End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(10)
Garrett rolled his head back onto his chair, staring at the ceiling and thinking. He didn’t like the choice of paying off a man who had already been a weasel in Syria, skimming off their money to enrich himself. But he had done what he’d said he’d do, protecting the Knights.
He said, “Okay. Pay him what he wants. But this is bullshit. If there’s one place Keta’ib Hezbollah can operate, it’s Bahrain. I mean, they can kill an old chief of Mossad in Switzerland, a Shin Bet head in Paris, but they need more money in Bahrain, a Shia state?”
“It’s because of the level of the target and the Sunni security apparatus. They say it makes it harder to operate than in a European country. And they might be right.”
Garrett rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. Use the cutout account, but this is the last time. We aren’t made of money, and we aren’t in Syria anymore. I can’t steal the money here in Rome like we did there, but I agree. We need that hit.”
Leonardo nodded and Garrett changed the subject. “What’s the status on Raphael? Do we have contact?”
Leonardo raised a cell phone and said, “He’s on Zello. We’ll hear as soon as he has the target.”
Zello was an application that basically turned the cell phone into a multiplex walkie-talkie, with everyone who was tuned to the channel able to listen instead of the usual point-to-point communications of a cell phone.
No sooner did he say that than the phone chirped, “Donnie, Donnie, this is Raph. Target just passed my location.”
Donatello came back, the sound crystal clear, “Roger that. We’re set. What’s the traffic status?”
“You’re clear. He’s a singleton. Light traffic, and they’re running slow.”
In the office, Leonardo smiled and said, “Told you.”
At the same time Garrett was hearing the radio traffic, the small trailer next to the park in the EUR neighborhood was being surrounded with crime scene tape, the body having been found, a small crowd forming outside.
Inspector Lia Vairo parked her car next to the perimeter and exited. She pushed past the tape outside the trailer, saying to the carabinieri at the entrance checkpoint, “Another one?”
“Looks that way.”
She entered the crime scene, thinking she was solving a murder. She had no idea of the threat the death represented.
Most of the people living in the neighborhood didn’t care about the murders happening. In fact, if asked, almost all would say they brought it upon themselves by littering the neighborhood with their trade. Just one more whore killed doing her job. But Lia did care. She was someone who didn’t look at the life of the victim, only the death.
And because of it, Lia held the fate of many more in her hands.
Chapter 7
I pulled into the parking garage on Wentworth Street, right next to the Restoration Hotel in the historic district of Charleston, saying, “I still can’t believe you guys got a room here.” I parked, turned around, and said, “You trying to poke me in the eye?”
Aaron laughed and said, “No, when we did that operation for you here Shoshana really liked it. And truthfully, it was the only hotel I knew about on the peninsula.”
A couple of years ago we’d tracked some Russian assassins to this hotel after they’d killed my boss and former commander of the Taskforce, Colonel Kurt Hale. Since they were gunning for me and hit him by mistake, and thus knew me on sight, I’d asked Shoshana and Aaron for a little bit of help and together we’d returned the favor.
I nodded and said, “You could have asked us for some recommendations. This place isn’t cheap, but it is nice. See you guys tomorrow for breakfast?”
Shoshana floated her weird glow over me, reading me, and it was disconcerting, not the least because I knew she only did that when she was trying to determine my mindset. She was one complicated woman—which is a polite way of saying a little bit off—but she had this ability to see inside a person’s soul. I don’t know how she did it, but I’d become a believer—although I’d never tell her that.
One thing was for sure; she didn’t do it without reason. Something was coming.
She said, “Pike, come up to the room for a nightcap.”
I looked at my watch and said, “It’s after one a.m. Didn’t you get enough of me tonight?”
After they’d appeared at Ashley Hall, and after the reunion kisses and handshakes, we’d restarted the rehearsal, getting everything right in Jennifer’s mind, and then had broken up to allow Shoshana and Aaron to check into their hotel and everyone else to do whatever sightseeing they had planned—which is why they were here a week early for a wedding.
I didn’t want to impose on their time, so we’d agreed to meet at my Grolier Recovery Services office on Shem Creek at seven p.m., just across the Ravenel Bridge from Charleston.
The company, of course, was a front for the Taskforce. Jennifer and I were civilian partners, ostensibly traveling the world assisting archeological projects by cutting through government red tape and security on-site, but in truth, the business allowed us to penetrate just about anywhere, because there were few spots on earth that didn’t have some sort of archeological work going on. Until COVID-19, that is. Then it all shut down.
My entire team had shown up for the rehearsal, but I couldn’t possibly put them all up in my small row house. When school had let out in May, Amena’s boarding room privileges had ended, so I only had one spare bedroom. I’d offered it to my best man, Knuckles—who was also the second in command of my team—and he’d declined, which I thought was strange. Why pay for a hotel when you can rack out for free? Lord knows he’d spent enough time sleeping on my couch in the past. Instead, I’d given it to Veep and Kylie.