The Blood Lance (13 page)

'In the flesh,' she told him.

Carlisle smiled.

An automated female voice directed Agent Randal in British English as they drove back to the city. 'In Barcelona,' Randal said, 'we couldn't get GPS and we spent half our time there trying to read a frigging map. We come here and get
this
gal's voice - I mean sometimes I take a wrong turn just so she'll scold me!'

Embarrassed by his partner's patter, Josh Sutter said that the good part about being lost all the time in Barcelona was they got to see a lot of the city.

'You speak any German, T. K.?' Jim Randal asked.

Malloy's parents had moved to Zürich when he was seven. By the time he was fourteen he was fluent in Swiss German and beginning to understand the nuances of High German, the written language of the Swiss. Two decades working in Europe had pretty much turned him native, but of course the FBI didn't need to know all that. 'I can order a beer or a cup of coffee,' he said.

Sutter thought about it. 'They're like. . . the same word. . . right? Coffee and beer?'

Malloy answered with what he hoped was a disarming smile.

'We learned that much yesterday - I mean get the essentials, right?' This from Jim Randal. 'Toilet is toilet. Beer is beer. Coffee is coffee. I figure out how to ask for a steak and I could pretty much live here.'

'I tell you what. I thought I knew a little Spanish,' Josh Sutter announced, 'but we got to Barcelona, and I didn't even understand their English!'
'The cops treating you all right?'

They're great!'

Total professionals,' Randal nodded. 'Especially the Germans.'

'To tell you the truth I was surprised at that. I mean, you know, you see these old war flicks with the Germans and everybody's throwing their arms out and shouting
Heil Hitler.
So. . . we get here and we're ready for the Swastika armbands and goosesteps, but they're like smiling and friendly—'

'Efficient!' Randal offered with a nod. 'First thing you see, their offices are like
clean
. They got no papers or files sitting around, no stained coffee cups. Everything is like an operating room! You go into an NYPD precinct, you know what you see?'

'We got in yesterday,' Sutter said, cutting off the litany of what one would see, 'and they're handing us reports that are already translated. And they like give us this guy—'

'Hans!' Randal said from the driver's seat. He liked Hans.

'Hans,' Sutter agreed. 'Some last name you couldn't say if someone put a gun to your head! But he like went to school in South Carolina so he's got this like German-South Carolina thing going on, but his English is like better than mine!'

'Way
better than mine!' Randal added.

'They're embarrassed,' Malloy said in a matter of fact tone.

As he expected, both agents got quiet. Finally, Sutter bit. 'Embarrassed about letting Jack Farrell get away?'

'The Germans study us and then do what we do - only they expect to do it better.'

'Well,
we
lost the guy, too!'

Malloy let one shoulder kick up, 'We're not as efficient.'

Randal's eyes caught his partner's gaze through the mirror. They were evaluating Malloy, not what he was telling them. That was okay. That was the first step to getting them on his side.

They're going to bury you in paperwork to show you how
efficient they are.'
'I don't care why they're doing it,' Sutter said with a laugh, 'it's just way better than what we got in Barcelona.'

'In Barcelona,' Randal added, 'they never heard of English! They brought some translator in and we couldn't understand a word she said either. And the reports! All Spanish. We had to like fax them to New York for a translation.'

'And we're
still
waiting on the DNA from the bed sheets there,' Josh Sutter added. 'The Germans had DNA by the time our plane touched down. That was like twelve hours after they got the evidence!'

'I understand you talked to Irina Turner in Barcelona.' Malloy said.

Sutter nodded, his face showing frustration, 'Nothing there. She's this. . . secretary I guess you'd call it—'

'Sex-a-tary.'

Malloy looked at Randal, then back to Sutter. Josh Sutter shrugged in his farm boy manner. 'Girlfriend-slash- administrative-assistant. I guess it was like blow jobs at the office and three or four other assistants around to move the paper and set up the meetings.'

'Russian girl?' Malloy asked.

'Lithuanian.'

'Right. . .'

'In way over her head,' Randal grumbled.

'Barcelona still holding her?'

'I don't think they really want her,' Sutter said. 'She was travelling on a forged passport, but that's all she did.'

'Countries frown on it,' Malloy answered.

'She didn't sign anything, didn't talk at Immigration. Farrell handled the documents. She gets a good lawyer she can say she thought the passport Farrell gave them was hers.'

'Just doing what Farrell told her to do.' Randal said.

'She said they hit Barcelona and like the only English on TV was CNN. They were hanging out in this hotel watching CNN all day long. They go out, Farrell's talking in Spanish. She's like . . .isolated. She gets on his case, says they got to go some place
where she can understand people. Like Russia, only
he
doesn't speak Russian.'

'Anyway,' Randal picked up the thread of his partner's narrative, 'Farrell sends her downstairs to dinner one night. Tells her he'll be right down. . .'

'And skips!'

'Tired of the nagging,' Randal added.

'She waits around all night,' Sutter continued, 'and next morning she goes down and turns herself in. She's got nothing - no ID, no money, just a frigging hotel bill she can't pay.'

'And a lot of questions in Spanish she can't even understand.'

'Tough,' Malloy answered.

'I asked her,' Sutter said, 'what she thought it was going to be like where she couldn't speak the language. All she said was, "Not like this.'"

'Good looking woman,' Malloy offered.

'Take the makeup off and put her in a jailhouse jumpsuit she's pretty plain, you come right down to it,' Sutter said. Josh Sutter liked his women dolled up, Malloy decided. Probably hadn't seen his wife without her makeup until a year or so after the honeymoon.

'What it is,' Randal explained, 'she's like. . . this submissive. Like whatever Farrell wanted her to do, she was ready.'

'I wish my wife was a little bit more that way,' Josh Sutter said. 'I mean she's great! But sometimes. . .'

'I keep telling you, you carry handcuffs, use 'em!'

'This from the guy with two divorces and a string of ex- girlfriends.'

Jim Randal smiled and shrugged his shoulders. His women apparently took orders whilst they lasted.

From the back, Sutter said, 'Hans was telling us a lot of these girls from the former Soviet Union get into the West any way they can, and then they get married to the first guy with money that comes along - you know, to like an older guy that doesn't want any hassles. They basically do what they're told, and they get to live in the West.'

'A lot of Germans hate the Russians,' Malloy answered. 'It's hard to believe, but it goes back to the Second World War. There were atrocities on both sides, but you know when something happens to people in your family you don't see it objectively and you don't forgive and forget because fifty or sixty years have passed. With us the thing with the Russians was ideological. With the Germans it runs deep in the blood. Plus the Cold War tensions kept it in their face. Put it all together and you find otherwise decent people jumping at the chance to say something like that. You know, the Russian men are all drunks. The women are all whores. That kind of thing. You want to be careful about accepting those kinds of judgments as fact. Irina Turner could be anything.'

'One thing she ain't is smart,' Randal told him, his Queens accent coming on strong.

Sutter shook his head. 'Give you an idea what the interview was like. We ask where Farrell was planning to go. She says maybe Italy. We ask if he mentioned a city in Italy. She says, "Geneva?"'

'Met her first husband in St. Petersburg. He's some American businessman who doesn't mind a good looking woman living with him, but he sets up this pre-nup that gives her nothing - I mean nothing - when they get a divorce. He gets a little tired of the Russian accent and she's on the streets with like the clothes on her back.'

Josh Sutter finished his partner's story: 'Sees this ad in the paper for a party hostess and ends up at one of Jack Farrell's Long Island bashes. She's like the queen bee at the orgy, so the next week Farrell hires her as his assistant.'

Malloy laughed. 'Okay. Sounds like Hans might be right about this Russian.'

'You're some kind of forensic accountant?' Jim Randal asked with his Queens accent. As he spoke his eyes cut to the rear view mirror. He and his partner had been speculating.

Malloy nodded. 'The thinking is if we find his money we can wait for Farrell to come to it.'

'Oh, I know the thinking,' Randal answered with just a touch of condescension. 'We've got guys like you that have been on the job fulltime since we got called in. What I can tell you is this: the money is gone. We get these credit cards and they're just piddling little bank accounts in the middle of nowhere.'

'But the money comes from somewhere.'

'Sure it does. A place called Montreal. First thing Farrell did, he opened an account in Montreal with cash. Did the same with a Barcelona bank - fifty thousand cash in each. They're falling all over themselves passing out toasters and credit cards. Meanwhile, the big stuff, what he wired to different accounts before he ran, that's all been routed through banks that won't give us any information. We're talking places like—'

'I get the idea.'

'And you can follow it?' Josh Sutter asked. He was willing to believe Malloy could walk through walls because he
wanted
Jack Farrell. Jack Farrell's arrest and extradition back to the U. S. was his next promotion.

'That's what I'm here to find out,' Malloy answered.

They were quiet, mulling it over, but they both were thinking
spook.

Chernoff and Carlisle listened to everything said between the two agents and Malloy on the ride into the city. Once the three men had left the SUV there was no more audio, but Carlisle tracked the two agents on Chernoff's computer monitor through their cell phone signals. The two men entered the hotel, Malloy presumably with them.

'What do you think?' Chernoff asked. She was a small woman with dark eyes and a creamy white complexion. They had been lovers some years back, but it had been the sort of affair where you kept your eyes open when you kissed, and they had finally settled with a working relationship. After a time they had not even bothered with pleasantries. Chernoff assassinated people. For that she took a great deal of money.

Once he had finally understood that she did not care what he thought of her, making conversation was rather pointless. In his considerable experience with killers of every ilk, Helena Chernoff was the coldest creature he had ever known.

She seemed never to tire of the game she played, never to reflect on the choices she had made in her youth. She planned ahead and she put away her past as easily as throwing out old clothes. There was simply no pleasure in the woman's existence unless it came in those intimate moments when she cut away a man's genitals as he watched her doing it. She ate food with indifference. She drank wine if you put it in front of her. She could survive without food or water the whole day through and then take a modest amount at the end of the day without caring for its flavour or even the relief it provided. She lived constantly in the shadows, and had learned to make love like a well-paid escort. She was competent and businesslike about it, as intimate afterwards as a streetwalker.

David Carlisle, on the other hand, considered himself a creature of the sun. He could endure pain and do without almost anything, if he had to. He was a soldier, trained to suffer hardship, but when he had the choice he was a sensualist. He liked spending money lavishly. He liked women, all kinds - even hard cases like Helena Chernoff on occasion. He loved wine and could talk all evening about the nuances of flavour it offered. He liked travel, liked seeing the colours of the world, and he loved good food. Spending a day with Helena Chernoff was like sitting beside a ghost. In answer to her question, the first comment she had made since identifying their target, Carlisle offered a dry laugh. 'I think we might have overestimated our Mr Malloy. I'm not sure he's smart enough to find you.'

Chernoff kept her eyes focused on the road as they passed between the hotel and the lake. 'He found Jack Farrell,' she answered.

'He had help.'

'It's not a problem,' she said. 'If he can't find me, I'll find him.'