The Looters (25 page)

For the first time I didn’t feel alone in my life.

Chapter 38

We both slept late. I climbed into a hot bath and soaked for an hour while Coby got dressed and eager to get going.

“I’m tried of looking for this Milan guy and I haven’t even started. I’ll get you a detective to find this bastard,” he told me before he left. “Then I’m going to rip the bastard to pieces so you can shove the pieces into a bag and drop him off at a police station.”

I liked the way Coby talked.

He kept it up as he went out the door. “We’ll get people on the phone calling every hotel and rental outfit in the area. Going door-to-door looking for him. By dinnertime, this Milan dude will be begging you to turn him over to the police.”

I was looking forward to that.

I leaned back in the tub and prayed that the nightmare would be over. I promised God I would do something good if He helped me out of the mess. I know it wasn’t right… I hadn’t been in church since Sunday school a million years ago. I had my parents’ attitude toward religion, a vague belief that this incredible universe couldn’t have been an accident… and that I didn’t need to find God in a man-made church.

Still, this was the first time I had asked for divine help even though I felt like a hypocrite. But I still asked.

Coby and I had agreed to meet back here at two o’clock. In the meantime, I pulled myself out of the tub and got dressed. My job was to hit the local antiquities museum, the Alcazabar, and the galleries to see if I could get a lead on Milan.

The Alcazabar was a fifteenth-century Moorish fort converted into an archaeological museum. I got a taxi in front of the hotel and told the driver to take me to the museum. He drove for a moment before he examined me in the rearview mirror and turned around in the driver’s seat.

“Señorita, do you realize that the museum is closed for siesta?”

I forgot. Businesses were closed during midday and wouldn’t reopen until four o’clock.

“What about art galleries?”

“Open after siesta,” he said. “Restaurants are open. I can take you to a good one.”

I wasn’t hungry. I kicked myself for being so stupid. Lunch is the big meal, then back to work until around seven, then a light dinner after nine or ten o’clock.

“Why don’t you just drive me around,” I said. “I need to get orientated to the city.”

I sat back and relaxed. Maybe it was better that I didn’t go to the museum. This way at least I’d have a chance to scope out my surroundings.

We drove around for fifteen minutes before I saw the van with the Swiss license plate.

“Go back around and come down the street again,” I told the driver.

Could it be a different van? I wasn’t sure. But the same color and Swiss plates gave me a chill and sent my heart pumping.

When we came back around, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I saw Coby going into a bodega, a wine bar, with two men. The same two men who had grabbed me on the street in Zurich.

***

I sat alone in the taxi and kept an eye on the front door of the wine bar. I had given the driver a wad of euros and sent him to get himself something to eat and told him to stay nearby. I was going to need him as soon as Coby came out so I could follow him.

Not much of a plan, but sitting frozen in the cab with thoughts roiling through my mind was the best I could do.

Actually, my mind was amazingly clear for someone who just had the rug of love and trust pulled out from under her. Obviously, I had been duped. Coby was a fraud. The attempt to kidnap me was staged. But why? I chuckled without humor. He said he wanted to get into the movies. That meet-the-girl-by-saving-her was as old as Hollywood flicks. But it was a particularly dirty trick because I had needed the help so badly.

Emotion welled up in me and I fought back tears.
That bastard!
I had given him my heart and my trust.

Who the hell are you?

The obvious answer was that he was an enforcer for Viktor Milan. He fit the mode perfectly… muscular, athletic… a hired “gun” for me, literally. Why not for Milan?

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered… could he be Viktor Milan himself? Why not? I had no idea what the man looked like. And Coby—if that was his name—had two links to antiquities: the antique Spanish coin on his watch and the Iraq military tour he did. He said he served in the first Gulf War. Maybe it was the second one instead. That would fit perfectly with the looting of the museum.

But if he was Milan, why hadn’t he just killed me?

I thought I knew the answer: If he killed me, he wouldn’t know how much I knew. And he and his cohorts couldn’t continue to use me as a fall guy. I’d been at the scene shortly after Abdullah was murdered and in the London gallery when the place was torched. He knew the police thought I was involved.

He tried to kill me at the London gallery. Might even have been waiting to kill me at the top of Abdullah’s stairs, but I had run too fast.

I wondered what the third act would be. Leaving me dead clutching an incriminating suicide note that took responsibility for the other murders?

Abdullah had seen the men who robbed the museum. He told me the uniforms and caps were American.

I kicked myself for not asking Abdullah more questions.

From what I’d seen on the news, the battle dress of most countries was similar.

A cap—Abdullah had pointed to his head. He probably recognized the thieves as Americans from their caps. Why? What did he see?

I scrolled through previously called numbers on my cell phone, found Abdullah’s, and hit the call button. I had Western European service in my plan.

Ten rings later a sleepy feminine voice answered. The time difference hadn’t occurred to me. New York would be six or seven hours earlier.

I spoke fast. “Don’t hang up. This is Madison Dupre. I’m calling from halfway around the world. I’m trying to find out who killed your father and who destroyed my career.”

I stopped and let Abdullah’s daughter digest my plea.

Silence. Some static.

“Are you there?”

I thought I could hear breathing. “Please. I’m trying to track down the killer. You must have heard about that Lipton gallery being blown up in London. I was in it when the killer struck. I believe it’s the same man who killed your father.”

Silence again. Did I lose her?

“What do you want?” a tearful voice finally said.

I smothered a sob. “I’m so sorry about your father. I really am.” I couldn’t suppress it anymore. I started crying. “Hold on,” I gasped. I took deep breaths. “Your father was a brave and honest man. You should be very proud of him. He was right; the Semiramis was stolen.”

“I’m going to call the police.”

“It won’t do you any good; I’m thousands of miles away.”

“Why did you call? Why are you doing this?”

“I’m following a man I think is involved in the museum robbery and your father’s murder. I have a question that I was hoping you would answer. Did your father ever describe any of the men he saw?” What I really wanted to know was whether one was a blond-haired, muscular, athletic-looking guy, about in his midthirties?

Silence.

“Anything?”

“He didn’t describe the men. He just said they were Americans.”

“How did he know they were Americans?”

“Their uniforms.”

“But the British and other countries had similar-looking battle uniforms. Did he see the American flag or—”

“He recognized something on a hat.”

“A word, a picture?”

“He’d seen it on news programs about American commandos.”

“What did he see?”

“Four letters.”

“Four letters?”

“
S… E… A… L
….”

Chapter 39

My impatient driver stood outside and smoked a cigarette as I made another call. To Special Agent Nunes.

His voice mail came on. I left my message after I heard the beep.

“This is Madison Dupre. I’m in Malaga,” I said. “Spain. You probably know that I was in London when Henri Lipton was killed. I was almost killed. I went there to confront him about selling me the Semiramis. He got it from Viktor Milan.”

I said I’d traced Viktor Milan to Zurich and then Malaga and that I was with a man who wore a SEAL cap and I believed to be Milan. I also told him that Abdullah’s daughter said her father saw a SEAL hat on a soldier robbing the museum.

“Two men tried to grab me in Zurich and this guy pretending not to be Milan saved me. Now I know it’s all a crock.” My voice faltered. My throat went dry. I ran out of steam. I didn’t know what else to say.

I pressed the end button. My heart was beating a mile a minute. My underarms were wet.

One more thing I had to tell Nunes.

I pressed the send button again and his number was redialed. After his voice mail came on, I left another message.

“If I’m murdered, Viktor Milan is the one you should be after. He’s the killer. I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent.” Before I hung up I added, “And scared.”

The last words came out as a gasp.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and leaned back in the seat trying to fight back panic.
Don’t lose it, Madison.
Not now.

When I opened my eyes the driver was coming back to the taxi, squinting at me. “It’s okay,” I said. I used English, but he understood. “Okay” was universal.

Coby and the two men from Zurich came out of the wine bar. I frantically motioned the driver to get back in the cab.

As the trio paused by the van to talk, my driver turned in the seat to me. “You will have to get another taxi. My shift is over.”

That’s what he thought. He didn’t know about the plan I’d just thought up.

“It’s my husband,” I said. “He’s cheating on me.”

I knew that would strike home to any red-blooded Spaniard, a culture where machismo protection of women—and love affairs—were perfected.

He looked at the three men and back to me. I cleared up his puzzlement.

“Those men are his lovers,” I told the driver, trying to sound convincing.

“
Bastardo!
”

My sentiments exactly.

Coby shook hands with both of his pals and grabbed a taxi.

“Follow him.”

My driver muttered something derogatory about modern men and pulled out into the street. From the distance he kept behind Coby’s taxi, I could see that my driver had gotten into the spirit of things.

“Where will he lead us?” he asked me.

“To his love nest. Where’s he’s hiding my children’s money.”

God, what a golden tongue I suddenly had. Trembling in my boots one moment, playing the wronged woman the next. I wasn’t really getting into the role, but the calls to Abdullah’s daughter and the FBI had gotten my nerves’ energy racing.

At least now I knew that if I was killed, the murderer would be tracked down.

Coby’s taxi took us to a road that ran near the coast and along the Mediterranean to a small beach town west of the central Malaga metro. I recognized it as the city address that the hotel in Zurich put on the phony package to Milan.

We followed the taxi off the main road and down a dirt path that went by a seaside villa. I noted the address on a bronze plaque as my cab drove past it with me crouching down in the backseat.

Again, I wasn’t surprised that it was the house address written on the package for Milan in Zurich.

Chapter 40

“Please wait for me.” I paid the driver twice what he asked for.

Fifty feet down the road, I turned and watched him drive away. Great. That was smart of me. He seemed like a decent guy, too. I should have held the extra money to make sure he waited.

Strutting down the long, tree-lined driveway straight to the villa didn’t seem advisable, so I went back down the main road until I found a trail that led to the beach. I took it and turned right when I reached the sand. As one came up the beach, the villa was atop the hill, surrounded by a large wall.

I stood behind an outcropping from the small hills that rolled down to the beach, and studied the villa. Only the second floor and red tile roof were visible because of the wall. Not the abode of the superrich, at least not an ostentatious one, I decided. On the Jersey shore I’d call it a beach house. But this was Europe and it did have a Mediterranean ambiance.

A stone stairway led down from the villa to a boathouse on the water. A sleek powerboat, long and narrow with a big engine and small cockpit, was moored next to the boathouse.

Coby came out of the boathouse and I ducked down to avoid being seen.

Sneaking a peek from behind the outcrop, I watched him disappear through the gate. I hurried across to the boathouse. He wouldn’t be able to see me unless he went to the second floor. I risked it because I needed a peek in the window of the boathouse. The fact that he had immediately gone down to it was a sure sign something important was in it. My instincts were chiming,
Iraqi loot, Iraqi loot
.

As I ran down the beach and got close enough to the boathouse, I could see that the windows on my side were covered. Coby had come out of a door at the back, and I headed for that, hoping he had left it unlocked. My adrenaline was pumping full-time. Where I got the courage—and the stupidity—to do these things was beyond me.
I must be out of my mind
, I told myself. But I had come this far and I needed a roomful of stolen Iraqi museum pieces to get the police on my side.

As I was going by the boat, my foot hit a raised board on the dock and I stumbled and almost fell. Terrified I was being observed from the villa, I quickly got around the backside and out of sight. I stood with my back to the wall, panting.
Unbelievably stupid.
That’s what I was.

A window next to the door was also covered, but the dark curtains had a narrow slit. The window was fouled with sand and saltwater residue from wind and waves. I cleared a spot that would let me see through the split in the curtains and peered in closer. Using my hands to block out light, I strained to see something but only saw darkness. The lights were not on inside.

Damn.

I stared mindlessly at the door. Rational thought had long since stopped. I was operating off of adrenaline, terror, and anticipation.