The Betrayer (2 page)

What he liked
about ketamine was that it dissipated quickly, and since he had inserted the
syringe between her toes, the likelihood of the needle mark being found was nil.
To the authorities it would appear that this woman had drowned while
skinny-dipping after too much vodka. A pair of condoms had prevented any trace
of himself being left inside her, and the salt water in which he had left her
body, as well as the sand the steady waves churned up, would erase any trace of
him that their final encounter may have left upon her. Of course, June in New
Hampshire was perhaps a bit early for a midnight swim in the Atlantic, but
people did crazy things all the time, especially when drunk.

If the cops did,
however, deem her death suspicious and went hunting for the stranger with whom
she’d recently spent her nights — and if they were good or lucky enough to
locate the hotel he’d been staying at — they would find only a fake name. He
had paid for his room with cash, and the credit card the desk clerk had swiped
for incidentals would turn out to be stolen. A colleague in South America
provided him with a steady supply of stolen cards. And if the cops dusted his
room for prints, they would find none. Since it was likely that they would
sweep his sheets and pillowcases for hair, he had taken the precaution of
removing them and taking them with him. He even went as far as replacing them
with a clean set of standard hotel sheets and disposing of the stolen ones en
route to his final meeting with the woman. And though he shaved his head and
his entire body daily, there was still the matter of eyebrows and eyelashes to
consider, not to mention bodily fluids that he may have emitted during sleep and
the dead skin cells that may have sloughed off. So he always had at least one set
of replacement sheets with him whenever he traveled.

Still, I should
have left her alive, he decided. If I had, I could have returned there and
sought her out after this was done. She was, after all, as good a match as he’d
found in a long time. Willing and gifted and, most important, able to take
him.

But the urge
had been just too much to resist — the need to
get away with it
, just
one
more time
, to wield the power and then escape the consequences of having
wielded it. Killing professionally had its thrills, no doubt, but these kills —
when it wasn’t at all necessary, when there was no profit to be had, and when
he and his victim were both naked — these were his reasons for living.

Well, that and
the promise of vengeance.

He abandoned the Ford in Harlem
just before dawn, then rode the subway to his final destination. A room had
been reserved under one of his fake names at the Chelsea Hotel, and the walk from
the subway station to the hotel’s entrance took less than two minutes.

He was, he
observed, the only being on Twenty-Third Street during those two minutes. A
rare thing, he thought, to be all alone in a city like this.

The room was
large and overlooked Twenty-Third. If he stood close to the glass and looked
down, he could see the steps leading to the hotel’s front entrance, though not
the actual entrance itself. Good enough, he thought.

On the bed lay a
large manila envelope that contained five thousand dollars in cash — his
“working” money, but he’d be here for nothing. There were also several eight-by-ten
photographs and two prepaid cell phones, their batteries disconnected. Attaching
the battery to one of the phones, he powered it up, then entered the number
written in a prearranged code on the outside of the envelope. He was looking
through the photos when his call was answered.

The male voice
said, “That took longer than I would have liked.”

“I had to take
care of some things before I left.” Vitali didn’t see any need to lie. Nor did
he see any need to mask his accent.

“Nothing
foolish, I hope.”

Vitali ignored
that. “When do I begin?”

“We’re set for sometime
late tonight.”

“I’m looking at
the photos. He isn’t in any of them.”

“You know the
situation. We need to draw him out. Tonight should accomplish that nicely. Do exactly
what I tell you to do, nothing more and nothing less. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“This is what
you’ve been waiting for.”

“You do not need
to keep telling me that.”

“I just want to
make sure you understand.”

“I do.”

“Good. I should
have all the details by noon. Stay put until then.”

The line went
dead. Vitali dropped the cell phone onto the bed and continued looking at the photographs.

Three of them, each
one a surveillance shot taken by cameras fitted with telephonic lenses. The
first photo showed a male and a female walking on a city sidewalk. A circle had
been drawn in red marker, somewhat unnecessarily, around the male’s face. Vitali
had seen this man only briefly — three years ago through a car windshield at
night — but he recognized him nonetheless. This was John Coyle Jr. — Johnny to
his friends. He would be about thirty now. Average height and build, but fit. And
his dark hair was still cropped to military shortness.

In the years
since Vitali had last glimpsed him, Johnny Coyle had done little more than
drift through life. At one point he had even left the country, virtually
disappearing for over a year. Coyle had been in the US Army before that — had qualified
as a paratrooper, then graduated from Ranger school. Obviously, Vitali had wanted
to be kept informed on this Coyle in particular, and his employer had done a
good job of that, providing Vitali with updates twice a year, all in
anticipation of this day finally arriving.

Though Johnny Coyle
had made it through his Ranger training, he never actually got to serve. An off-post
car accident shortly after graduation had left him with a shattered left ankle
and a subsequent medical discharge, which Coyle had fought but ultimately lost.
It was shortly after his discharge, while Coyle was still on crutches, that
Vitali had caught a brief glimpse of him. The photo in Vitali’s hand had been
taken within the last few weeks and showed Coyle walking without the aid of
anything — crutches or a cane. His injury had occurred three years ago, and
clearly his ankle had since healed — or at least healed enough. Still, the
injury was a potential weakness, and Vitali had an eye for weakness.

As confident as
he was, as physically bigger as he may be, Vitali knew this Coyle was a man he
should not underestimate. To qualify as a paratrooper meant he was tough and
smart. But to finish Ranger school, that meant much more. This Coyle was the
elite of the elite — or at least had been, once. It took real effort — daily
effort — for Vitali to keep his own edge. He’d perfected the art of the motel room
workout — pull-ups from upper door frames, push-ups with his full duffel bag on
his back, squats with any and every weight available in his arms. And he ran
nearly every day — nothing tested a man’s heart like running.

But physical
conditioning was only part of it. Mental toughness was what made the
difference. The body can do anything the mind tells it to. When the mind gives
up, so does the body. What was it Vitali’s father had said?
Fatigue makes cowards
of men.
There were no truer words.

Vitali still
had his mental edge, his soldier’s edge; there was no doubt about that. His
monk’s discipline saw to that. His killing for a living — and for pleasure — kept
him sharp, alert, always thinking steps ahead.

But would Johnny
Coyle still have his edge? Had civilian life — his “strange self-exile in
Brooklyn” was how Vitali’s employer had described it — softened him?

Hard to tell
from a photograph. Vitali noted that Coyle’s eyes were narrowed, as if he were
looking carefully at something in the distance as he walked along. Scanning, perhaps,
studying his surroundings, just as Vitali always did. Of course, the man could
have just been squinting at the sun. And if he were still razor sharp, he would
have noticed the surveillance team photographing him, no? Vitali was confident
that he would have.

Nonetheless, I
can’t underestimate him, Vitali thought. I won’t make that mistake. I won’t
make the same mistakes you made, Father. I promise that.

The female
walking beside Coyle was beautiful — as beautiful a woman as Vitali had ever
seen. Tall, regal, long red hair. A true redhead? He’d never had one of those. His
eyes lingered on her for a moment. She was dressed like a bohemian: peasant
dress, dark tank top, sandals. Vitali knew the type — rich American playing at being
poor. Strike one. Her right arm bore a sleeve of tattoos. Lots of bright reds
and greens and blues and black shadowing making what looked to be a dragon coiling
from her upper bicep down to her right wrist. Vitali didn’t like his women
tattooed — strike two — and ideas of what he would do to her if he got the
chance were already forming in his mind.

The second
photo was of another male — the youngest child, Jeremy. A teenager when Vitali
had last seen him, so twenty or so now. Good-looking, but in a fragile,
slightly feminine way. The long, well-tended hair only made him look
more…tender. Foolish boy, Vitali thought. Though Jeremy Coyle had no military
experience, Vitali had been warned that the kid was somewhat streetwise — brushes
with the law, casual associations with a bad crowd, a real scrapper. And though
he was wiry — and men like that were often stronger than they appeared — Vitali
was not at all worried. He had learned his early skills in lawless Moscow — his
father’s brother, a member of the Russian mob, had begun training Vitali as a
boy, and then resumed his training after Vitali had fled the army. All this was
to prepare him for his inevitable journey to the States, where he would work
beside his father, who was employed by an American crime boss. And once he had
finally made his way into the States — once he had begun working beside his father
— Vitali learned even more. So much more. All that his old man, a true master,
had to teach.

Till his old
man had been killed.

But even the
hardest of Moscow thugs — and they were the hardest in the world, there was no
doubt in Vitali’s mind about that — had never once given him anything close to
a run for his money.

No, he wasn’t
worried too much about this boy.

This second photograph
had been taken through the window of a café, and seated across from the younger
Coyle was another female. Older than Coyle — much older, Vitali noted. They
were holding hands across the table in a way that seemed secretive. A weakness I
could exploit? he wondered. Looking closer, he saw that the woman was wearing
an engagement ring and wedding band. The stone in the engagement ring was
large. Coyle was not married, so another weakness, perhaps?

Even though the
faces of the two females hadn’t been circled, Vitali made a point of studying
both women closely.

The third and
final photo was of the oldest of the three Coyle children. A female, in her midthirties
now. Pretty, though in a plain way, not beautiful like the other two females. Forgettable,
really, except maybe for something in her eyes. Something…
knowing
. But
she was clearly fit, and Vitali was drawn to women who were fit — victims or
lovers (and then victims), fit women were the most fun for him. He didn’t know
this female’s name — she hadn’t been present the night his father had been killed
— so he flipped over the photo and found on the back a short bio sheet. Printed
on it were details, among which was the name Catherine. Nicknamed Cat. Below
that was her Long Island City address, and below that a list of neighborhood bars
she frequented.

The photograph,
a night shot, taken by a surveillance team like the others, showed her getting
out of an unmarked sedan. A short leather jacket did little to hide the holstered
handgun clipped to her belt. A Glock, he noted. She was FBI three years ago, just
as her father had been. So she and Johnny Coyle had that in common — he had
obviously joined the Rangers because of his father, and she had pursued a
career in the FBI because her father had been FBI.

But would she
still be FBI now? Or had her father’s disgrace stained her and driven her out?

Maybe the list
of bars was a clue to that. Vitali knew enough about the FBI to know that
weakness wasn’t tolerated. How long could a drunk hope to last in that
organization?

There wasn’t
anything about Catherine Coyle’s employment status on the bio sheet. An
oversight? Or was he to assume she was still an agent? Even if she were still
FBI, Vitali wasn’t at all intimidated; he could never allow himself to fear a
woman — any woman, no matter what the situation, what kind of badge she might
carry, what skills she might possess. Such a thing would simply be an absurdity.
He knew, though, that he should find out either way. After all, if she was still
FBI, then that meant she worked for men…