I pushed him toward it, and when he tried to sit in the chair, I hooked it with my right foot and shoved it out of the way.
"Stand."
He began to nod twice, then switched the computer on with a slow and deliberate press of his right index finger.
"It will take a minute," he whispered.
I didn't say anything, knowing that he wanted me to. Beads of sweat formed at his hairline; I watched as they met the barrel of the Browning and broke to either side. The computer ground through its boot cycle, its internal fan not quite as loud as the rasp of Junot's frightened breathing.
When the monitor asked for his password he began typing, didn't even hesitate. The program he was after was marked on the desktop, and the interface window opened and I knew enough to know I was looking at what I was after.
Junot cleared his throat. "I… you understand, I cannot do it all from here… some money, yes… but… but in the morning, if we were to go to my bank, you see, it would be…"
So that was going to be his play, that was what he'd been thinking of as we'd crossed the hall. I grinned.
"How much money?"
"Only two, three million dollars, perhaps." He sounded apologetic.
I moved the gun from his neck down along his spine, until it was in the middle of his back.
"You're lying," I said. "I want all of it."
"No, monsieur, please under…"
"Shut up!" I shouted, and he did, and he cringed.
I waited a couple of seconds, letting him wonder if I was going to kill him. I let the silence build.
"How much?" I repeated.
"Maybe four or five…"
I punched him in the left side with my left hand, where I had kicked him, and he groaned and bent, and I pushed the gun harder into his spine.
"Listen to me, you soon-to-be-quadriplegic," I said. "Don't try to tell me that if you get a call at three in the morning from a man you fear more than Satan himself saying he needs twenty million dollars transferred to Bogota in ten minutes you can't do it, because we both know that's a fucking lie. You will transfer his money, all of it, to the account I tell you, or I'll start pulling the trigger and I won't stop until I hear the hammer go dry."
He had begun trembling halfway through my tirade, and when I finished he simply began typing. His voice was shaking like his body when he asked me for the account number, the name of the bank. I gave both to him, the account I'd established earlier that day, and he bent over the keyboard and his fingers fumbled on the keys, but I watched the monitor, and I saw the numbers moving, and I knew I had him.
It took him under three and a half minutes, and when he was done, I had twenty-seven million, three hundred and forty-two thousand, eight hundred and sixteen dollars and seventeen cents more in my account than when I'd arrived. I waited until he had logged out and shut down the computer before letting up on the gun in his back.
When the monitor was charcoal again, Laurent Junot lowered his head and said, "Monsieur…please, I do not want to die like this…"
I pulled him back from the desk, stepping away as I turned him to face me. "You tell him anything about me, that I was here, anything at all, and I'll come back and put so many holes in you, your body will whistle in a breeze."
The idiom seemed to confuse him, or perhaps he was too afraid to understand. The blood from his nose came in slow drops that broke free when he nodded.
"Please," he said again, and it was pitiful, and it made me sick.
For a moment I looked at him, wrecked and terrified, and felt the same burden of grief and power I'd had when I'd seen him asleep in his bed. Then I flipped the Browning in my hand and struck him with the butt. He saw the movement coming, but was too slow to do anything in his defense, and perhaps his hands were coming up to protect his temple.
The butt of the pistol cracked against his skull, the shudder of metal meeting bone, and he toppled to the floor, landing hard enough to rattle the case of watches on the wall.
I needed a moment before I could bring myself to crouch beside him, to check him for a pulse. Like the manservant below, he was still alive, and like the manservant below, I hoped the only thing I'd left Junot with was a rotten headache.
I switched off the lights before leaving, exited the villa through the same door by which I'd entered. When I got outside, my watch said it was three minutes past midnight.
The air was cold and I started shaking as soon as it hit me, and I felt giddy, almost drunk, and I nearly tripped twice as I made my way the short twenty feet to the edge of Lake Geneva. I threw the Browning into the water, followed it with the duct tape, then turned and made my way back to the car, half-jogging, half-walking. It was where I'd left it parked, and I started the engine and pulled out, and my foot felt heavy on the gas. The streets were mostly deserted, and I took them carefully, mindful of the posted limits.
At the rental agency, I left the car in the lot and the keys in the slot, then stripped off my bloodied gloves and dumped them in a trash can on the corner before hailing a cab. The lobby of the Intercontinental was quiet and deserted but for the attendant at the desk, who greeted me in English as Mr.
Murphy, and who had to say it twice before I realized she was talking to me.
"Enjoying Geneva?" she asked.
"Time of my life," I assured her, and went up to my room.
It took me a while to fall asleep, staring at the ceiling, feeling the sorrow gnawing at my bones.
Chapter 7
When the bank opened the next morning I withdrew twenty thousand in American dollars cash, the rest in a draft. Then I closed the account and went back to the Intercontinental, where I cleaned out my room and checked out of the hotel. At the Gare de Cornavin I stopped in the men's room long enough to dump the Beretta in a trash can, then got a second-class ticket on the next train to Austria. I found a pay phone and fed it a lot of coins for the privilege of speaking with Robert Moore.
"Klein," I said when he picked up.
"How's business, then, Mr. Klein?"
"Lucrative."
"Oh, well, I'm delighted to hear that." From his tone, I couldn't tell if he was lying or not.
"I'm looking to do some business in Vienna," I said.
"So you'd mentioned. I've got someone I think would be perfect for you. Her name's Sigrid Koller, and I've already told her all about you."
"Where can I meet her?"
"There's a bar on Stephansplatz called Onyx, opens early, nine in the morning in fact. Perfect for you business types. Ms. Koller will be there tomorrow at a quarter to ten, looking for you."
"What does she look like?"
Moore laughed. "Don't worry about that, mate. Shall I tell her it's on?"
"I'll be there."
"Right. Good luck with your business, Mr. Klein."
"Thanks," I said, but he'd already hung up.
I slept most of the way to Vienna, which was better than being awake, because awake I worried. By now, Junot had certainly contacted Oxford, or at least had tried to; it would take him time to reach his employer, to put the word in the right locations that they needed to talk. But assuming that Junot had regained his courage shortly after his consciousness, that meant that Oxford either knew he'd been robbed, or was soon to find out.
Then what? It wouldn't take long to track the account number, to find out that Dennis Murphy had received the twenty-seven-million-dollar deposit, and that Dennis Murphy had the next morning withdrawn the whole amount. With a little more legwork, some routine inquiries, Oxford would find out where I'd stayed, would get my description. Even assuming that he didn't know I was behind the theft when Junot contacted him, once he had a physical description, there wouldn't be any doubt.