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 Aurea, 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-Merignac 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 that 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?
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.
