‘You mean, she’s getting bored.’
‘I don’t think so. After the life she’s been forced to live for the past ten years, she’s in paradise. She has her island, she has her parents with her, she has her dogs and her cat and her faithful retainers . . . and if I were to marry her, she’d have her favourite man.’
‘It seems to me that you are describing a fate worse than death, which most men would happily die to achieve, even if briefly.’
‘Billy, if I married Anna, I would have to retire from MI6. Right?’
‘Well . . . yes, if you intended to live with her on a permanent basis.’
‘I seem to have missed something here. Isn’t that what husbands normally do with their wives? More than that. I would become a kept man, a parasite, living off Anna’s millions. It isn’t me.’
‘You could write your memoirs. No, I suppose you couldn’t; I’d have to slap a D-notice on you. We all have our problems. However, indirectly, that is what I’m here to discuss. Anna is retired, right?’
‘This government we’re presently suffering insisted on it.’
‘Absolutely. And as you say, she never leaves her island except for brief trips to Nassau, right?’
Clive frowned. ‘Just what are you driving at?’
Baxter waved his sheets of paper. ‘Just a report I received today from our Mexico office.’
‘And that’s important to me?’ Clive asked. ‘My field of operation is Europe.’
‘Absolutely. However, it seems that a couple of days ago, a chap named Roberto Capillano was shot dead in his hotel suite in Mexico City. That ring any sort of bell?’
‘Ah . . . Capillano. Isn’t he top of the FBI most wanted list?’
‘The correct word is “was”.’
‘Well, I would say, jolly good riddance. A gangland killing?’
‘A professional hit, certainly. Our people say, from what they have learned from the Mexican police, that he was killed by a single bullet to the head from a point two-two pistol, probably a Walther PPK.’
Clive’s frown was back.
‘Capillano was of course well protected,’ Billy went on. ‘He had three armed bodyguards, together with a secretary. All of these were also killed with single shots to the head, although the assassin seems to have switched weapons and used a Browning nine-millimetre automatic. This gun appears to have belonged to Capillano, and may have been used because the assassin lacked a Luger. Does any of this ring a bell?’
‘Oh, my God, my God, my God,’ Clive said. ‘But wait a minute, Billy. This is purely circumstantial, based on what we know of Anna’s methods. There is nothing concrete to implicate her.’
‘I haven’t finished,’ Baxter pointed out, and referred to his papers. ‘The Mexican police have no clues as to the perpetrator of this dreadful crime, their words, but it was clearly a highly professional job. There is not a trace of a fingerprint anywhere apart from those of the people living in the suite. There were two champagne glasses on the table in the room where Capillano died; one bore his prints, the other had been wiped clean. That is the only indication that anyone was there apart from his people. As I recall, just for example, when that fellow Johannsson was found dead in his apartment in Stockholm in 1944, suffering from a single bullet wound in the head, there was also not a fingerprint or a suggestion that anyone had been there. However, unlike the Swedish police, the Mexicans have a lead; they are looking for a young woman using the name of Anna O’Brien.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ Clive said.
‘This woman,’ Baxter continued, inexorably, ‘is described as a strikingly good-looking blonde prostitute.’
‘Prostitute?’
‘That’s what they say. Employed on a temporary basis by one of Mexico City’s leading madames, someone named Jaquetta. This Jaquetta claims to know nothing about O’Brien, simply that she suddenly appeared and asked for employment, as a whore. Well, according to Jaquetta, while she reckoned there was something odd about her, as she was absolutely dripping expensive jewellery, not unreasonably she felt she was just too good to refuse. In this capacity, the young lady seems to have visited Capillano on the night in question, stayed with him for just over half an hour, and left him just about the time of the massacre of him and his friends. You’ll note that the police are not accusing her of carrying out the crime. At least, yet. I suppose they find it impossible to believe that a pretty girl would, or in fact could, shoot five armed men dead with five shots. However, they do know that she made herself scarce, hijacking a taxi to drive her four hundred miles to Matamoros. Outside of the town she left the driver bound and gagged on a lonely beach. She then drove into Matamoros itself . . . I know Anna was taking driving lessons when she had to leave Scotland in a hurry, but did she ever get a licence?’
‘She got a licence.’ Clive’s voice was redolent of gloom. ‘In America.’
‘Not,’ Baxter said, ‘that when you have just killed five men and wish to remove yourself from their proximity the absence of a driving licence is likely to stop you driving a car. Anyway, she drove into the town, took the ferry across the Rio Grande to Brownsville, using, they have been able to ascertain, a passport in the name of Anna O’Donovan.’
He paused, but Clive was holding his head in his hands.
‘This was an American passport,’ Baxter said. ‘So she had no problem entering the States. She then seems to have gone to San Antonio, as there is a record of a woman that same day and using the name O’Donovan boarding a flight to Miami. The incredible thing is that having got clear away, she telephoned the Mexico police to tell them where the taxi driver could be found. Has she completely lost her marbles, or does she have a death wish?’
Clive sighed as he looked up. ‘It’s the way Anna is.’
‘You mean she rations herself. Only five murders a day, or a night, or whatever?’
‘They were not murders, Billy. They were executions. Anna does not commit murder. As far as she was concerned, this taxi driver was an innocent bystander; to have killed him would have been murder.’
‘It’s a point of view. The real point is that she was now leaving a trail as wide as a four-lane highway. At least, up to a point. At Miami she checked in at the Airport Hotel . . . and simply disappeared. She had only a single piece of luggage, a large shoulder bag –’ he paused to look at a stricken Clive – ‘and this was found by a chambermaid the next morning, apparently with all possible identification removed. There was nothing else. Now, do you think we are still talking about circumstantial evidence?’
‘But—’
‘I agree entirely. The number of buts is monumental. But only one concerns me: was she working on her own, or is she being employed? If so, by whom? She’s supposed to be ours.’
Clive seemed to wake up. ‘She is not ours, Billy. Not any more. She was ours. But when we pulled in our horns in 1946, she was left out on a limb. We stuck her up in that so-called safe house in Scotland while the government decided what to do with her, and they took so long over it that the Reds were able to trace her.’
‘So she shot four of them dead, I suppose that was because there were only four of them available to shoot, and departed, leaving a monumental diplomatic mess behind her.’
‘She left with the aid of Joe Andrews and the CIA.’
‘Correct. And then worked for them in South America, briefly, leaving another trail of murder and mayhem. She said she took on that assignment because they promised that if she helped them get Martin Bormann they would help her get her money out of Germany. We agreed to go along with that on condition she then agreed to retire and disappear. But she doesn’t seem to have done that. So?’
‘I would say,’ Clive said thoughtfully, ‘that she had a different agreement with the Yanks.’
‘You mean with Andrews.’
‘Well . . .’
‘With whom, if I remember correctly, she had been, how shall I put it, associated, in the past.’
‘He saved her life,’ C
live said miserably. ‘In Russia, in 1941.’
‘And she’s a girl whose gratitude knows no end.’
‘All right, Billy, you’ve made your point and ruined my day. But what the hell do you propose to do about it? So she has just murdered, she would say executed, five thugs. I suppose old habits die hard.’
‘In the past two years, you have spent four holidays in the Bahamas, and you knew nothing about these, shall we say, extracurricular activities? I am assuming this Mexico business is not the first.’
‘No, I did not know anything about what she’s been doing with her time. She has always appeared totally normal and contented.’
‘A vampire can appear totally normal and contented as long as he, or she, gets his regular ration of blood. So, now that you do know about it, what are you going to do about it?’
‘What can I do about it? She is no longer ours to command.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Billy, we retired her, told her to get out of the UK, and to stay out. She has done that. We didn’t specify what she was to do with her retirement. Anna was never one to lie on a beach.’
‘May I remind you that no matter what she may be doing on her beach, said beach is situated in a British colony, and is therefore subject to British law?’
‘And may I point out that so far as we know she has broken no British laws? If she killed those blokes, it was in Mexico.’
‘And when they track her down and demand her extradition?’
‘You are supposing they can do that. I mean, track her down. Apart from doing the right thing about the taxi driver she seems to have covered her tracks pretty well. You are also assuming that they’ll really want to go after her. Capillano may have had a lot of friends in high places to stand between him and extradition to the States, but they were friends simply because he kept their palms well greased. That doesn’t alter the fact that he seems to have been the nastiest creature to walk this earth since Jack the Ripper. And maybe I’m being hard on the Ripper. I’d bet all his “friends”, and definitely the police, while obliged to go through the motions, are saying to themselves, good riddance.’
Baxter snorted. ‘You make an unconvincing advocate. So do you think she’s set herself up as some kind of supreme judge and jury, the ultimate international vigilante, dedicated to wiping out all the baddies she can locate? If that’s the case, we simply have to do something about it; some of those undesirables are living in England.’
‘As I said just now, almost certainly she’s working for the CIA.’
‘You mean Andrews. And you still think she’s yours for the taking, whenever you can summon the guts to do it?’
‘God, I don’t know. Don’t you think it keeps me awake at night? Look, I’m seeing her in a few days’ time. I’ll see if I can sort things out.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘What? Now, Billy, strong-arm tactics won’t work with Anna. The only thing you’re likely to achieve is joining the bullet in the head club.’
Baxter grinned, an unusual event. ‘Well, if that happens, we’d at least have her for committing murder on British soil. But I’ll have you to protect me, won’t I?’
‘But why do you want to come? She’s not likely to listen to you if she won’t listen to me.’
‘Do you know,’ Billy said, remembering. ‘It’s three years since I last saw Anna. Maybe I just need to get my hormones moving again, in the right direction. The point is, Clive, although it seems to have escaped you, if by any chance you are wrong, and the Mexican police are serious about trying to get hold of her, and there is a risk of her being returned to Mexico City to face their methods of interrogation, and she decides to talk her way out of trouble, or simply to go out with a publicity bang, she could blow a big hole in the credibility of this government, and the US Administration, and international relations all over the world. The merest suggestion of some of the jobs she has carried out for us, and the Americans, would fill the front pages for months. So you see, if there were any risk of that happening, we would have to take the young lady out ourselves to prevent it. And when I say we, I mean you, as you are the only member of this organization who has both the ability to get up close to her, and who also has the ability to do the job. So we need to have a serious chat with her. You with me?’
Clive gulped.
‘Besides,’ Billy went on, ‘there is something I wish to talk to her about.’
‘What thing?’
‘You’ll have to ask her. After I’ve talked with her.’
‘Well, if I may give you a word of advice, leave your pipe behind. Anna does not allow smoking on her island.’
*
Don Giovanni Ravanelli was a very big man. Naturally tall and heavy, he had added to his size by a lifetime of overeating. The result was, now that he was in his sixties, constant indigestion that, despite a steady consumption of Rennie’s, left him with a jaundiced view of life and unable properly to enjoy the wealth that years of being boss of the Ravanelli Family had brought him, and often caused him to exercise the power of his position with angry ruthlessness.
All his employees were afraid of him, and so was his actual family, with the exception of his son Luis, who being an only son and thus certain to succeed his papa in the course of time – and perhaps not all that much time if the old man refused to change his habits – took him in his stride, as it were. Thirty-one years old, married and with a family of his own, Luis had, with Don Giovanni in front of him as a bad example, always kept himself well in hand. He neither ate nor drank to excess, spent an hour every morning in the gym, and as a result had a well-balanced figure to go with his strongly aquiline features and his sleek black hair. Always immaculately dressed, he was most often seen in a tuxedo attending one of Chicago’s nightclubs – in most of which his father had an interest – surrounded by his four bodyguards and always with a beautiful woman, not necessarily his wife, on his arm.
This morning he wore a perfectly cut three-piece grey suit, with a carefully knotted quiet blue tie, a red carnation in his buttonhole, and smiled across the huge desk at his father’s expression. ‘You got the burn?’ he asked, solicitously.
‘Fucking razor blades,’ Don Giovanni growled. ‘And it ain’t nothing to do with breakfast.’ He tapped the newspaper lying on his desk. ‘You seen this sheet?’
‘You mean about Roberto buying it? I reckon he had it coming. He was a shitting asshole.’
‘So who do you reckon did it?’
Luis shrugged. ‘Those women and kids he burned up must have had fathers, husbands, brothers, maybe even adult sons.’
‘This was a top-class professional hit. For Christ’s sake, five bullets, five dead men? Shit! And they were good. That guy Carlos Dias was the best. I tried to get him on my payroll one time. And he never even got his gun out of its holster.’
‘So, maybe it wasn’t a gifted amateur. They have hit men in Mexico as well, you know. Although I’d still go for someone from up here.’
His father gazed at him for several seconds. ‘What about the broad?’
‘The key, eh? Having set it up, and apparently hanging around to make sure their eyes weren’t on the ball, she flees back home. That’s what makes me think the job originated here rather than Mexico. But I don’t think she’s going to do anyone much good. She’s got her feet in concrete by now.’
‘What makes you think she set it up?’
‘Well, that’s pretty obvious, Pa. This Jaquetta says Capillano hires a girl for the night, every night. So this girl turns up and asks for the assignment. So she goes in at eight and leaves half an hour later. Half an hour, not the whole night. And the moment she leaves, presumably after letting the hit man, or hit squad in, boom boom.’
‘That’s what you think happened.’
‘That’s what the police say happened. Who are we to argue with the cops?’
Again Don Giovanni considered for some seconds. Then he opened his desk drawer and took out a rather tattered pho
tograph, held it out. ‘What do you think?’
Luis studied it. ‘Wow! Somebody you know? She sure is someone I’d like to know.’
‘You wouldn’t sit in on the meeting I had with that guy Botten a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Hell, Pa, he was a Red. I can smell those guys a mile away.’ A Veteran, Luis had finished the war as a captain in the infantry, and was a patriot to his bootlaces . . . as long as patriotism did not interfere with the Family business.
‘Maybe. But he was offering ten thousand dollars for a hit.’
‘Ten . . . a hit on whom? The president?’
‘That dame. He gave me the photo.’
Luis was still holding the photograph. Now he looked at it again. ‘Ten thousand dollars . . . he was putting you on. This is just a kid.’
‘That was taken a few years back. Nine to be precise. Although apparently she hasn’t changed too much. And it seems she was worth a lot of money, dead, even then.’
Luis was still studying the photo. ‘Just where was this taken? Those buildings in the background don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen, at least in this country. That church, with all those onion domes . . .’
‘That’s St Basil’s Cathedral. She’s standing in Red Square, in Moscow. That high wall on her left is the Kremlin.’
‘Holy shit! You mean she’s on the run from the Reds? And you want to go along with them?’
‘They want her because she’s a war criminal, a Nazi, who’s a killer, and who escaped capture when they fell apart. Amongst other things she spent the war rounding up Jews and either bumping them off herself, or handing them over to the Gestapo for the gas chambers.’
Luis continued to stare at the photograph. ‘This guy Botten tell you this?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘Ten thousand dollars says he could be right.’
Luis tapped the cardboard. ‘A face like that couldn’t harm a fly.’
‘There were guys in the old days who made the same sort of misjudgement about Lucretia Borgia. And all they got was a slab in the morgue.’
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