“And Louis?”
“The doctor was one of them. He was Angel’s backup. He was an expert with explosives. They assigned him here so he could stay close to you. A phony kidnapping was set up and you were rescued by Mr. Charm.” He saw the expression on Mary’s face. “You were lonely and vulnerable, and they worked on that. You weren’t the first one to fall for the good doctor.”
Mary remembered something. The smiling chauffeur. No Romanian is happy, only foreigners. I would hate to have my wife become a widow.
She said slowly, “Florian was in on it. He used the flat tire as an excuse to get me out of the car.”
“We’ll have him picked up.”
Something was bothering Mary. “Mike—why did you kill Louis?”
“I had no choice. The whole point of their plan was to murder you and the children as spectacularly as possible in full public view. Louis knew I was a member of the Committee. When he figured out that I was the one poisoning you, he became suspicious of me. That wasn’t the way you were supposed to die. I had to kill him before he exposed me.
Mary sat there, listening as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The man she had distrusted had poisoned her to keep her alive, and the man she thought she loved had saved her for a more dramatic death. She and her children had been used. I was the Judas goat, Mary thought. All the warmth that everyone showed me was phony. The only one who was real was Stanton Rogers. Or was he—?
“Stanton—” Mary began, “is he—?”
“He’s been protective of you all the way,” Colonel McKinney assured her. “When he thought Mike was the one trying to kill you, he ordered me to arrest him.”
Mary turned to look at Mike. He had been sent over here to protect her, and all the time she had looked on him as the enemy. Her thoughts were in a turmoil.
“Louis never had a wife or children?”
“No.”
Mary remembered something. “But—I asked Eddie Maltz to check, and he told me that Louis was married and had two daughters.”
Mike and Colonel McKinney exchanged a look.
“He’ll be taken care of,” McKinney said. “I sent him to Frankfurt. I’ll have him picked up.”
“Who is Angel?” Mary asked.
Mike answered. “He’s an assassin from South America. He’s probably the best in the world. The Committee agreed to pay him five million dollars to kill you.”
Mary listened to the words in disbelief.
Mike went on. “We know he’s in Bucharest. Ordinarily, we’d have everything covered—airports, roads, railway stations—but we don’t have a single description of Angel. He uses a dozen different passports. No one has ever talked directly to him. They deal through his mistress, Neusa Muñez. The different groups in the Committee are so compartmentalized that I haven’t been able to learn who’s been assigned to help him here, or what Angel’s plan is.”
“What’s to stop him from killing me?”
“Us.” It was Colonel McKinney talking. “With the help of the Romanian government, we’ve taken extraordinary precautions for the party tonight. We’ve covered every possible contingency.”
“What happens now?” Mary asked.
Mike said carefully, “That’s up to you. Angel was ordered to carry out the contract at your party tonight. We’re sure we can catch him, but if you and the children aren’t at the party…” His voice trailed off.
“Then he won’t try anything.”
“Not today. Sooner or later, he’ll try again.”
“You’re asking me to set myself up as a target.”
Colonel McKinney said, “You don’t have to agree, Madam Ambassador.”
I could end this now. I could go back to Kansas with the children and leave this nightmare behind. I could pick up my life again, go back to teaching, live like a normal human being. No one wants to assassinate schoolteachers. Angel would forget about me.
She looked up at Mike and Colonel McKinney and said, “I won’t expose my children to danger.”
Colonel McKinney said, “I can arrange for Beth and Tim to be spirited out of the residence and taken back here under escort.”