Blow Fly

24

IN POLAND, it is a few minutes past midnight. Lucy drives past caravans of World War II Russian Army trucks and speeds through miles of tiled tunnels and along the tree-lined E28. She can't stop thinking about the Red Notice, how easy it was for her to send computerized information that has law enforcement agencies around the world on guard. Of course, her information is legitimate. Rocco Caggiano is a criminal. She has known that for years. But until she recently received information that ties him to at least a few of his crimes, neither she nor other interested parries had probable cause to do anything more than hate him.

One simple phone call.

Lucy called Interpol's Central Bureau in Washington, D.C. She identified herself-her real identity, of course-and had a brief conversation with a U.S. Marshal liaison named McCord. The next step was a search of the Interpol database to see if Caggiano is known, and he wasn't, not even as a Green Notice, which simply means a person is of interest to Interpol and should be watched and subjected to extra scans and pat-downs when he or she crosses borders and passes through international airports.

Rocco Caggiano is in his mid-thirties. He has never been arrested and has made a fortune, ostensibly as a scumbag, ambulance-chasing lawyer, but his formidable wealth and power come from his real clients, the Chandonnes, although it isn't accurate to call them clients. They own him. They shield him. He is kept in high style and alive at their pleasure.

"Check out a murder in 1997," Lucy told McCord. "New Year's Day in Sicily. A journalist named Carlos Guarino. Shot in the head, his body dumped in a drainage ditch. He was working on an investigative story about the Chandonnes-a very risky thing to do, by the way. He had just interviewed a lawyer who represents Jean-Baptiste Chandonne…"

"Right, right. I know about that case. The Wolfman, or whatever they call him."

"The cover of People magazine, Time magazine, whatever. Who doesn't know about the Wтlfman serial killer, I guess," Lucy replied. "Guarino was murdered hours after talking to Caggiano.

"Next, a journalist named Emmanuelle La Fleur. Barbizon, France, February eleventh, 1997. Worked for Le Monde. He also was unwisely doing a story on the Chandonne family."

"Why all this interest in the Chandonnes, beyond their being Jean-Baptiste's unlucky parents?"

"Organized crime. A huge cartel. Never been proven that the father heads it, but he does. There are rumors. Investigative reporters are sometimes blinded by scoops and prizes. La Fleur had drinks with Caggiano hours before the journalists body was found in a garden near the former chateau of the painter Jean Francois Millet-don't bother looking for him. He's been dead more than a hundred years."

She wasn't being sarcastic. She would never assume that Millet was a household name and didn't want to find the artist was suddenly a person of interest.

"La Fleur was shot in the head, and the ten-millimeter bullet was fired from the same gun used to murder Guarino," she explained.

There was more. The information came from a letter written by Jean -Baptiste Chandonne.

"I'll e-mail you his letter immediately," Lucy said, a transmission that would have been unthinkable before Interpol began using the Internet.

But the International Police Agency's computerized communication network has more than enough firewalls, hieroglyphical encryptions and hacker-tracking systems to render any transmission secure. Lucy knows. When Interpol began to use the Internet, the secretary general personally invited her to hack her way in. She couldn't. She never made it past the first firewall and secretly was furious at being foiled, even though the last thing she should have wanted was success.

The secretary general called her, quite amused. He read to her a list of her usernames, passwords and the location of her computer.

"Don't worry, Lucy. I won't send the police," he said.

"Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Hartman, "she replied to the secretary general, who is American.

From New York to London to Berlin and now crossing the border into Poland, police have been alert, she sensed that. But they didn't take her seriously, could have cared less about this young American woman driving her rented Mercedes at a late hour on a cool spring night. To them she clearly doesn't look like a terrorist, and she isn't. But she could be- easily-and it is foolish not to take her seriously, for no reason beyond her nationality, youthfulness, appearance and a smile that can be warm and captivating when she chooses.

She is far too smart to carry a firearm. Her tactical baton will do if she runs into a problem, not from the police, but from some asshole along the way who might have singled her out for robbery or some other type of assault. The baton was easy for her to smuggle into Germany. She used her shopworn routine because it has never failed: overnighted it in a cosmetic bag filled with a jumble of accessories (curling iron, curling brush, blow-dryer, et cetera). The package arrived at a cheap hotel near the airport, addressed to one of Lucy s aliases; she also had a room reserved and paid for in that name. Lucy drove her rental car to the hotel, parked on a side street, picked up the package at check-in, messed up her room a bit and hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. She was back in her car in half an hour.

If a more serious weapon is imperative on a mission, a handgun and extra magazines of ammunition are tucked inside alleged lost baggage sloppily bound in airline tape and dumped at the hotel desk by one of Lucy's associates, dressed for the part. She has many associates. Most of them have never met her and don't know who she is. Only her core team knows her. She has them and they have her. It is enough.

She plucks her international cell phone from between her legs and presses redial.

"I'm on the go," she says when Rudy Musil answers. "An hour-fifteen out if I don't speed too much."

"Don't." A television plays loudly in the background.

Lucy eyes the speedometer as it eases past 120 kilometers per hour. She might be brazen, but never intentionally foolish. She has no intention of getting entangled with police as she heads toward the most prominent but beleaguered port city in Poland. Americans aren't often seen in Szczecin. Why would Americans go there? Certainly not for tourism, unless it is to look at nearby concentration camps. For years now, the Germans have been intercepting foreign vessels en route to the Szczecin port. Daily, the Germans steal business from a city where unemployment and economic depression continue to corrode what once was a jewel of architecture, culture and art.

Very little glory has been restored to Szczecin since World War II, when Hitler set out to bomb Poland off the map and exterminate its people. It is impossible to earn a decent living. Few people know what it is like to live in a nice house, drive a nice car, wear nice clothes, buy books or go on vacation. It is said that no one but members of the Russian Mafia and criminal cartels have money in Poland, and with rare exception, this is true.

Lucy constantly scans the highway and her smile fades, her eyes narrow.

"Taillights ahead. I don't like it," she says into the cell phone. "Someone slowing." She eases up on the accelerator. "Stopping in the middle of the fucking highway. No place to pull over."

"Don't stop. Go around it," Rudy tells her.

"Disabled limousine. Weird to see an American limo in these parts."

Lucy swerves around a white stretch Lincoln. The driver and a passenger are climbing out, and she resists the urge to stop and help.

"Shit," she mutters in frustration.

"Don't even think about it," Rudy warns, well aware of Lucys high-risk personality and compulsion to save the world.

She pushes down the accelerator, and the limousine and its stranded passengers become part of the thick darkness behind her.

"The front desk is empty at this hour. You know where you're going," Rudy makes sure.

There can be no mistakes and no sightings.

Lucy repeatedly glances in the rearview mirror, worrying that the limousine might be gaining on her and turn out to be real trouble. Her stomach tightens. What if those people back there genuinely need help? She left them alone in the dark on E28, where there is no way to pull off the road. They'll probably get run over by a truck.

For several seconds she considers speeding to the next exit and turning around. She does it for lost dogs, for turtles crossing highways and streets. She always brakes for chipmunks and squirrels, and runs outside to check on birds that fly into her windows. But people are another matter. She can't afford to take the chance.

"You can't miss the Radisson," Rudy is saying. "Don't park in the courtyard for buses. They don't appreciate it."

He is joking, it goes without saying that Lucy will not park at the Radisson.