My telephone rang. It was Joe Kitty.
“Tommy, two guys just entered the bank building. There’s a car and driver waiting out front. They might be after that server. What should I do?”
“I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
I tore out of the embassy, jumped into my rental car, and headed for the bank. Eight minutes later, I pulled up behind the suspect car parked in front of the bank. The engine was running. I hopped out with my shooter in my hand and walked toward the driver’s door. The driver didn’t wait to see what was going to happen next: he gunned his ride and tore off down the street.
Joe Kitty came running over. “Now what?”
“Watch the door in back of the building. We want the server.”
He hotfooted it for the nearest alley. That’s what I like about Joe Kitty—no stupid questions. As if I had any answers.
The interior of the building was dark except for a few night lights on the stairs. The guys in the building, if they were indeed in the bank’s branch office, would come out and look for their ride. And it was gone. If the driver of the getaway car was on the phone to them, Lord only knows what they would decide to do. Maybe hunker down like Bill Leitz and I did the other night.
The door to the building was unlocked, so I went in. I eased up the stairs and checked the door to the branch office. Unlocked. Should I go in?
Not feeling suicidal, I decided not to.
Were they still in there? No more than a minute had passed since the getaway car made its quick departure.
I retreated to the top of the stairs, faced the branch office door, and waited for it to open. They were coming through that door or they weren’t coming out. Two guys, Joe said.
I stretched out on the floor with the pistol at arm’s length. The light wasn’t very good—I’d be almost invisible to them—but I could see the sights well enough to shoot. I waited.
Wished I had a silencer on the pistol. Oh, well. Next time.
How do you say “Stop” in Russian? Or Swedish?
No more than sixty seconds had passed when the door opened quickly and two men came out. One of them was carrying something. They paused and looked over the transom that gave them a view of the main entrance. Looking for their ride. So the driver hadn’t called them, or they had their cell phones off.
“Halt,” I said loudly. One of them, the guy without the server, turned my way and I saw the flash of a pistol in his hand. He shot from the hip without aiming, and I heard just a muffled pop. The bullet must have gone over my head.
I pulled the trigger of my shooter and the report filled the hall. The guy staggered and fell.
The other guy decided he wasn’t a hero. He froze.
I sprang from the floor and walked toward them. The guy on the floor wasn’t moving. The man holding the server watched me come. I kept the gun on him.
“Put it down,” I said.
He was looking at the pistol and trying to decide. I motioned at the server. “Down slowly.”
He got the idea. After he put the box down, I motioned back against the wall. He turned around, spread his arms, and leaned on the wall. He’d done this before. I hit him in the head with the pistol, as hard as I could. He collapsed.
He had a gun on him too. No wallet. No phone. No passport. Nothing but the gun.
I checked the guy I had shot. He was still alive but out of it with a hole in the chest. Blood frothing out. A lung shot. No wallet, phone, or passport, but a pack of Marlboros and some matches.
I picked up the server and trotted down the stairs. Joe Kitty was already behind the wheel of our car and had the engine running. I climbed in, slammed the door, and he put us in motion.
“I heard the shot.”
“He shot first. Had a silencer.”
“What do you think this is, Tommy, a fucking cowboy movie? Man, never give the assholes the first shot.”
“Sarah Houston on Line Two, Admiral.” That was the receptionist.
Jake answered it. “Grafton.”
“The server in Tallinn is off line.”
“Maybe Tommy got it.”
“Someone did, or turned it off.”
“I’m going to Sweden in a couple of hours. I’ll need a printout of everything you can give me from that server.”
“Yes, sir.”
When Sarah was gone, Jake called Tommy on his cell. Tommy answered.
“Unsecure line. Do you have the box?”
“Great. Call me on a secure line.”
“You should have marched that dude you hit into the car,” Joe Kitty said, “and sweated him to see what he knows about that kid.”
“Then what?” I said. “Let him loose to tell his boss all about us, or should we shoot him and dump him somewhere?”
“I keep thinking about that kid,” Joe Kitty said.
“Yeah, I do too.”
“If she isn’t dead she soon will be.”
That was my thought too, and it sat like a rock. Nine years old. Probably scared out of her mind. Damn!
I said, “Let’s go back and see if we can follow that guy when he leaves the building. He’ll go somewhere. He doesn’t have a cell phone or wallet on him.”
“Someone will come for him,” Joe said. He made a U-turn on the wet empty street. He parked the car around the corner from the bank building. There were three other cars parked on the street—none of them occupied. I stepped to the corner and peered around. It was raining gently and I didn’t have a hat. Temp in the mid-fifties. I checked my watch. In five minutes I was damp all over. After ten I was wet. I hugged the building, trying to stay out of most of the rain. The wind came up, a gentle breeze, and I began to chill. Say what you will, this spook business was for the dogs.
I had been standing in the rain for seventeen minutes when a dark sedan came slowly from the other direction and stopped immediately in front of the bank. Two men got out, adjusted their clothes and weapons, looked around, then tried the door to the building. It was still unlocked. They went in. The driver stayed in the car and kept it running.
In three minutes they came out with the guy I had slugged. His legs were working, but not very well—no doubt he had a concussion—and the two men supported him. They put him in the back seat of the sedan, then went back inside for the man I had shot. They carried him out. I zipped over to my ride and hopped in the passenger seat just before the car passed us, going to the left.
“That’s them. Lay back all you can.”
“I know how to do this, Tommy.”
“Yeah, but I feel better giving you orders. It’s a power thing.”
“You get off on it, I know.”
Joe pulled out and stayed a block or so behind the sedan, which was obviously going somewhere. That somewhere turned out to be a hospital. They took him into the emergency room while we sat watching from nearly two hundred yards away. Hospital people rolled out a gurney for the gunshot victim.
Well, at least they were decent to their friends. That was something. Maybe there was some hope for Audra Rogers after all.
A billion dollars a week! Think about it. Talk about a score! Man, this was like winning the Power Ball Lottery.
And yet, all that money belonged to someone, or an army of someones, and they would be very unhappy if even a significant percentage happened to disappear. Like, poof, off into cyberspace. If that happened, the boys in Stockholm were going to need to find a way off this planet, fast.
I looked around at the server lying on the back seat. Wondered what secrets it held. Well, Sarah Houston and her colleagues would tell us, book, chapter and verse. Just put it in the diplomatic bag, and voila, it would magically appear at the CIA campus.
When the dudes had been in the hospital for a half hour, Joe Kitty said aloud, “Wonder how long they are going to be in there.”
“Until they come out.”
“They could have called someone, Tommy. If they spotted us tailing them, help could be on the way with a lot more firepower than we have.”
“Let’s move the car. Park it near the exit to that parking lot.”
Joe did. While we were sitting there, an ambulance came and the crew took someone into the hospital on a gurney. After it left, a private car rolled up, parked behind the sedan that had brought our guys, and an elderly man helped a woman into the hospital.
The rain continued to fall. A gentle breeze off the Baltic stirred the leaves of the trees, which were enjoying the spring after a miserable Baltic winter. I watched the entrance to the emergency room in my side mirror. The bad guys’ ride was still where they left it, with a man at the wheel. We kept our heads on a swivel, watching for cars. Sitting still like this in Indian country made me nervous.
I called Armanti Hall on his cell. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How’s things?”
“Quiet.”
“Folks asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re parked outside the emergency entrance to a hospital”—I named it, and since my command of the local lingo wasn’t great, spelled it—“and need your help. Come find us. Call when you get close.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll give him the server, just in case,” I told Joe.
Another ten minutes went by. The rain was steady. The sea wind caressed the trees.
Twelve minutes. Fourteen.
“Let’s get the hell outta here,” Joe said.
I had the willys terribly bad too. “Go,” I said.
He fired up the engine and put the car in gear. As we started to move, a van pulled in front of us, facing us, blocking the exit lane. Two men piled out, one on each side. Men with submachine guns.
“Oh, fuck,” Joe said, and aimed the car for the guy on the passenger side and stood on the gas. As we jumped the curb the windshield exploded. Little pebbles of glass flew everywhere and I slammed my eyes shut. Somehow Joe kept his foot on the gas pedal and the car was accelerating. I opened my eyes in time to see the guy who was in front of us going over the top of the car.
Joe’s head was a mass of blood. He was leaning back against the headrest and still had the accelerator floored, his lifeless hands on the wheel. The engine was howling.
The car shot across the street and slammed into a parked vehicle. The air bag deployed; I felt it smack me a good one. I was conscious and miraculously alive. I could hear the engine winding at full screech, tortured metal screaming a banshee wail. Then the little four-banger quit dead. The air bag lay there like a deflated balloon.
I didn’t have my seat belt on, so in the great silence I shoved hard against the door and was out onto the pavement. On my face. Got the pistol out and started shooting at the guy who was still standing beside the van across the street. He jumped back into the van as I emptied the pistol at it. The van driver shot straight ahead, past the entrance to the hospital and on out into the street. I could see the shooter we had smacked lying flat on the glistening pavement.
I looked back into our ride. Joe Kitty had stopped four or five bullets with his head. Blood and brains were blasted everywhere. Both shooters had been aiming for the driver, which was the only reason I was still alive.
The rear door was buckled and wouldn’t open. I leaned in over the passenger seat and grabbed that damned server—it was on the floor—and set off down the sidewalk. The car that had brought the other guys to the hospital was gone. How the driver got that thing out of there I had no idea, nor did I care.
I was having my troubles walking. Staggering. I had glass pebbles in my hair and clothes and maybe in my eyes. I was trying to clear my vision when a car pulled alongside with Armanti Hall at the wheel.
I stared at him.
“Get in, you damn fool.”
I opened the door, tossed the server in, and managed to cram myself in. I was still trying to get the door closed a block later.
“Holster that fucking gun.”
To my amazement, I found that I still had the Beretta in my hand. I managed to jam it under my armpit.
“What happened?” Armanti Hall demanded.
“Fuckers killed Joe.”
“Oh, man…”
I could hear sirens wailing. I put my head down on Armanti’s shoulder and went to sleep.
A doctor came to the embassy, wiped Joe Kitty’s blood off my face, and rooted around in my left eye for a little glass shard. With the glass out, I wrote a message for Jake Grafton which Dulcie Del Rio sent over the secure com system, and Armanti Hall took me back to my hotel. My clothes were wet and splotched with Joe’s blood. I took them off and threw them in the trash. Then I showered and fell into bed. Armanti stayed in the hallway, just in case.
Lying in bed, I felt as if I had really screwed up this assignment. Joe Kitty was dead, which wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t sat outside that hospital for way over an hour while the bad guys summoned help. How stupid can you get? Then there was Audra Rogers… imprisoned… somewhere.
Tired as I was, I still couldn’t let it go enough to fall asleep. I wandered back and forth around the room, looked out the window… the rain was now a misty fog.
What should I have done? Sure, the Rogers had lied. If they had told the truth immediately, would that have gotten us to Audra? There was no way to know.
I laid down on the bed and thrashed around, going over and over it. The kid was dead; I knew it in my bones. Finally, I must have dozed off. When I awoke, the sun was out and the sky had cleared. My left eye bothered me. Felt as if something was still in there, although I wasn’t stupid enough to rub it. It was slightly blurred, but since I had two eyes, I was good to go.
I showered again, shaved, got dressed, and packed my bag. No doubt the Estonian authorities wanted to talk to me. One had to assume the authorities had been back to see the Rogers after the robbery at the branch bank, and the Rogers had probably told them all about Jim Wilson, U. S. State Department investigator. Then there was Joe Kitty, sitting in a smashed, shot-up car with his head blown off. Any way you looked at it, we had worn out our welcome in lovely Estonia.
Armanti was indeed waiting in the hall, sitting on stairs coming down from the floor above. He looked as tired as I felt, even with my nap. We rode over to the embassy, were admitted by the gate guard, and went to the basement to see Dulcie.
She had news. The Estonians said the man outside the bank branch—he had bled out—was a Russian, as was the man who had flown over our car in front of the hospital. “Go to the cafeteria,” she said, “get something to eat. You two are leaving on a plane at noon.” She produced two diplomatic passports. “These will get you through immigration and on to the plane.”
“Where are we going?” Armanti asked.
“Berlin. You change planes there for Stockholm.” She produced folders with tickets.
“What about the Rogers?” I asked Dulcie.
“They left Estonia this morning on their way to the States.”
“And the kidnapped kid?”
“Sit down, Tommy. Armanti.” Dulcie reminded me of my grandmother, plump, with salt-and pepper hair.
“A body of a child was found last night floating in a canal. The Estonians think it is Audra Rogers. It will take a while to be sure. The child has been dead about ten days, according to the forensic examiner, and in the water for much of that time.”
“Shit,” Armanti Hall said.
They killed her after they took the picture to give to her folks, I thought.
“Have the Rogers been told?” I asked.
“The ambassador broke the news to them.”
After some silence, Armanti and I gave her our guns and wandered down to the cafeteria. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate something anyway, and drank some American coffee. Nursing it, I asked Armanti, “Was Joe married?”
“Once,” he said. “For awhile. He never said much about it.” He shrugged. “It just didn’t work out, I guess.”
“Damn,” I said. “I liked him.”
“Served with him in Syria and Afghanistan,” Armanti Hall said slowly. “He saved my life once. If he hadn’t been there, I’d be dead now.” He growled. “But, shit, Tommy, we all gotta go sometime, and one place is as good as another.”
Embassy staffers had already been to Armani’s hotel. They brought his suitcase, a carry-on, which was now in Dulcie’s office, and they brought Joe’s stuff too. No doubt the Estonians had Joe’s gun, which meant Dulcie had some paperwork to do for the company to explain why a pistol from her inventory was missing. Maybe the local police would eventually give the gun back, but I doubted State would allow the American government to claim it. Maybe the local cops or the Estonian spooks would slip it to Dulcie under the table; they had their troubles with the Russians too. Or maybe not. The bureaucracies keep grinding along, sure as death and taxes.
Armanti found an empty couch and stretched out on it.
We were going to have to move on. Help find the Russian muscle and the mastermind behind the river of money. I was going to need to get my head clear and on straight and do a hell of a lot better job than I had been doing the last few days.
I said a little prayer for Audra Rogers and her parents, then added one for Joe Kitty. Then one for myself and Armanti Hall. We were going to need all the help we could get. Perhaps we too had an appointment in Samarra.