Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (173 page)

“No shooting, except in self defense. You have my word.”

“
Está bien.
You can arrest this
gringo
and take him to the border. I will write a letter if you are stopped. At the border, you can speak to border agents and American officials or your friends in
D.F.
”

“That’s very reasonable,” Markov said. “Thank you.”

“But you must take two of my officers to the hotel. They can observe.”

Markov clenched his teeth for a moment, then he nodded. “Yes, of course.”

He left Aguilar’s office and returned to the van, where two of his three agents waited. The other was posted outside the hotel where Ian and Julia had holed up for the night. As Markov pulled the van out of the parking lot, a police cruiser slid in behind and followed them down the road.

Querétaro was a large, growing city a few hours north of Mexico City, more modern than the quaint colonial towns to the north but not urban blight, either. From here, Ian and Julia could sprint to the capital and catch a flight for Europe or anywhere else in the world.

Markov’s team had arrived in Utah to a trail gone cold, with Sarah Redd’s men standing around the wreckage in Nephi, smoking and bitching about local law enforcement while they waited for something to fall into their laps. Markov demanded to know what the hell they were doing. “We’re securing the facility,” one man told Markov, incredulous. “What does it look like?”

He’d sent their worthless butts back to Langley and relied mostly on local law enforcement. The Utahns were professional and anxious to help, a rare combination. It didn’t take long to piece together the aftermath of the failed airstrike.

Three people had survived, then split apart at a truck stop north of Nephi. One of them—an escaped inmate from the psych ward—had hitched a ride with a truck driver and probably crossed into Canada before he disappeared. Markov ignored this trail.

The other two were a man and woman, presumably Ian and Julia. Markov tracked them to Moab, where a security camera on Main Street captured the pair enter a grocery store, then leave almost two hours later. This was during Sarah Redd’s helicopter overflights of the town.

Very late that same night, there was an incident at a hospital in Monticello in the southeastern corner of Utah. Hard to piece together what had happened. Security at the hospital was poor, the two eye-witnesses unreliable. Worse, before the local police showed up, someone from the night janitorial services had stumbled upon the mess left by Julia and Ian and cleaned it up, disinfected every surface, erased every clue.

But it was clear that Julia had brought Ian into the hospital for surgery. Markov supposed that Ian took some injuries during the battle at the psychiatric ward. Whatever the extent of the wounds, they hadn’t prevented him from overpowering the security guard and the two fugitives fleeing the scene before the police could arrive.

The trail resurfaced in Nogales, Mexico, where a couple crossed the border on Sunday morning, less that twelve hours ahead of Anton Markov and his team. For one brief moment, Julia glanced up at something in the sky—maybe a bird, maybe an airplane—and a security camera stole a peek at her face.

In Mexico, Anton Markov tracked the fugitives to a dumpy motel called Las Palmitas on the outskirts of Querétaro. Markov, even though he’d spoken only English to Carlos Aguilar, had a good command of Spanish thanks to several years as a field operative in South America, and had bribed the hotel owner into giving him keys to the room. Markov prepared to burst into room with guns drawn.

But then local police arrived. It took a few hurried calls to Langley and back to Mexico City to put enough pressure on Carlos Aguilar to allow Markov to proceed.

It was now four-thirty in the morning. There was still time to catch the fugitives in bed. Markov wondered if he would find them sleeping in each other’s arms.

The van pulled into the underlit parking lot, followed by the Mexican police car. Markov’s man stepped from behind one of the palm trees that ringed the hotel parking lot. He flashed a thumbs up.

Markov parked the van and sent a man to either side of the hotel room door and a third around back, by the far window. He took out an M40 bolt action sniper rifle and attached a tripod. He’d have preferred something with semi-automatic functionality, as sniping was not his specialty, but there had been trouble getting needed weaponry across the border in a hurry.

It shouldn’t matter in any event; it wouldn’t take an expert marksman to knock down Ian Westhelle at such short range. And that was only if Ian somehow managed to get past two agents, bursting into his hotel room while he slept. The plan was to kill Ian and take Julia into custody. Markov would make his apologies (backed by the US government) to the Mexicans, then return Julia to the States. Let Sarah Redd worry about her then. If she still wanted Julia dead, fine. It wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

He was searching for a place to belly up with the rifle when the hotel owner came scurrying from his owner’s quarters.

“
No quiero problemas,”
the man said.
I don’t want problems.
He rubbed his hands together and his eyes darted out to the police car. Thankfully, the officers stayed inside.

“
No se preocupe,
” Markov said.
Don’t worry.
He continued in Spanish, “We’ll reimburse you for any damage.”

“Damage? What kind of damage?”

“I said don’t worry. Now, you’re sure the rooms on either side of number eighteen are vacant?”

The man nodded. “There’s someone in room six and in room eleven. The others are empty.”

“
Muy bien.
Now go back to your office. This man is a dangerous criminal, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

The man hurried away. Markov found the darkest place in the parking lot that still offered a good view of the front door of the fugitives’ motel room and lay on his belly. He spent a long minute adjusting his scope and double checking the equipment. As soon as he was sure, he took a penlight and blinked it twice against the hotel room door.

One of the two CIA agents lifted the ram while the other stood behind his shoulder with a shotgun at the ready. It would be a violent, chaotic few seconds. So much could go wrong. Markov had no doubt they would get Ian; the man had no chance under the circumstances. But there was even odds that Julia would go down as collateral damage.

Markov wanted to be there with them, and not back here as backup with the sniper rifle. But he was too old, too slow for a man like Ian.

The agent slammed the ram into the door. It was a flimsy thing, and burst open on the first blow. The man tossed the ram aside and the two agents burst into the room with shotguns lowered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Charles Ikanbo’s brother paced back and forth across the parquet floor in the office of the Central Intelligence Service in Windhoek. His breath smelled of alcohol, but he didn’t slur his words or otherwise seem drunk.

William liked his drink, but Charles couldn’t remember ever seeing him drink hard this early in the morning. Maybe he’d been up all night.

“It’s all gone wrong,” William said. “I don’t know why they’d pull out now. We were so close, and they have as much to lose as we do.”

“Are the Chinese leaving?” Charles asked. He didn’t know what this was about, only that his brother, the Minister of Mines and Energy, had shown up at his office mid-morning, insisting on talking to him.

“No, they’re not leaving. Not willingly. Ah, this has all gone wrong. And I’m committed now. Everything is ready. If only the Old Crab wasn’t so stubborn, I could still go forward without the Americans.”

Charles still had no idea what William was talking about. The Old Crab, however, was the nickname for General Katz, the half-German, half-Namibian Minister of Defense, and head of Namibia’s small, underfunded military.

Both the Central Intelligence Service and the military had purposefully been kept small. They would never be strong enough to fight off the South Africans, the thinking went, but had to show enough muscle to keep bush wars in Angola and other neighbors from spreading to the country. Not so strong, however, as to encourage that other plague of post-colonial Africa, the military coup.

It had been the firm position of President Nujoma, who had led Namibia’s liberation movement since the 1950’s, secured its independence from South Africa in 1990, and run the country as president until 2005. As someone who had known how fragile African governments could be, he walked a tightrope between impotence and strength. So far, Nujoma’s successors had been wise enough to follow his lead.

Problem was, there were so many Blackwing contractors in the country now that the Chinese had beefed up their camps, that it felt like the north of the country was for all intents occupied by foreigners. If things went wrong it would take a major offensive to pry them loose. The Old Crab was not the one to do it.

“Are the Chinese planning something?” Charles asked. “Why haven’t I heard anything? And why would the Ministry of Mines and Energy be involved?”

“No, it’s not the Chinese, you fool. They’ve already got everything they want. Why would they risk that?” William looked around the room and his eyes fixed on the small refrigerator that Charles kept in the corner of his office. “What have you got in there? I could use a drink.”

Charles walked to the corner and opened the fridge. There was no beer, just his lunch, some soda, and plain yogurt that he ate whenever his stomach acted up. “Want a Fanta?”

“No, I could use a beer. Or something harder if you’ve got it.”

“A beer? What you need is coffee.” He didn’t mention that he kept a bottle of Scotch in the cabinet to share a drink when the president visited.

“You know what worries me about you?” William asked abruptly. “I don’t trust your loyalties.”

Charles was taken aback. “What are you talking about? I am completely loyal to this country. I have never taken a bribe, I have never been derelict in my duties. Nobody has ever claimed that I didn’t have Namibia’s best interests at heart.”

William nodded. “That’s what I’m talking about. Have you seen Okisbo lately?”

“You know I have. I go see mother twice a month. I just got back from the village the day before yesterday.”

“And did you see the new clinic? The school?”

“I did, they’re very nice. They both have your name on them. And big pictures of your smiling face in the lobby. But I can’t see how you came up with the money. And your job has nothing to do with health or education, so why are you messing around with schools and clinics?”

“This is exactly my point,” William said in an excited tone. “You’re trying to tell me that I can’t help my own village, where my mother
still
lives, where I have three sisters and eleven nieces and nephews. And even if you didn’t tell me, it would be obvious that was your opinion because you’ve done nothing to help them.”

“I’m a poor man. I don’t have the resources.”

“You
choose
to be poor. You’re like a priest or a monk, you think it makes you righteous to walk around in shoes that are more polish than leather, in a six year old car.”

Charles felt heat rising in his face. Leave it to his brother to spin corruption as a virtue. “Is there something you want to tell me that has something to do with my
job,
or is this a social call?”

“All those people in Okisbo believed in you. They pitched in their money to buy you books, helped pay for your school.”

“And now they expect payback, is that it?”

“They expect gratitude.”

“I
am
grateful. But the way I’m going to help them is not by letting Namibia sink into the same mire that has ruined half of Africa. You think taking bribes and doing favors for multinational corporations is going to help Okisbo?”

“I built a school and a clinic,” William said. “What have you done?”

“What the hell do you want?”

“I need your help,” his brother said. “I know what this country needs, and I know what’s holding it back. I thought the Americans were going to help me, but the Americans only help the Americans. They didn’t like what happened in Kaokoland, and now they’re pulling out. But it’s too late now, I’ve got to take a risk.”