whose password he used to get into the computer system to expunge
all his personal data, killing someone to fake his own accidental
death in that car accident. How many more we don’t know
about? And that brings up another question. You said that you believe
you’re now his only focus, his purpose for living. What about
his son? He’s in that burn clinic in Switzerland. He doesn’t care
about him anymore? Or maybe that wasn’t an accident, either, and
he tried to kill him, too?”
“I don’t know.”
Adam said, “Hell, maybe he was always over the top and he’s just
gotten more so, and maybe that goes to explain why he appears not
to be worrying about his son. No, Thomas, don’t argue with me.
He’s now here–in a foreign country to him–no longer in Crete.
He’s on our turf, and he probably hasn’t been here for all that long.”
“Listen, Adam, we don’t know that. Officially, Vasili Krimakov
hasn’t come into this country in the past fifteen years. He was here
once back in the mid-eighties, checking around, trying to sniff me
out. That was when he killed that assistant of mine simply because
he’d seen her with me and decided that she was my mistress. But I
got away that time and he left, returned to Crete. We’ve learned he
went to England a number of times, but he hasn’t gone back there
recently. Unofficially, he could have bounced in and out of the
United States with a dozen different phony passports. Who in
Greece would catch on to that? Or if they did, even care?”
“Still, we have to assume that he was in Crete most of the time.
For God’s sake, he was married. He eventually had a kid with this
woman. So he simply can’t know his way around here all that
well.”
Thomas said, “Becca is right. He’s a monster, no matter the excuses
I make for the man I knew more than twenty years ago. Of
course I didn’t really know him. He was just a target to me, always
on the opposite side, the black king to checkmate. Now we’re
forced to wait, to gnaw our elbows. Krimakov will find us, count
on it.
“Oh yeah,Tellie Hawley and Scratch Cobb are coming tomorrow
morning to speak to Becca. Maybe that’ll be good. I think she
liked them both when she met them in New York. Maybe she’ll remember
more talking to them. They’re pretty desperate, as you can
well imagine. Hawley is eating himself alive with guilt. They were
his agents, all four of them, and now they’re dead.”
“Yes,” Adam said, and streaked his fingers through his hair, sending
it on end. “Since Savich found Krimakov’s apartment in Iraklion,
our people will go in. Just maybe they’ll find something.”
Becca leaned her forehead against the closed door, listening to
their voices as they moved off down the hall. She turned then and
leaned back against the door, her arms crossed over her chest, just as
Adam had done when he’d first come into her room. She closed her
eyes.
He’d murdered four more people. Like Thomas, she knew Krimakov
would find them. It was as if he were somehow programmed
to find Thomas and kill him. And her, too, of course. He
would do anything, go anywhere, kill anyone in his way, to gain his
objective.
How could he have killed his wife and her two children, his
stepchildren? And his own son was in a burn hospital in Switzerland.
Had that one truly been an accident? No, there were no accidents
when it came to Krimakov. It was beyond terrifying.
She returned to her bed, curled up, hugging her arms around
her knees. It was warm, very warm, but she was cold all the way to
her bone marrow. Suddenly, she heard her mother’s voice, sharp
with impatience, telling her that if she even considered going out
with Tim Hardaway–that juvenile delinquent–she would lock
her in a closet for a month. Now she smiled with the memory;
then, at sixteen, she had believed her life was over. She wondered
what her mother would think of Adam. She smiled, then shivered