Girl Undercover 10 & 11: The Abduction & Dante's Inferno (5 page)

Dr. Juback’s eyes moved over to the powerful Russian and his big Adam’s apple bounced when he swallowed.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be helping you,” I said. “As long as I can make Jonah believe that my mother truly needs the two of you, you should have no problem getting Stenger to buy your lies.”

“You don’t know Stenger,” Dr. Juback muttered under his breath.

“That is very true,” I replied. “I’m hoping during your stay here, you will also help me get to know him better. A lot better.” I blew out a weary sigh and stared into the distance, as though I was somewhere else momentarily. “God only knows I’ve gotten to know his son a little too well…” My eyes found the two doctors again. “Maybe you two can tell me where his father is?”

“We don’t know where he is,” Dr. Kelly said. “We haven’t even met him.”

I scowled at him. “How’s that possible? Your friend here just told me you two were practically indispensable to Stenger. Are you telling me he lied about that?”

Dr. Kelly looked at Dr. Juback tentatively, as if wanting direction for how to proceed. But the other man didn’t even return his glance, just kept glaring at me.

“Um…” Dr. Kelly began. “No, but…”

I leaned closer to him over the glass table. “But what, Doc? Is he or isn’t he lying?”

“He isn’t lying.”

“So then how is it that you two haven’t met him?”

Dr. Kelly spread his hands wide, palms facing the ceiling, and shrugged his shoulders. “Because he never meets anyone. Except for his family and three or so of his closest advisors. We only communicate with him over video conferences. He’s a very private person.”

“Ah…” I nodded as if I understood exactly what that was like. “But he is here in the States, correct?” I directed the question to Dr. Kelly, who seemed to be the one who was most likely to give up information.

Again, he turned to Dr. Juback for help and again the other man ignored him.

“Sometimes,” Dr. Kelly said finally.

“Is he here right now?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Dr. Kelly replied. He licked his fleshy lips.

I sucked in a breath and covered my mouth, then, “Oh, I’m so sorry! How unthoughtful of me. I didn’t offer you any refreshments. Can I get you something to drink? Eat?”

“I’d like a Diet Coke if you have it,” Dr. Kelly said.

“We do.” My gaze went to Dr. Juback. “And you? What would you like?”

He was still just glaring at me with his arms crossed over his chest, appearing determined not to give an answer. I took that as him not wanting anything.

“Well,” I said, “we’ll bring you some water just in case you change your mind. Take it from a trainer, it’s not healthy going long without hydrating.” I turned to Dante and asked him to bring a Diet Coke and some water for the doctors. Facing them again, I asked, “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat? We can get you anything you want—within limits of course.”

Dr. Kelly held up a hand and shook his head no. Dr. Juback kept stonewalling me.

“You just let me know when you get hungry and we’ll get you some food,” I said congenially. “There should be some sandwiches and fruit in the refrigerator in the meantime. Now let’s get back to Stenger. You mentioned you’ve had video conferences with the man. What does he look like?”

Dr. Kelly inhaled and opened his mouth to speak. But before a word could come out, Dr. Juback said, “He’s a seventy-year-old man with thick salt-and-pepper hair and deep-set hazel eyes. He’s neither attractive nor ugly. His most distinctive feature are his razor-sharp cheekbones and defined jawline. Some people would describe him as looking Serbian.” He turned to face his colleague. “Wouldn’t you agree with that, Andrew?”

Dr. Kelly took a beat before replying during which he regarded Dr. Juback. “Um, yes. That would be a good way to describe what he looks like. Very Serbian-looking indeed.”

Dr. Juback looked at me again, a triumphant smile playing on his thin lips. “Does that give you enough of a picture of the man?”

I’d realized my mistake even before the skinny doctor asked for his colleague’s confirmation, but by then it was too late. In order to have the best chance of learning what Otto Stenger looked like, I should have separated the two men and asked them the question. While Dr. Juback might have lied about it, I could have been fairly sure that Dr. Kelly would have told me the truth. Now I had missed my chance.

Chapter 4

“I’m still furious about it,” I told Ian over our latest burner phones. After having spent another thirty minutes with the two doctors, I had left them and gone to my hotel to catch some sleep. It wasn’t that late, only nine thirty, but I was still on New York time, so for me it was way past midnight. “It was a golden opportunity and I squandered it!” I covered my eyes with my free hand as I relived the faux pas in my head over and over again. “I can’t believe I made such a rookie mistake.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Gabi,” Ian said. “You’re not infallible. Even the best make mistakes.”

“Yeah, but this was an effing
huge
one,” I muttered through clenched teeth as I thought about Dr. Juback’s triumphant expression. I pulled my knees up to my chest where I sat in the king-sized hotel bed. While super comfortable, it felt too big. Too empty. I found myself wishing that Ian was here with me instead of all the way over at the other side of the country. It was probably better if I kept that to myself for now, though, despite longing for him telling me some sweet words. The kind he used to tell me in bed before I became Jonah’s “girlfriend.”

“Not that big,” Ian said. “We still have more than five months before the coups are taking place. We’ll catch this megalomaniac long before that and then we can laugh about this.”

“Let’s hope so. How are you doing over there on the East Coast? Any progress?”

“Ask me again in a day or two. I’ve been staking out Jonah’s house all day. He got home a few hours ago and that’s it. I’m probably wasting my time hanging around here this late. I’m harboring a desperate wish he’ll have a reason to go see his dad in the middle of the night.” Ian chuckled dryly. “Oh, well. He’ll eventually go see him. They seem fairly close after all.”

“You think Stenger is in the city still then?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. But if he is, I’m sure Jonah will go see him at some point. Or do something else that’ll lead me to Stenger. I’ll just have to wait him out. And if he isn’t here, it’s only a matter of time before he returns. New York is one of their two headquarters. He
has
to come back here sooner or later. Which is why my best bet is to keep hanging around Jonah.”

“Right.”

I hadn’t managed to squeeze out any more information regarding Stenger’s whereabouts from the doctors. After my stumble during which I’d gotten a glimpse of how sharp Dr. Juback was, I’d realized that I needed to be careful. The worse I treated them, the more they’d hate me, and the more Dr. Juback would want to reveal to Stenger that I had kidnapped them to avoid his son. As bright as he appeared, he might find a way to convey this tidbit without us noticing it despite his obvious fear of Sergei’s fists. I couldn’t have that. So I had quickly decided to change approach—instead of being rough the way I usually was when interrogating suspects, I’d try to win them over. Make them my friends. Appeal to their better nature. I could only pray they were capable of goodness. Judging from the fact that both of them had reacted emotionally, I didn’t think they were sociopaths or even narcissists. That boded well as it meant they were capable of change.

“Hang on,” Ian said. He was moving around, creating rustling sounds over the phone line. Then, “I’ll be damned. I think he’s coming out of his building. Oh, yes, baby, it’s him all right. Maybe this will turn out to be my lucky night. Gotta go, luv. Talk soon.”

With those words, Ian had disconnected and I was sitting with only the faint blues tones traveling the air from some lounge in the vicinity to accompany me. I put away the phone and went to the bathroom to take a shower before going to bed. When I was done, I contemplated returning Jonah’s call; I had called him as soon as I left the doctors to give him an update and had been ecstatic when his voicemail kicked in. The likelihood of him picking up was smaller if he was out and about, and I would prefer it if I could leave another voicemail, thus prolong my break from him. I soon decided against it, however. The chance that he’d pick up was even smaller if I tried him tomorrow before seeing the doctors as he would surely be training someone.

I would also pay Captain Brady a visit at his house tomorrow. Part of me was excited about this, while another dreaded it. I wasn’t looking forward to having to tell him about Stenger and the conspiracy without having access to any tangible evidence to support my story. The recording chip I was supposed to have used was no longer working, courtesy of Massimo, Ian’s cat, who had decided to play with it last week, destroying it in the process. I consoled myself with the thought of Dr. Sokoloff, my precinct’s Harvard-educated in-house psychologist and someone I knew Brady held in great respect. If he didn’t believe me, I would just ask him to have her evaluate my sanity.

***

When my silver-haired captain opened his front door and spotted me standing on his doorstep, he looked so confused I worried that he was about to have another heart attack. He must not recognize me with my shorter, red hairdo, I soon decided.

“Hello, Captain, it’s me, Gabi Longoria, one of your detectives,” I said to clarify things for him. That made him smile big, his light blue eyes disappearing in all the deep wrinkles that formed around them. He opened his arms wide.

“Gabi, you’re back,” he said as we embraced. “What a nice surprise.” Letting go of me, he held me by the upper arms and took me in. His eyes went to my hair. “What prompted you to change your hair so drastically?”

Since I was about to admit to Brady that I had never gone to Hungary in the first place, it didn’t matter that he saw my new red hair. When he found out about what Stenger and The Adler Group were planning, I was confident he wouldn’t care that I had lied to him and done my own investigation. Not for long at least.

“I’ll soon tell you,” I said. “Among lots of other things. How are you feeling? I heard about the heart attack.”

He was looking pretty good for someone who had been hovering between life and death only a few days ago, I couldn’t help but think. Dressed in jeans and a casual flannel shirt, he looked years younger despite being past sixty. There was also a distinct pep in his demeanor that I couldn’t remember having been there previously.

“I’m much better now, but I still need a few days to recover before I can get back to work. Come in.” Brady stepped aside so I could enter his house. Together, we walked into the foyer and continued into the living area, cluttered with furniture, books and newspapers. Brady was, like me, a news junkie.

“You’re alone?” I asked him as I took a seat on the green plush velvet couch in a corner.

“Yes, Mary is out shopping with the grandkids. Can I get you something to drink? I was just about to have some coffee myself.”

“Coffee would be nice. Black, no sugar.”

As Brady disappeared into the kitchen, I thought about what I was going to tell him. The best way to break all the horror that we were facing. Despite having turned it around in my head thousands of times while driving over to Culver City where he lived, I still struggled with it, mostly because of his fragile health. I was pleased his wife wasn’t at home at least, as that would have made it all even more awkward to convey.

By the time he returned, I had decided that I would just start from the beginning and work my way till the end in a chronological order.

He handed me a steaming coffee cup and took a seat in an armchair with floral-patterned upholstery, facing me.

“You never went to Budapest, did you?” he asked after having had a taste of his own coffee, regarding me closely.

I lowered my gaze to the rust-colored rug on the floor, unable to stop my cheeks from heating up as embarrassment over having defied his direct orders surged through me. Then I reminded myself what my unofficial investigation had led to and felt better. Clearing my throat, I raised my gaze and met his again.

“No, I didn’t,” I said matter-of-factly. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t follow your orders. I have nothing to say in my defense other than that I couldn’t just sit around and wait for others to find Nick’s killers. I simply had to try to find them myself. It would have driven me crazy to do nothing.” I inhaled, taking a beat, before continuing. “But, unlike you, I was convinced they were to be found in New York rather than in L.A., so that’s where I went. Back to Nikkei and undercover as a trainer again, to be specific. Hence the hair.” Attempting a smile, I flipped a few of my red strands. “And I believe I may have found his killers—unfortunately I discovered all sorts of other things. Terrible things. In a little over five months, coups will take place to overthrow the governments in key parts of the world. They are the main reason I came here today. I think you can help us fight the… organization that’s behind the coups.”

Brady took all of what I was saying with unexpected composure, contemplating me over his coffee cup that he held onto with both hands, not blinking once.

I put my own coffee cup down on the low oak table between us and waited for him to say something. The way he was just watching me made me increasingly uncomfortable.

“I should have known you weren’t going to listen to me,” he said finally. “Maybe I would have done the same had I been in your shoes. It’s impossible to know. Tell me more about what you’ve discovered.”

I stared at him, still not sure why he wasn’t more upset with me. Based on his serene manner, it appeared he couldn’t care less that I had broken my promise to him. But I soon pulled myself together and gave him an abridged version of all that happened after I met Ian. Again, Brady took all the incredible things I was telling him in stride, barely reacting. It struck me that having been near death might have changed him.
Yes, that’s what it is,
I thought. Surely you put things in perspective when you escaped death as narrowly as he had done. Nothing had the power to faze you much any longer. Not even the idea of a world filled with super humans controlled by a mastermind rivaling Hitler in terms of cruelty.