Part 10 (2/2)
”So Eichel swiped a Toyota's plates and put them on his van.”
”Appears so. I've asked the Maryland State Police to watch for it.” Tucker eyed him. ”Where are the limestone pieces?”
Ryder paused the pickup at the intersection with the county highway. ”There's a gallon of water in the bed of the pickup, Tucker. Get it, will you?” When Tucker did not budge, Ryder insisted: ”It's important. Please get the G.o.dd.a.m.n jug.”
”It'll be ice, not water.” With a sigh, Tucker jumped out and returned in a cloud of arctic air. Slamming the door behind him, he dropped hard onto the seat, one gloved hand grasping the neck of the plastic jug. ”It's frozen solid.”
”You asked where the limestone pieces were.”
Tucker grinned. ”You clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d.” He held the translucent bottle up to the street light. ”Can't see anything inside.”
”Good. I pulled off the highway a couple of times to rotate the bottle to make sure the rocks ended up in the middle.” Ryder pressed the accelerator, and they entered traffic. ”Five more miles and we'll be at Chapman's place.”
”We've got a stop to make first. The satellite photos showed his spread was a fortress, but we think we've found a way to get in. I'll explain when we get there.”
”Okay.” As they pa.s.sed farmhouses and corrals, he felt Tucker a.s.sessing him. He glanced over, saw the intensity of his gaze. ”What?”
”You didn't ask what kind of security Chapman has,” Tucker said. ”The details.”
”I figured you'd fill me in if it was important.”
”Not good enough, Judd. It's the sort of question you always ask, because the information is critical. You know already. At some point you must've studied his protection.” He did not pause for Ryder to deny it. ”The only reason you'd do that is because you were intending to liquidate him. But Chapman's still breathing. What happened?” His brown eyes peered somberly through his tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses at Ryder.
Suddenly the hot air blasting into the pickup was stifling. Ryder turned it down. ”I surveilled Chapman for weeks, but he had a security detail that stuck to him like epoxy. Finally one night he went to a s.e.x club, and he was in there so long I could see his guards were losing their edge. Finally at three A.M. he came out, and for a few seconds I had a clear shot.” But just then, in his mind, he had seen his mother crying. At first he had thought it was because she missed his father, and then he had realized she was crying for him, for the killer he had become. ”I tried my d.a.m.nedest to pull the trigger.” He shook his head. ”I couldn't make myself do it. So here I am, caught up in something I never expected or wanted, and Martin Chapman is probably deep into it, too.” Focusing on the traffic, Ryder changed the subject. ”Why are you here? I expected you to send someone lower down the food chain to help me.”
”The first reason is Bridgeman. If he can get me fired, every day will be Christmas for him. But he'll have to find some other way to do it when you and I uncover what in h.e.l.l is really going on with these d.a.m.n a.s.sa.s.sins.” He took out his handheld. ”I brought their dossiers, or at least as much as Gloria could collect in the time I gave her. I've already told you some of the background on the Padre and the Eichel brothers, so let's talk about the Carnivore.”
”When Eva and I were with him in Turkey, he told us he still took jobs but only occasionally. He sounded semiretired.”
”Yeah, that's my take, too. But maybe he's tired of it all.”
”He didn't act tired when we were working together.” Ryder remembered how the a.s.sa.s.sin had almost killed him and Eva.
Tucker changed the subject. ”Langley must've had extensive records about him at some point, because Gloria found references to them. She tried to track them down but ran out of time. I never had any personal contact with him in the old Cold War days, but I remember hearing he was useful on occasion. Translated, that means we hired him for jobs we couldn't or wouldn't touch. By the nineties I wasn't hearing his name much.” He peered at the handheld's screen. ”This is from his dossier....
”'He may have at least one U.S. parent, since reports from informants indicate he has an American accent when speaking English. He also is fluent in at least four other languages, most with no accent-German, French, Italian, and Spanish.'”
”He speaks Arabic, too,” Ryder said.
”Makes sense. I think he was involved in some jihadist face-offs in the eighties, so he'd know Arabic if for no other reason than to protect himself.” Tucker continued reading: ”'His real name is allegedly Alex Bosa. Bosa could be Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, or from any Central or South American nation, such as Cuba. It is believed, however, to be Italian.'”
”Bosa was one of the names he was using back when he was with Eva and me,” Ryder recalled. ”Do you have photos of him?”
Despite their past contact with the Carnivore, none of them had seen the a.s.sa.s.sin's real face because of his disguises.
”Not a single photo,” Tucker said. ”He's been called the a.s.sa.s.sin Without a Face because there aren't any visuals of him. It's a h.e.l.l of a handicap to anyone who wants to find him.”
”What about his targets?”
Tucker scrolled through the doc.u.ment on his handheld. ”Here's one.
”'In 1981, Minister of Finance Jacques-Claude Metarsque died when he drove his car off a cliff in Normandy. His blood alcohol level was so high that the coroner ascribed the event to an alcoholic blackout. However, our Belgium a.s.set ”Salsa” reports it was an a.s.sa.s.sination.
”'An insurance executive wanted to stop Metarsque's insurance reform, which was expected to cost the executive's company close to 100 million francs. Metarsque wouldn't drop the proposal. So the executive took matters into his own hands and secretly hired the Carnivore.'”
Tucker looked up. ”As you can see, an 'accident,' thanks to the Carnivore. And it was effective for the employer-the insurance reform died, and no one has been able to resurrect it.”
Ryder nodded. ”Did I ever give you his rules?”
”What do you mean, 'rules'?”
”He told Eva and me the reason he'd survived so long while most of his colleagues had been killed off was self-discipline. He had terms, and every prospective employer had to agree to them or he wouldn't take the job no matter how much money they threw at him.”
”You know the rules?”
”Yes, he gave them to us, but of course it had to be his way. He talked to us as if we were trying to hire him: 'When it's time to make the hit, I work alone. That means you must be gone, and your people must be gone. You must never reveal our a.s.sociation. You must never try to find out what I look like or who I am. If you make any attempts, I will come after you. I'll do you the favor of making it a clean kill out of respect for our business relations.h.i.+p and the money you will have paid me. After this, you will never try to meet me again. When the job is finished, I'll be in touch to let you know how I want to receive the last payment. If you don't pay me, I will come after you for that, too. I do wet work only on people who shouldn't be breathing anyway. I'm the one who makes that decision-not you. Do you agree?'” Ryder gave a cold laugh and shook his head, remembering.
”Imagine some car executive or socialite or politician listening to that,” Tucker said. ”They'd be sitting in a pool of their own sweat by the time he finished. The rest of the a.s.sa.s.sins are survivors, too, which tells you they're just as tough. And hardened. Okay, let's move on.” He scrolled down the screen of his handheld. ”Here's one about Eli Eichel.
”'In 1987, British citizen Madonna Millman was killed by a sniper shot between her eyes as she walked down a Mayfair street. She had been a witness against a Yamaguchi-gumi crime boss in Kobe, j.a.pan, and managed to escape to London after testifying.
”'According to an impeccable source, the gang tracked her to London but wanted to lessen the chance any of the Yakuza family would be charged with her murder. They also wanted to send a warning to anyone considering breaking their code of silence.
”'They hired Eli Eichel to do the wet work....'”
Ryder let out a long stream of air. The Yamaguchi-gumi family was one of the largest crime organizations in the world, operating not only in j.a.pan but across Asia and into the United States.
”Her murder was all over the newspapers,” he recalled. ”She was pregnant. The baby didn't survive.”
”And no one was ever arrested.” Tucker set his handheld on his knee and peered grimly out at the night. ”There were more a.s.sa.s.sinations and terrorist acts in the 1980s than at any other time in history when there wasn't a major hot war. Everyone was targeted-children and grandmothers, pa.s.sengers on airliners and cruise s.h.i.+ps. And this was done by political, religious, and independent terrorists and a.s.sa.s.sins of all kinds. They were erasing the line between guilt and innocence and destroying ethical and moral norms. Does that sound like what we have today? Of course it does. There aren't any more boundaries. Anyone and everyone is vulnerable.”
They were silent.
Judd finally asked, ”Did you find any clue in your research about what connects the a.s.sa.s.sins with the cuneiform pieces?”
”I wish. I studied the dossiers. I checked for mutual jobs, for being employed by the same person if not simultaneously then at different times, for being in the same place at the same time, for shared suppliers, shared interests, shared politics, shared girlfriends, anything. One of our problems is that independent a.s.sa.s.sins are particularly covert. With no large organization to protect them, they have to be particularly secretive. Their employers demand anonymity. So the answer is no, I couldn't find anything that linked them. And I also couldn't find any links to limestone pieces, cuneiform writing, or ancient tablets.”
Disappointed, Ryder said, ”Have you come to any conclusions?”
”Yes. There are too many top a.s.sa.s.sins involved for this to be just about pieces of a cuneiform tablet. Something big is going on. I can feel it, smell it.”
”Agreed. But what in h.e.l.l is it?”
Tucker nodded. ”Exactly.”
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