It took only three minutes to assemble the gun.
Forty minutes later, she was in the lobby of the Hotel Bac Saint-Germain.
The front desk clerk was young, slender, and extremely beleaguered.
“No, madame. No one else has complained about the water pressure,” she told the guest on the other end of the phone. Her voice was calm, but her body language said otherwise. “Of course. I’ll send the engineer back to your room immediately. Yes. I know. Room three one four.
She hung up and smiled at Marta. “
“I’d like a room,” Marta said. “Preferably on the same floor as my friends Matthew Bannon and Katherine Sanborne.”
The clerk’s long bloodred fingernails clicked lightly on her keyboard. “I’m afraid you just missed them,” she said.
“Out sightseeing, I’m sure,” Marta said. “Do you happen to know when they’ll be back?”
“They’re not expected back. They checked out this morning.”
Marta stood at the front desk, cool and composed on the outside, boiling over on the inside.
“How strange,” she said calmly. “I guess I can FedEx the paperwork I was going to discuss with them. Did they leave the address of their next stop?”
“No, but I saw Monsieur Bannon talking with the concierge a couple of hours ago. He might be able to help you.”
The front desk phone rang, and after checking the caller ID, the clerk turned back to Marta. “Now, what size room are you looking for? They
“You’re busy,” Marta said. “Why don’t you deal with room three fourteen, and I’ll see if the concierge knows where to find my friends.”
Marta walked across the lobby as the front desk clerk reluctantly picked up the phone.
The concierge was tall and trim and had thick, dark hair that was slicked back. He wore a well-tailored gray uniform with black piping and two crossed gold keys — the
After several minutes, he paused to nod to Marta. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said.
She didn’t know if he was just being polite or trying to let the couple know that there were other people who needed his attention, too. But he looked up several times and smiled at Marta.
Another five minutes passed before the concierge handed the couple a map, a packet of brochures, and a printout of their itinerary for the day. They thanked him profusely with head bows and several euros.
“Mademoiselle, I am Laurent,” he said, offering up his name quickly. “Sorry to keep you waiting. How can I be of service?”
She leaned forward and rested her hands on his desk so he could get a good look at her breasts. He didn’t seem all that interested.
“I was supposed to meet my friends here, but there seems to have been some miscommunication,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “According to the front desk, they checked out this morning. I’m wondering if you know where they went.”
“These mix-ups happen all the time,” he said with a smile that showed a mouthful of perfectly straight, professionally whitened teeth. “What are their names?”
“Matthew Bannon and Katherine Sanborne.”
His lips tightened and the smile disappeared. He sat broom-up-his-ass straight in his chair. One second he looked like he was ready to invite himself up to her room, and the next he was transformed into the quintessentially cold, uncaring, unhelpful Parisian.
“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” Laurent said, “but I have no forwarding address for your friends.”
It was clear he was lying through his cosmetically enhanced, pearly white teeth.
The question was why.
Chapter 50
“Laurent,” Marta said sweetly. “Of course you know where they went. This may help jog your memory.” She slid fifty euros across his desk.
He ignored the money. “Whether I know or do not know is not relevant. The privacy of our guests is of utmost concern, and I’m not at liberty to say anything. Hotel policy.”
The cash bribe didn’t work. Marta leaned across his desk, her breasts almost out of their nest. “You can tell me,” she purred. “And you can surely imagine how grateful I would be.”
The concierge leaned in toward her and wagged a finger in her direction. “Mademoiselle, I absolutely cannot divulge any—”
Marta grabbed his finger and held it tight.
“I guess you’re not the breast man I thought you were,” she said. “How do you feel about fingers?”
His eyes widened, but he tried to maintain his composure. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said, pressing hard on the top of his knuckle joint with her thumb and squeezing the rest of the digit with viselike strength, “how much do you care about your fingers?”
“This is ridiculous,” Laurent said. “Surely, you can’t be threaten—”
She snapped his finger in two, and the crack of Laurent’s bone was followed by a piercing scream.
Marta covered it up immediately with a shriek of her own and began laughing hysterically. The harried desk clerk was still on the phone with the dissatisfied guest and barely turned to see what the noise was about.
Marta let go of the concierge’s broken finger and grabbed on to his pinkie. “You’ve got nine left,” she said. “So let me ask you again. How much do you care about your fingers?”
Tears were streaming down the concierge’s face. Excruciating pain and paralyzing fear trumped hotel policy.
“I made reservations for Monsieur Bannon this morning,” he whimpered. “A flight to Venice and dinner at the Antico Martini at eight tonight.”
“What hotel?”
“The Danieli.”
“One more question,” Marta said. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? You don’t strike me as a man who would be a slave to hotel policy.”
“Monsieur Bannon gave me a hundred euros to be discreet about where he was going.”
She released Laurent’s pinkie. His hands flew to his chest and he tucked them safely under his armpits.
He stood there cowering as Marta picked up the fifty euros she had put on his desk. She slipped the money into her purse, then slowly turned and left the hotel.
What a merry little chase this was turning out to be. Marta Krall absolutely loved it.
Chapter 51
It was 4:30 a.m. in New York City when Chukov’s phone rang. The voice on the other end was female and the accent German. Marta Krall didn’t have to identify herself.
“He’s in my sights,” she said.
“Where are you?”
