Inside Man

by Jeff Abbott

  The plaza opened up from the hillside, facing Old San Juan. Above it was a large incline that led to the fort proper. I’d been here, once before, with my parents during a break from an assignment in Haiti, and my mother constantly made us feel guilty that we were enjoying a beautiful day in a clean, functioning city while people back in our temporary home were trapped in squalor. I remembered small turrets that faced the ocean; Danny and I had played in them, pretending to watch for both Sir Francis Drake and Nazis—we were historically inexact.

  Marianne would meet the Varelas on the plaza courtyard, bordering the street.

  I was parked along Calle Norzagaray, uphill a bit from the open courtyard, a sign in English and Spanish on the dashboard marking that I was a hired driver. Behind me were more of the colorful buildings with balconies that were the standard in Old San Juan.

  The Yukon’s windows were darkened—I’m guessing the high-end luxury car rental market has to always be prepared to rent to a celebrity. But I had a dark cap and dark glasses—left behind in the car by Lavrenti—and Mila’s makeup on my bruised face. I watched, one earpiece in my right ear tuned to Mila, the other in my left tuned to Marianne’s wire. I had no intention of ordering her men dead—but Marianne didn’t know that, and I wanted Mila to know how this rendezvous unfolded.

  So at the appointed time, Marianne walked to the plaza.

  And then I saw Galo and Kent and Rey get out of a car and walk toward her. No sign of Zhanna. Or Ricky. They had to be close. Rey seemed fragile still; Galo kept a hand on him. Kent walked next to them, his white cane moving in front of him. He didn’t like to be guided unless it was necessary. I was surprised to see Galo and Rey making a personal appearance.

  Marianne waited.

  “I figured my associate would not be here,” Marianne said.

  “He won’t be,” Galo said. There was no waver in his voice. Rey centered himself before her, Galo to his side, Kent two steps off, his sunglasses aimed sightlessly at the sky, listening. “We’re here to talk with you. Nothing else. We don’t want trouble.”

  “You should know we’re being observed,” she said.

  “As you are, by our people,” Kent said. And now I knew where Zhanna was.

  “Given yesterday’s events, your clients entrusted me with a message to deliver to you. From your clients: You do not hand off our mutual business to Zhanna Pozharskaya.”

  Rey said, “It is mine to run. That has always been the agreement.”

  “The clients do not trust your stepdaughter.”

  “How did anyone know I was making a change?” Rey asked.

  She shrugged. “Phones can be tapped, e-mails monitored. Offices bugged. Mobile phones are shockingly insecure.”

  Who is her client? I wondered.

  “Zhanna is perfectly capable of running the business.”

  “Your clients don’t agree. They know what she did, and they don’t like her for it. She is not…stable.”

  “Unfounded,” Rey said. Galo looked confused; Kent was calm. But he always looked calm. “What do they think she did?” Kent asked. He tapped the cane against the stone, twice, and I took that for a show of anger.

  “I cannot answer questions,” Marianne said. “I can only deliver the message. This isn’t a negotiation. Galo can run the legitimate side of the business. But the underside will be run by someone of the client’s appointing. Someone that you will accept.”

  “And if I say no, you try to kidnap me again?” The rage shone in Rey’s voice.

  “This is no different than shareholders not agreeing with a new CEO’s appointment. It is a business matter. But it is not up for negotiation. She cannot run it.”

  Rey started to sputter, and I thought of the pride and arrogance I’d always heard in his words. He would not take this lightly. Galo put a calming hand on him. A big group of tourists wandered past them, being broken into three smaller groups by their costumed tour guides. Kent kept his head tilted upward, as though listening to the sky. He pulled the cane close to him.

  “We could simply shut the business down,” Rey said. “Walk away from it. The clients could do nothing.”

  Marianne looked at him. “Again, this is a message. Not a negotiation. Message delivered.” She paused. “Now. A new item on the agenda. Which one of you killed Lavrenti?”

  Silence. I could hear the wind hiss between them.

  “Are you so afraid of me?” she asked, in barely a whisper.

  “You bore me,” Rey said. “Go away, lady.”

  “You’re cowards,” she said. “Good-bye.” And she turned on her heel and began to walk away, back toward me.

  Kent started to follow the click of her footsteps, his cane swishing in front of him, taking Rey’s arm.

  And then the shot rang out.

  37

  MARIANNE STAGGERED, SHE screamed.

  The people in the plaza, intent on their tours, glanced around and then realized, as if one, what they’d heard. The firing of a gun in a public space.

  People scattered, parents huddling over their kids, guards running, weapons drawn, tourists and families going over the stone walls or running back down the hill.

  Images swimming in front of me: Kent blindly lurching after Marianne, his cane swinging, Galo knocking Rey to the ground and covering him, a shield of good-son flesh.

  She ran toward me, in the Yukon. And then there was Galo rising, making sure his father was all right, his gaze following her through the scattering crowds.

  “I’m shot!” she screamed in German. “I’m shot!” Most people collapse at this point. The pain is terrible. An assassin trained by former East Germans is made of sterner stuff.

  I lost sight of them all as people fled. Then I saw Marianne, running, clutching at her jacketed arm, toward the Yukon. She clambered into the backseat.

  Galo hurried after her. Thirty feet away.

  I didn’t have to be told. I revved the engine and sped down the street. In the rearview I saw him climb into a BMW, firing up the engine.

  I couldn’t let him see me.

  “Sam, respond,” Mila said very calmly into my earpiece.

  “Marianne’s shot, being pursued,” I answered.

  Marianne cursed in German from the backseat.

  I took a hard, screeching right at the bottom of the hill, narrowly missing a tour bus that was trying to inch forward. Onto Calle San Francisco. On my right was a block of charming little restaurants and shops, on my left Plaza de Colón, with a big statue of Christopher Columbus and tour groups wandering among small booths selling crafts and food and souvenirs. I laid on the horn and the pedestrians scattered. Ahead of me stretched Old San Juan—narrow streets of blue-gray cobblestone, crowded colorful buildings, full sidewalks. Not ideal for a chase. I leaned on the horn and hurtled forward, people scattering out of my way, blasting past a church. The buildings were brightly painted, most with balconies, and in some ways the architecture reminded me of home, back in the French Quarter; maybe San Juan and New Orleans were of an age. Weird what registers during your fight against panic.

  I glanced in the rearview and saw Galo, three cars behind me, honking and gesturing like mad, desperate to catch me. And then also a cop, on a motorcycle, trying to catch Galo.

  I didn’t need this.

  It got worse. I came up on Plaza de Armas, one of the more congested sections of Old San Juan, full of tourists and artists. I dodged the Yukon around them, screaming out the window that I had a sick woman in the car.

  “Here, turn here!” Marianne ordered. I turned right onto Calle del Cristo.

  “No, the other way, idiot!”

  Now I was driving the wrong way on a cobblestone street, past buildings of tangerine and turquoise. I saw a sign as we approached the cream-colored Catedral de San Juan Bautista. I remembered it from my childhood visit, because the beautiful church held the mausoleum of Ponce de Leon and I remembered thinking then, Well, I guess no Fountain of Youth for him.

  “Sam, where are yo
u?” Mila said in my ear.

  “Wrong way on a one-way street!” I yelled.

  “Hurry, take a left…before you get to the cathedral. Go down the hill.” Marianne ordered me.

  The road was clear.

  “Slow down, there’s always cops around here,” she said.

  Right on cue, another motorcycle cop was approaching me. Waving at me that I was going the wrong way. Typical tourist, I hoped he’d think. No sirens yet. In the back mirror I couldn’t see Galo. Or the other cop. I could see the bright yellow El Convento Hotel ahead on my left, catty-corner from the cathedral.

  And on the corner were four cops, both on and off their motorcycles, chatting. The motorcycle officer I’d seen approaching from the direction of El Convento pulled alongside. I quickly made the left turn, waving in apology at them, them waving good-naturedly at me, one reminding me in Spanish to watch for the signs.

  “Go toward the gate! Puerta de San Juan,” Marianne told me.

  I remembered calling it the Red Gate from an earlier visit as I turned down the tree-canopied street. Because it was painted a vivid scarlet.

  And slammed on the brakes.

  Across from the cathedral was the Museo del Niño, and a large group of kids were marching single-file across the street onto which I’d just turned left. They went across, chained together holding hands, one smiling at me with her front teeth missing.

  One of the cops looked right into our windows as we were stopped. I waved as we waited on the kids. I lowered the window. Don’t let him notice the woman in the back is hurt, I thought.

  “Sorry, officer!” I said in my best German-accented Spanish. The cop waved back.

  Marianne murmured a pleasantry through gritted teeth.

  The cop nodded. “Look out for the signs, sir.”

  “Yes, sir,” I agreed.

  “Enjoy San Juan.”

  I will, I thought, as long as your radio doesn’t tell you to be looking for a Yukon, leaving a shooting scene.

  We waited. The chain of children seemed to go on forever. Then the police suddenly had fingers at their earpieces, murmuring into their radios. They mounted the motorcycles and revved off behind us.

  Then the last child and the last chaperone went by and I drove slowly past the houses of green and pink and blue, toward the bottom of the hill, then over toward the puerta. Bright-red against the gray of the massive fortification.

  It was a surviving gate from the days when San Juan was a walled city.

  “Don’t drive through!” Marianne said. “The other side is a walking path. You can’t get out, it’ll be blocked off, and there are always police.”

  Lavrenti’s gear for kidnapping Rey was still in the Yukon. Marianne had had the presence of mind to put one of the adult diapers under her jacket on the wound, to soak up the blood. She wasn’t bleeding too badly.

  I got her out of the car, left the engine running, the keys inside.

  “Can you walk?”

  She nodded. I put an arm around her. Her black jacket covered the blood.

  “We’ll be noticed,” she gasped.

  “I’ll support you,” I said. “We’ll be okay.”

  We went through the ancient gate, through the old fifteen-foot wall, onto the Paseo de la Princesa. Above us the wall rose nearly forty feet. Ahead of us was the sparkling blue of San Juan Bay.

  A stunning view that I had no time to appreciate. If the police stopped me with a wounded woman, I was done.

  38

  WE STROLLED. CALMLY. In a non-attention-attracting way.

  We made steady progress down the esplanade. If anyone looked too closely at us, Marianne laughed, as though she didn’t have a care in the world, then she gritted her teeth together so hard I could hear them grind. I glanced over my shoulder. I saw one blotch of blood painting the stones. We walked steadily, past couples, families, solo adventurers. A couple of security men chatted and ignored us as Marianne giggled and fake-cooed in German.

  “You’re such a good actress,” I said.

  “Shut up,” she said. “You have ruined my day.”

  The cops must have pulled Galo over, gotten him instead of me. And what would he tell them? Did he see my face? If he had…I was done.

  “Those bastards,” she said. “I was just the messenger.”

  “I’ll take you back to the hotel,” I whispered to her as we reached the esplanade’s end at Plaza del Inmigrante, a large cobbled area not far from the cruise-ship ports, and a few blocks from the Gran Fortuna. “We can tend to you…”

  “Screw you, you got me shot!”

  Why do it? She’d delivered the message. It was an enormous risk to shoot her in public, to bring attention to the Varela family.

  “Who trained you?” Marianne said. “They’re idiots. You should have been one of mine. I could have made you into something.”

  “Sam, Sam?” Mila said into the earpiece.

  “I will tell Mr. Beethoven I delivered the message,” Marianne said. “And then I am done with these people.”

  “The hotel…”

  “No. Drop me off here. I will call a friend in San Juan. I have friends everywhere.” Her voice broke. “Do not hurt my kids. Please.”

  “I promise you we won’t. But you can’t go to a hospital.”

  “No. My friend will get me the help I need, quietly.”

  “I’m sorry, Marianne.” It was strange to apologize to her. But we were both professionals. At least, I had been once.

  “You do not hurt the boys. You let them go.” Sweat beaded her face. I pushed her behind a building, out of sight of the pedestrian traffic.

  “They won’t be harmed. I don’t think I feel comfortable leaving you hurt…”

  She slapped all the sympathy out of me. My ears rang from the blow. She put her mouth close to my ear. “You can’t kill me here on the street. But if you hurt the boys, I know your face. Your name is Sam; I heard it through the earphone. And I know the face of your woman. I know her accent; she’s Romanian or Moldovan. I will find you both if I have to, find out who you work for. So don’t give me a reason to hunt you down. I have lots of sons and daughters around the world that I’ve trained. You do not want to make my family mad.”

  Then I did an unkindness. I jabbed my fist, hard, into where her bullet wound was. She nearly crumpled from shock. “And now you hear me. I knew about you and Nesterov before you even showed up in San Juan. I have resources you can’t imagine. If you come after me or mine, I will come after you, Marianne, and I will kill you.” Our voices were whispers in each other’s ears. “Do we understand each other?”

  She made a noise of assent.

  I gave her back her cell phone. “I’ll tell your sons to call you.”

  She turned away from me. I hurried back toward the Gran Fortuna, thinking the whole time that Galo, freed from answering police questions, could be looking for me. I could feel my phone vibrating with texts.

  I redialed Mila. “Let the guys go.”

  “I’ll leave them a small knife that they can cut themselves loose with,” she said. “It will take them several minutes and by then I’ll be gone. What happened?”

  I explained. “There’s a tie between Marianne and Steve. Someone was paying them both with a casino chip.” I glanced over my shoulder. No sign of the police or Galo. “We have to find out who that is. And if the Varelas saw me, I can’t go back to Cori.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “They didn’t know the Yukon. I was wearing dark glasses and a cap. Galo might not have gotten close enough to me to see.”

  “Might not? That’s a risk, Sam.”

  “Not if Cori lies to them and tells them I was with her the whole time.”

  “Will she lie for you?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “You think. Sam, we need to pull back.”

  “I know too much about them. They’ll come after me. I have to see this through.” I’d reached the hotel. Mila was in the lobby. I nearly fell into
her embrace.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go back to Miami. There’s nothing more here.”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Sam.”

  Her husband, I knew, would hate that she said that, even if it was only a professional statement. I looked out over the casino, the crowds. Bells rang from a slot machine, and from the bar reggaeton music blared. For some reason I didn’t feel like looking at her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

  Mila blinked in surprise. “What did it matter?”

  “It didn’t. Except it’s the sort of thing you share with your…friends.”

  “I didn’t know you so well, Sam. I didn’t know if once you had your child back you would stick with the Round Table, working with me…I don’t really talk about my personal life.”

  “But I knew you worked with a guy named Jimmy, and he’d recruited you after you had to go on the run,” I said. “How hard would it have been to say, ‘Oh and he’s my husband’?”

  “It wouldn’t have been hard at all, but I didn’t do it.” Her voice grew a little cool. “I don’t think I really owe you an explanation.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “You don’t. It’s your business.”

  “You and Jimmy don’t like each other.”

  I had to be careful. “I think he’s taken advantage of situations to build his own power base.”

  “Ah. So then he is like every executive in every company in the world.”