Columbus (5 page)

I head toward him, but he is deliberately looking past me, over my shoulder, at some imaginary person thirty feet behind me, avoiding eye contact completely, and everything about this encounter is wrong.

“Turner!” he says loudly as he approaches, like he’s calling out to the phantom behind me. “Jeff!”

Turner. Turner. What’s in a name? A pre-planned warning. A signal decided upon when we first went into business together. Ryan has been set up, compromised, and he’s letting me know to ignore him, to keep walking, to get the hell out of there as quickly as I can.

I lock eyes on a woman stepping off the train and wave to her like
she’s
the one I’ve been hurrying to see and as I move past Ryan, I hear the unmistakable sound of a bullet whizzing past my ear before it slams squarely into Ryan’s back. From the angle of the shot, I know the shooter is ahead of me and as Ryan crumples to the dirty cement, as the crowd on the landing starts to scatter in all directions like shrapnel, I catch just a glimpse of a dark-suited, bearded man holding a pistol two platforms over.

His eyes find mine and it’s enough. It was a smart play to take out Ryan as soon as the fence opened his mouth. By shooting him, this professional killer flushes the true target. He drops Ryan and watches the crowd’s reaction, focusing in on anyone who looks up at the bullet’s flight path instead of scrambling away in a panic. He looks for a professional, a man who doesn’t jump at the sound of a gun firing in a crowd. It’s what I would have done.

Goddammit, the jig is up; he knows I’m the quarry, the one Ryan was coming to meet. Without thinking, I draw my Glock and unload back at the bearded man, off-balance, knowing instinctively my shots will miss the mark yet give me enough time to duck for cover.

A train is backing away from the station on the tenth platform, and I bolt for it, trying to make myself as small as possible, careful not to run in a straight line. I know enough about putting bullets into people to hopefully avoid the shooter putting one into me.

Anton Noel. The sloppiness of the kill came home to roost. Of course he had friends in high places, friends who wouldn’t be encumbered by police procedure or official leads, friends who would hire dark men like me to hunt down and execute the executioner. The man’s company counted life and death as numbers on an accountant’s ledger, so why should I be surprised someone close to Noel hired a professional to exact revenge? This hired gun got to Ryan and worked him over and Ryan led the bagman to me, but not before he called out for “Jeff Turner,” giving me one last professional, undeserved nod, before he died with a bullet in his spine.

I hear a gunshot ricochet off the pavement somewhere near my right foot but I don’t break stride, just zero in on the door to the debarking train. A quick glance over my shoulder reveals the bearded man sprinting my way, out in front of a host of light-blue uniformed Italian Railway Police officers.

“Interpol! Interpol!” he is shouting, but he is no more a part of the international criminal police organization than I am. Interpol agents aren’t the swashbuckling lawmen seen in countless films or read about in mystery novels. They don’t carry guns, can’t make arrests, and rarely leave their offices. His shouting is creating the intended effect amongst the Railway officers, however: confusion.

A few more steps and I bang on the last train door, the pressure causing it to swish open. I leap through it, and immediately crouch next to the luggage rack, pointing my gun up at the doorway, waiting, hoping the bearded man will make a mistake, try to chase me inside, but all I spy through the sliver of the doorway is the last bit of the tenth platform moving away as the train rolls out of the station.

When Risina opens the bookshop, I am already inside.

“My God—”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“How did you—?”

“The door was open.”

“It was?”

I nod. “I was going to stand outside and wait for you, but when I saw the door, I thought you were already here. I just walked in and you came up behind me.”

She looks puzzled, worried. “The alarm—”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

She hurries over to the cases of old texts, but no glass has been broken, no volumes appear to be missing.

“I remember—” She stops to curse in Italian. “I thought I locked up like usual.”

She shakes her head, her hand flitting to her temples, brushing her long black hair away from her forehead. She looks at me in the middle of the room, like she has just remembered something. “You stood me up. We had a date for lunch.”

“I had some unexpected business.” I am watching her eyes. “I meant to call, but things happened quickly.”

She nods stiffly, and I’m not sure she believes me, as though she’s heard that excuse before. That underlying sadness is fluttering just below the surface of her skin again. It doesn’t matter; I have cards left to play and despite my own misgivings, I plan on playing them. I don’t fully understand why, but I
have
to play them.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

She moves over to the ornate desk in the back of the room, checking the drawers to see if any have been forced.

“I have to go away for a while. I have to do some things that are important to me, which may require me to leave Italy for some time.”

I watch as her shoulders sag a bit, as her head lowers. “I see.”

“No, I—” I stop, choosing my words carefully.

She looks up from the desk to meet my eyes, sensing that the words I choose will carry weight.

“It’s that . . . my question is this . . . ” I can feel my throat tighten. “Will you wait for me?”

CHAPTER FOUR

HOW MUCH IS A NAME WORTH?

In the killing business, names have value. The names of targets can command staggering sums, depending on the difficulty of the assassination. The name of a U.S. cabinet member might be worth more than say, a Wall Street trader or a low-level crime boss. The name of a CEO guarded by a host of expensive and professional bodyguards might be more valuable than a police officer who is about to testify and is too smug or pig-headed to bother with protection. But these aren’t the only names in the business of death that hold worth.

Fences, middlemen, go-betweens are hired to keep us from knowing whom we’re working for and to keep clients from knowing whom they’re hiring. They are windowless walls erected to protect us from ourselves, to keep ends from becoming loose. But there was a breakdown of the wall protecting me; someone used William Ryan’s head as a battering ram and knocked right through it. I don’t know who that someone is yet, but I plan to find out.

I know a name too.

Doriot is the fence who hired me to kill Anton Noel, the same fence who hired me four times in the past. He’s on the acquiring side, meaning he works with clients directly and then selects assassins to fill his jobs.

Before the first assignment, acquiring fences often meet with gunmen so they can kick the tires on the showroom car. They want to get a look and feel for the killer they will be contracting; they want to be able to assure their client they are on top of things, all will go smoothly, they have a relationship with the killer and they trust the job will be cleanly and professionally executed. Clients tend to get jumpy as the contract inches closer to fulfillment; an experienced acquiring fence placates the nervous party by extolling the achievements of the assassin hired to do the job. It always helps to say he knows the gunman personally, even better if he’s used the same assassin in the past.

Whether or not Doriot sold out Ryan is immaterial, though he seems the most likely candidate. He’s the only direct connection between Noel and me. I don’t care about revenge; I’m going to dispassionately put a bullet in whoever hired someone to kill me. It is the only way to take down the contract on my life, to pull the scent away from the hound’s nose.

I have two guesses as to the identity of the man who put a price on my head. Either he’s someone close to Anton Noel, as I speculated before, or he’s the same man who hired me to kill Noel and after the sloppiness of the job, he wants all ties to the assassination severed. Since I’m not sure yet how to tackle the first hypothesis, I’ll start with the second.

Brussels is a cold city in the middle of Europe. It is a mixture of old and new, of modern skyscrapers and shopping pavilions and art-deco houses standing shoulder to shoulder with Gothic cathedrals and pristine fifteenth-century town halls. Currently the seat of the European Union’s Council and Commission, the city and its people are aloof, taciturn. The entire place feels like a museum that allows you to enter, but asks you to speak softly and not touch anything. It is somewhat telling that Brussels’s most popular attraction is a statue of a little boy pissing into a basin.

Doriot lives here. I met him once, in a secure building near the river, about two years ago, before my first assignment for him. Like I said, acquiring fences like to kick the tires, and Doriot wanted to kick mine.

I remember it was cold that day, and I entered the address from a secluded street near the Zenne river. The front door opened and locked behind me, leaving me in a ten-foot-by-ten-foot “holding” room. An intercom in the wall barked at me. The killing business flourishes all over the world, but, conveniently, its agreed-upon universal language is English.

“May I help you?” A baritone voice with a slightly German accent that sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well filled the room.

“I’m Columbus. I have an appointment with Doriot.”

“Step back from the door, empty your chambers, and place your clips on the floor in front of you. Then clasp your fingers behind your head.”

Most acquiring fences surround themselves with a small army of protection, at least the prominent ones do if they want to stay prominent. I was used to this. I didn’t get defensive, I didn’t protest, I just did as commanded without revealing an ounce of emotion on my face.

After a moment, a giant of a man entered through the opaque door in front of me, holding a leather bag. Quietly, he collected the three clips I had placed on the floor, along with the two bullets I had ejected from the chambers of my Glocks. Finished, he turned and faced me.

“Hello, Columbus.”

“Hello.” I kept my fingers interlocked behind my head.

“I will have to frisk you now. Yes?”

I nodded and he ran his hands over my body, patting me down. I kicked off my shoes and he checked my ankles, then the seams of my pants. His hands were massive, the size of melons. He gave me a thorough examination, then, satisfied, stepped back.

“My name is Brueggemann. I work for Monsieur Doriot. You have heard of me?”

I shook my head and he watched my eyes, checking to see if I was withholding anything. Then he made a “tsk” sound, sucking air between his teeth. “I used to do what you do. Yes? For many years. Over twenty. Yet I am still here.”

“Not many can say that.” I thought this was what he wanted to hear. Challenging strangers at this stage of the game is foolish, a good way to get yourself in a bad way.

He nodded. “No, not many. Now I work safety for the boss. And the boss is always safe, you understand?”

I shrugged, keeping my expression a well-practiced neutral. “I’m just here to pick up my assignment. I have no interest in tearing down fences.”

He smiled, revealing a gap in his front teeth I could’ve driven a rig through. His eyes didn’t smile, though; they stayed chained to mine. “You may see Monsieur Doriot now. Make sure you do not approach him. Yes?”

I lowered my arms and straightened out my jacket. “Not a problem.”

I was ushered in to see the boss, a small man with awkward frame-less glasses perched on his nose. He was sitting behind an oversized desk. Brueggemann never left my side. I answered the usual questions impassively, while Doriot studied me the way a rancher examines a prize bull. He had heard about the jobs I’d pulled in the States, had heard about my reputation, and a few pointed answers to his questions let him know I had done the work Ryan claimed. I had the feeling he wanted to ask more, to try to open me up, but he knew the futility in that, and so gave me my assignment and had Brueggemann show me to the door.

The next day, I cased the building, invisible in the shadows of a nearby alley. Names hold value and Brueggemann had given me his, ostensibly to advertise his reputation. But if he had once been a contract killer like me, he had lost a step, gone soft in his retirement, the way a moonlighting cop lets his defenses down when he’s sitting on a security guard’s stool. It was a mistake giving me his name. The cons outweighed the pros; the scales tipped away from his favor. I knew his boss Doriot would be careful to avoid detection or pursuit when he entered or exited the building in Brussels where he did business . . . he was a deliberate and methodical professional. He would vary his routine, have multiple entrance and exit points, take illogical routes to wherever he laid his head. Ours is a business where reputation is prized but anonymity is essential. We have to be able to float into this world, this game, and then shut the door behind us when we leave. A private, personal life can never be fully realized, I have learned this all too well, but we can do things to make the likelihood of clashes between the two worlds, if not impossible, at least improbable. Still, I hoped Brueggemann’s lack of foresight in revealing his name would mean he was lax when covering his own tracks.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. He exited the building through the same door I had entered the day before and headed north up the street, toward the city center, walking with his hands in his pockets, not even checking over his shoulder or scanning shop windows for reflections. Being as big as he was, he was as easy to follow as if he’d been painted red. I hung back and stayed with him until he retreated into a three-story apartment building only a quarter of a mile from the office. A minute later, a light came on in a corner window on the top floor. Brueggemann had led me right to his doorstep.