“Did you get a name or a photo?” the disembodied voice on the other end of the connection asked.
“Neither. You need to keep your internet guy on the job. I’ll stay in the neighborhood awaiting word from you. He can’t have gone too far.”
“Unless he went to the airport,” Blue Raincoat’s employer said, anger in his voice.
Blue Raincoat shrugged. “Yeah. Unless that. But then we’ll just go where he is, won’t we?”
His employer huffed. “I expected more.”
“You shouldn’t have. You sent me here without a name, a photo, or a room number. I’d say I did pretty well, all things considered.”
Silence, then, “All right. Sit tight. You’ll hear from us shortly.”
“One more thing,” Raincoat said. “Expect heat. A hotel employee called in an assault. She had an accident shortly after that.”
“You deserve to be shot.”
“I don’t think you’d have done any better,” Raincoat said to his employer before severing their connection.
18
Peter Kittredge peered nervously through the windowpane on the door leading from the hotel fitness center to the tenth floor hallway. He checked both directions down the hallway, at least as far as the small window would permit him to see, as he had done at least a dozen times over the preceding half hour.
He was looking for the asshole in the blue raincoat, Mr. You’ll-Be-Fine, Mr. Just-Let-Me-Beat-You-Up-A-Little-Bit. Kittredge’s heart had discontinued its threats of open revolt only a few minutes earlier, and his pulse was finally settling back down to its normal rate, which was significantly higher than average owing to his enduring affinity for ethanol.
The encounter with the thug was deeply disconcerting, and it shook Kittredge’s world on a number of levels. But the experience was also educational. It taught Kittredge a great deal about his predicament. More people than just the Cologne police were interested in his activities. Some of these people were not afraid to do bad things, and they weren’t afraid to hurt bystanders in the process.
It had also taught Kittredge that he couldn’t just wait around for the forensics team to finish combing over his apartment, after which life would return to its normal, calmly inebriated stasis.
Far from it. He was now, he realized, officially on the run.
It raised an interesting question. Kittredge wondered, did the people who killed Sergio think they were actually killing him? He pondered why that could possibly be the case, and there were really only a couple of explanations.
Truth be told, those possible explanations really just rolled up into a single, decidedly ugly reason. He had signed an agreement of permanent fealty. He hadn’t had much choice in the matter, as the “stick” on the other side of that little “carrot” was a very, very lengthy prison sentence.
And it wasn’t until after he’d signed the oath of permanent allegiance, which stipulated immediate penitentiary time as the remedy for any perceived noncompliance, that Kittredge had learned just how ruthless his new friends really were. They were truly awful people. But they got a permanent pass, because they cloaked their insanity in the garb of National Security. End of discussion, next question, please.
Except Kittredge wasn’t keen on all the murders, rights violations, disregard for national sovereignty, and, most of all, their deep and repeated violation of his own privacy. There wasn’t an aspect of his life that they hadn’t thoroughly dominated. They’d even invaded a private sexual moment with himself, watching him via hidden video camera in his own apartment, and immediately called to taunt him.
And they’d used him to decimate a cell of Venezuelan intelligence officers they didn’t care for. Kittredge hadn’t pulled the trigger, of course, and he certainly hadn’t bloodied his beloved Maria, but they’d used his nature against him, and they had manipulated his sensibilities to gain the leverage and access they wanted. Not a day had passed since then that Kittredge hadn’t cursed his naïveté, hadn’t wondered whether he couldn’t have somehow altered the course of events to save all those lives.
To save her life.
And, in retrospect, to save his own. Because what he was doing now, the days and nights of chemically-induced distance from his own self, the continuous attempt to gain sufficient separation from his own radioactive core so that he wouldn’t be burned, wasn’t really living at all.
The episode with the asshole in the blue raincoat had also taught him that his anonymous urban life, his carefully-chosen hideout in a carefully-chosen European city, one far enough inside Uncle Sam’s sphere of influence so as not to attract much Agency attention, and large enough not to care a great deal one way or the other, likely hadn’t worked.
Someone had sure the hell found him. And the whole thing had a disconcertingly familiar vibe, which made Kittredge all but certain that they — the objects of his burning hatred, and the subjects of his recurring nightmares — had found him. Not just any assholes, but the assholes.
He realized that he was muttering to himself. He glanced quickly at the treadmills full of elderly women and fat men. They were still staring at him. It became obvious that his behavior was anything but inconspicuous. While Kittredge was no spy, a reality which his Venezuelan nightmare had demonstrated in spades, he was smart enough to know that standing out was a great way to get mowed down.
He had to get out of the hotel. He probably even had to get out of Cologne, maybe even out of Germany altogether.
But go where? The Serengeti? Siberia? The South Pole? If his move from South America to Europe didn’t shake them, what made him think that pulling another “geographic” would buy him anything in the long run?
No, he had to face this thing down, whatever it was.
But how? Could he call Quinn, that giant, feral beast with different-colored eyes and a grip like death? Or fat Fredericks, possibly the most disagreeable human he’d ever met? He hadn’t exactly kept them in his rolodex, and he had long ago ditched the cell phones that had contained their numbers. Besides, those guys probably went through a new set of cell phones every week. And they weren’t on Facebook, or whatever the kids were using these days. You didn’t just track those guys down for a friendly chat; if they felt like talking, they tracked you down.
And what would he say, anyway? Sorry I took off like that — I know we had an agreement and all, but I’ve had some second thoughts, on account of all the blood on your hands? He could only imagine what Bill Fredericks would say in response. Right before he had Quinn pull out the belt sander and salt shaker.
Kittredge chuckled mirthlessly, shook his head, and ran his hands through his hair. He became aware of another presence, and he looked up to see one of the little old ladies who had been power-walking on the treadmill standing just a few feet in front of him.
She smiled at him. Her eyes were knowing but benevolent. “Maybe you should sleep it off,” she said sotto voce. “My husband used to get paranoid hallucinations, too.”
Kittredge didn’t know what to say. “Thanks,” is what came out.
He stood, shaky, and watched as the elderly woman exited the hotel fitness center. He looked through the opening out into the hallway as the door closed. He saw no one but the old lady ambling toward the elevator. Perhaps Mr. Raincoat had lost interest.
More than likely, the man wouldn’t be hanging around inside the hotel. Kittredge wasn’t sure how badly the cleaning lady was injured, but the wet crunching sound her face made when the guy clocked her told Kittredge that if the woman was still alive, she was probably in the mood to press charges. If the goon was smart, he would make himself scarce.
So now was likely as good a time as any to make his surreptitious exit, Kittredge realized. He thought briefly of returning to his room to collect his meager belongings, but immediately thought better of it. It was that kind of thing that had gotten him captured by Mr. Raincoat in the first place.
He needed to be unpredictable, to avoid his known hangouts, and, most of all, to ge
t some information. He was stumbling around in the dark on this thing, and it had proven to be an unhealthy way to go.
He had his wallet, his credit cards, and a debit card, and an account full of inherited money. His cancer cash, he called it, and it would be more than enough to carry him through.
Provided they didn’t use his bank records against him, or somehow freeze his accounts. He had been meaning to build up a hit-and-run stash, a bag full of paper currency and his passport, that he could grab in a heartbeat in case he needed to get out of town quickly.
Too late for that now. He was at the mercy of the ATM withdrawal limits, because his account was still with a bank in Washington Freaking DC. There wasn’t exactly a Cologne branch where he could pull out ten grand in cash.
He shook his head. The cash issue was a microcosm of his life. He was grossly unprepared, and hope was his main course of action. Preparation was something he thought about, but never really got around to.
So, maybe it was time for a change. Maybe the old Peter Kittredge needed to learn some new tricks. And maybe he should learn how to defend himself. Gay or not, getting your ass kicked wasn’t cool.
He took the stairs all the way down to the basement, walking slowly and quietly, listening all the while for footsteps on the floors above and below. A door opened and slammed shut above him at one point, but it sounded like the footfalls had gone up instead of down.
Kittredge exited the stairway into a less presentable hallway. The hotel’s recent remodel hadn’t extended to the basement floor, and Kittredge immediately understood why. There was a sad little pool and sauna, but the doors led mostly to spaces for kitchen staff, laundry, and storage.
But there was an exit. At a loading dock, it appeared. There was little road noise, which told Kittredge that the dock was likely in back of the hotel, opening to the alleyway rather than the main drag. He smiled, straightened himself up, and tried to act less like someone sneaking around and more like someone who belonged there as he ambled through the door adjacent to the loading dock.
A rush of cold, damp Cologne air awakened his senses. He checked the alley in both directions, debated which way to set off, and ultimately decided that left was just as good as right.
He paralleled the long side of the hotel and arrived at a less-trafficked cross street. He turned in the direction opposite the hotel’s front entrance, and walked quickly but not too quickly, head down against the omnipresent German drizzle, checking behind him at regular intervals in case he was being followed.
He saw no one. Four blocks later, it occurred to him that he might actually have escaped the hotel.
Now what?
He thought about Sergio. He really wanted to ask Polizeikommissar Strauss what had developed in the investigation over the past day, but he feared that might smack a bit too much like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Strauss was already leaning pretty hard in Kittredge’s direction, based on the lack of evidence pointing anywhere else. Kittredge didn’t want to press his luck.
But he had to figure a few things out, pronto. For instance, was Sergio’s death in Kittredge’s bed just an unfortunate bit of happenstance? Or was Kittredge part of the thing in a way that was not yet clear?
He wanted to see Nora. He wanted to compare notes.
And he wanted to come inside of her again, in all the places she’d let him come two nights earlier. Peter Kittredge, cocksman. He laughed at himself. How many times had his dick landed him in trouble? More than he could count. There was, in fact, a strong case to be made that Kittredge’s libido had created the entire Venezuelan situation. He sighed.
But he still needed to see Nora. He needed to know what she had figured out about what had happened to Sergio. He wanted to know if she knew Sergio’s real last name. And, maybe more than anything, he wanted to know what Nora had done with his apartment key when she had run back up to fetch her purse. Had she left the door unlocked? Had she let someone in to murder Sergio?
Had she done it herself?
Jesus. That was a sick thought. They’d shared breakfast just moments later, a breakfast during which Kittredge caught the unmistakable signs of chemistry between them, and they’d returned to his apartment frisky for frolic. If Nora had pulled all of that off just moments after bashing a man’s brains out, she had to be one sick individual.
No way. Kittredge just couldn’t see her doing something like that. Or maybe he just didn’t want to see it.
Either way, Nora was his link, he decided, his starting point to figuring out what was going on.
He had no idea where to find her, but he knew where she worked. Kleinmann Holdings would undoubtedly be closed on Sunday. It was Europe, after all, and they took their leisure time seriously. But that might actually present an opportunity, Kittredge realized. He could scope the place out a little bit, get the lay of the land, maybe keep from getting ambushed when he came back on Monday to chat with Nora.
Because if they knew enough to find him, Kittredge figured, they would also know enough to suspect he’d eventually need to talk to Nora. Best to be prepared for when that happened.
19
Kleinmann Holdings occupied the fourth floor of an office building in downtown Cologne. Kittredge’s journey by foot and subway didn’t take long. He spent most of the time alternating between being lost in thought and being hyper-aware of his surroundings, a sort of schizophrenic dance of consciousness that left him ineffective at both thinking and observing. A little mental discipline wouldn’t kill anyone, he realized, though it seemed like a project for another time.
On the other hand, a bit of mental discipline would probably go a long way toward keeping him alive. He shook his head. It was the story of his life. He was always too busy peeling potatoes to ever sharpen the knife.
He was sure there would be video cameras surveilling the elevator lobby in the office building, so he stopped along the way and bought a hat and sweatshirt, along with some reading glasses. He didn’t need them to see, but he hoped the lenses would obscure his eyes somewhat.
Kittredge arrived in the lobby, pushed the elevator button, and forced himself to stand still, moving only his eyeballs to examine his surroundings while listening intently for signs of other people.
The elevator arrived, empty, and Kittredge rode it to the fourth floor, where he encountered an etched-glass door and full-height window demarcating Kleinmann Holdings’ territory.
Locked, of course. He didn’t really know what he had expected. Waste of time, he chided himself, but then called to mind that his purpose was really just to get the lay of the land, to scope out any likely hiding places for surveillance people, or people with pipe wrenches intended for his kneecaps.
So what the hell am I looking for, exactly? He wasn’t trained for this kind of thing, and he certainly didn’t have the years of experience necessary to be a competent field agent. Hell, half the time he forgot where he parked his damn car. That’s how much attention he usually paid to the world around him.
But he was at Kleinmann Holdings. Nobody was around. He got the sense that it might be an opportunity for him to fill his clue bag just a little bit.
Kittredge checked around for surveillance or alarm equipment. Finding none, he inserted his credit card in the door’s latch mechanism and called on a skill that he still possessed after all these years, a lingering artifact of a misspent summer in his youth. He jimmied the lock, and it yielded after a little over half a minute of effort.
He was in. Kittredge was surprised by how wired he felt. His heart raced, he felt his fingers tingle, and his eyes darted about, taking in everything at once. He felt alive.
It felt pretty damned good, he realized.
Who are you, Nora? He wandered through the offices, looking for her nameplate. She had an office with a view. The door was locked. The jamb was too tight, and the latch too recalcitrant, and he couldn’t work his way into her office. He thought about forcing the lock, but realized it would be a foolish move. No use adver
tising his presence, and he wasn’t sure what he would find that would justify the additional risk.
So where to find information on Nora? The answer was instantly clear. He needed to find that soul-sapping repository of all things administrative, Human Resources.
It took just a few seconds to find it. Personalabteilung, the Germans called it. The personnel department. There was a large filing cabinet, but the little push-button lock was pulled out. Someone forgot to lock up before they left. Kittredge smiled.
Nora Jane Martin was her name, it turned out. Like apple pie. Kittredge wondered if she learned her sexual tricks in catholic school.
Holy shit, she makes a lot of money, he thought, looking at her employee information sheet. It had taken Kittredge a decade before he started earning as much as Nora was making, and she was just a few years out of college. What did she have going for her that he didn’t? Despite the obvious, of course. She was smart, likable, and gorgeous. Still, she was pulling down nearly a big and a half a year, which was a good bit of scratch for a recent college graduate.
Chicago University, it turned out. The place to be for an economics major. At least, it was the place to be if one wanted to learn the Chicago School’s take on economics, Kittredge thought, amused. They were a little too political, too much under the influence of the Fed for Kittredge’s taste.
Focus. He needed an address. He found her emergency contact information sheet, tucked in a file marked “onboarding,” and made a photocopy, along with her last two performance appraisals, which were sparkling.
Of course they were, because Nora Jane Martin was perfect in nearly every way, even down to the way she moaned in bed.
And maybe the way she bashed a man’s skull in, and made it look like someone else had done it.
Rhythmic blue flashes on the blinds caught Kittredge’s attention. He peered out the window and saw the cop car, some stupid little economy-conscious thing the Euros all used, parked at the curb. Two officers got out and walked toward the building entrance.
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