sounding like this before. But there was an undertone of purpose as well, and it was this purpose which Calabrese found terrifying. “I’ll show you your salvation,” he said.
“You have. You already have.”
“I’ll show you your fucking salvation, Stavros, and I’ll make you beg for release from it.”
“I don’t care anymore,” Stavros said thinly. The connection must have been going bad; the voice was now fading. “I’m not interested in your threats or promises anymore. I’m going to attend to my own set of purposes now, and the hell with yours. This is my country and this is my hotel, Calabrese.”
“That’s a fucking joke. Your country? It’s no more your country than mine.”
“It’s been mine for thirty years,” Stavros said. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t have to be afraid,” he said and broke the connection, leaving Calabrese looking at an empty phone. The first, flaming sense of disbelief modulated into a dull, gasping rage that moved through him like an electrical impulse through wire, and then Calabrese found that he was trembling all over.
He was a fool. He had been a fool. Face it: Walker, that crooked cop, that son of a bitch, had been right. He had had Wulff face-to-face in these very rooms and he had not killed him. Why had he not killed him? Was it that he was losing his grip? Did it all come down to that?
“It doesn’t matter what it comes down to,” Calabrese muttered to himself and he was right. It really didn’t. Fuck the psychology of the thing; for whatever reason he had blown it very badly with Wulff, but that was behind him; what was ahead was the necessity now to rectify the mistake. It was a problem, one of the biggest problems he had ever had, but at least it was the kind of difficulty that could lend itself to relatively rational resolution. You moved ahead with a practical business problem like this; you brought in the artillery and you did what you could.
The only way you got into difficulty was wondering about the motives for a condition in the first place, but that had never been his style. Not at all. The gravesites, the deeps of Michigan, were filled with men who had pondered all the motives.
Relatively simple, this equation now: he had to get Wulff because the man was on the loose again with Stavros’s coaching and obviously hell-bent to get out of Peru and get on with his life’s work; he had to get rid of Stavros because the little Nazi bastard was a traitor who had sprung Wulff free and was probably hoping to use him to play out his own options. Stavros and Wulff. Wulff and Stavros. Take care of those two and then it was home-free.
What he had to do was to move in now with the heavy artillery.
It was a wonderful thing—just think of it!—to be in a room by yourself with nothing but a phone and the capability to call in literally hundreds of men through that one weapon, the telephone. It was an accomplishment. It was something to strive for.
He went ahead and he did it.
He called for total war.
XI
Rolling out of the exploding car Wulff had a single, sickening instant when he thought that it was all over; he was rolling and rolling in hilly country and he could lose his grip entirely, just keep on rolling, bounce off a precipice somewhere and start rotating through the stones. But the survival instinct was within him as ever, and although in many ways that seemed tempting, just giving up like that and going with the roll, he did not do so. He was able to get hold of some ground, heavy, dense mud which retarded the roll and then, wrenching himself against the force of the spin, was able to bring himself to a stop in some kind of crevice. Looking to his right then he saw the open, empty valley; hundreds of feet below, it reared up like a cup to seize him … but he sprang away from that vision, looking toward the left and up the hill. Some two or three hundred feet from the point of the impact he saw
“You have. You already have.”
“I’ll show you your fucking salvation, Stavros, and I’ll make you beg for release from it.”
“I don’t care anymore,” Stavros said thinly. The connection must have been going bad; the voice was now fading. “I’m not interested in your threats or promises anymore. I’m going to attend to my own set of purposes now, and the hell with yours. This is my country and this is my hotel, Calabrese.”
“That’s a fucking joke. Your country? It’s no more your country than mine.”
“It’s been mine for thirty years,” Stavros said. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t have to be afraid,” he said and broke the connection, leaving Calabrese looking at an empty phone. The first, flaming sense of disbelief modulated into a dull, gasping rage that moved through him like an electrical impulse through wire, and then Calabrese found that he was trembling all over.
He was a fool. He had been a fool. Face it: Walker, that crooked cop, that son of a bitch, had been right. He had had Wulff face-to-face in these very rooms and he had not killed him. Why had he not killed him? Was it that he was losing his grip? Did it all come down to that?
“It doesn’t matter what it comes down to,” Calabrese muttered to himself and he was right. It really didn’t. Fuck the psychology of the thing; for whatever reason he had blown it very badly with Wulff, but that was behind him; what was ahead was the necessity now to rectify the mistake. It was a problem, one of the biggest problems he had ever had, but at least it was the kind of difficulty that could lend itself to relatively rational resolution. You moved ahead with a practical business problem like this; you brought in the artillery and you did what you could.
The only way you got into difficulty was wondering about the motives for a condition in the first place, but that had never been his style. Not at all. The gravesites, the deeps of Michigan, were filled with men who had pondered all the motives.
Relatively simple, this equation now: he had to get Wulff because the man was on the loose again with Stavros’s coaching and obviously hell-bent to get out of Peru and get on with his life’s work; he had to get rid of Stavros because the little Nazi bastard was a traitor who had sprung Wulff free and was probably hoping to use him to play out his own options. Stavros and Wulff. Wulff and Stavros. Take care of those two and then it was home-free.
What he had to do was to move in now with the heavy artillery.
It was a wonderful thing—just think of it!—to be in a room by yourself with nothing but a phone and the capability to call in literally hundreds of men through that one weapon, the telephone. It was an accomplishment. It was something to strive for.
He went ahead and he did it.
He called for total war.
XI
Rolling out of the exploding car Wulff had a single, sickening instant when he thought that it was all over; he was rolling and rolling in hilly country and he could lose his grip entirely, just keep on rolling, bounce off a precipice somewhere and start rotating through the stones. But the survival instinct was within him as ever, and although in many ways that seemed tempting, just giving up like that and going with the roll, he did not do so. He was able to get hold of some ground, heavy, dense mud which retarded the roll and then, wrenching himself against the force of the spin, was able to bring himself to a stop in some kind of crevice. Looking to his right then he saw the open, empty valley; hundreds of feet below, it reared up like a cup to seize him … but he sprang away from that vision, looking toward the left and up the hill. Some two or three hundred feet from the point of the impact he saw
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