Abruptly Marten walked away, then turned and looked back. “I’m asking you, where does Kitner fit into this?”
Kovalenko smiled faintly. “You seem to know a great deal, Mr. Marten.”
“Only a little—it’s what you said when Dan asked you what you knew about America. Only a little? No, you know a lot more. You were surprised when you saw the menu. You were even more surprised when you saw Kitner’s name. Okay, I’ve told you what I know, now it’s your turn.”
“Mr. Marten, you are in France illegally. There is no reason for me to tell you anything at all.”
“Maybe there isn’t, except that I have the feeling you would just as soon keep this between you and me. If not, you would have called Lenard the minute you picked me up.” Marten came back across the room. “I told you before, Inspector, Raymond sliced my best friend to pieces. I want to make sure something is done about it. If you won’t help, I’ll take the chance and go to Lenard myself. I’m sure he’d find all this rather interesting. Especially when he wonders why you brought me here without informing him, even more so when he finds you have Halliday’s appointment book and Ford’s file.”
Kovalenko looked at Marten in silence. Finally he spoke, and when he did his voice was quiet, even gentle. “I think your friendship with Mr. Ford was very important to you.”
“It was.”
Kovalenko nodded slightly, then crossed to take out the bottle of vodka Marten had brought back from the store. Pouring some in a glass, he held it for a moment, then looked to Marten. “It is possible, Mr. Marten, that Peter Kitner may have been still another target of Raymond Thorne.”
“Kitner?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I said it is possible, not probable. Peter Kitner is a very prominent man who was, as you say, a friend of Alfred Neuss.” Kovalenko took a pull at his vodka. “It’s simply one theory among many we’ve entertained.”
The sharp chirp of Kovalenko’s cell phone stopped the conversation, and he put down his glass to answer it.
“Da,” he said as he clicked on, then, phone in hand, turned away and continued his conversation in Russian.
Marten put the menu and clippings back in Ford’s accordion file. Both Ford and Halliday had thought Raymond was still alive, and they had been right. And for some reason Dan had pursued the Kitner angle. How he had come to it there was no way to know, but now Kovalenko himself had included Kitner when he said he might have been still another of Raymond’s targets—and in the process all but confirming that Marten had been right when he guessed Neuss and Kitner were friends. Still, it didn’t explain what was going on or why Neuss and Curtay and others killed in the United States and Mexico had been involved. Yet Marten knew that somehow it was interwoven and included April 7/Moscow and the safe deposit keys and the other notations in Raymond’s calendar, particularly those that pertained to London. But those were things he couldn’t discuss with Kovalenko because of who Marten was and what he was trying to keep secret. Even if he said he had learned them from Dan Ford, the Russian was still suspicious of him, and bringing up those kinds of details would only increase his mistrust. It was something Marten couldn’t do, particularly when all of it rested on the assumption that it was Raymond who had murdered Neuss and Curtay and not someone else. But who else, now that they knew he was alive and in Paris?
Even so, the question remained why—why had he done it, and what had he expected to gain from it? Moreover, where did the second menu fit in? What “menued” event was yet to come that was so secret that Raymond had had to massacre—and that was the only word for it—Dan Ford and Jean-Luc Vabres to keep anyone from finding out about it?
Marten glanced at Kovalenko across the room gesturing and chattering away in Russian. Alright, Raymond was here, but how to find him, how to even know what he looked like? Suddenly he thought of the trail Halliday had followed to Argentina. If somehow they could find the plastic surgeon who had done the cosmetic work on Raymond, maybe Kovalenko could arrange for the Argentine police to get some sort of court order that, with luck, would force the physician to reveal the name his patient had used while under his care, and perhaps even a photograph of him as he looked now. If so, they would have a name and a face. Additionally, if Raymond had come to France legally and by air with an Argentine passport, he would have had to pass through passport control, and that would give them an airport and a date when he had arrived.
Marten went to the bed and opened Halliday’s appointment book. He turned one page and then another and then another—and then he found what he was looking for.
Dr. Hermann Gray, plastic surgeon, Bel Air, age 48. Abruptly retired, sold home, and left country.
In parentheses alongside Gray’s name was Puerto Quepos, Costa Rica, then Rosario, Argentina, name changed to James Patrick Odett—ALC/hunting accident.
ALC—who or what was that? Before, he had thought that maybe Halliday had transposed the letters and really meant ACL—anterior cruciate ligament, a severe knee injury one might suffer in a sporting accident. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Suddenly he felt a presence and looked up. Kovalenko was no longer on the phone but was standing at the foot of the bed staring at him. “Something puzzles you—”
“Do the initials ALC mean anything to you?”
Again Marten saw the look of surprise register on Kovalenko’s face. “It depends,” he said.
“On what?”
“On the context in which they are used.”
“They’re in Halliday’s notes tracing Raymond and his plastic surgeon to Argentina.”
“A surgeon by the name of James Patrick Odett?”
“So, you did go through Halliday’s book.”
“Yes, but only to find the disk.”
“Then how did you know about Odett?”
“The day Detective Halliday was murdered, Dr. Odett died in a fire in a rented office building in Rosario, Argentina. The entire building burned to the ground. Seven other people died as well. Everything inside the building was destroyed.”
“Patient records, X-rays—”
“Everything wiped away, Mr. Marten.”
“Just like all the other medical and law enforcement databases.”
Kovalenko nodded. “The information came to me from my office in Moscow. I received it on my return from the Halliday murder scene and shortly before I went to stake out Mr. Ford’s apartment.” Kovalenko’s gaze wandered off as if he were working through some kind of thought process, as if something were troubling him.
Marten had the sense that part of Kovalenko’s information was new and he found that discomforting. The rest was how much, if anything, to tell Marten. Finally the gaze came back. His eyes were disturbed yet filled with a sincerity, or maybe it was a vulnerability, Marten hadn’t seen before, and he knew the Russian had decided to include him.
“You would like to know how and why I would have that information? For the same reason I told you it depended on what context in which the initials ALC were used. James Patrick Odett was a plastic surgeon who treated one patient exclusively. His name is Alexander Luis Cabrera. He was shot and very seriously wounded in a hunting accident in the Andes when his gun blew up in his face as he fired at a deer.”
“When”—Marten paused as if he already knew the answer—“did it happen?”
“In March of last year.”
“March?”
“Yes.”
“Who was with him?”
“No one. His lone shooting companion was farther down the trail.” Kovalenko’s manner suddenly hardened. It wasn’t that he had said too much, it was more that he didn’t want to believe it.
“I know what you are thinking, Mr. Marten, that this was a made-up incident. That the accident wasn’t an accident at all. And that it didn’t happen in the Andes but in Los Angeles, in a gun battle with the police. But the fact is, it is not so. There are records from emergency medical people who rescued him by helicopter, hospital recor
ds of his stay there. Records of the physicians who treated him.”
“Those records could be false.”
“Perhaps, except that Alexander Cabrera is a very prominent and legitimate Argentine businessman and the accident was well publicized in his country.”
“Then why was Halliday onto him? Why did he put it in here?” Marten pushed Halliday’s appointment book toward Kovalenko.
“It is not an answer I have.” Kovalenko smiled. “But I will tell you, Alexander Cabrera is not only prominent, he is exceedingly successful. He owns a global pipeline company with offices around the world. He keeps offices and permanent suites in five-star hotels in a dozen major cities, including one here in Paris at the Hôtel Ritz.”
“Cabrera is here in Paris?”
“I’m not aware of his current whereabouts; I merely said he keeps a suite here. Don’t try to make coincidences when there are none, Mr. Marten. I hardly think a man like Cabrera is likely to be your infamous Raymond Thorne.”
“Halliday did.”
“Did he? Or was it just a notation, something to ask Dr. Odett about?”
“Obviously it is something we will never know, because both men are dead.”
Marten looked at Kovalenko in silence, then went to the window and looked out. For a long moment he simply stood there rubbing his hands together against the cold and staring at the whirling snow outside.
“Why do you know about Alexander Cabrera at all?” he said finally.
“He is the eldest son of Sir Peter Kitner.”
“What?” Marten was astounded.
“Alexander Cabrera is the product of an earlier marriage.”
“Is this common knowledge?”
“No. In fact I think very few people are aware of it. I would doubt his own family knows.”
“But you do.”
Kovalenko nodded.
“Why?”
“Let’s just say that I do.”
There it was, confirmation that Kovalenko did have some other agenda. Marten decided to take it as far as the Russian would let him. “So now we’re back to Kitner.”
Kovalenko found his glass and picked it up. “Would you like a drink, Mr. Marten?”
“I would like you to tell me what is going on with Peter Kitner. Why he is attending the Romanov dinner tonight.”
“Because, Mr. Marten—Sir Peter Kitner is a Romanov.”
59
STILL THURSDAY, JANUARY 16. 6:20 P.M.
The front penthouse apartment at number 127 Avenue Hoche was large, newly decorated, and freshly painted. It had two master suites and a private maid’s quarters. From the windows, even in the snow, one could see the lighted Arc de Triomphe two blocks away and the heavy rush hour traffic swirling around it.
Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna and her mother, Grand Duchess Maria, would share one of the suites. Catherine’s son, Grand Duke Sergei Petrovich Romanov, would take the other. The maid’s quarters, into which two single beds had been moved, would be used by their four bodyguards, two of whom would be on duty at all times. It was the way Grand Duchess Catherine had planned it and the way it would be until they left two days from now. By then, she was certain, crowds would line the avenue outside hoping for a glimpse of her son, the newly chosen Tsarevich, the first Tsar of Russia in nearly a century.
“Like Moscow,” her mother, Grand Duchess Maria, said as she looked out of the living room window at the falling snow.
“Yes, like Moscow,” Catherine said. Despite the long trip, both women were fresh, elegantly dressed, and eager for the night to begin. Immediately there was a knock at the door.
“Come in.” She turned as the door opened, expecting to see her son enter, dressed and ready for the short drive to the house on the L’Avenue Georges V. Instead it was Octavio, their scar-faced bodyguard.
“We have swept the building and it is secure, Your Highness. There are two doors to the alley in the rear; both are locked. Though one was not, it is now. The front entrance has a doorman posted twenty-four hours. His employer knows we have arrived. No one will be permitted to the penthouse without authorization from us.”
“Very good, Octavio.”
“The car is ready when you are, Your Highness.”
“Thank—”
Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna stopped midsentence. She was looking past Octavio to where her son stood in the doorway, the light from the hall behind touching his shoulders and bathing him in gold. Dressed in a dark, well-fitted suit over a starched white shirt with a deep burgundy silk tie tied four-in-hand, his hair parted on the side and then combed slightly back, he was as handsome as she had ever seen him. More than that was a presence and bearing that overrode his physical beauty. It was cultured, self-assured, and royal—if she’d had any doubt earlier as she’d watched him playing computer games in the car during the long ride to Paris looking like any twenty-two-year-old, with tousled hair and wearing blue jeans and an oversized sweater, there was none now. The boy that had been was gone. In his place was a highly educated, mature man, fully prepared to become a national leader.
“Are you ready, Mother, Grandmother?” he said.
“Yes, we are ready,” Catherine said and smiled, and for the first time called him by the name she was certain the entire world would use by this time tomorrow. “Yes, we are ready—Tsarevich.”
60
Peter Kitner put one arm and then the other into the starched formal shirt. Ordinarily he would have had his French valet to help him, but because of the snow the valet had been unable to get there. Instead, it was his private secretary, Taylor Barrie, who helped him dress, handing him now the silk-lined trousers to his black tuxedo, then turning to find the appropriate bow tie in the mahogany drawer to which formal ties were assigned.
Of all nights for Barrie to be pressed into service as Kitner’s valet, this was the worst. The mogul was filled with fury, most of it directed at Barrie, and, from Kitner’s point of view, for good reason—Barrie had been unable to arrange the private meeting he had requested with Alexander Cabrera and the Baroness Marga de Vienne. The site had not been a problem, a secluded villa near Versailles had been quickly found and arrangements made for its use tomorrow morning. The difficulty had been in reaching either Cabrera or the Baroness. The best Barrie had been able to do was leave word, and he had, anywhere he could—for Cabrera at the Ritz, at his head office in Buenos Aires, and at his European headquarters in Lausanne, and for the Baroness at her home in Auvergne and at her apartment in Zurich. In all cases he’d been curtly told the parties were traveling and simply not available. It was a response he knew Kitner would take personally. Sir Peter Kitner had the ear of kings, presidents, and the crème de la crème of business leaders around the world, and none ever, even in times of emergency, refused his phone call, let alone being “simply not available.”
“Tie,” Kitner said, abruptly securing the top button of his trousers.
“Yes, sir.” Barrie handed him the selected tie, half expecting him to reject it. Instead he took it and glared at him.
“I’ll finish dressing myself. Tell Higgs I want the car in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Taylor Barrie nodded crisply and left the room, grateful to have been dismissed.
Kitner turned to the mirror. One angry loop of his tie, and a second, then he stopped. The fault was not Barrie’s at all. It was him Cabrera and the Baroness had refused, not his secretary. Barrie had only been doing his job. Suddenly Kitner realized he was staring at himself in the mirror. Abruptly he turned away.
Alfred Neuss was dead; so was Fabien Curtay. The knife and the 8 mm film were gone. How long ago had it been since the incident in the Parc Monceau? Twenty years? He had been one of a half-dozen adults supervising a children’s birthday party and taking home movies when Kitner and his wife Luisa’s ten-year-old son, Paul, had run off into some trees to retrieve a soccer ball. Camera running, Neuss had followed, getting there just as fourteen-year-old Alexander came from nowhere to
plunge the huge Spanish switchblade into Paul’s chest. Instantly Neuss had grabbed Alexander’s hand, spinning him around. The camera still running, Alexander struggled to get away but couldn’t. Suddenly he let go of the knife, then pushed away and ran off. But it was too late, Paul was on the ground dying, blood everywhere, his heart destroyed.
The trouble was Alexander had left Neuss with both the murder weapon and the murder itself, captured on Super 8 film. Neuss told the police what happened—a young man had been behind the trees and had stabbed Paul Kitner to death and then run off—but that was all he told them. Not once did he mention that he had known who the assailant was or that he had the entire incident on film or that he was in possession of the murder weapon.
He’d said nothing about any of it because Peter Kitner was his dearest friend and had been for years, and because he was one of the very few who knew Kitner’s true identity.
He’d said nothing because the decision as to what to do about the knife and the filmed evidence was not his to make, but Kitner’s.
It was why, a day after Paul’s funeral, Kitner had called both the Baroness and Alexander to a meeting at a suite in the Hotel Sacher in Vienna. There, not wanting Alexander’s existence known to his family, nor wishing to put them through the ordeal and scandal of seeing one son on trial for the murder of another, he presented the evidence and offered a written pact. In trade for Kitner’s silence, Alexander would leave Europe immediately and go to South America, where he would take a new name and a new life and where Kitner would provide money for his housing and education. In return Alexander would sign a document renouncing, forever, any claim to the family name and promising never to reveal his true heritage under penalty of having the evidence turned over to the police. In other words, in exchange for his freedom, he was being banished from Europe and disowned by his family in the cruelest sense of the word—his father was wholly denying his existence.