He waited for a couple of seconds, then shoved the door the rest of the way open.
There was no sound or movement from inside the suite, but alarms were jangling all through McGarvey’s nerves.
Something. He was missing something.
Cloves. Katy said the one odd thing she clearly remembered about Salman was the odor of the Indian clove cigarettes he smoked. It had been an offhand comment two days before, and now McGarvey thought he was smelling something from within the suite.
Something out of place. Something that hadn’t been there earlier.
Liese gave him a questioning look.
He motioned to her that he was going in and she was to back him up, when he caught a movement outside the French doors. Out on the balcony. A momentary shadow blocking the light from the Place.
The bastard had come after all. He meant to wait in ambush outside, make the kill after McGarvey was in bed or had his back turned to the windows, and then leave before the body was found. After what had happened on the cruise ship and then this morning aboard his yacht, he had lost his stomach for a stand-up fight.
His only mistake was not keeping out of sight. He’d seen the corridor door opened, and when no one came through the door he apparently got spooked.
Liese had her pistol up at the ready, waiting for him to charge into the room.
“He’s out on the balcony,” McGarvey told her in a whisper.
“Did you see him?”
“I saw something. I want you to stay out here in the corridor. If anyone comes through the window, shoot him. But don’t take any chances.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going outside so I can get behind him. I don’t think he’ll want to risk a shootout in plain sight of half of Monte Carlo. I’m betting he’ll try to get past you.”
Liese nodded, a grim, expectant look in her eyes.
“Watch yourself,” McGarvey warned her. “He won’t give you a second chance.”
She nodded again, and McGarvey turned on his heel, sprinted down the corridor to the stairwell door, and took the stairs two at a time to the ground. He had no intention of giving Khalil the chance to escape. The public be damned for the moment. The instant he had a clear ID on the man and a good sight line, he would take his shot.
He safetied his pistol and stuffed it in the waistband of his trousers before he burst out of the stairwell and raced across the busy lobby. Several heads turned his way, and the concierge got to her feet. She started to call out something to him, but he was out the door before she got it out.
Traffic was definitely beginning to pick up. In addition to several taxis and a limousine parked in front of the hotel, a Principality Police cruiser had just pulled up, and four uniformed cops were getting out.
McGarvey slowed his pace to a walk until he was away from the bright lights beneath the entryway. Making sure that he hadn’t been noticed yet, he sprinted the rest of the way down the street until he was just below the balcony outside his room.
The fronds of the palm tree blocked much of his view, but after a moment he spotted a figure crouched in the relative darkness just to the left of the French doors.
McGarvey checked over his shoulder to make sure the cops hadn’t spotted him. But they had gone into the hotel, and for the moment he hadn’t attracted any notice.
He pulled out his pistol, thumbed the safety catch to the off position, and moved closer.
The man on the balcony was motionless. He back was turned to the street. But even with the bad angle and uncertain light, McGarvey began to get the feeling that the man was not Khalil. He was too slightly built. Khalil was much larger.
McGarvey raised his pistol. “You,” he shouted up.
The figure jerked as if he had been startled, and he turned around. All at once, McGarvey could see the cameras hanging by straps around his neck. He was the photographer who’d accosted them in front of the hotel just a few minutes earlier.
It struck him suddenly that the odd smell upstairs was cloves after all. Khalil was in the suite, and the advantage was his because Liese thought he was outside on the balcony.
“Don’t move,” McGarvey shouted to the cameraman, but it was too late.
The man straightened up and stepped directly in front of the French doors. Almost immediately he was thrown forward, as if punched from behind. His chest erupted in a spray of blood, and he was pitched over the rail, shot from behind. But there’d not been the sound of a gunshot. Whoever had fired was using a silencer. It wasn’t Liese.
McGarvey headed back up the street in a dead run even before the cameraman’s body had reached the ground.
Apparently no one in the Place had seen or heard a thing. No one stopped or looked over to where the cameraman had fallen from the second-floor balcony.
McGarvey had made a bad decision leaving Liese alone outside the suite. The smart move would have been to call the police, and make sure that Khalil did not get out of there before the cops came.
But it had become personal aboard the cruise liner. Khalil had murdered innocent people, including the mother and her infant child. And he had laid his hands on Katy.
McGarvey reached the front entrance as two police cruisers, their blue lights flashing, sirens blaring, screeched to a halt.
They were in a big hurry, and McGarvey was getting the feeling that he’d been set up to take a fall. It was probably Gertner’s friends here in Monaco reacting to Liese’s chasing after him.
He pulled up short, stuffed the pistol back into his waistband, and as calmly as possible walked into the hotel lobby. He couldn’t afford to be stopped now with Liese upstairs on her own. In no way was she a match for Khalil. She might hesitate to take the shot, but Khalil wouldn’t.
The lobby was a scene of confusion. The cops who’d shown up as McGarvey had left the hotel were talking with the concierge and a large man dressed in a dark suit, probably hotel security.
McGarvey tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, angling across to the stairway before someone looked over and recognized him.
There was a sudden commotion at the entry behind him.
“Arrêtez!” a man shouted.
McGarvey took two more steps as the cops standing with the concierge and security man turned his way.
“Arrêtez” one of the cops behind him shouted even more urgently.
McGarvey turned and raised his hands in plain sight. Several of the cops had drawn their pistols. Some of the hotel guests and staff, realizing that something dangerous was happening, were scrambling for cover. The situation was on the verge of exploding into an uncontrolled shootout in which innocent people would get hurt.
“There’s a Swiss Federal cop and a killer on the second floor.” McGarvey said, loudly, in French, so that there would be absolutely no misunderstanding.
At that moment everyone heard two gunshots from somewhere upstairs.
FORTY-EIGHT
Khalil slumped in a kneeling position beside the chair he had pushed aside, his head lolling on the chair seat, his eyes open and fixed on the corridor door, as if he were dead.
The situation was rapidly becoming critical for him, and he seethed with a barely controlled rage. He’d heard the police sirens outside, and if they had heard the two unsilenced shots they would be on their way now. It’s why he had momentarily stepped into view to draw fire and then had pretended to be wounded. He wanted to lure the shooter in the corridor to show herself.
The woman whom McGarvey had come up with was in the corridor. She had to figure that her two shots had hit their mark. From her position she would be able to see him, unmoving.