28
In an old brick apartment building on the north end of Manhattan Island across the street from Columbia University’s Baker Field, Andrew Kane paused for a moment to look at himself in a mirror hanging from the wall of a room converted into an office. He sometimes missed the more refined look he’d had, but he was generally pleased with his new more rugged appearance…especially as it seemed to have everybody fooled.
God, I love you, Andrew Kane, he thought as he contemplated the fact that his plan had almost reached fruition; there were only a couple of issues he’d had to resolve and come to grips with since Aspen.
The first was the traitor in his midst who had been sending pieces from an expensive chess set he’d purchased, apparently as some sort of fuzzy warning about his plans for revenge.
When Ellis told him about the traitor at the Hotel Jerome, he’d acted like it was no big deal. However, upon his arrival in Manhattan at the apartment building, he’d immediately located the Torres chess sets he’d shipped. The first had been intact, and for a moment, he wondered if Ellis had got it wrong. But then he’d opened the second set. Missing from the black side were the bishop and the knight; gone from the white side were the pawns, the two knights, a bishop, and the king and queen.
In a rage, he’d flung the set across the room, frightening his al Qaeda bodyguards, who, while more than willing to blow themselves up for Allah, were scared to death of Kane. He knew that they referred to him as Iblis- the chief of the
No part of him was laughing when he discovered the betrayal. But who? he wondered. There weren’t many who had access to the chess sets, which he’d kept in the guesthouse until the warning from Ellis and the decision for “the new, improved Agent Hodges” to have his coming-out party. Even fewer of them knew about his plans for vengeance.
Samira? No, as much as she hated him, she was devoted to seeing that the plan-along with her glorious martyrdom-came off.
Ajmaani/Nadya? Unlikely. The Russians wanted this as much as he did. They also could not chance her role in the plan being exposed.
Ellis knew about the plan, including the revenge murders. In fact, he’d been the one to turn FBI agent Michael Grover into a traitor. But he hadn’t been in the house.
Prince Bandar? The man had never been privy to the plan. However, if he’d found a way to listen in on some of Kane’s conversations-despite efforts to sweep the premises for eavesdropping devices and cameras-he might have heard enough. But why the oblique warnings instead of just contacting law enforcement and spelling it out? Unless he, too, was playing a little game, Kane thought. Perhaps, the little toad had more of a mean streak in him than I thought. Maybe sending the chess pieces-which hadn’t really arrived in time to do much good-wasn’t to warn, but to tease and torment.
It was an act of maliciousness that Kane could identify with, and he’d decided that Bandar was the traitor. If so, there was certainly nothing more to worry about from the man whom he’d personally turned into a million bits and pieces with the remote control detonator button he’d carried in his pocket. However, he was also keeping an open mind that the traitor might still be alive.
Kane’s thoughts were interrupted by the whining voice of Bryce Anderson. “I’m worried we might lose this case,” Anderson said. “They’ve got something up their sleeve with these impeachment witnesses.”
“Whatever are you talking about, Bryce?” Kane asked coldly. If there was one thing he hated more than all the many other things he hated, it was people who whined about or questioned his plans.
Anderson caught the edge in Kane’s voice and stopped himself. “Uh, well, I was just cautioning you that we could very well lose this case.”
“Bryce, are you an idiot?”
Anderson felt the knot in his stomach tightening into a solid mass. “No, I don’t believe that I’m an idiot,” he said meekly.
“Well, then stop acting like one,” Kane snarled. “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose this case. It’s all just a distraction, remember? All you have to remember is that whatever it takes, this better not go to the jury tomorrow. None of us can afford to have the jury come back early with a guilty verdict. Emil Stavros cannot be in prison this weekend. If he is…unavailable because he is in prison, I would not be a very happy man. Do you understand what that would mean to you?”
Anderson glanced quickly at the young woman in the corner. She was very beautiful but looking at him in such a predatory way that he thought he might faint. He nodded quickly. “Yes, I understand completely.”
Kane smiled, but his eyes were as cold as any serpent’s. “Good, because I don’t care if you have to shoot yourself to delay the trial…. Besides, come Monday, you won’t have to worry about Butch Karp or Emil Stavros.”
After the lawyer was gone, Samira nearly spit when she said, “This game you play is stupid. You put our plan in danger of failing.”
“And you forget your place, Samira, darling.”
“My place is to see that this mission is completed. But this personal vendetta against Karp jeopardizes that.”
“That’s none of your concern. Without my help this ‘mission’ cannot succeed anyway.”
Kane admired himself again in the mirror. Stupid bitch, he thought. On a mission to kill herself, as if it will matter one little bit in the grand scheme of things.
The whole reason that Emil Stavros was being tried for his wife’s murder was part of his glorious plan. He’d come up with the idea while in the Tombs and knew then that he was going to need a banker with access to international financial transfer wires.
That’s when he thought of Emil Stavros.
Kane had known Stavros for nearly twenty years, having met him at various high-society functions. Always on the alert for weaknesses in others that he could exploit, he’d learned that Stavros not only cheated on his wife, and cheated on his various mistresses, he also had a bad gambling habit and was heavily indebted to some very bad people.
Kane had purchased the bad debt and then told Stavros who his new master was going to be. Originally, it was so that he could use Stavros’s bank to launder money from his criminal enterprises. But he didn’t trust the man, so he’d insisted that Stavros hire
Then came the night when Coletta called Kane and said that Stavros had choked his wife into unconsciousness during a fit of rage when she announced that despite her Catholic faith, she was going to divorce him, taking their son and her bank accounts with her. Kane had thought about it for a moment, then instructed Coletta to give Stavros the.22 Teresa Stavros was known to carry.
Kane had taken the gun to a bank and placed it in a safe deposit box. It was insurance against the day he might want to blackmail Stavros into something a bit more dramatic than questionable banking transactions. He’d then come up with the elaborate plan of making it appear that Teresa Stavros was alive and running about the world, using up her credit and bank accounts.
It had been easy enough to hire a woman who resembled Mrs. Stavros. Then when that nosy detective Bassaline started getting too close and especially after he’d talked to the gardener, Kane had decided to put a stop to it. First, he’d gone to Bassaline’s boss, a man who’d been on his payroll for years, and insisted that the case be turned over to Detective Michael Flanagan.
Flanagan, who at the time thought Kane was giving him orders on behalf of the archdiocese, was told that certain anti-Catholic interests in the city were trying to frame Stavros, a big supporter of the church. Those interests had corrupted Bassaline and paid off the gardener in an attempt to destroy “a good man’s, a good Catholic’s” reputation. It was Flanagan who’d shelved the case after removing anything that some later detective
