Authors: Kevin Wignall
People Die (17 page)
15
How close had they come those two years before? What additional factor would it have taken for the pilot to have lost control, for the plane to have come flailing out of its climb, tearing itself into scrap, burned bodies flung over the frozen hinterland of the airport?
The plane had never been in danger, that’s what Aurianne had said and always stuck to. He thought about it though. Every time he flew he turned it over again, not out of fear, more out of curiosity, the curiosity of a bystander with no great stake in whether he lived or died.
It was out of his hands, that’s what appealed to him. This plane that he was sitting on now, waiting to take off in a calm night sky, could explode like others had before it, scattering him and everyone else into the ocean, reducing their lives to debris to be picked from the water with seats and suitcases.
It was almost a comforting thought, the prospect of his reputation and his history and all the unwritten killings ahead of him, dispersed in the inky water of the Atlantic, leaving behind only the body of a venture capitalist, somebody with two parents, a sister, no other connections.
“Oh God!”
JJ turned to look at the woman next to him, gray haired, early sixties, somebody’s grandmother. He’d been conscious of her, tense and uneasy, and now the plane was taxiing and she’d felt the need to let someone else know how nervous she was. She smiled apologetically but JJ put his hand on hers where it clenched the armrest and fixed her gaze. “This plane won’t crash,” he said, quiet, forceful.
“I know, it’s silly of me.”
“No it isn’t. Planes do crash and any rational person has every right to be afraid. But this plane won’t; it’s not how you die, it’s not how I die. Trust me.” She looked transfixed for a moment or two, mystified, enchanted, the placebo effect of his words taking hold of her like a prophetic truth. She nodded then and leaned back with her eyes closed, her hand relaxing beneath his.
JJ relaxed too as the plane began to pull underneath him. He’d meant well but was left bemused by how easy it was to make someone believe she’d live forever. And maybe it was a spell he’d cast on himself too, a belief that he’d never take a bullet, a stubborn underlying resistance even now to the reality of what he was flying into, a reality he knew better than he pretended.
Twenty minutes or so into the flight the woman opened her eyes again and said, “Thank you so much.”
“It was nothing,” replied JJ, turning to her.
“Oh it was though.” She stared at him again. “I could see in your eyes that you know about these things.”
“More than I care to,” he said, smiling. They talked on and off then throughout the flight, between the movie and sleeping, JJ finding himself surprisingly expansive about Vermont and the Copley. And when they arrived in the harsh haze-filled sunlight of Athens she thanked him again, like he was the only reason she was still alive. It made him feel good, to know that if it all went wrong he’d done at least one worthwhile thing in the final days.
It was late afternoon by the time he arrived at the hotel, a place he’d never stayed before, as obvious as it was on the city landscape. He showered, ate in his room, ventured in the evening down to the bar, a place with plenty of red leather chairs in classic styles, like some garish seventies attempt at an English club.
If he’d been playing by the rules he’d have stayed away from the public areas but he liked the idea of being out in the open, the possibility that someone would identify him or that, best of all, Berg himself would stroll nonchalantly into the bar and see JJ sitting there.
Berg wasn’t that nonchalant though, perhaps not even nonchalant enough to be in the same hotel as the man who was protecting him, and the Russians themselves were probably too tightly leashed to be down there relaxing. Instead, JJ took his couple of drinks alone at the bar, a few people talking quietly in other parts of the room, the barman keeping to himself. And after the two drinks he made it an early night, already tired, feeling he’d held off long enough to beat the jet lag.
He slept fitfully though, angry sleep, waking more than once with a pounding reflex, springing out of the bed before coming to and realizing there was no threat. The second time woke him fully, enough for him to put the lamp on and sit there on the edge of the bed, collecting his thoughts. It was just after three, too early to stay awake, particularly with the day he had ahead of him, but his thoughts were like razors, cutting clean. He took a drink from the minibar and went out onto the balcony where the air was cooler or at least had a kind of coolness that was more authentic, an ebb and flow on a faint breeze.
The pool and gardens below were floodlit but empty, most of the hotel in darkness too, even the city beyond subdued. It was early evening back in Vermont and he thought about it for a while as he stood there, mentally slapping himself then and turning his thoughts instead to the Russians two floors above him.
That was what he had to concentrate on, those Russians, dealing with Naumenko. That was why he needed sleep. Because he’d already let things slip enough that week without going in there tired, his mind on other things. If he ended up taking a bullet, he wanted it to be because it was his day to die, not because he’d lost sight of the ball. For as much as he knew though, perhaps they were one and the same thing.
The next morning he sat on a lounge chair in the shade of some drooping palms, the noise of kids from the small pool off to his right, traffic punctuated by beeping horns from beyond the grounds of the hotel. The heat was still fresh, the day still subdued at the edges.
He guessed most people were in conferences and meetings or out sightseeing before the afternoon temperatures cut off the air supply. The main pool was almost empty, just a couple of people plowing up and down. Most of the lounge chairs were vacant too, though a handful were occupied by other people like him, keeping their own company.
It was just over a week since he’d almost come to Athens from Geneva, and if he’d taken Danny’s advice this was the kind of place he might well have spent that week, thinking things were blowing over when in reality he’d have been dying by default as he’d lain there in the sun. It was a piece of advice he’d pass on himself someday: never take a holiday during a crisis.
He checked his watch and counted his way up the side of the building to the sixth floor, reckoning he’d head up there within the next hour. Naumenko was probably up by now and ready to face the world. JJ felt ready to face him too, the couple of hours soaking up the early sun restoring him after the troubled night, any doubts sinking away into the depths.
He was thinking clearly now, coldly aware of the possible outcomes of going there, the best of which was Naumenko backing off, or even dealing with Berg himself. If it fell like that it would be easy enough then for JJ to normalize things, putting himself back above the politics, particularly now with Holden onboard.
If it went the other way it would just be the death sentence he’d been under all week anyway. And then maybe his only chance would be if Naumenko didn’t want him killed there in the hotel. Either way, as he’d said to Holden, it was probably worth no more thought than the risk of a plane crashing, or of getting cancer, dying a silent death in old age, any of the other options.
He went back up to his room, took a shower, put his suit on, and went back out to the elevator, pressing for the sixth floor. When the doors opened it looked like he’d stumbled on a wedding or funeral party, a handful of guys in suits standing around looking nervous in the lobby. They looked at him with a mix of edginess and suspicion, bristling as he stepped out of the elevator toward them.
He singled out the one who was closest to him, a small thin guy with slicked-back hair, a glass-eye stare.
“Tell Mr. Naumenko that William Hoffman is here to see him.” The guy kept staring at him, raising an eyebrow as if to ask who he was to be giving orders. He turned all the same, a forced nonchalance, like a kid trying to back down without losing face, and as he walked away he told one of the others to search JJ.
JJ slowly opened his jacket, let the guy frisk him, acknowledging the nod when nothing was found. They all stood for a minute and then the first good sign came when the other guy returned looking embarrassed, apologizing to JJ for any disrespect he’d shown him. JJ shrugged it off, mystified all the same as he often was by his own reputation, by the thought of what must have been said in those brief moments as he’d waited by the elevator.
The guy led him along a corridor and into a room which was either part of a suite or had been refurbished specifically for Naumenko to use as an office. There was a large desk over by the window, a couple of sofas, no flowers or ornaments, the only decoration a few more suited men around the edge of the room.
Naumenko was standing in the middle waiting for him, wearing a suit but no tie. It was the first time JJ had seen him, bar the file picture Holden had shown him. The guy was unlike any of the big Mafia bosses he’d seen, in his early thirties, in good shape, hair neatly combed, almost conservative looking, the boss of a computer company perhaps.
When he spoke, though, electricity came off him, crackling around the room, the flunkies tightening a little in readiness at the deep roll of his voice.
“It’s a great pleasure, Mr. Hoffman. I take it I may call you JJ?” The Russian lilt was still there but his English accent was pretty good too; he had the air of someone who relished speaking the language, finding pleasure in the words, the sounds.
“Of course,” said JJ. An expensive-looking smile came back at him.
“Excellent. And of course you must call me Alex, none of this formality or patronymics. Please, come and sit down.” JJ followed him over to the sofas and sat down opposite him. Naumenko ordered mint tea for them both, saying, “So, I understand you’ve had a particularly busy week, killing people in London, Geneva, Paris.”
“Connecticut, Vermont,” said JJ, adding to the list, Naumenko’s face showing that he hadn’t known about his two men over there. He seemed to brush it off though, and said with a smile, “I studied at Yale, you know?”
“So I heard—it’s a small world.” He thought about it for a second and added, “I didn’t know they were your people, but I would have killed them anyway. See, I know you have unresolved issues with Holden, but he’s one of the good guys.”
“That’s all very well, JJ, but you know perhaps I’m one of the bad guys.”
JJ smiled but thought of Tom talking in the bookstore and said, “No, the good guys are the ones still alive at the end of the story.”
“Then that’s settled.” Naumenko laughed, encompassing everyone in the room with his outstretched arms. “We’re all good guys.” A couple of his people smiled or laughed too, looking uncertain what the joke was but amused all the same.
Naumenko looked at JJ then and said, “So anyway, you’re not here to kill me at least. What then did you have in mind?”
“I came here to tell you that I killed David Bostridge.”
For the first time in the meeting Naumenko looked as dangerous as his reputation; there was an almost imperceptible shift in his expression but it was clear all the same, a calculated and underplayed fierceness in his eyes, like a button had been pressed, a countdown started. As it stood at that moment, JJ was dead, exactly the reaction he’d expected, hoping only that the second part of his plan would achieve the expected reversal.
Holden had advised against even mentioning it, too aware himself of how deeply Naumenko had felt about his friend, but the way JJ saw it there’d been no other option; it was a piece of information which might be lethal in the open but could be used by Berg to discredit them if he’d kept it concealed. He was glad he’d mentioned it anyway, felt a strange exhilaration coming off the visual death sentence of Naumenko’s eyes, as if dealing with it was a challenge that was worthy of him.
The mint tea was brought in, and Naumenko returned to a level of token charm, the clock counting quietly beneath the surface, the end result not in question.
“You know how I felt about David,” he said finally. JJ nodded, Naumenko instructing him, “Then explain.”
JJ sipped at his tea, found it too hot, and began casually, “The hit came to me through Viner, and until this week I assumed it had come through the normal channels.”
“Ours is not to reason why,” added Naumenko. It was unclear from his tone whether he was being sarcastic or not.
JJ responded like he was being straight, saying, “Exactly. But it was someone else’s hit. They made it look official but it was personal business. This person, though, ran it past Holden.”
“Holden knew?” Naumenko said, shocked, maybe angered by it, that Ed hadn’t passed the information on.
“Holden knew,” confirmed JJ, eager not to make it sound like criticism. “But like I said, he thought David had stood on London’s toes, that it was a done deal. So he felt terrible about it, knowing he couldn’t do anything to save his friend. What he could do, though, was request someone who’d do it as quickly and cleanly as possible, so he requested me.”
Naumenko nodded thoughtfully, taking in perhaps what this information said about Holden, recasting him in the light of it.
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