Chapter 30

30

“Hold camera,” Regina Gideon said.

She jumped out of her chair in front of the monitors—known as the video village—and jogged out to where Tessa and Mari Chen stood on the gravel walkway that edged the Danube River, next to the picturesque Széchenyi Chain Bridge.

This drew new shouts from the fans behind the crowd-control barriers who had descended upon the area in droves when word got out that the shoot featured the two international stars.

Billy and Peter were standing behind Regina’s now empty chair, Peter shifting back and forth from foot to foot.

“Are you okay?” Billy asked.

“What do you mean?” Peter said.

“You seem a little on edge.”

“Me? No. I’m fine.”

Billy put a hand on Peter’s shoulder to stop him from rocking. “Are you sure about that?”

Peter looked surprised. “How long have I been doing that?”

“Since a few minutes after we arrived.”

“Ugh. Sorry. It feels weird to be on a set and not doing anything.” He chuckled. “But I guess you know all about that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you are a producer. All you do is stand around.”

“I may be standing around, but my mind is running a thousand miles an hour, wondering what crazy thing you’ll be coming up with next that I’ll have to figure out.”

“It’s called cinematic vision, not crazy.”

Billy patted him on the arm. “Keep telling yourself that.”

The discussion on the walkway ended, and Regina returned to her chair.

“Roland?” she said.

A middle-aged man who’d been introduced as the script supervisor stepped over to Regina.

“I’m flipping shots two-c and two-d,” she said.

Roland made a note on his tablet computer, said, “Got it,” and moved back out of the way.

Regina gave a nod to the assistant director, who then raised her bullhorn and said, “Settle, everyone. We’re going again.”

At the crowd-control barriers, locally hired assistants used their bullhorns to tell the crowds to be quiet.

“How are we looking?” Regina asked her cameraman.

“Camera ready,” he replied.

“Roll camera.”

“Rolling.”

“And action!”

Danielle slipped out of the hotel without seeing Dieter or his men, and headed to the river. Her fear of not being able to find the filming location turned out to be a nonissue. As soon as she reached the Danube, the shoot’s bright production lights acted like a neon sign, pointing the way.

A large mob of onlookers stood by the barriers meant to keep them from swarming the film site, and just beyond the barriers several police officers watched over everything.

She cursed to herself.

She had assumed the shoot would draw some attention, but she hadn’t anticipated as many people as this.

Turning around and going back to the hotel wasn’t an option, however. She needed to talk to Barnett now so that he could pass on the warning.

She slipped into the crowd and began squeezing through the gaps, hoping that she could convince one of the officers to let Barnett know she was there.

Upon arriving at the Ritz-Carlton, Dieter Wenz found a housephone and asked the operator to be connected to Roland Turner’s room.

The phone rang until the hotel answering system picked up. Dieter set the receiver back in the cradle. His was a message that needed to be delivered in person.

He approached the reception desk.

“How may I help you?” the man behind the counter asked.

“I’m supposed to meet one of your guests,” Dieter said. “Roland Turner. I tried calling his room, but there was no answer.”

“Would you like me to try for you?”

“That won’t be necessary. He’s here to film a commercial, and I’m wondering if he might have mentioned when he’ll be back.”

The man checked his computer and shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. He did not leave a message to that effect.”

“Thank you anyway.”

As Dieter was turning to leave, one of the clerk’s female colleagues said, “Are you talking about the shoot with Tessa Tweed and Mari Chen?”

“I believe so,” Dieter said. He had no idea if the women she’d mentioned were in the commercial or not, but how many shoots could be happening that evening?

“They’re filming by the river.” She pulled out her phone and showed him a few photos posted to Instagram from the production site.

“Is this far?”

She shook her head. “Just walk down to the river and you’ll see it.”

“Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”

Dieter rejoined Rolf and Andreas, the two men he’d brought with him.

“Any luck?” Andreas asked.

“Not here, but I know where he is.” He gave Andreas a long look. “If we get this done, maybe we can keep your ass out of the fire.”

Andreas had overseen the team in Romania who’d failed to take out Danielle Verde. Dieter had pulled him in to help protect him from Braun’s wrath.

“You’re not going to let it drop, are you? I told you we did everything right.”

“If that were true,” Rolf said, “then wouldn’t you have taken care of Verde already?”

“Like you would have done any better.”

“Both of you cool it,” Dieter said. “We need to focus on Turner.”

“So where is he?” Rolf asked.

“Not far.”

They found the shoot and joined the fans by one of the crowd-control barriers. It was farther from the action than Dieter had hoped to be, but with all the fans, the police, and the people working on the shoot, it wasn’t like he and his men could do much more than observe anyway.

They needed Turner alone so they could establish whether he was Teddy Fay or not. If the answer was yes, they’d terminate him and leave the boss’s calling card.

Dieter pulled out a pair of pocket-size binoculars and scanned the film crew.

For a moment, he thought he spotted Turner standing with a younger man near a table loaded down by several monitors. The man was around the right age and approximately the right height. But when he turned, Dieter saw his face and realized he wasn’t Turner.

Dieter scanned the rest of the crew, then smiled when he spotted Turner, sitting in a chair not too far from the monitors.

All Dieter needed to do now was keep an eye on him, then he and his colleagues could follow him back to the hotel and have a private conversation in the men’s room. All very nice and neat.

“Oh, shit,” Andreas said.

Dieter lowered the binoculars and saw that Andreas was staring at someone in the crowd, off to the right.

“What?” Dieter asked.

“I…I think that’s Danielle Verde.”

“Verde? Here?”

“Yeah.” Andreas pointed. “The woman with the brown and gray hair tied in a ponytail. Gray sweater.”

She was about twenty feet away and seemed to be trying to move to the front of the crowd.

“Are you sure?” Rolf asked.

“One hundred percent.”