John Connolly - The Reapers

Louis left the Netherlands without Bliss ever catching sight of him, and another man took his place for the final days, but during Louis’s time there he tracked Bliss, using Gabriel’s assistance as well as his own initiative. They found bank accounts. The office of his lawyer was searched. Business interests, and properties owned, were identified. Even his car was found.

Then, during Louis’s final days in Amsterdam, relations between the Dutch government and the transport unions deteriorated. A series of strikes was anticipated. One week later, Bliss went to his garage to pick up his car in order to drive to Rotterdam. There was a cassette player in the dashboard. He turned on the stereo as he maneuvered out of his space, the nose of the car angling upward with the slope, but instead of the anticipated Rolling Stones he heard a woman’s voice. Connie Francis, he thought. It’s Connie Francis singing “Who’s Sorry Now?”

But I don’t own any Connie Francis.

Oh, you clever boy.

He already had one foot on the ground when the mercury tilt switch activated, and the car, and Bliss, were engulfed in flame.

“He survived,” Gabriel told Louis. “You should have found another way.”

“That way seemed appropriate. Are you sure he’s not dead?”

“There were no remains found in the car, but fragments of skin and clothing had adhered to the garage floor.”

“How much skin?”

“A great deal, apparently. He must have been in considerable pain. We traced him to a doctor’s surgery on Rokin. The doctor was dead when we found him, of course.”

“If Bliss lives, he’ll come back at us someday.”

“Perhaps. Then again, it may be that all that is left is a charred husk with the man we knew trapped inside.”

“I could find him again.”

“No, I don’t think so. He has money, and connections. This time, he’ll bury himself deep. I think we shall have to wait for him to come to us, if he comes at all. Patience, Louis, patience…”

BLISS SAT IN THE dining room of Arthur Leehagen’s house, the table at his back and an empty Hardigg Storm case at his feet. He wore a raincoat, and he held a soft waterproof hat in his hands. In front of him was a window, but until a short time before he had been able to see nothing through the glass and had, instead, focused entirely on his own reflection. He was not weary. He had come so far, and the moment for which he had long wished was almost upon him.

He recalled those first hours, when he was convinced that all of the skin had been seared from his body, the agony as he had stumbled into the night, his mind clouded entirely by pain. It had taken a great effort of will to compartmentalize his suffering, to clear a tiny corner of his consciousness so that reason could take over from instinct. He had made it to a phone, and that had been enough. He had money, and with money you could buy anything, if you had enough of it: a hiding place, transport, treatment for one’s wounds, a new face, a new identity.

A chance to live.

But such pain. It had never gone away, not truly. It was said that one forgot the intensity of one’s former agonies as time went on, but that was not true for Bliss. The memory of the pain that he endured had been seared both in and on him, in his spirit and on his body, and even though the physical reality of it had faded, the memory of it remained sharp and clear. Its ghost was enough to evoke all that had once been, and he had used that capacity to relive it in order to bring him to this place.

He heard footsteps behind him. Michael Leehagen spoke, but Bliss did not turn around to acknowledge his presence.

“There’s been contact,” Leehagen said.

“Where?”

“The inner ring, close by the southern intersection.”

“Did your father’s men do as they were told?”

There was a pause before Michael answered. Bliss knew that the reminder of his father’s authority would rankle. It served no purpose other than to amuse Bliss. It was a reminder that Michael had overstepped his authority in ordering the attack on Gabriel. Bliss had not forgotten it. There would be a reckoning once the job was done. Benton, the man who had pulled the trigger, would be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of Bliss’s atonement for the shooting. It was for Bliss, and no other, to decide if Gabriel lived or died. Bliss understood that Gabriel could not have let his treachery go unpunished, and he bore him no animosity for the long hunt that had ensued. It was Louis that Bliss wanted. Louis had burned him. Louis had made it personal.

“They forced them back. They didn’t aim to kill.”

Bliss blew air through his nose, like an amused bull. “Even if they didn’t, they probably wouldn’t have hit anything, unless it was in error.”

“They’re good men.”

“No, they’re not. They’re local thugs. They’re farmboys and squirrel eaters.”

Michael didn’t dispute the accuracy of the description.

“There’s something else. We lost contact with two of our people, Willis and Harding, on the outer ring. A stranger came on their radio.”

“Then I suggest you deal with the problem.”

“We’re doing that now. I just thought you should know.”

Bliss stood, turning now for the first time but still ignoring the man who stood at the door. On the table behind him, resting on its Harris bipod, was a Chandler XM-3 sniper rifle with a titanium picatinny rail and recoil lug, and a Nightforce NXS day optic sight. The Hardigg case also contained a universal night sight, which Bliss had not fitted in the hope that there would be enough light for him to track his prey. He stared through the window at the spreading dawn, masked somewhat by the rain that had begun to fall. Day was coming in earnest.

Beside the Chandler was a second rifle, a Surgeon XL. Bliss had been torn between the two, although “torn” was an exaggeration of the relative equanimity with which he now made his choice. Unusually for a man in his particular line of work, Bliss had no excessive fondness for guns. He had encountered those for whom the tools of their trade exerted an almost sexual attraction, but he felt no kinship with them. On the contrary: he considered their sensual regard for their weapons as a form of weakness, a symptom of a deeper malaise. In Bliss’s experience, they were the kind of men who gave amusing names to their sexual organs, and who sought a release from killing similar to that which they found in the act of congress. Such beliefs were, for Bliss, the height of foolishness.

The XL was a.338 Lapua Magnum, with a Schmidt & Bender 5-25 x 56 scope mounted on its rail and a multiport jet muzzle brake to tame the recoil. The stock was Fiberglas, and altogether the gun weighed just slightly more than twenty pounds. He lifted the rifle, put his left arm through the sling, and let his left shoulder take the weight. He had always preferred his right, but since that day in Amsterdam he had learned to adapt in this matter as in so much else.

“You’re going now?”

“Yes.”

“How will you find them?”

“I’ll smell them.”

Leehagen’s son wondered if the strange, scarred man was joking, and decided he was not. He said nothing more as he watched Bliss leave the house and walk across the lawn in search of his prey.

For some of these, it could not be the place

It is without blood.

These hunt, as they have done

But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.

– JAMES DICKEY (1923-97), “THE HEAVEN OF ANIMALS”

THEIR RETREAT FROM THE road was conducted in the same way as their approach to it had been: steady progress using the trees for cover, one moving while the other kept vigil, both constantly watching, listening. They waited for the hooded figures to advance upon them from the road, judging the distance so that any pursuers would be within range of the Steyrs, but they did not come.