“Would you mind looking at the picture please?”
“Hey, asshole, I said I haven’t seen him.”
Henri pulled out his Interpol badge. “Please look again.”
The woman glanced down at the badge, not long enough to read the agency, and sighed. Interpol, technically, had no jurisdiction in the United States without cooperation from the local agency. But few, if any, people understood this.
“Haven’t seen him. We’re dealing with enough problems.”
“What happened here?”
“What, you haven’t talked to your cop buddies? My clerk was shot.”
“Really? When was this?”
“Night before last. The detectives was all over my motel, talkin’ to people and scarin’ the shit outta ’em. I told ’em to take it easy and not go around bangin’ on people’s doors, but they did anyway. I’m thinkin’ of filin’ a complaint.”
“Did they find the man who did it?”
“No. And they took my surveillance video, which I want back. I use the same tape.”
Henri nodded. “Did the video show who shot your clerk?”
“How the hell should I know? I haven’t watched it.”
“Of course. Eh, did the detectives leave a card?”
“Yeah, hang on.” As she bent down and ruffled through a drawer, Henri glanced behind her and saw the blood stains on the wall and carpet. “Here it is.”
Henri copied the case information into his phone. “Thank you very much.”
As he was walking out, she yelled, “Hey, when do I get my tape back? And who’s going to come and clean up this mess?”
He ignored her and went out to his car. As he did so, he noticed a group of men sitting on the steps leading up to the second floor. He checked his watch: it was just a little past 7:00 a.m. and they were already drinking beer.
He approached them. “Good morning,” he said. “Were you gentlemen here when the front-desk clerk was shot?”
“We already talked to the cops, man.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Told ’em we didn’t see nothin’.”
“Ah, but that’s not true, is it?”
The men didn’t say anything. Henri had studied criminology and one of the most interesting aspects of it was the growing distrust of police in the United States. Many people identified more with the criminals than with the police and saw them as the bigger threat. In some cities, such as Baltimore, prosecutors only had a thirty percent conviction rate for the simple fact that the juries didn’t trust the officers testifying on the stand.
Henri pulled out his wallet, withdrew two hundred dollars, and held it out. “It stays between us.”
The man took it. “Yeah, we seen somebody.”
Henri took out the photo of Rhett. “Was it this man?”
“Nah, nah that ain’t him.”
He opened his phone and flipped open a file, expanding a photo of Gustav Fabrice. “Was it this man?”
“Yeah, that him right there.”
Henri nodded. “What kind of car was he driving?”
“Red Cadi. Nice.”
“Cadi?”
“Cadillac.”
“Oh, of course. Thank you for your help.”
On the way to his car, he stopped at the sidewalk and looked across the street, scanning the storefronts and the other motel located just down the block. He got back into his car and began heading to the nearest police precinct.
September 1st
We stood in formation with thin Kevlar vests on. It was raining and the water soaked us and got in our eyes. The sky was the color of smoke and filled with clouds. The forest floor sank beneath our feet and I shivered though I tried not to show it. Heather stood next to me, her teeth chattering.
Gustav stood before us with a pistol. “This is a Desert Eagle .45 caliber pistol. It is wet and it is covered in mud. For a gun to fire, it requires three things: oxygen, fuel, and an ignition source. The firing pin is the ignition source and the gunpowder is the fuel.” A small puddle had gathered in front of him. He bent over and put the gun in the water until it was fully submerged.
“So we’re missing oxygen. Will this gun still fire?” He looked to the recruit to my left, a man named Christopher. “Recruit, will this gun fire?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
“Would you bet a thousand dollars that this gun won’t fire?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Would you bet your life?”
Christopher hesitated.
“Ah, see. It’s amazing how much we know until something serious is at stake. And then all our knowledge gets thrown out the window, as you Americans like to say.”
He fired the pistol and the round went into Christopher’s Kevlar vest, and he toppled over with a groan. It took him a moment before he straightened up.
“The oxygen is in the gunpowder. There are things that you cannot perceive but that are true. Be wary of your surroundings and always have an open mind.”
The next day, after a twenty-mile run with fifty-pound packs, we worked explosives. We made nitroglycerin out of products you could find in almost any home. Glycerin left over from a batch of homemade soap mixed with gasoline or crushed kitty litter. By the end of the day, we were all black with soot and exhausted to the point that we couldn’t move. Heather walked back with me to the bunks and asked if I wanted to get a drink. I said I did.
We went to a nearby bar about five miles from the compound and ordered nachos and beers. “Can I ask you something?” I said. “Why did you say yes to this? You could have been in the intel section and sat behind a desk. I heard you have a medical degree too. You could have been a doctor for any agency you wanted.”
She looked at me and said, “Everybody said I wouldn’t make it. So I had to prove them wrong.”
When we got back to the compound, we passed the driving course and the town, which we called Taintsville for reasons I couldn’t say, but everybody guessed it was a joke started by the first class. The town had about twenty houses, a school, a police station, a park, and a few restaurants. They were filled with realistic props and their point was to train us for urban warfare.
“I don’t feel like going back yet,” she said. We found a house in Taintsville and went inside. I sat on the couch and tried the remote for the television but it didn’t work. She sat next to me and put her head on my shoulder, and we stared at the black television screen as the rain pattered on the windows outside. I let her sleep for a long while.
On the way to our bunks, I saw Gustav up in his room. The door was open a crack and I glanced in. He was nude and on his knees, doing some kind of stretching. I thought somebody was in the room because he was having a conversation, but I didn’t see anyone else there.
CHAPTER 38
Rhett slept in the passenger seat while Stephanie drove for the last hour. When he awoke they were in a section of the state he didn’t recognize: a place reserved for only the most wealthy. The mansions looked like plantations of the old South and each one was set far enough back that no one inside could be bothered by any noise from the street. It had stopped raining and the well-manicured bushes glistened from the remaining water.
They pulled up to a gate. Stephanie got out and approached a comm box, which she used to call up to the house. The gate opened a few seconds later, and they drove up the long, winding driveway to the massive home.
At the door a maid offered to take their jackets, but since they weren’t wearing any she just shuffled them inside the house. She led them up to the second floor and to a large balcony overlooking the property. Rhett saw a portly man sitting at a table having tea and finger sandwiches. He was on the phone and hung up on seeing them. He rose to his feet.
“Stephanie! What the hell is going on? Do you know the FBI is looking for you? I called your office fifty tim—”
“I know. I need to talk to you.”
“Who is this?” Clarence said, looking at Rhett.
�
��A friend. Please, can we sit down?”
“Sure.”
As Stephanie sat down at the table and began going through everything that had occurred, Rhett wandered around the various rooms. One was a trophy room with the heads of assorted animals up on the walls. A stuffed lion claiming one of the corners. Rhett went to it and ran his hand along the mane. Up above loomed the mounted head of a rhino.
In another room he found every rifle, sword, and shield that man had used through the centuries. A Roman gladius was encased in glass on the wall next to a German World War II Ruger next to a Mongolian spear. Rhett studied each one. They were in exquisite condition. He was there about half an hour before coming across a curved long sword from Arabia. Its edge was crusted with a black material that looked like blood.
“You’re a weapons man?”
Rhett turned to see Clarence standing at the doorway.
“You could say that.”
“Look at this,” Clarence said, waddling over to a case on the far side of the room. He pulled out a rifle. “This assassinated an SS soldier who gave orders for a village to be cleared in Southern France, where my family is from. My great uncle went out to his barn—and this is a man that didn’t have any military training; he was just a farmer—he went out to the barn, pointed the weapon, and fired two rounds. One of them went through that German’s temple. They killed him after that. They set the barn on fire and when he ran out, they shot him.”
“This is an amazing collection.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “So it sounds like you two are in a bit of trouble.”
“You could say that.”
“Well, you did the right thing coming here. Can I ask you something, though? What do you care what happens to her?”
“I guess I don’t.”
Clarence looked at him a moment. “Guess not.” He put the rifle back in the case. “Well, she’s in good hands. Your obligation is over.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“You’d be surprised, as I first was, how much justice money can buy. We’ll clear this mess up quickly. I mean, she’s clearly innocent.”
“Maybe I should stay?”
“No reason for it. Unless you feel there is.”
“No, no it’s fine. She should get back to her life without me hanging around.”
“I would think so.” Clarence sat down in a chair that was against the wall. “I’m not going to ask about your background or how you met her. She wouldn’t tell me. She just said you helped her when she needed it. But I think I can guess. So I’ll take over now. She’ll be fine. To be perfectly blunt, she asked that you leave. I don’t think she wanted to tell you herself because of how much you’ve helped her.”
He nodded. “Tell her goodbye for me.”
“I will.”
Rhett walked into the hallway. The maid was there, and she smiled as she led him down the hall. He glanced back once but didn’t see Stephanie anywhere.
In the driver’s seat, he turned on the car but couldn’t bring himself to put it in drive. He kept glancing back to the mansion. He sat maybe five minutes before pulling down the driveway.
About halfway down, he heard a spit, and a hole appeared in his windshield.
Another spit and searing pain radiated from his shoulder. He ducked in his seat as bullets shattered the windshield and rear window. They began piercing the car doors and one got through and hit him in the chest. The car swerved to the right, the impact from a tree sending him into the dashboard. He reached for the pistol in his waistband when a face appeared in the driver’s side window.
“Hello, Isaac. How have you been?”
CHAPTER 39
Henri parked his car in front of the police precinct and stepped outside to sit on the hood. He took out a package of cigarettes, Belgian with no filters, and smoked. The sky, which had been dark and gray, began to clear to a soft hue of orange as the sun began to shine through the clouds. He took out his cell phone and called his home. His son answered, informing him his mother had left for the market.
“Tell her that I love you both and I miss you.”
“Okay, Papa. I love you too.”
When he finished smoking, he went inside and asked the front-desk receptionist for the detective working the shooting at the Garden Line.
“He’ll be out in a minute.”
“Thank you.”
He sat on an old couch and flipped through some magazines on a coffee table. They were mostly gun magazines, a few Sports Illustrateds, and he put them back and leaned into the couch, staring at the floor of the police precinct.
Cops were busy swapping war stories, giving each other a hard time, joking about cases, and complaining about superior officers. It made him grin: no matter where you went, cops were always the same.
Before long, a pudgy detective in a wrinkled suit came out. “I’m Detective Karl Loosle. What can I do for you?”
“You are the detective working the Garden Line shooting?”
“Yeah.”
“I believe I can help you.” Henri stood and took out his Interpol badge. “The man that did this, that I think did this, was in one of our prisons in Paris until about five days ago.”
“You sure it’s him?”
“It’s my understanding you have a video of the incident?”
“Yeah,” he said, eyeing him.
“I can identify him. Detective, I have no interest in your investigation. If you arrest this man, it is your arrest. I just want to help you.”
He was silent a moment. “Come in the back.”
Henri followed him around the bullpen, past the officers who were lounging around and drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups, and through a gray door that led into a long hallway. Two doors down on the right was a room set up with a DVD/TV combo, a desk, and some chairs. Henri sat in one of the chairs as the detective took a DVD, which had been on top of the TV, out of a slip and put it into the machine. A grainy black-and-white video came on.
Henri watched as it caught a glimpse of a man walking out of the Garden Line Motel, firing two rounds into the clerk. The man didn’t even have to glance the clerk’s way and yet both rounds hit the heart. He went outside, disappeared off camera a few moments, and then got into a red car and drove away.
“That him?”
“Oui. That is him.”
“Here’s what I don’t get,” the detective said, “three blocks up the road some poor bastard was walking his bicycle across the street and witnesses said a red Cadillac sped up and ran him over. No reason at all. He’d already gotten far enough away from the motel and it actually drew more attention to him to do that. I don’t get it.”
“It amused him.”
“What did?”
“To see that man die.” They exchanged glances. “Do you know who the car belongs to?”
“Yeah, we traced it down based on the plates. The owner’s been dead almost ten years.”
Henri nodded and rose. “Thank you for showing me the video.”
“Well, is it for certain?”
“What?”
“That that’s the man you’re looking for.”
“Yes, I’m certain that’s him.”
“Well I’d like to spend some time with you then and get his information.”
“You won’t find him in any databases, Detective, and he has many names.”
“You have any idea where he is?”
Henri brushed past him and into the hall. “No. But I think I know where he’s going.”
CHAPTER 40
It was nearly midnight when Vanessa Hailstorm looked up at the clock and realized she’d been at her computer for four hours straight. She stretched her arms over her head and yawned before looking out the windows to the streets of Washington, DC, below.
She remembered this town from a long time ago. She counted the years it had been since she was an intern in Congress from George Washington University: twenty-one years. Twenty-one. Looking back, it seemed like a tick o
f the clock but the time was obvious in the city’s nature. It had changed.
She remembered, as an intern, going to dinners and out for drinks, Democrats and Republicans, interns and senators, and joking around and trading barbs. She remembered reporters were there too, but there was an understanding that these were intimate moments between friends and they never betrayed that trust.
Now, your own staff sold you out to the papers for a few bucks and the hatred between the parties was so deep, they could barely speak to each other in private much less be seen in public together. Each politician was after reelection and getting rich. That was why almost every politician went into politics, Vanessa thought: wealth.
It was amazing to her that the public didn’t ask how a congressman going into the house or senate making $90,000 per year came out a millionaire. It was a simple loophole: members of Congress were allowed to insider trade. When they found out that a piece of land was about to be developed or a major bank was going to be under investigation by the SEC, they simply bought the land or shorted that bank’s stocks. In Congress, a monkey with a few bucks could become a millionaire.
But even so, she remembered a different generation of politicians that, at least on some level, had the public interest at heart.
She clicked off her computer and grabbed her purse before heading out of the office. The building was empty now except for security and she nodded to one of the guards that let her out through the back exit to employee parking.
Her car, a Mercedes, was parked on the second level. As she walked down the metal stairs, she heard footsteps behind her. She kept walking, pretending not to notice, and casually slipped her hand inside her purse.
She swung around with the .25 caliber Smith & Wesson and pointed it at Santos Aras’ face. He held up his hands in mock surrender, an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a lighter in his hand.
“You got me.”
She put the gun away. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Could ask you the same thing,” he said, lighting the cigarette.
Diary of an Assassin Page 12
