Shoot Him if He Runs (12 page)

“And what you’ve just told me is as much as you have for thinking Robertson is Barney Cox?”

Pepper threw up his hands. “Lance told me to tell you what I know about him; that’s what I know and what I think. Oh, I forgot, he has a false identity, which is what Barney Cox would have, too. Anything else?”

“Tell me about Colonel Croft.”

“Ah, now
there’s
a piece of work. His real name is Maurice Benet, and he’s Haitian.”

“That explains the odd accent.”

“It explains a lot of things. When Benet was twenty, he was a captain in Papa Doc’s Tonton Macoutes. You know about them?”

“The Haitian secret police?”

“They were a happy band of murderers and torturers, whose main job was to scare the shit out of anybody who had a discouraging word to say about Papa Doc or his regime. They did this by kidnapping, torturing and murdering anybody who annoyed them, then delivering the mutilated corpse home to the family.”

“How did he end up in St. Marks?”

“When Baby Doc’s regime fell, Benet and a cohort of his escaped the island with a large bundle of various currencies and island-hopped for a while, ending up here, in the happy arms of Sir Winston Sutherland. Sutherland found a place in the police force for him and his buddy, and he’s been clawing his way up ever since. He’s been a little more restrained than when he was in Haiti, but he’s matured, I guess. He still scares the shit out of people, though.”

“How did you identify him?”

“I followed him into a bar and got his right index fingerprint off a bar glass. It’s confirmed; there’s no guessing about this guy.”

“Is he wanted anywhere?”

“Sure, he’s wanted in Haiti, but that place is such a mess they probably wouldn’t know what to do if he turned up on a street corner in Port-au-Prince.”

“How’d you get hold of Robertson’s application for buying a house?”

“I’ve been hacking into the government computers almost since I arrived here a year ago. I can find out just about anything you’d want to know, and a great deal you wouldn’t want to know.”

“I want to know if Colonel Croft has any real interest in our party.”

“If you’re here, he’s interested. I hope to God you didn’t yank out those bugs on your phones, because if you did, he’s going to be all over you.”

“I didn’t; they’re still in place; we’re just being careful what we say when we’re in the house.”

“I hear you’ve been up to Irene Foster’s.”

“Yes.”

“She’s probably bugged, too; did you say anything indiscreet there?”

“Certainly not, and I don’t think she’s bugged, because when Stone Barrington happened to mention to the colonel he’d heard that casinos were going to start opening here, Croft got tense. We heard about that from Irene’s buddy Harry Pitts at her house, and if she had been bugged, Croft would already have known about our conversations there.”

Pepper checked his watch. “I’ve got to get back,” he said. “If I stay any longer, my wife’s going to think I’m fucking you.”

Holly laughed. “She sounds like a suspicious woman; she must have cause.”

“Let’s not go into that.” He handed Holly a card. “That’s my satphone number; I’ve got one just like yours. Have you noticed that there’s a scrambler button on it?”

“Yes, but Lance hasn’t told me to use it.”

“When you call me, use it. You can reach me any day at twelve-thirty
P.M
. for five minutes. No other time.”

“Got it,” Holly said, tucking the card into her bra.

“Give me a minute before you go back to the restaurant.” He got out of the car and returned to the dining room.

Holly waited, then joined the others. Pepper was paying his check and leaving.

“Interesting?” Stone asked.

“I’ll tell you when we’re out of here,” she said.

24

B
ill Pepper and his wife, Annie, paid their check and left the inn.

“So, did you fuck her?” Annie asked.

“I would have, if I’d had the time.”

“I thought so.”

They were quiet for a while.

“Did you think she was attractive?”

“You got a look at her; what do you think?”

“I think she’s attractive.”

“Well, I won’t be seeing her again; we’ll talk only on the satphone.”

“Satphone sex!”

“Scrambled satphone sex!”

They both laughed. They arrived home and got undressed for bed.

“I’ve got to call in,” he said to his wife. “Anything you want to pass on?” She was Agency, too.

“Not to Lance Cabot,” she said.

“You’d better start being nice to him.”

“You think he’s going to get the job?”

“I think he will if this Holly Barker’s assignment pans out.”

“What’s her assignment?”

“This is between you and me, okay? Nobody else ever hears about it.”

She fluffed her pillow and got into bed. “Okay.”

“Lance sent her down here to find Teddy Fay.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“I kid you not.”

“Lance thinks he’s still alive?”

“The Director thinks he
might
be still alive, and that’s enough.”

She shook her head. “Hang on a minute while I connect the dots.” She was quiet for a moment. “Okay, I can’t connect the dots.”

“The dots run all the way to the president; does that help?”

Her eyebrows went up. “Ooooh; reelection!”

“You’ve just connected the dots.”

“Why don’t they just leave well enough alone? Nobody else is looking for him.”

“I’ll bet you a blow job the FBI still is.”

“I won’t take that bet,” she said. “Teddy got away from them twice; Director Bob must be pissed off.”

“Yeah, and he’s the kind of guy who, once he’s pissed off, stays pissed off, until somebody makes him happy.”

“You think they’d arrest Teddy if they found him?”

“My guess is, not until after the election. After all, it was Will Lee who pulled Director Bob out of the ranks and gave him the big job. The guy must have
some
sense of gratitude.”

“You’d think.”

“Ms. Barker thinks this guy, Robertson, might be Teddy Fay.”

“The one you think is the escaped airport bandit?”

“I’m right; I know I am.”

“Excuse me, but aren’t you the guy who thought that coffee merchant in Cairo was Osama bin Laden?”

“That has nothing to do with this. Besides, the guy was
very
tall. And he had a beard.”

“Right. So tell me why you think Robertson isn’t Teddy Fay.”

“Instinct.”

“Uh-oh, instinct. You should never follow your instincts, darling. Let me guess, Robertson looks like Teddy.”

“He looks like the description of Teddy that Lance gave Holly Barker.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Come on, Billy, use your noodle a little; just consider it. What about Robertson conflicts with what’s known about Teddy Fay?”

Pepper was silent. “Teddy wouldn’t be stupid enough to use an identity that couldn’t be confirmed.”

“Nothing else, huh?”

“Not much.”

“Name some little thing about Robertson that conflicts with his being Teddy.”

“His identity doesn’t check out, okay? All right, nothing else, but nothing conflicts with his being Barney Cox, either.”

“Tell me, in your wildest dreams, who would you rather be responsible for bringing in: Barney Cox or Teddy Fay?”

“Well, Barney Cox, of course. If I brought in Teddy Fay, nobody would ever know; Langley would sit on it.”

“Lance would know, and if he gets the DDO job, that would be nice.”

“Yeah, but
only
Lance would know, and suppose he doesn’t get the job?”

“The director would know, and that means the president would know.”

“Why do you think that? You think Lance would tell her if
I
busted Teddy? He’d see that he and his acolyte, Barker, got the credit; then he’d get credit for sending her down here. And the director wouldn’t tell the president until he’s out of office. He wouldn’t want to know a thing like that.”

“You have a point.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe we’d get a nice transfer out of it?”

“What’s wrong with St. Marks? I’m working practically alone—ah, with the woman I love—in my very own country; I have nobody local breathing down my neck, except the guy at the embassy. And you’re having the time of your life; your tennis game has never been better.”

“If we were a couple of years from retirement, St. Marks would be heaven,” she said. “But we have careers ahead of us. In another year, Langley will forget we’re here, and we’ll be left to rot on the vine.
But
if you could make Robertson as Barney Cox, the Brits would love you for it; maybe you could join MI6.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you. Think of some way we can make hay out of Barney Cox.”

“If we were the police, we’d be world-famous in an instant, have our pictures in every newspaper in the world, but that’s not who we are, is it? If we’re responsible for busting Cox, only the Agency is going to know; Langley is not even going to tell the Brits.”

“They’d be very pleased if we busted Cox for the Brits. They could lord it over MI6 for years.”

“Well, there is that. All right, you want me to see what I can find out at the tennis club?”

“Does Robertson play tennis?”

“He’s a new member; I checked.”

“You’ve been holding out on me, haven’t you?”

“I only checked today. I win the blow job!” She shucked off her nightgown.

“Hang on, I don’t even remember what the bet was about. How do I know you won?”

She grabbed him by the hair and drew his face into her lap. “Trust me,” she said.

They forgot about calling Lance.

25

L
ance asked for and got an appointment with the director, and he presented himself at the appointed time. His morning conversation with Barker had been interesting.

“Good morning, Lance,” Kate Lee said, waving him to a chair. “What do you have to report?”

“We’ve identified a man in St. Marks as, possibly, Teddy Fay.”

“Great!”

“Stone Barrington interviewed a man at the airport who showed him a small airplane belonging to a recently arrived Englishman, calling himself Robertson. There’s no British paper on this character at all, so he’s obviously not who he says he is, and he more or less fits Teddy’s description.”

“Now what?”

“Problem is, Bill Pepper, on his own hook, has made a different identification.”

“Pepper’s our man in the casino down there, isn’t he? The computer whiz?”

“Right.”

“Who does Pepper think the man is?”

“He thinks he’s one of the four men who robbed a currency-transfer company at Heathrow a few months ago, name of Barney Cox.”

“I remember the incident; a hell of a lot of money, wasn’t it?”

“Over a hundred million quid.”

“Hard to handle that much cash, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but with careful planning, it could be done. Private jet to a country with amenable banks, numbered accounts, et cetera.”

“How much does a hundred million pounds sterling weigh?”

“Let’s see, the biggest sterling note is fifty pounds; you could get a million in a large briefcase.”

“So a hundred large briefcases would do it?”

“Or ten manageable-sized crates. As I recall, they used a large van to remove the money from Heathrow.”

“They’d need a big private jet, then.”

“Or a not-very-big cargo plane. Of course, the Brits would be all over that sort of flight.”

“They could truck it across the channel and fly from anywhere in Europe.”

“Yes, they could, if they waited for things to cool off enough.”

“So you think this Robertson could be Cox?”

“It’s possible.”

“Just as possible as if he’s Teddy Fay, then.”

“I’m afraid so. The reason I came to you about this is that Bill Pepper doesn’t work for me. He did me a favor and met briefly with Holly Barker to tell her what he knows about Pemberton. She was also interested in the evil Colonel Croft, né Benet, of Haiti.”

“Why?”

“Their cottage is bugged, and she suspects Croft, a logical assumption.”

“Have they blown their mission?” Kate asked.

“No, they’ve been careful. But as I was saying, Bill Pepper reports to Hugh English, through one of his deputies, and should you decide to mention this Robertson to the Brits, I don’t want to ruffle Hugh’s feathers by having him know that I’ve talked to Pepper without going through him.”

“Why didn’t you go through him?”

“Because I don’t think he would have given me permission. This was a benign contact, nothing that would jeopardize Pepper’s work down there. Also, Hugh English doesn’t know about our looking for Teddy, and I didn’t think you’d want him to.”

“Yes, well, there is that. Pepper has cracked the government computers down there, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s how he began his background check on Robertson; he checked the info on his application to buy a house.”

“One thing about Robertson that doesn’t sound like Teddy: he has no paper in Britain,” Kate said. “It doesn’t sound like Teddy to create a legend with no paper behind him. All his experience is in new identities with a lot of depth.”

“I’ll grant you that, but Teddy can’t have the resources he did when he was at home, here. He may have taken a certain amount of paper with him—passports, that sort of thing—but to build an identity in depth, he’d need more than just an Internet connection. He’d need British passwords and codes that he couldn’t get without the Agency’s people and equipment. That may be why this identity is so shallow.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Kate asked.

“Nothing. But if you decide to pass Pemberton on to the Brits for a more thorough investigation, I’d like you to conceal your source from Hugh English.”

“Hasn’t Pepper already reported his suspicions to Hugh?”

“Not yet; his hunch is only a day or so old. I could tell him, on your instructions, not to report it until you’re ready.”

“I think that’s the best course for now. I’ll get back to you. And Lance, thanks for bringing this to my attention, even though it’s outside your purview.”