Steven Gore - Final Target

Gage scanned the sidewalks, cars, storefronts, and apartment windows above for countersurveillance or for others also tailing Matson.

A young woman wearing black pants and a fur-necked jacket slowed near the entrance to the Ax Man Pub. She stopped to read the specials written in chalk on a green board attached to the wall, then pushed the door open and walked in.

Hixon One glanced over his shoulder at Gage, and smiled with a father’s pride. “Lovely, isn’t she?”

Gage nodded. “And no one would ever guess what she does for a living.” He grabbed the door handle. “I need to get a closer look at some of the guys on the street.” He glanced at Hixon One. “Why don’t you stay here?” Then at Mickey. “How about a little fresh air?”

Mickey climbed out after him and they walked along the sidewalk to the corner, stopping first at a flower stand, then inside West London Newsagents for cover while surveying the street.

“You see them?” Gage whispered to Mickey, peering out through the window.

“I see one, the rather stout fellow on the opposite corner.”

“Look at the third car down from the pub, the dark blue Rover.”

“Ah yes,” Mickey said, “a disturbingly unattractive little creature. His face looks like a bleached prune.” He chuckled. “His mother must be quite embarrassed.”

Gage nodded toward a silver Mercedes directly in front of the pub. “I think that one may be part of this, too.” He then glanced back and forth between the automobiles. The license plates of both were blocked by the cars bracketing them. “We need the numbers. I’ll slip by the Rover.”

Gage scanned the news rack and grabbed a London map. Mickey paid for it while Gage headed toward the door and adopted the puzzled but earnest expression of a tourist. He walked toward the next intersection, while Mickey strolled back the way they came.

They met at the cab five minutes later.

“Cheap suit,” Mickey said, pointing at the Mercedes and settling into the backseat next to Gage. “Foreign.”

“The suit?” Gage asked.

“No, the biceps. Quite expansive. The fellow is an absolute giant. Like one of these Greco-Roman wrestlers in the Olympics. Probably Eastern or Central European.”

Hixon One wrote down the plate numbers, then dialed his cell phone and passed them on. After listening for a moment, he disconnected and looked back at Gage. “They’re both registered to something called UES Holdings Limited on West Cromwell Road.”

Gage called Alex Z. “Sorry to wake you up, but I need you to run something.”

“No problem. I was lying awake and thinking about how I’d feel if my father had been shot down like Mr. Burch. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll meet my dad for breakfast.”

“That’s a good idea. You’re lucky to have him.”

“I’ve been realizing that more and more every day,” Alex Z said. “What do you need?”

“Find out everything you can about UES Holdings Limited in London.”

Twenty minutes later Alex Z called back.

“I ran a registration search on the UK Companies House Web site. UES has the same address as Fitzhugh. Looks like there are a hundred offices in the building, mostly lawyers and accountants.”

“E-mail me everything you downloaded, then run a newspaper search on Fitzhugh. He was murdered last week.”

“Jeez. Be careful, boss.”

Just then Matson stomped out of the Ax Man. He started to hail a cab, but dropped his arm and marched up Kensington High Street, hands jammed into his coat pockets.

“Mickey,” Gage said, “follow him on foot. I’ll stay here and take photos. Have Hixon Two pick you up if he grabs a cab. We’ll meet at my room when you think he’s in for the night.”

H ixon One, parked down the block from Matson’s flat, gave himself a discreet scratch, then settled in for the evening. Alla emerged a half hour later dressed in a blue Marks amp; Spencer running suit. She stretched for a few minutes against the black wrought-iron fence surrounding the property, then ran off, her long legs beating a practiced rhythm.

Gage had just disconnected from Hixon One’s update when Mickey and Hixon Two arrived at his room. He directed them to the couch and again sat in the wing chair.

“Is Two what people really call you?” Gage asked.

“Family and friends,” she said. “My mother died when I was four. Since then it’s been Pop and me, One and Two.”

She looked even younger up close, but her eyes had a mature depth of experience.

“How long have you been in the service?”

“Almost five years. Three in regular army and two in Reconnaissance and Surveillance. I joined after college. It was Uncle Mickey’s idea.”

“Where’d they send you?”

Hixon Two grinned. “Around.”

“Good answer.” Gage leaned forward. “So, tell me what happened inside the Ax Man.”

She straightened up, as if preparing to report to a superior.

“Matson met Russians. Or at least Central Europeans who spoke Russian to each other. Mostly friendly. At one point it got tense, then it lightened up. But I’m not sure the meeting ended well.”

“That was our impression, too.” Gage reached over and opened his laptop to display the digital photos he snapped outside the Ax Man after Matson stormed out. He’d numbered them one through thirty-seven. He turned the computer toward her.

Hixon Two studied the first fifteen spread across the screen. “Number three, six, and eleven were the ones who met with Matson.”

She pressed the page-down button, then worked her finger across along the images.

“Sixteen is the bodyguard. A giant. He came in just for a minute, otherwise he was in a Mercedes outside. Number three did almost all the talking.” She looked up at Gage. “I don’t recognize anyone else.”

“Could you hear what they were saying?”

“I played girly-girl at the bar in order not to be too obvious, so I didn’t catch much of the conversation. I went to the WC twice so I could walk by the table. All I caught was ‘leave him out of it’ and ‘when the time comes.’ At one point Matson raised his voice a little and said ‘arranger’ or ‘ranger’ or some word like that a couple of times.”

“Could it be Granger?”

“Yes, I think that could be it. At one point number three took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. I saw a tattoo on his arm.” She reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a bar napkin that bore a detailed drawing. “It was like this.” She handed it to Gage. “But I don’t know what it means. It’s not the kind Russian soldiers get.”

“It means number three is a thief-in-the-law,” Gage said, “a vory-v-zakone. Each point represents a year in prison. There are only a few hundred vorys in the world. If they were Italian mafia, we’d call them made men. But these are Russians and Ukrainians and it’s a lot tougher to get made. Even a guy like John Gotti wouldn’t have made it past gofer.”

“Shouldn’t they be called thieves outside the law?” Hixon Two asked.

“It’s law in the sense of a thief’s code.”

“Like a no snitching rule?”

“Exactly.” Gage closed his laptop. The click echoed in the now silent room. He looked back and forth between her and Mickey. “How about I take you two out for dinner and we can make plans for tomorrow?”

Heads nodded.

“How about Indian?” Mickey said, smiling. “A little chicken tikka, a little tandoori, a few chapattis. Food in London is wonderful. It’s the only surviving benefit of imperialism. Anytime we want, we get to eat food from all the colonies we’ve been thrown out of.”

Gage sent them home after dinner, then returned to his hotel room to check his e-mails. One from Faith was waiting. She’d sent it just after meeting Courtney at the hospital: Burch’s doctors had reported that his condition remained unchanged.