Columbus

by Derek Haas

  Jiri Dolezal took care of business by sucker-punching his men, gunning them down when they couldn’t see it or hear it coming. I’m not sure if he pulled the trigger, or simply ordered it done, but I had little doubt it was his decision, his play, and it gave me all I needed to plan his death.

  I return to Rome for one purpose, to pick up a first-edition copy of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler. There are a hundred ways I could have paid for the book and had it delivered to me without setting foot inside Zodelli’s, but I find my feet moving through the door like they are operating on their own, no mind to guide them, enchanted.

  “Mr. Walker!” Risina greets me warmly, and now it is my throat constricting.

  “Good afternoon,” I manage.

  “Just give me one moment. I have your book in the back.”

  She heads through a swinging wooden door, leaving me alone in the shop. The truth is, I don’t need to be here. I’ve done what I set out to do, to get inside the mind of my target, and the rare-book world is a dead end, a pointless triviality, with no evil to exploit. So why am I here? Why did I travel all the way back to Rome? Why am I waiting to look into a face flawlessly exhibiting both kinds of beauty? Because there’s an undercurrent in her face I need to explore.

  “Ahh, here it is. Have a look?”

  I take the volume in my hand, and study the front . . . the author’s name in white text above the black title of the book, and then an illustration of a pair of men nestled under a tree, casting lines into a river.

  “Remarkable condition for a seventeenth-century novel, yes?”

  I nod. “It’s amazing.”

  “I will admit I read through it while I was waiting for you to pick it up. I studied literature in school, yes, but my seventeenth-century experience is limited. Milton, yes, some of the poets like Herbert, Donne . . . but Walton passed me by. You have inspired me.”

  “I’ll confess I know nothing about him. I told a friend I might start collecting books, and he suggested this one. But now I feel like I shouldn’t touch it, just put it on a shelf. . . . ”

  She makes a clucking sound with her mouth, like a schoolteacher correcting a student. “No, no, no, Mr. Walker. Hang paintings on a wall, put photographs on a shelf, but books . . . no, they are alive. They are meant to be handled. Open the pages and read them. Only then are they worth collecting, once you know what’s inside.”

  I smile at her and Risina returns it, and there’s that underlying hint of sadness there, like the bass note of a perfume. The corners of her mouth turn up, but only slightly. I feel a spot opening up in my stomach, like someone has hooked a line there and is towing me toward her. Goddamn, do I need to know more about her. But to what end? What can it possibly gain me but complications in a life where it remains essential I be alone?

  After I pay for the book, she offers her hand. “Please come back to see me, Mr. Walker. We can start to grow your collection.”

  “I would like that,” I say, and since there is no other practical reason for me to remain, I head for the door. This will be the last time I see her, I lie to myself, and take one last look at her behind the desk as I head out into the street.

  Jiri Dolezal will die tonight. He is in his office, working late, surrounded by a skeletal staff: an assistant, a bodyguard, and his cousin, who oversees his ledgers. Dolezal didn’t luck into his fortune; he worked extremely hard at the business of evil. His work ethic would almost be admirable if he applied it toward say, fighting world poverty instead of exploiting teenage girls in the Eastern European sex trade.

  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I do not know who hires me. Our fences are designed as a barrier between assassin and client, to protect us from each other. It is better this way. I don’t need to know the motivation for why someone placed a hit on my mark. I only need to validate the inherent evil in my target so I can make my kill and walk away.

  Occasionally, though, I discover the client in the course of the hunt. The file will hint at a possibility, and if beneficial, I can use that information to assist me. I just have to be right.

  I break into the building using the oldest of techniques: a tension wrench and a steel lockpick. While Prague has made great strides toward joining the new century, security is surprisingly Old World. It is as though the new crop of organized criminals believes the fear and intimidation popularized by the old government regime is enough to keep danger at bay.

  I march to the second-floor office and knock on the door, brazenly. I can hear everything go quiet in the room, like I’ve caught its occupants in some nefarious act, and then a man with a baritone voice barks an order to someone nearer to my position.

  The door swings open and the secretary fills the space. She measures me with a dour expression. She says something in Czech, and I respond by holding up the book Risina tracked down for me. With my best British accent, I say, “I understand Mr. Dolezal collects Izaak Walton.”

  She frowns and clucks over her shoulder. After a brief argument from which I can guess the gist, the door opens further, and I step into the room.

  Dolezal is behind his desk, ten feet away. He has a fat face and a nose that lists to the left, like it was broken and never reset. To my right is the cousin, who barely looks up from his laptop. The bodyguard, who is easily a head taller than me, stands next to him. I am confident he is the man who pulled the trigger on Novotny and Chalupnik, the one who shot them at close range from behind.

  In my left hand, I hold the first edition Compleat Angler. It is like a magician’s feint . . . it draws the eye to it and away from my free hand. The bodyguard steps in to frisk me, which is always a good time to strike. When the big man is stooped over, his hands on my waist instead of his weapon, he is vulnerable.

  He starts to pat me down and my right hand finds that pistol he keeps in the small of his back. I have it out of his waistband and up in the blink of an eye. It’s a double-action, nine millimeter Czech CZ-TT, a little small for me but it will do just fine in close quarters. Dolezal is still staring at the book in my left hand when the bullet shatters that misshapen nose of his for good. I hit him square, a sucker punch he never saw coming.

  The loud report of the gun is like an electric shock to the bodyguard. He leaps backward, takes one look at his boss, and his face falls. I can see the calculations working out in his mind, can see his brain forming the wrong decision. The secretary starts to bellow like a siren but I’m not worried about her. The bodyguard sets his legs to pounce, lowers his head to charge me—if he’s going down, he’s going down a fighter even though the battle is already decided.

  Just as I swing the gun around, the cousin rises up behind him, wielding that laptop like a mallet. He brings it down with everything he has on top of the bodyguard’s head. The big man drops like someone kicked his legs out from under him as the laptop cracks across the back of his head, shattering into a hundred pieces.

  The cousin gives me a satisfied look but I keep my face neutral, drop the pistol next to the capsized guard, and hurry toward the stairwell. I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to kill the bodyguard. In my experience, killing anyone other than the target creates a mess. So I let the forgotten man in the room take care of him, the cousin, the one who hired me. Since I don’t know where the secretary’s loyalties lie, I am gone before she can make a decision. If she had planned it with the cousin, had been a part of hiring me, I’ll never know.

  I know exactly what I’m doing, goddammit. I’m clearing my mind, recharging my batteries, wiping my slate clean so I will be fresh for a new assignment. I am getting my mind right.

  So why am I once again in Rome, sitting in a small trattoria near the Trevi fountain?

  “I hate it, actually,” Risina is saying. “My sister was six or seven when my mother was pregnant, carrying me. For some inexplicable reason, my mother asked her to name me. She was so young, and I suppose was playing off of the common name Rosina, which means ‘rose,’ and instead came up with Risina, which means nothin
g except that I have had to correct people all my life.”

  “I would say ‘a rose by any other name’ but I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”

  She smiles genuinely. “Only once or twice.”

  The last fifteen years have taught me many things, but above all else is this: I cannot do what I do and maintain a relationship. There are no rules in the assassination world, no code, no honor amongst thieves. There are no civilians, no untouchable targets. If I continue to escalate this, if I continue to see Risina, then I have thrust her into this game despite the fact she will not know she’s playing. I have pounded my head against this immovable wall twice before. With Pooley, who died, and with a girl I loved, Jake Owens, whom I had to forcibly remove from my life. I thought I could go back to her, but I was wrong.

  So what am I doing here? Jiri Dolezal is dead; my connection to the rare-book world has been severed. So why do I keep returning to that bookstore on the Via Poli, why am I still pretending to be a collector, why did I hire Risina to track down another Compleat Angler for me? Why did I suggest dinner tonight?

  Is it because I’m searching for some vestige of humanity in myself and I’m willing to put another life in danger, if only to satisfy my basest instincts?

  I’ll say it again. I told you not to like me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE MARK’S NAME IS ANTON NOEL. He is the fifty-two-year-old chief information officer of a French pharmaceutical company based in Paris named Ventus-Safori. He has worked there for over two decades, rising through the ranks since he was hired out of school as an assistant accountant in the late eighties. The attached surveillance photos reveal a man who has not passed on too many crepes since graduation.

  Ryan and I met outside a cathedral in Turin to exchange the file.

  “It’s the same procurer as the Prague job.”

  “That’s the fourth time they’ve hired me.”

  “They like your work.”

  “I met the fence. . . . ”

  “Doriot.”

  “Yes. I met him in Brussels before the first job when he wanted to take a look at me. He was hard to read.”

  Ryan looked at me with a level expression. “Which means he’s a professional.”

  “Yeah. I get that. He’s still the one handling affairs for this client, then?”

  Ryan nodded.

  “I don’t want to get too tied to one contractor. I mean, I think we should—”

  My fence held up one palm as though nothing further needed to be said on the subject. “I understand. You still want this file then, or do you want me to beg off to Doriot?”

  “No, I’ll take it.”

  He handed it to me, and I felt that weight again. Heavier this time. The stones piling up.

  Ryan stared hard at me. “You sure you’re ready, Columbus?”

  “Of course.”

  He looked like he had something more to say, but I avoided his eyes. Finally, we shook hands and left.

  Now, with the file in my hand, I pore over its contents, an uneasy feeling prickling my brain. Am I ready? What did Ryan see in me that made him ask that question?

  Noel appears to be a typical rich European businessman. He keeps a mistress in a small apartment on the Left Bank. He employs a couple of Serbian bodyguards, veterans from a mostly forgotten war. He travels a few times a month by private jet to London or New York or Geneva. Peculiarly, he drives his own car, a Mercedes, and has his bodyguards sit behind him and in the passenger seat. This piques my interest, the way Dolezal’s rare-book collection stood out on the page for me. If he’s chauffeuring his bodyguards around, then he isn’t particularly concerned with his own protection. Or he’s arrogant, controlling, a trait I’ve seen in some of these business titans. They don’t want to relinquish control of any part of their lives, even the mundane.

  Possibilities emerge in front of me. Take him en route to work, while he’s behind the wheel? Take him at the private airfield housing his jet? Strike when he’s occupied with his mistress? Take that control he cherishes and turn it against him?

  I should have left for Paris already. I am four weeks into an eight-week assignment and I should be following my mark, forming strike plans, identifying his weaknesses, searching for evil.

  But I am with Risina, in her small apartment in Rome, keeping that weight off me, even if the relief is only temporary.

  Her cooking is awful. The pasta is chewy, the sauce is bland, the cheese on top is strong enough to melt my nose, and I love every bite of it. A home-cooked anything is enticing for someone who barely knows the meaning of the word “home,” and if the wine has to flow to wash it down, so be it.

  She looks at me across the table, her fork poised in midair.

  “I seem to talk a great bit about myself, and when I leave you, I realize I’ve learned nothing new about you.”

  “I find you interesting.”

  She points the fork at me. “I know what you’re doing and it won’t work.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “I am going to ask you a direct question and you are going to turn it around back to me.”

  “Ask.”

  “Okay. I will ask this. What do you do for a living that brings you to Italia so often?”

  “That’s an easy one. Why did you start working with book collectors?”

  She laughs and wags her finger. “I told you.”

  There are two parts to lying, and both require practice. One is to hold your eyes steady and to speak with only a hint of inflection. The second is to make the lie so plain and uninteresting as to rule out any follow-up questions.

  I set my face. “My work is boring. I work for an airline company. I buy and sell parts for airplane wings. I line up contracts all over the world.”

  “You see. That is not boring. You are an international businessman.”

  “A boring international businessman.”

  “But as you say, you travel all over the world.”

  “Doing a job any man can do.”

  “I think you are modest.”

  “Just telling the truth.”

  And the corners of her mouth turn up into a smile, this one stretching farther, because she is with a man who tells the truth, who is safe, who is humble about his life. The sadness below the surface has dissipated, at least a bit.

  She takes a bite of her pasta and makes a face.

  “My cooking is terrible.”

  “No,” I say and keep my gaze locked. “I mean, I can’t feel my tongue any more, but it’s really wonderful.”

  She erupts in laughter, the infectious kind, color coming to her cheeks.

  “Okay, we’re going to try something only one time,” she says as she pushes her plate to the center of the table, dismissing it.

  “What?”

  “We’re going to ask each other one question and no topic is how-do-you-say. . . . ”

  “Off limits?”

  “Yes, taboo. Off limits. And the other has to answer truthfully, no matter what is asked. Maybe we’ll learn something and want to learn more, or maybe after hearing the answer, we’ll decide we just aren’t . . . we just don’t want to keep seeing each other.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Okay, I’m in.”

  “Okay?”

  I nod and she smiles.

  “Can I ask first?”

  I nod again.

  “Why do you want to see me, Jack?”

  I don’t have to set my face, don’t have to lie, not this time. “I want to know who put that sadness in your eyes, in your cheeks.”

  She leans back, the answer catching her off guard, and folds her arms across her chest. For a long moment, she doesn’t say anything, and even the air in the room seems to still.

  “Is that your question to me?”

  “That’s my answer to your question. I haven’t asked one yet.”

  She nods, forces a smile. Her voice stays low. “Okay, then, what is your quest
ion?”

  “We don’t have to—”

  “Don’t be silly. This was my idea.”

  “Okay. Are you ready?”

  She lowers her eyes like she’s bracing herself, and her nod is barely perceptible.

  I wait until she looks up, then arrest her eyes with mine. “My question is this. What is the recipe for this pasta?”

  She blinks, and then starts laughing again. It is a sound that will stay with me for the next few weeks, holding me afloat like a life preserver.

  The signs are there, if you pay attention. Little things: you bang your shin into the coffee table in the morning, or you step off a curb into a puddle of sewer water, or you can’t find your wallet, your keys, your jacket, no matter how hard you look. Bad luck has a way of building momentum, of summoning its strength like an ocean wave before crashing down over you, knocking you off your feet. If you can spot the signs, you might be fortunate enough not to drown.

  Paris is chilly and gray in February, though it is desperately trying to maintain its charm. There is something sad about it, like a hostess doing her best to keep a party together after the first guests start trickling away. Stores and restaurants are open, but outside tables are empty and silent. People shuffle by without talking, hurrying to get where they’re going, lighting cigarettes without breaking stride.

  I have seen Anton Noel four times. Once, at a charity auction where I monitored him from a crowd inside an art gallery. Once, at a business conference where he droned on in French about the necessity of product diversification in emerging global markets. And twice, I have watched him driving his Mercedes, heading out of the gate where the Rue du St. Paul meets the Rue St. Antoine.

  The gate is well guarded, with two dark-suited men perking up whenever the boss is about to roll outside, and a bevy of cameras pointing out at the street. I can watch the gate from the front window of a café a block away without drawing attention to myself . . . just order a coffee and a pastry while I pretend to read an American newspaper. The guards are a signal; they sit relaxed throughout most of the day, slumped in stiff chairs, even when a delivery truck or visitor crosses through the gates. However, when a white phone near the gate rings, they both rise to attention and stand erect, eyes sweeping the area, always five minutes before the black Mercedes drives out, Noel at the wheel, his bodyguards in the passenger seat and behind him.