Predator Read online

  “But I already quit.”

  “Did you? I don’t recall getting a formal letter of resignation from you. And I damn sure never fired you.”

  “I guess not,” Jo admitted. “But if you’re not going to be there, what am I going to do?”

  She got up and examined herself in the mirror again. Her complexion still looked just as pale as it had before and her hair was a mess, but now she had red, watery eyes as well. She resolved that she wasn’t going to leave the bathroom until she’d made herself look a hell of a lot more presentable. If she was going to leave Hector, she didn’t want him to remember her looking anything at all like this.

  “Be my eyes and ears,” Bunter was saying. “The doc wants me to stay away as much as I can, but that’s going to be impossible unless I know for sure what’s going on.”

  “You want me to spy for you? I can’t see that being too popular.”

  “No, I don’t want you to spy for me. But you can represent me, like an ambassador, making my views known, and at the same time relaying back other people’s opinions to me. And of course, you can continue your work as a legal assistant. You’re damn good at the job, Jo. Folks’ll be glad to have you around.”

  “Thanks, Ronnie, I really appreciate that. And I guess I’m going to hold you to it, too. I’m coming home to Houston. I wish more than anything else in the world that I weren’t. But I’ve got to leave Hector . . .” She gave a deep, despairing sigh. “And now I’ve got to find a way to tell him.”

  Their lovemaking that night had been especially intense and satisfying for both Hector and Jo Stanley. Afterward he fell into such a deep and dreamless sleep that he did not hear Jo leave the bed or the bedroom. When he woke again he heard her in her bathroom. He checked the bedside clock and found the time was not yet five in the morning. He roused himself and went through to his own bathroom.

  On his way back he paused by her closed door and heard her busy on the telephone. He smiled and thought that she was probably calling her mother in Abilene. Sometimes he wondered what they still had to talk about after phoning each other almost every night. He returned to the bed and soon drifted off into sleep once more.

  When he woke again it was seven o’clock and Jo was sequestered in her dressing room. Hector slipped on his dressing gown and went through to the nursery. He returned to the bed with Catherine in his arms wearing a fresh diaper and clutching her morning bottle. He propped himself on the pillows and cradled Catherine in his lap.

  He studied her face as she drank. It seemed to him that she was growing more beautiful and more like her dead mother Hazel with every passing day.

  At last he heard the door to Jo’s dressing room open. As he looked up the smile melted from his face. Jo was fully dressed and she carried her small travelling valise. Her expression was somber.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, but she ignored the question.

  “Johnny Congo has escaped from prison,” she said. Hector felt the ice forming around his heart.

  He shook his head in denial. “How do you know this?” he whispered.

  “Ronnie Bunter told me. I have been on the phone with him half the night, discussing it.” She broke off to cough and clear her throat, and then she looked up at him again and her eyes were swimming with misery. She went on, “You will blame me for this, won’t you, Hector?”

  He shook his head, trying to find the words to deny it.

  “You will go after Johnny Congo again,” she said with quiet certainty.

  “Do I have any choice?” he asked, but the question was rhetorical.

  “I have to leave you,” Jo said.

  “If you truly love me you will stay.”

  “No. Because I truly love you I must go.”

  “Where to?”

  “Ronnie Bunter has offered me my old job back at Bunter and Theobald. At least there I can do something to protect Catherine’s interests in the trust.”

  “Will you ever come back to me?”

  “I doubt it.” She began to weep openly, but went on speaking through her tears: “I never imagined there could be any other man like you. But being with you is like living on the slopes of a volcano. One slope faces the sun. It is warm, fertile, beautiful and safe there. It is filled with love and laughter.” She broke off to choke back a sob, before she went on. “The other slope of you is full of shadows and dark frightening things, like hatred and revenge; like anger and death. I would never know when the mountain would erupt and destroy itself and me.”

  “If I can’t stop you from going, then at least kiss me once more before you go,” he said, and she shook her head.

  “No, if I kiss you it will weaken my resolve, and we will be stuck with each other forever. That must not happen. We were never meant for each other, Hector. We would destroy each other.” She looked deeply into his eyes and went on softly, “I believe in the law, while you believe you are the law. I have to go, Hector. Goodbye, my love.”

  She turned her back on him and went out through the door, closing it softly behind her.

  There were two people Major Bobby Malinga wanted to talk to right away: the only two people outside the prison system who he knew for sure had been in contact with Johnny Congo after his arrival at the Polunsky Unit. And both fitted the description of “smart and rich.” The first of the pair to fit Malinga into his busy schedule was D’Shonn Brown. Malinga went to his private office. It was large, decorated with the kind of minimal, modern, tasteful understatement that screamed serious money far more cleverly than a gaudy display of lurid marble and gold ever could. The personal assistant who led Malinga in was an impeccably mannered woman whose plain, knee-length charcoal skirt suit and white silk blouse were both tailored to fit her trim figure perfectly, but without the remotest hint of titillation.

  Though Brown had met a great many celebrities, business leaders and senior politicians, he did not display any photographs of those encounters on his walls. His diplomas for his undergraduate degree from Baylor, his master’s from Stanford Law and the state bar exams of both California and Texas, framed behind his desk, were the only overt sign of ego. And they were there for a very obvious and even necessary purpose. Several academic studies have shown that even the most liberal Caucasians harbor unconscious assumptions about the intellectual abilities of young African-American males. This was just a way of reminding visitors to D’Shonn Brown’s office that however smart they were, he was almost certainly smarter.

  Malinga took off his hat. He was of the opinion that a man’s office was as personal to him as his house and courtesy demanded the removal of headgear in both places. There was no hat stand, so he placed the hat on the desk, sat down opposite Brown and looked at the impressive display behind him. “You sure spent a lot more time in school than I ever did,” he said, going the self-deprecating, Columbo route.

  Brown shrugged noncommittally, then asked, “What can I do for you, Major?”

  “You came to Huntsville for Johnny Congo’s execution,” replied Malinga, getting out his notebook and pen. “How come?”

  “He reached out to me, through his attorney Shelby Weiss, and asked me to be there.” Brown sounded relaxed, open, like an honest citizen with nothing to hide, doing his best to assist the police with their investigation.

  “So you’re a close friend of Congo’s?”

  “Not really. I hadn’t seen him since I was a kid. But he was tight with my brother Aleutian, who was killed last year. As far as I’m aware, Johnny Congo doesn’t have any family. So I guess I was the only person he could think of.”

  “Did he ask you to do anything else, aside from come to his execution?”

  “Johnny didn’t ask me anything directly. But Mr. Weiss told me that he had expressed a wish for me to organize his funeral and also a memorial party in his honor.”

  “And you did this?”

  “Of course. I found a plot for Johnny’s grave, arranged flowers, a mortician and so on for the funeral and made preparations for the
party, too. My assistant can give you all the details.”

  “Even though you hardly knew the man?”

  “I knew my brother and he knew Johnny. That was good enough for me.”

  “Who was paying for all this?”

  “Johnny paid. He arranged for me to be given money through Mr. Weiss.”

  “How much money?”

  “Two million dollars,” said Brown, without missing a beat, letting Malinga know that a sum like that was no big deal to him.

  Malinga wasn’t nearly so cool about it. “Two million . . . for a funeral . . . you gotta be kidding me!”

  “Why?” Brown asked. “Whatever you or I might think of Johnny Congo’s crimes, and I don’t deny that they were heinous, he was a very wealthy man. As I understand it, his lifestyle in Africa was extremely lavish. So he wanted to go out in style.”

  “And for that he needed two million dollars?”

  “It’s not a question of need, Major Malinga. No one needs to drop a million bucks on a wedding, or a birthday party, or a bar mitzvah, but there are plenty of people right here in this city who would do that without blinking. Hell, I’ve been to parties where Beyoncé was the cabaret, and there’s your two million, just for her. Johnny had the money. He wasn’t going to be spending it where he was going. Why not use it to give his guests a good time?”

  “OK . . . OK,” said Malinga, just about accepting Brown’s logic. “So what happened to this money?”

  “I opened a special account, just for Johnny’s events. Some of it I spent, and again I can provide you with any receipts or documentation you require. The rest is still in the account, untouched.”

  “And you knew nothing about Congo’s escape plans?”

  “No, I knew about his plans for his funeral. And I had two million very good reasons for believing they were serious.”

  “So this all came as a total surprise to you?”

  “Yes, it did. I drove up to Huntsville, steeling myself for the experience of seeing a man die before my eyes—not something I’ve ever seen before, thank God. First I knew about any escape was a reporter sticking a mike in front of my face and asking me what I thought about it, live on TV. I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Felt like a damn fool, if you really want to know.”

  “And none of that two million was used to buy the weapons, transportation or personnel used to free a convicted murderer and kill fifteen police officers and state officials?”

  Brown looked Malinga straight in the eye. “No, absolutely not.”

  “Did Mr. Weiss say anything to you that indicated the money should be used for such a purpose?”

  “What?” For the first time Brown raised his voice. “Are you seriously suggesting that one of the state’s most respected criminal attorneys, together with a prominent businessman who is himself qualified to practice law, would have a conversation about the illegal seizure of a convicted killer?”

  Malinga did not raise his. “I’m not making any suggestions, Mr. Brown, I’m asking you a question.”

  “Well, the answer is an absolute, categorical ‘no.’”

  “OK then, here’s another. Did you have any communication with Johnny Congo, aside from what you heard from Mr. Weiss?”

  “Again no. How could I have done? Prisoners awaiting execution have a very limited ability to communicate with anyone. And if Johnny had ever tried to speak or write to me, I imagine they’d have a record of it at the Polunsky Unit. Do they have such a record, Major Malinga?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you go.” Brown exhaled, letting the tension out. In his previously calm but authoritative style he said, “I think we’re done, don’t you? I appreciate that you’ve got a job to do, Major Malinga. So I’ll make this as simple and straightforward as I can. I had nothing whatever to do with Johnny Congo’s escape. I had no knowledge of any plans for such an escape. I was not involved in financing any illegal activities or purchases on Johnny Congo’s behalf. None of the money given to me to fund Johnny Congo’s funeral and memorial event has been used for anything other than the purpose for which it was intended. Are we clear on that?”

  “Guess so.”

  “Then I wish you good luck with your ongoing investigation. My assistant will show you out.”

  Cross had a way of dealing with the pain that could hit a man when a woman had ripped his heart out through his chest, thrown it to the floor and then harpooned it with a single stab of her stiletto heel. First he sealed it up inside an imaginary thick lead box; then he dropped it, like radioactive waste, into the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind. Once that was done, he got back to work.

  Cross was already bearing down hard on his emotions and turning his thoughts to the two issues that would be dominating his life for the foreseeable future: the security of Bannock Oil’s Angolan operations, and the hunt for Johnny Congo. Now that his arch-enemy was at large once again, Cross knew that he would have to go back to war. Sooner or later, Congo would come after him, and when he did, there could only be one winner, one survivor.

  He called Agatha, the personal assistant who’d been a secretary, confidante and unfailing ally to Hazel for years before transferring her allegiance to him. “John Bigelow wants me to talk to some State Department official called Bobby Franklin, but he never gave me a contact number. Call John’s office to get it, then call Franklin to set up a Skype meeting in the next couple of days.”

  “Of course,” Agatha replied with her usual unflappable efficiency.

  “Thanks. And then I need to talk to Imbiss and the O’Quinns, but in person. So please track them down and wherever they are in the world, tell them they need to be in London by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  “What if there aren’t any flights?”

  “Send a plane. Send one for each of them if you have to. But they have to be here.”

  “Don’t worry, sir, they will be.”

  “Thank you, Agatha. If anyone else said that, I’d think they were probably bluffing. But I can absolutely count on you getting my people here. None of them would dare say no to you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The thought of having his best people around him raised Cross’s spirits. Dave Imbiss didn’t look like a man you’d want beside you in the heat of battle. No matter how hard he worked at his fitness, he still had a plump, fresh-faced demeanour. But that appearance was deceptive. Imbiss’s bulk was all muscle, not fat. He’d been awarded a Bronze Star for heroism in combat when serving as a U.S. Infantry captain in Afghanistan and he had brains as well as brawn. Imbiss was Cross Bow’s resident techie, a master in the dark arts of cyber-warfare, surveillance, hacking and all-purpose gadgetry. Paddy O’Quinn was leaner, edgier, a quick-witted, hot-tempered Irishman who’d served under Cross in the SAS until he’d punched a junior officer whose decisions under fire were threatening to cost his entire fifteen-man troop their lives. That mutinous blow saved those soldiers’ lives, cost O’Quinn his military career and made him the first name on Cross’s list when he began recruiting for Cross Bow.

  Paddy O’Quinn was as tough as they came, but he had met his match—and more—in his wife. Anastasia Voronova O’Quinn was a beautiful blonde who looked like a supermodel, fought like a demon and could drink any man under the table. Nastiya, as her friends were allowed to call her, had been trained in the arts of subterfuge and deceit by the FSB, the Russian security agency that was the post-Communist successor to the KGB, while the Spetsnaz—Russian Special Forces—had taught her how to inflict pain and, if necessary, death in a myriad different ways. As good as his men were, Cross believed that he could still more than match them. But even he would think twice before picking a fight with Nastiya.

  Together they had already beaten Johnny Congo once. Now they would do it a second time. And then they’d never have to do it again.

  D’Shonn Brown had said nothing remotely incriminating. There was as yet no evidence whatever to suggest that he had done anything wrong. On that basis, an
y suggestion that he had been involved in Johnny Congo’s escape could reasonably be taken as unjustified and even racially biased. But Malinga couldn’t shake a feeling that hung around the back of his mind like an itch that needed scratching: a cop’s intuition that he had just witnessed a slick, proficient, shameless display of lying. He wasn’t going to voice that suspicion publicly just yet. He wasn’t that dumb. But still, it meant that he could approach his interview with Shelby Weiss primed for any hint that Johnny Congo’s attorney had something to hide.

  If Brown’s working environment was an exercise in contemporary design, Weiss’s was far more traditional: wood panelling on the walls; bookshelves full of august legal tomes; all the vanity portraits that Brown had conspicuously avoided. The one thing they had in common was the framed diplomas. But whereas D’Shonn Brown’s education had been as close to Ivy League as you could get west of the Appalachians; Weiss took a perverse pride in the fact that he had studied his law in the relatively humble surroundings of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, a public college right in the heart of Houston on Cleburne Street. He wanted people to know that however slick he might look now, he’d started out as a blue-collar kid, working his way up from nothing by ability, determination and damned hard work. Juries lapped it up. Malinga had seen the Shelby Weiss Show enough times in enough courtrooms not to give a damn, one way or the other.

  “This is a change,” Weiss said as he shook Malinga’s hand. “I’ve cross-examined you enough times, Bobby. Don’t recall that you’ve ever asked questions of me.”

  “First time for everything,” Malinga said, settling into a padded leather chair that was a lot more comfortable than the ones in front of D’Shonn Brown’s desk. “So, Mr. Weiss,” he went on, “can you confirm that you visited Johnny Congo at the Allen B. Polunsky Unit on the twenty-seventh of October?”