Diary of an Assassin (11 page)

CHAPTER 26

In the morning, they used the disposable toothbrushes sold at the front counter, and Stephanie showered before they went out to the main dining area for breakfast. A small grill replaced the continental breakfasts they used to give out to the guests and Rhett ordered two omelets with orange juice.

Sitting in a corner booth, Rhett watched a young girls soccer team as they poured out of their rooms and into the dining hall. They were laughing and joking around with each other.

“Do you have any kids?” Stephanie asked, taking a sip of orange juice.

“No.”

“Paul and I wanted kids. Or at least I did. Just never seemed like the right time. It was a blessing in disguise, though, I guess. I would have been stuck with him. Did you grow up with any siblings?”

“No. My parents were a little off. They would travel so much I’d be lucky to see them a few times a year.
And they almost worked themselves to death. That’s why I grew up with my grandparents.”

“Why were your parents traveling so much?”

“They could never sit still for very long. I think they felt like strangers at home and so they thought traveling would bring them that sense of community. Staying in hostels with other travelers, things like that.”

“Did you ever go with them anywhere?”

“No, they never took me.” He took a long sip of juice. “I was a mistake for them.”

“Holy shit.”

Rhett saw that she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were above and behind him, watching the television behind the grill. Rhett turned around to see a news anchor speaking, a photo of Stephanie in a box to the side.

Again
, Congresswoman Stephanie Johnson is wanted for questioning in the death of her husband Paul Johnson. We’ve been told there is video evidence taken from a passerby on their phone of Congresswoman Johnson fleeing from her home shortly after police believe her husband was killed. We will be providing our viewers with updates as the story progresses. James—

Stephanie took out her phone and Rhett grabbed it away from her before she could dial.

“I need to call my assistant.”

“It won’t help.”

“I need her to tell the police that—”

“It won’t help. They have video and probably the murder weapon with your prints on it. You can’t do anything about it.”

Her eyes suddenly went wide. “Paul,” she gasped. “Oh no, Paul.” Her hand covered her mouth and she began to cry.

“I’m sorry
.”

“How can they do this? How does this happen in America?”

“We’re no different than any other country. We’re riding on the wave that our Founding Fathers gave us, but every day that wave grows a little smaller. It’s the nature of democracy to become tyranny.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying there’s the world you think you know and the world that actually is. Some people don’t ever want to learn how the real world works. We’re the most hated nation on the planet but it’s extremely rare to have a terrorist attack on our soil. In fact, we haven’t had one since nine-eleven. How do you think that is? Just luck? Organizations like Starlight extinguish those fires before they happen.” He downed his orange juice. “Let’s go before someone recognizes you.”

They stepped outside and walked up the street to a grocery store. Rhett went to the phone booth and pretended to use the phone as he watched the cars pulling in. A young man of sixteen or seventeen parked with a yellow Mustang.

Rhett waited until the boy had gone inside. He walked to the car and pulled out the small wallet he always carried with him. Opening it, he chose a tool in the shape of smooth key. It unlocked the door and the alarm went off. Rhett jumped in and popped open the hood, disconnecting the alarm from the battery and shutting it off in less than ten seconds. He used the same tool to start the car and picked up Stephanie, who waited for him by the phone booth.

“I don’t like stealing,” she said.

“We’ll leave it at the airport with a note to contact the police. They’ll get it back to him.”

As they drove on the interstate, Stephanie kept checking the messages on her phone.

“I have over three hundred unread emails,” she said. “Can I at least respond to emails?”

“No. Don’t say anything to anyone. In fact, you should get rid of your phone.”

“I can’t do that.”

Rhett glanced at her. “Are you that much of a junkie
, you can’t disconnect even to save yourself?”

She looked to him and then away. They drove in silence a long time before she rolled down her window and threw the phone out. It bounced once before shattering into a dozen pieces from the impact of the car behind them.

“Maybe I should turn myself in,” she said. “Hire the best lawyers.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re free
. They don’t care about incarcerating you. They want to know where you are. They can kill you just as easily in prison as they can outside. They just need a location, that’s why they killed Paul. They were hoping that would draw you out.”

She sighed as they exited the interstate
and drove into the same neighborhood they’d been in before. She was trembling and Rhett saw her take one hand in the other so it wouldn’t show.

Parking on the curb, Rhett said he would be right back and then
strolled to the Giacconis’ front door. He knocked, waited half a minute, and then rang the doorbell. He repeated this several times but no one answered. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He glanced back to Stephanie, and then pulled out his pistol before going inside.

CHAPTER
27

Detective Henri Abbott sat at the Interpol administrative offices in Lyon, France. He put his feet up on the desk. He’d spent the last three days tracking down a ring of car thieves and was exhausted though he’d done little more than place a few calls and make a few visits to mothers to talk about their sons.

Apparently the teenage boys, and oddly enough, Henri thought, two girls, traveled to Los Angeles, stole several cars, and then had them shipped back to France and Spain where they could get premium dollar. As long as the cars were of luxury makes of course.
But they had now moved into darker territory: the importation of underage prostitutes. Girls as young as ten would be lured by the boys with promises of money and then forced to work as prostitutes on the streets.

That’s why Henri had gotten the call.
There was no international police force. Each member nation had a certain number of clerks and detectives assigned to Interpol. Someone smuggling cocaine from France to America could be arrested by either police agency. To avoid confusion and confrontation, a call would simply be placed to Interpol and the Interpol detectives in both police agencies working the case would come together to solve it. In theory. In practice of course, no police agencies enjoyed working together. Especially across oceans.

Henri had gotten the break he needed when he confronted one of the boys’ grandmothers. She was heartbroken
at what her grandson was doing, but said she would not call him home to come get arrested. So Henri arrested her for obstructing a police investigation. He called the news and waited for them to arrive before hauling the eighty-one-year-old to his car in handcuffs. The boy came into the police station that night, freely, and offered directions to a house where the young girls were in exchange for charges being dropped against his grandmother.

Henri had been the one to go inside and see the filth that the girls lived in. Even more shocking was the fact that there were at least twenty of them. A couple of teenage boys had rounded up and kidnapped twenty prostitutes. It terrified him to think what older men with more connections and organization could do.

Henri was forty-three and almost retired, having joined the police force at twenty, the minimum age of entry back then. He could have retired three years ago but chose to stay on. He thought now that it was a mistake and pondered when would be the best time to quit.

His phone rang.
It was his wife. “J'ai été en attente pour vous appeler. I was wondering when you would check up on me,” he said.

“I
’m making carbonnade à la flamande. I thought you could pick up some wine to pair it with.”

“Oh? Really? And to what do I owe such a magnificent meal?”

“To the fact that you bought me new boots today.”

“I hope they were not too expensive.”

“Not too much, no. Just enough.”

He smiled. “Well then, I would
be happy to pick up a good wine.”

“Bientôt à la maison, je suis en attente pour vous.”

“Comme le vent, mon amour.”

“Vous pouvez toujours me faire sourire
.
Bientôt à la maison.”

Henri hung up the phone just as his door opened and a junior detective walked in. He held a file under his arm and placed it on the desk.

“What’s this?”

“Gustav Fabrice,” the detective said.

Henri took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “What about him?”

“He’s been released.”

“What are you talking about, released?”

“He was let go
from La Santé four days ago.”

“Why wasn’t I notified? The parole board knows that I have a—”

“The board didn’t release him. In fact, they fought against it.”

“Who did then?”

“I don’t know. The order comes from the top. No one is willing to say who.”

Henri opened the file. It was
Gustav’s prison file with a black-and-white photo of him clipped to the inside of the jacket. Just seeing Gustav gave him a cold shiver. “Where is he now?”

“He was put on a private flight for New York.”

“New York?” Henri said, looking up from the file. The detective shrugged. “Charter a flight for me for tonight and get me an expense card. I need at least eleven hundred euros a day.”

“Where are you going?”

Henri rose and grabbed his coat. “To New York. But first to La Santé to find out what the hell is going on.”

CHAPTER
28 

Henri showed his badge to the front desk of La Santé and waited until the superintendent arrived. He was a portly man of about fifty and he was sweating so much, his shirt was soaked and beads of it came down over his forehead. Henri put his hands behind his back and stood far enough away from him that he wouldn’t have to shake his hand. 

“Inspector, what a pleasant surprise.”

“I’m sure it is, Nicolas.”

“What is it I can do for you? Eh, you know you can always call.”

“No, I wanted to look at you when you answered me.”

“I see. Answer you what?”

“Why was Gustav Fabrice released four days ago?”

Nicolas nodded. “Hm. Come to my office.”

Henri followed him down the corridor and to a suite of offices that were down another hallway before they arrived to the main gate, which led to the cells. They turned down a separate corridor toward the administrative offices.

The offices were small and cramped and many of them had no windows. But Nicolas’
office was terrible even by those standards. They sat and Nicolas poured wine out of a container into two small glasses, pushing one forward to Henri, who took it in his hand but didn’t drink.

“He was an interesting one, that one,” Nicolas said.

“Why was he released?”

“Orders.”

“Orders from who?”

“From people that make a lot more than me.”

“May I see these orders?”

Nicolas reached into a drawer in his desk and ruffled some papers. He came back out with a legal document written in French
, an English translation attached. It was an official release order from the Cour de Cassation: one of the highest courts in all of France.

“They don’t have jurisdiction to do this,” Henri said.

“Don’t they? How would you know? The laws change so quickly, Henri. Men like us can’t keep up.”

“Nicolas, they can’t do this.”

“So, hire a barrister and set a hearing and go argue with them if you like. I’m not going to waste my time. I just follow orders.”

“Who was he released to?”

“I don’t know. Some woman came and saw him the day before his release. Maybe it was her?”

“What woman?”

“I don’t know, Henri. I got this order and I released him that day. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

He exhaled. “I saw a video camera by the entrance
. Show me video of this woman.”

“I’m very busy right now. Very busy. Why don’t you set an appointment and we can—”

“Unless you would like me searching through your drawers for the cocaine you keep in the lower left one, I recommend we watch the video.”

Nicolas was silent a moment and then said, “The video is not such a bad idea.”

Henri was led to a small room, even smaller than the offices, with a DVD player and a television set up. The DVD player looked to be about fifteen years old but he was impressed they even had that, as the last time he was here, he remembered someone mentioning that they had a VCR.

A guard fast-forwarded
a disc until he stopped on a blond woman in a skirt. She checked in at the front desk and then waited a while before a guard came and took her back.

“Do you know her?” Nicolas said.

“Yes. I know her.”

“Who is she?”

“She works for the United States government. CIA.”

“CIA?” He whistled between his teeth. “They certainly do pick their most beautiful women for
such work.”

“Thank you for showing me this, Nicolas. Call me if you hear anything.”

“I don’t suppose you would be willing to pay a little for such a call?”

Henri glanced at him before
leaving the room and finding his way out of the prison and into the warm Paris afternoon. He had a flight to catch to the United States and he had just decided he needed to go to a new city: Washington, DC.