He looked at her. “By the way, just to be clear, this is all off the record, isn’t it? I don’t want to be quoted on any of it.”
“Absolutely, you have my word.”
Nathaniel nodded. “Wasn’t it you and Johnson who finished off that California senator several years ago? The one who was running for the Republican nomination. What was his name, William Marsh? The Nazi sympathizer.”
Fiona glanced sharply at him. “Yes, that’s right, back in 2003. He was a U.S. senator. We did collaborate on that story. You’ve got a very long memory.”
In fact, it had been one of the stories that had made her reputation. Marsh, on the right wing of the party, had been forced to resign from Congress and pull out of the race for the nomination against the incumbent George W. Bush. Fiona ran a front-page story in the Times revealing that he had for more than two decades sheltered and employed a senior ex-Nazi Auschwitz prison camp guard, Heinz Waldmeister, at his forestry and timber business outside San Francisco.
Johnson and she had worked together on the investigation after both were tipped off by the same source, an ambitious younger party official who was aiming to supplant Marsh, although he ultimately failed in that objective. Johnson had then led the initiative to have the eighty-five-year-old Waldmeister deported and successfully prosecuted at a court in Munich for a series of brutal murders at Auschwitz.
Nathaniel nodded again. “I remember it well. A notable scoop for the Times.” He hunched over and looked at Fiona steadily. “It pays to have good sources, doesn’t it? We should chat further.”
Then he stood up. “I’d better go now, but I’d definitely like to meet again. Do you live in D.C.?”
“I do,” said Fiona. “It would be great to catch up again very soon. I’d like to talk about what you’ve been discussing in a bit more depth, if possible. I’ll give you my details.” She reached into her small brown leather handbag as she stood and gave him a card.
Fiona shook Nathaniel’s hand and watched as he walked across the white oak floor toward the entrance hall. Her reporter’s instinct told her he had something more to say but was holding back.
Chapter Two
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Washington, D.C.
Fiona exploded.
“Absolutely not, Des. I am not doing that damn story. I haven’t stopped since I came back from that fund-raiser. I’ve had no dinner, nothing to eat. If this company can’t hire enough people to cover the workload, that’s not my problem. I’m meant to be an investigative reporter, not a hack.”
She was almost spitting across the desk at Des Cole, her boss, both hands on her hips and her face starting to turn the same color as her crimson cardigan.
Des, a gray-haired Englishman and chief news editor at Inside Track, just stared at her.
“Apart from going out to the fund-raiser, I’ve been in here since ten this morning and it’s now what, half past nine? And you’re asking me to write another piece,” Fiona said. With that, she pressed the off button on her laptop, slammed the lid shut, grabbed her coat, and headed across the newsroom toward the elevator.
“Look, Fiona, come back here a second. I just need to discuss—”
But Des wasn’t given the chance to finish his sentence.
Fiona drummed her fingers on the side of the elevator as it ground its way down from the fifth floor, then walked swiftly through the revolving door at the front of the building.
Muttering a volley of expletives under her breath, she veered left and continued up 15th Street Northwest toward her apartment, a fifteen-minute walk away on the same road.
By now, the street was almost deserted, with most office workers well ensconced in their homes and apartments.
Glancing to her right, back in the direction of her office, she caught a glimpse of a figure ducking behind a wide pillar outside the entrance to an underground parking lot a block or so behind her. Pausing, she checked again, but then turned away.
In that moment, she decided. She didn’t feel like cooking and didn’t want to spend the evening sitting alone in her apartment. Instead, she would dump her bag at home and go to the wine bar around the corner, enjoy a quiet glass or two, and choose something from the menu.
Fiona walked briskly northward across L Street Northwest. She felt calmer now and realized she had gone over the top with Des. She made a mental note to text him later and apologize.
As she waited for the green light at the junction with Massachusetts Avenue, she glanced behind her and again thought she saw the shadow of a person, this time moving behind a tree. She felt the same sensation she sometimes had when someone was eyeing her in a bar or a restaurant, as guys often did. But pivoting around once more, she could see nobody.
A few minutes later, she was home, fumbling in her handbag for her key to the main entrance of her large, nine-story apartment building, grandly christened Miramar Apartments.
She had lived in her fourth-floor, two-bedroom apartment, overlooking Rhode Island Avenue, the Holiday Inn on the corner, and the Doubletree Hilton, for two years, since she had split up with her boyfriend and they had sold their house, at a large loss.
One attraction of Miramar Apartments had been the short walk into work, rather than suffering the long commute some of her colleagues endured.
Fiona opened her front door, threw her bag into the hallway, and headed immediately out again, around the corner to her favorite restaurant, B Too, on 14th Street Northwest. A cozy modern Belgian bar with wooden decor and a long wine list in addition to the beers, it was expensive but worth it. Fiona had become almost a regular, especially on evenings such as tonight, when she finished work late.
A waiter greeted her at the door with a smile. “Good evening Fiona. Would you like your usual table?”
“Thank you, Alex, I would. And can you bring me a bottle of that Spanish tempranillo? I’m desperate for a drink.”
One hour, one venison fillet, and half a bottle of wine later, Fiona was feeling much more at peace with herself. She glanced out the window at the passersby and the traffic, which was still busy.
Then someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“Hello, Fiona, I hope you don’t mind. I just noticed you sitting there and . . . ”
She whirled around, startled. “Nathaniel! Where did you come from? At this time of night? Do you live around here?”
Fiona had been enjoying her solitude and initially felt quite annoyed. Is he the one who followed me up the street?
“No, no, sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have . . . It’s just that I’m staying at the Greenacres Hotel down the road and I happened to notice you sitting here when I went past. I actually meant to get in touch today, because I’m heading back to LA tomorrow afternoon, but I ran out of time. Look, I’ll leave you in peace. I can see you’re chilling out here.”
She calmed down. “So you just walked in. You’re not actually eating here, I presume?” He shook his head and straightened his coat, making as if to leave.
Fiona hesitated. “Okay, seeing as you’re here, would you like a glass of this?” She pointed at her bottle.
“Are you sure?” Nathaniel asked. “Maybe you’d prefer to be by yourself?” But she was already signaling to the waiter for another glass.
“Okay, then, thanks,” Nathaniel said. “I just thought, you know, you might like to chat through some of the stuff we were talking about at the fund-raiser earlier. It’s probably easier here.”
The waiter arrived with a second glass, waited until Nathaniel sat down, and then poured wine into it for him.
Fiona sipped her wine and surveyed the restaurant. There were several other diners: a middle-aged Latino who had just come in and was sitting by himself two tables away, studying the menu, a British couple talking excitedly to each other, an old lady, a group of four businessmen—nobody who seemed to be a rival journalist, she was relieved to see.
She brushed her hair back over her shoulders.
Then she had a quick thought,
reached inside her bag, and took out her phone. She tapped the screen a couple of times, as if she were just checking her text messages, and put it on the table. It was always useful to record such conversations, in her experience.
Chapter Three
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Washington, D.C.
Nathaniel woke up in his hotel room. His head throbbed and his tongue felt dry. He groaned and put his hand on his temple, then sat up in bed.
What was I doing last night?
He glanced at the red glow of the digital clock on his bedside table, which told him it was quarter past six. He felt for the bottle of water and pack of aspirin he had put next to the clock.
Nathaniel’s memory of much of the previous evening felt a little hazy. Having followed Fiona to B Too, he had left her at around quarter past midnight and headed back to the Greenacres Hotel.
But instead of going to his room, he had gone to the bar.
There he had sat on a stool and ordered a local beer. What was it called? Ah yes, of course, The Corruption. He recalled looking at the bottle label and chuckling to himself. After drinking it, he had ordered another.
Shortly afterward, he had gotten into a conversation with a woman who was waiting for a friend. When the friend had turned up, the three of them had ended up sharing two bottles of shiraz followed by a couple of double whiskies each. By that stage, Nathaniel had been well and truly drunk.
Both women, slim, good-looking blonds, were political researchers who worked for different Republican senators, so they had mainly talked politics.
He had optimistically suggested they come back to his hotel room for a nightcap, but the two of them had looked at each other, giggled, then mumbled something about needing to get to bed and had left.
Nathaniel groaned again. It was all just too embarrassing.
He was still wearing the same clothes as the night before, and a feeling of nausea was starting to swell in his stomach.
Have I done the right thing?
“Ah, screw it,” he said out loud into the darkness, which was broken only by an eerie orange glow that seeped into his bedroom through a slight gap between the curtains. “They can’t carry on like that any longer. Somebody’s gotta put a stop to it.”
Nathaniel removed two aspirins from the pack and washed them down with some of the water.
Then he picked up his phone and tapped out a short message. Job done. Please make the first transfer now.
He selected a number from his list of contacts and pressed send.
There was the sound of a siren wailing as a police car sped down the road outside the front of the hotel. A hint of its red and blue lights strobed in through the bathroom window.
Now Nathaniel really was feeling sick. He could feel the bile rising in his throat, and he broke out into a cold sweat, a clammy, damp sensation that spread across his forehead.
Long experience of dealing with the after-effects of overindulgence told him he wasn’t going to be able to ride this one out. Better to vomit up the contents of his stomach and get it over with. He slid out from under the duvet and staggered into the en suite bathroom, battling to retain his balance as he went. There, he got to his knees in front of the white toilet bowl and began to retch.
He heaved three or four times before the cocktail of wine, whiskey, and food from the previous evening finally reappeared, leaving him feeling weak and wretched. Nathaniel kneeled on all fours, feeling drained and utterly sorry for himself.
It was then that he heard a noise behind him. He twisted his head and caught sight of a black, hooded silhouette standing in the doorway to the bathroom.
Through his alcohol-induced haze, Nathaniel felt his bowels turn over. The skin on his scalp tightened like a drumhead. “Hey, who’s that? Who are you?” he said, his voice rising sharply.
The dark shadow moved toward him, one arm raised in front.
Nathaniel couldn’t make out who it was beneath the hood, which was pulled down over the intruder’s face. But there was no mistaking the flash of silver from a long, wide-bladed knife the person was holding.
“As you said, somebody must put a stop to it,” a vaguely familiar man’s voice said. “I warned you to keep your mouth shut. But like your politician brother, you can’t stop talking, can you, my friend?”
Nathaniel instinctively yelled out, his voice now jabbering in fright. “No, no, I haven’t told anyone, I never said . . . please, don’t . . . no, no . . . ”
They were his last words.
The man, whom Nathaniel now recognized, rushed toward him and shoved him hard to the floor. His chin hit the white floor tiles, crunching his teeth together. Then he felt a hard blow in the center of his back.
At first he thought the man had hit him with his fist and flattened him. His first instinct was to somehow haul himself back up into a kneeling position. But as he did, he looked down. There, protruding from the left side of his chest, was the sharp, silver point of the man’s knife.
That was when Nathaniel Kudrow’s world went black.
Portland, Maine
The unusually warm November had allowed many trees in Portland to keep some of their red, yellow, and gold finery in a last stand before the assault from strong winds and overnight frosts finally finished them off.
But Johnson’s mind wasn’t on the fall colors outside.
His lecture at American University had gone well, but he hadn’t arrived home until after midnight because his evening flight back to Portland, some five hundred miles northeast of the capital, had been delayed by more than an hour. Then he had been up at half past six to fix breakfast for his children before they left for school.
Now, sitting in his home office, he clasped his phone to his ear. “No, Mrs. Richardson, you’ve called me four times in the past hour about this and it’s not really helping. As I said to you before, if we’re going to stand any chance of finding your husband and the girl, we’ll need to think where he would be most likely to take her.”
“Yes, I know that.” Mrs. Richardson, a high school assistant principal’s wife, was a nervous woman with a high-pitched voice. She had called Johnson a couple of days earlier, after her forty-eight-year-old husband had failed to return home after work.
One of the man’s former pupils, a striking blond girl whom he had recently been assisting with special Spanish-language tutoring to bolster her college applications, had also disappeared.
“The thing is, given that the girl is eighteen, it’s a difficult one to involve the police with,” Johnson said. “I’ve had checks done on his credit cards and bank cards, but they’ve not been used. He must be using cash. His phone seems to be switched off, so we can’t trace that—not easily, anyway. But you said he’s a creature of habit, likes routine—so can you do something for me? Just make a list of the places you have been to on vacation with him and the family in recent years—hotel details, everything—and e-mail it to me. Go back, say, over the past ten years.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
“Good. I’ll speak to you later, Mrs. Richardson. Thanks.”
Johnson ended the call and stood behind his desk, hands clasped behind his head, pen clenched between his teeth.
To deal with the Richardsons, Johnson had temporarily dropped another case, which involved a search for a professional baseball player who owed a lot of money and had vanished.
Johnson sighed. He sympathized with the woman, but it was just more of the same type of work: phone call after phone call, trawling through search engines, social networking websites, census archives, libraries, company accounts, and birth, marriage, and death records.
It really felt like small-town stuff.
He checked his watch. He hadn’t even had time for a second cup of coffee or to listen to the news. Now he needed to drive down to South Portland for a meeting with another client.
As Johnson pulled on his jacket, the family dog, Cocoa, a three-year-old, chocolate-colored Labrador, jumped up from his
prone position on the floor and began wagging his tail. “Sorry, boy,” Johnson said, patting Cocoa on the head. “Your walk will have to wait today. Later.”
He climbed into his blue Ford Explorer, then drove his usual route over the Casco Bay Bridge. The blue expanse of Casco Bay lay to his left, and to his right the Fore River and the white tanks of the Turners Island oil terminal glinted in a low wintery sun.
His phone rang and he glanced down at the screen. It was Fiona.
Johnson hesitated in answering. He still felt uneasy about the brief fling they had in 2006 after his wife’s death, during the months before he had moved from D.C. back to Portland. It had happened too soon, for all the wrong reasons, and Fiona had been hurt when he had ended it.
He felt it was a bad idea to reignite that particular flame, or to inadvertently seem open to reconnecting in that way, but he wasn’t sure what Fiona was thinking, especially given her comment at the fund-raiser that she’d been missing him. Then again, Fiona hadn’t actually said that was what she wanted either.
Johnson let the phone ring for several seconds, but then eventually pressed the green button.
“Hi, Fiona, I’m driving. How are—”
“Joe, have you heard?”
“Have I heard what?”
“About Nathaniel Kudrow?”
“No, what’s happened?”
“He was found dead, stabbed, in his hotel room first thing this morning, not far from my apartment.”
Johnson cursed. “Oh, shit. No. You’ve got to be joking.”
He swerved a little, almost sideswiping a van that was passing him.
“Unfortunately I’m not. It’s all over the news, radio, TV. We’re running a long story on it. I’ve just finished writing a piece for our website; that’s why I didn’t call you before. It’s a big story.”
Johnson exhaled. “Unbelievable. Do you know what happened?”
“A maid found him in the en suite bathroom. A huge knife wound straight through his chest, in at the back, out at the front. He’d been sick in the toilet and was supposedly attacked immediately afterward. Police already have a theory that whoever did it hacked the hotel door lock with some electronic tool. Nobody heard or saw a thing in the hotel. No screams, nothing.”
The Last Nazi (A Joe Johnson Thriller, Book 1) Page 3
