by Fritz Galt
“Like hell you will. What the hell’s going on? We found Suzy Kraft’s body this morning. People are dropping like flies. We need you back in Bern. Today.”
She froze. Suzy was killed? How awful.
“I can’t come back,” she said numbly. “At least not yet. I need more time.”
“Time for what? You’re shacked up with Khalid Slimane. He’s a Polisario Front terrorist.”
Polisario Front? That was a movement funded by Algeria. Then she thought back to the license plate on the car of the woman who had seduced Mick. It was an Algerian car. Khalid was an overgrown adolescent and a failed engineer. But he was no kidnapper or terrorist.
She had latched onto Khalid because he was a friend of Alec’s at CERN and also worked for Sir Trevor O’Smythe, who put up Anaïs. Furthermore, he claimed to be Moroccan, mortal enemies of the Polisario Front.
None of what Everett said made sense.
Natalie wasn’t trying to find Algerians. She was after the Proteus Jihad. Based on the transcript of the dying man’s last words, the Proteus Jihad was trying to kill Alec. “The bastard’s from the Proteus organization of Morocco.” And based on the shootout at Alec’s apartment with “Proteus” scrawled in blood on the wall, Proteus was still after Alec. Why, she didn’t know.
“I don’t think it’s the Polisario we should be worried about,” she said. “It could be much worse than that.”
“Like what?”
“Listen, there’s a lot going on here, and I can’t resurface for a while. Mick and I are safer this way.”
“Is Mick okay?” he asked, with hope in his voice.
“You haven’t heard from him either?”
“No.”
“I sure hope he’s okay. All I know is that they’re using us, and I need to lay low. Please understand. And don’t follow me.”
“Where’s Alec?”
She set the phone down gently. Tears were streaming from her eyes. The bastards had gotten Suzy. They had gotten the coroner. Her husband would be next.
Thinking of Mick again increased the ache in her heart. Her Mick of Portugal, where they had met and married. Her Mick of La Paz, of Belgrade, of Taipei. They had shared a million memories, a million triumphs and a million laughs. She would not let a woman or deranged terrorist take him away from her.
Her fingers felt cold and began to tremble again. She made a futile attempt at the bag of chips, but had to veer unsteadily toward the bathroom.
Several minutes later, she re-emerged, turned off the central air and let an outside breeze ventilate the room.
She was a wreck.
As her mind gradually cleared, her aims began to crystallize. The only way to get her husband back was to put the Proteus Jihad out of commission. And in order to do that, she had to learn the group’s objective and somehow neutralize it.
She took a deep breath of the lake air and listened to seagulls cawing. After her narrow escape from Khalid’s arms the night before, she doubted that she had the strength to penetrate a terrorist group.
Turning back to the room, her eyes fell on a work number Khalid had scrawled by the telephone. He had some confidence after his failed pursuit of her.
She smiled for the first time that morning. She would do the pursuing.
She didn’t have much time before Everett would decide to ignore her plea and close in on the hotel.
She punched in Khalid’s work number.
A lazy male voice answered with a Scandinavian accent. “This is CERN.”
“Is Khalid there?”
“No, but I saw him a second ago. Please hold up.”
She could barely hold up as she waited for over a minute.
“Yes?” Khalid finally said in an officious voice. “May I help you?”
“This is Natalie calling, Khalid. I need your help. Someone’s chasing me.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now. Some man chased me to the Château de Chillon two days ago and that’s why I’m staying with Anaïs. Now I think he’s back.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He just called me.”
“At my hotel room?”
“Yes.” She held her breath. She could sense him sniffing the bait.
“Well, I was planning a trip to a friend’s funeral. Maybe you can come with me.”
“Sure. Anywhere.”
“I’ll arrange your ticket. Meet me at the Royal Air Maroc check-in counter in one hour.”
“Royal Air Maroc?”
“Yes. But you must leave now. We’ll buy you some clothes on the way.”
The phone clicked off, and she was left to contemplate a dial tone.
Quickly, she dialed Anaïs’ apartment number.
“Listen, Anaïs,” she said into the answering machine. “I hope you get this message. I’m leaving today for Morocco. With Khalid.”
Before departing the room, she scoured it for a veil or scarf. If she could only blend in with the Arabs in the lobby. She finally located a silk scarf among extra women’s clothing in the closet. She paused before the mirror and wrapped it over her hair and face. How did the Muslims do it so neatly?
Fortunately, the elevator was empty. So was the lobby. She exited out a side door and stepped onto the busy sidewalk.
She waited for a red tram to pass, crossed the street, trotted several blocks, and found a bakery. It had a green pay phone on the wall.
She reached into her pocketbook. There was her passport, a photo of Mick, some bills. But no coins.
She bought a raspberry-filled croissant with a twenty-franc note and took the change to the phone. She dialed the long-distance number that Alec had left on Anaïs’s answering machine. It rang only once before being picked up.
“Hôtel Saint Paul,” an older man answered.
“Hello. I’m looking for Mr. Pierce.”
The other party hesitated. “Oh, you mean a guest?” He sounded British.
“Yes, a guest,” she said, trying to hide her impatience.
“There is no Monsieur Pierce staying with us.”
“He’s a tall man, thirty-five, blond hair.”
The voice considered the description. “A Monsieur Franklin checked out of the hotel this morning, madame.”
“Damn. That must be him.” Franklin Pierce was the disgraced 14th President of the United States. The name was an alias Alec had used before. “I’m sorry to bother you, but where is your hotel located?”
“We’re on rue Monsieur le Prince.”
“Which is where?”
“The Latin Quarter.”
“Paris?”
“Yes. Paris, France.”
“Got it. Did Mr. Franklin leave a forwarding address?”
“We don’t require such information, madame.”
“Did a woman meet him this morning?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
“Please. I’m his sister-in-law.”
“One moment.” A hand covered the mouthpiece. She watched the balance of her phone call dwindle down to one franc. She tossed in a large silver five-franc piece.
“Yes, madame,” the voice came back. “He met a woman this morning as he left.”
“Did she have short bangs? Blonde hair?”
“Short what, madame?”
“Short blond hair?”
“That would be correct, madame.”
“Thank you, sir. Good-bye.”
She wrapped her purse strap around her forearm to keep it from swinging away from her. It was her only luggage.
Then she sprinted into the middle of traffic and flagged down a passing cab. “L’aeroport, s’il vous plait.”
As the cab pulled away from the curb, an oncoming police siren blared at them. The flashing light flew past them heading for the Noga Hilton.
She sat back and batted down the loose ends of her headscarf.
Looking through the immaculately clean windshield, she watched the buildings turn to forests and fields and finally the airport as she m
unched on her croissant.
Chapter 23
Someone rapped on Mick’s bedroom door.
He sat up on the edge of his bed. He had no control over who entered his room, so he didn’t bother to answer.
A tall, dapper man strolled in with a measuring tape draped over the lapels of his business suit.
“Hello. I’m Mr. Day,” he said, extending his hand. “Your clothier.”
Zafina, in a gray tank top and battle fatigues for pants, slipped in the doorway behind the tailor. She leaned back rigidly against the far wall.
Mick shook Mr. Day’s extended hand. The palm was soft, and the handshake, courteous. The man was treating him like a client.
“Sir Trevor O’Smythe asked me to trek down here to fit you,” Mr. Day explained.
For the past two days, Mick had washed his own shirt, underwear and socks in his bathroom sink. He had worn them damp to Trevor’s extravagant meals.
“And why would Trevor feel obliged?” he asked.
“He said something about making you feel useful, sir.”
“How thoughtful.”
“I take it you wouldn’t mind one slight inconvenience?”
“Which would be?” he looked at Zafina, who had locked her eyes on him.
“A small transmitter, so Trevor knows where you are at all times. Really doesn’t affect the fit.” The tailor held up a narrow-lapel, European-cut suit coat.
Mick felt a flat plastic box sewn into a hem of the gray summer-weight wool. “And what if I decide to take off the suit?”
“Of course you can take off the suit. What a strange question to ask. But you would have to take out your teeth as well.”
The man reached for Mick’s mouth, and Mick smelled his lavender-scented cologne. “You will allow me, sir?”
“Get your hands off me.”
“Sir, I think you wouldn’t mind if I attached this small pack of C-4 to your teeth. You know, plastique explosive. The equivalent of twelve pounds of TNT will detonate in your mouth if you move more than ten feet away from your jacket, or, for that matter, if your teeth chatter.”
“I don’t even like bubble gum.”
Mick looked at Zafina for a way out.
“Oh,” Mr. Day said. “Then would you rather not have your freedom?”
Zafina’s look was no longer scathing, nor did she gloat. He had his freedom, at a price.
Several minutes later, Mick wore a fine gray suit and an implant in his mouth.
“Was this your idea, or Trevor’s?” he asked her, as she hustled him down the hall.
She grunted noncommittally and ground her fingers tighter into his arm.
“I need to know.” He tried to catch her eye.
“You can thank your friend Proteus for the inspiration,” she finally said. “Thank me for suggesting it. And thank Trevor for the execution.”
Great word, execution.
He worked his tongue around the back of his mouth and tried to pry under the flat top of his bottom left molars. Simply sucking on the device couldn’t dislodge it.
He had asked Mr. Day how the device worked without a battery. “Oh, but it does have a battery. It operates off the constant presence of alkaline in your saliva. If the alkaline is gone—”
Spitting it out wouldn’t work. It would explode the moment it left his mouth.
He turned back to Zafina. “So I have you to thank for turning me into an alkaline battery.”
She continued pushing him forward, and said between her teeth, “You can thank me when you step out that door.”
Just before the end of the hallway, they passed a well-lit room where a nurse was making up a hospital bed. If he wasn’t mistaken, he thought he glimpsed a radiation machine in the corner.
“Is that for me?” he asked.
“You know, you’re not the only person with problems,” she said.
She whisked him into Trevor’s library and left him there. Something in her final shove and the slammed door gave him the distinct impression that the rest was up to him.
The library was a spacious room with plenty of books and large portraits of Idi Amin and Muammar Qadhafi.
“Friends of yours?” Mick asked.
“Personal gifts,” Trevor said from a sofa chair. “You have to hang them somewhere.”
“How about in the public square?”
Trevor held a pill in one hand and a shot glass in the other. He swallowed the pill, then slowly rose to his feet.
A smile grew on his lips as he admired his hostage’s new attire. He walked around Mick and hefted the transmitter in the hem of the right-side panel of his suit. The thin box was presumably sending out a homing signal already for Trevor to trace his movements around the world. Then he stopped squarely before him.
“Fine set of fillings,” he said, and tapped Mick on his lower jaw. “They were the final gift of our dear departed friend from Settat, Morocco. You must thank him by going to his funeral.”
“You mean to say that this was made by the young bomb maker in Morocco?”
“One and the same. It is, shall we say, his crowning achievement? As it turns out, his last as well. I was forced to make a choice: pay him or kill him. With Proteus still lurking in the shadows, the decision was an easy one to make.”
“Wonderful for your reputation, I’m sure,” Mick said.
“I expect many fascinating people to appear at his funeral. Including you, as my proxy. I’d like you to pay my final respects.”
“And flush out Proteus.”
“Nothing as dangerous as that. Just bring him this.”
He handed over a white business envelope.
Mick held it up to the light. It had a security lining, preventing him from seeing the contents.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” Trevor said. “It describes the substrate issue I discussed with my Japanese friend.”
“Was I supposed to take notes?”
Trevor laughed. “I would hope for your sake that you followed some of our conversation. In case you lose this letter, you’ll need to tell Proteus personally.”
“Okay. I overheard the conversation, but I couldn’t exactly follow it.”
“Which is fine. You don’t have to understand it, but do understand this. If Proteus doesn’t receive your instructions, I’m afraid your president’s life may be in jeopardy. Think of this as performing a service for your country.”
Mick tucked the envelope into an inside pocket of his jacket. He had to deliver that letter at all costs.
Trevor examined a thermometer mounted outside the library window and jotted down a figure on a nearby chart.
When he turned around, he seemed surprised to find Mick still standing there. “Don’t you think you should be on your way? Just make sure you return to me after delivering the letter.”
Mick raised an eyebrow.
“Otherwise, how would you get out of that suit? You have my business card in case you run into trouble. Now don’t just stand there. Get moving.”
He dismissed Mick with a wave of his hand.
Unbelievable. Mick could leave as easily as that.
On his way out of the villa, envelope in the pocket of his new suit, he passed Zafina, who was standing vigil at the doorway.
“Thank you,” he said, facing her eye to eye.
There was no reaction. Her face was set in stone.
With Suzy’s death still fresh on his mind, along with news about the Polisario Front and Natalie shacking up with a terrorist, Everett gripped his office phone, hard. “Get me the ambassador,” he demanded.
“The ambassador is on his boat in Sandrain. It’s personal time,” the Front Office secretary explained protectively.
Everett smacked his forehead. Ambassador Rupert Pistol had an excuse for everything.
“Tell him I’m on my way.”
“But Everett—” the secretary protested.
If the hectic preparations for the presidential visit didn’t faze the ambassador, then how woul
d news of Suzy’s murder go over?
He ran downstairs and headed for his car.
Minutes later, he turned off busy Sandrain-Strasse into the Bontonierbootverein club.
Everett parked and surveyed a rapidly drifting flotilla of rafts, inner tubes and bobbing bodies. On a sunny day, there was no more fun than to wade into the Aare River and float past the city.
The pleasure cruiser America I was still tied to its slip. It looked enormous next to the row of colorful wooden Bontonier Booten, shallow four-man ferryboats.
The former military craft were pushed across the swift current with a long stick. The local boat club held regular competitions navigating upriver, negotiating slalom courses and practicing landing precision.
“Permission to come aboard, sir?” Everett requested.
As skipper, Rupert Pistol motioned him across the gangplank with a frown on his face.
“I have company, you know,” Pistol said. He gestured behind him at an older man and a refreshingly young woman, both sipping drinks with Roberta Pistol. “It’s the French ambassador and his wife.”
“Sir, I need to speak with you in private.”
“This was private until you interrupted. Okay, meet me in the main stateroom in five minutes.”
So there were several staterooms. Everett would have to find the main one.
Descending below deck, he caught Roberta’s eye. Her sable hair flowed over one shoulder, and her coal black eyes burned through to his soul. She wore a blue and white sailor suit with a pleated skirt that swished around her thighs as she swung back and forth between her two guests.
She raised her glass to him. His face burned, as if he were slipping through the back door of his mistress’ boudoir.
Okay, there were several bedrooms down there, but one did look big.
He stepped up to the enormous bed and hoped to God that Roberta wouldn’t try to corner him down there. He wasn’t sure how he would react.
The cabin door swung upon behind him. He froze.
“Why so jumpy?”
It was the ambassador.
“Jumpy?” Everett moved away from the bed as far as possible.
“You interrupted an important conversation,” Ambassador Pistol said.
Everett wanted to tell him about Suzy, but maybe it was better to hear out the ambassador first.