Tower Down--A Kirk McGarvey Novel, page 13
“If he does he’ll have to wonder why I approached him the way I did,” McGarvey said. “But I don’t think he’ll just let me walk off. His curiosity will get the better of him.”
“And his greed,” Pete said, turning away from the television.
Otto heard it. “You’re talking about tons of money. He’s going to want more.”
“I’m counting on it. In the meantime, what have you come up with on al-Hamadi?”
“Nothing more than we already knew. If he’s working for Saudi intel he’s deep cover. Probably not even a paper trail. Just a control officer who he reports to verbally, who in turn makes his reports verbally to his supervisor.”
“Makes him an important operator.”
“I have a gut feeling that his charter is to keep tabs on the royals, so that they can be reined in when they get themselves into trouble.”
“If that’s the case he must be a busy man. But his cover is damned good. From what I’ve seen he plays the role of the fool very well. But we haven’t encountered any royals yet.”
“They were all over the place at the festival and they’ll be in Monaco for the race,” Otto said. “There’re at least two of their yachts in Monaco and a third, plus Hammond’s, on the way.”
“Then why the hell is al-Hamadi bothering with me?”
“Because for the moment it seems as if his target is Hammond, for some reason.”
Something suddenly came into McGarvey’s head. It was tradecraft pure and simple. Anomalies. Look for the one possibility, or set of possibilities, that no matter how unlikely would open an entirely new avenue. Murphy’s Law: Out of five things, the one that would do you the most harm is likely to be the next to happen. Or: If everything seems to be going well, you’re probably running into an ambush.
“Nero’s here and he’s using al-Hamadi for the same reason we’re using him. He’s looking for an invitation to Jian’s penthouse party.”
“He’d have to have a good source of intel.”
“He had it in New York to target Seif and masquerade as him.”
“The same ploy won’t work again.”
“He’s offered Hammond, or someone like him, a moneymaking scheme, of course. Something that would appeal to Jian.”
“It would have to be something so big that a guy like Hammond couldn’t or wouldn’t want to handle on his own,” Otto said. “Fringe.”
“Nero is here for one reason—to get an invitation to the Tower. For now it’s his Achilles’ heel. In the meantime do you have any updates on the Identikit? Someone from the Bureau was going to talk to possible witnesses.”
“All the new stuff is contradictory,” Otto said. “It only takes a day or two for people’s memories to start getting fuzzy. The first image is probably as close as we’re going to get. And no one downtown is recommending distribution even of that version.”
“How about his general build?”
“All over the map, Kemo Sabe. We’re back at square one. If someone looks like he doesn’t belong … well, you know what to do.”
* * *
They finished packing and McGarvey was about to call the bellman when the house phone rang. It was al-Hamadi.
“I thought that you’d be up here in Monaco by now.”
“We’re taking the noon train,” McGarvey said.
“That’s not necessary. Mr. Hammond will send a car for you.”
“I told you last night that my offer is off the table.”
Al-Hamadi hesitated for a beat. “About last night, I never thanked you.”
“For what?”
“Those bastards could have killed us both. You reacted almost like you were a cop or something.”
“I was in the Air Force OSI for a few years a long time ago. Old training, I guess, doesn’t die.” The Office of Special Investigations was the air force’s counterintelligence, criminal investigative, and protective services agency.
“I thought it must have been something like that. Those guys didn’t have a chance.”
McGarvey didn’t answer.
“Mr. Hammond is still very interested. And from what I understand so is Ms. Patterson.”
“Who the hell is she?”
“A Hollywood big deal. She and Hammond are a thing.”
“No.”
“I’m trying to help here.”
“I don’t give a shit,” McGarvey said. “Just stay the fuck away from us.”
“Hammond has talked with Viktor Shepelev, who wants to buy in.”
“I have a couple of other people already interested.”
“Not these kind of people,” al-Hamadi said, and he almost sounded desperate.
“I want people with balls, because that’s what it’s going to take to corner the market.”
“I’m talking about a fantastic finder’s fee.”
McGarvey laughed. “I’m not interested in a finder’s fee. You don’t have a fucking clue. I’m in this one hundred percent. I know the play, I know the moves, I know the timing.”
“Maybe I’ll recommend that Hammond and the others do this thing on their own, and you can go screw yourself.”
“Be my guest, and when it falls apart because none of them knows what they’re doing, you can be the fall guy.” McGarvey hung up.
Pete was grinning. “That was probably the worst sales pitch I’ve ever heard. Unless you really meant to blow them off.”
“What are you talking about? I was thought I was being charming.”
“Fuel to the fire?”
“Something like that.”
TWENTY-NINE
The run up to Monaco was only twenty-five miles by train, the route scenic. They stopped briefly at Antibes, then Nice for nearly ten minutes while a couple of passengers helped an old woman aboard and to her seat. They didn’t pull out of the station until she was settled.
“Merci, merci, mes petites,” she kept saying to the pair of helpful young men.
“You don’t see that every day,” Pete said.
“This is France,” McGarvey said.
“You lived here once upon a time.”
“Yes, and so did Otto. It was good for a while, but then it got bad.”
“Bad, how?”
“Just bad,” McGarvey said, thinking back.
In fact almost every place he’d ever lived for any length of time had gotten bad. Even Washington and the Beltway and beyond. A friend of his had died in an attack at a Georgetown restaurant. His son-in-law had been gunned down, his wife and daughter killed in a bomb blast, and even Pete had nearly lost her life in an op.
It had been the same in Florida, where he’d been the target of a couple of assassination attempts.
And on the plage last night.
“A penny,” Pete said, breaking him out of his thoughts. He realized, for the first time, that though Pete often used the expression—so had Katy.
“Are you carrying?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t go anywhere without it.”
“You’ve already said that.”
McGarvey held up a hand. “I don’t want to lose you. Watch your six, I mean it.”
“I’m frosty, boss.”
“Christ.” McGarvey had to laugh.
* * *
The train station was in the hills just above the old Sainte-Dévote Chapel, below which was the busy port of Monaco. Hammond’s yacht was a half mile to the south, angling in toward the entrance between the breakwaters.
Outside they got a cab to take them to the Hermitage. Traffic wasn’t busy until they reached La Condamine, the business downtown of Monaco. Traffic here was impossible because of all the people in town for the week, and because important sections of the streets were blocked off for the race.
“And it will be three weeks before all the barriers have been removed and life can get back to normal,” their driver told them. “But no one complains, hein.”
“The money is good,” McGarvey said, stating the obvious.
The driver looked in the rearview mirror to see if the American was pulling his leg, but then smiled. “Except from the Brits. Most of them are tight.”
Otto called. “I ran down the guest lists from the major hotels in Cannes and Monaco, and came up with nothing of any real interest except for a Mexican by the name of Angel Castillo. But the guy checks out okay. He runs a small stock brokerage company in Mexico City. Just a one-man operation, but he’s accredited on the Bolsa.” The Bolsa Mexicana de Valores was Mexico’s stock exchange.
“Is he registered at Basel or Aspen?” McGarvey asked.
“No. And before you ask, that name didn’t show up at any of the top-ten hotels in Manhattan going back three months.”
“Castillo is out, but Nero is here. I can damned near feel him.”
“Problem is, nobody knows what he looks like, except the ones who were at AtEighth when it went down. But I’ve come up with something else, and I don’t even know if I should mention it.”
“Everything is on the board,” McGarvey said.
“I’m still following up on the possibility that the Saudis are involved. I’ve eliminated any government-sanctioned operation. If something like that ever got out the royals would become pariahs. We’re talking about the murders of a lot of seriously rich people and blaming it on ISIS. The blowback would be intense.”
“Nothing would come of it. The families of the nine-eleven victims sued but the court dropped it for lack of strong enough evidence to overcome Saudi Arabia’s sovereign immunity.”
“My darlings are starting to pick up whiffs of someone called el Nassr, ‘the Eagle.’ That could be his actual surname, but I’m betting that it’s a designator. A code name. The GIP likes that sort of ambiguity.”
“What’s the context?”
“It popped up when a German politician was found murdered in bed with his mistress. Both of them were shot in the head twice, once at short range. The same insurance shots as Nero’s. The German was leading a campaign to control OPEC’s pricing policies, which would have had a direct effect on Saudi oil production. Anyway, the BND had a brief reference to a Saudi national who might have gone by the code name Eagle. They didn’t take it any further.”
“Any others?”
“Nothing concrete. One reference in Caracas about an incident in Maracaibo when a series of drilling platforms went up in flames. It was eventually declared an industrial accident. But one line in an early report said something to the effect that ‘It was as if an Eagle, its talons spread wide, swooped down for an attack.’”
“Thin,” McGarvey said, but the two references resonated.
“At this point we don’t have anything else. Are you expecting Hammond to call?”
“I’d bet good money that he will. And does the name Patterson—Ms. Patterson—a Hollywood big shot, mean anything to you?”
“Hold on.”
McGarvey glanced at the driver, who seemed to be concentrating on getting through traffic, and then to Pete, who had caught his gesture. She shook her head, the movement very slight.
Otto came back. “Susan Patterson, a Hollywood producer worth a couple of billion. She was in just about the same league as Nenet Akila, who was killed when AtEighth came down. They were friends, or at least nodding acquaintances.”
“An interesting connection.”
“I wouldn’t take it any further than that. All these people run in the same crowd.”
“Keep us posted,” McGarvey said. “I think I’m going to throw another stick into the pack of dogs. See which one yelps.”
* * *
The driver dropped them off at the Hermitage, one of Monaco’s premier hotels. They checked in under the same work names as they had used in Cannes, and were shown to their decent junior suite, which had its own balcony that looked down on the harbor and the section of the racetrack along the waterfront.
When they were alone, McGarvey explained what Otto had come up with, including the hint of someone with the code name el Nassr.
“I don’t think the cabby was paying much attention,” she said.
The house phone on the coffee table rang and Pete went across to answer it.
“This is Mr. Canton’s suite,” she said. She put it on speakerphone.
“I’m Tom Hammond. If he’s floating around there, I’d like to have a quick word with him.”
Pete held out the phone. She was grinning.
McGarvey answered. “I’m surprised to hear from you,” he said.
“Alyan told me about your unfortunate adventure last night.”
“Unfortunate for them, not me.”
Hammond laughed. “I’d like to talk to you about your project.”
“I have someone else interested.”
“We’re just coming through the breakwater now. Should be squared away within the hour. Can I expect you?”
“I’m not interested in your parties, Mr. Hammond, just business.”
“Of course, but I think that you and Ms. Borman would enjoy the race from my boat tomorrow better than from your balcony,” Hammond said. “One hour?”
“Sure,” McGarvey said.
He hung up and Pete gave him a fist bump.
THIRTY
Kamal was sitting on the balcony having croissants and dark coffee so he wouldn’t have to endure what the Americans called a buffet lunch aboard Hammond’s yacht, which was just now gliding through the breakwaters. It wasn’t the largest here but it was close. He’d seen an interview with the American, who claimed that he wasn’t in competition for the biggest, most expensive things on the block—the yachts, the houses, the cars.
“Or the most expensive women?” the interviewer had asked.
Hammond had gotten up and walked off the set. A few days later the interviewer was fired.
Kamal had done the research on the handful of targets he needed to turn in order to get invited to Jian’s party at the Tower. Hammond had turned out to be an interesting man, but so were most of the other players on the circuit. Even the bland ones—the Gates: and the Buffets—were egocentric. They all shared the same characteristic: they believed in themselves.
Ego was a weakness that could be exploited, unlike his own, which he figured he had under perfect control.
But his chief concern at the moment was the blogger Joe Canton, whom al-Hamadi had warned him about. To this point he was an unknown.
He phoned Sa’ad again and explained the situation. “Could he be working with Alyan?”
“I doubt it. And I also doubt that he’s a U.S. Treasury agent as Alyan suggested. The American government doesn’t do business that way.”
“He was attacked on the beach last night. Your doing?”
“No. We think it was random.”
Kamal didn’t think so, but he let it ride. “He’s not who he claims to be. His blog posts supposedly go back two years and yet no one heard of him until a couple of days ago.”
“You’re going aboard Hammond’s yacht for the race?”
“Yes.”
“Good. If Canton shows up and you get the chance to take his picture, send it to me.”
“I don’t want to come face-to-face with the man this close to the operation.”
“On the contrary, my dear friend, it’s exactly what you must do,” Sa’ad said. “Talk to him, find out what he’s all about. And if need be, kill him.”
Kamal saw the logic. “Especially if he shows up at Basel or Aspen.”
“It’s unlikely that the Americans know about you, unless you were sloppy in New York.”
It was an insult, but Kamal let it go. For now.
“Canton is nothing more than someone else coming to Hammond with a deal.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Do.”
Kamal finished his coffee and retrieved his weapon kit in a zip-up leather case and brought it back out to the balcony.
Wilson Combat pistols were loosely modeled after the old U.S. Army Colt .45 1911A1, the official sidearm well into the nineties when the military switched over to the Beretta 92F. But the Wilson pistols, which came in a wide variety of models, had it over the Colt and Beretta in reliability and especially in accuracy.
After New York he’d decided to switch from the Glock to the Wilson in the 9mm Ultralight Carry Sentinel version. It only had an eight-round magazine, but it had an accuracy guarantee of an inch and a half at twenty-five yards. It was something Kamal had verified on his own. There was nothing wrong with the Glock, but it was nowhere as accurate or reliable.
The gun was clean, but he disassembled it, cleaned everything again with odorless gun oil, and put it back together. He took the bullets from both magazines and made sure everything was ultraclean before loading both mags and seating one home in the butt of the pistol. He cycled a round into the chamber, ejected the magazine, and loaded one round before seating it home again. Nine shots now.
He was just wiping down the suppressor when Susan Patterson breezed out onto the balcony. “Going pheasant hunting?”
On instinct alone Kamal snatched the pistol and turned and pointed it at her.
She stopped short and held up her hands. “Whoa, I don’t even like pheasant.” She was startled but she was more amused than frightened.
“How’d you get in?”
“I told one of the maids that I was your lover. Still, it cost me three hundred euros before she would let me in.”
Kamal watched her eyes. She wasn’t lying; either that or she was damned good at it.
“Would you mind pointing that thing somewhere else?”
He lowered the pistol and laid it on the hand towel he’d spread out.
She came over and sat down next to him. She was wearing a white pantsuit cut low in front and back, with a broad black belt around her narrow waist and a Versace baseball cap, diamonds in the bill. She looked stunning and she knew it.
“Why are you here?” Kamal asked.
“In the first place, to seduce you where Tom can’t get his rocks off by watching. And then to take you back to the yacht for lunch.” She reached out for the gun.
“Don’t. It’s not a toy.”
She pulled her hand back. “I didn’t think it was.”
