His mind drifted back to the case. He’d spent the morning watching CCTV footage provided by London’s Transport Police, showing Tracy clearing customs and emerging into the arrivals terminal at Heathrow four days ago. She was wearing a head scarf and glasses, which did a good job of concealing most of her face. Her demeanor was casual and relaxed. She neither hurried nor dawdled and she never looked over her shoulder or behind her as she walked toward the tube.
Jean had played and replayed the clip for hours, searching for a clue, for anything that might jog his memory or stir up a new lead.
Was Cooper in London? In England, at any rate?
Some instinct told Jean he wasn’t, but he told himself that perhaps his instincts were wrong. Just before he drove to pick up the kids, he’d learned that there was a painting in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square entitled Six Hills. He’d dropped a quick e-mail to Interpol’s London field office to contact the authorities at the gallery, but he was itching to get on the phone to them himself.
Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he switched it on, ignoring the disapproving glances of the other parents. He set it to vibrate. Immediately it began to jump and buzz in his lap, like an angry bee.
Nine missed calls.
Nine! Something must have happened.
He opened his text messages and began to read.
SYLVIE RIZZO WAS CURLED up on the couch at home, reading a novel and enjoying some well-earned peace, when the front door opened and two crying children burst in. Their father trailed behind them, looking stressed.
“I’m sorry,” Jean mumbled. “I have to go. I have to catch a plane.”
“What, right now?”
“The film wasn’t even halfway through!” Clémence moaned.
“Dad wouldn’t let us stay. I didn’t even get to finish my ICEE!” Luc sobbed.
“You bought them ICEEs?” Sylvie’s frown deepened. “I told you they make Luc sick.”
“I have to go.”
“For God’s sake, Jean!” Sylvie snapped. “I’ll have to go to court if this goes on. You can’t keep letting them down like this. It’s Clémence’s birthday!”
At that moment Luc vomited violently, spraying blue sugary puke all over the living room carpet.
Jean ran to his car and didn’t look back.
Tracy had been spotted at Heathrow. The footage was two days old, but it was clear. With a new alias, and dark brown hair extensions, she had boarded a Britannia flight to Sofia, Bulgaria.
This year’s World Chess Championships were being held in Bulgaria.
Jean had Antoine Cléry look up the date and venue.
“The competition began yesterday. It’s in Plovdiv, a provincial city, in a conference center attached to a hotel.”
Jean Googled “Plovdiv” as he left Sylvie’s house.
“Plovdiv is often referred to in Bulgaria as ‘the City of the Seven Hills . . . Inside the city proper are six syenite hills, called tepeta . . .”
Jean Rizzo slammed his foot on the accelerator.
CHAPTER 26
PLOVDIV, BULGARIA’S SECOND LARGEST city and the venue for the latest World Chess Championships, is set on the banks of the Maritsa River, about a hundred miles southeast of the capital, Sofia. With over six thousand years of history, the city is a treasure trove of archaeological wonders, with sites from antiquity, including two ancient amphitheaters, set beside Ottoman baths and mosques and the remainders of medieval towers.
Tracy booked a hotel in the old quarter, a pretty maze of narrow, paved streets lined with old churches and homes from what was known as the National Revival period. The Britannia Hotel was really little more than a guesthouse, with a few rooms, a grubby reception area and a salon that served fruit, bread and coffee for breakfast but nothing else. It suited Tracy perfectly. From her bedroom window she could see the heights of Sredna Gora rise to the northwest, above the alluvial plain on which Plovdiv had proudly stood since four thousand years before Christ was born. It had been a decade since she’d set foot in Europe. In other circumstances she would have drunk in the culture and beauty of her surroundings like a wanderer stumbling upon a water hole after years in the desert. As it was, the pealing church bells and sights and smells of the Old World barely registered.
Tracy wasn’t here to sightsee. It had taken her a long time, too long, to figure out the first line of Daniel Cooper’s riddle. By the time she arrived at the Britannia Hotel, she was hot, exhausted and nauseous with stress . . . What if this was all a sick joke? What if Jeff wasn’t here after all, but already dead, and Cooper had lured her here so he could kill her too? What if Blake Carter was right and she was making a terrible, deadly mistake? . . . Her “twenty nights” were almost up.
She had to meet Cooper tonight. Tracy knew from bitter experience that Daniel Cooper would not tolerate lateness, or extend a deadline once set, not even for her. The problem was she still wasn’t certain which open-air theater he was referring to in his “beneath the stars” line. The Antichen Teatar, built by the Emperor Trajan in the second century was the most famous. It was also situated between two of Plovdiv’s six hills, making it an obvious choice. But the Ancient Stadium, built a hundred years later by the Emperor Hadrian had as much claim to be a “stage of history,” as well as the advantage of being closed to the public for restoration work.
With nothing else to go on, Tracy decided that Cooper would choose the abandoned theater for their rendezvous. He’ll want to meet me alone. Dropping her suitcase on the bed, she showered, changed and walked across the street to a tiny café where she forced herself to eat a Pritnsessi sandwich, a traditional Bulgarian snack of feta cheese and egg, and drink a cup of strong coffee. Felling slightly better, physically at least, she checked her watch.
Six P.M.
Three hours to go, assuming she was right about “three times three” meaning nine P.M. From the tourist map she’d picked up at the reception desk, Tracy knew that the stadium was situated in the north of the city, no more than a twenty-minute cab ride away. She decided to get there early. When going into battle, it always made sense to check out the terrain first. Especially when the battlefield had been handpicked by the enemy. Daniel Cooper had chosen this spot for a reason.
I should find out what it is.
Reaching into her purse for her wallet, Tracy fingered first her cell phone and then the gun she’d brought with her, a tiny, custom-made Kahr PM9 micro 9mm that could be disassembled into pieces that looked like lipstick tubes and other “permissible items” when passing through airport scanners. Jeff would have laughed and called it a “woman’s gun.” But its bullets could kill, just like any others.
In all her years as a con artist, Tracy had never gone armed to a job. Not since that fateful night at Joe Romano’s house in New Orleans, the night that had seen her wind up in jail and that had changed her life utterly and forever. Tracy didn’t like guns. She wasn’t in the business of hurting people. But this was different.
Daniel Cooper was a psychotic killer.
And he had Jeff.
Tracy paid her bill and walked out into the street.
THE MAIN BUS STATION in Sofia is right next to the railway station. Jean Rizzo arrived just as the bus to Plovdiv was leaving and was told he would have to wait another half an hour for the next one.
“Goddamn it!” Jean shouted aloud.
It was already five o’clock. As ridiculous as it sounded, numerous people had told Jean that the fastest and most reliable way to get to Plovdiv from Sofia was by bus. Taxi drivers invariably took unnecessary detours to jack up their prices, the trains were frequently canceled, and renting a car was complicated and involved navigation, never Jean’s strong suit. In other circumstances he’d have asked the local police to drive him the ninety miles, but by the time he’d explained about Daniel Cooper and Tracy Whitney and the Bible killings and deciphering riddles, more valuable hours would have been lost.
At last, another bus arrived and Jean climbed onboard, paying the eleven levs fare. It was crowded and almost unbearably humid, and the suspension of the vehicle was atrocious, as was the cell-phone reception. Not that it mattered much. After three barely audible, then dropped calls to his office, Jean learned that they still knew precisely nothing about where Tracy might be staying. Nor had there been any sightings or leads on either Cooper or Jeff Stevens. Local police had been dispatched to the chess championships—“where masters meet”—as well as to a variety of possible open-air meeting places. Tonight’s tense match between the Russian Alexandr Makarov and his Ukranian rival Leonid Savchuk at the Plovdiv Royal Hotel was a highlight of the competition. There was at least a chance that Cooper might choose to meet Tracy there, or leave some further clue to his whereabouts, thinking himself safe in the anonymity of the crowd.