The Fifth Profession (25 page)

“So now you'll demand the favor,” Akira said.

“A car.”

“And
then
what?” Rachel asked.

“Force of circumstance,” Savage said.
“We've
got our ‘ nightmare, but
you're
our obligation. So it looks like you get your wish, what you tried to get me to agree to on the plane.”

“You're taking me with you?” Rachel breathed. “To New York?”

“And Graham,” Akira said. “But I have to qualify my approval.”

“Why?”
Savage asked.

“Because we're no longer protecting only this woman,” Akira said. “We're also protecting
ourselves.
Solving our common nightmare.
Your
death and mine. If this woman gets in the way …”

“You'll defend her,” Savage said.

“But of course,” Akira said, his eyes tinged with sadness.
“Arigato
for reminding me. The three of us are bound. But our paths conflict.”

“We don't have a choice,” Savage said.

VANISHING ACT

1

Thirty-six hours later, they arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport. During the intervening time, they'd driven to Marseilles and flown to Paris, where Savage decided that Rachel's bruises had faded enough that, with the use of cosmetics, she could pose for an acceptable passport photograph. She no longer dared risk attracting attention by pretending to be her sister. Using a trusted contact in Paris, Savage arranged for her to obtain a complete set of first-rate counterfeit documents, all in the name of Susan Porter. If anyone—especially an immigration official—commented on her likeness to Joyce Stone, Rachel merely had to say, “Thanks for the compliment.” As it happened, she and Savage passed through the checkpoints at Kennedy without incident.

Akira, who stood farther back in line so he wouldn't seem to be traveling with them, joined them shortly afterward. “I studied the crowd. No one showed interest in us.”

“Just as we hoped. Papadropolis has no way to guess where Rachel went. He probably figures we're still in southern France, trying to get onto her sister's island.”

They walked through the noisy, crowded concourse.

“Then
I'm free?”
Rachel asked.

“Let's call it ‘reprieved,’ “ Savage said. “I have to be honest. Your problem's been postponed, not canceled.”

“I'll settle for what I can get. For now, it's a relief not to have to keep watching behind me.”

“Ahead, though,” Akira said. “We have to deal with Graham.”

“I understand. I'm holding you back. I'm sorry. But if it weren't for the two of you … I don't know how to … It sounds so inadequate.
Thanks.”

She hugged them.

2

They took a taxi to Grand Central Station, entered on Forty-second Street, came out on Lexington Avenue, and took another taxi to Central Park, from where they walked two blocks to a hotel on a side street off Fifth Avenue.

The suite that Savage had phoned ahead to reserve was spacious.

“Rachel, the bedroom's yours,” Savage said. “Akira and I will take turns using the sofa.”

They unpacked the travel bags they'd bought before leaving Paris.

“Anybody hungry?” Savage took their requests and ordered smoked-salmon sandwiches, salads, fruit, and bottled water from room service.

For the next few hours, they rested, bathed, and ate. Though they'd slept on the plane, they still felt jet lag. A further call to room service brought coffee and tea. The stimulants helped, as did a change of clothes. Just before five, Savage went to a nearby store to buy coats and gloves, a TV news announcer having warned that the night would be chilly and damp.

They waited till nine.

“Ready?” Savage asked.

“Not yet,” Akira said. “There are still some things we need to discuss. I know the answer already, but the question can't be ignored. Would it not be better to leave Rachel here?”

“
We think
we weren't followed, but we can't be totally sure,” Savage said. “If we leave her unprotected, she might be in danger.”

“Might
be.”

“An unacceptable risk.”

“I agree,” Akira said.

“So what's the trouble?”

“Something I should have realized. Something I suddenly thought of. Your assignment to rescue Rachel,” Akira said. “What about it?”

“My
assignment was to protect her husband. I arrived on Mykonos a day before you did. Graham negotiated my fee. And Graham sent you to get Rachel. Doesn't it strike you as curious that the man who arranged for both of us to protect Kamichi also arranged for both of us to go to Mykonos, our first assignment after we recovered from our injuries?”

“We were meant to meet?”
Savage's spine froze.

“There was no guarantee we'd see each other. But I'd have chased you.”

“Just as I'd have chased
you
if our roles had been reversed, “ Savage said. ‘ ‘Graham knew he could count on our sense of obligation.”

“And on my skill. No matter how long it took, eventually I'd have found you.”

“There are few men I'd admit this to, but yes, you're good enough, eventually you'd have found me. We were meant to come face-to-face,” Savage said.

“And confront each other's nightmare.”

“A nightmare that didn't happen. But why do we think it did?
Why did Graham arrange for us to meet six months ago and then meet again?”

“That's why I have to ask. Since we don't know what we're facing, should Rachel be part of it? We might be putting her in worse danger than she already is.”

“Then what do we do? Stay here?”

“I have to know why I see a dead man before me.”

“So do I,” Savage said.

“Then you're going,” Rachel said.

They turned, surprised.

“And I'm going with you.”

3

The weather forecast had been accurate. A cold, damp wind gusted along Fifth Avenue, bringing tears to Savage's eyes. He rubbed them, closed the top button of his overcoat, and watched the taillights of the taxi he'd left recede toward Greenwich Village.

Rachel stood next to him, flanked by Akira.

“One more time,” Savage said. “If there's any trouble, run. Don't worry about Akira and me. Go back to the hotel. If we're not in touch by noon, check out. Leave town. I gave you ten thousand dollars. That'll help you get started. I've told you how to contact your parents and your sister and get money without your husband being able to trace it. Pick a city at random. Begin a new life.”

“At random? But how would you find me?”

“We wouldn't, and no one else would either. That's the point. As long as you stay away from anyone or anything related to your former life, your husband can't track you. You'll be safe.”

“It sounds so”—Rachel shivered—”lonely.”

“The alternative's worse.”

The three of them walked down Fifth Avenue.

Three blocks later, near Washington Square, they reached a lane between streets. A wrought-iron gate blocked the entrance, its bars topped with spikes. The gate had a keyhole beneath a handle. When Savage twisted the handle and pushed, he discovered that the gate was locked. That didn't surprise him.

He studied the bars. They were tall. The many passing cars and pedestrians were bound to see two men and a woman climb over.

Despite the myth that New Yorkers minded their own business, it was more than likely that someone would call the police.

“Do the honors, Akira.”

On the way here, they'd stopped at an East Side tavern, where the owner—one of Savage's contacts—had sold them a set of lockpicks.

Akira freed the lock as easily as if he'd possessed a key. From their frequent visits here, both men knew that the gate was not equipped with intrusion sensors. Akira pushed the gate open, waited for Savage and Rachel to follow, then shoved the gate back into place. In case they needed to leave here quickly, he didn't relock it. Anyone who lived along this lane and found the gate unlocked would merely be disgusted that one of the neighbors had been irresponsible.

They faced the lane. A century earlier, stables and carriage houses had flanked it. The exteriors of the buildings had been carefully modified, their historical appearance preserved. Narrow entrances alternated with quaint double doors that had long ago provided access to barns. The surface of the lane remained cobblestoned. Electric lights, shaped like lanterns, reinforced the impression that time had been suspended.

An exclusive expensive location.

The lane was wide. Intended for horse-drawn buggies, it now permitted residents to steer cars into renovated garages. Lights gleamed from windows. But the only lights Savage cared about were those that shone from the fourth town house on his left.

He walked with Rachel and Akira toward it. Pausing at the entrance, he pressed a button beneath an intercom.

The oak door was lined with steel, Savage knew. Even so, he heard a bell ring faintly behind it. Ten seconds later, he Tang the bell again, and ten seconds later again. He waited to hear Graham's voice from the intercom.

No response.

“Asleep?” Savage wondered.

“At ten
P.M
.? With the lights on?”

“Then he doesn't want to be interrupted, or else he's gone out.”

“There's one way to tell,” Akira said. “If he's home, he'll have wedged a bar against the door in addition to locking it.”

The door had two dead-bolt locks. Akira picked them in rapid succession. He tested the door. It opened.

Savage hurried through. He'd been here so often that he knew the specifics of Graham's defenses. Not only were the windows barred; they had intrusion sensors. So did the doors to Graham's garage. And
this
door. As soon as its locks were freed, anyone entering had to open a closet on the left and press a series of buttons on a console to prevent an alarm from shrieking throughout the neighborhood and, more important, to prevent the local police from sending a squad car in response to a flashing light on their precinct's monitor. This had to be done within fifteen seconds.

Savage yanked the closet door open. A year ago, after several tries, due to professional habit, he'd managed to catch a glimpse of the numbers Graham had pressed.

He pressed those numbers now. A red light stopped glowing.

No siren wailed.

Savage leaned against the closet's wall.

Akira's silhouette filled the doorway. “I've checked this floor. No sign of him.”

Savage had been so preoccupied he hadn't paid attention to the harsh throbbing music he'd heard when he entered. “Heavy metal?”

“The radio,” Akira said. “Graham must have left it on when he went out. If someone tried to break in, the intruder would hear the music, decide the house was occupied, and look for another target.”

“But why would Graham bother? If someone tripped a sensor, the sirens would scare an intruder a lot more than the music would. Besides, when we stood outside, I barely heard the doorbell and didn't hear the music at all. The radio's hardly a deterrent.”

“It's not like Graham to go out and forget to turn it off.
Heavy metal?
Graham hates electric music. He's strictly classical.”

“Something's wrong. Check the top floors. I'll take the basement. Rachel, stay here.”

As Akira crept up a stairway to the left, Savage's bowels contracted. He crossed the large room that occupied this level. The room was Graham's office, though the glass-and-chrome desk at the rear was the only detail that indicated its purpose. Otherwise, it seemed a living room. To the right, bookshelves flanked a fireplace. To the left, stereo equipment filled a cabinet, Boston Acoustics speakers on either side, the source of the throbbing music. In the middle, a coffee table—its glass and chrome a match to Graham's desk—separated two leather sofas. Beneath them, an Afghan rug covered most of the floor, the border brightly waxed hardwood. Large pots of ferns occupied each corner. The brilliant white walls—upon which hung only a few paintings, all by Monet—reinforced the feeling of spaciousness created by the sparse furnishings.

A stranger could not have known, as Savage did, that Graham hid business documents in alcoves behind the bookshelves, and that the stereo's purpose was to assure those few clients he trusted enough to come here that the swelling cadences of Beethoven's glorious
Eroica
prevented their subdued conversation from being picked up by undetected microphones.

While Savage passed the coffee table, he noticed three empty bottles of champagne. Approaching the desk in the rear, he saw an ashtray filled with cigar butts and a tall-stemmed glass, the bottom of which contained a remnant of liquid.

To the left of the desk, he reached a door and cautiously opened it. Shadowy steps descended to a murky basement. He opened his overcoat and withdrew a .45 pistol that the owner of the East Side bar had sold him along with the lockpicks. Akira had bought one as well.

Gripping the pistol with his leather-gloved right hand, Savage pawed with his other hand, found a light switch, and illuminated the basement. Sweating, he took one step down. Another. Then another.

He held his breath, sprang to the bottom, and tensely aimed.

Three tables. Neat piles of wires, batteries, and disc-shaped objects covered them, various sophisticated eavesdropping devices in progressive stages of assembly.

A furnace. Ready with the .45, Savage peered behind it, seeing no one. Moisture dripped from his forehead. There weren't any other hiding places. He climbed the stairs.

But he wasn't relieved.

4

When Akira joined him, having searched the upper floors and reporting nothing unusual, Savage still didn't feel at ease.

Rachel slumped on a sofa.

Akira holstered his pistol. Electric guitars kept wailing.

“Maybe we're overreacting. There might be a simple explanation for Graham's uncharacteristic choice of music.”

“You don't sound convinced.”

Rachel pressed her hands to her ears. “Maybe he likes to torture himself.”

“Let's do ourselves a favor.” Savage pushed a button on the stereo's tuner, and the heavy-metal radio station became mercifully silent.

“Thank God,” Rachel said. She studied the coffee table. “Did you notice these empty bottles?”