by Stuart Woods
“Yes, Billy has briefed me on all that.”
“And you’re willing to take the time to train?”
“I can start now, and then do it more intensively when we’ve finished this film.”
“Then I’ll make you a gift of the airplane,” Stone said.
“Dad, I can afford to buy it from you.”
“And I can afford to give it to you.”
Peter grinned. “All right, I accept.”
“And you want to buy this hangar?”
“Yes, and I think it’s a really good deal.” Peter explained the circumstances and Livingston’s need to sell quickly. He gave his father Livingston’s attorney’s number. “Will you negotiate the deal?”
“I’ll call him now and get back to you,” Stone said.
They hung up.
“Did you hear that?” Peter said.
“Are you buying his Mustang?”
“He’s giving it to me.”
Billy laughed. “That’s a much better deal.”
They talked about flight training in the Mustang for a few minutes, then Peter’s phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Congratulations, kiddo, you’ve just bought yourself a hangar. His attorney accepted our offer, after calling his client. He faxed me his ground lease with the airport, which runs another eighty-six years, which looks good, and we can wrap it up today.”
“That’s great, Dad.”
“And one of Mike Freeman’s pilots is available to fly your new Mustang out here. He’s waiting for my call after we’ve closed.”
“Perfect.”
“Livingston’s pilot is making a hundred grand a year, and with all the work he’s doing—servicing his airplanes, taking care of paperwork, training—he’s worth it. I think you should hire him.
“I’ve pulled a boilerplate contract from our database, and after I’ve typed in the parties’ names and made a few small changes, I’ll fax it to you. Fax it back to both me and the lawyer and ask the bank to wire the funds to the lawyer, then we’ve closed. The bank will want you to fax them a letter.”
“I’ll do it the moment I get the contract.” He saw Billy answer his cell phone, then leave the room. “Thanks, Dad.” He hung up and waited for Billy to return.
• • •
Teddy closed the door behind him. “Betsy?”
“Yes. I’ve just had a phone call on the line at the apartment.”
“Who has that number? I don’t even have it.”
“A man named Harry Katz, who works for Pete Genaro.”
“All right, start packing. I’ll be there in half an hour, and we’ll get out.”
“No, no, Billy, we don’t have to move.” She began explaining what Katz had said. “For some reason, Pete wanted you to know that Majorov is coming to town.” She gave him Majorov’s ETA and the description of his airplane. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not convinced that Majorov is looking for me in L.A.,” Teddy said. “I’m going to look into it, though.”
• • •
Peter’s fax machine spat out the contracts. He looked them over, then signed them and faxed them back to the two numbers, then he wrote and printed a letter to his bank with the wiring instructions, asking for a confirmation when the funds hit the seller’s account. He called his father back.
“We’re closed, Dad. Thanks so much for your help.”
“Your Mustang will arrive at Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon, late. I’ve got the hangar number, and I’ll direct the pilot. Give him two thousand in cash and tell him to enjoy an evening in L.A. before flying back to New York.”
Peter turned to see Billy returning to the room. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up.
“We’ve closed on the hangar,” he said. “Dad says I should hire the pilot. What’s his name?”
“Tim Peters.”
“He makes a hundred grand a year now, and he does a lot for it. We can add flight instruction to his duties.”
“I’ve just had a call about my airplane,” Teddy said. “I have to go out to Santa Monica and move it right now. I can hire the pilot for you, if you like.”
“Great, do that. Tell him Ruth will send him an employment package next week, outlining the benefits and the health insurance. And you can put your airplane in the hangar. The Mustang arrives from New York late Sunday afternoon.”
“Great. I’ll be back later. Is that all right?”
“Sure, take the rest of the day off. Billy, I’m really excited about this.”
“You’re going to enjoy the experience,” Teddy said. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eleven, in your hangar.” He told Peter how to find it, then he left and headed for Santa Monica Airport.
Teddy drove quickly to Santa Monica, got buzzed through the gate, and drove to the hangar. He walked inside to find Livingston’s jet gone and Tim Peters packing things into boxes.
“Going somewhere?” Teddy asked.
“Home, I guess. Livingston sold the hangar, and less than half an hour ago fired me and flew his airplane to Burbank.”
“Did he give you any severance pay?”
“A month. I’ve been with him five years.”
“Put that in your pocket, then, and come to work for Peter Barrington.”
Tim blinked. “Who’s he?”
“My boss—a young film director and producer at Centurion Studios. He’s offering you a hundred grand a year and a package of benefits, including health insurance.”
“Then I accept,” Tim said.
“He’s an enthusiastic pilot. I’m starting his instrument training tomorrow in my airplane, a JetPROP, and as soon as we’re done with that, you can start giving him all the time he can handle in the Mustang. Flight Safety will want him to have some turbine time before he trains.”
“Not only can I do that, but there’s a training outfit on the field that’s bought a Mustang simulator from Flight Safety, so he can do his training here. They’ve got a night class to teach the ground school, and simulator training starts the first of the month. The biggest part of it is learning the avionics.”
Teddy gave him Peter’s card. “You can start by getting the utilities and phone switched to his company name, B&B Productions, and you can call Atlantic and ask them to tow my airplane over here. It’s going to live in the hangar, along with the Mustang.”
Tim sat down at his desk and picked up the phone. “What a relief! The wife is going to love it!”
“Oh, and get a cleaning service over here to clean the hangar and the apartment upstairs. I may be using it, myself.”
“I forgot to show you the pilot’s lounge,” Tim said. “It’s in the back left corner, and it has a computer station that connects to weather planning and Flight Services. There are a couple of reclining chairs for visiting pilots and a big-screen TV to keep them entertained while they’re waiting.”
“Good, I can use that for giving Peter ground school.”
“Are you type-rated for the Mustang?”
“No, just the 535 series of Citation jets, but I have the same Garmin 1000 software in my airplane, so getting typed wouldn’t be much of a jump, and that will be a help to Peter, since the Mustang has the same avionics.”
“I’ll get you type-rated. If you can learn the operator’s manual description of the systems, we can do it with some simulator time, a few hours of dual, and a checkride, and there’s an FAA examiner on the field.”
“Great, Tim.”
Teddy’s airplane arrived, and was backed into the hangar, leaving room for the Mustang. Teddy pulled his Porsche Speedster inside, too.
• • •
Teddy sat down in the pilot’s lounge and thought. If Majorov didn’t know where to find him, as Harry Katz had said, why would he be coming to L.A.? And if T
eddy wasn’t his target, that left Peter. He looked at his watch; Majorov’s G-450 was due in shortly. He went to his airplane and got some things, including a pair of binoculars that had a built-in camera, from his equipment case and left the hangar. He found an out-of-the-way perch at one side of the Atlantic Aviation ramp and waited.
• • •
Majorov pulled a file from his briefcase and handed it to the man who sat across the folding desk from him. They were half an hour out of Santa Monica and descending. “Mr. Chernensky,” he began.
“Call me Vlad, please,” the man said, in Russian.
“This is the material I have on the people who are your targets. There is a young man named Peter Barrington and his father, Stone Barrington. Young Peter does something in the movies, I’m not sure what, but I expect he lives in his father’s house at The Arrington. Security is very tight there. His father is a New York lawyer who is very influential on the board of The Arrington and is the key to my gaining control. He is based in New York, and when his son is dead, I feel he will be much more likely to wish to sell his interest in the hotel, and at my price.
“The third man is named William J. Burnett and is known as Billy. You should regard him as extremely dangerous.”
“I regard all targets as extremely dangerous,” Vlad replied. “No one is a lamb if he knows he is hunted. Does Mr. Burnett know he is hunted?”
“Yes, but it’s likely he feels that recent events have made him safe.”
“Do you mean your leaving Las Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“Why should he be concerned with whether or not you are in Las Vegas, if he is in Los Angeles?”
“I sent two men, on separate occasions, to deal with him. They both are dead. One of them was my sister’s boy. Neither of them was stupid.”
“I see. I will keep those facts in mind. On the other hand, he does not know me, does he?”
“Certainly not.”
“He will not expect someone of my age and mien of being an assassin.”
“Perhaps not—I cannot say. But you must remember, he is very wily.”
Vlad smiled a tight little smile, revealing gray teeth. “I am pretty wily, myself.”
• • •
Teddy watched as the big Gulfstream set down on runway 21 and engaged its engine reversers. Shortly, it taxied to a halt on the ramp at Atlantic Aviation, guided by the chief lineman. A large Mercedes van pulled up as the airstair door was lowered by a crew member.
Teddy trained his binoculars on the open aircraft door, focused them, and waited. A crew member came down the stairs carrying two large suitcases. He was followed by a large mustached man whom Teddy assumed was Majorov, and he took a rapid series of photographs. Then came someone Teddy had not expected.
A small, gray man in a black suit, white shirt, black tie, and black fedora, who might have been an undertaker, came slowly down the stairs, carrying a large, apparently heavy case that he would not allow anyone to take from him. He looked to be between sixty and sixty-five.
Intrigued, Teddy got as many shots of him as possible before he disappeared into the van with Majorov, and they drove across the ramp to the electrically operated security gate and waited for it to open. Teddy ran back into the hangar, tossed his equipment into the Speedster, and got it started. “Tim,” he called to the pilot, “if you want to meet your new boss, be here at eleven tomorrow morning.”
Tim ran over and held out a key ring. “Here are a few keys to the place. One key works in all doors.”
Teddy pocketed them and drove out onto the ramp. He saw the Mercedes van driving through the now-opened gate and hurried to catch the gate before it closed.
Teddy pulled into the parking lot outside the gate and, after noting the license plate number, let the van get a couple hundred yards from him before following. The van made a right turn, then a left, and then turned right onto I-10. At the next exit it turned onto 405 North, and Teddy followed, always keeping two or three cars between him and the van, which was easy to follow, because it was so tall. Teddy had seen photographs of that model given the sort of interior one would expect in a corporate jet.
Traffic was moving moderately well on I-405, and soon the van got off at the Sunset Boulevard exit and made a right. Five minutes later, at UCLA, it turned left onto Stone Canyon Road.
Is he headed for The Arrington? Teddy asked himself, but after another five minutes, the van turned into the entrance of the Bel-Air Hotel. Teddy drove straight on, then when out of sight, made a U-turn and went back to the hotel. He saw Majorov and the older man leave the van and head toward the check-in lobby, while a bellman unloaded their luggage.
Teddy parked on the street; he put on a blue blazer and a porkpie straw hat, then he ran across the road and the bridge into the grounds of the hotel. He saw Majorov’s back as he disappeared into the lobby. He walked around the freestanding building and saw a bench and a newspaper someone had left. He parked himself there, put on his sunglasses, and began to leaf through the paper. Ten minutes passed, then the two men left the lobby in the company of an assistant manager, who was chatting to them and getting little response.
Teddy made a point of not lifting his eyes from the paper as they passed him. He watched them take a turn past the outdoor restaurant, then got up and stood at the corner of the building, watching as they continued up a covered walk and past the swimming pool. He kept as much distance as possible between himself and his quarry, but he still managed to see which building they entered. After the door was closed, he got close enough to read the suite number, then he walked up a service road, out of the hotel’s grounds, and back to his car.
Teddy didn’t like the Bel-Air Hotel as an environment for killing—at least, not alone. There were two many people about, too many ends to tie together. Dealing with Majorov and/or his friend was a job for a team, not one man, and he did not work with a team.
• • •
Back at the airport, he drove into the hangar. Tim Peters was sitting at his desk, putting his belongings back into the drawers. Teddy went to the pilots’ lounge and went to work on the computer. He took the memory chip from his binocular-camera, inserted it into the computer, and copied the photographs of Majorov and his friend onto the hard drive, then he encrypted the file. He set up a path through half a dozen other computer sites to the CIA mainframe, and logged on to it. After another half a minute’s work he was into the Agency’s face-recognition program.
The program identified Majorov almost immediately and brought up a file on him. Teddy read it avidly and committed the salient details to memory. Then he switched to the photographs of Majorov’s companion; the computer took much longer and it required all the photographs before the man was identified. Teddy read the file:
Vladimir Ivanovich Chernensky, born Kiev, Ukraine, 1951, served in Soviet Army 1969–74, trained as a sniper. Tried for murdering his platoon sergeant, acquitted, but discharged. Seems to have become associated with criminal gangs in Moscow as a young man. Entered U.S. 1997 on a Polish passport, then disappeared, probably now in Brooklyn, NY. Rumors of use by the Russian Mafia as an assassin, acquiring sobriquet “the Viper.” Said to be a crack shot with rifle or handgun and good with knife and razor. Said to be inventive in his work.
That was all, but it was more than enough to worry Teddy. He made a phone call on his cell phone.
“Mike Freeman.”
“It’s Billy Barnett.”
“Hi, Billy, you ready to come work for us?”
“Not yet—probably not for several months.”
“Is something else occupying your time?”
“Yes. Majorov landed in Santa Monica a couple of hours ago and has checked into the Bel-Air Hotel.” He gave Mike the suite number.
“That’s interesting to know,” Mike said. “Do you think he’s an immediate threat to anyone I know?”
“He brought with him a man from New York—write this down: Vladimir Ivanovich Chernensky, early sixties, five-seven, a hundred and thirty, gray hair. Known in Brooklyn as ‘the Viper.’”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Mike said.
“There isn’t anything to like about this man. He’s an assassin, pure and simple: rifle, handgun, knife, razor—probably poison and a dozen other ways to kill. He’s not the sort of person a sane man would choose to travel with. He was carrying a heavy suitcase that he wouldn’t let anyone touch.”
“I’m in L.A. I’m going to talk to Stone about this and suggest putting some people on him and Peter.”
“If you’ll forgive the suggestion, I think you should do it surreptitiously with Mr. Barrington and confine your protection of Peter to transporting him between The Arrington and Centurion Studios. I’m doing some work for him at the studio and at Santa Monica Airport, and we’ll be spending a lot of time together, so I can watch his back. I’ll e-mail you photographs of Chernensky and Majorov, and you can distribute them to your people.”
“Maybe I can get Chernensky arrested before he has time to move.”
“He has no criminal record in the United States and by this time probably has an ironclad identity,” Teddy said, “so it would be difficult to have him arrested. If he gets anywhere near Peter, I’ll deal with him. If he gets near Mr. Barrington, I recommend he be dealt with . . . informally.”
“That’s out. We don’t do that sort of thing—too much to lose.”
“Then tell your people not to get in my way,” Teddy said, then hung up. He e-mailed the photographs to Freeman, printed out some copies, then got into his car and drove back to Centurion Studios.
Peter was editing when Teddy walked in.
“I thought you were taking the day off,” Peter said.
“I finished my work, and I’d like to talk to you.”
Peter switched off the machine, and they moved into his office.
Teddy placed the hangar keys on Peter’s desk. “The hangar is all yours. One key works every lock. I’d like your permission to make use of the apartment in the hangar, if you don’t need it.”
