Blind Instinct

by Fiona Brand

  He shrugged. “We’ve already got him under surveillance.”

  She checked her watch. She had fifteen minutes before Bayard would have her removed from the party. On a large blank wall Charlie Chaplin twirled his cane, drawing a small round of applause from a group of exquisitely dressed Japanese guests. Sara stopped, concentrating only on facial features and let her gaze go loose. The blond woman with icy-blue eyes she had noticed before refused a glass of champagne, the action drawing her attention.

  An older woman moved into her line of sight, her features instantly familiar. Ambassador Cohen was currently based in D.C. with a regular seat at the United Nations and an advisory role to the president. Cohen’s rise to power had been quiet, but steady. A prominent magazine had tipped her to be the next Secretary of State.

  Her gaze moved onto the next knot of guests. The flash of diamonds jerked her gaze back. Cohen had diamonds at her throat, the lobes of her ears and her wrist. The settings were discreet, but the diamonds were impressive.

  Frowning, she studied the ambassador. She didn’t look seventy—midfifties at most—which was why she had automatically crossed her off her list of possible suspects.

  Mistake. A lot of older women had cosmetic surgery or procedures of some sort. As long as money wasn’t a problem, neither was looking ten years younger. Looking twenty years younger was more difficult, but with enough wealth and discipline, it was doable.

  The ambassador was average height, her hair tinted honey blond with elegant streaks of gray. She turned, the tilt of her head imperious, and for a millisecond the room wavered as Sara looked directly into Heinrich Reichmann’s eyes.

  She jerked her gaze away almost immediately and stared blankly at Bridges. “That’s her over there, in the gray silk.”

  “Cohen. Shit.” He turned away and talked rapidly into a microphone.

  The younger blond woman with the ambassador turned. Sara caught the discreet bulge of a shoulder-holstered weapon beneath the woman’s satin jacket, and her sharp watchfulness registered. Not Cohen’s daughter, despite the resemblance: she was security.

  Bayard appeared. When Sara checked on Cohen, the area that she and the younger blond woman had occupied was empty. She caught the gleam of light off blond hair and gray silk. “She’s leaving.”

  Bayard spoke into the microphone on his collar. His fingers closed over her arm. “So are you. Now.”

  She gripped her skirt, holding it to one side as Bayard hurried her toward a side exit. “What about Cohen?”

  “Bridges is following.”

  A split second later the room dissolved and Sara was knocked to the floor. When she came to, her nose was bleeding, her ears were ringing, and she was having difficulty breathing.

  Strong fingers wrapped around her arm, hauling her to her feet. “Can you walk?”

  The room was blotted out with thick smoke and dust. “Yes.” Not Bayard.

  Panic gripped her as she searched for Bayard. They had been in the middle of the reception room when the bomb, if that was what it had been, had exploded. A gaping hole had been ripped in the ceiling, and the entire landing and a wall had collapsed.

  The man who was helping her, a security guard, kept her moving as they threaded past injured people and mounds of debris. He left her on the front portico, which was jammed with agents checking IDs and people talking on phones, trying to get their cars.

  Rear Admiral Saunders materialized out of the crowd, waves of security parting automatically for him. “Sara, thank God you’re all right.” He handed her a pristine white handkerchief which she used to blot the blood from her nose. “Lissa’s just getting the car. I think we’re next in the queue.”

  Saunders’s icy calm was almost incomprehensible, when all she wanted to do was plunge back into the building and find Bayard. “Marc’s still in there.”

  A limousine pulled out and another pulled in. The window rolled down and Saunders took her arm. “He checked in with the command post about a minute ago. He’s fine. That’s our ride.”

  “What do you mean, fine?”

  Saunders’s phone rang. He lifted it to his ear, spoke briefly and slipped the phone back in his pocket. “I told him I’d take you home. He’ll meet you back at his apartment.”

  He opened the passenger door. Sara stepped into the rear of the limousine. Saunders joined her and told the driver to move on.

  As the car accelerated into traffic, she fastened her seat belt. “Where’s Lissa?”

  Saunders produced a gun. “I’m afraid she’s not coming on this trip.”

  Twenty-Three

  Saunders’s men moved like dark shadows around her, taking up positions, two on a mezzanine floor of a warehouse, the other four fanned out on the ground floor, covering both doors and her.

  Sara was pushed into the center of the dusty space. The entry door was directly in front of her. If anyone busted in, she would be in the line of fire.

  “Sit down. There.”

  “You’re working for Reichmann?”

  “With her, not for.”

  “Oil?”

  Saunders looked briefly amused. “The oil angle did work until Marc found the shares.”

  A blond woman Sara recognized as one of Helene’s security detail strolled across the floor, wearing dark jeans and a black shirt, a large black handgun held loosely in one hand. A sharp sting at her throat and the diamond necklace dangled from the blond woman’s fingers. “Guess again.”

  “The de Vernay diamonds.”

  Her gaze was icy. “What do you know about de Vernay?”

  “Reichmann stole from de Vernay in France, then sent him and his family to Auschwitz.”

  “Now tell me how you knew that?” she demanded softly. “No one, except a handful of the upper echelon, even knew the diamonds existed. Since Hartley died, only Helene—and my father.”

  Sara studied Marisa’s face. For her father to share any knowledge with Helene, he had to be part of the upper echelon. Four members had died last year: Onslow, Parker, Seaton and Ritter. All four stories, complete with photos, had made the front pages of the national tabloids. “Stephen Ritter?”

  Marisa glanced at Saunders. “I thought you said she was just a librarian.”

  Sara recalled a news report on Ritter’s death. “Ritter never married.”

  Marisa’s expression was remote. “My father was a clever man. He kept us a secret.”

  Sara glanced at Saunders. “So that’s how you found out Helene’s identity.” When Ritter had died Saunders would have had access to her private papers. He had discovered the existence of Marisa then cut a deal with her.

  Ritter, a mathematical and financial genius, had been the most brilliant of all of the exposed cabal members, and the one most likely to take leadership from Helene. Helene was supposed to have murdered him. It made a twisted kind of sense that Ritter would leave behind a daughter who had the potential to destroy Helene and take control of the cabal’s assets.

  Sara glanced at Saunders. “So, who are we waiting for? Helene?”

  His mouth curved with cold amusement. “Lopez.”

  She briefly closed her eyes. “This is the meeting Reichmann arranged.”

  “At my behest.”

  Saunders’s motives were as clear as an icy pool. His reputation—and his career prospects—had been damaged by the discovery of the mass grave at Juarez, but bringing in Lopez would provide an instant career fix. “You want Lopez.” And, at a guess, the director’s job.

  He checked his wristwatch. “Lopez should be here sometime in the next half hour.”

  Her stomach tightened. “And when he gets here, let me guess—I have a nasty accident.”

  “Correct again. With your family’s connection to Lopez and the cabal, no one will question Lopez’s motive for shooting you, or the fact that—” he bent down and brushed the transmitter earring in her lobe, which he had turned off at the same time he had removed her microphone “—I was able to find you and shoot Lopez.”


  “It’s too late to keep a lid on Helene’s identity. It was radioed in just before the explosion.”

  He shrugged. “Helene will have to take care of that little problem herself.”

  And now that Helene was exposed as Ambassador Cohen and on the run, her face would be splashed over newspapers and television screens. That would suit Saunders. With his power, he could easily arrange safe passage out of the country and name his price. With the death of Lopez and his public profile taken care of, that price would be the de Vernay diamonds.

  “What makes you think Lopez will show?”

  The answer came from Marisa. “He needs the diamonds to survive. Helene has promised him a share.”

  Saunders produced a handful of cotton wadding and a roll of tape, signaling that the conversation was over, and expertly gagged her.

  Time crawled by. Her shoulders and back ached from holding herself in a sitting position and she was shivering convulsively. Her wrists and hands were numb. Her head periodically dipped forward on her chest as she slipped in and out of a dozing state, although she never quite lost consciousness.

  The vibration of a cell phone jerked her fully awake. The toneless conversation, followed by a flurry of movement as Saunders’s men shifted position, sent adrenaline pumping through her veins.

  Glass shattered. Simultaneously, light flashed, temporarily blinding her, and an explosion made her ears ring for the second time that night. The door burst open, the sound of gunfire deafening. Saunders jerked her in front of him, using her as a human shield, one arm locked across her throat.

  Her head swam. Acrid smoke burned her nostrils and throat as Saunders dragged her backward. Something whined close to her ear, the sound uncannily like a kitten mewling. A bullet.

  A second shot and Saunders’s grip loosened and she was rolling. Then Bayard was leaning over her, his eyes like chips of black ice. His hands swept over her stomach, her rib cage.

  “I’m not hurt. You got Saunders.” She sucked in air, adjusting to the fact that it was over and that Bayard was all right. “You know you got Saunders.”

  Aside from bruising and a stitched cut over one cheekbone where a piece of debris had sliced him, Bayard was none the worse for wear after the explosion. As soon as the area was secure, he bundled her out onto the street and into the back of a van with tinted windows. Bridges watched over her, his face grim, while Bayard dealt with the mop-up.

  Thirty minutes later, a “caretaker” team of Bayard’s people was in place, the jurisdictions sorted, and the paperwork in process. Bayard moved her from the van into a company car.

  In grim silence he peeled out of his body armor and thigh holster, dropped both on the backseat, then shrugged into a shoulder rig and transferred the gun. He slid behind the wheel, dug in his pocket and handed her the diamond necklace Marisa had taken.

  Her fingers closed around the stones. She was glad he had retrieved a family heirloom, but in that moment the diamonds and their value was utterly unimportant. Bayard was alive and so was she; that was all that mattered.

  She had seen Marisa cuffed and pushed into the back of another van, along with two of Saunders’s men. The rest had been loaded into ambulances on stretchers or in body bags.

  Bayard stopped for lights. He checked the rearview mirror and Sara realized the reason he had been driving slowly was that Bridges and another agent were following them in the van.

  Bayard parked outside the apartment. Bridges pulled in behind. The second agent, Hudson, she realized, got out and took the car keys from Bayard.

  Bridges saw them to the door of Bayard’s apartment, his eyes watchful. When the door closed behind them, Sara stared at the warm lamp-lit room. They had only left hours before, but it felt like weeks. “What about Helene and Lopez?”

  Bayard shrugged out of his shoulder rig, and dropped it on a couch. “Marisa’s talking. According to her, Saunders was too late making his play. Helene and Lopez have cut a deal.”

  “You knew it was going to happen.”

  “It was a safe bet. A few weeks ago, one of my researchers uncovered an interesting fact. On the day Alex Lopez was born in Bogotá, his mother, Maria Chavez, a hemophiliac, was admitted to a hospital for a blood transfusion. But not in Bogotá. She was in San Jose del Guaviare, a tiny clinic in the interior of Colombia.”

  “So there’s no way she could be Lopez’s mother.”

  Bayard collected a first aid kit from the kitchen. He made her sit on one of the stools at the kitchen counter while he cleaned the myriad nicks and abrasions she’d sustained at the embassy party, mostly on the back of her neck and arms.

  “As far as we can ascertain, Maria Chavez had a number of miscarriages, but she never gave birth to a live child. There’s no way to prove it, but given that Marco was desperate for a son, and Helene needed his backing to retain control of the cabal after her father died, it seems clear that they struck a bargain.”

  The puzzling, volatile relationship between Lopez and Helene Reichmann suddenly made crazy sense.

  Alex Lopez was Helene’s son.

  “So Helene set Saunders and Marisa up?”

  Bayard unscrewed a tube of antiseptic cream. “Saunders made the mistake of believing that he had the sole tools required to manipulate her. As soon as his demands became too great, she was always going to cut a deal with Lopez.”

  “But if you had informed him about the relationship, he would never have made that mistake.”

  Bayard smeared a thin layer of cream over the cuts. “Like I said, you’re wasted on that library.”

  “How long have you known about Saunders?”

  “Not long. I transferred to National Intelligence at the request of the director. He suspected he had a leak, and he wanted someone from out of department coordinating the investigations into Lopez and the cabal. I’ve had Saunders under surveillance for months, although, with the amount of traveling he does, it wasn’t possible to watch him all the time. A few weeks ago he had a series of after-hours visits with Marisa. We had it logged as an affair.”

  “So you restricted information to him and watched—”

  “And still made mistakes.” He pulled her to her feet.

  Her arms closed around his waist and he winced. Not so invulnerable, then. “So who set the bomb?”

  “An explosives team is checking out the site. They think it was set by Reichmann’s head of security, Hendricks, which means she was two steps ahead. The bomb was inserted into the floor cavity upstairs. She planned her exit—and Saunders’s death.”

  Twenty-Four

  Two days later, Portland, Maine

  Midnight. An empty stretch of beach.

  Helene Reichmann checked the luminous dial of her wristwatch as she studied the blank canvas of damp sand left by a retreating tide. The cold drift of the breeze raised gooseflesh on her arms as she tried to penetrate the thick darkness.

  The cold, ceaseless rhythm of the Atlantic Ocean sweeping the coast spun her back. Lubek, 1944. Juarez, just a few weeks later. Costa Rica, 1984.

  A dim shadow was briefly silhouetted by moonlight. Not Lopez; he was too elusive to show himself like that. But it was most certainly one of his men.

  Concealed in the rocks behind her, Hendricks talked tonelessly into a radio, repositioning his men.

  Silence, broken by the ceaseless rush of waves. More memories.

  Marco Chavez hadn’t wanted marriage—he’d already had the blue-blooded wife he’d ordered from Spain. All he had wanted from her was a son. She had agreed to give him the child in exchange for his backing. And the backing had been imperative. Despite the fact that she had held power by virtue of holding the money, without the brutal tactics of Marco’s enforcers, the network her father had built would have disintegrated. She would have ended up exposed, imprisoned—more than likely dead.

  She had slept with Marco because he had insisted on it. She had stayed in Bogotá, isolated from everyone but Marco and an old crone of a nurse, who had looke
d after her and made sure no other man came near her for almost a year. Long enough for her to get pregnant, bear the child—which, to her relief, was male—and hand him over to Marco.

  When she’d handed the baby over, she hadn’t expected to feel anything more than revulsion and relief. In her mind he had been a part of Marco, not her—the seal to a bargain.

  A whisper of sound, shifting shadows. A hand clamped around her throat. A dark, flat gaze locked with hers, and any idea that there was a bond dissolved. Gunfire sounded, to the left, then another shot, higher up.

  The choking pressure on her throat eased.

  The cold gleam of a gun in Lopez’s hand was outlined by moonlight. “That’s Larson and Hendricks down.”

  She stared down the barrel of the gun. He could shoot, but he wouldn’t. Not until he had gotten what he wanted. “You didn’t need to shoot them, they were holding fire.”

  His list of demands was succinct and predictable. She could keep her shares and business interests; thanks to Bayard they were traceable, and the alliance with Riyad was now useless. What was left of the gold bullion and the artwork was too bulky; he would never get them out of the country.

  He would take the Cayman Island accounts.

  His mouth curved in a smile, and for the first time she saw herself in his features. “And the diamonds.”

  “You knew that I was your mother. Knew and used it.”

  “Are we dealing, or do I kill you now?”

  “You won’t kill me, so don’t bother with the bluff. You can have twenty-five percent now, the rest when we reach the Caymans. Who told you about the diamonds?”

  Over the years she had added to the original cache of diamonds, but always in secret, steadily converting cash reserves into cut and polished stones. They were small, portable and, thanks to the tight grip the South Africans had on the diamond market, more than held their value.

  Abruptly, she was free. Something chill swirled at her back. Choking fear held her immobile for long seconds.