When They Come for You

by James W. Hall

  A CRUSHED PECAN BRITTLE WITH PECAN GIANDUJA DIPPED IN MILK CHOCOLATE AND GARNISHED WITH FINELY GROUND CHILI PEPPERS.

  CHOPPED, SWEETENED BRAZIL NUTS, ALMONDS, AND MACADAMIA NUTS WITH A SPRINKLING OF ORANGE PEEL, COVERED IN DARK CHOCOLATE.

  A MILK CHOCOLATE FRESH CRÉME BLENDED WITH PURE, SWEET HONEY, DIPPED IN MILK CHOCOLATE, AND SPRINKLED WITH A SPICY CASSIA CINNAMON.

  Ganache and truffles, pralines shaped like seashells, fish, and diamonds. Orangettes, Manon Blanc, bouchons, pistoles, éclairs filled with chocolate mousse and fresh buttercreams, chocolate dollops packed with pistachio paste and caramelized almonds and Grand Marnier.

  At the cash register, the line was filled with smartly dressed travelers, the urbane, cultured, the business class, their faces downy white and glowing with guilty excitement. Paying their money, turning back to the concourse, some of them secretly dipping their hands into the sacks, plundering the decadent treats.

  An attendant asked Harper if anything struck her fancy.

  “Nothing,” she said as politely as she could manage and turned away, her face flushed.

  Not long ago, with no second thoughts, she would have selected a handful of sweets and relished the swoon of pleasure as they liquefied in her mouth. But after her days in Africa, after the orphanage, the trip to Soko, seeing the stone grave markers littering the village grounds, chocolate would never again be so innocent or so sweet.

  Perhaps what was true for chocolate was true for every delicacy in that store. Very likely at the bottom of each food production line there was exploitation and poverty and grim, unspeakable realities. But she doubted any products shelved in Epicure were as tainted as the ones derived from cacao beans. Kidnapping, slavery, mass murder, and a conspiracy stretching across continents, one that had destroyed the two lives she cherished most.

  For the next hour, she drifted through the concourse, lost in a furious stupor until her flight boarded. She took her seat, stared out her window at the tarmac slick with fresh rain, her breasts aching again, her face still prickling with heat, and the lump on her temple throbbing. As the plane taxied to the runway, she dug a bottle of aspirin from her carry-on and dry swallowed three tablets.

  She spent the flight rehashing the days since Ross and Leo were taken from her. Picking through every hour in as much detail she could recall. She’d been doing it constantly in her quiet times, retracing the steps of this torturous journey because she had a teasing sense that she’d missed something along the way. A key fact floating just out of reach in a hazy corner of her mind.

  Hours later, as the flight attendants prepared the cabin for the landing in Zurich, it flashed into focus. Harper drew her iPad from her carry-on, linked to the flight’s Internet, and navigated to the Epic backup service where Ross’s files were stored. She entered the passwords, and once again his many pages of research material appeared. She found his JPEG files and, at the very end, saw again that single movie file.

  Last week, when she’d first noticed the file, it had struck her as oddly out of place, but in the welter of calamities, she’d set that feeling aside and forgotten to watch the film.

  She tapped the movie-file icon, and after a long hesitation, the video began to play. It was, she saw immediately, the attempted rescue at Royale Plantation, the film Ross had described in his notes.

  The boy called Yacou and a half circle of other boys were wielding machetes that seemed outsize in their small hands. They were hacking open the cacao pods, spilling out the seeds in a clearing in the jungle. She watched as Yacou set down his blade and came to his feet, feigning nonchalance, then headed for the bushes as if to relieve himself. Just as Ross rendered it in his first-person account, Yacou next appeared a few feet from the camera. He swept aside the fronds, hesitated a moment as if marshaling his courage, then pointed at Rachel and the man named Charles and cried out, “Ils sont ici.” Here they are.

  The two African men in security uniforms burst into their hiding place, shoved Yacou aside, and behind the security guards the blond man appeared. A boxy haircut, sharp angles in his face, almost handsome except for his flattened lips and avid eyes. And yes, it was indeed the same man Harper had fought on the balcony of the Edgewater Apartments, the Ruger guy she had tipped over the railing. And on the edge of the frame was a half-second glimpse of another white man, just his ear, a quick sliver of his neck and cheek.

  The next moments unfolded exactly as Ross had described. The camera ripped from Rachel Sharp’s hand, tossed into the brush. Still running, its audio captured the fearsome exchange between the blond man and the two American do-gooders. And though Harper knew it was coming, she could not turn away. Ross had watched the horror. So must she.

  The woman, Rachel Sharp, close to Harper’s age, let loose an anguished scream, followed by a long silence, then, only a yard from the camera, slammed onto her back, blood pumping from the slit in her throat, her eyes wide and vacant.

  “Madam.” A flight attendant leaned over Harper. “You must turn off your device and prepare for landing.”

  Harper looked up into the woman’s bright, clear face and opened her mouth to speak but found no words.

  Five thirty, a half hour past quitting time on that Zurich banking street. At the Metropol’s outdoor sidewalk bar, Spider was bundled up in a down parka, trying to find a comfortable position on the padded chair. Every way he moved made his left buttock throb even more. Aggravated by the endless flight across the Atlantic, wedged into a middle seat between two fat grandmothers, he had felt the blood pooling in his ass. Now, after three days on stakeout, ten hours a day sitting outside in the freezing weather, he felt the ache worsen, and it seemed to be growing claws.

  Last week in Miami, the Jamaican vet who’d extracted the slug and sewed up the gouge warned him not to sit for long periods. Sure thing, mon, but what the hell was Spider supposed to do, pace the 737’s narrow aisles for six hours, keep dodging the grumpy flight attendants, squeezing past the food carts?

  This was Spider’s third outing to Zurich. First time, ten years back on R & R when he was based in Düsseldorf; a second time when he’d been dispatched to take out a Russian businessman for some mortal sin Spider never learned. Spider’s view: Zurich was as boring as a slice of unbuttered Wonder bread. One exception, the Niederdorf district in the lower village, part of Old Town on the east side of the Limmat River. There, along Härringstrasse, the classier hookers patrolled the sidewalks near a jazz bar he liked, the House of Spirits.

  When Adrian Naff finally made an appearance, Spider could finish his business, not give his old friend a chance to explain, just take him out, then by god he’d head over to the Andorra to celebrate with a few rusty nails. Stand at the bar, let the blood drain from his swollen butt, and, when suitably lubricated, splurge on one of the street ladies. He’d choose a slender one, tall with long, black hair, close his eyes, and imagine Harper McDaniel. Then he’d spend the night spreading his all-American charm to this dreary corner of Europe.

  Sooner or later, Adrian Naff had to show, and he’d have to use the front entrance. The back entry was for deliveries. No chopper pad on the roof, no side exits. Maybe when Spider was taking a piss, Adrian had passed by. Or maybe he’d blinked at the exact wrong moment, and the guy’d slipped past in a crowd. Maybe Adrian was out sick, taking a few days off. Didn’t matter. Spider was patient, plenty of covert operations under his belt. You sat, you waited, you watched, you kept your trigger finger limber.

  Sitting in the same seat for three consecutive days was a breach of surveillance protocol. Tactics manual said he should change his clothes, vary his appearance and location, assume his quarry was doing his own countersurveillance. But Spider didn’t care anymore. Somewhere in the last few days, he’d decided he was done with this business, ready to try a new direction. Not sure exactly what, but maybe something halfway normal, four walls and a woman at the stove, kids running around in the yard wanting to throw a baseball. Retire from covert ops, finish with the endless trav
el, the stress, the bottomless solitude.

  So screw protocol. And anyway, by god, he liked the Metropol. Liked its ambiance. Reminded him of a Paris bistro with sidewalk tables. A romantic place to take your girl, watch the flow of people, talk to her, the way ordinary people talked, the way Ross McDaniel and Harper talked. Saying nothing fancy, just regular chitchat, close, affectionate. That lucky fucker, Ross, talking with his beautiful wife. The two of them making dinner plans, sharing the events of their days, talking about their friends, about Leo, the funny shit the kid did that day.

  That week of surveillance, Spider had gotten an inside look at Harper’s marriage, all of it on his video feed, stored in a file on his phone. He looked at the phone sitting on the table in front of him. Maybe he’d watch a little of it again right now. That life they’d been living. An intimate view. Like nothing he’d ever seen before. Nothing like his own family, how his old man would steal into his bedroom at night with his Vietnam Purple Heart in his hand, sit on Spider’s bed and tell him about the war, how ugly it was, how Spider didn’t know anything about pain and terror, and the old man would pull the medal’s stickpin out straight and hold it in front of Spider’s eyes, hold it there for several silent seconds, then some nights he’d poke Spider with it a few times, light pokes, and while he kept talking about what a spoiled, ungrateful little shit Spider was and how he knew nothing about real pain and horror, the old man working himself up, he’d finally jab Spider with the pin, draw blood, jab him deep in his arms and his chest and his legs, jab and jab until Spider cried and writhed away. Night after night like that until, one night, Spider didn’t cry and didn’t writhe away. That night marking the end of his childhood.

  Nothing like that ever went down with Harper and Ross and their little kid. No, this was just two calm, ordinary people. What love looked like. Sex and love and quiet dinners and talk and holding each other. All that on the video feed. All of it stored on his phone.

  Spider reached out for the phone, then stopped and drew back.

  No, he’d save it for later. Watch some of it when he was alone, back at the hotel when no one was around, just in case the damn thing made him cry again.

  At the Widder Hotel, Harper settled her bags in her suite, then returned to the chrome-and-glass lobby with its zebra-striped chairs and exited onto the busy thoroughfare.

  Quarter past six. She walked a block to Bahnhofstrasse, where it was a ten-minute straight shot down to the square at Paradeplatz. Dodging streetcars, finding her place in the swarm of homebound workers, she navigated the crowded sidewalk, the air crisp, the sky a soft pewter.

  She glided past Cartier, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chanel, Van Cleef & Arpels, then, for no reason she could explain, stopped at the window of a swanky local shop. Another window, like the one at the Brussels airport, not chocolate this time, but belts and shoes and purses made of leather so buttery it was as if they’d been stitched from the skins of fanciful beasts that existed only in fairy tales.

  On a pedestal beside the leather goods lay a silver brooch, its filigree as delicate as the wings of dragonflies, and beside the pedestal a display of watches encrusted with diamonds and pearls, and a collection of perfumes in glittering bottles shaped like ballerinas and dragons. Necklaces of gold, pendants of platinum, finely detailed bracelets and earrings.

  Such abundance, such a vast accretion of bullion on display, brought to mind the gold-plated interior walls of Spanish cathedrals sheathed in thousands of precious coins beaten flat, the alms of countless peasants, whose pooled sacrifices made such splendor possible.

  She turned and pushed on through the evening crowd, her destination fifteen minutes ahead, less than a mile. All she meant to do was cruise past the building, give it a quick look, test the air for vibrations, glimpse the employees, look into their faces, those men and women exiting the front doors of the headquarters of Albion.

  Just a quick flyby, then she’d return to her suite at the Widder, order a dinner on a silver tray, and haggle with her conscience for a few hours of sleep.

  Twenty yards away from the seven-story building, she halted and watched as two armed guards in uniforms climbed down from an armored van parked at the curb. The uniformed men lowered a stainless steel drum from the rear of the van, and when they had it settled on the sidewalk, one of them rolled the container through the wide front doors while the second man followed.

  Harper slipped forward and watched the two uniformed men enter the building and turn left in the lobby, then disappear down a long corridor. She stood for a moment, then rejoined the flow of the crowd, an idea clicking into place.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Early March, Zurich, Switzerland

  The next morning Harper woke to the smell of coffee. It took her a hazy moment to remember she hadn’t ordered any, hadn’t hung out the order sheet on her door last night. She lay still, heart revving, listening to the passing street sweeper, its big brushes grinding against the pavement.

  That street cleaner had stolen into her final dream of the night, morphing into a brigade of Russian-made tanks rumbling down the thoroughfare. Jamal Fakhri’s tanks. In the surreal logic of her dream, Jamal was still alive and had hunted Harper down to exact revenge. He was riding atop the turret of the lead tank and somehow he’d spotted her standing in the hotel window. Fakhri waved his arms to the others behind him, directing them toward Harper. As she watched in horror, they turned in unison to point their big guns at her hotel room window.

  She’d jerked awake, pulse roaring.

  Still roaring now as she rose from the bed, rubbed her eyes.

  She sniffed again. Definitely coffee. Maybe a passing room service cart in the hallway. Barefoot, she padded into the front room, the chilly bedroom tiles giving way to the sleek wood of the sitting room, oak inlaid with a maze of golden maple. Covering the walls was a dark-mahogany paneling, and in the center of the room, a cluster of leather chairs and matching settee arranged around a wide TV.

  The heavy green drapes were open. Not how she’d left them last night. On the bar the coffee maker belched and trickled coffee into the pot. A cup and saucer sat beside the machine. On the glass-topped desk, a laptop computer she didn’t recognize was open, its screensaver playing a loop of busty blondes in bikinis flashing toothy smiles at the camera.

  In her flannel pajamas, Harper was now fully awake. With four quick steps, she slipped to the drapes, swept them aside. No one there. And nowhere else in the room to hide.

  As she turned from the window, the toilet in the powder room flushed. She cut around the settee, pressed flat against the bathroom wall, and listened to the clumsy sounds of someone banging around in the small room.

  A moment later, the door swung open and a short man stepped into the room, wiping his hands on his trousers. He wore a baggy long-sleeve T-shirt. He mumbled to himself as he continued to dry his palms on his gray pants.

  From the bar she grabbed a bottle of Bordeaux by the neck and raised it. He caught the movement, halted, then turned to her. Deep-blue eyes, large ears, a nose that took up half his face.

  “Did I wake you?” Sal Leonardi looked at the bottle, poised to strike. “I should’ve called, I guess.”

  She lowered the wine.

  “You just walk in here, into my locked hotel room?”

  He blinked at her as though he didn’t comprehend the problem. “Those card keys, they’re a joke.”

  “You’re incredible.”

  “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. Tried to be quiet. You were sawing some big logs in there.”

  He grunted and headed to the desk. She set the bottle on the bar and followed.

  “Found some interesting stuff on Naff. Like for one thing, he’s twelve different guys at once.”

  Sal settled into the desk chair, tapped a key, and the loop of buxom babes disappeared, replaced by a page of print. Running down the left margin was a row of thumbnail photos.

  “See,” he said. “Same guy, different bios. Foun
d a dozen so far.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “These are passport photos. Took me a week to dig them out. Once I had a photo of Naff, I ran face-recognition code to find the rest.

  “What you got here is four US passports, two Canadian, one French, two Swiss, three British. Different birthdays, cities of origin, date of issue. Guy’s a chameleon. Beards, mustaches, glasses. I like the wig, this one here.”

  He tapped a finger on the screen. A man in a Paul McCartney mop with a metallic green tendril of hair drooping across his forehead.

  She stared at the faces. After years of training alongside Deena, reading eyes, catching the elusive clues in faces, Harper had learned to spot slippages in the mask, the micromoments that revealed glimpses of authentic character.

  With Naff, it was more than wigs and glasses and fake mustaches that made these faces different from one another. More than makeup. This man seemed to have masterful control of muscles in his mouth and cheeks, a lift of eyebrow here, a smug narrowing of eyes, warping himself into a nerdy introvert, a braying bully, a haughty snob, a playboy complete with a sleazy, come-on smile.

  And there were other, subtler portraits more difficult to label. There was one man who seemed so hollowed out by heartache it made the world beyond his skin unbearable to behold. He could barely bring himself to look into the camera lens.

  “This guy here.” Sal tapped the last thumbnail. “Now this is the asshole you worry about. One you don’t see coming.”

  The man in the final photo still had Naff’s dark eyes, strong chin, his straight nose, but somehow he’d drained his features of content. They expressed nothing. They barely reflected light. He’d made himself so anonymous he’d be able to stand in plain sight and be all but invisible. Look at him as long as you like, memorize him, then turn away and try to picture this unremarkable man, and you’d fail. Too much like everyone else and nobody at all.