Private Berlin (Private 5)

Perfecta hesitated. “Yes. Of course. Why don’t you eat, and then we’ll burn some calories in bed, get you relaxed before your game.”

She made to head toward the bed, but the striker stopped her, saying, “Sit first. We’ll eat a little snack together. It will make us stronger for love.”

Perfecta looked uncomfortable, but then she smiled brightly. “I just ate.”

Cassiano poured from the teapot. “Tea then? You love green tea.”

He held the teacup out to her. “So good for the skin.”

Perfecta looked worried, and then she shook her head. “No. I’ve already had three glasses this morning.”

“I insist,” her husband said.

She appeared insulted and her nostrils flared. “No.”

“I insist,” Cassiano retorted with a hard edge to his voice.

Perfecta stepped toward him but did not take the teacup. She ran her hand across the front of his training pants. “Let’s see if we can—”

The door to the bathroom burst open. Out jumped Jack Morgan, Daniel Brecht, and Georg Johansson, an agent with the Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA, the German Federal Criminal Police.

Agent Johansson flashed his badge and said, “Perfecta Delores, you are under arrest for wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the attempted murder of your husband.”

“You bitch,” Cassiano snarled, throwing the tea at her.

CHAPTER 97

MORGAN, BRECHT, AND Johansson grilled Perfecta for almost an hour on her whereabouts and activities during the last ten days. She spoke decent English. At first she indignantly claimed that she had been in Africa on a photo shoot and threatened to sue them all for defamation of character.

Then they showed her Dr. Gabriel’s analysis of Cassiano’s hair, which indicated that he’d been exposed to low doses of cyanide. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make him nauseated and “off” for a couple of days.

“I have no idea how that could have happened,” Perfecta insisted.

“No idea?” Morgan said, picking up the teapot. “I’m betting there’s some form of raw Brazilian manioc in this tea. The raw stuff contains cyanide, as I’m sure you know. Everyone in Brazil has to know that.”

Perfecta denied her involvement again before Cassiano shouted at her: “Who did you poison me for? Maxim Pavel?”

For the first time, Morgan saw a crack in the fashion model’s façade even as she started to say, “I don’t—”

Cassiano hit the remote and the screen was filled with the image of Perfecta stripping for Pavel in the hotel hallway.

“How could you do this to me with him?” her husband shouted in outrage. “He’s twice my age!”

“And he knows how to use his hands, not his feet!” Perfecta shot back.

They got it all out of her eventually.

She’d done it out of greed. It was true that her husband might make good money at Manchester United, possibly as much as 1.5 million e

uros a year. But Pavel had offered her twenty times that in the betting scam.

“Did Pavel kill Chris Schneider?” Brecht demanded.

“Who?” Perfecta asked, her puzzlement undisguised.

“Who?” Brecht echoed.

“He worked at Private,” Morgan said. “We think he was on to the swindle.”