The Pretender's Gambit. Alex Archer

you do that from outside?”

      “Not from five stories up, sir. We haven’t taken the killers into custody yet. They might still be in the neighborhood. They could be in this building. We would like to prevent anyone else from falling victim to them. Your assistance will be appreciated, and your safety may hinge on your cooperation.”

      The man hesitated for a moment. “Could I see your identification?”

      “Of course.” Calapez dug the badge and wallet out of his pocket. He’d purchased both from a street dealer who specialized in such things. The dealer had sworn no one could tell the difference.

      Evidently the man in the apartment couldn’t. The locks snicked back one by one. He opened the door. Of medium height and pasty, myopic behind thick lenses and his gray hair in disarray, the apartment dweller looked like an accountant or a grade-school teacher.

      Calapez put away the fake identification, then took out a small notebook and flipped it open with a practiced flick of his wrist. This wasn’t the first time he’d pretended to be an official and he’d encountered plenty of the real ones in his line of work.

      “Could I have your name, sir?”

      “Montgomery. Felix Montgomery.”

      Calapez swept the living area with a glance. “Are you here alone, Mr. Montgomery?”

      “I am.”

      “Then if I can see your window, I will be only a moment.”

      Montgomery led the way to the window. Pousao stood nearby and kept watch over the man.

      Calapez pulled the drapes to one side and peered out the window. From his vantage point he could see the windows of the apartment where the dead man had lived, but curtains blocked the view inside the rooms.

      “Do you know what happened over there?” Montgomery asked.

      “A man was killed.”

      Uneasiness made Montgomery fidget. “Was it a domestic situation?”

      “No, sir. A break-in.” That much would be on the news in short order. Calapez continued watching.

      “That’s terrible. There haven’t been any break-ins that I’ve heard about.”

      “This sort of thing happens in the best neighborhoods, sir.” Calapez turned and looked at Montgomery. “Do you have a camera, sir?”

      Montgomery hesitated. “I do. I teach photojournalism.”

      “Would you mind if I used your camera? I left mine in the squad car.”

      Montgomery frowned. If he was a schoolteacher, that was probably the same frown he gave students who showed up to class without a pencil or paper. “It’s a digital.”

      “That’s fine. I’ll need a telephoto lens if you have one.”

      After another brief hesitation, Montgomery walked toward the back rooms. Pousao trailed him, silent as the man’s own shadow. Only a few minutes later, while Calapez watched the group milling in front of the apartment building across the street, Montgomery returned with the camera. The telephoto lens was long and large, professional quality.

      “Do you know how to use this?” Montgomery held on to the camera.

      “I do.”

      “I still don’t understand why you need to borrow—”

      Calapez nodded to Pousao and the younger man drew a short, wide-bladed knife. With a practiced motion, Pousao shoved the blade into Montgomery’s neck at the base of the skull. A surprised look of pain filled the man’s face as life left him. Calapez snatched the camera from the dead man’s hands as the body sagged to the floor.

      While the man quivered, Calapez returned his attention to the apartment building across the street. “Put the body in the bedroom. Find a few more things to steal and we’ll make this look like a burglary gone wrong.”

      Pousao grabbed the corpse and pulled it away.

      Focusing on the apartment building, Calapez looked through the camera and adjusted the lens to bring the apartment into focus. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew it would be a matter of time. Perhaps the police would find the elephant he had been sent there for. Then all he’d have to do would be to retrieve it. The task was more difficult, but he knew Sequeira would not accept anything less.

      “Jose.”

      “Yes.”

      “I see television reporters out there. Turn on the television and find the coverage. We need to know who the chief investigator is and if they have found the elephant.”

      Pousao turned on the television and searched the channels till he found one reporting live from the scene. “I have discovered the woman.”

      “Who is she?” Calapez kept the camera aimed at the apartment building.

      “Her name is Annja Creed.”

      “Is she police?”

      “No. She is an archaeologist.”

      An archaeologist possibly meant the NYPD knew something about the elephant. Sequeira talked to people such as those. He had cultivated a number of resources within that circle. Calapez had visited with some of them himself, to get things Sequeira wanted. A few of those people Calapez had killed to obtain those things. Calapez didn’t understand what his employer saw in antiquities, but there was no denying Sequeira’s interest.

      Calapez took down the archaeologist’s name in his official-looking pad, then he extracted his cell phone and placed a call to his employer. Despite the lateness of the hour, or the earliness, depending on a person’s point of view, the phone only rang twice before it was answered.

      “Do you have it?” Sequeira sounded fully awake. His voice was deep and full-bodied, as if rumbling from a huge chest. Sequeira was a broad man in his forties and worked to stay in shape.

      “There has been a complication.” Calapez hated giving his employer bad news. Sequeira was not one to easily accept such a thing.

      “I have been watching the news. You killed the old man?”

      “Not me. He was dead when I arrived there, and the elephant was not to be found.”

      “Then you must locate it.”

      “I will. I only wanted you to know where the situation stood.”

      “I have faith in you, Francisco. Otherwise I would have sent another in your place.”

      “I will get the piece for you when I can, but there appears to be additional interest in the old man’s murder. The police have summoned an archaeologist to the old man’s home.”

      “Then they must suspect what the elephant means.”

      “Perhaps.”

      “Find out, my friend. I must know. Perhaps there will be another way to get at this thing.”

      “I will.” Calapez heard the anticipation and frustration in Sequeira’s words. Calapez did not know why the elephant piece was so important. His employer kept him in the dark about many things. “I hesitate to ask, but would it be helpful at this point if I knew more about the elephant? What makes it so interesting?”

      “There is a legend about the elephant, a thing I must know from it in order to pick up a trail that vanished hundreds of years ago. For me to explain would take hours. Know only that the elephant is but the key to a mystery that has lain buried for hundreds of years as that piece wandered through the hands of queens and warriors. And there is a treasure. I want that treasure, and to find it, I must solve the mystery of the elephant.”

      “Then I will bring you the elephant.”

      “See that you do.” Sequeira broke the connection.

      Calapez