St. Amand and his en­tour­age boarded his private jet at dawn, and flew two and a half hours north­w­est to Lon­don. Today, Clau­dio Laz­zari, St. Amand’s pre­ferred double, was with them, as St. Amand him­self would be play­ing the part of his own fic­ti­tious ad­visor, Ant­o­nio Becker. While this meant he didn’t have to wear the paraphernalia that usu­ally covered his head, it did not mean he wasn’t in dis­guise.

  Today’s look con­sisted of a black, shoulder-length wig, found­a­tion makeup four shades darker than his skin tone, dark brown con­tacts, steel-rimmed sunglasses, and mo­tion pic­ture-grade cheek pros­thet­ics that both altered the shape of his face and covered the scar by his eye.

  The first ap­point­ment of the day was at nine a.m. local time, in an of­fice build­ing near the new Globe Theatre, with a man named Louis Rolland. Rolland rep­res­en­ted a West African rebel leader nick­named Le Taur­eau, or The Bull. Le Taur­eau had designs on cre­at­ing a new na­tion out of parts of Mali and Burk­ina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, and had already made ser­i­ous in­roads in that ef­fort.

  St. Amand, who—un­be­knownst to Le Taur­eau or Rolland—already helped sup­ply two of the coun­tries they were fight­ing, was look­ing for­ward to play­ing both sides. No mat­ter who ul­ti­mately came out on top, the vic­tori­ous side would be in­debted to him. And the more people in power­ful po­s­i­tions who owed him, the more the world be­came his to play with.

  The limo pulled into a covered park­ing area next to the meet­ing loc­a­tion. With a nod from St. Amand, Drake and four men, who had been trav­el­ing in one of the two SUVs trail­ing the limo, entered the struc­ture.

  St. Amand stud­ied his double. “The scarf is low on the right.”

  Laz­zari ad­jus­ted the scarf. “My apo­lo­gies, Mr. St. Amand.”

  “Don’t let it hap­pen again.” This was said mat­ter-of-factly, but his mean­ing was clear. If there was an­other in­cid­ent, the man would no longer have a job. And a double’s job, as had been made clear from the be­gin­ning, was for life.

  Soon, Drake ree­m­erged from the build­ing and opened the back door of the limo. “Everything’s ready.”

  *

  The meet­ing went ex­actly as planned, and an agree­ment was reached on a series of new ship­ments, the first of which would ar­rive by the end of the month.

  Meet­ing num­ber two was across the river in the fin­an­cial dis­trict. There was no set time for their ar­rival, as the cli­ent didn’t know they were com­ing.

  The of­fice build­ing was on Dukes Place, not far from the Gher­kin tower. St. Amand entered with Drake, Laz­zari, and two of Drake’s men, and took an el­ev­ator to the eighth floor.

  A taste­ful sign next to the cli­ent’s of­fice read: MURPHY & COX, LTD.

  The wo­man sit­ting at the re­cep­tion desk in the ex­quis­itely dec­or­ated lobby looked up as they walked in. “Can I help you?”

  “Which way to David Cox’s of­fice?” St. Amand said.

  “Do you have an ap­point­ment?”

  “My dear, we don’t need an ap­point­ment.”

  The wel­com­ing ex­pres­sion on her face dimmed ever so slightly. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Cox is very busy today. Per­haps we could set up a time for you to come back.”

  Drake leaned over the desk, and al­lowed his jacket to hang open enough to re­veal the gun in the hol­ster un­der his arm. “We will not be com­ing back later. We will see Mr. Cox now.”

  She swal­lowed hard, her hand mov­ing slowly off the desk.

  “Don’t,” St. Amand said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The but­ton you were go­ing to push. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  She jerked her hand back as if she’d touched a flame.

  “Now, please show us to Mr. Cox’s of­fice.”

  She looked at St. Amand, then at Drake and the oth­ers. “Of…course.” She stood. “This way.”

  She led them down a long cor­ridor to a door with a name­plate read­ing KEN­NETH COX, and looked back at them.

  “Open it,” Drake said.

  The re­cep­tion­ist licked her lips and did as ordered.

  The room they entered was not Cox’s ac­tual of­fice, but that of his as­sist­ant. The wo­man was at least two dec­ades older than the re­cep­tion­ist, and spor­ted a dour ex­pres­sion that ap­peared to be per­man­ently etched on her face.

  She looked up as they entered. “What’s go­ing on? Marna, who are these people?”

  “They’re, um, here to see Mr. Cox.”

  The older wo­man looked at the men. “Well, I’m sorry. Mr. Cox does not see any­one without an ap­point­ment.” Clearly, she was not sorry. To the re­cep­tion­ist, she said, “You should not have—”

  She stopped as St. Amand and the oth­ers strode past her desk, to­ward the door to the in­ner of­fice.

  “You can’t go in there,” she said, try­ing to get in front of them.

  Drake shoved her side­ways, pro­pelling her into her desk chair. She yelped in pain, and Marna rushed over to help her.

  “The but­ton,” the as­sist­ant said, wav­ing at her desk. “Push the but­ton!”

  Marna moved to­ward the desk, but one of Drake’s men grabbed her be­fore she could get there.

  A lock­down but­ton, no doubt. More and more ex­ec­ut­ives were in­stalling them.

  Drake opened the door and led the oth­ers into the room.

  Cox, who had been sit­ting on a couch read­ing a stack of pa­pers, jumped up.

  “What’s this? You can’t just come in here like this! Pamela! Pamela, why are these—” Then his face drained of blood. “Mr. St. Amand?”

  Laz­zari crossed his arms and stared at Cox, un­mov­ing. The real St. Amand and Drake ap­proached the couch.

  “Mr. Cox, you re­mem­ber me, don’t you?” St. Amand said.

  “You’re Becker.”

  “That’s right. Though I prefer Mr. Becker.” St. Amand smiled while lower­ing him­self into the pad­ded leather chair next to the cof­fee table. “Please, have a seat.”

  When Cox didn’t move, Drake moved over to the couch, sat down, and pat­ted the cush­ion next to him.

  With con­sid­er­able re­luct­ance, Cox took a seat. “So, um, what can I do for you gen­tle­men?”

  St. Amand closed the of­fice door and walked to­ward the couch. “Mr. St. Amand is con­cerned.”

  “Con­cerned? About what?”

  “About our com­mu­nic­a­tion prob­lems.”

  “I wasn’t aware we had a com­mu­nic­a­tion prob­lem.”

  “Then you’re say­ing there’s been a bank­ing er­ror?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If there is no com­mu­nic­a­tion prob­lem, then the only reason we haven’t re­ceived the fi­nal pay­ment for our last ship­ment to Ok­lahoma has to be a bank­ing er­ror, cor­rect?”

  Cox had been the broker who con­nec­ted St. Amand to Wil­liam Sand­strom and his ul­trarad­ical Amer­ican mi­li­tia net­work, which in­cluded Jack­son Reed’s Ok­lahoma or­gan­iz­a­tion.

  “I, um, I meant to call you. There’s been a…com­plic­a­tion.”

  “What kind of com­plic­a­tion?”

  “Well, uh…see, the FBI raided Reed’s com­pound. They con­fis­cated his en­tire cache.”

  St. Amand looked at Drake.

  “There has been noth­ing in the news,” Drake said.

  “I was in­formed by one of my con­tacts not long after it happened,” Cox said. “So far the FBI’s kept a lid on it.”

  “But you’ve known for, what? A few days?” St. Amand asked.

  “Um, I would say more like a day, a day and a half at most.”

  “For a day and a half, then, and you didn’t think it ne­ces­sary to share this in­form­a­tion with us?”

  “Like I said. I was go­ing to call you, but…it’s a del­ic­ate mat­ter. I wanted to gather more in­form­a­tion first. Be­sides, there’s noth­ing to be done.”

  “Noth­ing to be done? What about pro­tect­ing ourselves from the po­ten­tial ex­pos­ure?”

  The fear in Cox’s eyes rat­cheted up sev­eral notches. “There’s no reason for you to be con­cerned at all. My-my-my con­tact said the search for the source of the weapons has reached a dead end. They can’t find you. Your con­nec­tion is well hid­den.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Def­in­itely so. Def­in­itely.”

  Cox was prob­ably right on that point. Like everything else St. Amand did, the de­liv­er­ies to the Amer­ic­ans were masked by a wind­ing trail of fake com­pan­ies nestled within other fake com­pan­ies. A roadmap few, if any, could ever un­tangle.

  “You had bet­ter hope you are cor­rect.” St. Amand stood. “If you would give me a mo­ment, please.”

  “Um, okay. Sure.”

  St. Amand walked over to his double and pre­ten­ded to speak quietly to him. Laz­zari moved his head like he was listen­ing. After sev­eral mo­ments, St. Amand whispered, “Re­spond, five seconds.”

  Laz­zari leaned his mouth up to St. Amand’s ear and mumbled non­sense for the pre­scribed in­ter­val.

  After he fin­ished, St. Amand nod­ded and re­turned to the sit­ting area but re­mained on his feet. “Mr. St. Amand would like you to in­form Mr. Sand­strom that the deals we had in place are ter­min­ated.”

  “What? No. You can’t do that. We have an agree­ment.”

  “Had an agree­ment. What you have now is the FBI breath­ing down your cli­ent’s neck.”

  “Wait. Please. Can’t we talk about this?”

  “There’s noth­ing to dis­cuss. You’re not pay­ing us nearly enough to com­pensate for the po­ten­tial trouble our work­ing to­gether could bring us.”

  “If it’s about money, let me talk to Mr. Sand­strom. I’m sure we can reach an ac­com­mod­a­tion you’ll be happy with.”

  This was what St. Amand had been wait­ing for. An­other des­per­ate cli­ent who would be even more be­holden to him in the fu­ture. Sure, there were risks, but St. Amand had been op­er­at­ing for years without any prob­lems, and he didn’t ex­pect that to change now.

  He walked over to Laz­zari and ex­changed more whis­pers, then said, “If Mr. Sand­strom is will­ing to dis­cuss a change to the terms, Mr. St. Amand would be will­ing to meet with him in per­son to­mor­row even­ing in Rome.”

  “To­mor­row even­ing? I don’t know his sched­ule. He may not be able to make him­self avail­able that quickly.”

  “Then I guess our busi­ness to­gether is com­plete.”

  St. Amand nod­ded at Drake, who stood, and the two men headed to­ward the door.

  Cox jumped up. “No, wait. He’ll, um, he’ll be there. We both will.”

  St. Amand turned back. “No, Mr. Cox. You will stay here. Mr. St. Amand will meet with Mr. Sand­strom alone. No middle men. Or there will be no meet­ing at all.”

  Put­ting on as brave a face as he could, Cox said, “I’ll let Mr. Sand­strom know.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  CHICAGO

  Accord­ing to the po­lice re­port, Danny Hawthorne, aka Da­mon Cruise, had been ar­res­ted at the age of nine­teen for pos­ses­sion with in­tent to sell. Due to a deal with the city at­tor­ney, Cruise’s charges had been dropped in ex­change for him giv­ing up the name of his sup­plier. In the file, De­tect­ive Mar­tinez had noted that Cruise had agreed to move in with his aunt un­til the trial was over, and to make him­self avail­able for more ques­tion­ing if ne­ces­sary. Once the ver­dict was read, his ar­rest would be ex­punged.

  The item of most in­terest to Nate was the ad­dress Mar­tinez had lis­ted for the aunt, one Katar­ina Ma­lin­owski. It had not been on the list of Cruise’s po­ten­tial res­id­ences.

  Nate found a pay phone near the apart­ment build­ing and called the num­ber in the re­port, want­ing to see if the aunt was still at the same ad­dress. When a younger, male voice answered, “Hello,” Nate wondered if Katar­ina Ma­lin­owski was an­other dead end.

  “Good morn­ing,” Nate said. “My name is Tim Foster from Cent­ral One Bank. May I speak to Katar­ina Ma­lin­owski, please?”

  “We’re not in­ter­ested.”

  “I’m not selling any­thing. I’m call­ing about some ques­tion­able activ­ity on her ac­count. Is she home?”

  “Where did you say you were from?”

  Nate grinned. He’d now heard enough to know the voice be­longed to Da­mon Cruise. “Cent­ral One Bank. It’s about her Visa card.”

  “Well, she ain’t here. Call back later.”

  As Nate star­ted to say, “Thank you,” Cruise hung up.

  It took Nate eight minutes to jog from the Grant Hotel to the block Katar­ina Ma­lin­owski’s build­ing was on, and an­other six to find a con­cealed spot from where he could watch the en­trance.

  For three hours, he watched res­id­ents leav­ing for work or school, with no sign of Cruise. Then, at 9:17 a.m., the front door swung open and there he was.

  Nate let him get halfway down the block be­fore he star­ted to fol­low.

  It was in­ter­est­ing, though not par­tic­u­larly sur­pris­ing, that Cruise headed to­ward the same area Brian King had dis­ap­peared into the pre­vi­ous even­ing. Nate wasn’t about to make the same mis­take, and stayed close enough to see Cruise turn into one of the deser­ted park­ing lots.

  From the corner, he watched Cruise cross the empty field be­hind the park­ing area to the back of an aban­doned build­ing on the next street over, and enter through the rear door.

  Nate gave it a few minutes, then made his way around the edge of the field to the struc­ture. The win­dows on the first two floors were all boarded up, while those on the up­per three floors were broken or painted over or covered in grime or all the above.

  Nate walked around the build­ing to get a bet­ter sense of it. The only ob­vi­ous way in was through the door Cruise had used. All the oth­ers, in­clud­ing the main en­trance street side, were covered with ply­wood, like the win­dows. He did dis­cover a not-so-ob­vi­ous en­trance on the side of the build­ing, where an­other sheet of ply­wood hid a set of con­crete stairs that led to a base­ment door.

  Be­fore he went through it, he needed to gear up.

  *

  Quinn was noth­ing if not a pa­tient man. It was a re­quire­ment in his pro­fes­sion. Get­ting rid of bod­ies for a liv­ing of­ten en­tailed wait­ing for the tar­get in ques­tion to stop breath­ing, a timeline that did not al­ways fol­low a plan. But this morn­ing, as he sat in his car, watch­ing the Grant Hotel for signs of Nate, he felt antsy.

  The split between him and Nate weighed heav­ily on him. It was his fault. When Liz died, he had all but verbally blamed Nate. And then, when Nate was about to put down the wo­man who had shot Liz, Quinn had stopped him. It had been the right de­cision, but it was far from a sat­is­fact­ory res­ol­u­tion for Nate.

  And for Quinn.

  He knew their com­ing en­counter would not be an easy one, so he wanted to get it over with. He con­sidered walk­ing into the hotel and knock­ing on doors un­til he found Nate. But no mat­ter which way he played it through in his mind, the meet­ing al­ways ended with Nate slam­ming the door in Quinn’s face. Bet­ter to ap­proach him some­place pub­lic, where neither of them would want to make a scene. That, at least, would give them a chance at a con­ver­sa­tion, how­ever awk­ward it might be.

  Quinn’s stom­ach growled, re­mind­ing him he hadn’t had break­fast yet. He grabbed his back­pack off the pas­sen­ger seat and rum­maged around for the gran­ola bars he kept in the front sec­tion. His hand had just en­circled the foil wrap­per when he no­ticed a jog­ger head­ing down the street, tucked up against the parked cars. The per­son was wear­ing identical clothes to the jog­ger Quinn had seen when he first ar­rived. It couldn’t be the same per­son, though. It would have meant he’d been run­ning for hours.

  Quinn raised his cam­era and zoomed in on the jog­ger.

  Well, I’ll be damned.

  It was Nate.

  But he looked al­most fresh, not like he’d been run­ning the whole time. So what the hell had he been do­ing?

  Quinn reached for the door handle but stopped him­self. He would have to sprint to reach his part­ner be­fore Nate ar­rived at the hotel. No way Nate would miss that. And as soon as he real­ized it was Quinn, he’d likely dis­ap­pear into the build­ing and Quinn might never find him again.

  He let go of the handle and shot off a text to Or­lando.

  He’s def­in­itely stay­ing at the Grant.

  Her re­sponse came al­most im­me­di­ately:

  You talked to him?

  Quinn tapped the key­board.

  Not yet.

  He watched his friend enter the hotel, hop­ing it would not be long be­fore he re­appeared.

  *

  Nate took a quick shower, pulled on a black T-shirt and jeans, and loaded his back­pack with the items he thought he might need. He wished he could in­clude plenty of other things, but the tools he’d been trav­el­ing with were lim­ited.

  The same four people who’d been in the small lobby when he re­turned earlier were still there when he left. Only the old wo­man with the ci­gar­ette-wrinkled face glanced at him. The oth­ers ap­par­ently couldn’t care less.

  The mo­ment he reached the side­walk, the back of his neck tingled, like it of­ten did in dan­ger­ous situ­ations. He stopped and scanned the street, won­der­ing if Cruise or one of his friends had seen him snoop­ing around and fol­lowed him back. But the few people he saw didn’t set off any alarms.

  He shoved the feel­ing into a men­tal box and star­ted walk­ing.

  *

  Quinn was sur­prised when Nate came back out in less than fif­teen minutes. His clothes were changed, and his hair damp. He was car­ry­ing a back­pack over his shoulder.

 

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