“That would be embarrassing,” Bruno agreed. “Especially since I don’t know a blasted thing.”
Bruno thought he detected a glare in Kurt’s eyes before he went back to climb into the rent-a-car. Bruno shrugged and started the van.
Kurt got the Cherokee started. He hated surprises, and the day had been nothing but surprises. With his Special Ops Army training, he prided himself on careful planning, as was necessary for any military mission. Accordingly, he had been observing the two doctors for more than a week, and he thought he understood their mind-set and situation. Then the woman doctor had broken into the egg room; that had been totally unexpected and had caught him unprepared. Even worse was what had happened tonight.
As soon as they got through town and on open road, Kurt pulled out his cell phone and pressed the preprogrammed number for Paul Saunders. Although Spencer Wingate was the titular head of the clinic, Kurt preferred dealing with Paul. It had been Paul who had hired him back in Massachusetts. Besides, Paul, like Kurt, was always at the clinic, which was in sharp contrast to Spencer, who was always out looking for loose women.
As per usual, Paul answered after only a few rings.
“I’m on my cell,” Kurt warned before saying anything else.
“Oh?” Paul questioned. “Don’t tell me there is another problem.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Is it related to our guests?”
“Very much so.”
“Does it have anything to do with what happened today?”
“It’s worse.”
“I don’t like the sound of this. Can you give me some idea what it is about?”
“I think it is better that we meet.”
“When and where?”
“In three quarters of an hour in my office. Let’s say twenty-three hundred hours.” By force of habit, Kurt still used military time.
“Should we involve Spencer?”
“That’s your call.”
“See you then.”
Kurt ended the call and slipped the phone into its holder on his belt. He glanced into the rearview mirror. Bruno was following at a comfortable distance. Events seemed to be back under control.
The airport was all but deserted, save for the cleaning crews. More specifically, the rent-a-car concessions were all closed. Kurt nosed the Cherokee into one of the appropriate rent-a-car slips. He locked the car and took the keys and the papers over to the after-hours deposit box. A moment later, he climbed back into Bruno’s van. Bruno had kept the engine idling.
“Now what?” Bruno asked.
“You are going to drive me back to the Ocean Club to get my van. Then we are both going to drive out to Lyford Cay Marina. You’ll be taking a moonlight cruise on the company yacht.”
“Aha! I’m starting to get the picture. My guess is that we’ll soon be in the market for a new anchor. Am I right?”
“Just drive,” Kurt said.
True to his word, Kurt pushed open the door to his office almost to the second of his eleven o’clock commitment. Both Spencer and Paul were already there, accustomed to his signature punctuality. Kurt brought his rucksack over to the desk and dropped it. It made a resounding thud against the desk’s metal surface.
Spencer and Paul were sitting in the two chairs facing Kurt’s utilitarian desk. Their eyes had followed Kurt from the moment the security chief had walked through the door. They were waiting for him to say something, but Kurt took his time. He took off his black silk jacket and draped it over the chair. Then he pulled out his gun from its holster in the small of his back and carefully placed it on the desk.
With obvious exasperation, Spencer exhaled noisily and rolled his eyes. “Mr. Hermann, I am forced to remind you that you work for us and not vice versa. What the hell is going on? And it better be good, for having dragged us in here in the middle of the night. I happened to have been pleasurably occupied.”
Kurt peeled off his form-fitting gloves and put them next to his automatic. Only then did he sit down. He reached out and lifted his computer monitor and put it to the side to have an uninterrupted view of his visitors.
“I was forced in the line of duty to kill someone tonight.”
Both Spencer and Paul’s mouths slowly dropped open. They stared in consternation at their security supervisor, who calmly stared back at them. For a beat, no one moved and no one spoke. It was Paul who first found his voice. He spoke hesitantly, as if afraid to hear the answer: “Could you tell us who it was you killed?”
Kurt used one hand to open the buckle on his rucksack and the other to pull out a billfold. He pushed it across the desk at his bosses and then sat back. “His name is Gaetano Baresse.”
Paul reached out and picked up the wallet. Before he could open it, Spencer slammed his palm down on the surface of the metal desk hard enough to make it sound like a kettledrum. Paul jumped and dropped the wallet. Kurt didn’t visibly flinch, although all his honed muscles tensed.
After pounding the desk, Spencer leaped to his feet and began to pace with both hands clasped on top of his head. “I don’t believe this,” he wailed. “Before we know it, it will be Massachusetts all over again, with the Bahamian authorities instead of U.S. marshals knocking at our gate!”
“I don’t think so,” Kurt said simply.
“Oh, yeah?” Spencer questioned sarcastically. He stopped pacing. “How can you be so sure?”
“There’s no body,” Kurt said.
“How can that be?” Paul asked, as he bent over to retrieve the wallet.
“As we speak, Bruno is dumping the body and its effects into the deep. I returned the man’s rent-a-car to the airport as if he left the island. The man is just going to disappear. Period! End of story.”
“That sounds encouraging,” Paul commented, as he opened the wallet and pulled out Gaetano’s driver’s license, which he examined.
“Encouraging, my ass!” Spencer shouted. “You promised me this…” Spencer pointed at Kurt while searching for the right descriptive word, “… this half-assed Green Beret wouldn’t kill anybody, and here we are, barely with our doors open, and he’s already iced somebody. This is a disaster in the making. We can’t afford to move the clinic again.”
“Spencer!” Paul said sharply. “Sit down!”
“I’ll sit down when I feel like sitting down! I’m the head of this freaking clinic.”
“Suit yourself,” Paul said, gazing up at Spencer, “but let’s hear the details before we fly off the handle and conjure up doomsday scenarios.” Paul looked at Kurt. “You do owe us an explanation. Why was killing this Gaetano Baresse from Somerville, Massachusetts, in the line of duty?” Paul put both the wallet and the driver’s license on the desk.
“I told you I got the bug in Dr. D’Agostino’s phone. To monitor it, I had to stay close. After dinner, they took a walk in the Ocean Club’s garden. As I followed at a distance, I realized this Gaetano Baresse was also following them, but much closer. So I closed in on them. It soon became apparent that Gaetano Baresse was a professional hit man, and he was about to do in the doctors. I had to make an instantaneous decision. I thought you would want the doctors alive.”
Paul glanced back up at Spencer with arched eyebrows to question Spencer’s reaction to what he had just heard. Spencer leaned over and picked up the driver’s license. He stared at the photo for a second before flipping it back onto the desk. He yanked his chair back to where he was standing and sat down, slightly apart from the others.
“How are you so sure this Baresse guy was a professional hit man?” Spencer asked. His voice had lost most of its bluster.
Using his left hand, Kurt again opened his rucksack. Reaching in with his right, he pulled out Gaetano’s gun. He pushed it across the desk as he had done with the wallet. “This is no Saturday night special, particularly not with a built-in laser and a suppressor.”
Paul picked up the weapon gingerly, glanced at it, and extended it back toward Spencer. Spencer motioned that he didn’t care to touch it. Paul put it back on Kurt’s desk.