They went out into the hall, which remained quiet.
They crossed the hall and closed the door.
Two minutes later, Nagib emerged from the service stairs that led from the garage. He walked down the hallway, his pistol under his coat. He arrived at the doorways to 505 and 506.
He stood outside, listened, and waited. Then somewhere in the distance, he heard some sort of alarm go off.
EIGHTEEN
Janet’s recall was encyclopedic when it came to devices that she had planted. She could recall all of them, where in a room she had put one, what had been the problems of location.
She had entered the apartment behind Alex, then stepped slightly ahead.
In this case, it all seemed so simple. Janet went down to her hands and knees on the living room floor, then turned slightly to an angle as she neared a coffee table that stood in front of a sofa. Alex followed her to the floor while Don Tomas was content to stand and watch.
Janet reached under the coffee table and quietly extended an index finger. Alex was next to her on the floor and positioned her head so she could see under the table. Her finger pointed to the listening device, still clamped exactly where she had put it several months earlier.
Janet turned toward Alex and said nothing. Alex nodded, not with anger but with understanding. Then Janet sprung up again and went to the bedroom. They repeated the on-the-floor guidance. Janet showed Alex the transmitter that had been wedged under the headboard of her bed.
Alex nodded. They left everything in place and returned to Don Tomas’s apartment. Down the hall, they heard Mrs. Rothman’s smoke alarm going off. They didn’t speak again until they were inside with the door closed.
“That deaf old bat doesn’t even hear her own smoke alarm,” Don Tomas muttered. “Can you believe that?”
But Janet was still dwelling on the electronic snooping.
“I’m sorry,” Janet said to Alex. “I had a job to do. Nothing personal.”
“I understand,” Alex said. “You’re forgiven. You had a job to do and you did it.” She paused. “Same as myself.”
“Oh, and there’s one other thing,” Janet said. “I mentioned it to the interrogators. They laughed at me and said it was impossible. But I’ll mention it to you.”
Alex waited.
“The three men in the bar in Cairo,” she said. “Carlos got close enough to eavesdrop. He could hear them, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying. At the time he didn’t know what language they were speaking. Then afterward, he realized what it was.”
“What was it?” Alex asked.
“Russian,” she said. “The day before he died, Carlos said he was sure. They were talking Russian.”
A few minutes later Alex was at the door. She stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
From somewhere there was a noise in the hall. She turned around, looked in each direction, but saw nothing.
She reentered her own apartment. It was past 1:00 a.m.
She knew already that she was going to be sleep-deprived the next day. She would be dragging herself around as if she were dead.
On the street five stories below, Nagib and Rashaad were arguing furiously. Someone on the fifth floor had set off a smoke alarm. Around the corner from where he stood, vulnerable to view, doors began to open and a few people walked into the hall. Nagib had turned immediately and left, rather than be seen.
Rashaad was furious. The longer that it took to get the job done, the more chance that things would go wrong. They departed again, with their assignment still unfulfilled.
NINETEEN
Late the next morning Alex arrived at Mike Gamburian’s door and found it half open. She knocked. Gamburian looked up from his desk. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Got a couple of minutes?”
“For you, always. Two, three, maybe even four and a half.”
There were a trio of hardcopy classified folders on his desk. Alex could tell by the bold red binders. He flipped all three shut as she pushed the door closed and sat down.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“I had a meeting in New York two nights ago with Yuri Federov,” she said. “But you knew that.”
“Of course. How’s our old friend Yuri?”
“He’s been better in his life. In fact, I can’t figure out if he’s got a serious health problem of some sort.”
“Usually with men like that, a health problem is if someone’s trying to shoot them.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “We had some drinks at the hotel bar and then went for dinner at an Italian place down around Mulberry Street.”
“Well! What a New York
“Seriously,” Alex said, meaning yes. “And Federov introduced me to a friend.”
“That’s where it often gets interesting,” he said. “A person of interest to us, perhaps?”
“You never know. What do you know about the Mafia in Cuba, Mike?” she asked.
“Now or in the past?”
“Either or both,” Alex answered. “I’ve seen The Godfather II like everyone else, but aside from that the whole era is before my time. I assume we have files.”
“
“I’m interested.”
“Then I’ll try to get you some file-archive access by later today.”
“Good. I’d like to run the friend’s name across the files,” Alex said. “Paul Guarneri. Name mean anything to you?”
“Guarneri only means something as the patriarch of a seventeenth-century family of violin makers in Italy. I’m not up on all the current wise guys; there are too many of them, and it’s not my department.”
“Paul Guarnari didn’t look personally that mobbed up to me,” Alex continued. “Or at least not on the surface. But his father certainly was. Then again, what’s he hanging around with Federov for if he’s not a mob guy? The only use Federov ever had for legitimate businessmen was to shake them down.”
“Where exactly was this meeting again?” Gamburian asked.
“A place called Il Vagabondo in Lower Manhattan. I did some asking around afterward. It’s a mob hangout, not that I couldn’t tell at the time.”
“So as a Fed, if you don’t mind the metaphor, you must have felt like a mosquito at a nudist colony.”
“Pretty much,” Alex said. “But I stuck with Guarneri. He said his family was from Cuba. His father was Italian but married a dancer who worked at one of the big hotel casinos. I think he has some major ideas about trying to get some old property back, including a pile of cash that was stashed somewhere. Does that make sense?”
Gamburian laughed. “Some,” he said. “As soon as Castro is planted and pushing up daisies, all the old mob families are going to be looking for recovery of property. Then who knows what else they’ll be up to. Can you keep the contact alive?”
“Sure,” Alex said. “In fact, I’d like to.”
“Well, you were introduced, so you’d be wise to follow it up. You never know when something small cracks something big. The ‘French Connection’ case was made when two cops wandered into a nightclub and spotted some hoods. ‘Son of Sam’ broke over a parking ticket. You could have a career case over a veal scaloppini in Brooklyn.”
“It was saltimbocca, and it was in Lower Manhattan, but I catch your drift.”
“Speaking of Lower Manhattan, how did the interview go? At the Federal Building?”
“Fine,” she said.
“So you’ll be leaving us and moving to New York.”
“Let’s see if they offer me anything,” she said.
“Ha! They will. New York steals Washington’s top employees all the time. We’re used to it.”
“Thanks, Mike,” she said with irony. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was meant as one.”
“I know,” she said. She rose from the chair and moved to the door. As she opened the door, she turned and asked a final question.
“By the way,” Alex inquired, “what do you hear about Mike Cerny’s widow and family?”
Gamburian reacted with surprise. “Not much,” he said. “They moved back to the Midwest somewhere from what I heard. That’s all I know.”
“She got her widow’s benefits and pension?” Alex asked.
“Why wouldn’t she?”
