Fatal (5 page)

“Yes, I’m certain. You flew all the way down here, approached us in public, and brought us here to tell you the man you lost is on a vacation. If you had waited a day or two he would have probably showed up again on his own.”

“I don’t like it when I don’t know where my assets are,” Francis said. “I don’t like losing them even for a day.”

Cassie got up off the sofa, her eyes ice. She was shaking with anger. “Then don’t lose them,” she said. Ronnie took her hand, heading for the door.

Francis stood up. “You may not like what I do. But remember, you don’t have much choice in this. I say the word and you perform. Got that?”

Cassie stopped and turned back when she was halfway out the door. “You be careful,” she said. “We’re not domesticated. Sometimes we bite back.”

*****

The wait for the elevator was silent. Cassie bounced leg to leg, watching the numbers on the overhead indicator move to three, slowly but surely. The bell went off. She was on before the doors opened completely. Ronnie followed, stabbing the button for the lobby. The ride down seemed even slower. They crossed the lobby, passing out into the muggy air. Traffic on the street had thinned, the mix of passersby now changing from workers headed home to pleasure seekers out for the night. By the time they reached their car, Cassie had calmed down enough to start the process of thinking about their situation.

“It may be time to run, Ronnie,” she said. “This guy is going to get us killed sooner or later. He doesn’t have the sense God gave a grapefruit. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him run my life.”

“I don’t think he’s the smartest guy in the world either,” Ronnie said, backing out of the parking space. “But we need to think this thing through. Look what we would be giving up. We have my family, your family, our entire lives. I like living in New Orleans. I don’t know anything else. If I decide to make a change for myself, I can deal with that. But running? Do you really want to get chased out of your own life?”

Traffic on the street was light as they made their way down Canal toward the I-10 onramp. The French Quarter was on their right, the cobblestoned streets passing one after the other, freshly washed and awaiting the crowds of tourists who found their way to the Crescent City. Cassie watched them go by. Ronnie was right. It was too early to think about giving up everything they had. They would have to fight. She was seeing a dual-headed risk. The chance of Luke Francis exposing them to outside interests was one thing, but Francis himself presented an immediate risk. Archer had chosen to use them sparingly, allowing them at least some semblance of a normal life. Francis was an unknown quantity, but he was off to a bad start. His arrogance grated on her. Cassie liked to make her own decisions. She could never tolerate Francis having complete control over her. Archer had misjudged the nature of his successor, and now Cassie and Ronnie would have to pay the price. Or, she thought to herself, Francis would.

For now, she would put it away. Francis would bear watching. Her senses were on high alert. They would stay that way until she felt it was time to act. Ronnie drove on, not speaking. He would mull things over in his own way. Cassie knew she could depend on him more than she could depend on anyone in the world. When push came to shove Ronnie would act decisively. He was slower to jump into things than she was, but when the time came, he wouldn’t hesitate. At the age of thirteen, he had confronted a pair of intruders in his home, men intent on kidnapping him and Cassie both. One ended up with permanent brain damage from a baseball bat, the other dead, shot with the first intruder’s gun, which Ronnie had picked up. Together they had handled things. They would do the same now. They would wait, she decided. Right now, she was hungry. “Head for the Sweetie Place,” Cassie said. Ronnie smiled and drove on.

*****

Andre Kohl watched the kids as they left the hotel and made their way into the parking garage. There was no need to follow them himself. His people were in place. His job was to put it all together: Francis, the kids, the trip itself, the meetings. If something was in the wind, he had no idea what it was. But the tingling at the base of his spine was still there. He sighed, drained his cup of coffee, and walked out onto Canal Street. Tomorrow, he thought, I will find some answers. Maybe. The battle between patience and action was perpetual. He was used to it. Eventually he would find answers. Now it was time to call his superiors and try to find out if there was something big building, or perhaps already underway. So many things we never know, he thought, and so many things to learn.

*****

The Sweetie Place, as Ronnie and Cassie knew it, was a small restaurant on Chef Highway. Built on a triangle of land between Franklin Avenue and Louisa Street, it was easy to find. Stay left and Chef Highway rolled on. Bear right and a small avenue of businesses eventually ended in front of Schwegmann’s Grocery and the Industrial Canal. Ronnie stayed left, hooked an immediate right into the parking lot, and shut down the engine. The small diner smelled like heaven and felt like home. Half a dozen tables were all the place could hold and the inexpensive but hearty food packed the place during lunch and dinner. The dinner crowd was gone though, and Ronnie grabbed a booth next to the window looking out on the highway.

The waitress came over, laying out napkins and forks and knives and delivered her usual line. “What can I get you to drink, sweetie?”

Cassie giggled, looking over at Ronnie. The waitress’s traditional greeting had given birth to their name for the restaurant.

Ronnie rattled off his order. “I’ll have white beans and rice with a breaded pork chop and French dressing on the salad.” He looked at Cassie. “Roast Beef Poorboy, dressed but no tomato,” she said. “And we’ll both have iced tea, unsweetened.”

“Gotcha, sweetie,” the waitress said, and waddled off to the kitchen. She returned a minute later with two glasses of tea, setting them on the table. Cassie sat across the table from Ronnie, her eyes watching the traffic through the window. The smell from the kitchen was making Ronnie hungrier by the minute. An old man sat alone at the counter, loudly sipping split pea soup from a cup. A middle-aged man in work clothes was making his way through a plate of corn beef and cabbage, a newspaper spread out on the table in front of him. A young couple with a child occupied the third. The boy squirmed in his seat as his mother admonished him to eat his dinner. This was the kind of place they would lose if they ran, Cassie thought.

Thirty minutes after midnight, Andre Kohl made his move. He watched as Luke Francis returned to Washington on a redeye flight out of New Orleans, his entourage in tow. The kids were in their apartment. They had eaten in a small restaurant and gone directly home, making their way through traffic towards the lakefront and the university area. Two hours after entering the apartment, the lights were out. There was no movement. The upstairs neighbor stirred once, stepping onto his tiny balcony to smoke a cigarette. He flicked the butt down into the alley with the neighboring house, raised his arms in a stretch and went inside. His lights disappeared shortly afterward.

The connection was too tempting for him to leave untested. Philip Archer had been a formidable adversary for years. His success had been a source of admiration and envy, his resources a subject of debate. What’s more, his travel to New Orleans prior to his death was a source of speculation on the part of Kohl. A dying man prepares for death. He sets his house in order. He tidies things up. A man like Archer would leave no loose strings. The following visit by Francis, so close on the heels of Archer’s death, was intriguing. There had to be a connection between Archer’s trip to New Orleans and this trip by Francis.

Francis was a much easier target than Archer. Archer slipped away like a shadow. Francis moved through the world like a parade. Had they both headed here for these kids? They must have. What Kohl needed to know now was: what did these two college students have to offer a government organization like the one Archer had built?
The itch was back and Kohl decided he had to act. The longer he waited the greater the chance his own people would be detected. At the very least, the two young students could be questioned. He had to know their connection to Francis. He expected no problems. If it became necessary, young people disappeared all the time.

*****

By 11PM Cassie was in bed but not sleeping. She tossed and turned for an hour, eventually pulling the covers off Ronnie, who was snoring beside her. She finally got up, put on her robe, and made her way to the kitchen where she hit the switch on the coffee machine. She waited for the coffee to brew, sitting by the kitchen table in the dark. Outside, the night was still. The glow from the university buildings filtered in over the top of the surrounding houses and drifted in through the window. A car passed on the street, the driver moving slowly north.

The coffee machine stopped making noise. She filled a cup and moved into the living room, drinking it black. No fuss no muss. Cassie moved around the room. It was easier for her to think on her feet. The troubles with Francis were weighing on her. She had a kind of internal alarm, an alarm sensitive to vibrations from the world around her. Taking two steps to the picture window that looked out over the street, she pushed aside the drapes a few inches. They were a gift from her mother, a reluctant gift at best. Now she was grateful for them. Their thickness shielded the room from the outside.

Cassie saw her car parked in the driveway. The neighborhood seemed still, until another car passed the house and turned right at the corner. She could see the driver settle the vehicle against the curb immediately after they made the turn, brake light flaring red. Two men got out and met at the back of the car, conferring on something. One nodded and began to make his way down the street. His path would take him past the apartment. He reached into his coat pocket and checked something as Cassie watched. Her inner alarm started to jangle. The other man took off in a quick walk, crossing the street at the corner, continuing out of sight in the direction of the next block over. Cassie followed the figure as he got closer to the apartment. He passed under the streetlight, head down, walking with quick steps. Cassie put her coffee down on the floor and turned back to the window. He was gone.

She was in the bedroom in three steps, grabbing her jeans off the floor. She punched Ronnie on the arm, hard. “Get dressed. Now. Someone’s outside.” Ronnie rolled off the bed instantly awake. By the time he got his pants on, Cassie was fully dressed, kicking her feet into tennis shoes. Ronnie pulled on a t-shirt, sat down on the bed to lace his boots. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Two guys got out of a car on the corner. One headed this way. I lost him. I don’t know where the other one is, he headed over to the next block.”

*****

Andre Kohl hated working in a vacuum. It was a vacuum he was trying to fill of course. He was operating under the assumption that the objects of his interest were a pair of college students. How formidable could they be? Their connection to Francis didn’t raise any warning signs. As a result, he sent two of his least experienced men. They were well trained of course, and relatively intelligent. The KGB didn’t employ slackers, but even the most intelligent man is at a disadvantage when he first sets out on his career path. In this case, Kohl’s two rookies made the mistake of thinking things were going to be easy.

The first man, known in this country as Raul Mead, made his way directly down the street toward the apartment. Two houses before he turned into the driveway, he reached into his pocket where he had a small set of burglary tools. The plan was simple. Gain access to the house and surprise the pair inside. Subdue them with the threat of a weapon before forcing them out to the car and taking them downtown to see Kohl. It was simple and should be effective. It seemed to Mead to be almost foolproof against a pair of college students. He expected some resistance from the boy of course. He would probably act to protect his lover, as well he should. From the girl he expected no problems.

Mead’s companion was the less capable of the two, and acting in reserve. Mead was used to calling him Brooks. They had been working together under the direction of Kohl for two weeks and Mead had never heard a first name. Should either of the subjects break free, an unlikely event, Brooks would be there to corral any escape. There was very little that could go wrong.

Mead slipped along the front of the houses, reaching the driveway where Cassie’s car sat on the narrow strips of concrete that ran the depth of the lot into the backyard. The grass was neatly trimmed, the area uncluttered. There was enough light for him to make his way toward the backyard. From there he would pick the lock on the back door and slip inside. Mead moved quickly now. The faster this went the less exposure. He flattened himself against the side of the house in the shadows, keeping his head well below window level, and rounded the corner. Two light steps up a stairway of cinder blocks and Mead got an unexpected surprise. The back door was open.

*****

Ronnie found himself with his back pressed up against the rear wall in the kitchen. The sound of footsteps was light but discernible on the night air, mixed with the rustle of the wind and the buzz of a mosquito. They stopped. Whoever was outside was assessing the fact that the back door was open. Ronnie could almost feel him thinking. Blocks away, a horn honked. Another step, a cautious one, and the shadow moved into the doorway, hesitating. A hand came up with a gun in it, sweeping back and forth. Nothing else moved. Ronnie held his breath. Seconds passed with the figure not moving, listening. One cautious step and he was in the door, another and he was in the kitchen. Ronnie flung the pot of hot coffee he was holding, catching the figure full in the face. A shout of surprise was followed by a sickening crack as Ronnie turned and delivered a kick to the intruder’s knee. He went down immediately. Ronnie followed, grabbing for the gun.