Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  I needed to take him out of the fight to save him.

  The man in black ran over the sofa, springing for the gun. I kicked out, caught his shin, sent him sprawling over the edge of the couch.

  I guess the Russian believed muscle paved every road, made life easier. He tried to seize my throat in one big hand while grabbing at the man in black with the other.

  He missed.

  “Idiot!” I screamed. In English. The Russian started strangling me with one hand while dragging me along in pursuit of the man in black.

  “Let go—hurk, I’ll help—hurk.” I believe these were the noises I made.

  The man in black reached the gun, spun, fired at the Russian. He missed but I felt the heat of the bullet pass between me and the Russian. The Russian surged forward, propelling me along with him, using me like a shield as I tried to pull away, his arms locked over mine. Only my feet were free. I powered a sideways kick into the man in black’s arm and he fired again as I did. It all happened within three seconds. I’d used my left leg and the shot went right into the Russian’s chest, just missing my ear. The poor guy screamed and he let go and sank.

  I pulled free and the man in black was running out the door.

  The door slammed.

  The Rostov brother—I assumed from the photos in the room—looked up at me as I knelt beside him, pulling out my phone to dial 911, and he stared at me and he drew a shuddering breath and then released it; his last. And me, a stranger, his last sight on earth.

  Just like his brother, he looked confused, surprised. Life can end in a snap; we wrap ourselves in all sorts of blankets to hide that cruel fact.

  What would Detective DeSoto make of two brothers dead the same night, one in a bar fight, one in his home?

  She would be looking very, very hard at me.

  My situation had reached a new level of disaster by an order of magnitude. If she found a print of mine here—a strand of hair even…I wiped, carefully, the front door, the light switch, trying to think of any surface my hand might have landed on during the fight. A bit of fiber from my clothes, a stray print, and I could no longer deny that I had any previous connection to Grigori Rostov.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him when I was done. How weird is that? Sorry for having killed his brother, who tried to kill me? Sorry he came home and died because two strangers were having a stare down? He was midtwenties, about my age. I was alive. He was dead and gone and soon he’d be cold.

  I hurried out to the street, hoping my life wasn’t about to collapse. In trying to make sure I was safe, I’d just put myself in far greater danger.

  You’re in this now…You know too much.

  Because there was no way the man in black would let me walk now, would let us be ships that passed in the night. Now I was a threat to him.

  11

  Thursday, November 4, late evening

  WAKE UP.”

  Belias tapped the edge of the hard drive against Glenn’s head. “I have a bit of wisdom to share with you, knowing the value you put on information, Glenn.”

  Glenn opened his eyes, bleary, bloodshot, the bruising darkening on his temple. “What?”

  Belias put his face close to Glenn’s. “People teach you who they are under pressure. That’s when you see all their failings, all their weaknesses. I visited Grigori Rostov’s humble abode.” He dangled the hard drive above Glenn’s face. “I read your e-mails to him. He needed to use a spell-checker.”

  Glenn’s eyes widened.

  “You want to take over from me, Glenn. In you I created a monster. You’re like a zombie of ambition. Ravenous but brainless.”

  “I…I…”

  “Please. Don’t deny it.”

  Glenn shifted his voice to low and reasonable. “Let me help you. You can’t run our network alone, John. It’s too much power, too much responsibility. If I knew who all the others were…”

  “You could use them!”

  “No. I could help you protect them. What if something happens to you? We would have no peace of mind…not knowing if anyone else was going to find out about the network.”

  “Only I know the names of everyone. That’s how I protect you, Glenn. And I’m really bad at sharing. Always have been. Ask my dad.” He couldn’t contain a bitter laugh.

  “I could help you. Find new people. New ways for us to rise.”

  “I don’t appreciate a succession plan being forced on me, Glenn. You were using our moment of greatest danger for your own advantage.”

  Glenn’s mouth narrowed. “Isn’t that what you do every day?”

  “For your own good, Glenn! I made you!” Belias cupped his hands as though a potter’s wheel spun beneath them. “I shaped you from the clay of failure.”

  “Don’t sound so full of yourself,” Glenn said. “You know you need me.”

  “You want to play the need card? Come on, didn’t you need Holly once? Roger.” And Roger, standing close, brought up the knife where Glenn could see it. “I should go chat with Holly about your little rebellion.”

  The panic flared hot in Glenn’s eyes. “Holly didn’t know about the takeover. She thought I just hired the Russian to grab Diana Keene. Please…leave her alone.”

  “And I should believe you why?”

  “It’s the truth. Holly’s done everything you’ve ever asked. I swear, she knew nothing about this.”

  “You only had a few more years to pay out the debt, Glenn. This was really poor judgment.” Belias set down the hard drive. “I think we must dissolve our business relationship.”

  Glenn stared at him, the beginning of a disbelieving grin cracking his face. “You can’t replace me. Not in what I provide to you.”

  “Glenn, you don’t get to plead once you’ve buried the knife in my back.” He turned away from Glenn. “Roger, put down the knife and get the tools. Have him tell me who else is involved in his little revolt against me.”

  “It’s just me. Not Holly. I swear!”

  “Make him talk. You know how I like it done,” Belias said. He went and got a glass of water while Roger began.

  It took eighteen minutes. Roger probed with knife and scalpel and the soft sound of his voice, asking questions. Flecks of blood dotted the wall at one point. Glenn confessed that no one else knew, he was afraid anyone he approached would have told Belias, and finally Roger said, “I really think he might have acted alone.”

  “Is that true, Glenn?” Belias brushed back Glenn’s hair from his pale, sweaty, bloodied forehead.

  “Yes,” Glenn whispered. “Just stop, please stop, don’t let him hurt me any more…”

  “Don’t hurt him any more, Roger. End it.”

  Roger took the necklace off Glenn, handed it to Belias. And then Roger slammed the knife into Glenn’s heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Roger said when either felt like speaking, “for the mess. A bit of blood on the walls.” Roger poured himself a bourbon, neat. “I’ll clean it in the morning.”

  “Paint over the blood. Holly will be back here tomorrow.”

  “Means a quick trip to the paint store,” Roger said. “We’ll have to kill Holly?”

  “I hope not,” Belias said. “What a bad evening.” The only bright spot was the bartender. A bartender who was far more than a bartender. Belias could not resist the not knowing. The mystery of it. What you could not have you wanted to possess. He saw this truth constantly in other people but so rarely in himself; he felt a surge of heat rise along his arms, just like when he had a brilliant idea. The bartender who could give him Diana Keene and maybe be a new ally in his moment of need.

  He went and washed his pale hands. He wanted a bourbon like Roger was enjoying, but it was vital to not lose control.

  “Glenn was my first recruit,” he said as he rinsed his hands. “Feeling a little sad. I hate when they leave me.”

  “No, you’re not sorry.” Roger took another tiny sip of the bourbon. “You like the ex-wife.”

  Belias dried his hands with a paper towe
l and he glanced toward Roger with a flash of ice in his gaze. “I respect Holly.”

  “You’d respect her right into your bed.” Roger put Glenn’s cell phone on the table, next to his drink.

  “You don’t mind cleaning up?” Belias asked. “I need to figure out what to do about this bartender.” He dangled Glenn’s necklace before his own eyes as if wondering whose throat it might decorate next.

  “I live to serve. And I want things nice and neat when you bring in Diana Keene.” Roger took another sip of his bourbon. “Are you mourning out of sentiment or because Glenn was very valuable to you?”

  “He planned a takeover. I—and you—built this private empire. Not him. He’d be selling penny stocks over the phone to senile grandfathers if I hadn’t made his life easier. Did he think I would ever tell him who all the others are? This is a relationship built on trust and it would have betrayed the whole network for him to know them all. After I gave Glenn the good life.”

  “People are natural ingrates,” Roger said. “It’s like a law of nature.”

  “You’ll get rid of the body,” Belias told him. “I know this was unexpected work for you. What can I give you? Stock information, per usual?”

  Roger nodded.

  “And anyone bothering you?”

  “I’d like my daughter to be valedictorian.” Belias knew Roger’s ex-wife had his teenage daughter in a fine school in Boston.

  “I can’t work a miracle.”

  “She’s in second place. Barely a point-zero-eight behind.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “The current valedictorian plays soccer.”

  “An injury can be so distracting,” Belias said. “Or a parent’s unemployment.”

  “Thank you. I can dump Glenn in the bay. How will you tell Holly?”

  “He died in his sleep tonight, brain injury. The blow he took was too severe.”

  “She might want to see the body.”

  “I’ll tell her we couldn’t leave a body around for hours. Get it out of here before she comes back tomorrow.”

  “His wife will be upset.”

  “Holly’s not his wife anymore.”

  “Very funny,” Roger said. “He’s going to be a man that people miss. You’ll need an explanation for the new wife. And quick.”

  “I can make it look like he left town for good reason. The press and the police will first think he’s kidnapped. Then they’ll think maybe he was crooked—it’s what they’ll always think of a businessman—then Holly will do exactly what I ask. She won’t put her children’s future at risk. The story we build around Glenn will ensure she stays loyal. I have plans for Holly now.”

  Glenn’s cell phone began to ring.

  Part Three

  Friday,

  November 5

  12

  Friday, November 5, very early morning

  THE FOG—I would have been disappointed if I hadn’t seen it during my stay in San Francisco—began to snake its way through the city. I drove my rental car back toward the Haight, watching my rearview mirror. No sign I was being followed.

  What had DeSoto said? Most people are affected by killing. Like I wasn’t. She was wrong. A long shuddering took hold of me; a life ended at my hands, and I was powerless to save another. I felt like I’d taken a double-punch to the chest.

  And I knew I could have died, on the wrong side of the knife, the tumble of the bullet. I could have been taken away from my son I’d fought so hard to get back. A heavy, aching need to hold Daniel in my arms took me. Had I only held him hours ago? I told myself not to worry. Daniel was safe now.

  I didn’t need to be involved in this nightmare. I wasn’t a secret soldier anymore, right?

  My life was not killing bad guys with knives or breaking into people’s houses and getting involved in three-way fights that ended in death.

  But I was going to have to fight. The man in black had made sure of that now. I’d have no peace until this was resolved, and I was at a serious disadvantage; he knew I worked at The Select.

  He could find me and I couldn’t find him.

  I put my hand on the phone I’d taken from Grigori Rostov.

  Time to find out who you were and what business you had in my bar.

  I unlocked the gated parking area behind the bar, pulled in close to the back door. The police appeared to be finished with processing the outside of the bar in their search for evidence. I wondered what they had found. There were still techs inside the bar, talking quietly. I peered through the front window; Rostov’s body was gone.

  I went up the back steps. Felix was waiting inside the apartment.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I told him.

  “Oh, Sam,” Felix said. “I just thought we should know who we were up against…” He sat suddenly. “I didn’t mean to get a man killed,” he whispered, as though the police techs a floor below could hear us.

  “I’ve made a new enemy. We need to prepare.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How?”

  “We need to find out who Rostov is and who the man in black is.” I felt weird simply coming in and giving orders; I was an absentee boss, and Felix did all the hard, daily work of keeping The Select running and in the black. And he was older than me, if not quite old enough to be my dad, at least my really much older brother. “And then we need to clean up the mess downstairs.” I think better while doing physical work or running.

  “It would be a bigger mess,” Felix said, “if the police decided to look hard at you and wanted to know more about you or the bar and subpoenaed our business records. I’ve finished uploading everything to a secure server, wiped the hard drives, and put in a fake set of business records. You’re clean as a whistle.”

  “Thank you. I want to look at the security feed. I want to see if we can find out who this young woman is. She’s the key.”

  “Of course, we gave a copy of the feed to the police, but I kept a copy.” Felix kicked up the security video feed, watched the woman enter, talk to me, run away from the bar. The angle didn’t give the best view of her face.

  “I want to review the feed from the past few days. See if she ever came in before,” I said.

  Felix slowed the video, ran it again, studied it. Ran it again. “I know her,” he said. “Diana Keene. Her mother is a friend of mine.”

  “Friend?”

  “Friend.” He rubbed his fingers along his face. “We…we’re not dating. Exactly.”

  “How exactly then do you know her?”

  Felix swallowed. “I need you to swear not to tell Mila.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  Felix took his time. “I have cancer. In my lung. I know Diana’s mom—her name is Janice—from a cancer support group I’m in.”

  I am bad at this stuff. Comfort. Reassurance. “Felix, I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t know what to say, either. Presumably if he’d wanted me or Mila to know this, he would have told us earlier. He was only telling me because it was relevant to the disaster we were in right now. “It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t, but like me he didn’t know what else to say. “How bad is it?”

  “Small, caught early.” He swallowed. “I start chemo soon. But I want to keep working. Mila doesn’t know. Please don’t tell her. The higher-ups at the Round Table know; they take care of my health insurance.”

  “Higher-ups.”

  “Jimmy. Mila reports to him. He knows.”

  Mila had told me Jimmy recruited her into the Round Table after she’d taken revenge against the leader of an international criminal ring who’d hurt her sister. She’d had a million-dollar bounty put on her head; Jimmy kept her safe. I’d never met him. I’m not sure I wanted to—Mila told me we’d either be close as brothers or we’d kill each other.

  “What can I do for you, Felix? Whatever you need, whatever you want.”

  “What I need is to be helpful to you. To stay busy. I’m okay, Sam. Please. I’m not an invalid.”
>
  I’m all for staying busy rather than talk about the unpleasant and overly personal. “So Diana Keene came in looking for you.”

  “I don’t know why she would need help. She works for her mother. Janice is a public relations guru, one of the best in the country. Big name clients.”

  “Maybe they found out something unsavory about one of those clients.”

  “Then Janice would go to the police. She’s totally respectable.”

  No police, Diana Keene had said. “Maybe her mother’s involved in a bad way.”

  Felix shook his head emphatically. “No. No, Janice is a solid citizen.”

  “Okay. Tell me about Diana being here.”

  “She came in Wednesday night. I was down at the bar, you were upstairs reviewing the business accounts.”

  I didn’t recall seeing her. “Looking for you or for her mom?”

  “Her mom, but I told her that her mom wasn’t here. I’ve only met Diana once. Janice did not want her to know she had cancer. She was going to tell her, but she hadn’t yet, I guess.”

  “How bad is her mom’s cancer?”

  “Bad.”

  “Terminal?”

  “No, but she is starting treatment soon. I guess she was going to tell her daughter then.” Felix coughed, took a sip of water. “Diana said her mom had gone out of town and did I have a way to reach her. She was extremely nervous, upset.” Felix scratched at the trace of gray in his goatee. “She ordered a glass of pinot noir. And have you ever seen someone, they think about getting drunk when the drink first arrives and then they decide not to? That was Diana. A couple of guys tried to buy her wine and she shot them down. She sat and she waited and she didn’t finish her glass.” Felix frowned.

  “Did you talk much with her?” Felix, I had noticed, was very social whenever he was in the bar; he was great with customers.

  “She didn’t stay long. I told her I didn’t even know her mom was out of town. It was news to me. She said, ‘Well, maybe she isn’t.’ I said, ‘Why would she lie to you?’ She said something about a retreat with no cell phones, she can’t reach her mom. She wanted to know if her mom came in, or if she called me, could she leave a message for her. I said yes.” His eyes widened. “I haven’t thought about it again since because I hadn’t seen Janice this week…but I thought it very odd that Janice wouldn’t be in touch with her daughter.”