Highlander - Donna Lettow [99]
Constantine was already out the door. “I have to use the phone.”
MacLeod’s barge was not at all what Avram expected. When he learned that MacLeod lived on the Seine a stone’s throw from Notre-Dame, he’d pictured a luxurious yacht, a few servants, perhaps some scantily clad beauties lounging on deck—a real 007 pad. This, on the other hand, was simple, without ostentation. He could respect that. It was also ridiculously easy to break into. He couldn’t respect that.
Know your opposition. The first rule of chess, of business, of war. Only by knowing him could you anticipate him, stay in front of him … know his weaknesses. A standard background check on MacLeod was meaningless, full of forgeries and lies just like his own. No, to get into the head of Duncan MacLeod, he needed to see firsthand how he lived, what he threw away and what he felt was important to keep, how he treated the things that were precious to him. A man’s home was his castle, but it was also a blueprint to his soul.
Avram’s time gathering intelligence with the Shai, before Israel’s War of Independence, and later with the Mossad, had taught him many things, not least of which was how to violate a person’s privacy and yet leave no trace. He studied the photos on MacLeod’s writing desk. The blonde would be “Noel, Tessa; DOB: 24 August 1958; killed in a random mugging incident” or so MacLeod had reported it to the police at the time.
Carefully sorted in the drawers, MacLeod’s personal correspondence and bookkeeping. In an age of instantaneous communication, MacLeod obviously still enjoyed keeping in touch with a well-crafted letter. But he was also not averse to picking up a cellular phone, as his monthly statement indicated. A lot of calls to the States, primarily two numbers. Avram recognized one immediately as MacLeod’s business in Seacouver. He would run a trace on the other, but he suspected it might correspond to an establishment called “Joe’s,” a neighborhood bar that seemed to be MacLeod’s only other interest back in the U.S.
Avram continued around the room, scanning the titles of the CDs on the shelves, pulling down random books to see how well thumbed they appeared. MacLeod seemed to actually read the weighty tomes he collected. He was stymied by a piece of statuary on prominent display—burnished chrome, very modern, very dramatic, very stark. Very out of place amid the pottery and other world folk art in the rest of MacLeod’s collection. It didn’t fit in with the profile he was creating of the man and that bothered him … until he remembered reading that the dead girlfriend had been a sculptor.
On a table by the couch, the phone and answering machine, blinking, blinking an open invitation to press the play button. So he did. “MacLeod?” Avram recognized his teacher’s voice before he identified himself on the tape. “It’s Marcus … Hello? Are you there? Damn, you’re probably still at the hospital. Look, MacLeod, I saw the news footage. It was Avram. Do you hear me? Avram. We have to do something. The museum closes at three today. Meet me here. It’s important.” The tape clicked off.
Avram’s time with the Mossad had indeed taught him many things. Another lesson hard learned had been that you never know who your enemies are until they stab you in the back, so trust no one. Now all the pieces fit. Constantine was against him, too.
Constantine had just shooed the last straggler out of the exhibit in preparation for closing when he sensed that MacLeod had arrived. He threaded his way back through the gallery, turning off displays as he went. The doomed holographic hill-fort at Alesia disappeared into smoke. The crowds filling the stands at the Coliseum urging the lions on were silenced. The names of the societies driven to extinction by the empire of the Romans ceased their ceiling-to-floor spiral. Constantine had expected to meet up with MacLeod somewhere midway through the exhibit and was surprised when he made it all the way back to the replica of the Arch of Titus that formed the entrance without seeing him. Then