Oasis of Night (31 page)

I went down the hall and found a series of rooms opening off the main corridor: a couple of kids' bedrooms with books and toys, and Sam's study. At the end of the hall there were two matching bedrooms, side by side, joined by a connecting door. The left side of the suite was distinctly feminine, and I found women's clothing in the closet. The right side must have been where Sam slept. This room was decorated in blue and gold, there were books in huge piles on every available surface, and Sam's uniforms hung in the closet. I pulled back the bedspread, exposing the pillows and sheets. It was a ridiculous risk I was taking, but there was nobody around, and nobody knew I was in here. I bent low and pressed my face into each of the pillows in turn. The one on the left smelled mostly of laundry soap and some commercial bluing preparation; the pillow on the right smelled like Sam. I took it into my arms and held it, hugging it like it really was Sam, like he was close enough to touch.
I know where you are, Jack. I always know where you are.

“How very appropriate.” The voice came from behind and above me, and I tensed, but then I heard the click of a gun being cocked. “Do not, I beg you, make any sudden movements, Mr. Stoyles. I should very much hate to splatter your brains over Captain Halim's bed linens.”

I turned my head slowly. Yeah, it was Jonah Octavian all right. I'd recognize those cold, dead eyes anywhere. “I wondered when you were going to show up.”

His thin lips curved into a smile. “How nice that the suspense has now been broken. Get up, Mr. Stoyles, and don't give me an excuse to shoot you.”

I did as I was told. Octavian was a slippery character, duplicitous as hell, and I wasn't about to try and second-guess him. “Been watching me, Octavian?”

“Shut up, Mr. Stoyles. There will be plenty of time for small talk later.” The barrel of the gun was jammed into my back, just above my kidneys. “Start walking toward the front door. I have a car waiting to take you to my country home.”

“We can skip the guided tour, Octavian. I've been there already. You should hire an interior decorator. That dead guy in the living room doesn't go with the drapes.”

He pushed me outside and into a big Mercedes outfitted with a uniformed chauffeur. We pulled away from the curb. The morning sun was now up over the broad, smooth expanse of the Nile, and under any other circumstances it would have been real pretty. “So you're going to take me into the desert and kill me?”

Octavian lit a long Egyptian cigarette and took a drag. “You disappoint me, Mr. Stoyles.”

“Brother, you have no idea how often I've heard that.”

“I had hoped you would have found me out long before now, but no, instead of following the most obvious of clues, I find you sniffing pillows in your paramour's bedroom.”

“Maybe I was looking for the laundry mark. You know how some of these places are, you send in your linens and get back some other guy's dirty socks.”

Octavian rolled down the window and tossed out the spent match. His technique was flawless, not once did the gun barrel stray even a millimeter from my side. “I hate to do this to someone like you, Mr. Stoyles. You're a relatively harmless creature, even if you are annoyingly obstinate. If it were up to me, I'd put you on the next plane back to Newfoundland and have done with it.”

“But you can't do that.”

“No, I'm afraid I really can't. You see, you're one of those people who are simply too much trouble. You attract it like iron filings to a magnet.”

“Right. So which one are you, the filings or the magnet?”

He smiled thinly. “You are an inquisitive man, Mr. Stoyles, one who is far too curious for his own good and who doesn't know when to leave well enough alone. I'd kill you myself, except….”

“You don't want to get your hands dirty.”

He ignored the dig. “Mr. Missalo was a good friend of yours, wasn't he? What a shame you killed him. I expect the authorities aren't going to take such a brutal murder lying down.”

“I killed Frankie.” This guy was something else. “
I
did.”

“Of course you did, Mr. Stoyles. Frank Missalo had a good scheme worked out with the war contractors back in Newfoundland, one which allowed him to pocket lots and lots of cash, with minimal effort. It couldn't last forever—nothing ever does—and when Sam Halim started sniffing around, your friend Missalo got nervous.”

“Like you're nervous now, Octavian?”

The gun jabbed hard into my ribs. “Don't interrupt, Mr. Stoyles. It's bad manners. Missalo got nervous, so he decided the best way to deal with Halim was to remove him. He hadn't counted on you and Halim getting… cozy. That's to my benefit, of course. The authorities will think you came all the way to Cairo to find Frankie Missalo and pay him back for interfering in your perverted little love affair. You killed him in a rage, you know. Beat his head in with a hammer.”

“I get it. I'm the fall guy.”

“Yes, Mr. Stoyles.” Octavian picked an imaginary piece of lint off his shirt. “You are, sad to say, the fall guy.”

“Hey, you.” I spoke to the chauffeur. From the back he was easily one of the biggest men I'd ever seen. “You okay with this? It's cold-blooded murder, is what it is.”

The driver turned his head and said something I didn't understand. “Constantine speaks only Greek,” Octavian said. “Appealing to him is rather pointless, I'm afraid.”

“Yeah, you got it all fixed.” Something about the chauffeur bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. There was something not right with his eyebrows or maybe it was his hair. His face looked like he'd suffered a bad burn at some time in the recent past, for it had the smooth, shiny look of too-new skin. I remembered a crack Frankie made once, about a guy we used to knock around with back in Philly:
He looks like he borrowed somebody else's face for the weekend.
Maybe that was it….

Octavian didn't talk much after that; he mostly concentrated on keeping the gun in my ribs and smoking one cigarette after another. He was nervous about something, but I couldn't readily place what that might be. He had no qualms about having his gorillas smack me around, just as he'd had no qualms about getting his little girlfriend, Julie Fayre, to poison me with quinine. In the end, it was Julie who went to the gallows while Octavian slipped quietly away. He probably planned to do the same thing now, once this business was over. He'd make sure I took the rap for Frankie's death, and he'd fix it so I'd never bother him again. Yeah, where I was going, I'd be hard-pressed to interfere with anybody.

Octavian was funneling money and supplies to the Nazis, selling out his own people to the enemy. “I hope you don't make it through the war,” I said.

“What does that mean?” He turned his flat, empty eyes on me. “Hm? What exactly are you saying, Mr. Stoyles?”

“I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, Octavian. When this war is over and we've won, the Greeks are gonna knock themselves out getting hold of you.” Maybe it was the heat or my imminent demise, but the thought of Octavian being handed over to the Greek Resistance was hilarious. “You'll be lucky if all they do is draw and quarter you.”

“Shut up, Stoyles.” He grimaced. “You have no idea what you're talking about. After the war I'll be welcomed back to Athens as a hero.”

“Is that so?” It might have been my imagination, but the Greek chauffeur's big shoulders moved up and down a notch. “Not after they find out about you, Octavian. The things you've done, the lives you've sacrificed. I think a firing squad is way too good for you. The Greeks are liable to think so, too.”

“Oh, Mr. Stoyles, you are so completely simpleminded. I am not so stupid as to openly cast my allegiance with any one body! I do a little here, I do a little there. It really doesn't matter to me who wins the war.”

Just listening to him was making me sick. “Yeah. You only care that you get paid.”

“And I do, Mr. Stoyles. I get paid very, very well, and I have the satisfaction of knowing my small contributions are put to the best possible use. The Germans have made such rapid progress in Greece. To subdue an entire nation takes careful planning and the very best lines of supply. Can you imagine the satisfaction I feel, knowing it was I who made that happen?”

There it was again: the chauffeur's shoulders moved, and his eyes met mine in the rear view mirror. What the hell was going on? “You're a real inspiration, Octavian. I'm sure your starving countrymen appreciate everything you've done.”

“Oh, but you are again mistaken, Mr. Stoyles. In this war, I consider myself a soldier. Unofficially, of course.”

“Of course.” I could see the white house on the desert, looming ahead of us through the windshield. We'd be there in a matter of moments.

“So I have taken care to”—he smirked—“spread the wealth a little. Sometimes there are clandestine air drops of food and medical supplies to some of the sorely harassed areas, or some surplus clothing, marked, of course, with the logo of my company, Octavian and Weiss. It is easier to be grateful for that which one has received when one is familiar with the giver, don't you think?”

I didn't have to answer. The chauffeur pulled the car up in front of the house, turned, and spoke something in Greek to Octavian. He kept the gun in my ribs while we got out of the car, holding me nice and steady. The big chauffeur walked behind Octavian, just in case I got any ideas about making a break for it. “It's a shame, Mr. Stoyles, that you feel the way you do. I could use a man like you in my organization.” He stopped before the door and waited, but the chauffeur didn't move, so Octavian barked something in Greek. The chauffeur turned so quickly, it was impossible to follow, and something flashed silver in the morning sun. Octavian's gun fell away, and he was crouched against the side of the house with both hands wrapped around a gaping wound in his throat. His mouth moved as if he was trying to speak, and then he simply folded to the ground, dead at my feet. The chauffeur moved toward me, pulling at the skin on his face, dislodging his hair and mustache and eyebrows, and Colonel Andros Scala emerged, coolly self-assured. “I did not want to kill him.”

I looked down at Octavian's dead face. “You saved my life.”

Scala shook his head sadly. “I did not do it for you.”

I followed him into the house. Frankie Missalo's body had been removed and some attempt made to clean up the living room. Sam Halim sat in a chair by the window with a Browning 9mm handgun in his lap. He looked at us, Colonel Scala and me, as if he had never seen either of us before. “Is he dead?”

Scala nodded.

Sam's face stiffened, and the hand holding the gun trembled. “It is well.” He tried to smile at me, but couldn't quite manage it. “I have done all I could for your friend, Mr. Missalo. I have shrouded his body and said the
Salat al-Janazah
for him. His remains are resting in the bedroom.”

“I'll go see him in a minute. Look, Sam, I know Jonah Octavian is your cousin….” There wasn't anything I could say, not really.

Scala shifted his feet. “I will contact the others.” He disappeared down the hall and into another room; I heard him talking on the telephone.

“It is over now, Jack.” Sam tried to stand but fell back into the chair. His gun clattered to the floor, and I bent to pick it up. “I had hoped to avoid the inevitable, but he left me no choice.” He shook his head slowly. “The day I left you in Newfoundland, I knew this could not end until I found him.” He pressed his hands against his eyes. “I am so tired, Jack.”

I went down on my knees and pulled him into my arms. “Me too, Sam.” I kissed his cheek. “Me too.”

I left him there for a few minutes while I went and had a word with Frankie. Sam had washed the body and shrouded it in a clean white sheet. I knelt beside him and touched the shroud where I figured his heart would be. “They'll never believe this back in Philly. You and me, huh Frankie?” I didn't need to ask why he'd hooked up with somebody like Octavian; I knew. Frankie was dirty. He hadn't started out that way; he just couldn't resist the money Octavian was offering.

See, Frankie came from a family with too many kids and not enough money, and lived in a falling-down house in a crummy part of Philly. By the time he was twelve, he had three paper routes and was earning extra money by selling apples after school. Mind you, my family wasn't doing too great either, especially after my old man was killed at work, but there was only me and Ma. We didn't have nowhere near the number of mouths to feed that Frankie's family did. I guess growing up that way makes you hunger for all the things you don't have. So when Jonah Octavian came knocking, Frankie took him up on it. He probably found some way to reconcile the things he was doing with the other stuff going on in the world, and maybe he reckoned it wasn't so bad. Maybe all the things he'd done to help me balanced the scales. The way I figured it, Frankie threw in with Octavian because the Greek had money and connections, and because he'd probably made Frankie the kind of promises that are hard to resist.

“Good-bye, Frankie.” I didn't know what else to say. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Sam was there. “He was your friend. I am sorry it ended the way it did for him.”

I nodded. Mostly I was trying not to cry, but I could feel the back of my throat closing together. “Yeah.” I coughed, just to try and get rid of the awful feeling of wanting to break down and sob my guts out. “So, uh, what happens now?”

Sam brushed my cheek. “Jonah Octavian has been effectively… removed. He is out of the equation. Now we go back to Cairo. My wife and children are staying with relatives. I am anxious to see them.”

There was that old, familiar, kick-in-the-gut feeling again. “Sure.”