The Altman Code c-4 Read online

  “Jesus, don’t scare me any more than I am. Anyway, my contact’s not a him. She’s a her.”

  “Then tell her.”

  Andy An swallowed and nodded. Smith climbed out of the car and pulled on his backpack. Inside were his tools. In his black work clothes, he trotted through the darkness toward the compound as traffic hummed far away, reminding him again how quiet this neighborhood was.

  At a corner of the wall far from the Yu mansion, a tree with thick branches hung over the side. The municipal government would not trim or cut down trees for the safety of a private tycoon, anymore than they would permit electronic security. Smith grabbed the branch and pulled himself up the wall. At the top, he paused. Blooming jasmine perfumed the air. He had a sense he was on the edge of a forest, so dense were the trees and underbrush. He dropped over into dry leaves. They crunched under his feet. Crouching, he waited motionless, hoping no one had heard him.

  There was still no sign of security. It made him uneasy. A man of the ambition and ostentation of Yu would have some sort of protection. Most likely, a phalanx of personal guards.

  He trotted toward the house and soon came out of the trees into a garden that brought him up as short as the house and the forest had. It was an elaborate, nineteenth-century English garden with narrow paths winding among rosebushes and immaculate flower beds, elaborate topiary, quaint benches, a gazebo, and even a lawn for croquet and bowling. There was the scent of freshly cut grass. He could imagine a homesick British tea tycoon finding solace here.

  The garden gave less cover in the ghostly moonlight, but the grotesque shadows cast by the topiary would serve well enough. Moving swiftly, he was soon inside a stand of trees near the house. He circled, discovered a six-car garage at the side that contained only two cars — a large, black Mercedes sedan and a silver Jaguar XJR. He could see no light in the house or an open window.

  He worked his way around to the front again. The ornately carved entrance door was mostly in shadow. The brass knocker was oversized and silvered by the moonlight. He studied the door. It was not set back inside a recess, so the moonlight shined directly on it. Moonlight distorted perspective, and depth perception became difficult. The door should not be shadowed at all. Where did the shadow that seemed to cover a quarter of the door come from?

  The answer was, there was no shadow. The door was a quarter open, and what appeared to be a shadow was the house’s dark interior.

  A trap? People had been watching and following him, but he had taken a multitude of precautions driving here. To all appearances, the estate was deserted. Still, there was the possibility he had missed something or someone.

  He drew his Beretta, circled left, and worked his way back to the front door. He listened once more.

  Everything was still, silent. Beretta in both hands, he inched the door farther open with the toe of his athletic shoe. The door was well oiled and swung soundlessly. Where were the servants who should be tending this post? He let the door open fully. A broad foyer of polished wood, floor to ceiling, came into view, illuminated by a wash of pewter-colored moonlight through the door and windows. An elegant, winding staircase led up at the rear.

  He stepped inside, his soft-soled shoes making little sound. He paused to peer into the room to his left. It was a Victorian-style dining room, but everything in it was Chinese, from the carved-wood dinner table to the screens that hid various corners.

  He padded to the right. Another open archway showed a living room twice the size of the dining room. It was dark and nearly silent. He listened, frowning. Inside he could hear the soft sound of someone’s weeping.

  Baghdad, Iraq The one commodity in Baghdad that was not in short supply or impossible to afford was petrol. As usual, traffic at five p.m. was congested on every major street of the ancient metropolis. Behind the wheel of his shiny Mercedes, Dr. Hussein Kamil was thinking bitterly of the shortages of anything that had to be imported or manufactured as he fought the sluggish river of cars and trucks toward the commercial center of the city. He was on a terrifying errand. His patients depended on the life-saving medicines that came from outside Iraq. So did his wealth, privileges, and the future of his family. His patients were among the country’s elite, and if he failed to find the antibiotics, tranquilizers, antidepressants, and all the other sophisticated Western pharmaceuticals they demanded, they would go somewhere else … or worse.

  He did not know how the elegant Frenchwoman had discovered how he obtained his contraband pharmaceuticals. But she knew every name and place, every contact, every devious arrangement, every secret drop. If a syllable of it were ever to come to the ears of the government or the Republican Guard, they would kill him.

  His throat dry with fear, he arrived at a soaring high-rise that had been constructed in happier times. He parked in the garage beneath and rode the elevator up to the headquarters of Tigris Export-Import, Ltd., Agricultural Chemicals. It was rumored to be one of the thousands of companies owned through fronts by the president and his family.

  Nadia, the anxious secretary, was waiting to meet him, wringing her hands. “He just collapsed, Dr. Kamil. Without warning. One moment he was―”

  “He’s still unconscious?”

  “Yes. We’re so frightened.”

  She led him at a trot past the cubicles of dozens of employees preparing in grim silence to go home for the day and into the large, quiet office of his patient, Nasser Faidhi, CEO and chairman. The view over the city and far out into the desert beyond the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was imposing. He took it in with a brief glance and rushed to Faidhi, who was lying on a leather couch, unconscious. He checked his vital signs.

  Nadia whispered, “Is he going to die?”

  Dr. Kamil had no idea how the Frenchwoman had created this medical crisis, but he knew she had, since she had told him he would get the call at precisely 4:45 p. m., and she had been right. He doubted Faidhi’s death was in her plan, because it would provoke an official investigation. The good news was that Faidhi’s heart beat strongly, his pulse was steady, and his color good. He was simply unconscious. Some kind of quick-acting but essentially harmless drug, Dr. Kamil guessed.

  He told the secretary, “Not at all, but I’ll need to make some tests.”

  He glanced at her. “I must undress him. You understand?”

  Nadia flushed. “Of course, Doctor.”

  “Thank you. And see that we’re not disturbed.”

  “No one would dare.” She left the office. She would guard the door like a fire-eating beast.

  The moment he was alone with the unconscious businessman, Dr. Kamil hurried to the wall of filing cabinets where he found the file the Frenchwoman had described: Flying Dragon Enterprises of Shanghai. Inside were four sheets of paper. Two were letters from the company’s Basra office, describing negotiations with a Yu Yongfu, president of Flying Dragon, con earning a cargo of agricultural implements, chemicals, electronics, and other goods to be delivered to the company on a ship named The Dowager Empress. The other two were Faidhi’s responses, containing instructions on the handling of the arrangements by the Basra office. There was nothing else.

  Dr. Kamil’s heart pounded with joy. The invoice the Frenchwoman wanted either did not exist or was in the Basra office. He jammed the file back inside the drawer, closed it, and strode back to his patient.

  Twenty minutes later, there was a low cough followed by a sigh from Faidhi. His eyelids fluttered. Dr. Kamil marched to the office door, opened it, and smiled to the distraught secretary, pacing outside.

  “You may come in now, Nadia. He’s reviving and should be fine.”

  “Allah be praised!” “Of course,” Kamil said solemnly, “I’ll need to examine him further, a complete checkup. Call my office and make an appointment for him.” He smiled again. There would be a fat fee and much gratitude. He would tell the Frenchwoman that if she wanted that invoice, she would have to go to Basra, where, of course, he could not go without arousing suspicion.

  Eve
rything had turned out well, just as he had expected.

  Chapter Eight

  Shanghai.

  A beautiful woman sat alone in the darkened living room, in the midst of heavy, museum-quality antique side pieces. She was curled up on a brown-leather Eames chair. Small and slender, she wore her shiny black hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. In one hand, she held a half-full brandy snifter. An uncorked bottle of Remy Martin cognac stood on the chrome-and-ebony table next to her. A large cat watched from a luxurious couch nearly half as long as the mammoth living room.

  The woman gave no sign she saw Smith, the cat, or anything else. She was staring into space, a fragile presence dwarfed by her surroundings.

  Smith scanned the room for a sign the woman was not alone. He saw and heard nothing. The house was eerily silent. He stepped carefully into the room, his Beretta still in both hands. The woman raised the snifter and drank it dry in a single gulp. She reached for the open bottle, poured it half full again, set the bottle down, and continued to stare ahead, her movements automatic, like a robot.

  Smith walked closer, making no sound, the Beretta still up and ready.

  Suddenly she was looking straight at him, and he realized he knew her from somewhere, had seen her before. At least her face, the high-necked Chinese dress she wore, the imperious expression … Of course, it was in the movies. Some Chinese movie. She was a film star. Yu Yongfu’s trophy wife? Whoever she was, she was staring straight into his face, seemingly oblivious to his pistol.

  “You’re the American spy.” Her English was flawless, and it was a statement, not a question.

  “Really?” “My husband told me.”

  “Is Yu Yongfu here?”

  She looked away, staring again into the distance. “My husband is dead.”

  “Dead? How did he die? When?”

  The woman turned to face him again and then did something odd. She looked at her watch. “Ten or perhaps fifteen minutes ago. How? He didn’t tell me. Possibly a pistol like the one you’re holding. Do all men love guns?”

  Her matter-of-fact, emotionless voice, her morbid calm, chilled Smith.

  Like a sharp wind blowing across a glacier.

  “It was you,” she continued. “They feared you. Your presence. It would cause questions they didn’t want asked.”

  “Who are ”?”

  She drained her cognac again. “Those who required my husband to kill himself. For me and the children, they said. For the family.” She laughed. It was abrupt, like an explosion. A macabre sound more like a bark than a real laugh. There was no humor in it, only bitterness. “They took his life to save themselves. Not from danger, mind you. From possible danger.” Her smile at Smith was mocking. “And here you are, aren’t you? Looking for my husband, just as they said you would. They always know when there’s a threat to their interests.”

  Smith seized on the acerbic mockery. “If you want to avenge him, help me bring them down. I need a document he had. It’ll expose them for the international criminals they are.”

  She considered. There was speculation in her gaze. She searched his face as if to find some trick. Then she shrugged, picked up the bottle of Remy Martin, poured her snifter almost full, and gazed away.

  “Upstairs,” she said woodenly. “In the safe in our bedroom.”

  She did not look at him again. Instead, she sipped the brandy and studied the empty air above her head as if it were full of answers she could not quite read.

  Smith stared. Was this an act? Perhaps to lull him into going upstairs where he would be trapped?

  In the end, it did not matter. He needed the document in the safe. Too much was at stake. He half backed out of the baronial room, rotating his Beretta to cover both it and the dark entry hall. But the house remained as silent as a tomb.

  He slipped upstairs to the second-floor landing, where the shadows were denser, since there were no windows to let in the moonlight. Nothing moved up here either. There was no odor of gun smoke and no corpses. The only sound came from down below — the clink of the bottle of cognac against the snifter in the echoing living room, where the grieving woman poured her next brandy.

  The master bedroom was at the far end of the hall. The size of two normal bedrooms, it was completely Chinese. There was a six-post, curtained canopy bed from the late Ming Dynasty, two Ming couch beds, Qing wardrobes and lady’s dressing table, and chairs and low tables from various other dynasties. Everything was heavily carved and decorated in the most elaborate Chinese style. Silks and brocades curtained the bed and hung from the walls. Screens decorated every corner.

  The wall safe was behind a hanging depicting some ancient battle from what looked like the Yuan Dynasty of Kublai Khan. Smith took out his picklocks, laid them on the cabinet closest to the safe, and inspected the combination lock.

  He took hold of the dial knob — and the safe door moved. Full of misgivings, he pulled on the knob. Just as the door swung toward him, a powerful car engine roared to life outside the house.

  Smith sprinted to the window, which overlooked the garage and driveway, in time to see the taillights of the Jaguar disappear down the long driveway toward the street. Damn.

  He tore out of the bedroom and down the stairs two at a time to the living room. The snifter and bottle were on the table beside the Eames chair, and the woman was gone. Had it all been a setup? A trap? The woman’s purpose to distract him with her bitter tale of forced suicide?

  He listened, but there were no sounds of any vehicles coming up the driveway.

  He rushed back upstairs to a bedroom at the front of the house to get a different view. It was a boy’s room. From the window, he looked past the garden and trees toward the distant wall. He heard nothing now out on the street. Saw nothing moving anywhere in the gardens below.

  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she really was distraught and half drunk, running away because of her horror to some private sanctuary. Or to join her husband in death.

  He could not take the chance. He raced back upstairs, emptied the safe, and dumped the contents on one of the couch beds. There were jewels, letters, documents. There was no money and no manifest. He shook his head angrily, his disappointment raw. He searched through the letters and documents twice more, swearing to himself. The invoice manifest was definitely missing.

  There was one item that was interesting — a typed note on the letterhead of a Belgian company: Donk & Lapierre, S. A., Antwerp and Hong Kong.

  Written in French, it was addressed to Yu Yongfu at Flying Dragon Enterprises. It assured Yu the shipment would arrive in Shanghai on August 24 in plenty of time for The Dowager Empress to sail, and it expressed great optimism for “our joint venture.” It was signed by Jan Donk and listed a phone number in Hong Kong under the sender’s name.

  Relieved he might have found something solid at last, Smith jammed the letter into his backpack and hurried out of the bedroom. He was at the head of the stairs when he saw shadows flit across the moonlit windows on either side of the front door. His pulse accelerated as he forced himself to stay motionless, listening. Out in the night, quick footsteps ran close to the house.

  With a jolt of adrenaline, he sprinted back to the master bedroom and peered out the rear windows at the formal English garden. No one was in sight, but there were no trees and no other way down except to jump.

  He dashed to the windows on the other side of the room, which faced away from the driveway and garage. The manicured lawn was the color of tarnished copper in the moonlight. There were trees, but none close enough to reach. There was, however, a drainpipe that ran from the gutters at the edge of the roof above him down to the grass.

  As he studied the drainpipe, two figures ran around the front corner of the mansion close to the house. They tested each window for entry.

  If no trap had been intended when he arrived, it was a trap now. They would soon find the front door unlocked, if they had not already. He had seconds to get out of the house before they were inside, up the stairs, and
on him.

  He waited until the figures vanished toward the rear. He opened the window, climbed out, sat on the sill with his legs dangling, and leaned to the drainpipe, which was sheet metal and looked well attached to the house. Holding it, he swung himself out. It groaned but held. Using the toes of his shoes, he literally walked down the side of the mansion. As soon as he touched grass, he bolted out across the moonlit lawn toward the stand of trees that had sheltered him when he first arrived.

  Angry shouts in Chinese carried across the night from the windows of the master bedroom. They had found the open safe and spotted his escape.

  As soon as he reached the trees, he began weaving, dodging the dark vegetation. Shouts followed across the distance, and then it was a single hushed version of a deep, harsh voice giving whispery orders like a drill sergeant instilling steadiness in his men. Smith had heard the voice before— from the leader of the attackers on Liuchiu Island. The big Chinese with the red-and-white hair that the treasurer of Flying Dragon had called Feng Dun.

  Suddenly an ominous silence filled the night. Smith guessed they had been ordered to spread out, to methodically force him toward the wall where it bordered the street and the gate. Feng Dun would have more of his people waiting there. It was the same pincer movement he had used in the attack on Liuchiu Island. Military minds tended to favor the same tactics — like Stonewall Jackson’s outflanking night marches.

  Smith turned and trotted softly toward the back wall. As he slipped through the shadows, he pulled his walkie-talkie from his pocket. “Andy?

  Come in, Andy.”

  “Shit, Colonel. Are you okay?”

  “You saw them?”

  “Sure did. Three cars. I got out of there fastest.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Out front, like you said. I stashed the car and walked back. The three cars are right here on the street, too close for comfort.”