A Billion Ways to Die (28 page)

“It’s very good or very bad.”

“What are you going to do?”

I looked around at her.

“Einstein said imagination was more important than knowledge,” I told her. “I could analyze the facts at hand for the rest of my life and not make a better decision than you’ll make in the next ten seconds by simply getting in touch with your feelings.”

“I’m feeling sick,” she said.

“What do we do?”

“Write him back and tell him to expect a bald Caucasian and stylish Japanese woman. But in an hour. Style like mine doesn’t come quickly.” I started to object, but she shut me up with the obvious. “You don’t let me decide then second-guess the decision.”

And that’s how we were walking along the River Limmat, arm in arm. The morning air was cool, even though spring had nearly surrendered to summer and there were flowers aplenty in the parks, planters and window boxes around the city. I was in a light fleece and Natsumi had fulfilled on her promise by wearing a skirt, scarf and suede jacket. I watched men of all ages watch her as she passed by.

We actually managed to be a little early, so we detoured up into the Old Town to use up the extra time.

“What are you thinking?” Natsumi asked as we wove our way through the narrow, ancient streets.

“Nothing. I’m done with all that.”

“Intuition only from now on?”

“You got it.”

“Maybe you should see how this next bit turns out before you decide,” she said.

“If that’s what your intuition is telling you.”

We walked the last block along the river and turned off onto the busy
Quaibrücke.
Captain Perry hadn’t specified which of the two broad sidewalks to meet on, so Natsumi picked the south side, facing the lake.

A few minutes later, her impulse was validated when a tall man who’d been leaning on the railing, looking out over the lake, turned around just as we were approaching. His ball of steel-wool hair might have been a little shorter, and his face a little less tan, but it was unmistakably Jersey Mitchell, former FBI agent, late of the good ship
That’s a Moray
.

He stuck out his hand and Natsumi took it.

“Captain,” she said.

“I almost bought the Jonathan Cornwall routine,” he said to her. “But you never seemed like a Natalie. Ian says hello,” he said to me as we also shook hands. “Or maybe it was ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Can’t remember which.”

“He brought you in,” I said.

“He did. After a fifth of whisky and a serious bout of conscience.”

“Over Angela?”

“Over selling out his former employer. He damn near ate a gun over that one.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He’s in rehab and finally free of that harpy of a wife, so maybe you saved his life.”

“I thought you were retired,” said Natsumi.

He smiled.

“Are you accusing me of deception? Come on, let’s walk and talk,” he said, moving down the sidewalk.

Without going into detail, Jersey told us he was only semiretired, staying in the game by being eyes and ears for the FBI in the Caribbean. That’s why, when Ian contacted him, he was able to pull agents from the Boston field office to pay us a call. No one expected us to dodge the interview.

“A less impressive evasion would have aroused less interest,” he said.

The report from Boston made its way to Washington, which resulted in Jersey being ordered on a plane north. Again, without revealing the FBI’s inner workings, he let us know a very important person wanted Jersey to brief him and only him.

“He’s the real Captain Perry. I just got to borrow the name to get your attention.”

“So you’re not here to arrest us and bring us back to the States,” said Natsumi.

I didn’t like it that he took his time answering.

“That depends,” he said, eventually.

“On what?” I asked.

“How the rest of this conversation goes. Who’s in the mood for coffee and a snack?”

By that time we were well west of the river in an area that was new to me. Jersey seemed to know his way around, however, and we were soon in a booth inside a dark little joint run by a husband and wife. Jersey ordered in German.

“They claim not to speak a lick of English, but everybody in Switzerland speaks a
leetle
,” he said, using the standard Swiss pronunciation.

“You’ll forgive us if we aren’t into small talk,” said Natsumi, “since our lives depend on the quality of the conversation.”

“Not afraid of the quality,” said Jersey. “It’s more about the content.”

“This feels like a game,” she said. “Only we don’t know the rules.”

“The only rule is honesty,” he said.

“Now that we have a table,” said Natsumi, “it would help if we got all the cards out.”

“Spoken like a blackjack dealer,” said Jersey.

“What did Shelly tell you?” I asked.

“Shelly Gross isn’t part of this conversation,” he said. “I’m here as Captain Perry’s proxy. He’s keenly interested in an organization that seems to interest you. There may be a way to work something out that could help you, while helping us, which is why we’re sitting here today.”

“The Société Commerciale Fontaine,” I said.

He nodded, and said, “In particular, Charles Andalusky.”

“He’s dirty,” said Natsumi.

“Is that a question or a statement?” asked Jersey.

“Why the interest in Andalusky?” I asked.

“That’s one of our questions for you.”

Natsumi told him how we’d been woken up on our boat, trussed up and shipped blindfolded to the old fishing scow. How we’d been held in grim metal rooms, then interrogated by Andalusky, drugged, and handed over to mercenaries who ignored his order to kill us. She told a reasonably complete story, while leaving out a lot, including our encounters with the Cuban mercenaries, my brief tenure as a research analyst with Fontaine, Albalita Suarez and Joselito Gorrotxategi, the financial IT wizard I’d helped the FBI ship off to penitentiary oblivion, and thus far the only connection between our past lives and the whole inexplicable swirl that had come since.

“And you have no idea why Andalusky, a man of serious international prestige, would behave in such a way?” he asked.

“We’re hoping you could ask him,” said Natsumi.

The set of Jersey’s shoulders seemed to relax slightly and he sat back in his seat. He took a long sip of his coffee, then said, “That’d be difficult.”

“The FBI’s afraid to talk to some corporate poo-bah?” she asked.

“It’s not that,” he said. “Nobody’s talking to him, now or ever again.”

Which is when I realized the true reason we were having this chat with Jersey Mitchell in the dim little coffee shop in Zurich, Switzerland, and not in a brightly lit, windowless room in some nameless location, or on an official plane on its way back to Washington, DC.

It’s when I saw, among a nearly infinite number of possibilities, one likelihood emerge, one sure outcome coalesce out of the fog of uncertainty. Although I hadn’t thought out all the details. In fact, I hadn’t thought at all. I’d merely felt.

“He’s dead,” I said.

Jersey nodded.

“Shot through the head, sitting in his car in the garage. Not a suicide, unless he figured out how to make the weapon, bullet and shell casing miraculously disappear.”

Natsumi broke the resulting silence during which Jersey’s usually friendly, jovial face seemed to assume a harder set.

“And you know who did this?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “The guy sitting next to you. Arthur Cathcart.”

C
HAPTER
22

S
ometimes an event can alter a person’s life so dramatically that the versions of himself, before and after, are best described as two people. For me, it wasn’t just the bullet in the brain, with all the attendant physical and psychological consequences, it was why it happened, and how. The horror and the violence of it all.

I forgive everyone who calls me lucky. They aren’t wrong, in that I lived, and the aftereffects, while devastating, could have been much worse. Most head trauma of that severity leaves partial amnesia, especially about the trauma itself. Another bit of luck, good or bad, depending on your point of view, is I remembered everything that happened.

I also remembered what I was like in my old life. I knew that person well, and I will never stop envying the extraordinarily blessed life he lived. Blessed most certainly in his innocence, which more than anything was obliterated by the assassin’s bullet.

It would be inconceivable that the blissfully innocent Arthur Cathcart could kill another human being. Not true of Arthur Cathcart’s successors. I’d proven that more than once.

“But you’re not bringing us back to the States,” said Natsumi.

“No,” he said. “Not yet anyway. Captain Perry wants to have a conversation before all that stuff becomes necessary.”

As I listened to Jersey, I wondered how difficult it would be to injure him badly enough to escape the coffee shop and make a run for it. He was at least ten years older than me, but far bigger, and as a career FBI field agent, not an easy opponent, even if I got in the first shot.

And with what, my fists? I hadn’t successfully hit anyone since high school, and then I had the element of surprise. No one back then thought a nerd like me would ever throw a punch. I needed more of an advantage, so I ordered a draft beer, which I’d seen served to a nearby table in a heavy glass mug. Without missing a beat, Natsumi ordered herself a glass of red wine.

Jersey looked at his watch.

“A little early, isn’t it?” he asked.

“We might be a bit nervous,” said Natsumi.

“Fair enough.”

“Captain Mitchell,” said Natsumi, “I understand the value of both holding and showing your cards. As you pointed out, I’m a professional blackjack dealer. But it’s very hard for the opposite player to know what to do when so many of your cards are face down. In this game, you have the greater advantage. We’ve turned over quite a bit. In good faith. It’s your turn.”

He liked that.

“I wouldn’t need your file to know you’re a psychologist,” he said.

He took a moment to gather his thoughts.

“In order to lighten the mountain of shit that was falling on him, our friend Joselito was more than eager to sell out anybody and everybody he might have helped in their illegal enterprise,” he said. “It was quite a treasure trove of material, and the FBI and the Justice Department are still happily working their way through some very promising opportunities. The stickler, however, was Joselito fingering Chuck Andalusky, which was a little like saying the Sisters of Mercy have been selling orphans to McDonald’s to make into cheeseburgers.”

“They haven’t?” said Natsumi.

“By one estimate, The Société Commerciale Fontaine has managed, or been the fiduciary for, about thirty billion dollars in taxpayer money,” said Jersey. “A big piece of this has flowed through Chuck Andalusky’s office in White Plains. Do you think maybe some people in Washington might be just a
leetle
bit concerned to hear that Mr. Andalusky might have been engaged in even a
leetle
hanky-panky?”

“And what are we supposed to know about this?” Natsumi asked.

“He hasn’t told you?” Jersey asked, looking over at me. “You two should talk more often.”

Natsumi kept her eyes on Jersey.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Where did Arthur go after they chased him out of Fontaine?” he asked her.

“He came home.”

“Directly?” he asked. She sat silent. “My guess is no. Andalusky was gunned down less than an hour after those bozos in security let Arthur drive away. I’m betting an hour after that Arthur shows up in a new ride. We have the Jeep, by the way. Nice job cleaning up, though you left behind a partial and enough DNA to make a match with the guy we’ve decided is you. What’s really interesting is that Andalusky’s next-door neighbor saw the same Jeep parked outside their house that same morning. Arthur doesn’t happen to own an automatic pistol, does he Natsumi? Fitted with a suppressor?”

I finished off the last of my beer, looking down into the mug the way I’d seen people do who needed a beer far more often than me. Gripping the handle, I tested the balance and calculated the weight, and ballistic potential.

“If you really believe what you’re saying, why aren’t we in custody?” Natsumi asked.

“You’re the psychologist,” he said to her. “Do you really know who you’ve been living with?”

“Please, Mr. Mitchell,” said Natsumi. “Don’t insult me with the oldest trick in the book.”

“Arthur’s a smart guy, but I’ve spent my whole life with guys like him. He cons everyone he knows. Why would you be different? Because you’re sleeping with him? Since when does that matter? Sorry, but it never does. Sure, he’s probably pretty good to you, if you ignore making you an accessory to enough shit to put you away for the rest of your life. I like you, Natsumi, but frankly, I don’t care what you think. You’re going to find out soon enough, as soon as the stakes get so high that even you move into the liability column. Right Arthur?”

She didn’t let him move her gaze on to me. Instead, she said to him, “I think the stakes are already as high as they can get.”

“Really?” said Jersey. “Why do you think Andalusky grabbed you off your boat in the Caribbean?”

This time I tried to make eye contact with Natsumi, but she stayed fixed on Jersey.

“They wanted something from us,” she said.

“What.”

“Information.”

“About what.”

“Money,” she said.

“Ah, money,” said Jersey. “It always gets back to money, doesn’t it Arthur?”

“Not always,” I said.

“It does when you’re talking about a really, really big pile of money. Big enough that the gravitational pull starts to warp and bend and everything in its path, including the hearts and minds of otherwise decent, honorable people.”

“Ostensibly decent and honorable,” I said.

Jersey nodded, as if conceding the point.

“Fair enough,” he said, “but let me ask you, Natsumi, how much money are we talking about here? Did Arthur tell you?”

I’d never mentioned to Natsumi that Albalita, then Alberta, had told me the only thing she wanted to discuss with me was a billion, with a B.