Inside Man

by Jeff Abbott

  Now that he had a yes in response to his insults and his offer, Rey gave up a smile. “If you mess it up or lose it I will haunt you forever. This is your duty.”

  “Yes, Papa.” Galo was now a CEO of a multi-million-dollar concern, but he didn’t sound that thrilled.

  “You will take care of your sisters. Both of them.”

  “I can take care of myself, Papa,” Cori said. “You don’t need to be patronizing.”

  “Zhanna,” Rey said, ignoring her, “you will run the security. Kent will run operations.” And then he spoke to her in Russian: You will run the na levo, you understand. Na levo was a Russian slang term for “under the table.” The underside of the business.

  An odd joy filled her eyes. Then her gaze slid to me, and she remembered my Russian.

  “What did he say to her?” Cori whispered, and I just squeezed her hand in response.

  Galo had caught the meaning. “Papa, we all love Zhanna but…please don’t divide up the company like this.”

  “You can’t have it all. We need her,” Rey said, and Zhanna smirked. I wondered exactly what Rey meant by need. “Think, Galo. You cannot have it. Be smart. I’m protecting you.” He turned to Zhanna. “Galo can never know the details of the security work. Always. Protect the family, Zhanna, as we’ve protected you.”

  “Protected her?” Cori asked. I could sense Cori’s anger rising. Nothing was changing, except that Galo and Z would be running the business—both the legal and the illicit.

  “I mean…what is the word,” Rey said, confused. “We took her in.”

  Zhanna nodded. A bit smugly, I thought.

  “Cordelia,” Rey said, “I need you, sweetheart. I need you to keep running the charity and I want you to be safe until this…problem blows over. Then I need you to take care of me. You have to put me someplace where I can rest until I’m better. Maybe here? Find attendants we can trust who won’t talk. And Sam. Maybe Sam will bodyguard me. He is like me, aren’t you, Sam?”

  I could only nod. What did he mean?

  “You take what you want! You fight for it!” he yelled at me. I glanced at Cori. His grip was slipping.

  “I’ll take care of you, Papa,” Galo said.

  He waved a hand toward his son. “No. Not you. You run the company. Run it well. Keep it clean. Zhanna, keep them happy.”

  Who was a security chief supposed to keep happy? Them. The presumed clients?

  “Papa, of course I’ll take care of you,” Cori said. Steel in her voice. “But you have to tell us, you have to tell me, who does that money belong to? What are you doing?”

  Rey didn’t answer.

  “Papa?” Galo, Cori, and Z all said it as one.

  Rey didn’t answer.

  “Rey, are you having another spell?” Kent’s voice cut through them all, like a knife.

  Rey stared. “Please don’t break your sister’s heart, Zhanna.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Zhanna said, and for once I believed her. She frowned in confusion.

  Rey pointed at me. “You. You’re the key.”

  “I’m what?” I said.

  “To keep Cori safe. Z, let him be. There is no need for her to be involved. She must not know.”

  They were all silent now. He’d pitted them against one another, issued his demands, and they’d all agreed. The power of a parent.

  Rey stood. “I’m hard on all of you. Zhanna, Galo may fight you because you’re not blood.” He coughed. “I want you to know. I love you like you were my own. I want you to know you are a Varela, no matter the last name.”

  “I know that,” she said, and her voice was very small.

  “Where is Eddie? I…I have to give him something.” Rey looked around the room.

  “Edwin is dead, Rey,” Kent said quietly. “Remember?”

  “Dead? Show me a grave. Show me…” And he put his face in his hands. “You all hate me. You all hate me for what I’ve done.”

  “Papa, no, we don’t.” Galo and Zhanna and Cori were all standing but I thought I was the only one who saw the little gleam in Rey’s eye. I blinked and it was gone.

  Rey caught me looking.

  “You didn’t run away from the fight. I like that in a man.” And then he said, “Last week, it was, in Kinshasa, I got into a fight. A fistfight with a man who tried to cheat me on my payment for the weapons…”

  “Not last week, Papa,” Cori said gently. “There were no weapons.”

  Lord Caliber, I thought. Well, well, maybe there was truth to the rumor.

  “Last week, yes, and…” His voice trailed off and he was quiet. Cori moved next to him and patted his back. “No. Of course. I am kidding you.” He tried to laugh. His mind was sliding from here to there.

  “I think perhaps Papa should go to bed,” Galo said.

  “I want Cori to take me upstairs,” he said.

  “I have something to say first,” Cori said. She turned to face her brother and stepsister. “Whatever you’re doing…you have to stop it.”

  Galo shook his head. “Cori, we can discuss this another time.”

  “Is moving this money worth this? Papa nearly dies, Galo kills a man. He’ll have to live with that forever.” She swallowed. “I realize…maybe you have to disentangle yourselves from whatever this is, moving this money. But start. Now.”

  They all stared. “Or what?” Zhanna said quietly. “You’ll go to the police?”

  “No, but…”

  “Then you’ll do nothing.” Zhanna stood. “I’ll put you to bed, Papa.”

  “No. Cordelia. Please.” He looked at me. “You come too, Guard Boy.”

  Great. I had a new freelance job. I followed Rey and Cori out of the silent room.

  He looked at me again, glancing back at me as we headed up the stairs.

  “Sam is a good guy,” Cori said.

  “How good? No one is good enough for you.” Affectionate teasing in his voice. For a second it seemed like his mind was back entirely.

  “He saved you, Papa. If we’d lost you…”

  “Oh, never mind that. I hate that I need saving. When I was young…I could fight for myself then. I didn’t need some kiddo.”

  “Now you really sound like an old man. Shall I get off your lawn next?” Cori said.

  He laughed.

  She didn’t. “The cash, Papa, where did it go after you showed it to me?”

  He stopped in the hallway. “I told you. I got confused. I thought it was money I could give. We moved it for a government in South America. It’s a secret. The paperwork was handled legally, though, with the Internal Revenue Service. They had a reason for moving the cash physically back into the States and I got…confused. You must believe me. You must stop asking questions about this part of the business. We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  I didn’t buy it for a second. Who needed cash moved like that? Okay, maybe a government, for some reason if they wanted a payment that couldn’t be traced. Maybe someone who needed cash for bribes. Drug runners. Terrorists. Criminal syndicates. Smugglers. My mind began to spin.

  “The kidnapping attempt today makes me not believe you.” Her voice rose. “Edwin. Papa, does this have something to do with Edwin’s kidnapping? It has to. It must.”

  “No. No.”

  “You could have died today, Papa. I am not giving this up.”

  “Do you love me?” Rey said.

  “I love you,” she said. “And you know I love you, and that I am a good daughter to you. But you’re endangering yourself…”

  “You trust me?”

  “Yes,” she said, a little more uncertain.

  “This Sam,” Rey said. “We trust him?”

  “Completely.”

  “I will talk to him.” It was as though I wasn’t standing there. “Cordelia. I want you gone until this danger is past. It won’t be long. Sam fought for me; he will fight for you.”

  “I won’t go. You can’t make me.”

  “I know you want to help us. But you can
not.” His frail voice turned to steel. “I will cut off all contributions to your charity. It will fold. I’m by far your biggest benefactor. Help me and I’ll keep the money coming. Fight me and it’s gone.”

  “Papa, you wouldn’t…the charity does good work…”

  “Yes. I know. But you come first.”

  Cori said, “Be honest. Have you had me followed since I found out about the ten million?”

  “Followed?” Rey sounded confused, and not from his illness. “Why?”

  “Two Colombians, maybe?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rey said. “Why would I send anyone from Colombia to follow you around?”

  “Cori, what do you mean?” Zhanna asked, suddenly appearing on the stairs. If she had sent the Colombians…Cori was showing her hand that she knew about them.

  “Go back, Z!” Rey yelled at her. “This is private.”

  With the barest dignity, Zhanna turned around and retreated down the hallway.

  “She’s like a worm in the fruit,” he said, as if his kind words to her earlier were forgotten. Or more likely, I thought, insincere. He’s using everyone in this family, I thought. And now it’s starting to show.

  “If you dislike her, why do you give her the most dangerous part of your business?” I said.

  He blinked in surprise. “I know Russian. I know what you said to her,” I told him. “Na levo. The underside. What is it?”

  He shook his head at me. “Very clever. Like my Cori.” He laughed. He patted my chin. “Zhanna is tough. Galo is smart. Only Cori is tough and smart. Good match, you two.”

  “You have a strange way of showing your kids that you love them,” I said bluntly.

  “We as a family can stop this,” Cori said, defiance in her tone.

  “Cori, I will give you until tomorrow to prepare to leave. To go someplace far away. For us to be sure this Sam is all right. But if you do not, I will end support for your charity. And your other donors will wonder why your own family has turned their backs on you.”

  “Maybe I’ll go to the police,” she said.

  “And you will get your sister and brother and me and Kent all arrested. We got rid of a corpse today, my darling. I can’t make your mind unknow that. But we’ll all face charges. And I will never”—here his voice broke—“forgive you.”

  “Is it money laundering? Who are you moving this cash for?”

  He took her face in his hands. “You are the smartest and the bravest,” he said. “If only you would take it over. But I wanted to shield you. You have no taste for this.” He looked at us both. “When you’re good at something, you never get to leave it. Success is a prison.”

  She stepped away from him. “Papa…”

  “Good night, Cordelia,” Rey Varela said. “Go where you like. Australia, Thailand, Canada, I don’t care. But you will go. Now. Where’s my wife?”

  27

  STUNNED SILENCE, THEN Cori murmured, “Papa, you’re tired. You’re tired.”

  “Quit nursemaiding me! I am a man! I fought…I fought my way out of the worst hellholes in the world…me and Sergei, they’d shoot the SAMs at us”—and for one moment I thought he’d said my name, but realized he meant surface-to-air missiles—“and we’d dodge them, and the warlords, buying the loads of guns and the rifles, paying me in the diamonds…paying me in diamonds that could choke you…I stared down those bastards, those animals…I’m not afraid of my own children…I did…” His voice faded, like an old lion’s feeble roar. “I did what they made me do. Where is my wife? Where is your mama?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Oh,” he said. “She is. They all are.”

  “You are tired, Papa. Come. I’ll help you,” Cori said. “Sam, maybe go back to your room.”

  I nodded.

  A few moments later Cordelia knocked on my door. She’d wiped away her tears but her eyes were reddened. Her mouth contorted.

  “I hate crying,” she said. “I hate it. I hate him, too.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “He’s your dad.”

  “But he’s changing into something that is not-my-dad,” she said. “What is my dad now?”

  “What he’s always been,” I said. “You just haven’t seen it.”

  I didn’t intend the words as a slap, but she recoiled. Then she nodded. “He was always driven. Sometimes not kind. He’s always played us against each other and we’ve known it.”

  “Yet tonight you played along.”

  “Listen to him…he’s losing his grip on reality. He’s like a stranger. It’s worse at night. He’s better in the mornings. Tomorrow maybe he won’t feel this way.”

  “What can I do?”

  “According to him, you can take me out of the country.” She laughed a jagged giggle. “Actually, I have an idea on what we should do.”

  “What?”

  “Kidnap him.” She stared at me, unblinking, her mouth a firm line.

  I stared back.

  “I’m just stealing the kidnapper’s idea. We take Papa, we keep him somewhere until he tells me the truth about what the company’s doing. Galo and Zhanna won’t dare call the police. We use him to strike a deal with them.”

  “And where do we keep him?”

  “They have no idea that you own a bar with an apartment above it,” she said. “It’s not like we have to take him at gunpoint. I’m saying take him with us and then force them to tell us what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know, Cori.”

  “I think it’s a brilliant plan.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s think about it. I need some fresh air, you want to come?”

  And she took my hand and we went downstairs and walked out into the cool of the stone patio. I liked watching the sea, at night. It seemed deeper and darker and more dangerous then, but the breeze was a gentle rub along our skin.

  “Kidnapping. It brings back all the pain about Eddie.”

  “You think they’re related. Now and then.”

  “Yes. I don’t know how, but yes. This family. We keep so much…hidden away. Do you know,” she said, “Galo stood here while his mother committed suicide? Right here.”

  “Suicide.”

  “She swam out into the ocean. Drowned herself. I think she didn’t want Galo to find her or see her dead. So worse, he saw her choose to die.” She sat down on the edge of the stone. “Eddie is dead somewhere. He might as well be lost in the ocean too.”

  I took a breath. “Your dad used to move arms and weapons into war zones. He could still be running illegal weapons. It could be any kind of contraband, and it’s much harder to catch, because he’s hiding it, somehow, under the legitimate cargo he moves…I don’t want you to underestimate how dangerous this could be. Eventually you may have to go to the police.”

  “I’m not going to go to the police. If I can get them to listen to me—”

  “They don’t take you seriously,” I said. She’d put a sheen of love on them all, but I could see them for what they were. Galo, determined to protect his family and be a good son—and he’d been willing to kill to do so. He’d seen his own mother commit suicide here, killed a man himself and then hid the body. That could rot a man’s soul. Zhanna, cruel and petty, so desperate to prove herself as one of the Varelas, greedy for a role and willing to take on the illicit work. Kent—well, who knew? His loyalty might have once been Rey’s, but now it might be Zhanna’s. Cori’s protests were nothing, because they knew she wouldn’t betray them to the police.

  A small little plan began to form in my mind. Sometimes the maze turns in an unexpected way, and you have to tighten the thread that leads the way out.

  “Your dad said he’d talk to you tomorrow. He’s had an emotionally unhinging day.” I took a step toward her. “Maybe we think about what he said. Take a trip somewhere.”

  She started to shake her head. “And what about Steve? Look, we have the same enemy, Sam. Whoever grabbed Papa has to be whoever ordered Steve’s killing. They ca
n’t get away with it.”

  “We go, but we don’t,” I whispered in her ear, giving her a reassuring hug.

  She leaned back from me, searching my face.

  Kent walked out onto the patio, his white cane moving softly in front of him. “Cori? Are you here?”

  “What?” she snapped. “Yes. Sorry. Sam and I are both here.”

  His cane tapped against a chair and he pulled it to himself and sat down. “A very long, trying day.”

  Cori sat next to him, took his hand in hers. “The others are too bound to Papa, but you’re not. Whatever they’re involved in, get us out of it.”

  I admired Kent because he didn’t throw us a denial, none of that I don’t know what you mean junk. “You act like that can be done instantly. And you don’t understand what’s at stake…what we’re asked to do…”

  Cori crossed her arms. “Kent, who’s trying to hurt Papa? Who hurt Edwin?”

  “We don’t know that’s connected, Cori.” He took a long breath.

  “Seriously?”

  “If I told you that it wasn’t, would you believe me?” His voice went low. “Your father made a lot of enemies in Africa. Edwin, I have always believed, was a payback for that.”

  Cori was silent.

  Kent leaned back. “I know you think I’ll always take Zhanna’s side, but perhaps not in this case. In this case I am worried about you, and your safety, and keeping your charity running.” He stood with quiet dignity. “And Cori, please, don’t judge him. Trust me—he has tried to do right by you. You want this to end—stop asking questions that no one is going to answer for you. You said he could stop this? Well, apparently, so can you. Do as your father asks…until it’s calm again. We’re setting a simple trap. It will catch the people who are bothering us. And then it’ll be over.”

  Cori didn’t speak.

  “Good night. Sleep if you can—the guards are on alert; they’ll keep us safe.”

  When Kent left, she whispered, “I think we go with my plan. Take Papa with us.”