Saint

1

I see darkness. I’m lying spread-eagle on my back, ankles and wrists tied tightly to the bedposts so that I can’t pull them free.

IA woman is crying beside me. I’ve been kidnapped.

My name is Carl.

But there’s more that I know about myself, fragments that don’t quite make sense. Pieces of a puzzle forced into place. I know that I’m a quarter inch shy of six feet tall and that my physical conditioning has been stretched to its limits. I have a son whom I love more than my own life and a wife named . . . named Kelly, of course, Kelly. How could I hesitate on that one? I’m unconscious or asleep, yes, but how could I ever misplace my wife’s name?

I was born in New York and joined the army when I was eighteen. Special Forces at age twenty, now twenty-five. My father left home when I was eight, and I took care of three younger sisters—Eve, Ashley, Pearl—and my mother, Betty Strople, who was always proud of me for being such a strong boy. When I was fourteen, Brad Stenko slapped my mother. I hit him over the head with a two-by-four and called the police. I remember his name because his intent to marry my mother terrified me. I remember things like that. Events and facts cemented into place by pain.

My wife’s name is Kelly. See, I know that, I really do. And my son’s name is Matthew. Matt. Matt and Kelly, right?

I’m a prisoner. A woman is crying beside me.

CARL SNAPPED his eyes wide open, stared into the white light above him, and closed his eyes again.

Opening his eyes had been a mistake that could have alerted anyone watching to his awakening. He scrambled for orientation. In that brief moment, eyes opened wide to the ceiling, his peripheral vision had seen the plain room. Smudged white walls. Natural light from a small window. A single fluorescent fixture above, a dirty mattress under him.

And the crying woman, strapped down beside him.

Otherwise the room appeared empty. If there was any immediate danger, he hadn’t seen it. So it was safe to open his eyes.

Carl did, quickly confirmed his estimation of the room, then glanced down at a thick red nylon cord bound around each ankle and tied to two metal bedposts. Beside him, the woman was strapped down in similar manner.

His black dungarees had been shoved up to his knees. No shoes. The woman’s left leg lay over his right and was strapped to the same post. Her legs had been cut and bruised, and the cord was tied tightly enough around her ankles to leave marks. She wore a pleated navy-blue skirt, torn at the hem, and a white blouse that looked as if it had been dragged through a field with her.

This was Kelly. He knew that, and he knew that he cared for Kelly deeply, but he was suddenly unsure why. He blinked, searching his memory for details, but his memory remained fractured. Perhaps his captors had used drugs.

The woman whose name was Kelly faced the ceiling, eyes closed. Her tears left streaks down dirty cheeks and into short blond hair. Small nose, high cheekbones, a bloody nose. Several scratches on her forehead.

I’m strapped to a bed next to a woman named Kelly who’s been brutalized. My name is Carl and I should feel panic, but I feel nothing.

The woman suddenly caught her breath, jerked her head to face him, and stared into his soul with wide blue eyes.

In the space of one breath, Carl’s world changed. Like a heat wave vented from a sauna, emotion swept over him. A terrible wave of empathy laced with a bitterness he couldn’t understand. But he understood that he cared for the woman behind these blue eyes very much.

And then, as quickly as the feeling had come, it fell away.

Carl . . . Her face twisted with anguish. Fresh tears flooded her eyes and ran down her left cheek.

Kelly?

She began to speak in a frantic whisper. We have to get out of here! They’re going to kill us. Her eyes darted toward the door. We have to do something before he comes back. He’s going to kill . . . Her voice choked on tears.

Carl’s mind refused to clear. He knew who she was, who he was, why he cared for her, but he couldn’t readily access that knowledge. Worse, he didn’t seem capable of emotion, not for more than a few seconds.

Who . . . who are you?

She blinked, as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. What did they do to you?

He didn’t know. They’d hurt him, he knew that. Who were they? Who was she?

She spoke urgently through her tears. I’m your wife! We were on vacation, at port in Istanbul when they took us. Three days ago. They . . . I think they took Matthew. Don’t tell me you can’t remember! Details that he’d rehearsed in his mind before waking flooded him. He was with the army, Special Forces. His family had been taken by force from a market in Istanbul. Matthew was their son. Kelly was his wife.

Panicked, Carl jerked hard against the restraints. He was rewarded with a squealing metal bed frame, no more.

Another mistake. Whoever had the resources to kidnap them undoubtedly had the foresight to use the right restraints. He was reacting impulsively rather than with calculation. Carl closed his eyes and calmed himself. Focus, you have to focus.

They brought you in here unconscious half an hour ago and gave you a shot. Her words came out in a rush. I think . . . I’m pretty sure they want you to kill someone. Her fingers touched the palm of his hand above their heads. Clasped his wrist. I’m afraid, Carl. I’m so afraid. Crying again.

Please, Kelly. Slow down.

Slow down? I’ve been tied to this bed for three days! I thought you were dead! They took our son!

The room faded and then came back into focus. They stared at each other for a few silent seconds. There was something strange about her eyes. He was remembering scant details of their kidnapping, even fewer details of their life together, but her eyes were a window into a world that felt familiar and right.

They had Matthew. Rage began to swell, but he cut it off and was surprised to feel it wane. His training was kicking in. He’d been trained not to let feelings cloud his judgment. So then his not feeling was a good thing.

I need you to tell me what you know.

I’ve told you. We were on a cruise—

No, everything. Who we are, how we were taken. What’s happened since we arrived. Everything.

What did they do to you?

I’m okay. I just can’t remember—

You’re bleeding. She stared at the base of his head. Your hair . . .

He felt no pain, no wetness from blood. He lifted his head and twisted it for a look at the mattress under his hair. A fist-sized red blotch stained the cover.

The pain came then, a deep, throbbing ache at the base of his skull. He laid his head back down and stared at the ceiling. With only a little effort he disconnected himself from the pain.

Tell me what you remember.

She blinked, breathed deliberately, as if she might forget to if she didn’t concentrate. You had a month off from your post in Kuwait and we decided to take a cruise to celebrate our seventh anniversary. Matthew was buying some crystallized ginger when a man grabbed him and went into an alley between the tents. You went after him. I saw someone hit you from behind with a metal pipe. Then a rag with some kind of chemical was clamped over my face and I passed out. Today’s the first time I’ve seen you. She closed her eyes. They tortured me, Carl.

Anger rose, but again he suppressed it. Not now. There would be time for anger later, if they survived.

His head seemed to be clearing. More than likely they’d kept him drugged for days, and whatever they’d put into his system half an hour ago was waking him up. That would explain his temporary memory loss.

What nationality are they?

Hungarian, I think. The one named Dale is a sickening . . . She stopped, but the look of hatred in her eyes spoke plenty.

Carl blocked scattered images of all the possible things Dale might have done to her. Again, that he was able to do this so easily surprised him. Was he so insensitive to his own wife?

No, he was brutally efficient. For her sake he had to be.

Their captors had left their mouths free—if he could find a way to reach their restraints . . .

The door swung open. A man with short-cropped blond hair stepped into the room. Medium height. Knifelike nose and chin. Fiercely eager blue eyes. Khaki cotton pants, black shirt, hairy arms. Dale.

Carl knew this man.

This was Dale Crompton. This was a man who’d spent some time in the dark spaces of Carl’s mind, securing Carl’s hatred. Kelly had said Hungarian, but she must have meant someone else, because Dale was an Englishman.

The man’s right arm hung by his side, hand snugged around an Eastern Bloc Makarov 9mm pistol. The detail was brightly lit in Carl’s mind while other details remained stubbornly shrouded by darkness. He knew his weapons.

Without any warning or fanfare, Dale rounded the foot of the bed, pressed the barrel of the Makarov against Kelly’s right thigh, and pulled the trigger.

The gun bucked with a thunderclap. Kelly arched her back, screamed, and thrashed against her restraints, then dropped to the mattress in a faint.

Carl’s mind passed the threshold of whatever training he’d received. His mind demanded he feel nothing, lie uncaring in the face of brutal manipulation, but his body had already begun its defense of his wife. He snarled and bolted up, oblivious to the pain in his wrists and ankles.

The movement proved useless. He might as well be a dog on a thick chain, jerked violently back at the end of a sprint for freedom. He collapsed back onto the bed and gathered himself. Kelly lay still. A single glance told him that the bullet had expended its energy without passing through her leg, which meant it had struck the femur, probably shattering it.

I hope I have your attention, Dale said. Her leg will heal. A similar bullet to her head, on the other hand, will produce far more satisfying results. I’d love to kill her. And your son. What is his name? Matthew?

Carl just stared at him. Focus. Believe. You must believe in your ability to save them.

Pity to destroy such a beautiful woman, Dale said, walking to the window. Just so you know, I argued to tie your son next to you and keep Kelly for other uses, but Kalman overruled me. He says the boy will be useful if you fail us the first time.

Englishman put the gun on the sill, unlatched the window, and pulled it up. Fresh breezes carried a lone bird’s chirping into the room. It’s spring. I can smell fresh grass and spring flowers. I can smell fresh blood.

Englishman faced him. A simple and quite lethal device has been surgically implanted at the base of your hypothalamus gland. This explains the bleeding at the back of your head. Any attempt to remove this device will result in the release of chemicals that will destroy your brain within ten seconds. Your life is in our hands. Is this clear?

The revelation struck Carl as perfectly natural. Exactly what he would have expected, knowing what he did, whatever that was.

Yes.

Good. Your mission is to kill a man and his wife currently housed in a heavily guarded hotel at the edge of the town directly to our south, three miles away. Joseph and Mary Fabin will be in their room on the third floor. Number 312. No one else is to be killed. Only the targets. You have two cartridges in the gun, only two. No head shots. We need their faces for television. Do you understand?

A wave of dizziness swept through Carl. Aside from a slight tic in his right eye, he showed none of it. Beside him, Kelly moaned. How could he ignore his wife’s suffering so easily?

Carl eyed the pistol on the sill. I understand.

We will watch you closely. If you make any contact with the authorities, your wife will die. If you step outside the mission parameters, she dies. If you haven’t returned within sixty minutes, both she and your son will die. Do you understand?

Carl spoke quickly to cover any fear in his eyes. The name of the hotel?

The Andrassy, Dale said. He withdrew a knife from his waistband, walked over to Carl, and laid the sharp edge against the red nylon rope that tied Carl’s right leg to the bed frame.

I’m sure you would like to kill me, Dale said. This is impossible, of course. But if you try, you, your wife, and your son will be dead within the minute.

Who are the targets?

They are the two people who can save your wife and son by dying within the hour. The man cut through the bonds around Carl’s ankles, then casually went to work on the rope at his wrists. You’ll find some shoes and clean clothes outside the window. With a faint pop, the last tie yielded to Englishman’s blade.

Kelly whimpered, and Carl looked over to see that her eyes were open again. Face white, muted by horror and pain.

For a long moment, lying there freed beside the woman he loved, Carl allowed a terrible fury to roll through his mind. Despite Dale’s claim, Carl knew that he stood at least an even chance of killing their captor.

He wanted to touch Kelly and to tell her that she would be okay. That he would save her and their son. He wanted to tear the heart out of the man who was now watching them with a dispassionate stare, like a robot assigned to a simple task.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to kill himself. Instead, he lay still.

Kelly closed her eyes and started to sob again. He wished she would stop. He wanted to shout at her and demand that she stop this awful display of fear. Didn’t she know that fear was now their greatest enemy?

Fifty-eight minutes, Dale said. It’s quite a long run.

Carl slid his legs off the bed, stood, and walked to the window, thinking that he was a monster for being so callous, never mind that it was for her sake that he steeled himself.

I’m in a nightmare. He reached for the gun. But the Makarov’s cold steel handle felt nothing like a dream. It felt like salvation.

Carl?

Kelly’s voice shattered his reprieve. Carl was sure that he would spin where he stood, shoot Dale through the forehead, and take his chances with the implant or whatever other means they had of killing him and his family. The only way he knew to deal with such a compelling urge was to shut down his emotions entirely. He clenched his jaw and shoved the gun into his waistband.

I love you, Carl.

He looked at her without seeing her, swallowed his terror. It’ll be okay, he said. I’ll be back.

He grabbed both sides of the window, thrust his head out to scan the grounds, withdrew, shoved his right leg through the opening, and rolled onto the grass outside. When he came to his feet, he was facing south. How did he know it was south? He just did.

He would go south and he would kill.

2

Carl found the clothes in a small duffel bag behind a bush along the outside wall. He dressed quickly, pulled on a pair of cargo pants and black running shoes, and tied a red bandanna around his neck to hide the blood that had oozed from a cut at the base of his skull, roughly two inches behind his right ear. Odd to think that a single remote signal could take his life.

Odd, not terrifying. Not even odd, actually. Interesting. Familiar.

He snatched up the Makarov, shoved it behind his back, and set out at a fast jog. South.

He was in a small compound, ten buildings in a small valley surrounded by a deciduous forest. Three of the buildings were concrete; the rest appeared to be made of wood. Most had small windows, perhaps eighteen inches square. Tin roofs. No landscaping, just bare dirt and grass. To the west, a shooting range stretched into the trees farther than he could see, well over three thousand yards.

The day was hot, midafternoon. Quiet except for the chirping of a few birds and the rustle of a light breeze through the trees.

On stilts, a single observation post with narrow, rectangular windows towered over the trees. There were eyes behind those windows, watching him.

All of this he assimilated before realizing that he was taking in his surroundings in such a calculating, clinical manner. His wife lay on a bed with a shattered femur, his son was in some dark hole in one of these buildings, and Carl was running south, away from them in order to save them.

Three miles would take fifteen minutes at a healthy jog for the fittest man. Was he fit? He’d run a hundred yards and felt only slightly winded. He was fit. As part of Special Forces, he would be.

But why was he forced to rely on instinct and calculation instead of clear memory to determine even these simple facts?

He brought his mind back to the task at hand. What were the consequences of entering a hotel and murdering a man and his wife? Death for the man and his wife. Orphaned children. A prison sentence for the killer.

What were the consequences of allowing this man and his wife to live? Death for Kelly and Matthew.

He was in a black hole from which there was no escape. But blackness was familiar territory to him, wasn’t it? A pang of sorrow stabbed him. There was something about blackness that made him want to cry.

Carl ran faster now, weaving through the trees, pushing back the emotions that flogged him, and doing so quite easily. When the blackness encroached, he focused on a single pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, because only there, in the light, could he find the strength to hold the darkness at bay.

He had no way to know with any certainty when the hour he’d been given would expire, but time was now irrelevant. He possessed limits and he would push himself to those limits. Any distraction caused by worry or fear would only interfere with his success.

He crested a gentle hill outside the forest roughly fifteen minutes into the run. He pulled up behind a tree, panting. There was the town. Only one neighborhood in his line of sight contained multi-story buildings—the Andrassy would be there. After a quick scan of the country leading to the town, he angled for the buildings at a jog, slower now, senses keen.

His shirttail hid the gun at his waist, but nothing else about him would be so easily hidden once he encountered people. Was Kelly right? Were they really in Hungary? He didn’t speak Hungarian but doubted he looked much different from any ordinary Hungarian. On the other hand, he was sweating from a hard run and his neck was wrapped in a bright bandanna—these facts wouldn’t go unnoticed.

The hotel was heavily guarded, Englishman had said. How could Carl possibly race into a completely foreign town, barge into a well-guarded hotel, shoot two possible innocents, and expect any good to come of it?

Images of Kelly flooded his mind. She was strapped to the bed, right femur shattered, face stained with tears, praying desperately for him to save her. And Matthew . . .

He ran past farming lots that bordered the blacktop entering the town from his angle of approach; past people milking a cow, raking straw, riding a bicycle, kicking a soccer ball. He ignored them all and jogged.

How empty his mind was. How vacant. How hopeless. How disconnected from the details swimming around him, though he noticed everything.

He slowed to a fast walk when he reached the edge of town and searched for a hotel matching Englishman’s description.

None. No hotel at all. And time was running low.

Carl flagged the rider of an old black Schwinn bicycle and spoke quickly when the older man’s blue eyes fixed on him. Andrassy Hotel?

The man put his feet down to balance himself, looked Carl over once, and then pointed toward the west, spouting something in Hungarian.

Carl nodded and ran west. On each side of the asphalt ribbon, people stopped to watch him. Clearly, he looked like more than a commoner out for an afternoon jog. But unless they represented an immediate threat, he would ignore them. For the moment they were only curious.

Assault has three allies: speed, surprise, and power. Carl didn’t have the power to overwhelm more than a few guards. Speed and surprise, on the other hand, could work for him, assuming he was unexpected.

The Andrassy was a square four-story building constructed out of red brick. A Hungarian flag flapped lazily on a pole jutting out from the wall above large revolving doors. Two long black Mercedes waited in the circular drive—possibly part of the guard.

Carl veered toward the back of the hotel. A large garbage bin smelled of rotting vegetables. The kitchen was nearby.

He bounded over three metal steps and tried a gray metal door. Unlocked. He pushed it open, stepped into a dim hallway, and pulled the door shut behind him.

He followed the sound of clattering dishes down the cluttered hall and through a doorway ten paces ahead on his right. He grabbed an apron from a laundry bin against the wall and wiped the sweat from his face. He slipped into the apron. Barely there long enough to answer a casual glance from a passing employee.

It was all about speed now.

If he was right, there would be a service elevator nearby. If he was right, there would be guards posted outside the third-floor room that held the targets. If he was right, he had roughly ten minutes to kill and run.

Carl took deep breaths, calming his heart and lungs. The soft ding of an elevator bell confirmed his first guess.

Kill and run. Somewhere deep in the black places of his mind, a voice objected, echoing faintly, but his mind refused to focus on that voice. His mind was on the killings because the killings would save his wife and son.

There were two ways to the third floor. The first required stealth—assuming a server’s identity on a mission to deliver room service, perhaps. He dismissed this idea because it was predictable, thus undermining his greatest allies, speed and surprise.

The second approach was far bolder and therefore less predictable.

Carl breathed deeply through his nostrils and closed his eyes. He’d been here before, hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember where or why, but he was in familiar territory.

Unless the guards were exceptional, they would hesitate before shooting an unarmed man who approached them.

There were towels in the laundry basket. Carl quickly pulled off his shoes, socks, apron, bandanna, and shirt, pushing them behind the laundry bin. With a flip of his fingers, he unsnapped his cargo pants, let them fall around his ankles, and tied the pistol to his thigh using the bandanna. He pulled his pants back up and rolled up the legs to just below his knees.

Bare feet, bare legs, bare chest, bare back—no sign of a weapon, even to a trained eye.

Satisfied, he draped a large white towel over his head and around his neck so that it covered the blood at the back of his neck and fell over his chest on either side. A man who’d just come from a swim or a shower. Unusual to be found walking through a hotel, particularly one that didn’t have a pool, which he suspected to be the case here, but not so unusual as to cause alarm. He had taken a shower upstairs, come down on a quick errand, and was headed back to his room.

Carl grabbed the towel on each side, strolled down the hall, and walked into the open, whistling a nondescript tune.

LASZLO KALMAN drummed his thin fingers on the table, a habit that annoyed Agotha more than she cared to admit. His uncut nails made a clicking sound like a rat running across a wooden floor. They were all firmly in this man’s grasp: she as much as his killers.

Agotha loved and hated him. Kalman could not be defined easily, only because he refused to explain himself. But then, evil rarely did explain itself.

Still, she could not ignore her attraction to the raw power that accompanied Kalman’s exceptional lust for death. He feared nothing except his own creations, killers who could slay a man with as little feeling as he himself possessed.

Of all his understudies, Englishman was the one he feared most, although soon enough Carl might surpass even Englishman, a fact that wasn’t lost on anyone. It was this tenuous nature of the game that brought Kalman satisfaction, not the millions of Euros this X Group of his was paid for its assassins’ skills.

How much time? Kalman asked.

Agotha glanced at the wall clock behind them. Thirty-five minutes. Perhaps I should call Englishman.

He knows the price of failure.

And if he does fail? We’ve come so far.

Agotha rarely got involved in any of the operations directly. Her place was here, in the compound’s hospital. But now they were on the verge of something that even she struggled to understand.

Englishman won’t fail, Laszlo said.

I was speaking of Carl.

Laszlo hesitated. That’s your department. I don’t care either way.

Agotha bit her lower lip. To fail now would be a terrible setback. The shooting of two people was all that stood in the way. Correction: the shooting of two people by this one man who had been meticulously selected and trained was all that stood in the way.

There’s something different about Carl, she said.

Kalman looked at her without emotion. Without comment.

He returned his gaze to the monitor and resumed clicking his fingernails on the wood.

3

Carl strolled toward the service elevator in bare feet, hoping that his wet bangs looked like the work of a shower rather than a hard run. In the event he raised an alarm prematurely, he would resort to force.

He’d timed his approach by the elevator’s bell, but by the time he caught sight of it, the door was already closing. Empty or not, he didn’t know.

At least a dozen people were staring his way from the main lobby on the right. Casual stares, curious stares. For the moment.

Carl stopped his whistling and ran for the door—a man hurrying to catch an elevator. The towel slipped off his neck and fell to the ground. He reached the elevator call button, gave it a quick hit with his palm, and reached back for the towel as the door slid open.

The car was empty. Good.

He stepped in, pushed the button for the fourth floor, and resumed his whistling. The door slid closed, and he shut his eyes to calm his nerves.

Who are you, Carl?

He didn’t know precisely who he was, did he? He knew his name. Scattered details of a dark past. He knew that Kelly was his wife and that Matthew was his son, and he knew that he would give his life for them if he needed to.

But why was his past so foggy? Who were his captors? Why had they chosen him to do their killing? Whatever they’d done to his head was more profound than a mere drug-induced effect.

He grunted and shoved the questions aside.

Do you believe?

I believe, he said softly.

What do you believe?

I believe that I will kill these two to save my wife and son.

Belief. Something about belief mattered greatly.

The elevator bell clanged.

He stepped onto the fourth floor, reached back into the elevator, pushed the button for the third floor, and was running toward the stairwell