“What was that?” Jack asked.
“They’re out of the vehicle, heading for Paul!”
Jack snapped the lights back on and gunned the Audi’s 220-horsepower turbo. The all-wheel-drive Quattro transmission kept it from spinning out as the speedometer passed 100 kilometers per hour four seconds later. But the narrow street was crowded on both sides by parked cars. The Audi hit standing water and hydroplaned. Sparks exploded when his right side-view mirror sheared off. He jerked the wheel and the Audi’s front bumper crashed into a green plastic dumpster left in the street, launching a shower of garbage onto the sidewalk.
Jack slammed on his brakes, screeching to a halt in a spray of water behind the Toyota van parked across from the “hotel”—a pale pink three-story building with PINK LILY on its sign. The street-front door was pushed open.
Jack charged out of the Audi and through the rain toward the door, his boots splashing in the puddles. He bounded onto the stairs, taking three at a time. He used the banisters to round the corners faster, and hit the third-floor landing winded but furious. A glance right down the hallway yielded nothing, but a glance left showed an open door and there was the sound of crashing furniture.
Jack bolted for the open door. He arrived just as the unibrowed Bulgarian backhanded Paul across the face. The blond German turned in shock at Jack’s appearance and reached inside his coat pocket, but Jack was faster with his fist and he cracked the smaller man’s jaw with a straight-armed punch, sending him to the floor, out cold.
The Bulgarian turned as Jack’s blow landed on the German’s jaw. He crashed hard into Jack, knocking him against the wall, smashing a cheap picture frame with a blue-armed Vishnu smiling behind the glass. The big Bulgarian grabbed Jack by the lapel of his coat with his left hand and cocked his right arm back, aiming the biggest fist Jack had ever seen at his face. The thick, hairy knuckles launched like a meat hammer at Jack’s head, but Jack diverted the blow with a swipe of his left hand, sending the man’s fist into the wall with a sickening crunch.
The man still had Jack’s lapel bunched in his left fist, and his heavy right arm was pressed against Jack’s face, pinning his head against the wall. Too tied up to throw a decent punch, Jack reached for his front pants pocket and pulled out his weapon of last resort, driving the tip of the stainless-steel Zebra pen deep into the soft tissue of the big man’s lower jaw. The Bulgarian howled, clawing at the pen as he stumbled backward, his eyes wide with panic as Jack landed a kick to the side of his head, knocking him out.
“He’s bleeding out,” Paul said, rubbing the side of his reddened face.
Jack was still trying to catch his breath. He knelt close to the Bulgarian, careful not to put his knee in the pooling blood. “He’s dead.”
Jack pulled the pen out of the Bulgarian’s jaw and wiped it off on the man’s shirt. He saw Paul’s disgusted look. “Can’t leave evidence behind.” He stood.
Paul took a step back into the small kitchen opening to the postage stamp — sized living room. “Who the hell are you, Jack?”
Jack frown-smiled. “You know who I am. I came here to find you.” He fished around in his pocket and pulled out Paul’s phone. Tossed it to him as a peace offering. “Thought you might need this.”
“Who sent you?”
“Nobody sent me. Look, we need to get out of here.”
Paul fiddled with his phone. He didn’t look up. “What about him?”
Jack stepped over to the German, felt for a pulse. Couldn’t find one. He wasn’t completely surprised. It was a perfectly thrown punch, the momentum of his two-hundred-pound frame propelling his fist like a mortar round into the smaller man’s jaw. A half-step shorter jab and the man would still be breathing.
“He’s gone.” Jack reached into the man’s coat and pulled out a 9x18mm Makarov pistol. He showed it to Paul. “Soviet version of the Walther.”
Paul glanced up from his phone, puzzled. He pocketed it. “Looks familiar. Can I see it?”
“You know how to handle one?”
“My dad was a cop.” Paul took the small pistol in his beefy hands and cleared the chamber while Jack searched the Bulgarian, his back to Paul.
Jack’s fingers gripped a pistol in the Bulgarian’s shoulder holster. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Why did Rhodes send you, Jack?”
“I told you, no one sent me—”
The pain exploding in the back of Jack’s skull cut his sentence short.
60
Jack blinked himself awake. His head throbbed, but his wrists burned like they were cut. It took him a moment to figure out they were tied behind his back. He was lying on his side, not far from the dead German.
Paul sat on a small, threadbare couch across from him, the Makarov pointed at Jack’s face.
“I’ll ask you again, why did Rhodes send you?”
“Damn it, Paul! I told you he didn’t.”
“Then why were you talking to him on your phone ten minutes ago?”
“He called me, looking for you.”
“That’s my point.”
Jack stretched his shoulders. “What did you tie my wrists with, piano wire?”
“Lamp cord. Last chance, Jack. Otherwise, I’m going to shoot you.”
“Goddamn it, Paul, who are you?”
“That’s what I asked you.”
Jack winced against the hammer clobbering his brain. “Yeah, Rhodes called me, looking for you. But I was already on my way to find you before he called.”
“Why?”
“You disappeared. I was worried about you.”
“How did you find me?”
“I didn’t. Gavin did.”
“So Gavin’s in on this, too?”
“In on what?”
Paul reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out Rhodes’s USB drive. “This.”
“What’s that?”
“You tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“No. I can’t, because I don’t know what it is. Is that the one you had hidden in the shower-curtain rod?”
“How did you know?”
“I caught you fooling with it after the police raid, remember?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Jack winced again. “Can you at least cut me loose?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, you better hurry. These assholes probably have friends, and they might be on their way over. We should get out of here.”
“Maybe I’ll leave and you can stay here and explain what you did to their friends.”
“At least one of us would survive.”
That caught Paul by surprise. “What did Rhodes tell you?”
“That he was worried about you, that he asked you to do him a favor, that if you didn’t do that favor by midnight tonight, you would be in big trouble. That about cover it?”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. He said he couldn’t ‘read’ me into the rest of it.”
“So you’re not working with him, or for him?”
“Yes, of course I am, just like you, doing the Dalfan audit.”
Paul snorted, pointing his gun at the two dead men. “You’re no auditor.”
“Technically, you’re right. I’m a financial analyst.”
“I never knew anybody in accounts receivable that could take out a couple of operators bare-handed. What are you, CIA?”
Jack shook his head. “No.” Jack winced again. “C’mon, Paul, my arms are killing me.”
“Just a second. If you’re not CIA, what are you? FBI? DIA?”
“None of the above.”
“Foreign service? Interpol?”
“Look, you’re smart enough to know that if I’m with a sworn service I can’t tell you. But Gerry will vouch for me.”
“Gerry was working with Rhodes. I don’t know if I can trust him.”