Charley had his Browning A-Bolt across her lap.

Beneath the wicker chair was a tiny puddle of blood that had been dripping from between her legs.

Middleton recoiled.

“Oh Jesus,” Perez said as he skidded to a halt. “Charley. Charley, wake up.” At that moment, Middleton understood that his daughter had lost her baby. He felt a muted sense of relief: For a moment, seeing the blood, he thought they had gotten to her as they had Henryk Jedynak, Sylvia and others—and had tried to kill him at Dulles.

Kneeling, Perez said, “She needs—”

“Yeah, she does.”

And now Charlotte Perez was recovering at Martha Jefferson Hospital. A private room, IV drip in place, and her husband at her side, barely awake in a lounge chair with a .357 Magnum in his jacket side pocket.

Honey sunlight streamed through the windows. Treetops swayed in the gentle breeze.

Felt like hiding in plain sight to Harold Middleton.

To Jack Perez too.

11 - PETER SPIEGELMAN

11

PETER SPIEGELMAN

Felicia Kaminski collapsed on the vast sofa that sat before the window that filled the wall of a suite atop the Harbor Court Hotel. The fat, silk-covered cushions nearly swallowed her whole. Far below, the lights of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor blinked yellow and white at her, and big boats bobbed like eggs on the black water. Was there something in the blinking lights—some pattern, a signal, a message meant for her? If there was, she was too tired to decipher it.

Beyond tired, really. She was spent—exhausted by fear and flight, and addled by too many time zones and Champagne that flowed freely in the first-class cabin. Faust had all but forced it on her, and he’d kept up with her glass for glass, all the while smiling like the Cheshire Cat. One bottle had led to another—so many bubbles—but the smiling Mr. Faust seemed entirely immune.

Kaminski closed her eyes, but she could still see his white teeth and those dark, stony eyes, could still hear that deep melodious voice speaking in Italian, then in French, in Polish, in German, and now in English as he addressed the hotel man. There was a rueful smile in his words. Without looking, she knew that the hotel man—not a bellman but the immaculate, blue-suited fellow from behind the desk—was smiling back and nodding. It was all smiles and nods and discreet bows for Mr. Faust, all along the way: on the airplane; in the executive lounge in Frankfurt as they waited to fly to the States; and from the man at Dulles who met them, retrieved their luggage and drove them in a shiny black BMW all the way to Baltimore. It was as if they all knew him, their oldest friend, dear Mr. Faust—who smiled and drank Champagne and spoke in many tongues, but answered questions in none of them.