I hit the floor even before I realize I’m falling.
As I lie on my back, heaving for breath, Regan drops a crushing knee onto my chest and leans over me, the orange eye of his cigarette burning white as he sucks air through it. Grabbing the butt from his mouth, he jams the burning tobacco into my left cheek.
Searing agony whites out his laughing face. For a wild rush of heartbeats there’s only fire in my skin and a hammer pounding in my skull. The next thing to register is a high-pitched scream. Turning my head toward the sound, I see Caitlin’s mouth wide, her eyes red and pouring tears. Royal gives an order that registers faintly in my brain, and then Regan gets off my chest and pulls me to my feet.
Brody walks up and squints into my eyes like a neurologist. “Can you hear me, Cage?”
I nod once, my head ringing like a struck anvil, my cheek radiating arcs of fire.
Brody signals Regan to bring Caitlin closer. The tall Irishman grabs her arm and drags her to within five feet of me. Her jet-black hair hangs lank over her eyes, but while her jaw hangs slack in shock, her emerald eyes still burn with intelligence.
“The name,” Brody urges.
Even in my dazed state, I sense Caitlin’s mind working at blinding speed, simultaneously racing down a dozen pathways, desperately searching for some ingenious blocking move. But there isn’t one. I’ve known that since we were in the van.
“They’re here,” Regan says from my left.
Royal nods, preoccupied. “I tell you what, dear,” he says with sudden gentleness. “Walk with me while you think about it. You, too, Mayor. Let me show you the pride of my collection.”
Putting his arm around Caitlin, Brody walks us down the line of display cases. Regan prods me from behind, and the object poking me feels more like a gun barrel than a finger. Glancing backward, I see a Glock semiautomatic in his hand. As my eyes rise to his face, I read sadistic hunger in his eyes. Worse, we’re already halfway to the firing range door.
Inside the display cases are MP40 and Mauser machine pistols, a Walther P38, the Fallschirmjägergewehr 42, a Sturmgewehr 44, even a Panzerfaust antitank weapon—each labeled with a brass plaque and a descriptive caption. Between a British Sten and a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle, I see a Thompson submachine gun, one of the few pieces I would have recognized without the tag.
“Did you serve in combat?” I ask Brody.
“I was exempted from the draft,” he answers over his shoulder. “War-critical work.”
“Bootlegging?” Caitlin says with scathing contempt.
A hitch in Royal’s stride tell me this barb hit home. “A little advice, Princess. Don’t insult the alligator until you’ve crossed the river.”
A few steps more, then Brody pauses before a cabinet at the end of the row, one wider than the rest. Despite its size, this case holds only two weapons: civilian hunting rifles, by the look of them. Below the rifles sits a large empty shelf with a plaque that reads: FLAMMENWERFER 41. ST. VITH. DECEMBER 1944.
“Do you know what you’re looking at?” Brody asks, his voice oddly hushed.
Leaning forward to read the plaques beneath the rifles, I freeze, barely breathing. The first reads, November 22, 1963. The second: April 4, 1968. Juxtaposed in this setting, those two dates blow what coherence I’ve regained to smithereens. Yet out of the resulting chaos bounces Henry’s tale of Snake Knox claiming to have killed Martin Luther King, and my father’s story of being trapped on the fishing boat with Brody Royal and the drunk CIA man who kept cursing about the botched job in Dallas. Caitlin’s gaze presses on my right cheek, silently asking if these weapons could be authentic. Unwilling to give Brody the satisfaction of seeing my distress, I straighten and turn to him as I would to a fool who’d paid top dollar for lead bricks painted gold.
“How much did you give the Knoxes for these fakes?” I ask. “Not much, I hope.”
The steady certainty in Royal’s eyes rattles me, and he knows it. In his mind, at least, these rifles are the genuine article.
As Caitlin straightens up, I try to catch her eyes, but she’s whipped her head toward the staircase by which we entered. Two strangers have entered the room. They’re better dressed than our van crew, and walk with distinctly military bearing. Each carries what looks to be a heavy banker’s box. The sight hardly affects me, but Caitlin looks as though someone just gut-punched her. Behind us, Brody Royal chuckles softly.
“You obviously recognize those boxes. Take those into the firing range, Chalmers. Then deal with the mayor’s car and our Natchez PD officer as quickly as possible.”
Both men walk quickly to the door on the far right, then disappear through it. “What’s in the boxes?” I ask.