by Allan Folsom
The first was something Anne had asked Raisa as she had shown them around the apartment.
“One other thing. A computer or laptop with an Internet connection. At some point I will need to do a little work.”
Raisa’s reply had been that as yet the building had no Internet connection. It was a reality Anne had accepted with little more than a nod.
The second was something that had happened earlier as they’d climbed from the Baixa quarter and turned onto Rua Garrett, where he was now—when Anne had suddenly ducked into a small, elegant five-star hotel to use the loo. At the time it had seemed completely reasonable, but putting the two pieces together now he wondered if she hadn’t been doing something more than just taking a pee. Maybe she’d been deliberately checking out the hotel to see if it had Internet service, a service a five-star hotel might very well provide even if some of the surrounding neighborhoods did not. But why? She had an Internet connection on her BlackBerry.
Still . . .
Abruptly Marten turned back, retracing his steps on Rua Garrett. The hotel had been small, stylish, and on the left. Where was it? What had it been called? He walked on. Suddenly the rain came down in earnest. He huddled close under the umbrella and moved on. Seconds later he stopped. Not fifty paces ahead he saw it. hotel lisboa chiado His blood came up in a rush, and he started toward it.
10:46 P.M.
88
HOTEL LISBOA CHIADO. 10:48 P.M.
The sound of a piano greeted Marten as he entered the small foyer. It seemed to be coming from a bar partway down an elegant wood-paneled hallway that led to the main desk area in the rear. On the left and in between was an elevator. A stairwell was just past it. Not the best architectural layout for a hotel, but probably done to work within the structural confines of a building that looked to be eighty years old at least and might once have been a private residence.
Marten closed the umbrella and walked down the hallway to glance into the bar. A young black man in a white suit sat at a piano effortlessly playing a medley of show tunes for the dozen or so patrons congregated there. As in the other places he’d visited, Anne was not among them.
He turned back, looked in the direction of the main desk, and headed for it. As he did, the elevator in front of him opened and three people stepped out. Their backs to him, they walked in the same direction he was going, toward the main desk. Two were clearly hotel employees, both in dark suits, one older than the other, the concierge, maybe. The third was a slim, fortyish, dark-haired man dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt.
“I understand she checked in, but where is she now?” the Hawaiian shirt asked emphatically.
“I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.” The older man was genuinely apologetic. “Maybe she went out for something she needed. She had no luggage. She said it had been lost at the airport and was to be delivered here. So far it hasn’t been.”
“But she did go to the room.”
“Yes, sir. The night clerk showed her to it. You saw that for yourself.”
“All I saw was that someone had used a hand towel in the bathroom. It could have been anyone.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Tidrow. It’s all I can tell you.”
“She’s my sister, you know. She’s not well. She was supposed to call the moment she checked in.”
“I appreciate the situation, sir. We will alert you the moment she returns.”
At the word “Tidrow” Marten stopped where he was. They were already here, looking for her. How could they have known? Unless she’d been foolish enough to use a credit card and her accounts were being electronically monitored. But then credit cards, plus a little cash—certainly not enough for a room in a hotel like this, four hundred euros a night at least, probably more—would have been all she had. Moreover, she would have known that there was every chance her accounts were being watched and that if she used any of her cards they would know where they had been used and when, almost instantly. It meant she’d come there, done whatever she’d had to do, and then left before they could get there. But why? What was it that was worth the risk of exposing herself like this?
Use of the Internet?
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she’d come there for some other reason entirely. He looked around. On a side table near the bar entrance was an arrangement of hotel brochures. Quickly he crossed to it, picked one up, and opened it. In the list of hotel amenities were the words High Speed Internet Access in All Rooms.
Again he saw the fire and fear and uncertainty in her eyes just before she’d left Raisa’s apartment building and disappeared into the night. Alright, maybe the Internet was what she’d been after. But what information had she hoped to get that wasn’t already available to her via her own BlackBerry?
He slipped the brochure back in its cradle and looked down the hallway. The man in the Hawaiian shirt had stepped away from the others and was on a cell phone.
Get out of here, now! Marten thought.
Head down, he started for the front door. As he did, it opened and two men in suit coats came in. One was strongly built and well over six feet; the other, tall and very slim. Marten barely glanced at them as he passed, but in that instant the breath went out of him. The big man was Conor White. The other was the French-Canadian jungle fighter, Patrice Sennac.
Breathless, umbrella in hand, Marten pushed through the door and out into the rain. A metallic gray BMW was parked directly in front of the hotel; a lone man sat at the wheel. Double-parked across the street was a dark blue Jaguar sedan. Its parking lights were on and he could just make out two figures in the front seat. Both were looking in his direction. Immediately he turned right and walked quickly off. Back down Rua Garrett, toward the Baixa district. Seconds later he heard the hotel’s door open behind him. A rush of feet followed. Beard, turned-up collar, pulled-down hat, or not, he’d been recognized.
He took off on the dead run.
10:57 P.M.
89
Marten turned off Rua Garrett and ran hard down steep, rain-slicked, white-cobblestoned steps that ran alongside whatever narrow side street he had taken.
“Marten!”
Someone shouted behind him. Conor White? Maybe.
“Marten!” it came again.
He looked back and saw two men crest the top of hill on foot. Just then the gray BMW came into view. It slid to a stop beside them. They jumped in and the car screeched off, coming after him.
He turned back and kept running, looking for a way out. Then he saw a darkened alley to his right and turned down it, moving, he thought, into the Baixa quarter. At the end he turned left and ran on. Seconds later he saw the dark blue Jaguar flash under street-lights as it cut in from a side street. He turned left again, ran up a hill, then cut right at the next street and started down it. For a moment there was silence. Then he heard a wild scream of tires behind him and saw the Jaguar slide around the corner, nearly hit a parked car, then regain control and race toward him. Where the BMW had gone he didn’t know.
Suddenly he remembered Kovalenko’s Glock automatic in his waistband. He slid it out and kept running. A hundred yards farther down was the bottom of the hill. There, it flattened out and went straight into the heart of the Baixa. If he could reach it, with its traffic and its myriad of streets and cross streets, he might still have a chance.
Then the Jaguar was alongside him. It flew past, then abruptly slid to a stop. The passenger door was wrenched open and a man stepped out, a machine pistol in his hand.
“Freeze right there!” he commanded in English.
“Freeze this!” Marten yelled and raised the Glock.
Boom! Boom!
He fired two quick shots. The man was blown backward, bounced off the passenger door, and dropped to the pavement like concrete. In the next instant the driver’s door slammed open. Marten dove behind a parked car as a salvo of machine-pistol fire cut across it, showering him with pieces of metal and windshield glass. For a seemingly endless moment there was quiet. Then, the machine pistol
up, the driver came forward in the rain and dark looking for him.
Marten let him come. Thirty steps, then twenty. He could see him now in the glow of the streetlights. Short hair, medium height, slim build. Thirty, thirty-five. The rain continued to fall. Ten steps away. Then five. Then two.
Marten calmly stood up. Almost in his face. “Right here,” he said. The driver cried out in surprise and swung the machine pistol.
Boom!
Marten’s lone shot caught him between the eyes. His head snapped back, taking his body with it. He tottered for a moment, defying gravity, and then his legs gave out and he collapsed on the pavement.
Instantly Marten shifted his stance and looked past him for the gray BMW. He didn’t see it. Suddenly lights in the apartments on either side of the street were coming on and he could hear voices. He debated whether to chance retrieving the driver’s machine pistol, then decided against it and quickly walked away. Down the hill. In the rain. And into the heart of the Baixa.
11:11 P.M.
90
11:17 P.M.
Irish Jack opened the left rear door of the gray BMW and climbed in next to Conor White. Carlos Branco was at the wheel, Patrice beside him.
“We’re not dealing with your everyday landscape architect.” Irish Jack was rain-soaked, his hair and suit jacket especially. Branco had parked the car at the top of the hill, and the Irishman had gone down to the stopped Jaguar to see what had happened even as residents began coming out of their apartments and the singsong of approaching sirens echoed in the distance.
“My guess is he took three shots and they all hit their mark. Got the driver smack-fuck between the eyes. He knows what the hell he’s doing.”
Carlos Branco’s eyes went to the mirror, and he looked at Conor White.
“Who is he?”
White stared back at him. He wasn’t happy. “The question is, who are you, Mr. Freelance Accomplished Resource? We knew where Anne was and she got away. We had Marten and he got away. Two of your people are dead. Coincidentally, if I’m not mistaken, he got a good look at you in the hotel. You’re supposed to be part of Congressman Ryder’s RSO team that sets all three of them up tomorrow. What are you going to do about that?”
“What I look like tomorrow. He’ll never make the connection.”
“You fucked up everything. You tell me why should I keep you on.”
The scream of sirens drew closer.
“Because it would be a mistake not to.”
Just then two police cars, their light bars flashing, turned the corner at the bottom of the hill, started up, then came to an abrupt stop in front of the Jaguar.
White looked at his watch: 11:22 p.m.
“What time does the Ritz bar close?” he asked quietly.
“One,” Branco replied.
“Good.”
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL RITZ, THE RITZ BAR. 11:52 P.M.
Sy Wirth came in and looked around. The bar area where he’d been earlier was nearly as busy as before, but the fashionable seating area back from it where small round tables with plush chairs or couches were nestled intimately close, was not. A man sitting at a corner table raised his hand. Wirth went over and sat down. He was dressed in a dark suit coat over a hastily thrown-on white dress shirt and jeans.
“You’re Patrice,” he said tersely.
“Yes.”
“Where’s Conor White?”
“He’s been delayed. He apologizes. He should be here shortly,” Patrice said easily.
“That’s what he said when he called and asked me to meet you. Where the fuck is he? What happened with Anne Tidrow?”
Patrice signaled for a waitress. “Ms. Tidrow had apparently been in the hotel for a short time and then left without being seen. Nicholas Marten showed up about the same time we did.”
“Marten?”
“He saw us and ran. We went after him. He killed two of our people.”
“What?”
“Afterward he got away.” Patrice looked up as the waitress arrived. “Mineral water for me.” He looked at Wirth. “You?”
“Nothing.”
“Please, Mr. Wirth.” Patrice smiled. “It’s been a long day, it may get longer. What do you drink?”
“Walker Blue,” Wirth said irritably.
The waitress left, and Wirth leaned in close. “What the good fuck is going on?”
“There’s been a new development. It has to do with Ms. Tidrow. Carlos Branco, you know him?”
“What about him?”
“He’s been in touch with Conor. It’s why the delay, why Conor asked me to see you and fill you in on what happened before he got here.”
“Your drinks, gentlemen.” The waitress smiled, put down cocktail napkins and then set each man’s drink in front of him.
“Cheers.” Patrice lifted his glass. Wirth took his and downed the whisky in one swallow.
Patrice looked to the waitress and grinned. “I think he might want another.”
“Yes, sir,” she said and left.
Wirth glared at him. “Get on your cell phone and call Conor White. Tell him I want him here. I want him here, now.”
“He doesn’t have to, Mr. Wirth.” Conor White slid into a chair next to him.
12:08 A.M. NOW MONDAY, JUNE 7.
91
12:12 A.M.
Banco Espirito Santo. Marten passed the bank building for the second time in the last twenty minutes and realized he was getting nowhere. He’d walked up and down the Baixa—Rua do Áurea, Rua Augusta, Rua dos Correeiros, Rua dos Fanqueiros, with others in between—to no avail. All he’d seen were several taxis, here and there a pedestrian, and darkened shops. Wherever Anne had gone after she’d left the Hotel Lisboa Chiado only she knew. The few other hotels he’d passed, the only public buildings still open and that she might have gone into, he’d ruled out because of the credit card situation and the risk of being seen himself.
Moreover, the police presence was heavy, which he knew it would be following the shootings. More than once he’d ducked into a doorway or around a corner as a patrol car passed. Luckily the rain kept the motorcycle units to a minimum, and there had been no foot patrol at all, at least that he’d seen. Meaning so far he’d been lucky, but how long that fortune would hold was, he knew, mostly up to him.
Finally he decided there was nothing more he could do about Anne. Her fate, like his, was in her own hands. The thing now was to try to get back to Raisa’s apartment and wait for Joe Ryder’s call. That meant a thirty-minute walk—through the Baixa, then up into the Chiado, and finally the Bairro Alto. A thirty-minute walk if he didn’t get lost. A lot more if he did. The longer he was out, the greater the chance of being stopped and questioned by the police. If that happened he was done, especially since he was still carrying the Glock automatic that had killed Hauptkommissar Franck and the two men in the Jaguar. A gun he could throw into any sewer opening or storm drain but didn’t dare in the event Conor White and his men showed up.
The rain came down steadily, and he pulled the umbrella close overhead. He turned right at the next corner and kept going. Now he realized he was walking toward the area where the shootings had taken place. There should be a way to circumvent it, but he didn’t know it. So he kept on, staying as much in shadows as he could.
He was wet and exhausted. The thought of the long walk back to the Bairro Alto was numbing, but he had no choice. So he kept on. Another block, then two. Somewhere along the way he began to think of the shootings themselves. Before, in the apartment in Berlin, he’d been nearly crushed by the fear of approaching police sirens. The next morning, he’d seen the television reports of the murders of Marita and her students and had a panic attack, losing control and physically assaulting Anne, blaming her for the killings. He nearly lost it again at the Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport when he’d been certain he had lost his edge and was no longer capable of surviving in a world of bloodshed and sudden death. But then had come the men in the Jaguar. Whatever security mechanisms t
hat had been hounded into his psyche those years ago in the LAPD were still there. The gunmen had stepped from the car, and he’d done what he’d been trained to do. Shoot to kill in self-defense. Calmly, accurately. Then he’d walked away. There’d been no rapid heartbeat, no trembling hands, no indecision. Just swift, deadly action. And afterward no remorse at all. It was a thought that troubled him more than if he’d simply lost his nerve and run. What had Marita told him at the airport in Paris? I think you’re one of those people trouble follows around.
As much as he tried to escape it, blood and violent death seemed to hover over him like some predestined curse. How long before it reached critical mass and took him over completely, making him wholly mad and coldly murderous, the way he had been with the men in the Jaguar? How much longer before it finally finished the job and swallowed him up for good?
Six minutes later he started up Rua do Carmo toward Rua Garrett. Somewhere in front of him he heard the sound of an accordion. It grew louder as he approached. Finally, in the spill of a streetlight, he saw the man playing it. He was alone, sitting out of the rain on a small folding chair inside a doorway. He wore an old overcoat and a beret that was too small for his head and seemed completely unaware of the world around him. There was no way to guess his age or even his race. But none of it mattered. His soul was somewhere else, on a different plane and on a different journey than the world around him. Whatever song he was playing was unbearably sad but at the same time hauntingly beautiful. Marten wished he could pull up a chair beside him and sit there listening forever.
But he couldn’t.
So he passed him by in the rain and dark.
And walked on.
12:25 A.M.
92
12:30 A.M.
The gray BMW sped along Avenida Álvares Cabral, rounded the city park Jardim da Estrela, the Garden of the Star, and raced off down Avenida Infante Santo toward the harbor. With little or no traffic to slow them, Irish Jack kept the accelerator to the floor and an eye on the mirror looking for police coming up from behind. Patrice rode silently beside him, little more than a passenger himself. Conor White and Sy Wirth sat side by side in the seat behind them with Wirth staring silently into space.
