wrist to snap or the gun to fall free; it loosened as Koenig's fingers spread in agony.
Drew grabbed it and flung it into the dark grass.
What followed was nothing short of a life-and-death struggle between two human animals, pit bulls, perhaps, each possessing an agenda that consumed him, one ideological, the other intensely personal. Koenig was a hissing, attacking cat, thrusts and claws deadly; Latham was the larger, snarling wolf, fangs bared, constantly lunging for the throat-in the present case, any appendage he could grab on to, hold, and immobilize. In the end, the wolf's size and marginally superior strength prevailed. Both animals, bloodied and exhausted, knew who had won the battle. Koenig lay on the ground, one arm broken, the other sprained, the thigh muscles of both legs partially paralyzed. Latham, his hands scraped and bleeding, his chest and stomach pummeled almost to the point of his vomiting, stood over the Nazi and spat in the direction of his face.
Drew knelt down, pulling the length of coiled cord provided by Hugo out of his belt, and proceeded to tie up the neo leader, legs and arms connected behind Koenig's spine; with each struggle the lines grew tighter. Finally, Latham tore the blue shawl in strips, as he had done with the sheets at the Normandie hotel, and gagged the ersatz minister of God. Glancing at his watch, he dragged Koenig into the bushes, chopped him into unconsciousness, yanked out his telephone, and dialed Stanley Witkowski.
You son of a bitch!" roared the colonel.
"Moreau wants your ass in front of a firing squad, and I Y can't say as I blame him one bit!"
"His two men got loose, then?"
"What did you think you were doing? What are you doing?"
"If you'll calm down for a moment or two, I'll fill you in."
"Me calm down? Oh, I've got a lot to be calm about. Courtland's to be ordered to the Quai d'Orsay in the morning to take the whacks for you; you're being declared persona non grata and thrown out of the country; a formal protest is being lodged against me by a foreign government, and you tell me to be calm?"
"Moreau's behind all this?"
"It's not Tinker Bell."
"Then we can control it."
"Are you listening to me? You assaulted two Deuxieme agents, blindsided them, and held them hostage by roping them up without communication for hours, therefore disrupting a major French intelligence investigation!"
"Yes, but, Stanley, I made progress, the kind of progress Moreau wants more than anything else."
"What .. . ?),
"Send a marine unit out to a Lutheran church in Neuilly-surSeine." Latham gave Witkowski the address and described the bound Koenig in the bushes.
"He's the high honcho of the neo movement in Paris, higher, I think, than Strasbourg, at least his cover's better."
"How did you find him?"
"There's no time for that now. Call Moreau and have the marines take Koenig to the Deuxieme Bureau. Tell Claude from me it's a bona fide."
"He'll want more than a roughed-up Lutheran minister. Jesus, you could be a nut and he'd be drummed out of his job, facing all kinds of lawsuits!"
"No way. Koenig's code name is Heracles, something out of mythology."
"Greek mythology?" interrupted the colonel.
"Heracles is a son of Zeus, known for feats of strength."
"That's nice," said Drew pleasantly.
"Now, get things moving, which shouldn't take you more than a minute or two. Then I want you to meet me-"
"Meet you? I may blow your brains out!"
"Postpone it, Stanley. I know where they've got Karin."
"What?"
"Twenty-three rue Lacoste, flat unknown, but just recently rented."
"You sprung this from the padre?"
"Actually, it wasn't difficult. He was frightened."
"He was what .. . ?"
"No time, Stosh! It's got to be just you and me. If they even sense a conversion, or see a strange car or two parking on the street at this hour, they'll kill her. They intend to do just that in an hour or so anyway if they don't reach me and pull me out."
"I'll meet you a hundred yards east of the building, between streetlights, the darkest storefront or alley."
"Thank you, Stanley, I mean that. I know when a solo operation has to be added to, and there's no one better than you."
"I don't have a choice. There's no way you could come up with a code like Heracles unless it was real."
Karin de Vries sat in the straight chair, her hands tied behind her, a slender, broad-shouldered neo killer sitting in front of her, his legs straddling the seat of a wooden kitchen chair, his arms across the