Fatal Conceit (25 page)

The inhabitants didn't need to be told twice. Some cast a fearful glance in the direction the voice had come from. Karp, too, looked
that way and saw the man he'd come to ask for a favor. At the far end of the cavern, on what appeared to be a long-abandoned subway platform from another century, David Grale sat slumped in a large, overstuffed chair.

“This way . . . whoop whoop . . . Butch,” Dirty Warren, clearly nervous, said. “Mustn't keep him waiting . . . oh boy ass balls.”

Karp followed the little news vendor up to the dais, where he stood before the King of the Mole People like a supplicant approaching a feudal monarch. Many years earlier, Grale had been a Catholic layperson whom Lucy had befriended when they worked together in a soup kitchen for the homeless. Ten years his junior, she'd developed a schoolgirl crush on the handsome, gentle man, not realizing that at night he transformed into a religious vigilante who hunted down and killed violent criminals he claimed were actually demons inhabiting the bodies of humans. His dual nature had gone undetected for quite some time before he was found out and had to flee—a wanted man by the police—to a life beneath the streets, where he took refuge among the homeless and unwanted and came to be regarded as their spiritual and temporal leader.

Over the years, Grale had slowly drifted in and out of madness as he vacillated between his better nature and the darkness that made him moody and dangerous. Karp knew that Grale was a serial killer, no matter if his victims “deserved” their fates. However, his views on the man were tempered by the fact that the “Mad Monk of Manhattan,” as the journalist Ariadne Stupenagel had labeled him in a recent feature article, had often acted as a guardian angel watching over his family. He was particularly fond of Lucy, and despite his murderous ways, she didn't judge him.

Deeply spiritual, Lucy had long believed that her family's seemingly endless run-ins with sociopaths and terrorists were not just happenstance or solely tied to her parents' professions, but part of a larger war between good and evil. And she saw Grale as an avenging angel of God. “Like it or not, his fate and ours are tied together,” she'd once told her father.

Looking up at the man, Karp was shocked by his appearance. He was clad in a plain brown monk's robe, his thin face was pale as moonlight, his dark eyes glittering with fever or madness from their deep-set sockets, and sweat beaded up on his forehead. His hair was long and stringy, and his beard and mustache more unkempt than the last time Karp had seen him. He clutched a handkerchief in one hand on which Karp could see spots of bright red blood.
I heard he was tubercular,
he thought.
Jesus, he looks like death warmed over
.

“Hello, Butch,” Grale said in his low, gravelly voice. “Welcome to my home. Forgive my oversight at not having invited you earlier, but we're both such busy people.” He laughed but was stopped short by a fit of coughing into the cloth.

“Thank you for seeing me now,” Karp replied. But before he could go on, there was a rattling of a chain and a dog . . . no, a man on all fours . . . came crawling out from behind Grale's “throne.”

It took Karp a moment to recognize the sorry creature, who seemed to be all skin and bones. The expensively coiffed wavy blond hair had been reduced to a few gray wisps, and the blue eyes that had charmed so many had been reduced to one wildly staring eyeball, while the other was just a white, sightless globe. The man's countenance was hideously disfigured by a botched face transplant he'd undergone many years earlier in order to disguise himself; discolored skin hung like shredded tissue paper on parts of his face while appearing normal elsewhere.

“Kane?” Karp said. The man was evil, but to see him reduced to such an abysmal condition shocked him.

At the mention of his name, what was left of Andrew Kane crawled forward to focus on the tall man standing in front of his master. Then he snarled, pulling his thin lips back from a nearly toothless mouth, and rage caught fire in his one good eye. “Kaaaaarrrrpppp,” he hissed, and it appeared he might try to leap on his old enemy. But Grale yanked hard on the chain around Kane's neck, pulling him roughly onto his back.

“Down, dog,” Grale growled at Kane, who rolled over onto his side and remained there cowering. Grale then turned back to Karp and smiled, revealing that he, too, had few teeth left in his mouth. “So, Butch, you didn't come all of this way to say hi to me or my dog. My friend Warren tells me you have a request?” His voice grew hard and his face set as if in stone as he finished his sentence.

Karp nodded. “I need to ask you to hand over Nadya Malovo . . . if she is still alive.”

“Alive?” Grale asked. “Oh, that devil is alive all right.” He leaned back in his chair and shouted. “Bring Malovo!”

After a minute, two large, muscular men emerged from the dark tunnel at one end of the platform. Each was holding a chain, the other end of which was attached to a thick leather collar fastened around the neck of a woman; her hands were bound behind her and her legs were hobbled by knotted ropes. However, if Karp was surprised to see how captivity had reduced Andrew Kane to barely human, he was just as surprised to see how well Nadya Malovo appeared to have handled two years of underground captivity. Her face was pale from the lack of sun and her short, formerly blond hair was now as white as snow, but she stood erect with her head up, and the seductress's body still retained its curves. She regarded him without expression with her sea green eyes.

Grale seemed to guess at Karp's surprise, because he suddenly heaved himself up from the chair and stalked across the platform until he stood in front of the prisoner. He grabbed her beneath her chin and turned her face until she had to look him in the eyes. That's when Karp noticed one other difference in Nadya Malovo. He'd never known her to exhibit fear, but her eyes betrayed that she was definitely afraid of her captor. She quailed and shut her eyes.

“Still alive and still beautiful, no?” Grale said as he released his grip. “Thus Satan's most effective minions are pleasant to look at on the outside while festering with evil beneath the lovely skin.”

“She is evil, no doubt,” Karp said. “But I'm asking you to release her into my custody.”

Malovo's eyes flew open and she looked at Karp with both curiosity and what he took to be hope. But Grale turned and walked over toward Karp until he was towering above him, his eyes glittering with anger.

“Why? So that our so-called justice system can let her go to kill innocent people?” he raged. “Law enforcement had her in its custody before, as they did Andrew Kane and Amir Al-Sistani, and yet she got away!”

“Those were other agencies, not the New York District Attorney's Office,” Karp replied evenly. “I've successfully prosecuted many of their associates, as well as a great many other people you believe are inhabited by demons.”

Grale frowned. “I'm not blaming you, Butch. I know the sort of man you are—a man of integrity. However, even you do not control everything that goes on in the world at large. I could hand her over to you confident that if possible you would bring her to justice; but there are others out there who might be able to force you to give her up to them. Those men I do not trust.”

“I'm not saying they wouldn't try,” Karp agreed. “And possibly even succeed—the federal government is no friend of mine. But they won't get the chance, because I intend to hand her over to someone else myself.”

Grale's eyes widened and he looked as if he was going to shout him down, but Karp softly added, “David, Lucy's in trouble, a captive of Al-Sistani. The only hope I have to save her is by using Malovo as bait to get her back.”

At the mention of Lucy's name, Grale's features softened. His hand passed over his eyes, and when he looked at Karp again, he more closely resembled the gentle social worker who'd dedicated himself to the poor. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I forgot that Warren said this was somehow tied to Lucy. My mind seems to wander these days. What can you tell me?”

“I'd rather not say in front of anyone but you,” Karp replied. “No disrespect intended, Warren.”

“None . . . whoop whoop . . . taken, Butch,” Dirty Warren said. “I'm one of those ‘need to know' sort of . . . oh boy breasts asses . . . guys. And I don't need to know.”

“Please, join me up here then,” Grale said, pointing to a stepladder. “The rest of you please excuse us. Take Malovo and Kane back to their cells.”

After the prisoners were led away, Karp settled into the chair next to Grale's throne. He then gave a condensed version of all that had transpired since the attack on the mission in Zandaq.

When he reached the part regarding the DVD disc and Al-Sistani's threats, Grale's face grew grim. “I should have slit his throat when I had him in my custody.” This wasn't the first time Grale had been asked to rescue Lucy from Al-Sistani. As with Kane and Malovo, he'd once captured the Islamic terrorist, but had then exchanged him for Lucy, who had been kidnapped by Kane.

Finished with his account, Karp remained silent while Grale sat with his head down and his eyes closed. The mad monk was so quiet that for a moment Karp wondered if he'd fallen asleep, but then the brown eyes flew open and his hands gripped the arms of his chair. “If there's any chance that we can save Lucy, then we have to take it,” he said.

With that Grale led the way back to “cells”—holes cut in the walls that had been fitted with steel bars and small steel doors, outside of which stood a guard of four men, including the two muscular men who'd brought Malovo out. He walked up to the cell where Malovo sat on a cot.

“I'm turning you over to the district attorney of New York City,” he said. “However, if you and I ever meet again, I will kill you, and it won't be quick; I promise that your torment will last for one hundred days. You are evil, Nadya Malovo, and I don't know that there is any part of your soul that can still be redeemed. But if it's
possible, you may find the opportunity to do so in the days ahead. And I hope that you will take it.”

Malovo said nothing but looked at Karp. Grale turned to Booger and Dirty Warren. “My men here will escort you and the prisoner,” he said. “If she attempts to escape, Booger, please do us all a favor and strangle her.”

“I 'romise,” Booger replied, holding up his right hand as if taking an oath. “If she 'ries 'oo 'scape, I 'ill 'rangle 'er with my 'are 'ands.”

As they turned to go back to the cavern, Andrew Kane suddenly scampered to the front of his cell and put a hand out toward Karp. “Please,” he begged, “take me with you. I will tell you everything.”

Karp looked at Grale, but the King of the Mole People shook his head. “Not today,” he said. “Perhaps someday you will visit me again and we can discuss it. But for now this dog remains in his kennel.”

An hour later, a very odd-looking group emerged from the Whitehall station and walked hurriedly toward Battery Park. Even though the immediate vicinity appeared to be deserted—Grale had sent a swift vanguard ahead to ensure it—they moved in a tight cluster so that no one would notice the hobbling, bound woman in their midst.

Once in the park, they approached two black Hummers, from which a half-dozen men emerged. One was Jaxon, another Jojola, with four more, younger men whom Karp didn't recognize, and then, to his surprise, his cousin Ivgeny Karchovski.

“Mr. Jaxon informed me what was going on with my cousin, Lucy,” the Russian mobster explained in heavily accented English. “He and I thought, perhaps, that my knowledge of the area and my experience with some of these people might help.”

Karp was touched. Their polar-opposite careers kept him and his cousin from open social contact but his fate, too, appeared to be tied to that of Karp and his family. “Thank you,” he said.

Smiling, Karchovski said, “This is what family is for, no?”

“Okay, Butch, she's all . . . whoop whooooop oh boy . . . yours,” Dirty Warren said, nodding to Malovo's handlers, who detached the chains from the collar.

“I can't thank you enough, Warren,” Karp said. “Once again you've proven to be a true friend.”

“Well . . . son of a bitch whoop . . . you could let me win at movie trivia one of these times,” the little man said with a grin.

Karp smiled. “You wouldn't want me to give you one, would you?”

Dirty Warren appeared to think about it for a moment, but then shook his head. “Nah, fair and square. I want . . . butt boobies . . . to win fair and square.”

“I knew you would,” Karp replied as Dirty Warren and the others walked away into the night.

When they were gone, he looked at Jaxon. “The prisoner is now yours,” he said.

As one of Jaxon's men stepped forward to place a belly chain around her waist and handcuff her to it, Malovo smiled at Karp. “How do you know I won't betray these men the first chance I get?”

Karp locked eyes with her and then shrugged. “I don't. I don't know what role you're going to play in all of this before the end, but then neither do you. But I hope you'll remember Grale's admonition about your soul.”

Malovo sneered. “The concepts of souls, heaven, and hell are for the weak,” she scoffed. “What I care about is me.”

“Then I hope that you will find a reason to do the right thing if needed . . . for your own sake,” Karp replied.

As Malovo was led away to one of the Hummers with the four younger men, Karp reached out and placed his hand on Jaxon's shoulder. “Bring my daughter home, Espy,” he said, his voice cracking.

“God willing, Butch,” Jaxon replied. “God willing.”

“S
TOP . . . DON'T MAKE ME SHOOT
you!”

Marlene and Stupenagel raised their hands and turned slowly around. They found themselves facing a terrified young woman who was pointing a pistol at them. Her hand trembled and their first concern was being shot accidentally.