The Guise of Another

by Allen Eskens

  “And Jericho is dead,” she said. “That leaves me.”

  “They're running out of straws.”

  “But I don't know anything,” Ianna pleaded. “I've never even heard of this flash drive until just now. Jericho didn't tell me anything about it.”

  “I know that, but they don't.”

  Alexander took Ianna's bags to the guest bedroom—to the bed that Alexander now thought of as Desi's bed. Ianna sat on the edge of the bed, in a stunned sort of silence. Then, as if surfacing after a deep thought, she looked around and asked, “What's your wife going to think about my being here?”

  Alexander leaned against the doorjamb and said, “My wife isn't here. She's in Chicago with her lover.”

  Ianna didn't say anything for a long time, at least it seemed unbearably long to Alexander. When she did speak, she spoke with great tenderness. “You know for sure that she's with a lover?”

  “Yes,” Alexander said. “She left last night. She told me that she needed to go to Chicago for business, but that's not true.”

  “How do you know?”

  Alexander smiled and shrugged. “I'm a detective. It's what I do.”

  “I'm so sorry,” Ianna said. “You must be going through hell right now.” She stood and walked to Alexander. “I don't understand how she could do that to you. You have got to be one of the kindest men I've ever met.” She took one of his hands and lifted it to her cheek, and gently kissed his palm.

  It would have been so easy to twine his fingers into her hair and pull her into him. But he didn't pull her in. He didn't kiss her. And his hesitation had nothing to do with his marriage, or what was left of it. He couldn't kiss her because Ianna saw him as a good man. She didn't know the real Alexander, the man who slipped a bag of cash into his trunk, the man who would soon be indicted and fired and shunned, the man whose disgrace would soon be complete.

  He pulled his hand back slowly. “I'm not the man you think I am,” he said. He leaned in and kissed the top of her head. “I'm not that man at all.”

  Then he left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  Drago Basta had chosen his hotel with great care, picking one that accepted cash in lieu of a credit card. Once the police discovered Walter Trigg's identity, they would run his credit card and see where else it had been swiped. Using cash at the hotel would end their trail. This particular hotel had no security cameras, and two important geographical advantages. First, it was near the airport, giving him close proximity to vehicles, either a rental or one stolen from long-term parking. The second geographical advantage was that the hotel stood on the edge of the Fort Snelling State Park, a swath of river bottom and backwater where the Minnesota River pushed north into the Mississippi River. That stretch of wilderness skirted north past the airport and would provide unbeatable cover in a pinch.

  When Drago had arrived back at his hotel, he connected to the satellite that would feed him the audio and video from the eavesdropping equipment that he stashed all around Pope's apartment. He wondered what reaction Ianna Markova would have when she saw what he had done to her home.

  By the time he tapped into the network, he'd missed seeing her reaction. Instead, he saw Alexander Rupert tiptoeing through the apartment, gun in hand. Rupert left for a couple minutes and returned with Ms. Markova. That's when Drago heard Detective Rupert tell Ms. Markova that he would be taking her to his house for the night—for safekeeping. Drago smiled an almost-imperceptible smile. He had already planned to keep a close eye on one of the Ruperts. Now that he knew that Alexander and Ianna would be together, the next phase of his plan had written itself. He typed Rupert's name into his computer and in a matter of seconds had an address.

  Confident that he had the situation under control—despite having to kill the woman detective earlier than he had planned—Drago began cleaning his hotel room. First, he turned on the hot water in the shower to flush any of his stray hairs down the drain's trap. He also wiped down every surface in the bathroom, even ones he knew he hadn't touched. He had trained himself early in his career to touch as little as possible in a rented room. He never knew when he would need to make a hasty exit. He didn't watch television. He didn't use the drinking glasses or the desk, other than to hold his laptop. And when he had time to clean, he cleaned everything.

  He rolled the sheets and comforter into a wad and threw them into the hallway. Then he called the front desk and told the girl there that he had spilled water on his bedding and it needed to be changed. She would throw his bedding in with the rest of the laundry, forever hiding his skin cells and DNA among the sheets of every other guest. He looked around the room for anything he may have missed, any trace of his having been there. Satisfied that the police would find nothing, he called a cab to come pick him up.

  As he waited for the cab to arrive, he rearranged his wallet, inserting a new driver's license and credit card bearing the name Marvin Taube, his new identity. “Marvin,” he muttered. “Fucking Garland.” With Drago's dark, Eastern European features and accent, Drago Basta was as far from being a Marvin as he was from being a Linda.

  He packed his laptop, rearranged the surveillance equipment and burglary tools in the rucksack, and stacked them on top of the duffle bag that still held the M16 and the sniper rifle. Last, he locked the new silencer onto the new 9 mm automatic and slid it into the shoulder holster under his jacket. Then he sat to await a call from the front desk, telling him that his taxi had arrived.

  Max called Dispatch as he ran to his car. By the time he shot out of the airport parking ramp, he had the night commander on the line. And in a matter of a few minutes, they had a plan. Bloomington Police—the suburb that laid jurisdictional claim to the hotel—would set up a perimeter of two blocks in every direction. Undercover units would then enter the perimeter to infiltrate the hotel and secure it until Tactical arrived. Once they had the bastard surrounded, they would close in.

  Max had already entered the hotel parking lot as they finalized the plan. He would be the first to enter. He would find out a room number for the man he knew to be Drago Basta, and then get the clerk and any wandering guests out of harm's way. That was the plan.

  As he curled past the entrance, he could see a young woman organizing brochures on a rack just inside the glass door. He could see no other guests or movement. He trolled around a parking lot that circumnavigated the building. As he turned the corner at the rear of the hotel, he saw the Camry that he had seen in the surveillance footage at the parking ramp where Billie died. He slowed a little to see if anyone was inside the car and to confirm the license-plate number. He didn't make any move that might draw attention to himself, should Basta be watching.

  When he pulled back around to the front, he saw a taxi parked near the entrance, waiting for a fare. Max parked as near the entrance as he could find a spot. He left his jacket in the car and unclipped his shield and holster from his belt. He put the badge in his pants pocket, tucked his gun into his waistband behind his back, pulling his shirt-tail out to cover it. He looked up Interstate 494, knowing that an army of police cruisers would soon be rolling toward the hotel and sifting into positions assigned by the SWAT commander.

  He walked to the entrance, contemplating whether or not to stand behind the front desk himself until the reinforcements arrived, that way he could divert guests to safety. As he pulled the door open, the girl arranging brochures gave him a curious look, as if she were trying to decide whether Max were a new guest or one returning to his room. Before Max could even nod to her, he saw movement from the opposite side of the lobby, a figure making his way to the front door, a figure wearing a dark jacket and a baseball cap.

  Max averted his eyes, pretending to look down at his watch as he walked past the clerk. The man carried a duffle bag in his right hand, a computer case in his left hand, and had a backpack slung over his left shoulder. Max watched for any hesitation in the man's step as they neared each other and saw none—no sign that the man knew Max's face.

 
The man loosened his grip on the duffle, letting the handle slip to the tips of his fingers. Max peeked to the side as they passed each other and saw the scar. He saw the slight hook of the man's nose. He saw the face of Drago Basta.

  A mirror the size of a mattress covered the wall behind the reception desk. Max gave it a passing glance over his shoulder. He looked just in time to see Basta drop his duffle bag to the floor and in a single motion, almost balletic in its fluidity, slip his hand inside his jacket.

  Max Rupert saw the gun and dove to the floor, rolling behind a support column as big around as a hay bale. Two bullets exploded into the plaster, sending a small spray of paint chips and dust into the air. The clerk started to scream, but then she swallowed the sound as if choked off by something. Max pulled his gun out of his belt and looked over his shoulder at the mirror, his view ricocheting to the front door, where Basta held the clerk by the throat—his gun, with its long silencer, aimed at her head.

  Outside, the taxi squealed away.

  Max expected Basta to use the girl as a shield and back out, or to negotiate and try to get Max away from his cover—which wasn't going to happen. Basta did neither. He backed up to the door, opened it, and paused to look in the mirror, staring hard into Max's eyes. Then he lowered his gun from the girl's head, sliding it down her torso, past her hip, and to her leg. There he pulled the trigger twice in quick succession and shoved her forward into the heart of the lobby as he disappeared into the night.

  Max got off three shots, shattering the front door. The girl lay screaming on the floor, her hands gripping the two holes in her thigh.

  Max almost charged to her aid but stopped himself. Drago's aim, when he shot Billie, had been impeccable. He intended to kill Billie, and he did so with flawless efficiency. When he shot the clerk, he didn't intend for her to die—not right away. He shot her in the leg. He wanted to immobilize her. He wanted to use her as bait.

  The lobby had a sitting area with chairs and a coffee table. The coffee table had a stone top. Max dove into the sitting area, rolling up to the coffee table. He tipped the table over to hide behind the inch of granite. Then he scooted along the floor, shoving the table across in front of him. Two shots slammed into the thick granite top, blasting shards of the stone into the air.

  Max rolled up to the screaming girl, who looked at his gun with mushrooming eyes until she heard him say “I'm a cop.” He fired two shots out into the darkness for good measure. Five shots, he counted in his head.

  He looked at the clerk's wounds and the blood that pooled beneath her leg. She was bleeding badly. Max put his gun down and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, hit speaker, and dialed 911. Max put the phone on the floor near his head and began sliding his belt off his pants to use as a tourniquet.

  “Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?”

  “Tracy, it's Max. The shooter's here at the hotel. He's shot the clerk. Tell all cars to come in loud and proud. I want to see hell itself coming down the road.” He wrapped the belt twice around the girl's leg and yanked the buckle tight. “I'll need an ambulance for the clerk—gunshot wounds to her leg.”

  “Ten-four, Detective. Standby.”

  In the distance, he heard sirens howl out their positions, none of them yet within a mile of the hotel. Basta would have heard them as well. Like a hunted animal, either he would attack or he would flee. Max put the loose end of his belt into the girl's hand and picked up his gun again. He readied the weapon and listened for Drago Basta's charge.

  It had been ten minutes since Alexander last heard any sound coming from the guest bedroom. He listened to Ianna get ready for bed, her bare feet padding so quietly on the carpet that he had to hold his breath to hear. He lay in bed now, staring at the ceiling, regretting his decision to leave her alone. She was scared, in a strange place, alone. She sang his praises for being such a good guy, and then he shut the door on her. As he stared at the strip of moonlight that fell across his bedroom, he heard the patter of her feet again, moving hesitantly, almost imperceptibly down his hall. They paused at his bedroom door, and then the door creaked open.

  “Alexander?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he answered in a low voice.

  She entered his room, closing the door behind her with a light click. She wore a pink, silk robe that barely covered her body, its bottom hem brushing the top of her thighs. A thin ribbon of the silk held the garment closed around her waist. She walked to his bed and sat on the edge.

  “I can't sleep,” she said.

  Alexander rolled onto his side, his hand resting only inches away from her. “It's been a hard week. No one should have to go through what you went through.”

  “It's not that,” she said. “It's something you said. You said that I don't know you—like there is something about you that's dark.”

  “And if there were?”

  “We all have a past. I wouldn't judge you.”

  Alexander rolled onto his back, laced his fingers together behind his head and thought about telling this woman his secret, a secret he'd kept from his own wife and his brother. Through the smoke in his head, he could hear the voice of Donald Rivas telling the world what they'd done. In the end, Alexander could think of no good reason not to tell Ianna. If she shunned him, she would just be one of many to meet that expectation. If she didn't recoil, then he would have unburdened himself of a weight that had pressed at his chest every waking hour for the past three months.

  “In the morning,” he began, “I have to obey a subpoena to appear before a grand jury. You know what a grand jury is?”

  “I've heard of them.”

  “It's a group of citizens who sit in judgment. They are given facts, and they have to decide, based on those facts, whether or not to prosecute someone.”

  “And you're giving them some of those facts?”

  “Yes. But it's my party. I'm the one they're after.”

  Ianna didn't flinch or gulp or give any outward sign that what Alexander said had shocked her. “What do they think you did?”

  “I was assigned to a Task Force that went after drug dealers. We worked undercover and we set them up. We were good at it. And some of those drug dealers had money stashed away. I'm talking about big wads of cash jammed in bags, just lying around the house.”

  “And then those bags of cash started to disappear,” Ianna said.

  Alexander nodded.

  Ianna moved closer to his side. “I know all about that,” she said.

  “You do?”

  Ianna leaned into him and laid her hand on Alexander's arm, her fingers gently touching his bicep. “After you came to my apartment yesterday…you were so nice. I wanted to know more about you. I went online. I read all about what happened.”

  “What you didn't read online is that I'm guilty. I stole money. I didn't take anything at first. I watched as some of the other guys were getting away with it. Then one day my partner came to me with a bag. It had over a hundred thousand dollars in it. He said that we should just keep it. It was drug money, after all. He said, ‘Why shouldn't we get some of it? We were the ones risking our lives.’ So…we split it. And tomorrow morning when I appear before that grand jury, I'm pretty sure they're going to bust me up pretty good for it. My partner turned state's evidence. They probably have everything they need to toss me in prison.”

  Ianna gently brushed her fingers across his shoulder, moving her hand slowly up the side of his neck and resting it on his cheek. Her finger felt wonderful against his skin. She leaned down and kissed him on the lips. Then she whispered, “That doesn't matter to me. We've all done things in our lives that we wish we could do over. But you can't undo the past. All you can do is leave it behind.”

  The moonlight seeping through the blinds radiated off of her honey skin. She untied the ribbon that cinched her robe, letting the silk fall open to reveal the soft curve of her breasts. “Alexander, I know who you are. I see the truth inside of you, and I want to be with you. But I need to know if that's what y
ou want.”

  He tried to speak, but the words seemed to get tangled in his throat. As Ianna slipped the garment off her shoulders and let it fall away, Alexander managed to whisper the words that screamed in his head. “It's what I want—more than anything.”

  Drago Basta stood behind the pillar of the portico and trained his site on the overturned table, waiting for Max Rupert to make a mistake. How had the detective found him so quickly? It had to be the car—a GPS maybe. There were no other police around, so the detective either was working a hunch or was the spearhead of a force in transit. He could hear the shrieks of the night clerk on the floor of the lobby. He fired two rounds, hoping to see the bullets pierce a tabletop of cheap Formica. Instead, the bullets disappeared into a cloud of stone dust.

  Drago moved quickly to a new plan. The cop would be focused on stopping the bleeding in the girl's leg and probably preparing for another frontal attack. Drago wouldn't attack from the front. He still had the hotel key card that would open the back exit. He ran around the side and found the back door. He swiped the card through the slot. The light lit up green.

  But as he went to pull the door open, he heard the wail of sirens nearby. How far away were they? He calculated the time it would take to charge down the hall, shoot the detective, grab his duffle, and exit. Another siren cut through the night only a block away. He could see the halo of the emergency lights reflecting off of the buildings and trees at the end of the block.

  Drago clenched his teeth in disgust, secured his rucksack to both shoulders, tightened his grip on his laptop, and ran for the woods of Fort Snelling State Park.

  The full moon lit up the wetland in silver and gray, cut with black where the shadows of the trees crossed his path. In the bottom of the valley, a thin mantle of fog lifted from the marsh, hovering just above Drago's head. It reminded him of his childhood in Kosovo, camping in the hills outside of Štrpce, telling stories to scare his companions, stories made all the more real by the haze that hid the monsters just out of sight. His boyhood friends seemed so frightened by the fog, but for Drago Basta, it wrapped around him and held him tight like a blanket. He paused to fill his chest with the cool night air and listen for any crackle of leaves, or the calling of orders to announce that someone had seen him scuttle over the valley wall. He heard nothing.