Iris Johansen - Deadlock

"Thank you."

"No, I repeat, it is my pleasure." He flashed a smile that lit his round, dark face. "Do you need clothes? Transportation?"

Garrett grinned. "We seem to be losing our shirts at every turn. But I imagine Ferguson had the rental car taken away from Nemid's house and our suitcases with it. We're not about to knock on Ferguson's door to get them. That might be entirely too tempting for him. I'll ask that clothes be brought by the pilot Dardon arranges to pick us up, but we still need to get out of the city without Emily being recognized." He nodded. "So yes, if you can get Emily some clothes, I'd appreciate it. Preferably something including a veil. Anything will do for me." He turned to Emily as Fatin left the room, "It will just be until we get out¬side the city."

"You don't need to give me explanations. I don't like the fact that men keep women veiled and under their heels, but it's a disguise that would work." She took a bite of cheese. "I should probably try to wear it on the plane to the U.S. It's only during security that I'd have to shed the veil."

He nodded. "But we'll arrange a private jet to get us to the New York area. I know a small local airport in Connecticut that's safe."

"Safe? Does that mean under the radar of Homeland Security? An echo from your shady past?"

"What else is a shady past good for?" He sat down across from her and reached for a piece of bread. "We'll whisk you away from the air¬port as soon as we hit the ground in New York."

"I brought you clothes." Fatin came into the room carrying an armful of voluminous black garments. "I hope they're suitable." He set the clothes down on a stool. "If you have trouble with the proper way of wearing them, tell me and I will send my wife to help you."

"Your wife?"

"Yes, they belong to her." He shrugged as he saw her expression of surprise. "It is tradition."

"I didn't mean-You've been very kind. Thank you."

Her gaze went back to the smothering black veils of the burqua as he left the room before looking at Garrett.

"You take what you can get." He repeated as he started to eat, "Baby steps."

IT WAS DARDON WHO GOT 0 U T of the helicopter when they ar¬rived at the same poppy field where they had landed the day Garrett had gotten her out of the mountains.

"I told you to stay with Irana," Garrett said as he opened the car door for Emily. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Irana didn't need me. She decided to stay in Morocco and work with another doctor who was developing a new vaccine for malaria."

"And Morocco is supposed to be safe?"

"She has an army around her." He lifted his hand to his forehead in a mocking salute. "As commanded. She told me to get out of her way and go somewhere that I could do some good." He gave a low whistle as Emily got out of the car. "Quite an outfit. I don't even recognize you beneath all that drapery."

"I can't breathe." She took off the veil. "I don't know how they stand it." She started to strip off as many layers as she could. "That's better."

"I brought you more clothes and a computer."

"Good," Emily said. "I want to check and see if I can find out any¬thing more about Nicholas Zelov and his place in Connecticut."

"I dug a little deeper and found out a few things about him while I was with Irana," Dardon said. "When he was on the verge of bank¬ruptcy, he hired an accounting lawyer, Donald Warwick, to go through the family's affairs and see where they'd gone wrong in the corpora¬tion and how to correct it. It took a little of your money, Garrett, but I managed to get Warwick to talk to me. Evidently he was pretty thorough because he went way back to the start of the corporation in 1925." "And?"

"He found sizeable amounts deposited in Mikhail Zelov's corpo¬rate accounts every six months on the same dates until 1943. Then they stopped."

"Where did they come from?"

Dardon shook his head. "First mail, then electronic transfers from somewhere in Belgium. Untraceable." "Belgium?" Emily asked.

"Don't take any stock in that," Garrett said. "If you don't want someone to know where a deposit is coming from, you can reroute halfway around the world."

"But Warwick said that Nicholas Zelov was very interested in those deposits. Nicholas said that old bastard, Mikhail, must have had some¬thing on someone, and it was too bad that the money had stopped."

"Blackmail?"

"Or payment for services rendered," Garrett said. "But Nicholas might have decided to do some searching on his own and come up with something that he thought might still be of interest. Hence the trip to Moscow."

"And his sudden reversal of fortune," Dardon said.

Garrett nodded. "It does seem a probable connection."

"I'm tired of probable," Emily said. "I want to find out. Where do we go from here?"

"Pakistan," Garrett said. "We'll change to a jet and head for New York."

"That's what you said in Rome." To Emily it seemed a hundred years ago that she'd found out that they were going to Kabul instead of New York. Murder and pursuit and the discovery of that amulet that meant absolutely nothing to them right now.

"This time it's a promise." Garrett lifted her into the helicopter. "I just had to check Nemid out after what you told me."

She braced herself. "You said that I'd said other things that you thought might help. What were they?"

He was silent a moment. "At one point Staunton was asked to come and talk to someone who had driven up to the camp to see him. He left you and Levy for a few moments."

She gazed at him blankly. "I don't remember…" But now she vaguely recalled muttering something last night in that fever of memories. "Why would I blank that out? Why couldn't I remember he-"

"You were sort of-" He shrugged, then said, "You couldn't focus on anything but Levy. That was the night that Staunton had given Borg the order to burn out Levy's eyes."

Her back went stiff as if he'd struck her. The memory of that night was right before her. "And Borg didn't stop," she whispered. "Staunton left the hut, but Borg didn't stop. And then he came back and said to Borg. 'Let me help. You're not doing it right.'"

"Stop it." Garret shook her gently. "I told you that I'd never ask you to remember again. But I had to answer when you asked."

She nodded jerkily. "I know." She remembered something else. "That next day Staunton was probing, digging at me, saying some¬thing about my blanking out things. It might be that he was trying to find out if I'd paid any attention to his leaving. Why… do you think that visitor was important?"

"Because Staunton cursed, and said, 'Damn Babin. He's always nosing around, checking up on me.' "

"Babin?"

"Yes." He climbed into the helicopter. "It's important, but it was going to take too much time to make the connection right away so I called Dardon and told him to start checking for a Babin. But I could see the link with Nemid that had possibilities, and we acted on that lead." He turned to Dardon. "Take off."

"In a minute. I have something more. I want to reveal my super-sleuthing and get praise heaped upon me."

"You found out something more about Zelov?" Emily asked. "No, more important. Staunton." "What?" Garrett asked.

"Do you remember I told you that Staunton might be a pseudo¬nym for a Robert Hurker?" "And is it?"

"Yes, it's only one of many. I had time when I was with Irana to buckle down and dig deeper. He doesn't use Staunton very often. He seems to save it for the times when there's no danger of him being booked. That's why I wasn't able to trace the name."

"Tell me about Hurker."

"Born in Melbourne, Australia. His father was a fisherman, his mother a whore until his father took her off the streets. He grew up in Sydney. He was booked for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon when he was ten. After that it was straight downhill. He almost beat a shopkeeper to death when he was fifteen and got off because he was a minor." He paused. "His mother and baby sister fell overboard off his father's fishing boat and drowned when he was sixteen. He pretended to be heartbroken. The social worker who had his case said that there was a possibility he did it himself. It got too hot in Sydney, and he dis¬appeared for a while. He was going to the university and when he came back, the only thing he'd learned was how to be smarter and more vicious. He took off for France, and has been hopping about the world and doing what he does best."