Retribution

FORTY-THREE

Kassim stood in front of the Marriott Hotel on West Century Boulevard and checked the area for signs of police activity. It was nearly nine thirty and the eighteen-floor building was a blaze of lights. So far he had seen nothing to alarm him, save for a couple of hotel security guards checking cars in the main car park.

In spite of the late hour, the traffic entering and leaving was considerable: cars, shuttle buses and cabs streaming in and out in a constant flow, passengers mixing with aircrew. The sheer bustle of activity made Kassim feel momentarily secure, but he didn’t relax his guard. If there were any police about, they were showing unusual patience; but if they were good, that was what police did the world over.

He finally stepped through the glass entrance, latching on to a group of European travellers from an airport shuttle. He felt nervous at the sheer size of the place and the surroundings, but he’d been trained for this; all he had to do was look bored — or tired. Either would do. And not catch anyone’s eye. He felt uneasy about approaching the desk to check in. He didn’t want to stay here, so what was the point? Then he spotted an internal phone and veered towards it.

‘Concierge.’

Kassim asked if a package had arrived for him. A knot built in his gut while the man went to check. He came back and confirmed that it had.

A few minutes later, among another influx of arrivals, he approached the desk and asked for the package in the name of Roberto Lucchini. The concierge, too busy to care, barely looked at him before handing it over. Two minutes later Kassim was out of the hotel and climbing into a cab. He needed to be on the move again.

‘Take me to another hotel,’ he told the cabbie. ‘Somewhere smaller.’

Further along West Century Boulevard, in the Comfort Inn where Bikovsky had been under guard, Harry and Rik were staring at an empty room. After briefing Bob Dosario at FBI headquarters and tossing around ideas, they had gone over the tape again frame by frame. It had been a tiring process, confirming only that Kleeman did not appear to have a UN beret, either on his head or tucked under his epaulette.

‘I remember thinking we had to get them some kit,’ Pendry had confirmed on the phone. ‘They were both wearing DPM jackets, but I don’t remember what they had on their heads.’

‘Bikovsky could be lying,’ Dosario had suggested reasonably.

Harry didn’t think so. The Marine’s response had sounded too genuine. ‘He’d be taking a risk. Who would you believe — him or Kleeman?’

Dosario grinned. ‘Good point. An all-state college sports champ turned international diplomat versus a sleaze with prior for rape who’s now working in porno movies. Mmm. . wonder how a jury would vote on that one?’

Harry stood up. ‘Only one way to find out. Let’s go see him.’

They had driven over to the Comfort Inn to talk with Bikovsky, but the ex-Marine was no longer there. An embarrassed officer who had been on guard outside the door was trying to explain how his charge had disappeared while his colleague had taken a comfort break.

‘Bikovsky said he needed some ice and to stretch his legs,’ muttered the officer, a fifteen-year veteran. He pointed to a machine down the corridor. ‘I watch him try it, and he calls back that it’s broken. He says he’ll go down to the next floor, and I start to follow. Just as I do, the room phone rings and I go get it, thinking maybe it’s important.’ He pulled a sour face. ‘When I get downstairs, he’s gone. My lieutenant’s gonna have my ass for this.’

Harry didn’t bother trying to make him feel better; the officer had been unbelievably negligent. They left him to his fate, while his colleagues began organizing a search and Bob Dosario put out a city-wide alert to his FBI agents in the area.

On the way back to their hotel, Rik checked his email. There was a brief note from Ripper.

Zip file on way. See cloud. Should I be worried about Homeland Security dogging my ass? Ripper.

There was a hypertext link to a secure cloud box where the full file could be seen, with no connections back to Ripper or the source material.

Rik waited until they were back in their hotel before responding. He wanted to see what quality of information Ripper had come up with.

He opened his laptop and clicked on the link to the secure site. There were several pages collated by Ripper taken from airline databases of passenger manifests, each with a separate link for Rik to follow if he wished. There was also a link to a travel agency in New York. He clicked on it. It belonged to a small company called Life Style Travel in Allen Street on the Lower East Side. Run by a man named Agim Remzi and offering cheap deals to resorts worldwide, it was a bucket shop offering cheap, no-frills airline travel for passengers who didn’t mind going the long way round and maybe finding their own way back.

‘Neat way to avoid obvious checkpoints,’ Harry commented, when he saw the website. ‘I wonder how many operators he’s moved around the world?’ He waited for Rik to pull up the pages of airline data that Ripper had uploaded. They ran to several sheets of plain text and figures showing flight numbers, airport acronyms, passenger names, seat numbers and departure and arrival times.

The name Zef Haxhi had been highlighted on each one, and the pages arranged in line with dates and times, showing Haxhi’s movements beginning with Peshawar and rolling through Paris, Brussels and New York, then to Columbus and on to Moscow and London.

‘He gets around, this boy,’ said Rik, clicking on the link to Life Style Travel. ‘Bingo.’

The details were a summary from Remzi’s PC matching those of the bookings made in the name of Haxhi. The in-bound trip from Peshawar to New York via Paris had been arranged some weeks beforehand, no doubt to prepare the necessary immigration paperwork. But it was clear that Remzi had organized a series of open tickets more recently. Wherever Haxhi had wanted to go, Remzi had smoothed the way like a magic carpet.

‘This was no impulse job,’ Harry commented. ‘There’s been too much advance planning.’

‘How do we get this to Deane?’ Rik queried. ‘I don’t want to compromise Ripper.’

‘You don’t need to. Send Deane the link to Life Style with a copy of one of the flight schedule pages, and he can do his own hacking. He doesn’t need to know how we got it.’

Rik did so, and hit the button to send the message on its way. ‘What do we do now?’

Harry shook his head. ‘Nothing we can do. Bikovsky’s gone, and this is his turf; he could be anywhere by now. Best leave it to the FBI and LAPD to deal with him. We’ve got more important things to do.’

‘Such as?’

‘Kassim or Haxhi, whatever his name is, won’t be waiting around. He’ll know by now that he’s come out too far and we’ve got a line on him. He’ll give up on Bikovsky and go on to bigger things.’

‘But isn’t that breaking with his plan to go after every member of the team?’

‘Perhaps. But I think he’s a realist. He knows by now who he isn’t after, so he’s not wasting time or running unnecessary risks by chasing them all down. He left Pendry alive and he didn’t wait to take another shot at Koslov. That must mean something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Once he’d seen them up close, he knew they weren’t his targets.’

Rik looked up from the laptop screen. ‘How could he know that?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Harry had been thinking about what made Pendry and Koslov different from the other men; something that allowed them to live. The most obvious point with Pendry was that he was black. Koslov, on the other hand, was white, like the other men. The only thing that set him apart was his size. Yet the girl’s murder at the compound had supposedly happened in the dead of night, save for security lights. And the murderer would have avoided them. So any sighting would have been vague at best.

Then he had it. Witness details always differ slightly from one telling to the next — a change of hair colour or body size here, a few inches in height there. Every pair of eyes sees things differently. It made a second-hand description of the killer too vague, too unreliable, especially after all this time.

But if Kassim could tell the difference between one man and another with any degree of certainty, it could only mean one thing.

He had been right there at the time.