by Kyle Mills
"They're going to go for the people under him, Mark. They want--they need--him to look like the top man. Trying to get him to roll over on some shadowy figure pulling his strings makes getting Gasta look like a failure, not a success. And I'll tell you right now, they're going to want the death penalty. That's a bargaining chip they aren't going to let us use."
Beamon sat up on the bed. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm sorry, Mark. This is my fault. If I was getting somewhere on finding this launcher . . . But I'm not, and the press is starting to come after us. The fact is, the FBI needs some good publicity."
"Jesus Christ, Laura, Gasta's a nobody!" Beamon realized he was starting to sound like a broken record.
"You and I know that, but the public doesn't. To the man on the street he's the personification of organized crime--the mastermind behind the Mob. This is going to be a big coup and it's going to take some of the heat off us."
Beamon rummaged through the tiny bottles on the floor, looking for one he hadn't completely drained. "Until a rocket goes off. After that, no one's even going to remember Carlo Gasta's name. Then Chet's death is going to be nothing more than a failed publicity stunt."
"Then, call Tom at the White House--get him to intervene."
"No, he was willing to help us squeeze the CIA, but he isn't going to countermand a decision by FBI management. The White House's whole shtick is getting the politics out of the agencies and letting the experts do their jobs. Besides, Tom doesn't do anything without knowing every angle. We don't have the time."
"So, what are you going to do, Mark?"
That was a good question. One he needed some time to think about.
"I don't know where Gasta is," Beamon lied. "But I can probably find him. Tell the Director I need a day to track him down and set him up. If we have to do this, I'd like to do it in a way that doesn't get any of our SWAT guys shot. We'll make it look smooth and professional for the cameras."
There was a confused silence over the line for a moment. "That's it?"
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Laura. But I'm getting too old to tilt at windmills."
He hung up the phone and closed his eyes again, though he knew he wouldn't sleep.
Chapter 30
THE random mix of tiny liquor bottles the night before, while creating no particular effect at the time, had left Beamon with a surprisingly durable hangover. That, in combination with the fact that he once again found himself in the empty desert--this time in the full heat of a cloudless afternoon--was putting him in danger of throwing up at any moment. Not really the image he was looking to project. He scooted his lawn chair back a few inches to escape the blazing sun that was beginning to sneak around the beach umbrella overhead and reached into the cooler next to him for a beer. "Come on, guys, we don't have all goddamn day!"
Three overweight middle-aged Italian men simultaneously stopped what they were doing and glared as threateningly as they could under the circumstances.
"You heard the man! Get your fat asses in gear!" Carlo Gasta was sitting next to Beamon on an uncomfortable-looking rock. He seemed afraid to encroach on the shade the umbrella provided and was already starting to redden in the sun.
Beamon popped the top off his beer and let some of the icy liquid slide down his throat. Pressing the cold bottle against his sweating forehead, he once again examined the dead, rolling landscape. Except for the poorly defined dirt road fifteen feet in front of him, there was no sign of civilization at all. Of course, that was an illusion. If taken west for about a mile, the sandy path dead-ended into a moderately traveled highway bordering the sprawl that surrounded L. A. And if taken east an equal distance, it dead-ended into the natural amphitheater where Carlo Gasta was to meet his Afghan suppliers three days from now.
Beamon closed his eyes for a moment and constructed a map of the area in his mind: the confusing jumble of interconnecting highways, secondary roads, and off-ramps that made a previously impassable desert into just another gateway to suburbia.
"How hot you figure it is, Carlo?" he said, opening his eyes again and watching Gasta's men attacking the sandy road with shovels.
"It's gotta be over a hundred."
One of the men suddenly jerked upright and began rubbing his arm. Sensing a heart attack in process, Beamon leaned forward and watched with ghoulish anticipation. "Mikey! Get back to work!" Gasta shouted.
"I think I pulled something in my arm, Carlo."
Beamon fell back into his lawn chair. False alarm. "I don't give a shit about your arm. Get it in gear!"
Beamon took another sip of his beer and watched the man start digging again, favoring his injured limb. They were almost finished, and with the exception of sunburns that would undoubtedly blister before tomorrow, none looked much worse for the wear. It must have been the goddamn breeze.
Beamon pushed the bag of ice off his ankle and stood, limping slightly as he hobbled up to the deep ditch that bordered the south side of the road, and jumped painfully over it. Fortunately, the landing was soft.
"Hey! We just did that part," Tony whined. "You're packing it down!"
Beamon ignored him, admiring the work that had been completed. Gasta's men had dug down a good foot and a half in the road, carefully sifting the dirt and then gently replacing it, creating a thirty-foot-long sand bog.
This particular spot was perfect. On one side of the road was the ditch Beamon had just crossed, and on the other was a low but steep berm. The Afghans' van, heavy with men and product, would make its way up the road toward the amphitheater and become hopelessly stuck in this unavoidable trap.
Beamon rolled his beer across his forehead again, wondering for the hundredth time what the hell he was doing. He'd told Laura, and she'd told the Director, that he was going to find Gasta and set him up for the FBI today. Instead he was standing in the desert, supervising the groundwork for the plan he'd come up with to get Gasta his heroin.
His new cell phone was turned off so he wouldn't receive the desperate calls that were undoubtedly being placed to it. He honestly wouldn't know what to say.
"All right. I think that's enough," Beamon said.
The three men stopped working and leaned on their shovels for support.
"Now we're going to run through this. Is everybody clear on what they're supposed to be doing?"
Gasta jumped over the ditch and joined his men, who were nodding with what little energy they had left. "Okay, put your masks on."
They all looked at one another and then at their boss, who was staring at his feet.
"We've been talking about this," Gasta started hesitantly. "We don't see the reason for the masks. These guys are going to know who we are."
It was a perceptive observation. The reason for the masks was simply to intensify the heat and to see if he could make one of these sons of bitches die of heatstroke. It had taken no small effort for Beamon to find four wool ski masks--in the appropriate sun-absorbing black--during the dead of the L. A. summer.
"Look, Carlo, we've already talked about this. If you want to go it alone . . ."
Gasta shook his head and pulled a mask from his back pocket. His men reluctantly followed his lead.
"Okay, are we ready?" Beamon said when their heads and faces were properly covered.
More nodding.
"And no shooting, right?"
"You know . . . that's another thing we wanted to talk to you about," Gasta said, his voice sounding a little muffled through the small hole in the wool. "Why don't we just kill these guys? It doesn't make sense to leave them alive." Beamon let out a bored sigh. "We're a mile from the highway. We don't need anyone hearing gunfire and calling the cops--or worse, some soccer mom catching a stray through her window. Besides, you said you wanted to send a message. Well, this is a clear message that you're not even afraid of these guys enough to bother to kill them. It also leaves you with some options. You can pay them after you've sold the stuff if you want--teach them that a deal is a deal and that you w
on't be fucked with."
Beamon had devised that speech over two hours the night before. The logic was a little strained, but Gasta was as dumb as a box of rocks. And, more importantly, he was afraid of Nicolai.
"Okay, okay," the gangster said. "Fine. We'll do it your way."
Beamon stared directly into the man's eyes. "You understand that I expect people to live up to their agreements. No screwing around."
"I said okay. What the fuck do you want from me?" Beamon didn't answer, instead strolling down the road toward a panel van parked fifty yards away. He'd rented it earlier that afternoon and had one of Gasta's men fill it with debris from a construction site to weigh it down. He slid behind the wheel and started it, turning the AC up to full. When he looked up through the windshield again, Gasta and his men had already scurried to their designated hiding places.
"I hope you know what you're doing," he said quietly to himself as he released the emergency brake.
He figured that the plan he'd hatched had about a thirty percent chance of working--assuming he actually had the guts to go through with it. Gasta would steal the van full of heroin and Beamon could have the local FBI pick up the Afghans while they were walking home. Then, when he made contact with Gasta again, the Director could have his testosterone-drenched SWAT maneuvers under the television lights. Everybody won.
Or not.
Beamon gunned the engine, accelerating to a slightly unsafe speed on the rough road. When the van hit the sand bog, it stopped a little more violently than he'd expected, throwing him hard against his seat belt. He managed to turn his face away from the side window just before it was smashed in by a hammer and a gun was pushed through the hole.
"Get the fuck out of the car!" The masked man screamed as the van's other windows were similarly shattered.
Beamon unlatched his seat belt and stepped out, feeling an uneasy sense of deja vu as he was forced facedown to the ground and a boot was pressed into his back. From his prone position he watched a beefy-looking four-wheel drive come rumbling up the road. A rope was connected to the rear of the van and it was quickly towed back onto solid ground. The pressure of the boot on his back disappeared and Beamon pushed himself to his feet, glancing at his watch.
"Three minutes," he said, brushing the dust from his cotton slacks. "Not bad, but we can do better."
The men groaned.
"What about what you said before?" Gasta asked as his men unhooked the van and the four-wheel drive retreated out of sight again.
"What do you mean?"
"What if they have a chase vehicle? Or if we run into cops on the way out of here?"
Beamon climbed back into the van and leaned out through the broken window. "You let me worry about that, okay?"
Chapter 31
CHRISTIAN Volkov squinted at the open book in his lap and read the page for the fourth time, but it still meant nothing to him. He adjusted the lamp on his desk to better illuminate the page. Now it was indecipherable and well lit. He had never been able to abide organized religion, seeing too much of the hand of man in it. But he still had a strange compulsion to glimpse the mind of God. As with all his previous attempts, though, this path seemed to lead nowhere.
Volkov leaned back in his uncomfortable new chair and admonished himself again for not rescuing his old one. The office around him appeared overly large and nearly empty, although it was fully furnished. Volkov had an obsessive distaste for paper and other tangible records of his business, making things like filing cabinets and bookshelves useless. His life--his entire history--was contained in billions of encrypted electronic impulses, which were nearly impossible to intercept and simple to relocate, and which could be destroyed almost instantly. An interesting byproduct of this philosophy was that when he died, he would leave almost no trace. If Fortune magazine was aware of his existence and recognized men in his profession, he would be listed as one of the wealthiest men in the world. His innovations in the businesses he was involved in and his success at integrating the undisciplined capitalist elements in the former Soviet Union might have been taught at universities.
Not that he really cared. He had no ambition for notoriety. In fact, there was something strangely appealing about living at the very edge of civilization. It wasn't without cost, though. His freedom from the arbitrary rules and dictates of society was more than paid for with uncertainty and loneliness.
"Christian?"
Volkov smiled as the young man approached his desk hesitantly. "Joseph! What wonderful timing." He held up the book he had been reading and the young man leaned over the desk to see the title.
"It tells the story of a mathematician who solved one of the last great math problems," Volkov explained. "Are you familiar with it?" Joseph had a master's degree in mathematics.
"Fermat's Last Theorem? Sure. But I haven't read that particular book."
"Well, I have," Volkov said, tossing it on his desk. "Twice. And as hard as I've tried, I can't comprehend it. I just read a rather long passage on imaginary numbers. What good is a number if it's imaginary? Isn't that like an anthropologist studying the anatomy of a dragon?"
Joseph laughed. "Imaginary numbers are multiples of the square root of negative one. They are one of the axes of the complex plane."
Volkov stared at him blankly.
"I think it might take some time to explain."
"I suppose so. Maybe we could discuss it over dinner. Francois is doing his duck tonight."
"Thank you, Christian. I'd love to."
"Now, what do you have for me?"
Joseph spread out a map of the Los Angeles area on Volkov's desk. "We've managed to pinpoint the place and time of Carlo Gasta's meeting with Yasin's people." He tapped an empty spot on the map well outside the overpopulated confines of L. A. "Our informant says they will be here at midnight American Pacific time on Saturday."
Volkov nodded slowly. He'd almost hoped that Joseph would fail in obtaining this information. It forced a difficult decision.
"Our informant also tells us that Nicolai is involved."
"Really?" Volkov said, genuinely surprised. The preliminary information Joseph had provided on Nicolai had been intriguing. Now, though, Volkov's interest was quickly turning to suspicion. Why would an extraordinarily well shrouded and apparently extremely effective private operator like Nicolai get involved with someone as unpredictable and well known as Carlo Gasta?
There seemed to be only one explanation: that Jonathan Drake was involved in the sudden appearance of this mercenary after all. It seemed likely that Drake was going to use this drug transaction to do away with both Gasta and the Afghans, thus severing two critical connections between al-Qaeda and the CIA. Could Nicolai be part of that plan--Drake's inside man?
"When am I going to get the remainder of the information on Nicolai?" Volkov asked.
"You already have it. The file's in your computer." Joseph whisked the map from Volkov's desk and began running it through a shredder by the wall.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I'm sorry. You seemed to be concentrating."
"He's working for Drake at the CIA," Volkov said matter-of-factly.
To his surprise Joseph shook his head. "Every indication is that he's not. You should look at the file. I think you'll find it interesting reading."
Volkov rose from his chair and turned on a portable stereo that was substituting for the elaborate sound system he'd left in the Seychelles. Louis Armstrong's rich voice--one of America's greatest contributions to the world--filled the room.
Volkov knew that he no longer had the luxury of not taking a position. It was time to decide whether he thought the CIA was going to renege on their agreement with him or if as Drake insisted, they were continuing forward. Nothing that had yet occurred was proof of either hypothesis. Gasta and the Afghans were pawns that would logically be sacrificed in light of the FBI's investigation into the rocket launcher photograph.
Despite that, he strongly suspected that Drake was no l
onger committed to his ill-conceived plan to destroy alQaeda. And if that was true, he would do whatever was in the Central Intelligence Agency's considerable power to see Volkov dead. But were his suspicions enough to start a war with America's CIA?
Volkov made his way back to his chair amid the strains of "Mack the Knife." He knew the answer--he just didn't want to face what would probably be the end of him and his organization. He wasn't ready for that yet.
"What do you want me to do, Christian?"
"I think we have no choice but to try to divert Jonathan Drake's attention a bit."
"And Nicolai?"
"Let me look at the information you've gathered and I'll make a decision by tomorrow. Thank you, Joseph."
The young man turned and started for the door but stopped when Volkov spoke again.
"And, Joseph--don't forget my mathematics lesson tonight. By dessert I want to completely understand the world of modular functions."
Joseph gave him a short nod and then disappeared through the door. He would undoubtedly spend the rest of the afternoon desperately trying to come up with a way to explain advanced number theory over the course of an hour and a half. He was a very bright, very conscientious, and very likable young man. But Volkov was still far from certain that he would ever be able to replace Pascal.
Chapter 32
"Count OFF."
"One, in position."
"Two, in position."
"Three, in position."
"Four, in position."
"Leader, in position."
Jonathan Drake leaned against the cliff wall behind him, feeling the jagged rock press painfully into his back. He concentrated on the discomfort for a few moments, sharpening his senses and focusing his mind. It wouldn't be long now.
The tiny space he'd concealed himself in was almost too small for his frame. The stone behind him bowed precariously, sweeping over his head at a height of no more than four feet. In front and to the sides of him were large boulders that had detached themselves from the cliff and now provided perfect cover.
Drake crawled forward, dropping to his stomach as he squeezed through a tight gap, stopping when he had an unobstructed view of the small natural amphitheater that he was at the edge of. The floor of it, some twenty feet below, was basically round and just over two hundred yards across at its widest point. The edges were defined by loose, steep slopes topped with sheer ten-foot cliffs and broken rock. The only entrance was to the west--a barely visible dirt road leading through a narrow gap of dirt and stone.