Chapter 30
At twenty past eight that evening, Ned Mahoney used a key card we’d gotten from the head of security at the Mandarin Oriental hotel to unlock elevator access to the suites-only fourteenth floor.
The doors shut. My mind was still processing what the security chief had told us.
Kasimov and his entourage of four were occupying the Jefferson Suite: three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a stunning view of the Jefferson Memorial. The Russian businessman had evidently been sick for days with an intestinal bug. A concierge doctor had been making twice-daily calls to his suite, and he was up there now.
Ned, Bree, and I got off on the fourteenth floor. The carpet was lush, like walking on spongy wool, and the air was scented from flowers in a vase on a table opposite the elevator.
“I kind of like this,” Mahoney said. “The ambience.”
“Who wouldn’t?” I said.
Bree laughed and shook her head.
We found the door to the Jefferson Suite and saw that the light near the bell was red, indicating the inhabitants did not wish to be disturbed. Mahoney rang it anyway.
When there was no answer, he rang it again, and then a third time, until a man barked in a thick accent, “Go away.”
“FBI. Open up please,” Mahoney said, showing his credentials through the peephole.
The locks were thrown open and the door moved to reveal a shaved-headed man built like an Olympic weight lifter wearing a pair of bulging gray slacks and a blue dress shirt.
“What do want?” he asked in the same thick accent.
“Who are you, sir?” Mahoney said.
“Boris,” he said.
“We’d like to speak with Mr. Kasimov, Boris.”
“Impossible. He has medical issues. Contagious.”
“We’ll take the chance.”
“No,” Boris said, his eyes dully locked on ours. “He is weak. They’re giving him the IV liquids and drugs. What is this about? More lies?”
“Just a few questions about Senator Walker,” Bree said. “She’s dead.”
Behind Boris, at the other end of the entry hall, a handsome, tall, and athletically built man in his late thirties appeared. He wore a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap over dark wavy hair and carried a large shoulder bag.
“Dr. Winters?” a voice called weakly.
The man in the Cowboys cap stopped and looked back. Another man dressed like Boris appeared, pushing a wheelchair. Kasimov sat in the chair under a blanket. An IV line ran from a pouch on a pole into his arm. He looked like death warmed over.
“Yes, Mr. Kasimov?” the doctor said.
“You will return tomorrow?” the businessman said.
“Yes. But the change in medications should help you tonight.”
“Thank you,” the man behind Kasimov said.
Dr. Winters started toward us again. Mahoney called out, “Mr. Kasimov? I’m with the FBI. Could I have five minutes of your time?”
“I said he’s sick,” Boris said loudly.
Kasimov peered down the hall a moment, blinked slowly, and then said, “No, Boris, let them in. Let’s see what they’re trying to frame me for this time.”
Chapter 31
Two floors below Kasimov’s suite, Martin Franks paced in his room. He whistled that Kansas tune again. Carry on, my wayward son...
He just couldn’t get the damn thing out of his mind.
But every time Franks passed his unmade bed, he glanced at the FedEx envelope lying there, bulging with documents regarding his target. He was always up for a challenge and never a man rattled by the implications of an assignment.
But this?
This was...
He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
But it was, wasn’t it?
He picked the envelope up, shaking his head in disbelief. I’d never have to work again.
Franks’s heart raced a bit at that thought before excitement was replaced by anxiety. Being a hired gun had made life simpler, turned his darkest impulses clean, orderly, and paid for. What if he stopped after this, made it his last for-hire job?
After several long moments he decided he could stop professionally and yet sate his particular hunger by continuing to look for those moments of chance, those prime targets of opportunity, like the logger.
Franks smiled. The logger.
He closed his eyes and let his mind dwell on the instant where he’d dodged the chain saw and driven the knife deep into the sawyer’s neck.
Wasn’t that something?
But wouldn’t this be something else again?
My biggest Houdini takeout ever.
Franks opened his eyes and read the payment schedule once more. With that kind of money, he could vanish into Bolivia or Uruguay, and...
He shut off that line of dreaming then, turned cold and professional, and forced himself to focus entirely on the assignment and whether or not he could get it done. He started by setting aside the target’s name and title and all the potential implications of the hit.
None of that meant a thing to Franks, at least for the moment. He drew out more documents from the FedEx envelope and studied rather than scanned them, as he had the first time through, seeing patterns and possibilities, the risks and the penalties.
An hour later, Franks believed that he was up to the task from a technical perspective. Only then did he pull out the photographs and biography of his target. Only then did he consider the idea of being tried and hung for his crimes.
Is it worth it?
He immediately knew the money alone was not enough. But Franks closed his eyes and imagined getting the job done and seeing himself slip away clean, and the sum of the payout plus the thrill of achievement was enough.
He opened his eyes. He felt a familiar want tickle and churn in his stomach. He looked to the photographs of his target again and started to whistle the Kansas tune.
In Franks’s mind, the job was already done. He picked up the burn phone from the bed and dialed. The phone rang twice before a computerized voice told him to leave a message at the beep.
“This is Conker, Peter,” Franks said. “I accept.”
Chapter 32
Somewhere in Kasimov’s suite, a phone rang twice, then stopped.
Boris was unhappy, but stood aside. Dr. Winters nodded to us uncertainly as we passed him in the hall.
Kasimov sagged more than sat in his wheelchair, his eyelids lazy, but he studied us when we held out our credentials.
“What’s this about?” the man behind the wheelchair said.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Nikolai,” he said. “Mr. Kasimov’s personal assistant.”
“I’m not dead, Nikolai,” Kasimov said weakly. “I can answer their questions.”
“I think it is unwise. Better to wait for the attorney.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Kasimov said, watching us all closely.
“Where were you around four thirty a.m. the day before yesterday?” I asked.
He let loose a phlegmy chortle. “You mean at the time Senator Walker died?”
“Exactly,” Mahoney said.
“See?” Kasimov said in a weak, sardonic tone. “I told you I’d hear about that sooner or later.”
“Please answer the question,” I said.
Kasimov was obviously not used to being talked to like this and glared at me a moment before saying, “I was in bed, here, Dr. Cross, sicker than a Siberian dog.”