"I'm not," said Kurtz.
They came into a wider area of the tunnel. "This should do nicely," said Kennedy. The bodyguard turned his flashlight back and pulled a pistol from his pocket. Edward stepped away a safe distance and leveled his Glock at Kurtz's chest.
Kennedy pulled his trench coat from Kurtz's shoulders and stepped back, draping it over his own shoulders. "It's very chilly down here," he said.
"Will you tell me why?" said Kurtz. He'd been fiddling with the handcuffs, but they were expensive and well made and very tight.
"Why what, old sport?"
"Why everything? Why save the Dodger from the asylum and sic him on the Gonzagas and Farinos so many years later? Why use me as an instrument to kill your friends the Major and Colonel Trinh? Why everything?"
Kennedy shook his head. "I'm afraid we don't have time. We have a busy day ahead of us. I have to visit your secretary at her sister-in-law's, and say hello to the girlAyshaas well. Edward and Theodore have to stop by the hospital to say hello to Detective King. Busy, busy, busy."
"At least tell me about Yasein Goba before you go," said Kurtz.
Kennedy shrugged. "What's to tell? He was very cooperative, butas it turned outa lousy shot. I had to finish the work there in the parking garage. I hated that wig I woreI never looked good in long hair."
"The police records show you in the air in your private jet at the time O'Toole and I were shot," said Kurtz. "O'Toole's e-mail records show you responding to her e-mail just forty-five minutes before" He stopped.
Kennedy smiled. "It's a poor corporation that doesn't own or lease more than one executive jet these days."
"You flew in on a second one, earlier," said Kurtz. "You even received and answered O'Toole's e-mail from the other Lear."
"Gulfstream V, actually," said Brian Kennedy. "But, yes. It's amazing how few formalities one has to go through at the private executive terminal out at Buffalo International."
"You shot us and drove out there to sign in as if you'd just arrived. Where did your real jetGulfstreamland?"
Kennedy shook his head. "Can it possibly matter now, Mr. Kurtz? You're simply stalling for time."
Kurtz shrugged. "Sure. Just one last question then."
"We searched you for a wire when you were unconscious, Mr. Kurtz. We know you're not broadcasting or recording. You're simply wasting your time and ours right now."
"The stud farm," said Kurtz. "Is that yours?"
"Bequeathed from my father," Brian Kennedy said softly. Rats scurried just around the bend in the tunnel. "In Virginia, actually."
"Poor Yasein Goba thought he was in the hands of Homeland Security and then the CIA, but it was just your Empire State Security and Executive Protection building in downtown Buffalo and then the farm, wasn't it?"
Kennedy said nothing. He was obviously tired of the conversation.
"You never worked for the CIA," said Kurtz. "But your old man did, didn't he? He was the third part of the triad back in Vietnamwith the Major and Trinh. They kept the drugs moving after the war ended."
"Of course," said Kennedy. "Are you just now figuring these things out, Mr. Kurtz? I must say, you're a very poor detective. But you're wrongI did work for the CIA. For just under a year. It was incredibly boring, so I took my inheritance and started the security agency.
Much more interesting. And lucrative."
"And you continued to shake down the Major and SEATCO after your old man died," said Kurtz. "Did they think you were still CIA? Still providing protection the way your daddy had in the seventies and eighties? And now you want it all? Is that it?"
"I'm afraid you've committed the cardinal sin, Mr. Kurtz. You've bored me." Kennedy took three steps back to the edge of the circle of light. "Edward. Theodore."
The two bodyguards made sure their field of fire was safe and raised their pistols, aiming at Kurtz's chest and head, bracing their weapons with born hands as if they could miss from eight feet away.
"You look like James Bond," Kurtz said to Kennedy, feeling his heart pounding wildly. "But you're making Dr. No's mistake."
Kennedy was no longer listening. "Time to feed the rats, old sport."
The tunnel echoed to the blast of six loud shots.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Kurtz did not move.
The man came silently out of the darkness. He was a tall man, very thin, dressed in a wool suit and a tan raincoat that looked too short and slightly dated. He wore a small Bavarian-style hat with a small red feather in its band. The man had a narrow, strangely kind-looking face, framed by thick, black-rimmed glasses, and had a thin ginger mustache and a slightly prominent lower lip. His eyes looked sad but very alert. He was carrying an unsilenced Llama semiautomatic pistol.
He walked to the first bodyguard, Theodore, stared down at him a few seconds, and then checked the second one, Edward. Both were dead. The man picked up one of the flashlights.
"Three," Kurtz said shakily, mostly to see if he could still speak. "I'll be paying this off in installments for twenty years."