“Maybe in a little bit,” she said. “When we’re done with the tour.”
“Ah, yes, my artwork,” he said. “I’ll be sure to show you that after.”
“After what?”
Viktor stepped toward Elizabeth, reaching for her shoulder and the strap of her dress. “After this.”
“Not so fast,” she said, putting a hand over his. “If you want to see what’s underneath, you’re going to have to earn it.”
“Earn it?”
“Yes. You heard me.” She cocked her hip, teasing him. “Do you think you’re up for it?”
It was the daily double of male button pushing. The prospect of sex combined with challenging his masculinity. Viktor was suddenly putty in her hands.
“Darling,” he said, “I’m up for anything.”
“Good.” Elizabeth took a step back and peeled a strap off her shoulder. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER 75
I KEPT staring through the crack of the stairwell door, waiting for Viktor’s door to open. What’s taking so long? Where are you, Elizabeth?
“Any longer and I’ll have to open another bottle of Scotch,” came Julian’s voice in my ear.
“Don’t get hammered on me now,” I whispered. “I need you sharp.”
“Hammered is when I’m at my sharpest, old friend. You know that.”
I did. I also knew it was weird to have Julian inside my head, courtesy of the earpiece he’d given me. It had GPS and cellular built in, too, and it was still no bigger than a raisin. Eat your heart out, Q.
“Should I do something?”
“Like what?” asked Julian.
“I don’t know. Knock on the door maybe.”
“You mean, ruin the whole plan?”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yes, and you’re already doing it,” he said. “Be patient. Elizabeth knows how to take care of herself.”
“I know she does.”
“It’s not weird, in case you’re wondering. Caring about her the way you do.”
“Who said it was weird?” I asked.
“Exactly. You’re just being human.”
Jesus. Julian really was inside my head. I was about to tell him to cut it out when I saw Viktor’s door open. Elizabeth appeared. Alone. Right according to plan. I quickly slipped off my loafers on the stairwell landing and made a beeline to her.
“You’ve got to be quick,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“No. I mean, you need to be really, really quick. I don’t know how much longer I can hold him off. I’m only wearing so much.”
“What does that mean?”
“I told Viktor I’d take something off for every shot of vodka he does. He’s now chilling shot glasses while I’m supposedly in the bathroom.”
I quickly looked her up and down. Two Louboutins, one dress, and whatever was underneath it. She was right; she wasn’t wearing much. “I hope your jewelry counts,” I said.
“And I hope it doesn’t come to that.” She stepped back and pointed. “Down the hall, second door on your left. There’s a laptop on the desk.”
“Wait. Where?”
“Viktor’s office,” she said. “It’s—”
“No, I was talking to Julian,” I explained, pointing to my ear.
He was trying to tell me something. Suddenly, I was whipping my head around to look at the elevator.
“What is it?” asked Elizabeth.
“We’ve got company,” I said. “Someone’s coming up.”
“What?”
As soon as the word left her mouth she knew she’d been loud. Way too loud.
“Did you say something, darling?” came Viktor’s voice, calling out to her.
There was no time to think, and only two ways to go. In or out.
Elizabeth decided for me, pulling me inside the apartment. “The office,” she said. “Go!”
CHAPTER 76
I TOOK off down the hall, racing in my socks so fast I nearly slid right past Viktor’s office. I saw his desk. I saw his laptop. The problem was what I couldn’t see.
“Julian, tell me that’s Viktor’s neighbor in the elevator,” I said.
Julian was more than the voice in my ear. He was also the eyes in the back of my head. Once I told him where Viktor lived he was able to hack the building’s security system by ghosting the IP address of the off-site monitoring company. He could see what every camera could see. The entrance and exits. The lobby and the elevators. Especially the lone elevator that serviced only the penthouse floor.
“No such luck,” said Julian. “It’s not the neighbor.”
The way he said it, I knew it was trouble.
Julian told me who it was the second the doorbell rang. Of all the gin joints in all the towns …
The man who’d paid a visit to me as Benjamin Al-Kazaz was now standing outside Viktor’s apartment. Check that. He was about to be inside the apartment.
I listened as Viktor opened the door and greeted him. I couldn’t make out their conversation all the way down the hall, but they definitely knew each other.
Then suddenly I could hear every word of what they were saying. Along with their footsteps getting closer.
“This way,” said Viktor. “Let’s go into my office.”
I spun in my socks, looking for a place to hide. My heart was pounding, the panic setting in. There was no closet. No bathroom. No balcony. The one couch in the office was perpendicular to the door; I couldn’t duck behind it.
I had only one choice. The curtains.
They were pulled back, bunched and long, the bottoms touching the floor. If they could hide my feet, they could hide the rest of me. Maybe.
Quickly, I slipped behind them doing a vertical limbo. All I could do was stand like a statue and hope that the first thing to see in Viktor’s office wasn’t a man trying to hide behind the curtains.
Don’t swallow. Don’t breathe. Don’t even blink.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” asked Viktor.
Good question. Thankfully, it wasn’t directed at me.
There was a pause—a long pause—before Viktor got a response. The voice was the same as I remembered from my apartment, but the tone was drastically different. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
My gut had told me that Al-Kazaz and the Mudir were one and the same. Whatever doubt I still had disappeared in that very moment. I didn’t need to see him. Hearing him was enough. It was the way he chillingly delivered the line, a simple question. What did you say?
Only it wasn’t really a question. It was a reminder. No one talked to the Mudir like that. And just to make sure? He added his own special punctuation.
Click.
Sometimes it takes the cocking of a hammer to drive a point home.
Consider it driven. Viktor immediately apologized, his voice trembling. He was suddenly a guest in his own home.
“I know, I know. I should’ve returned your calls,” said Viktor. “I was afraid to disappoint you.”
“Then don’t,” said the Mudir. “Where’s my package? What’s the delay?”
“Please lower the gun.”
“Answer the question. What’s the delay?”
“It’s customs,” said Viktor. “It’s being held up at customs.”
“You said you had that covered.”
“I do. Everything’s going to be fine. I’ve been assured the shipment will be cleared by the end of next week.”
“That’s too long. The timeline has changed. Things will be happening faster,” said the Mudir. “You’ve got twenty-four hours.”
I had one ear trained on the conversation. In my other ear was Julian asking me if I was okay. If I had a third ear I maybe would’ve heard the footsteps out in the hallway.
“There you are!” said Elizabeth. I knew the second she saw Viktor, she’d also see his guest—and his gun. Her reaction was pure reflex. “Oh.”
As in, Oh, shit.
The G42 is the smal
lest Glock there is, and I knew exactly where Elizabeth was hiding it. She had it strapped to the inside of her leg underneath her dress.
“My goodness. I can’t imagine what this must look like,” said Viktor. “Elizabeth, I want you to meet a good friend of mine.”
I slowly reached inside my jacket, feeling for the grip of my own Glock. There was no telling how the Mudir would respond, but I could feel Viktor silently pleading with him to play along.
He did. “I’m Benjamin,” he said. “Benjamin Al-Kazaz.” As liars go, at least he was consistent.
He offered no explanation for the gun in his hand. Nothing more about himself. But he was very curious about Elizabeth.
“What’s your last name?” he asked.
“It’s Johnson,” she said.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m an interior designer.”
I waited for the Mudir’s next question, but all I heard was silence. It was the loudest, most threatening stretch of dead air I’d ever encountered. The Mudir knew who Elizabeth really was.
“You’re no interior designer,” he said.
CHAPTER 77
ALL HELL broke loose. All at once.
I sprang from behind the curtains as the Mudir raised his arm to shoot Elizabeth. Viktor was screaming at him, “No!”
From the corner of his eye, the Mudir spotted me—a sudden distraction enough to shift his aim a couple of clicks to the left of Elizabeth as she dove clear of the doorway.
I closed the gap fast, bull-rushing him before he could swing his gun my way. I wanted him down but not dead. He knew too much. Too many secrets. The Mudir was more than a terrorist; he was the terrorist, the one behind the Times Square bombings and whatever else he was planning.
Had we hit the floor clean, I would’ve owned all the leverage, but my momentum carried us onto the back of the couch. As we careened into a bookcase, he was able to break free.
“Freeze!” yelled Elizabeth.
As fast as she was with her G42, the Mudir was even faster. By the time she was back in the doorway with him dead in her sights, he’d grabbed Viktor.
“Think again,” said the Mudir, his gun pressed hard against the side of Viktor’s head.
I didn’t know if I was more relieved or impressed. The Mudir could’ve killed me instead of going after Viktor, but he knew Elizabeth was surely packing as well. If he pulled the trigger on me, he would’ve been a dead man, too.
The Mudir was smart, all right. But how smart?
“Go ahead,” I told him, pointing at Viktor. “Kill him.”
The look on Viktor’s face. As if he weren’t scared shitless enough. The look from Elizabeth, too. She knew what I was doing. It was one thing she couldn’t do because of her badge.
But the only look that really mattered was the Mudir’s. I needed that grin on his face to go away. I needed to see a flash of fear, the sudden realization that maybe he hadn’t thought this all the way through.
Instead, he simply smiled wider. Nice try, he was telling me.
It didn’t matter whether I gave a shit about Viktor Alexandrov or not. As long as the Mudir had his gun jammed against the Russian’s head, he was walking out of that apartment. Alive.
With a couple of choice thoughts for me, as well.
“You’re out of your depth, Dr. Reinhart,” said the Mudir. “What brought you here tonight will only get you killed.”
“I’ll consider myself warned,” I said.
The most unsettling thing about the Mudir in that moment wasn’t the fact that he was threatening to kill Viktor. Or that he didn’t seem to care that there were two Glocks aimed right at him.
No, the most unsettling thing was that he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was relishing the moment. It was as if he lived to be this close to death. His and everyone else’s.
I had too much history with this. Too many encounters. Standing in that room, there was no shaking the feeling. One of us was about to die.
CHAPTER 78
JULIAN HAD been listening the entire time. I knew he didn’t want to say anything, not even a whisper, lest he distract me for even a millisecond. But there was one question he had to ask. “Do you want backup? Clear your throat if you do.”
I didn’t clear my throat.
I was sure Julian understood why. That’s why he asked. Otherwise he would’ve already made the call.
He knew the circumstances of how Elizabeth and I were in Viktor’s apartment. As operations went, this was beyond unsanctioned. Even worse, I had involved the mayor. He was an unwitting accomplice.
So, no. Elizabeth and I would take our chances. Roll the dice on our own.
“We just need to grab one thing,” said the Mudir, dragging Viktor a few steps back toward his desk. He winked at me. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“We already know where the payments are coming from,” I lied.
The Mudir didn’t ask What payments? It was maybe the first mistake he’d made. Or maybe there was simply no point in his playing dumb. We all knew who everyone was in the room.
“Perhaps you do know. All the same, I think we’ll take it with us anyway.” The Mudir jerked Viktor toward his laptop. “Pick it up,” he said.
Viktor’s hands were trembling. He nearly dropped the laptop twice before securing it against his stomach. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. It was as if he were drowning. A man suddenly realizing that he truly was out of his depth.
Elizabeth caught my eye, mouthing the word No. That’s how well she knew me.
I had the shot. I could put a bullet through the middle of the Mudir’s forehead, ten times out of ten. Eight of those times he’d die without even a twitch, never pulling his trigger. Those were pretty good odds.
But not good enough. Especially because I was nothing more than a civilian. The real reason Elizabeth was saying no was to protect me, not Viktor.
Still, something had to be done. A deal.
“You can’t take him with you,” I said. “We stay and you can go—but only if you go alone.”
The Mudir jammed the barrel of his gun even harder into the side of Viktor’s head. “I’ll do whatever I want.”
“No. You won’t,” I said. “If you take him, you’re taking all of us.”
That seemed to get him thinking. “Maybe if you lower your guns first,” he told us.
It was a lousy counteroffer and he knew it. He was stalling. He began moving for the hallway with his arm still wrapped around Viktor’s neck.
“He stays,” I repeated.
“After he shows me to the door,” said the Mudir. “I am a guest, after all.”
I joined Elizabeth in the hallway, but we stayed back as the Mudir headed for the front door of Viktor’s apartment. He walked backward, his eyes never leaving us, and the sights of our guns never leaving him. When he reached the door, Viktor knew enough to open it for him, shifting his laptop from one hand to the other.
“Now let him go,” I said.
Standing with one foot out in the foyer, the Mudir nodded. “As you wish,” he said. But it was the way he said it.
Only by then it was too late.
CHAPTER 79
LIKE A magician, the Mudir made a show of reaching for Viktor’s laptop while releasing him from his grasp. All eyes were where the Mudir wanted them to be. On the laptop. Not his gun.
By the time Elizabeth and I blinked, the Mudir had sidestepped out of the apartment. Now all we could see was the gun.
Viktor was staying, all right, along with everything he could tell us about the Mudir. It was all staying with him forever.
Bam!
The shot was so clean, so straight, that the blood didn’t splatter. It gurgled. Then poured.
Viktor’s right temple turned into a spigot of red as he spun downward, his legs collapsing beneath him. It was impossible not to watch, and again the Mudir was banking on it. We were frozen. Only for a few seconds, but it was all the time he needed f
or his head start. That and the length of the hallway that separated us.
“Me!” I said to Elizabeth, finally taking off. Me, as in, not you. As in, the one with the badge stays with the body.
“I can’t see him,” came Julian’s voice in my ear. He was checking all the security cameras. He didn’t need to be told what had happened. “Watch your front.”
The Mudir could’ve been right by the elevator waiting for me. Only he wasn’t. By the time I slid to a stop—damn these socks—and peeled around Viktor’s front door, the only thing to be seen beyond the barrel of my gun was the door to the stairwell closing shut. As much as the Mudir wanted me dead, he wanted out of that building more.
“Shit!”
“What is it?” asked Julian.
I’d reached the stairs only to suddenly stop on the landing. “He took my shoes.”
I could practically hear the Mudir laughing. It wasn’t that I couldn’t chase him without shoes, it’s that he knew I’d come to a stop once I saw they were gone. That’s just the way the mind works.
The Mudir’s racing footsteps floors below were echoing all around me now. There was still a slim chance I could catch him. But I didn’t budge.
Instead, I sat down and simply exhaled. Shoes or no shoes, I realized that ultimately catching the Mudir would have nothing to do with my feet. It was all between the ears. I’d have to outthink him.
“He just hit the lobby,” said Julian. “Elvis has left the building.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You still there?” Julian finally asked.
“Yeah. Still here.”
“You okay?”
“I will be.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said. “Okay, say it with me now.”
I knew what was coming. Of his many eclectic pursuits and interests, World War II held a special place in Julian’s heart. Most people fixated on the musings of Winston Churchill. Julian, however, was more partial to quoting Charles de Gaulle. Go figure.
“C’mon, don’t leave me hanging,” he said before switching to his horrible French accent. “France has lost a battle …”
It was the accent that got me every time. “But France has not lost the war,” I said.
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