The smaller man was on McGarvey, who elbowed him in the sternum, pushing him back dazed.
Before the street hood could recover, Mac went to the man by the Dumpster, snatched his pistol, and shot him once in each knee.
“You have a choice now,” he said to the other man. “Either call an ambulance for your friend, or call your driver and get him back to Sergev in Marseilles.”
“I think that you have made a very large mistake here, Mr. McGarvey. One that you won’t live to regret.”
Mac raised the pistol as he walked directly to the man and jammed the muzzle into his forehead. “If I see either of you again, I will kill you. Tell your boss that, and tell him that whoever hired you is a dead man walking.”
The Corsican said nothing.
Mac lowered the pistol and walked out of the service area, stuffing the gun into his belt before he reached the street and headed back the way he had come.
He put on his glasses as the Mercedes passed him without slowing down. Otto was right there in his ear.
“How’d it go?”
“They said that they were sent to rough me up, not kill me, and I believed them,” Mac said, and he told Otto everything.
“Sounds to me like they were ready to shoot you to death.”
“They were just trying to defend themselves. But they knew my real name, which rules out the possibility that someone at the casino sent them.”
“Well, the two guys you took down didn’t show up in the FSB’s personnel file, but from the way you describe them, I think they’re most likely street muscle.”
“What about Sergev Imports?”
“It’s a container-shipping company, registered in Monrovia, owned by Georgi Sliuchenko, one of Putin’s inner circle. I couldn’t find any mention of Sergev, and on the surface, the company seems legitimate.”
“Any links to Didenko or the FSB?”
“None. From where I’m sitting, the bully boys are probably just a sideline business that the managing director — a Frenchman by the name of Mohammed al-Dakheel — set up to make a few extra euros.”
“Is he a Saudi?”
“Born in Jeddah but immigrated to France nine years ago. I can’t find any connection between him and Sliuchenko other than the fact he works for the Russian. But I think it’s a dead end. They were hired to rough you up, nothing more than that. He’s playing with you.”
“I think you’re right.”
“What now?”
“I need a drink.”
“Le Bar Americain?”
“Mais oui.”
14
Kurshin and Martine sat at the end of the bar from where he could watch the lobby when McGarvey showed up. He was curious to see what shape the American was in. His instruction to al-Dakheel was for his people to rough up the man but not kill him. They were to make sure that he would be able to walk away from the encounter. No broken bones other than a rib or two.
“I’m surprised that we left the casino so early,” Martine asked. She was drinking a glass of Cristal, and he was working on a pink gin, a drink he highly detested.
“I wasn’t in the mood to gamble with a drunk American.”
“He might be back tomorrow.”
The lobby wasn’t busy at this hour of the morning, though the bar was nearly full, and the piano player had just returned from a break. Kurshin looked up as a red-haired woman, dressed in a white blouse and khakis, a jacket thrown over her shoulder, crossed to the front desk. She was turned away from him so he couldn’t see her face, but she looked familiar.
A bellman trailed behind her with a suitcase and small bag, and after a few moments, the desk clerk handed her a key card, and she went to the elevators around the corner.
“An old flame of yours?” Martine asked.
The woman was almost certainly Pete Boylan, the one who’d been at Arlington National Cemetery with McGarvey. She’d just arrived from talking to Didenko outside Moscow. And that fact still bothered him. They had already made a connection to the general, but he’d said that she claimed she was writing a book about McGarvey. The most disturbing thing she’d asked about, according to Didenko, was Arkady Kurshin. She’d wanted to know if someone was gunning for McGarvey out of revenge for Arkasha’s assassination.
“A penny,” Martine asked.
“I once knew a girl with red hair, and I thought that it might be her.”
“Lots of girls in England with red hair. I think this one must have been your lover. Is she here searching for you?”
Kurshin looked at her. Something in her eyes and in the way she watched him was odd, out of kilter, out of place for a Frenchwoman. He decided that when this part of his operation was finished, he would kill her.
“Would it bother you?”
“Immensely,” she said, laughing. She motioned to the barman for another glass of champagne. “I don’t know if I want to stay in the same hotel as your old girlfriend.”
“We can always go back to your place.”
“Might be for the best, after all,” she said, looking past him.
He turned in time to see McGarvey heading directly for them. So far as Kurshin could tell, he had not been injured or even roughed up. His shirt, tie, and jacket looked in proper order, the same as they had in the casino.
McGarvey smiled at Martine and nodded but walked past and took a stool near the opposite end of the bar.
“Nice smile for a drunk American,” Martine said.
“Maybe he’s one of your former lovers,” Kurshin said to mask his sudden dark feeling.
She laughed again. “I think that I would have remembered him.”
“He looks old.”
“But then so am I, mon cher.”
Kurshin nodded. “But then only a Frenchwoman ages with grace.”
“Gallant,” she said, raising her glass to him.
“Excuse me for a minute,” he said, and he went out to a spot in the lobby where he couldn’t be seen from the bar and phoned al-Dakheel’s emergency number.
The man answered on the second ring. He was angry. “Oui.”
“What happened?”
“He took my two people down. They said he had a gun. He kneecapped Rene and beat Charles half to death. They’re on their way down here to our doctor, but they’ll be of no further use to me after this night. You should have warned me.”
“You should have sent better men.”
“The next two I send will kill him on sight.”
“No,” Kurshin said, but al-Dakheel had already hung up.
He phoned the man again but only got an answering machine after four rings.
He walked outside and for several minutes just stared at the traffic. A doorman came up to him and asked if he wanted a taxi, but he waved the man off. Actually, the best thing would be to sit back and see what al-Dakheel’s hoods could do with a second chance. The object of the little game was McGarvey’s death. And yet he knew that it wasn’t so simple as that, and it hadn’t been so simple for him from the start.
He wanted to destroy the American, but he didn’t want it to be a bolt out of the blue. Killing McGarvey — or anyone, for that matter — with a sniper rifle from a long distance would be easy. Except that one moment the man would be alive and the next dead, not knowing what had happened.
And knowing was the entire point. It was why Arlington, why tonight. Kurshin wanted McGarvey to know that he was being toyed with. He wanted the man to understand that he was going to die, and he wanted the man to understand at some point not only who his killer was but the why of the thing.