“So if poison were planted against someone, the order would have come straight from the top,” she said, not as a question but as a statement. “And whoever was doing it would be linked to Putin.”
“That’s how it works,” he said. “Hey?”
“Hey,” she said softly.
The aroma of a roasted chicken filled the downstairs. Obviously, Marie-Louise earned her keep in more ways than one.
“Thank you, Yuri,” she said. “You’ve been more than helpful. That really is all.”
“Then I have one question for you,” he said.
“What’s that?”
He paused. Fatigue was all over him. “What is your favorite color?” he asked.
“My favorite color?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
A moment. Then, “Blue,” she said. “Why?”
“I’m like you,” he said. “There are things I have always wanted to ask.”
FORTY-NINE
Alex awoke early the next morning to the vibration of her cell phone. She answered it while still in bed and found herself talking to “Fitzgerald,” who was still in Egypt. He gave her a moment while she sought to clear the early morning mist from her brain.
Then, “How did your visit go?” he asked.
“I got what I needed,” she said.
“I hope you didn’t bother to unpack,” he said.
“I’m traveling today,” she said.
“You’re not the only one, we think,” he said.
“Uh-oh,” she said, sitting up in bed. “Do tell.”
She looked at her watch. It was 7:36 a.m. in Geneva, an hour later in Cairo. Across her bedroom her overnight bag hadn’t been touched, and beyond the window was another cold, gray Swiss morning.
“One of the license plates we discussed the other day,” Fitzgerald said. “The car is apparently out of the shop. It’s moving again.”
By license plates, he meant passport numbers. One of the five. And by car, he meant Michael Cerny.
“I believe it’s one of those old Zil limousines belonging to a Mr. Constantine,” he said. “That would be one stop before delivery here.”
The Zil meant that the voyager, Cerny, was flying on a Russian passport. Constantine was code for Constantinople, meaning he was most likely on Aeroflot, stopping in Istanbul before continuing on to Cairo.
“Do you happen to know the color of the vehicle?” she asked.
“Blue and white,” he said.
Blue and white meant El Al.
“Was he unable to find a buyer on his trip?” Alex asked.
“It appears unlikely. Not sure here that he had any actual buyers for a blue and white vehicle,” Bissinger said. “It’s like the art market in New York. Russian buyers all the way.”
“Understood,” she said.
All of that meant that Cerny had most likely taken the bait from Boris and Colonel Amjad. The timing suggested it. The Israelis were out of the picture and probably had never been in it. It had been a feint to entice his Russian buyers, or so it looked.
“Moving as part of a larger shipment?” she asked.
“It would appear so,” he said. “We checked all the manifests. No other items connecting, but there’s always the chance of acquiring more merchandise along the way. Constantine is like that.”
“Constantine is, indeed,” she agreed.
She had the context. Cerny was on an Aeroflot flight out of Tel Aviv to Istanbul. Fitzgerald explained further that the old car would then be shipped to Cairo via Kuwaiti Air.
“Very good,” Alex said
“I’ll see if some of our inspectors can give it a look in transit,” Fitzgerald said. “There’s always the chance that more merchandise will be gathered. But I know you’ll wish to be here for delivery.”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“Do you think you can make it?” he asked.
“If I take an earlier train,” she said. “Yes.”
Train, of course, meant plane. And merchandise suggested that Cerny could pick up a bodyguard or two as he connected in Istanbul. The passenger manifests would be closely watched for any indication of that.
“That would be good,” Bissinger said. “You are, after all, the only one among us who can tell the real item from a counterfeit. So we’re relying on you to be here.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said.
“You need to identify the item,” Fitzgerald concluded. “Then we’ll purchase it.”
“Got it,” she said. And from there, Alex was in motion. She rose from bed, washed quickly, dressed, and was downstairs.
Nick was sitting in the living room in jeans, a T-shirt, and a powerhouse of a Russian pistol nestled into a shoulder holster. He was hooked up to some music on an MP3. He grinned slightly when he saw her.
“Is Mr. Federov awake yet?” she asked.
“He had a difficult night,” Nick said sullenly, removing the ear buds from his ears. “He won’t be up for a few hours.”
“Medication?” she asked.
Nick grunted. He stood.
“Could you get me a taxi?” Alex asked.
“I’m told to keep watch on you,” Nick said.
For a moment, Alex interpreted that to suggest that she wouldn’t be allowed to leave. Then Nick refined what he meant. “If you need airport, I drive,” he said.
“That would be excellent,” she said. “Thank you.”
She did not see Federov that morning. She was out the door in another fifteen minutes, at the airport within sixty. She exchanged her ticket for the next flight back to Cairo.
Two hours after that, her flight broke through the heavy cloud cover of central Europe, hit the sunshine, and began a smooth flight back to Egypt.
FIFTY
The man traveling under the Russian passport of Benjamin Schulman put his paperback novel across his knee as his El Al flight descended into Istanbul. He could have caught a direct flight to Cairo, but precaution ruled against it. Anyone moving back and forth on El Al between the Egyptian capital and the Israeli capital drew extra scrutiny, and extra scrutiny he did not need.
He still sensed something strange about Boris’s email and Colonel Amjad’s mildly garbled phone call. But he also knew that he had to take some chances. Some days, everything was a chance. He had placed a price tag of two million dollars on the merchandise he was currently peddling, and for two million bucks and a cozy retirement in Paraguay or Argentina, well, why not? Besides, for anyone to know who he really was or what he was about would mean that his passport numbers were blown. And how could that be?