moment, then slipped out the front door and headed toward the house of Joos Van Vossen.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
In Red Henry’s office, a cherrywood liquor cabinet was stocked with expensive liquor but rarely opened. Henry did not often allow himself to lose even the slightest amount of self-control. He frequently drank beer, but at his size he rarely got at all drunk. He was now sitting with a tall glass of Four Roses Whiskey over ice, sipping aggressively. Three hours until the party began, and he didn’t like the way the day was progressing. The Poles were beginning to worry him. He had ASU guards discretely posted around the hotel where the contingent were staying. Nobody was getting to them at this late hour.
He grabbed a handful of cigars from a box on his desk and laid them out in front of him. He would bring five with him tonight. One for Rinus, or whatever the fuck his name was, and four for himself. He rolled the thick Cubans around on the table absently, letting his unconscious do the selecting while his mind wandered to Bernal. Henry did not have close emotional ties to people. Had he ever? He couldn’t remember any. But some people he liked to be around, people who amused and interested him. Bernal, like Block and Altabelli, had been one of those people.
He found himself equally disturbed by Bernal’s death—he would leave a void in Henry’s small social circle—and his apparent betrayal. Why would Bernal turn on him? What did he have to gain or, as might be the case, what was he trying to avoid losing? It didn’t make sense, which troubled Henry more than anything else.
Then there was that goddamn Frings, who for some reason was so pathologically single-minded in his pursuit of Henry that he was willing to sacrifice his girlfriend—and not just any girlfriend, but Nora Aspen—rather than give in on even a single point. How the hell had Frings found Otto Samuelson? It must have been Bernal. But again, why? Possibilities ran through Henry’s mind, but they always led to one thing—the Navajo Project. That could be a catastrophic problem. As he began to ponder the consequences of having Smith kill Frings, Henry realized his glass was empty. With pewter tongs he snared more ice from the bucket and poured the whiskey slowly, watching it cascade over the cubes.
The Four Roses had him feeling warm, but rather than mellowing, his mind raced more frantically. Where was Otto Samuelson? More important, where was Whiskers? What the hell was going on out in the sticks? Trevor Reid, the Vampire, had made a run, and Henry thought that the number that Whiskers had done on him would have cowed the others into staying put. Samuelson and the others, they were hard men, but like most hard men they recognized when they were had. Whiskers, on the other hand, was not adequately described as hard. He was on an entirely different fucking planet. It was odd, Henry thought, that the person who seemed most like Whiskers to him in this respect was Feral. Not that the two had anything else in common. Feral was controlled and literate and seemed to have some kind of moral sense, screwed up though it was. Whiskers was a homicidal maniac. But they shared a quality of otherworldliness. You couldn’t outhard them because they weren’t being hard. They were something entirely different. And that was why they alone worried Red Henry, the hardest of the hard.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Red light flickered across Van Vossen’s face, reflections of the flames dancing in the brick fireplace. Puskis sat in a cavernous upholstered chair across from Van Vossen, who lounged in its twin. No tin was in his lap this time. A Bach violin concerto whispered from the Victrola’s horn. The place smelled of Van Vossen’s pipe tobacco.
“You burned the Vaults?” His tone was dull and his eyes without expression, but a sudden tensing of his body had alerted Puskis to his alarm.
“They were corrupting it. They were changing the information.” Puskis felt shaky from excitement; the finality of the act.
Van Vossen nodded. “Better no files than a record of lies.”
He understood, as Puskis had known he would. “It would have been a collective dementia.”
Van Vossen sucked on his pipe, avoiding Puskis’s eyes by looking into the fire.
They were silent for a while, then Van Vossen poured them both brandies from a crystal decanter. Puskis did not enjoy alcohol, but sipped it to be polite.
“Your book is