Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

“He thinks so,” said Sarah.

“Let him go.”

“I don’t dare.”

“Sooner or later we’re gonna have to meet,” said Adin.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Adin got down on one knee. “You can mop up the blood if I’m wrong, but I don’t think he’s going to attack me.”

“It’s your funeral,” said Sarah. Gently she released the strain on the leash.

“Go ahead and take it off,” said Adin.

“No. No. You don’t know him. I need to be able to haul him in if I have to.” The minute she let go of the leash, Bugsy stopped.

He looked at Adin, one knee down on the floor ten feet away. The dog and the man were at eye level.

“Come on.” Adin coaxed him. “The secret is no sudden moves. Come on.” He allowed his voice to rise just a little. With the rest of his body perfectly still, he slowly raised his right arm, keeping his hand limp, palm down, with his fingers curved a little and open.

Bugsy moved slowly across the floor, sniffing the air as he went. A step at a time he slowly glided across the carpet until he was no more than three feet from Hirst. The dog moved cautiously to his right as if circling.

Adin didn’t move his hand. He left it where it was.

Bugsy came in from the side and slowly sniffed the back of his hand.

“That’s a good boy.” He allowed the dog to sniff as long as he wanted.

Slowly the dog moved in closer to Adin’s body. He picked up the scent off his chest and his face. By the time dog and man were nose to nose, the nub of Bugsy’s docked tail was wagging like the stylus on a Richter scale in a tremor.

“I don’t believe this. He’s never done that before with anyone, even the trainers on the farm,” said Sarah.

“It’s all a matter of trust. They can smell fear, and they can sense danger. The reason he went after the nurse is probably because the man panicked. You start backing up and instinct tells him to go after you, to close the distance. You have to remember that his only real weapon are those pearly white teeth. And to use them he has to move in. Maintaining close contact is his only defense. And with a Doberman, the best defense is a good offense. It’s in their breeding.” Adin slowly drew his right arm in, keeping the palm away, with the back of the hand toward Bugsy.

“How is it you know so much about dogs?”

“I used to work with them, in another life,” said Adin. He slowly scratched the dog’s head, carefully slid his hand down and petted the feltlike hair on his snout.

Bugsy sat down, ears straight up, the nub of a tail wagging behind him.

“Good thing you’re not a burglar,” said Sarah. “If he was a cat, he’d be purring.”

“I don’t think we need this anymore.” Adin removed the leash, unclipped the metal collar, and removed the choke chain from the dog’s throat. “That’s better.” Slowly he stood.

Bugsy got up, walked around behind him, and sat again as if he was heeled on a leash waiting for a command. “Whoever trained him did a good job.”

“They didn’t think so,” said Sarah. “That’s why they gave him to me. He flunked training.”

“He outwitted them,” said Adin.

“Trust me, they raise Dobermans, my aunt and uncle. They’ve been doing it for years.”

“And I’m sure they know their business. But Bugsy may be the Einstein of Dobermans for all we know.” Adin walked over to the couch and sat down.

As if to prove the point, the dog walked half a foot behind him all the way as if they were tethered. When he got to the couch, he sat on the floor right next to Hirst, ramrod straight between the couch and the coffee table, and didn’t move.

“I think I’ve lost my dog,” said Sarah.

“No. He’ll be back to pulling you down the hall again the minute I leave.”

“Why?”

“Be glad he doesn’t speak English. If he did, he’d have you on a leash. I’d say this is one smart animal.”

“Then why did he give the people on the farm so much trouble?”

“The dumb kid in class,” said Adin. “Failing every subject, always in trouble, until you test him and find out he has an IQ of a hundred and eighty. I’d say Bugsy learned everything in the first two days, got bored, and spent the rest of his time training his masters.”

“They told me he came from the shallow end of the gene pool. He was worthless. Pet quality is what my uncle called him.”

“Don’t look now,” said Hirst, “but who’s off the farm living in a condo? I’ll bet he sleeps on your bed at night. Give him time and he’ll have all your pillows.”

Sarah didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

“And you love it there, don’t you?” Adin petted his head and the dog wiggled.

“Yeah, well, he’s sleeping on the floor tonight,” said Sarah.

The phone rang, and Bugsy flinched as if he was going to take off.

“Heel!” said Adin.

The dog froze.

“First time he hasn’t torn the place to pieces when the phone rang or the door chimed.” She reached for the receiver and picked it up. “Hello… Dad, where the hell are you?” She turned her back, cupped her hand over the mouthpiece, and lowered her volume.

“You guys were going to Thailand. You were gonna be back in three days, remember? Now I get a message from Thorpe’s office, you’re in some swank hotel on the Left Bank… Yeah, yeah, I know.” She waited for a moment to let him get a word in. “Well, I hope you’re having a good time, because I’m here wrestling the dog with one hand and juggling Herman with the other… I know the dog was my idea. That’s not the point.”

“Who is it?” Herman was calling from the back room.

“It’s Dad!”

“Tell him I want to talk to him.”

“In a minute,” said Sarah. “Did you find him?” She listened for a long while as Adin sat on the couch, petted the dog, and watched her. At one point she wrote something down on a pad lying on the counter to the pass-through in the kitchen. “Listen, when are you going to be back because I’m not going to stay here forever… OK, tomorrow night? What time are you going to call?… My time, right?… OK. Yes, I will be here. Where else would I be? Hold on a minute. Herman wants to talk to you.” She laid the phone on the pass-through next to the note and turned toward Adin. “I’m sorry. Give me a second.”

“No problem.”

Sarah headed down the hall toward Herman’s room.

“Stay!” Adin quickly got up off the couch.

After the first night in the hotel, Liquida began to relax, if only a little. He settled in, buoyed by the notion that if the FBI was going to batter down his door, they would have already done it.

The next morning Liquida got up early. He had a busy day ahead of him. He slipped down the back stairs of the hotel, grabbed a taxi, and told the driver to take him to the Gare du Nord, the train station in North Paris.

The Gare du Nord is one of six main train terminals serving the Paris area. There Liquida purchased a one-way ticket on the Eurostar, the Paris-to-London run through the Channel Tunnel for later that day. He used his old Spanish passport to buy the ticket.

The trains ran every hour. The trip on the high-speed rail took two hours and fifteen minutes.

Liquida pocketed the ticket and then took a taxi out into the northern suburbs. These were neighborhoods of desperation housing thousands of immigrants, mostly from countries in North Africa. A good portion of these were asylum seekers from regimes of repression. Many were living in France illegally, constantly under the hammer of the French immigration service. For many of these people, deportation to their homeland meant torture or worse.

A few years earlier the French government announced a crackdown, threatening to repatriate any and all immigrants who lacked proper documentation to be in the country. Within days vast fires raged through the northern suburbs. Each night scores of cars were torched as rioters rampaged through the streets.