by Trevor Scott
Franz pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shoved one into his mouth. Smiling he said, “Go for it.”
She slowly walked into the bank, knowing it would take a lot of finesse to get any information out of a Luxembourg bank. She’d run into a brick wall with them all morning, not really expecting a straight answer. But she was mostly relying on her ability to judge the truthful statements of others than an actual answer. Toni went straight to a manager type, an older gentleman in a fine suit. If Jake had used this bank for a long time, this guy was likely to know him.
Toni handed the photo of Jake to the man. “Do you know him?”
“Does this have something to do with the shooting on the street?” the man asked.
“Yes.” She wasn’t lying. “Do you know him?”
“Was he involved?”
The man looked concerned. Bingo. He knew Jake. “Maybe. We’ll have to wait to review the street video.” She got what she needed from him. Maybe one more thing. “He was here this morning.”
“I can’t say,” he said.
“You just did. Listen, he’s a friend of mine. We worked together.” No need to tell him they had been more than friends for years.
“The American company in Frankfurt?”
Jesus, Jake. How long had he had that account? “Yes,” she lied. “We were more than friends. If you know what I mean.”
He smiled.
Toni looked at his name tag. “Tyson. I’m concerned for his safety. Do you know where he was going?”
“No, I never knew when I would see Mr. Adams.”
She shook the man’s hand and thanked him.
“I hope he’s all right,” Tyson said.
“I’m sure he is,” she said and then left him there alone. Unknowingly, the man had given her more information than he knew. So Jake had actually opened this account long ago, under his own last name, when he was probably in his first overseas assignment with the Company. Interesting. Almost every operative had such an account. A fail safe.
As Toni stepped outside, she found Franz drawing in on another cigarette. He’d snubbed out two other butts on the sidewalk.
“What you find?” Franz asked.
“Another dead end,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. We know he stayed at the hotel. Who cares if he went to the bank? What we need to know now is where he’s going. Any ideas?”
Franz blew out a stream of smoke and said, “This is the perfect jumping off place. Head north and you hit Belgium. Northeast to Netherlands. West and south and you’re in France. Or backtrack to Germany. All within an hour in any direction. He could be anywhere.”
“But someone found him before us,” she said. “How the hell was that possible?”
Toni grasped Franz by the arm and pulled him toward the car. They walked right in front of the shooting scene. Jake could be anywhere. Where would he go now? Perhaps somewhere totally unexpected. He’d come to Luxembourg for money, which she knew he had plenty of in that bank after his last case in Bulgaria. But now he’d go farther underground. She was sure of that. Because that’s what she’d do.
16
Ten kilometers south of Metz, France, Jake had Alexandra pull off the motorway on to a priority road, and then onto an old farming road along a stretch of vineyards, where the grapes had already been picked clean.
They’d heard the man pounding on the trunk floor while driving through Metz and Jake felt they had put enough distance between them and the two shooting locations.
“You have any latex gloves?” Jake asked her.
Confused, she said, “In the first aid kit under the seat.”
He found the gloves and put them on. “Let’s go.”
They got out and she clicked open the trunk remotely.
Staring at them with wide eyes was the man they’d learned a little about on the drive down, having checked on his passport and accessing the BND computer on the fly. The guy’s name was Bado Anvari. Iranian passport.
With one fluid motion, Jake grabbed the man by the jacket and hoisted him out of the trunk and plunked him onto the dirt. The man tried to struggle, but Jake shoved his knee into the man’s chest.
“This can only go one way,” Jake said. “My way.”
No reaction at all. Did the Iranian understand him? Absolutely. He had gone to the University of Michigan for his undergraduate degree in business.
Jake punched the man in his face, knocking his head back into the ground. Blood flowed from the man’s nose.
“Don’t try to play stupid. Of course, in your case it might not be a ploy. Again. . .this will go my way. Both of your friends are dead. Who hired you?”
The Iranian licked blood from his upper lip but said nothing. Jake knew the man had spent two years in the Iranian Army before going off to college. But he’d been regular army, not the more intense Revolutionary Guard. He would break. Everyone broke.
“What do you hate most, Bado? Fire? Water? Some other basic element? We’ll find out. And then you’ll tell me what I want to know. You could save yourself a lot of pain and time.” Jake pondered the possibilities. It was hard to come up with something original. Everything had been done before. Yet part of him wished he didn’t have to do what he knew had to be done. The game was getting old and tedious. A small bird flew over and landed on a grape vine near them. Jake was mesmerized for a moment on the beauty of its plumage. He thought of how he could take some of those feathers and make them into fishing flies, as he had so many times over the years. Maybe he could just take the money from his bank and move to Montana. Spend a few years reliving his youth fishing every stream that flowed from the Rockies to form the Missouri River. He could even drift up to Canada and explore more rivers there. Heavy sigh, he focused on the task at hand.
It took Jake just thirty minutes to get what he wanted. He worked on the bullet wound area with a knife, carving away at the nerve endings in the knee and again in the wrist. He damn near circumcised the guy, what little there was to find there. He shoved dirt down the guy’s throat until Jake thought the guy would choke to death. When he followed that with shoving the man’s head in water in an irrigation ditch, Jake found the man’s one fear. Drowning. But he didn’t get everything. The Iranian mentioned Gunter Schecht, Alexandra’s dead uncle. Yet, he didn’t know how they’d found Jake in Luxembourg. The driver had gotten a call from someone on his cell phone, so maybe they’d trace that back, since Alexandra had collected phones as well as identification.
Once Jake was sure he’d gotten everything there was from the Iranian, he taped the man up like Jesus on a grape vine. They’d call the police and give them the guy’s location once they got down the road a ways.
While Alexandra drove, Jake went through the phones, transferring the numbers to his computer server. They’d need some help to trace those calls.
“I saw a different side of you back there, Jake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remind me not to piss you off.”
“It’s a dirty business getting information from someone. But everyone breaks. Even the most radical terrorists. It’s our fear of death.”
“What about the seventy-two virgins?”
“They’re virgins for a reason. Probably fugly.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Fugly?”
“Frickin’ ugly. Besides, you’d have to teach them everything. That’s no fun. Better if you get seventy-two porn stars.”
She giggled again and said, “It was kind of hot.”
“What was?”
“The way you handled that man,” she said, her brows raising seductively. You’ll have to punish me later.”
Well, that was an unexpected benefit of interrogation, Jake thought.
She found her way back toward the motorway. “Now which direction?”
“South toward Nancy.”
Alexandra giggled again.
“What?”
“It’s pronounced Naa Si.”
“Yeah, well in English it�
��s still a girl’s name. Damn French. This you should know about me. You’ll almost never get the right French pronunciation from me.” Italian and German? No problem. He drove Anna crazy with his lack of care with French. He’d traveled with her to Interpol Headquarters in Lyon on many occasions, and those contacts had directed his current path.
“Head south to Lyon,” Jake said, with his best French impression.
“Why there?”
“I need to see a man about a horse.”
Her brows rose. “I’ll never get used to American idioms.”
That made two of them. But this time the idiom almost fit.
It was about 450 kilometers from Metz to Lyon. Driving close to the speed limit, it took them four hours to reach the sprawling outskirts of Lyon. They wouldn’t be going directly to Interpol Headquarters, though. Instead, Jake directed Alexandra to a hobby farm 20 kilometers northeast of the city near Meximieux.
Getting off the paved road, they slowly finished the final leg of their trip on a hard-packed gravel driveway as the early evening approached. She parked the BMW out front of a ranch house next to an older Citroen. Two fit horses grazed casually in a pasture surrounded by a white fence.
“Those would be the horses?” Alexandra asked.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Jake checked his watch as he got out of the car. Although it was five p.m., he guessed the owner would be home. As they approached the front door, it suddenly swung open and an older man with gray hair to his shoulders stood with a glass of red wine. He shoved his little round spectacles higher on his long, narrow nose, his forehead wrinkled with thought. He was short and somewhat frail.
“Qui l’enfer sont-ils vous?” the Frenchman said.
Stopping about ten feet from the man, Jake smiled, his hands out, palms up. “Andre. It’s Jake Adams.”
The old man laughed and met Jake halfway, kissing him on both cheeks and then giving him a bear hug.
“Who is this fine woman?” Andre asked in perfect English.
Jake introduced them, without mentioning her profession. He did say that Alexandra had been he and Anna’s friend for the past few years. When Jake mentioned Anna’s name, a sadness came to the old man.
“Please, come in,” Andre said, leading them inside.
Jake had been there a few times, but still couldn’t help observing the contrast. Where one would have expected French country style, Andre’s house was decorated with an American Southwest theme. Right down to the Texas longhorns over a stone fireplace, which burned real wood now. They sat down on dark brown leather chairs across from a sofa made from cowhide.
Without asking, Andre ran off and returned with a fresh bottle of wine and two more glasses. He poured them each a glass of Beaujolais. Then he took a seat across from them on the cow.
Jake took a drink of wine, his eyes concentrating on his host.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to Anna’s funeral,” Andre said.
“I didn’t make it either,” Jake said, swirling his wine lightly in the wide glass. “Alexandra did.”
“You had a good excuse,” the Frenchman said. “I understand you were in the hospital.”
Turning to Alexandra, Jake explained, “Andre was Anna’s boss and mentor when she first joined Interpol.” He turned back to Andre. “I thought you were going to retire this year.”
Andre laughed. “They’ve been trying to force that on me for the past two years. I’m still with Interpol, but I only work about half time.”
“Just like everyone else,” Jake quipped.
“You’ve always been a smartass, Jake. But that’s what I like about you. You tell me like it is.” He took a sip of wine and set his glass down onto a huge wooden coffee table that was the crosscut of a huge tree.
Silence as the two men stared at each other.
Jake took the opening. “I need some help.”
Andre laughed. “I would hope so. We have a Red Notice out on you.”
“What?”
Alexandra sat forward in her chair, a concerned look on her face.
“Afraid so. It was issued by our Vienna office for the death of a man in western Austria.”
Great. That’s all he needed. First he had every swinging dick in Europe trying to collect on a million Euro bounty, then the Austrian and German Polizei were after him, and now Interpol.
“That’s totally bogus,” Jake said. “I’ve had people trying to kill me.” He explained what had happened since the men killed Anna two months ago, including the car bomb, the men at his apartment, and those at the Austrian gasthaus. For now he left out the shootings earlier that day.
“It’s all true,” Alexandra interjected.
“I understand,” Andre said. “I believe you. But a Red Notice. . .” He trailed off and shrugged his shoulders before picking up his glass of wine and sipping gently.
“You’re yankin’ my chain,” Jake said.
Andre shook his head and produced a laptop computer from a side table. In a few moments he had accessed a site and then turned the computer for Jake to see. It showed the Red Notice with Jake’s photo. He was armed and dangerous and should be approached with great caution.
“That’s a terrible photo,” Jake said. “From one of my lectures in Austria.”
“How may I help?” Andre asked.
“Well, I guess you could start by convincing your Interpol friends to drop the Red Notice.”
Andre shook his head. “That has to come from the issuing organization. The Vienna office.”
They stared at each other again. Something wasn’t right.
“What’s wrong, Andre?”
The Interpol officer turned the computer back toward him and clicked a couple of times before showing Jake the screen again. It was a video of the shooting in Luxembourg. Looked like it came from a closed circuit camera that must have been directed toward the bank. It showed Jake walking across the street, the shoot out, and then Jake casually walking down the sidewalk. The camera hadn’t caught him getting into Alexandra’s car.
“It’s number three on the internet,” Andre said. “Will probably be number one by morning.”
“I told you people were trying to kill me,” Jake explained. “I was just walking across the street and they opened fire.”
Andre’s head nodded agreement. “I understand. Now the Luxembourg Police Grand-Ducale have a problem with you carrying a concealed weapon and shooting up their city. It’s bad for tourism.”
“Would they rather be investigating my murder right now?”
“Good point.”
Alexandra had been sitting back watching both of them talk, obviously wanting to stay out of the action. Jake didn’t want to give Andre any idea that they’d been together intimately, it being so soon after Anna’s murder. He also didn’t want to involve her any more with what he would have to do soon to take this case forward. Yet, he’d appreciated her company and her insight every step of the way. Maybe it was time to come clean with Andre also.
“I know what you’re thinking, Jake,” Andre said.
“Really.”
“You’re wondering if I know.” The Frenchman smiled.
“Know what?” He was feeling him out but Jake wasn’t buying it. The guy was a chess master, and he shifted people around like it was always his move.
“The million Euros. Dead. Not alive.”
“If you know that, then why do I still have a Red Notice out on me? You know damn well I’m just trying to stay alive.”
“I hope you’re doing more than that,” Andre said. “Trying to find out who killed Anna.”
Jake sucked down the rest of his wine and set the empty glass on the table in front of him. “The two are connected. Are you going to help me? What does Interpol know about this case?”
Andre smiled and poured Jake more wine. “We’ll move on to a Pinot Noir next.” Hesitating, as if searching for the right words, he continued, “We found the two men dead just across the French border south of
Luxembourg City, and later someone mysteriously called in the location of another man. . .gently crucified in a vineyard. They were all Persians, based on the car. They had no identification on them, though. I would bet my life that the two died from a bullet from the gun under your left arm.”
“Again, self defense. They were the same men who’d shot at me in Luxembourg.”
“Yes, I know. The Police Grand-Ducale in Luxembourg are taking credit for your work, giving some support to the French authorities. You see, all is well in the Grand Duchy. Come back and spend your money. Did you get any information from the man taped to the vines?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Jake said. “They’re Iranians, but I think it’s more likely they’re not Persians. They’re Kurds.”
“The man told you that?”
“He didn’t need to. I understand a few Kurdish phrases from my work there. He questioned not only the veracity of my parents, but indicated I should try to satisfy myself with extreme prejudice. I assured him that wasn’t possible. Many have tried.”
“I’ll bet. What did he tell you?” Andre pressed.
“Will you help me?”
The Interpol man hesitated. “Of course.”
Jake told Andre everything the man had told him, including the preposterous notion that somehow Gunter Schecht had risen from the dead and placed a price on Jake’s head.
“Now you know why I need your help,” Jake said to Andre.
“How can I help?”
Jake glanced sideways at Alexandra, who pulled Jake’s laptop from his backpack and handed it to him.
“Just a little internet access,” Jake said.
Andre leaned back in his comfortable sofa like a cowboy easing back on his saddle. “You could’ve gone to a cybercafe to do that.” Then his brain contemplated Jake like a chess master does to a worthy opponent. “You want an untraceable secure access to my Interpol database.”
Jake nodded.
“Why don’t you just access her German Intel database?”
Jake didn’t budge, but he saw Alexandra shift in her chair slightly.
