AFTER SHE’D GONE, Stag assessed what he had in his hotel room. Interpol had done a bang-up job already; he sure as hell wasn’t counting on them giving him a good night’s rest. But weaponry was hard to come by. All he had was the P-83 and it would do him absolutely no good while he was asleep.
He went to his computer and searched for creative methods of self-protection. After a few minutes of research, he figured out what to do.
In the bathroom, he stared at the cut-crystal glass on the sink for his drinking water. In his pocket, he dug out a pair of nail clippers he’d bought in the airport and assessed them.
Angelika Aradi was perhaps more interrogator and less assassin, but he didn’t trust her. Hell, right now, he didn’t trust anybody. He made up his mind to take care of his own damned security.
Duke Farnsworth loved Berlin. It appealed to his every white, male, conservative sensibility. The women were blond, the wine was French, the architecture clean and modern. To do a job there was pleasure upon pleasure.
He checked his weaponry. The bulk of the ice needle gun was more than he liked to carry. It ruined the cut of his suit. But it was everybody’s favorite. Clean and quick. The only mess was in the after-effects. You couldn’t disable the person right away, so the ice needle was only for certain circumstances. For the rest, he carried a Beretta 8000. The “Cougar” was sleek, swift, and now readily concealed beneath his suit jacket.
Duke Farnsworth had started out with a silver spoon in his mouth and a Yale degree. He was a bright baby investment banker who got his thrills and his insider stock tips from his good friends at Tarnhelm. That there was something inherently evil about a young, good-looking male in a Hugo Boss suit was a given. Farnsworth had no handicaps. The world just unfolded for him.
Of course, a complete lack of conscience could be a handicap. But in the business of assassination, it was a golden asset. There were some who worked very hard to keep theirs under control. Not Duke.
Which is why he didn’t bill himself to Tarnhelm as an independent contractor. No point in highlighting the fact that a lack of conscience came with an absolute lack of loyalty. It made him a huge whore, but who wasn’t a whore? Even the exalted Portier was a whore. It was obvious he was afraid of that Maguire guy in Wuttke. He wanted Maguire to talk.
But now, after Duke was done with him, there would only be infuriating silence.
He checked his bank account. The Vanderloos wire payment had hit. All set. He looked down at the master key card to the rooms at the Adlon. Bought at great expense but all part of the contract.
He smirked. It was three a.m. The electronic key card would gain him entrance to the elevator and to Maguire’s room. The job was about as direct as he’d ever had: Take. Him. Out.
Stag stepped out into the hallway outside his room and upended a glass of water. It was absorbed and camouflaged by the swirl pattern of the carpeting. For good measure, he splattered two more glasses, and then shut his door.
With the nail clippers, he clipped the cord to a table lamp and stripped the plastic coating off the wires, flushing the telltale plastic down the toilet. Then he wrapped the raw wires around the room’s door handle that was in turn wired to the electronic lock that used the key card.
Stepping back, he appraised his handiwork. He was no genius but he was sure good at an internet search and following directions.
Anxious about the setup, he placed a chair in front of the door, not so much to protect him from whomever entered, but to protect himself should he awake in the dark, befuddled, and head for the door. He smirked. That would be just like him to stumble into his own trap.
Now he had nothing to do but get some restless sleep.
Stag opened his eyes to the sound. Not quite to a scream; it was a kind of violent gurgle. The door rattled like barbarians at the gate, and for a far greater time than it would need to kill.
In the darkened room, he had a good, sickening mental picture of what was happening outside. The current was driving through the arm of the person on the other side of the door. Where the current drove through his body, the ATP—adenosine triphosphate—would be burned off and his muscles would stiffen. A kind of pre-dead rigor mortis. Then the current would blow out one or more wounds on the person’s calves where the current exited to reach the ground. Urine would run down his legs as his bladder involuntarily emptied, and when the medics came, they would think the victim had wet the carpet.
Not the perp.
There was a flurry of activity outside, as down the hallway, doors opened to discover the source of the strange sounds. Stag anxiously leapt out of bed and switched on a light. He unplugged the cord to the door and took it off the door handle. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he twisted together the wires inside the lamp and refastened the sticky felt covering on its base. Then he put it back on the table where it belonged, plugged it in, and turned it on. It worked perfectly. The staff would never notice the slightly truncated cord.
The phone rang in his room. He picked up the receiver.
“Herr Maguire! Emergency!” came the voice at the other end. “Please, please do not touch your door! We’ve had accident! Z’ fire department will open it for you! Attention! Attention!”
Maguire gave his calm assurances. Then, his message delivered to Tarnhelm to fuck off, he lay down to wait.
Of course, the Adlon lawyers wanted to meet with him. He knew too well there was no shortage of them when something bad occurred. Maguire refused the meeting. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of questions. He told the management he was fine and he didn’t know what happened. No, he didn’t want to sign anything; and he didn’t know the dead man outside his door in the security video that they showed him.
And he most certainly had no idea why the black guy stood watching the execution at the end of the hallway. Never coming to the man’s aid.