Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

When they got to the room, the guard opened the door and gestured a head nod for Raji to get back in his cell. The second he did, the door closed behind him and the key turned in the lock.

“Bastards!” Fareed didn’t linger on the thought. He turned immediately and saw that the computer was still where he left it, on the desk against the far wall. He took two steps toward the armoire, opened the door, and checked for his coat. It was still there in the same place where Joaquin hung it. Raji pressed with his fingers under the lapel until he felt the small hard prominence of the flash drive. He took a deep breath and relaxed.

Raji closed the armoire and walked across the room to his suitcase that lay open on the unfolded luggage rack near the desk. He got out a clean set of underwear and his toothbrush. He was about to take off his glasses when he felt a cool breeze from behind.

He suddenly realized that the air in the room was fresh. He turned quickly and looked toward the window. The drapes were drawn back and the window was closed. Raji turned toward the set of French doors. The drapes were closed. He couldn’t remember whether they were open when he left or not. He laid the underwear and the toothbrush on top of his shirts in the open suitcase. He moved slowly toward the French doors.

Before he got there, one of the curtains moved. Raji felt the light breeze as the fresh air from outside ruffled the heavy velour. He stopped in his tracks and stood there for a second. Something told him not to look. Instead he turned as if nothing had happened and walked back toward the suitcase.

His heart pounded in his chest like a sledgehammer. With his head down as if looking for something in the suitcase, Raji glanced toward the curtains. He knew that death was waiting for him out on that balcony. He fiddled in the suitcase, trying to figure out what to do. His mind raced. The window was bolted. The door to the hallway was locked. There was nowhere to go except the bathroom, and once there, there was no way out. Still, the door had a lock, and the key was inside. But to get there Raji would have to pass between the bed and the curtained-off French doors, a narrow gauntlet of less than three feet. He glanced once more at the curtains. If Joaquin was waiting for him there, that’s when he would make his move, before Raji could get to the bathroom and slam the door.

Raji needed a weapon, anything to ward him off, to beat him back. He had nothing. He thought about his shoes, but they were rubber-soled. They weren’t hard enough to do any damage, and if it came down to a fight for leverage, without shoes on his feet he would be lost. What if somehow he got out of the room and had to run? Without shoes, what would he do then?

Fareed left the shoes on his feet and instead grabbed one of the long white cotton athletic socks from his suitcase. He looked for something heavy and hard to drop inside of it. He kept an eye on the curtains. All he could find was his can of Barbasol shaving cream. It had been put in his checked luggage. The label on the can read eleven ounces. It was almost full. It wasn’t as good as a lead sap, but if Raji had enough room to swing it and get velocity, the hard pressurized can could do some damage, enough to keep Joaquin at a distance. And unless he had a silencer, neither Joaquin nor the goon outside could use a gun, not in the hotel. Anyone on the floors above or below would hear it.

Raji edged his back toward the French doors so that Joaquin couldn’t see what he was doing until the last minute. He pushed the can into the sock. The heavy cotton fabric stretched around it like a snake swallowing a full meal. He pushed until the can seated in the toe. He gripped the open end of the sock as tightly as he could with his right hand. There were a good six to eight inches of empty stocking between his hand and the can, enough to whip the weight and get it going.

Raji took a deep breath. If Joaquin wanted to come at him now, Fareed would take his chances. He turned and squared his body, facing the curtains, his feet spread about shoulder width.

He took two tentative steps toward the curtains and started swinging the can over his head. Within seconds the length of the whip doubled as the centrifugal force stretched the cotton.

Raji could feel the pulse pounding in his head as he moved toward the bathroom. The canned bolo whistled through the air above his head like a propeller. Fareed hugged the side of the bed, staying as far from the curtains as he could, inching his way toward the bathroom. He knew that if he got too close to the French doors, the weighted sock would tangle in the heavy velour and he would be dead. Joaquin, who probably had a blade, would be on him before he could think.

The curtains moved. Fareed felt the cool air. It was now or never. He was three feet from the open bathroom door. He would have to pull down the singing bolo to make it through.

One more step sideways with his back to the bed and Raji lunged for it. He threw the sock and can into the bathroom, grabbed the door with both hands, and slammed it closed. With his shoulder to the door he felt for the key, found and turned it until it locked.

Raji stood there in the darkness leaning against the door and breathing heavily, waiting for the adrenaline to flush from his heart. His hand felt for the light switch on the wall as his upper back absorbed the punch. An electrical shock passed through his body. Fareed thought he must have been wet when he touched the light. Numbness gripped his fingers, and his knees buckled.

Raji looked on in wonder as the light came on. His eyes beheld the needle-sharp point of the stiletto protruding from his throat. He wondered how this could be since the pain never registered in his brain.

Liquida’s blade had severed the spinal column just below the base of the brain. The body was dead, though the eyes might blink and see for a few more minutes. Liquida had no intention of wrestling with anybody. As far as he was concerned, he was following doctor’s orders. He was still on light duty until the wound under his arm healed completely.

He pulled Fareed over backward into the shower-tub so he wouldn’t bleed all over the floor. Liquida had already lined the tub, everything but the drain, with a blue plastic tarp.

The second Leffort told him that the stuff on the flash drive looked real, Liquida started packing his bags.

As he labored over Raji’s body, closing his eyes, retrieving his blade, and draining the blood from the tarp, the little hairs on the back of Liquida’s neck were standing up. He could smell the FBI bearing down on him.

He told Bruno to call Marseilles and have them rev up the jet, and to be ready to leave the hotel in less than an hour. A rocket hadn’t been designed yet that could get Liquida out of Paris fast enough.

It was Harry’s watch, though he could barely keep his eyes open. He sat behind the wheel of the small Renault, struggling to stay awake. Harry looked at his watch. It was just after four in the morning. Paul would spell him in two more hours.

The entire exercise was a catch-22. The only way they could search the hotel to find out if Liquida was there was to bring in the French police, and the only way they could do that was to see him and identify him first. At least they now had the benefit of the FBI sketch. A computer printout of Liquida’s poster off the FBI website lay on the passenger seat next to Harry. Joselyn was able to produce it using a printer in an Internet cafe.

For two days they camped in the cold car and saw nothing. Once each day they would drive around the block and search for a new parking space to keep from being ticketed.

Harry’s stomach was beginning to growl. He would have killed for a cup of coffee. The sidewalks were dead. There was no one on the street except for an occasional car and driver passing down the rue des Ecoles on their way to work or going home from a night shift somewhere.