Текст книги "The Final Cut"

Автор книги: Catherine Coulter

Соавторы: J. T. Ellison
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

81

Ritz Paris

15 Place Vendôme

Saturday, early evening

Nicholas was deep into rereading Lanighan’s file when there was a knock at the door to the suite.

Mike was combing the files from the French authorities on the elder Couverel’s mugging and murder. She set her laptop aside and said, “There’s the coffee. I’ll get it. I’m telling you, Nicholas, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing useful in these files. The case went cold thirty years ago, and no one has done any work on it since.”

She crossed the room and opened the door. Nicholas heard a strangled cry and bolted from the couch to see Mike hurled backward into the living room and slammed against a chair. A dark-skinned man burst in after her, a suppressed Beretta 92S in his hand.

The man ran into the suite, his eyes on Mike, his Beretta aimed at her head. Nicholas came in hard from the side, buying him a moment of precious surprise. He kicked out at the man’s knee, but the man whirled about and leapt back, only taking a glancing blow to his thigh. He grunted in pain, but it barely slowed him. He brought his gun to Nicholas’s chest, Mike forgotten.

Nicholas whipped his leg up to kick the gun out of his hand, but the man pulled his arm back in time. Nicholas jumped into him, slammed his fist into the man’s neck. The man’s head flew back, and as Nicholas spun around he grabbed the man’s arm and sent his elbow into his gut, once, twice. He grabbed the man’s wrist and clamped his fingers hard into the soft flesh. The man screamed and the gun went off, an obscene sound, then fell and skidded across the floor. The man’s fist hit Nicholas’s forehead, and he staggered back, seeing lights.

Nicholas heard Mike shout, “Get away from him, Nicholas!” He knew she wanted to shoot the man. And the man did, too, because he grabbed on to Nicholas, trying to use him as a shield, dragging him toward the door of the suite. But he couldn’t hold him.

Mike watched the fight turn into a vicious brawl. She had her Glock out, but the men were moving too fast to get a clear shot—blocking and countering each other’s strikes as they destroyed the furniture in the suite, and themselves.

Nicholas took a hard blow to the shoulder. He pivoted and grabbed the man’s neck with one arm as he punched him in the kidneys, vicious blows that would fell a giant, but the man managed to squirm away—how, Mike didn’t know, he was that good. He stared at Nicholas for a split second, then took off at a dead run out of the suite. Mike fired once, twice, but missed him.

Nicholas yelled to Mike, “Call it in, I’m going after him,” and ran out the door.

The man was at the end of the hall, going through the emergency door to the stairwell. Nicholas sprinted after him, made it through the door in time to see a black-sneakered foot running up toward the roof. He squeezed off three shots, but the man didn’t stop.

Up three more flights, and the man threw open the door to the roof and slammed it shut behind him, slowing Nicholas for a moment.

When he eased open the roof door, Nicholas was met with a deep silence. It was dark, but there was enough ambient light from the streets below and the rising full moon to make out shadows and shapes.

There were plenty of places to hide up here. The housings for the air-conditioning units acted as dividers down the length of the roof; the man could be behind any of them.

Nicholas held himself perfectly still, listening. There, labored breathing coming from about twenty feet away. He edged forward, his steps light on the gravel. Ten feet, five, then the door to the roof opened, light flooding the dark, and the man jumped up like a quail flushed from the brush. He ran hard down the roof.

Mike joined him, whispered fiercely, “Let’s get the bastard.” They could see the man bobbing and weaving, and fired.

There was a muffled grunt and the man stumbled. Good, Nicholas thought, one of them had hit him.

Mike peeled off to the other side to flank him. Three more steps and Nicholas tackled the man. They rolled to the ground, twisting, punching, kicking, trying to gain an advantage. Nicholas saw blood and realized a bullet had nicked the man’s rib cage. Why didn’t it slow him down? Nicholas flipped him onto his back, jammed his elbow in the wound, and wedged his forearm under the man’s chin.

“Who sent you?”

The man gurgled, and Nicholas eased off only to get a vicious hit in the back knocking him sideways. The man was up on his feet, his fists lashing out. Nicholas rolled over and up and went at him. He struck him in the face with his fist and saw blood spurt out. He’d broken the man’s nose.

Mike kicked out the man’s right knee from behind, and he collapsed forward. Nicholas clamped down tight on the man’s windpipe.

“Who sent you?”

The man shoved backward with all his strength, knocking Nicholas into the air conditioner’s housing, slamming his head into the metal unit, but Nicholas hung on. Still the man came at him, trying to slam his fist into his throat, a crushing blow meant to kill him, but Nicholas got his hands up in time.

The man kicked out again with his leg, blood dripping down his chin onto his chest. Nicholas was in a berserk fury now, punching and jabbing and kicking. Mike screamed, “Don’t kill him, Nicholas, we need him!” but the only noise he heard was his blood thundering in his ears.

Nicholas shoved the man backward, and as he lost his balance Mike shot him in the leg. He howled in pain, and his leg buckled. He was too close to the edge of the roof. Nicholas saw him stumble and fall, and grabbed for his wrist, but his palms were slick with blood and he couldn’t hold on.

With a scream, the man disappeared over the edge. His body struck the dormer window frame, then toppled down to the sidewalk onto the Place Vendôme below.

82

Nicholas and Mike looked over the edge. The man had landed facedown, arms spread-eagled out on the concrete, his neck clearly broken. She didn’t want to see his face.

Nicholas slid down the wall, breathing hard. Mike eased down beside him, reached over and swiped the blood off his nose and mouth. She picked up his hand, saw the torn knuckles. “Not too bad.” There was blood all over his chest. “You’re bleeding!”

“No, no, it’s his blood. Sorry I couldn’t keep him alive, Mike.”

“I wish I’d shot him in both knees.”

Nicholas laughed, couldn’t help it. He got up and pulled her with him. “Damnation, woman, you’re the one covered in blood. Where did he hit you?”

She blinked at him, mute, then stared down at herself and passed out without a sound.

He eased her down onto the roof. Her nose was bleeding, and she had a cut lip. He ripped her shirt open and pulled it down. The man had shot her in the arm. A bullet to the biceps, through and though, into the meat of the muscle, not the bone, thank the good Lord above.

He ripped the sleeve off and used it as a tourniquet, then ran his hands over the rest of her body. No more injuries. She’d be okay. He pulled her against him for a moment, thankful and quiet, then stood up and hoisted her over his shoulder. He heard a whisper of a laugh.

“That tickles.”

“Stay still. I need to get you down the stairs.” She relaxed against his back, and he carried her down the stairs to their room.

Their suite looked like a war zone. At least the sofa was still in one piece. He laid her down, and she looked up at him and smiled.

“Aren’t we a pair? Do I look as bad as you do?”

He smiled back. “I don’t want to look. Stay still, Mike. I hear the sirens. We’re going to be crawling with cops any second now. Did you call it in?”

“Yes. Before I went up after you to the roof. Let me sit up.” She realized then she had a split lip from the man’s fist in her face when she first opened the door.

“Now who’s being the tough one?” he asked, but helped her up, loosened the tourniquet, happy to see that the wound was bleeding only slightly.

He said, “We’re going to have matching stitches.”

She wanted to tell him she would have more fun checking his stitches than he would hers, but she didn’t. She said, “Who was that man?”

“I don’t know. He’s dead. Look, it couldn’t be helped. I still can’t believe he wouldn’t give up.”

She couldn’t believe it, either.

“I’ve never seen anyone fight like you do. It’s brutal.”

Nicholas said, “It’s Filipino Kali with a bit of karate thrown in. I’ll teach you, if you’d like.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you’d better wait to see some of my moves first.”

83

Ritz Paris

15 Place Vendôme

Saturday evening

Hotel security wasn’t happy to have a shootout on their roof and a dead man on the street at the front doors. The local flic from the commissariat de police, who introduced himself as Monsieur L’Agent Foulard, insisted on interrogating them for twenty minutes, despite their badges. It was only Menard’s arrival that put a halt to it.

After Foulard was gone, Menard said, “I was told your former suite needed a lot more than a simple dusting and clean towels. Do tell me how you managed to end up on the roof with an assassin.”

Nicholas said, “Fewer people on the roof than in the lobby.”

Menard grinned, showing a gold back tooth. He turned to Mike. “Agent Caine, I hear you’re being difficult. You should be treated at the hospital.”

Mike said, “I think we’re better off sticking together and staying here. Whoever’s after us isn’t going to give up simply because we’ve killed three of his men.”

Menard said, “We have an ID on the two men who ended up in Lake Geneva—César Arnault and Claude Soutane, local freelance bad guys.”

Nicholas said, “We think we know who hired them. A man named Saleem Lanighan, a British national who makes his home in France.”

“I know this man. He is big in the art world. What makes you think he is behind this?”

“Everything is pointing his way. If you could trace the men in Geneva to him, that would pretty much nail it. The man who went off the roof wasn’t local muscle, he was a pro. Tough, vicious, and committed to seeing us dead.”

“I heard the flics mention the name O’Brien. If this is the same man I know, you’re lucky to be alive. Talk about a pro—he’s never failed before tonight.”

Menard rose. “I need not remind the two of you to take care. Agent Caine, do as the doctor tells you. Keep your arm in a sling, and no more fights—at least for a couple of days.”

Mike said, “It’s only a flesh wound.”

Menard gave each of them a long look. “I will try to trace the men in Geneva to Saleem Lanighan.” And he took himself off to deal with the mess downstairs.

Nicholas’s computer chimed.

It was Savich. Nicholas opened the chat.

“Good to see you’re both still upright.”

“We’re fine,” Nicholas said. “The man who attacked us is dead, and Menard is going to try to connect him and the two men in Geneva with Saleem Lanighan.”

Nicholas and Mike filled Savich in on everything they’d learned from Couverel, to the Ghost, who was undoubtedly the man who’d murdered the Anatolys and Elaine York and Kochen. She told how they believed the Ghost was connected to the Fox. “But we still don’t know who he is or where to find him,” Mike said, “only that he exists. He could still be in New York.”

Nicholas told him about Saleem Lanighan’s direct line back to Duleep Singh, the brother of the Lion of Punjab, and the newly discovered scandal about his affair with the Countess Wiltshire.

Savich said, “I’m going to have to tell Sherlock she was right. She said she knew down to her size sevens we’d find the answer to the theft of the Koh-i-Noor in its English roots.”

“Kiss the woman’s size sevens, Dillon,” Mike said.

Savich laughed. “Now, for my contribution, I’ve found the money trail for one of the Fox’s accounts. Over the past three years, there have been four money transfers from the Bank Horim to a Smith Barney account, which then pinged out to a bank in Curaçao. The money left Curaçao and went to Israel, where it was disbursed back into five numbered accounts at a Horim branch in Tel Aviv. Clean as a whistle.”

“For how much?”

“Each transfer was for five million dollars.”

Nicholas was impressed. “Twenty-five million bucks. That isn’t a half-bad payday for a single job, and I imagine there’s another equal share owed her on delivery of the Koh-i-Noor. Does it say who the accounts belong to?”

“As you know the bank doesn’t have names attached to the accounts online, only numbers. You’ll have to get a warrant for the names tied to the numbered account. Though I wouldn’t count on it being anything other than multiple false identities, and therefore meaningless. The Fox seems to have plenty of identities.”

Mike said, “You’re right, Dillon, she does. Assuming this is the Fox’s money, why would she circle back to the same bank? Is this the safest way to move the money around?”

“With as many accounts as it pinged through, yes, it’s a very safe way to launder money. I wouldn’t have found it if I wasn’t specifically looking for these types of transfers from this specific bank and cross-referencing by the account numbers you found. All the Swiss banks are good, but she must trust this bank implicitly. I’d be willing to bet she has someone on the inside at the bank running these accounts for her.”

Nicholas arched a black brow. “Marie-Louise Helmut, perchance?”

“Probably,” Mike said, then turned back to the screen. “Dillon, did you see any direct ties to Saleem Lanighan?”

“No, not yet, but I bet the originating account will trace to him. Since it’s been closed, there’s no foolproof way to tell. Maybe you’ll have more luck on your end. One more thing. Nick, I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But last week there was a money transfer from this Smith Barney account to Elaine York’s bank account as well. One payment of two hundred thousand dollars.”

Nicholas felt the news like a punch to his gut. It was over, no more trying to pretend Elaine was innocent.

He said only, “Thanks, Savich. We’ll take it from here.”

“Be careful, guys.”

They closed his computer, Nicholas looked at his watch. Nearly eight. Mike was watching him. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, of course. The question is, are you?”

“Like I said, ’tis only a flesh wound.”

“You’re lying. I admire that. Okay now, we know Lanighan is based in Paris. Find out where he lives. Later tonight you and I are going to go watch his house and see if he has plans.”

“What about the Fox?”

“If she’s making a delivery to Lanighan, he’s the one we need to track. Like you said, she seems to have a sixth sense about us on this case. Who knows? Maybe she’ll come to us.”

84

New York, New York

26 Federal Plaza

Saturday afternoon

Ben Houston was deep into Anatoly’s files when Zachery called him into his office.

Ben gathered his things and walked the hundred feet to the executive suites on the twentieth floor. Normally at 2:00 p.m. the leadership would be in their daily big-dog meeting, but since it was a weekend, only a few stragglers were around. Even Maryann, the secretary to all the Criminal Division SACs since the late eighties, had gone home. But her boss hadn’t. When Zachery closed and locked the door behind him, Ben went on red alert.

Something big was going down.

Zachery gestured to the black leather couch instead of his round conference table. “You’ve been at it for hours. Take a load off.”

Like everyone else working this case, Ben had managed only a few hours’ sleep for the past few days. Safer to take the chair. “If I get on that couch, you’ll never get me off it. What’s happening, sir?”

Zachery stood at his window, staring out across the East River into Brooklyn, his arms behind him. “Nicholas and Mike found the buyer for the diamond; Savich has verified it.”

“Who is it?”

“A wealthy businessman, Saleem Lanighan, supposedly a direct descendant of the Lion of Punjab, who was the one who surrendered the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria.”

“So Sherlock was right,” Ben said.

“Yes, she was. However, we have lots more work to do, Ben. The NSA has sent over the trace of the phone number the Fox called from her plane. They confirmed the signal, and we’ve been able to track it. The owner of the phone has been in New York for the past week. He left the country last night, bound for Paris. We ran his face through the NGI facial-recognition database, and it matched the photo of a British national who tried to assassinate François Mitterrand two decades ago. Interpol believes this man is the Ghost. They’re sending us everything they’ve got, which isn’t much.

“It seems likely the Ghost killed not only Elaine York, but Anatoly and his two sons and attacked Mike and Nicholas in the garage. We’ve also identified the man killed at Anatoly’s. His name is Jason Rathbone, and he works for Saleem Lanighan. There were no prints in the system, but there was a DNA match on CODIS.”

Zachery said, “Savich told me Elaine’s bank accounts show a two-hundred-thousand-dollar deposit last week. So she was being paid, but for what? By whom?”

Ben couldn’t bear it. He’d hoped everything would be explained, that Elaine would be exonerated. But no. Ben said only, “I don’t know, sir.”

Zachery came over and sat in the chair opposite Ben. “I don’t know, either. We need to find the tie between the Ghost and Elaine and Anatoly. They’re all mixed together in this, but we don’t know exactly how.

“Track this Ghost character, Ben, and find out what he took from Anatoly’s safe. Can you do that for me?”

“Of course, sir. I’m on it.”

Ben left Zachery staring out the windows, and went back to his desk. He called Mike first thing, to warn her so she’d know about the Ghost, but she didn’t answer her phone, so he left her a message to call him as soon as she could.

And then he settled himself at his desk to mourn Elaine York and find a killer.

85

Paris

Saturday evening

Kitsune checked into a small, quiet hotel on the West Bank, took a room sight unseen, and was barely inside the door before she plugged the thumb drive into her laptop and watched the files upload. Hundreds upon hundreds of files, every one a valuable link to Lanighan’s enterprise. It gave her great satisfaction to hold the heart of his world in her hands.

If Mulvaney was close by, she would find him in these files.

She set the laptop down on the small desk and opened her bag. She wanted to hold on a bit longer, but there was no help for it, she needed fuel and rest. The hotel provided fruit at the front desk. She’d taken three apples and a banana, had jerky and granola bars in her bag from her stop at the travel center. She ate while the files began to load, then took a shower. She set her alarm for two hours of sleep and drifted off immediately.

She woke refreshed, though still tired. She took a handful of vitamins loaded with ginseng to help her stay awake and focused. She drank water, stretched, and made a cup of herbal tea.

While she was sipping her tea, the files finished uploading. She scrolled through them, down to the S files—the security folder—hoping there were protocols of the security systems from Lanighan’s warehouses. She was in luck; there was a folder inside labeled DropCams.

There were at least fifty camera feeds to go through. With a sigh, she settled deeper in her chair and began opening them one by one.

She hit pay dirt on the eighth folder. The screen was separated into five squares, two large showing the first-floor interior of a warehouse, and row upon row of what she knew must be artwork, and three smaller squares on the bottom showing individual rooms on the top floor, one a very large office. And in the office, she saw Mulvaney, tied to a chair, his arms stretched tight behind his back, a gag in his mouth. He was slumped over, asleep or dead, she couldn’t tell. The video was too grainy to see if his chest rose and fell. She saw flashes of light, shadows moving outside the range of the cameras. She realized whoever was in the room with him was taking photographs.

She took a deep breath to calm her rage, looked at the file, saw the address—it was a warehouse in Gagny Neuf-trois. Forty minutes away.

She hadn’t wanted to believe Lanighan, but now she had no choice—she’d seen Mulvaney with her own eyes. She felt tears burn her eyes, shook it off. She’d save him, she had to.

She scanned the remaining files, saw a few more attached to the Gagny warehouse. She opened them and read through the information, found the corresponding video feeds for the cameras on the grounds.

She wasn’t surprised the outside cameras showed armed guards patrolling the perimeter. She counted fourteen men in fatigues, cradling AR-15s to their chests, all in a state of readiness she’d seen from professional soldiers. They fairly screamed mercenary.

It made sense to have security, of course, with the treasures he had inside the warehouse. But this—fourteen heavily armed men sweeping around the building in a clearly coordinated pattern, this was overkill, and done for a reason: Lanighan knew she was coming.

If it was a war he wanted, she was happy to bring it to his door. One against fourteen wasn’t the best odds, but she’d dealt with worse.

She spent the next fifteen minutes drawing up plans, making lists. She had a storage unit near Paris that held everything she’d need, units similar to ones she had all over the world. Tools were needed for her work, and it paid to be prepared.

She looked at her watch; she was supposed to meet Lanighan at 9:00 p.m. back at his apartment on Avenue Foch, but she had no intention of doing that. She put away her computer and called him.