Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

I said, “What are the odds she’s here?”

Mahoney turned off the car, said, “The clerk I spoke with said she’s in and out and hasn’t let them service the room.”

For a moment, I thought about Kasimov, the Russian, and how he’d been holed up at his hotel while his men put on disguises to go out on clandestine missions.

But I tucked that away and focused on the motel parking lot, seeing aged Ford pickups and beater Chevy sedans with tailpipes held on by coat hangers. Nothing newer. Nothing that screamed rental. Then again, Kristina Varjan could have parked on the street or in the alley behind the motel, where Mahoney had a squad of junior FBI agents moving into position.

When they radioed us that they were ready, we spilled out of the car, all of us dressed in jeans, work boots, and oversize rain jackets that hid our Kevlar vests. Remembering what we’d been told about the Hungarian assassin, I wondered if I was wearing enough armor.

As we crossed the street, I said, “You don’t find it odd she used the same name she used coming into the country? Edith, that spook we spoke with at the CIA, said she switches identities constantly.”

Mahoney shrugged. “She didn’t know she’d been spotted, so she stuck with it.”

We went into the office where we were met by the owner, Vash Yasant, a young, nervous Indian immigrant who’d bought the motel three months before.

“What’s this about?” Yasant said. “What’s she done?”

“Let’s make sure of something first,” Mahoney said, and on the counter he put a still from the surveillance footage at Dulles airport.

“Is that her?” I asked.

Yasant studied it, stroking his chin, then nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s her. I’d swear on it. Especially that bag. She had it with her when she checked in.”

“She have a car?”

“She said she came by Metro and bus.”

“Room?” Mahoney said.

“Number fifteen, right above us,” Yasant said, pointing upward. “She wanted a room facing the street.”

I sighed. “She saw us coming in.”

“If she was looking,” Mahoney said.

“She went out two hours ago,” the motel manager said. “What has this Martina Rodoni done?”

“Nothing so far,” I said. “We just want to talk to her.”

“I will take you to her room,” Yasant said. “I’ll bring the master key.”

I thought that was a mistake, but Mahoney said, “You’ll stay well behind us, and you will move only when told to.”

“Yes, sir!” the innkeeper cried, and he stood up straight.

“Yes, what?” his wife said, coming out from behind a curtain. She was dressed in a colorful sari and was very pregnant.

Her husband said, “Rani, these men are with the FBI, and that woman up in fifteen, she is very, very dangerous. They have asked me to assist them with the key!”

Mrs. Yasant looked at her husband, at us, and then at her husband again. “You will do no such thing, Vash! The baby comes any day, and you cannot go playing policeman!”

The innkeeper looked ready to argue, but Mahoney said, “On second thought, Mr. Yasant, your wife’s probably right. Why don’t you just give us the key? We’ll drop it on the way out.”

The father-to-be looked chagrined and deflated, but he handed us the key from a hook on the wall behind him.

“You will report what you find up there?” he asked. “This is my place, yes?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

We went out of the door and drew weapons and put them in our raincoat pockets before climbing the near staircase and walking back toward the main drag and room 15. It was mid-morning, no new hourly customers, and the long-termers had gone off to scavenge their lives.

Every room we passed was quiet. Even room 15, which had a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the door handle.

Mahoney stood to the side of the door, looked at the window and tight curtains beyond it, then knocked sharply.

No answer. After thirty seconds, Mahoney knocked again.

Again, no answer.

Mahoney took his pistol out. I did the same. He fitted the key in the lock and turned it.

I pushed the door inward, revealing twin beds, unused, still crisply made. Dead center of the bed deeper into the room was the same roller bag we’d seen Varjan wheeling in the Dulles airport security footage.

Beside it was a cheap cell phone.

Mahoney went over to the bag, but I stopped him.

“Why leave it like this?” I said. “Why not put it in the closed closet?”

Ned did not have time to answer before the cell phone on the tacky bedspread began to ring and buzz.

I was closer, so I picked it up and answered on speaker.

“Hello?” I said. “Kristina? Kristina Varjan?”

There was a moment before Varjan said, “Good-bye. Whoever you are.”

The phone went dead.

My eyes darted to the bag.

“Run!”

We spun and bolted toward the open door. I was behind Mahoney and one step onto the balcony when the phone in my hand began to ring with a different ringtone.

I threw myself completely out of the room a split second before the bomb went off behind us, blowing out the windows and blasting the metal door off its hinges.

Two hours later, the blast was still ringing in my ears as I looked down on the carnival that had descended on the Happy Pines Motel. Two fire trucks. Five police cruisers. Four vans bearing a small army of crime scene techs and special agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Mahoney was standing next to me, elbows on the balcony railing, still shocked by how close we’d come to death.

“Wish I’d never quit smoking,” he said, and I heard a quiver in his voice.

“Close,” I said, equally shaken. “That’s the closest I’ve ever come.”

I’d called Bree to let her know what had happened, and Mahoney and I had already spoken about Varjan with a parade of agents assigned to the case. Our theory was that she suspected she’d been spotted after arriving at Dulles and had tested that suspicion by renting the motel room under the name Martina Rodoni.

“She sat on us, waiting,” I said. “For two days.”

“She’s disciplined, I give you that,” Mahoney said.

“Is she? Why try to kill us? It only increases the heat on her.”

“I’ll set aside the why for now. She did it is all I need to know. We have to get her face everywhere. She’s got other business planned.”

“I agree. Enhance and enlarge the security photo of her. She’ll be recognized.”

He nodded and took out his cell phone.

Almost directly below us in the parking lot, Rani Yasant was yelling at her husband, who was looking up at the smoldering hole that had once been room 15.

“You see?” Mrs. Yasant cried, hands on her belly. “If you had been brave and gone up there, you would have died, Vash, and then where would I be? Answer me that, where would I be?”

Yasant put both hands to his head as if squeezing it in a vise. “Why do you always think this way, Rani? I did not go up there. I am alive. And you wish me to be a coward in every aspect of my life!”

He shouted this last bit, and it caused his wife to step back and start crying.

“What are we going to do?” she said, sobbing. “I told you not to buy that extra fire insurance. I said it was too expensive!”

Her husband softened and walked over to her. He put his arms around her.

“It’s okay, Rani. I did not listen to you.”

His wife looked up at him through tears. “Is that true?”

“We’re covered,” he said, and he kissed her forehead.

“Agent Mahoney?”

Mahoney and I turned to find Tim Schmidt, the supervising special agent with BATF, coming toward us. Mahoney finished his call and hung up.