The last step, figuring out why Byrd was there, would have to be postmortem.
Jones gathered the documents from Byrd’s safe and put them in a bag by the door. Then he returned to the bedroom to make sure he wasn’t missing anything important.
He searched under the bed, in the nightstand, in the dresser, even in the air-conditioning vents. Then he continued with Byrd’s belongings. He checked clothes and shoes, suitcases and toiletries, and a stack of books that sat in the corner of the room. From there, he moved his search to the other parts of the suite. There weren’t a lot of hiding places, and considering Byrd’s paranoia, Jones figured he wouldn’t find anything of value sitting out in the open.
And he was right. After several minutes of searching, Jones was ready to pack up.
It took two days for Kozlov to pick up Byrd’s scent. Two days of sitting on his ass in his hotel room, sifting through mountains of information in the FSB’s database. Two days of crunching numbers and making educated guesses before he noticed a pattern.
Of course, there is always a pattern. People are creatures of habit.
By studying old credit card statements, Kozlov determined that Byrd, a man of great wealth, always went first-class when he ventured around the globe. At least he did when he traveled as Richard Byrd. And since old habits were difficult to break, Kozlov predicted that Byrd would follow the same pattern when he was traveling under an alias.
The best hotels, the best restaurants, the best of everything.
In a city as large as Saint Petersburg, Kozlov knew he had to limit the scope of his search, so he decided to concentrate on one thing: luxury hotels. Particularly those close to Nevsky Prospekt. Not only was it the ritziest part of the city, but the avenue ran past several museums, including the Hermitage, which was where he had bumped into his target to begin with.
So that’s where Kozlov started—back at the Hermitage.
Armed with a gun, an old NCB badge, and a photograph of Byrd, Kozlov planned to visit every hotel on Nevsky Prospekt. He was going to flash his badge at every front desk and ask about the man in the picture. Now that Byrd was dead, he wasn’t nearly as worried about keeping things quiet. He was more concerned about finding information as quickly as possible.
And he would start at the hotel that was next to the museum.
The same hotel that David Jones was leaving.
41
Spárti, Greece (location of Ancient Sparta)
George Pappas was looking forward to this day. Even though he had been an NCB agent for twenty-one years, this was the first time he had ever been given an assignment from Interpol Headquarters. Not only that, but his orders came straight from the top. Nick Dial, the head of the Homicide Division, needed help with a multiple homicide at Metéora. He believed the killers might be from the mountain towns near Spárti, because of video evidence at the scene.
Normally, Pappas, a small-town cop, spent most of his time dealing with the tourists who flooded Greece during the summer months. He worked full-time for the local municipality, which was the administrative capital of Laconia, but also received a stipend for his NCB duties, which were usually limited to entering crime statistics into Interpol’s criminal database.
But today was a different story. After all this time, he was being asked to do real police work for Interpol as opposed to really boring police work.
And he couldn’t wait to get started.
Accompanying Pappas on the drive into the mountains were two younger officers, Stefan Manos and Thomas Constantinou. Manos was a ten-year veteran of the Spárti police force and was quite familiar with the people of the region. Meanwhile, Constantinou was the exact opposite. He had finished his police training in Athens less than a month ago and had never visited Laconia before being hired by Spárti. This was Constantinou’s first trip into the Taygetos Mountains, which made him an easy target for some teasing.
“Thomas,” Pappas said as he drove the four-wheel-drive truck up the winding road. “Make sure you stay close to us once we get into the village.”
“Why is that?” Constantinou asked from the cramped backseat.
Pappas looked at Manos in the passenger seat. “You didn’t tell him?”
Manos shook his head. “You invited the kid. I figured you would tell him.”
“Tell me what?”
Pappas glanced at him in his rearview mirror. “About your haircut.”
Constantinou rubbed his scalp, which he kept closely shaved. “What about it?”
“Everyone in the village has hair like yours. Men, women, kids. Even their goats.”
Manos laughed at the comment. He knew all about the Spartans and their haircuts.