“You don’t know anything about it. I may not even choose to use your precious information. I’ll have to decide. It’s sometimes better to go for a fresh, unexpected approach. It’s certainly more enjoyable.”
“I’m not interested in what’s enjoyable for you.”
“You may be very interested at some point, Queen.”
Back off. That last remark was aimed at him, and Black’s malice might also be changed to include Queen. He didn’t want to have to deal with Black until he had done his job and retrieved the ledger. He’d already lined up a hit man to take care of Black after he had no use for him. “All I’m saying is that nothing should get in the way of what’s important.”
“I thought that was what you meant.” Black sounded amused. “I’m certain you wouldn’t deliberately be rude.” He hung up.
Queen expelled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Everything was in motion. All he had to do was sit back and watch and pick up the spoils.
* * *
BLACK LOOKED DOWN AT THE pad on which he’d scrawled the room number in Milwaukee.
Eve Duncan’s room number.
He remembered her well. How could he forget?
And how well and in what ways did Gallo remember Eve Duncan? Queen had said she’d been with him in the house in the mountains.
Is it time to take your toy from you, Gallo?
He felt a surge of fierce pleasure at the thought. Not only the death of Gallo, but making him watch the death of someone he cared about.
But how to do it in the most pleasurable way for himself?
He thought he knew what path he wanted to take. He reached in his pocket and pulled out another note he had made.
San Cecilia.
* * *
EVE TOOK OUT THE PLASTIC key the clerk had given her and pushed it into the slot.
“No, my room.”
She stiffened and turned to see John Gallo standing behind her. He was wearing a black shirt and khaki pants and looked dark, lean, and completely casual and confident. “All of this cloak-and-dagger stuff is annoying, John. I feel as if I’ve joined the CIA like Catherine.”
He shook his head. “Nary a cloak or dagger in sight.” He nodded at an open door down the hall. “My room. It’s safer. I’ve ordered dinner.” He took her carry-on and rolled it down the hall. “You were followed from the airport.”
“How do you know?”
“I hired an old friend, Peter Chakon, to watch the Toyota and report to me.” He smiled. “Would I let you take a chance on being intercepted on your way here?”
“I don’t know what you’d do. Was it one of Queen’s people?”
“Maybe.” He stepped aside for her to enter the room. “Probably.”
She glanced around the room. Typical hotel room, blue synthetic-silk spread on a king-size bed, a desk and chair across the room. A small damask-covered room-service table was pushed against the wall.
“Not as nice as the last Marriott we were in together,” John said. “But then there are Marriotts and Marriotts.”
She looked at him. “That wasn’t a pleasant memory, either.”
“I know. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to repeat history on some level.” He shut the door and gestured to the table. “Sit down and eat. I don’t know how long we’ll have before we’re interrupted.”
She sat down in the chair. “You think someone is going to come. Then why are we still here?”
“Because I want to see who it is.” He uncovered the plates to reveal sandwiches and soup. “Ham okay?”
She nodded. “You said you were curious. I don’t think you’re this curious.”
He sat down across from her. “It’s important that I know who may be knocking on the door.”
“Queen.” She took a sip of soup. “Who else?”
He didn’t answer.
She studied him. “Who else?” she whispered. “Black?”
“It’s possible that Queen decided to bring him in on a job that he considered important. I worked very hard at being a thorn in his side to bring that about.” He poured coffee into her cup. “At least, I hope he did.”
“Bring him in?” Her grip tightened on her spoon. “Stop this. I have to know what you’re talking about. Start at the beginning. What do you have on Queen?”
He made a face. “The beginning? I try to avoid thinking of the beginning.” He leaned back in his chair. “But I’ll try to skirt around the really nasty parts. Korea. Five months after I left Atlanta. Fresh out of Ranger school. I was good and cocky and one of the chosen ones. I met Queen and his subordinate, Jacobs, at a meeting in Tokyo. Queen was a major at that time, and Jacobs was a corporal. Jacobs seemed to be some kind of assistant to Queen. They were officers in Army Intelligence and had requested special assistance from my unit. They said Washington had information that North Korea was buying nuclear raw materials to start their own program. They wanted proof but didn’t want to disturb diplomatic relations to get it. So they sent me, Ron Capshaw, and Larry Silak in to find it.”
“What kind of proof?”
“A ledger of transactions between the North Koreans and arms dealers of various countries. It was described as a slender leather-bound book and easily portable. The ledger was in the possession of General Tai Sen. He kept it at his country home near Pyongyang. Our orders were to go in and grab the ledger and head for the coast to get picked up. The theft went slick as glass.” He grimaced. “But everything went wrong from the time that we stole the ledger. We knew the chances were that we all weren’t going to make it to the coast. We hid the ledger and separated and took off on our own.”
“And you were caught.”
“Capshaw and Silak were shot and killed. I was taken to prison and questioned. They wanted to know what happened to the ledger. I told them that I was only a noncom and that Capshaw as the commanding officer had taken it with him when we separated. I thought they believed me, maybe they did for a while. The Koreans have an almost slavish obedience and respect for their officers.” He lifted his cup to his lips. “But General Tai Sen decided they had to be sure when they still couldn’t find the ledger.” He looked at her and his lips twisted. “And this is where I start to skip a few years, if you don’t mind.”
She shook her head. No, she didn’t want to hear about the years of torture and starvation. It hurt her to think of them. “But you didn’t tell them where to find the ledger?”
“No, first I thought I was being a patriot. Then I was angry; and then I just endured.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I told you about escaping and the Tokyo hospital and going to Atlanta.”
“Queen visited you in the hospital. He told Joe and Catherine that you were raving and that Army Intelligence was afraid you might give away top secret information.”
He shrugged. “I was raving at the time. And I was probably even more unbalanced than I was later. I’d completely blocked out most of the things that happened. The only thing I remember about Queen’s visits were his questions about the ledger. He kept at me.”
“You’d forgotten that, too?”
“It was the one question they kept asking in the prison. I blocked it so thoroughly that there was no way it was going to come back without a hell of a lot of time and therapy. That was why Queen got me dismissed from the hospital. He didn’t want me talking to any therapist.”
She shook her head. “You must have been in terrible shape.”
He nodded. “I didn’t work my way through the worst of it for years after Queen sent me off to try to get me killed.”
“You knew they were suicide missions?”
“Not at first. I was still in a haze for a long while. I was operating on automatic.”
And that automatic had clearly been lethal if it had kept him alive. “You said you came back to the U.S. some years later.”
He nodded. “Because I’d become clearheaded enough to realize that I was a target. I started to wonder why Queen was so determined to r
id himself of me in a way that wouldn’t be questioned. Oh, they were very determined.” He paused. “And it all came back to the ledger.”
“Which you couldn’t remember.”
“By that time I’d worked my way through the haze enough to start to remember some details.” His lips tightened. “And I’d realized that it probably wasn’t dedication to home and country that had driven Queen. Some of the missions they sent me on were a revelation. They appeared to have nothing to do with protecting home and country. Dirty. Queen was definitely dirty. So I decided to go back to Korea and retrieve the ledger.”
“That must have been—I’d think that you’d have avoided that place like the plague.”
“It wasn’t easy. The North Koreans had become even more belligerent, and I was on their most wanted list. I was in a cold sweat most of the time I was there.” He paused. “But I found the ledger and I took it to Tokyo and had it translated.”
She tilted her head. “No nuclear secrets?”
“Drugs and stolen ancient artifacts. General Tai Sen was a joint partner with Queen. He received the merchandise and saw that it was sent to Tokyo to Queen for distribution and sale. The ledger belonged to the general and listed all the transactions in detail, naming names. The most prominent of which were Queen and Jacobs. The general was trying to cut them out of the business and threatening to send the ledger to their superiors if they caused any trouble.”
“So they had to have the ledger.”
“And didn’t mind throwing me into a hellhole and killing two of my buddies to get it.” His hand tightened on his cup. “You might say I was a little angry. If I’d found out a year earlier, I would have set up a prison like the one I called home for all those years and done a few experiments on Queen. Maybe I would have hired a North Korean to help. They know the way it’s done.”
There was such savagery in his face that Eve inhaled sharply. “But you didn’t do it. Why not?”
“I found out Queen’s connection to Paul Black.”
She stiffened. “What?”
“For years, Paul Black has been engaged as an assassin by Queen. When I left the hospital in Tokyo, they hired Black to follow me and to terminate me at the earliest opportunity.” He looked down into his cup. “He must have been following me when I came that day to see you and Bonnie. It had to have been obvious as hell what I was feeling when I was staring at Bonnie and you. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. From what I’ve learned about him, Black appears to be very thorough and takes his time. Evidently, he didn’t find the right time and place to kill me while I was in Atlanta.”
“Bonnie,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Queen sent me to Pakistan, and Black followed me. He attacked at the same time I was dealing with the terrorists Queen had assigned me to get. I didn’t even realize that Black wasn’t one of them.” He smiled tightly. “He didn’t find me an easy target. As I told you, I was really crazy during those days. He went after me with a knife, and I took it away from him and stabbed him in the belly. At the time I thought he was dead, but he crawled away.”
“To recover and go after Bonnie,” she said dully.
“Do you think I haven’t thought about that every day since I found out Bonnie had been murdered?” he said harshly. “I’d found after searching through his pockets after I stabbed him that he had a U.S. passport under the name of Paul Black. I was lucky he wasn’t traveling under an assumed name. I found out later that was common with him. He was so arrogant he thought no one could touch him. But that was all I knew about him. Nothing more. Maybe I should have tried to find out something else, but it didn’t seem to matter to me at the time. Hell, I didn’t realize that it would concern anyone but me, and most of the time I didn’t give a damn whether I lived or died. I didn’t know what a monster the son of a bitch was.”
“And when did you find that out?” Eve asked jerkily.
“Drink your coffee,” Gallo said. “You’re too pale.”
“I shouldn’t be. I’ve dealt with monsters before.” She took a sip of coffee. It was hot and strong and braced her a little. “But it never does any good. Not when I think about those monsters with Bonnie.”
“The time Bonnie was taken was too shortly after I came to Atlanta. Just one month. I tried to see if I could find any connection. God knows I didn’t want to find one.”
“But you did.”
“I was already suspecting Queen of trying to kill me. That led me back to Paul Black. Hired by Queen? Maybe. But what connection to Bonnie’s kidnapping? I started to work on finding out much more about Paul Black. I bribed and threatened and stole records. It took me over a year, but I put together his picture. He was born in Metaire, Louisiana, and he was in a mental hospital by the time he was twelve. He’d stabbed one of his classmates. The kid lived, and they released Black a year later. After that, Black was more careful and began to move about the country doing what he liked best.”
“Montalvo told me the records show he was born in Macon, Georgia.”
“Queen altered the records. He was protecting his pet cobra. It was part of the arrangement they had together. Queen protected, and Black did all his killings.” He held her eyes. “But he didn’t only do Queen’s killings. There are all kinds of indications that he was a serial killer before Queen took him under his wing. Very clever, very bloodthirsty. He liked it, and he wanted to keep on doing it. The only way he could see himself staying alive to appease his appetite was to find someone like Queen, who didn’t care what he did as long as he performed well for him. According to all the books and reports I’ve read, a serial killer of that magnitude has a tremendous ego. He has to be all-powerful.”
“The terrible thing is that they usually are,” Eve said. “They don’t stop. They just keep on killing.”
“I must have damaged Black’s ego badly when I managed to escape him and stabbed him in the belly. I told you that he had a tremendous opinion of himself. He would have wanted to hurt me. In any way he could.”
A little red-haired girl in a Bugs Bunny T-shirt.
Eve nodded slowly. “But why didn’t he go after you again?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how he thinks. It might be that ego. He might have felt vulnerable after I almost killed him and convinced himself that he didn’t have to murder me to inflict the most hurt. He may not have known she was my daughter. Though it would not surprise me that he’d found that out. But anyone looking at me the day I came to see her would know how much I loved her.”
“Are you sure he killed her?”
“Do I have proof? No, and I won’t know until I hear it from his lips. But I believe he killed her. I’ve been tracking him over Asia and half of Europe, and there’s no question in my mind that he’s killed at least a dozen people in that time.” He paused. “Though he’s very smart. He’s like a phantom, moving in and out and away. I think when the police do come too close, he calls on Queen to help him.”
“Then he’s just as guilty of those murders as Black.”
“Yes.” He met her eyes. “But then I’m guilty of them, too.”
“What?”
“Oh, I wasn’t an accessory, but I wasn’t able to stop him. That should qualify.”
“That’s nuts,” she said flatly.
He smiled faintly. “I’m not going to address that statement. It would be redundant.”
“In all these years, you haven’t gotten close enough to catch him?”
“I got close a couple times but he slipped away.” He put his cup back on the saucer. “So I put Queen on the job.”
“What?”
“I told him that I’d give him his ledger if they gave me Black. He was pretending that he’d had nothing to do with him. I knew they were using him. It was only a matter of time until he decided that getting the ledger was more important to him than an assassin who probably knew too much about him anyway.”
Excitement was beginning to build. “Then you can get Queen to tell u
s where he is? Or do you know already?”
“I knew a few days ago. I’d traced him on my own to Samoa and was going to go after him myself. But I didn’t get the chance. His house was blown up, and his housekeeper and an unknown man were incinerated.”
“Then Black could be dead?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. They’re checking the dental records, but the height and bone structure aren’t right. I think Queen sent someone to kill Black, and it went wrong. Which for me wasn’t all that bad. It meant that Black would be stirred into action against Queen.” He inclined his head. “And probably me. I can’t imagine Queen not throwing me under the bus at the earliest opportunity. When he burned my place, he was behaving with a recklessness that wasn’t characteristic.”
“Black will be coming after you.”
“He’s probably breathing down my neck right now.” He looked her in the eye. “Which makes me criminally irresponsible to be here with you.”
“You can’t be responsible for an act I committed myself.” She pushed back her chair. “That’s not possible. Now I think it’s time I went to my room and took a shower and unpacked. Unless we’re going to be leaving here soon?”
“Not soon.” He got to his feet. “But it’s probably not wise to unpack.” He added, “Nor to go to your room. I want you to stay here tonight.”
She stiffened, her gaze flying to his face. “Why?”
“In another life, you wouldn’t even have to ask.”
She felt a rush of heat that surprised her. It was as if her body had memories of him that triggered responses that were purely instinctive. “But that was another life.”
“Have you ever considered reincarnation?”
“No.” She started for the door. “I’ll call you after I shower and we’ll discuss—”
“I meant it about staying,” he said. “And it wasn’t for the most obvious and pleasant reason. I just couldn’t resist giving the answer that I—” He shook his head ruefully. “I know that it would only make things more difficult, but I’m finding I don’t have much control. I’m reacting instinctively.”
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