Neil Olson - The Icon

“Stamáta! Stop it, both of you.” Father John helped him to a chair, but Matthew would not sit, merely leaned on the pale wooden arm, pulling hard for breath. Baldy straightened his jacket, a combination of rage and surprise distorting his features. “Demetrios was not after you,” the priest said firmly, “he was headed for the door.”

Matthew had realized that a moment after he struck, and yet the anger remained, barely under control. And wholly misdirected, he now understood. His hands shook. The floor seemed to drop away, like the shaky scaffolding that Fotis had built beneath him. A lie; he had built it himself, using the shoddy materials his godfather supplied, the half-truths and flimsy reasoning. Ignoring every sign, letting the worthy goal justify all. He had been played. It was just as his father had warned him, he could keep the truth at bay no longer.

“OK,” Matthew said, once his breath returned. “I’ll go with you. But we do this my way. Fotis is very sharp, and he’s well protected.”

The priest smiled.

“Then we shall count on you to protect us.”

It was cold. Andreas had not been on the streets this early in a long time, and he was surprised at how the predawn chill penetrated him. He walked swiftly to get the blood flowing in his stiff limbs, knowing that he could not afford to be slow in the minutes or hours to come. Vigorous action might be required. He felt a tremor of unease rise up. He had poked and poked, expecting nothing, and suddenly he had stirred up the hornets’ nest. Things could easily get out of hand now, and he would have no one to blame but himself. Yet he couldn’t wish it were not happening. If it was Müller, well, a reckoning was required. Time did not wash away crimes, and instinct continued to tell him that the threat to anyone involved with the icon was real. He only hoped that Benny would be punctual, because it was very cold.

Shadows hung thickly in the narrow canyons of side streets, but the sky was slowly brightening over Queens. Some people were out already, solitary specters appearing not quite aware or awake. Taxis rocketed up Third Avenue. A silver-gray sedan sat before a brick bank on the northeast corner of an intersection. A small Japanese car, good for parking. The passenger door was unlocked, and Andreas slipped gratefully into the warm compartment. Benny was already smoking, and two cups of deli coffee were jammed into a plastic holder between them. The man’s demeanor was relaxed this morning, and he allowed the thin stream of traffic to pass completely before pulling onto the avenue.

“Where are we going,” Andreas asked.

“Not far. Yorkville. Germantown, they call it, but it’s really more Hungarian. Hungarian churches, restaurants, clubs.”

“I know the neighborhood.”

“There’s a kind of boardinghouse, run by a Hungarian woman. I didn’t know about it before, but someone put me on to it a few days ago.”

“And you sent one of the girls over with brochures?”

“Got in through the cleaning service, not that it’s any of your business. Anyway, he’s not staying in the boardinghouse proper, but in an apartment this woman owns, a few blocks away. Under the name Peter Miller.”

“Miller,” Andreas mused, skeptically. “That’s an old one. He hasn’t used that in years.”

“Maybe that’s why he chose it.”

“Benny, are you sure of this? Peter Miller is a very common name.”

“I saw him go in last night. Quite old, short legs, long torso, a slight limp.”

It sounded right, but it could be coincidence.

“How many apartments in the building?”

“You really have no faith in me, do you, my friend?”

“I am asking a few questions.”

“You are asking,” the younger man said sharply, “how I know the man was even this Miller, let alone Müller, and not one of ten thousand old men who live on the upper East Side. It’s a small building, eight apartments, two unoccupied. Four people went in who look like residents, younger people, briefcases, dry cleaning. That doesn’t cover the whole building, but it narrows it considerably.”

“Yes. It sounds promising.”

“I think we have your man. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“What is the plan?”

“He went in late last night. I don’t think he will have left again. We park and wait. It’s a quiet street, we could pick him up, take him to a secure location. I have two in mind. Or we could do the business right there, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Then why mention it?”

“In case it would be easier for you.”

In other words, thought Andreas, in case sitting in a car for an hour with a terrified old bastard who knows we’re going to kill him makes me lose my nerve. He had never actually agreed to Benny’s condition, but his failure to object had made the plan concrete. The moral issues did not trouble him; they simply weren’t set up for an operation like this. It was just the two of them, no other support was possible. No matter how well Benny thought it out, it was bound to be messy, with the risk of failure or discovery very high.

“I’m prepared to do it quietly,” Benny continued. “Sit him down on a stoop or against a car. It would take a few minutes, at least, for anyone to notice. It’s far from ideal.”

“It’s impossible,” Andreas snapped. “We haven’t even identified him yet.”

“You won’t know him on sight?”

“I think I will, but I will need to be very close.”

“So we pick him up.”

“What if there are too many people on the street?”

“Then we follow him. See what he’s up to. Wait for the next opportunity.”

They turned east on Eighty-fourth Street and headed toward the brightening sky. Andreas hated being so close to the target with only the vaguest sketch of a plan. In truth, he had participated in numerous ill-advised operations for the Greek security forces, but they went against his nature, and his fears were usually proved correct by some blunder. He liked to run a tighter ship. The English, and later the Americans, had been his models. Mostly he envied their resources: secure apartments, high-powered surveillance, teams of trackers. His own former agency now employed all these methods, but it no longer employed him. He was on his own, at the mercy of this skilled but lunatic Jew. Andreas reminded himself that the consequences did not greatly matter. Sloppiness insulted his professionalism, but it was the result that counted. He was no longer responsible for anyone but himself. To get Müller, after all these years, would be worth something. A service rendered, and a debt paid. Let them do to him what they wanted after that. He began to feel calmer, surveying each tree-lined block, checking the pedestrian traffic at each intersection. Things would go as they went, and he was prepared for whatever happened.

Benny pointed out the building, an old brownstone with a tall, worn set of stairs. Second floor, front right, was where he had seen a light go on a minute after Miller entered. There was no place to park, so they circled the block until a space opened up near the avenue, beneath a leaning plane tree, still mostly bare. In summer the street would be shrouded in leafy shadow, but at the moment Andreas felt completely exposed.

“Relax,” said Benny.

“We drove by the damn place three times.”

“Looking for parking. Everyone does it. Remember that he’s avoided detection for fifty years. Not everyone is like you, examining the stall for microphones before he shits.”

“There.”

A man came out the heavy wooden door of the brownstone and trudged wearily down the steps. In his sixties, dressed casually but carrying a briefcase.

“He doesn’t want to go to work,” Benny said, sipping coffee.