Thomas Perry - The Informant

At eight in the morning he awoke, got up and dressed, then drove to an electronics store, bought a prepaid cell phone, and dialed Meg's number in London.

"Hello," she said.

"Hi. It's me."

"I've been wishing it would be you every time, but I always remind myself that you would never call in these circumstances. Do you have new circumstances?"

"They're a bit worse than before. I wanted to tell you that I'm doing my best to get through this, but you should be prepared for the probability that it won't work out."

"Oh, my God, Michael. Please. Is there any way to simply leave? If you and I met in a village in Paraguay or one of the thirty thousand islands of the Maldives, couldn't we live some kind of life together? Because I'd do that without hesitation."

"So would I. The problem is that the people I'm worrying about have branches and subsidiaries in a great many countries, and very close ties with a lot of other organizations everywhere. Right now, today, the word is being spread that finding me is worth a lot of money. The figure will be high enough so quite a few people in different places will begin to search."

"What are you going to do?"

"Make getting me seem like a hard way to make money."

"The only other time you went back there, you made up such a pretty story for me. Do you remember? You were with the CIA, and the two boys who had been killed when the Bulgarians came after you would be awarded posthumous medals by the queen?"

"I remember."

"I never bought a word of it. But I loved you for making it up. I've always loved you, from the time you took me to tea after that meeting in Bath, and we talked. I didn't know anything about you-what you had done before, who you knew, and so on. I could see everything about you without any facts to obstruct the view. You do your best to come back to me. If you make it, I'll be here waiting for you. If you don't make it back, then know that I don't regret anything. If I had it to do again, I'd give myself to you in a heartbeat."

"What's going on now reminds me that I have a few things to regret, but I've never felt anything but lucky I met you. I love you."

"I feel as though we didn't get to say that enough times."

"If I get back, I'll say it every morning before I do anything else."

"I'll remind you."

"I'm sorry, but I've got to keep moving, so I'd better go. Stay safe. Be alert. If anything around you seems odd, assume it's trouble. Visit friends in faraway places for a few weeks. One way or another, this will be over by then. If they find me, they'll stop looking."

"I'll be waiting for you."

He disconnected the call, took the phone apart, and dropped the pieces in trash cans as he walked along the street. When he reached the hotel, he checked out and began to drive northward out of Houston.

Elizabeth had a strange, disconnected feeling as she looked down at Washington from the air. She wasn't feeling the way she usually did when she flew into Reagan International-a mixture of comfortable familiarity and pride at how beautiful the place was. She was somewhere else in her mind, and she realized that she was feeling what the Butcher's Boy must be feeling.

He had killed Frank Tosca in the midst of the biggest conference of bosses in fifty years. He must be wondering, as she was, what kind of reaction the old men were having. Most of them were probably busy dealing with the problem of being detained in Arizona. Even if nothing else was lost, each of the old men would be aware that he had been made to look ridiculous-not only careless, but gullible. He must be feeling very alone right now.

Looking foolish was a very serious matter if you were trying to keep a couple of hundred soldiers cowed and respectful. Looking weak had probably been the foremost cause of death in their families for the past five generations. Who would they be blaming today for what had happened in Arizona? The one who had insisted on the meeting was Frank Tosca. But it must be terribly unsatisfying to be angry at a dead man.

Most of them would have no choice but to settle on the Butcher's Boy. He was safe to hate. He was an outsider. None of them would have to deal with retaliation from his cousins and in-laws. When he had killed Tosca, he had robbed the meeting of its purpose. He had contributed to the number and gravity of their potential legal troubles. He had also contributed to the spectacle they presented as a group of impotent, half-senile old men trying to reconstruct a past that could never return. It had been one against two hundred, and once again, the two hundred looked like idiots. That alone would make them want him dead.

She knew, and the Butcher's Boy must know too, that the death of a man like Frank Tosca wasn't entirely bad news to the other bosses. They were the veterans of a great many vendettas and coups. The older ones had lived through a couple of disputes that in some countries would have seemed like civil wars. They knew that a strong man like Tosca might revitalize an organization that had been stagnating for years. But the more success Tosca had and the more people flocked around him, the less power the other bosses would have. He would become the first among equals, and then, ultimately, the boss of bosses- Il capo di tutti capi. Soon they would have been paying percentages to him for the privilege of running businesses, and after that, they would have begun to take orders from him and serve at his pleasure. Many of them must have been delighted that he had not made it home from Arizona.

None of that would help his killer. Getting the killer would be a way to overcome their new image problem and keep their power from leaking away. By killing the Butcher's Boy, they would console any of their own men who had been hoping a new golden age for the Mafia would start when Tosca took over. They would complete this single small accomplishment in concert with all of the other families who had agreed to it, and maybe acting together would bring better things later. These were men who killed on a suspicion, an impulse, a whim. Death always seemed to be the solution to every problem.

If only the Butcher's Boy was astute enough to understand his predicament, he might be ready for an approach from her. He just might be feeling the right kind of desperation. If she offered the kind of sanctuary that only the U.S. government could offer, he just might take it.

As her plane banked and leveled its wings for the approach, she was already trying to think of a way to contact him. He would be watching television and looking at newspapers to find out anything he could about the aftermath of his killing Tosca. She needed to let him know that she understood his predicament and sympathized. She stopped herself. No, that wasn't right. Did she feel sympathy for him? She detected a temptation to feel sorry he was going to suffer, even though she knew the feeling was wasted on him. There were insane serial killers who murdered fewer people than he had just since he'd turned up again, and they served as the models for horror movies.

Still, there had never been an underdog who had worse odds. His opponents were all grown-up men who had needed to commit a murder in order to be "made," and they all had been trying to kill him when he'd attacked them. But she had to resist the impulse to defend him. It made her confused and, if anyone knew, would make her seem crazy, like the women who wrote love letters to convicted serial killers.

The plane landed, gave its usual bounce and shudder, rattled down the runway to a stop, then taxied toward the terminal. By the time the lights came on to illuminate the impatient passengers popping up to get their bags from the overhead compartments, she had composed what she wanted to say.

"I've known about you for twenty years, but only met you on August 30. You've got troubles, so talk to me."