“Accepted.”
“I’ll keep this short.”
Alvarez wiped some rain from his head. “Suits me.”
“Andris Ozols,” Lefèvre began, “was a retired officer of the Russian and Soviet navies. Correct?”
Alvarez didn’t respond.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” the French lieutenant said with a half smile. “I know this is true, and I’m quite sure you do too. Anyway, we both know that he was murdered last week by a professional killer. A killer who was himself targeted only two hours later at his hotel, where he shot a large number of people. This as-yet unnamed killer then returned to Paris a few days ago. He was recognized and followed but escaped arrest, and in the process killed several police officers. Before his escape he met with an American woman.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Alvarez asked.
Lefèvre leaned back. “Because you can do more with it than I can.”
“Why do you say that?”
“John Kennard,” Lefèvre said.
Hearing the name made Alvarez picture the guy in his head. Dead. Stabbed to death and lying on a shitty bathroom floor. “What about him?”
“He worked with you, yes?”
“Listen, I’m not here to answer your questions, okay?”
Lefèvre nodded. “That’s up to you. I’m telling you what I know, and I’m asking for nothing in return. But I hope when I have finished you will be more forthcoming with me.”
The waitress returned with their order. Alvarez took a sip of coffee. “Go on.”
“A day after Kennard was murdered, a homeless man, well known to my people, tried to use his credit card to buy alcohol. He was picked up by an officer and questioned. On his person, among other things, was a cellular phone that had belonged to your colleague. After extensive interrogation the man claimed to have retrieved the items from a trash can after seeing another man discard them. I believe him. He has no history of violence, and there was no knife on him nor any blood on his clothes, clothes he neither washes nor takes off.”
Lefèvre continued, “The man who threw the phone and credit card away is described as wearing a suit and speaking with an English accent. As you might expect this did not sound like a typical Parisian mugger to me. There was clearly more to the murder than anyone first thought. As part of the investigation Kennard’s most recent calls were all checked. They were to friends, family members, colleagues, and so on-nothing suspicious except a single French number that called Kennard’s phone twice after he had been killed.”
Alvarez did his best not to react to what he was hearing.
“That number corresponds to an apartment in Marseilles where we found sophisticated communications equipment. My equivalent in Marseilles found this residence abandoned. Fingerprints were taken there that match those found in an apartment here in Paris. The same apartment where Ozols’s killer escaped with that American woman.”
Alvarez was stunned. He put his coffee down.
Lefèvre continued, “As you can see, there is some connection between your colleague, this American woman, and the man who murdered Andris Ozols. I don’t know what this connection is, and I’m taking a big risk in telling you all this information. For all I know you’re involved, too.”
“I can assure you that is definitely not the case.”
Lefèvre nodded as if he didn’t need to be convinced. “I’m a police officer. It’s my job to bring criminals to justice. But I know how the intelligence business works. I know there are things I will never be told, things that I need to be told, and without all the evidence, How can I solve anything?”
Lefèvre took a brown leather briefcase from the floor and removed a file.
“What’s that?” Alvarez asked, looking at the file.
“For you,” Lefèvre explained, “everything we have so far. All the evidence.”
Alvarez picked up the file. He asked a simple question. “Why?”
“Because you can do more with it than I can. I would prefer one of us to succeed than us both to fail. Justice matters more to me than credit. People are dead. They deserve to be avenged. For this, I am deferring to you. All I ask in return,” Lefèvre said, “is that you tell me, off the record, when you are successful.”
It was a small price to pay. “I will,” Alvarez said and meant it.
Lefèvre gestured to the file. “Inside you’ll find the fingerprints of the American woman. I suggest you start by finding out who she really is.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
Lefèvre smiled. “You don’t have to.”
SIXTY-THREE
Nicosia, Cyprus
Thursday
23:49 CET
Rebecca sat on the end of the bed, flicking through the hotel’s satellite-television channels. It was a bizarre mix of both English and Greek language channels with local Cypriot TV. Tesseract was packing his backpack. Her curiosity had made her ask what the equipment was for and, to her surprise, he’d told her. First there was a portable high-capacity hard disk to clone the contents of computer hard drives. Next a transmitter, radio receiver, and tape recorder to bug a phone should he not find what they needed. Items she didn’t need explained were screwdrivers, pliers, a wrench, hexagon keys, pencils, and paper. Lock-picking tools, a glass cutter, and a suction cup were placed together in a separate small bag, which was then added to the backpack.
“Do you think you’ll need all that?” Rebecca asked.
He shook his head. “But better I take what I might not need than find myself without what I do need.”
When everything was securely packed away, he took a set of clothes with him into the bathroom and closed the door. It wasn’t closed all the way, and through the crack she could see his reflection as he changed. She glimpsed his bare arm, lean but with ridges of hard muscle. She continued watching to sneak a peek at the rest of his body but instead flinched at what she saw.
She caught a glance of his torso and the scars that marked his flesh. A huge circular bruise the size of a fist dominated the center of his chest. She saw two scars that could have been bullet wounds and more that she guessed were caused by blades. There were others, but she didn’t look long enough to identify them. Rebecca turned her head away, shocked and horrified.
“That pretty?”
She looked up and saw he was looking at her through the mirror. Her face flushed with embarrassment, and she averted her eyes. Before she had worked up the courage to respond, he closed the door fully. She heard the bolt slide across.
He came out a few minutes later, and she watched him take the folding knife from the bedside table and slip it into his pocket. He’d bought it from town. Trying to find a gun would have attracted too much attention, he’d told her.
“I expect you hate instant coffee as much as I do,” Rebecca said. “So I made us both a tea.”
He took the mug from her and sipped. It must have been okay because he took a longer sip a second later.
“I still think I should go with you,” she said.
He didn’t look at her. “I work alone.”
“That hardly matters. I-”
“Besides,” he said, interrupting her. “It’s safer for you if you stay here.”
She sighed. It was useless trying to argue with him. He was like a child. Stubborn and narrow minded, too used to doing things his own way to accept that someone else might be able to help.
“Remember,” he said, “don’t leave the room until morning. If I’m not back by sunrise, something has happened to me, and I’ll never be coming back. Get off the island straightaway and disappear. Take a boat not a plane-”
“I know, I know. We’ve been through this once already.”
“And we’ll keep going through it until I’m convinced you understand everything.”
“It would be nice if you could give me some credit.”
He looked at her for a moment. “This is what I do.”