A door opened somewhere.
But not the front door. Which one?
The side door I’d noticed earlier.
I needed to conceal myself, but where?
No time to hesitate.
A door next to the kitchen entrance. A closet, probably, with a wooden kitchen chair next to it. I slid the chair a few inches out of the way.
Opened the door with my left hand, stepped into the darkness-
And dropped into space.
Not a closet, but the basement stairs. I reached out and grabbed something to arrest my fall. My boots landed with a muffled thud.
A wooden banister. Swiveled myself around, pulled the door shut behind me. My hand on the knob, keeping it turned so the latch wouldn’t click.
Silently eased it shut. Lowering myself to my knees on the first step, I peered out through the keyhole.
Waited for him to appear.
100.
Dragomir Zhukov had parked at the side of the house just to vary the pattern. Never be predictable.
It was for the same reason that he’d shut off the satellite Internet connection. It was predictable that he’d want to stay connected. It was also a needless risk. There were ways to trace an Internet signal.
Of course he had left one cable in place: the one connecting his computer to the casket.
Before he opened the door, he glanced down at the baseboard and saw the tiny strip of transparent tape he’d placed between the door and the jamb. It was still in place. That meant no one had entered here.
Or probably not, anyway. Nothing was ever certain.
Long ago Dragomir had learned the importance of leaving nothing to chance. This was one of the many lessons he’d learned at the University of Hell, also known as Prison Number One, in Kopeisk.
The money transfer had been received in his account. The cutout had been eliminated.
Some time ago he had made provisions for a quick escape in the event the operation did not go to plan. In a steel box he’d buried in the Acadia National Park in Maine was a Ukrainian passport and wads of cash, in U.S. dollars and euros. The passport didn’t expire for another two years.
With a new identity, crossing the Canadian border would be quick and easy, and there were plenty of international flights out of Montreal.
The only chore that remained was hardly a chore at all.
It was his reward for all the long tedious days of vigilance and patience and restraint.
He knew how it would go: He had rehearsed it countless times, savoring the prospect. He’d tell the young girl what was about to happen, because there was nothing as delicious as a victim’s foreknowledge. Hour after hour he’d seen her fear, but when she learned, in precise and clinical detail, what was imminent, her terror would reach a whole new physical state.
Then he’d go about the business methodically: He’d disconnect the air hose from the compressor and attach it to the garden hose with the brass coupler. Once he pulled up the lever on the farmer’s hydrant, the water would start to flow. It would take a few seconds before the water began to trickle into the casket.
He had drowned small animals-mice, chipmunks and rabbits, a stray cat-in a trash barrel. But the squeals and the frantic scrambling of a dumb animal were ultimately not satisfying. They lacked apprehension.
She would hear the trickle, and then she would know.
Would she scream, or plead, or both?
As the water level grew higher and the air pocket grew smaller, she would flail and pound and most of all beg.
He had done some calculations. The interior volume of the casket was 230 gallons. Given the water pressure in the house and the diameter of the hose and the distance from the spigot to the burial site and then the nine feet down through the soil into the casket itself, it would take just short of half an hour to fill to capacity.
Then the water would reach her chin and she would have to struggle to keep her head above water, gasping her last precious breaths, her neck trembling from the exertion, her lips pursed like a fish.
He would watch in hypnotized fascination.
She would attempt to scream as her lungs filled with water; she’d flail and plead, and when she was entirely submerged, she would hold her breath until she couldn’t take it anymore and she was forced to expel the air from her lungs. And like a child in utero she would be forced to breathe liquid.
She would drown before his eyes.
It was a terrible way to die. The way his father died. For years he could only imagine it.
But now he would know.
Dragomir knew he was not like other people. He understood his own psychology, the way he drew sustenance from the fear of others.
As he entered the house, he paused.
Something was different here. A shift in the air? A vibration? He had the finely tuned senses of a wild animal.
Now that the cutout was dead, he wondered how long it would take for the Client to realize what had happened. They had some idea where he was based, but he was sure he hadn’t been followed after the last rendezvous.
Still, he wondered. Something was off.
He moved quietly through the parlor to the front door, where he’d placed another tell, a barely visible slice of Scotch tape at the bottom of the door next to the jamb, both inside and out.
A minuscule ribbon of tape lay on the floor. No one who wasn’t looking for it would see it.
But now he knew for certain: someone was here.
101.
I could hear footfalls, the creaking of the wooden floor, the sounds becoming louder, closer. Grasping the pistol in my right hand, the banister in my left, I squatted and looked through the keyhole and saw only the ice-blue light from the computer monitor.
Alexa on the screen. Such advanced technology in the service of such primitive depravity.
He had entered the room.
I saw a leg, clad in jeans, but just for an instant. Walking toward the computer, or at least in that direction. Then he came to a stop.
The man was standing a few feet away. I could see his back: large torso, broad shoulders, a dark sweatshirt.
Did he suspect anything? But his body language didn’t indicate suspicion.
He was standing at the window, I saw now, casually looking outside, a black knit watch cap on his head.
And the hideous pattern on the back of his neck.
The bottom half of an owl’s face.
102.
Dragomir Zhukov entered the back room, peering around at the filthy windowsills and the peeling yellow paint on the walls and the uneven floorboards.
A voice crackled from the small computer speaker. The girl was speaking.
“Nick!” she screamed. “Please don’t go away!”
The pistol was in his right hand even before he’d made the conscious decision to draw it.
ZHUKOV TURNED swiftly, holding a weapon, an enormous steel semiautomatic with a barrel like a cannon.
I recognized it at once. An Israeli-made.50 caliber Desert Eagle. Made by the same folks who gave the world the Uzi. It was the sort of thing you were far more likely to see in a movie or a video game than in reality. It was too large and unwieldy, so unnecessarily powerful. When Clint Eastwood declared, in Dirty Harry, that his.44 Magnum was “the most powerful handgun in the world,” he was right. In 1971. But since then, that title had been claimed by the Desert Eagle.
I saw his wide angry stare, his strong nose, a sharp jaw, a cauliflower ear.
“Nick, where’d you go? I thought you were here! When are the others coming? Nick, please, get me out of here, oh God, please, Nick, don’t leave me-”
Zhukov turned slowly.
He knew.
103.
Zhukov knew I was here somewhere.
Alexa’s voice, steadily more frantic: “Please, Nick, answer me! Don’t leave me stuck here. Don’t you goddamn go away!”