he live with himself? .. . Or, you might say, if it was in my power, I'd like to see him dead."
"Those are serious words," said the neo, leaning back in the chair, his pistol mockingly pointed at his head.
"Boom! You would do that if you could?"
"Probably."
"But of course! You've found another, haven't you? An officer of American intelligence, a very accomplished deep-cover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency named Harry Latham."
Karin froze, her expression immobile.
"That is irrelevant, be is irrelevant."
"We don't think so, madame. You are lovers, we've established that."
"Establish what you like, it doesn't change the reality. Why are you interested in .. . Harry Latham?"
"You know why as well as I do." The neo grinned, placing both heels on the floor as he straddled the chair, a laughing cavalier on horseback.
"He knows too much about us. He penetrated our former headquarters in the Hausruck and saw things, learned things, he should not have seen or learned. But it's merely a question of an hour, perhaps two, and he will no longer be a thorn to our superiors. We will follow orders down to the letter, including a coup de grace in the left side of his skull. You see how wonderfully specific we are? We're not hypothetical at all, and certainly not fictitious. We are the reality, you're the fiction. You can do nothing to stop us."
"Why his skull, the left side of his skull?" asked De Vries in a monotone, mesmerized by the Nazi's words.
"We wondered about that, but then one of our younger recruits, a very educated fellow, supplied the answer. It goes back to the seventeen hundreds, when condemned soldiers were executed by a single officer. If the condemned man had shown valor in battle, he was shot on the right side of his head; if he had no redeeming qualities, he was shot on the left side-sinistra in Italian, where the custom began, sinister in English. Harry Latham is filth, need I say more?"
"That strikes me as a barbaric ritual," said Karin, barely audibly as she stared at the lean, muscular assassin.
"Rituals, dear lady, are the basis of all discipline. The further back they go, the more ingrained they are, the more to be worshiped."
There was a brief sound of static from an adjoining room, followed by a muffled male voice speaking in German. The voice stopped and moments later another neo appeared in the doorway, this one' ounger than De Vries's y interrogator, but no less lean and muscular.
"That was Berlin on the radio," he said.
"The Paris authorities are in the dark, they've traced nothing, so we're to proceed on schedule."
"It was -a useless communication. How could they trace anything?"
"Well, there were the bodies outside the Normandie hotel-"
"And a [email protected] vehicle at the bottom of the Seine. So what?"
"Thoy said to make sure that everything-well, you know, w1mwI mean-the Chiteau de Vincennes, north of the Bois."
"Yes, I know what you mean and what Berlin means. Anything else?"
"It will begin to be light in an hour."
"Helmut is in place, no?"
"He is, and with the words he's to say."
"Tell him to make the call in twenty minutes."
"Bin it will still be dark."
"I'm aware of that. Better for us to be in place and reconnoiter, no?"
"As always, you're brilliant, sir."
"I'm aware of that too. Go!" The second neo disappeared and the interrogator turned to Karin.
"I'm afraid I must tape your mouth, Frau de Vries, quite' extensively Then I will untie the ropes and you will accompany us."
"Where are we going, other than to my death?"
"Do not be so pessimistic. Killing you is not a priority with us."
"And Hitler protected the Jews."
"Acb, you really can be amusing."
Latham made contact with Witkowski roughly eighty yards east of 23, rue Lacoste, in a dark, narrow alleyway.
"Good spot," said Drew.
"There wasn't any other. I don't know who pays the electric bills for the tlity of Lights, but they've got to be horrendous."
"Speaking of lights, that's the only way we'll be able to center in on the flat."
"Wrong," said the colonel.
"It's on the fifth floor, west corner."
"You're kidding."
"I don't kid when I'm carrying two automatics with custom-made silencers, four clips of ammunition, and a cut-down version of a MAC-10 under this raincoat."
"How did you find out?"
"Thank Moreau, who still wants your ass, but he received your package."
"Koenig?"
"That's right. Funny thing is, the Saret6 had the good prelate in their files."
"As a neo?"
"No, his predilection for choir boys Five anonymous complaints had been registered."
"What about the flat?"
"Claude ran a trace on