Watchlist (4 page)

He was going the wrong way and she knew it but they were there before she could tell him. The Vespa screamed to a halt in a dead-end alley sealed off by freshly painted black iron railings, a view point over the tangled ruins around the Pescaria, the imperial fish market that led to the vast circular stump of the Theatre of Marcellus, like some smaller Colosseum cut short by a giant’s knife. There was no road, only a narrow pathway down into the mess of columns and shattered walls.

They ran and stumbled across threadbare grass through the low petrified forest of dusty granite and marble. She could hear shouts behind and anguished cries in Polish. Then she heard a shot. The tramp’s strong hand grasped her as she tripped over a fluted portion of shattered column. Panting for breath, she found herself in the angry mass of traffic beneath the looming theatre. He dragged her into the mob of vehicles. Halfway across the road there was a young man on a scooter, long black hair falling out from beneath his helmet.

The tramp kicked him out of the seat, then screamed at her to get onto the pillion.

She didn’t need to think any more. She didn’t want to. They wound a sinuous route through the snarled-up vehicles, found the sidewalk on the river side of the road, roared over the cobbles, out to the Lungotevere. The traffic was just as bad there.

She dared to turn. Over the road, fighting through the cars, were three men, guns in their hands.

She swore. She prayed. And then they were through, on the Tiber side of the road, rattling down the steps that led down to the water and the long broad concrete of the flood defenses.

Two days before she’d walked here, wondering, thinking, trying to work out where she belonged. Not yet 20, born in a country that had forgotten her, without parents. And now, she reflected, without her uncle who had come to her rescue when she found herself orphaned. She clung on, tears in her eyes, determined they’d be spent before this man who had both rescued and kidnapped her would look into her face again.

After half a mile, they raced up a long walkway and returned to the road, riding steadily through San Giovanni, past the street where she lived. In her head she said good-bye to the few belongings she had there: a Bible little read; some photos; a few cheap clothes; a music case with some much-loved pieces.

They found the autovia and she saw the sign to the airport. A few miles short of Fiumicino he turned the Vespa into the drive of a low, modern hotel, found a hidden space in the car park at the rear, stopped and turned off the engine.

She got off the scooter without being asked.

“You did well,” the man said simply, staring at her.

“Did I have a choice?”

“If you want to live, no, you don’t. Have you already forgotten you are in grave danger?”

She glanced at the scooter. “Is that what you are? A thief?”

He nodded, and she wondered if there was the slightest of smiles behind the matted, grubby beard. “A thief. That’s correct, Felicia. We must go inside now.”

He waved the key as they rushed past reception, and went to the first floor where he opened the door and ushered her into his room. It was a suite, elegant and expensive, the kind she had only seen in movies. There were two large suitcases already packed on the floor. The pillows of the bed were covered with scattered chocolates. He picked up a couple and gave them to her. She ate greedily. It was good chocolate, the best. The room, she understood, had been waiting here, empty, running up a bill, perhaps for weeks.

“Do you have a passport with you?” he asked.

“Of course. It is the law.”

She showed him.

“I meant the other. You have dual nationality. This is important.”

“No.” She shook her head forcefully. “I am Polish only. That was an accident of birth.”

“A lucky accident,” he grumbled, and picked up a briefcase by the side of the bed. The man—she could no longer think of him as a tramp—pulled out a blue document, an American passport.

“Your name now is Joanna Phelps. Your mother was Polish, which explains your accent. You are a student at college in Baltimore. Remember all this.”

She didn’t take the passport, though she couldn’t stop herself staring at the gold eagle on the cover.

“Why?” she asked.

“You know why, Felicia,” he replied.

“I don’t, really . . . ”

His strong hands suddenly held her shoulders, shaking her slender frame. His eyes were fierce and unavoidable.

“What’s your name? What’s your name?”

“My name is Felicia Kaminski. I am nineteen years old. A citizen of the Polish Republic. I was born . . . ”

“Felicia Kaminski is dead,” he cut in. “Be careful you don’t join her.”

Stepping back, he said, “Do not answer the door to anyone. Eat and drink from the mini bar if you need something. I must—” he stared at the grubby clothes, hating them—“do something.”

He took new clothes out of one of the cases and disappeared into the bathroom. She looked at the second piece of luggage. It seemed expensive. The label bore the name Joanna Phelps and an address in Baltimore. Felicia opened it and found that it was full of new jeans, skirts, shirts and underwear. They were all the right size, and must have cost more than she earned in an entire month.

When he came out he was wearing a dark business suit with a white shirt and elegant silk red tie. He was no more than 40, handsome, Italian-looking, with a sallow skin, clean shaven, rough and red in places from the razor. He had dark, darting eyes and long hair wet from the shower, slicked back on his head, black mostly, with gray flecks. His face seemed more lined than she felt it ought to be, as if there had been pain somewhere, or illness.

He had a phone in his hand.

“In an hour, Joanna, we will go to Fiumicino,” he said. “There will be a ticket waiting for you at the first class Alitalia counter. You show them your passport, check in and go straight to the lounge. I will meet you there. I shall be behind you all the way. Do not stop after immigration. Do not look at me. Do not acknowledge me until we have landed and I approach you.”

“Where are we going?”

He considered the question, wondering whether to answer.

“First to New York. Then to Washington. You must know this surely. How else would one get back to where you live from Italy?”

She said nothing.

“Where do you live, Joanna?”

She tugged at the label of the case he had provided for her. “I live at 121 South Fremont Avenue, Baltimore. And you?”

He smiled genuinely. In other circumstances, she might have thought she liked this man.

“That is none of your business.”

“Your name is?”

He said nothing, but kept on smiling.

Felicia walked quickly to the second case, before he could stop her, and grasped the label.

It was blank. He laughed at her, and she was unsure whether this was a pleasant sound or a cruel one.

“So what do I call you?” she asked.

A theatrical gesture: He placed a forefinger on his reddened chin, stared at the hotel bedroom ceiling, and said, “For now, you may call me Faust.”

3

JAMES GRADY

T
he jetliner glided out of the night to touch down at Washington’s Dulles Airport 29 minutes early and 47 minutes before Harold Middleton killed a cop.

As soon as the plane’s wheels grabbed runway, Middleton text-messaged his daughter.

She hadn’t answered his calls from Europe, and state, county and city police had been vague about protecting a young couple just because a frantic father called from Poland. The D.C. suburban cops seemed skeptical of Middleton’s promises that Polish badges and American diplomats would echo his alarm as soon as their chains of command argued out who should contact whom.

Middleton’s text-message read: GREEN LANTERN EVAC SCOTLAND.

GREEN LANTERN: His then-wife Sylvia had scoffed at his family code word system to prevent their toddler from being deceived by two-legged predators, but little Charlotte judged the plan cool, especially when Daddy let her make their secret code his (and thus her) favorite comic book hero.

EVAC: Charlotte was nine when the Pentagon Military Intelligence Unit where Middleton spent most of his career ran an evacuation drill. She adopted the word EVAC as a mantra, with significant shifts in irony as she roared through her teenage years.

SCOTLAND: When Charlotte got married, Middleton let her use his suburban house for the wedding’s staging ground while he rented another lonely room in a hotel near the Capital Hill garden for the marriage ceremony. Two nights before the wedding, father and daughter got drunk in the hotel bar as she introduced him to a hip single-malt Scotch. From then on, they called that hotel “Scotland.”

Told her what to do, thought Middleton. Where to go. That it’s really me.

If she got the message.

The seatbelt “ding!” launched Middleton into the plane’s aisle. Looping the shoulder strap on his soft black briefcase across his sports jacket kept his hands free. He didn’t know where the rest of his luggage was; didn’t care. His briefcase held his work, his laptop, iPod and toiletries airport security let him take onto an airplane, plus a paperback copy of Albert Camus’s
The Stranger
.

As Middleton was about to reach the plane’s door, a couple from first class barged in front of him. The woman, who may have looked great 10 years and a million scowls ago, clutched a battered jewel case to suspiciously firm breasts as she and her sad-eyed husband shuffled up the jet way ahead of Middleton.

Middleton heard the wife huff, “I still can’t believe that sister of yours thought she could keep your mother’s jewels from me just by going to Europe!”

The husband’s flat voice knew its own irrelevance. “We all make mistakes.”

They bumbled ahead to Customs, where a surgical-gloved guard carefully examined the jewel box’s glittering necklaces, bracelets and earrings, comparing them to a transit document the wife kept tapping with her crimson fingernails. When he was through, the first class couple trudged ahead of Middleton through the terminal.

Middleton’s jagged nerves keyed him into a detached hyper-vigilance he’d not felt since returning to the Balkans’ slaughterhouse. There, all he had to fear were the ghosts of strangers. Now he felt his own life crawl along the edge of a straight razor.

He smelled his fellow travelers. Damp wool scent of lived-in clothes. Deodorants’ metallic perfumes. Stale beer from the Englishman who’d tried to drown his fear of flying.

Middleton heard a child whine, and sobs from a Spec 4 soldier, who was all of 20 years old, as he marched toward a flight to Germany with connections to Iraq. An unseen CD blasted drums and crashing guitars: Middleton recognized Springsteen, and then remembered that expanding his range of classic rock music was the only debt besides Charlotte he owed his ex.

Night filled the terminal windows. Ads landscaped its walls. The musician in Middleton found melody in crowd movements synced with his rhythmic march to a bus for the main terminal. From there, he’d find his car in Long Term Parking, race to Scotland, working his cell phone the whole way. He saw all that with the absolute clarity of what is and what would be.

Looming beyond the shuffling first-class couple, Middleton saw a cop hurrying toward him. Saw the cop’s blue uniform. Saw his shoulder-holstered black automatic. Saw a second pistol on the cop’s black-leather belt along with handcuffs, ammo pouches, an empty loop for a radio.

They were 10 steps apart when Middleton matched the cop’s face to photos he’d seen in Poland of a murderer.

The fake cop unsnapped his hip holster.

Middleton shoved the first-class woman into the pistol-drawing cop.

The fragile jewel case popped out of her grasp and flew toward the cop, who knocked it away. The case burst open. Glittering objects rained on the airport crowd.

First-class woman clawed at the cop: “Mine! Mine!”

Her bumped husband fell into an empty chair.

The fake cop pointed his gun at Middleton’s face, as the woman continued to flail at him.

The gunshot reverberated through the terminal to Gate 67 some 40 feet off to Middleton’s left where FBI Agent M. T. Connolly was snapping a handcuff onto her own wrist. The handcuffs’ other clamp already circled the wrist of Dan Kohrman, who wore a second set of handcuffs shackling his wrists in front of him. Connolly’s close-cropped brass hair came up to the shoulder of the husky Kohrman who’d been apprehended in Chicago on a federal Flight To Avoid Prosecution charge and extradited to D.C. Chicago cops passed him off.

Connolly hadn’t needed to double cuff Kohrman. True, he was a felony fugitive, but he’d embezzled funds as a lawyer. Not the kind of bad boy who’d give “14-years-on-the-bricks her” any trouble. No, she cuffed her left hand to his right hand because she didn’t feel like talking to the scum-bag. Easier to jerk him where she wanted him to go.

He’d protested his innocence as Windy City cops led him off the plane toward Connolly and a uniformed Virginia state trooper who had been assigned to accompany the FBI during custodial transferals through the state’s jurisdiction to a federal lockup. After that . . .

Well, after that, the state trooper had the easy smile of a Dixie scamp. He seemed like a possible diversion from the storm of empty howling in Connolly. His eyes twinkled while they waited for the Chicago plane, indicating to her that he harbored similar thoughts. He introduced himself as George, and she knew he wouldn’t be around long enough for her to need to remember his last name.

“Look,” Kohrman had said as she clicked her handcuff on his wrist. “Have you asked yourself why I would be so stupid as to steal that money?”

As she tightened the handcuff on her left wrist, Connolly replied, “Like I care about why.”

Then she heard the high-caliber pistol shot crackle behind her. Crowd reacting. Trooper George facing the sound source. Screams and she turned, her .40 Glock filling her right hand.

She saw travelers stampeding.

Sensed the taller, trooper-uniformed George draw his gun.

Glimpsed a thick, black-haired American crashing onto a cop.

The roar of the gun in Middleton’s face deafened him. The muzzle flash novaed his eyes. But as the bullet cut wide, Middleton fell onto his would-be killer and the crazed woman from first class, and they crashed to the floor. The gun flew from the killer’s hand as hordes of airline travelers panicked in a 21st century terrorism nightmare.

Middleton’s vision returned. But why can’t I hear? Why is there no noise?

He scrambled after a 9mm Beretta gliding silently across a jewel-strewn floor.

The fake cop chopped at the first-class woman’s throat. Jumped to his feet. Reached for his shoulder-holstered second pistol.

Middleton heard only the hammering of his own heart. He grabbed the Beretta and fired at the man who was drawing a second gun.

A glowing green neon Starbucks sign exploded on a wall beyond as the fake cop to a marksman’s stance and acquired his target. His black shoes crunched white pearls scattered on the floor.

The fake cop and Middleton fired at the same time.

His arm unsteady, Middleton’s bullet missed.

The fake cop’s bullet missed too because he slipped on pearls and tumbled back through the air.

Off to Middleton’s left, State Trooper George saw a uniformed police officer in trouble. Saw the cop fall. Panicked civilians ran between Trooper George and the gun battle. George glimpsed his target—tapped out two snap shots.

Missed!

Middleton saw a nearby black plastic chair shatter.

Instantly knew why, whirled. His eyes locked on a man wearing a blue uniform like the enemy’s. Middleton fired four slugs at that second uniform.

Connolly heard the whine of bullets, the roar of a gun.

As the fugitive Kohrman screamed, Connolly saw Trooper George. Flat on his back, a hole at the collar of the blue-uniformed shirt over his bulletproof vest. A red stream flowed from George’s neck. His eyes stared at the ceiling

Connolly lunged toward the fallen trooper, but Kohrman jerked her handcuffed left arm and she tipped back toward him.

“I wanted to make it big!” screamed Kohrman. “All right? I admit it! Just don’t shoot—”

“Shut up!” Connolly shouted as she broke his nose with the butt of her pistol.

Kohrman crumpled, dead weight she dragged to Trooper George bleeding on the floor. Dropped her gun, pressed her free right hand over the gushing hole in the trooper’s neck.

“You’re going to make it!” she screamed at the fallen officer.

But she knew that was a lie.

Can’t hear!

Middleton saw the second uniformed man who’d tried to shoot him crash to the floor. Middleton whirled his deaf attention to the nearby fake cop, who scrambled to his feet on the floor’s glittering debris and fled through an emergency exit door.

Get him before he gets me! Or my daughter!

Battling in a world of silence, Middleton saw men and women dive for cover behind waiting room chairs. He saw their muted screaming faces.

First-class husband slumped in a black plastic chair, his face contorted like a laughing clown, staring at the tiled floor where his buxom wife lay gasping for air.

Middleton’s eyes followed the husband’s focus.

Saw flecks of gold paint on the tiles.

Saw broken shards of red and green and white stones.

Saw glittering glass ground to dust.

Saw a fallen cell phone spinning to a stop amid the rainbow rubble.

Middleton scooped up the cell phone as he burst to the emergency exit, broke out to the night from a facility designed by Homeland Security to prevent people from storming into it and its planes, not to keep people from running away.

Swallowed by cool air, Middleton stood at the top of metal stairs leading to the vast fields of runways where jets taxied, landed, took off—all in terrible silence.

A baggage caravan rolled silently across the dark tarmac. No sign of the fake cop. Middleton suddenly realized he stood spotlighted by the door’s white light—a perfect target.

He ran down the stairs. Ran toward the glowing swoop of the main terminal.

A jumbo jet dropped out of the sky, skimmed over his head as he staggered across a runway. He ran under a second airliner as it climbed into the night. The pressure changing wakes of those jet engines popped his gunshot-deafened ears.

Suddenly, blessedly, he heard jet engines roar.

Get to Scotland, he thought. Got to get to Scotland.

The strap of his briefcase boa-constrictored his chest as he gasped for oxygen. Sweat stuck his shirt to his skin. His leg muscles burned and felt as if someone smashed a baseball bat into his right kneecap.

He knew better than to try for his car. They—whoever they were—might be waiting for him in the parking garage.

Pistol shoved in the back waistband of his pants, Middleton loped to the front of the main terminal. No one paid much attention—people run through airports all the time. A long line of people stood waiting their turn for a taxi.

To his left, he saw a young couple exiting a Town Car. He burst between them, leapt into the back seat before the driver could protest.

“Go!”

The man behind the wheel stared into the rearview mirror.

“Two-fifty,” Middleton said, digging into his pocket for U.S. currency.

He sank into the backseat cushion of the taxi as it shot away from the terminal. “Capitol Hill.”

The driver let him out in front of the Supreme Court that glowed like a gray-stone temple across from Congress’ white-castle Capitol. Middleton walked through a park and saw no one but the nocturnal outline of a patrolling Capitol Hill policeman and his leashed German shepherd.

Scotland was a hotel built back when visiting Washington wasn’t a big business. Middleton passed through the hotel’s glass doors, walked straight to the registration desk.

“No sir, no young woman by that name is registered. No Mister and Missus either. No sir, no messages. Yes sir, I’ll call you at the bar if anything changes. Oh wait, what was your name? Excuse me: Sir? Sir?”

In the dark lounge, Middleton told the bartender, “Glenfiddich, rocks.”

After the ice melted in his drink, Middleton concluded that his daughter wasn’t coming. Wasn’t here. Wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

He laid the cell phone he’d snatched off the floor beside his glass on the bar. A pre-pay. Not his. He fished his phone from his briefcase. Ached to call someone, anyone. But he couldn’t risk a monster hacking and tracking his calls. Besides, who could he talk to? Who could he trust now? Maybe killers had infiltrated Uncle Sam’s badges too.

Breathe. Breathe.

You’re a musician. Be like Beethoven. Hear the full, true symphony.

Do what you do best.

Interpret. Authenticate.

Whatever this was started in Europe. Could still be evolving there with other assassins, other terrors. Started way back with Kosovo, a war criminal, and a phantom mastermind. Was worth killing for. Worth dying for.

From Poland, the fake cop rode the plane that Middleton was supposed to be on. He might have spotted an airport cop getting off shift, followed him to his parking spot, snapped his neck, stuffed the dead cop in the trunk of his own car, stripped the corpse of clothes, weapons and IDs. As a cop in uniform, the killer strolled into the airport to meet every plane from Paris.