Iron Orchid (Holly Barker 5)

“If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll see how quickly we can get this done,” she said.

Teddy took a book of Winston Churchill’s speeches from a bookcase, sat down and began reading.

Ten minutes later the woman returned. “Your credit report is fine, and the building manager has approved you,” she said. “And in view of your advance payment, I’ve gotten him to waive the security deposit.”

“Then I’m home,” Teddy said.

“Yes, you are.” She handed him the keys. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Not a thing,” Teddy said.

They rode down to the street together, and Teddy took a cab back to the Algonquin. He cleaned out the safe, packed his bags and checked out. Fifteen minutes later, he was a resident of New York City. He called the bank and gave them his new address, then he began looking in the classified section of the newspaper for suitable work space.

____________________

AN HOUR LATER, Teddy was looking at a three-room furnished space over a dry-cleaner’s shop on Lexington Avenue. “Does anyone live in the building?” he asked the super.

“No, sir. The place is empty by six.”

“What’s immediately below?”

“A storeroom for furs. The cleaners store them there for clients.”

“And above?”

“The roof.”

“I’ll take it.” He wrote the man a check for a year’s rent and was given the keys.

Now all Teddy had to do was to begin shopping for tools. He already had a detailed list of what he would need, and he knew where to find them. He walked downstairs and out onto Lexington Avenue and hailed a cab.

FIVE

HOLLY FOLLOWED THE MAP to the room number on her map, which turned out to be an underground firing range. She was issued an electronic noise-canceling headset and shown to an equipment room where she could leave Daisy. Someone had thoughtfully left a bowl of water and a blanket for her.

A dozen trainees had assembled in the range, and shortly, a short, thickly built man in what Holly assumed to be his late fifties, wearing an olive-drab T-shirt, army-issue fatigue trousers, black tennis shoes and a white-sidewall haircut, addressed them.

“You may call me Sarge,” he said in a clipped voice. “I will teach you how to shoot, if you do not already know how. Your employer does not issue a standard weapon, so you will fire many weapons- handguns, assault rifles and machine guns. You will learn how they work and to disassemble and reassemble them in light and dark. You will learn about silencers and flash suppressors. Someone else will teach you how to eviscerate others with knives and kill them with your hands. That is out of my line.”

He looked at a clipboard. “Harry One?”

Holly raised a hand. “Here, Sarge.”

“Have you ever fired a handgun?”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Come over here and show me how you do it. Ears on, everyone. We didn’t bring you here to send you out into the world deaf.”

Everyone put on their headsets.

Sarge indicated half a dozen handguns lined up on a bench. “Take your pick, Harry One.”

Holly chose a standard Model 1911 Colt semiautomatic pistol. While pointing it downrange she removed the magazine and found it full and the chamber empty. She shoved the magazine back into the weapon, racked the slide, took up a combat position and emptied the weapon into the target, fifty feet away, at the rate of a round per second. She removed the magazine from the gun and returned it to the bench.

Sarge pressed a button, and the target traveled toward the group. He examined the tight group, all eight shots in the bull’s-eye, then turned back to his class. “I have been at this i

nstallation for an extended period of time, and that is the first time I have ever seen a trainee do that on the first day,” he said. “When I am done with you, you will all be able to do it.” He turned to Holly. “Harry One, you are my assistant instructor.”