The Pretender's Gambit. Alex Archer
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of a golden boy. However, he’s got a bad habit of stealing artifacts from other countries, making illegal acquisitions. According to Interpol, Sequeira has hired people to get things for him off the books. They couldn’t make a case stick against him because he took care of his hired help.” Bart paused for a sip of the coffee he’d brought into the room with him. “But he’s never been indicted for murder.”
“So why do these guys fit together?”
“Sequeira’s name came up in the bidding on Benyovszky’s site. Calapez is in town asking about the elephant. Sequeira likes getting things. Calapez likes getting money for getting things for people, and he’s been suspected of retrieving artifacts for Sequeira before. The math is easy.”
“If Sequeira has a lot of money—”
“He does.”
“—then why didn’t he just outbid Charles Prosch and acquire the elephant without anyone getting hurt?”
“I’ll be asking him that, if the DA’s office ever gets through Sequeira’s lawyers so I can get a face-to-face with him. The man’s put up shields that are keeping our enquiries at bay.”
“He must be hiding something.” Annja knew Bart had to be thinking along the same lines.
“Maybe.” Bart shrugged and winced. “Sequeira’s also the kind of rich that likes to have privacy and can afford it. He’s got a history of avoiding publicity except when he wants to shine the spotlight on himself. Could be he just doesn’t want to deal with us.”
Annja looked at the man in the interview room, watching as Calapez calmly picked at the temporary cast. “I suppose since Calapez isn’t talking, neither is the other guy you have in custody.”
“You’d think they were twins with a limited vocabulary from the way they shut down so quickly to lawyer up.”
“What’s the other guy’s name?”
Bart shook his head. “We don’t know. His prints aren’t on file anywhere. He’s young enough that he may not have been in trouble before now. After tonight, though, we’ll have his prints, so he’ll be in the books for anyone who needs to know.”
“I don’t think either one of these two guys, or any of the other guys working with them, killed Maurice Benyovszky.” Annja pulled at her coat, her mind active and restless.
“Neither do I.” Bart looked unhappy. “Doesn’t make sense for them to kill Benyovszky, grab the elephant, then hang around to shoot me and wreak havoc in a local diner.”
“That means Benyovszky’s killer is still out there, and more than likely has the elephant.”
“I know. We’re going to be working the murder scene, the shooting at the diner, and we caught another squeal about a murder in an apartment building across the street from Benyovszky’s building. One of the neighbors checked in on a guy named Felix Montgomery, found out he was dead. Other neighbors say they saw him in the building as late as eleven o’clock. So the time of death was sometime between eleven last night and this morning. Someone had rammed a blade into Montgomery’s neck at the base of his skull and killed him.” Bart touched the back of his neck to indicate where the blow had been delivered.
“A knife kill like that means training.”
Bart glanced at her in consternation with raised eyebrows.
“Discovery Channel,” Annja replied, realizing she was entirely too knowledgeable and calm about the violence. Bart wasn’t privy to everything she had done since gaining possession of the sword.
“You’re watching way too much television.” Bart swung his focus back to the prisoner. “And one of the things Calapez did before he’s been doing whatever he’s been doing for the past eight years is mercenary work. He signed on with the Portuguese Army when he was eighteen, served in special forces for a few years, then mustered out. So somewhere he would have gotten that kind of training.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Hang on to him as long as we can. Unless an attorney shows up here, I can lose Calapez in the system for seventy-two hours before I have to bring him before the judge. I will have to take him in for medical treatment, but I can finesse that, too. I don’t know if we’re going to be any closer to an answer by then, but we’ll keep working the case. That’s what we do.”
Someone knocked on the door. Bart told them to enter.
A young plainclothes cop stepped into the room. “Unis caught the Asian guy who was at the diner, Detective McGilley. The guy who approached you and her.” He nodded at Annja. “Sergeant Vogt wanted me to let you know.”
“How did the unis find him?”
The guy smiled mirthlessly. “They didn’t catch him. He walked up to them and turned himself in. There’s nothing to arrest him on, but we’re holding him as a material witness.”
“Do we have a name for him?”
The detective checked the folder he was holding. “Nguyen Rao. Says here he’s a professor in Cambodia.”
“That’s the same name he gave us at the diner,” Annja said.
Bart nodded. “Did Mr. Nguyen say what he’s doing in New York?”
“He’s not really talkative. He asked to speak to you both.”
“Where is he?”
“Got him in an interview room.”
Bart headed for the door and Annja followed at his heels. This was twice the man had reached out to them.
* * *
NGUYEN RAO SAT in the interview room and looked serene. His hands rested palms-down on the desk that looked like a twin to the one in Calapez’s room. His eyes were open and staring at the one-way glass, but he appeared to be asleep. Or really, really relaxed. Annja didn’t know how a man could do that after nearly getting shot down just a short time ago. Then again, she was pretty calm herself, but she’d had a lot of experience at that sort of thing.
Bart thumbed through the file that he’d gotten on the man. Annja read the folder’s contents over his shoulder.
There wasn’t much. Nguyen Rao—that did appear to be his real name—was a professor attached to the most prestigious university in Phnom Penh. He was thirty-two years old and also worked as a curator for the national museum.
Annja took out her tablet and tapped in Rao’s name, quickly locating several papers he’d written on Cambodian history ranging from the country’s pre-history through the Khmer Rouge. Many of those papers included a photograph of Nguyen that matched the man in the interview room.
“Is he legit?” Bart peered over Annja’s shoulder as she skimmed through the papers Rao had written.
“He is, if these papers are all truly his work and not part of a cover.”
“You have a suspicious mind.”
“Tonight has created a little paranoia, I suppose.” Annja smiled at him.
Bart smiled back. “Paranoia’s good for you. Sometimes they really are out to get you.” He cut his eyes back to the tablet PC. “So he’s like you? An archaeologist?”
“Not quite. He’s more of a historian.”
Bart returned his attention to the man on the other side of the one-way glass. “If he’s a historian, then what’s he doing here in New York looking for that elephant piece?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“I’m going to.” Bart left Annja standing there and walked to the door down the hall.
Rao