Michael Walsh - Early Warning

The shotgun shell blew through Stegmaier’s forehead, tearing off the top of his head and leaving behind only the mandible and one eyeball still attached to the stalk. Devlin had seen many men die before, and killed more than a few of them himself, but this death was different. This was not a wartime killing but an act of mercy, an act of deliverance. This was not a death to be mourned, or even to be received indifferently. This was a death to be appreciated.

He had the cell phone. He had the number. And now, just to be sporting, their runner knew he was on to them. What was the point of being the best at what you did if there was no one around to appreciate it? The poor boy on the floor had met his maker, and gone contentedly to his end. But something told Devlin that the man on the other end of the line-the Iranian, whom he had just threatened in Farsi-would not go quite so quietly, or happily.

Very well then. Let it be.

Night was falling, and darkness had always been his friend.

Geneva, Switzerland

Skorzeny’s car was waiting for them as they disembarked in Geneva. Switzerland being neutral, and there being no actual warrant for his arrest, just an informal understanding between that rotter, Tyler, and countries with which the United States had an extradition treaty, they were free to enter. Switzerland would turn a blind eye to his presence in the country, just long enough for him to do what he had to do, make a substantial deposit in one of the banks, and be on his way.

Geneva was the most French of Swiss cities, which meant that despite its proximity to the French border, it was not French at all. It didn’t matter whether the Swiss spoke French, Italian, Romansch, or German, at their heart they remained Swiss-insular at the top of their mountains, clannish despite their linguistic divisions, and dedicated solely to the proposition that making money and keeping it hidden was the highest goal of life.

Skorzeny’s eyes roamed over the city as they approached. Here and there, a mosque caught his eye, and although the Swiss had recently voted to outlaw the construction of any more minarets, which they rightly deemed emblematic of the coming Islamic supremacy, he knew there would be more coming. Like some poor hypnotized creature facing down a cobra, the West had lost the will to resist its centuries-old challenger, and even here, in the very heart of rational, Calvinist, capitalist Europe, the green shoots of the coming caliphate were everywhere in evidence.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he reminded Amanda. Wearing a fashionable black dress that extended just below the knee, she was sitting as close to him as politically necessary and as far away as propriety allowed.

Even though she was used to reading his mind, Amanda had no idea what he was talking about. “Mr. Skorzeny?” she said.

He shot her a look of annoyance, as if she had somehow let him down. And after what he’d done to her. But in her heart she knew he would not see it that way at all. A man as rich as he was could afford to indulge his sociopathy, all the while telling himself that it was his very love for humanity that made him hate people so. “About God, I mean.”

She was hoping he’d forgotten, but the old reptile never forgot anything. Should he be incapacitated, chained to a gurney, his limbs cut off, his malevolent memory would machinate on, until the day the darkness he so passionately believed in but just as passionately tried to avoid finally descended. “I’m sure we’ve had this conversation before, Mr. Skorzeny,” she dodged.

“If we have, I cannot recall it.”

“Mr. Skorzeny-”

“Your former lover, the late Mr. Milverton, was an atheist.”

He always knew to put her at a disadvantage, how to wound her. “I believe that had something to do with the way he was raised, sir,” she replied.

“Whereas I have come by my skepticism independently-is that what you are saying, Miss Harrington?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

“What do you know about the Higgs boson?”

She expected anything from Skorzeny, but this query caught her by surprise. “Sir?”

“I think I speak English passably well, Miss Harrington. So please answer my question.”

“Higgs boson, sir?”

“Despite my advancing years, I am not deaf, madam.”

Amanda decided to rewind the conversation to more secure ground. She could not hope to compete with him here, in the stratosphere of his psychosis. “Mr. Skorzeny, all I know about your background-”

“I have told you. Which is all you need to know. So, what is your answer?”

She never thought she would miss the icy M. Pilier. He had borne the brunt of Skorzeny’s endless insane questions. She wondered what had become of him, but “no longer in service to us,” was about all she could pry out of Skorzeny. He probably said that about all the dead people in his life. Somehow, just looking at him, she knew he had had a lot of experience with dead people. What was his family like? What sort of people, no matter what the provocation, could have produced this monster?

“I’m not sure I can give you one at this moment, Mr. Skorzeny,” she replied.

“Which is why, Miss Harrington,” he said, twisting the knife, “most likely you are childless at this moment. Because, were you not a charter member of your generation’s suicide cult, you’d have five by now.”

She felt herself reddening. “Sir?”

“Don’t by coy with me, Miss Harrington, you know perfectly well what I mean. You know that if you truly believed in your country, in your culture, in yourself, and in your future, you’d have done what every other woman since Eve has done: have a child. Invest in the future. Have a stake in the benefits you demand of your government. Have some skin in the game.”

“Mr. Skorzeny-”

“But no.” He spat out his words with contempt. “But no, you cannot even be bothered to do that. A moment of pleasure, nine months of pain and the work ’twere done. That the next generation might live.”

“Sir! I really must pro-”

“But you won’t even give it that chance. Instead, you deny it life, or should it be conceived by some unhappy circumstance after a night of liquor and concupiscence, you throttle it-not in its cradle, like Hercules-but in your dark womb, where sins go unpunished and heroes die unborn.”

Amanda felt a wave of murderous hostility wash over her. If she could have plunged a knife into his dark heart, she would have, though it cost her her life. If, like some character from a movie, she could have taken any weapon to hand-a champagne flute, a pair of eyeglasses, a pencil-and gouged out his eyes, she would have. But she could do nothing. She had to sit there, take it, and pretend to like it.

“Allow me to make myself quite clear, Miss Harrington as, at the moment, you are the only person, it seems, whom I can trust in this deceitful and slanderous world.”

“Yes, sir.” Might as well encourage him. “Please do, that I might better understand.”

He smiled that reptilian smile of his, the smile she had learned so well, the same smile that creased his unholy visage even when he was making love to her.

“Making love.” The very thought nauseated her. To him, she was nothing but chattel, a piece of ass masquerading as a piece of property, just as she had been on that day at the Savoy Hotel. She, one of the most recognizable and accomplished women in the City of London, reduced to the state of a Soho drab in one horrifying encounter. For which she would never forgive him. The fact that he didn’t realize that was his weakness, his Achilles’ heel.