Vermeulen was breathing hard. “I saw a man in a tracksuit in the hallway. He didn’t look in a hurry, more like a visitor who was glad to get out of the hospital. You didn’t see him?”
“No. There was nobody else in the hallway.”
He looked at Gaby. She lay there, motionless, like before, her chest moving in the rhythm of her breathing. Nothing had changed.
“This is very odd,” he said.
The room looked unchanged, too. The vase with flowers, the chairs, nothing had been moved. He blinked. “A vase with flowers?
“These flowers weren’t here before, were they?”
Tessa looked at them, then at him.
“No, they weren’t.”
He checked Gaby one more time. That’s when he noticed that her left hand lay on her belly, not beside her, where it had been when he left. Had she moved it? His heart leaped. She moved her arm. She was coming out of the coma. Then he saw the piece of paper under the hand.
It was an embossed note card, the kind one would enclose in an envelope with a Thank You note. Except this card didn’t have any expressions of gratitude written on it. Just one sentence: “We know where you are.”
Chapter Thirty
Jackson saw the two men near Hawthorne Liquors. They weren’t going anywhere, just standing there as if waiting for the bus. His mind switched to instant alert, because they were white. White people didn’t hang out on Hawthorne Street. Especially not in the morning. The alert turned into a flashing red light when he recognized the thugs from the garage, Gergi and Andrej. He turned back into his side street and ducked behind a ramshackle storefront belonging to a clothing store that had been out of business for as long as he’d lived in the neighborhood.
Ever since Dr. Patel told him how dangerous the Broker was, Jackson had gotten a lot less eager to bust Rosenbaum. He’d run out of ideas. No matter how he turned it, he’d have to contact Rosenbaum again. The moment he did that, the Broker would be involved. That was bad news. Maybe there was a way to make a deal with the doctor to frame the Broker. Or make a deal with the Broker to frame the doctor. None of it looked promising, so he’d decided to just lay low and let the whole thing blow over.
Until he saw Gergi and Andrej standing by the liquor store. They must’ve traced the phone to him. But that still didn’t explain how the two found him. Could they have followed him from the Edison parking garage? He thought he’d hit them good, but maybe not. Beating people wasn’t his strong suit. He preferred persuasion.
Two against one were odds he didn’t like. He could maybe take one of them, but not both. Especially since they had guns. He could follow them, see where they led him. Find out where the Broker hid out, then get the cops involved. Nah. That didn’t work either. The cops’d be asking questions about how he knew anything about them. Before long, they’d be asking about the twenty-five hundred dollars.
The longer he carried that cash in his pocket, the more he wished he hadn’t taken it. Actually, he wished he hadn’t called Rosenbaum. He’d been greedy. If he’d just taken the cash, he’d be sitting pretty now. Just like his grandma used to say, Greed destroys everything. That made him remember Vermeulen’s advice. Do the right thing. Easy for Vermeulen to say. He didn’t have to hustle every day to make a living. Still, that phrase kept niggling him. Abasi coming all the way over here to get money for his family. Man, they were waiting over there in Kenya. Waiting for the guy to come back with the cash. They’d be waiting a long time.
He took his phone and called the liquor store.
“Yeah, Maurice, this is Earle. Listen, there’s two white guys standing outside your store. They’re bad dudes who are after me. Do me a favor and call me when they leave, okay?”
“Which white guys?”
“The ones outside your store.”
“There’s no one outside my store, white, black, or purple.”
“You sure? Check again.”
“I got eyes, don’t I?”
Jackson ended the call and went back to the corner. He peered around the edge of the house there and saw that Maurice was right. The two men were gone. About to step onto Hawthorne, he heard steps behind him, turned, and saw Gergi and Andrej running toward him. Andrej couldn’t keep up because he was still limping from the hit against his knee. But Gergi was closing in, and he looked pissed off.
Jackson sprinted across Hawthorne to the liquor store. He yanked the door open and stormed into the store. Maurice looked up, surprised.
“Hey, Jackson. Still lookin’ for those dudes?”
“Nah, they’re right behind me. You still got that shotgun behind the counter?”
Maurice raised his eyebrows, but nodded.
“Do me a favor. Keep these guys pinned down here for fifteen minutes. I’ll run out the back and call the police.”
“Man, it’s way too early for that kind of grief.”
“Come on, Maurice. I gotta get away from them.”
“Okay, just this once. I ain’t savin’ your ass again.”
Jackson ran into the back room just as the buzzer from the front door sounded.
“Freeze, suckers!” he heard Maurice say. That man loved the movies.
Jackson opened the rear door while dialing 911.
“Yeah, there’s an armed robbery going on at Hawthorne Liquors.” He hung up before they could ask more questions. By the time he reached his room, he could hear the sirens approaching.
This whole thing was out of control. It had to stop. And the only way to stop it was to leave town. He stuffed some clean clothes into a bag, added the e-ticket receipt, Abasi’s passport, his own passport, and ran.
Jackson had never been to JFK. The only time he’d ever been on an airplane was a trip to the Virgin Islands with doctors Patel and Mulberry. It was the reason he even had a passport. They’d departed from Newark. JFK was in an entirely different league. Taking the AirTrain from the Jamaica E train station, he saw that the terminals all looked different. Terminal 8 was a glass structure that jutted out at odd angles. Inside, it had a light, airy feel. White steel beams spanned across an impossible distance. After entering the terminal, he just stood and gaped for a moment.
It was still too early for Abasi’s flight. During the train ride to midtown and the subway ride to Jamaica Station, he had to remind himself that his name was now Okeyo Abasi. He didn’t think he’d have any problems at JFK. He was leaving the U.S. Leaving was always easier than arriving. Getting into Kenya was another story. He’d worry about that when the time came.
He meandered past the long row of airline counters. The mural of the Manhattan silhouette was pretty cool. People hurried around him, trying to make a flight. The PA system provided a regular stream of announcements. He drank some coffee but didn’t buy any food. There’d better be some on the plane. Since he’d decided to go to Kenya, he felt a strange urge to preserve as much of the money as he could.
When the Qatar counter opened for the check-in of Flight 702 to Doha, he waited for the first ten or so passengers to be served before he joined the line. He felt the blood coursing through his temples, could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Why was he so nervous? Abasi’s picture wasn’t very clear. He could easily pass for him. He mumbled “Good afternoon” before giving the woman in the maroon outfit the e-ticket receipt and Abasi’s passport.
“Do you have any luggage, Mr. Abasi?”
He shook his head. The woman raised her eyebrows.
“The bags were stolen,” he said.
“I’m terribly sorry. I hope you didn’t lose anything valuable.”
He shook his head. He didn’t know what Kenyans sounded like, so he didn’t want to speak too much.
The woman nodded.
“I have you checked in to Doha and then onward to Nairobi. Here are your boarding passes. Have a pleasant flight.”
“Thank you.”
He made his way through security, found his gate, and settled down to wait. It was all too crazy. Running from the Broker all the
way to Kenya. Was that the smart thing to do? He could go south. Visit his auntie in Atlanta who he hadn’t seen in ages. Wait for things to settle down. The money would last him a while. But the idea of traveling to Kenya trumped those thoughts. There was a tingle of anticipation in his belly. He’d gotten this far. No reason not to go all the way.
An hour into the wait, he dialed Vermeulen again. No answer. He left another message, telling the man that he was going to Kenya. Why hadn’t he called back after the first message? Sure, his daughter was having a bad time, but still, he could’ve called. Just to say thanks for the information on the Broker. But Vermeulen was one stuck-up guy.
Two hours later, Earle Jackson took his seat in the Airbus A340.
Chapter Thirty-One
For the second time that day, Vermeulen raced along the hospital corridor, slowing only to inspect alcoves and sitting areas where the man in the tracksuit might have taken cover. Startled faces looked back at him. He stopped at a different nurses’ station, but nobody there could remember a middle-aged man in a tracksuit. The elevator took forever on its way down. In the lobby, he ran to the reception desk.
“Did you see a man in a blue and green tracksuit come in or go out?”
The first woman frowned, then shook her head. “Sorry, sir. I don’t remember anyone like that.”
Her colleague had a better memory. “A tracksuit with green stripes down the arms?”
Vermeulen nodded.
“Yes, he came and asked for a patient. He carried a bouquet of flowers. They were very nice.”
“Did you see him leave just now?” he said.
“No, sorry, it’s pretty busy here.”
“Did he give a name when he asked for the patient?”
“Yes, he said it was Vermöhlen or something like that.”
Vermeulen nodded his thanks and scanned the lobby. The receptionist was right—it was a busy place, people coming and going. He ran outside.
There was a fair amount of traffic outside the hospital. Pedestrians on the sidewalk all seemed dressed in grays and browns. No blue and green tracksuit anywhere. Vermeulen sprinted across the street. A silver Fiat honked at him, its driver wagging her index finger. He jumped on the edge of a large concrete planter with a bush. From that perch, he saw a flash of blue just near the next intersection to the left.
Crossing the street again earned him more honks. Apparently, the Viennese didn’t like jaywalkers. He raced to the intersection. Halfway there, he collided with a man in a brown coat.
“Passen Sie doch auf!” he said, shaking his head.
Vermeulen shouted “Sorry” over his shoulder and continued. The cross street was bounded by the hospital on one side and a light rail track on the other. Between the track and the street stood a multi-story parking garage partially hidden behind trees. Had the man parked there? He wouldn’t have come alone. Which meant there’d be a car waiting for him close by. Vermeulen ran along the side of the hospital. The sidewalk widened halfway down the block to accommodate a dozen trees, evenly spaced in cast-iron grates.
At the first tree, he caught a second glimpse of something blue. A gray Audi was parked in a long row of cars down the street. The man in the tracksuit was just getting into the passenger side. The car backed out leisurely and drove toward him. Vermeulen ran into the street. The car sped up. He jumped into its path. The car accelerated. Vermeulen stared at the two men through the windshield. They smiled. But they didn’t slow down. At the last moment, he jumped out of the way. The passenger side mirror hit his right forearm. The car turned right at the intersection and was gone. But not before Vermeulen got a good look at the license plate. He swallowed his anger. He rubbed his arm. It was bruised, but nothing was broken.
Back in the hospital room, Tessa eyed him with raised eyebrows and shook her head. He caught himself just before letting out a stream of invective.
“He got away,” was all he said.
“I see.”
“I did get the license plate.”
“Good.”
“It started with white letters WD followed by a dash and the numbers 99530.”
“Hmm.”
“Why so monosyllabic?”
“Because we don’t need you playing the lone avenger. Gaby is in danger. If this organization is as far reaching as you said, chasing after one of its gofers and leaving your daughter exposed is not smart.”
“I thought I’d catch him and find out who sent him.”
She shook her head in that pitying manner that drove him up the wall.
“What do you want me to do?” he said, ready to let her have it.
“Figure out where to move Gaby so that these people can’t find her. She’s the only one who can’t look out for herself.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was right, of course. And fighting made no sense.
“Okay, I’ll talk to someone. There’s got to be a private clinic that protects the identity of their patients.”
At the nurses’ station, he asked for the doctor.
“The doctor will come in three hours,” the nurse said in accented English.
“I need to speak to her now. It is urgent.”
The nurse studied a monitor for a moment.
“I see nothing changed in Room 412,” she said. “Why is it urgent?”
Vermeulen pulled out his UN ID. “I can discuss this only with the doctor. But it is an emergency. Could you please call the doctor?”
The nurse shrugged, picked up the telephone receiver, dialed a short number, and said something in German. Her tone was exasperated.
Ten minutes later, the doctor showed up. She was petite, about as tall as Tessa, who was a head shorter than Vermeulen. But Tessa had a well-trained body that signaled its strength through even the most stylish clothes. The doctor seemed fragile in her pink and blue smock.
“I’m Dr. Mueller,” she said. Her voice belied her stature. This was a woman in charge. “What’s the emergency that couldn’t wait a couple of hours and required waving around diplomatic IDs?”
“Can we speak in private?” Vermeulen said.
She pointed to a door. Vermeulen opened it. It was a supply closet barely large enough to accommodate them both. She closed the door behind her.
“Here’s the issue. I’m an investigator for the UN in New York. I was involved in a dangerous investigation there when I found out that my daughter had an accident and was in a coma. Room 412.”
The woman’s arms were folded defensively across her chest. “I know who you’re talking about.”
“I left New York in a hurry. Somehow, the people I confronted there found out I came here. They left a threatening note with my daughter.”
He pulled the note from his jacket. The doctor examined it and nodded.
“Is there a private clinic where Gaby could disappear for a while until this blows over?” he said.
“Of course. But this is the best place for your daughter. We specialize in head trauma. A private clinic doesn’t have the resources we have here.”
“I’m aware of that, but the circumstances make her stay here too dangerous. At the moment, it seems we are waiting for her to come out of her coma. I’m sure she can do that elsewhere.”
“Oh, so you are a medical expert, too.” She raised her eyebrows. “Let me tell you, the crucial part is when she comes out of the coma. Only then can we really determine what damage has occurred and what the best course of therapy is.”
Vermeulen raised his hands in apology.
“I’m sorry … that was presumptuous of me. Of course, you know what is best. But she’s not safe here. The best care in the world won’t do any good if the gangsters get to her.”
“You have a point. There are two suitable institutions. I’ll make some calls.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I know this is uncommon. I appreciate your help.”
“This is only a temporary fix. You’d better sort out what you are involved in. Your daughter can’t stay i
n hiding forever.”
“I know.”
Dr. Mueller turned and left. Vermeulen went back to Gaby’s room.
“It’s a UN car,” Tessa said when he came back.
“What?”
“The license plate you got. It’s a UN car. The WD stands for Wien Diplomatisches Korps and the first two digits, 99, are reserved for UN cars. Talk to Dufaux; he should be able to tell you who the car’s driver was.”
By eight that evening, Gaby had been moved to the Privatklinik Alsergrund. Vermeulen was surprised by the quiet efficiency. Two orderlies and a nurse wearing a starched white outfit appeared. They rolled Gaby’s bed to an elevator in the back. At the emergency take-in, the two orderlies shifted Gaby to a gurney. An unmarked white van waited at the ambulance ramp. Inside, the van was equipped with a plethora of medical apparatuses, their purposes beyond Vermeulen’s comprehension.
The two orderlies loaded the gurney into the van. Vermeulen wanted to climb into the back, but the nurse shook her head. She and one of the orderlies were the only ones allowed. Tessa and Vermeulen could take a taxi and follow the van. Dr. Mueller had arranged for the paperwork to be transferred electronically. Whatever bills Gaby owed the hospital would be sent directly to her insurance. It all seemed too easy.
Vermeulen called Marieke to tell her about the move. Her icy response left no doubt that she was still upset.
The private clinic put Gaby into a lovely room that could have been mistaken for a comfortable studio apartment, had it not been for the medical equipment. The ceiling was at least ten feet high, and tall windows faced a pocket park planted with trees. The entire building radiated calm and healing. The only person unaffected by that atmosphere was Marieke. She stared at Vermeulen with barely contained fury when Gaby was brought in. Since she had decided to take the night shift, Vermeulen and Tessa let her be. He was happy about that. There were more important things to do than fight. He needed to get to the bottom of the Vienna connection.
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