Still, he put his head back, closed his eyes, and gradually drifted off. When he awoke with a start, the soccer match was over, and the evening news was on. No daylight at all was slanting in through the front blinds.
And he was alone.
“Julius!” he called out. “Where the hell are you?”
He got up, looked behind the Chinese screen, then went down the short hall, between a galley kitchen and an immense old wardrobe, to the bathroom. But he wasn’t in there, either. Nor was there any note lying around.
“Jantzen!” he called out one last time, and as if out of nowhere, the man appeared behind him, in a white surgical apron. The door to the wardrobe was open, and Julius said, “Christ, you snore.”
“Where were you?” Escher said, peering around the wardrobe door. There was no back to the thing, and a bright light washed into the hallway from a room tucked away behind the cabinet’s false front.
“Working,” Jantzen said, stepping back through the armoire, with Escher close behind.
No one would ever have guessed the lab was there. It was spotlessly clean and antiseptic, with bright fluorescent lighting overhead, an examining table, sink, and metal racks well stocked with everything from medical equipment to drug supplies. And suddenly, it all made much more sense to Escher.
“I put out something you might want,” Julius said, gesturing at a Glock nine-millimeter, with its silencer already attached to its muzzle, on the counter. Escher was glad to see that Jantzen had followed orders, and he picked up the gun and examined it. “It’s loaded, so please be careful,” Jantzen said, as he finished counting out a pile of pills into waiting vials. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a decent little place down the street,” he said, brushing his hands on his apron, then taking it off and folding it on the examining table.
“Looks like you’ve got quite an operation here,” Escher said, impressed.
“We have a small, but loyal, clientele.”
When they were back in the hall, Jantzen slid a panel across the back of the armoire and pulled a bunch of old shirts and jackets across on the rod.
“You can leave your things here,” Jantzen said, “and spend the night on the sofa. Tomorrow, I expect, you’ll want to find better accommodations.”
Escher said nothing though he had no intention of waiting that long. He rummaged in his bag for a pack of cigarettes as Jantzen pulled on an overcoat, stuck a silly Cossack-style hat on his head, and undid the locks. He had no sooner thrown the last bolt and cracked the door open-“The restaurant’s run by Spaniards”-when the door flew back and he was hit so hard by a flying tackle that he was carried halfway into the room, with a dark-skinned man in a sweatshirt still gripping his shoulders. Escher looked up just as two more men-the Turks who’d been watching him when he arrived-charged into the room, one with a knife drawn, the other holding a gun.
The one with the knife kicked the door closed while the one with the gun pointed it at Escher, who held up his hands to show he wasn’t armed, and ordered him to move away from the bag.
Escher backed off, and the gunman knelt by it, quickly groping through the things inside.
“You can keep the cigarettes,” Escher said, “if you get out now.”
“Shut up,” the man said before giving up on the bag and kicking it aside. Escher figured the Turks must have thought he was making a delivery.
“You’ve made a mistake,” Escher said, and the gunman fired a warning shot into the sofa pillow, six inches from his arm. A plume of feathers erupted into the air.
“Ahmet, put the gun down,” Jantzen pleaded, still on the floor.
So he knows him, Escher thought. A customer. But how much does this customer know?
“In back,” Ahmet said, gesturing with the gun toward the hallway-and the armoire.
Too much.
Jantzen got to his feet, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and both he and Escher were herded toward the wardrobe.
Ahmet and the others let Jantzen push the clothes to one side, slide the panel back, and step through. Jantzen flicked the lights on, and Escher moved calmly but deliberately toward the Glock 9 on the counter.
“What are you doing there?” Ahmet said, his view blocked by Escher’s back. “Stop now, or I will shoot you.”
Escher discreetly picked up the gun, turned slowly with his head cocked to one side as if to signal acquiescence, and shot Ahmet point-blank in the chest. He dropped to his knees, mouth gaping, and the other two looked stunned. Escher took advantage of their shock to shoot the one in the sweatshirt, too, the bullet whipping his head back against a metal rack; but Jantzen was in the way of the third one, who hurled his knife wildly, then rushed from the room, screaming.
“Get out of the way,” Escher said, pushing past Jantzen, whose own eyes were bugging out of his head, and followed the last one out into the apartment. He was already at the door, struggling to turn a lock and get it open, when Escher said, “Hold on, I’m not going to hurt you.”
The man turned his head, his face twisted in fear, and Escher said, “Step away from the door.”
His fingers fumbled at the lock again, and the door was just starting to open when Escher shot him. The bullet caught him in the shoulder, but the man barely reacted. Escher had to leap at him, grab hold of his sleeve, and pull him back into the room.
“No, no, don’t shoot!” the man shouted, putting his hands together and crumpling to his knees. “Don’t shoot me!”
But Escher knew that some things, once begun, had to be finished.
He pressed the gun to the kneeling man’s forehead, fired, and let him drop to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
He heard Jantzen throwing up in the hallway.
That would be just one more thing to clean up, he thought.
Wedging the gun under his belt, he stepped away from the body. Christ, what a mess. He considered calling his boss, the fancy ex-ambassador, but he knew he had a reputation already for a certain hotheadedness. And for all he knew, it was Schillinger who was responsible for this whole fiasco. Had he sent Escher off to Italy in secret, on his own initiative? An initiative that had conflicted with someone else’s greater plan?
The pool of blood was widening, and he had to step back again.
If that was the case, then Escher was caught in the gears of a colossal case of miscommunication-a place he always hated to be.
Or was it only what it seemed? A drug robbery gone wrong? Given Julius’s clientele, that wasn’t so hard to believe, either.
Now he regretted having been quite so hasty. If one of the Turks had been kept alive, he might have been able to get some answers out of him. Next time he’d have to remind himself to be more patient.
“Julius,” he called out, rolling up his sleeves.
“What?” Jantzen replied, still doubled over and averting his gaze from the door.
“You ever going to stop puking?”
Jantzen replied with another dry heave before croaking, “What… the hell… do we do now?”
“Well,” Escher said, putting aside his deeper ruminations, “I’d say we start with a mop and a pail. You do have them, don’t you?”
Chapter 13
Cellini could tell from the slant of fading sunlight on the wall of the dungeon that it was almost time for his single meal of the day. He slumped in the corner, watching idly as a pair of tarantulas mated in the straw spilling from his mattress. He had grown used to them, along with the rats and other vermin that inhabited his tiny cell. After months of imprisonment, he might have missed them if they’d gone.
There was a shuffling tread outside, a clanging of keys, and the wooden door creaked open. While the
