The Beauty of Bucharest (A Clean Up Crew Thriller Book 1) Read online

  “Oh, yeah. The whole terrorism thing.”

  “Again, another word you don’t want to bandy around, Daniel.”

  “Daniel” again. He yearned for “pig.”

  “Okay, okay. Take it easy. I’m sure you didn’t know all this spy shit your first day on the job.”

  Her expression softened. “No, you’re right. I didn’t. But you’re not ‘on the job,’ and if you were, the way you’re going, your first day might turn out to be your last. You need to follow my lead a little more, hon.”

  Whew. “Hon.” Back on thicker ice. “Of course. I know. I guess I’m kind of used to being in the driver’s seat in most of our social situations.”

  “And I have always loved you taking that role. But you probably shouldn’t think of anything we do here as a ‘social situation.’ It will be far healthier to think of it as a potential death situation.”

  “You told me Bucharest was safe.”

  “Any city of two million people is going to have its unsafe aspects. And I was talking about it being safe for tourists, which we are not.”

  “Sure we are. We’re Rick and Alicia from the land of Laverne and Shirley.”

  “And that will satisfy the people who don’t want us dead. But there are plenty of the other kind of people as well.”

  “The ones who do?”

  “The ones who do.”

  Their drinks came. Nicole had ordered a Cosmo, much to the bartender’s delight. Even from their corner, they’d heard him reply to Razvan’s instructions by saying, “Ah! Sex in the City! Terry Bradshaw!” Both Americans laughed out loud as the man confused the character Carrie Bradshaw with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ former quarterback. Dan’s drink, bourbon on the rocks, had not elicited any pop-culture references. Dan supposed he’d been hoping for something like “Humphrey Bogart. American badass!”

  “Mulţumesc foarte mult,” Nicole said, thanking the waitress, who looked like she might still be in her teens. “Child labor is not the issue here that it is at home,” she commented after the girl refused the tip Nicole had offered and walked away.

  “Why didn’t she take the tip?” Dan asked.

  “Because the hotel offering us free drinks means she can’t accept any money from us either. It wouldn’t be free then, whether the money went to the house or to her.”

  “So why did you offer it?”

  “Not doing so would be rude on two levels. First, she’s a waitress working for dirt, so of course you’d offer a tip. Secondly, by offering, I gave her the opportunity to turn it down, which makes her look good to her employers.”

  “Holy shit, this place is complicated.”

  “Oh, we’re just getting started,” Nicole said with a sly grin. She took a sip of her drink and found it was delightfully mixed, as good as any she’d tasted in the US. Dan’s bourbon was exactly what he’d expected, figuring it would be nearly impossible to foul up bourbon on the rocks. They enjoyed their liquid apologies, making small talk until Razvan reappeared to inform them their room was now ready.

  “That was quick,” Dan said.

  “I am happy you found the wait not too long,” the concierge said with a beaming smile as he led them to the elevators.

  “Good job,” Nicole said as they followed him. “You expressed satisfaction with their promptness. He saved face.”

  At the elevator, a bellhop was waiting. “I’ve had your luggage brought up to your room already,” Razvan said. “I hope you enjoy your stay in Bucharest.” He handed a key-card marked “808” to Dan, and with a polite bow, left them in the care of the bellhop.

  “Let’s go see our room, Rick. That Cosmo was good. You may get lucky after all.”

  They stepped onto the elevator, Nicole drawing close to Dan, causing the bellhop to look away with studied indifference. The ride to the eighth floor was leisurely, as the elevators, much like the hotel itself, were more in the classic vein, and speed was not necessarily viewed as an mandatory option. They arrived just as the bellhop was about to reach a level of discomfort that was equal parts comical and contagious. Dan breathed a deep sigh of relief when the doors opened.

  The uniformed young man led them to the door of room 808 and Dan inserted the key-card. This time, just before they entered, when Nicole handed the bellhop a tip, it was not refused. He bowed politely and returned to the elevator, which had not yet closed its doors.

  The room was comfortable, and Dan noted that the luggage was lined up neatly on a bureau near the mahogany chifforobe, which he opened to allow Nicole to hang her dresses. “Hey, Cole, you can use as much of this hanging space as you need...” he started, but as he turned to face her, he found she was stretched out on the bed, smiling.

  “I thought you said you needed to get right to business,” he said, smiling back.

  Nicole held up her cell phone. “Just got a text. I have to meet my handler at nine.”

  “What’s a ‘handler?’ What kind of handling of you will he be doing?” Dan’s smile was supposed to indicate teasing, but Nicole saw a shadow on it.

  “A handler is a local contact with the intelligence I need to complete the assignment,” she said, attempting to infuse her words with reassurance that there would be no handling that Dan needed to worry about.

  “It’s not even seven.”

  “It was a very good Cosmo, Dan.”

  “The bourbon wasn’t bad either,” he said, walking to the bed to join her.

  Nicole left Dan sleeping, his post-coital go-to move, and dressed quietly. She slipped out of the room with a level of stealth that would have caught him by surprise, as she normally made a show of being a little clumsy and a lot noisy at home. She thought about the vast amount of things that Dan was going to find surprising in the days... in the years ahead.

  Stopping at the desk, she asked directions to the bar, named simply The Pub, and calculated that at just a little over a half-mile away, she could make it to her meeting in time if she walked briskly, an activity she found invigorating anyway, not that she wasn’t already quite energized from the lovemaking. For her, sex was a stimulant. It sharpened her senses and made her eager, either for more sex or for some other equally exhilarating activity. As she stepped quickly along Bulevardul Regina Elisabeta, she pulled out her phone and wrote a quick text to Viktor, the local Crew handler, who would fill her in on all the pertinent details before bringing her to a place where she could gather up some firepower.

  When Nicole had first begun working for the Clean Up Crew, the protocol was to bring any weapons you’d be using with you, but the world’s social climate had changed considerably since then, and boarding airplanes with a gun (or more often than not, several guns), even in checked luggage, was no longer considered a worthwhile operational risk. Besides, the organization had grown to a size that allowed for a handler to be in just about any location, or if not there, close enough to be able to be in place in time to meet the operative who’d be doing the cleaning. And getting weapons across land borders, especially if one knew the language, the customs, and the right palms to grease, was a lot easier than getting them past airport security.

  She thought about Viktor in terms of his ability to move weapons. It was a lucrative business for him when there was nothing kicking with the Crew. In fact, most people knew him primarily as a gunrunner. Nicole certainly had no problem with Viktor’s other line of work, as long as he was available when she needed him. And he always was.

  By the time she reached The Pub, her heart rate was satisfyingly elevated, though her breathing was slow and even. She knew Viktor by sight, having worked with him in other Eastern European cases in the past, and as she scanned the bar, she saw him seated in a well-situated booth. He’d grown a beard since the last time she’d seen him, though his head was still shaved.

  The bar, she quickly saw, was populated mainly by locals, and was not decorated to appeal to the tourists’ sensitivities. There were few adornments at all, save for promotional items featuring various liquors. A woode
n plaque for Dr. McGillicuddy’s peppermint schnapps, with the quote “A glass half-empty is a job half-done,” seemed the most out of place in the Romanian watering hole, and it made her smile. The bar itself was dimly lit, and looking at a pair of women seated there, she could see that this would be to their benefit. They were obviously “escorts” and had clearly been working at the “oldest profession” since it wasn’t so old. The various booths and tables were made of aged, solid, dark wood, well worn and time-scarred by more than one person hoping to achieve the brand of immortality gained by defacing a table, the sort that lasted only until the table was replaced. From the looks of this furniture, the inscription “Vlad the Impaler was here” was very likely to be somewhere in the place. But that suited Nicole just fine. Old, nondescript, and not bustling with noisy Americans was just the sort of decor she needed.

  “Salut, Viktor.”

  “Hello, boss,” the handler said with a grin. She saw that there were two shot-sized glasses on the booth table. Viktor pushed one to her. “Tuică,” he said.

  Nicole picked up the glass and raised it, meeting Viktor’s, which was already held aloft.

  “O treavbă rapidă,” Viktor toasted.

  “A quick job, indeed,” Nicole responded, taking a sip of the strong plum spirit. Viktor smiled, seeing that she drank properly, not pouring it down as the shot glass would suggest. Tuică was always sipped. As she set the glass down on the table’s uneven surface, Viktor powered up a tablet and turned it to face her.

  “This is your target. His name is Bogdan Grigorescu. This picture is a year old and is the most recent known image of him. In the past twelve to fourteen months, as his activity level has increased, his public appearances have drastically decreased. The stuff he’s been doing lately has drawn the sort of attention a dealer in flesh is happy to avoid.”

  Nicole looked at the man and had to suppress a laugh. He was almost a cartoon caricature of evil, from the shaved head and black turtleneck, to a rather nasty scar in an uncomfortable proximity to his left eye. She’d dealt with the slime that trade in human life before, but never one who so looked the part.

  After she’d had time to commit the face to memory, Viktor said, “Swipe left.”

  The next image was of a tall woman in her early thirties. She was dressed entirely in black leather and wore darkened glasses that made it impossible to determine her eye color. The shade of her hair was not a mystery. She wore it in a short style that Nicole would have dubbed “cute” had it not been growing on the head of a woman who looked like she would as quickly kill you as tell you where to buy a good cup of coffee. Also it was a bright, metallic blue. The third color in the composition was the brown wooden stock of an assault rifle in her hands.

  “She’s obviously less concerned about being spotted,” Nicole observed. “She cuts quite a figure.”

  “That is Ileana Gabor, Bogdan’s chief of security. You are correct in assuming she is not concerned about being noticed. She makes sure to be seen, although generally without the AK, on a regular basis. Her movement is a message to any who would doubt that Bogdan is very much still active, still the man to deal with when one needs a human being for whatever purpose.”

  “None of them wholesome.”

  “Rarely, if ever,” Viktor conceded.

  “How recent is this picture?”

  “This is actually from the same time as the picture of Bogdan. On those rare occasions when he is seen, she is invariably by his side, and it is then that you will see her openly carrying her rifle. There is no misinterpreting her message. Get too close to Bogdan Grigorescu, and you will die.”

  “So I’ll no doubt have to deal with her before I take care of Bogdan.”

  “I see no other likely scenario. Swipe again.”

  Nicole did and caught her breath as an image of one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen, and for a woman as attractive as Nicole to be floored by another’s appearance, it would have to have been. The picture was obviously professionally taken. “A model?” Nicole asked.

  Viktor shook his head. “No. Not a model. The model. That is Ana Albu.”

  “I’ve heard the name.”

  “The plan was for the world to have heard it by now, but just as she was poised to move from being the most famous female face in Romania to being the face everybody on the planet wanted to see, she dropped out of sight.”

  “What does that have to do with my assignment?”

  “We are 99 percent sure she has dropped out of sight because Bogdan has her.”

  Nicole looked up from the tablet in surprise. “He doesn’t think he can move someone that well-known, does he? Just how cocky is this guy?”

  “He’s never missed a beat, never suffered a setback. Aside from that scar on his face, which legend says he obtained in a knife fight at age ten, he’s never been touched. Yes, Nicole, he’s quite confident that he can get her into the hands of a very wealthy buyer.”

  Nicole frowned. “I don’t like these sorts of complications. I was ready to put one into his bodyguard, then three or four into him. I wasn’t expecting to have to rescue a damsel in distress.”

  “Officially, you don’t,” Viktor said, a grim tone in his voice.

  “You know me too well to know that I won’t do what I can for her now that I’m aware.”

  “That’s why I told you. I’m that kind of bastard.”

  “What makes you think he’s got her? Couldn’t she just have crumpled under the pressure of the move her people were trying to make? The vault from top hometown girl to international super-model is no small leap. Or what about drugs? Could she have overdosed?”

  “She’s quite public about her commitment to a clean lifestyle, so probably not that. And among the modeling community, she is known as “The Steel Queen,” for the strength of her will and drive, making a breakdown unlikely as well. No, we’re almost certain he has taken her for two main reasons. As public a profile as Ileana has kept, since Ana’s disappearance, she hasn’t been seen either, leading us to suspect that Bogdan has tightened security. Also there’s this...” Viktor reached to the tablet and swept Ana’s head shot away, replacing it with a wide angle shot of an outdoor scene. In its original resolution it appeared to be a sizable crowd of people with a hole in the center of the group, but as Viktor zoomed in, Nicole could see that in the center of the hole was a jumble of lights and cables and support staff surrounding a photographer and Ana Albu dressed in clothing that was at the same time very alluring and very inappropriate for the weather conditions. Even in the photo, Nicole could see a set to Ana’s eyes that made the origin of her nickname easy to understand. The onlookers were watching the photo shoot the way a mob in Brooklyn might congregate around a particularly entertaining hobo fight.

  “Look here,” Viktor said, panning the picture with a drag of his finger. About ten feet back from the leading edge of the crowd was a very distinctive metallic blue head of hair.

  “Ileana was at the photo shoot,” Nicole said.

  “Either her or another six-foot-tall woman with electric blue hair.”

  “I don’t imagine there are a surplus of those.”

  Viktor shook his head.

  “Shit. Okay. So I have a target that no one ever sees. I have a secondary target that is often seen, but I’d venture to guess rarely in the same place twice. Am I right?”

  Viktor nodded. “She makes appearances all over the city. Clubs, museums, the ballet. None of it does us any good in locating Bogdan.”

  “Except that when she’s done watching Petrushka, she’s going to head back to wherever the worm is holed up.”

  “And ‘holed up’ is a term you need to use loosely. Just because no one sees him doesn’t mean he’s lying low in a hovel somewhere.”

  “Oh, I’m confident that he’s quite comfortable. So the visible bodyguard, the invisible son-of-a-bitch, and the Beauty of Bucharest who has been missing for how long?”

  “She was last seen at an outdoor photo s
hoot just over six months ago.”

  “Even still, there’s a very good chance she’s still in Romania. A sale this high profile will be done with excruciating caution. Bogdan may be trying to play a few deep-pocketed bidders against each other as well, and getting the price to the figure he has in mind could take some time.”

  “Do you think he would keep her in Bucharest?” the handler asked.

  “I would,” Nicole answered. “If I were already underground... term used loosely, lower your eyebrow... and I’m comfortable that no one is likely to stumble upon my hidey-hole, I’d keep her close, and I’d keep my blue-tressed pit bull chained up by her side.”

  “Then maybe your complication won’t be so complicated,” Viktor offered hopefully.

  Nicole thought about all the intel she’d received, and after a few more moments of rumination, her expression changed. Viktor saw her move from angry and groping for direction to being focused and something that almost looked like satisfied. “You know, Viktor, I wasn’t happy with this assignment, and I’ll tell you why.”

  The handler took a sip of tuică and looked at her with intense concentration.

  “This was going to be largely a symbolic cleaning. We weren’t hired by the mother of some kidnapped teen. That would have been another, better matter altogether. No, we were called by a friend of a friend of a friend of the government, who wanted to make a statement. But killing Bogdan Grigorescu isn’t going to stop human trafficking in Romania. Some other slimy fucker will gladly jump into his place, probably even before the blood has had time to dry on the ground.”

  “Clean Up Crew does not let blood dry. They are on the scene as soon as the police take down the tape,” Viktor joked.

  But Nicole didn’t laugh. “Do you know how many women are traded across international borders annually?”