I got on the radio. Davy Johansen and his partner had taken up positions on either end of the block and were there mostly to see to it that Reza didn’t bolt. He wasn’t going to bolt.
“Status,” I said. “Alpha?”
“At the table,” Davy said. He was positioned east of the complex on Rue de Pantin, with eyes on every piece of transportation moving in my direction. “At the table” was typical tradecraft. We always spoke as if the target had a scanner with the capability of monitoring our conversation, no matter how long the odds were.
“Bravo?”
“Table clear,” the one posted at the intersection west of Reza’s place said. I didn’t know him. I didn’t want to know him. Just do the job and say good night.
“Roger that,” I said.
I didn’t want the Iranian using the visitors’ parking spaces out in front of the apartment house, and a dirtball like Reza wouldn’t think twice about doing that if he thought it would save him a dozen steps to his front door. Visibility out on the street was way too risky, especially with people hanging out on their balconies, so we’d filled the empty spaces with rental cars. Just in case.
“Sit tight,” I said in a voice so calm you would have thought we were delivering a pizza. “Not a chance in the world this guy’ll miss dinner. Momma’s cooking up a classic. He’ll be here.” All this really meant was that I knew how Reza operated. I knew he was a creature of habit. And I knew he’d make an appearance eventually.
There was something else I remembered about Reza Mahvi. He was nothing if not a big talker. He couldn’t wait to regale you with his puny exploits. If there was a name to drop, he dropped it — anything to put a fresh coat of paint on the image of a second-rate street hustler. Clearly, he’d taken a step up in the world. From hustling drugs and women for U.S. congressmen on the prowl to putting the squeeze on the very guys he used to pimp for. Give the guy credit.
“Action!” Bravo called, his voice as cool as a mountain stream. He had Reza in his sights. “ETA thirty seconds. I’m putting a lid on it on this end.”
“Likewise on my end,” Davy said.
“Ten seconds to the table. Fifteen to the chair. Good luck,” Bravo said.
“Roger that,” I said. And those were the last words we would ever say to each other.
I saw the headlights before I saw the Mercedes. I was parked in the space reserved for unit 16, two cars away from Reza’s space. Naturally, Reza spun his wheels navigating the parking lot; he may have climbed the criminal ladder a rung or two, but he still conducted himself like a second-rate drug dealer.
The Mauser 7.65 mm rested on my lap, and I gripped it loosely with a gloved hand. It was fitted out with an aluminum silencer and was untraceable.
Mob-style. That’s how Mr. Elliot wanted it done. A clear message needed to be delivered to anyone else thinking about blackmailing an American official, and the 7.65 caliber, the silencer, and the parking lot — everything was designed to make it look like that.
I opened my door, slipped the Mauser into the pocket of my jacket, and climbed silently out. I walked along the back of the cars to Reza’s Mercedes. The music inside the car was still blaring, and Reza was drumming the steering wheel, waiting for the song to end. I kept my back to the apartment house even though all the balconies faced the Seine. I walked without a sound between the Mercedes and a gray Citroën. I stopped next to the driver’s-side door and wrapped on the window with my left hand. Reza sat bolt upright at the sound, like a man fending off a blow. Then he saw my face, and the slow dawn of recognition caused his brow to furrow. I smiled, but the furrows only curled into lines of dark suspicion. I beat on the window again. He finally rolled it down, shaking his head and trying to look pissed off.
“What the fuck? That you, Jake? What the hell you doing in Paris, man? You scared the shit out of me,” he said, sneering.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said, easing the Mauser from my jacket pocket. “But we need to talk.”
Reza shook his head; he was clearly partied out. “I got no blow on me, man. Nada. And besides, I’ve been out of that business for years.”
“Do an old friend a favor and turn down the music, Reza,” I said calmly.
Perturbed, Reza reached for the knob on the radio. I raised the Mauser. The end of the silencer came up next to his head, and I pulled the trigger. Two times in less than a second. The Iranian slumped sideways. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead. He was.
I launched the Mauser toward an overgrown hedgerow, turned, and walked with unhurried steps back to the Renault. I was opening the door on the driver’s side when two women came out the back door of the apartment house and started across the lot. I didn’t glance back and didn’t hurry. I slid behind the wheel but didn’t close the door until I saw the women duck inside a red Fiat parked a dozen spaces away. When I heard their doors slam, I closed mine. I waited until the Fiat was out of sight before turning over the engine.
I wasn’t concerned. I’d be on a plane for Amsterdam in an hour. And by the time the French police identified the Iranian, I’d be headed for the most dangerous place on earth and Reza Mahvi would be the very least of my worries.
CHAPTER 5
I never forgot a name and never jettisoned a possible connection, including Arman DiCiccio.
I entered the Merry Times café, a serious dump on a side street just off Warmoesstraat Boulevard. Pungent smoke clouded the air. A bunch of college-age kids crowded the closest table and shared hits on a bong. Most of the other tables were occupied by couples nursing lattes and puffing on joints. Glass cabinets sat atop the wooden counter along the back of the café. A chalkboard above the counter advertised prices for the café’s daily specials: Silver Haze, seven euros; Thai stick, six euros; Isolator hashish, eight euros. Ah, Amsterdam! No place on earth quite like it.
I wore a tie-dyed hoodie with a tattered denim Jerry Garcia cap and mirrored sunglasses. I looked like an over-the-hill Dead Head and fit right in.
I was here for a reason, and it had nothing to do with getting high. There was a link that everyone digging into Iran’s nuclear capabilities failed to make, and that was the funding that supported both their worldwide terrorist movement and their weapons research. A serious part of that funding came from their monopoly on opium production, and their influence stretched from Afghanistan and Turkey to Burma and Cambodia. It meant billions of dollars, and you can get a lot done with billions of dollars.
The Merry Times was the domicile of one Arman DiCiccio, a man I had befriended during my first op, over three decades ago. Arman had gotten wounded in a crossfire outside a Newark nightclub, shot in the thigh and stomach by his own people. His subsequent convalescence hadn’t worked out so well. He’d gotten himself addicted to morphine, and that had drawn him here to Amsterdam, the junkie capital of Europe. Since then, Arman had kicked the habit, or so I’d been told. That was the good news. The even better news, for my purposes, was that he had plied his many and varied contacts in the drug business to open up this coffee shop and smoke hole.
I took a seat near the counter and ordered an espresso from a rail-thin waitress with bronze-and-gold hair. I had a new weapon under my hoodie; Davy Johansen had arranged a pickup the minute I landed in Amsterdam, and his choice of the Walther PPK/S had put a grin on my face. The Walther .380 was my favorite pistol. Davy knew that. What he didn’t know was that he’d earned himself a bottle of fifteen-year-old Dalmore for his efforts.
Five minutes passed before a curtain of plastic beads guarding the doorway behind the counter parted. A very large, very pudgy man with acres of tattoos limped into the room with a cardboard box in his hands. I studied him with a crooked grin on my face. His thinning, wiry locks were gathered into a ponytail, which only served to emphasize a receding hairline. His forehead was a knob of smooth flesh creased by shallow pink wrinkles. Bushy eyebrows hooded dark, deeply set eyes. It had been years since I’d seen that face and the years had taken a toll, but it definitely belonged to Arman DiCiccio.