He went.
Jake Grafton answered on the third ring. I gave it to him as quickly and succinctly as I could.
He took a second or two to process it — no more.
“Come back to London,” he said. “Get out of Germany as quickly as you can.”
“I’ve left fingerprints all over. The local fuzz will alert every cop and county mountie between here and California.”
“I’ll call them. Leave before they arrive.” Then he hung up.
I stood there with the dead phone pressed against my ear, trying to think. He didn’t give a good goddamn if the assassin came back after Marisa. He must know she did it, or was in on it.
Well, I had a few minutes. One or two, anyway.
I put the phone in my pocket and went storming back upstairs. The door to the Petrous’ bedroom was closed and locked. After I retrieved my gear from the bedroom next door, I used my foot on Marisa’s chamber. Two kicks and the doorjamb shattered. The door flew open.
Marisa had lit a candle. The old woman was sitting in a chair, wearing a robe. Marisa was on the bed.
“Why’d you do it?” I demanded.
“I thought you were shooting at one of the guards.”
“You lying bitch! Why’d you open the basement door to let the knifemen in?”
She stared at me. “You don’t know that.”
“I make my living opening locked doors. That door was opened from the inside. The jimmy marks were made so it would look like the door was forced. It wasn’t.”
She lowered her head and remained silent.
I grabbed a handful of hair and lifted her head so I could see directly into her face and she could see into mine.
“Four people murdered, and you helped kill them. One woman and three men. Let me tell you how it is. If another person dies with you in attendance, I’m coming after you. There isn’t a hole on this planet you can hide in. And when I find you, I’ll kill you sure as God made little green apples. And you can tell that to your pop.”
Then I left. There was nothing else I could do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Khadr dropped over the wall and lit like a cat on the sidewalk, Abu Qasim put the car in motion. He stopped by Khadr, who climbed into the passenger seat.
“I heard shots,” Qasim said.
Khadr took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he collected his thoughts. Khadr was not his real name, of course. In fact, Abu Qasim didn’t know his real name. He was a professional killer from somewhere in the Middle East, spoke five languages fluently, had some education and was an excellent actor, with the ability to fit into almost any crowd. If he had any religious convictions, Qasim didn’t know about them. Khadr killed for money. For the right price, he would kill anyone. Qasim paid his fees because Khadr was good, very good. Holy warriors on jihad would do their best, but when Qasim wanted it done right the first time with no screw-ups, he hired a professional like Khadr.
“I was jimmying the door when I heard someone turn the lock. Obviously I was making some noise, and apparently the man heard it. There were two locks. I stood back, and when he opened the door and was silhouetted by the light behind him, I shot him. I stepped inside, and the other guard was coming down the stairs. I shot him, too.
“I dragged the corpses into a basement storeroom and found the electrical distribution box, turned off the power, waited for my eyes to adjust, then went upstairs.
“Zetsche and his woman were asleep. I killed them with a knife. On the way out someone began following me. We played cat and mouse for a while, then I slipped down the stairs to the basement. Someone had apparently put a vase on the stair. I saw it, but the man behind me didn’t. Then someone started shooting — killed the man chasing me, I think.”
As they drove, Abu Qasim thought about his next move. Finally he said, “There is a man in Zurich, a banker named Rolf Gnadinger …”
The snow was sticking on the grass, but the wall to the Zetsche estate was merely wet and slick. I fell onto the sidewalk, a drop of about five feet, and twisted my ankle a little bit. Cussing under my breath, I limped off toward town. The road was also wet — the flakes were melting as fast as they hit.
Up in the parking garage, I threw my bag into the front trunk of the Porsche and lit her off. If the law found me before I got out of Germany, I was going to spend a few miserable days as a guest of the German republic. My clothes and razor and toothbrush were in the hotel — I certainly didn’t want to waste time retrieving them. I’d just replace that stuff somewhere and put the bill on my expense account. Screw the taxpayers — that’s my motto.
On the way out of town I passed an ambulance running lights and sirens going the other way. They need not have hurried; none of the people at the Zetsche estate needed a fast ride to a hospital.
I didn’t relax until I crossed the Rhine River bridge into France. That’s when the reaction to too much adrenaline and a fumbled assignment hit me hard. At one point I had to pull over and rest my head on the steering wheel as the windshield wipers slapped and squeaked and a rain-snow mixture pattered gently on the roof of my ride. My face throbbed where that cop slugged me, and I was exhausted.
A dead battery in the night vision goggles and my inability to stay awake had cost four people their lives. Oh, I know, I didn’t kill them— the assassin who did had already gone on to his reward, whatever it might be. Still, the story should have had a different ending. Those people should still be alive.
Marisa Petrou! She had to be the one who opened the door for the assassin. Even if she wasn’t, she sandbagged me, trying to help him escape. That gorgeous bitch was in this mess right up to her plastic surgery scars.
I should have slapped her harder. Should have knocked her damned head off.
Grafton knew she was involved in the Surkov killing, and I’d bet ten dollars against a doughnut that she poisoned her husband. Tens of thousands of women have murdered their husbands since people stopped living in caves — maybe millions. It’s the ones who don’t kill their man that we should wonder about. Naturally, I made a fool of myself by defending her to Grafton. “She isn’t the type.” Ha!
A sleety dawn was threatening to smear itself all over France when I realized that I couldn’t go any farther. The next pull-off was a truck rest stop. There was even a McDonald’s. I found a spot under a tree— behind a semi where the car couldn’t be seen from the highway — killed the engine, locked the doors and went to sleep.
The workday was well under way in London when Jake Grafton called Sal Molina on the encrypted telephone — getting him at home and waking him up — and gave him the news: Wolfgang Zetsche was dead, as were his girlfriend and two employees. The killer had been shot dead by Tommy Carmellini. Before he could tell it all, Molina began asking questions.
“Abu Qasim?”
“I haven’t had a chance to do a debrief yet. Tommy’s driving back to London. He said the man he killed was young, maybe twenty-five.”
“German police?”
“I’ve talked to the German intelligence chief. Given him all I can.”
“Do any of the police or intel agencies know of the link between Surkov, Petrou and Zetsche?”
“The police know Marisa Petrou was present at all three killings, and Isolde at two. Tongues are starting to wag. To the best of my knowledge, they don’t know what the link is, but they are looking.”
“Did one of those women kill those people? Or any of them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lot of damned help you are.”
“My job is delivering bad news.”
“You’re really good at it. Call me when you get some more.” The connection went dead.
Jake Grafton called Speedo Harris and Per Diem into his office. “Let’s hear it,” he said. Unlike the president’s
