Chapter 46

At six-forty-five Eric called Morgan from the desk of his Fifth Avenue hotel, then took the elevator up to the third floor. Andrews opened the door and Eric stepped in. He nodded at Andrews. He left on his coat but pulled it open where it was covering his bodywire.

Morgan, in another room behind, called to Eric to come in. Eric moved to where Morgan sat and watched him fiddling with a piece of equipment. The device was letting off a series of clicks like a Geiger counter, and a red light went on. The light was labeled ‘Alert.’

“Are we under attack?” asked Eric.

Morgan smiled. “Take off your coat,” he suggested.

Eric did so.

Andrews came over to Eric who was still standing and took the coat. He placed it on the bed. Eric went to sit down. “Just a moment,” said Morgan. Eric stood back up, puzzled. Andrews came back over and stood before Eric, who was waiting to find out what was going on.

Andrews ripped open Eric’s shirt, tearing off buttons in the process. Eric didn’t defend himself but gasped in surprise. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, outraged. Andrews pulled up Eric’s cotton undershirt and pulled out the mic and transmitter. “I guess you caught me,” Eric called out, in case his handlers could hear. Andrews exited the room with the electronics. Shit!

“Look at that,” said Morgan. He pointed at the unit in front of him. The red alert light had gone off. “I just got this,” he added. “It seems to work.”

Eric was stunned. He hadn’t expected things to go so wrong so quickly. And so quietly. Steinberg and Klein would know that something was amiss, obviously, but they wouldn’t know what. This deal was a no-go!

Eric sat down. He and Morgan stared at one another. “I’ve been a little nervous recently with the arrest of some folks in my line of work in London,” Morgan commented, perfectly calm. “I must admit, however, that you have surprised me. Who is it you’ve been working with?”

“Jubei Kitani,” said Eric at once, throwing in a wild card.

“Kitani!” exclaimed Morgan, his eyes lighting up in anger. Andrews walked back into the room and Morgan turned to him. “Our friend here is involved with Kitani.” Andrews raised his eyebrows.

“Can I borrow a shirt from you?” Eric asked Morgan politely. Morgan was approximately the same size as he was, he guessed.

Morgan smiled. He nodded at Andrews. “Go get him a shirt,” he directed. “We don’t want anything to look out of the ordinary when we take him out of here.”

When we take him out of here. That gave Eric a clue that all was really not well. They might be planning something unpleasant for him.

“I’m working for Kitani, but I don’t know much about what’s going on,” said Eric. “Tell me. I’m flexible, quite capable of switching sides. Did Kitani kill your man Sherba in Miami?”

Morgan looked at him contemptuously. “I killed Sherba,” he told Eric. “I killed him because he was working for Kitani.” Morgan gazed at Eric meaningfully.

Wait a minute! If Morgan had killed Sherba, why had Kitani admitted to it? Or had he? Eric tried to recall Kitani’s exact words. He said someone had gotten killed. What a joker the guy was! No staying on your toes with him. Trying to keep up with Kitani was like trying to retain your equilibrium during a seven-point-two temblor, which, Eric now knew, was a bit iffy.

“The killing was a nice job,” said Eric. “You placed the knife just so.”

Morgan was happy with the compliment. “I’ve been around a bit,” he confessed, modestly. “The old spy game, you know. But one must change with the times, learn new job skills.”

Andrews returned with a shirt and handed it to Eric who removed his cotton blend rags and examined Morgan’s garment. The fabric was far softer than any Eric had ever worn, and the label told him the shirt had been custom tailored expressly for Morgan himself.

Morgan noticed Eric’s interest. “I live well,” he explained lightly.

“Who’s spying on who in this scenario?” Eric continued, unbuttoning the shirt.

“Who’s spying on whom,” Morgan corrected with emphasis.

Eric ignored the grammatical instruction. “Are you trying to get Kitani’s secrets, or is he trying to get everyone else’s from you?”

“Don’t you get it, my American friend? Jubei Kitani and I are in competition. We’re competing for the same information. Only he wants it all for Moritomo and I want to sell it to the highest bidder. He’s been in this game a long time, you see, and thought he had the territory all sewn up. I’ve come as a big surprise and disappointment to him—I’m just that good.”

The fact that Morgan was speaking so freely to him made Eric uncomfortable. Of course, if the British spy thought that Eric worked for Kitani, a fellow stealer of secrets, maybe he believed it didn’t matter how much Eric knew. More likely, Morgan was simply planning on killing Eric, whoever he was working with.

“We were going to do some business,” Morgan reminded Eric. “Did you bring the flash drive you promised me? Let’s not allow that information to go to waste. There must be something to it, even if you are working with Moritomo.”

Eric went over to his coat on the bed and pulled the flash drive Aki had given him from the pocket. He brought it to Morgan who slid it into a nearby computer.

Eric sat down again and watched Morgan’s face. Morgan wasn’t an engineer like Kitani, Eric figured. Morgan would see the designs, but he wouldn’t be able to tell exactly what they were.

“What the hell is this?” snarled Morgan. His face had gone furious and his eyes emitted sparks. Eric jumped up from his chair and ran over to see what had caused the fuss. He glanced at the screen. Good God, what else would go wrong tonight? He had picked up a flash drive of his sister’s. This one was the legal brief for Katherine’s age discrimination case.

“It’s the wrong file,” Eric muttered. The guy could only kill him once anyway. No use being too apologetic.

The three of them got into Morgan’s rented Lincoln. Eric was hoping that the feds or the NYPD would rescue him, but he realized they wouldn’t have a clue as to his whereabouts. After a while, they would storm the hotel room and find his torn shirt and the electronics detector, but by then Eric would be long gone.

He would have to save himself, as usual. There were only two bad guys, after all, although Morgan and Andrews were kind of mean sons-of-bitches, who had “been around” as Morgan described it. They both also had guns. “No big deal,” he told himself, but he knew that he was lying.

The speeding car headed up the West Side Highway. “We’re going to have to visit that family of yours,” Morgan repeated, having informed Eric of that in the room. “I’m not very happy with the way things have gone.”

“I’m not especially happy either,” Eric concurred. They could only kill him once, but they could also kill Katherine and David. If they could, he thought they would, because at this point, they had nothing in particular to lose. It was as absolutely simple to leave three bodies as to leave one and Eric hardly imagined that scruples entered into the equation anywhere for these guys. In fact, Morgan might kill his additional two victims for the sort of reason that appealed to certain drug dealer types: ‘As a lesson to others I do business with.’

“This isn’t the route I usually take,” Eric piped up helpfully.

Morgan laughed. “I’m going to miss you,” he said derisively. “You’re rather a clown.”

Andrews was driving at about the average speed for these highways, seventy miles an hour, give or take five or ten. Some form of injury was guaranteed to anyone leaping from a vehicle accelerated to that speed.

Yet Eric had only two choices that he could figure: jump out of the car at a spot where he would sustain the least degree of damage and find a phone (they’d taken his cell) to warn Katherine away from the house; or drive with them to Katherine’s and wrest control from Morgan and Andrews at that point. Neither strategy would assure his or his family’s survival. Either way, in fact, he was in real trouble.

Although he would be at least somewhat hurt, jumping out would give him the most possibility for action, he decided, as they whizzed over a ground-level roadway next to the woods. And at this moment, on the outside lane, he was at least safe from the other cars; in another second or two, Andrews might switch lanes, and the opportunity would be lost. Eric took two deep breaths, pulled up on the lock, pushed open the door, and jumped out into the road—really jumped, tucking his head against his chest so that he would roll forward off the highway into the overgrowth beyond.

He felt something sting against his hip and shifted his eyes behind him toward the car. Morgan was aiming his gun back at Eric and had squeezed off a shot. Luckily traffic was still heavy and, at the fast clip everyone was traveling, Andrews dared not stop to give him a second chance to shoot. Eric tumbled down the verge, at the last-minute gripping out at the vegetation to stop himself, so he wouldn’t slam into a tree.

He lay flat, dizzy, wondering what damage he had sustained. He tested his bones. Miraculously, nothing appeared to be broken. He tried to stand, then realized he had a searing sensation in his hip. He probed the spot with his fingers and came away with blood. He had, indeed, been shot, and lean as he was, he feared the bullet had taken away some bone as well as muscle.

Ignoring the pain, he pulled himself to his feet and headed back toward the highway. The leg was working; the hip was just about working, despite an intense discomfort. That was all that mattered, for the moment.

Fool that he was, he had pictured someone coming to his aid as he stood with a thumb out on the side of the expressway. But just as Andrews and Morgan couldn’t slow down, neither could the other post-rush-hour commuters. Couldn’t or wouldn’t, despite his being the absolute picture of affluent respectability in someone else’s high-fashion overcoat and a second guy’s custom-made dress shirt.

What the hell had he done? How the hell was he going to get out of here? Those two f’ing maniacs were on their way to his house to do something nasty and here Eric was in the middle of nowhere, having outfoxed himself once and for all. Where in God’s name were the state police? They were his only chance.

He walked backward alongside the hurtling cars, still hoping against hope that someone would stop. He could feel the blood trickling down his side and each time he checked to see if he was really still bleeding, he was. The hip smarted something fierce. He tried to probe, to see if the bullet was embedded, but the wound really didn’t want to be touched. Ah, some father he was, some hero, some smart guy!

He heard it before he saw it, the buzz-saw sound of a powerful bike. A motorcycle could pull off the road a great deal more easily than a car. But while he was costumed in a way that would appeal to his cousins in the Volvos, Chevrolets, and the occasional BMW, a biker would hardly rescue Eric dressed as such a bourgeois gentleman. Nonetheless, he stuck out his thumb, and held his breath.