The Blood Lance (38 page)

'He has to have some juice? People aren't going to give him their best markets without a fight.'

'The old man still has friends. You touch Luca's operations, you push him out of a market and bad things happen. Nobody bothers him that I've heard about, and he's fairly insulated from the police. . .'

'Would you call him a major player?'

'He runs a few crews. The money is good, but the old man taught him to keep a low profile.'

'I'm looking for someone capable of organising a political
assassination.'

'That kind of thing I don't hear about. Me? I wouldn't touch a Swiss cop for the world. A politician? Forget it! When someone important is killed they never stop coming! They buy your enemies. They threaten your friends. If you want to kill politicians and get away with it there aren't many people willing to do it for you, and those who are cost a small fortune. If you want to spend like that, you might as well buy them.'

'I understand that. But someone is doing it.'

'Not Luca.'

'What do you know about a man named David Carlisle?'

Hasan shook his head, but there was a quick, nervous tick, a moment when the eyes lost focus.

'Are you sure? He's an Englishman. Maybe our age, a couple years younger. . . could be friends with Luca. . . ?'

Hasan lifted his hands, palms upwards, as if to say the name didn't mean anything. He was lying, but Malloy didn't push it. Knowing Hasan was lying to him was all he really needed to know. David Carlisle scared him, it seemed, and Malloy didn't know anyone who scared Hasan.

'Helena Chernoff?'

'Not a lady I want to meet.'

'You know the people she works for?'

He shook his head. 'As far as I know she's independent.'

'The past decade or so she's been involved with a cartel...'

'No. She has people working for her, Thomas, but she's freelance - she goes to the highest bidder and always has.'

'Could she kill a politician?'

'If she had people who could arrange the contract and maybe organise the logistical support.'

'Do you know a man named Hugo Ohlendorf?'

Again, a shake of the head. This time probably legitimate.

Before he left Malloy asked about Hasan's family. The giant lost the tension in his face and talked easily about his daughters and sons. Then talk turned to old friends and the usual litany of misfortunes and illnesses that come with the
passing of time. As they left Hasan said, 'You take care of yourself, Thomas!'

It was a kind remark and certainly genuine, but Malloy could not help remember that the last time he had been in trouble Hasan had offered to help. This time, it seemed, he was on his own.

After his phone call to Max, Malloy came out the back door of The Gold Standard and slipped into the Mercedes. 'Good meeting?' Max asked as his eyes scanned the shadows.

'Instructive.'

'So where to now?'

'I was thinking about having a drink at the Savoy.'

Chapter Ten

Zürich, Switzerland

Monday-Tuesday March 10-11, 2008.

A uniformed private security guard stood before the door to Kate and Ethan's suite. 'You have business here, sir?' he asked in Swiss German. Malloy said he wanted to see Mr Peter Bartholomew. 'And your name is?'

'T. K.'

The man knocked on the door without taking his eyes off Malloy. Ethan opened the door with an easy-going grin. 'He's okay.' To Malloy he said, 'Come on in. We were beginning to wonder if something had happened.'

Malloy walked into their suite and saw Kate sitting up in bed. She had a set of three throwing knives resting on her lap. A knife-scarred sheet of plywood with a human silhouette drawn on it leaned against the wall opposite the foot of her bed. She held one knife up and smiled. 'You care to try your luck?'

'Don't do it,' Ethan told him. 'She just wants your money.'

'The neighbours must love you,' Malloy said.

'The neighbours on either side are Securitas,' Ethan told him. 'They're getting paid to be miserable. You want a drink?'

'Thanks, but I had a beer at lunch and passed out for the rest of the day.'

'We're hopped up on meds and can't drink anything,' Kate answered. She sent three knives at the target in rapid succession, using her right, left, and right hands. Only the left handed throw was wide of the kill zone.

'Would you like some orange juice?' Ethan asked.

'Orange juice sounds good.'

'Any news?' Kate asked.

'Quite a bit, actually.' At their look of sudden interest, he added, 'The good news first. Josh came out of surgery without complications. He's flying home tomorrow.'

'Anything on Jim?' Ethan asked.

Malloy's face tightened. 'Jim was dead when Chernoff called us to make the trade.'

Kate and Ethan lost their smiles.

'As near as I can tell Chernoff or one of her operatives drove him to an apartment about a mile away and then recorded him telling me to help him. Chernoff set her trap at the back of
Das Sternenlicht
and called Josh. She was already on the roof with the recording when I talked to her.'

'You think Jim told her where we were hiding? Ethan asked.

'I don't think Jim had any idea where we were. He was lost without GPS. I think Chernoff got our location from my cell phone.'

'How would she have got that?' Kate asked.

'From Dale's cell phone. There were only two numbers in the address book, and one of them was in America. She was hooked into the provider and found the phone - the same way Dale found the phone we thought belonged to her.'

'I hope you've changed phones,' Kate said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

'Not until I used the old one to bait Chernoff into coming after me.'

This got the expected reaction: disbelief, surprise, and ultimately, with the news of Chernoff's capture, a profound sense of relief. At their insistence, still not believing it, Malloy went through everything from Chernoff's take down and arrest by the Germans to the capture of her cell phone and computer. At the mention of Chernoff's computer files Ethan wanted to know if Malloy thought it might lead them to Jack Farrell. That had been the point of going to Hamburg after all.

'I think it's safe to assume Jack Farrell was dead when Irina Turner left New York,' Malloy told them.

'What are you talking about?' Kate asked.

'We've been chasing a ghost.'

Ethan stirred. 'I thought they had proof Farrell was at the Barcelona airport and then inside the Royal Meridien. Photographs, fingerprints, DNA. . .' He looked at Kate for confirmation. They had seen it all on TV.

'Irina Turner needed a stand-in for the surveillance photos and bank transactions, but the DNA and fingerprints were easy enough to leave behind.'

'How did she. . . ?' Ethan stopped himself. Between test tubes with bodily fluids and severed digits, it wasn't that difficult to leave trace evidence for crime scene teams to find. With Irina Turner's story to support the evidence, everyone had just assumed. . .

'So why make it look like Farrell was running?' Kate asked. 'I don't understand. What was the point?'

'Chernoff's employer got wind of what I was doing with the SEC investigation and decided to silence Farrell before he could do any damage. While he was at it, he had Irina embezzle roughly four-hundred-sixty million dollars. To cover his tracks, he made it look like Jack Farrell had done it and was on the run with the money. The police raid on the Royal Meridien put the pressure on, and the person I had used to start the investigation against Farrell sent me over to do what I could to make Farrell go away.'

'You're saying Chernoff's employer knew you were involved in this before Farrell even disappeared?' Ethan asked.

'They knew all three of us were involved. From what I can tell, we were the targets in the multiple assassinations Ohlendorf mentioned.'

'But that was. . . a couple of months ago!'

'Phase one was to get Irina Turner in place. She was the specialist Chernoff needed. She moved the money off shore and then apparently killed Farrell. Next came the pretence of flight,
and finally the publicity. The near-miss at the Royal Meridien was the bait that was designed to draw the three of us to Hamburg.'

'Why not just find you in New York and us in Zürich?'

'If the three of us had been killed in Hamburg, my people would have denied any knowledge of what I was doing, but they would have known I was on assignment and that would have answered any questions they might have had. If someone shot me down in New York - or if I just had a heart attack - there would have been some interest in what I had been doing, and that would have led to Farrell and Robert Kenyon and the Council of Paladins. So instead of shutting down the enquiry, killing me in New York would have generated a lot more interest.'

'How could anyone know you instigated the investigation against Farrell?' Kate asked.

'I made a number of enquiries about Robert Kenyon. In some cases, I hired people to check out certain addresses or acquire certain records. Apparently Robert Kenyon's killer found out what I was doing and decided Farrell was a liability he could not afford.'

'Giancarlo told me I had to let this thing go. He said if I didn't he couldn't protect Ethan or me.'

'When was this?'

'A few weeks ago - at the party.'

'About the time Farrell disappeared. . .' Malloy thought about it. 'So he was telling you not to go to Hamburg. . .'

'He couldn't have known that was going to happen.'

'Maybe he contacted you to find out if my investigation was connected to Robert Kenyon's murder.'

Kate thought about this without answering.

'How do they know about the three of us?' Ethan asked.

'Helena Chernoff worked for Julian Corbeau - back when the three of us took him down. She had our names and at least some basic information about all of us. I have been assuming she was hired by the paladins to kill us, but I think it's possible
she provided some of the intel on me before she arranged the trap for us in Hamburg. That could mean she is in partnership with some or all of the people we've been looking at - not just a contract assassin.'

'I don't understand something,' Ethan said. 'If Jack Farrell had to be killed because he knew too much, why bother coming after us?'

'Because Farrell isn't the only one with the information we're looking for. I think Ohlendorf could have taken us to Kenyon's killer, and I think Giancarlo and Luca know the truth. In fact, at this point, I think we have to admit that Ethan has been right about this thing from the start. The paladins or some faction of them were involved in Kenyon's death.'

'There are nine paladins,' Ethan told him.

'Ohlendorf represented four of them: Johannes Diekmann and the other three founding members. Once you remove the emeritus members from the equation you have Jack Farrell, Farrell's father, Robert Kenyon, Hugo Ohlendorf, Giancarlo and Luca Bartoli - all active at the time of Robert Kenyon's death. At this point they are all dead except for Luca and Giancarlo.'

'We don't
know
Jack Farrell is dead,' Ethan said.

'Farrell was a businessman. As far as I can see he wasn't involved in much except for laundering money and working some bankruptcy scams with Giancarlo. I don't think he was capable of arranging what happened to us in Hamburg.'

'That's why he hired Chernoff.'

Malloy shrugged. 'Okay. It's a possibility, at least until we find the body.'

'What about the other two paladins?' Kate asked.

'David Carlisle replaced Kenyon. Christine Foulkes joined the council a couple of years later, after Jack Farrell's father passed away. I suppose Carlisle could be involved. He seems to have gained by Lord Kenyon's death, but Foulkes doesn't make sense. I put her with Diekmann and the socialites — not really involved in the criminal activities.'

'So what do we know about Carlisle?' Kate asked.

Malloy lifted his hands in a gesture of frustration. 'The guy is a ghost. He has a permanent address in Paris, an apartment in the city actually, but he's never there. Never. Different people occasionally use the apartment, there's a regular maid service, and someone goes by once in a while to pick up mail and restock the place, but no one, including the landlord, has ever met Mr Carlisle.'

'There is quite a bit about him in the annual reports the paladins put out,' Ethan said. 'I've seen pictures of him and summaries of his activities. Outside of that, I can't find anything about him.'

'I've seen some credit reports, some activity on his UK passport, but nothing conclusive,' Malloy told them.

'How much do we know about his history?' Kate asked.

'Just the bare bones. He was born and raised in Liverpool. As a young man he kicked around the docks before he finally drifted into the armed forces. No immediate family is left and his cousins haven't seen him since he was a kid. Old friends from school don't even remember him - so he is either a very frightening individual or he didn't have much personality. From those who do recall him, it could be a bit of both.'