“An address, or a zip code?” she suggested eagerly. “Or a safe deposit box number?”
“Perhaps.” Tom was hesitant. “But you know in Europe double-oh is the international access code, not oh-one-one like in the States. It could be a phone number.”
“So what’s ninety and two-one-two?”
“Well, two-one-two is New York, isn’t it? But the country code for the U.S. is one not ninety, so that doesn’t make sense.”
“Isn’t that a list of country codes there?” Jennifer pointed at a laminated poster to the left of the phone. She ran her finger down the list, muttering under her breath every so often.
“It’s only got the major countries here, so it might not have it. China eighty-six… India ninety-one… Mexico fifty-two… Here we go. Turkey ninety. It’s Turkey.”
“Of course.” Tom snapped his fingers and grimaced in frustration.
“What?”
“I’d forgotten. Two-one-two is the city code for Istanbul.”
“So what are you saying? That maybe Steiner was in the middle of writing someone’s number down when he got killed?”
Tom agreed with a nod.
“Could be.”
“Maybe he was still searching for a buyer. Maybe he’d found someone there that was interested.”
Tom shrugged, his voice skeptical.
“In Istanbul? It’s possible, I guess. But it’s not an obvious place.”
“Well, can’t we find out who the most likely buyers are out there? If there isn’t a big list it should make it easier.”
“I guess so.”
A shadow fell over the tent, a dark silhouette projected against the white plastic that grew smaller as its owner drew closer.
“Wie is daar?” the shadow barked.
“Shit.” Tom slipped the card in his pocket and quickly searched for a way out. There was none. The tent had been firmly anchored to the ground, its skirt flush to the pavement.
A large gloved hand slipped through the doorway and gripped the entrance flap. Tom knew that this was not good. They’d used Jennifer’s contacts to bypass customs, taking a small, rarely patrolled road over the border. Technically, as in France, they had entered the country illegally.
What’s more, Tom had ensured that they did not have to fill out a registration card at the hotel, normally mandatory for all guests, the details uploaded onto national police databases every night. That was also illegal. Neither of them could afford a run-in with the law, not at this stage. The list of possible options ran through his head. In the end, only one was practical.
He grabbed Jennifer and kissed her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Kyle Foster could not remember a time when he had been without a gun. His fifth birthday present had been a gas-operated BB gun and his eighteenth a Magnum .45 with a specially engraved backup clip slipped to him lovingly by his mother. From that day on she hadn’t slapped him once, told him that he was a man now, that her work was done.
By the time he was twenty he’d tried just about every handgun, machine gun, sniper, hunting and assault rifle on the market and quite a few that weren’t. At least not legally.
It wasn’t just that he was a good shot, which he was, having served almost twenty years with the U.S. Army Rangers in their elite sniping unit. It wasn’t just that he enjoyed killing, which he did.
It was the hunt.
He still got that same feeling, that tightness in his chest, the butterflies in his stomach. He had first tasted the rush when out with his father hunting deer around the lakes near their farm in Mississippi. First reveled in the euphoria of the chase when he had had his face ritually smeared in blood from his first kill, still warm as it bubbled noisily from the deer’s throat.
The ultimate killer; that’s how he liked to think of himself now. Totally focused, totally in control, and totally lethal. When he was hunting, he was stronger, fitter, smarter than normal human beings. With his body, with all his senses working together in perfect harmony, bent to the kill, he could see further, hear clearer, smell more acutely.
Of course, he had gotten better. Of that there was no doubt. The rifle had given way to the gun. The gun to the knife. That was his favorite, now. That required real skill, real planning. Getting in close, seeing the look of surprise, of shock, of questioning in their eyes as the polished blade sliced into them.
He took the Gideon Bible out of the drawer and replaced it with the new one he had bought at the bookstore round the corner. It wasn’t his favorite version, but at least all the pages were there. That had to count for something.
He’d make tonight count, too. No opportunity to use the knife this time, he’d be too far away. It wasn’t that sort of job. No, tonight he’d be hunting with the rifle.
It was just like being out with his father again.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Jennifer gasped in surprise, her eyes wide open. Her arms, trapped against his chest, tried to push him away from her. And yet her eyes fluttered shut, her lips parted. It was three years since she’d last been kissed like that.
An angry-looking policeman stepped into the tent, his pale blue shirt stained under the arms, the sweat trickling down the side of his head from under the edge of his peaked hat, its thin black visor rippling in the heat like tarmac in the desert.
“Stoppen,” he ordered. “Stop,” he shouted again when they ignored him. Jennifer looked up and squinted into the late-afternoon sun.
“This is forbidden area,” he said in halting English. Jennifer stared at the ground, hot waves of embarrassment washing over her. “Not for tourists.”
“Sorry,” Tom apologized. “It’s a mistake.” The policeman eyed them, his top lip quivering with suspicion, looking beyond them to see if they had moved or touched anything.
“You go now, yes.”
He held the flap open and they both stooped under his arm and vaulted the metal barriers back out onto the street. She could feel the policeman’s eyes burning into her back until they turned the corner.
They retraced their steps toward the hotel in funereal silence. Eventually Tom coughed out an apology.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.” Jennifer tried to sound casual, concentrating on her breathing, on trying to settle her stomach that was still turning over. In a way she wasn’t that surprised. After three years, a kiss — any kiss — was bound to make her feel strange. What did surprise her, though, was what she was not feeling. What she would have expected to feel. Guilty.
“No, really. I am sorry. It was just… well, you know. It was the only thing I could think of. I thought it would make us look less suspicious.”
“I’m not sure how much more suspicious we could have looked,” she shot back, hoping that manufactured anger would help disguise the tremor in her voice.
Tom raised his eyebrows.
“Well, you were pretty convincing.”
“Like I had a choice?” she retorted.
There was a pause. A bicycle thrummed past, black and old-fashioned with a wicker basket hanging off the front and lights powered by a small generator that hugged the rear rubber tire with a low-pitched whirr. They stepped out of its way, the rider signaling his gratitude with a ring of his bell.
“Jesus, it was just a kiss. Get over it.”
Jennifer stared defiantly into the distance as she walked, her heart still thudding in her chest.