False Impression (33 page)

“When the golf
tournament is on, I drop a lot of my customers off at the Wentworth Arms. They
ought to be able to fix you up with a room at this time of year.’

‘Then let’s find
out,’ said Jack.

‘Right you are,
guv.’

Jack sat back
and dialled a number on his cellphone.

‘American
embassy.’

‘Tom Crasanti,
please.’

W
hen Krantz came
round following the operation, the first thing she felt was a stabbing pain in
her right shoulder. She managed to raise her head a couple of inches off the
pillow as she tried to focus on the small white-walled, unadorned room: just
the bare necessities – a bed, a table, a chair, one sheet, one blanket and a
bed pan. It could only be a hospital, but not of the private variety, because
the room had no windows, no flowers, no fruit, no cards from well-wishers and
an exit that had bars clamped across the door.

Krantz tried to
piece together what had happened to her. She could remember spotting the taxi
driver’s gun pointing at her heart, and that was where the memory faded. She’d
had just enough time to turn – an inch, no more – before the bullet ripped into
her shoulder. No one had been that close before. The next bullet missed
completely, but by then he’d given her another second, easily enough time to
cut his throat. He had to be a pro, an ex-policeman perhaps, possibly a
soldier. But then she must have passed out.

Jack checked
himself into the Wentworth Arms for the night, and booked a table for dinner at
eight. After a shower and a change of clothes, he looked forward to devouring a
large juicy steak.

Even though Anna
was safely ensconced at Wentworth Hall, he didn’t feel he could relax while
Crew Cut might well be hovering somewhere nearby. He had already asked Tom to
brief the local police, while he continued to carry out his own surveillance.

He sat in the
lounge enjoying a Guinness and thinking about Anna. Long before the hall clock
struck eight, Tom walked in, looked around and spotted his old friend by the
fire. Jack rose to greet him, and apologized for having to drag him down to
Went worth when he could have been spending the evening with Chloe and Hank.

‘As long as this
establishment can produce a decent Tom Collins, you’ll not hear me complain,’
Tom answered him.

Tom was
explaining to Jack how Hank had scored a half century – whatever that was –
when they were joined by the head waiter, who took their orders for dinner.
They both chose steaks, but as a Texan, Tom admitted he hadn’t got used to the
English version that was served up looking like a lamb chop.

I’ll call you
through,’ said the head waiter, ‘as soon as your table is ready.’

‘Thank you,’
said Jack, as Tom bent down to open his briefcase.

He extracted a
thick file and placed it on the table between them.

Small talk had
never been his forte.

‘Let’s begin
with the important news,’ said Tom, opening the file. ‘We’ve identified the woman
in the photograph you sent through from Tokyo.’ Jack put his drink down and
concentrated on the contents of the file. ‘Her name is Olga Krantz, and she has
one thing in common with Dr Petrescu.’

‘And what’s
that?’ asked Jack.

‘The agency was
also under the illusion that she was missing, presumed dead. As you can see
from her profile,’ Tom added, pushing a sheet of paper across the table, ‘we
lost contact with her in 1989, when she ceased being a member of Ceaugescu’s
personal bodyguard. But we’re now convinced that she works exclusively for
Fenston.’

‘That’s one hell
of a leap of logic,’ suggested Jack, as a waiter appeared with a Tom Collins
and another half pint of Guinness.

‘Not if you
consider the facts logically,’ said Tom, ‘and then follow them step by step,’
he added, before sipping his drink.
‘Um, not bad.
After all, she and Fenston worked for Ceau§escu at the same time.’

‘Coincidence,’
said Jack.
‘Wouldn’t stand up in court.’

‘It might, when
you learn what her job description was.’

‘Try me,’ said
Jack.

‘She was
responsible for removing anyone who posed a threat to Ceau§escu.’

‘Still
circumstantial.’

‘Until
you discover her chosen method of disposal.’

‘A kitchen
knife?’ suggested Jack, not looking down at the sheet of paper in front of him.

‘You’ve got it,’
said Tom.

“
Which, I fear, means that there is yet another undeniable link in
your chain of logic
’

What’s that?’
asked Tom.

‘Anna is being
lined up as her next victim.’

‘No – there,
fortunately, the logic breaks down, because Krantz was arrested in Bucharest
this morning.’

What?’ said
Jack.

‘By the local
police,’ added Tom.

‘It’s hard to
believe they got within a mile of her,’ said Jack.

‘I kept losing
her even when I knew where she was.’

‘The local
police were the first to admit,’ said Tom, ‘that she was unconscious at the
time.’

‘Fill me in on
the details,’ said Jack impatiently.

It seems, and
reports were still coming through when I left the embassy, that Krantz was
involved in a quarrel with a taxi driver, who was found to have five hundred dollars
in his possession. The driver had his throat cut, while she ended up with a
bullet in her right shoulder. We don’t yet know what caused the fight, but as
he was killed only moments before your flight took off, we thought you might be
able to throw some light on it.’

‘Krantz would
have been trying to find out which plane Anna was on, after she made such a
fool of herself in Tokyo, but that man would never have told her. He protected
Anna more like a father than a taxi driver, and the five hundred dollars is a
red herring. Krantz doesn’t bother to kill people for that sort of money, and
that was one taxi driver who never kept the meter running.’

“Well, whatever,
Krantz is safely locked up, and with a bit of luck will spend the rest of her
life in jail, which may not prove to be that long, as we’re reliably informed
that half the population of Romania would be happy to strangle her.’ Tom
glanced back down at his file. ‘And it turns out that our taxi driver, one
Colonel Sergei Slatinaru, was a hero of the resistance.’ Tom took another sip
of his drink before he added, ‘So there’s no longer any reason for you to worry
about Petrescu’s safety.’

The waiter
reappeared to accompany them into the dining room.

‘In common with most
Romanians, I won’t relax until Krantz is dead,’ said Jack. ‘Until then, I’ll
remain anxious for Anna.’

‘Anna? Are you
two on first-name terms?’ asked Tom as he took his seat opposite Jack in the
dining room.

‘Hardly, though
we may as well be. I’ve spent more nights with her than any of my recent
girlfriends.’

‘Then perhaps we
should have invited Dr Petrescu to join us?’

‘Forget it,’
said Jack. ‘She’ll be having dinner with Lady Arabella at Wentworth Hall, while
we have to settle for the Wentworth Arms.’

A waiter placed
a bowl of leek and potato soup in front of Tom and served Jack with a Caesar
salad.

‘Have you found
out anything else about Anna?’

‘Not a lot,’
admitted Tom, ‘but I can tell you that she called the New York Police
Department from Bucharest airport. She asked them to take her name off the
missing list, said she’d been in Romania visiting her mother. She also called
her uncle in Danville,

Illinois,
and Lady
Arabella Wentworth.’

‘Then her
meeting in Tokyo must have gone belly up,’ said Jack.

‘You’re going to
have to explain that one to me,’ said Tom.

‘She had a
meeting in Tokyo with a steel tycoon called Nakamura, who has one of the
largest collections of Impressionist paintings in the world, so the concierge
at the Seiyo informed me.’

Jack paused.
‘She obviously failed to sell Nakamura the Van Gogh, which would explain why
she sent the painting back to London, and even allowed it to be forwarded to
New York.’

‘She doesn’t
strike me as someone who gives up that easily,’ said Tom, extracting another
piece of paper from his file. ‘By the way, the Happy Hire Company is also
looking for her. They claim she abandoned one of their vehicles on the Canadian
border, minus its front mudguard, front and rear bumper, with not one of its
lights in working order.’

‘Hardly a major
crime,’ said Jack.

‘Are you falling
for this girl?* asked Tom.

Jack didn’t
reply as a waiter appeared by their side. ‘Two steaks, one rare, one medium,’
he announced.

‘Mine’s the
rare,’ said Tom.

The waiter
placed both plates on the table, and added, ‘Enjoy.’

‘Another
Americanism we seem to have exported,’ grunted Tom.

Jack smiled.
‘Did you get any further with Leapman?’

‘Oh yes,’ said
Tom. “We know a great deal about Mr Leapman.’

He placed
another file on the table. ‘He’s an American citizen, second generation, and
studied law at Columbia. Not unlike you,’

Tom said with a
grin. ‘After graduating, he worked for several banks, always moving on fairly
quickly, until he became involved in a share fraud. His speciality was selling
bonds to widows that didn’t exist.’ He paused. ‘The widows existed, the bonds
didn’t.’ Jack laughed. ‘He served a two-year sentence at Rochester Correctional
Facility in upstate New York, and was banned for life from working at a bank or
any other financial institution.’

‘But he’s
Fenston’s right hand
?5

‘Fenston’s
possibly, but not the
bank’s
. Leapman’s name doesn’t
appear on their books, even as a cleaner. He pays taxes on his only known
income, a monthly cheque from an aunt in Mexico.’

‘Come on...’
said Jack.

‘And before you
say anything else,’ added Tom, ‘my department has neither the financial
resources nor the back-up to find out if this aunt even exists.’

‘Any
Romanian connection?’
Jack asked as he dug into his steak.

‘None that we’re
aware of,’ said Tom. ‘Straight out of the
Bronx,
and
into a Brooks Brothers suit.’

‘Leapman may yet
turn out to be our best lead,’ said Jack. ‘If we could only get him to
testify...’

‘Not a hope,’
said Tom. ‘Since leaving jail, he hasn’t even had a parking ticket, and I
suspect he’s a lot more frightened of Fenston than he is of us.’

‘If only Hoover
was still alive,’ said Jack with a grin.

They both raised
their glasses, before Tom added, ‘So when do you fly back to the States? I only
ask, as I want to know when I can return to my day job.’

‘Tomorrow, I
suppose,’ said Jack. ‘Now Krantz is safely locked up, I ought to get back to
New York. Macy will want to know if I’m any nearer to linking Krantz with
Fenston.’

‘And are you?’
asked Tom.

Neither of them
noticed the two men talking to the maitre d\

They couldn’t
have been booking a
table,
otherwise they would have
left their raincoats in reception. Once the maitre d’ had answered their
question, they walked purposefully across the dining room.

Tom was placing
the files back in his briefcase by the time they reached their table.

‘Good evening,
gentlemen,’ said the taller of the two men. ‘My name is Detective Sergeant
Frankham, and this is my colleague,

Detective
Constable Ross. I’m sorry to disturb your meal, but I need to have a word with
you, sir,’ he said, touching Jack on the shoulder.

Why, what have I
done?’ asked Jack, putting down his knife and fork. ‘Parked on a double yellow
line?’

‘I’m afraid it’s
a little more serious than that, sir,’ said the detective sergeant, ‘and I must
therefore ask you to accompany me to the station.’

‘On what
charge?’ demanded Jack.

T think it might
be wiser, sir, if we were not to continue this conversation in a crowded
restaurant.’

‘And on whose
authority...’ began Tom.

‘I don’t think
you need to involve yourself, sir.’

Til decide about
that,’ said Tom, as he removed his FBI badge from an inside pocket. He was
about to flick the leather wallet open, when Jack touched him on the elbow and
said, ‘Let’s not create a scene. No need to get the bureau involved.’

‘To hell with
that, who do these people think
...’

Tom, calm down.
This is not our country. I’ll go along to the police station and sort this all
out.’