Columbus (6 page)

So why did I follow him?

Because names hold value, and you never know when you’ll need to collect a trinket from your safe.

Two years later, and I am waiting in his hallway when he lumbers to his door. He has his hands in his pockets and is humming a song I don’t recognize.

“Hello, Brueggemann.”

He turns his head at the sound, slowly. Being so large, every movement he makes takes an eternity. His eyes find the gun in my hand and then flit back to my face. The only flicker of emotion he gives is a slight pursing of his lips.

“I remember you.”

“Good.”

“Columbus, yes?”

“Yes.”

He pulls his hands out of his pockets and takes a small step toward his apartment. In his left hand, he’s holding a set of keys.

He looks ahead, like he’s speaking to the door. He is trying to keep his voice even, relaxed. “The boss told me many things about the work you’ve done. He said you were particularly good with . . . ”

And then he swings away from the door and towards my face, lunging with his left, the keys leading the way.

I wanted this to happen, and I don’t blame him for trying. If I had come on strong, kept my distance and then ordered him away with my gun in his back, he would have made an attempt to challenge me at some point. It’s better to get it done early, break the man’s spirit, so the remainder of our time together can be spent usefully.

One of the things I learned at the Waxham detention center was to fight dirty against older and bigger opponents. Many believe the best way to take down a big man is to drive your heel into his kneecap, buckling it, chopping his legs out from under him so he’ll fall like a redwood. This always sounds good in theory, but the reality is it takes a precise, well-balanced kick, and if you miss above or below, then you’re either striking thick thigh muscle or the rock-hard bones of the shin. It’s not easy to do in a juvey yard, much less in the tight confines of a Brussels apartment corridor.

No, the preferable strike points are one of two places. The groin is excellent, on both men and women, and with enough impact, a single strike can sap the fight out of even the roughest of giants. But Brueggemann is swinging wildly, and the hallway isn’t all that well lit and I don’t want to miss his crotch, so I go for the second option.

The little light available in the hall reflects off the fleshy white skin of his neck and I quickly duck his arm and pop him with everything I have square in the throat.

The results are immediate, the keys go flying and he collapses to both knees, clutching his gullet while he sucks desperately for air. His face turns crimson, his eyes roll back and fill with tears, his breath sounds like a cat mewing.

I just wait.

Finally, he’s able to get some air back into his lungs and he looks over at me, defeat sweeping across his face like a bitter wind. He shrugs, still on his knees.

“What . . . do you want?”

“I want you to take me to Doriot. I want you to lead me to your boss where I can get to him and I don’t want him to know I’m coming. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” And inexplicably, a small grin creases his face, revealing that big gap between his front teeth.

We stand in Lantin, about 60 miles west of Brussels, outside of the jailhouse. It is a blocky building, one of those holdovers from the sixties that were made with little imagination.

Brueggemann has his arms folded across his chest.

“When?”

“Three weeks ago. The police stormed a restaurant he was dining in. . . . ”

“Where were you?”

“He said he needed to be alone.”

“Convenient.”

“Yes.”

I look over at the bodyguard, who keeps a smug expression on his face. “You think he wanted to be caught?”

“He didn’t pay me enough to think.”

I shake my head. It is frigid outside, but my face feels warm, flush with blood.

“You speak to him since?”

“Not a word.”

“Goddammit.” I look at the prison, shaking my head.

Brueggemann speaks up. “You will let me go now, yes?”

I nod, and he doesn’t wait for more. He spins and marches back in the direction of the town without a backward glance.

Carrots or sticks.

I stand against a wall in the prison yard in Lantin, waiting for Doriot to come out. I am dressed in the yellow jumpers assigned to all Belgian prisoners, my hands in my pockets, my toes numb from the cold. Mostly, the night is as black as coal, but occasionally the moon makes a brief appearance before ducking back to safety.

Often in doing what I do, there is information I need, or travel arrangements I must have, or access to a building I must be granted. I can’t do it alone; I rely upon strangers to get me the things I require. And so I have to decide in each instance which avenue is the best to get me where I want to go: the carrot, or the stick? A bribe, or a threat?

I didn’t want to take too long to get to Doriot. That bearded man is still hunting me, and the way he worked over Ryan suggests he got ample information before he shot him in the back. I own a home in Positano along the Amalfi coast of Italy, and I imagine the man who flushed me in Naples surely went there next.

An official visitation with Doriot would’ve been insufficient. Three feet of bulletproof glass separating us would render any threat moot. I had to get inside where I could work him close.

It didn’t take me long to find out which bar the Lantin guards frequented. A place known simply as “The Pub” featured television screens showing rugby, soccer, and cricket, with taps that served Stella, Jupiler, Hoegaarden and Leffe. I stood at the bar and mumbled to a waitress in English and watched the shifts change and the prison guards mope in for three straight days. I didn’t know Dutch and only minimal French, but I’ve found reading faces is as important as speaking. I wanted a sap, a guy with the most hang-down expression stamped on his mug like an advertisement for desperation. And I wanted a guy with a family.

On the third day, I clocked the same man coming off the night shift, a sad-sack, overweight guy with a moony face expressing a permanent look of bewilderment. On my way out, I asked him for a lighter in English without making any hand gestures and he produced one from his two-pocket shirt. He spoke English, or at least understood it, and that would help.

He rode a Vespa and I followed him from a casual distance until he reached a tiny apartment resembling a college dormitory. His wife barked at him from a window before he even cut the engine of his bike. She was holding an infant. He would do.

I stood in his living room when he came out of his bathroom, wiping his hands on his pants. His eyes had trouble conveying to his brain what he was seeing, a stranger in his living room, holding a pistol in one hand and a stack of cash in the other. His wife was in the bedroom, breast-feeding the baby.

“I need a favor from you.”

His eyes wouldn’t leave my hands, as though his neurons had stopped firing, his mind had shut down. Finally, he searched my face for some sort of sign he wasn’t hallucinating.

“I’m going to need you to get me inside the jail and bring a prisoner to me in the north yard, alone.”

He blinked, but nothing came out of his mouth.

“If you do this for me, you’ll have the ten thousand euros in my right hand and you’ll never see me again. If you fail, or you fuck me in any way, then your wife and your baby are going to get what’s in my left. Nod your head if you understand.”

Carrots or sticks. Sometimes, if you want to be sure, you choose both.

I can hear Doriot coming before he rounds the corner. He is spitting curses in French, propelled against his will by the moon-faced guard I threatened. He had probably just racked out for the night in his cot and was surprised to be awoken, singled out, and shuffled outside to the yard.

He turns the corner and his eyes peel open, all signs of sleep vanishing. His adam’s apple bobs as he swallows dryly. He reels back against the guard, but the man holds him there, firm.

“Hello, Doriot.”

Doriot tries to swivel his head to meet the guard’s eyes. “He’s a killer! He’s here to kill me.” But the guard just shuffles away.

“That’s debatable. Why’d you sell Ryan down the river?”

It doesn’t matter what his response is, I’m watching his eyes. His French accent is thick; it seems to pull his whole face down when he speaks, but his eyes don’t waver or blink. “I didn’t . . . you have no right accusing me of this thing, Columbus.”

“Your client wants me dead.”

His eyes slide back and forth, like he’s puzzled, searching for an answer. “What is this you’re telling me?”

“The man who hired me to put a bullet in Anton Noel.”

“Yes?”

“He’s upset.”

“Why should he be upset? You fulfilled the contract.”

“It was sloppy.”

There is a glint of hope in Doriot’s eyes now, like he can sense we aren’t on the same page and his life might be spared because of it. “Sloppy? What is this
sloppy
? My client would have cared nothing if you’d blown up a rail platform with five hundred people on it just to kill that bastard Noel.”

I chew on this, turning it over in my mind so I can see it from all angles. The little man in front of me isn’t faking his response. I believe him. Or at least I believe he isn’t involved. But that’s a far cry from his client not being involved. His client might have been equally upset with Doriot and not used his services for this particular bit of cleaning up.

“Why’d you let yourself get thrown in here?”

“Reasons that have nothing to do with you.”

“You see how easily I got to you?”

He lowers his eyes. “Yes. That does concern me. Yes.”

“What is your client’s name?”

“You know that I cannot—”

“If he’s happy as you say he is, then he’ll never know I was barking up his tree. If he’s not happy and hasn’t included you, then it’d be in your best interest for me to get to him. Before he gets to you.”

I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he maps the various moves in his head like a chess player trying to envision the board ten plays ahead. Finally, he nods.

“His name is Thomas Saxon. He’s an American. I have worked for him more than once. He is a hard man.”

“I know all about hard men. What city?”

“Atlanta.”

“All right then.” I nod at the guard, who comes back over, looking relieved. He starts to whirl Doriot back the way he came.

“Wait,” the little man says, and the guard stops for a moment. Doriot looks over his shoulder at me. “What happened to Ryan?”

“Shot in the spine in the Naples train station.”

He gnaws on his lip for a second, then nods at the guard. As their footsteps recede and the prison yard falls silent, I turn my eyes up to the nameless moon right before it disappears behind a cloud.

CHAPTER FIVE

HE’S TOYING WITH ME.

I’ve seen the bearded man twice since leaving Belgium. First, I thought I’d lucked into spotting him at the Gatwick airport. I was walking through the terminal, heading to catch a cab to Heathrow, airport-hopping so I could fly directly to Atlanta. I took a turn at the last moment, realizing the taxi stand was to the left, and I caught his reflection behind me in the glass window of a coffee klatch.

I have trained myself not to flinch. Ever. Not to hesitate, not to give a moment’s pause. He had scented my trail faster than I thought possible, but now he’d made a mistake. I lined up in the taxi queue, checked my wrist like I was looking at my watch, and then ducked into the baggage claim so I could stand behind the carousel and watch the only two entranceways into the room. He never came through the doors.

I waited patiently, then quickly bought a tan coat from an Austin Reed store and pitched my gray one in a trashcan. It wasn’t much, but maybe it would steal me a moment, and sometimes a moment is all I need.

I didn’t see him again that day. I switched flights and holed up at the Savoy on the Strand, spending two days in the lobby reading, watching the door. He never showed and I started to doubt whether I had actually seen him in Gatwick. It had only been a moment, a split second, just his face some forty feet behind me, and how could I be sure, really sure it was him?

Because my life had always relied on these moments of perspicacity. If I started to doubt them now, I might as well quit, really quit. I might as well head back to Rome, scoop up Risina Lorenzana and try to disappear where no one would ever find us. But I couldn’t do that, not now. Someone with a gun was looking for me and in my experience, hiding would only delay the inevitable. Instead of trying to outrun him, never knowing when he’d catch me, I needed to turn my boat and steer into him with everything I had. Let the crash determine which of us swims away free.

I saw him the second time in Atlanta at the Lenox mall. I pitched my tent at the Sheraton in Buckhead and headed to the shops to give my wardrobe an overhaul. It was teeth-chattering cold in Georgia, and the tickling at the back of my neck told me to ditch everything I’d worn in Europe and start over, buy casual clothes and blend into the background, especially if I was going to be spending time in the South.

I was riding up an escalator, exposed, vulnerable, when I saw him on the first-floor landing, looking directly at me. Smiling. If he wanted to pop me there, he could have. Hell, he
should
have. Which begged the question, how many times had he gotten this close since Naples and not finished the kill? I instinctually ducked down to tie my shoe, riding out the rest of the escalation below the shooter’s sight line. I kept low, acting like I was tugging my socks up and practically crawled into Macy’s like a crab darting across the sand. I didn’t want to get cornered in a store with only one entrance and exit. I needed options, quickly.

The department store had its own escalators in the center of the clothing area, but standing exposed and upright on a moving staircase is a dangerous game, as I had just been reminded. Instead, I ducked to the back of the store and zeroed in on a pair of elevators, usually reserved for women with strollers. Doors were just closing as I hustled aboard and pressed the button for the bottom floor of underground parking.