The security team marched the nude couple into the main house. Quinn and Beck stood in the doorway.
“Who’s the guy with your father?” Joachim asked.
“His name’s Ross Andros.” Sapphira smiled. “You and he have a lot in common, actually.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He’s got a collection of knife scars and bullet wounds that he doesn’t talk about, either.”
One of the security guards sprinted from Quinn to the band. After a whispered exchange, the band started playing again and the lead singer called people back to the dance area.
“I want to dance,” Sapphira declared, taking Joachim’s beer from his hand.
“All right.” Joachim took her hand and surprised her by leading her out onto the dance floor. But his thoughts were on Elle, wondering if she’d made it back through the sea to her boat.
ELLE SURFACED BESIDE THE BOAT and found her father standing watch with a Kalashnikov rifle in his hands. Finding the rifle hadn’t been too difficult. The previous owner had claimed to use it as a shark gun.
“You had a bit of excitement,” her father said. His words were calm, but she heard the tension in them.
“A bit.” Elle caught hold of the ladder, slipped her swim fins off, and pulled herself up. She held up the sodden pillowcase. “A bit of luck, too, I hope.”
“I saw that you found Joachim Reiter.” Her father started the boat. The powerful engines shuddered to life.
“I did,” Elle admitted. “Those infrared binoculars you were using are very good.”
“The best that the Swiss make,” he agreed. “What is Reiter doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s wanted in Germany for killing a BND agent. Perhaps he’s seeking new employment.”
Elle shook her head. “I don’t know what happened there, but he’s smarter than that.”
The memory of his heated kiss still elevated her pulse. Damn him! What had he been thinking? And why couldn’t she think of anything else?
“He did aid in your escape when it might have been best if he had captured you.”
“I know.” Elle shivered in the cold. Thinking about Joachim Reiter left her feeling confused. On several levels. She had no clue why he had turned up here. Or how.
“There is a blanket below,” her father said. “You should try to stay warm.”
Elle started below.
“There is also a Thermos of coffee,” her father said. “In case you happen to think of your father.”
Despite the aftermath of the adrenaline surge, the confusion over Joachim Reiter and trying to figure out what her next move would be, Elle grinned. “I’ll bring it out.”
“I always said you were a good daughter.”
Chapter 21
Mykonos Town, Mykonos
The Cyclades Islands, Greece
For two days, Elle kept close watch over Vasilios Island. The digital cameras and planners she’d stolen from Quinn’s home hadn’t netted any information. Whatever Quinn was up to remained a mystery.
During that time, Vasilios Quinn kept his operations buttoned down tight. He didn’t go anywhere and entertained no one. No doubt her breakin had made him extra cautious.
Sapphira Quinn came and went often, brought by a small group of security men who flanked her throughout her visits to the islands and the mainland. She shopped and partied and saw a few friends.
Twice Joachim Reiter had gone with her. Both times Elle had experienced a twinge of unease and anger that she hadn’t wanted to feel. Despite her father’s attempts to find out information about the man through SVR intelligence, no explanation could be found for Joachim Reiter’s presence in the Greek Islands.
She was hitting the bar scene, floating along through the tavernas hoping to find Joachim’s trail, or Sapphira’s or Beck’s. During the last two days, she’d discovered that Ross Andros made the party scenes in a big way as well.
Seated at one of the open-air tables at almost nine o’clock, Elle sipped a glass of wine and watched the docks. The tourist crowd was in full swing, and roving groups plowed from one end of the island’s bar scene and back again, growing steadily more raucous.
Her father, dressed now in slacks and a nice shirt she’d helped him pick out, approached her and sat at her table. He smiled. “Hello.”
“You have a reason for risking our cover?”
“Our cover is intact,” her father insisted. “By now everyone knows you’re my daughter, whom I check up on regularly.”
It was true. Her father was better at getting inside a local environment than she was. He spent his mornings gossiping with the old fishermen who had eyes on everything and listened for news constantly. Lunches he spent with some of the lonely women who owned their own businesses, either tavernas or tourist gift shops. And evenings he spent chasing after women much too young for him, but getting to know the local Lotharios.
“Did you just come to chat?” Elle asked.
“You act as though you’re not glad to see me.”
A pang of guilt sliced through Elle. “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Your sister?”
That’s one of the things, Elle thought. She knew they weren’t going to talk about the other. “I’d feel better if I can talk to her.”
“She would want to know why you disappeared and why you haven’t been in touch.”
“I know.”
“If the CIA learn of Lenin’s Lullaby, they will come into this area quickly. Too quickly. We are here and we are effective. What is that American saying? Too many cooks spoil the broth?”
“Something like that,” Elle agreed. “But I think it may be an English saying.”
Her father waved it away. “Whatever. The point is, we don’t need outside interference at this juncture.”
“I know. I just wish we were doing more.”
“I had a fabulous idea today,” her father stated. He smiled smugly.
“Do I have to wait to be amazed?”
“You’re young,” he said. “You still have plenty of time for fabulous ideas. It’s good to be your father and still occasionally one step ahead of you.” He waved down a harried server and asked for coffee.
“I’m getting older,” Elle said.
“Do you remember the two things you can always trace men by? And most women?”
“Sex and money,” Elle answered automatically. That had been one of his first lessons and it remained true today.
“Yes. Today I was talking to Nestor. Do you remember Nestor?”
“The old fisherman who repairs nets.” Elle found that keeping up with the people her father met was harder than managing those she encountered. However, her father’s assets were more colorful and individual than hers.
“Exactly. Well, I was talking to Nestor this morning and he was complaining to me that if he’d been smarter about things when he was younger, he’d have put away savings and been retired by now. Or at the very least owned a much nicer boat. He commented that there were any number of young people who managed investments here in the islands. So I started wondering—”
Elle knew exactly what her father had been wondering. “Who manages our target’s accounts.”
Her father smiled. “I did train you very well.” The server arrived with his coffee. He paid her and sent her on her way.
“We didn’t think of it two days ago,” Elle said.
“We should have.”
“A legitimate accountant won’t know about our target’s extracurricular activities.”
“No, but we should be able to negotiate something.” Her father laced his fingers across his flat stomach. “I think, if we can forge such a relationship with the man who handles our target’s affairs, that we might be able to parlay it into greater leverage.”
“Do we know who that is?”
“Unfortunately, not yet. But I have gotten in touch with Ashimov in Moscow and had him put his considerable talents to the quest.”
Elle nodded. If anyone could turn up something on a deep search involving money, Ashimov could. “So we’re waiting.”
“For the moment, yes. But it is one more card we have in play.” He sipped his coffee and looked uncomfortable.
Elle waited. When her father was uncomfortable with an idea, there was no getting it out of him till he was ready. She sipped her wine, feeling a little too relaxed and thinking that maybe she’d let her drinking get ahead of her. But it was nothing a good walk couldn’t cure.
“I found Joachim Reiter’s apartment here on the island,” her father told her.
Elle’s breath stilled in her lungs. Her brain suddenly raced, turning over the implications of that soft statement. If her father had viewed Joachim as a threat, which he sometimes did, then he might have moved directly to eliminate that threat.
“I have an address for him.”
So he’s still alive. Elle let her breath out.
Her father reached into his jacket and produced a card. “Do you remember Layna?”
“The woman who runs the coffee shop.”
“There are several coffee shops, actually, but she does run the best of them.”
Watching her father, Elle decided he might actually be smitten with the woman. That amazed her. However, there was something magical on the islands that brought out feelings better left buried. At least, that was what she’d been telling herself the last two nights she’d tossed and turned in her own bed while thinking of Joachim Reiter.
“As it turns out, Layna has a good friend who manages property rentals,” her father went on. “I told her that my daughter had been attracted to a young man she met at a party—”
“You did not,” Elle interrupted.
“Layna was more than happy to help act as matchmaker.” He slid the card across the table. “He registered as Joachim Kleinner.”
Elle took the card. “It might not be him.” She tried to hide her excitement.
“It is him. I saw him there earlier.”
“You didn’t talk to him?”
He shook his head. “Actually, I thought you might be the more persuasive of us.” He shrugged. “I also believe you’ll be better able to judge if we can trust him.”
“And if we can’t?”
Opening his hands, her father shrugged. “Then he needs to be removed from the game board. The closer we get—the closer you get to our target—the more dangerous Joachim Reiter’s knowledge about you becomes.” He hesitated. “There is a lot at stake in our mission. Not just our lives.”
So she would have to kill him.
Elle took a deep breath. “Let me think about it.”
ELLE LOOKED AT THE SMALL HOUSE built into the hillside. According to her father’s briefing, the house had six rooms to let. Joachim Reiter had taken one on the second floor.
Lights from the nearby Cavo Tagoo Hotel spilled neon into the street. Pedestrian traffic trickled through the front door as tourists returned to their rooms.
“It doesn’t look as though he’s in,” Elle commented. She couldn’t help wondering if Joachim was with Sapphira Quinn. She shut down that line of thinking.
“If he isn’t, he will be.” Her father took a breath. “Do you want me to go with you?”
Elle tried to appear to think about that. “No. A woman going up to the room alone won’t draw as much attention. But if one of the other renters sees us together and realizes we don’t live there, it could trigger a call to the police.”
“Agreed. Reluctantly. This man, by all accounts, he is a dangerous man. If he feels threatened, he might not hesitate to kill you.”
“I won’t allow that,” Elle replied. At her back, she felt the weight of the SIG-Sauer P-226 9mm her father had gotten from one of the black marketeers on the island.
“See that you don’t.” He nodded toward a small taverna only a block away. “I will be there.” He held up the walkie-talkie he carried in his jacket pocket. “If you need me—”
“I won’t,” Elle said. “But if I do, I’ll call.”
“Be careful.”
“And you.”
Without another word, he turned and walked down the street.
Silently, Elle took a breath and turned her attention to the rental property. She walked as if she belonged there, going up the stairs at the back and finding number six easily.
The lock was an easy one. She was through it in the time it would have taken to use a key.
Inside the rooms, she didn’t use a light. If someone had been watching her from outside that would have appeared strange. But she hadn’t felt anyone’s eyes on her. She and her father had already checked the neighborhood to make certain Quinn hadn’t assigned anyone to watch over Joachim.
The flat was simple. A bedroom/living quarters with two windows, one that looked out over the street separating the building from the Cavo Tagoo and another that looked out over the alley, occupied most of the space. A small bathroom took up the rest.
Elle stood in the center of the room and drew in a deep breath. Even over the closed-in smell of the room, she could detect Joachim’s musk. A tingle raced up her spine.
Don’t, she told herself. She walled off the reaction before it could get started. Forcing herself to remember that BND Agent Schultz had a family who would never see him again, she slipped the SIG-Sauer from her waistband and sat at the small desk against the wall by the window. She positioned herself so the muted light from the window never touched her.
And she began to wait.
ONE HOUR AND THIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES later, a key rattled in the lock.
Elle picked the pistol up from the desk. She’d been fighting sleep, thinking perhaps she should have brought a coffee with her but knowing that the smell of it would have given away her presence. Now, however, she was wide-awake.
She remained seated in the chair. In the darkness, a person’s peripheral vision could still pick up movement. The safety was already off the pistol and a live round was chambered.
Aiming deliberately, she centered the pistol on the shadow that stepped through the doorway. The rectangle of light from outside stopped inches short of her.
Joachim automatically reached for the light and switched it on. He saw her immediately.
That was the moment, Elle knew, feeling it stretch tight and thin between them, that he lived or died. Or escaped. Though she couldn’t truly imagine that because she was a good shot.
He wouldn’t make it back through the door without being dead or wounded.
Instead of moving, he froze. His face was calm. “What’s the occasion?”
“We need to talk.”
“I gathered that from the way you didn’t shoot me as soon as you saw me.”
“Come in,” she said. “Close the door behind you. And pull the curtains over the window.”
“I didn’t see the old man anywhere.” Joachim closed the door behind him and pulled the curtains. He placed his hands on his head.
“Down on your knees,” she told him.
Without a word, he dropped to his knees. He wore a swimsuit and an open shirt that exposed his washboard abs and tanned chest. Being near the sea agreed with him.
“Are you armed?” she asked.
“No.”
Elle eased to her feet and kept the pistol tucked in close to her body so it couldn’t be knocked away easily.” She slipped a pair of handcuffs from her pocket. They weren’t the disposable plastic kind she preferred. Rather, they were the old-fashioned steel ones that required a key. As it turned out, there were a few shops, if a person knew where to look for them, that provided for more…exotic tastes. Elle didn’t ask her father how he’d come to learn about those places. “Give me your left wrist.”
“This isn’t necessary,” he growled. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I feel that it is necessary,” Elle countered.
Cursing, he pushed his left hand behind his back.
Elle expertly hooked his wrist. “Now the oth
er one.”
Joachim slid his right wrist behind his back. As she opened the other cuff, he reared back into her, knocking her back. She went with the impact, wanting to be as far away from him as she could. Tripping, she plopped to her bottom on the floor with her back against the wall. He rushed her like an animal on his hands and knees, throwing himself at her.
He lay on top of her as she shoved the pistol against his forehead. He didn’t try to take the weapon from her grip, just stared at her with those predatory gray-green eyes.
“Shoot me,” he said in a hoarse voice, “and you’ll be killing my family, too.”
Family? That jarred Elle. No one had mentioned a family. Was he married? Did he have children? She froze but knew if he made a move to harm her she’d pull the trigger.
“You’ll also have to shoot your way past the two men that Quinn and Beck have following me around,” he said.
“What family?” Elle asked.
“My mother,” he answered. “My sister and her husband. My niece.”
Elle looked up at him, hoping that she didn’t have to kill him. “I don’t understand.”
“I work for a man,” Joachim said. “A very dangerous man. Günter Stahlmann. He’s a criminal underworld leader in Leipzig.”
“Yes.” Stahlmann was mentioned in Joachim’s file.
“I’ve worked with Günter for years,” Joachim said desperately. “Since I was a kid. I had to support my family after my father…died. During that time, he’s always trusted me. At least, as much as Günter trusts anyone. After Amsterdam, Günter decided he didn’t trust me so much.”
Elle listened, feeling the weight of him against her. Her eyes searched his, but she felt that he was telling the truth.
“I’d been talking to the BND,” Joachim said. “Negotiating a deal with an agent named Schultz. I was turning information about Günter’s operations in exchange for my own amnesty. Günter put me in a box. I didn’t have a choice about betraying him. I couldn’t shake loose. Günter framed me for Schultz’s death, putting me back in his box this time. He sent me here, to find out what Beck was doing, and he’s holding my family hostage.”
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