by Jeff Abbott
“Sometimes I get a little confused.”
“We all do,” I said.
“You feel up to a walk?” he asked. “They won’t let me walk alone anywhere anymore.”
“Yes, sir.”
I followed him across the stone patio, past the fire pit. Halfway down the steps to the beach stood one guard, the one who’d had most of the night off. The guard had a whistle in his mouth, presumably to rouse the household at any sign of danger. As we walked past him, Rey flicked out a finger and knocked the whistle from the man’s lips.
“You look stupid. Get up on the driveway.”
“Yes, sir, but Zhanna…”
“Do as I say.”
Did he not remember last night? He’d given up command to his kids. Rey sailed on past and I glanced back at the guard, who shrugged and put the corded whistle back in his mouth. And stayed where Zhanna had apparently ordered him to be.
The clouds hung low and gray over the water. We went down the stone stairway, past the area where we’d fought the assailant.
“You could have used a whistle yesterday,” I observed.
“If I ever have to whistle for help, don’t come save me,” he said.
We walked along the sand to a flat rock that abutted the water. He set down his coffee on the rock. Then he sat, the breeze ruffling his thin strands of hair.
“Who’s after you?” I thought it was worth a shot. You never know; unguarded, he might tell me.
“A wealthy man can have many enemies.” His gaze met mine, bemused. This was a man who’d cut million-dollar cargo deals in jungles, shantytowns, bombed-out airports. He would only respect forthrightness.
“It seems to me life started getting complicated here when you showed Cori the ten million dollars.”
He glanced at me.
And here I played my card. “It’s the ten million. Either someone is upset with you that you showed it to her, or you stole it.”
“Here’s all you need to know: a slice of that money will be yours if you take care of Cori.”
“Why trust me? You don’t even know me.”
“Because I don’t trust anyone. Ever.”
“You just handed over the company to Galo and Zhanna. Odd that you don’t trust them.”
“We’ll see what they do with my trust.”
Trust. Then I put it together, wove the strings of what I’d learned here into a thread. “The family knows you showed the money to Cori, and someone in the family told someone else. Without your permission.”
He watched the sea. “It’s a hard thing to feel your mind slip away at times. Right now I know you, and where I am, and who’s around me. And then it’s like my brain is in a time machine and my first wife is still alive and coming down those steps. Or I forget my own name. My time’s running out. I used to say I’m running out of runway, you know, to take off. And I shouldn’t have shown Cori the money but I wanted her to have it…”
I studied the foam of the surf sliding onto the beach.
“So the money’s yours?” That meant everything we’d been told about the money was a lie.
“Yes.” But he didn’t look at me. “I’m not going to risk Cori. I can’t take another…” And he didn’t have to say Edwin.
I stayed quiet. For all his scoffing at the trials of having children, I could hear the pain in his voice.
“You can’t know what’s it like. To lose someone to kidnapping. The not knowing…every night I would go to sleep and know that somewhere my boy was either dead or wondering when I would use all my power and money and influence to find him. Waiting for me to help him.”
But I did. Not Sam Chevalier. Sam Capra did. My son, Daniel, kept from me after his birth, used by a criminal syndicate as a pawn to get me to do their bidding. He was already a few months old by the time I first saw him, held him, and I could never make up that time. My brother, Danny, kidnapped in Afghanistan as a relief worker, held for days, his throat finally cut on a grainy video.
I knew what it was like. But I couldn’t say so. I preferred not to dwell on any similarities between the Capras and the Varelas. That was a mirror too close.
Rey kept talking: “…back when Sergei and I flew in Africa, no one would have touched us, or my kids—because of our friends. You don’t piss off the nonelected president or the warlord. But I didn’t have enemies then; I was everyone’s friend. I need better friends now.” He lit a cigarette, coughed. “Kent and Galo and Zhanna, they hired the best detectives money could buy. I know people in the CIA”—and here my heart jangled and my blood dropped a degree or two—“because every Cuban in Miami, they know someone who knows CIA. Did you know back in the day, when we were going to kill Castro, that the CIA Miami office had the standing of a foreign office? The CIA’s not supposed to work on US soil, right?”
“I believe I’ve heard that,” I said.
“So after Castro comes to power, the CIA treats Miami like foreign soil. Thousands on payroll, lots of funding for companies that could turn into fronts for the CIA if needed.” He shrugged. “They poured all that money into south Florida, like it was the front line of the war on communism. And for nothing. Castro, the bastard, stayed put.” He stared out at the blue of the water.
“Did they fund you? Before you were flying in Africa?”
“The government used to look at me, flying arms into Africa, and hold its nose.” He’d just admitted he dealt arms. He kept his gaze locked on the ocean.
“But if you couldn’t find Edwin, with all your money, all your contacts…then you and your family were up against someone more powerful than you.”
He blinked at me, then looked again to the blue of the water. “You’re a good match for Cori. She’s smart and she doesn’t give up. It can be very annoying.”
“Who is after you?” I asked again. “Because I’m not going to let what happened to Edwin happen to Cordelia.”
“Too many men would have run from the trouble. You ran toward the trouble. I am like you, Sam, you are like me. I want you watching Cori. I want you to take her away today. Now.” He tossed the cigarette onto the beach, scooped sand atop it to smother the ember. “I sent some friends of mine for a follow-up talk with your friend Mr. Lada. They…leaned on him. Tried to punch holes in your story. He stuck to it, apparently even after they burned him with a cigar.”
I stared at him in horror.
“Oh, don’t worry, he’s fine. He’ll just have a few days of quiet rest at home. If he needs a bit of cosmetic surgery I’ll make sure he’s taken care of.”
Poor Lada. I felt a hot stab of anger, but I kept my face very still.
“Does that make you angry?”
“You did,” I said, “what you had to do. I don’t like it, but I understand it…”
“Okay. So. Take Cori today, yes, don’t wait around. And I’ll pay you very, very well.”
“Yes, sir.” He was trying to get me away from the action. But he’d also given me an excuse to not be here, and I needed to take it.
Now to get Cori away from here, and to meet Mila.
Because there was going to be another kidnapping today. But this time, I would be the kidnapper.
33
WE TOOK A spare car—an older Lincoln Navigator—and I pulled onto the road, heading north toward Aguadilla. It would be around a two-hour drive to San Juan. No one followed us.
“So are we going to, um, grab my dad?” Cori said.
I wondered if the car might be bugged and I shook my head at her. I turned on the radio. Near Aguadilla we parked at a scenic overlook along State Road 2 and I went through the car carefully while Cori stared out at the blue of the Atlantic and the smudge of Desecheo Island.
No bug. We could talk.
“I found the kidnapper’s car. We’re going to use it. But not to take your father. Instead we’re going to get the kidnapper’s accomplice before your sister and your brother do.”
“That sounds more dangerous.”
“Cori, your father will
tell us nothing. The kidnapper’s accomplice could tell us everything.”
After a moment she nodded. “How?”
“I need you to do exactly as I say, Cori, if you want to protect your family and protect yourself. Are you all right with that?”
She nodded after a moment. “I trust you totally.”
“Okay. I’m keeping the promise to your dad to keep you out of danger. But I need you to drive this car, and I’ll drive the kidnapper’s.”
“How on earth…”
“I snuck out last night, found the car, snuck back in. This was a professional job. The car had knockout drugs, a medical kit.”
Her eyes widened. “You are something else. So what’s the plan?”
“You may not like it. But you’ve reached the point of no return.”
“What?”
“You have to…well, to be blunt, burn this house down.”
She shook her head. “It’s made of stone and Papa will just buy a new one.”
“I mean your family. To save them, you’ve got to ruin them.”
“What?”
I crossed my arms. “They have a legit business and a dirty one. The dirty one, whatever they’re smuggling for people—this ten million, whatever else, it has to go. Make it a disaster for them. Unprofitable. Make them want to give it up.”
“I can’t hurt them.”
“It might be one of them trying to kill you off because you know about the ten million.”
“I can believe a lot of bad about my family except…that they would try to hurt me.”
Sometimes you have to be blunt. “Eddie. What if he found out too? What if this was why he died?”
She swallowed. The thought had to have lodged in her mind already, poisonous, a sickening seed, ready to grow. I just poured water on it.
“What did we say before, back at the bar? Every game must have a winner.” I remembered the abandoned checkerboard. “Someone wants to win here, very badly, and doesn’t care who gets hurt.”
I saw the tears edge her eyes but she didn’t cry. I kissed her, gently at first, and then hard. She kissed me back. I did not expect this. How long had she felt penned in a cage by crimes she couldn’t even name? The wild mix of anger and resentment and love she must have felt toward her family.
She broke the kiss as another car drove past us. “Sam. Sam. Can you guarantee no one gets hurt?”
“I won’t hurt anyone unless I’m forced to. But if one of them killed Steve, and we find that out…I won’t protect them.”
“But you won’t go to the police.”
“I won’t go to the police,” I said. “One step at a time. First we find the Russian’s partner.”
“And what do you get for this?”
“Justice for Steve. And very likely justice for your brother. And freedom for you.”
“And when it’s gone…”
“They can’t start it up again. This has to be a final solution.” I didn’t threaten. I didn’t explain. I wanted to see if she could wrap her head around the idea. “It’s huge. Ricky said it affects the whole world. Your dad even said it was a prison for them, they can’t get free of it. This isn’t just about Steve anymore, Cori.”
“For Eddie,” she said, after a moment. Almost a whisper to herself. Her gaze met mine. “All right. What do you need from me?”
“I am going to grab this partner of the kidnapper’s before your family does. Could be a partner in the smuggling, could be the owner of the ten million, could be an angry customer. Zhanna and the guards will have a plan to trap this person at a rendezvous they’ve set up. But we trap the person first.”
“I don’t know how to do any of that.” She looked shell-shocked.
“I do.”
We got back in the car and drove to the neighbor’s house. The Yukon, and the gear I needed from it, was still there. Cori watched me ready the car; she stared at the medical kit in the back. I went inside the house to see if Nesterov had left anything else of interest or any other clue as to who he worked for. Nothing.
When I came out, Cori was in her car, ready to go. We took both cars to San Juan, heading east, me following her. Mila had texted me earlier; she would arrive in a couple of hours, on a flight coming in from Miami. It could well be the same flight as Nesterov’s partner; it would be easier to get a last-minute booking on the midmorning arrival. We had very little time.
But the giant question mark was driving the car in front of me. How far would Cordelia go?
34
I LEFT CORI in my room at the Gran Fortuna in Old San Juan. “Can’t I do something useful?” she asked.
“Tell me about Ricky’s guys. They don’t seem the sharpest pencils. How good of a team are they? Can they grab someone in the middle of San Juan and get away with it?”
“They’re all ex-Army, from somewhere in Central America. Honduras or Panama. It varies. I have no idea of their level of training.”
I pulled the broken casino chip from my pocket. Her eyes went wide. “You…”
“It was in Steve’s house. I found it there. I broke it and planted the other half because I wanted to see how your family would react. Do you have a friend here you can trust? Someone who could tell us what you get if you redeem an unmarked chip like this one?”
She nodded. “Yes. I worked here a couple of summers when I was in college. I have a friend who got a full-time job here. I can ask her.” She took the half with the serial number from me, studied it. Something lit in her face—anger, surprise—and I wondered how it would feel to realize the people in the world you loved most had kept the darkest secrets from you.
“She can’t let anyone know who might alert your family.”
“I’ll make sure she keeps her mouth shut.”
“I’ll be back soon.” I decided not to take the gun with me; but after a moment’s thought, I slipped the syringe, capped, into my pocket. You never knew.
I left her at the casino and drove back to the airport to catch Mila’s arrival.
I waited near the baggage claim as the crowd from the Miami flight came through, and then Mila was at my side before I realized it. She wore a dark suit, white shirt. Her cool eyes hidden behind large sunglasses.
“She is there,” Mila said. “With the two men who look like they could bend you over their knee and snap you. Do not look. Just follow.”
We followed. The woman was fortyish, an attractive, elegant redhead. The two men with her were in their twenties, thickly muscled, with the air of bodyguards. They boarded a shuttle to a car rental complex away from the terminal. We followed. They sat in the front of the bus; we went to the back.
“Who is she?” I asked as we sat.
“She’s big trouble. Which means Lavrenti Nesterov,” Mila began—and this was her way to say hello and give me her answer—“is not just a former Miami cop.”
“What is he?”
“There was a Round Table file on him.”
This was unusual. The Round Table is not the FBI or the CIA—they track people who may be of interest because they’ve fallen through the cracks left by the world’s justice systems. “What about him?”
“He was spotted and photographed once with this woman. One of our people was following her.”
“And she is?”
“One of the most dangerous freelance assassins in the world. Trained by former East German operatives, one of which was her father. She goes by the name Marianne. Nesterov was photographed with her in Ecuador, a month after he was dismissed from the Miami police. We were tracking her, not him, but after we got his picture from public records we ran a face-recognition program against our files and we found him with her.”
“Why was an assassin meeting with an ex-cop?” We stopped at a rental car company, about half the bus got off. The woman and the two young men stayed.
“We believe he was one of her protégés. She has many. She trains them and they work for her. Sort of like how I have taken you under my wing, yes, Sam?”
/> “Not remotely similar.”
“Marianne is franchising her expertise. She is the new model of assassination.” Mila shrugged. “I dislike new business paradigms, myself.”
“And Marianne sent Nesterov here on a job.”
“One might surmise. Once we realized we had a file on him we pulled up her information—not that there is much of it—and I recognized her.”
“I didn’t know assassins did kidnappings and traveled with guards.” Something was off here.
“Marianne does. She calls them her ‘sons’ or ‘daughters.’ As a former teacher I admire her dedication.”
“And the Varelas think they’re going to take this woman down?”
“I’m quite sure she realizes there is a trap. Hence the ‘sons’ with her today. Perhaps she has a trap of her own.” The shuttle bus reached another, larger car rental office. Here everyone got off. Mila began tapping at her phone, using the rental company’s app, speeding up her rental of a car from this same lot. We stayed outside.
“I don’t suppose she would tell us why someone wants Rey Varela dead.”
Mila glanced at me. “Don’t underestimate her. She’s worked for governments, we believe. Not just terrorists.”
Marianne and her “sons” got their paperwork completed at the counter. The sons kept a steady watch on their surroundings.
“I want to talk to her,” I said.
“Are you insane? Let her and this family hash it out. You have no reason to be involved.”
“I want to know who wants Rey Varela dead and why.”
“We have to take out both her and the sons,” Mila said, “and I am not armed at the moment. And we need to ascertain where they’re going to and…come, I’m a gold member, I have a confirmation.” We followed as the trio headed toward the rental car lot, walking over to the section with the luxury SUVs. Seriously, what was it with criminals and big cars? There’s no subtlety left in the world.
“Sam. No. We take them at their hotel.”
I stopped. I’d nearly spoken to Marianne in German, thinking if I called her name out the shock of it would stop her in her tracks. And she wouldn’t be armed, none of them would be. They wouldn’t have had time to get the guns from their checked bags. But it had been foolhardy. Of course they could probably kill with their bare hands. But it would attract unwanted attention here in the rental car lot.