Foreign Affairs (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, his cell phone rang and the voice of Emmanuelle from Blue Moon came through. “How’s it going?” she asked, referring to Sharla DePaglia, the wild beauty from Rome who got suffocated.

  “Believe it or not, I was working on it this morning,” he said. “I think I may be onto something, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.”

  “Exciting,” she said.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  She said, “The phone number I gave you before has been retired. Here’s the new one—”

  FROM THE CAFÉ, he swung by the houseboat and found it just as quiet and lifeless as last night. Had the snakes done their job? He sat down, closed his eyes and pulled up an image of the woman stretched out on the rack at De Luna with her wonderful tattoo, being felt up and tickled by strangers.

  The image made his cock tighten against his pants.

  He put a hand in his lap and applied downward pressure, nothing anyone would notice but feeling so good.

  He needed his dick sucked.

  For a brief moment, he thought about paying a visit to the blond hooker down at Verdant Park, but then realized that part of his life was over.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Day Eight—July 19

  Monday Morning

  ______________

  TEFFINGER LOVED MONDAY MORNINGS because that’s when he had the whole week ahead of him. He usually jogged but didn’t today because he needed his strength for the desert, if they ended up there. He did, however, surprise Fallon when she stepped out of the shower by throwing her on the mattress and taking her.

  “God, Teffinger, you just used up all my energy for the whole day,” she said afterwards.

  He patted himself on the back.

  “I need coffee.”

  Luckily, the hotel had heard of the stuff and, in fact, had a truckload on hand, which was just about the right amount. As they woke up, Fallon called Targaux and asked, “Can you do something for me?”

  What?

  She explained.

  “Why didn’t you do that before you left?”

  “Because I didn’t think of it,” she said. “In fact, I didn’t even think of it now, Teffinger did. By the way, our plane crashed yesterday.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Will you do it?”

  He grunted.

  “Okay, but I’m making a sour face right now, just for the record.”

  A half hour later he called back.

  It turned out that Deja Lafayette had two credit cards. One had been used all over Luxor the last couple of days, including the Golden Palace Hotel on Television Street.

  She told Teffinger.

  He looked at his watch.

  “Let’s see if we can catch her before she heads out.”

  THE GOLDEN PALACE turned out to be a 3-star budget hotel on a main street near the west bank, a stone’s throw from the train station. Deja Lafayette wasn’t there, naturally, because that’s how Teffinger’s life worked. But the receptionist said the women hadn’t checked out, so they must be around somewhere.

  “Women?”

  “Right.”

  “As in more than one?”

  “Right. Deja Lafayette and Alexandra Reed.”

  Fallon looked at Teffinger, made a sour face and said, “He’s going to kill me.”

  Then she called Targaux again.

  “Is this some kind of a plan to make me think that you two aren’t in a hot tub drinking wine?” he asked. “Because if it is, it’s not working.”

  She grinned.

  “Alexandra Reed,” she said. “She’s someone rooming down here with Deja Lafayette. It would be nice if I knew who she was.”

  Targaux grunted and called back fifteen minutes later with a lot more information than Fallon expected. Teffinger drank coffee and watched as she spoke, wondering if he could learn to speak French. She hung up and said, “Alexandra Reed is an archeologist. She lived in Cairo until three years ago, then moved to Paris.”

  Teffinger cocked his head.

  “So she knows the turf around here.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe she’s the 10-year-old Alexandra in the 18-year-old notes.”

  Chapter Eighty

  Day Eight—July 19

  Monday Afternoon

  ______________

  AMAURY POSTED PHOTOS OF THE COIN on his website, spent an hour making long distance telephone calls, some of them very long distance, and then grinned at the women. “Your bait is in the trap. Now we get drunk.”

  He took them to a belly-dance bar, set them on barstools and filled their tummies with wine.

  The lighting was dim.

  The air conditioning was heaven.

  The music was Middle Eastern, sensual and erotic.

  The bartender—a curvy brunette named Andrea—wore a long-sleeve white blouse tied just below her breasts, showcasing a very nice stomach.

  The dancers all knew Amaury.

  They crowded around, gyrated up-close-and-personal, and let him buy them shots. He stayed at Deja’s side and every so often turned and kissed her on the mouth. She stopped resisting after the first few times and began to wonder what he was like in bed.

  “Your kissing is improving,” he told her.

  “Yours too.”

  He grinned.

  Ten minutes later he took her by the hand and said, “I want to show you something.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  He led her to a back storage room, stood her against the wall, and flicked off the lights. The world turned blacker than black. Then he kneeled before her, unbuttoned her shorts and slid them down.

  She bit her lip, deciding, and stepped out of them.

  WHEN SHE GOT BACK TO THE BARSTOOL a half hour later, Alexandra handed her a fresh glass of wine and said, “Well, it looks like you’re enjoying Cairo.”

  “Yeah, it’s bigger than I thought.”

  Alexandra rolled her eyes.

  “Bad, even for you.”

  “Bad but accurate.” She took a sip of wine. “Or did you already know that?”

  Alexandra frowned.

  “Actually I didn’t, not that I didn’t want to at one point in time,” she said. “Look, we need to talk about something. You have the right to know what’s going on.”

  “You mean about Amaury?”

  No.

  She didn’t.

  “Forget about him for a minute,” Alexandra said. “I wanted to tell you what I’m about to tell you a hundred different times, but we were still in the middle of things. Now we’re not. Now we’re at the end of things and you have a right to know the truth. I’ve lied to you about a lot of things. I’ve lied to you all along, from the very beginning. I’m sorry.”

  Deja set the glass down and studied Alexandra.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Okay, it goes like this,” Alexandra said. “I have a friend named Michelle Berri, an archeology friend—I let her tag along on some of my projects. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that a week ago, I got a strange phone call from a man who said he had abducted Michelle. He said he’d kill her unless I did exactly what he said.”

  “This is a joke, right?”

  No.

  It wasn’t.

  “He also said that he killed Michelle’s roommate, just so I’d know he was serious. He said he gouged her eyes out and then stuck them in backwards.”

  “Was that true?”

  Alexandra nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “I CALLED MICHELLE RIGHT AWAY but didn’t get an answer,” Alexandra said. “The next day, there was an article in the newspaper. Michelle’s roommate—a woman named Margaux Simon—had been found dead in her home. The police were treating it as a homicide. The article also reported that Michelle Berri was missing.” She exhaled. “There was nothing in the article about Margaux’s eyes being gouged out, but I figured the police wouldn’t release that kind of detail anyway.”

&
nbsp; So he was telling the truth.

  Absolutely.

  “How terrible,” Deja said.

  Alexandra nodded.

  “It gets worse,” she said. “The man called me the next day and let me talk to Michelle briefly, just so I knew she was alive and really was in his control. Then he told me what I needed to do. He asked me if I knew about the tomb recently discovered in the Valley of the Kings and about the missing treasure.”

  “So he knew you were an archeologist,” Deja said.

  Right.

  Exactly.

  “That’s why he targeted me,” Alexandra said. “Anyway, I told him I was aware of it. He said that he had hired Remy Lafayette—your uncle—to find that treasure. Remy had been working on the project for three months and recently told the man he believed he knew where it was. There was a map. The man wasn’t sure if the map was something Remy found, like an original document, or whether it was something he drew himself, based on his investigation. Anyway, the man came to Paris to meet with Remy about what to do next.”

  Alexandra swallowed.

  “When he got there,” she added, “he found Remy dead. All his files were gone.”

  “So this man wasn’t the one who killed Remy,” Deja said.

  No.

  Not according to him, anyway.

  He said it was probably looters who somehow heard through the grapevine that Remy had a map.

  They went to get it from him.

  It didn’t work out very good for anyone.

  “ANYWAY,” ALEXANDRA SAID, “He wanted me to pick up where Remy left off. He wanted me to find the map or find the treasure. Then he’d let Michelle go.”

  Deja ran her hands through her hair.

  “Why didn’t he just hire you like he did with Remy?”

  Alexandra grunted.

  “Funny you should ask, because I actually questioned him about that,” she said. “He told me I’d never go for it because he was going to keep the treasure. It wouldn’t end up in a museum.”

  Deja cocked her head.

  “Is that the deal he had with Remy?”

  Alexandra shrugged.

  She didn’t know.

  “So what did you do?” Deja asked.

  “You actually know most of it,” Alexandra said. “The first thing I did was go to your apartment to see if you knew anything about the map or maybe even had a copy of it by chance. You remember that day.”

  Deja did—coming home after work to find the place torn apart.

  “So you’re the one who searched my apartment?”

  “No,” she said. “I would have but the looters got to it first. But I did lie to you. I told you I was working for the Egyptian government, which I wasn’t. I had to have some kind of a reason to get you to help me find the map and that’s the best story I could come up with.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

  “Lots of reasons,” Alexandra said. “Primarily because the man swore he’d kill Michelle if I told a single soul what was going on. But beyond that, I didn’t know you yet. I didn’t know if you’d believe me or not. And if you did believe me, I didn’t know if you’d work with me or just report the whole thing to the police. If you had done that, Michelle would be dead right now, I know that for a fact.” She cocked her head. “What would you have done, in hindsight?”

  Deja thought about it.

  She didn’t know.

  It was a moot point anyway.

  “You know what happened after that,” Alexandra said. “We broke into Remy’s place. I was hoping that something would spark in your mind as to where he might hide things, but nothing did. We went to my place. The looters showed up. My guess is that they had been staking out Remy’s house, saw us searching around, speculated that we might have found the map, and followed us. That night one of them broke in. You ended up shooting him. You remember that, I suppose.”

  Deja nodded.

  Only too well.

  “Here’s the bottom line,” Alexandra said. “We found the treasure. I’ve already contacted the man and told him. He let me talk to Michelle to verify she’s still alive. The man is coming to Luxor tonight. He’s going to bring Michelle. We’re going to make the exchange. I don’t want you anywhere around when that happens.”

  “But—”

  “There are no buts,” Alexandra said. “I’m not going to put you at risk and that’s all there is to it. Stay here in Cairo and wait for me. You’ll be safe with Amaury. And speaking of Amaury, don’t tell him a word of this. He needs to stay focused on finding the looters.”

  Alexandra looked at her watch.

  “I need to get to the airport.”

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Day Eight—July 19

  Monday Afternoon

  ______________

  DURAND THREW A ROCK into the Seine, took one more look at the lifeless houseboat and checked his watch. It was time to head to the hideaway where Michelle Berri was being kept. Unlike Saturday night, when he came here with Prarie after dark and parked at the edge of the field, this time he drove directly to the house and parked the car at the far end of the long dirt driveway, out of sight behind vegetation.

  The nearest house was fifty or sixty meters away.

  He put on latex gloves, entered through the back door and pulled a ski mask over his face. Then he walked downstairs to the basement, knocked on a steel door and said, “Michelle, put your blindfold on. Do you hear me?”

  Yes.

  Durand waited, giving her time.

  He knew she was obeying because if she ever saw anyone’s face, she would have to die.

  “It’s on,” she said.

  “Sit on the bed and put your hands on your head,” he said.

  He opened the door and stepped in.

  She was positioned as she should be.

  He checked her blindfold, found it secure, pulled his ski mask off and scratched the itch off his face.

  There.

  Better.

  He could breathe again.

  SHE WAS A NICE GIRL, twenty-four, short brown hair, five-foot-three, strong legs, tiny chest and, best of all, obedient. She hadn’t given Durand a speck of trouble.

  “This is the day you’ve been waiting for,” he said. “You’re going to be released.”

  He expected her to smile but she didn’t.

  She was processing the information.

  “You’re messing with me.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “Let me tell you how it’s going to work. You’re going to get into the trunk of my car. I’m going to drive to the airport. You’re going to board a private jet.”

  “A private jet?”

  Yes.

  That’s right.

  “You’re going to fly to Luxor, Egypt. That’s where you’ll be released.”

  “Luxor? Why Luxor?”

  “It’s a long story,” Durand said. “Here’s the important thing. You need to cooperate every single step of the way. If you do, then everything will turn out fine. If you don’t, things will go badly. You’ve come this far. Don’t screw it up now. Do you understand?”

  Yes.

  She did.

  “Behave yourself and you’ll be free by midnight,” he said.

  She would behave

  She promised.

  “I like you better than the other man who was taking care of me,” she said. “He was mean.”

  “He died in a car crash,” Durand said.

  “Good. I hope he suffered.”

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Day Eight—July 19

  Monday

  ______________

  THE TWO WOMEN didn’t show up at their hotel room all day long. Teffinger and Fallon knew that and knew it well, because they staked it out hour after agonizingly hot hour.

  Waiting.

  Sweating.

  Pacing.

  Deja Lafayette had answers.

  Maybe Alexandra Reed did too.

  They were the connecti
on to the killer.

  The day turned to twilight, the twilight turned to night, and the night turned to a pitch-black sky with a moon inching across it.

  Teffinger and Fallon stayed where they were.

  “I feel like one of those guys at a slot machine who’s been loosing money all day,” Teffinger said. “I can’t get up and walk away, because as soon as I do, some slob’s going to sit down and hit the jackpot on the first pull.”

  Fallon flicked hair out of her eyes.

  “That’s the way my life works too,” she said. “It’s almost like there’s someone up there screwing with me.”

  Teffinger nodded.

  Exactly.

  Then something weird happened.

  A man and woman screeched a car to a stop in front of the hotel and ran inside.

  “Come on,” Teffinger said.

  BY THE TIME TEFFINGER AND FALLON got to the entrance, the man and woman were running out of the hotel, as if they had come to see if someone was there and got a negative. “Hey, hold on,” Teffinger said.

  The man pushed by.

  “No time, buddy.”

  Teffinger snagged the woman’s arm and yanked her to a stop.

  “Are you Deja Lafayette?”

  The woman stared as if trying to figure out if she knew him.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Who are you?”

  THEY TALKED.

  Fast.

  Heated.

  And Teffinger found out something he wouldn’t have expected in a million years—Michelle Berri was alive and was supposed to be exchanged for the treasure.

  Tonight, as they spoke.

  “He won’t give her up until he’s actually seen the treasure and verified it’s not a trick,” Teffinger said. “That’s where they are. At the treasure.”

  No kidding.

  Let’s go.

  They took the car as far as the roads let them into the Valley of the Kings and then trotted west on foot with the woman, Deja Lafayette, leading the way. She provided more and more of the story as they went.

  Teffinger’s heart raced.

  Somewhere out there in the blackness was the man who killed Amanda Peterson and Tracy White.