Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (24 page)

“
Your daddy and brothers wouldn’t like it,” Robert Nichols deadpanned.
Damn and blast!
That’s all I needed. The boss of Interpol knew my dad.

“
I have to go home,” I insisted. “The Kirichenko wedding is my responsibility. It’s my job, my family’s livelihood.” I swept a glance over a sea of set, stubborn faces. “It’s a
wedding
,” I told them. “Two people getting married. Strangers, yes, but Viktor is spending a fortune to make it spectacular. The eggs are
gorgeous
,” I added, desperation setting in as the cop faces remained implacable.

“
You don’t have dick,” I ground out, not caring if the expression sailed over foreign heads. “There’s no crime in two Russians getting married, even if they’ve never met. And what’s so menacing about four paper maché eggs?”

“
As far as we can tell, nothing,” Klaus Peiper admitted, “but there has to be something we’re missing. Perhaps if you can identify this Viktor Kirichenko in our files, we will be better able to determine where the problem lies.”

“
Of course,” I murmured, “I’ll be happy to try.” What else could I say?

“
And now, Miss Halliday,” said the Secretary General, “if you and Tarrant would be kind enough to start at the beginning. I came to this situation late and would like to hear the story as each of you sees it.”

Rhys began our tale with his interest in recruiting me as an informant, his sneaky plotting to get me to Peru, chasing after me by train when I gave him the slip by joining the Arendsens on the Inca Trail. He recalled following the trail out of Machu Picchu but after that, for a period of about twenty hours, he still remembered nothing.

I took up the story, with Rhys inserting remarks here and there. How I found his battered body, blank of mind, the series of attacks that followed. The visit by Lieutenant Manko, the dead body found at Phuyupatamarca. The shooting on the train. Being whisked off to our respective embassies and onto planes for home. Rhys recapped this morning’s adventure of finding ourselves trapped beneath the icy waters of the Rhone.

“
Guess I’m just a black widow,” I added quietly. “I can’t really blame you all for finding me a very great pain in the–ah–neck.”

Nobody denied it. The atmosphere in the conference room with its shiny boardroom table and comfortable chairs, the homey remains of coffee cups and pastry crumbs, was crushing. These people wished they’d never heard of me. (Well, maybe not Rhys.) Nothing to do but keep my mouth shut and hope for the best.

The Secretary General shook his head. “A genuine mystery,” he said. “Well, Klaus, from what little we can guess, this seems to be your mess. How do you want to handle it?”

The blunt, solid German, who was Rhys’s direct boss, scowled in my direction. “If Miss Halliday will be good enough to look through photos, make an effort to identify this Viktor Kirichenko, perhaps we will gain some clue as to what element we have missed. Why someone wishes Tarrant dead, and now Miss Halliday as well.”

“
A reasonable first step,” Nichols approved. “And have someone contact the U. S. Marshals. Miss Halliday will need an escort back to Florida.”

Inwardly, I winced. I was being thrown out. Again. Removed as far from Rhys Tarrant as Interpol could justify.

The meeting broke up soon after. Rhys took me down to the cheerful Interpol restaurant with sun pouring through the windows, flowers on the table, and genuine French cooking. After that, I was in a more mellow mood when we went back upstairs to his portion of the spacious, well-lit room devoted to Human Trafficking. I shoved the icy waters of the Rhone and the fish-eyed stares of Interpol’s top cops to the back of my mind as Rhys set me up in a rolling chair next to his computer, then sat beside me, his fingers running lightly over the keyboard.

“
Interpol was late coming to computers,” he told me as he punched the keys. “There’s always a budget crunch—lots of member nations but only a few with the big bucks, as you Yanks say. We were trying to build a new building and transfer the largest number of criminal records in the world to computer at almost the same time.” Rhys highlighted a line on a long menu, clicked his mouse, then continued his background on Interpol’s computer system.

“
It’s not all that long since we depended on card files, radio—Morse code, believe it or not—telex and snail mail.” He tossed me a quizzical glance. “Derisive noises are not allowed, Ms. Halliday. It wasn’t all lack of funds—some of our member nations had barely learned how to use a telex machine, let alone a computer. Some still haven’t. Anyway, there we were, faced with organizing the data from four and a half
million
cards. We had files cross-indexed by alias, phonetic files to account for errors in spelling all those strange names, particularly from Asian and Arab countries. We had MO files and files that could be searched by odd physical or mental characteristics. On top of that, we had to cull out all the really old stuff where the criminals surely had to be geriatric, if not dead. All in all, it took more than twice as long to convert to computer as we’d hoped. Meanwhile, our file geniuses struggled along finding things the old way—sliding their chairs along metal rails in front of banks of file cabinets.”

I made suitable noises to indicate I was sympathetic to the obstacles that had delayed Interpol’s full conversion to Bill Gates’s Information Highway, but inwardly I was shaking my head. No wonder the brothers called Interpol paper pushers.

Rhys nodded at the program now on the screen. “Needless to say, finding someone is a lot faster now. All right, give me the stats on Viktor.”

“
I don’t care what your fancy friends say,” I protested once again. “I still don’t see why you’re all so fixated on Viktor.”

Rhys looked pained. Obviously, he’d thought the matter settled at this morning’s meeting. “Laine”—he sucked in his breath—“it’s the only connection between you and me that makes sense. The Russians are heavily into female trafficking. Your Viktor is actually marrying a mail-order bride. And no matter how fine a point he puts on it, that’s what she is. It’s highly likely he’s marrying a woman he’s bought.”

“
Even if Viktor’s a bad guy, how can he be a connection? You’ve never met him, have you?”

“
How do you know I don’t know him? A name means nothing. We can’t be sure until you find a photo.”

“
This is absurd,” I muttered stubbornly. “There’s nothing to recognize but his eyes.”

“
Hair, height, weight. We even have personality records. Come on, Laine, just do it.”

I wasn’t sure why I was dragging my feet, except I really, really didn’t like Fantascapes being cast in the role of aiding and abetting a villain, which seemed to be where all this was going.

“
Okay,” I sighed, “Viktor is a bear of a man. Taller than any of my brothers, maybe six-four. Beefy, big-boned. I’m sure he’s never weighed less than two-twenty in his adult life. Now . . . at least two-fifty, two-sixty. Hair, warm brown, lighter than yours. Curly. I don’t think it’s dyed because the beard looks perfectly natural. Big and bushy. Covers everything but his forehead and his eyes. Eyes . . .” I hesitated, struggling to remember. I’m trained to be a good observer, but a woman didn’t look directly into Viktor Kirichenko’s eyes in case he might mistake the contact for a signal to something more. He was a man a sensible woman did not encourage. Eyes, eyes . . .?

“
Pale blue,” I said at last. “Strangely washed out for such a dynamic man. Slavic accent—I assumed he was Russian or Ukrainian, I didn’t ask. His bride, allegedly, is from Odessa.”

“
You told Inspector Peiper that even if Viktor is Russian mob, you don’t think he’s a boss?”

“
More like a bodyguard.”

“
Or a hitman?”

Hitman?
Viktor, my big brown teddy bear?

Okay, Laine, what about the dead man who washed up at the doggie park?
Our diligent Calusa County Sheriff’s Department hadn’t been able to discover a thing. Had nothing, in fact, beyond the possible coincidence of Viktor’s altercation with someone on the fishing pier.

“
All right,” Rhys said, “I’ve entered the criteria you gave me, let’s see what pops up.” He clicked the mouse, the computer whirred, and a face popped onto the screen. Scooting his chair back, Rhys waved me into his place directly in front of the computer. “Just click the mouse for the next,” he said. “There’s a place to bookmark the possibles. I’ll leave you to it, while I find out if there’s anything new on the lorry.”

Lorry
. Brit for truck. Long gone, I imagined. Tucked in a warehouse, driven off a pier. A lost cause—even for Interpol and the Lyon police.

I fingered the small bandage on my forehead, scowled at the mug shot on the screen, and settled down to finding a needle in a haystack.

Chapter Fourteen

By the time Rhys came back—admitting they’d found no sign of the truck—I’d ruled out all the men with beards. He did a bit more magic with his fingers, but I wasn’t hopeful. Recognizing a clean-shaven Viktor was going to be close to impossible. But for three solid hours I tried, bookmarking an occasional face. Late in the afternoon, now adept with the system, I went back over the bookmarked photos while Rhys looked over my shoulder, carefully keeping silent, letting me concentrate. But I could feel him holding his breath, as if he believed I was close to something important.

“
This one,” I said at last. “This could be Viktor, but it’s really just the eyes.” The eyes I’d assiduously avoided. “I can’t be certain.”

Rhys let out a long slow sigh, as if to say,
Thank you, Lord
. “You’ve just fingered one of the bodyguards and alleged prime hitman for the Rufikov mob. Based in Miami. Grigori Rufikov is currently in a power struggle with the New York boss, Dmitri Chazov, for control of all Russian trafficking in the U. S.”

I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and fought to be objective. This was wrong, it had to be wrong. And yet . . . when Viktor had been so casual about the cost of the wedding, hadn’t I immediately wondered if he was a drug smuggler or arms dealer? And now Interpol seemed to be suggesting he might be a pimp on an international scale.

Stop fighting, Laine. You’re playing with the big boys now
.
They’re the professional crime fighters, you’re not.
And yet . . . admitting Weddings Extraordinaire might be involved in a mob war was more than I was ready to acknowledge. “I have to point out,” I said firmly, “that my ID is ephemeral at best. “I’m only saying this man’s eyes, his general description, seem most like Viktor’s. It’s guesswork, nothing but guesswork.”

“
And yet it all fits. I work trafficking, you’re doing a Russian-bride wedding. And for some obscure reason Rufikov didn’t want us to meet—”

“
But how could he possibly know—”

“
He knew because Viktor knew,” Rhys returned, looking a bit pained at my naivety. “As for me, Peru is enough out of my territory that signal flags went up when I took a flight to Lima. You have to realize, Laine,” he added kindly, “they keep eyes on Interpol like we keep eyes on them.”

“
That’s stretching it, Tarrant.”

“
How else do you explain Russian assassins on the Inca trail and the train to Cuzco?”

I couldn’t, and he knew it. While swallowing my grumbles, I peered at the name on the screen. “Have you ever met this Aleksei Tatarkin?”

“
No, but I heard his name mentioned a couple of months ago in Paris. There’s a left bank club I enjoy for its human scenery, as well as its ambiance. You never know what interesting faces might turn up. I caught snatches of a conversation at a booth near my table. Three men, probably careless because they assumed no one there understood Russian. They mentioned Rufikov, Tatarkin, and Florida. Of that I’m certain. Otherwise . . .” Rhys shrugged. “My Russian is only adequate, and the club was loud, so no alarm bells rang. I can only suppose they mentioned something they shouldn’t have, one of them recognized me, and got worried. But nothing happened until I headed for Peru to see you.”

“
Thin, very thin. You’re grabbing at straws.”

“
Fine.” Rhys leaned over, shut down the screen. The photo of a clean-shaven Aleksei Tatarkin and his stats went to black. Picking up his phone, Rhys reported my discovery to Inspector Peiper. Word spread. Everyone was jubilant . . . but me. I knew just how iffy my identification was. Ten percent eyesight, ninety percent intuition. With an end result I did not like one little bit.

While the Human Trafficking section was congratulating itself, I put in a call to Dad, explaining that I’d be one more day in France. What I actually meant, of course, was one more night in Lyon. But not a word about the little episode this morning. “Tell Mom I’ll be back in plenty of time for the Kirichenko wedding,” I added. “Are the eggs almost done?” Dad assured me Candy was breathing down the students’ necks, the eggs would be ready. Under his crisp professionalism I could hear amused tolerance. The whole family knew why I’d gone to Lyon.

But facing down Interpol’s Secretary General, the chief of Human Trafficking, and assorted lesser Interpol officers had not exactly been what I was thinking of when I boarded the train in Bern, only yesterday morning. But tonight . . . tonight Rhys and I would sweep all our problems away on a fireworks-strewn cloud of great sex.