“Like I said, ’tis only a flesh wound.”
“You’re lying. I admire that. Okay now, we know Lanighan is based in Paris. Find out where he lives. Later tonight you and I are going to go watch his house and see if he has plans.”
“What about the Fox?”
“If she’s making a delivery to Lanighan, he’s the one we need to track. Like you said, she seems to have a sixth sense about us on this case. Who knows? Maybe she’ll come to us.”
84
New York, New York
26 Federal Plaza
Saturday afternoon
Ben Houston was deep into Anatoly’s files when Zachery called him into his office.
Ben gathered his things and walked the hundred feet to the executive suites on the twentieth floor. Normally at 2:00 p.m. the leadership would be in their daily big-dog meeting, but since it was a weekend, only a few stragglers were around. Even Maryann, the secretary to all the Criminal Division SACs since the late eighties, had gone home. But her boss hadn’t. When Zachery closed and locked the door behind him, Ben went on red alert.
Something big was going down.
Zachery gestured to the black leather couch instead of his round conference table. “You’ve been at it for hours. Take a load off.”
Like everyone else working this case, Ben had managed only a few hours’ sleep for the past few days. Safer to take the chair. “If I get on that couch, you’ll never get me off it. What’s happening, sir?”
Zachery stood at his window, staring out across the East River into Brooklyn, his arms behind him. “Nicholas and Mike found the buyer for the diamond; Savich has verified it.”
“Who is it?”
“A wealthy businessman, Saleem Lanighan, supposedly a direct descendant of the Lion of Punjab, who was the one who surrendered the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria.”
“So Sherlock was right,” Ben said.
“Yes, she was. However, we have lots more work to do, Ben. The NSA has sent over the trace of the phone number the Fox called from her plane. They confirmed the signal, and we’ve been able to track it. The owner of the phone has been in New York for the past week. He left the country last night, bound for Paris. We ran his face through the NGI facial-recognition database, and it matched the photo of a British national who tried to assassinate Fran?ois Mitterrand two decades ago. Interpol believes this man is the Ghost. They’re sending us everything they’ve got, which isn’t much.
“It seems likely the Ghost killed not only Elaine York, but Anatoly and his two sons and attacked Mike and Nicholas in the garage. We’ve also identified the man killed at Anatoly’s. His name is Jason Rathbone, and he works for Saleem Lanighan. There were no prints in the system, but there was a DNA match on CODIS.”
Zachery said, “Savich told me Elaine’s bank accounts show a two-hundred-thousand-dollar deposit last week. So she was being paid, but for what? By whom?”
Ben couldn’t bear it. He’d hoped everything would be explained, that Elaine would be exonerated. But no. Ben said only, “I don’t know, sir.”
Zachery came over and sat in the chair opposite Ben. “I don’t know, either. We need to find the tie between the Ghost and Elaine and Anatoly. They’re all mixed together in this, but we don’t know exactly how.
“Track this Ghost character, Ben, and find out what he took from Anatoly’s safe. Can you do that for me?”
“Of course, sir. I’m on it.”
Ben left Zachery staring out the windows, and went back to his desk. He called Mike first thing, to warn her so she’d know about the Ghost, but she didn’t answer her phone, so he left her a message to call him as soon as she could.
And then he settled himself at his desk to mourn Elaine York and find a killer.
85
Paris