Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  Hopefully his business with Sam and the woman would be concluded by then. He disliked brides, he disliked romantic couples. He saw them and they always reminded him of Svetlana. The sting hadn’t faded; he knew it was unhealthy. He needed to forget her. But when he tried he could hear the rich sound of her voice, singing, laughing, begging for her life.

  His phone buzzed. “They’re on their way.” Holly sounded disappointed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “The bar is still closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “See if you can get inside and find if they have any information on us and get rid of it. Then go back to the safe house.”

  “I understand.” She hung up. Then he saw that four voice mails were on the phone he used only with Janice. He had forgotten to look at his phone again in the madness of dealing with the bartender. Probably Janice asking for instructions. Or reporting that Lucky Lazard was dead.

  The first: “I have the woman you sent to Vegas. Call her on her phone.”

  His mouth went dry.

  The second: “I’ll try again. I have the woman you apparently sent to kill me or follow me. Call her on her phone.”

  The third: “You must not be interested in your hired gun’s safety.”

  He took a deep breath and put the phone back in his left pocket. Then he pulled another phone from his right pocket.

  He checked another voice mail number for the second phone. Another set of messages, also from Lazard. He called him back on this second phone. He listened to Lazard shriek about the danger he was in.

  “Don’t hurt this woman,” he said. “I’d like to be able to question her. I’ll be in Vegas very soon, and I’ll deal with her.”

  He hung up, shaking, and slipped the second phone back into his right pocket.

  The meeting with Sam was now perhaps the most important meeting of his life. He waited, trying not to sweat, his racing mind considering angles, possibilities, approaches, while the ducks danced and paddled and the laughter of a bride echoed across the water.

  55

  Saturday, November 6, evening

  HOLLY HUNG UP, slipped her journal into her purse, and hurried out of the coffee shop. She hurried to the back of The Select. She pulled the weapon from her purse. She listened at the heavy steel door. She knelt and inspected the locks with a penlight. She opened the flap on the belt and began to reach for her tools.

  Then the doorknob, an inch from her face, began to turn.

  Holly leapt back, her hand going to her weapon.

  The door cracked open.

  She fired the Taser needles through the opening. The needles and the wires hissed into a man’s body.

  He knew even before she thumbed the charge. He tried to slap the wires free—if he’d slammed the door shut, he might have prevailed. But she thumbed the charge and he jerked back. She slid through the door, hitting him again as he jerked along the concrete floor.

  Third blast and he was gagging. She leveled a kick at the back of his head and he sprawled into stillness. She searched the man: fortyish, slight. Driver’s license: Felix Neare. He was armed, a gun wedged in the back of his pants, knocked out by his Taser convulsions. She took it. She found a cell phone and a ring of keys in his pocket.

  She opened a door into a storeroom, stacked with boxes of wine and cases of beer. She propped him up against the boxes.

  And then she put the barrel of the gun against his forehead.

  Let Sam Capra know what it felt like to lose someone.

  Her finger squeezed on the trigger. A little drop of drool inched from his lip.

  She lowered the gun.

  No. This wasn’t who she was.

  Holly noticed something on the concrete floor, where he had convulsed—little plastic cuffs, like you’d use for a prisoner. He must have intended them for her; perhaps he’d seen her kneeling by the door on a security camera. She took the pair and snapped them on his wrists. Found a rag in a box and carefully stuffed it in his mouth. She made sure his nasal passages were clear, nearly laughing, since she had been going to kill him not a minute earlier. She was gentle with him.

  She locked him inside the storeroom.

  She made a fast sweep through the bar. It had been cleaned since the fight. Heavy curtains closed off the windowed front from the street; no one could see inside. Upstairs she found a locked door. She tried keys until one worked. It looked like a small combination studio apartment/office.

  Names and faces taped on the wall. She didn’t know who any of them were—until she saw the picture of Audrey’s father. She scanned the notes. People who had been brought down.

  They were trying to figure out who was in the network. Her skin prickled. A separate section of papers about a Russian businessman she’d never heard of were taped to an opposite wall. She wondered what they meant.

  She left the papers in place. Tried another door, locked.

  She tested the keys again. Inside was a small room. Stocked with weapons. Rifles, handguns. A small assortment of knives, of night vision gear, cheap prepaid phones. Ammunition.

  She moved past the weapons. In a bureau drawer she found neatly stacked papers—the kind of paper used only for passports, with the appropriate watermarks. Entry stamps for countries. Tools for forgery: special printers, pens, photo equipment. Blank bank credit cards awaiting numbers.

  In another drawer she found a finished passport with Sam Capra’s photo in the document. But the passport was Belgian. Another one for Guatemala. Same face. One of the petite woman, in a UK passport, her name was Mila Court. A French passport bore her face but a different name.

  Who were these people?

  Some sort of organization to rival Belias’s?

  She could see a security camera feed on one of the laptops. She erased the last ten minutes of footage and turned the cameras off. She unplugged the laptops. She found a bag to carry them. Belias had ordered her to destroy the hard drives, but maybe he could crack them open and find data that would tell them who this new enemy was.

  A knock rapped on the back door as she came back down the stairs. She froze. Another knock, less timid, more insistent.

  The front. She could go out the front door. Felix’s key ring should unlock it.

  The knock again.

  Boldness took her. She went to the door. Maybe it was Sam Capra, returned. And she could shoot him in the privacy of the bar.

  Holly Marchbanks opened the door.

  At first in the dim gleam of the alley light she couldn’t see the woman’s face, turned to glance toward the street. Then she turned.

  Diana Keene.

  “Yes?” Holly heard herself ask. Get her inside, she thought. She forced an uncertain smile. “I’m afraid we’re not open.”

  “I…I…I was looking for Felix. I called him and he said to come over.”

  “You must be Diana. Sorry, we’ve had a lot of people wanting to know when we’re reopening. Felix stepped out for just a moment. I’m—Emma.” She said the first name that came to mind, then felt bad, sullying her daughter’s name as a deception. “He should be back in just a minute. He just went to get dinner for you. I’m a friend of his.”

  “And a friend of Sam’s?”

  “Sam is trouble. Felix is a good guy. He thought we could…hide you at my apartment. He probably hadn’t told you that yet. But he has a plan to get you away from all this mess, until we can find your mother.”

  Diana stepped inside.

  Holly shut the door, then locked it with the key ring. A little but important detail to make her look like she belonged.

  “Felix doesn’t like to leave the door unlocked when we’re closed.” She set down the bag containing the laptops by the door.

  “I understand.” Diana stepped into the back of the bar from the rear hallway, toward the open areas, with their neat tables. Her gaze scanning the room.

  “Are you all right?” Holly pulled her shirt free, with a deft yank, to cover Felix’s gun she’d tucked into her jean
s. The Taser was in the pouch with the laptops.

  “Yes. Just strange to be here.”

  “Do…do you want something to drink?” Holly asked. “The bar’s open. Even when we’re not.” She forced an awkward laugh. I can give her to Belias, and then I really will be free. Me and the kids, we’ll be free of him forever.

  “A drink. No.” Diana crossed her arms, walked toward the bar. She stopped at a spot where bleach had been poured on the concrete. “The Russian man died right there. The blood is all gone.”

  “Felix…and I…cleaned it up when the police were done.” Holly’s voice sounded flat. What if she realizes I’m lying? She’d have to force Diana into the car. Or knock her out, and get her into her Mercedes, which was parked down the street, without anyone seeing. Kidnapping wasn’t so easy, especially on your own. Or convince her that Felix wanted to meet her somewhere else and that they’d have to drive. That would be easier…

  “I left a message here,” Diana said. “Felix put it by the cash register.”

  Holly went toward the register, but in the mirrored bar back she watched Diana step away from where the Russian died and stroll along where the tables and chairs sat, back in the proper and orderly positions. She didn’t speak, shoulders hunched. Dropping to one knee, looking under the tables.

  She didn’t want me to see her do that, Holly realized. “Are you looking for something?”

  Five seconds ticked by. “No.” Diana stood. “I was looking for…the blood. I dreamt about it.”

  “You sure you don’t want a drink? I could use one.” Maybe she could get her drunk. That would be a help.

  “Okay,” Diana said.

  “What would you like?”

  “Wine. Whatever’s open.” But Diana kept glancing around, as though she expected to find something, see something.

  Holly went behind the bar, glanced along the wall till she saw the squat glass-fronted double refrigerator, knelt, grabbed an already open bottle of Riesling. She put it on the bar. She pulled down two wineglasses but she could feel the weight of Diana’s stare on her back.

  Did I take too long? Holly thought.

  “How do you know Felix?”

  “I used to work with him at another bar. We’re old friends.” She forced her hand to be steady as she gushed the golden wine into the glasses.

  “Really? He and my mom are friends.”

  Holly recorked the Riesling, slid one of the glasses toward Diana. She left the bottle out.

  Diana didn’t touch her wine while Holly took a long sip. “My message?”

  Holly set down the wineglass. “You said he put it by the cash register?” She ran a finger along the edge of the register. “It’s not here.”

  “What did he tell you about me?” Diana took a fortifying sip of the Riesling.

  “Just that you were a good person who needed help.”

  Diana took another gulp of wine. “Doesn’t this bar serve food? Couldn’t Felix have cooked something here?”

  “Well, yes, but that food belongs to the bar. Sam watches the food expenses like a hawk.”

  The mention of Sam seemed to upset her; Holly watched Diana take another long sip of wine. “The Russian…did the police tell you who he was? The news reports didn’t say.”

  “His name was Rostov. Felix told me.” Holly leaned forward like they were gossiping. “He used to be Russian Special Forces.”

  “And Sam killed a guy like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh,” Diana said. “I guess he didn’t need my help.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the other guy was going to shoot Sam, in the alley, I stopped him. I’m glad I didn’t have to stop the Russian.”

  A chill touched Holly. “You stopped him?”

  “I hit him in the head with a board.” Diana almost sounded proud. “I hope that still counts with Sam. He might not be very happy with me right now.”

  “That was very brave of you.” The words felt molten in Holly’s throat.

  “That jerk was going to shoot so I hit him. Hard as I could, but I guess it wasn’t hard enough because he ran and it said on the news there were no arrests yet.”

  Holly nodded as though her head were moved by a string. Roaring pounded in her ears.

  “He hasn’t come back here?”

  “I don’t think so.” Holly stared at the woman who’d killed the father of her children, the love of her life.

  Why had Belias lied to her? Maybe Glenn lied. Or was confused as to who hit him. His injury…Diana had killed him. She had just admitted it.

  “Could you please call Felix? And tell him I’m here?”

  “Of course I can call Felix.” Holly went to the bar’s phone. She dialed the first six numbers, not a seventh. “Felix? Hi, your friend is here.” Paused, flexed a smile at Diana in the bar’s mirror, still cracked by the bullet from the night Diana’d come into the bar. “She’s understandably anxious, yes. All right.” This was her chance, say that Felix needed them someplace else. If she asked to talk to Felix, though, then that was not going to happen, and in the mirror she saw Diana’s hand reaching toward the phone…

  And then a pounding noise.

  Not at the back door or at the front.

  It was the storage room door.

  Diana turned toward the noise, then back to Holly, and Holly slammed the Riesling bottle into the young woman’s jaw. Diana fell, terror in her eyes, hands clawing against the concrete floor and the mahogany of the bar. She nearly sat on the old-fashioned brass footrail that circled the bar, a few inches above the floor.

  Holly vaulted over the bar.

  “No! No!” Diana cried out in terror, kicking out at Holly. She wasn’t a fighter, but she landed the kick square into Holly’s flat stomach.

  A cold, hard rage filled Holly. “You killed him! You killed him!” she screamed.

  “Please don’t, don’t!” Diana screamed back. Holly powered a fist into the girl’s nose—she felt blood spurt against her fingers.

  “You killed him!” She grabbed Diana’s hair, clenched a fist down to the scalp, hammered her head back against the side of the mahogany bar worn smooth by elbows over the years. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Diana was silent. Holly let go of her hair. The woman’s head lolled back, as though she’d crept into sleep. Her mouth and jaw hung slack, her eyes open.

  “Wait, wait,” Holly managed to sputter. Her fingertips—her manicured nails broken on two fingers—went to the younger woman’s throat.

  The edge of the bar. Unyielding, hard wood. She’d struck Diana’s neck against the edge…too hard. The wrong angle.

  I killed her.

  She thought she would be sick, bile roiling up in her throat like heat.

  But she killed Glenn.

  The two thoughts tore at her as if they were razors.

  Behind her the pounding on the door grew louder.

  She crabbed away from the dead woman’s body, hurried to the phone. Dialed Belias.

  No answer. She glanced at the clock—the meeting with Sam Capra was on now. She hung up the phone. She grabbed a rag off the bar back and wiped the phone, then wiped every place she had touched. The railing. The bar. The refrigerator.

  Then she knelt again by the body.

  The pounding on the supply door ceased. The sudden quiet frightened her. Diana didn’t carry a purse. Maybe she’d left it in her car. She searched the woman’s pockets. A small wallet with thirty-odd dollars. A set of BMW car keys attached to a pepper spray that might have saved her if she’d used it fast enough. A cell phone, the screen cracked and broken.

  She stood and stared down at the young woman’s body. “You shouldn’t have hurt him.”

  The storage door began to shudder in its frame. Felix had found something inside to use as a ram. He must have cut himself loose from the cuffs. The knob began to rattle.

  She ran. She forgot the bag with the laptops and bolted out the back door. The key for Diana’s car was a
BMW and Holly ran down the street until she saw one. Tried the key. Nothing. She ran down and saw another BMW, an older model. She got inside, shut the door, began to search the car.

  No disc to hold a video. No flash drive, nothing. A bag with some clothes, nothing else.

  She forced herself to slow down. To search more carefully.

  She jumped at a knock on the driver’s side window.

  “What?” she half screamed.

  “Are you pulling out?” A man, smiling, hopeful he’d found that elusive San Francisco prey, a parking spot.

  “No!” she yelled and the man retreated back to his car.

  The video wasn’t in here.

  The trunk?

  She got out of the car, stood, and she saw Felix bolting down the street, scanning, searching for her and his eyes locked on hers. He held a battered fire extinguisher in his bloodied hands.

  She dropped back into the BMW, locked the doors. She revved the car out of the way just as Felix reached her. She floored it, the tires gripping on the incline of the hill, her laying on the horn.

  The guy who’d wanted her parking space blocked her five spots up, turn signal on, waiting for a slot to open.

  The fire extinguisher smashed into the passenger window. Starring it into a broken galaxy of rings.

  Holly floored the accelerator, took off, wheeling around the stopped car, headfirst into oncoming traffic. Horns blared. Headlights dazzled her eyes. She levered the wheel over, blasting back into the correct lane.

  She stared at the rearview. Felix Neare stood in the street, watching her run.

  Holly pulled off the road when she got closer to the safe house. She carefully searched the car. Inch by inch. No sign of a flash or portable computer drive that could have held the video Diana had. Nothing. A cheap bag with one pair of jeans, underwear still in the package, a couple of new T-shirts. The girl on the run, trying to make her dollars last so Belias wouldn’t find her. Waiting for her mom to come home, not wanting to send her mom to jail. A blanket on the backseat.

  Diana Keene had been running and hiding and sleeping in this car.

  But the video about Belias and his network, the nuclear bomb of evidence that could vaporize her life, was still somewhere out there.