A Serpent's Tooth

A Serpent’s Tooth

Germany and Belgium

October, 1987

They could have been any two elderly gentlemen, swathed in overcoats against the autumn chill and sharing a bottle at a café on the seedier side of Hamburg. Armand Brecht, of course, would have argued that Hamburg had no non-seedy aspects, but that was Armand for you.

They were that rarity: old and wealthy mercenaries.

Armand, who for most of his postwar career had operated under the trade name Janvier, poured himself another glass of schnapps. “The weather is far too damp this year,” he groused. “It will be an evil winter.” Brecht had leveraged a modest inheritance, a family name well-known in financial circles, and a series of shrewd investments based on insider knowledge into a reputable company that specialized in real estate and dabbled in venture capital.

His host that evening had operated under the trade name Friedrich. Without an embarrassingly successful family to trade on, he had slowly built himself an empire of strip clubs and brothels in eleven countries. “I plan to winter with my daughter and her family,” he said. “She has purchased a resort property in Haiti.”

“A fine move. Is she still with—“

“No, he’s flown the coop. Boys these days—“

“I agree. Unable to stay the course.”

Friedrich picked at the remains of his sausage. “I should stay away from this stuff, she says,” he confided, with angry emphasis on the pronoun. “She wants to keep me alive by making my life a living death.”

“My problem is the reverse; my wife would probably suggest I take up bungee-jumping or skateboarding if she thought that I would take her seriously and that it would hurry me along a little faster toward her inheritance.”

“So you’re here in our beautiful city to escape her charms?”

Armand allowed himself a canny grin. “And to see a beautiful, ah, professional, if you get my meaning. One who relieves me of many cares.”

Friedrich chuckled and raised his glass in a mock toast.

Armand acknowledged the compliment shamelessly.

The professional, however young and admittedly beautiful, worked at a local clinic specializing in alternative medicine, including a magnetism-and-hot-oil treatment that Armand found alleviated some of the pain in his arthritic hands and feet.

“And speaking of cares,” Friedrich said, “I was, of course, saddened to see that your protégé, Esau, had met with a bad end.”

Armand gaped at him. “Esau?”

“God in heaven, you were not aware? Janvier, my friend, I am so dreadfully sorry! I had not planned on being the bearer of sorrowful news.”

Esau? Dead? How could that possibly be?

Brecht’s vitals twisted with shock and sorrow, but he tried to keep his tone light. “That’s quite all right, my dear Friedrich. At our age, we often have to say farewell, do we not? Naturally, we assume that we will predecease those who are so much younger than ourselves, but—” He cleared his throat. “I dare not suppose that you happened to hear how—“

“Well, apparently—he was young, after all, and boys will be boys—apparently he was following his dick around, as they say, and got himself involved with a Kuwaiti lass. I gather that she came from one of those families that one does not cross lightly. The way I hear it, the two of them were executed quietly by family retainers.”

“Astounding.”

It was more than astounding. Armand was a great believer in having at hand for emergency use fables which would fake his death. Such fallbacks occasionally proved necessary when it was important not only to drop out of sight, but to discourage anyone from ever looking for you again, and death was the ultimate discouragement. He had helped the very bright, very deadly young man whose working name was Esau to arrange his own fables.

Neither scenario had anything to do with Kuwait.

“It’s a small world we live in nowadays, but some things never change, do they?” Friedrich continued. “You had quite a hand in his training, did you not?”

Armand nodded.

“I always thought so! Talented lad, from all I ever saw or heard of him. Milanese, was he not?”

“Indeed.”

“I thought perhaps he might have been. My first wife was from Milan, and the accent is unmistakable.”

Armand drank deeply of schnapps. Within him, grief and rage warred. His face reflected merely an old man’s pragmatism. “It was I who discovered him, you know.”

“I had no idea.”

“Oh, yes.” He tried to infuse his voice with a casual, but bittersweet tone. “A wild child, a little street rat, but with extraordinary potential, once I got him cleaned up and slapped some manners into him. But enough reminiscence! What is this I hear of you? Is it true that you are a great-grandfather?”

***

When he returned to Brussels, he kept his own counsel for two days. On Sunday, he invited his wife to the city—he and Simone had not inhabited the same house for the last eight years of their marriage—and took her to the ballet. On Monday, he got his hair cut (strange how, as his hair dwindled, the time and expense required to groom it increased!). He consulted his tailor about a pair of new suits and a coat with a fur-trimmed collar for the winter season.

On Tuesday, he visited his office. He reviewed the week’s numbers, flirted briefly with his receptionist, and returned a few phone calls.

As lunchtime approached, he gripped his cane tightly and stalked down the hall to his great-nephew’s office. “Mathieu,” he said.

Mathieu looked up from the spreadsheets he was reconciling and brushed back the hair from his eyes. He took the pencil from between his teeth, rose respectfully from his chair and smiled. “Welcome back, Uncle Armand. I’ve met with the people from the Hilgess Corporation.”

Armand did not return the smile. “My office. Two minutes.”

He turned and left without further word.

His nephew appeared in the doorway of his office exactly on time, probably to the second. He could be assiduously anal like that when the mood struck him.

“Mathieu,” Armand said heavily. He did not ask the young man to sit down, and Mathieu knew better than to take a seat without an invitation.

Mathieu bowed his head, ever so slightly. “Uncle.” Nevertheless, he lounged in the doorway with his arms folded and one hip against the jamb.

Armand Brecht had, in one way or another, been responsible for much of the rearing of the boy. Little Matti was twenty-two now and built along the lines of his dancer mother and his acrobatic great-uncle: short in stature, but lean, agile and hard-muscled. The mulishness that had been so adorable in the puppy-eyed child was now merely infuriating.

“Close the door,” Armand said, “and stand up straight. What in the name of all that is holy have you done with your breeding?”

Mathieu muttered an apology. He shut the door, and when he stood before the desk, his posture was perfect.

“I had an interesting trip,” Armand began, watching his nephew’s face carefully. “My arthritis is better, not that you have inquired after my health. Oh, do try not to be so obvious about trying not to sigh and roll your eyes! Make an effort to live down your immaturity for a minute or so.”

“I’ll do my best,” Mathieu said, ill-concealing his petulance.

“You can imagine my surprise when I learned this past week that you are dead.”

Mathieu barely batted an eye. “I thought it better not to tell you,” he replied. “I was not sure whether you would need some sort of deniability.”

It was true that Armand had always walked a bit of a fine line, passing off his own family, the grandson of a younger brother whom Armand particularly loathed, as an Italian child of the streets. Nevertheless, their shared vocation was based on lies. The only individuals likely to be angered by the deceit were various members of the, oh, so conventional Brecht family and their annoying American counterparts, the Colthanes.

And the Witherspoons, of course, but they danced to the Colthanes’ tune.

“More likely, you feared that I would stop you.”

“Not at all, Uncle. You could not stop me without killing me—and since that would have the same effect, your prior knowledge was irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant?”

“Except, possibly, in terms of your own contacts in the business.”

“How very kind of you.” Armand sat back in his chair. Eighty years of hiding his emotions enabled him to maintain a calm tone and a blank face. “You know, I have given you all of the tools at my command. I have offered you skills and contacts beyond most people’s imagination.”

“I remain deeply grateful, Uncle Armand.”

“Do you, now?”

“Yes.”

The boy was refusing to be shaken. It was maddening: For almost twenty years Armand had toiled and slaved to turn aside the boy’s fire and train him to be stone. Now that Armand actually needed a little bit of the flame, the boy had suddenly gone all granite on him. Armand cleared his throat several times to give himself the luxury of devising a new way to get to Mathieu. He needed rage, complaints, or excuses—not this damnable calm.

“I confess that I am shocked,” the old man said at last. “I see in you no evidence whatsoever of gratitude; only of an ambitious little boy who will do whatever it takes to get himself where he wants to be. I took your modest gifts and turned you into an agent who could have reached the highest levels of power. Now, I suppose that you have some idiot fantasy of making a killing in the American stock market or managing leveraged buyouts or whatever the bean-counting hordes fancy this year. It is business, is it not? You don’t imagine yourself trading on your mother’s name and dancing, or playing that ridiculous fiddle of yours?”

“It’s a double bass, Uncle Armand. And I know that I have neither the talent nor the drive to make a career for myself in music or dance.” Mathieu replied. “And, yes, sir, business interests me.”

“And life doesn’t? Power doesn’t? God in Heaven, I have made you a young prince and you prefer to be a nebbish—“

Mathieu’s brows knit.

“Yiddish. A useful word. A timid, mousy, ineffectual creature.”

“Aha. Thank you.”

“And the use of the word does not even insult you.”

“It’s a word, Uncle.”

“So is whore.”

His nephew nodded. “So it is, Uncle.”

At the last minute, Armand decided to abandon that line of conversation. It had failed to hit its mark. Worse, any exploration of the various meanings of the word whore could lead to tiresome and awkward accusations and counter-accusations about small favors that Armand had asked the boy to perform for certain powerful persons in the past.

Time for the heavy artillery.

“After all these years, Mathieu, it grieves me that you care so little for what I have given you. I am, after all, the only adult male who has ever shown the slightest interest in treating you like a son.”

The boy’s face remained impassive, but Armand could tell from his eyes that he had found the chink in his armor.

“I have made you my son and my heir, Mathieu. I have no intention of going back on my promises to you. Nevertheless, I wish you had honored your promises to me in the same way.”

“Touché,” Mathieu murmured.

“And yet, given a chance to take my place at the world’s banquet table, to drink deep of life and reach for the stars, you appear to be more interested in grubbing for gold, like your pathetic nebbish grandfather and his brothers.”

There was a long, painful pause.

“Yes, sir.”

“I am deeply disappointed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is this point where I play the monster and deny you the inheritance that I have promised you all of these years?”

The boy’s eyes darkened, and for the first time Armand saw flashes of anger. “Sir, if I stayed beside you, it was not because of any promise of an inheritance.”

“Yet clearly your staying has very little to do with respect for my livelihood, my friends, with everything that I stand for.”

Another pause. Mathieu had to use silence as a weapon, because, alas, he would never be as verbally astute as his uncle. Sometimes Armand thought he could actually watch the thoughts forming behind his eyes.

“As you said, Uncle,” Mathieu replied, his voice even, “you are the only person who has shown any interest in being a father to me. Is that not enough reason to stay?”

Armand made a dismissive gesture. “Leave me. Clear out your desk and get out, you self-centered little ingrate! Damn you, you have betrayed me. Considering all that you know about me, for my own—and my wife’s—protection, I should arrange to have you genuinely eliminated.”

Oh, dear. Bad move. Exceptionally bad move.

Fire flashed behind the ice, but only a coldly polite smile showed on the boy’s face. “You are welcome to try,” Mathieu said in a dangerously civil tone. His posture changed only infinitesimally, but Armand read the coiled-snake intensity behind the shift.

The boy knew everything that Armand knew about the arts of surveillance and murder; moreover, Mathieu’s strength and agility now far outstripped Armand’s—and the boy had managed to arrange his own fable. God only knew how many contacts Mathieu had developed on his own in the business, or for what reason.

Time for an orderly withdrawal.

“Have I taught you all of this, given you a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and experience, all for nothing?”

The challenging intensity faded, and the boy had the good grace to bow his head. “To the extent that your life tends to rule out some of the things I want—“

“You want? You want? You think yourself old enough to make that kind of decision alone? You think your wisdom equals mine? An abacus, is that what you want? To sit in your little room and count your coins and play it safe?”

“To the extent that I want a wife, and children, and an end to the pretend, and the fear, and the second and third and fourth identities, yes.” The boy looked at him, and his expression was harder than Armand had ever seen it before. “I am not constructed like you, Uncle. You thrive on that life. I don’t.”

“You could, if you wanted to.”

“That may be true. But I want the other things more.”

“More even than pleasing me?”

Ice in his eyes. “Yes, Uncle.”

“So, what do you want of mine? Have I anything that you value?”

“Your good will. Shall I leave you now?”

Armand gave up. “No, Mathieu. You will always have my good will, in this life, or any life. However, since you are determined to chain yourself to the abacus, then let us send you out on your own in search of challenges more to your liking. If you must count beans, which of my beans interests you the most?”

No hesitation. “Margate-Broussard.”

“A poor choice.”

“I disagree. I see a lot of potential there, if it’s managed properly.”

“It’s in the United States. You have always said that you preferred not to live in the same country as your father’s family. Has that changed?”

“I think I’m ready to face them now.”

“Very well, then. Do you have a business plan?”

Mathieu smiled. “I do.”

“Bring it here.”

“No, Uncle.” As Armand stiffened, his nephew continued, “Allow me and Belle to take you and Simone to dinner tomorrow night, and afterward, I will show you what I think we can do with Margate-Broussard.”

“Belle, eh? Has she moved in with you yet?”

The boy looked faintly abashed. “Yes.”

“So this is a serious relationship?”

“Not really.”

Ah, good. Something he could understand. “Just less tedious and expensive than having to buy it, eh?”

A faint grin. “That was the idea, but—“

“In practice it’s a little stickier, eh?”

“Yes—and a lot more expensive.”

“It’s good you’re learning this now. You were entirely too idealistic about your love life.”

“You may be right, Uncle.”

Armand gazed into Mathieu’s almost-black eyes, the Dugas eyes: his mother’s eyes, his brother’s eyes, his niece’s eyes. His own. Certainly the closest he would ever come to parenthood, to immortality. The one human being who knew everything—well, a good deal, at least—about what Armand had needed to do in order to survive and prosper in his life. Recipient of both Armand’s boasts and his confessions.

“So,” he said heavily. “Why are you standing there like a stunned goat? Get us some brandy, and tell me what you learned in your meetings with the Hilgess people.”