Kill Plan (Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers -) (26 page)

The line went very quiet. Ingrid could hear Angelis breathing. “Are you OK about this?”

“Sure.”

“I read the article. I know what he did to that woman. The man’s a vicious bastard. Do you have protection where you are right now?”

“Of course not. Ellis won’t be here inside the embassy.” Ingrid quickly remembered that was exactly where Marshall was supposing Ellis, or as far as he was concerned, Darryl Wyatt, was right now. Her stomach somersaulted. She coughed as a reflux of acid tried to make it all the way up into her mouth. Whatever Ellis had been planning and wherever he intended to execute that plan, it was likely to happen today. Ingrid felt as if time was running out.

“Presumably this Ellis bloke will have changed his appearance again?”

“He has a distinctive rose tattoo on his left forearm.”

“So as long as he’s wearing a tee shirt I won’t have any problems.”

“It was worth mentioning.”

Angelis sniffed. “Of course it was. Don’t mind me, I’m just worried about you.”

“I’m fine. There are dozens of armed Marines patrolling the building.”

“I can come in—I don’t have much on today. I wouldn’t be any bother. Just sit me in a corner with a good book.”

“That won’t be necessary. But thanks for offering.”

Ingrid made her way back to the office, frustrated Sol still wasn’t answering his phone. She got there to discover Marshall sitting at her desk, tapping away at her keyboard. Jennifer was leaning over the desk, thrusting her breasts toward him.

Dear God
.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, Marshall?” Jennifer said.

“No—that’s all for now. Thank you.” Marshall looked up and smiled at Ingrid, who was hovering in the doorway. She felt like turning right around and leaving again. Instead, she marched purposefully toward her desk.

“Where’s Isaac?” she asked and watched as Jennifer sashayed back to her own desk.

“I sent him on an errand to find Sol Franklin. We can’t get him on his cell,” Marshall said.

“You do know Isaac doesn’t actually work for you?”

“For today he does. I squared it with Deputy Chief Louden.”

“So what do you want with Sol?”

“The deputy chief said Sol would be able to authorize any extra manpower I’ll need to maintain security at the cafeteria and kitchen.”

“How long has Isaac been gone?” She glanced at her watch. Her tone was a little harsher than she’d intended.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Marshall grabbed her hand.

Ingrid tugged it away and glanced up at Jennifer. The clerk was watching them closely. Now was neither the time nor the place to list all her grievances.

Marshall stood up. “I guess you want your desk back. I’m heading to the kitchen soon to start interviewing the staff.”

“You’re just fine where you are. Sit down.” With that, Ingrid spun around and left. She tried Mike Stiller on her cell phone and headed in the direction of Sol’s office.

“Hey, Mike. How many miracles is it so far today?”

“Whatever it is you want, make it quick. I do actually have other work to do.”

“I’m looking for a connection between Ambassador Frances Byrne-Williams and the original Henry Ellis investigation.”

“The ambassador? You’ve got to be kidding me. Are you saying she’s mixed up in all of this somehow?”

“Actually I’m trying to prove the opposite. I don’t think she is. But I do think Cory Ellis is still right here in London and he hasn’t finished what he came here to do.” She reached the elevator as the doors opened. A half dozen Marines marched out, heading toward her office. No doubt they were on some fruitless mission for Marshall.

“You know how impossible it is to prove a negative?” Mike said. “I guess you could look at all the main players involved in the investigation. See how many of them are still alive, see if any could conceivably be in the UK.”

“OK—I guess Cory Ellis would have targeted the man who actually killed his father.”

“The prison guard?”

“Can you find out what happened to him?”

“What’s the matter? Your computer stop working?”

“I’m not at my desk. It’s been… commandeered by somebody working the Byrne-Williams angle.”

“OK—you remember the name of the guard?”

Ingrid struggled to remember. Amazingly, the name popped into her head. Maybe her mind was finally clearing a little. She spelled the name out to Mike Stiller and stepped out of the elevator on the fifth floor. She reached Sol’s office. Again it was unoccupied. Only this time she noticed Sol’s cell phone sitting in the middle of his desk. No wonder she wasn’t having any luck calling him. Maybe he’d just popped out to the restroom. She heard a whistle at the other end of the line. “Mike?”

“Well, as you may have already guessed, the guard responsible for killing Henry Ellis is no longer with us.”

“How’d he die?” Ingrid wondered if Ellis had plumped for poison.

“He was shot dead. Three shots to the chest, two to the face. Point blank range.”

That didn’t match Ellis’ profile at all. To be so close to the victim at the time of death? Plus he carefully planned and executed the killings. That just sounded like a wild shooting spree. And how did it have anything to do with a weakness or vulnerability in the victim? At the end of a gun, everyone is vulnerable.

“Perpetrator was never found.”

“Can you tell me anything about the guard himself? I’m looking for some kind of weakness he might have had. Something that maybe most people didn’t know about him.”

“It’s hardly likely to turn up in the police report, if nobody knew about it.”

Ingrid felt like she was flailing. She reminded herself that, despite his claims, Mike Stiller wasn’t actually a miracle worker.

“But I can tell you something about the poor schmuck,” Mike said.

Ingrid waited. Knowing Mike he would want to pause a beat for an imaginary drum roll.

“The guard was shot in his bed, naked, handcuffed to the headboard.”

42

“The guard had a sex addiction?”

“Maybe, but that’s not the perceived weakness I was shooting for. According to the regular bartender at the local gay bar, on the night he died, the guard picked up some dark handsome stranger and took him home with him. Something he never did. Because of his job, he was always real cautious. Seems the dark stranger made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“Ellis?”

“Can you think of any more likely candidates?”

“How did Ellis even know he was gay?”

“All he had to do was follow him for a few nights. If the perpetrator is as smart as you seem to think he is, it wouldn’t exactly have taxed his intellect to discover the guard’s little secret.”

“What year was this?”

“Two-thousand five.”

“And the date?” Ingrid had a feeling she knew the answer already.

“May 15
^th
. Just like Highsmith and David Brite.” Mike paused again. “Wait a minute. That’s today’s date.”

Ingrid closed her eyes.

“OK—let’s look at exactly what we’ve discovered so far,” Mike said. “Holy crap.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve got a meeting I should be getting to.”

Ingrid took one last look around Sol’s office and left the room. Where the hell was he? “Any help you can give me, Mike, you know I appreciate it.”

“I’ve only got a coupla minutes.”

“We have four victims either directly or indirectly involved in the Henry Ellis investigation. The investor who testified against him, the investor’s son, the prosecuting attorney and the prison guard who shot him dead.” Ingrid was more convinced than ever that there was no connection between Cory Ellis and Frances Byrne-Williams. She should go and speak to Marshall about it.

She headed for the cafeteria in the basement.

“Listen, I’ll call you back,” Mike whispered down the line. “My boss just walked in the room.”

Ingrid reached the entrance to the cafeteria. A Marine was standing sentry. She waved her security pass at him, followed by her badge. Eventually, he stood to one side and let her enter.

All the harsh overhead lights had been turned on in the cafeteria. Ingrid recognized some of the counter staff sitting at the tables, sipping at cans of soda, nibbling on candy bars and potato chips. All of them looking royally pissed off. Then there were lots of faces she didn’t recognize, judging by the way they were dressed, they had to be kitchen staff. They looked severely pissed off too. None of them, however, looked in any way tense or guilty. No one was trying to leave. They just seemed resigned to their fate, as if this sort of thing happened every day.

“Excuse me.” A woman dressed in a white tunic and checkered pants stood up and touched Ingrid on the arm. “Do you have any idea how long this is going to take? Only I have some slow-cooking pot roasts in the ovens. Pretty soon, they’re going to start burning.”

“I’ll look into that for you,” Ingrid said, without the slightest intention of doing any such thing. She needed to find Marshall, try to convince him again how wrong he was. At the far end of the cafeteria was a small office used by the restaurant manager. From what Ingrid could see through the window in the door, it seemed Marshall was using it to interview the kitchen and cafeteria staff. Another armed Marine was guarding the door.

Ingrid’s cell phone started to buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out and answered quickly.

“When are we going to get our cell phones back?” one of the kitchen staff asked, the tone of her voice somehow managing to be accusatory and defeatist at the same time.

Ingrid ignored her. “Mike, did you get out of your meeting?”

“I’m joining them in five minutes. Now, where were we?”

“Trying to work out the identities of other possible victims on Ellis’ list.”

“Sure. If we work backwards, I guess we should look at who the arresting officers were. Who was investigating Henry Ellis before he even got arrested.”

“Was it a cop or a Federal agent? Should have been a Fed, in that kind of fraud case, shouldn’t it?”

“Just looking that up now.”

Ingrid’s left ear was suddenly filled with the sound of nasal breathing coming all the way from Washington D.C.

“Holy shit.”

“What have you found?” Ingrid started to edge closer to the small room Marshall was occupying, and the six feet something Marine standing to attention outside.

“Tell me you’re sitting down.”

“Please don’t make me go through all of that again. Is it someone you know? Someone I know?”

“I can’t believe it, but here it is in black and white.”

“Goddammit, Mike, who?”

“Special Agent Solomon Franklin.”

Ingrid stopped in her tracks. “Sol? You’re sure?”

“He led the team of investigating agents. It looks like it was quite a coup for him at the time. Got a juicy promotion out of it.”

“I’ve got to go, Mike.” She hung up and tried Sol’s cell phone again. It switched to voicemail. Just like it had every other time she’d attempted to speak to him today. The phone was probably still on the desk in his empty office.

Ingrid marched up to the Marine guarding Marshall’s interview room. “I need to speak to SSA Claybourne,” she declared, “right now.”

“He’s a little busy.”

She flashed her embassy ID and her FBI badge. The Marine wasn’t impressed. Ingrid stepped to one side and banged a fist against the door, and kept on banging until the armed guard physically restrained her. Marshall turned around and yanked open the door.

“What the hell is it?”

43

Ingrid pushed into the makeshift interview room, glanced at the man dressed in white tunic and checkered pants sitting very upright in front of the desk, then turned her attention to Marshall.

“For God’s sake, what do you think you’re doing?” Marshall was trying to keep his booming voice down and failing.

“You need to stop this charade right now.” Ingrid could feel the Marine’s hot breath blasting against the back of her neck. He was standing just inches away. In theory, one word from Marshall and he could have her bundled away.

“Charade? What the hell are you talking about?” Marshall glanced at his interviewee, a hint of embarrassment on his face. “These interviews are highly sensitive. They have to be handled in the right way.”

“And I’m telling you to stop.”

Marshall grabbed her arm, walked her past the Marine and straight out the office. He didn’t let go until they were in the corridor outside the cafeteria. “Were you deliberately trying to humiliate me in there?”

“I can’t worry about hurting your feelings, you’re wasting your time interviewing these people. The ambassador is not the target.”

“You have nothing to back that up.”

“The target is Sol Franklin and I have plenty to back it up but no time to explain. We’ve got to find Sol. I haven’t been able to reach him for hours. The killer will strike today. Maybe he already has.” Ingrid drew down an unsteady breath. “We can’t waste any more time.”

Much to her amazement, Marshall seemed to be considering what she’d said. He was chewing the inside of his cheek as if it were a plug of tobacco. Then he shook his head decisively. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to… sabotage this operation. Just because I’ve come here and—”

“Taken over?”

“Exactly.”

“You seriously think I’d put the ambassador’s life in jeopardy out of… some petty resentment?”

He shrugged at her. “I know you never say anything, but it’s got to be hard seeing me get promoted over and over. It’s only human. I don’t even blame you.” He gave her a patronizing smile with the corner of his mouth.

She wanted to slap it.

“Listen, Marshall. I am one hundred per cent sure about this. I need the manpower you’ve been assigned to search the building for Sol.”

“You think the suspect intends to poison Sol?”

“Poison? No!” She hadn’t had time to consider what method Ellis might use. “I don’t know how he plans to do it. Just that he will. We have to find Sol.” She grabbed Marshall’s thick arms and squeezed them, hoping that might somehow make him take her more seriously.

“I love you, honey, but you’re just not making any sense. You obviously came back to work too early. Why don’t you go back to the hotel and I’ll join you there just as soon as I can.”