Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark (22 page)

W
HO ARE YOU
? W
HAT DO YOU
want?”

Fear coursed through David Ishag's body. A year ago, the idea of death wouldn't have fazed him. If it was his time, it was his time. But now that he had Sarah Jane, everything was different. The thought of being torn away from her so soon after they'd found each other filled him with utter terror.

The pistol protruded from the man's inside jacket pocket. He reached for it. David closed his eyes, bracing himself for the shot. Instead, he heard a polite American voice asking him, “Are you all right, Mr. Ishag? You don't look well.”

David opened his eyes. The man was holding up an Interpol badge and an ID card. They must have been in the same pocket as the gun.

The relief was so overpowering David felt nauseous. He clutched at the desk. “Jesus Christ. You almost gave me a heart attack. Why didn't you say you were a cop?”

Danny McGuire looked perplexed. “I didn't have much of a chance.”

David sank back into his chair. He reached for a glass of water with shaking hands. “I thought you were going to shoot me.”

“Do visitors to your office often try to shoot you?”

“No. But they aren't usually armed either. Your inside jacket pocket?”

“Ohhhhh.”
Pulling his regulation Glock 22 automatic out of its holster, Danny McGuire laid it down on the desk. “Sorry about that. It's standard issue. Half the time I forget I'm carrying it. Danny McGuire, Interpol.”

The two men shook hands.

Now that his heart rate had slowed to something approaching normal, David Ishag asked, “So how can I help you?”

Danny McGuire frowned. This was going to be difficult. But he'd learned long ago that when you had bad news to break, it was best not to beat around the bush.

“I'm afraid it concerns your wife.”

Those six words ripped into David Ishag more powerfully than any bullet.

“Sarah Jane?” he said defensively. “What about her?”

Danny McGuire took a deep breath. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Ishag, but we think she's planning to kill you.”

 

E
VEN IN
D
ANNY
M
C
G
UIRE'S NO-NONSENSE, UNFLOWERY
prose, it took over an hour to fill David in on the long and convoluted history of the Azrael killings. An hour during which David listened intently, searching for flaws in McGuire's thinking, for reasons
not
to believe that any of this crazy story had anything to do with Sarah Jane, his wife, and the one woman on earth with whom he believed he could be truly happy.

When McGuire finished, David was silent for a long time. He wasn't going to roll over and simply accept that his marriage, his entire relationship with Sarah, had been a sham, just because some unknown police officer told him it was. Eventually he said, “I'd like to see the photographs of the other women.”

“Of course. You can come down to our headquarters and see them, or I can have them e-mailed to you here.”

“Let's say you're right. Let's say Sarah Jane
has
lied about her name and background.”

“That much is a provable fact.”

“Okay, fine. But it doesn't make her a killer, does it?”

McGuire felt bad for the guy. He didn't want to believe that his wife was a murderer, any more than Matt Daley wanted to accept that Lisa Baring had conspired in Miles's death, or than he, Danny, wanted to blame Angela Jakes for
her
husband's death all those years ago. Even now, despite knowing what he did, Danny McGuire found that part the hardest to accept. That the Angela Jakes he remembered, that sweet, good-natured, innocent angel
of a woman had never really existed. She was a character, an act, a shell. An identity assumed for a purpose—a deadly purpose—just like Tracey Henley was an act, and Irina Anjou and Lisa Baring and now Sarah Jane Ishag.

Angela Jakes's words on the night of the first murder came floating back to him.

“I have no life.”

If only he'd realized then that she meant it literally. Angela had no life. She didn't exist, had never existed. And neither did Sarah Jane.

“It makes her an accessory to multiple homicides,” Danny said bluntly. “It also makes her a liar.”

David longed to jump in and defend Sarah's honor, but what could he say? At a minimum she had lied to him. He clung to the hope that the pictures McGuire sent him of the other Azrael widows would somehow exonerate her, but deep down he knew that they would not. Interpol wouldn't have sent a senior director to see him if all they had were wild accusations.

Even so, it all sounded so preposterous, so impossible to believe.

McGuire went on: “Clearly, she's not acting alone. As I said, there's been a sexual element to all the Azrael killings, with each of the ‘wives' apparently raped and beaten at the scene. We have clear forensic evidence that a man was present at each homicide. We don't know whether the rapes were conceived as a cover, to throw us off the scent, or whether violent sex is a part of the motive. This woman, whoever she really is, may get off on the sadomasochistic element.”

David groaned.
No, not my Sarah. She loves me.
The pain was so intense that he felt it physically, like someone injecting acid into his veins.

“Certainly money does not seem to be the primary motive. Despite the fact that all four prior victims have been wealthy, and their wills altered in their wives' favor, most of the money has wound up going to children's charities. May I ask if you and Sarah Jane signed a prenuptial agreement of any kind?”

David stared out of the window bleakly. “No,” he said wearily. “No prenup.”

Sarah Jane's voice rang in his head:
“You might as well have written me a letter saying ‘I don't trust you.'”

“And your will?”

David put his head in his hands.

It had started out as a joke between them. One night in Paris, in bed
in the palatial honeymoon suite at the Georges V, Sarah Jane had teased him for not wanting to make love.

“Is this what I've let myself in for, marrying such an old man? Long nights of celibacy?”

“It's the wine we had at dinner!” David protested. “And then that Château d'Yquem with dessert. It's done for me.”

Sarah Jane shook her head in mock disappointment. “I knew I should have gone for a younger man. Next time around I'm going for a boy toy.”

“Next time?”

“When I'm living the life of a merry widow.”

David grinned and rolled on top of her. “I'll put a provision in my will. One sniff of a boy toy and you'll be penniless.”

Sarah Jane laughed, that deep sexy laugh that fired up David's libido like a blowtorch. In the end, he made love to her that night with more passion than he'd ever felt before. The next morning, thinking back to their banter, he realized guiltily,
Shit. She isn't even
in
my will. I'd better change it before she has another cow about me not trusting her with money.

He'd faxed the amendments to his attorney the next day.

Danny McGuire asked gently, “Is she sole beneficiary?”

David Ishag nodded. He looked so stricken that for one awful moment Danny McGuire feared he was going to break down in tears.

“I understand how hard this is for you, Mr. Ishag, believe me. I'm truly sorry.”
Hard?
The understatement was so hilarious, David almost laughed.

“But we need your help if we're going to catch this woman and the man who's helping her. We got to you in time. But if Sarah Jane figures out we're on to her and takes off, her next victim may not be so lucky.”

David Ishag closed his eyes. In a dull, lifeless monotone he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

 

O
UTSIDE, IN THE PUNISHING
M
UMBAI HEAT,
Danny pulled out his BlackBerry and sent a private, encrypted e-mail. It was addressed to Rajit Kapiri of the Indian IB and all six members of the Azrael team, and was cc'd to Henri Frémeaux back in Lyon.

The message read simply: “Ishag's in. Operation Azrael a go.”

W
ILL YOU BE LATE TONIGHT, DARLING?”

Sarah Jane Ishag leaned over the breakfast table to kiss her husband. David had been unusually distracted lately. They hadn't made love in weeks.

Without looking up from the
Wall Street Journal,
David said, “Hmm? Late? Oh no. I shouldn't think so.”

Sarah Jane studied his handsome head, with its thick, shining jet-black hair and skin the same shade of cappuccino as her silk La Perla robe. She watched his fingers trace the words of the newspaper article as he read. Everything about him seemed so vital, so alive. For a moment panic gripped her, but she quickly banished it.

“Good. I thought we could make it an early night. I'll make you some of that horrid chicken noodle soup that you like, with the dumplings.”

David looked up. It was disconcerting the way he stared at her, as if he were seeing her face for the first time.

“Matzo balls,” he said dully.

“Sorry. Matzo balls.” She blushed. “Not much of a Jewish wife, am I?”

A few weeks earlier, on their honeymoon, David would have laughed at that line. Made some joke about Catholic girls being crap in the kitchen but virtuosos in the bedroom. Now he said nothing. He just sat there, staring.
Something's changed.

Inside, she was worried, but she made sure to betray no trace of her anxiety in her tone.

“So if I have dinner ready at eight, you'll be home?”

“I'll be home.”

David Ishag kissed her on the cheek and went to work.

 

T
EN MINUTES LATER, BEHIND THE WHEEL
of his Range Rover Evoque, David plugged in his MP3 player and listened again to the recording Danny McGuire had given him yesterday.

Sarah Jane's voice.
“We can't, not yet. I'm not ready.”

A man's voice, electronically distorted.
“Come on, angel. We've been through this. We go through it every time. The gods have demanded their sacrifice. The time is now.”

Sarah Jane again. Angry now.
“That's all very easy for you to say, but it's not the gods that have to do it, is it? It's me. I'm the one who has to suffer. I'm the one who always suffers.”

“I'll be gentle this time.”

A strangled sound, half muffled. Was it a laugh? Then Sarah's voice again.

“He's different from the others. I don't know if I can do it.”

“Different? How is he different?”

“He's younger.”
There was a note of desperation in her voice, of pity even. Hearing her made David Ishag's heart tighten.
“He has so much to live for.”

The distorted voice took on a harder edge.
“Your sister has a lot to live for too, doesn't she?”

The line went crackly at this point, and the audio was lost. David had heard the recording fifty, a hundred times now, desperately searching for any meaning other than the obvious one: that his wife and some unknown lover were plotting his murder. Each time he reached this point, he willed the next line to be different. Prayed he would hear Sarah Jane's voice saying:
“No, I can't, I won't do it. David's my husband and I love him. Leave me alone.”
But each time, the nightmare recurred exactly as it had before.

“Yes, yes. Friday night.”

“I love you, angel.”

“I love you too.”

With David's help, Danny McGuire and his team had finally managed to tap in to Sarah Jane's cell phone, as well as the two pay phones in Dharavi that his men had observed her using. They still hadn't traced the identity of the man. He was obviously a pro, distorting his voice and using sophisticated blocking software to prevent anyone from accurately tracking his number. But the Ishag mansion was under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Any unidentified male coming within five hundred feet of the place was photographed and, if necessary, stopped and searched.

“You're completely safe,” Danny McGuire told David. “If she tries anything, we'll be there in an instant.”

But David Ishag didn't feel safe. Not just because Interpol being there “in an instant” might not be quick enough. It could take less than “an instant” for a bullet to penetrate his skull or a kitchen knife to puncture his aorta. But because the real tragedy of all this, the thing he feared most, had already happened. He had lost Sarah Jane. Worse than that, he never really had her in the first place. Sarah Jane,
his
Sarah Jane, didn't exist.

Even now, in the face of overwhelming damning evidence of her guilt—even without the audiotapes, David Ishag had seen McGuire's pictures of the other widows, and the resemblances were too striking to ignore—he couldn't fully make himself believe it. Sarah Jane had looked so heartbreakingly sexy in that negligee this morning. She'd sounded so vulnerable when he hadn't been able to bring himself to laugh at her jokes, or even look at her properly when she spoke to him. Part of him, a big part, still wanted to tell Danny McGuire and Interpol and the rest of the world to go fuck themselves. To take Sarah Jane to bed, make love to her the way he used to and afterward simply ask her about the man on the tape and the lies she'd told him. Challenge her face-to-face to explain herself and give him a rational explanation.

And she would explain herself and apologize, and David would forgive her, and someone else would have committed these dreadful murders, not Sarah Jane, and they'd live happily ever after.

His car phone rang, shattering the fantasy.

“So we're still set for an eight o'clock start tonight.” Danny McGuire
sounded almost excited, as if they were talking about a kick-off at a football game and not an attempt on David's life. “No last-minute changes. That's good.”

“You picked all that up, then? At breakfast.”

“Clear as a bell.”

David thought,
At least the bugging devices are working properly.
The only thing more terrifying than going through with tonight's plan would be going through it with technical hitches.

Danny McGuire said, “Try to relax. I know it doesn't feel that way, but you're perfectly safe in there. We've got your back.”

“I'll try to remember that this evening when my wife's boyfriend starts lunging at my jugular with a sharpened machete.” David laughed weakly.

“You're doing the right thing. Come tomorrow morning, this will all be over.”

David Ishag hung up the phone and swallowed hard. He knew that if he allowed himself to cry once, the tears would never stop.

“This will all be over.”

No, it won't.

For David Ishag, the pain of Sarah Jane's betrayal would never be over. Without her, he might as well be dead.

 

A
T SIX P.M
., D
ANNY
M
C
G
UIRE SAT
in the back of the transit van, dividing his attention between the screen in front of him and today's London
Times
crossword puzzle on his iPad. It was Richard Sturi, the statistician, who'd gotten him hooked on British-style crosswords and Danny had quickly become a junkie. They helped relieve the stress and loneliness of running Operation Azrael, helped him forget how much he missed home and Céline, helped him block out the fear about the state his marriage might be in once this operation was finally over.

The London
Times
puzzle was usually the most challenging, far superior to that of the
New York Times
or
Le Figaro,
but today's setter seemed to be having an off day.

One across:
Wet yarn I entangled.

As anagrams went, it was laughably easy. As Danny typed in the
answer—
R-a-i-n-y
—his mind started to wander. When had he last been in the rain? A month ago? Longer? It rained a lot in Lyon. Here in Mumbai the sun was relentless, beating down punishingly on the sticky, humid city from dawn till dusk.

“Sir.” Ajay Jassal, a surveillance operative on loan from the Indians, tapped Danny on the shoulder. “The catering van. That's not the usual driver.”

Danny was alert in an instant. “Zoom in.”

Jassal was eagle-eyed. Even up close, it was tough to make out the van driver's features on the fuzzy green screen. It didn't help that he was wearing a cap and had one hand covering the lower part of his face as he waited for the service gates to open.

“You're quite sure it's a different driver?”

The young Indian looked at Danny McGuire curiously, as if he were blind. “Yes, sir. Quite sure. Look at his arms, sir. That is a white man.”

Danny's pulse quickened. Ajay Jassal was right. The arm dangling out of the driver's-side window was a distinctly paler shade of green than that of the rear gatekeeper waving him into the compound.

Was this him? Was this the killer?

Was the face beneath that cap the face of Lyle Renalto, aka Frankie Mancini?

Have we got him at last?

The barrier lifted. Lurching forward, the driver put both hands back on the wheel, turning slightly to the side as he did so. For the first time Danny McGuire got a good look at his face.

“I don't believe it,” he whispered.

“Sir?”

“I do
not
fucking believe it.”

“You know the man, sir? You've seen him before?”

“Oh yeah.” Danny nodded. “I know the man.”

It wasn't Lyle Renalto.