But meeting and talking with Lori had made me feel almost human again. And she said yes to the interview. Maybe things were starting to go my way at last. So instead of beating him up, I waved to the guy and walked out through the west exit of the Sports Palace, into the late evening sunlight.
Chapter Nine
Elsewhere
Three Crowns Hotel
St. Petersburg, Russia
Irina Sokolova unlocked the door of room 418 and pushed her cart inside. As she did, the heavy door swung closed behind her, and the latch engaged with a satisfying click. The door was designed to do exactly that—but it wasn’t supposed to be closed when hotel staff were inside the room without the guest being present.
The penalty for violating the rule was immediate termination, so Irina had to hurry. She reached inside the stack of towels on the middle shelf of the cart and pulled out a large and bulky white envelope, perhaps twenty centimeters wide and forty long. The envelope itself was securely sealed and made of a tamper-resistant material that made it impossible to open the thing “accidentally on purpose.” It was the first time she had seen it, though Sasha had assured her it would be there. The envelope bore no markings.
There was no time to be curious about its contents. Irina stripped the linens from the bed with her free hand and tossed the pillows onto the floor; then she lifted a corner of the mattress and shoved the envelope underneath, kneeling down to push it toward the approximate center of the bed. She jumped to her feet, moved quickly across the room, opened the door, and knelt again to shove in a small rubber wedge that would keep it open. Then she stood up, wiping her hands on her black apron.
Done as it all was in the space of a few seconds, it would have been a decent workout for a normal person, but Irina trained regularly in the hotel gym and skated competitively with a local club in her free time at the weekends. Her breathing and pulse rate were normal. She brushed back a wisp of blonde hair, smiled to herself, and got on with her regular duties. She glanced at the mattress. It was easily thick enough that no one who lay down on it could possibly feel the envelope underneath.
Sasha will be so proud of me, she thought. And tonight, after he gives me the rest of the money he promised, I will suggest to him a suitable way for me to show my appreciation…
As she made the bed and changed the towels, Irina’s mind wandered. She felt her face and body growing warm as she thought of where the evening’s activities were likely to lead. He had been so kind to her, and he was so good looking. Best of all, there was all that money to consider…
She shook her head to clear it; then she pushed her cart out of the room, bent to remove the doorstop, and glanced up and down the long passage. She saw no one, which meant that no one saw her: the Three Crowns didn’t have security cameras in this part of the hotel.
Irina Sokolova closed the door to room 418 and pushed her cart toward the service elevator.
Seconds after the elevator doors closed behind the maid, the occupant of room 413 opened his door. Then, as Irina had done, he glanced up and down the still-empty hallway. He removed a key card from his pocket, propped his own door open, stepped across the hall to 418, and swiped the card through the lock. The light changed from red to green and he was inside.
The man knew what to look for and where. It would have taken a very long time to find it otherwise: the tiny surveillance camera mounted in the far corner of the room was only just larger than a postage stamp. He stood on a chair, reached up, and removed it. Then he stepped down, pocketed the device, replaced the chair, and went back across the hall to his own room. Door to door, the operation had taken less than sixty seconds. He poured himself a small glass of vodka, drained it, then picked up his cell phone—a prepaid “burner” that had been purchased in, of all places, Andorra—and punched in a number. Five seconds later, he quietly spoke a single English word.
“Okay.”
Then he broke the connection without waiting for acknowledgement. None should have been forthcoming in any event.
Flat 2-B, Kreshin Apartment Complex
St. Petersburg, Russia
The Chameleon powered down his computer, rubbed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. Everything was in place. Now he could relax and give some consideration to his meeting with the girl later. He had no doubt she was looking forward to it on at least one count; probably two. He was looking forward to it as well, though he suspected that his reasons overlapped only slightly with hers. A Venn diagram with two joined circles, he thought: the intersection of Set A and Set B. (His university degree was in mathematics—although the certificate had not been issued in his real name.)
But it was that small intersection that occupied his mind at the moment. Yes, it was an assignment, as opposed to an assignation—he switched from Russian to English for this bit of mental wordplay—but there was no reason they couldn’t have a little fun beforehand. The girl had certainly been eager enough at their first meeting…as eager as she had proven to be talented. So why not? He smiled to himself. Pleasure before business. The union of Set A and Set B, if you will…
Then he reached for his cell phone again and typed in a short text message.
Midtown Manhattan (West)
New York City
Koto and shakuhachi music played softly in the background as Felicity Carter studied the position on the board. After a moment, she dipped her right hand into the small cherrywood bowl on the floor to her right and expertly trapped a round black stone between her index and middle fingers. Then she bent forward slightly from the waist, reached out, and placed the stone decisively at g17. The rough slate made a satisfying click against the hard katsura wood of the Go table as Felicity’s move separated a potentially dangerous group of White forces from its allies and effectively decided the game in her favor. That accomplished, she took a sip of tea and leaned back. The green silk of her robe rustled softly against her thighs as she stretched her legs luxuriously under the table. After an hour and a half of sitting, they were beginning to cramp.
Maria had seen the move coming. She and Felicity were roughly equal in skill, each playing to around four or five kyu, but tonight, she hadn’t been able to get her head into the game. There was only one tenable reply, but unless Black blundered at this late stage, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to save the situation. The advantage was small—perhaps five to seven points—but decisive. She reached into her own bowl and placed a white stone at g16.
Felicity reached for another stone, but Maria held up a hand in resignation, stopping her.
“I’ve had enough,” she said. “It’s your game. Besides, you look so comfortable over there that I wouldn’t dream of putting you to the trouble.”
“You’re funny,” Felicity said, making a face. “More tea?”
“Why not?”
Felicity collected the tea cups and went to put the kettle back on. Maria put the Go board and stones away, then joined her friend in the kitchen, where they sat at a small table that served as a breakfast nook.
Maria looked over the rim of her cup at her friend. “You played well tonight,” she said. “The san-ren-sei always gives me trouble. I never know how—”
“What’s bugging you, Maria?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you. San-ren-sei, my foot. You’ve been a million miles away all day long.”
“Not a million. A few thousand, is all.”
“Why? What’s going on a few thousand miles away?”
“A handball tournament.”
“Oh, a handball tournament. Well, that’s all right then. For a moment there, I thought it was something trivial. What in the world does a handball tournament have to do—oh. This is about Paul Mallory again, isn’t it? I thought we’d already covered that ground.” She reached across the table, took her friend by the shoulders, and gave her a gentle shake before releasing her. “Look, Rakosi. He’s a big boy, and he can take care of himself. Would Mr. Cramer hire someone who could
n’t?”
Maria selected a Walkers shortbread cookie from a red and black tin and examined it carefully before taking a small bite.
“You’re right, Fliss. I know it’s silly,” she said, “but I haven’t been able to shake the feeling. And you, of all people, know my track record is pretty good.”
Felicity did know. She had seen her friend do her “gypsy thing” more than once, and though she couldn’t explain it (for that matter, neither could Maria), she believed in it. So if Maria still thought something was amiss, she thought, then maybe it was time for her to start thinking so, too.
“What’s the problem, specifically?” she asked, keeping it light. “What does the old Magic 8-Ball have to say?”
Maria laughed—briefly—and played along. “‘Reply hazy, try again’,” she said before turning serious. “That’s part of the problem. I usually see these things much more clearly.”
“Or maybe it’s hazy because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Mallory and it’s time to take your gypsy heritage into the shop for its six-monthly checkup.”
“Or that,” Maria said. She took a small bite of cookie.
“I’m glad that’s settled.” Then Felicity did some mind-reading of her own.
“We can’t go to Mr. Cramer with this, Maria. Not until we have evidence more concrete than your worrying about a mysterious something that’s out there somewhere. He’ll laugh us out of his office. He’ll laugh us all the way into the street.”
“I know.”
“But you’re going to tell him anyway.”
“We’re going to tell him anyway.”
Felicity nodded again. “You win,” she said, smiling as she reached for the tea cups. “We’ll tell him. And tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be the best-looking executive secretaries in the unemployment queue.”
Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office)
Wiesbaden, Germany
When the cell phone in Franz Koppel’s pocket buzzed at him, he quite naturally took it out and read the incoming text message. Had anyone been looking over his shoulder, they would have seen nothing more on the screen than a banal reminder from his wife to bring home some bread and cheese. To Koppel, the message meant something else entirely—something that would allow him to buy more bread and cheese than his family could eat in a year. He put his lunchtime sandwich aside and, sitting up, pulled his computer keyboard toward him.
The BKA was more than just the German national police. They also served as the country’s central bureau for Europol, Interpol, and the Schengen Information System—a governmental database used by most of the countries of the European Union. The computer held information not only on known criminals, but also on any of Germany’s eighty-two million people who had identification data on file—anyone who had applied for a driving license, for example.
Or a passport.
Using his own username and password, Koppel logged into the main database. There was little risk in doing so: the database was constantly being updated, as new information became available and data entry errors came to light—as they did more often than one might tend to think. Among all the other traffic, one more “correction” would surely pass unremarked.
It took only seconds to make the change; it was a small one. Neither of the involved parties had a criminal record, which made things much less complicated. He logged off, took a couple of deep breaths, and returned to his lunch. When he finished, he replied to the text message, adding (per instructions) that he would buy a bottle of wine as well. That message would indicate that he had been successful. Then he deleted both message and reply from his phone and, smiling to himself, got back to work.
Come to think of it, Franz Koppel thought, a bottle of wine would go down very well with dinner tonight; perhaps a nice upper-level Riesling.
He could afford it now.
Athens, Greece
Stavros Kyronis shivered.
Hospitals always made him nervous, and the Greek shipping magnate’s own personal three-bed infirmary was no exception. The antiseptic smell, the darkened room, the silence broken only by the occasional beeping of some piece of equipment or another, and above all, the sure and certain knowledge that in the nature of things, many more people walked into hospitals than ever walked out of them—all this combined to create in him a very uneasy feeling indeed. Kyronis did not like being thus reminded of his own mortality; had not, in fact, consulted a physician at all in the last twenty years. The infirmary was purely for the use of his employees and his guests.
He didn’t care for the religious overtones, either: the three-barred Eastern Orthodox cross over the bed, or the Theotókou—the depiction of the Virgin Mary and her newborn child—on the opposite wall, facing east. The Greek was a confirmed nonbeliever, but his medical staff had told him that such eikonídia had a beneficial effect on their patients. He was damned if he could see how.
Kyronis stood over the hospital bed in Room 2 and gazed down at his bodyguard. As he had been when the authorities found him three days ago, Nicolas Triandos was under restraint, but this time for his own protection. In his left arm, an intravenous drip—a cocktail of diazepam and meperedine—kept him heavily sedated and pain-free, and clean white bandages encircled his head, covering his eyes—or, more accurately, the empty sockets that had once held them.
Whoever maimed Triandos had made a thorough job of it. Both optic nerves were comprehensively destroyed. Transplants were out of the question. Someone—it could only have been his assailant—had, however, notified emergency personnel, even informing them about the fugu poisoning. There is no antidote for tetrodotoxin, and only prompt treatment (gastric lavage, followed by standard life-support measures until the effects of the poison have worn off) gives the victim any chance of survival. Luckily, the paramedics had arrived in time and knew what to do.
Luckily, Kyronis thought. His lip twitched. He wondered whether Nico felt lucky just now.
Triandos himself had, perhaps understandably, been unable to shed any light on the matter. All he could provide was the name Marco, who was apparently a deckhand on one of the ships currently berthed in Piraeus. Not much help even if it was the truth, which Kyronis didn’t believe for a second.
The Greek reached for a cigarette before remembering where he was. He wasn’t worried about fouling the air—it was his air, bought and paid for, and Triandos wouldn’t mind—but he suspected that it might contain a high concentration of oxygen and he had no wish to immolate himself.
He looked down at Triandos again. Why would someone go to all this trouble, he thought. Obviously it was someone whom Triandos knew and trusted; someone who was able to get close enough to administer the poison and then to gain access to his room, no doubt under the pretense of lending assistance. For it must have been the same person.
Also obviously, it had not been the attacker’s intention that his victim should die. The poison had the effect of paralyzing Triandos but, left untreated, would have killed him in six to eight hours. So the real point of the assignment must have been the blinding—and to make sure that he, Kyronis, would see what had happened and get the desired message.
The blinding was the message.
And then Kyronis had it. It must have been the man “Robinson” he had hired in Las Vegas. He had, despite Robinson’s warning, instructed Triandos to identify and follow the man when he left the hotel. Triandos had seen no one who remotely fit that description, but Robinson must have seen him. That would explain it; and the message was—the Greek permitted himself a small, grim smile—a blindingly obvious one.
In retrospect, he thought, he should perhaps have followed the man’s instructions, but that was in the past. The question was what to do now. Triandos would live; but he would regain neither his sight nor his sanity: watching helplessly as your eyes are gouged out of your head is not likely to be beneficial to the psyche. More to the point, his usefulness as a bodyguard was nil; his prospects for a happy, productive future, only slightly bett
er.
Kyronis decided—or rather, confirmed the decision he had already made. He reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out the Tanfoglio T95 he had carried with him in Las Vegas. He racked the slide and chambered a round. Triandos might recognize the familiar sound, but in his drug-induced state, he would attribute to it no particular significance. And even if he somehow did, Kyronis thought, he would in all likelihood consider it a favor.
He placed the gun six centimeters above Triandos’s forehead and fired. Then, quite deliberately, he replaced the Tanfoglio in its holster and reached for the bedside phone. He wasn’t unduly worried about anyone objecting to what he had done. The doctors Stavros Kyronis employed weren’t the type to be unreasonably beholden to a 2500-year-old professional oath—even if it was written by one of their own countrymen.
Chapter Ten
For the next two days I sat beside Jon Stefansson in the upper tier of the press box. During that time, I learned more about handball from the courtly yet affable Icelander than I would ever need to know—or even remotely remember.
And I learned a great deal about my colleague as well.
Jon was accredited to the Iceland News Service, the country’s oldest and most prestigious news organization. He went to work for them immediately after graduating with honors from the equally prestigious Háskólinn í Reykjavík in the spring of 1972 at the age of eighteen, by which time he had also mastered five foreign languages and four musical instruments.
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