“What now?” Franz asked Toni.
“Let’s go for a little walk,” she said.
They got out and went down the block toward the hotel. The police were still allowing pedestrians to access the hotel, so the two of them crossed the street and went to the front entrance of the Cravat.
Toni stopped Franz and said, “Look across the street.”
Franz glanced around. “A bank. You think that’s why Jake was here?”
“Come on.” She led him into the hotel lobby and showed a younger woman at the front desk Jake’s picture, without saying Jake’s name.
“I can’t give any information,” the woman said.
Franz flashed his Polizei badge. “It will help with the investigation out there.”
“I heard the shots,” she said, reliving the event in her mind. “It was scary.”
“So he was staying here,” Toni pressed.
“He never checked out.” She clicked on her computer. “Are you sure he was involved with the shooting. He seemed like such a nice man.”
“A victim,” Franz assured her. “Maybe a witness.”
“Was he with anyone here?” Toni asked.
The desk clerk shook her head. “I don’t think so. He checked in himself. Here it is. Peter Magrath from Calgary, Canada.”
Toni thanked the woman and led Franz to the front door. That was a new identity for Jake, she thought. Since the road out front was closed off, they crossed Roosevelt to the bank.
“You don’t think he used the same name at the bank,” Franz said.
“No.” Nor did it really matter at this point. Jake had been here, but was gone now and she had no idea where he’d gone. She stopped out front of the bank. “Why don’t you let me handle this.”
Franz pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shoved one into his mouth. Smiling he said, “Go for it.”
She slowly walked into the bank, knowing it would take a lot of finesse to get any information out of a Luxembourg bank. She’d run into a brick wall with them all morning, not really expecting a straight answer. But she was mostly relying on her ability to judge the truthful statements of others than an actual answer. Toni went straight to a manager type, an older gentleman in a fine suit. If Jake had used this bank for a long time, this guy was likely to know him.
Toni handed the photo of Jake to the man. “Do you know him?”
“Does this have something to do with the shooting on the street?” the man asked.
“Yes.” She wasn’t lying. “Do you know him?”
“Was he involved?”
The man looked concerned. Bingo. He knew Jake. “Maybe. We’ll have to wait to review the street video.” She got what she needed from him. Maybe one more thing. “He was here this morning.”
“I can’t say,” he said.
“You just did. Listen, he’s a friend of mine. We worked together.” No need to tell him they had been more than friends for years.
“The American company in Frankfurt?”
Jesus, Jake. How long had he had that account? “Yes,” she lied. “We were more than friends. If you know what I mean.”
He smiled.
Toni looked at his name tag. “Tyson. I’m concerned for his safety. Do you know where he was going?”
“No, I never knew when I would see Mr. Adams.”
She shook the man’s hand and thanked him.
“I hope he’s all right,” Tyson said.
“I’m sure he is,” she said and then left him there alone. Unknowingly, the man had given her more information than he knew. So Jake had actually opened this account long ago, under his own last name, when he was probably in his first overseas assignment with the Company. Interesting. Almost every operative had such an account. A fail safe.
As Toni stepped outside, she found Franz drawing in on another cigarette. He’d snubbed out two other butts on the sidewalk.
“What you find?” Franz asked.
“Another dead end,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. We know he stayed at the hotel. Who cares if he went to the bank? What we need to know now is where he’s going. Any ideas?”
Franz blew out a stream of smoke and said, “This is the perfect jumping off place. Head north and you hit Belgium. Northeast to Netherlands. West and south and you’re in France. Or backtrack to Germany. All within an hour in any direction. He could be anywhere.”
“But someone found him before us,” she said. “How the hell was that possible?”
Toni grasped Franz by the arm and pulled him toward the car. They walked right in front of the shooting scene. Jake could be anywhere. Where would he go now? Perhaps somewhere totally unexpected. He’d come to Luxembourg for money, which she knew he had plenty of in that bank after his last case in Bulgaria. But now he’d go farther underground. She was sure of that. Because that’s what she’d do.
16
Ten kilometers south of Metz, France, Jake had Alexandra pull off the motorway on to a priority road, and then onto an old farming road along a stretch of vineyards, where the grapes had already been picked clean.
They’d heard the man pounding on the trunk floor while driving through Metz and Jake felt they had put enough distance between them and the two shooting locations.
“You have any latex gloves?” Jake asked her.
Confused, she said, “In the first aid kit under the seat.”
He found the gloves and put them on. “Let’s go.”
They got out and she clicked open the trunk remotely.
Staring at them with wide eyes was the man they’d learned a little about on the drive down, having checked on his passport and accessing the BND computer on the fly. The guy’s name was Bado Anvari. Iranian passport.
With one fluid motion, Jake grabbed the man by the jacket and hoisted him out of the trunk and plunked him onto the dirt. The man tried to struggle, but Jake shoved his knee into the man’s chest.
“This can only go one way,” Jake said. “My way.”
No reaction at all. Did the Iranian understand him? Absolutely. He had gone to the University of Michigan for his undergraduate degree in business.
Jake punched the man in his face, knocking his head back into the ground. Blood flowed from the man’s nose.
“Don’t try to play stupid. Of course, in your case it might not be a ploy. Again…this will go my way. Both of your friends are dead. Who hired you?”
The Iranian licked blood from his upper lip but said nothing. Jake knew the man had spent two years in the Iranian Army before going off to college. But he’d been regular army, not the more intense Revolutionary Guard. He would break. Everyone broke.
“What do you hate most, Bado? Fire? Water? Some other basic element? We’ll find out. And then you’ll tell me what I want to know. You could save yourself a lot of pain and time.” Jake pondered the possibilities. It was hard to come up with something original. Everything had been done before. Yet part of him wished he didn’t have to do what he knew had to be done. The game was getting old and tedious. A small bird flew over and landed on a grape vine near them. Jake was mesmerized for a moment on the beauty of its plumage. He thought of how he could take some of those feathers and make them into fishing flies, as he had so many times over the years. Maybe he could just take the money from his bank and move to Montana. Spend a few years reliving his youth fishing every stream that flowed from the Rockies to form the Missouri River. He could even drift up to Canada and explore more rivers there. Heavy sigh, he focused on the task at hand.