The Vengeance of the Tau (24 page)

Johnny’s expression remained unchanged. His eyes slid to a corner where a man was feeding change into a compact disc jukebox. Against the far wall the bar’s oyster shucker had stopped slicing and was simply holding his knife.

“I have come for Jack Watts,” Wareagle told the bartender.

The man grinned, and buried a chuckle. “Never mixed one of them before. How’s about a beer? Indian lager.”

Johnny heard more laughter, this time from behind him. “I wish to speak to Jack Watts. I have been told he comes here. Often.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He was here yesterday. And the day before.” Wareagle’s eyes roamed behind the counter. “His name is in the book where you keep track of bets.”

The bartender leaned farther across the counter. His right hand disappeared beneath it.

“I lost plenty of ancestors to you injuns. Don’t see much of your kind in these parts and don’t miss ’em none neither.”

Johnny saw the ax handle the instant it crossed the bar and snapped his right hand out against the bartender’s to keep it from going any farther. At the same time, he heard the chair scratching backward against the floor behind him and whipped his knife out with his left hand. A quick glance that way was all that he needed to spot the pistol rising in the hand of one of Cooter Brown’s patrons. The knife whirled out of Johnny’s fingers and sliced into and through the man’s wrist. The tip of the blade emerged on the other side. The gunman’s hand jerked upward. A harmless shot rang out, the sound of it swallowed by his screaming. The rest of the patrons were still. They had guns; Johnny could feel that much. But no one else had any intention of drawing one.

“You fucking broke my arm, you crazy fucking In—”

“Not yet,” Wareagle told the bartender, holding the arm straight out with no slack.

The bartender was heaving for breath, his face scarlet. “You want Jersey Jack, fine. Just let me go.”

“After you have spoken.”

“Jesus, it hurts. …”

“Tell me where he is.”

“Rooming house on Ferrett Street. Twenty-seven, I think, or seventy-two. Yeah, seventy-two. Second floor, room five.”

Wareagle let the bartender’s arm drop. Numbed, it collapsed to his side. He slipped backward against the mirrored wall of liquor bottles.

“Hope he plugs your red ass full of lead. You hear me, you son of a bitch?”

Johnny did, but kept walking. The man his blade had found was whimpering now, seated on the floor and gazing in shock at his wrist.

“You can keep the knife,” Johnny told him.

Ferrett Street was located in what the residents of New Orleans commonly refer to as “Slumville.” Johnny walked to it from Cooter Brown’s and felt uncomfortable every step of the way. This kind of work was far more up Blaine McCracken’s alley than his. The presence of so many strangers unnerved him. He knew that he attracted their stares, but could do nothing but move on past them as quickly as possible. Venturing out on such a pursuit would have ordinarily been impossible for him; even responding to Joe Rainwater’s call had been difficult. But now Joe Rainwater was dead, and the discomforting knowledge that his killers were still out there was worse than any unease he would feel on their trail.

The rooming house Jersey Jack Watts was holed up in on Ferrett Street in Slumville was as shabby and decrepit as the neighborhood’s name indicated. The sign advertising ROOMS was missing the top of the second “O” and the bottom half of the “S.” Several of the windows had boards in place of glass panes. Several more were shattered or missing and hadn’t been replaced with anything.

The lobby consisted of a single chair and couch. Johnny Wareagle walked right past a trio of black men sitting there drinking wine out of plastic cups. He mounted the stairs quickly to the second floor and moved to room five.

“Nobody fucking home,” a tired, angry voice greeted his knock.

Wareagle rapped again.

“Get the fuck out of here!”

“I have come from Heydan Larroux.”

Johnny heard the soft click and threw his body down. An instant later a huge chunk of the door’s upper part was blown into splinters. They showered over Johnny as he shoved his body into what remained of the door and tore it clear off its hinges.

“Shit!” he heard a voice wail as he drove the door inward.

Impact smashed Watts up against the wall. His breath left him in a rush. His shotgun was pinned against his body. The air smelled of gunsmoke and ruined wood.

“Jesus, no!” Watts gasped.
“Please, no! …”

“I need to find Heydan Larroux,” Wareagle said simply. He tossed the ruined door aside and held Watts pinned against the wall with a single hand.

Watts’s eyes sharpened at last, drinking in the sight of the huge Indian before him. The shotgun slipped out of his grasp and dropped to the floor.

“Who are you? Jesus,
what
are you?”

“You were the last one with Larroux before they came.”

“She dead, man. They all dead.”

“She got out.”

“Fuck me, she did. I heard what went down in that house. I run away first ’cause somebody mighta figured was me that done it, and then ’cause I figured whatever really done it might wanna pay me a visit.”

“She’s alive.”

“No way, man. Nothin’ go through what happened at the big house and live to tell.” He looked the big Indian over again. “ ’Cept maybe you.”

A pair of men appeared in Jersey Jack’s doorway. Wareagle turned enough for them to see his eyes. They rushed off, one muttering, “Fuck, let’s call the cops.”

“You worked for her,” Wareagle said, his eyes back on Watts.

Jersey Jack shrugged. The wounds Larroux had inflicted on him with the cat-o’-nine-tails still had him grinding his teeth when he moved, but, shit, he’d deserved it.

“Bitch always treated me straight.”

“You owe her.”

“How you know that?”

“I do. You can pay her back.”

“How’s that?”

“Let me help her.”

Jersey Jack tried to look the Indian in the eye. “Whatever showed up at the big house still after her?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you can stop them?”

“I don’t know.”

“If anyone can, it’s you.”

“Where is she?”

“Only one place she could go to hide, place some of us call hell.”

Johnny didn’t seem surprised.

“Man, you don’t know much, do ya? I’m talking about the bayou. Lady got a place down there. Been there myself. She in trouble, that’s where she’d go.”

“She’s in trouble,” said Wareagle.

The Old One held the stones before her out to Heydan Larroux.

“Take one, my child.”

Larroux did so reluctantly. She held it in her hand but did not let it drop in the bowl of water. The afternoon air beyond her bayou hideaway was ripe with the sound of frogs and birds.

After the Old One’s last admonitions, she had redistributed her guards around the bayou hideaway that rose on stilts over the muck and ooze. Some of the guards were perched within trees. Others used the mud itself for camouflage. Still more spent their shifts in steel-hulled rowboats in the black waters. A few hid themselves within the thick, rank foliage. No electronic signals, no sophisticated security devices. Just men who knew the bayou and could smell a stranger a mile away.

“The stone, my child,” the Old One uttered in her ancient voice.

“Are they near?” Heydan asked.

Plop …

As always, the blind hag gazed down into the water as if she could see the ripples made by the stone. “They have learned where you are.”

Larroux accepted another stone.

“Should I leave?”

Plop …

“You are safer here than anywhere else. Your chances of surviving are greater because …”

“Because why?”

“It is difficult … to see. Another stone. Quickly!”

“A warrior comes,” the Old One resumed, after Heydan had let it fall into the water.

“You mentioned him before.”

“This is not the one I recognize.” The Old One’s dead eyes gazed across at her. “He comes our way even now. He will be joined eventually by the first warrior I saw; but not here, not now.”

Heydan Larroux got her fourth stone ready to fall.

“Who is he?”

Plop …

The Old One brought her face close enough to the water to drink. “I see a bird of prey dressed for war. An eagle, I think it is an eagle!”

Her head snapped upward with a start. She was breathing in rapid heaves.

“Another stone,” she instructed. “Now!”

Heydan took the second-to-the-last and let it drop.

“Others come,” the Old One said into the bowl.

“The enemy …”

“No. But not allies, either.”

“Who?”

“The last stone. Quickly, before the vision fades.”

Plop …

The Old One’s head was bowed low once more. “So hazy … They, too, are warriors. They come in number. But they … wait.”

“Wait?”

The Old One raised her head. “I can see no more.”

“You must!”

“The vision is gone.” Her dead eyes fixed themselves on Larroux. “But you will see for yourself soon, my child. That time is coming.”

To underscore his fervent support for Israel, Arnold Rothstein was in the habit of making frequent public appearances throughout the country. Because of his stature, the government insisted on supplying him security in the form of agents from Shin Bet and Mossad for all public gatherings. The billionaire agreed, on the condition that the majority of them not be obtrusive. Today’s appearance in Jerusalem was no exception. Minutes before his arrival, a dozen agents had blended into the crowd.

Uniformed security personnel, meanwhile, allowed a wheelchair-bound veteran of one of Israel’s more recent wars to be pushed up to the front of the line. The man was missing both legs. It would make for good shots on television, a perfect backdrop when the American networks picked up the feed.

Because of their disguises, none of the security personnel, uniformed or otherwise, noticed that the cripple and the man pushing his wheelchair were twins.

Israel’s greatest benefactor arrived right on schedule and stepped out of his car to a symphony of cheers and applause. He was waving and shaking hands with the first wave of supporters when the agents nearest the crowd’s front noticed the empty wheelchair.

Witnesses nearby would later say that the commotion actually started
before
the explosion, as bodies seemed to lunge and leap through the air. The blast was shattering, the fireball swallowed almost immediately by a gray-black wave of smoke that coughed blood in all directions. The screams were the only sounds that remained when the echoes of the blast dissipated. The only sights were mangled, twisted bodies. When the screams died down, the sound of sirens replaced them and continued for the rest of the afternoon, seemingly without end.

Chapter 23

GERMANY MAINTAINS NO OFFICIAL
archive of World War II. The closest thing to it is called the Document Center, which had been administered by the Americans until reunification. Located in Berlin, the center is a five-story building resembling a library. Melissa and her father had attended the ceremony when it was turned over to German control, because one of Benson Hazelhurst’s oldest friends had been named administrator.

She did not call ahead that Friday morning to announce her intentions. Instead she simply showed up at the Document Center and asked to see the chief administrator, Wolfgang Bertlemass. The guard at the front desk held the receiver against his shoulder while he informed Melissa that Bertlemass was sending his secretary down to escort her up.

“Melissa, you’re more lovely man I remembered,” he greeted moments later inside his office, stepping out from behind his desk. Bertlemass was even heavier than he had been at the ceremony. His vest strained to reach the top of his pants. He seemed barely able to move.

Melissa accepted his hug and light kiss. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“You are here no doubt on some adventurous research project for your father.”

“Sit down, please,
Herr
Bertlemass.”

“Wolfgang.” His eyes grew uncertain. “Your tone of voice, Melissa, tells me you have bad news.”

“The worst. My father … is dead.”

Bertlemass’s bulbous frame sank into his chair, mouth agape in shock. “
What?
I had not heard, did not know. Please forgive me. How did it happen? Where? Why wasn’t I informed?”

“You are the first to be informed.”

“I … don’t understand.”

“He died in the midst of his greatest discovery,
Herr
Bertlemass. But that discovery unearthed the promise of more death unless action is taken.”

“What are you saying?”

“No more than I have to. I’m asking you to trust me.”

“For your father I would do anything. You need keep no secrets from me.”

“What I do, I do for your own good.”

Wolfgang Bertlemass wiped the tears from his eyes. “I am so sorry, Melissa. …”

“You must help me.”

“Of course. Anything.”

“With no questions.”

Bertlemass’s nod came without hesitation. “Whatever you choose to tell me will be sufficient.”

Melissa pulled Gunthar Brandt’s journal from the shoulder bag she had purchased at the airport. “I found this in the excavation where my father died. It tells of a battle from near the Second World War’s end but it is vague and much has been lost to the years. I need to learn everything about that battle. I need the holes filled in.”

Wolfgang Bertlemass struggled to rise once again. “Come with me.”

“We used to call these the stacks,” he explained as they stepped off the elevator onto the fifth floor. “Now they are called the official archives of the war. Everything that was ever written or known of those years is here. And almost all of it has been transferred into our computer banks.”

Around her everywhere, Melissa saw traditional library shelving packed with material of all shapes and sizes. There were maps, battle plans, discourses, first-hand accounts of various engagements, and accumulated interviews with tens of thousands of men and women. In essence, much of the Third Reich’s legacy was contained here, what it had done and failed to do. Melissa was overwhelmed.