The Geneva Decision (26 page)

Tania called her about the noise.

“Everything’s OK,” Pia said, “but we might need to leave in a hurry.”

Tania made it clear she would stay until someone pried her cold dead fingers off the silk bedcovers.

Klaus poked his head out. She waved him over and together they dragged Alphonse into her room and on the bed. In her mind, he deserved a better resting place than Janko. Her gut still told her he was a good man, but she couldn’t overlook the facts. Alphonse showed up at her hotel—a hotel she purposely hadn’t mentioned to him. Good detective work? Inside information? Must have been the Austrian polizei. Her hotel address was required during the interrogation. But did they tell Alphonse, or did Calixthe?

She checked his pockets. He came unarmed—a small mark in his favor. Paging through his texts she found nothing incriminating. No one named Calixthe or Conor or Elgin was in his contact list. His boss, Villeneuve, texted about ten times an hour for updates on the case. Another set of texts in English involved someone named Susan Duncan, an inquiry about NATO soldiers. Another exchange from Pierre Lamartine and another from Marie Lamartine in French. And one from Duchamps, the hapless street cop.

The most recent text from Capitaine Villeneuve, just two hours ago, piqued her curiosity.

Nous n'avons plus besoin de vos services. Je vous prie de bien vouloir retourner à Chamonix.

She had a feeling she knew what it meant but verified it on a translation site. Villeneuve had sent him home to Chamonix. Before or after he hopped a plane to Vienna?

She took up her position against the door and waited.

Sometime after three in
the morning, she heard people coming down the hallway from the central staircase. The swishing of their clothes gave them away. When they came into the peephole’s view she recognized Calixthe, the man posing as Elgin Thomas, and David Benson. All three wore trench coats. They were learning. The coats were as good as body armor against her sleeper darts. Leaving her with headshots only. And she wasn’t exactly a sharpshooter.

Her stomach clenched. Tania was in there. She had to do this or die trying. Calixthe was opening the suite’s door. Benson was holding his gun up, prepared to follow. Elgin was guarding the hall and stairs, looking away from Pia.

She pulled the door open as quietly as possible.

She stepped into the hall at the same moment Calixthe stepped into the suite. Pia fired three times at Benson. All three misses.

Her hand was shaking. She’d been warned about the body’s response under pressure.

Thomas and Benson turned around, shocked.

She took a breath and fired again, hitting Benson square in the nose. He dropped.

Calixthe was inside, out of sight.

Pia hugged the wall, looking down her Glock’s sight directly at Elgin Thomas. His gun was aimed the wrong way, into the suite, to cover Calixthe. His face looked directly into Pia’s barrel and turned white. Her hand was rock-steady. She held her fire on instinct, motioned instead for him to lie down and toss the gun aside. He complied, lying flat on the far side of the suite’s doorway from Pia. She guessed Calixthe was standing in the doorway ready to shoot anyone who came around the corner—and Pia was doing the same. A classic standoff.

Pia’s mind spun through options and ideas. She could dart Elgin Thomas and go after Calixthe. But her adversary was crafty and tenacious. Pia stood a good chance of losing. She could try to draw the older woman out. Or she could hope Tania would help from inside.

“Hey, Calixthe!” Pia called out. “There’s only one door in that room. Only one way out. Sooner or later you’ll have to face Detective Janko.”

Calixthe stayed silent.

Pia knew what that meant: come and get me.

She patted down David Benson fast while keeping her eyes and her gun trained on Elgin. One P225, one money clip, one stiletto, one phone. She tossed them into the hallway behind her.

Elgin Thomas’s eyes kept darting back and forth from Pia to inside the suite. That could only mean one thing: he was guiding an attack from Calixthe. Those back-and-forth eye movements provided Calixthe intelligence about Pia’s position.

She picked up Benson’s gun, aimed it at Elgin, and rose off her knees to a squat. With her fingers, she indicated he should raise his eyes as if he were watching her stand up. At first he pretended not to understand. She sighted down the barrel of Benson’s gun.

He raised his eyes.

Calixthe’s footfalls were silent, but her creaking ankle gave away her position. If Pia’s calculations were correct, she’d burst around the corner and fire at head level. She might even do it without looking. Pia remained in a crouch, aiming her Glock up and her confiscated P225 at Elgin. Another ankle creak. Another footstep closer. If Elgin gave her away, or if she were wrong, Pia’s life would end in the next ten seconds. It was all she could do not to force the issue by rolling out and firing wildly. Her breathing stopped. Her heart raced.

She caught a shift in Elgin’s pupils. Calixthe’s reflection.

Pia pushed her Glock around the corner and fired three darts.

“Dammit, Pia!” Tania’s voice rang out before Calixthe hit the floor. “You forgot she was mine?”

Chapter 36

28-May, 3AM

“S
orry,” Pia said.

She heard a body hit the floor. Tania screamed in pain.

Pia looked at Elgin Thomas. She said, “Get up. Unbuckle your belt, drop your pants to your ankles, keep your hands as high as you can get them. Stand in the corner. You move and I’m going to empty Benson’s magazine in you. Got it?”

Elgin nodded and complied.

Behind her, Pia heard a loud gasp.

Down the hall, Klaus stood in the doorway.

Pia rolled her eyes. “It’s OK. Um … Sie sind Räubers, Schurkens. Bad guys. Look, just get Tania, she needs your help. Helfen Tania.”

Klaus flew into the suite, stepping over the bodies in the doorway. He scooped up Tania in one hand, grabbed her crutch with the other, and carried her back to bed.

Pia picked up all the loose items in the hallway and made Elgin drag the bodies into the suite. After a quick look around the hall to make sure everything looked normal, she went inside. Klaus joined her after settling Tania. She held Elgin at gunpoint and called the front desk.

“I need four rolls of duct tape,” she said. “Duct tape. Gray, thick, wide. You know?”

“Klebeband,” Elgin said. “Filament Klebeband.”

“Filament Klebeband,” Pia said. “Right away, bitte.”

Three minutes later she tipped the bellboy ten euros and closed the door.

“Elgin Thomas.” She tossed him a roll of tape. “What’s your real name?”

“Walter Walcott.”

“One thing I’ve learned about your gang is that you guys love using fake names. Not hard to guess you’re not Elgin. But then, Elgin is the boss’s name. And let’s face it, you’re no boss.”

“I could be.”

“You kept looking at Calixthe for answers.”

He blinked his swollen, tired eyes.

“You ready to switch sides, Walter?”

He looked ready.

“Right, I wouldn’t trust you if you said yes. So here’s what you’re going to do. You help Klaus prop these guys up in the dining room chairs and bind them up with Filament Klebeband. Then I’ve got three more stashed across the hall.”

With Walter/Elgin’s help translating, she communicated the work to Klaus and began securing Calixthe Ebokea, David Benson, then Alphonse. When it came time for the detectives, they had a little fun. They propped them in compromising positions and took pictures. Finally, they taped up the polizei with the others. Each prisoner’s wrists were secured to the arm of a chair, each ankle bound to a chair leg. Their heads were held upright with a ligature attached to the chair’s back. When she finished, the dining room looked like a horror-comedy with awkward zombies taped into antique chairs at an elegant table.

“Your turn, Elgin, Walter, whatever your name is. Sit in the chair, Klaus will tape you up. I’m not going to dart you if you talk. As you can see, Calixthe is going to jail. Her operation is done. If you work with me, I’ll help you out as best I can. Calixthe can’t hear you, so you can talk all you want. They’ll all wake up within an hour of each other. Won’t that be fun?”

He looked sick.

“First question, who runs the Cameroon operation?”

“Elgin Thomas.”

“C’mon, tell me the truth.”

“I am.”

“Did you know your buddy Conor Wigan is dead?”

Walter looked up, his eyes searching hers for the truth. She stared back, cold and honest. His face paled as the truth sank in.

“Just before he died, he told me the Swiss ordered Mustafa Ahmadi to kill him. Guess who’s next? Especially since you failed tonight.” Pia leaned toward him while Klaus finished binding his hands to the chair’s armrests.

“Who’s going to take the blame? Calixthe? Oh no. She’s going to nail you, my friend. How does the real Elgin Thomas reward abject failure? The death penalty?”

He glared at the sleeping woman next to him.

“One more time, who runs the Cameroon operation?”

He nodded at Calixthe. “Susan Duncan.”

Pia’s heart stopped. She turned to the pile of phones and guns on the side table and plowed through them until she found Alphonse’s phone. She flipped through the texts.

Alphonse Lamartine:

I am looking for the friend of yours named Elgin Thomas. Berlin four years ago. You have kept in touch?

Susan Duncan:

No. Thought I’d never hear from you again. How have you been?

Alphonse Lamartine:

Fine. Thomas is serious trouble. Murder. Geneva Police, Sabel Security, Interpol.

Susan Duncan:

If I see him, I’ll let him know.

Pia reeled. A coded warning? An innocent inquiry? Official police investigation? How did he know her?

“Who is Susan Duncan?” she asked. “Where is she from? Why was she in Berlin four years ago?”

“How do you know Conor’s dead?”

“I was there.” Pia filled him in. “He never mentioned Calixthe, or Susan Duncan. He said Mustafa killed him. I’m guessing Mustafa never did anything unless Calixthe told him to.”

“Well. That’s partly right,” he said. “Bloody little bastard followed her around like a puppy dog until last week. Now he’s full of himself.”

She squinted at Walter. “She was Elgin Thomas? She ran everything?”

His eyes flickered for a second.

“Right now,” Pia said, “the only thing I have on you is guilt by association and pointing a gun at me. With a good attorney, you could probably distance yourself from these guys and slink back to whatever hole in the ground weasels like you live in. All I need from you is enough information to turn the tables on these guys.”

He stared at the wall.

“OK, here’s the deal.” Pia paced the dining room. “You want something. I want something. You help me, I’ll think about helping you. Now tell me what you want.”

“I want to walk out of here.”

“You know, I might actually let you do that.” Pia smirked. “But I’d have to verify your story first. So start talking.”

Walter sighed. “Yeah, she had us call her Elgin Thomas. Even to her face. Calixthe Ebokea was her Cameroon name. Elgin was her business name. Susan Duncan was her real name. Used to be the American liaison to NATO.” He paused. “Hey, you OK love? You’re looking a bit sick. Anyway, Conor was stationed in Stockholm with her when they were young. Had a baby. She was a piss-poor mother. Conor raised that boy alone, best he could. I met them both when I was stationed in Rome. So the deal was, someone asked for a guy named Elgin, it was a sign they were not to be trusted.”

“Wow, you guys are clever. OK, she ran the Cameroon operation. Conor already told me that much. Who was she working with?”

“I don’t know. She and Conor kept the whole thing secret.”

“Le Directeur?” Pia asked.

“Don’t know what you mean. Who’s that?”

“Are you that stupid? Or do you think I am.”

“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Le Directeur, the money laundering in Geneva. How’d you get paid?”

“We’d come up here to Vienna. Me, Conor, and Davey Benson escorting Susan. We’d put up in a little shack across the Danube, then she’d head out to meet someone. Come home with a bag of cash, every time.”

“And as insurance, you followed her a couple times. Just in case she tried to cut you out. Right?”

Walter Walcott’s head spun around to face her, angry and straining against the duct tape.

“Is that what Conor told you?”

“No, you just did. Conor wasn’t bright enough for insurance. Besides, he figured he and Calixthe, or Susan, were married for life. You didn’t have that kind of guarantee. You needed something else. What was it?”

“Married? Calixthe would never marry him. She just let him think that.” He looked down at the table. “Yeah, I followed her. Never figured out much. She met a young man one time. A good-looking woman another. I followed her five times. Three times it was the young man, once the woman. Two weeks ago it was both. Cafe Tirolerhof on Führichgasse every time. The young man was one of those soft types. The woman was either madly in love with him or the best gold digger you ever saw.”

“What language did they speak?”

“Bloody hell, you think I’m that stupid? I never got close enough to hear them. Calixthe would have shot me on the spot.”

Pia pushed between two zombies, leaned across the table, planting her palms in the middle. She asked, “Where is Mustafa Ahmadi?”

He smiled at her. “In the lobby.”

“Nice try,” Pia said. “If he was, you’d never have talked.”

“I have no idea where he is. He came to Brussels with us. Split up at the airport. Never saw him again. But you should be scared. Conor was crazy, but only when he went off his meds. Mustafa’s a real nutcase. He finds you, you’re one dead footballer.”

“Guess he never told you,” Pia said.

Walter looked confused.

“I tackled him after he murdered Clément Marot and turned him over to the police,” she said. “I scared him off on the Rhone. I ran him out of ammunition in Cameroon. He’s actually afraid of me.”