Downfall (24 page)

“So Audrey might be a point where we can get inside and find out more about this network. That information might be in Glenn’s house. I want us to think about how to get inside there.”

“If he wanted to take over, he had to assess the risk,” Felix said. “Not to mention consider insurance.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Put yourself in Glenn’s shoes. You’ve risen to the top of your field. You’re successful. But the price of that success is that you have to help others succeed, and you might have to break the law to do it. You get everything but you could easily lose everything. You might want some insurance. If you go down, you point at others. Maybe they can save you. Or by naming some really big names you save yourself with the cops. Or if you get enough names, you get rid of Belias. You don’t need him anymore.”

“Remind me not to form an alliance with you,” Mila said. “Oops, too late.”

Something big is coming.
Which meant someone powerful was joining the network, presumably. And did that have anything to do with Janice Keene’s file or her mysterious mission for Belias? I looked at the photos on the wall. Eleven people could mean dozens of rivals in business or politics or just life. This could take time. “You keep on the people in the file, Felix. I’m going to figure out who Belias is.”

“Sam,” Mila said. “I think that’s smart. He’s just like the people you used to hunt.”

And she was right. I’d worked for a division at CIA that targeted criminal elements who represented a threat to national security. I went after arms traffickers and smugglers who could sneak both weapons and terrorists across borders, along with contraband. Belias was exactly the kind of guy I used to hunt, used to go undercover to get close to and bring down. I could feel the heat of excitement warm my blood. “Okay. I’ll focus on him, you focus on the network.”

“Why did he do it? Belias? Build this network?” Mila said. “At some point in his life, he made this choice. That fascinates me.”

“Never mind the why,” Felix said. “How did he do it? Who is he that he could manage this?”

I ticked off what I guessed about him. “He’s an American who spent a lot of time in the UK, judging from his hybrid accent. He said he was a computer hacker who now hacked lives. He made a comment at Rostov’s that he dislikes Russians, but he spoke to me in Russian. He and Holly and Glenn wear a symbol, and I saw the same symbol in Janice’s office, with sixty-three others. And he knew a Special Forces soldier named Roger Metcalfe.”

Those were my starting points. I wished I still had access to CIA databases. It would make life easier.

“Show me this symbol,” Mila said.

I showed her the necklace I’d taken from Holly.

“And there were ones like this? Sixty-four, you said?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were exposed to other cultures in your nomadic childhood,” Mila said. “There are sixty-four symbols in the I Ching, the Chinese fortune-telling system, also called the Book of Changes.”

“This doesn’t look Chinese,” I said.

“These are hexagrams. Solid line is yang, open space is yin. The balance between opposing forces.” She went to the laptop, opened a search window.

“It was in a bottom row of a whole series of them in Janice’s office.”

“Ah, here. Hexagram fifty-seven. Its modern interpretation is ‘subtle influence’ or ‘with cultivation comes influence.’”

“Subtle influence,” Felix said. “Behind the scenes, with no one knowing. Sounds like our guy with his promises and deals.”

“How’d you know this?” I asked.

Mila smiled. “Jimmy took me to a Chinese fortune-teller in London a few months ago. I liked it better than the museums.”

She would.

“After we have caught him and made him spill his secrets,” Mila said, “we will turn him over to a psychologist. It should be fun.”

“We catch him, we kill him,” Felix said.

“No. We find out who all is in this network,” she said. “But we don’t turn them over to the police.”

The silence in the room was sudden.

“Mila, I want to break up this network so it can’t threaten us. We’re not going to turn them into something useful to the Round Table,” I said. “Belias might want me, I don’t want him.”

“Yes, Sam, I do not mean that we keep his network alive. But innocent people—families, employees, and many investors—will all be hurt when they are exposed. And that exposing them might expose us, as well. How do we explain how we caught them? Why would they remain silent?”

“If Belias vanishes, the network dies,” Felix said. “That’s all we have to do.”

“Felix, you care for this Janice? You don’t want to see her in court or in jail, especially if she is dying,” Mila said.

Felix nodded slowly. “But she used me. She used me to get to Dalton. That implies they know about the Round Table.”

“It implies they know Dalton comes here for a drink every time he’s in San Francisco and that you are his friend, and you might be at his event. That’s rather different than knowing about the Round Table as a whole.”

Maybe she was right. And yet Belias seemed…surprised by me and my skills. If he knew about the Round Table, he shouldn’t be. Something didn’t fit. Something wasn’t right.

“Then we must take them over,” Mila said, “before they take us, to put an end to them. Is like a hostile takeover in movies, yes?” She almost sounded pleased.

Felix and I exchanged a look.

I watched Mila sit back down at her laptop and connect a fresh phone to her laptop. She connected to a database servicing the various cellular carriers and started looking for Glenn Marchbanks’s account.

“So we take them over and you’d be the new Belias,” I said. “I knew my earlier comparison was a bad idea.”

“Hardly. I’m not ruining other people for them. They have access to information, to cash, access to people. This is how they’re useful. We tell them we’ll expose them if they don’t cooperate.”

“They’re fakes.”

She laughed. “What do you mean, Sam?”

“They didn’t earn their success.”

“Okay, this is what I find amusing, and yes, it makes me a bad person. What if they were capable of success on their own? What if Belias has just made them feel like he is needed to be successful for them. He is like the—What is the American good luck thing that is gross? Ah. The rabbit’s foot.”

“I think it’s more than that.”

“Is it? Oh yes, perhaps there is a rival and he takes the rival out of the picture. How does the insecure fool in the network know he wouldn’t have won success on his own terms?”

I hesitated. “They don’t.”

“Yes. So they feel always Belias is a necessary part of their success. It is a psychological poison. Belias is their drug. I don’t want to destroy them. I want to free them from their addiction to him.”

I saw her reasoning and her logic irritated me. And if we took down Belias, would someone else simply take his place? Better us than a successor. “Perhaps.”

“I wonder,” Mila said. “Perhaps you are like these people who put their faith in Belias and his game.”

“How?” I glanced at her. “No one’s done me any special favors in a real long time.”

“No. But you see, they have a good life. They have all they want. Yet it is not enough.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Me, my life, I can never go back to Moldova. I would be found, killed. After what I have done, I cannot be a schoolteacher again and sit in a room full of children and mold young thoughts. I have seen too much and done far worse. But you. You could just run the bars, have your life with Daniel and”—here she made a face at the thought of Leonie—“have the forger nanny person. You could have the normal life. But you would choose to have the two lives, the public and the secret, like these people. You would be two Sams.”

“That’s not true.”

Mila didn’t reply.

My cell phone rang. I answered, hoping it wouldn’t be Belias. I didn’t like the question Mila now had rattling in my mind.

“This is Detective DeSoto.”

“Hello, Detective.”

“Our investigation finds you acted in self-defense, Mr. Capra. No charges will be filed.” Her voice sounded worn, dead.

“Oh. That’s great.” Belias made it happen. I felt the pit of my stomach shiver.

“I suppose you have heard that Mr. Rostov’s brother was killed at their home that same night.”

“They must have been dangerous men living dangerous lives,” I said.

“The sad tragedy of House Rostov continues.”

“What do you mean?” I couldn’t act as if I already knew. But this was independent confirmation.

“There’s a dead Rostov in the Denver airport. He had a seat on a flight to San Francisco. Poisoned, they think, in a bathroom stall.” She made a small, silvery laugh. Not one of amusement.

Poison. I thought of Janice’s attempt on Dalton.

“Three dead Rostovs might eventually mean one dead Capra. Be careful.”

“I had nothing to do with any dead Rostovs except the first one.”

“I hope your powerful friends who warned me off will warn
them
off. I’m sure it will make a great difference to the Rostovs when they’re told, hands off you. They’ll run home and have their three funerals and count themselves lucky they were warned. Off. You.” She laughed again, bitter.

“Why?” I said. “Why are you telling me this?”

“If you’re truly on the side of the angels, then good luck to you. Give my regards to Mrs. Court.”

Mrs. Court? I started to ask who that was, but then I remembered she’d spoken with Mila. Odd. I’d never heard Mila use that pseudonym. “I will. Thank you, Detective.” I hung up.

I told Mila what happened. “Belias said he could turn off the heat.”

The idea that he could, and he had, made us all fall silent for a moment.

“He just proved to you his power. He’s gotten the police off your back.” She sounded slightly stunned. “He is trying to steal you away from me. Little poaching jerk.”

“This is a doorway for me to get in with him.”

She nodded. “We need to give him that reason. I have worked out the logic. It is very dangerous, Sam. Not just for you but for me.”

“What do you suggest?”

“The stumbling block to him recruiting you is me—that you have an ally. So. I must be disposable.”

I blinked, started to speak, and she smiled.

“Give me a few pieces of silver,” Mila said, “and I’ll betray you.”

H
OLLY RANG THE BELL
and Belias came down and unlocked the gate. He looked like he hadn’t slept well. She waited to speak until he had closed the house’s door behind her.

“I did what you asked,” she said. “The police in Tiburon don’t think it was aimed at me, just random. They asked about my ex-husband, obviously, because they asked if I had enemies, or any of my family did. I told them Glenn was out of town and would call them when he got back. So. I’ve sold your lies.” She sat down.

Belias poured her coffee. She was surprised he remembered how she took her sugar and cream. “Audrey hasn’t reported Glenn missing yet.”

“How do you know?”

“I have her phones, e-mails, and text messages tapped.”

“Of course you do.” Holly drank her coffee. “I sent my college roommate a long e-mail. Outlining how Glenn had come to the house, tore it up, fired a few shots, broken two windows. Then broke down and cried and begged me not to call the police or his wife. That he wanted time alone from her. That he was a man I didn’t know. That I fibbed to the police about it. She’ll keep it and have it when Glenn goes missing.”

“I’m sure,” Belias said, “that it was beautifully written. I wish I could write a eulogy for Roger. But it’s not like I can give a speech in front of lots of people.”

She didn’t want to hear about Roger. “I can’t be suspected in Glenn’s death,” she said. “Of course they’d look at me as the ex-wife. I can’t go to jail, can’t lose my kids.” She hadn’t been able to sleep last night, consumed by fear and panic and guilt.

“You won’t.”

“So I’ve done what you want and I want out.” She set down the coffee mug. “I’ve done what you asked. This is a huge risk for me. I consider my debt discharged.”

“We had a deal. You’ll be free when this…situation is resolved. When Sam Capra is under my control.”

“He killed Glenn. No room for him here.” She said it before she thought.

“We’re losing people. Glenn. Roger. Diana’s mother has cancer, she doesn’t have long. I need him.”

She clenched her hand into a fist, pressed it to her mouth.

“What does it matter? You won’t have to work with him. You’ll have a very easy job. No more danger.”

“What job?”

“I’ll tell you soon enough. But I promise you, Holly, it will be the safest job imaginable for you.”

His sudden smile made her uneasy. “How could you want to recruit him after he killed Glenn? And after Roger’s death?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you…but know that I don’t believe in revenge. It’s messy and expensive.”

She balled her hands into fists. Then let them go.

“We’re going to set a trap for him, and I’m going to make him an offer. Now. It may not work. But if it does, he’s mine and you’re free from dangerous work and then we’re all happy, yes?”

“What about Diana?”

“He can give her to us. Our problem is Audrey.”

“Audrey will be expecting Glenn to contact her. Audrey will no doubt freak out when he doesn’t call her tonight or tomorrow.”

“Then text her,” Belias said. “Pretend that you’re him. You know the kind of words he’d say.”

Holly rubbed her temples. She felt like she’d aged a decade in a day. “I don’t think I can be that cruel, John.”

“You can be if you have to be.”

Holly sat down in the chair. She remembered when they bought their Tiburon house, when she furnished it with the things she liked, possessions she could love, when she and Glenn rose high in society, when the children were accepted at the best schools, and she and Glenn had more money than she could spend in a lifetime…and now her life here felt like an anchor. All that mattered were her children, getting herself out of this disaster so it would never touch them. If she had to vanish—to Canada or New Zealand or South Africa…she could live simply. The kids could, too; it would be a wrenching adjustment. But they could cope. If only he would let her go.

“I’m grateful you’re still on my side, Holly. I’ve always admired your strength.”

The tone of his words…she glanced at him, then glanced away. It was hard to think of him as a man, with wants and needs, and not just a presence that guided their lives, like a faraway god. He could not be serious. He could not be…hitting on her, not one minute after talking about recruiting Sam Capra to their cause. An easy job? What, in his bed? She felt ill.

The laptop beeped.

“What’s that?” she asked, grateful for the interruption.

“Another phone call being made to the Rostov chief in New York,” he said. “I’m monitoring and recording his calls…” He moved to turn the volume off. But then he heard a woman’s voice speaking English, and he turned up the volume.

“Mr. Rostov?”

“Who is this? How did you get this number?” Rostov’s English was heavily accented.

“A friend. I am sorry for your recent losses.”

“Who is this?”

“I can give you a measure of justice.”

A pause, then quiet. “Who is this?”

“The man you want dead. Sam Capra. I can give him to you.”

“I don’t wish anyone dead.”

“Surely you do. Sam killed Grigori and Vladimir. He knows who killed Viktor in Denver. I can give you Sam and the people who killed Viktor. For a price.”

“You should call the police if you know something.” But he didn’t hang up.

“He’s not just a bartender. Well, he is now, but he used to be hired muscle,” she said. “And he messed with your boys. I can make it so he doesn’t see you coming. For a price. Or I can take him out for you. For a price. Never have to get your hands dirty.”

“I am respectable businessman. I don’t know what you mean, please leave me alone.”

“Your phone is secure,” she said. “I got your number off
Grigori’s
cell. Only a few people have the number. I got it because I was with Sam when he took Grigori’s cell phone and ID. Those were gone from his body, did the police tell you that?”

Belias could hear the slight suck in of breath from the elder
Rostov
.

“But you can call me back on another line if you like.” She fed him a number. She hung up. Five seconds later, Rostov was on another call, furiously speaking in Russian.

“Sam’s friend isn’t much of a friend.” Belias glanced at Holly. “I think we should share this information with Sam, don’t you?”