Jade thought about it as she again looked at the chronometer. Thirteen minutes had passed. “:Not enough,” she replied curtly. “We need the taped conversations to go with the documents and photos of the men.”
“Hey, Mother Hen, I’m telling you there’s a lot of good shit here. They’re going to be at the banquet for at least another hour or so. I can carry the briefcase out of here under my tray. You photograph what you want, and I’ll return it the same way—or you can bring it back when you do your maid’s act.”
It was so tempting, Jade thought—to have the most dangerous and time-consuming part of their task out of the way on the first night. Then all they would have to do was wait and listen until Saturday night when she would pay Henry Bolo a last visit before they left …
But the briefcase had to be almost as big as the tray Roy was carrying; it could be noticed. Roy would be caught, and they would lose everything.
Sixteen minutes.
“No. It’s too risky. There’s no reason why you’d be bringing the tray back with you. It’s too much exposure too soon. Just leave the briefcase where it is and get back up here before the guard gets suspicious and comes looking for you.”
“It may not be here when you come looking for it. The guy may take it with him the next time he goes out.”
“I know that, Roy. Ditch the tray down a laundry chute and get back up here.”
“It’s your call, Mother Hen. I’m on my way.”
Jade again heard the rustle of papers, and then the sound of the briefcase being closed. A few seconds later there was the click of a door opening, and then another soft click as Roy closed the door behind him. She strapped the chronometer back on her wrist, and then got up off the bed and walked to the door as she heard the sounds of Roy disposing of the tray and dishes.
Fifty seconds passed, and she judged that Roy would be approaching the bank of elevators on the mezzanine.
“Have a nice evening, sir.”
The guard merely grunted. Jade breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the elevator doors open and close, and then the humming of the elevator as it brought Roy back up to the seventh floor. Jade opened the door and greeted Roy with kiss and a wide grin when he entered the room.
“My hero.”
“Indeed,” Roy replied as he closed the door behind him and then put his arms around Jade’s waist. “Mission accomplished. I’ve got bugs planted in all the places we wanted, plus one by the pay telephones on the mezzanine, and another in the ash tray by the guard’s post. I thought it would be interesting to hear what the muscle boys have to say among themselves.”
“Most outstanding.”
“Incidentally, there’s a sign posted down there notifying everybody that the day trip to the naval base has been called off. There’s a tropical storm coming in; you can already hear the wind howling in the elevator shafts. The Beowulf boys are going to be around the hotel all day tomorrow, so we’ll have to lie low until tomorrow night’s banquet.”
Jade nodded, and then went to the window and pulled back the heavy drape. Now she could hear the wind and sheets of rain lashing at the thick glass. “The storm could work to our advantage,” she said. “If they’re cooped up all day, they could be doing a lot of drinking, which could lead to a lot of talking.”
“Right. I hope we’ve got enough tape.”
“Two hundred hours.”
“Well, that should do the trick. Now, besides monitoring eight different listening posts, how are we going to while away the long, lonely hours until tomorrow night’s outing?”
Jade turned from the window, came back across the room and smiled mischievously at Roy. “Should we have room service bring us a pinochle deck?”
“Let’s think on that. Right now I want to hear you tell me again how much trouble you’d be in if I hadn’t come along.”
“My, how you do love that story,” Jade said, and then kissed him and pulled him toward the bed.
Chapter Fifteen
Jade adjusted her blond wig as she studied herself in the mirror. Her luminous green eyes were disguised with black contact lenses, and the bright red lipstick and black liner she wore made her lips seem fuller than they actually were. It was going to have to be enough, she thought. There was nothing she could do about her height, which was sure to attract the attention of anyone she passed in the halls. None of the maids’ uniforms she had found in the supply closet she’d broken into had fit her, and so she was wearing one of her own skirt and sweater sets covered by a man’s blue smock. Roy’s service revolver was beneath a pile of towels on a maid’s cart she had found in the closet and brought into the room with her.
Roy’s reflection suddenly appeared next to hers in the mirror, and then she felt his arms around her waist, his lips on her neck. Roy said, “You just don’t look like the maidenly type, my dear. Let me go.”
Jade shook her head. “Having the same room service waiter show up two nights in a row when everybody is supposed to be at the banquet would be a little much. This is my job.”
Roy’s strong hands kneaded the muscles in her neck and back. “You’re too tense.”
“I’ll be all right once I get going.”
“I’m not just being solicitous, Jade. We’ve spent all day listening to these jokers talk among themselves, and your name keeps coming up. You are a very hot topic of conversation at this gathering.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jade replied evenly. “They think I pose a very big threat to them, and I plan to prove them right.”
“What about the voice you thought was familiar? Have you placed it yet?”
“No.”
“It’s not Bolo?”
“His voice I’d recognize.”
“You want to listen to the tape again? We only hear him once.”
“No. It doesn’t matter who he is. Even if I can’t remember where I’ve heard the voice, we’ll eventually find out who he is, won’t we?”
“Jade, they’re as focused on you as they are on their arms dealing. Also, we know that each bulletin was numbered, and they’re very concerned about the missing one I swiped; they’re not sure it dropped out of the guy’s pocket in the lobby or on the street. That’s a very edgy bunch down there, so security is going to be even tighter. Disguised or not, you’re still a six-foot woman who’s going to be walking past guards who are going to be very suspicious of six-foot women. We can use room service again, and I bet I can use that fancy camera as well as you can.”
“You can’t. I’m faster, and there won’t be time to photograph everything in the briefcase. I know exactly what documents to look for.”
Roy sighed in resignation, then stepped over to the maid’s cart and lifted the stack of towels on top to make sure his .38 caliber revolver was in place beneath them. He nodded approvingly, and then laid the towels back in place.
“Roy,” Jade continued, “if I have to use that, it will mean we’ve failed.”
“Not necessarily. We’ll still have the tapes and personnel photos, and there’s plenty of incriminating evidence on those tapes. I just want to make sure you get off that floor alive. You be careful.”
“For sure, Father Hen.”
“There are no Father Hens.”
“You’re one of a kind. Open the door for me, will you? Make sure there’s nobody in the corridor.”
“Jade?”
“Yes?”
“When do you plan to take care of Sergeant Bolo?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Later tonight, after the banquet. Thanks to the microphone you planted at the guards’ station, I know what room he’s in.”
“What if he’s on duty?”
“He shouldn’t be. He’s already done a shift today.”
“How are you going to do it?”
Jade smiled thinly. “Well, I’m not going to shoot him with your gun, Roy.”
“Then how?”
“I don’t think you should know.”
>
“I think I should. How?”
“He’s going to die in a domestic accident. I think he’s going to slip in the shower and break his neck.”
“How the hell are you going to get him into the shower?”
“Jesus, Roy. As an assassin, you make a great cop. I’ll drag him in the shower after I break his neck.”
“You can handle Bolo by yourself?” Roy grunted when Jade rolled her eyes, and then continued, “Silly of me to ask, right? What about the other guards?”
“I’ll use the stairs. There’ll only be one guard in the stairwell, and odds are good that he’ll be asleep. If he’s not, I’ll try to take him out without killing him. It won’t take me long to kiss Bolo good night. By the time they find him in the morning, we’ll be on our way home.”
“If you have to take out a guard, they’ll know somebody’s been on the floor, and you’ll be their number one suspect. They could find Bolo’s corpse a hell of a lot quicker than you think they will. I don’t have to be an assassin to recognize a lousy plan, Jade. There are too many variables, and it’s way too risky.”
“I can’t leave him alive, Roy. Canceling Sergeant Bolo is my primary objective in coming here.”
“I understand that. I’ll think on it.”
“You do that. Right now I have to take care of this other business, and we’re not getting any younger standing here. May I go now, Father Hen?”
Roy stared into Jade’s face for some time, unsmiling, then glanced at his watch. “How long do you figure this is going to take you?”
“Five minutes, tops, from the time I enter the suite. I can’t afford to be there any longer. I’ll only photograph the most important documents.”
Roy went to the door and opened it. He looked up and down the corridor, and then stepped aside, holding the door open for Jade to push her maid’s cart through. “You make sure you come back safely.”
“Aye, sir.”
“I’m going to be listening to everything that goes on down there,” Roy said as he pulled aside a flap on Jade’s smock to make certain her tiny microphone was taped in place. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll be right down.”
“No!” Jade said sharply, reaching around the cart and pushing the door shut. Behind the contact lenses her eyes glinted with anger. “That is not the drill. That’s the problem with running an operation like this with someone with whom you’re emotionally involved. Think. If I am caught, it will do me absolutely no good to have you captured along with me. The best chance for keeping me alive is for you to get away with the tapes we have here. Then I’ll at least be in a position to negotiate. Okay?”
Roy stared hard at Jade, and then finally nodded as he once again opened the door and looked out. “You’re right, of course. Get out of here. The sooner you get going, the sooner you’ll be back.”
In the elevator Jade could hear the soughing of the gale-force winds from the tropical storm still raging outside. Once the lights dimmed and she was afraid the power might go off, trapping her inside the elevator, but it stayed on. She took a series of deep breaths in order to calm and center herself.
With the hours of tapes in their possession and packed away, Jade judged that they already had sufficient evidence to send dozens of very important and powerful men, including not a few high-ranking officers who were still in the military, to prison. But she wanted the case to be airtight, and photographing incriminating documents to back up the taped conversations would assure that.
She wished she could remember where she had heard the one man’s voice before, but she could not.
What she had found most striking in the hours of conversation she had sampled on the tape deck’s monitors was not the conspirators’ venality and greed, which she had taken for granted, but their incredible sense of self-righteousness. They saw nothing wrong in what they were doing, indeed considered themselves warriors in a high patriotic cause, battling to undo the harm caused by the evils of inaction in Washington, complacency among the public, and the female presence in the military embodied by—her.
As Roy had said, she was indeed very much on the minds of the men gathered in this hotel in Miami. She was to be eliminated, although, as far as she could tell, a decision had not yet been made as to how this goal was to be accomplished. What she found odd was the fact that not once, at least not in the tapes she had listened to, had anyone mentioned the fact that she was being followed—or had been up until Friday afternoon, when she had taken serious steps to lose her tail before going to meet Roy at the airport. That led to the question of just who was responsible for having her followed in the first place, but there wasn’t time to worry about that at the moment.
The elevator door sighed open and Jade, her warrior now firmly in place, unhesitatingly pushed the maid’s cart out onto the second floor mezzanine, past the guard with an eye patch who sat in a chair next to the bank of pay telephones with his feet flat on the floor and his arms folded across his chest. It was the man with the close-cropped red hair whose eye she had poked out when he had tried to kill her on the river.
Jade kept walking toward the mouth of the carpeted corridor at the opposite end of the mezzanine. She affected a slight limp and a vacant expression as she mumbled to herself in Arabic.
Roy’s voice came through the tiny, flesh colored receiver she wore in her right ear. “Jade,” Roy said in an anxious whisper, “what the hell’s going on down there? I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“Hey, you.”
Jade kept walking.
“Hey, woman!” the red-haired man barked, abruptly rising to his feet and knocking over his chair. “I’m talking to you! Hold it!”
Jade stopped and, still mumbling in Arabic, turned around the face the man. There was nobody else around, and she began considering her options. If the man recognized her, there would have to be a radical change in plans; she would have to try to accomplish everything on this one pass. She would have to kill the man immediately, and then take the corpse with her on the maid’s cart to the treasurer’s suite. She would warn Roy to leave at once, photograph a few documents, and then go hunting for Henry Bolo, wherever he might be. Then, at best, she would be on her own, alone in Miami with the police after her. It was a desperation plan, but she did not see any other way.
If the man recognized her—which did not yet seem to be the case. He came halfway across the mezzanine, but then stopped and placed his hands on his hips.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“No speak good English,” Jade said with a heavy accent, and then added in Arabic, “Sit down, fool, if you don’t want your larynx crushed.”
The man shook his head in disgust. “Jesus Christ, you’d think this place could at least find some fucking help that speaks English.” He paused and gestured toward the cart. “Where the fuck are you going with that?”
“Towels,” Jade replied, placing her hand on the pile of clean towels that hid Roy’s service revolver. “Man at dinner say he want clean towels in two-eighteen right away. I take there.”
The guard shook his head, and then gestured for Jade to move on. “All right, you dumb broad, go ahead.”
Jade pushed the maid’s cart down the corridor to the suite occupied by the treasurer of the Beowulf Society. She paused outside the door, glanced around to make sure the corridor was empty, and then used her electronic key card to let herself in. She pulled the cart in behind her, closed the door and looked around.
The briefcase Roy had described was nowhere in sight.
“Hey, lady, you all right?”
“Yes. Shhh.”
Jade transferred the gun and a miniature camera from beneath and within the stack of towels to a pocket in her smock. Then, very conscious of the precious seconds that were ticking away, she began searching the suite. She finally found the briefcase inside a closet in one of the two bedrooms, on a luggage rack. Although she had the tools to open the combination lock, she was relieved to see that she
would not have to take the time to do that; the briefcase remained unlocked. She brought it to a desk in the bedroom that had an overhead lamp. She turned on the light, opened the briefcase.
In the bottom of the case was an accordion file stuffed with papers, which she quickly began to examine. When she found a bill of lading for a shipment of “canned goods” to Iraq, she slipped it out of the file, laid it flat on the desk and photographed it. There were dozens of pieces of correspondence with people whose names she didn’t recognize, and she photographed three of these. There was also a booklet with a plain blue cover that turned out to be a catalogue of available weapons for sale, everything from automatic rifles to handheld missile launchers. One whole page was taken up with a series of drawings depicting a Jolly Roger being deployed to blow up a cargo ship in a harbor; the page had been crossed out with a black felt tipped marker. Jade photographed that, along with another page listing types of poison gas available.
Jade was just closing the briefcase when the door to the bedroom burst open. Startled, Jade glanced up to find herself looking into the equally startled faces of the one-eyed man and Henry Bolo, who was standing just behind him.
“What the hell-?!” Bolo exclaimed, pushing the redhead out of the way and starting toward her.
Jade pulled the revolver from the pocket in her smock and fired twice at point blank range. Both slugs hit Bolo in the center of the chest, flinging him backward across the bed. He bounced once, his clutching fingers taking the bedspread with him, smashing an end table and crashing to the floor between the bed and the wall.
Jade quickly swung the gun around and aimed it at the chest of the redhead, whose remaining eye was opened wide with shock.
“Jade?!”
“I’m fried, Roy,” Jade said evenly, keeping her gun leveled on the guard’s chest. “Take the tapes and films and haul ass out of here. Leave the equipment.”
“Jade, what the hell is-?!”
“Get out!” Jade snapped, and then tore the microphone from beneath the flap of her smock and flung it across the room. She used one hand to close the snaps on the briefcase, which she picked up and carried with her as she advanced on the redhead, who was standing just inside the door to the bedroom with his arms half raised.
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