Cross Country

got Ugly Fred looking at me across my desk” — I heard a shout of protest in the background — “and half the Major Case Squad’s in the room with me. You want me to keep going?”
    I took a rain check and we said our good-byes. Then, before I could dial home to Fifth Street,
I heard a rattle at my door
.
    “Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”
    The door swung open so fast I didn’t have time to get off the bed to look. I recognized the front-desk manager.
    But not the two dark suits with white shirts standing in the hall behind him.
    “What are you doing in my room?” I asked the desk man. “What is this all about? Who are they?”
    He didn’t say a word to me. He just held the door open for the other two and then closed it from the outside as they moved across the room toward me.
    I jumped up off the bed and set my feet on the floor. “What’s going on here?” I said. “What’s happening now?”

Chapter 70
    “SSS!” ONE OF them shouted at the top of his voice. I had heard the initials before.
State Security Service,
if that’s who these two men really were.
    They went right at me, totally unafraid of any consequences. One of them bear-hugged my arms and shoulders; the other scooped my legs out from under me.
    Now what was happening? Were they really State Security? Who had sent them for me? And why?
    I struggled, but both of them were freaks sizewise, incredibly powerful men, quick and athletic too. They had my body twisted in a corkscrew and it was impossible to break free.
    We crossed the room like that, with me tangled and helpless in their arms. Then I heard
a window slide open,
and I felt the rush of humidity on my skin.
    My whole body tensed and I started to yell for help — as loudly as I possibly could to anyone who might hear me.
    There was a blur of sky and earth and swimming pool and then
my back slammed hard into the hotel wall
.
    I was suddenly
outside — and hanging upside down
!
    “What do you want?” I screamed up at the one holding my legs. He had a very round face, flat nose, kind of a Mike Tyson squint. It was a struggle to keep still and not fight him, but I sure didn’t want him to lose his grip.
    The SSS man, or whoever he was, grinned down at me over the curve of my knees.
    “You been here long enough, Cross. Time to cross you off.” He laughed over his shoulder, sharing the joke with his partner.
    Even if the swimming pool had been directly below me, which it wasn’t, I figured I was too high to survive any fall. My blood coursed through me. I could feel it everywhere, especially in the growing pressure in my head.
    But then my body was moving again. Inside!
    My spine scraped hard against the aluminum window track, and I came down on the floor of my hotel room.

Chapter 71
    I JUMPED UP and went at the nearest SSS man, until the other pressed his gun into my ribs.
    “Easy,” he said. “You don’t want to get shot now, do you?”
    I saw that my duffel was out on the bed.
    And packed
.
    “Pick up the bag.”
    “Who sent you?” I asked them. “Who are you working for? This is insane!”
    He didn’t answer me. Instead, they grabbed me and moved me out into the hall. Freak One shut the door behind us and pocketed the key.
    Then they both just turned and walked away.
    “Go home, Detective Cross. You’re not wanted here.
Last warning
.”
    There was a bizarre half minute or so while they waited for the elevator, talking low to each other. Then they calmly got on and left me standing in the hallway.
    Clueless.
    And keyless.
    Obviously they’d taken this as far as it was going for now. Whoever they were, police or not, and whatever connection they might have to the Tiger, they didn’t kill for him.
    They hadn’t even tried to put me on a plane.
    But why not?
    What was going on in this crazy country of theirs?

Chapter 72
    IT WAS HARD to fathom or predict, but my situation in Lagos actually got worse over the next hour or so. The front-desk people at the Superior insisted that I had “checked out” and that no rooms were available, something I knew to be untrue.
    I tried half a dozen hotels on the phone and got the same story everywhere —
credit card denied
. It was looking more and more like the two strong men who had evicted me from the Superior were indeed representatives of the state, whatever in hell that meant here in Lagos.
    I tried Ian Flaherty several times and left a voice mail twice, but I didn’t hear back from the CIA man.
    So I did the