The Tangled Web: an international web of intrigue, murder and romance (24 page)

A shrill laugh caught his attention and he looked to see a group of idlers in front of a shop, their animated conversation punctuated with equally animated gesticulations. At that moment, the light turned green and the cab took off again. As it crawled along, the city revealed itself at an equally unhurried pace. Clothes fluttering in the breeze on backyard clotheslines, children in uniform sauntering home from school. It was not as it appeared from the other side of the harbor where high rise towers that smacked of prosperity were the first thing to greet the eye.

They continued on, passing by a beggar on crutches leaning against a wall half asleep; a sidewalk vendor selling mangoes, bananas, yams, breadfruit; another stall displaying cheap hair accessories and other imports from China; a goat, at home yet incongruously out of place in the middle of a city; strays rummaging around a garbage can. Suddenly, one of the mangy mongrels bolted between the cars to cross the street. Pavel braced himself for the worst, but by some miracle, the pathetic creature made it to the other side of the road unharmed. The cab made a right turn as they came to the next light. Once again the mountains were in view. Pavel gazed at them wistfully, thinking how much they were like the Fagaras Mountains, except for the snow that covered the Romanian mountain peaks in perpetuity.

The citiscape had now changed dramatically. Gone were the shacks with the corrugated zinc roofs, the brightly colored clothes drying in the sun, the vagrants hanging out in front of little grocery shops. Modern multi-story buildings rose in front of the cab, fronted by sidewalks and streets free of litter and other signs of poverty. This was the other face of the island, a world apart from the part of the city he had just passed through, and the Eastern Europe of his childhood.

Romania. It had been years since he had been there. He had grown up in Bucharest under the rule of a draconian police state. The Iron Curtain had fallen in 1989, but it was not until the mid-nineties that the communists were finally swept from power. Pavel was long gone by then. Many of his memories of Romania were dark; hushed conversations about Ceausescu “the beast”, his parents not wanting even their children to hear their true feelings about the decades-entrenched dictator. Pavel’s father had been a teacher, a slight man with intelligent eyes, a wan smile, and a dissident point of view. His mother, still alive as far as he knew, had been an artist, effervescent, energetic, thin as a rail and seldom without a paintbrush in her hand. Oil paints and turpentine were the smells of home.

He pulled himself away from his reminiscence and focused on the task at hand. He had more than ample time to rest after his trip and go over the plan. The only pressing thing was to confirm his appointment with the attorney as soon as possible. Everything hinged on that appointment. Leaving himself more than a day between his arrival and his visit to the attorney, he could do a reconnaissance of the downtown area at his leisure. The photographs the woman had delivered to him had been explicit, but seeing the area for himself would enable him to avoid any unforeseen snags. It would all be very interesting, he smiled to himself as the cab finally pulled up in front of the Park Plaza Hotel. It was, he noted glancing at his watch, just before midnight London time.

THIRTY-SIX

Margaret Thomas seemed miles away as she sat having dinner at a table that had seated a family of four in the not too distant past. Now as she and her husband dined without the hubbub of family conversation going on, Rich gave Margaret a curious glance. “You don’t seem yourself.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” the Minister of Finance replied, pecking listlessly at her food.

“Are you carrying the entire weight of the island on those slender shoulders of yours again?” Rich asked with a teasing smile.

Yes, the recent IMF report was of deep concern, Margaret admitted. The government’s defaults on international loans meant another devaluation to keep the ship afloat. There had been so many, coming fast and furiously on the heels of each other, the island’s currency had become no better than “Monopoly Money” as her darling niece Lauren was fond of dubbing it of late. Lauren had a caustic tongue, but, secretly Margaret admired her for speaking out. As Lauren so succinctly put it, foreign investment was flowing out of the country as fast as floodwaters to the sea. In addition, the island’s trade deficit was the worst it had been in history. Without drastic and immediate change, the future looked bleak. It was those drastic and immediate changes that now weighed heavily on Margaret as she put down her knife and fork in despair of eating anything.

“How are things going at the firm?” she asked in an attempt to divert her thoughts from what she knew loomed ahead.

Rich was relieved to talk about something other than the dire state of the nation’s economy. “We just took on another senior partner. Bright guy. David Plummer. I think you probably know him. Mind you, there are few lawyers in your class, Margaret. Pity you deserted the bar for government.”

“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,” Margaret joked lamely.

“You know I’ve always supported you, but you would have been managing senior partner at Foster & Foster by now if you hadn’t taken on what has turned out to be a Herculean feat.”

Margaret looked visibly ill. His fork midway to his mouth, Rich studied her with concern. “What’s the matter? Are you sick or something?”

“No, no,” Margaret answered hastily. “My tummy just feels a little upset. It’s nothing.”

Rich still looked concerned.

“Don’t worry,” Margaret assured him, “Really, it’s nothing.”

As her eyes met his, a feeling of terrible guilt swept over Margaret. How she hated deceiving her husband. But how could she tell him that his mention of Foster & Foster had immediately brought to mind a meeting at her Ministry during which Logan Armstrong had asked where the assassin would be placed? Logan Armstrong hadn’t inquired how the man would gain access to a busy law office in the middle of the day and she hadn’t offered an explanation, seeing none was required. However, to position the assassin in the perfect location in the Foster & Foster building had been so simple an undertaking it had almost seemed to be aided by providence.

When she had resigned from Foster & Foster, she had never returned her keys. It had been an oversight she had long forgotten until one morning while wracking her brain for a suitable location for the assassin. She had gone home and searched for the keys in the drawer that held old keys and other useless objects she had never got around to throwing out. The keys had been easy enough to find. They still had the tag she had attached to the key ring –
office
.

Finding the keys had been the easy part. Sneaking into the Foster & Foster offices like a burglar in the dead of night had been a different matter. It had been a harrowing experience, which she had been obliged to repeat. Her first visit was to make sure the keys still worked. The second was to hide the firearm in the upstairs storage for obsolete files. She had never been as frightened as that night when she had removed box after box of old files to make sure the weapon was properly hidden, praying the whole time the guards across the street at the capital building would not notice a light on in the room. By the time she was through, she was shaking like a leaf. Her knees had turned so weak from fear of being discovered she had barely been able to reset the burglar alarm and make it back to her car parked a little way down the lane behind the building. She had sat in her car for a long time, her heart pounding in her head, before she was capable of driving away.

Without realizing it, she heaved a heavy sigh and said out loud, “Only two days to go.”

“What was that you said?” Rich asked looking up from his plate.

“Nothing,” Margaret started. “I was just talking to myself.”

The Deputy Prime Minister pulled into his garage and got out of his car, immediately noticing the absence of his wife’s car. For a minute, he wondered where she could be. Then he remembered it was her bridge night. Allan heaved a sigh of relief, thankful she was not home, thankful that on this particular evening he would not have to account for every nuance of facial expression. If anyone could, his wife could read him like a book. Not having much of an appetite for dinner, he went directly to his bedroom. He threw himself on the chaise, kicked his shoes off and turned the TV on. Finding nothing of much interest to watch, he clicked the remote repetitively, his mind flitting between past and future as quickly as the changing of channels. He finally settled on a channel, absently watching the program as the fateful meeting with Logan in New York came back to haunt him yet again.

Immediately following the meeting with Margaret and John, during which Erick Freeman’s shocking intentions had been revealed, he had flown to New York to run the whole thing by Logan. It hadn’t taken Logan long to reach a conclusion. “From what you’ve told me, there doesn’t seem to be any other option but to get rid of Freeman,” Logan had remarked with a nonchalance that took Allan by surprise.

“It’s pretty obvious Freeman has to go, but
get rid of Freeman
is a bit ambiguous. What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m in complete agreement with the Thomas woman.”

“What you’re saying is assassinate Freeman.”

“That about sums it up.”

Allan stared at Logan reflectively. “It may well come to that, but I still think every legal option has to be explored before we resort to killing the man. We’d be sinking to his level. I’ve never been one to believe anything good came out of something bad. We’d be setting a very dark precedent for governance of the country.”

Logan smiled cynically. “I think that precedent has already been set by Freeman and that bunch, don’t you?”

He rose from his chair and went over to the windows overlooking the park. After a while, he turned to Allan. “Since you’re so insistent on treading the straight and narrow path, here’s how I see it. It would be essentially self-defense. You have every reason to believe the man has serious intentions of doing away with you and two other members of his cabinet. It would be a mistake to think he’s not crazy enough to try something like that.”

“You have a point, but what we’re talking about here boils down to murder, Logan. For Christ’s sake, I’ve spent my entire political life trying to rid the country of violent crime.”

“What’s the alternative? To have a futile legal procedure dragged through a corrupt court system indefinitely, and get killed in the meantime? Get rid of him – for the sake of the country if nothing else. But I’m stepping outside my boundaries. It’s your choice. Whatever you decide, you have my support.”

Allan got up and paced the floor. “Say we decided on such a drastic course of action, where would we even begin looking for an assassin? We certainly can’t use anybody local, although there are enough guns for hire, Lord knows.”

“Let me see what I can find out. I’ll get back to you on that score.”

It had taken some time before they were able to make direct contact with the man whose identity was sheltered by an impenetrable fortress of go-betweens. Even now, they didn’t know his name, or where he was located. They had no idea when he was arriving on the island either. Making contact with him had been like something out of an espionage novel. He and John had acquired mobile phones with untraceable numbers and dumped them after each call to a series of people with questionable names. Finally, it had boiled down to dealing with one person, supposedly the assassin, though no one could be sure it was actually the man himself.

The sticky part had been the delivery of the package to London. Margaret had come up with a solution, though he and John had initially balked at the idea of involving an outsider in the one thing that could be traced back to her. However Margaret had been persistent, going as far as to say she could put her head on the block for the person, whose name she refused to divulge. But Margaret had not been the only one playing their cards close to their chest. Until the meeting at the Ministry of Finance, he had kept Logan’s identity under wraps. The only thing John and Margaret knew was that the financing was being undertaken by a discreet source that supported their endeavor. As to how the assassin was resourced, Allan would take that information to his grave. He and Logan were like brothers. The trust between them would never be violated.

Allan’s thoughts drifted to a later meeting with Logan. Necessity for privacy had provided an opportunity to enjoy some fishing together, something they had not done for a long time. They had met at a canal in the country where they had fished with their fathers when they were boys. Logan was sitting on the bank cutting up avocado for bait when Allan pulled up. Allan went and joined him on the bank. Looking down at the canal, he couldn’t help but notice development had taken its toll on the narrow waterway that carried water from the large river upstream to irrigate the farms in the area. The canal seemed substantially lower than when he had last seen it. “I see you’ve already started on the bait,” he said sitting.

“I was a few minutes early. Think I have enough if you need any,” Logan said without looking up.

Allan readied his rod. He reached for a chunk of avocado and baited his line. “Seems like yesterday when we used to come here with the old men,” he said watching the water make its way downstream.

Logan cast his line and waited for it to settle until he said, “I’ve brought the banker’s check your courier is delivering to our party in London. I’ve made arrangements for the courier to pick up their payment directly from the bank.”

“Are they going to be able to do that without having to present identification?” Allan asked worriedly.

“It’s handled. All they have to do is walk into the bank and say they’re there to pick up the check. You don’t have to worry.”

They were interrupted by a tug on Logan’s line. Logan held the line firm, waiting patiently for another sign of movement. Then his rod arched. He reeled in the fighting mountain mullet, its body gleaming silver through the air.