Lopez. Was it possible? “Security tape footage?”
Herschel had backed off a step. “Yes, sir, from two angles. A bank across the road and a traffic camera.”
“I’ll need to see both, now. And talk to the café owner.”
The quick tap of heels was followed by the muted swish of the doors swinging open. Jennifer Corcoran, accompanied by a uniformed policewoman, stepped into the morgue. Her face was white, her eyes stark and already red rimmed and swollen from crying.
When she saw Marc, her mouth trembled. He reached her in two strides and held her tight, while Bridges cleared the room. The M.E. stepped back but didn’t leave, her face apologetic. Marc didn’t labor the point. As private as this moment was, there were formalities to be completed; she had to stay.
Two hours later, Marc stepped into his office, dropped his briefcase on his desk and jerked at the knot of his tie.
Both tapes and the café owner’s recollection had been inconclusive. The tapes had been blurred by distance and obscured by traffic and passersby. The mask the shooter had been wearing had successfully blanked out his features. Aside from the fact that he was approximately five-ten, dark-haired and no longer young, they had nothing.
Bridges’s jaw was grim as he strolled over to the coffee machine in the corner of his office. “So, what now?”
Marc shrugged out of his jacket and peeled off the shoulder rig. A raft of paperwork, a press release, sat on his desk: damage control. “I’m pulling my people off the team.”
Two agents dead within a fortnight wasn’t enough to establish that Lopez was systematically killing men Marc had handpicked. A third killing would cement the pattern, but damned if he would risk losing anyone else.
The first, Powdrell, had been an experienced field agent. Corcoran had been a step up into the executive ranks. The disparity in rank aside, both of the men had been ex-FBI, headhunted by Marc. He had known them personally, and they had both chosen to move from the Bureau to National Intelligence on the strength of that personal loyalty. Maybe it was just a coincidence that “his” people were being targeted, but Marc didn’t think so.
Lopez was cold and methodical. Aside from the seemingly random killing of his own bodyguard at age twelve in Colombia, to Bayard’s knowledge, Lopez hadn’t made one move without good reason. In light of his consistent methodology, he was certain that first killing hadn’t been carried out in a psychotic fit of rage, either. At age twelve, Lopez—then known as Alejandro Chavez—had been experimenting with execution.
The unprovoked killing had set off a chain of events that still reverberated. In order to extract Alex from prison, his father, Marco Chavez, had literally held the country to ransom, machine-gunning three villages then manipulating a pardon for Alex with the donation of a hospital. Following the wave of hatred for the Chavez cartel, and the death threats that had followed Alex’s release, Marco had been forced to remove his son from the country. Courtesy of the power and influence of the Nazi cabal, which had strong links with Marco, Alex had started a new life in the States under the name Lopez.
Once in the States, protected and bankrolled by the cabal, Alex had thrived, heading up the American branch of the Chavez cartel and expanding into the international terrorism market. Until that point the relationship between the cartel and the Nazi cabal had been stable and mutually beneficial. In 1984, however, with the theft of billions of dollars from Lopez’s main operating account, the balance of power had shifted.
In order to avert his own possible execution for the massive loss of cartel funds, Lopez had traveled to Colombia, murdered the only person who could order his death—his father—and taken control of the cartel. He had saved his own skin, but, heavily in debt, and with rival cartels circling, Lopez had been forced to go, cap in hand, to the cabal in order to survive.
The cost of survival had been servitude, something Lopez had never had a talent for. As lethal as an asp, approximately eighteen months previously, he had manipulated his cabal “keepers,” threatening exposure of their secretive and politically powerful organization if they didn’t allow him entrance into their upper echelon. The cabal had acted swiftly, executing their own people in order to neutralize the threat and setting a trap to take down Lopez. But with federal agencies—including Interpol, MI6 and Mossad—now locked onto both Lopez and the cabal, the damage control was too late.
A missile blast in Colombia had vaporized the Chavez fortress, located in Macaro, hundreds of miles east from Bogotá. Unfortunately, the cabal had missed killing Lopez and his right-hand man, former FBI agent Edward Dennison, by seconds. A further attempt to take Lopez out at a meeting in El Paso had also failed, and resulted in a state of war between the two organizations. Lopez had escaped, taking a wounded Dennison and his leverage with him—a book that exposed the cabal members. He had also left behind an interesting array of corpses—one of them Senator Radcliff, a bona fide, paid up member of the cabal’s upper echelon.
Lopez had gone underground, only to surface months later as the lead suspect in a series of clever murders, which had systematically decimated the upper echelon of the cabal, leaving one lone member—the powerful but elusive Helene Reichmann, daughter of Heinrich Reichmann, the original architect of the cabal.
The series of murders had been chilling and effective, demonstrating Lopez’s power and destroying a number of leads in Bayard’s investigation. Ultimately, the murders had proved to be a godsend, throwing the workings of the cabal wide and providing a huge investigative platform that meant Marc had been able to systematically take down both the cabal and Lopez’s networks.
The rich scent of coffee filled the office, overlaying the faint, lingering scents of the morgue that still clung to his clothes and skin. He hadn’t eaten—neither of them had—so while he waited for the coffee he called in some takeout.
Despite the caffeine, Bridges was a health nut. He rarely ate red meat and almost keeled over at the sight of fat, so Marc limited the selection to salads and sandwiches. In any case, after seeing Jim and the hollow emptiness in Jennifer’s eyes, he didn’t particularly care what he ate.
Bridges handed him a cup. “Willard’s in Florida. Rossi’s home sick.”
Otherwise Rossi would have been with Corcoran, and the hit might not have taken place. Supposition, maybe, but Marc doubted Lopez would have risked taking on two federal agents.
The fact that Lopez had known Corcoran was on his own could have been the result of inside information, but that didn’t necessarily follow. If his surveillance was good enough, and it probably was, he would simply have recognized the opportunity and acted on it. “Willard’s on his way back. They’re both on leave until further notice.”
Bayard studied the view from his office window while he drank his coffee. Ever since he had seen Corcoran, the back of his neck had been crawling. He had run through possible motivations, but the only one that linked both Powdrell and Corcoran was the investigation into Lopez. It was also a fact that the murders uncannily mirrored Lopez’s assault on the cabal.
Two kills, both running with clocklike precision and no concrete leads. It took time, planning and good information to carry out a hit.
Aside from the fact that his men were being hunted, he was also certain that someone within his own organization was leaking information.
Lissa, his personal assistant, tapped on the door, breezed in, set a box on his desk and dangled an invoice. Marc peeled some bills out of his wallet and added a generous tip. The gourmet restaurant that regularly supplied the building made a point of extending deliveries into the early evening specifically for them, and the service was always prompt.
Lissa flicked open the box on her way out and checked on the contents. “Looks like chick food to me.”
Bridges looked faintly outraged. “What’s wrong with healthy food?”
Lissa lifted her brows and sauntered out to pay the delivery boy.
Smothering