Swimsuit - James Patterson [89]
An alarm rang out in the stairwell, and I was sure another alarm was ringing in a firehouse nearby.
As water surged across the fine wooden floors, I returned to the main room, packed away the computers, slinging both mine and Van der Heuvel’s over my shoulder.
Then I slapped Van der Heuvel’s face, yelled his name, jerked him to his feet. “Up! Get up. Now!” I yelled.
I ignored his questions as I marched him down the stairs to the street. Smoke billowed from the windows and, as I’d hoped, a thick crowd of witnesses had congregated around the house: men and women in business attire, old people and children on bicycles that the city provided free to residents.
I sat Van der Heuvel down on the curb and uncapped the marking pen. I wrote on his forehead, “Murderer.”
He called out to people in the crowd, his voice shrill. He was pleading, but the only word I could understand was “police.” Cell phones came out and numbers were punched.
Soon sirens screamed, and as they came closer I wanted to howl along with them. But I kept Henri’s gun trained on Van der Heuvel and waited for the police to arrive.
When they finally did, I set down the Ruger on the sidewalk, and I pointed at Van der Heuvel’s forehead.
Chapter 120
SWITZERLAND.
Two cops were in the front seat, and I sat in the back of a car speeding toward Wengen, a toylike Alpine town in the shadow of the Eiger. Despite the ban on cars in this idyllic ski resort, our armored vehicle twisted around the narrow and icy roads. I clenched the armrest, leaned forward, and stared straight ahead. I wasn’t afraid that the car would sail over a guardrail. I was afraid that we wouldn’t get to Horst Werner in time.
Van der Heuvel’s computer had yielded his contact list, and in addition to the complete playlist of Henri Benoit’s videos, I’d turned over my transcripts of Henri’s confessions in the trailer. I’d explained to the police the connection between Henri Benoit, serial killer for hire, and the people who paid him.
The cops were elated.
Henri’s trail of victims, dozens of horrific killings in Europe and America and Asia, had been linked only since the recent murders of the two young women in Barbados. Now the Swiss police were optimistic that with the right kind of pressure, Horst Werner would give Henri up.
As we sped toward Werner’s villa, law enforcement agents were moving in on members of the Alliance in countries around the world. These should have been triumphant hours for me, but I was in a state of raw panic.
I’d made calls to friends, but there were no phones where Amanda was staying. I didn’t know if it would be hours or days before I would know if she was safe. And although Van der Heuvel had referred to Henri as a toy, I had more evidence than before of his ruthlessness, his resourcefulness, his lust for revenge. And I finally understood why Henri had drafted me to write his book. He wanted the Alliance, his puppeteers, to be caught so that he could be free of them, to change his identity again and lead his own life.
The car I was riding in braked, wheels shimmying on ice and gravel, the heavy vehicle sliding to a stop at the foot of a stone wall. The wall fronted a fortresslike compound built into the side of a hill.
Car doors opened and slammed, radios chattered. Armored commando units flanked us, dozens of men in flak jackets who were armed with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and high-tech equipment I couldn’t even name.
Fifty yards away, across a snowy field, glass shattered. A window had been knocked out in a corner room of the villa. Bullets flew, and grenades boomed as they exploded inside the target area.
Under covering fire, a dozen agents charged the villa, and I heard the rumble of snow cracking loose from the steep grade behind Horst’s stronghold. There was shouting in German, more small-arms fire, and I visualized Horst Werner’s dead body coming out on a stretcher, the final act of this takedown.
With Horst Werner dead, how would we find Henri?
The massive front door opened. The men who were