Hunter (27 page)

DOWNTOWN SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA

At 4pm on Friday afternoon, the man who'd fled the hospital in Mandia as Raoul Demaci and boarded the Air France flight from Tunis to Seattle as Adolfo Men-dosa, surrendered a Danish passport in the name of Ulric Sorensen to the reception desk. When he checked into the Paramount Hotel on Pine Street his appearance had markedly changed, although the transformation was much less complex than the end result suggested.

As Raoul Demaci, everything about his demeanour and appearance reflected precisely the persona he intended to convey: a wealthy businessman from Montenegro who could afford the sort of lavish lifestyle others could only dream of. In the guise of Raoul, with his actual personal fortune underwritten by the considerable financial reserves of the
Zmajevi,
he gained entree into a select strata of international society that instantly propelled him into the social circles of the rich and famous. It was too easy then to appear as part of an exclusive entourage being introduced to the beautiful American pianist at a post-performance reception for her in Rome. How pathetic that she so easily fell for the treacle he would pour upon her, lavishing her with gifts and feeding her hungry ego. Never once did she stop to ask questions of him or 
delve into his past; blindly accepting, instead, the shallow character of Raoul that he chose to present.

Adopting the pretext of Adolfo Mendosa, a middle-aged Spaniard of modest but comfortable means, tired of the extensive travel required for his work but nonetheless engaging and humble, had been a breeze. It enabled him to both enter and exit Tunisia unnoticed by the authorities. The moment the American bitch's abduction had been successfully carried out, he left her to the babysitters and turned his attention to the task of preparing for her movement through Albania and then, as per the plan, on to Serbia, never to return.

During the weeks that followed his own faux abduction, he'd allowed his hair to become unruly and his beard to grow, while dramatically reducing his food consumption, relying largely on a protein-only diet to reduce his weight, resulting in a gaunt and weary facade. The ruse had worked doubly well when it had been necessary for him to once again adopt the persona of Raoul Demaci - post kidnapping - in order to pass general inspection by the Tunisian cops.

Ten minutes alone in a gas station men's room halfway between the airport and downtown produced the transformation from Adolfo Mendosa to Ulric Sorensen. With his head shaved to the scalp, beard trimmed to fashionable stubble and an outfit change that included stylish contemporary wear for an outgoing man in his forties, he emerged confidently into Seattle's late afternoon and hailed a cab to the hotel.

Ulric Sorensen flirted outrageously but respectfully with the young woman on the counter and within minutes, his room had been upgraded from a standard to an executive king.

When his luggage finally arrived and the door closed behind the bellboy, he walked over to the large corner window that overlooked Seattle, along Pine Street and down toward Pike Place Market.

Standing there quietly taking in the significance of what he'd achieved already, Vukasin Petrovic allowed himself a broad, self-satisfied smile.

The Wolf had returned to America to finish what he'd started.

INTERPOL HEADQUARTERS, LYON, FRANCE

Hermann "the Key" Braunschweiger found himself once again buried deep within Interpol Headquarters in Lyon, this time surrounded by floor-to-ceiling state-of-the-art technology. Somehow he'd managed to convince the techno-boffins of Intrepid's Intelligence, Investigations and Communications Section to allow him into their inner sanctum without proper adult supervision. From what he'd heard, it was absolutely unprecedented for field agents to be allowed back here without a grown up. Maybe it was because it was a Saturday morning. Who knew? Whatever the reason, true to their word, they'd found him a mini-operations room, given him the soldiers' five on how everything worked, showed him where the coffee was and left him to it. Most importantly, there was plenty more room in here than there had been in the surveillance van in Albania. That was enough to celebrate on its own.

Braunschweiger had quickly become the point man on everything to do with the Petrovic brothers. Of course, now everyone's attention had shifted dramatically from Dobrashin Petrovic, who was in custody, to Vukasin Petrovic, aka the Wolf, still at large.

Braunschweiger had been working through the night, trawling through hundreds of pages of Interpol
reports from the past two decades relating to the Serbian mafia and organized crime figures, but still nothing surfaced on Vukasin Petrovic or the Wolf. His task now was to search the endless gigabytes of images and CCTV files Intrepid had managed to piece together since the operation commenced.

Overnight, Mila Haddad had confirmed a number of possible hits on passengers traveling out of Tunis in the past forty-eight hours with names meaning, or associated with, wolf. Of particular interest was a passenger by the name of Adolfo Mendosa, a Spanish citizen traveling on an EU passport. According to Mila, the name Adolfo meant noble wolf, which, given that the final destination on his travel itinerary was Seattle, suddenly made Mendosa a person of interest. Mila was in the process of chainsawing through red tape to access CCTV footage from Tunis International Airport in the hope that airport surveillance would assist in identifying him. The moment she had it, she would patch it through to Braunschweiger.

The details of Adolfo Mendosa's itinerary put him on a flight out of Tunis late on Friday night, via Marseille and Paris. He was scheduled to arrive in Seattle early Saturday afternoon - yesterday. What added to the serious interest in him, apart from the fact that he happened to be traveling to Seattle, was that the age on his passport was reasonably consistent with the actual age of Vukasin Petrovic, give or take a few years, and that the departure time from Tunis would have allowed sufficient time for him to leave the hospital in Mandia, travel the distance to Tunis International Airport and still make the flight.

The efforts of the XO and the New Scotland Yard team in London to examine the passenger manifests of every flight leaving Tunis since Friday notwithstanding, identification of the name Adolfo Mendosa and the discovery that Adolfo meant noble wolf did not occur until well after the flight had landed in Seattle.

The Key looked at his watch: almost 10am; about lam in Seattle.

So far, there'd been no reports of anything untoward occurring at the Seattle residence of Judge Clancy - whose daughter, Charlotte-Rose Fleming, was also staying there. And once the red flag regarding Mendosa had been raised, Intrepid had immediately contacted the US marshals who were protecting the judge and Ms Fleming, alerting them to the arrival of Adolfo Mendosa in Seattle and, importantly, the reasons for Intrepid's interest in him. In turn, the marshals advised Intrepid that Judge Clancy was visiting a sick relative in Ellensburg, two hours' drive away, while Ms Fleming had remained at the main residence in Sunset Hill. US marshals were on station at both locations.

Despite all the cross-pollination of information, including the fact that over eleven hours had transpired since Mendosa's flight had touched down at Sea-Tac International Airport, none of the local law enforcement agencies in Seattle had managed to locate him for questioning.

Braunschweiger left the control room to make more coffee. When he returned, he dropped heavily back into the seat in the center of the console surrounded by digital screens, rubbed his eyes, took a long drink of the strong brew and began.

He started by uploading images of all the key players associated with the hunt for Drago Obrenovic and placed them on the screen directly in front of him. He grouped them in a kind of family tree structure, Drago at its pinnacle. Bit by bit he added additional images of each person under their respective names until he had run the image sources dry. The whole process took the best part of three hours. He sat back and studied them all.

There were dozens of Drago, although none of them recent. And there were numerous images of Ivan Simovic, Dobrashin Petrovic and Lorenc Gjoka, all of whom were in custody. There were even police mug shots of those now confirmed as
Zmajevi
foot soldiers, like Muscles and the other baldies, all of whom had criminal histories. Although the most recent of those, excluding Muscles, were post mortem.

The only blank spaces sat beneath the file names Vukasin Petrovic aka the Wolf, Adolfo Mendosa and Raoul Demaci.

Braunschweiger moved all the other image files across to the high screens on his left and kept Pet-rovic, Mendosa and Demaci open in front of him. Something occurred to him and he turned his attention to the emails he'd received from Mila Haddad. Increasingly he found himself drawn to this beguiling Ms Haddad he kept hearing about. He was fascinated by her wolf-name theory, which she'd convinced the general to see as more than just a theory, enabling her to put it into operation. He re-read some of her emails to him and smiled.

Concentrate, Braunschweiger.
Concentrate.

Going through them again, he found the attached files he was after and brought them up on the center 
monitor. In front of him were two passport photos: one was Adolfo Mendosa and the other Raoul Demaci. He peered intensely at the screen until his brow furrowed. Then he enlarged both images and brought them up on separate screens above the center monitor. Another thought occurred to him and he returned to his emails, scrolled to the group listed "Morgan, A," and found what he was looking for.

Alex Morgan had emailed him an image recently provided by Charlotte-Rose Fleming. According to Morgan's email, Charly said that Demaci always avoided having his photograph taken, but she'd managed to find one taken at a party in Rome in which Demaci was clearly captured in the background. She'd been happy to provide it to Morgan to assist in identifying him. Morgan's final comment on the email said: "Good-looking bloke. Bastard. Maybe it's better if he stays missing! Joking, mate. Joking."

Braunschweiger laughed to himself, enlarged the image and flicked it up onto the screen alongside Demaci's passport photo. He picked up his coffee, rolled in his chair to the back of the small room, placed his feet up on the console and stared at the faces of Adolfo Mendosa and Raoul Demaci looking lifelessly back at him.

Hermann Braunschweiger remained fixated on the images for five full minutes until he had finished his coffee. By then, the intensity of his examination began to play havoc with his eyesight and his objectivity. There were definite similarities, he thought, but there were also enough differences to make a definitive match impossible. Still, he kept them up high and turned to phase two of his search: CCTV footage.

"Let's see,' said Braunschweiger, as he began tapping out commands on the keyboard, "if we can't smoke you out, Wolf man."

SUNSET HILL, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA

The Wolf parked the hire car in 34th Avenue, got out noiselessly and went the rest of the way on foot. It was lam. The place was pitch black and stone-cold quiet.

He couldn't afford to come this far and blunder in without knowing the lie of the land. He'd already paid for a local crew to spend a week driving by the house and reporting back, so he knew there were cops on point at the Clancy house. He just needed to see the layout of the place and the street approaches for himself.

He'd decided that, once he'd dealt with the cops as covertly as possible - and he wasn't quite sure how he'd do that yet - he'd reduce the chances of an incident and lots of screaming at the house by playing it natural, walking straight up to the front door and presenting himself as Raoul Demaci, returned safely from captivity. She'd buy it; he knew that already. Once inside, he would get them both together, mother and daughter, kill them quickly and leave. It was important that both should die. Killing the judge was crucial to successfully achieving the original objective: to force the ICTY and Interpol to back off. Killing the daughter would make the Wolf a legend, not only of the underworld, and the only rightful successor to the role of
sefa
of the
Zmajevi.

That left only Drago to contend with.

Drago.
He spat on the ground as he moved along 34th Avenue, comfortable in the darkness. The time had come to kill the old fuck and be done with it once and for all, rather than fucking about with keeping the factions onside. That ship had sailed. Once Drago was dead he would deal with the fallout. The son had to die, too. That was a given. Deflecting the blame would be a challenge, but not impossible. Maybe he could make it look like a murder—suicide between the two. A power struggle between father and son. That would keep the factions at bay.

He turned left, down Northwest 67th Street. He knew where he was headed. He'd done his map reconnaissance. Part way down 67th was a cul-de-sac backing onto the street that the Clancy house was situated on.

At the right spot, the Wolf found the laneway he needed that branched off from the cul-de-sac. He knew that once he'd made it past that last house and got to the end of the laneway, he'd have a clear view to the Clancy house. Then he'd take his time, get as close as he could, scope it out for as long as possible and backtrack to the car.

With that, the Wolf checked his surrounds, listening intently for dogs or any human activity. There were neither.

He moved in for the final recon. With luck he'd be back in his hotel room by 4am and would manage a few hours' sleep.

Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.