Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver Page A

heart. . . . 
    “Don’t move,” the man announced in guttural German. “Drop the bag.”
    He dropped the briefcase on the cobblestones, feeling the gun leave his back and touch his head, just below the sweatband of his hat.
    Father, he thought—not to the deity but to his own parent, gone from this earth twelve years.
    He closed his eyes.
    The sun finally sets . . .
    The shot was abrupt. It echoed briefly off the walls of the alley and then was smothered by the brick.
    Cringing, Paul felt the muzzle of the gun press harder into his skull and then the weapon fell away; he heard it clatter on the cobblestones. He stepped away fast, crouching, and turned to see the man who’d been about to kill him crumpling to the ground. His eyes were open but glazed. A bullet had struck him in the side of the head. Blood spattered the ground and brick wall.
    He looked up and saw another man, in a charcoal-gray flannel suit, approaching him. Instinct took over and Paul swept up the dead man’s pistol. It was an automatic of some sort with a toggle on the top, a Luger, he believed. Aiming at the man’s chest, Paul squinted. He recognized the fellow from the Beer House. He’d been sitting on the patio, lost in his newspaper—Paul had assumed. He held a pistol, a large automatic of some kind, but it wasn’t pointed at Paul; he was still aiming at the man on the ground.
    “Don’t move,” Paul said in German. “Drop the gun.”
    The man didn’t drop it but, convinced the man he’d shot wasn’t a threat, slipped his own weapon into his pocket. He looked up and down Dresden Alley. “Shhhh,” he whispered then cocked his head to listen. He slowly approached. “Schumann?” he asked.
    Paul said nothing. He kept the Luger aimed at thestranger, who crouched in front of the shot man. “My watch.” The words were in German, a faint accent.
    “What?”
    “My watch. That’s all I’m reaching for.” He pulled out his pocket watch, opened it and held the crystal in front of the man’s nose and mouth. There was no condensation of breath. He put the timepiece away.
    “You’re Schumann?” the man repeated, nodding at the briefcase on the ground. “I’m Reggie Morgan.” He too fit the description Avery had given him: dark hair and mustache, though he was much thinner than the dead man.
    Paul looked up and down the alley. No one.
    The exchange would seem absurd, with a dead body in front of them, but Paul asked, “What’s the best tram to take to get to Alexander Plaza?”
    Morgan replied quickly, “The number one thirty-eight tram . . . No, actually, the two fifty-four is better.”
    Paul glanced at the body. “So then who’s he?”
    “Let’s find out.” He bent over the corpse and began to rifle through the dead man’s pockets.
    “I’ll keep watch,” Paul said.
    “Good.”
    Paul stepped away. Then he turned back and touched the Luger to the back of Morgan’s head.
    “Don’t move.”
    The man froze. “What’s this?”
    In English Paul said, “Give me your passport.”
    Paul took the booklet, which confirmed that he was Reginald Morgan. Still, as he handed it back, he kept the pistol where it was. “Describe the Senator to me. In English.”
    “Just easy on the trigger, you don’t mind,” the man said in a voice that placed his roots somewhere in NewEngland. “Okay, the Senator? He’s sixty-two years old, got white hair, a nose with more veins than he ought to have, thanks to the scotch. And he’s thin as a rail even though he eats a whole T-bone at Delmonico’s when he’s in New York and at Ernie’s in Detroit.”
    “What’s he smoke?”
    “Nothing the last time I saw him, last year. Because of the wife. But he told me he was going to start again. And what he used to smoke were Dominican cigars that smelled like burning Firestones. Give me a break, pal. I don’t want to die ’cause some old man took up a bad habit again.”
    Paul put the gun away. “Sorry.”
    Morgan resumed his