Kills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Egypt, 1994

Dawn is breaking over Luxor as Billie steps from the train. It is eleven hours since she left Cairo, and she is lightheaded from lack of sleep. Through the night, the train jolted and jerked every mile, but it is the anticipation that has kept her awake, the blood fizzing in her body. Today is the day that Fermín Bosque will die.

The foursome surveilled him from his hotel in Cairo the previous afternoon, handing off to each other as he changes direction. He is cautious, discreet even, dressed in a plain djellaba in subdued grey as he emerges from his hotel. Without looking around, he dodges through the crowded alleys of the Khan el-Khalili. He ignores the calls of the vendors in the souk as they press leather goods and spices on him, waving them off with a brusque hand. He follows the narrow, twisting passageways to emerge on the far side of the bazaar. He dives into the hectic city streets to make his way on foot to the Windsor Hotel. He does not go inside. Instead, he climbs into one of the many tuk-tuks idling outside waiting for tourists. He gives directions to a travel agency near Tahrir Square where he collects a plane ticket, taking a moment outside to tuck it into his pocket. Then he walks briskly up the street towards the Egyptian Museum. They follow him for the better part of two hours as he slowly circles the exhibits, studying Tutankhamun’s grave goods.

As he comes to the end of the exhibit, he checks his watch and disappears into the men’s room, emerging a moment later wearing nondescript trousers in desert khaki and a shirt to match. A hat shields his eyes, and he keeps his head down as he steps outside and hails a taxi that delivers him back to his hotel. He stops at the desk and makes conversation with the clerk for several minutes. They hear little of the discussion, but the desk clerk hands over a business card shaped like a car. Taking it with a smile, Bosque heads to his room. The four assassins, footsore and annoyed, assemble in a coffee shop across the street, watching the main door. They order coffee and pastries and plan their next steps.

“He is careful, you have to give him that,” Helen says, stirring sugar into her coffee. It is thick with grounds and has to be sucked through the teeth to strain it.

“Is it paranoia if they’re really out to get you?” Mary Alice asks with a grin.

“How are we doing this?” Nat asks as she reaches for a pastry. “We know he’s headed for the Valley of the Kings and he has to go through Luxor to get there. He’s got a plane ticket, but that could be a decoy.” The others nod agreement and Nat continues. “You saw the card the desk clerk gave him. He might be renting a car. Or hiring a private driver to take him to Luxor.”

“It’s at least three hundred and fifty miles,” Mary Alice points out. “Over really, really bad roads.”

“Further than that if they’ve closed some of the highways,” Helen says in agreement. “They’re always rerouting and detouring and setting up roadblocks. I don’t think our man wants anything to do with official channels and heightened security.”

Mary Alice frowns. “Did you see all the police at the airport when we arrived? Every one of them carrying a semiautomatic.”

“Can you blame them? People are tense,” Nat says with a shrug.

Terror attacks at tourist hot spots have left everyone—visitors and law enforcement—twitching, waiting for the next explosion or outbreak of violence. Armed guards patrol pyramids and temple complexes, a sight that is both threatening and reassuring to tourists.

“What about a Nile cruise?” Mary Alice asks. “Couldn’t he just sail up to Luxor?”

“Most cruises leave from Luxor to cram all the highlights into a few days,” Billie tells her. “He could hire a private boat from Cairo but it might take a week to sail down to Luxor. That’s a lot of wasted days when you have loot to move.”

Mary Alice speaks up. “The plane is the fastest way to go. An hour wheels up to wheels down. I’ll book a ticket on the evening flight in case that’s the way he chooses to go. And if he chooses to sail, we’ll be there waiting when he shows up. The most important thing is that we can’t let him get to the valley before we do or we’ll never find his little stash.”

“I’ll come with you,” Helen says. “It might take two of us to track him.”

Mary Alice turns to Billie. “You have your pensive face on. What are you thinking?”

“That this guy is all over the map,” Billie says slowly. “Why slip out of his hotel in a half-assed disguise and wind through the souk to pick up a decoy plane ticket and then openly ask about a car to rent? I think he’s hoping to mislead us—or anybody else who might be watching him.”

“I’ll ask around about a car,” Nat says to Mary Alice and Helen. “Then I’ll fly down on the late plane to meet up with you in Luxor. Tomorrow morning at the latest. Book me a room at the Winter Palace.”

They agree and Helen turns to Billie. “Where will you be?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know yet. I need cigarettes.” She gets up as Mary Alice points to the hotel across the street.

“I saw some in the gift shop,” she calls. Billie gives her a wave over her head and crosses the street, nipping under the nose of a horse drawing a calèche for tourists. They don’t carry Eves, but she finds a pack of Marlboros along with an assortment of pharaoh-themed tchotchkes. She grabs a Tutankhamun pocket knife as a joke for Helen along with a stack of postcards and is paying cash for her purchases when she catches something out of the corner of her eye.

Fermín Bosque is on the move. He is wearing the grey djellaba again, but this time he has shaded his eyes with dark glasses. He is carrying a small leather satchel, and as he makes his way through the lobby, she sees him slip his room key into a box on the front desk without breaking stride. He walks smoothly out the front door and steps into a waiting taxi.

There is no time to signal to the others. She follows him out of the hotel and dives into the first taxi she can find. Traffic is heavy and her taxi is able to keep pace with his, always with several cars between them. They head east to the Ramses Railway Station, where Billie loses sight of him twice, finally finding him at the ticket window. She edges into line ahead of a placid-looking woman with several children hanging around her neck.

“Hadha hu zawji,” she says to the woman with an apologetic shrug. The woman nods as if to say she understands about husbands. Billie thrusts cash at the clerk.

“A ticket on the same train, please,” she says, nodding to Bosque’s departing back and crossing her fingers the train is not about to leave. The sleepy clerk shoves a ticket and too little change back to her, but she doesn’t stop to count it.

She hurries after Bosque, but he does not move to the platforms. Instead, he goes directly to the taxi rank, climbing into a vacant cab that swings into traffic.

“Oh, this is bullshit,” she mutters to herself. She shoves in front of an annoyed businessman to take the next cab in line and listens to him cursing her and her entire line of progeny, but she is still in pursuit. They plunge into the murderous Cairo traffic once more, crawling their way towards the Nile. It is not until they have crossed the river and the Great Pyramid of Cheops is in sight that she realizes where he is headed.

“The Giza railway station, please,” she tells her driver. “As quickly as you can.”

He floors it, nipping in and out of cars until he delivers her to the curb. She tips generously as she jumps out, blending with the crowds before Bosque’s taxi arrives. She goes directly to the platform where the eight pm sleeper has just arrived.

When she approaches the train, she understands the cleverness of Bosque’s tactics. While Egyptians must wait to be cleared by security, tourists are simply waved on board. The tickets they’re holding were from the Ramses station, but by boarding at Giza instead, Bosque ensures he has bypassed the stringent security in the capital. She locks herself in her sleeper compartment and turns out the light, watching the platform from behind a gap in the window shade. At the last moment, Bosque passes her window and turns left, climbing aboard. She waits until they have left the station to relax. They are en route to Luxor and Bosque is on the train. She has no way to contact the others and no gear, nothing but her passport and a toothbrush and an emergency belt of gold pahlavis. But she has Fermín Bosque in her sights.

The next morning, she rises before dawn, sipping gritty coffee as they approach the Luxor station in the dark. It is not even six am when they arrive. She hangs back, waiting to make sure Bosque gets off the train, and heaves a sigh of relief when she sees him. He’s dressed in his khakis this time, wearing a fedora like half the other Indiana Jones wannabes at any other archaeological site. His leather satchel is strapped over his chest, and he keeps the hat pulled low. Behind him, Billie tugs on her khaki jacket and dark glasses, the nearest thing she has to a disguise. She has to rely on nothing more than body language and how she carries herself to seem like a different person than the woman he might have spotted in Cairo.

The bag carriers swarm the arriving passengers outside the station, but Bosque and Billie have nothing for them. They make their way through the throng, taking a direct route to the corniche, the elegant pavement lined with palms that faces the Nile. At another time, Billie might have been distracted by the restaurants and shops facing the river, but she is focused on one thing only as she follows Bosque onto the ferry dock. There are dozens of brightly painted boats to carry tourists across the river to the Valley of the Kings, but Bosque has opted for the local ferry, riding with the people on their way to work. The ferry is enormous compared to the little tourist boats, and Billie takes a seat far from Bosque, positioning herself to disembark ahead of him. The rising sun spreads across the river as they cross, sending long beams of light over the cliffs that surround the tombs. Billie heads that direction after leaving the boat, stopping long enough to purchase a ticket for the tombs. From there, she is directed to a tram, garishly painted to look like Tutankhamun’s headdress. It takes the tram three minutes to cover the distance to the entrance to the valley. Armed guards patrol the area, a reminder of the violence that has been dealt here. But none of them look twice at the American woman who passes by, guidebook and map in hand as she searches for the first tomb.

It is early, but already tour groups are assembling. One group from Australia passes by, the leader holding aloft a stuffed kangaroo tied to a stick as she calls out facts about the valley. “This is one of the most important and comprehensive archaeological sites in the world. It is the resting place of pharaohs from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of the New Kingdom. The tombs were dug out between 1539 and 1075 BC. Now, if you look directly ahead, you’ll see a peak shaped almost like a pyramid. This mountain, the highest spot in the valley, is called Al-Qurn. Don’t worry, folks, we’re not hiking up there! But if you step this way, we will be heading first to the tomb of Ramesses V. A quick reminder about flash photography—”

Billie uses the group as a shield as she steps off the main path, pretending to study her guidebook. Other travelers pass her by, and just as she is wondering if she has somehow lost him, Fermín Bosque comes into view. She keeps her face in her book, turning away slightly as he passes. The morning is warm and damp patches are already forming on the back of his shirt. He moves quickly but without hurry, directing his steps to the west, past the tombs of Amenhotep II and Seti II. Billie is thirty yards or so behind him, keeping pace. Around them, the walls of the valley rise starkly, the barren brown of the cliffs softened only slightly by the rose gold of the rising sun.

The furthest tomb from the entrance is Thutmose III. No one else has made it this far so early, and the area is quiet. Billie can hear only her own pulse beating steadily in her ears and the soft scrape of her shoes on the stones. The walls of the valley seem to shrink together as they approach the tomb, narrowing so closely they begin to shut out the morning light. Long shadows fall over the entrance. A low stone wall separates the rockier ground from the pathway that leads to a steep staircase up to the tomb’s entrance.

Just before he reaches the bottom step, Bosque smoothly steps over the low wall and disappears. It is as quick as a conjuring trick, and Billie stops short, staring at the blank space where Bosque had stood a second before. She steps over the wall herself and pauses there for a moment, reaching down to collect three of the pebbles at her feet. She sets them atop the wall and then turns back to the sheer cliff rising above her. It is heavily shadowed and it’s these shadows that have concealed the narrow gap, a fissure splitting the high wall of the valley in two. It is the smallest of wadis, the chasms that form the landscape of this part of Egypt, each cut by the merciless flash floods of the rainy season.

The rift in the rock is hardly large enough for a goat to fit, and as Billie moves into the passage, her shoulders brush the sides. The walls press so closely around her there is no other way to move but forward. Once or twice, her path is almost blocked by piles of stones, but Bosque has not come back, so she knows he must be ahead of her. She pushes through, scrambling over the piles and ducking under outcroppings until the wadi widens just a little, opening to an area perhaps six feet across. There is no sign of Bosque. She examines the ground until she finds a mark, the fresh scrape of a sole at the bottom of a cliff, and realizes there is a narrow path, maybe eight inches wide, edging upwards along the cliff face. She slings her bag to her back and sets her feet as she faces the rock wall. There are tiny handholds, nothing more than little gaps in the stone where she can put a fingertip to help her balance. She is smart enough not to look down. Some of the rock is rotten, crumbling away under her feet as she moves. She edges along the cliff until she is ten or twelve feet above the ground. The path seems to stop dead, falling away into nothingness, and Billie perches, willing her breath to slow as she takes stock. Her foothold is solid enough, but the rock wall turns sharply to the left and the path does not follow. There is a little outcropping about a foot above and two feet out. She will have to jump for it. Missing is not an option.

She pulls in one slow breath, rolling her shoulders down and back as she loosens her knees. Then she pushes up, explosively, vaulting herself across the gap and up to the outcropping. She lands sloppily, but she’s safe, and she scrambles to stand, happy to find that she is on a proper path at last—three feet wide and sheltered by an overhanging bit of rock. The path winds around the face of the cliff, following the wadi, and Billie moves fast. She is filthy, smudged with dust and sweat, her hands bloody from the various slips and scrapes, but she is enjoying herself.

She even enjoys herself when she comes around a curve and finds Bosque standing in the middle of the path, revolver raised to the level of her heart.

There is no reason to pretend she doesn’t know exactly who he is and exactly why he is here. A casual tourist might have gotten lost in the Valley of the Kings, but there is nothing casual about the rock climbing she has just done.

“Buenos días, senor Bosque.”

“Your accent is good, but I prefer English,” he tells her. His own accent is pure Oxbridge. “I suppose you’ve been following me since Cairo?”

“Yep. That was a nice trick with the train. I almost missed you.”

He shrugs but the gun doesn’t waver. “I knew your people would get onto me eventually. I thought it was worth taking a few precautions.”

“My people?”

His grin is humorless and unpleasant. “Interpol.”

“Ah. Yes. Interpol,” she says, nodding seriously.

His mouth thins, and she realizes her flippancy has annoyed him. “Don’t try to pretend you’re not Interpol.”

“Okay, but I’m not, actually. People have really strange ideas about Interpol. They don’t make arrests, you know. They pretty much just hang around the office. I don’t even think they have guns.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m employed by a completely different organization.” She holds three fingers up. “Scout’s honor.”

“I was hoping to do this quickly, but it might be helpful to know exactly who is tracking me. So, I’m sorry to say, you’re not going to enjoy this next bit very much.” He jerks the gun. “Inside.”

She realizes then that they’ve been standing outside a narrow gap in the cliff wall, this one leading into a cave. The first few feet of the cave are tight, but it turns and widens into a full room, twenty by ten she estimates, with a ceiling eight or nine feet overhead. Not enormous, but big enough for Bosque’s purposes. The turn in the passage has blocked out the morning light, but Bosque has lit a lantern. The light is battery-powered, cold and flat, and the room deserves better. It is a treasure trove, stacked with slim wooden cases she knows are filled with paintings. And one of them must be Leda , waiting all these years to go home. Next to the large, flat boxes are small crates that must hold the Egyptological trophies his grandfather collected, ushabti and papyri and jewels for a pharaoh’s queen.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” she tells him cheerfully. “It’s homey.”

“Shut up.” His tone is rough, but she can see he is sweating. Whatever he is planning for her, he is not hardened enough to take pleasure in it. He stinks of desperation, and desperation is unpredictable, dangerous. Billie knows she has to take control of the situation. She doesn’t look around, but uses her peripheral vision to scan for possible weapons. There is nothing within arm’s reach except a wooden case which must contain one of the paintings, and she doesn’t dare use it for fear of damaging the art inside. A slender crowbar is propped against the opposite wall, but between her and the bar is Bosque, still holding his gun—a gun she has to prevent him from firing. If nothing else, the noise would deafen them both, but she is thinking about the rotten rock she has passed and wondering how safe the cave is.

“Your grandfather must have had a hell of a time finding this place,” she says.

He doesn’t bother to hide his surprise. “You’ve done your homework.”

“Not me personally,” she says modestly. “We have a whole department for that. But yes. We know all about Grandpa Albrecht. Tell me, does it bother you having a Nazi in the family? Because I’d be really, really bummed about that.”

“I told you to shut up,” he says, moving like he means to hit her.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she says in a different voice, soft and lethal.

“I think you’re forgetting who has the gun,” he tells her. She doesn’t believe the bravado. It feels forced, and she knows every minute she lets him hold a gun on her is another chance for him to fire it.

She gestures towards the weapon. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look entirely comfortable with that. You can put it down if you like. I won’t take it and I’m not going anywhere.”

He laughs and the gun wavers a little. “I don’t think so.”

She shrugs. “It was worth a try.” She looks around the cave. “So, what are you going to do with me? Shoot me and leave me here? Risky. There are jackals in these hills. They’ll smell the rotting meat and come in for a snack. That might attract attention. And a gunshot is risky in the first place. Did you see that seam of rotten rock outside? This valley has been falling apart for about eight thousand years. You could get caught in a rockfall and injured or killed. And again, the jackals would smell the blood, and that’s not pretty. Basically, it always comes back to the jackals.”

“You seem really relaxed about the possibility of dying,” he tells her.

“Buddhists believe you should act as though every day were your last,” she replies. “Because one of these days you’re going to be right.” He doesn’t have an answer for this and she continues on. “Do you think about dying, Fermín?” She gestures towards the stacked boxes. “None of this will mean anything when you’re dead. These paintings didn’t mean anything to your grandfather after he kicked it. Or to the people he stole them from. You know they died, right? Sent to camps while people like your grandfather picked over the carcasses. He was a Nazi vulture. You must be so proud. Do you tell people about him at parties?”

Goading a mark is dangerous, but not as dangerous as standing in the crosshairs of an amateur. Bosque’s mouth thins again and he moves forward. Billie lunges to the side and forward as he pulls the trigger, the shot going wide. The noise is like a bomb going off inside the cave, reverberating painfully. Before he can squeeze the trigger again, she is on him. She wraps one hand over his, trapping his finger on the trigger as she twists sharply, breaking the finger. At the same time, her other elbow comes up hard, catching him just under the chin. He drops the gun and she kicks it aside. He is holding his wounded hand and moaning as she grabs him by the throat, forcing him backwards into the cave wall. He slams against it, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He realizes then that this is a fight to the death and the wounded animal inside him takes over.

He forgets the broken finger, the blood dripping from the back of his head. He aims his fist under her arms and up, punching her jaw with a savage undercut that snaps her head back. Momentarily stunned, she drops to the floor, blinking away the stars dancing across her field of vision. She stays there, crouched at his feet. She doesn’t react when he reaches down and picks her up by her collar. He lifts her off her feet, bringing her face close to his.

“You’re going to be sorry you did that,” he promises.

But before he can do anything else, she moves her hand once. It takes him a moment to realize he has been stabbed. There is no pain, just a dull pressure.

Until she pulls the knife out. It is a silly thing to kill a person with, covered in photographs of Tutankhamun’s burial mask. But there is something satisfying about killing Fermín Bosque with a cheap tourist souvenir. The blade isn’t long, but she knows exactly how to direct it into the femoral artery. For a moment it acts as a barrier to the blood building up behind it, but as soon as she pulls the knife out, the blood gushes, pumping a flood over Bosque’s shoes, splashing the floor of the cave.

He looks down at the spreading pool in shock.

“Femoral artery,” she tells him. “You’re not going to make it, Fermín.” He scrabbles to put compression on the gushing wound, but she shakes her head. “It won’t help. I mean, what’s your plan? You slow the bleeding and for what? It’s not like I’m going to call 911 for you. And you can’t walk out of here because the exertion will just make you bleed more.” She tips her head, assessing the accumulating blood. “From the looks of it, I’d guess you’ve got ten minutes. Maybe less. That’s enough time to make your peace with God.”

With a muffled roar, he lunges for her, bloody hands raised for her throat. He is hampered by his torn leg, and she simply steps back and watches him collapse.

But he isn’t finished. He rises again, pushing himself up to his feet. “If I’m dying, I’m taking you with me,” he says. With one last superhuman effort, he staggers forwards towards where the gun has fallen. Billie reaches for the crowbar. She doesn’t know if it’s kinder to let him think he has a chance, but decides it is better to put him out of his misery.

She raises the crowbar and aims carefully. It isn’t even a hard blow, just a perfectly placed tap to the skull right behind the ear. He crumples instantly into unconsciousness. A second tap finishes him, and she is checking his pulse when there is a noise at the entrance of the cave. She looks up.

“It’s about damned time,” she says with a grin as Natalie and Helen enter. “Where’s Mary Alice?”

“Still hanging on the edge of that damned cliff, trying to decide if she’s going to jump,” Nat tells her. She looks down at the bloody corpse and the spreading pool of blood. “Oooh, a messy one.”

“As long as the art isn’t damaged,” Helen says as she surveys the cave. “This has to be most of Danner’s hoard. I’ll let Mary Alice know she doesn’t need to make the jump. She can go back and notify the Acquisitions team that it’s clear for them to move in.”

She disappears and Billie and Natalie move to quickly survey the hoard, skimming the codes marked on the cases.

“Oh my god, the Dürer is here!” Natalie squeals. “And the Botticelli. And look at all the Egyptological stuff—papyri, jewelry. Everything Marilyn told us he’d taken. It’s all here.”

“Not all of it,” Billie says, her mouth suddenly dry. “I can’t find her.”

“Her who?” Nat doesn’t look up as she reaches for a crate with a shout of joy. “Oh my god—it’s the Leonardo!”

“Where’s the Raphael?” Billie asks. “ Leda and the Swan ?”

Nat pauses and looks around. “I haven’t seen her.”

“Because she isn’t here,” Billie says flatly.

“Bosque must have moved her when he took the Rubens,” Nat replies. She turns back to the cache.

Billie feels suddenly deflated. She has tailed the mark, executed the mission, and secured a hoard of Nazi-looted art that will be restored to its owners. This job will be celebrated by the Museum, and she will receive a considerable bonus as well as a commendation. It has been a success.

She reminds herself of this as she carefully wipes her hands and steps out of the cave and back into the sunshine.

They have only a few minutes before the Acquisitions team arrives. The team will remove every trace of Bosque’s find, hauling it out under the protection of the Egyptian government. In exchange for the return of their antiquities, the authorities will look the other way when the paintings are shipped back to Europe. And they will say nothing of the dead man in the cave. They will leave him for the jackals, and then the beetles will come. And whatever’s left, only the desert will know.