The Good Thief

by Judith Leon

  So, the man with the bone-crushing grip did know the word please.

  She heard soft footsteps and smelled a lilac perfume. After relieving her of her outer wear, Brows said, “You need to let this lady search you.” Lindsey’s flesh crawled as gentle hands swept over her shoulders, across and under her breasts, and down her sides. In a few seconds, Zuza giggled.

  Someone took Lindsey’s arm roughly again, probably Brows, and moved her forward, then up a flight of stairs, and to the right. She had counted thirty paces when another door opened. They entered a room filled with the sounds of perhaps a dozen voices and what she guessed was recorded piano music.

  “Take off the blindfold,” Brows commanded.

  Lindsey did; he took her blindfold and the one Zuza removed and then, without further comment, stepped into the corner and crossed his arms, now on silent guard. Lindsey searched the large, medieval-looking room for Jeremy. He emerged from a group of four and hurried toward her, stroking his goatee nervously.

  His dark brown suit pants hung too low over shiny brown shoes and bagged around the crotch. His jacket, worn over a gray turtleneck wool sweater, was also badly cut. Jeremy was no fashion maven. His cold, light-blue eyes blinked rapidly. He didn’t offer to shake her hand, which was fine by her.

  “Good evening, Ms. Platt. You are the last to arrive. I apologize for the necessary security. I’m sure you understand my caution.”

  Unsmiling, she regarded him with the cold professionalism and focus of a woman used to making large, unscrupulous financial deals. “My companion is Tara.”

  He smiled at Zuza. “You, I believe, are going to have the experience of a lifetime tonight.” Lindsey sensed something smugly sadistic in his look of satisfaction. Returning his attention to Lindsey he continued, eyes gleaming, “Let me introduce you to your competitors.”

  Lindsey quickly sized up the room. Gothic arches vaulted the ceiling that curved down into the walls, all finished in clean white plaster. Massive long wooden table in the center. Curved-back Gothic chairs around it. Flickering candles in pewter candlesticks below the tiered gargoyle chandeliers, together casting shadows into the room’s many corners and angles. Instinctively, Lindsey cringed at all the likely places for cobwebs. Was this why Stefan had seen a spider on Teal’s face?

  Along the wall to her right, heavy ruby damask drapes closed over a row of windows. Directly opposite Lindsey a small servant’s door led from the room, and opposite the windows, two arched wooden doors undoubtedly also led into other rooms. Always know your exits.

  Between the arched doors, a mural of an epic scene looked to be partially restored. It was not done in the Gothic style of the building. The building might be one of Prague’s genuine Gothic structures. She would love to inspect it carefully, but this was not the time.

  At the room’s far end, next to the servant’s door, stood the one anomaly: a rectangular box, like a big ice cube of clear plastic, about four feet wide and six feet tall. And in the middle of it, one of the Gothic chairs. Who would be sitting in the chair, visible but beyond the reach of bidders?

  She could think of only one answer. These horrid people would be inspecting Teal as if she were a prize horse. Lindsey fought back a shudder.

  Her fellow bidders, all presumably representing the true purchasers, now included five men and five women. They stood in clusters at small tables where food and drinks were available, but every so often they looked at the ominous box. Except for the music the room was mostly silent as these somber-faced participants in this criminal auction studied each other. Jeremy’s obvious calculation was that by thrusting all of them into a face-to-face competition it would stimulate higher bids.

  Zuza took Lindsey’s arm, drew her aside and whispered, “My skin creeps in this room. Very evil presences here. All of them. That one,” Zuza indicated a barrel-chested man with a face so scarred it looked as if he’d survived an explosion. “He is very dangerous. Military. But most important that you look out for this tall man in black.” Lindsey had already noted the coldly handsome Asian. “The silent one. He is violent. A killer. I am positive.”

  She squeezed Zuza’s hand, squelching the urge to reply that it didn’t take ESP to know that everything Zuza said was correct.

  Jeremy led the way to the closest group, all of them Asian, and it included the tallest man in the room, the one Zuza feared most.

  “We use only first names,” Jeremy said. “Gentlemen, this is Sylvia and Tara.” Jeremy was acting like this was some damn cocktail party—a friendly get-together and he the gracious host.

  Another man in the group, shorter than Lindsey by six inches, hair cut in a Western style and wearing a dark expensive-looking suit, nodded in her direction. A long, thin mustache drooped on either side of his narrow lips. Thick-lensed, steel-rimmed glasses magnified heavy eye folds.

  “This is Yun,” Jeremy said. Yun did not offer to shake hands. Everyone in the room was surely as reluctant as she was to make physical contact. Yun. Might be Korean. And probably North Korean, given the interest in military uses for genetics. The man looked like an accountant, not a wheeler-dealer, but the woman he was with was surely not the power broker of the two.

  “And Haneul,” Jeremy added, as if an afterthought. This woman was easily the smallest person present. Her gorgeous red cheongsam was elaborately embroidered with a dragon in green, gold and silver. The psychic, no doubt.

  “Good evening,” Lindsey said, cynically going along with Jeremy’s party tone.

  “And these gentlemen are,” Jeremy continued, looking up at least four inches to the tall Asian man, “Foo Hai and Bing.” Jeremy named the man next to Foo Hai, but his gaze never left that of Foo Hai.

  So, Chinese names. Foo Hai probably had some Anglo ancestry. He could be around forty, but was well muscled and trim at the midsection. Complete with ponytail and dressed all in black, he reminded her of the actor in all those kung fu movies, Steven Segal, except that the man’s features were strongly Asian. Only his height and the lack of an eye fold suggested Anglo genes. This man’s dominating presence was impressive. He wore a black pendant with gold calligraphy, but the symbols were complex. One element looked slightly familiar, but if she had any chance of remembering it she must soon write it down.

  Foo Hai—that wasn’t likely his real name—simply stared impassively at her, a black, frightening cipher. She felt his gaze touch her throat, felt her skin there tighten.

  Bing, probably the psychic, watched her. His gaze felt like it cut right under her skin. His hairline had receded severely, giving him a high, shiny forehead. Short, trimmed mustache. A black mole the size of a nickel on his left cheek sort of pointed toward eyes that shifted and darted, taking in everything.

  Lindsey nodded to him coolly and followed Jeremy to a second cluster of four. With Zuza sticking close to her side, Lindsey saw, to her amazement, that what she had thought was a very petite man was actually a boy of about thirteen years.

  He had a gentle face, blond hair, cobalt-blue eyes and a noticeably hunched back. Hovering next to him, a stocky woman in her late fifties. Her angular face was made even more severe by dyed black hair cut in a pageboy with bangs. Gaudy red lipstick. Cheap but stylish dark-gray suit. Unfortunately, she looked like a lump and smelled too strongly of attar of roses. But her haughty composure suggested she felt certain of winning the bidding war.

  Jeremy introduced them as Galina and Yegor. Their accents, when Galina said “Good evening” and the boy said “hello” confirmed that they were probably as Russian as the names they were using. If they were fronting for the Russian government, they might very well be able to outbid everyone else.

  Lindsey’s final set of competitors made up what was perhaps the strangest-looking pair of the whole bunch. The man calling himself Todor was clearly the bidder, and Petia, the tallest person in the room, his psychic. Thin as if recently out of Auschwitz, she had to be six feet three or four. She wore a long black baggy dress, a pewter pendant with a single gr
een stone in it and her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head.

  If Petia was extraordinary by her thinness and height, Todor was extraordinary by his ugliness. Burly. Slightly shorter than Jeremy with bulging greenish eyes that made Lindsey think of sunless bogs and peat. His ginger-colored hair was his only asset, as far as she could tell. Big hands with fat fingers and two rings on either hand. Sweat trickled down into the lines of his many scars.

  The two people in this room that she would least like to encounter in a dark alley were the big Asian and this pug-faced Todor. How horrid that Teal could fall into the hands of any of these people.

  The small door at the far end of the room opened, and a new male joined the party, a slender, sharp dresser in black slacks with a red turtleneck and slick, greasy dark hair, long in back.

  Jeremy stepped back from everyone a bit and cleared his throat. “If I may have your attention. I have two announcements. First, you were all relieved of your digital devices as a precaution. But in this day of nanotechnology, I find it necessary to take additional protective measures. I have in my bag of tricks an interference system that disrupts all electronic transmission within a seven-kilometer radius of this site.”

  He smiled that smug smile of his as Lindsey’s heart dropped to her stomach. She and Zuza were cut off from Marko. They were totally alone in a den of thieves and cutthroats.

  Jeremy continued. “So if any of you thought to detect this location using a GPS, you will be disappointed. The only way you will get from me what I have to offer tonight is by delivering the highest bid, paying, and waiting for me to arrange an exchange. Secondly, I must leave you briefly for something important, but my assistant—” he gestured to the mean-looking strong-arm type with slick hair “—will remain with you to see to your needs. Please continue to enjoy yourselves.”

  Enjoy! Lindsey swallowed back the urge to laugh in contempt. She could see the bulge of a weapon under Slick Hair’s sleek gray jacket. Something about this guy nagged at her. Rather than stare at him, she steered Zuza toward the mural. They looked at it until the man stopped watching them. When he turned to watch Foo Hai on the other side of the room, she saw a tattoo on Slick Hair’s neck behind his right ear. Was that…? Yes, a spider’s web!

  A shiver ran along her sides, and the room suddenly felt like a trap. She imagined the spider arriving, ready to devour its victim. To devour her.

  He snapped his head back toward her and she saw a colorless mole embedded in one of his eyebrows near the nose bridge. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but now she did. No longer bundled in his black coat she hadn’t recognized him, but this was none other than the man who’d attacked her with the knife.

  Lindsey retreated with Zuza back to the food as she absorbed the knowledge that Jeremy had, as she thought he might, tried to either kidnap her or test her. Clearly Marko’s intervention hadn’t blown her cover.

  Zuza whispered, “That man is like a spider.”

  Maybe she’d seen the tattoo, or maybe her psychic sense was in high gear. Lindsey thought again of the image Stefan had of a spider on Teal’s face. The heat of immediate loathing was so strong she forced herself to focus on the food lest detestation show in her face. Everyone had resumed drinking and eating silently as they waited for the real action. Todor stepped next to Lindsey, reached past her to a plate laid out with black caviar on crisp white crackers and plunked seven on his plate.

  With his arm only inches from hers, she was struck by the heat coming off his body, as though he had a fever. Was he ill? Under intense pressure? Possibly on amphetamines? Runnels of sweat rolled along the grooves of his scarred face. You’d have thought he was a pig roasting on a barbecue spit.

  Zuza spoke softly, a nervous edge in her voice. “We are alone. No Marko. Right?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Jeremy approached the ancient dungeon cubicle using a high-powered flashlight, juice and cup in the other hand. At the beginning he and the Colombians had treated the Arnett girl with care. She was, of course, valuable alive, not dead. He hadn’t seen her for three days now. Time to observe the effect of starvation, darkness and total deprivation of human contact on his marvelous creation.

  Holding the flashlight under his arm, he took the key from an ancient stone ring, used it to unlock her cellar door and stepped inside. The girl, seated on the floor, flinched and pulled herself into a tight ball, squinting up at first and then covering her eyes from the strong beam.

  He switched on the cell’s overhead light. She pulled into an even tighter ball.

  “You will straighten yourself up. Comb your hair and wash your face. It’s time now for you to show people what you are worth.”

  Hands over her eyes, she sat up straighter. “Please give me something to eat.”

  “In few minutes Pietro will fetch you.” He set the pitcher of high-energy juice and the cup on the floor but stood between them and her. She looked so pathetic. Maybe this hadn’t been the best strategy.

  “What’s happening?”

  “You will do what I ask of you without question. If you do that, I’ll let you live. If you fail to perform satisfactorily—”

  “Perform? I’m starving. I won’t—”

  “You listen to me, you little bitch. If you fail to perform satisfactorily, you will be of no use to me. I’ll remove you from the demonstration and have Pietro bind you and bury you alive in the snow.”

  She slowly lowered her hands from her face and squinted up at him.

  “Do you understand? Do as I wish and live. Fail me and you die.”

  Chapter 24

  A ll was darkness around Marko, a darkness freezing cold and silent, except for the roar of an occasional car or truck. No moon had risen yet to reflect its light on the surrounding fields of snow. Under patchy starlight, the fields appeared only slightly lighter than the blackness of the wooded hills beyond. He sat, fuming in the rented car, staring at the little receiver in his palm, willing it to come to life and blink again in the compass point crosshairs. It had remained dark for at least fifteen minutes. Something was screwing up this critical GPS link to Lindsey.

  A car with two Asian men had also pulled over in the shelter of a stand of evergreens not far behind him. Why? Or rather, who? Whoever they were, it would be one hell of a strange coincidence if they just happened to decide to rest in the same isolated spot where Marko had stopped. The car’s presence triggered all of his alarms, but he had decided against confronting whoever was in it. His task was to keep track of Lindsey, not pick fights.

  A black car that had passed at least ten minutes earlier whizzed by again going in the opposite direction. It must have turned around somewhere up the road and now was possibly returning to Prague. The driver had high cheekbones. Someone, scarcely visible, sat in the back.

  Cristo! I can’t just sit here doing nothing. He started the motor, left the parked car behind, and took a potholed road he hadn’t tried earlier. As far as he could tell, the car didn’t follow him. At least he couldn’t see headlights.

  He slowed at lighted houses and an occasional building, taking in everything he could but having no clue what kind of car might have picked up Lindsey. He repeatedly checked the Rolly but its screen remained ominously black.

  When he heard a sound in the distance, he pulled over again and shut off the motor. The noise grew louder and then deafening as a chopper passed overhead, its course zigging and zagging. Damn odd, flying a copter at night.

  A Rolly that wouldn’t work, a mysterious car with Asians in it in the middle of Europe and a night-flying helicopter. A lot of things were damn odd.

  Thinking maybe someone in the chopper was on the same kind of hunt he was, he followed it, but soon lost it and then couldn’t find the main road again. He backtracked and approached foothills he hadn’t seen before. He’d lost Lindsey and now he was lost.

  Headlights flashed on behind him, as if someone had been following his taillights and then suddenly hi
t him with their brights. A bullet shattered his rear windshield and passed through the front. Instantly, Marko pulled over, braked hard, ducked down, grabbed his gun and returned fire. The approaching car braked to a halt behind him. Another bullet pinged into his car. Two more shots and his left rear tire lost air; he felt the car sink lower.

  He went on the offensive, leaping out in a crouch, whirling to take shelter behind the open car door, then rising and firing six rounds into the black car’s windshield. He fired again as the Asian bastards backed up, turned around, and left him there.

  Back in the car, his pounding heartbeat slowing, he stared at the Rolly receiver that refused to blink. He let fly a stream of blistering Italian swearwords, ending with stramaledetto.

  He was being irrational. It wasn’t his fault the damn receiver wasn’t working. But he felt a sick twisting in his gut. Lindsey. K-bar. Teal. “Stramaledetto!”

  Lindsey had to get away from Todor and his stinky sweat. She moved to stand beside the incredibly tall Petia while Todor bragged on about his Kestonian nationality.

  “The new order in Kestonia will soon amaze the world,” Todor was saying. “And Vlados Zelasko will be hailed throughout history as the most powerful and effective leader the modern age has ever known.”

  Vlados Zelasko, the petty tyrant who had recently killed off his competition and taken over the little country of Kestonia, was known for strutting around in fancy suits, flashy jewelry and, of all things, a Gucci leather twin shoulder holster for his famous Beretta nine-millimeter handguns. He boasted that if half the population didn’t want to see a leader dead, that leader was doing something wrong.

  The North Korean, Yun, was nodding with enthusiasm. Foo Hai just stared at Todor with a look of indifference. Galina, the Russian woman, looked as if she wanted to exterminate Todor immediately. The psychics had all stepped back and seemed a bit bored. Lindsey and Zuza eased themselves toward the mural.

  “Waiting in this room of murderers is driving me nuts,” she murmured to Zuza. “Do you think something’s happened to Teal? Is that why Jeremy is stalling?”