Hot Ice (21 page)

The passenger door opened and the courtesy light confirmed that this man was one of the two he had seen at King’s Cross that morning.

“Do come in and have a seat,” Jason said mildly, pressing the automatic against the underside of the other man’s chin as he stubbed out the cigarette. “But be sure to keep your hands right there on the dashboard.”

The man silently complied. “Where’s Uri?” the man asked before his lips tightened.

“Inspecting the baggage, I’d imagine. Now, keep your hands where I can see them.

“Good boy! Now, take your left hand and slowly, and I mean real slowly, reach inside your jacket, remove your pistol, holding it between your thumb and forefinger, and drop it on the floor.”

Jason sensed, rather than saw, a flicker of resistance, an instant when the man was considering his options. He pressed the gun’s muzzle a little harder against the bottom of the man’s chin. “Don’t even
think
about not doing exactly as you are told. I really would prefer not to make a bloody mess of this nice car. But then, I’m not the one who would have to explain to Mr. Hertz.”

The gun came out from under the jacket, held between thumb and forefinger like the tail of a dead rat.

“You’re doing swell. Now drop it.”

The pistol thumped against the car’s carpeted floor mat.

“Now the knife.”

The man spoke for the first time, the accent light but noticeable. “What knife?”

This time Jason jammed the gun’s business end into the soft flesh under the chin. “We’re not playing games, Ivan. Either the knife hits the floor or your brains hit the ceiling. Your choice.”

The knife followed the gun.

“Very good. Now I’m going to ask you a few questions… .”

“Fuck you.”

Spetsnaz training must include a pretty limited English vocabulary. Jason tipped the barrel of the automatic down and squeezed the trigger. It was no contest between the shot muffled by the silencer and the terrified shriek of the man who was now looking at a hole in the slack of his trousers just between his crotch and his leg.

The sound suppressor was against the man’s jaw again. “Unless you have ambitions to join a girls’ choir, I’d suggest you answer the question.”

Even in the dim light, Jason could see the man’s eyes widen in fright.

“First and last time: Who sent you?”

Jason could almost smell the panic seething beneath the surface. “The sex-change operation will commence on three. One, two …”

It happened so quickly, Jason was caught off guard. With a lunge, his captive opened the car door and was rolling across the pavement. With the grace of an acrobat, he was on his feet and sprinting into the darkness. Jason blamed himself for not locking the Alfa’s door or at least making sure it was fully closed. He never seriously considered shooting. The potential consequences—police, indefinite detainment, explanations—far outweighed any benefit. Besides, the man’s anguished yell may well have the local constabulary on its way already as it was.

As indeed it had.

The desk clerk was either too sleepy or too polite to ask questions about a mid-evening departure when Jason signed the credit card slip for the entire night despite his brief stay. As he turned from the desk, keys to the Morris and single bag in hand, he could see forms across the street silhouetted against flashing blue lights.

He handed the clerk a twenty-pound note. “A favor: after I’ve been gone about twenty minutes, suggest the police check the trunk, er, boot, of the Alfa.”

He was repaid by a puzzled expression and the polite disdain the British have for invasive questions.

Jason hated transoceanic flights, even more so in economy class. Hours of being crammed into close quarters with nearly two hundred strangers, none of whom had paid the same price for their ticket. Even military transport was more generous with legroom.

Add to that the all-night drive from Durham to London that had forced him to drink what he guessed was more coffee than the little car’s gas tank would have held. Certainly enough to make him promise his souring stomach that he would swear off the stuff for the next twenty years.

In the wee hours of the morning, he left the Morris beside the embassy and handed the keys to a somewhat puzzled Marine security guard at the gate. By this time, the Underground’s first trains of the day were beginning to run. A quick check revealed the number of police in the tube stations from the day before had been sharply reduced: only one automatic weapon–carrying officer that Jason could see. Still, he made himself extremely camera shy, shielding his face from the overhead lenses as much as he could without being obvious.

He had dozed off during the ride to St. Pancras Station, where he purchased a Eurostar ticket for the two-hour-and-fifteen-minute Chunnel ride to Paris, falling asleep again as the train left the station. From de Gaulle he would return to Washington by a route he hoped sufficiently circuitous to have eluded anyone looking for him, whether Scotland Yard or former Spetsnaz.

The airline, of course, had nearly frustrated his plan. During multiple coffee breaks on the drive back to London, and the equally frequent stops necessitated thereby, Jason had used his BlackBerry to book a first-class ticket Paris–Washington, reservations he had electronically confirmed upon his arrival at Gare du Nord in Paris before getting on the Métro for Charles de Gaulle.

His arrival at the airport revealed a somewhat different story: Yes, of course his reservations were in the system, the pretty young Frenchwoman assured him in delightfully accented English. But what did the system know, she asked with that Gallic shrug that says there is no understanding to be had. The equipment had been changed to an aircraft with a smaller first-class section. The row including Jason’s seat had been eliminated. Management had not told the reservations people, she confided, this time with a forefinger tugging at a bottom eyelid, the French gesture that says the words are not to be believed.

A seat was available in economy. She smiled with this information as though Delta was doing him a real service just to let him on the airplane. No? There would be plenty of first-class seats on the next flight.

When would that be? he wanted to know.

She checked her watch as though it displayed airline timetables rather than the hour. Its scheduled departure was only an hour or so away.

Jason wasn’t going to get screwed by the airline twice in the same day. “Could you give the actual departure time?”

There was a hitch: the next flight, the one with a surplus of first-class seats, had a small problem. Something about some silly little light that would not go off no matter how many switches, buttons, and levers the pilot had used on the flight over earlier that day. It should be no problem: the necessary part was on its way, being trucked over from Orly, Paris’s other international airport.

Jason had flown enough to be wary of both “minor” maintenance problems and flights with a plethora of available seats. Since admission of a
major
mechanical problem was bad PR, all glitches were classed as ‘minor.’ Second, a flight with a number of empty seats, particularly transoceanic, was likely to be canceled for some fabricated reason other than the real one: that the airline would lose money on it.

He took the seat in coach.

With his single bag in the overhead bin, he shoehorned himself into a middle seat that had obviously been designed by someone with minimal knowledge of human anatomy. Or a sadist. To his right, next to the window, was a gray-haired woman who began to unload a collection of travel guides to France from a voluminous purse. Why she would find the attractions of, say, the Loire, of interest when departing the country was a mystery.

Just as the cabin door was about to close, a young woman with a bad blond bleach job plopped down in the aisle seat to Jason’s left. She also carried a purse that could have served as a suitcase. From it she began to unload a collection of cosmetics: face powder, mascara, eye liner, and a number of items Jason could not have identified had he tried. Once the items were arranged in her lap, she began to apply them with the aid of a small mirror. Another mystery: where was she going in the next eight or so hours where such an effort would be necessary?

At least he had nothing in common with his seat mates sufficient to provoke an effort at conversation. Enduring a recap of some stranger’s recent vacation, business trip, or whatever was not what Jason had in mind. To make sure, he stood, unzipped his suitcase, and took his iPad out and put the buds in his ears. If relaxation would have been difficult with the seat back released to its customary six inches, it was impossible in the pre-takeoff upright or rigid position.

Religious music, per se, was of little interest to Jason but J. S. Bach’s
Mass in B Minor
was a composition of pure beauty regardless of the subject matter. Like all of this composer’s work, vocal or instrumental, this was more of a journey than an experience, returning over and over to same or similar themes and patterns. The a cappella choral prelude was blending into strings when Jason looked up to see a flight attendant who was saying something.

He removed the ear buds.

“Sir, as has already been announced, electronic devices must be shut off before takeoff. The captain will announce when it is safe to use such devices. You need to check the in-flight magazine to see which electronics may be used on board.”

Both of Jason’s seat mates were scowling at him, someone who was carelessly endangering their safety. Jason knew from his own flight training that iPads, cell phones, e-readers, and the like had as much influence on the aircraft’s navigational systems as the wizard Merlin had had on raising up Stonehenge. Neither legend would die, however. The difference was the airlines had a motive in promoting theirs: a passenger allowed unlimited access to his own electronics was far less likely to pay for earphones to watch the in-flight entertainment.

Reluctantly, Jason made a show of turning the contraption off.

He put it in the seat pocket in front of him. His fingers went to his own pocket. The matchbook he had taken from the assassin in Durham.

He pulled it out, examining it.
HOTEL EL CONVENTO, 100 CALLE CRISTO, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
was embossed on its cover.

What was the connection between a Spetsnaz killer and a hotel in San Juan? Not much of a clue, but the only one Jason had.

Jason had been disappointed to learn that Thomas, Roosevelt, Captain, United States Marine Corps (Ret.) had checked out. In fact, the bachelor officers’ quarters seemed deserted. There had been nothing to do but take his single bag to his quarters and retrieve the package he had left before flying to London: the Glock, two clips, and a box of ammunition. He could have checked the gun in a bag on the plane but that would have required waiting at a baggage carousel, risking delay, and becoming a stationary target. Plus, there was also the risk the British might discover the weapon, subjecting him to criminal penalties at worst and lengthy questioning at best.

He took the opportunity to stop by the base clinic to have a doctor look at his shoulder’s healing gunshot wound.

The doctor was a woman. She wore no makeup. Thick black-framed glasses, blond hair pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck, white lab coat at least two sizes too big. Her name tag labeled her as Ferris, J. The bronze oak leaves on her collar denoted her rank as a major.

She pulled off the bandage, gently pressing around the area. “Hurt?”

“Not as much as it did last time I was here, a couple of days ago.”

She cocked her head, still staring at the shoulder. “Looks like a bullet wound.”

Jason said nothing as she perused his brief chart. “Says here it
is
a bullet wound, sustained outside the country.”

Again, Jason said nothing.

“Also says here you’re retired Army. If you’re retired, how come somebody shot you?”

“Accidentally, self-inflicted.”

She made no effort to conceal her incredulity as she taped a new bandage into place. “As an Army officer you should know how to handle firearms safely.”

“The human mind is always capable of learning. And make that a
former
Army officer.”

She snipped the last bit of tape. “Hopefully quickly. The next ‘accident’”—she made quotation marks with her fingers—“might be fatal.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Doc.”

She stood. “For that bit of advice, Captain, I’ll allow you to buy me a drink at the officers’ club at, say, twenty hundred hours?”

“As long as the sun has gone down, Doc.”

“Captain, somewhere on this old earth the sun has always gone down.”

It was not until he was walking back to his quarters he had realized he had something very much resembling a date.

Well, why not? Maria was still in Iceland with her damned volcanoes, too busy to call or even text these last couple of days and …

Not her fault she’s in Iceland,
the small voice in his head argued.
She’s there ’cause you let Momma manipulate her so you could take the assignment she had for you.

Maybe. But I didn’t stop her from even so much as an e-mail. I mean, what’s she doing with this guy … ?

Sevensen, Pier Sevensen.

Yeah, him. What’s she doing with him that’s so important she can’t stay in touch?

You got problems with the global chip in your own BlackBerry?

Well, it’s really not a date, anyway. Just two officers having a drink.

The internal argument came to an end as Jason passed the officers’ club. He went inside to the room where he had seen the computers. Calling up Google, he entered “Hotel El Convento.” He was rewarded by a picture of a pale-yellow stucco Spanish colonial building. An adjacent map located it in the middle of Old San Juan. A brief read informed him the place had, as the name suggested, begun life as a convent, specifically of the Carmelite order, in 1561. Later years had been anything but benign, turning the structure into a dance hall, a casino, a flophouse and, finally, a parking area for garbage trucks. The renaissance of Puerto Rican tourism began shortly after the end of World War II and the old place had been restored as a hotel, one visited on at least one occasion by Ernest Hemingway and an impressive list of other luminaries.