15th Affair

by James Patterson

  I was watching Joe, listening as he said to Muller, “It’s over, Alison. Turn around. Put your hands behind your back.”

  She looked at Joe and asked, “How could you do this to me? How in God’s name can you humiliate me like this?”

  I was standing only ten feet from Ali Muller, and even though she’d been caught moments away from her great escape and had been shot at by her own people, she looked composed. If there was the slightest trace of vulnerability in her face, it was that of hurt feelings. And the way she looked at Joe made me think she was taking her arrest personally.

  She said, “Are you kidding me, Joseph? Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing and why?”

  Joseph?

  His smile was a grimace. He used Flex-Cuffs to pin her wrists together behind her back, after which he encircled her biceps with his hand. She twisted away, but it was halfhearted. She kept looking up into his face—I have to say, adoringly. I followed them across the grass, between the trailers and toward the shot-up Audi.

  I listened as Muller tried to make her point.

  “Joseph, have you lost sight of the truth? I’m still working for you. Don’t you get that? This was part of our plan.”

  “What plan? You left the country. You were on the run. You’re a traitor, Ali. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about this, but not now.”

  “I’m a traitor? You knew I was going to work for us once I got to China. I told you. Didn’t you understand that? Weren’t you paying attention?”

  Joe scoffed, but what I could see of his face was clouded.

  Alison kept selling, working hard. Was she working Joe into giving her an alibi? Or was she telling the truth? How could I possibly know?

  “You’ve told me you loved me,” she said. “And now, what? You don’t love me anymore?”

  Joe loved her? Hearing that hurt worse than the beating I’d taken on Lake Street. Far worse. The left rear door of the Audi creaked as Joe opened it. He put one hand on Muller’s head and angled her into the backseat. He closed the door hard and opened the driver’s side door for me, and I got in.

  “I have to talk to Knightly,” he said through the open window. “I’ll only be about ten minutes. Watch her, Lindsay. And don’t believe anything she says. She has an advanced degree in making shit up.”

  Muller called out, “Joseph. Joseph, don’t leave me with her. She shot at me.” She almost sounded panicky. “She’ll kill me. Is that what you want?”

  Joe reached into the car and threw the door locks. He said, “Lindsay, don’t shoot her unless you have to. But if you have to, do it. Do not let her leave.”

  “Copy that.”

  Did he want me to shoot her?

  Would that solve a lot of problems for Joe?

  Well, I had my own agenda.

  Out on the rosy airfield, Knightly was speaking with the helicopter pilots from the RCMP. Joe said a few words, then headed over to the hangar, joining the agents who were loading the survivors of the shootout into vehicles.

  I was alone with Alison Muller, the modern-day Mata Hari who had just sucker-punched my heart, then jumped on it and set it on fire. Oh, yeah, I was throbbing from the pain of that, but I had to push it all aside.

  If the City of San Francisco was ever to have the chance to prosecute Muller for the Four Seasons murders, I had to get her to talk to me. I couldn’t let my injured feelings compromise a case against her.

  This meeting with Muller was why I was here.

  I sat with my legs across the length of the front seat, my feet under the steering wheel, my face turned toward the honey-trap beauty. I showed her my gun.

  “I’m Lindsay,” I said. “Joe is my husband.”

  CHAPTER 95

  MULLER SLID DOWN in the backseat catercorner from me. She stuck the soles of her boots up against the back of the driver’s seat and got as comfortable as I imagine she could with her wrists bound behind her back.

  I reached up to where Joe’s phone was still clamped in its holder, below Ali’s line of sight. I pressed the On button. And I pressed Record.

  Then I turned around to face her.

  I took a good long look at Muller’s strong, almost mesmerizing features: her gorgeous skin, the shimmering blond hair with the signature bangs, her large eyes, which were almost all pupils at the moment. No matter the bravado she was exuding with her feet cocked up on the backseat, she’d been through a shit-storm and she was feeling the effects of it.

  She spoke. “So you’re his wife, huh?”

  “That’s right. I’m also a cop. SFPD. Just so you know, you don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say can be used against you in court. Do you understand?”

  Her merry laughter filled the car.

  Then she said, “You can’t touch me, babe. I’m in federal custody and that trumps the SFPD any day, every day. Do you have any idea who I am? Do you have any idea who your husband is? Don’t bother to answer. You don’t know jack. You don’t know Joe.”

  “You may be right,” I said, channeling the benign manner and patience of Rich Conklin. “So fill me in, why don’t you?”

  “What do you want to know?” she said. “You’ve got questions about Joe, I suppose. Like, how close are we, exactly? How often do we see each other? How tight are we after knowing each other for twenty-five years? How good we are together in bed? Yeah, I’ll bet you’d like to know all that, but why don’t you ask your husband? And good luck getting the truth out of him, Lindsay. Lying is one of the top two traits required of a CIA operative. Number two is not giving a shit.”

  I, too, was still pumping adrenaline. My fight-or-flight instinct had powered my blood into overdrive and my left hand had balled up into a fist. I wanted to lean over the seat back and punch Alison Muller in the mouth. I also wanted to get out of the car and run screaming into the foothills.

  I kept it all down. It was the performance of my life.

  “Actually, I want to know how you pulled off the killings at the hotel. It seems almost impossible that you got away.”

  “Hmmm. I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Well, humor me. Let’s just play hypotheticals, OK?”

  “Sure, Lindsay. Hypothetically and actually, I had nothing to do with whatever you’re referring to. I was getting laid. Next thing I know, a masked man shot up the room and killed my boyfriend. I locked myself in the bathroom, and when the shooting stopped, I put on my clothes and got out. Once I was outside, I decided to leave the country and carry on my work for the Agency by pretending to flip to the Chinese side. That way, I could continue to serve my country from China. At great personal sacrifice, I might add. I was going to leave my family, and oh, yeah, stop seeing your husband, my lover, who is also the greatest guy in the world. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Geez, you’re good.”

  “Thanks. I’d like a cigarette.”

  “I’ll see what I can do for you. But first.”

  “Aw, Christ.”

  “The one thing I really admire is how, while you were getting, uh, laid, all the Wi-Fi went down. Your room, the room next door, the common spaces—but not down on Market Street, where a kid who was working for the FBI was remotely taping you and Chan and Bud and Chrissy and everything that went down.”

  I was watching her closely. Her face stayed composed, but I could see the flash of alarm in her eyes.

  She said, “What?”

  “Try to keep up, Alison. An FBI surveillance tech had been following you for weeks, and he taped your highly enjoyable tryst in room fourteen-twenty at the Four Seasons from his car. He taped all of the passion and the tragedy of Renata and the Prince of Cheese. Every minute. I’ll run your whole afternoon for you. Just speak up if I get something wrong, OK?”

  I’d rocked her, caught her off guard and planted more than a little doubt in her shady mind. She didn’t know the truth: that the FBI kid had also lost his video hookup, and that after their tryst, all we had of Chan and Muller was static and
snow.

  I might not be as good a liar as she was, but I was dancing on the balls of my feet, jabbing, and sticking to my story.

  We were still in the early rounds, and I had to punch above my weight. But I was determined to win the bout.

  CHAPTER 96

  I WAS HOPING that Joe’s phone was charged and recording, but I didn’t dare look at it. I didn’t blink. Either way, I had Alison’s attention. I wanted all of that and more.

  I said, “See, here’s where it really got interesting for me, Alison. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Not really. And you’re not going to get me a cigarette, are you?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “So, as I was saying, this part fascinates me. Michael Chan didn’t know when his father was coming over from China…”

  Her eyebrows shot up. I kept going.

  “But your partner in this operation was listening to you and Chan on the coms he’d set up in fourteen-twenty, and he was also listening in on Bud and Chrissy in the next room.”

  “Maybe in your overheated imagination.”

  “He heard Joe tell Bud that he was coming up to the room, and that’s when your partner pulled the plug on the entire wireless system, as only the hotel’s head of security could do.”

  Alison’s face had stiffened.

  “Nice story for total bullshit.”

  “I met him, Alison. I spent almost a day and a half with Liam Dugan watching video of the lobby, the hallway, the elevators. He told me it was a mystery why and how the Internet had gone down, but that’s life, right?”

  My gun hand was sweating. I switched hands, dried my right hand on my jeans, and switched back again. Muller was watching me like a cat at the window that’s spotted a bird. I kept going.

  “Honestly, Alison, and this is no bull, I didn’t put it together until a half hour ago when I saw Dugan get shot to death. Right. Out. There. He caught a bullet—meant for you.”

  “Lindsay. You’re delusional.”

  “Am I? I said I’d run the story for you, and look, I’m not done. So, back to the hotel. Liam Dugan was watching the feeds. He hears Joe saying he’s coming up to fourteen-eighteen, so Dugan shuts down the Wi-Fi, maybe knocks out a guest elevator at the same time so he can slow Joe down. He takes the service elevator to fourteen, where he kills the housekeeper, a potential witness, and stuffs her body into the supply closet.

  “Then he takes the cart and knocks on the door to fourteen-twenty. Maybe he yells ‘Maintenance,’ something like that, and uses the passkey. Chan gets up to go to the door and Dugan shoots him twice in the face. Gives him another shot in the chest for good measure. And he says to you, ‘Get dressed, Alison. Hurry up.’”

  “Entertaining, yes, but pure make-believe—”

  “And you do get dressed. You step over Michael Chan’s dead body, and you tell Dugan to let you into the room next door. Again, he uses the key card he took from the dead housekeeper, which is registered with the security system. That was smart.”

  “Even brilliant.”

  “I agree,” I said. “So now you’re in fourteen-eighteen and the two kids are looking up at you, like ‘What just happened?’ One minute they’re watching you party with Michael Chan on their laptops, waiting for Joe to arrive— then the Wi-Fi goes down and now you’re inside their room with a gun in your hand.

  “Alison, you killed those two unarmed kids and then, I’m thinking, Dugan got you out of the hotel by way of the fire stairs. And then he calls the police, says shots have been heard on the fourteenth floor.

  “The Net is back up and hell, I’ll bet he wasn’t even winded when he showed us cops the crime scene. Very cool guy. I can see why you liked him. So here’s a question, Alison.”

  She said, “Where the hell is Joseph? Oh. You remember I said I’m a federal employee, don’t you?”

  “Of course. I can’t touch you, right? So here’s my question. Why would Dugan do that for you? Why would he kill for you? And why would he die for you?”

  “This is your story, not mine,” said Alison Muller, exhaling like her breath was smoke.

  “Well, here’s my theory. He did it because he knew you. And as a world-class femme fatale to his former cop turned security chief, I think he would have been an easy score for you. You were beyond his wildest dreams. And—I’ll admit this part is hypothetical—I think you told Dugan that you’d run away with him to the People’s Republic of China and start a new and exciting life together. Am I warm, Alison?”

  She was staring past me through the windshield, considering her options.

  I knew it. I wasn’t just warm. I was red-smoking-hot.

  “Look,” she said, “I’m going to get disappeared for a while. I want you to tell my daughters that I’m OK. That I love them. There are a few things I want them to have and there are some things I have to tell Khalid.”

  I understood what she was saying. She didn’t know when she’d see them again. Or if.

  “Happy to help. Tell me you killed Shirley Chan and it’s a deal.”

  Alison sighed, shook her head, and said, “What a bitch.” She was referring to me.

  Then she said, “OK. I didn’t know if or what Michael had told her about me. She was smart and she could have turned people against me. I went into her house and I put her down. OK? I killed her. Now shut the hell up. I can’t stand the sound of your voice.”

  “Back at you, babe. You kind of make me sick.”

  I took the phone out of the holder, showed Alison the big icon of a microphone on the faceplate, rewound it a touch, and played back “You kind of make me sick.” Then I said, “We’re still rolling. Let’s have the message for your family.”

  While she talked to her kids, I was thinking, Gotcha. Shirley Chan’s death wasn’t a government-ordered hit. Killing a mother of two small children was Muller’s own personal cover-up to protect herself.

  If the CIA spat Muller out, we could charge her for Shirley Chan’s murder and do our best to build a case. I thought I could do it starting with her confession.

  When Muller finished talking into the recorder, I pressed Stop and said, “That’s a wrap.”

  She smiled—a hat-tip to me for making the deal. And then she started to laugh. Man, it was catching. I laughed, too. This hilarity was more about relief and hysteria than it was about humor, but we were both into it, chortling and giggling like high school girls.

  Technically, I laughed last.

  And of course, best.

  CHAPTER 97

  CHRIS KNIGHTLY’S BIG face filled the open car window.

  “You girls having fun?” he said.

  I didn’t like the guy, but screw him. I had what I wanted, on the record. Knightly unlocked and opened the creaking back door and said, “Let me help you out, Ali. Watch your head.”

  Joe opened the front door, and as Knightly and Muller walked toward a chopper, he got in behind the wheel, reached over, pushed my gun muzzle toward the floor, and peeled my fingers off the butt one by one.

  “It’s OK, Linds. It’s all OK.”

  He opened his arms and I went into them. He held me and kissed the top of my head, and I just gave myself over to the pleasure of that hug—but not for long. I disengaged, sat back in the passenger seat, and said, “What happens now?”

  Joe said, “I’m going with Knightly, taking Muller in for interrogation. Munder is a good guy. He and a few others are taking a chopper to the Vancouver airport. You’ll go with them. I’ll call you when I can.”

  I nodded. There was no point asking him, “Where are you taking her? How long will you be gone?” I took back my gun and holstered it. I let Joe open the door for me and I got out, looking around at this little airfield that had been a shooting gallery a short while ago.

  Agent Munder came over and told me there was a bathroom in the hangar if I needed it and that a coffee urn and some rolls had been set out earlier for the crew.

  “Help yourself.”

  A little while later, he gav
e me a hand up into the helicopter, which was too loud for conversation. I was glad. The flight to the airport was short. I waited in the lounge with Agent Munder for the flight to San Francisco, which was also short.

  Conklin and Cindy met me at SFO, and they both hugged me to pieces. I sat in the backseat on the drive into the city, leaning toward them over the seat back so I could tell them about my fifteen hours with the CIA.

  I fell asleep while I was talking.

  Cindy walked with me upstairs to the apartment and sat with Mrs. Rose and Julie until I’d finished taking the best shower of my entire life. And then everyone left us alone.

  I sat in Joe’s chair holding our child, and then I sobbed deeply until she started crying, too. Poor Martha was dumbfounded. She barked and yipped and circled until I was all cried out.

  We napped. Then we went to the park, my girls and me.

  We sat by the lake and watched ducks and people. I made small talk with Martha and Julie. But my mind was working hard.

  As usual, I still had questions.

  CHAPTER 98

  THE PHONE RANG at seven the next morning while I was brushing my teeth. It was Brady.

  “Hah-wo,” I said.

  “Are you all right?”

  I spat and rinsed. “Good as new.”

  “Fine. There’s a car downstairs for you. Go to Mission and Cortland. Two officers are at the scene. They’ll fill you in. Conklin’s on the way.”

  Brady hung up. I sang to my reflection, “It’s gonna be another bright, bright, sunshiny day.”

  I finished my morning ablutions and welcomed Mrs. Rose, who asked, “How are you?”

  Everyone wanted to know how I was. I must look like I’d been dragged up and down Filbert Street behind a garbage truck.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”

  “A little tense. My daughter’s due anytime. She’s packed to go to the hospital. Do you think you’ll be home after work?”