The Angel Tapes (17 page)

It read: “Amn't I only just after telling you?”

Amn't I only just after telling you I do? Now come back to bed, will you?

Okay, Daddy.

Earley was right. To think that the bastard had been
here,
in Harcourt Square, right under their very noses; taking everything in, laughing his fucking head off at the lot of them the whole time. Jesus on a moped, it was unbelievable.

Blade checked himself; he bit his lip and allowed his professionalism to resume control. This was no time for private vendettas. Not when they were
this
close to baiting the monster in its lair.

The man was clever—too bloody clever. But Angel had slipped up, just as Blade had predicted, by providing him with a recording that none of the others—not even the omniscient bloody CIA—knew anything about.

And Macken wasn't telling them. He felt a rush of adrenalin, the surge of excitement of the soldier who is close, dangerously close, to the enemy's position. But Blade knew he'd have to have his wits about him, to keep a
very
cool head. For this was no ordinary enemy.

He'd to make a call first. As soon as Duffy was finished speaking, Blade excused himself.

“Peter?”

“Yeah.”

“Where's the cockroach? Is he there with you?”

“Uh … no. He's working late at the office.”

“At this hour? On a Friday? Are you sure?”

“That's what he said. Is there something the matter?”

“Never mind for now. You're sure now he's at the office?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks, Peter. I'll be in touch.”

Twenty

Centurion Security was located on Crow Street, one of a number of narrow, cobblestoned byways that ring the area known as Temple Bar. The Irish equivalent of the Latin Quarter of Paris, it's the place where Dublin's young and beautiful come to shop, to eat, to drink, and to play. Two decades ago the street was a dismal, dilapidated part of the city; now it's prime real estate.

Blade walked quietly onto Crow Street a few minutes after ten in the evening. True nightfall was still some time distant, yet the mean street's dark buildings shut out most of the twilight, turning even the richest hues of the store signs and graffiti to indifferent shades of gray.

Jim Roche's premises were halfway down the street and Blade was pleased to see lights burning on the two floors above the store. He was also grateful for the fact that there was almost no traffic, and few pedestrians.

He stood for several minutes in front of the twin-windowed storefront. The steel shutters were down and he noted the array of security devices that kept a nocturnal watch on Roche's business assets. You name it, and it was there; the place was like a fortress.

Another door, however—to the right of the premises—was temporarily unguarded. It led to the apartment that extended to both the second and third floors. To be sure, it was watched over by a surveillance camera—but this was activated only when somebody rang the doorbell. The twin alarms were dormant, too; they would come into operation when the building had been vacated, or when Roche had settled in for the night, when he stayed late at the office and didn't return to Joan.

Blade waited for a break in the traffic on nearby Dame Street, which would afford him a brief period of relative quiet. It came sooner than he'd expected. Taking advantage of the lull, he quickly picked the lock on the door and slipped inside.

He was wearing black Reeboks, a black canvas hunting jacket, and black pants. His cellular phone—in mute mode—was in a breast pocket.

The stairs were lighted but that didn't deter him. Blade had come for a confrontation and, if his quarry were to surprise him now, then that would do no more than hasten the confrontation.

Music was playing two floors up. It was muffled by intervening doors and the rich carpeting on the stairs. Jazz: slow and easy. Sensual. It was not the sort of background music Blade would have chosen when working late—but each to his own, he thought.

The neat office on the second floor was deserted and there was no sign that anybody had been using it that evening. A screensaver pattern of multicolored supernovae burst slowly and soundlessly across a computer monitor; a low hum came from fluorescent lamps in the ceiling. Blade glanced around, satisfied himself there was nobody in that section of the apartment, then padded slowly up the stairs to the next floor.

The hall of the topmost story belonged in a brothel.

Its walls were hung with red satin, illuminated by lamps held by naked, golden,
Jugendstil
nymphs. Macken's Reeboks sank into a coal-black carpet. Aspidistras and potted palms sprouted from a series of enormous gilded urns decorated with Grecian bas-relief, matching the frieze below the ceiling.

Blade stood before a door behind which the music was playing, now more distinct. He heard a male voice groan with either pain or pleasure. He turned the door handle noiselessly and stepped inside.

A trail of discarded items of clothing wound zigzag up to the end of a canopied, four-poster bed. Two people were on the bed, both glistening with perspiration. One was a man in his forties with a prominent beer gut. The other was Blade Macken's eighteen-year-old daughter Sandra.

And sweet suffering lamb of Judas, she was giving the motherfucker a
blowjob.

Blade went to the stereo and turned it up full. John Coltrane's saxophone thundered and reverberated around the four walls.

Sandra sat up, stark terror written on her face. Jim Roche turned his head at the same time—and almost had a heart attack.

Though not a religious man, he would have gotten down on his knees at that moment and prayed, pleaded, cried out to the god of the Christians, the god of the Jews, of the Muslims, anybody's god. He would have paid that deity whatever tribute or sacrifice it demanded, in return for deliverance. Roche prayed he could be elsewhere at that moment—anywhere,
anywhere:
in a war zone, in a gulag, on death row, in hell itself—anywhere else but in that room, in that bed, with that girl.

“Get the fuck out of here, Sandra!” Blade bellowed above the wailing saxophone, drums, and double bass. “Now!”

The girl saw murder in her father's eyes. She left the bed, her nudity forgotten, and ran to him.

“Don't do it, Blade. Please, oh, please, don't do it!”

He averted his eyes. Jesus, how could he even
look
at her in that state? What did she take him for?

“
Go,
Sandra! Get out of my sight. For God's sake, go!”

She needed no more urging. Such was the fury in her father's face that she feared he was capable of anything at that moment. Almost in hysterics and sobbing, she gathered up her clothing and fled through the half-open door.

Roche had taken a marble statuette, one of a pair, from a bedside table. Naked, trembling with fright, he brandished it like a club as Blade bore down on him. When Macken reached one side of the bed, Roche scurried across to the other. He flung the statuette with all his strength.

But Blade had anticipated the move and dodged easily. At least two thousand dollars' worth of Italian marble shattered against a far wall. Roche tried to run for safety. Macken brought him down with a flying tackle, then kicked the door shut.

“Jesus, Blade—don't!”

A Reebok-shod foot connected violently with Roche's groin. He shrieked and nearly passed out.

Aitken was the bastard's name. Major Donald fucking Aitken. He'd almost forgotten, until now.

Roche writhed on the carpet in agony, hands held between his thighs. Blade leaned down and chopped him hard in the left kidney with the side of his hand. Roche's body convulsed; John Coltrane hit a triumphant high C.

He'd never expected it, that Aitken could do a thing like that. But you never knew with people—soldiers particularly; they were trained in aggression, in violence. It was part of their conditioning.

Roche's scrotum presented itself once again and Blade dealt it another vicious kick.

But Aitken had always become aggressive when he'd had a few. It was mostly punch-ups: harmless, really—almost what you'd call “friendly” fights.

Blade delivered a hammer punch to Roche's other kidney. This time the naked man went limp.

She'd been so young, too: fifteen, though you'd have sworn she was twenty. Jesus, she'd been far too young to have known what she was letting herself in for. And Aitken, fuck him, he wasn't going to tell her, was he?

Roche came to, only to find his tormentor gripping his right ankle in one hand and the twin of the broken marble statuette in the other. He screamed for mercy just before it connected with great force and accuracy with the upturned sole of his foot. He screamed even more loudly as Macken held his left foot by the ankle and struck that one, too. Then Blade repeated the punishment: twice, three times more. Roche began to blubber like a baby.

She was Norwegian—he remembered that. Very pretty. It had been her first visit to Cyprus and her first vacation away from her parents. She'd felt elated, free.

“Please, Blade,” Roche moaned.

Macken decided that Roche's testicles were ripe for another mule-like kick—and obliged. John Coltrane launched into his closing, soaring solo.

He'd come upon them in an alley behind the taverna. The sounds of revelry from within had drowned out her screams. Men had been dancing solo, arms wide; plates were being smashed with abandon on the floor—part of the ritual. Her eyes had been like those of a wounded hind when she sees the hounds closing in for the kill. There'd been blood trickling down her bare thighs as Aitken had continued to thrust into her like a berserk pile driver.

Blade dealt each of Roche's kidneys a savage blow.

He'd thought of his eldest niece Rose. She was about the same age as the Norwegian girl. He'd imagined some bastard like Aitken doing those despicable things to Rose. He'd lost it.

The CD player was silent. Jim Roche lay moaning on the carpet. He'd passed beyond his threshold of pain some minutes before. A stream of vomit oozed from his mouth.

Blade squatted down beside him and spoke into his ear.

“Doesn't it feel good to be alive, Cock? Eh? And look, I haven't left a mark on you. Oh, you'll be bloody sore for days to come, I guarantee you that. But the thing is: Nobody'll know unless you tell them; you get me?”

No reply. Blade grasped a handful of Roche's hair and twisted it brutally.

“You
get
me?”

“Yes!” the naked man gasped.

“That's good. Because when I send for the men with the handcuffs and the blue van, I want to hand you over to them unblemished, not a scratch on you—which is more than can be said for those poor unfortunates you blew to fucking bits. There was a three-year-old-girl who lost both her legs
and
is blind for life. Did you know that, you cunt? Three years of age! And I'm not even talking about the baby that
didn't
make it. Fuck
me,
Cock, I always knew you were a prize prick—but this! You're an insane, twisted bastard, do you know that?”

Roche had shut his eyes. Pain burned through every part of his body. He could barely speak.

“Wh-what are you talking about?”

“Ah, please, don't insult my intelligence now, Cock—or would you rather I called you
Angel?
”

“What are you
t-talking
about?”

“Jesus, Cock, do you want me to start all over again? Believe you me, I'd be only too fucking pleased to do it. Except this time, it'd probably be the death of you. You see, I don't know how much more punishment them balls of yours can stand.”

“N-no, please.…”

“You sniveling cunt. Next you'll be telling me you're not Angel at all. That you're
not
the fucker responsible for last week's bombing? Is that it?”

Roche's eyes opened wide.

“B-Blade, Jesus! You're wrong, you're wrong! I swear to God, Blade! On my mother's grave. Christ, I didn't even know it
was
a bomb.”

Macken's blood was up; he himself knew that. Yet at that moment he wondered if he hadn't exerted himself above the limit of a man who drank and smoked as much as he did, because he felt palpitations in his heart. They came again—but this time he realized that it was the pulsating, double ring of his cellular phone.

He pulled it out, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on his victim.

“Macken.…”

“
HELLO, BLADE. I JUST THOUGHT I'D GIVE YOU A RING AND SEE HOW YOU WERE KEEPING
.”

He'd felt like this only once before in his life. Cyprus again. His unit sometimes found itself sleeping rough; they used to bivouac in any old place, as long as it was flat and not too stony. He'd enjoyed it; made him feel like a Boy Scout again. Blade had risen one morning at first light, and had reached for his boots, going through the motions like an automaton. But when your toes expect to find empty space inside a boot—and don't? When they find, instead, something cold and coiled up, something that
wriggles
upon being roused from sleep …

Macken experienced the same crawling sensation now. He was too stunned to reply to the taunting voice. He stared in disbelief at the unclothed man who lay groaning at his feet, and felt as Macbeth had on seeing Banquo's ghost. Blade gazed stupidly at the phone in his hand.

He couldn't talk now; not to Angel, not to anyone. He broke the connection.

Five minutes later he was still at the window of Roche's love nest, looking down onto the empty street.

All the clues had led here: to this room, to this man. Now all was as dust. He would have to start almost from scratch again. His head was throbbing; he badly needed a drink.