9

Wesker had finished shredding the chaff and was pouching the wheat for the courier, who was due in fifteen minutes. “Funny about Savinkov having hemorrhoids and complaining about it in Latin,” he was saying. “Somehow you’d think a KGB station chief would be above that kind of thing.”

“Hemorrhoids or Latin?”

“Hemorrhoids, obviously.”

“Hemorrhoids are not a character flaw,” the Weeder pointed out.

“You’re being ironic again, right?”

“Right. Why don’t you pack it in for the day,” the Weeder added. “I’ll zip up the pouch.”

Wesker began slipping into a vast belted overcoat before the Weeder finished the sentence. He hooked enormous yellowish designer sunglasses over his floppy ears, pulled on a fore-aft Russian astrakhan and lowered the ear flaps so that they dangled over his jaw like medieval armor. He leered at his reflection in the mirror above the sink and, apparently satisfied with what he saw, lowered his head and charged the armor-plated door. He punched with his fist at the button that sent electricity flowing to the lock. The door sprang open and Wesker disappeared.

The Weeder, who thought of himself as an artiste manqué, switched to a graphics program on his computer and began toying with the stylus. He drew a mushroom-shaped cloud coming out of the mouth of someone with a broken nose that had more than a passing resemblance to Wanamaker’s. Inside the cloud he wrote, in an elegant gothic script, the words Stufftingle and Ides of March.

He glanced at the wall clock; the courier would be there any moment. The Weeder depressed a key. In an instant the high-speed laser printer had spit out the hooked nose and the mushroom cloud. The Weeder put on his fleece-lined gloves, tore off the printout and folded it into a plain white envelope. With a red grease pencil he printed in a child’s handwriting:

R. Wanamaker

Operations Subgroup Charlie

Special Interagency Antiterrorist Working Group (SIAWG)

A mischievous grin installed itself on the Weeder’s lips as he slipped the letter into a second envelope, which he sealed and addressed to Company Mail Room—Classified Material for Eyes Only Distribution. That meant the letter would be put into Wanamaker’s hot hands. He would go straight up the wall when he opened it. He’d swallow the soggy Schimmelpenninck that bobbed on his lower lip. He’d have a coughing fit, turn blue, experience chest pains, have difficulty breathing. An ambulance would be summoned. A mask would be fitted over his mouth and broken nose. Oxygen would be supplied. With any luck, last rites would be administered.

Images of disaster multiplied in the Weeder’s head. It occurred to him that waiting all those years was what made it so sweet. Revenge was a meal that tasted best cold.