Kittredge cursed himself silently. This was why he tried not to lie. Because he was terrible at it, and half the time he confused the tall tale with the truth. It had landed him in all sorts of trouble in his life, and had done so once again.
“Yes,” Kittredge finally said. “Two.”
“The same man, yes?” Strauss guessed.
Kittredge’s breathing accelerated, and he wondered if Strauss could hear his anxiety. This was dangerous territory. His heart pounded. “Yes. The same man.”
“Where did it happen?”
Dammit. He really wanted to avoid talking to the police about all of this. He had to be extremely careful with his answer. The last thing he needed was Strauss nosing around inside Nora’s apartment looking for evidence. He was confident he’d cleaned up the blood and guts, but not so confident that he wanted a forensics team snooping around. “Outside Nora’s apartment. I was returning from the store. He was in the elevator lobby.”
Strauss considered. “He attacked you in the apartment building?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he do that? In front of a floor full of witnesses.”
“I don’t know.”
“Herr Kittredge, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Sonuvabitch. Kittredge would have to fabricate details on the fly, which meant he would have to remember those fabrications for later, to make sure his lie stayed consistent. And there was significant danger of creating damning inconsistencies. It was exactly what Kittredge didn’t want.
“What do you want me to say?” But he recalled the first assault, in the hotel on Saturday. The man had attacked Kittredge in the hallway, in front of a witness. “It was basically the same thing as in the hotel. The same exactly.” Except for the stabbing and dismembering.
“It seems very sloppy,” Strauss said. “What did he do to you?”
This answer didn’t take much thought. “He strangled me. I thought I was going to die.”
“But you survived.”
“No, you’re talking to an apparition.” Kittredge was surprised at his own wit and wherewithal under the circumstances.
He heard Strauss with that little Indiana Jones villain laugh again. “How did you survive, Herr Kittredge. That is what I am interested in knowing.”
Is he grilling me because he doesn’t believe me? Or is it just what cops do? He needed another careful answer here. But he couldn’t think of one. “I was carrying a knife,” he finally said.
“Smart, I think,” Strauss said. “I won’t ask you what kind of knife you were carrying. Did you stab him with it?”
Alarm bells rang in Kittredge’s head. It didn’t sound terribly plausible that he was able to scare off a persistent killer by waving a kitchen knife around, especially if the killer had his hands around Kittredge’s throat. Getting the man to stop would probably have required wounding him. A wound would mean DNA evidence, which the cops would want to collect.
Kittredge rubbed his brow and noticed that he was sweating. “No,” he lied. “It might not have been the knife exactly that made him stop. Two big guys came around the corner into the elevator lobby about that time, I think.”
“You think.”
“That’s what I said. I wasn’t exactly at my sharpest. I couldn’t see because I was being choked to death. But I heard voices shouting.”
Kittredge heard Strauss tapping his pen against the desk on the other end of the line. Kittredge wiped his sweaty brow again.
“This is a very serious thing, Herr Strauss. Tell me, why didn’t you file a report? Perhaps we would have caught the man already. You wouldn’t have to hide any longer.”
That’s a damned good question, Kittredge thought. It demanded a damn good answer. But he couldn’t think of one. He decided to bluster. “And what would you have done, exactly? The same thing you guys did on Saturday, which was precisely nothing?”
More villain chuckling from Strauss. “We didn’t exactly do nothing, Herr Kittredge. We examined the security footage from the hotel.”
Holy hell, Kittredge thought. Did Nora’s apartment have security cameras installed in the elevator lobby? If so, it would take the cops half a nanosecond to figure out that he was lying to them about the second assault. And then he would be screwed beyond recovery.
“Do you want to know what we discovered, Herr Kittredge?” Strauss asked after a moment’s awkward silence, during which Kittredge quietly panicked.
“Uh… Hell yes, I want to know.”
“We identified your assailant. A US Consulate employee.”
Kittredge dropped the phone. He was suddenly dizzy. He swooned, sat down heavily on the bed in the hotel room, ran his hands through his hair. “Herr Kittredge?” Strauss’ voice was small and tinny, reaching his ears from the floor where the phone lay.
This changes everything, Kittredge realized.
Kittredge didn’t know how much time had passed. At some point, Strauss’ voice had stopped calling his name from the cell phone on the floor. The Polizeikommissar had hung up.
Kittredge was still reeling from the news. He had killed an employee of the US Consulate.
Which meant he had killed a CIA agent.
Which meant that the Agency had definitely not forgotten about Peter Kittredge and his deal with the devil.
And, taken altogether, all of that meant that life as Kittredge knew it had ended. There were no two ways about it.
He felt denial, searched frantically through his mind for some plausible explanation other than the worst possible one, that he was back on the Agency’s radar, but he could think of nothing remotely believable. A US Consulate employee. Oh, dear mother of God.
He felt sorry for himself. Victimized. Back in the same helpless emotional state he’d experienced when he’d first come to know the Agency’s full reach, the full depth of the ass-reaming they were capable of delivering.
Kittredge raided the mini-bar. There was nothing left but tequila. He hated tequila. But he hated sobriety more, so he twisted the small cap from the bottle and tilted it into his mouth. Who drinks this shit, a small part of his brain wondered. It tasted like cough syrup and mariachi music. He emptied and discarded the small bottle and sat back on the bed, his back rounded and slouched in defeat, his hands draped lifelessly across his thighs.
I can’t handle this again. It had been so exhausting, so debilitating the first time around, in Venezuela. He had lost a part of his soul. At least, that’s how he viewed the episode, particularly when he was making villains out of Quinn, Fredericks, and whatever collection of SOBs had seen fit to hire them and set them loose on the world.
But you’re innocent in all of this, right, Pete? Somehow Quinn’s voice had found its way inside Kittredge’s head. That giant, powerful, sarcastic, evil bastard with the wolf’s eyes. He had a way of slicing right through Kittredge, always with a caustic, sarcastic laugh. And there was also the time when Quinn had taken a belt sander and a shaker full of salt to the small of Kittredge’s back. He still bore the scars.
But behind the evisceration-as-sport aspect of Quinn’s personality, the man usually had a point. And Quinn’s voice in Kittredge’s head just a second ago had also had a point.
Kittredge wasn’t innocent.
The same evil roiled around inside of him that boiled inside of all men. Like Quinn and Fredericks, Kittredge had dared to open the lid. Maybe just a little bit — nothing at all like those two Agency devils, a shades-of-gray distinction that somehow still felt important to Kittredge — but he had nevertheless let the demons curl their hands around the slightly opened door in the dark part of his being.
With this uncomfortable knowledge, something hardened inside of him. His feelings of victimhood and violation diminished. He no longer felt as if he was only the poor, gay, put-upon Peter Kittredge. He understood that he was also the powerful, dangerous, resourceful man who had viciously dispatched a very bad person who deserved what he got, and then had the gumption to do what needed to be done with the
body.
It wasn’t anything he’d care to talk to his mom about, if she were still alive, but it was an important realization nonetheless. He needed to get over his squeamishness, he thought. He needed to butch the fuck up.
He needed to take care of business. Because if he didn’t, business would certainly take care of him.
His phone buzzed. It was still lying on the floor where he’d dropped it, face-up. Jürgen Strauss, the caller ID said.
How convenient, the new Kittredge thought. I needed to talk to that asshole anyway.
“Sorry about that,” Kittredge said. “My battery died.” What was one more lie? He was getting drunk and his mind was loosening up, he noticed. He smiled a little bit. A little less give-a-shit was precisely what he would need to pull things off with Strauss.
“I was just saying,” Strauss said, “that the man who assaulted you in the hotel was a US Consulate employee. Do you have any idea what he might have wanted with you?”
I have about a dozen ideas, Kittredge didn’t say. “None whatsoever. I mean, that sounds really strange. Is there even a US Consulate in Cologne?”
“No,” Strauss said. “The closest is in Düsseldorf. Half an hour north. That’s where your friend worked.”
“What was his name?”
Strauss clucked. “I can’t give you that information, Herr Kittredge.”
“He assaulted me. You can’t tell me who he was?”
“Not until an arrest has been made and formal charges have been filed.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Maybe so,” Strauss said, his firm but conciliatory tone defusing Kittredge’s anger a bit, “but those are the laws we live with.”
“I want to know how you found me, Strauss.”
“That’s Polizeikommissar Strauss, Herr Kittredge. And I didn’t find you, because I never lost you.”
“You’ve been following me?”
“Not precisely.”
“Then what, precisely?” Kittredge was standing now, pacing back and forth in the room, feeling powerful at the way the energy had shifted in the exchange. He was on the offensive, and he was driving the agenda. He wasn’t just sitting back while the world rolled him, like some… sissy.
“You’re one of two witnesses in a murder, Herr Kittredge. You are also the victim of an assault. We have ways of looking out for your safety, and for the rule of law.”
Kittredge’s voice rose. “What ways, exactly? This is important, Strauss. This asshole found me twice in two days, in two very different places. I want to know if there’s a connection.”
“Connection to whom?” There was a bit of threat in Strauss’ voice, and some annoyance, too. Kittredge sensed that Strauss knew where the line of questioning was headed, and the cop was not entirely pleased about the implicit accusation.
It was time to press the advantage, to get a rise out of Strauss. “Connection to you, Polizeikommissar Strauss. A connection to you and your goddamned goon squad.”
Strauss was silent for a moment. Kittredge heard the inspector’s breathing quicken momentarily, as if he were preparing to fire off a retort, but it lasted only a moment, and Strauss was back in total Teutonic control. “That is a possibility, Herr Kittredge. The Polizeiamt is large. Many people work here. They say that everyone has his price. But I cannot see the connection at this point.”
Kittredge was disarmed by Strauss’ flat, honest response. It took him a while to respond. “I still need to know how you found me,” Kittredge said, his voice quiet. “Because if you found me, then they can find me again, too.”
He heard Strauss sigh on the other end of the connection. “I’m afraid that’s not something you and I can discuss.”
“So you’re following me. Then why the hell didn’t you stop the second assault?”
“Herr Kittredge, if I had the manpower to follow you, I still wouldn’t have the permission. We use less… obtrusive methods.”
Goddamn video cameras, Kittredge realized. He should have known. And despite all the post-Fascist lip service paid to German civil liberties, this was still the group of people that spawned and elevated the Kaiser and the Führer, he reflected. Things changed with time, but not that much.
“Perhaps someone has hacked into your system,” Kittredge said.
“Perhaps,” Strauss agreed. Then he changed the subject. “Please come file a report. It will help us deport this individual who is bothering you.”
Deportation would be tough at this point, Kittredge thought. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to lay low. I don’t know who’s screwing with me, and I don’t have any confidence that it isn’t you guys.”
“Herr Kittredge, it is a simple matter to obtain the surveillance footage from Fräulein Martin’s apartment building. But I would still like to hear your impressions, and I would like you to file a report to aid our investigation.”
Kittredge’s blood froze. Strauss planned to pull the surveillance footage anyway. It wouldn’t show an elevator lobby assault by a large US Consulate employee. Instead, it would show a large US Consulate employee entering Nora’s flat using a key. And then it would show Peter Kittredge making two dozen trips to the basement trash compactor.
The math wouldn’t be difficult. Two and two added up to I’m completely screwed.
So… it begins. A part of him knew that something like this was a possibility. It wasn’t the nineteen fifties, when murders went unsolved and missing persons stayed missing. In a wired society, with seven billion people and over a billion unblinking eyes with perfect memories, there was nothing hidden, nothing that couldn’t be discovered, no matter how careful one might be.
Grab your socks, Peter Kittredge, and kiss your ass goodbye.
“Okay,” Kittredge told Strauss. “I’ll be right in.”
But he had no intention of seeing Polizeikommissar Jürgen Strauss. Ever.
35
Quinn was the name he went by. It wasn’t his given name, but it was just as real as if he’d been so christened. There was nobody important in his life who didn’t call him Quinn.
He was a giant. His jaw was chiseled, as were his muscular features. He had a scar on his face. One eye was brilliant blue, and the other was a bright hazel, like a wolf or a wild dog.
Quinn killed people. Often, he tortured them first. He was good at both, though he didn’t favor torture, or in current bureaucratic parlance, enhanced interrogation methods. He wasn’t squeamish by any stretch, but he lacked the innate, deep sadism that marked the truly great torturers. Those guys were truly talented, mostly because they were psychopaths and sociopaths.
Quinn wasn’t one of them, but he was undoubtedly a sociopath. There was no denying that fact, and Quinn had long ago chosen to follow a famous pop star’s advice to just fucking own it, baby. But he definitely wasn’t a psychopath, and so he turned down torture jobs when he could.
Quinn held the hotel phone to his ear. On the other end was the nasal voice belonging to a fat, sarcastic, and entirely unwholesome character. Quinn had known this character for a very long time, and had worked with and for him on more occasions than he could count, in just about every continent on earth, save the ones permanently covered with ice.
Together they were, as the saying went, the pointy end of the spear. Their efforts ensured that the self-evidently superior binary ideologies of Capitalism and Democracy remained self-evidently superior. The irony wasn’t lost on Quinn, but he’d long ago stopped caring. His career field matched his predilections almost perfectly, and he didn’t have to be an ideologue to endure the occasional unpleasantness that cropped up, because he was obscenely well compensated. He was employed by the government, in a manner of speaking, but he sure as hell wasn’t a government employee.
“You already have a guy,” Quinn inserted into a microscopic pause in his boss’ monologue.
“Had.”
“Aha,” Quinn said. There was the rub. The agent was either burned or smoked. It was a conclusion he made immediat
e use of. “I’ll do it for time and a half.”
“The hell you will,” his boss said.
Quinn hung up. What was the fat bastard going to do? Kill the guy himself? Quinn snorted. It had probably been a decade since that piece of shit had had to wash his hands.
It didn’t take long for the phone to ring again. “You’ve reconsidered, I see,” Quinn said with a smug smile.
“Go to hell.”
“Funds first, like always,” Quinn said.
“There’s no time for that. I have a nerd hoovering up search engine shit, and our guy has popped up again. He moves around a lot. It has to be now.”
“Then I suggest you wire the funds now,” Quinn said.
“It would really help,” the nasal voice said, “if you could find it in your heart to trust me just this once. The money will be there, and I don’t have time to waste.”
Quinn laughed. “Sorry. I don’t trust you because I know you. ‘Just this once’ would become every time. It’s tough love, tons-of-fun. Take it or leave it.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Quinn smiled. He could envision his boss turning red, jowls shaking with rage. He thoroughly enjoyed jerking the man around. But as a contractor, Quinn could do whatever the hell he wanted. Sure, the Agency assholes could fire him whenever they pleased, but then they’d have to worry about him sneaking up on them and slicing their throats while they slept. It wasn’t a bad little bit of leverage to hold.
“All right. Give me half an hour to get to a clean computer. Then check your account.”
“Take your time,” Quinn said. “I’m in no rush.” It was an unnecessary little twist of the knife, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.
Despite his insistence to the contrary during the conversation with his handler, Quinn prepared to move out right away. He cleaned and sanitized the hotel room, and once he felt confident that he’d either removed or sufficiently mangled any lingering DNA, he selected his weapons of choice from his backpack: a silenced 10mm pistol, which packed enough punch to stop a gorilla, and a handy little knife that had two finger holes instead of a handle. When he wanted to use the knife, he slipped it over his beefy fingers brass-knuckle style. He preferred to wear it with the blade hidden in his palm rather than protruding the other direction, out the back side of his fingers. That way, he could sever a man’s carotid just by grabbing his throat. It was much quicker than swinging the silly thing around like some sort of Olympic fencer. And quicker was always better where killing was concerned.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 101
