A Sudden Death in Cyprus Page 6

  I brought two coffees on a tray and was rather proud that I delivered all the necessaries without nervous clattering. Little fears make you jump, but real fears, the big fears, well, they do flood the system with adrenalin but unless you’re an amateur you use all that hormonal heat to focus on the most ancient of all human dilemmas: fight or flight?

  I was extremely focused. I was confident that my Merc would outrun their Kia, but how much support did they have lined up from the locals? Could they shoot me? In a foreign country?

  ‘Here we go,’ I said. ‘Do you take sugar? Milk?’

  Delacorte shook her head slowly, side to side, still with that knowing smirk.

  ‘So, how can I help the FBI?’ I asked.

  Delacorte sipped and crossed her legs which drew the linen tight over what I guessed would be spectacular thighs. Kim sat with legs apart, balls bulging aggressively against Dockers, weight slightly forward, a badger ready to pounce.

  ‘Mr David Mitre,’ Kim said again.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘The author.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Do you mind telling us why you are here on Cyprus?’

  I shrugged. ‘I may be setting a book here. I like to spend some time, get the local color. And I’m on deadline to write a piece for GQ. You know, all that writerly stuff.’

  He waited.

  I waited too, with a benignly quizzical expression glued on, pushing my panic down and down to join all the other fears I’d suppressed over the years. I assume all that festering emotion will eventually grow a tumor and kill me, but I had more immediate concerns.

  ‘Is that it?’ I asked, finally.

  Kim sighed and shook his head with the sincere sympathy law enforcement folks feel for criminals. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Mitre. You see, we have reason to believe that Mitre is not your only name. A David Mitre, born the very same day as you, age seven days at his death, is buried in a cemetery in a little town near Broken Bow, Nebraska.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘That’s an interesting coincidence.’

  Kim did not smile. Delacorte did, but she wiped it away quickly.

  ‘This Nebraska town, they never have gotten around to computerizing all their records. Birth records, death records, they’re all there, just not cross-referenced. So, it seems they issued a birth certificate for David Mitre nine years ago. It was sent to …’ He paused and pulled out a notebook, made a show of flipping through the pages before saying, ‘Ah, here it is. Yes, the BC was mailed to Cranston, Rhode Island. To a letter drop at a UPS store.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, still doing the puzzled face while Delacorte’s half-lidded eyes mocked me.

  ‘Mr Mitre,’ Kim said with so very much regret, ‘we have evidence that suggests you obtained a passport under false pretenses. And, not just the one. We have linked you with two other identities as well.’

  And there it was. Time’s up! Game over!

  ‘Okay,’ I said again, in a lower register.

  ‘Do you have any way to explain—’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ I erupted, nerves getting the better of me. ‘Can we cut the bullshit? Are you here to arrest me or not?’

  Kim started in with, ‘I’m just trying to ascertain—’ before he was silenced by Delacorte raising a languid hand.

  ‘I think we’re all on the same page, Frank,’ she said. She had drunk a few sips of her coffee and set the cup back down, slow but very precise. Cup met saucer with hardly a sound.

  ‘Cookie?’ I said, nodding at the small plate of Hobnobs. I was caught. I was well and truly screwed. I could afford to be insolent.

  That brought a genuine smile from Delacorte, one of those big, wide, inviting smiles, the kind of smile I was absolutely not going to be seeing again until I was a shambling old wreck being dropped off at the nearest bus station after doing my time.

  ‘Mr Mitre,’ Delacorte said.

  ‘David, please,’ I said. ‘It’s my favorite of all my names.’

  ‘David,’ she said with a gracious dip of her head.

  ‘And I’ll call you Agent Delacorte. So, what are we doing here, special agents K. and D.?’

  ‘There was a murder the other day,’ Delacorte said.

  What?

  ‘Yeah, I heard about it.’

  ‘The victim was a British national also, coincidentally, traveling on a phony passport.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘A British national with a couple of warrants out for her.’

  ‘Huh,’ I repeated.

  ‘You witnessed the murder.’

  ‘Not quite. I almost did but—’

  Delacorte held up her iPhone. ‘Would you like to see the video?’

  You shouldn’t, as a rule, start to like the folks who want to lock you in a cage, but I kind of liked her despite everything. I liked her eyes. I liked the mockery in them. She was a woman I would never have tried to con. I sighed. ‘From the yacht, I assume?’ Goddamned tourists and their cameras.

  ‘The resolution is quite good given the distance.’

  ‘The miracles of technology,’ I said.

  ‘You were there, you saw, and you beat it out of there.’

  This was not right. True, but not right. If they had video they knew I didn’t do the crime. And anyway, ex-burglars and ex-grifters do not suddenly take up murder late in their careers. Also, I was white and the killer was not, which was the one thing all witnesses agreed, and which should be plainly visible on the video on her phone.

  I detected a faint hint of light on the distant horizon. Hope pulled its head out of its hands and looked up through swollen, tear-streaked eyes. I sensed that the two specials had an as yet undisclosed weakness.

  ‘Okay, I was there,’ I said. ‘And as soon as I saw what was going down, I bailed. So?’

  ‘Well, David, here’s our situation. We are what’s called legal attachés, “legats.” That’s the term of art for FBI agents assigned to embassies. We deal in counterterrorism and organized crime, for the most part. That’s all public knowledge.’

  ‘For the most part’ and ‘public knowledge.’ Did I catch the implication that they might sometimes involve themselves in things which were neither terrorism nor organized crime? Yes, I did.

  ‘Terrorism?’ I laughed. That, at least, I was innocent of.

  ‘We know you’re not the number two man for ISIS.’

  ‘I applied for the job,’ I said. ‘But they went a different direction.’

  ‘A woman is murdered. We recognize one of our own fugitives on the scene. We make a few queries. We’re interested in the American witness, you, but, no disrespect intended, we are not very interested in you.’

  ‘Should I feel insulted?’

  ‘It’s not that we don’t care about theft or fraud, we do care. And all other things being equal, we would submit an extradition request and have you picked up and flown back to the States.’ Then, out of sheer spite she added, ‘In coach.’

  ‘But all other things are not equal?’

  She shook her head like she was in slow-motion, never taking her eyes off me. ‘No, they are not, David. You see, as fascinating as you are, the dead woman is more fascinating still. We are very interested in finding out what happened to her. Very interested in who killed her and why.’

  ‘I’ll bite: who killed her? And why?’

  Delacorte shrugged, a minuscule gesture, almost a suggestion of a shrug. ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Why do you care?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ she said. She tilted her head and watched me.

  ‘She’s a – what is the current term of art? Do we still say “person of interest,” or is that no longer in vogue?’ I asked.

  ‘Mmm. Interesting suggestion. Unfortunately, there’s only so much I can tell you – the US government is reluctant to grant security clearances to escaped fugitives.’

  ‘That’s rather close-minded.’

  She liked that. ‘So. So, there is only so
much we can tell you. And only so much we can do here in a foreign country as legats. We have no power to order a legal search, and we have no power to arrest.’

  ‘That must be very frustrating for you.’

  ‘It can be. But when we operate outside the United States we are required to be circumspect. Indirect. To use whatever, or whomever, is legally available to us.’ A sly and slightly terrifying grin appeared. ‘Guess who is legally available to us.’

  The truth dropped on me like a Road Runner cartoon anvil. ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ I blurted. ‘You …’ I peered at her, doubting my conclusion, but she nodded encouragingly, like a kindergarten teacher with a kid who had almost recited the whole alphabet and just needed to remember what comes after elemenopee. ‘You want me to …’ I couldn’t finish it. It was absurd.

  ‘Yes, David,’ Delacorte said, coming to my rescue. ‘You’ve got a perfect cover story, the whole visiting author thing. You are quite good at gaining people’s trust. Obviously. And you are already connected to the local expat community via your landlady, Stella Weedon.’

  ‘Dame Stella. She really likes people to use the “dame.” British, you know. They take that stuff seriously. Well, the ones with the titles do, anyway. You think this is connected to expats?’

  ‘And you are quite intelligent,’ Delia Delacorte said, carefully not hearing my question.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘And we have you …’ She let it trail off, as if too delicate to complete the thought.

  ‘By the balls?’

  ‘I’ll keep them safe for you,’ she said. ‘Maybe give them a little squeeze every now and then.’ She mimed the squeezing. Far and away the most erotic threat I’ve ever received.

  ‘What’s in it for me?’ I asked. Because it’s important to pretend that you have a say in things, even when a lovely FBI agent is demonstrating her ball-squeezing technique.

  ‘We have no authority here,’ Delacorte said, and she regretted the fact. ‘The locals are not big fans of the US of A at the moment.’

  ‘Few people are. Including most Americans.’

  ‘And there are the ongoing reunification negotiations …’

  ‘Which will go nowhere,’ I commented. Greek Cypriots started from the position that all Turks – and their progeny – who’d come to the island after the 1974 Turkish invasion had to go home. Ethnic cleansing is a nonstarter.

  ‘So, we can’t really poke our noses into this case.’

  ‘Certainly not without sending a big, flashing neon message that the dead woman had already caught the eye of the FBI.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Which brings me back to what’s in it for me.’

  Delacorte unfolded her legs and leaned forward, elbows on knees. ‘We don’t want you, David. It’s like fishing. We went looking for a shark, and we caught, well, not a guppy, but not a shark, either.’

  Dissed by the FBI.

  ‘So, to extend the metaphor I’m what, bait?’

  The sleepy look disappeared, replaced by predator’s eyes. ‘Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve pulled off a string of felonies in the US and despite that we could probably only convict you on two counts – at least at the federal level. As to your activities outside the US, well, that’s not really our problem. No, you’re a clever man, David. You’re good at what you do, or at least what you used to do. You have a very healthy balance at a bank in Luxembourg.’

  Seriously? They knew about my allegedly secret bank account in Luxembourg? Was nothing sacred? How about my other account in the Caymans?

  ‘I don’t suppose you can tell me what this is all about?’ I asked.

  ‘Murder’s not enough?’

  ‘Murder’s too much,’ I said, as the memory of a knife being twisted up, down, left, right loomed in my memory. ‘But it’s a symptom not the cause.’

  ‘See? I said you were clever. You want to know what this is all about?’ She took a moment, looking down. Then she glanced over at the long-silent Agent Kim, who was content to sit and give me unblinking cop stare. Finally she said, ‘I can’t tell you anything, David. But I can make an observation.’

  ‘Observe away,’ I said with a generous wave.

  ‘Well, as a general observation, it’s my opinion, that a man who would harm a helpless child should be impaled on a fucking telephone pole.’

  There was no smirk in that. Agent Delacorte had put teeth into that remark. Unless she was a very good actress, that was pure, distilled, essence of righteous, law-enforcement-grade hate.

  ‘And if I help you, you forget you ever heard of me?’

  She shook her head, drawing back, and that flash of fire was gone. ‘I never forget, David. However. I do sometimes misplace files. Isn’t that right, Agent Kim?’

  ‘She’s disorganized sometimes,’ Kim agreed. I would not have thought him capable of even minor wit.

  Delacorte stood up and Kim followed her lead. Standing closer now I could see that she was very nearly my height.

  ‘Don’t run, Mitre,’ Kim warned, doing his bad-cop thing. ‘We’ll catch you.’

  ‘And Luxembourg?’ I asked.

  Delacorte smiled. ‘Is that a country? Never heard of it.’

  EIGHT

  My first thought, after they had gone, was: Run!

  My second thought was: Scotch! I went with that.

  I understood Agent Delacorte’s thinking. Someone surreptitiously tied to, or at least of interest to, the US government had been murdered. They wanted to know who done it, but American agents were not at that moment held in high regard anywhere in Europe, certainly not on Cyprus, and in any case the FBI could not get involved without signaling a degree of US interest not yet known to the Cypriots. Which the FBI presumably did not want to do.

  What to do, what to do? Delacorte must have wondered. Oh, look! It’s a US citizen whose balls I have in my pocket. He’s ‘clever,’ knows at least a little about investigations, and can weasel his way into expat society and achieve a sort of attenuated ‘local’ status. He won’t even cost anything, he’ll spend his own funds just to curry favor, so there is the bonus of less paperwork to be filled out. And if it all blows up, we can deny everything with much loud haw-haw-hawing at the notion that we would ever do business with a man wanted for multiple felonies.

  She could sell me out and anything I said about our implied deal would be instantly dismissed.

  Well, Agents slash legats Kim and Delacorte were no doubt very good at their jobs, but I wasn’t a complete mook.

  I pulled out my phone, tapped the Nest app, pulled up the living-room camera, and played just enough to be sure the microphone had picked everything up. The video was not on my phone, it was already in the cloud. The NSA would take about two seconds to break in and wipe it – if they knew it existed – but the FBI was not the NSA. The FBI would need to know the video existed, and then they’d need a legal basis for a search warrant, and then they’d be stuck living with it because the FBI does not destroy evidence.

  Here’s some good, sound advice to aspiring criminals: know the law and the people who enforce it. Cop ≠ cop. Each organization comes with its own limitations and each individual cop comes with a full set of strengths and weaknesses.

  And yet, I reminded myself, they knew about my bank account in Luxembourg.

  Or did they?

  She hadn’t named the bank, or the amount in the account. Had it been a bluff? They could have simply traced the movements of my passport, noting a four-day stay in a country which, while lovely in a damp, bucolic way, was better known as an excellent place to hide money.

  I tapped another app, muttered one of the several curse words I use for addressing apps, remembered how to do what I wanted to do, and sent a copy of the video to an account owned by my lawyers, one in New York and one in Paris. So now there were three copies. I sent another duplicate to my own secret Gmail account, opened it on my laptop and slid the video onto a memory stick.

  Four copies. No, five, because I kept
one on my laptop in a password-protected ‘invisible’ file.

  Cloud, lawyer 1, lawyer 2, laptop and memory stick. Try getting all five of those, Agents K. and D. Delacorte had me by the balls, but she would never be able to deny that she had made a deal, at least a clearly-implied one. If they threw me under the bus I’d drag them under with me, which meant I had at least some leverage. And I had confessed to nothing.

  ‘Small consolation,’ I muttered. Then I froze, replaying the moves of the two agents as they entered the door, crossed the room, sat … and I went for coffee. Yep, there went Agent Kim, jumping up the instant I was out of the room.

  I found the tiny microphone neatly inserted between a standing lamp’s plug and the outlet. Power supply and near invisibility: hidden in plain sight. Nice.

  Such sneaky people, FBI agents. And playing a bit unfairly, frankly: bugging a private citizen without a warrant? For shame!

  I fumbled in my junk drawer until I found a pen-sized voice recorder, set it to record, laid it on the coffee table, and went to take a long, hot shower, and to hell with the water restrictions. Having taken first steps, I decided to go ahead and have my nervous breakdown in the shower, with hot water running over my head.

  Was I going to prison?

  That question tended to cut through everything else happening in my mind. Was this it? Was it finally happening? Was I well and truly fucked?

  I forced my thoughts back to avenues of escape. The best option was to hop aboard my Aussie’s boat and head for Egypt. Or, better still, look for a tramp steamer at sea, pull up alongside and wave a fistful of cash. I could just hop aboard Cap’n Wilson’s boat and run to Egypt or transfer to a steamer at sea and ride along to Tunis or Marseille or Genoa. Those were my options. No way I’d be able to get a flight out of Larnaca or Paphos.

  I had come to Cyprus for a cluster of reasons – plenty of sun, a big English-speaking expat community to disappear into, and enough regional turmoil that authorities would have their eyes peeled for terrorists and refugees, not for retired gentleman thieves.