Tall, Hard and Trouble

by Cerise DeLand

  “Where are the birth records and housing records kept for those in Jerusalem?” she asked Paul.

  Paul shook his head. “No clue. I’d have to ask around. Why?”

  “I have to discover why these people live together. Are they family? Related in some way? By marriage or blood? Or are they just a big commune? And I have missed that, too.”

  * * *

  Grant itched to get out of the car, out of the West Bank and Israel, back into his own jet where he could feel secure and keep Coco safe, too.

  Paul dropped them off at the front door of their hotel with a promise to find out where vital statistics were kept and see who had access to look at them. “I think you’ll have to get Langley to ask the Israeli government to open private records.”

  Grant knew putting that request through channels could mean he’d be much older and greyer before they had results.

  “Thanks, Paul, for everything,” he bid him goodbye as he and Coco stepped out of the car. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Coco leaned in to peck Paul on the cheek. “I appreciate this.”

  “No idea what you’re into, but stay safe,” he told her.

  “I have good help,” she told him and waved him off.

  Grant took her arm. “Let’s walk a bit, shall we?”

  The rain had subsided and dusk had turned the sky to silver storm clouds. They strolled along the sidewalk, virtually alone.

  “Tell me all that you’re thinking,” he ordered.

  “My control has holes in her head.”

  He snorted. “Big ones!”

  “A lot of people missed details. I should have been allowed to take longer to identify these suspects. I realize Langley wanted fast results three years ago, but what’s the good of mistakes and sloppy work?”

  Grant agreed. “Waste of time and money. And people die who shouldn’t.”

  “Like Ahmed,” she added and hooked her arm through his to press closer. “Grant, I want to go to Naples to look at the other man.”

  “I’ll call Mark and tell him to prepare a flight plan.”

  She stopped and faced him, her expression forlorn. “I don’t trust anyone now. Only you.”

  He tried to smile. “I’ll keep earning that.”

  “That won’t be hard. Let’s get out here, shall we?”

  They passed through the quiet lobby and up the elevator to their floor.

  Grant entered their room and stopped to survey it. Some air about it felt different. He saw it then. A hand print, or rather an indentation of a hand into the made bedding.

  He raised his arm, barring Coco from entering behind him. “Wait,” he mouthed to her.

  She examined the room herself.

  His gaze took in the glare of the lamplight and a swirl of a hand or a cloth across the surface of the night table. A flesh-colored powder seemed to have been swept away, and whoever did it, missed a light sprinkle near the base of the lamp.

  He put a finger to his lips for her to be quiet.

  She nodded.

  He took his handkerchief from his trouser pocket and covering his index finger, put it to the substance. No change of color. He shot her a glance. Coco didn’t use face powder. So what—? Oh, hell. He knew what it was!

  He threw the scrap of white to the floor and watched it begin to disintegrate at tiny pinpoints wherever the powder had touched the fabric. As if it were lit by fire, the material was eaten away.

  He stepped backward. No fumes. No odor. But in concentration, it could do harm to fabric and to skin too.

  He examined the floor and the bedspread more closely. The bastards put it in our bed?

  He didn’t care. Wouldn’t wait to find out more. They had to move them out of here. Fast.

  Coco clutched his arm, mesmerized by the clump of ashes on the floor.

  He looked at her.

  “What is that?” she mouthed.

  He took her arm and nodded toward the door, willing her to respond to him nonchalantly. Bugs could be anywhere. “You know, I’m hungry suddenly. How about we have some dinner?”

  She stared back at him, wide-eyed. “Yes. Dinner. I’m starved.”

  He took two steps toward the door.

  “Wait! Wait!” She dug in her heels and pointed at her camera bag. “I need to freshen up a minute.”

  You mean you need the jump suit? He shook his head at her. “You look just fine. No need for that.”

  “But I do!” She tore away from him, ran to the bathroom, ran water in a sink a second and returned with a hand towel to drape over the handle of the bag. “See! I feel better already!”

  “Now, babe! I’m gonna eat a bear.” God knows, I’m loaded to kill one!

  Downstairs he didn’t bother to stop to check out, but walked to the portico and hailed a taxi.

  “Tel Aviv,” he ordered the driver as they got in the back seat.

  “Your things?” she asked him. “Mine?”

  Grant had his phone on pronto, exhaling in disgust as the taxi driver sped them toward the highway west. “I’ll call the hotel and tell them we’ll check out tomorrow. That’ll be enough time to get Todd out here to talk to the locals, bring a forensics guy and see what that substance was.” He eyed the driver and with a wary look. “We can do without our belongings. Especially if we can learn something from that event.”

  She crossed her arms, beginning to shake with the tension. “Crazy people. Wanting to scare us.”

  Put us in the emergency room. Grant didn’t want to think about what else. The powder was on their bedding, maybe in the sheets. If we had gotten into bed, we would have been eaten to the bone!

  She caught Grant’s, horrified. “Oh. No, Grant. Mark? He’s at that hotel, too. If they’ve done the same thing to him? That’s be horrible.”

  Grant was already calling his friend and pilot on his cell.

  “Hey, Mark, problem. Where are you? Sightseeing? Good for you. Listen. Do not go into your hotel room.” Grant explained only briefly, a wary eye on the cab driver. “By any chance, did you have a conversation with anyone and mention where we were staying? Hmm. No? Okay. Thanks. I’ve got Todd flying over here and he’ll get your luggage and ours, then check us out and pay the tab. Just leave. Catch a taxi for Tel Aviv and rev up the engines. We’ve got a change of destination. Right. Tell you all when we see you.”

  It was half an hour later as they approached an airport security checkpoint for all cars entering the Israeli airport before he could speak freely. As the driver got out of the car to show his identification to the guards, Grant urged her to stretch her legs, too. He took her out the other side of the taxi well out of earshot from any others.

  “I began checking in Venice the first night we were together,” he told her, “and I tell you we’ve had no tail. But someone knew where we were.”

  “My control knew we were in Jerusalem.”

  “Nick Chekov, too.”

  “And Paul,” she added, “but he has no reason to do anything like that.”

  “I don’t trust anyone or anything at this point, Coco.” He jammed his hands on his hips and watched a 747 overhead dip low for a landing at Ben Gurion.

  “Did you tell Jamal, too?”

  “I did,” he replied. “And Todd.”

  “But none of them knew we were at that hotel,” she added. “True?”

  Grant nodded, rabid to figure out this madness. “True.” Or was it?

  Chapter Ten

  Coco rubbed her eyes. For two days she’d been watching the same villa and the monotony of her surveillance was eating at her. Sitting next to her in their unobtrusive rental car, Grant constantly scanned the surroundings for anyone who might decide that they themselves were a proper target.

  She squinted as she saw the late summer sun hit her eyes. She moved, trying to avoid the glare as it began to set behind the house, casting a brilliant reflection off the bleached stone. This villa was the one owned by the export-import guy. Aside from that information that they’d gleaned
from the city’s property records, she and Grant hadn’t learned much more about him from the Italian police. Local authorities had nothing on the man for which they could recommend he be jailed. The man kept a very low profile, not having joined any business groups or riled any feathers among associates or laborers. Furthermore, to Coco’s dismay, no one seemed to be at home. For two days, there’d been no activity outside the house nor near the windows. Picking up her camera and looking through the zoom lens, she saw no signs of habitation now either. A sure sign those inside knew they were being watched.

  She put down her camera and nibbled her lower lip. The multi-story home sat nestled into the hillside. Easy to get in the windows with a grappling hook in the light of the moon.

  Her heartbeat picked up a notch at the knowledge that she could get in and out easily. But Grant would throw a fit if I so much as breathed the suggestion.

  She sighed, recalling that in Naples two days ago they’d seen no sign of life at the other suspect’s house, either.

  She hated to complain to him. But they were wasting time. “We’re getting nowhere fast,” she said. “They’ve got to do something soon. Get groceries. Go for a drive. Go camping even.”

  Grant shot her a skeptical look over the tops of his sunglasses. “I doubt a beer run is in their future. Who knows what kind of reserves they might have stocked up. My bet is this isn’t the first time they’ve run to ground. Refresh my memory, how many people live in the house?”

  “Three years ago, there were four. Two women, a young boy, and the one man whom I suspected was the fifth one—the shorter, fatter one at the meeting in the desert. A candidate for Mr. Chubby. But here, I could never get a good look at him or a decent photograph.”

  “Surveillance is not my favorite activity.”

  Not mine, either.

  And I know what to do about that. But damn if Grant is going to watch me put on the cat suit. He’d have a stroke. But it’s what I do well. Ballet and yoga are such good training for breaking and entering.

  “Let’s get dinner,” he offered and put in a text message to their backup team. “We need it. We’ll leave the guys in charge.”

  “Or I could gnaw on your arm?”

  “We’re preserving your teeth, lady.”

  She closed her eyes and licked her lower lip, dreaming of great Italian delicacies. “We could do gnocchi with shrimp and calamari caught in the bay this morning, smothered in tons of fresh parmesan.”

  He chuckled, turned the key in the ignition of their rental car and took them down the hill along the winding road into the village.

  “The restaurant we went to yesterday was good. Let’s go again.”

  “We’ll go to the street by the town hall. We don’t want the same people to see us and wonder why we’re back.”

  “Good point.” She tucked her camera back into her duffle and her fingers brushed against the cat suit. Time to bring it out, Coco. Cut to the good stuff. “Maybe we eat and call it a day. What do you think?”

  “Sure.”

  In the tiny café, they sat by the floor-length window drinking water and waiting for their order. The two of them were the only patrons, and opera music played over the stereo system.

  Grant’s cell phone rang.

  “Hey, Todd, how are you?” he greeted his assistant and fixed on Coco’s eyes as he listened. “Yeah, we’re good. We chose a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Naples.”

  Coco smiled. Grant was not telling anyone any specifics about their location. Not even his right hand man in Houston. He still had to learn where the leak was in their network.

  “You got our luggage? Wonderful.” He lowered his voice. “No powder on them. Interesting, that they would have just done the bed, I agree. Hmmm. A neurotoxin. I figured. Enough to be corrosive. All right. Any word from the Paris investigation? I see. Nothing? No mention of fingerprints on the cable connector?” He frowned and looked up at Coco. “What do you mean…? No, I was certain there was a computer in the room.”

  Coco’s heart picked up a beat. Nick certainly should have called Grant by now to share any further developments about the computer—and he hadn’t. But from Grant’s expression something was wrong.

  She watched him end his call as if he were sleepwalking. “Tell me what he said.”

  “Todd talked to a friend in the Paris police and the investigation into Ahmed Suleiman’s murder is nearing an end. And no one has said anything about a computer or a laptop missing from the crime scene.”

  “Nick said he would tell them.” She folded her arms, stymied at this turn of events. “Unless they have another suspect.”

  Grant’s features grew tight with strain. “But they don’t.”

  “Maybe they didn’t take Nick seriously.” Is that grasping at straws? What other explanation was there?

  Four more people entered and took a table on the other side of the restaurant.

  Beneath his breath, Grant said, “A chance of that, yes.”

  “From the look on your face, you don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t,” he affirmed and sat back to let the waitress serve their orders.

  His eyes narrowed, focusing out on to the street. Suddenly he placed his napkin on the table and rose. “Eat your dinner. Wait here for me, okay?”

  She watched him exit to the sidewalk and press a few buttons on his phone, then proceed to pace before the restaurant.

  She glanced down at her lovely, large shrimp, took a bite of one and closed her eyes at the succulent taste of fresh seafood. Oh, to die and go to Italian heaven. She tried her gnocchi covered in ripe tomato and basil sauce. She was probably going to gain so much weight that when she tried to put the damn cat suit on, she’d rip the seams.

  And then she paused on her last bite.

  Across the street, entering the town hall was the fat man she’d been looking for. His gait, his posture all spoke of the man in the desert. No doubt about it.

  She started to rise from the table, but remembered where she was. She sat down. Raised her chin to catch the waitress’s eye. Asked for the check.

  Searching for Grant, she cursed that she couldn’t see him.

  The waitress was slow, but Coco got up, took out sixty Euro, knowing it would more than cover the bill, but she had to follow that man. Now!

  She apologized profusely in Italian to the young server proclaiming the food to be excellent, but she had to go. The waitress stared at her, polite and kind, accepting the overpayment but clearly thinking the Americano had rocks in her head to leave without finishing her dinner.

  Coco left the café and pushed on her sunglasses as she dodged cars to cross the street.

  On the curb, she whirled to check for Grant. He had his head down, deep in conversation, as he stood at the end of the block.

  Coco knew she couldn’t wait. She spun and ran up the steps.

  Inside, the town hall was a marvel of medieval Italian architecture. Wood so dark it was almost black, mold so pungent it made her cough, gilt so bright it assaulted her eyes, even with sunglasses on. But she couldn’t—dare not—take them off. She scurried along the corridors, right and left, looking into tiny offices, trying to look fairly normal in her haste, excusing herself when she entered and found no one who resembled the man she sought.

  She sprinted up the main stairs to the second floor. Here the smell of mold was replaced by the aromas of stale coffee and lemons. She repeated her pattern of ducking into all the offices. Where had he gone?

  She ran for the stairs again and ran smack against Grant.

  He grabbed her by her upper arms. “What the hell are you doing, honey?”

  “Chubby came in there! I had to follow him! But I can’t find him. Unless he’s hiding in a damn closet, how did he get out?”

  “No clue. We’ll track him. No worries. You go out the front door. I’ll see if there is a back door, okay?”

  An hour later, Grant walked toward her as she sat on one of the elaborately carved stone benches in
front of the town hall. Night had fallen. In the lamplight from the old lanterns along the sidewalks, she saw how weary Grant was. “No luck.”

  “Me, neither.” She scanned the building again, puzzled as to how Chubby had escaped them.

  “Time to hang it up for today.” Grant took her hand.

  But desperation gnawed at her as Grant drove them back to their pensione. Someone knew what she was doing. Someone wanted to stop her. But that was not going to happen until she finished this job, identified the last men who had been in the meeting in the desert. The sooner she completed this, the better off she would be. Grant, too.

  But Grant would never agree to let her go alone into the man’s villa. Hell, she doubted she wanted to. But she’d done this kind of thing before. Well, to be honest, twice before. Once in San’a to take a photo of a man Langley thought might have been in the desert that day. An Al-Qaeda suspect whom no one in the world had been able to find in more than three years. The second time she’d hunted in the suit was in Cairo, when Langley thought another radical who hid in the attic of a politician’s house might be one of the men she sought. Both times she’d gotten up to the rooftops, slid into an open window, crept along the halls and found what she’d needed. Each time, the results had been the same. And gratifyingly so. She’d found one man. Alone. Startled by her presence. Her camera. Stunned by her precision and timing. Her quick actions. A picture. A portrait. Clear. Crisp enough for her to see that neither one had attended the meeting in the desert.

  But this man, Chubby, whom she’d seen this afternoon was someone she needed to see up close. Very close.

  Because she wasn’t going to leave Langley’s service without ID-ing these men. She had made a promise to herself. To her father. Finding the men who mattered most to him. The men who had ruined his last diplomatic mission.

  Inside their rooms, she tossed her purse and equipment bag in the corner and decided she needed to clear her head. Summon her resolve to defy Grant and do what she must. She read her email, paced, debated what to tell Grant, if she should tell him all of the facts of this case.

  Grant did his own email and answered texts. Occasionally, he’d look up and finally, he just sat back in his chair and focused on her, tracking her.