The color rushed from both of their faces, and Bernstein gave his friend a look that said he would like to shove every last chess piece down his throat. Slowly, they both turned their heads and looked at the man sitting four feet away.
Stan Hurley slid his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose and looked straight at Jones. “How about I put a bullet in the back of your head, and we call it even?”
The tall reporter sat gaping for a moment, as he was too shocked to think of a reply. Slowly his mouth started to move, but no words came out, and then he started to stammer as if he were back in grade school.
“Stop fucking mumbling,” Hurley ordered. “How long have I been working with you two?”
Again, Jones began to stutter.
Hurley, as impatient as ever, answered his own question. “Seventeen fucking years and this is how you want to treat me, you selfish prick? I got your ass out of that jam in Turkey. I helped both of you find jobs, and there’s been no shortage in cash that has come your way over the years, and you act like you’re a fucking victim.”
“I was only . . .”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear you speak yet. I’m still trying to figure out if you’re worth the risk.” Hurley leaned back and crossed his legs. “Turkey, and I’m not talking about Thanksgiving . . . I’m talking Midnight Express. Two stupid college kids deciding they’re going to try to bring a bunch of drugs out of the country and then sell them stateside and make a nice profit. I’m talking big hairy Turkish guards gang-raping a couple of East Coast journalism majors. I thought that nice little visual was seared into your brainpans, because it sure did seem like it when you were both bawling like babies for me to save your asses all those years ago.”
Bernstein looked solemnly at Hurley and said, “I have not forgotten the fact that you saved us, and I never will.”
“You’re not the one who worries me, Dick. It’s pretty boy here.”
Jones had managed to get some saliva in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to croak out his words. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. I haven’t been feeling all that well and it’s put me in a bad mood.”
“Mood?” Hurley threw the word back with disgust. “Mood has nothing to do with this. This is serious shit, and while I know you think you made a deal with the devil, you should open your mind to the possibility that all these years you’ve spent rubbing elbows with all of your fellow bleeding-heart reporters has turned you into a half Commie.” Hurley leaned in close. “The U.S. of Fucking A. is not the bad guy in this fight. The CIA is not the bad guy, and if you opened your eyes and fucking looked around at all the nasty shit you’ve seen, you’d know that. We’re not perfect, but we’re a hell of a lot better than the opposition. Now . . . I’d like to hear from you, Brian, what in hell has been so difficult about our little relationship?”
Jones looked down at the chessboard and cleared his throat. “It’s just that it’s unethical for a journalist to work for you and your organization. It puts a lot of stress on me. If word ever got out . . .” His voice trailed off and he began to shake his head.
“Unethical.” Hurley laughed. “You mean like trying to transport illegal drugs from one country to another. Would that be unethical or should we just cut through the bullshit and elevate it to a crime punishable by twenty years in a Turkish prison?”
“We were young and stupid.”
“And now you’re older and still stupid. How about the cash I’ve given you over the years? I assume you assuaged your ethical burden by giving all the money to the Little Sisters of the Poor?”
Jones lifted his chin and shook his head.
“You know what, Brian, you need to get off your high horse. You’re not the only journalist I have in my pocket, and I didn’t even invent this game. There’s been plenty before you and will be plenty after you. You need to start thinking of me as your godfather. You think you would have won that Murrow Award three years ago if it wasn’t for me making sure you didn’t get shot?”
“Nope,” Bernstein said as if there were doubt in the statement.
“You need to listen to him more,” Hurley said, pointing to Bernstein. “Your problem, Brian, is that while you are basically a good guy, you are way too insecure. Stop worrying about what your colleagues think of you. A few of them might be your friends, but most of them would just as soon see you fall flat on your face and take your job. You made a deal with me a long time ago and I saved your ass. That is something you should never forget. If you’re willing to step back and take an honest look at this relationship, you’d understand this has been a very beneficial one for all of us. If you’re not willing to do that, then let’s end this thing right now, and trust me on this, I’ll be the one outing your ass and ruining your career, and a month from now they’ll find you swinging from the rafters of that cabin you have up in Thunder Lake. You’ll be so pumped full of drugs no one will doubt for a second that you committed suicide.”
A wide-eyed Jones asked, “How did you know I had a cabin on Thunder Lake?”
Hurley shook his head and said, “Oh, for Christ sake.” He turned to Bernstein and said, “I’m putting you in charge of him. You guys have fifteen minutes to get your shit together. A big guy named Victor is going to show up. If you guys aren’t here, I’ll assume you want to end our relationship, which would be really stupid, because I will assume you are now my enemy and I will be forced to put certain plans in motion . . . the kind of plans that will be nearly impossible to stop once they are started.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Bernstein offered quickly.
“Good. I’ll dispense with Victor for the moment. I assume you’re both familiar with the bloodbath that took place the other night?”
Jones gave his friend a See, I told you so look and asked, “At the hotel on the Seine?”
“Yep . . . Are you guys already covering it?”
“The bureau has someone on it.”
Hurley thought about that a second. “Maybe you should show some initiative. Start digging a bit. I assume you still have some contacts with the police.” Hurley had plenty of contacts of his own all over Paris, but he didn’t want to go tipping his hand. At the moment, everything he had was based on gossip and rumor. He needed the hard facts that the police were dealing with.
Bernstein scratched his beard. “We have some pretty decent sources, but this is Paris, so you know what that means.”
Hurley did and reached into his pocket. He retrieved a thick envelope. “Ten thousand francs. You need more, let me know.”
“Receipts?” Jones asked, regaining a bit of his sense of humor.
“Along with expense reports in triplicate, please.” Hurley pulled two relatively small devices from his pocket. He handed one to Jones and the other to Bernstein. “Those, gentlemen, are the newest in cell phone technology . . . the StarTAC by Motorola. My number is already programmed. As soon as you know something I want to know something.” Hurley also handed them two chargers. “We don’t think the French are up and running on intercepting these things yet, but let’s be careful. You’ve both made enough international calls to know how the game works.”
Both men nodded. They had indeed. Countries could get very ugly about foreign reporters wanting to tell the world about certain atrocities that they were committing. Jones and Bernstein often had to work out special codes with their producers back in New York.
“Also . . .” Hurley started, “I might need you to pull some surveillance shifts.”
Jones let out a moan that said You have got to be kidding me.
“Don’t worry,” Hurley said. “I’ll make sure you’re compensated. You get your head back in the game and get me what I need and I’ll make sure you both walk away from this with a fist full of cash.”
Now that Hurley was calm, Bernstein wasn’t going to wait for his friend to inflame him again. “Thank you. We’ll get right on it.”
“Victor is a big guy . . . impossible to miss. Just do what he says and everything will
be fine.” Hurley stood and placed his hand on Jones’s shoulder. “Brian . . . you’re not a bad guy . . . you’re just self-righteous. You think you’re the only noble man in the game.” Hurley shook his head. “Trust me, it’s a little more complicated than that.”
CHAPTER 16
LITTLE yellow flags littered the grassy area across the street from the hotel. Commandant Neville had received the call shortly after 10:00 a.m. She’d already showered and was lounging with her husband and two kids. She’d given up on going to church with two kids in diapers, so Sunday mornings were spent on the floor of their tiny flat. She and her husband tried to simultaneously read the papers and keep the kids occupied with an endless stream of irritating shows that supposedly were going to make Marc, who was two and a half, and Agatha, who was nine months, the smartest kids of their generation. Neville didn’t actually believe it, but she was all for anything that kept them occupied for more than ten minutes. When the call came, she put on a white shirt, black slacks, black pumps, and a gray trench coat. Knowing the cameras would be following her every move, she even put on a dab of makeup and bushed out her short black hair.
A vivid, low fall sun sparkled off the Seine. Neville’s eyes were concealed by a stylish pair of oversized Chanel sunglasses that covered nearly a third of her face. She wore them as much to shield her from the bright sun as to shield her from the prying eyes of the reporters. She had yet to hold a press conference, and she didn’t want them reading anything into her expressions until she was ready. She stood in the middle of the area and tried to make sense of it all. The reporters were back, thick as summer flies, shouting questions and snapping photos and in general being their irritating selves. In addition to the press, there were hundreds if not thousands of curious onlookers who couldn’t resist the morbid pull of the crime scene.
Neville kept her concern beneath a placid mask. She’d learned over the years that it was best to look serious at murder scenes—even angry could work, but it was never okay to laugh or be caught joking with other officers. The investigation, only in its second day, was becoming something of a mess. These little yellow flags, for instance, had only been placed this morning. The entire area from river to street was now blocked off with bands of crime scene tape and another ten officers to make sure nothing was tampered with. Neville thought it was a waste of manpower, but her superiors had insisted. The problem, she knew, was that this entire space had been crowded with people the day before. They had stepped all over the evidence and if this ever got to court it would be all but useless. She did, however, gain something very important—a new angle.
Neville looked back at the hotel and the balcony outside Tarek’s suite. She chided herself for not expanding the perimeter right away, but as her boss had explained, the amount of evidence in the hotel itself was overwhelming. Nine bodies, shell casings and slugs everywhere, and then on top of that they’d found the room with all of the surveillance equipment. They still didn’t have that one quite figured out. No one on the hotel staff remembered any security for the Libyan oil minister. They had over fifteen statements from employees saying Tarek had arrived with a single assistant. That assistant was now unavailable for comment, securely locked behind the gates of the Libyan Embassy.
The tough one to stomach for Neville was that she had more than thirty officers assigned to the case, and she had only learned of the spent shell casings that were strewn about the sidewalk and gutter in front of the hotel the previous evening. The press might eat her alive for that one. She went back to the crime scene, examined the casings, and wondered how many had been crushed, kicked, and taken during the course of the long day. They were more or less spread out under the suite’s balcony. The logical assumption was that either someone had stood on Tarek’s balcony and fired into his room, or someone had stood on his balcony and fired at someone or something down on the street.
She went up to the suite, stood on the balcony, and looked into the room. The wall directly in front of her was untouched, whereas the wall to her right was pocked with bullet holes. Turning toward the river, she looked down at the sidewalk where the shell casings had been found and imagined firing a weapon. After a long moment of reflection she ordered her deputy Martin Simon to rope off the area, bring in the metal detectors, and begin the search for 9mm slugs.
Neville then went home full of self-recrimination for the mishap. She had allowed herself to be sucked into the most plausible theory—that one man, or several men, had killed Tarek, the prostitute, the supposed bodyguards, and then two guests and a hotel worker on his way out the back door. In barely a day’s time it was all falling apart. The Libyans were so far refusing to talk, saying only that the four men were there to protect their oil minister. As a police officer, Neville despised being lied to, and like most cops, she had a very well-tuned BS detector. The four dead men were not bodyguards. They might have been sent to keep an eye on Tarek, but they most certainly were not bodyguards. She would have to ask around, but to the best of her knowledge, she’d never heard of bodyguards using silenced weapons.
Neville ignored the reporters who were yelling her name, instead choosing to act as if the pattern of little yellow flags would give her a glimpse into how to solve the crime of the century. Martin Simon approached from behind and called out her name. When Neville turned, she could tell by the open-eyed expression on his face that the case was about to take another turn.
“What’s up?”
“Let’s take a walk.” Simon glanced back toward the hotel. “There’s something interesting you should see.”
Neville fell into step with the red-haired Simon. Although he was two years older than her, his red hair and freckles made him look as if he were ten years her junior. When they were clear of the throngs of reporters and onlookers, she said, “Please tell me we didn’t find another body.”
Simon laughed. “No more bodies. I think nine is enough.”
“Then you’ve solved the crime for us?”
Simon shook his head as they entered the lobby. “No, but I think I’ve found something that is going to upset you.”
She pulled off her sunglasses and placed them in her purse. The hotel staff watched them with understandable anxiety. More than half of their guests had checked out and future reservations were being canceled at a quick clip. Neville felt bad for them. They were overworked and stressed and this thing was far from over. Every single one of them, whether they had been on duty or not, would be interviewed at least twice more. It was an avenue that had to be pursued for two reasons. Either one of the employees had seen something without realizing it, or one of them was involved in giving the killer or killers information about Tarek’s comings and goings.
They entered the elevator, and when the doors were closed, Simon said, “I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“That’s because you drink too much coffee,” Neville said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Don’t start, boss,” he said as he watched the brass arrow move from left to right, ticking out their ascent. “While I was lying awake staring at the water marks on my ceiling, I asked myself why someone would stand on the balcony and shoot toward the street and the river.”
“And?”
“The nine-millimeter casings we found on the street match the ones that were scattered all around Tarek’s suite, and in the hallway, and the ones found by the body at the back door.”
The elevator stopped at the top floor and the doors opened. Neville exited first. “So you think they were fired by one of our Libyan bodyguards.”
“Maybe . . . but for the moment, I’m more interested in who was being shot at than who was doing the firing.”
Neville’s thin lips pinched to the left in an expression that told Simon she wasn’t following his line of reasoning.
Simon stopped walking in the middle of the hall and acted as if he was holding a gun. “If I’m standing on the balcony and firing at someone below, why am I firing at them, and how did they get there?”
> Neville shook her head abruptly as if she was trying to clear her thoughts. “What are you talking about?”
“Somebody, or several people, killed those bodyguards, and then they had to get out of the hotel. We jumped to the conclusion that the same person or persons killed Tarek, the prostitute, the bodyguards, then killed the two guests and the worker.”
“Correct.”
“Then who was shooting from the balcony down onto the street, and more important, who were they shooting at?”
Neville visualized what he was saying and said, “I see your point.”
Simon opened a service door at the end of the hallway, revealing a steep, narrow metal staircase that led to the roof. “Whoever was being shot at was not the man who killed the employee who was in the alley. You wouldn’t leave by the back door and then come around to the front of the hotel where there’s a greater chance that you’ll run into someone.” Simon started climbing the stairs. The hatch that led to the roof was already opened.
Neville followed her fellow officer onto the roof and immediately noticed two of her best crime scene technicians.
“So I’m lying in bed,” Simon continued, “and I think, the most logical explanation is that someone left that room last night via the balcony, and if they left via the balcony they must have had a rope.” Simon stopped next to a black cast-iron vent stack and dropped to a knee. Neville followed suit. “You see where the soot has been rubbed free right here?” He pointed to the general area but did not touch it.
Neville could see a circle that wound itself around the cylindrical vent stack. She nodded.
Simon rose to his feet and walked to the edge where one of the crime scene technicians was taking measurements. “Bernard, tell her what you found.”