my way. Sorry for disturbin' you." Scofield stopped her with a gesture.
"Sir?" asked the woman, her eyes alert.
"Tell me, what part of Ireland do you come from? I can't place the dialect.
County Wicklow, I think." "Yes, sir." "The south country?" "Yes, sir; very good, sir," she said rapidly, her left hand on the doorknob.
"Would you mind leaving me an extra towel? Just put it on the bed." "Oh?" The old woman turned, the perplexed expression again on her face.
"Yes, sir, of course." She started toward the bed.
Bray went to the door and pushed the bolt into place. He spoke as he did so, but gently; there was nothing to be gained by alarming Taleniekov's frightened bird. "I'd like to talk to you. You see, I watched you last night, at four o'clock this morning to be precise-" A rush of air, the scratching of fabric. Sounds he was familiar with.
Behind him in the room.
He spun, but not in time. He heard the muted spit and felt a razorlike cut across the skin of his neck. An eruption of blood, spread over his left shoulder. He lunged to his right; a second shot followed, the bullet imbedding itself in the wall above him. He swung his arm in a violent arc, sending a lamp off a table toward the impossible sight six feet away, in the center of the room.
The old woman had dropped the towels and in her hand was a gun. Gone was her soft, gentle bewilderment, in its place the calm, determined face of an experienced killer. He should have known!
He dove to the floor, his fingers gripping the base of the table; he spun again to his right, then twisted to his left, lifting the table by its legs like a small battering ram. He rose, crashing forward; two more shots were fired, splintering the wood inches above his head.
He rammed the woman, hammering her back into the wall with such force that a stream of saliva accompanied the expulsion of breath from the snarling lips.
"Bastard!" The scream was swallowed as the gun clattered to the floor.
Scofield dropped the table, slamming it down on her feet as he reached for the weapon.
He held it, stood up, and grabbed the bent-over woman by the hair, yanking her away from the wall. The red wig beneath the ruffled maid's cap came off in his hand, throwing him off balance. From somewhere beneath the uniform, the gray-haired killer had pulled a knife-a thin stiletto. Bray had seen such weapons before; they were as deadly as any gun, the blades coated with succinyl choline. Paralysis began in seconds, death seconds later. A scrape or a superficial puncture was all the attacker needed to inflict.
She was on him, the thin knife plunging straight forward, the most difficult thrust to parry, used by the most experienced. He leaped backwards, crashing the gun down on the woman's forearm. She withdrew it quickly in pain, but no suspension of purpose.
"Don't do it!" he shouted, leveling the gun directly at her head. "Four shots were fired; two shells are leftl I'll kill you!" The old woman stopped and lowered the knife. She stood motionless, speechless, breathing heavily, staring at him in a kind of ethereal disbelief. It occurred to Scofield that she had never been in this position before; she had always won.
Taleniekov's bird was a vicious hawk in the guise of a small, gray dove.
That protective coloration was her insurance. It had never failea her.
"Who are you? KGBT' asked Bray, reaching for the towel on the bed, and holding it against the wound on his neck.
"What?" she whispered, her eyes barely in focus.
"You work for Taleniekov. Where is he?" "I'm paid by a man who uses many names," she replied, the lethal knife still held limply in her hand. Her fury was gone, replaced by fear and exhaustion. "I don't know who he is. I don't know where he is." "He knew where to find you. You're sometbing. Where did you learn? When?" "When?" she repeated in her bloodless whisper. "When you were a child.
Chapter Eight
Where? Out of Belsen and Dachau... to other camps, other fronts. All of us." "Christ. uttered Scofield softly. A It of us. They were legion. Girls taken from the camps, sent to the war fronts, to barracks everywhere, to airfields. Surviving as wbores, dishonored by their own, unwanted, ostramed. They became the scavengers of Europe. Taleniekov did know where to find his flocks.