Chapter 38

 

Nick was driving the rental car along the river, being careful to avoid any of the muddy spots along the bank. If this little piece of junk rental car got stuck anywhere, he would be in big trouble.

Cattoretti was sitting in the back seat, his hands still bound behind him, watching Nick warily with his one good eye.

The man had not said a word since Elaine and Dmitry had left.

Nick had been slowly driving up and down the same stretch of river ever since Elaine and Dmitry had left, but spent most of the time sitting still, parked at spots where Nick could see a long way in either direction. It made him feel safer to be in an area where there were no people and he was bordered at least on one side by a large body of water.

They soon passed three Chadian men walking along the riverbank who had impossibly high stacks of firewood strapped to their backs.

Cattoretti turned and glanced after them, as if he might be thinking of yelling for help now.

“Nobody gives a crap about you here,” Nick muttered. “Scream your head off if you want.”

“You’re not going to kill me,” Cattoretti muttered, as if he’d been thinking and debating about nothing but this the entire time, and had just reached that conclusion.

Nick brought the car to a stop. He then gazed at Cattoretti through the rearview. “And why is that?”

The Cat sat there, gazing back at him for what must have been a full minute. Nick was just waiting for him to say, “Because I’m Ryan’s real father” or some such shit. Just say that, Nick thought, almost wanting him to utter the words. He would put a bullet in Cattoretti’s head, then and there, and dump his body in the river.

“You won’t kill me,” Giorgio said, “because you promised your wife you wouldn’t, and you’re a man of your word.”

“Is that so?”

“Indeed it is. You have some ethical principles, Nick, some finesse. Just like Elaine. Very unusual for people in your professions.”

Nick noticed Cattoretti had said “professions” rather than the singular form of the word. Meaning that The Cat knew that he did not work for the Secret Service and probably knew he was a CIA extractor. But then of course Giorgio must have known about that, and quite a few other personal details, because either he or Raj, or both of them, had arranged to put Isabella in their fake black site to sidetrack him.

Then again, Nick thought, what does it matter?

He said, “For your own health, I suggest you keep your mouth shut.” He wanted to kill the smug Italian so badly he could taste it—the circumstances were so deliciously perfect for it.

Yet Cattoretti was right—Nick had made a promise to Elaine and he intended to keep it. He felt bad enough about sleeping with Isabella, even the one time, being emotionally upset and drunk. He had no excuses. He owed it to Elaine to be loyal now.

That was, unless there was some major change in the circumstances, a change that would justify his actions.

Glaring at Cattoretti through the rearview mirror, he pressed on the accelerator, and started driving along the river again.

 

* * *

About an hour later, they were parked along the riverbank not far from the place they had started out, where Cattoretti had been transferred to the car. Nick didn’t think the N’Djamena police would venture this far out of town, and in this westernmost part of Chad, things were relatively peaceful.

Nick was just sitting there, looking out of the window at a group of women who, incredibly, were washing their clothes in the river, even in the persistent drizzle. He wondered how they managed to get anything dry, then supposed they must have hung their clothes around their fires in the villages.

Cattoretti was slumped in the back seat, dozing.

During the past couple of hours, Nick had managed to clear his mind and divorce himself from all the complicated issues surrounding Cattoretti and Elaine. The Cat was her problem, not his. She had asked him to keep hold of the Italian to make sure that he wouldn’t contact Raj before she and Luna could make the bust, and that’s what he intended to do. After that went down, Elaine could decide what she wanted to do with him. Let him go, probably. Of course that’s what she would do—under the circumstances, she had no other choice, other than the one he knew she would not make.

Nick’s eyes had almost fallen shut himself when his cell phone started ringing.

He sat up and pulled it out of his pocket. When he glanced at the display, he was surprised to see that it was Brian calling.

Nick answered it. “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Brian said. “Can you talk?”

Nick glanced in the rearview. The ringing phone had woken up Cattoretti and he was watching with interest.

“Not for long. Why?”

“I’m in Kiev, at the SBU.” The SBU was the Ukrainian’s version of the CIA, formerly part of the KGB under Soviet Russia. “I just found out something interesting, kind of a coincidence. The Kiev police have had an apartment building in the Troeshina suburb under surveillance for quite a while—it turns out the hit-man who almost killed you when you were in Latvia lived there. Or hit woman, I should say. Known as The Artist.”

“Yeah?” Nick said, with growing interest.

“They had a hidden camera on the floor where her apartment was located, taking pictures of everyone coming and going for the past year. It’s possible they snagged a photo of the man who hired her to knock you off. They’ve identified all of the individuals who went to her apartment except for one man. I’d like to send you the photo to see if you happen to recognize him.”

“I probably won’t,” Nick said, knowing that the man who’d put out the contract on him was likely someone related to the terrorist cell he’d wiped out during the fateful extraction mission that should have cost him his life.

“I’d like you to check anyway,” Brian said. “I’m going to send the photo to your secure email address.”

“Fine,” Nick said. “I’ll get back to you after I have a look.”

After Nick cut the call, he glanced in the rearview mirror at Cattoretti. The Italian looked like he wanted to ask who had just called but knew better.

Holding the phone in his lap so that Cattoretti couldn’t see it, he logged into the secure email account that he used to communicate with Brian.

 

* * *

A minute later, Nick had opened the message from Brian and had clicked on the attached file. The picture of the unidentified man from Kiev began to appear on the phone’s display.

The Internet connection was incredibly slow, and the black and white photo appeared in jerky sections, from the top down. First a blurry gray background, then the grainy top of a head. The photo had been taken in very dim light and was quite grainy.

It looked like the man in question had black hair. Not surprising, since he was certainly of Middle Eastern descent.

Then the top half of a blurry profile, when after another few seconds, came into better focus.

The suspect wore glasses.

Then another blurry chunk of the photograph appeared, the whole face and shoulders.

Nick had an odd feeling in the few seconds that it took for the picture to come into focus.

He flinched, staring at the familiar face, which was looking slightly upwards, maybe at the numbers on the apartment doors.

It was Giorgio Cattoretti.

Unmistakably.

No question.

Nick sat there for a few seconds, realizing he had stopped breathing. He glanced up into the rearview mirror.

Cattoretti was anxiously staring at him. “What’s the matter?”

Nick looked back down at the picture on the phone, remembering in vivid detail the moment he’d almost died—the middle-aged assassin had posed as a hotel maid, one who he’d actually gotten friendly with, and had caught him by surprise with a goddamn garotte...he swallowed as the feeling of the taught wire pulling across his throat came back to him, digging into his skin, cutting off his oxygen, his legs flailing helplessly against the hotel room floor. If the Russian mercenary hadn’t happened to come along at that particular moment, he would have died that day.

“What’s the matter?” Cattoretti repeated, in a frightened tone.

Even to Nick, the temperature inside the car seemed to have dropped ten degrees, as if his own coldness had chilled the air.

Only one thought ran through Nick’s mind now, a thought he’d had a couple of hours ago.

He owed it to Elaine to be loyal. That was, unless there was some major change in the circumstances, a change that would justify his actions, and a change that she would understand.

Nick mechanically reached over to the glove compartment, opened it, and pulled out his pistol.

“Hey,” Cattoretti said anxiously. “Take it easy! Did something happen to Elaine?”

Nick swung his arm out over the seat, pointing the gun at the Italian’s forehead, peering into the man’s uncovered eye. “You put out a contract on me, you son-of-bitch.”

“Me?” Cattoretti said, trying to back away from the barrel.

“Yes, you. The Artist, from Troeshina.”

Giorgio’s face turned pale.

His eye shifted and he looked past Nick, out through the windshield.

Nick could hear the faint sound of an automobile engine, and turned to look.

An SUV was slowly moving along the riverbank. Even though it was a couple of hundred feet away, Nick could see that it was a police car.

“Shit,” he muttered.

He set the pistol down and reached for the ignition, but it was too late to try to get away, especially in this little car. He could see a cop at the wheel of the powerful vehicle, looking straight at him.

“Untie my hands!” Giorgio said. “You’ll never get out of this otherwise.”

Nick glanced back at Cattoretti, trying to stay calm. One glance at the man in the back seat—leaning forward, unable to sit normally, his arms pulled behind his back—and anyone could see that he was a prisoner.

“Untie me!” Giorgio said. “Come on, man, I don’t want to be arrested any more than you do.”

Now the police car was no more than one hundred feet away.

Nick really had no choice. Showing his Secret Service ID—an expired one—and trying to explain that Cattoretti was his prisoner would open up too big of a can of worms.

“Turn around,” Nick said, pulling out his pocket knife.

Giorgio did so, and Nick reached across the seat and pressed the blade against the thick white tie-wrap. “If you say one word, I’ll kill you and the cop. I’m not going to jail, either. Understand?”

“Yes, yes, yes, just do it before he gets here!”

Nick hesitated another second, then yanked the sharp blade upwards and cut through plastic.

Cattoretti turned back around and sat normally in the seat just as the SUV rolled up on Nick’s side.

The cop was wearing a beige camouflage uniform shirt, with a maroon beret. He was staring at them and checking out the car—there was a rental sticker on both the front and back. Nick knew the officer was aware that they were foreigners, not that his and Cattoretti’s skin color and clothes didn’t give it away.

The cop brought the SUV to a stop, his eyes on Nick. He threw his door open stepped over, his boots squishing in the mud. He was wearing a typical duty belt with a radio, handcuffs, flashlight, a taser and a pistol.

Nick’s window was already down.

“Documents,” the cop said, with a slight French accent. He bent down a little and peered into the back seat at Giorgio. “Documents, sir?”

Nick couldn’t believe his bad luck.

The pistol was hidden underneath all the documents in the glove compartment. He reached over and carefully removed his and Cattoretti’s passports, along with the rental car agreement, and handed it to the cop through the window.

The officer opened passports one after the other, peering at Nick, then bending down again to look at Cattoretti.

Suddenly, Giorgio threw his door open and jumped out of the back seat, his hands thrust high in the air. “He kidnapped me!” Cattoretti shouted, backing away from the car. “Help! He’s got a gun in the glove compartment.”

The cop quickly drew his pistol and aimed it at Nick, though backing away so he could point it at Cattoretti if he needed to.

“Hands in air, come out!” he yelled.

“He stole all my money!” Cattoretti said, as Nick complied, slowly opening the door and climbing out. “He made me give him my PIN code for my credit card!”

“He’s lying,” Nick said, as calmly as he could. “I’m with the United States Secret Service, and this man is a prisoner.” Nick motioned to the car’s interior. “There is a gun in the glove compartment, but I have a license for it. And my Secret Service I.D. is in there, too.” Nick actually didn’t work for the Secret Service anymore, and he doubted the cop would notice that his I.D. had expired. Now he wished he would have played it this way from the start.

The officer hesitated, glancing inside the car.

“Don’t listen to him!” Cattoretti said. “He’s a criminal—he took all my money!” He turned his forearms outwards, showing the red marks across his wrists. “Look, he had me tied up!”

The cop glanced at them, then looked at Nick and reached for his radio.

Cattoretti rushed at him.

Giorgio grabbed the cop’s wrist and pulled the pistol upright—it went off, sending one round into the sky, before the man landed on his back in the mud.

Cattoretti jumped on top of him, trying to wrestle the gun away. Nick threw himself back into the driver’s seat and reached into the open glove compartment for his own gun.

He heard a groan, and when he turned back around to fire, Cattoretti was standing over the nearly unconscious cop, one foot planted on the man’s wrist, which was still half-holding the pistol.

Nick aimed the gun at Giorgio and at the same instant his eye caught something in The Cat’s right hand.

A taser.

It was his last thought before the electrodes shot out of the device and reduced his brain to jelly and turned his entire body into one horrific, pulsating cramp.