Chapter 34
34
“Thank you,” Jillian said into the phone, in English. “I’ll authorize the second half of your payment to be wired immediately.”
She hung up and stared at her desk.
The man she’d just talked to had been the private eye in California who had been doing the deeper background check on Roland Turner. Given what he’d found, there was no way Turner could be Fay.
It was both a relief and a gut punch.
While she still didn’t know for a fact what Braun had planned for the names on his list, she had no doubt it wasn’t good. She’d finally googled Alexis Komarov, the Russian she’d located for Braun a month ago. Less than a week later, the passenger jet he was flying on experienced a mid-flight explosion.
The timing was too close to be coincidental.
To think that she had all but fingered Roland Turner as Teddy Fay and had thus potentially signed his death warrant was almost too much to bear.
While she was not glad that Danielle Verde was injured, it at least kept Dieter occupied. She just needed to let him know that Turner was not Fay.
She called him and was sent straight to voicemail. “Mr. Wenz, it’s Jillian Courtois. Roland Turner is not Teddy Fay. Call back and I’ll give you the details.”
She hung up, hoping desperately that he checked his messages.
“It’s a no-go,” Rolf said. “There are two men in the lobby watching everyone. And where there are two—”
“—there will be more elsewhere,” Dieter finished for him.
He, Rolf, and Andreas were at a café three blocks from the Ritz-Carlton. Since dealing with Verde was currently not an option, Dieter had sent Rolf to scope out the hotel. If all looked okay there, he had planned on paying Roland Turner a visit.
Now even that was off the table.
“Wait here,” he said, then went outside to call Jillian, and noticed that he had a voicemail from her. Instead of listening to it, he tapped her number.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “You got my message?”
“I saw that you left one, but haven’t heard it yet,” he said. “Listen, can you find out what Turner’s schedule will be for the next few days? That would be a big help.”
“That’s what my message was about.”
“Turner’s schedule?”
“No. About Turner. I don’t think he is our guy.”
“What do you mean? I thought he was.”
“I had a private investigator in the States looking into him. His identity is real.”
“Teddy Fay could easily create a solid legend for himself.”
“Yes, of course. You’re right. B-b-but the investigator found more than enough credible evidence, including a half sister, which Fay did not have.”
“It could still be faked.”
“It’s not. Turner is not Fay.”
“Well, shit, Jillian. The boss isn’t going to like this.”
“Oh, um, sh-sh-should I tell him?” she asked, sounding very much like she didn’t want to do that.
“I’ll do it.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
“You owe me, though.”
There was a long pause before she said, “Okay.”
Braun raised his mobile to his ear as he stepped onto the balcony of his penthouse. “Dieter, my friend, tell me the good news.”
“There’s been a complication.”
Braun’s grin vanished. One of the things he hated most was a complication, and this project had already had several.
“Explain,” Braun said sternly.
Dieter told him what had happened.
“Dieter, I expect you out of all my people to take care of things without any issues.”
“I made the best of the situation as it was presented.”
Braun usually appreciated Dieter’s habit of telling things like they were, but this time it got under his skin. “I think the words you were looking for were ‘I’m sorry, it won’t happy again.’?”
There was a pause before Dieter said, “My apologies, Mr. Braun.”
Braun silently counted to five. It would do no good to get into an argument with Dieter right now. But after this was all done, they would be having a nice, long chat.
“Back to Verde,” Braun said, once he had calmed. “This is actually good news. If she was there, and Turner was there, then Turner must be Fay.”
“I had thought so, too, but it turns out that’s not the case.”
“What do you mean?”
Dieter shared what Jillian had told him, then said, “Verde’s contact has to be someone else. Someone who probably isn’t even Teddy Fay.”
Braun wasn’t ready to let go of that possibility yet. “Any ideas who she was there for?”
“The man at the hospital who stopped me from finishing off Verde, most likely.”
“Did you at least get a picture of him?”
“I wasn’t exactly in a position to do so. But I’ll asked Jillian to check hospital security footage. If she can get in, she should be able to pull an image of him.”
“This is all very disappointing.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Braun cocked his head. “Why not?”
“We were here because we thought Turner was Fay. If we hadn’t come, we wouldn’t have known that Verde showed up.”
“I guess that’s something,” Braun begrudgingly admitted. “Can I assume you’ll make another run at her?”
“Yes, but not right now. She’s well protected, and we don’t want to do something that will jeopardize the rest of the mission. I’ll keep you in the loop on our next move.”
“Damn right you will.”
After the CIA security team relieved Teddy at midnight, he went to the hospital’s security department. There, he used security cam footage to retrace the fake doctor’s movements from when he walked into the hospital until he escaped through a stairwell emergency exit.
At first, it appeared the man had arrived alone. But a review of the footage from outside the doctors’ locker room, where the man had changed, showed another man entering the room a few minutes after the assassin left. When the second man exited, he was holding a rolled-up bundle of clothes.
Teddy rewatched the video of the assassin’s arrival and noted that the man who’d retrieved the clothes had entered the lobby a few seconds after the assassin, and in the company of a third man.
The second man received a phone call prior to going to the locker room, and another right before he and his friend left the building. Something that occurred less than a minute after the assassin had done the same.
Teddy pulled screenshots of each man’s face and texted them to Rick, then finally returned to the Ritz-Carlton.
Before going to his suite, he stopped by room 321 and used Danielle’s key card to enter.
Save for an envelope sitting on a nightstand, the room appeared unused, which meant the envelope had to be what Danielle had wanted him to find. He checked all the cabinets and obvious hiding spots and discovered nothing else. He took the envelope up to Mark Weldon’s suite, since that’s who he needed to be in the morning.
After reading Danielle’s note, he understood why she’d shown up at the shoot. She had seen the same men Teddy had.
Unlike Teddy, however, she knew who two of them were. One was part of the team that had been pursuing her in Romania. She didn’t know his name, but she did provide a short description that aligned with the guy who’d remained in the hospital lobby the entire time.
Her description of the second man matched her would-be assassin, and his name she did know.
Dieter Wenz.
Vesna’s ex, and Felix Braun’s right-hand man.