by Seeley James
She stepped into the hall at the same moment Calixthe stepped into the suite. Pia fired three times at Benson. All three misses.
Her hand was shaking. She’d been warned about the body’s response under pressure.
Thomas and Benson turned around, shocked.
She took a breath and fired again, hitting Benson square in the nose. He dropped.
Calixthe was inside, out of sight.
Pia hugged the wall, looking down her Glock’s sight directly at Elgin Thomas. His gun was aimed the wrong way, into the suite, to cover Calixthe. His face looked directly into Pia’s barrel and turned white. Her hand was rock-steady. She held her fire on instinct, motioned instead for him to lie down and toss the gun aside. He complied, lying flat on the far side of the suite’s doorway from Pia. She guessed Calixthe was standing in the doorway ready to shoot anyone who came around the corner—and Pia was doing the same. A classic standoff.
Pia’s mind spun through options and ideas. She could dart Elgin Thomas and go after Calixthe. But her adversary was crafty and tenacious. Pia stood a good chance of losing. She could try to draw the older woman out. Or she could hope Tania would help from inside.
“Hey, Calixthe!” Pia called out. “There’s only one door in that room. Only one way out. Sooner or later you’ll have to face Detective Janko.”
Calixthe stayed silent.
Pia knew what that meant: come and get me.
She patted down David Benson fast while keeping her eyes and her gun trained on Elgin. One P225, one money clip, one stiletto, one phone. She tossed them into the hallway behind her.
Elgin Thomas’s eyes kept darting back and forth from Pia to inside the suite. That could only mean one thing: he was guiding an attack from Calixthe. Those back-and-forth eye movements provided Calixthe intelligence about Pia’s position.
She picked up Benson’s gun, aimed it at Elgin, and rose off her knees to a squat. With her fingers, she indicated he should raise his eyes as if he were watching her stand up. At first he pretended not to understand. She sighted down the barrel of Benson’s gun.
He raised his eyes.
Calixthe’s footfalls were silent, but her creaking ankle gave away her position. If Pia’s calculations were correct, she’d burst around the corner and fire at head level. She might even do it without looking. Pia remained in a crouch, aiming her Glock up and her confiscated P225 at Elgin. Another ankle creak. Another footstep closer. If Elgin gave her away, or if she were wrong, Pia’s life would end in the next ten seconds. It was all she could do not to force the issue by rolling out and firing wildly. Her breathing stopped. Her heart raced.
She caught a shift in Elgin’s pupils. Calixthe’s reflection.
Pia pushed her Glock around the corner and fired three darts.
“Dammit, Pia!” Tania’s voice rang out before Calixthe hit the floor. “You forgot she was mine?”
Chapter 36
* * *
28-May, 3AM
“Sorry,” Pia said.
She heard a body hit the floor. Tania screamed in pain.
Pia looked at Elgin Thomas. She said, “Get up. Unbuckle your belt, drop your pants to your ankles, keep your hands as high as you can get them. Stand in the corner. You move and I’m going to empty Benson’s magazine in you. Got it?”
Elgin nodded and complied.
Behind her, Pia heard a loud gasp.
Down the hall, Klaus stood in the doorway.
Pia rolled her eyes. “It’s OK. Um … Sie sind Räubers, Schurkens. Bad guys. Look, just get Tania, she needs your help. Helfen Tania.”
Klaus flew into the suite, stepping over the bodies in the doorway. He scooped up Tania in one hand, grabbed her crutch with the other, and carried her back to bed.
Pia picked up all the loose items in the hallway and made Elgin drag the bodies into the suite. After a quick look around the hall to make sure everything looked normal, she went inside. Klaus joined her after settling Tania. She held Elgin at gunpoint and called the front desk.
“I need four rolls of duct tape,” she said. “Duct tape. Gray, thick, wide. You know?”
“Klebeband,” Elgin said. “Filament Klebeband.”
“Filament Klebeband,” Pia said. “Right away, bitte.”
Three minutes later she tipped the bellboy ten euros and closed the door.
“Elgin Thomas.” She tossed him a roll of tape. “What’s your real name?”
“Walter Walcott.”
“One thing I’ve learned about your gang is that you guys love using fake names. Not hard to guess you’re not Elgin. But then, Elgin is the boss’s name. And let’s face it, you’re no boss.”
“I could be.”
“You kept looking at Calixthe for answers.”
He blinked his swollen, tired eyes.
“You ready to switch sides, Walter?”
He looked ready.
“Right, I wouldn’t trust you if you said yes. So here’s what you’re going to do. You help Klaus prop these guys up in the dining room chairs and bind them up with Filament Klebeband. Then I’ve got three more stashed across the hall.”
With Walter/Elgin’s help translating, she communicated the work to Klaus and began securing Calixthe Ebokea, David Benson, then Alphonse. When it came time for the detectives, they had a little fun. They propped them in compromising positions and took pictures. Finally, they taped up the polizei with the others. Each prisoner’s wrists were secured to the arm of a chair, each ankle bound to a chair leg. Their heads were held upright with a ligature attached to the chair’s back. When she finished, the dining room looked like a horror-comedy with awkward zombies taped into antique chairs at an elegant table.
“Your turn, Elgin, Walter, whatever your name is. Sit in the chair, Klaus will tape you up. I’m not going to dart you if you talk. As you can see, Calixthe is going to jail. Her operation is done. If you work with me, I’ll help you out as best I can. Calixthe can’t hear you, so you can talk all you want. They’ll all wake up within an hour of each other. Won’t that be fun?”
He looked sick.
“First question, who runs the Cameroon operation?”
“Elgin Thomas.”
“C’mon, tell me the truth.”
“I am.”
“Did you know your buddy Conor Wigan is dead?”
Walter looked up, his eyes searching hers for the truth. She stared back, cold and honest. His face paled as the truth sank in.
“Just before he died, he told me the Swiss ordered Mustafa Ahmadi to kill him. Guess who’s next? Especially since you failed tonight.” Pia leaned toward him while Klaus finished binding his hands to the chair’s armrests.
“Who’s going to take the blame? Calixthe? Oh no. She’s going to nail you, my friend. How does the real Elgin Thomas reward abject failure? The death penalty?”
He glared at the sleeping woman next to him.
“One more time, who runs the Cameroon operation?”
He nodded at Calixthe. “Susan Duncan.”
Pia’s heart stopped. She turned to the pile of phones and guns on the side table and plowed through them until she found Alphonse’s phone. She flipped through the texts.
Alphonse Lamartine:
I am looking for the friend of yours named Elgin Thomas. Berlin four years ago. You have kept in touch?
Susan Duncan:
No. Thought I’d never hear from you again. How have you been?
Alphonse Lamartine:
Fine. Thomas is serious trouble. Murder. Geneva Police, Sabel Security, Interpol.
Susan Duncan:
If I see him, I’ll let him know.
Pia reeled. A coded warning? An innocent inquiry? Official police investigation? How did he know her?
“Who is Susan Duncan?” she asked. “Where is she from? Why was she in Berlin four years ago?”
“How do you know Conor’s dead?”
“I was there.” Pia filled him in. “He never mentioned Calixthe, or Susan Duncan. H
e said Mustafa killed him. I’m guessing Mustafa never did anything unless Calixthe told him to.”
“Well. That’s partly right,” he said. “Bloody little bastard followed her around like a puppy dog until last week. Now he’s full of himself.”
She squinted at Walter. “She was Elgin Thomas? She ran everything?”
His eyes flickered for a second.
“Right now,” Pia said, “the only thing I have on you is guilt by association and pointing a gun at me. With a good attorney, you could probably distance yourself from these guys and slink back to whatever hole in the ground weasels like you live in. All I need from you is enough information to turn the tables on these guys.”
He stared at the wall.
“OK, here’s the deal.” Pia paced the dining room. “You want something. I want something. You help me, I’ll think about helping you. Now tell me what you want.”
“I want to walk out of here.”
“You know, I might actually let you do that.” Pia smirked. “But I’d have to verify your story first. So start talking.”
Walter sighed. “Yeah, she had us call her Elgin Thomas. Even to her face. Calixthe Ebokea was her Cameroon name. Elgin was her business name. Susan Duncan was her real name. Used to be the American liaison to NATO.” He paused. “Hey, you OK love? You’re looking a bit sick. Anyway, Conor was stationed in Stockholm with her when they were young. Had a baby. She was a piss-poor mother. Conor raised that boy alone, best he could. I met them both when I was stationed in Rome. So the deal was, someone asked for a guy named Elgin, it was a sign they were not to be trusted.”
“Wow, you guys are clever. OK, she ran the Cameroon operation. Conor already told me that much. Who was she working with?”
“I don’t know. She and Conor kept the whole thing secret.”
“Le Directeur?” Pia asked.
“Don’t know what you mean. Who’s that?”
“Are you that stupid? Or do you think I am.”
“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Le Directeur, the money laundering in Geneva. How’d you get paid?”
“We’d come up here to Vienna. Me, Conor, and Davey Benson escorting Susan. We’d put up in a little shack across the Danube, then she’d head out to meet someone. Come home with a bag of cash, every time.”
“And as insurance, you followed her a couple times. Just in case she tried to cut you out. Right?”
Walter Walcott’s head spun around to face her, angry and straining against the duct tape.
“Is that what Conor told you?”
“No, you just did. Conor wasn’t bright enough for insurance. Besides, he figured he and Calixthe, or Susan, were married for life. You didn’t have that kind of guarantee. You needed something else. What was it?”
“Married? Calixthe would never marry him. She just let him think that.” He looked down at the table. “Yeah, I followed her. Never figured out much. She met a young man one time. A good-looking woman another. I followed her five times. Three times it was the young man, once the woman. Two weeks ago it was both. Cafe Tirolerhof on Führichgasse every time. The young man was one of those soft types. The woman was either madly in love with him or the best gold digger you ever saw.”
“What language did they speak?”
“Bloody hell, you think I’m that stupid? I never got close enough to hear them. Calixthe would have shot me on the spot.”
Pia pushed between two zombies, leaned across the table, planting her palms in the middle. She asked, “Where is Mustafa Ahmadi?”
He smiled at her. “In the lobby.”
“Nice try,” Pia said. “If he was, you’d never have talked.”
“I have no idea where he is. He came to Brussels with us. Split up at the airport. Never saw him again. But you should be scared. Conor was crazy, but only when he went off his meds. Mustafa’s a real nutcase. He finds you, you’re one dead footballer.”
“Guess he never told you,” Pia said.
Walter looked confused.
“I tackled him after he murdered Clément Marot and turned him over to the police,” she said. “I scared him off on the Rhone. I ran him out of ammunition in Cameroon. He’s actually afraid of me.”
“You bested him? Three times?” Walter Walcott laughed deep enough to make himself cough. Then he cleared his throat. “Well then, you’re just the lass who can help me out. See, I need to get that young man out of my life for good. He plans the same for me as he did for Conor. I could tell something was wrong with him on the flight up here. Knowing he killed Conor, it all makes sense now. So, here’s the deal. You cut me loose, walk me to the door with no guns in your hands, and just before I make a run for it, I tell you where you can find him.”
“That’s funny, Walter. You’re a riot.”
“I’m serious, love. You can have the bugger. You get the killer, I get a chance. What do you Yanks call it? A win-win?”
“OK, you almost got a deal. Almost. First, you tell me how to find le Directeur. That was a code name for the young couple, right? The same way Calixthe was Elgin Thomas?”
“Guess so,” Walter said.
“You followed them but never got close enough to hear them talking. That would be only halfway smart. I think you’re all the way smart. I think you found some way of getting in touch with them just in case something happened to Calixthe, or whatever her name is. Now, you tell me how to find them and I’ll think about helping you out with Mustafa.”
Walter Walcott stared at the table for a long time. Finally, he looked up.
“You’ll think about helping me? You want Mustafa, don’t you?”
“I used to. But now that I know he’s planning to kill you, I’m thinking, what a great opportunity to get rid of you both. I just tell the polizei about him after he kills you and my work in Vienna is done. If you want me to take care of him for you—that’ll cost you.”
Walter shook his head slowly before looking back at her with pathetic, pleading eyes. He said, “How do I know I can trust you?”
Chapter 37
* * *
Geneva, Switzerland
28-May, 6AM
“…because where she goes is important,” the Major said.
Agent Miguel took the keys and the bagged breakfast and headed out into the morning mist without a word.
The Major nodded at the hotel’s doorman, who stepped to the street and hailed her a cab. A block from Joey Campbell’s house, she got out and hiked up the hillside. Walking was a necessary meditation for her. Alone with no distractions, she could untangle webs of deceit.
If Antje Affolter was telling the truth about her affair with Joey Campbell, sometime in the next thirty minutes, she’d scurry from the Campbell’s house and head home. Once the affair was confirmed, the Major would proceed to Bachmann’s house. No matter how she looked at it, the Major couldn’t see Marina Bachmann as capable of hiring assassins. She most likely stood to inherit something of her sister’s but she had no other ties to the banking community. Ramona Wölfli, who would most likely get up some time after ten, was a much better suspect. Not because she hated her husband—which was convenient, believable, and probably honest—but because of her mercenary attitude. Ramona had dismissed Philippe Marot as too young—clearly she saw herself capable of winning another older, wealthier man. Maybe she’d already found one in the money laundering business.
Dawn lightened the eastern sky and the streetlights clicked off. In the dim gray light, she found the view of Lake Léman breathtaking. Early morning bird calls lent music to the scenery. The Major stopped between houses to admire the view. A dome of baby blue sky covered dark blue water surrounded by dark blue mountains. She took a mental picture and kept walking.
Reaching the end of the lane from which she could still observe the Campbell’s residence, she turned around. On cue, Antje tiptoed out of the house, a small bag in her hand, then got into a car and drove off.
The Major put a checkmark
on her mental list: affair confirmed, but still a suspect. The woman knew banking, exhibited bad judgment with Joey, had plenty of financial motive. And her husband had ties to Cameroon. If she were ranking suspects by capability, Antje would take first place. If she ranked them by cold-bloodededness, Antje tied for last with Marina Bachmann. Could Antje be a good actress? The Major had seen plenty of great acting jobs in her time. It was possible.
Turning up the next lane, the Major made the short hike toward the Bachmann residence. Two blocks away, she heard her name called. Marina Bachmann, a dog’s leash in one hand, waved from a side street.
“Major Jackson, out for a morning walk?” Marina said.
“My body’s in a different time zone, so I thought I’d stroll around the lake. Beautiful view.”
“Yes, we love it.” Marina held a knuckle to her lips and winced. “We used to walk the dog together, you know. It was one of our chores as children. She was older and would tell me what to do, so I hated it. Now, I miss the innocent little fights.”
“What did you talk about as adults?” the Major said.
“Gossip. What she heard about this banker, what I heard about that wife.” Marina Bachmann laughed at herself. “Sounds so silly, doesn’t it?”
The Major smiled and winked. “Did she have anything good?”
Marina turned down the sidewalk and motioned for the Major to join her.
“Did you know Antje Affolter was having an affair with that artist, Campbell?”
“No! Really?”
“And Eren Wölfli lived like a Muslim sheik with three wives in his harem.”
“I met Mme. Wölfli,” the Major said in her best conspiratorial voice. “Did he choose the others for the same reason?”
“Eren divorced women for the sin of turning twenty-nine.”
“Where did he find them?”
“Where do you think?”
They both laughed.
“But then,” Marina said, “is it so much worse than older women running around with younger men? They say only young gigolos ski Chamonix now.”
The Major laughed again. “Am I too old to take up skiing?”