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
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.
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.
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.
