The Double Eagle (24 page)
Authors: James Twining
GARE DU NORD, 10TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS
,
9:13
P.M.
A
rchie walked up the Rue Denain toward the station’s main entrance, checking the screen of his one remaining phone every so often. Under the streetlights, he could see that the wide area under the building’s neo-Corinthian façade was still busy with Algerian taxi drivers and pickpockets cruising for their next victim. Romanian gypsies, babies carefully positioned in the folds of their brightly colored skirts, begged, their hands dark with henna tattoos, their fingers covered in gold rings.
He sensed the car before he saw it, its headlights staining the road yellow, its tires sucking onto the tarmac as it drew up alongside him. It stopped when the rear window drew level with him, the smoked glass glinting. Archie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as the window dropped an inch. The dry scent of air-conditioning seeped out onto the street.
“Going somewhere?”
“Do I know you?” Archie’s tone was cautious.
“Yes, and yet no.”
“I haven’t got time for riddles.”
“No. You’re almost right out of time.”
“Cassius?” Archie gasped, his heart leaping in his chest.
“You came highly recommended. I have to say, so far you have done little to suggest that reputation is deserved. Late on the first egg. Now, with two days to go, no sign of the second.” Archie swallowed, wished he had chosen not to walk.
“I know, but it’s been difficult. More difficult than we thought.” As he spoke he tried to peer through the gap in the window. “Perhaps if I had a bit more time—”
“That, unfortunately, is the one thing I cannot give you. I’ve paid you handsomely. Now I expect you to deliver. You know the consequences if you fail.”
Archie stammered out an answer.
“It’s not my fault. It’s Felix. I’m still working on him.”
“That is not my concern.”
“But I’ve got it all planned out.” Archie tried to sound confident.
“Where?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Where?” The voice insisted, the single word dripping with menace.
“Amsterdam,” Archie muttered, his eyes dropping to the road.
“Good.” The voice was more relaxed now. “I will be in touch. Don’t fail me.”
The window whirred back into its frame and the car eased away from the curb and out into the street. A few seconds later, it had gone.
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
—P
LATO,
Laws
(Book 5)
SEVEN BRIDGES HOTEL, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
28 July—2:37
P.M.
J
ennifer flopped onto the bed, her shoes slipping off her feet and dropping noiselessly onto the worn brown carpet. She had not slept well the previous night even though they had taken turns during the drive from Paris. She felt drained, exhausted by the events of the past few days. She knew that this was partly due to the jet lag, partly due to the intensity of her investigation and subsequent reconstruction of the Fort Knox robbery, days of worry and lost sleep that she was still recovering from.
And, of course, the last few days had hardly been easy. An innocent man murdered, the coin that had been entrusted to her safekeeping stolen, a hasty and unauthorized flight to France with her prime suspect riding shotgun. And still so many questions. Who had ordered the Fort Knox breakin? Was Tom involved? How had one of the coins ended up in the stomach of a murdered priest? Who was behind Renwick’s murder? What was Van Simson’s involvement, if any? Where did Steiner and his murder fit in? Where were the coins now?
Try as she might to dismiss it, she was also forced to recognize that part of her exhaustion stemmed from the emotional burden of the mismatch between the Tom Kirk portrayed by Piper and Corbett and the evidence of her own eyes and ears. The same burden that had led her—head poundingly reminding her that morning—to drink too much the previous night.
In Tom she had seen someone who was resourceful, intelligent, and fiercely loyal. Someone who had, if you believed him, his own unarguable reasons for being who he was, for becoming what he had. She had realized that morning in the car that she had come to a crossroads. To trust him or not to trust him? To believe what she saw, or what people told her?
In the end, she wasn’t sure she had any choice. Without Tom, she never would have found Ranieri’s hideout or the newspaper and made the connection to Steiner. And he’d saved her life on that roof, she was sure of it. As for the Fort Knox job, she had looked into his eyes and seen in that instance, at least, the unblinking passion of an innocent man. No, she was quite clear in her own mind. Tom Kirk deserved a second chance. The question was whether Corbett would see it the same way.
“What are you doing?” She opened one eye, then the other as she heard Tom struggling to hook a rug around the corners of the large mirror that dominated the right-hand wall.
“People sometimes use this room to make porn movies,” Tom explained without turning around, still trying to secure the right-hand corner of the rug over the mirror’s chipped frame. “I’m pretty sure this is two-way glass for hiding a camera behind. I figured you wouldn’t want to take any chances.”
Jennifer sat upright, fully awake now.
“You’ve taken me to a brothel?” She slid off the bed and held her hands in front of her, scared of brushing against any surface that could have been soiled by the room’s previous occupants.
“It’s not a brothel. Just a place people go sometimes. Anyway, I know the owner. It’s clean and safe and no one will come looking for us here. Sorry they only had the one room, though. Don’t worry, I’ll take the floor.”
“Fine.”
Unhappy but not prepared to argue further, Jennifer sat back down. She reached down the side of the bed to grab the thick padded envelope that Corbett had sent over to the hotel as promised. She opened it and summarized the first few pages out loud, her left hand brushing hair back behind each ear as she spoke.
“Karl Steiner. East German. Forty-six years old. A former border guard. Suspected Stasi informer. Did time for armed robbery, handling stolen goods, usual stuff. Was implicated in several murders in Germany but they could never make anything stick. Moved to the Netherlands three years ago apparently to better serve his heroin addiction.”
Tom gave a short laugh. “Well, he came to the right place. What about the murder? What does it say about that?”
Jennifer turned over a few more pages in the file before answering.
“Not a lot.” She looked up at Tom over the top of the brown folder and shrugged. “Exactly the same injury as Ranieri, though he was on the phone when it happened. The call was traced to another phone booth in London. His wallet and keys were still on him, so even the Dutch police worked out it wasn’t a random mugging. They think it was probably drug related. Happens all the time apparently.”
Tom pinched his nose in thought.
“Well, we know different at least. We’re dealing with professionals here, trained assassins. They killed Ranieri and then made their move on Steiner. Probably counted on the fact that no one would link the two. The only question is whether they got what they wanted.”
Jennifer nodded slowly.
“You mean the coins?”
“Yeah.”
She consulted another typed page.
“I don’t believe it!”
“What?”
Jennifer, amazed, looked up at him.
“Apparently there’s a video of the whole thing.”
“A video? What do you mean, a video? A videotape?” It was Tom’s turn to look surprised. Jennifer nodded.
“Seems a couple of tourists caught the whole thing on camera. There should be a copy here somewhere.” Jennifer rummaged in the envelope until she triumphantly produced a cassette, a hastily scrawled label on the top side identifying it as
Steiner—Video Footage
in red ink.
Tom snatched it out of her hand and prodded the TV into action, its sleek black shape strangely out of place amidst the stained and ripped floral wallpaper and the laminate furniture, painted many years before in various shades of dark green. The built-in video player hungrily swallowed the tape with a low mechanical moan.
VAN RIJN HOTEL, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
2:49
P.M.
T
he hotel room was dingy and dirty. Stained green curtains clinging onto the rail by a few loose threads hung over a grimy window that had been nailed shut. The floor and the walls were lined in the same brown corduroy-effect material, no doubt the height of fashion when it had been laid in the 1970s, but now balding and flecked with the offal of its many occupants over the years.
The bed sagged in the middle like an abandoned trampoline, its bruised white headboard and pockmarked melamine side cabinets screwed to the wall. A Gideon Bible in the left-hand drawer had several pages torn out, the few black crumbs trapped between the Gospels of Mark and Luke and the heady smell of the remaining pages suggesting that they had been smoked one night out of desperation for a cigarette paper.
The ceiling had ripened to a watery yellow color, its sickly appearance hardly helped by the blotchy glow that emerged from the ripped and torn paper shade that engulfed the single forty-watt bulb in the middle of the ceiling.
But it served its purpose. People came and went without any questions being asked. Rooms were rented by the hour, by the day, by the week even—cash up front. It was easy to be anonymous there, to blend into the shadows, to slip in and out unobtrusively, unobserved. So he fitted in fine.
But he’d been there seven days now and was packed and ready to leave. He’d smoked himself silly, fucked four hookers, all of whom had reminded him in a strange way of his sister, and woken up each morning hugging an empty bottle of Jack and nursing a hangover. He’d almost proved to himself that you could have too much of a good thing. The mutilated Bible still bothered him, though. That was not right. That was not respectful.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out, flipped the cover open and pressed it to his face, the warm plastic nestling against his straggly blond beard.
“This is Foster.” His voice hinted at azaleas and whispering pines draped in Spanish moss, of long suffocating nights and alligator-infested swamps.
“Are you still in Amsterdam?” The voice was clipped, to the point. As always.
“Sure am.”
“Good. Stay put. There’s another little job I’d like you to do. Usual fee. I’ll call you in an hour.”
The line went dead.
Sighing, the man tossed the phone down onto the bed. The loose sheets swallowed it whole. He popped the catches of his suitcase and threw it open, lifting out neatly folded shirts and trousers from the lower half and placing them on the bed.
He reached into the case again, his hands pausing over the silky fabric that lined the inside of the plastic shell, before pulling it toward him. The Velcro holding the lining in place gave way with a reluctant rip and he folded it back, exposing the foam-filled compartment it had concealed within the lid.
The black Teflon sheen of his dismembered Remington M24 sniper rifle gazed silently back at him.
SEVEN BRIDGES HOTEL, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
2:49
P.M.
T
he screen glowed into life, darkness fading to light, the image jerking from the unsteady camera work.
A beatific sun smiled down through diaphanous clouds. The soothing hum of the tour guide’s harmless chatter and the swish of the water against the boat echoed in the background. The sights and sounds of the city, its bridges and canals and long narrow houses, drifted lazily in front of them.
Abruptly the mood changed. The sun disappeared, blotted out behind a tall building. The boat was plunged into shadow, the picture cold, the sky angry and portentous. And then, initially on the right-hand side but his face soon occupying the whole screen in terrifying detail, Tom and Jennifer saw Steiner. Saw his murder.
It was so quick. A man in a phone booth, two men silently approaching, the phone tumbling from his hand, swinging gracefully down and clashing against the phone’s metal base, the molded plastic shattering. Then the telltale flash of steel, a body lying crumpled on the pavement. In the background, the guide obliviously chanted her singsong commentary. A few seconds later and the tape ended. The screen was dark once again. A life extinguished.
They swapped a guilty glance, Tom shifting awkwardly on the edge of the bed, Jennifer swallowing nervously. He had been transfixed by the images, unable to look away as the knife dropped, as Steiner’s heart had stopped beating, as his life had spilled out onto the street. He could tell she had felt the same. That voyeuristic compulsion now hung over them like some terrible secret, a shared fetish that they were at once repulsed by and attracted to.
“Shall we have another look?” Tom was almost reluctant to suggest it, but it seemed unavoidable. Jennifer nodded silently.
He rewound the tape, pressed play and sat back down on the edge of the bed, trying to focus more objectively on what he was seeing. Steiner was easily recognizable from the mug shots and photo composites in his file. However, there was no way of identifying the murderers. The camera was never on the right side of them and by the time it was, they had both gone. Equally, it was impossible to see if the two men had removed anything from Steiner. At the crucial moment, when they had both been crouching over the body, the boat had passed under a bridge.
What was clear was that Steiner had recognized the threat as soon as they appeared. With good reason. They had murdered him in cold blood and in broad daylight in full view of a boat packed with tourists. It was a miracle no one else had seen them. In fact, if anything, it was almost as if they’d wanted to be seen. Either that, or they had been unwilling to risk missing him. They just took Steiner down at the first opportunity, whatever the consequences. These were desperate, dedicated men. Dangerous men.
Tom played the tape again, moving closer to the screen as if he was going to climb into the picture and walk right up to them all. A thought suddenly occurred to him. He stood up and rewound the tape again, pausing it just before Steiner had looked up and noticed the two men. Tom tilted his head, first one way and then the other, as if he were trying to see around the side of the image.
“What are you doing, Karl?” he asked slowly, more to himself than to Jennifer.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at him.” He walked right up to the screen and pointed at Steiner’s back. “Just before he notices the two guys. He’s facing the back of the phone booth, away from us. He’s bent slightly forward, his left arm leaning against the back wall, the phone jammed between his head and his left shoulder. What’s he doing?”
“Yeah, I see.” Jennifer got up and moved next to Tom. “It’s like he’s reading something. Or maybe leaning on the top of the phone with his right hand. Hey, I wonder if they found a pen on him?”
Jennifer flicked through the crime-scene report again, her eyes scanning the pages for the relevant section.
“Here we go.” She nodded. “Not on him, but there was one on the ground next to him. The cops think it must have fallen out of his pocket when the two men went through them.”
“You’re thinking he was writing something down, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, but what was he writing on?” She motioned to Tom to play the film again, advancing it frame by frame.
“You see,” she continued, “he definitely doesn’t put anything in his pockets or back in his wallet before the killers showed up and they then just killed him, searched him, and disappeared.”
“Meaning that if he was writing something down and the police didn’t find anything on him, then it might well still be down there,” said Tom, nodding in understanding. “Where’s the phone booth?”
“You must be kidding. It was nearly a week ago now.”
“Believe me, the Amsterdam police are not that well known for their efficiency. They’ve got a lot on their plate here. Let’s just go and have a look.”
“Are you serious?” Tom nodded. “Okay, fine.” Jennifer conceded with a shrug. “It’s on Prinze…I don’t know. How do you pronounce this?”
“Prinsengracht,” said Tom, glancing at the file. “Near the Hotel Pulitzer. It’s only about a fifteen-minute walk.”