Look-Alike

by Meredith Fletcher

  “There’s nothing that I enjoy more than aiding a beautiful woman,” Chatzidakis said, smiling broadly.

  “You are so kind,” Elle said.

  “Have you had breakfast? The cafe here is very good.” Chatzidakis waved her to a seat.

  Elle hesitated for a moment, putting on a show for the bodyguards, then sat across from Chatzidakis.

  “Now what are you trying to find?” He took the guide she offered.

  Dropping her hand inside the camera case in her lap, Elle spoke without the affected accent, “Markos Chatzidakis, do I have your attention?”

  Startled, he looked up at her. Fear tightened his brown eyes.

  “Good,” Elle said. “First of all, I want you to know that I have a pistol in this camera case.”

  “I have three bodyguards.”

  “I know that, but here’s how this is going to play.” Elle slipped the sunglasses from her eyes and smiled as if they were having a friendly discussion. “If you call to them, I’m going to shoot you. My accomplice, who is on top of one of the shops—”

  Chatzidakis lifted his gaze and started searching. Clearly he’d never been so close to death before. Good. His lack of experience was a great advantage.

  Elle waited, knowing the man would spot her father on the tourist shop just behind her. “Do you see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you do anything—anything—other than work with me, he’s going to shoot you,” Elle said. “He’s a very good shot at this distance. Then we’ll sort out your bodyguards.” She paused and smiled again. “I very much doubt that you’ll be in any shape to care how it all ends up.”

  “What do you want?” Sweat beaded on Chatzidakis’s forehead.

  A server came over but Elle waved him away. “I want Vasilios Quinn’s personal accounts. All of them.”

  Chatzidakis protested. “Quinn will kill me.”

  “Quinn,” Elle pointed out, “isn’t sitting across from you in this chair this morning. And we’re going to give you amnesty if you cooperate. A free pass. We’ll get you out of the country.”

  Chatzidakis hesitated only a moment. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go to this Web site.” Elle gave him the site address. “Then enter the information about Quinn’s accounts.”

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  Elle fixed him with her gaze and smiled comfortably. “Want to live long enough to find out if I do?”

  Without a word, looking pained, Chatzidakis started typing.

  Taking a cell phone from the side of the camera case, Elle punched speed dial.

  “Yes?” Ashimov answered on the other end.

  “We’re at go.”

  There was a brief pause, then the Russian computer expert said, “I have him. Tell him to give me the information on the Swiss accounts first. I’ll be better able to find out if he tries holding out on us with those.”

  “All right.” Shifting from Russian to English, Elle spoke to Chatzidakis. “The Swiss accounts first.”

  The man glowered at her.

  “All of them,” Ashimov said. “Two are missing.”

  “The other two as well,” Elle said, relaying the information. “List the passwords for each. Then the accounts in Barbados, followed by the accounts in the Cayman Islands.”

  Chatzidakis hesitated.

  “Quickly,” Elle snapped. “I don’t have all day. Sooner or later your bodyguards will become suspicious. I can’t be responsible for what happens then.”

  Chatzidakis complied. With Ashimov quietly directing her over the phone, Elle watched the accountant and his men. When properly motivated, Chatzidakis could type exceedingly fast. In less than twenty minutes, Ashimov assured her they had it all.

  “Now,” Elle said, smiling more broadly and putting her sunglasses back in place, “you get to live if you do exactly what I say.”

  “You already promised,” Chatzidakis said. He looked ready to cry.

  “I did, and I mean it.” When Quinn discovered his money was missing—and he would—Elle knew that Chatzidakis’s disappearance would further confuse the man. “I’m going to walk away now. Don’t call out to your friends. Don’t call Quinn and warn him because it’s already too late. My friend is draining those accounts even as we talk. Just sit here until I’m gone.”

  “All right.”

  Elle stood and made a display of thanking Chatzidakis for his time. Then she turned and walked back toward the marina and the boat she and her father had rented.

  Her father joined her as she was stepping down into the boat. “That went well,” he said.

  “I thought so,” Elle agreed. She cast off the mooring rope as her father took the wheel and powered them up. She held her cell phone up to her ear again and called Ashimov. “Did you get it?”

  “I did,” Ashimov replied. A grin sounded in his voice. “You know, Elle, I’ve only been this rich four times in my life.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” Elle warned. “You can’t keep the money.”

  “But he’s a bad man,” Ashimov protested.

  “Some would say you are a bad man.”

  Ashimov laughed. “You know that’s not true. I have worked very hard for you.”

  “Which is why you’re getting a percentage of everything you lifted from Quinn’s accounts,” Elle agreed.

  Her father turned the boat without incident and powered east across the open sea toward Mykonos.

  “How long before Quinn finds out he’s broke?” Elle asked.

  “Not long,” Ashimov said. “Not long at all if he’s watching his accounts. Judging from the dire straits of his current finances, I would assume he keeps a close eye on things.”

  But not close enough, Elle thought with cruel satisfaction. Over the last day and a half, since the night she’d spent time in Joachim Reiter’s arms and bed, she’d learned to detest Vasilios Quinn even more. She blamed Quinn for the confusion she felt every time she thought of Joachim.

  If things had ended in Amsterdam, with the two of them sharing a few near misses and an unresolved attraction, she would have been fine. However, now she knew that her actions—necessary though they were—had placed Joachim in the line of fire. If something happened to him, she knew she was going to feel responsible. She couldn’t let that get in the way of the mission.

  “Are you all right?” her father asked.

  “I will be,” she told him, but she kept her gaze out to sea. She’d never been able to look him in the eye and successfully lie to him.

  Chapter 23

  Vasilios Island

  The Cyclades Islands, Greece

  Cold rage expanded inside Vasilios Quinn as he gripped the phone. Screaming a curse, he threw the device across the room and stared once more at the damning computer monitor on his desk.

  All of his accounts in Switzerland, Barbados, the Caymans and the United States were pale, anemic shadows of what they had been.

  “I take it Chatzidakis was not at home.” Arnaud Beck lounged quietly in one of the expensive leather chairs in Quinn’s office.

  “No, he’s not.” Quinn went to the window that had been replaced only days ago and stared out over the pool. His daughter, Sapphira, lounged poolside with two young men.

  “Joachim Reiter was not involved in the Chatzidakis matter,” Beck said. “My men have had him under observation since the…disturbance at your daughter’s party. He’s made no attempt to hide what he’s doing.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Judging by his actions, he’s trying to find me.” Beck grinned at the thought of that.

  “Why?”

  “His boss, Günter Stahlmann, knows me. Just as he used to know you.”

  “It would have been better if you’d have disappeared as I did.”

  “Looking back on things now, from our present perspective, I’m inclined to agree. But I would have had to find someone to murder me.”

  “Who has my money then?”

 
“My guess is the woman.”

  “The CIA agent? St. John?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To make you tell her what you know about Marion Gracelyn’s death.”

  Angrily, scarcely able to contain himself, Quinn paced the floor. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t know anything about that woman’s murder.”

  “But you shared a blackmailer,” Beck pointed out. “Perhaps St. John is after her.”

  “She would go to these lengths?”

  Beck lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “It remains to be seen. There is the possibility that you were simply robbed by an outside party.”

  Quinn didn’t want to accept that. He couldn’t. If whomever took his money was an anonymous person, he might not be able to get his money back.

  “You still have the deal with the Berzhaan terrorists,” Beck pointed out. “That alone can make you wealthy.”

  “I don’t want to give up this life I’ve made here,” Quinn said. “I’ve grown…comfortable with it. It suits me.”

  “You lost your edge here, Klaus.”

  Hearing his old name shocked Quinn. No one called him that anymore. Klaus Stryker had died twenty years ago, just footsteps ahead of a Russian retaliation and CIA strike team.

  “You need to get back to the man you used to be before you took all this soft living for granted,” Beck said. He smiled but there was no mirth. “You can get back there. We grew up together. Think. Twenty years ago you would have already had a plan in place.”

  “If it is St. John,” Quinn said, shuffling the bits and pieces that he knew, “we know she has a relationship with Joachim Reiter.”

  “He helped her escape the security guards here.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.”

  “Certainties are for the law,” Beck said. “You and I, we operate by a different set of rules. Even if we kill the wrong person, the situation becomes clearer.”

  When the theft had occurred, Quinn had let Joachim Reiter’s probable involvement slide. That was when Beck had put him under constant surveillance. For the last few days, the German leg-breaker had maintained an interest in watching things, but stayed apart. Only Sapphira had anything to do with him, and then just to anger her father.

  “They spent the night together,” Beck reminded.

  Beck’s spies had told him that, but they hadn’t identified her until the next day. At the time they had believed St. John to simply be a woman Joachim had picked up in a taverna, or a prostitute. Since that night, she’d been a ghost, never anywhere on his radar screen.

  “For the moment, she is in command of her game,” Quinn said. “We have to wait to be contacted. If she was behind this.”

  “I believe she was.”

  “But that won’t stop us from adding our own dimension to the game,” Quinn went on. “Bring Joachim Reiter in. We’ll up the ante.” He took a deep breath as Beck pulled a cell phone from his pocket and made the call. It felt good to be back in control of something.

  Mykonos Town, Mykonos Island

  Günter Stahlmann was growing impatient. Joachim heard that in the man’s voice even though Günter tried to act sublimely confident.

  Seated in one of the tavernas facing the harbor, Joachim tried to remain calm. That was becoming increasingly hard. At first he’d been concerned for his family, who remained in good health as of this morning. But now he was preoccupied with thinking about Elle. He hadn’t seen her since the night they were together.

  Images of her on top of him, under him, in his arms and in his shower wouldn’t leave his mind. He could close his eyes and smell the heat of her again, feel the smoothness of her skin gliding against his, hear the sounds of their bodies straining together and taste her lips on his.

  The following morning he’d woke drenched in sweat from a nightmare that had borrowed from events that night. In the dream, Beck had held Elle naked and bound on her knees, one hand knotted in her hair and the other holding a pistol at the back of her head. Beck had grinned at her and shot her. The bullet had ripped through Elle, exploding her beautiful face all over Joachim.

  “How much longer am I supposed to wait?” Günter asked.

  “Give me a few more days.”

  “And what if you have nothing to report then?”

  Joachim didn’t know. “Approaching Quinn isn’t like going after someone who owes you money. I don’t have the necessary leverage.” Surely Günter understood that.

  “Two more days,” Günter said harshly. “Two more days, Joachim. Then we start talking about consequences. In the meantime, think about whom in your family you least want to lose. Your mother? Your sister? That still leaves your brother-in-law and your niece. Which of those should I start with? Think about it. I will.”

  Günter hung up the phone before Joachim could make a reply.

  Joachim finished his flavored water and paid his tab. He had to get out and move. All around him, tourists and residents went on with their vacations and everyday lives. It wasn’t fair. Some of the anger and helplessness he felt was almost ready to spill over onto them.

  Outside, distracted by his own worries, Joachim didn’t notice the men closing in on him till it was too late. He turned and started to run.

  Then he saw her—Elle Petrenko—seated at a bar with a good-looking man who looked like an American. She was dressed casually, like a tourist, and she looked at him as if she was shocked to see him.

  For a second too long, Joachim hesitated, wondering what she was doing there and who the man was she was with. Something sharp pierced his left thigh. When he looked down, he saw the feathered tranquilizer dart standing out from his flesh. Not again.

  He tried to move then, but unforgiving blackness sucked his conscious mind into it. Trapped there, he witnessed the nightmare again, watching Elle’s beautiful face turn to gory crimson ruin in an explosive rush.

  AT THE TABLE IN THE TAVERNA, Samantha St. John tensed as she watched the man stumble. She lost sight of him as a throng of passing tourists crossed between them. When she saw the man again, he was limping between two men.

  “What’s wrong?” Riley asked. He sat across the table from her, looking fatigued.

  “That man.” Sam gestured and half stood to try to see more of him.

  Riley turned and looked in the direction she indicated. “Which one?”

  “I think it was Joachim,” Sam said, craning her neck to get a better look at the man and his companions. Unfortunately, foot traffic prevented anything other than a few glimpses. By that time, the men were already down to the docks.

  “Let’s take a look,” Riley said, dropping money on the table to pay for their drinks.

  “Yes.” Sam took the lead, moving through the crowd of pedestrians, down the incline and around the groups of fishermen repairing their nets.

  The late afternoon sun slammed into her with unaccustomed intensity. For the last week they had been trying to get a lead on Elle, but whatever hole her sister had fled into seemed to have closed after her.

  In frustration, Sam and Riley had gone to Leipzig, trying to pick up Joachim Reiter’s trail or the one that had ended in the murder of her parents twenty years ago. She and Riley had spent three days chasing themselves. There had been no sign of Elle or Joachim.

  Then, that morning, a CIA agent who had been tailing a man named Markos Chatzidakis as the result of another operation had called in complaining that “Special Agent Samantha St. John” had rousted his target. Chatzidakis had quit Syros and it looked like he wasn’t returning.

  Since Sam had been in Leipzig, and since the CIA agent in Syros that had identified her was a man she’d worked with before, she’d known the woman couldn’t have been anyone but Elle. Though what her sister was doing in Greece escaped Sam. Nothing in the files she’d been privy to indicated any interest in Greece.

  The boat “Sam” had used to leave Syros had turned up in Mykonos. Maybe Elle wasn’t still on the island, but she had been there.
Sam and Riley had chartered a plane and flown to Mykonos island immediately, hoping to pick up her sister’s trail.

  The men loaded onto a boat and cast off before Sam and Riley could get there.

  Spotting a man using a pair of binoculars to ogle some of the young women draped across the prows of several nearby boats, Sam went over to him. “Could I borrow those?”

  Startled, the man looked guilty and nodded. “Just admiring the boats.”

  Sam didn’t say anything. She fitted the binoculars to her eyes and focused on the departing boat now getting under full power.

  The two men had dropped their incapacitated companion in a fishing seat and belted him in. His head jerked back and forth in a loose roll, mimicking the pitch and yaw of the boat

  This time Sam had no problem identifying him. She passed the binoculars back to the tourist, who immediately elected to go elsewhere to “admire” boats.

  “That,” Sam said, “was Joachim Reiter.”

  “Let’s see if we can run down the boat’s registry,” Riley suggested.

  Sam fell into step beside Riley. “Elle isn’t here with Joachim Reiter.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because those men just took Joachim,” Sam said. “If Elle had been here with him, she wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”

  “Then what,” Riley asked, “drew them both here?”

  “We missed something,” Sam said. “Something important.”

  ELLE MADE THE CALL from Mykonos Town just after dark. She held the cell phone in her hand and surveyed the tourists walking up from the harbor. Disguised with a dark wig, and wearing jeans and a pullover, she didn’t stand out among the evening crowd flooding into the tavernas.

  Vasilios Quinn answered on the second ring.

  “Do you want to know where your money is?” Elle taunted.

  “What do you want?” Quinn demanded.

  “I want you, Klaus Stryker,” Elle said.

  Despite the use of his old name, Quinn remained calm. “Since I am out of the question, I know you’re after something else.”

  Elle hated the smug tone in the man’s voice. Ashimov had stripped his remaining millions from him. Quinn probably had some money put back, hidden away in other places kept separate from the Quinn name, but it wouldn’t be much. Not enough to keep him happy as greedy as he was.