The Pretender's Gambit

by Alex Archer

  The man stood at the counter next to the side door and nursed a coffee or a hot tea. No one else was around him.

  Rao did not know the man’s name, but there was no mistaking that cruel look or those dead eyes.

  * * *

  UNTIL THE MONK started to walk out with the police detective and Annja Creed, Calapez thought he had the situation in hand. The fact that the monk was there let Calapez know that the Asian didn’t have the elephant. Evidently the piece was still in play.

  However, when recognition flared in the monk’s eyes, Calapez felt threatened and reacted instantly because he preferred the element of surprise to be one of his weapons rather than someone else’s. He pushed away from the counter and swept his coat back, reaching for his pistol.

  The detective, focusing on the Asian, was slow getting to his own weapon. Calapez had the 9mm out and started firing, aiming for the detective because he knew the American would have a weapon and the monk and the woman probably didn’t.

  Calapez squeezed the rounds off as quickly as he could, putting all three of them into the center of the detective’s chest. The American went back and down, the pistol tumbling from his fingers. The woman dropped down beside him, concern tightening her features.

  The monk came toward Calapez so quick that Calapez couldn’t bring his pistol around fast enough to center his weapon on the man. It didn’t matter, though, because one of the men Calapez had stationed outside stepped through the door and raised a machine pistol, spraying bullets indiscriminately.

  * * *

  SEEING THE MACHINE pistol in the other man’s hands as he entered the diner and knowing that continuing to stay inside the building would only be endangering the rest of the patrons, Rao abandoned his forward momentum and threw himself over the counter. As he landed on fingers and toes, he swept out his left leg, caught the legs of the man tending the grill, and knocked him down as well, so the machine pistol’s bullets cut the air where he’d been, instead of tearing through flesh.

  The man sprawled in shock and decided to lie there, still clutching the spatula he’d been using. He mumbled, curses or prayers, Rao couldn’t tell over the yammering machine pistol. Bullets hammered the stainless-steel grill vent and cored through the tile wall, spilling ceramic fragments over the floor.

  Rao ran, staying low behind the counter, knowing that his opponents would seek to find him because they had recognized him as a familiar threat even if they didn’t know what he truly represented.

  Hoping that his departure would draw his enemies away from the diner, Rao slid around the end of the counter and angled for the door. Bullets chased him, cutting through the air just inches behind him. Thankfully the patrons were down on the floor and out of the way.

  He hit the door with both palms, spreading the impact so that the glass door shattered. He ran through the falling fragments and out into the street, thinking that the Portuguese man would have set up his cronies at that door, as well. He just managed to stay ahead of a swath of bullets from the two gunmen standing outside the wrecked door.

  Traffic had been held up by a red light at the intersection. At the sound of the shots, the drivers panicked and began trying to pull around each other. Failing that, many of them got out and ran or stayed in their vehicles.

  Rao ran, his head low, and knew that the gunmen pursued him.

  * * *

  ANNJA FELT THE shock of adrenaline hitting her system, but concentrated on examining Bart. He’d been hit by the man’s bullets. That was all she knew.

  She reached for him, gazing at his chest and expecting it to be a bloody ruin. It wasn’t. Three bullet holes showed in his shirt, one of them piercing his coat as well, but there was no blood.

  Vest, Annja thought frantically. He’s wearing a protective vest.

  Then she was aware of the swarthy man beside her. He grabbed her roughly by one elbow and shoved the hot barrel of the pistol against her neck. The barrel was so hot that her flesh seared. She almost fought back, but she knew that would only fail. All the man had to do was squeeze the trigger and the fight would end before it started.

  “Move,” the man ordered in a harsh voice.

  Annja stood, looking down at Bart. His eyelids flickered, but he was almost unconscious, barely aware of what was going on around him. Even with the vest, his ribs could have been cracked. One of them might have punctured a lung.

  The man yanked her again, guiding her toward the back door. Annja knew she had a chance to escape then. The man wasn’t paying strict attention to her. He didn’t know what she was capable of.

  But there were too many people around. The innocents would get hurt. She didn’t want that. She held herself ready and waited.

  Through the door, outside in the cold air of morning, horns blaring at the traffic jam that had taken shape in the intersection, Annja strode down the sidewalk as the man guided her. They were walking away from the building where Maurice Benyovszky had been killed, walking past the other door to the diner now.

  Police would arrive quickly. She knew that. She concentrated on her breathing, keeping it smooth and regular, and she paid attention. There had been two men inside the diner, the guy who held her captive and the man who followed them that had wielded the machine pistol.

  The Asian man had vanished, but the two armed men sprinting through the stalled traffic gave Annja a good idea which way Nguyen Rao had gone.

  If that’s even his name. Anger flared up in Annja then. She wasn’t sure who to blame for Bart getting shot. From the way the guy who was holding on to her had acted, he’d chosen to shoot Bart as soon as Bart had tried to leave with the Asian man.

  They definitely weren’t working together. The Asian man had been asking about the elephant piece, but that didn’t mean the guy holding on to her was interested in that.

  “Annja Creed,” the man said in that hard voice as he looked around.

  She didn’t respond.

  Angrily, the man shook her. “You will speak when I speak to you.”

  “All right.” Annja took note of the neighborhood. Pedestrians had been drawn to the diner, thinning out of the alley and the streets. The smart neighbors and passersby stayed in their homes and watched.

  “Where is the elephant?”

  Okay, so all of this is connected. Everybody has an elephant on their agenda. Annja took a breath and stepped off the curb, keeping pace with the man at her side. “I don’t know.”

  “Does the detective have it?”

  “No. The elephant wasn’t in Benyovszky’s apartment.”

  The man cursed in Portuguese. Annja understood enough of the man’s invective to understand he was mad and scared.

  “What is the elephant?” Annja asked.

  “None of your business. If you do not know, it is better that you do not learn.”

  Annja kept walking, but she was aware that the man was no longer as focused on her. He was looking for a way out now, a way through the police net that would be going up even as they were speaking.

  “Maybe I can help,” she suggested. “Just tell me why you’re looking for the elephant and maybe I’d be able to figure out where it is.”

  “No.” The man shook her again and kept walking, glancing at the street. “Who killed Benyovszky?”

  “I don’t know. You didn’t kill him?”

  “The old man was dead when we got there.” Realizing what he had just done, how he had admitted more than he’d intended, the man cursed in Portuguese again.

  “There.” The man carrying the machine pistol under his coat pointed to a sedan sailing swiftly down the street. He stepped toward the curb and started flagging the vehicle down.

  She didn’t want to get into the car with the men—escape would be harder there if not impossible. Annja lifted her right leg and drove her foot into the back of
her abductor’s knee, tripping him and forcing him down at the same time. She caught his gun hand in her hands and twisted. The man released the pistol with a cry of pain just before his wrist bones shattered. He fell away, dropping to the sidewalk.

  The man with the machine pistol wheeled around and started bringing his weapon from under his coat.

  Knowing she wouldn’t reach the other man in time to prevent him from employing the machine pistol, Annja reached into the otherwhere and grabbed the handle of the sword that had once belonged to Joan of Arc. In less than an eyeblink, it was in this world with her, a piece of her just as surely as any of her limbs.

  The sword was crude and beautiful at the same time. Over three feet in length, with an unadorned cross-guard, the handle wrapped in leather, the sword was a weapon, not a showpiece. It had been forged for battle, and Annja was intimate with its abilities. She joined her two hands together as she stepped forward and swung.

  Catching the morning light, the blade sang through the air in a horizontal arc that sheared through the machine pistol a bare inch above the man’s hands. Gaping in disbelief, the man stared at the useless weapon he held as the pieces tumbled to the sidewalk.

  Before the man could react, Annja set herself and lashed out with a roundhouse kick that lifted the gunman from his feet and bounced him off the side of a nearby parked car. The vehicle’s anti-theft alarm screamed and echoed along the street.

  Annja released the sword, letting it go back into the otherwhere and disappear. The other man pushed himself up, but his injured wrist gave out on him and he crashed back down to his chest. Annja stomped on his hand as he reached for the dropped pistol, then picked up the weapon herself.

  Backing away, Annja pointed the pistol at the second man. “Roll over onto your stomach. Lock your fingers behind your head. I’m sure you’re familiar with the drill.”

  Without a word, the man did as he was ordered. The first man lay unconscious. Three uniformed police officers sprinted up the street toward Annja.

  Out on the street, the driver of the approaching car slowed, then saw that the odds had shifted. Ducking down, the man pulled toward an alley and drove away.

  The police officers pointed their weapons at Annja. One of them addressed her in a too-loud but calm voice. “Ma’am, put down the weapon.”

  Annja complied, then laid on her stomach the same way the man she’d captured was. Handcuffs closed around her wrists and she kept telling herself that Bart would get her cut loose as soon as he was able.

  Being handcuffed didn’t bother her so much, though. It was the thought of the elephant, lost out there, people chasing after it for some unknown reason, and she was getting behind in that pursuit.

  Chapter 7

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Shaking her head, Annja made an effort to stop rubbing her bruised wrists. Although the pain had subsided, they still throbbed from the constriction they’d suffered while she’d been brought down to the police station. The policeman who had put the handcuffs on had put them on tight and time had passed before Bart could get free of the paramedics and the investigators and arrive to release her. “I’m fine.”

  Bart squinted up at her as if taking her measure. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Me?” She frowned at Bart, who was sitting on the other side of his desk in the detectives’ bull pen. All around the station cops were fielding reports and filling out forms. Evidently Benyovszky’s murder and the shoot-out at the diner hadn’t been the only things going on tonight. The conversations and the constant noise distanced her from the memory of the old man lying dead in his apartment and the violence in the diner that had spilled out into the street. “You’re the one who got shot.”

  In the uncertain glare of the fluorescent lighting, Bart looked pale and haggard. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and breathed shallowly. His shirttails were out and his tie hung in a coat pocket. “The vest stopped the bullets.”

  “The vest doesn’t stop the impact. That’s still like getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer.”

  Bart grinned at her ruefully. “How would you know something like that?”

  Actually, Annja had experienced that same injury on occasion, as well as getting shot. Things hadn’t been dull since the sword had come into her possession. She didn’t know if the increased danger was just her lifestyle or a byproduct of having the sword.

  “There was a special on the History Channel about body armor,” she replied. “You should go to the emergency room and get checked out. In addition to the bruising, the hydrostatic shock caused by the impacts could have cracked your ribs or torn muscles.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Bart opened a desk drawer, took out a bottle of pain relievers and shook a couple tablets out into his hand. He swallowed them down dry and grimaced, at the taste or the pain, Annja wasn’t sure which. He put the bottle back in the desk drawer. “There’s a line at the hospital. There always is. If this is still hurting in a few hours, I’ll go in.” He took a breath gingerly and winced. “In the meantime, I’ve got a case I’m working on that just blew up big-time, and I still have no idea why people are shooting up the neighborhood over an elephant statue we can’t find.”

  Annja decided not to press the issue and risk reminding Bart that she was just a civilian pushing into police business. Friendship would only carry her so far, and she knew Bart wouldn’t bend regulations any further. She massaged her wrists again. “Do you have anything on the two men who were arrested at the diner?”

  “I do.” Bart stood with effort and picked up a file folder from the desktop. “Come with me.”

  * * *

  “HIS NAME’S FRANCISCO CALAPEZ.” Bart peered through the one-way glass into the interview room at the man sitting alone at a desk.

  Calapez sat in a straight-backed chair that was bolted to the floor. Other than the two chairs, one across from the other, and the table, the room offered nothing more in furnishings or accoutrements. Hands cuffed to the table in front of him, one of them sleeved in a temporary cast, Calapez looked uncomfortable and half-asleep.

  Holding her arms across her chest because it made the bruises on her wrists throb less painfully, Annja peered through the one-way glass. “What’s he saying?”

  Bart shook his head. “Nothing. He started yelling lawyer as soon as we sat down to talk to him. We only got a name because his prints rolled up in the system. We’re not even certain that’s his real name yet. We’re still awaiting verification on a true ID. According to the files I’ve seen, and there may be more hits coming in soon because this guy, whoever he turns out to be, has got a record in Europe that’s coming in to us in pieces.”

  Annja thought about that. “What kind of history does he have?”

  “Guy’s a strong-arm, probably a killer, but no one’s ever pinned that on him.”

  “He told me he didn’t kill Benyovszky.”

  “How did you have time for a discussion in the middle of everything that was going on?”

  “He brought it up. He asked me if I knew who killed Benyovszky. Calapez wants the elephant.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No.”

  “If the guy’s going to shoot at you—and he did—” Bart pointed to his chest “—it’s a safe bet he’s going to lie to you, too.”

  “I don’t think he killed him.”

  Bart sighed, but carefully. “Neither do I. If Calapez had killed Benyovszky and taken the elephant—which this all seems to focus on, he would have disappeared. We took his shoes when we brought him in because we noticed dried blood on them.”

  Annja glanced down at Calapez’s sock-covered feet.

  “The lab has the shoes now, but there were traces of blood in the tread, and I’m betting that blood at one time pumped through Maurice Benyovszky.”

  “No bet.�
��

  “The lab will take a while getting the results back to us, though. So for right now, I can’t put Calapez in Benyovszky’s apartment. Which means all I have him on is a weapons charge and intent to murder at the diner.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I hope so. Depends on the judge and how much money Calapez can get his hands on. If this guy makes bail, he could be in the wind and we might never see him again.”

  “Even after him blasting away inside the diner?”

  “Yeah. Until we can prove he killed somebody, we can’t leverage enough to guarantee he’ll be held without bail. If we could prove he was a threat to national security, we could lock him down tight.”

  “But Calapez could walk away from this.”

  “He could.” Bart grimaced.

  On one hand, Annja couldn’t believe Calapez could be released, but on the other she knew that things often happened just as Bart described. When he was feeling particularly irritated at his job, he sometimes stated that the justice system protected criminals more than it protected citizens. Of course, that took a really bad day for him to bring that up.

  Annja thought about that for a moment. “Can you connect Calapez or the other man who was arrested to Fernando Sequeira?”

  “No.” Bart grimaced. “But I think the three of them would fit well together. Sequeira isn’t a squeaky-clean television and radio mogul in Lisbon. I did a background check on him. When it comes to television and radio programming, Sequeira is something of a golden boy. However, he’s got a bad habit of stealing artifacts from other countries, making illegal acquisitions. According to Interpol, Sequeira has hired people to get things for him off the books. They couldn’t make a case stick against him because he took care of his hired help.” Bart paused for a sip of the coffee he’d brought into the room with him. “But he’s never been indicted for murder.”