Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Gabriel Allon #22) (99)

“I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

“I’m sure you would,” replied Gabriel absently. Then he checked the feed from Phillip Somerset’s phone. The device had not moved in more than three hours. Fourteen missed calls, eight new voice mails, thirty-seven unread text messages.

No images.

No audio.

No Phillip.



When it was over, there was near-universal agreement that it was all Christopher’s fault. He rang Sarah from London as she was entering her room and kept her on the phone while she stripped off her wrinkled clothing and changed into something more appropriate. Putting her hair and makeup in order proved more of a challenge than she had imagined it would, placing her at the elevators two minutes behind schedule. Arriving, she breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed her new friend from Spain was running late as well.

But when three additional minutes elapsed with no sign of Magdalena, Sarah grew anxious. Her fear of impending disaster worsened when a press of the call button produced a glowing light but no carriage. Frantic, she snatched up the receiver of the house phone, explained her plight to the hotel operator, and was assured she would momentarily be lobby bound.

At last a carriage appeared. It stopped on a half-dozen floors, collecting a menagerie of annoyed hotel guests, before finally reaching the lobby. Sarah made straight for the bar, but Magdalena was nowhere to be found. She asked a waiter whether he had seen a tall, black-haired woman, approximately forty years old, quite beautiful. Unfortunately, said the waiter, he had not.

Sarah received a similar answer from the girl at Reception. And from the dark-suited security man standing nearby. And from the porters and valets at both of the hotel’s entrances.

Finally she dialed Gabriel’s number. “Please tell me that Magdalena is still upstairs with you.”

“She left fifteen minutes ago.”

Sarah’s shouted obscenity reverberated through the Pierre’s grand lobby. She had turned her back on Magdalena. And now she was gone.





65

Midtown




Magdalena had recognized the man who greeted her elevator. She saw him each time she stayed at the Pierre. He was the hotel’s head of security. A big guy with an Irish face and an outer boroughs accent. In her previous life, Magdalena would have avoided a man like him. It was obvious the guy was a cop. Retired, sure. But a cop all the same.

On that evening, however, the former police officer whose name Magdalena did not know had presented himself as her guardian. Quietly, his voice calm and assured, he had asked Magdalena whether she was expecting any visitors. And when she replied that she wasn’t, he informed her that he had noticed two men loitering outside her suite earlier that afternoon. The same two men, he explained, were now drinking club soda in the lobby bar. It was his considered opinion that both were federal law enforcement agents.

“FBI?”

“Probably. And I think there might be a couple more outside.”

“Can you get me out of here?”

“That depends on what you’ve done.”

“I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.”

“I’ve done that once or twice myself.” He looked her up and down. “Do you need anything from your suite?”

“I can’t go back.”

“Why not?”

“Because the man I trusted is there now.”

With that, he took her by the arm and led her through a doorway. It opened onto a hallway lined with small offices, which in turn gave onto the hotel’s loading bay. A black Escalade idled curbside on East Sixty-First Street.

“He’s waiting for another guest. It’s yours if you want it.”

“I don’t have any way to pay him.”

“I know the driver. I’ll take care of it.”

The big former cop with an Irish face escorted Magdalena across the sidewalk and opened the rear driver’s-side door. Seated in the back was a gray man in a gray suit. The former cop forced Magdalena inside and slammed the door. The Escalade lurched forward and made a left turn onto Fifth Avenue.

The gray man in the gray suit watched Magdalena without expression as she clawed at the door latch. Finally she capitulated and turned to face him. “Who are you?”

“I’m the man who makes Phillip’s problems go away,” he answered. “And you, Ms. Navarro, are a problem.”



The driver had a neck like a fire hydrant and stubble-length hair. At the corner of East Fifty-Ninth Street and Park Avenue, Magdalena politely asked him to unlock her door. Receiving no response, she appealed to the gray man in the gray suit, who told her to shut her mouth. Furious, she tried to gouge his eyes from their sockets. Her attack ended when he seized her right wrist and twisted it to the breaking point.

“Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

He increased the pain. “Are you sure?”

“I promise.”

He reduced the pressure, but only slightly. “Why are you in New York?”

“I was arrested.”

“Where?”

“Italy.”

“How is Allon involved?”

“He was working with the Italian police.”

“I assume you made a deal?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”