Outside her building, he opened the door of the cab he’d called earlier and paused to glance up. She stood in the second-floor window, watching him with a look of longing in her eyes, the golden pharaoh hanging around her neck. And he knew right then, aside from his gallery, he’d never had anything all his own he’d ever truly wanted to hang on to. Now he did.
He waved, then climbed into the car.
“Airport?” the driver asked.
Pete rubbed his chin as they pulled away from the curb. Any doubt he’d had about what he was about to do next disappeared forever. “No.” He gave the driver the address of a bar in a dilapidated area of Old Cairo. “I have one last thing I have to finish.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Present day
Philadelphia
In a run-down apartment in the heart of Philadelphia, Dean Bertrand lifted the gun in his hand and stared down at the lifeless body of David Halloway. Blood from the shot to the man’s head was already seeping into the carpet.
He unscrewed the silencer from the end of the 9mm with care and placed it in his jacket pocket. Then he tucked the gun in the holster hidden in the back waistband of his pants and eyed the dead man like a cat eyes a writhing mouse. Funny that most would have considered Halloway his friend only moments before. If, that is, Halloway’d had any friends.
No one would come looking for ex-FBI Agent David Halloway for days. He’d been the solitary sort, no girlfriend, no wife, no kids watching out for him. He’d dedicated his life to the Bureau, and what had he gotten for it? A piss-poor pension and a date with the devil.
Dean shook his head as he watched the color of the carpet change before his eyes. He figured eventually the stench would seep out into the hall and someone would investigate. Probably that elderly neighbor next door who kept her TV up too loud and let her damn cats wander the hallways. Maintenance would find him when she insisted he was cooking drugs or something else altogether repugnant in his apartment. The police would come, and a case would be opened. Only the authorities would never locate Halloway’s killer.
Because like a silent shadow, Dean Bertrand had never been here.
Turning away, Dean lifted the untraceable cell phone from the coffee table and dialed a number he knew by heart but hadn’t used in years.
He waited while it rang. The link he’d forged so long ago had finally panned out. When Halloway had IMed him moments before and told him of Slade’s phone call, he’d known the two years of watching and waiting had finally paid off. He’d been here within minutes.
A clipped female voice answered. “It’s been a long time, Dean.” Her Middle Eastern accent was strong, her tone all business. Just as it always was.
“Yeah. A long time.” He stared out the dingy window at a pigeon balanced precariously on the railing of the fire escape as he thought about the best tactic to use with her. Some women were easily swayed. This one wasn’t. A shark with claws, that was the way he’d always thought of her and still did. “I have something that may interest you.”
“Oh, really?” Traffic rumbled in the background. A horn blared. “Must be pretty important for you to come out of the dark. Jameson’s death last fall didn’t even rouse you. We thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth.”
Not quite. But he’d wanted to. More than once. He’d seen and done things in his fifteen years with INTERPOL he wasn’t proud of.
Of course, none of that was relevant now.
He ignored her taunt. “I know where Aten Minyawi will be in roughly three hours.”
Static crinkled across the line, followed by clicking footsteps, then silence, like she’d entered a building or found a quiet corner to continue their conversation. Oh, yes. Now he had her attention.
“That does interest me,” she said. “How, exactly, did you come by this information?”
He glanced at Halloway’s lifeless body on the floor. “A mutual acquaintance informed me of his movement. Katherine Meyer will be calling shortly.”
Silence.
Yep. That was what happened when you dropped a bomb like this one. He definitely had her attention now.
“So Meyer is really alive,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Alive and on her way to meet me.”
“You?”
“Our mutual contact is unavailable, you could say.”
Silence again as she processed the information. Then, “Minyawi is a