly retrieved the canister and returned to the bedroom. He opened the nozzle, released the lock, pointed the nozzle at the bed, and pressed the trigger. With a loud whoosh a broad stream of jet fuel shot out. He sprayed the bodies liberally and then hosed down the room, the highly pressurized canister enabling him to saturate the bodies and the room in only a moment. He sprayed the other upstairs rooms as well.

Downstairs he did the same thing, spraying, just for the hell of it, all the drawings hanging on the walls and giving a good shot into the library. By the time he made it through the other rooms the fumes from the jet fuel were almost unbearable.

He slipped on his shoes and took from his coat pocket a small plastic box the size of a pager. He peeled a piece of paper from an adhesive patch on the box and slapped the box on the wall. He pushed some buttons, and a green digital readout appeared on a screen. At the programmed time the box would produce nothing more than a series of electrical sparks, more than enough to ignite the fog of jet fuel now expanding throughout the house. He gave himself thirty-five minutes. He could almost be back at the airport by then. He would even have them circle the city so he could see the fire. On second thought, with an additional ten minutes he might even be able to see the explosion itself. He changed it to forty-five minutes. By then the fumes would be so dense that even the thought of a spark would set them off.

Carrying the canister, he went out the front door and dutifully locked it behind him.

ROME

Harry Strand sat with his back to the stucco wall in a cafe in Testaccio and stared in stunned silence at the phlegmatic face of Alain Darras. It was midmorning in yet another working-class neighborhood south of the Aventine, and both men were leaning over cups of steaming cappuccino. The front doors of the cafe were open to the street, where trucks and motorini buzzed by like insects swarming in the warm morning sun. The bakery in the front of the cafe was a popular stop for a fast breakfast, and the tin-covered bar where most of the customers stood while they quickly devoured their espresso and roll had been busy since Strand arrived. But in the rear of the cafe he and Darras had a table to themselves in relative isolation.

“I told him nothing, of course,” Darras said. “Not even that I had heard from you.”

Strand felt weak and nauseated, as if he had been hit very hard and was struggling to stay conscious.

“They must have known that it was likely you would call me at some point.” He stopped. “I don’t like it that I was the one to tell you.”

It was mind-boggling. What Schrade had done was horrible, incredible.

“Howard knows you’ve come to Rome with a woman. He knows her name.”

Strand’s face must have registered suspicion.

“No, no, they did not get this from me. From the flight information. They have her name from that. That’s what Howard said, anyway. As for me, I couldn’t find anything on her. If she’s working with anyone, I can’t find any trace of it. She doesn’t show up with Schrade. There’s nothing on her anywhere else. I don’t think she is in the business, my friend. Or, if she is, she is very, very new to it.”

Strand processed this. He had never had bad information from Darras. Ever. He was surprised, but it was difficult to believe, even though he wanted more than anything for it to be true. But if he was going to remain sane, he couldn’t go on playing mind games about her. He had to trust the information he was getting. And he had to trust her. Then his mind went right back to the house and the explosion. The two bodies. God, what had he done?

“Of course, Howard wanted information on Mara Song, too,” Darras added.

“You confirmed Howard’s story about the explosion?”

“Yes, Harry, I did. The FBI is already involved. They are interested in the explosives, of course.”

“What was it?”

“They think it was jet fuel. Probably spark ignition.” He paused. “I understand… well, it was very bad. Almost total destruction. As for forensics, there’s almost nothing to work with. The jet fuel… you know, it burns so hot…”

Darras showed no emotion beyond the momentary hesitations. Strand noticed it and was pained.

“Do they have anything else?”

“I don’t know what they have. It’s moving too quickly. My sources are not good on breaking information.”

Strand knew that Darras’s sources were very good indeed, and he wondered if Darras was holding out on him. If he was, why?

He quickly calculated the progress of events. No records would be left. Nothing to start from. He was sure that aside from the fuel residue precious little would remain to guide investigators. They would go back to his old ties in Europe from four years before and start from there. Strand still dealt with some of the same people, though not as many since he’d retired. Those dealers and collectors would not know about Mara Song. The only person who would know about the house in Sallustiano would be Aldo Chiappini, and since he had become Strand’s client after Strand left the FIS, his name would not be in agency records. So they would have to work their way to him through Strand’s other contacts. The world of drawing collectors was a small world. It wouldn’t be long. Strand didn’t have that much time.