by Lee Goldberg
“It means there’s a conspiracy,” Ian said.
“How do you figure that?”
“Because there had to be other people involved in this besides Waldo. Someone was out there watching these two men meet and spotted Briana Clemens taking a selfie that might have captured it going down. Someone was worried that once the news broke about the murders, there was a slim chance that Clemens would recognize Reynoso in the photo and go to the police. She had to die before the murders hit the national news. That means they knew when the bodies would be discovered and Reynoso would be killed. There’s only one way that’s possible.”
“If it’s all a setup,” Margo said.
“It has to be or they wouldn’t have killed her on the remote possibility she could become a risk,” Ian said. “And we’re talking about people who have the resources to learn who she was, get her travel itinerary, and send Waldo after her. I think this is more than a setup. It’s part of a much bigger scheme.”
“What is there to gain from murdering two women in San Diego and making the fall guy a convicted rapist from Mexico?”
“I don’t know, but the answers aren’t here. They’re at home.”
“I’ll get us on the first flight back tonight,” Margo said, gathering up her stuff, a smile on her face. “In the meantime, I’ll send Waldo’s picture to the Agency and see if they can ID him.”
“Why are you smiling?” Ian asked, closing up his laptop.
“Because you did it again, just like I knew you would. You started working on a Straker story and uncovered a real-life conspiracy along the way.”
She was right and it made him both proud of himself and frightened. Once again, he was the spoiler of a deadly conspiracy, which meant he could soon become a target himself if he wasn’t one already. He glanced up at the sky and wondered if maybe he should have brought Ronnie’s aluminum hat and white-noise device after all.
Then again, maybe he was exaggerating the significance of whatever this conspiracy was. Maybe it wasn’t as big or as dangerous or as global as what he’d uncovered before.
“Just because I’ve discovered a conspiracy, it doesn’t mean that it’s a job for the CIA,” Ian said as they got up and started walking back across the plaza toward their hotel. “It could be tawdry and domestic.”
“Who else besides a rival intelligence agency has the resources to mount this kind of operation and send a professional assassin here to kill the couple and make it look like an accident?”
“I can think of all kinds of possible bad guys. It could be some billionaire who either murdered his cheating wife or a mistress who was blackmailing him or both and framed an illegal alien for it.”
“That’s a stretch,” she said.
“I’m just getting started. It could be American nationalists trying to create a crisis on the Mexican border to force the US government into taking harsher measures on immigration. Or it could be Dwight Edney trying to start a war with Mexico to jack up his ratings. Or it could be Ernst Stavro Blofeld in a secret base in a dormant volcano, stroking his white cat and plotting world domination.”
“Let’s go with Blofeld in the volcano,” Margo said. “Out of all of those plots, it sounds like the most fun.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When Ian and Margo got back to the hotel, Beatriz was at the front desk along with the bellman, a ferret-faced, skinny man in a pillbox hat, bow tie, and a red, oversize waistcoat that made him look like a child playing dress-up. His name tag read DUDA.
On impulse, Ian approached Beatriz and showed her the photo of Waldo that he’d sent to his phone. “Have you seen this man before?”
She glanced at the photo. “Yes, I have.”
Ian and Margo shared a look.
“When and where?” Ian asked.
“He checked in the same night as the couple you’re interested in,” Beatriz said and began typing something on her computer.
“I’m surprised you remember it so clearly,” Ian said.
“We don’t often have guests who get killed. I’ll probably always remember everything about them, from the day they arrived until the day they fell, including the other guests who checked in.” She looked from the screen to Margo. “This is an odd coincidence.”
“What is?” Margo asked.
“The gentleman you’re asking about was booked in your room.”
The room right next door to the one Clemens and Rolfe were staying in.
And Waldo had their key.
It wasn’t a coincidence. Now Ian was certain that Rolfe hadn’t lost his room key. Waldo had lifted it from his pocket at some point during their walking tour of Porto.
Waldo came to Porto to kill the couple. He was following them until he saw an opportunity to do the deed and make it look accidental. And if that failed, Waldo had their room key. He could murder them in their bed if he had to, then make it look like they’d OD’d or something.
“When did the man check out?” Ian asked.
“The day the couple died,” Beatriz said.
“Can you tell us his name?”
“No,” Beatriz said, glancing uncomfortably at the bellman before looking back at them. “I’ve probably told you too much as it is. Why do you ask?”
“Because he killed them,” Margo said.
Ian gave Margo a sharp look, then smiled at Beatriz. “Margo is joking, of course. We just thought he might have befriended them while they were here and could tell us more about how they spent their time.”
“Before he killed them,” Margo said.
“Sorry I can’t help you,” Beatriz said. “Perhaps you should speak to the police.”
“Good idea,” Margo said. “Did the detective leave a card?”
“Yes, he did.” Beatriz opened a drawer, pulled out a card, and placed it on the counter.
Margo took a picture of it. “Thanks!”
Beatriz put the card back in the drawer and slammed it shut with her hip. “Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you,” Ian said. “We’ll be checking out today.”
Beatriz flashed her customer service smile, but Ian thought she also looked relieved that they were leaving. “I hope you had a pleasant stay.”
“It was delightful.” Ian smiled and headed to the elevators with Margo, asking her in a near whisper: “Why did you tell the clerk that he killed them?”
“I wanted to see how she’d react.”
“Are you planning to call the police?”
“Of course not. I just wanted to see how far she’d go with it,” she said. “She’s clean. She wouldn’t have given me the cop’s card if she’d been involved with Waldo.”
The elevator doors opened.
“That’s ridiculous,” Ian said as they stepped inside. “Why would she have been involved with Waldo?”
Margo shrugged. “You never know.”
That was when he remembered that Beatriz ratting out Straker to the couple’s killer was how he’d ended his imaginary scene, but he didn’t tell Margo that.
The elevator doors closed and they went up to their rooms.
Duda the bellman waited until the couple was gone, then turned to Beatriz and told her that he was stepping outside for a smoke.
He walked out of the hotel and around the corner onto Rua do Dr. Ricardo Jorge, where Beatriz couldn’t see him. But Duda didn’t really want a cigarette. He took out his phone, then opened his wallet for the slip of paper the man in the photograph had given him with half of a torn hundred-euro bill clipped to it. The bellman dialed the number on the paper. The call was answered after a few rings.
“Yes?” The man sounded drowsy, clearly awakened from sleep, his reply escaping through barely opened lips and articulated with a heavy, dry tongue.
“This is the bellman at the Almada Regent in Porto,” Duda said in English. “Do you remember me?”
“Yes.” This time the response was sharp, firmly articulated. The man was alert now.
“You gave me
half of a hundred-euro note. You said you’d give me the other half if anybody ever came asking about you and I called to tell you about it. Do you remember this?”
“Yes.” Now he sounded irritated. It was interesting to Duda how a single word, spoken in different ways, could convey so much.
“Someone came.”
“Who?”
“An American writer named Ian Ludlow and a woman named Margo French. They were asking about the American couple who were staying here, the ones who died in a fall off the Miradouro da Vitória. They showed us your picture and asked if we knew you,” Duda said. “The woman said you killed them.”
“You said us. Who else was with you?”
The bellman thought it was odd the man had nothing to say about the woman’s accusation. “Beatriz, the desk clerk.”
“What did Beatriz tell them?”
“That you stayed here, but nothing else. She let the woman take a picture of the business card the police left with us and that was it,” Duda said. “Do I get the other half of the note?”
“I’ll send a friend to you soon with the other half and another hundred to forget we ever spoke.”
“It’s already forgotten.” The bellman disconnected the call. Duda didn’t ask if the man killed the couple because he was afraid of the answer.
Nice Nite Motel. Rio Grande City, Texas. November 13. 5:15 a.m. Central Standard Time.
Magar Orlov sat up shirtless in bed, his back against the headboard, and removed the SIM card from his burner phone immediately after finishing the call with the bellman.
“Who was that?” Beth Wheeler asked.
She was lying on her side, staring at him from the other double bed. The two feet of space between their beds might as well have been the Grand Canyon. She’d made it very clear she had no interest in sleeping with him.
They were in a cinder block motel room that reeked of industrial-strength disinfectant. The TV was bolted to the wall and the lamps were glued to the nightstands. He’d been in prison cells with more charm and thicker mattresses.
“The bellman at the hotel in Porto,” Magar said and he gave her the details as he got up in his boxer shorts, went into the bathroom, and flushed the SIM card down the toilet along with his future as a field agent. He stood in the bathroom doorway and faced her when he was done talking.
Her eyes were cold and her face was rigid. She definitely would never sleep with him now. This was a simple kill and somehow, inexplicably, he’d failed. He’d be working a desk somewhere very cold for the rest of his career.
She threw off the thin sandpaper sheets and got out of bed in her tank top and panties. “How did they get on to you?”
“I have no idea,” he said.
It was an honest answer. Magar couldn’t think of a single mistake that he’d made. He’d been meticulous and professional in Porto, constantly checking whether he was under any surveillance or if the couple was aware that they were. He was certain the couple had never suspected they were in any danger. He’d always remember the look of bewilderment and fear in the woman’s eyes after her fall and right before he smashed her skull in with a rock to finish her off.
Was he equally clueless? Did he have that look in his eyes now?
Beth went to her knapsack and pulled out one of her burner phones. “You must have fucked up in a big way.”
“No,” he said emphatically. “Something else is at work here. I didn’t make any mistakes.”
“Obviously you’re wrong or two civilians wouldn’t have discovered that you murdered Clemens and her boyfriend.”
“We don’t know that Ludlow and French are civilians,” Magar said. “They could be CIA agents.”
Beth laughed and somehow it was as emasculating to him as a knife swipe to his scrotum, something he knew Beth enjoyed doing to her male adversaries.
“Ian Ludlow is a famous author. He writes spy novels, but he’s definitely not a spy himself.”
“How can you be sure?” He was afraid that he’d heard a squeal in his voice, that he was already a soprano.
“It’s clear from the idiotic shit that he writes.”
“You’ve read his books?”
“I picked up one of his Straker novels to blend in on a train ride once and to keep anyone from engaging me in a conversation. The book was a stupid male fantasy that had no relation to actual spy craft and represented everything that’s wrong with American popular culture.”
“Maybe his books are intentionally unrealistic so nobody will question his cover as a bestselling novelist.”
“Or you screwed up big-time. Which explanation do you think is the most likely to be true?” Beth said, then held up her phone. “I have to notify Moscow about this.”
Magar knew what explanation the Kitchen would pick. He just hoped their solution to the problem wouldn’t be to order Beth to put a bullet in his skull. If it was, he would see it in her eyes and kill her first. He was devoted to his country, but even more to self-preservation.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Top Chef Catering. Khimki, Moscow Oblast. November 13. 3:06 p.m. Moscow Standard Time.
Kirk Cannon sat in a fourth-floor editing room, watching footage on a computer screen of the president of the United States being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes and thought about unintended consequences.
“The balance of world power will be changed forever because actors hate to loop,” Cannon said.
“Loop?” asked Viktor, who sat beside him, manning the keyboard while the software analyzed the presidential footage.
“It’s Hollywood slang for rerecording dialogue after the film has been shot,” Cannon said.
As a tremendously gifted and tragically unappreciated actor himself, Cannon understood why his fellow thespians hated looping. They had to stand in a recording booth and repeat their lines while watching the film, re-creating the emotion of the scene, staying in character, and exactly matching the timing of how they delivered their dialogue the first time to match up with their flapping lips on-screen.
Or they had to record entirely new dialogue, usually heard in the final cut on the back of their heads or on someone else’s close-up to avoid lip-synch problems. This kind of looping was done to cover chunks of a scene that were edited out to make the film move faster, or to correct continuity errors, or to make up for a bad performance.
Looping was miserable, difficult work but it was a necessary part of filmmaking. It could also be inconvenient and costly for the studio if the actor was in some far-flung location, shooting another movie or on a vacation, when they were needed to record new dialogue. The producers had to either bring the actor back to Los Angeles for a day or two of recording or fly the director to the actor, book a recording studio, and hire audio engineers wherever that place might be.
“I don’t record any audio in my movies while I’m shooting,” Viktor said. “I record all the sound and dialogue later, like the great Italian director Sergio Leone did.”
But the audio in Viktor’s movies, amateur skin flicks uploaded to Pornhub, were mostly moans and groans of fake ecstasy. There wasn’t much dialogue and acting certainly wasn’t an issue. Cannon knew this because Viktor had screened some of his awful porn for him, eager for advice from a renowned master of the cinematic arts. Viktor’s skill was altering existing video content for fake news, not creating films of his own. But Cannon took pity on him and said he had a “unique artistic vision,” which wasn’t exactly a lie. His vision just happened to be shit.
“I still don’t see why the actors have a problem with recording the audio later,” Viktor said. “It’s easy. They don’t have to memorize their lines, get naked, or put their hand up in anyone’s ass. They can just read their lines off the script and concentrate on the words.”
“It’s hard to recapture a character, and an emotional moment, that you shot weeks or months ago, especially if you’re already in the middle of filming a new role,” Cannon said, trying to sound wise and not condescend
ing to his disciple. “On top of that, there are the technical problems of trying to match your performance to the footage. There are actors who can’t do both.”
Viktor nodded toward the screen. “That won’t be an issue anymore.”
No, it wouldn’t.
A few days earlier, Cannon had read an article about how the company behind the most popular film-editing software in Hollywood had developed a new audio feature that eliminated the need for looping. All a director needed was twenty minutes of an actor talking and the software could flawlessly re-create his dialogue or put new words in his mouth, and could even match the performance.
The company had secretly tested the software to loop the audio of a famous actor who’d died of a drug overdose shortly after he’d completed filming his part in a $100 million science fiction movie. Nobody noticed the tinkering.
But the software company didn’t consider the real-world security and ethical implications of their postproduction breakthrough until word leaked about their work. Now they were indefinitely delaying release of the software until they could come up with safeguards against misuse or at least until their lawyers could compose a half-assed “ethical statement” to put on the box.
The Kitchen wasn’t waiting. At Cannon’s insistence, their hackers had broken into the company’s computers and stolen the program. Now they were inputting the US president’s voice into the software to use for their own diabolical purposes. And that was what prompted Cannon’s musing on unintentional consequences.
“It’s done,” Viktor said. “All you have to do is type what you want the president to say and he will say it.”
He slid the keyboard over to Cannon and turned up the volume on the speakers. If it worked, he believed this technological innovation could speed up their operation in America by weeks.
Cannon was about to type a sentence for the president to speak when Leonid Morzeny burst into the editing room like Kramer coming into Seinfeld’s apartment and almost tripped over his untied sneakers in the process.
“Here you are,” Morzeny said, catching his breath. “I’ve been looking all over the building for you. What are you doing down here?”