Джеймс Паттерсон - The 18th Abduction

Reilly said, “Hang on.”

Joe did and was relieved when Reilly got back on the line.

“Molinari, still there?”

“Yes. What do you know?”

“It looks like Petrović rolled on a few people in the high command in exchange for immunity. There were seven indictments and convictions as the result of the information he turned over to the ICC.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Reilly went on.

“That’s why he got a deal. Due to the number of enemies he acquired, he was given a new identity, passport included, and allowed to leave the country. He’s now known as Antonije Branko.”

Joe said, “What were the conditions of his release?”

“Only one,” said Reilly. “If he commits a felony anywhere from Bosnia to the moon, the original sentence of life imprisonment will be reinstated.”

“So as I understand you,” Joe said, “if Petrović is convicted of a major crime, he goes back to the ICC, and he’d have to serve the sentence they set aside in return for a guilty plea and information.”

“Yep. Of course, it might not fly. In order to deport him, you’d have to nail him to the wall.”

“Thanks, Reilly. That’s what I needed to know.”

Joe made notes to the file and closed down his computer. As long as Petrović ran a clean business and didn’t flaunt the conditions of his agreement, he was free to zip around town in his Jaguar and be the big man of Tony’s Place.

But if he laundered money, or transported drugs, or trafficked children, he could be sent back to The Hague, and from there to prison—where any number of his former fellow officers would be happy to murder him.

Chapter 45

Anna had promised Joe not to chase Petrović, and she would keep that promise.

But nothing had been said about parking on Fell Street, where she could see the Butcher come and go, observe his movements in the hours when she was not working, and make sure that if he did spot her, he wouldn’t get a good look at her face.

It was after 8:00 p.m. and Anna was in her car, parked on Fell. The traffic was light, and she could easily see the row of Victorian houses, especially the yellow one with the blue trim where she’d seen Petrović coming down the front stairs twice before.

The fancy houses were lit up inside, and Anna could see the blue glow of televisions and the silhouettes of the homeowners against the curtains.

Once, she had lived in a beautiful mountain town with pretty houses and TVs and cars, and parks and shops, bridges over cool waters, and an ancient fortress. She and her friends had read books and gone to work and dressed in Western clothing, like in any European country. It had been like a dream, but she hadn’t known she was only dreaming.

Now she opened a nut-and-chocolate candy bar and ate it as she stared out at the picture-pretty street. She thought about a time not so long ago when she and her husband had had their own house on the outskirts of Djoba.

The house was not big, but it was cozy.

Built of brick and stucco and wood, it was pale blue outside and white inside, with exposed beams overhead and a brick stove in the kitchen. She loved cooking on that stove and felt completely at home in that earthy kitchen, with its sweet touch of decorated plates hanging on the walls.

When she was just married, her friend and Tina, her older sister, taught her to cook their recipes on that small stove, and they gave her some good tricks to make delicious dinners.

There was a sweet dessert called krempita, cream pie, that they made for holidays and birthdays. Anna remembered her first attempts at rolling out the puff pastry dough and making the custard filling. Her friend and sister had laughed so hard at the flour sticking to her hair and her face and hands and every surface, but she had learned and grown to love serving krempita on her grandmother’s blue cake plates, using the forks that had been in her family for generations. And it was her husband’s favorite dessert, though his mother made a different type: sampita, in which the custard was replaced with meringue. He would tease her in a sexy voice, “Anna, my sweet, I love your krempita. ”

The way he said it always made her laugh.

Anna hadn’t made pie since Petrović’s army stormed Djoba. Her family had been buried in a mass grave, except for her baby. She didn’t know where his poor bones had come to rest.

Tears came down her face, but she didn’t sob and she didn’t even blink. She wiped them away with the back of her hand and kept her eyes on the fancy house where Slobodan Petrović lived.

Chapter 46

Anna saw headlights in her rearview mirror first but didn’t realize until after they’d passed her that the car was a blue Jaguar.

There was an empty spot in front of the yellow house, and the car swept into it, parked, shut off the lights.

It was dark again, and Anna exhaled. She looked at her watch and saw the time, just after midnight. She’d fallen asleep and hadn’t known it. Petrović’s restaurant must have closed, and he was home for the night.

She watched him get out of his car, phone to his face as usual, and head up under the decorative woodwork of the front porch to the front door. Lights came on in the front hall, then the parlor.

Anna switched on her ignition as another car came down the street, the headlights shining in her eyes. She waited for this car to pass her before pulling out, but instead it pulled parallel to a parked car behind her and stopped. Double-parked.

The driver-side door opened, and a man with silvery hair in a gray topcoat got out, slammed the door to his dark SUV. Anna knew cars. It was a Cadillac Escalade.

Who was this?

An FBI man tailing Petrović?

A friend or colleague paying a call at midnight?

The man in gray walked to Petrović’s house and climbed the stairs. The door opened. Anna saw the dark hulk of Petrović stand back so that the man in gray could go in. The front door closed again.

Anna shut off the ignition, took a swig from her water bottle, and put it back on the seat. She would wait until the man in gray left the house. She’d promised Joe not to chase Petrović, but technically, following his associate wasn’t chasing him.

The more they knew about Petrović, the better.

And she didn’t have to wait long.

About five minutes after going inside the yellow house, the man in gray came out, got into his car, started it up, and drove up from behind her at a slow speed, coming alongside her and then stopping. Right next to her.

The man in the car waited for her to turn her face to him, and then made the universal signal for rolling down the car window.

She didn’t do it. Anna was actually paralyzed. She pictured a gun pointed at her. She imagined ducking to the floor of the car. She saw herself bolting out of her car on the sidewalk side and just running, running, running, bullets coming at her as she ran.

Anna heard the man yelling through his open window.

“You need help?”

She shook her head no. And reached for the key, turned her engine on. There was room to pull out and drive past him. Barely. She turned the wheel, and as she rolled out into her lane, she looked toward the driver of the Escalade.

He was smiling at her. It was the kind of smile she’d seen before in the darkest days of her hell on earth. The smile was an expression of power.

He was letting her know how confident he was of his power to hurt her.

The tires of Anna’s Kia grabbed asphalt, and the car squealed as it shot off and up the street. As Anna reached the intersection of Fell and Broderick, she checked her rearview mirror.

The Caddy wasn’t following her. But if he looked for her, he would recognize her car. She parked blocks away from her front door and stuck to the shadows as she made her way home.