Part 25 (1/2)

”You don't have the same surname, do you?” Judd asked Doug.

”No. My mother loved him but she wouldn't marry him,” Doug told him. ”Now that I'm older, I understand why. You'll see what I mean. Right now, he's exhausted. He's had a long day. Actually, several long days. His sports car was blown up in Paris. The kid he sent to bring it to him was the one who died. Dad didn't bother to correct the coroner about the victim. The whole thing made him pretty mad. Dad liked that car a lot.”

”Christ, he's the sixth a.s.sa.s.sin.” Judd stared at the sleeping man. ”Burleigh Morgan is alive.”

61.

Judd and Eva quickly returned to the cabin, where Bosa was leaning forward, working on his iPad. They dropped into their seats across from him.

”So you and Morgan have been collaborating all along,” Judd said.

Bosa looked up. ”Morgan got in touch with me after the attempt on his life in Paris. We decided it was smart to let him stay dead. He went to Marrakech, rented a Mercedes, and started following Krot. When he called me with what he'd discovered, I relayed it to you. Morgan was necessary, and you were necessary. Morgan wasn't going to hurt you, and he wasn't able to handle the situation by himself. Christ, he's closing in on eighty years old. When he got to the plane, he said you were on your way back and he'd fill me in later. He crashed, and I haven't seen him since. There was no point in telling you about him until I had to.”

”Watch it, sonny boy.” Grasping seat backs, Morgan swayed down the airplane's aisle. In motion, his wire-thin body seemed supple, not the bag of bones it had appeared in repose. His face was drawn and weary, but his eyes glinted. ”I can still b.l.o.o.d.y well beat the c.r.a.p out of you, Alex.” He fell into the seat next to him and peered across the aisle at Judd and Eva. ”Alex is an uncivil bloke. Should've introduced us. Glad to meet you both. You realize you're in love, don't you?”

Judd recoiled, feeling a strange sensation in his stomach.

Eva looked away.

Morgan chuckled and peered up at his son, who had followed him with blankets. ”Dougie, I need some food.”

Doug opened the blanket over Morgan's lap. ”Sure, Pops. Right away.” He handed another blanket to Bosa, who spread it on his legs.

”Don't call me Pops,” Morgan grumbled.

”No problem, Gramps.”

Muttering under his breath, Morgan focused on arranging his blanket.

Doug gestured down at him. ”Now you see why my mother wouldn't marry him.”

”She was an idiot,” Morgan announced. ”But great legs and b.o.o.bs.”

Doug sighed. ”He never learned any manners. But then, he started out as a bullet man in London's old East End. A few years later he shot his boss to death at Ronan Point and knifed his boss's boss in an alley near what's now South Quay Station.”

”I got ambitious,” Morgan explained.

Doug continued: ”He offered to do occasional work for the remaining boys if they'd let him make his own way in the world. He was twenty-five. They said get the f.u.c.king b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l out of here, we'll call you when we need you-and he went independent.”

Morgan nodded. ”I never looked back. And I d.a.m.n well don't have any plans to retire, either. I'm more trouble than a war horse. I'm the b.l.o.o.d.y war.”

With a roll of his eyes, Doug returned to the galley.

Eva glared at Morgan. ”Why did you kill Katia? You're a pro. You could've made a different decision.”

Morgan shot her an appraising look. ”Krot was b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.n dangerous. I wasn't going to get a second chance. So I took the chance I had. It's over. Done with. Can't change it. Walk away from it, Eva, or it'll weaken your ability to do what you have to do in the future.”

Morgan had just admitted accountability, but not responsibility. Eva leaned back in her seat, seeming lost in thought.

Before Morgan could respond, Jack's voice came over the loudspeakers: ”Cairo International ahead, folks.”

Cairo was an unscheduled stop. ”Are we scrubbing our trail?” Judd asked.

”Right,” Bosa confirmed. ”We'll switch planes so our flight plan to Baghdad shows we came from Cairo, not Marrakech.”

”Are you worried that if Seymour is in Baghdad, he's somehow found out about us?” Judd wondered.

”What I worry about is getting lazy,” Bosa said, ”and dead.”

The trijet circled over the metropolis. The Nile River was a black ribbon, glossy, splitting the sparkling city in two. Landing, they rolled to a stop beside a Gulfstream IV business jet. They transferred their things aboard, choosing the same seating arrangements, with Bosa and Morgan on one side of the central aisle, and Judd and Eva on the other. Reading the maintenance reports, Jack and George walked around the craft, tugging, prodding, doing a thorough inspection.

After more than an hour on the ground, they took off again. There were no clouds, and the stars shone brightly. Judd turned away from the window. An idea had been percolating in his mind for some time. He sat forward, clasping his hands between his knees, and studied Bosa and Morgan. ”Considering the lengths you six a.s.sa.s.sins go to maintain operational secrecy, who could possibly have found out enough about your work to compile an encyclopedia of your contract kills? And who besides you knew about the cuneiform tablet? The only answer I can see is one of you must be the e-mail's author. It's one of you who's blackmailing everyone else to play this sordid game.”

Morgan and Bosa exchanged a look.

”You tell them, Alex.” Morgan's bony face was grim.

Bosa gave a brief nod. ”Morgan and I have talked about this, of course. As far as we know, Seymour didn't contact any of us. The Padre, Eichel, and Krot were looking for him. Morgan and I have been looking for him. The blackmailer tried to blow up Morgan, so Morgan isn't the blackmailer. I know I'm not the blackmailer, and Morgan knows it, too, because I could've wiped him many times, including when he came limping back to the plane tonight. From the beginning, he and I figured whoever sent the e-mail starting the game could be one of us. Now that it's down to Morgan, Seymour, and me, it sure looks like it has to be Seymour. There's a logical reason he didn't contact any of us-he didn't need to. We've been reporting in to him every twelve hours, we just didn't realize it was him. Morgan and I think he's been waiting until there's only one of us left. When he gets that report, he'll make up some lie that he-Seymour-is dead, meet the 'winner,' and ambush him. That way Seymour gets the cuneiform tablet, keeps the Catalog, and has the satisfaction of knowing the rest of us are no longer taking up s.p.a.ce.”

”I thought you a.s.sa.s.sins made a lot of money,” Eva said. ”Your plane is worth what, Alex-forty million? Is Seymour so broke he needs the twelve-million-dollar tablet?”

”G.o.d knows why he's made so much trouble,” Bosa said tiredly. ”Seymour's a piece of work. I want to surprise the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but first we've got to find him.” He tapped his iPad. ”I went on Google Earth to check out the building a.s.sociated with the last phone call from Baghdad to Katia. It's clear why the SIL moved-all that's left is a big hole in the ground. Then I found a historical photo, and it showed a five-story apartment building. The SIL could've had a storefront on the first floor, and Grigori Levinchev was renting a place upstairs. Maybe Seymour was, too. So I searched for the building's owner. Of course, there are almost no records of Baghdad real estate online, so I went to my next question-where did the SIL move to? The answer is Saadun Street near Firdos Square and the Palestine Hotel.”

Grabbing a remote control from his tray, he aimed it aft and tapped a b.u.t.ton. The skin of the wall next to the galley door slid down, revealing a 48-inch LED television screen.

Bosa tapped his keyboard. ”I'm linking my iPad to the TV screen. Let's see what we can find out about the SIL political party.”

Google returned more than 100,000 references. There were links about its founding by Tariq Tabrizi and Siraj al-Sabah, its members, its ideology, interviews, a.n.a.lyses, programs for the poor, cultural events, and critiques by other politicians, academics, and foreigners.

When they reached the tenth page, Morgan finished his sandwich and put the plate aside. ”Go back to the beginning,” he told Bosa.

Bosa returned to the opening page.

Morgan leaned forward. ”Can you make those pictures bigger?”

Three thumbnail photos showed people while a fourth displayed a stately white stone building fronted by Corinthian columns.

”Which photo do you want me to enlarge?” Bosa asked.

”I don't care a gopher's snout about the building. I want to see the people.”

Without comment, Bosa put his cursor on the first photo and clicked. Immediately it enlarged. According to the caption, a group of thirty angry SIL MPs were storming out of a parliamentary session after they had lost a vote. In the lead was Tariq Tabrizi, who was running for prime minister now. In the next photo, Tabrizi stood at a podium making a speech. The last photo showed two men shaking hands. One was Tabrizi, who was congratulating the second man, a history professor, for winning the annual SIL leaders.h.i.+p prize for his daily column in The Iraqi Sword. Besides a bronze plaque, he received a prize of 100,000.

Judd whistled. ”That's one h.e.l.l of a lot of money for an organization in a poor country like Iraq.”