"Not much . . . " Another gamble. He thought of Felicia's email to him. "Aside from the copper bracelet, of course."
No Name's attempt to conceal his surprise was futile. His reaction was even more pronounced than at the reference to the Scorpion. As if unable to stop himself, he asked, "And the relation between the Scorpion and the copper bracelet? How do you mean, Colonel?"
Middleton wanted to play the man out longer, but he knew that if he told too much, he'd use up whatever value he had. "I think I've said all I'm going to for the time being."
The man leaned forward, persisting. "Do you know about the technology involved? What have you learned?"
Middleton smiled and shook his head.
No Name studied him for a moment, then rose and turned toward the door.
Staring at the back of his heavy wool coat, Middleton felt an odd premonition, as though life itself were about to leave him there alone. He'd established his value and learned some facts, but had he inadvertently exposed himself to long bouts of torture to learn what else he knew?
"What now?" He tried not to sound frightened. "I've cooperated. How much longer do you intend to keep me here?"
The man rapped gently on the door. The deadbolts rattled open. Without looking back over his shoulder, he said, "Regrettably, that's not for me to decide."
Ian Barrett-Bone stood outside the L'eglise de la Madeleine, leaning down so his face was level with those of Charley Middleton and Leonora Tesla. He said, "You're making a mistake, you know."
"You can always talk to me," Tesla said.
He sighed laboriously. "Not acceptable. How many times--"
"I'll pass word on to Colonel Middleton then. If he wishes to contact you, we have the number you provided."
He leaned closer, laying a hand on the roof of the cab. "The offer stands till midnight, not a tick longer. After that, I'm afraid, the race is on. And you're at a distinct disadvantage, you know. Been a step behind the whole time. I can change that. Truly. But I'll expect a certain recompense, you understand. Only fair."
"As I said, I'll pass that along." She signaled for the cabbie to drive on. "Thank you for your . . . "
They were out of earshot before she knew how to finish. The two women watched through the rear window as the dapper, thuggish, enigmatic Englishman grew smaller, staring right back at them through a ghostly plume of black exhaust.
Tesla tried her phone yet again, but was unable to reach Middleton. A call to Wiki Chang revealed that he'd sent their boss information on some shipping companies suspected of sending explosives to Florida from Russia, and that Middleton was investigating that lead in Moscow. But the tech expert had been unable to reach him either.
The taxi turned onto the Place de la Concorde and merged with traffic funneling onto the Champs Elysees. Charley turned toward the front, her voice an empty whisper. "Know what I admire most about you, Nora?" Lacing her fingers together, she stared at her folded hands in her lap as though not quite sure to whom they belonged. "You convinced that man, and quite possibly yourself, that my father is still alive."
9
LINDA BARNES
The four-poster dominated the room like a throne on a dais. Royal blue drapes floated over ivory walls. A turquoise satin coverlet turned the bed into a shimmering pool. Fat cherubs chased each other around the intricately carved molding. Outdoors, lovers who shared a kiss as they watched the brightly painted dhows cruise by on the Creek could be jailed. Here, in one of Dubai's finest hotels, a mirror was mounted to the ceiling over a bed large enough to sleep four.
Jana found the decadence both disturbing and provocative. Her long-sleeved navy sheath was conservative in cut, as befitted a woman traveling in the Middle East, the kind of dress an airline hostess might have chosen, or a nun, although neither would have cinched it with a wide leather belt.
She located the BlackBerry with no difficulty, tucked in the corner of the middle drawer of the bureau to the left of the bed, as arranged. At exactly eight, she pressed the keys. The connection took time, but the voice, when he answered, was clear. The right voice.
Archer had learned Hindi from the man he called father, Devras Sikari. They conversed in that language, Jana proud of her fluency in her mother's native tongue. She rarely spoke it aloud, letting others see her as the ignorant South Asian, almost equally tongue-tied in English and French. The assumptions of others wearied her, particularly the assumptions of men.
"Yes," she said, "he is with me. He's assured me there's a lead and I believe him." She listened awhile, nodding her head, all the while wrestling with the news Archer had just delivered rather casually--the death of his father Devras Sikari. It was inevitable, of course, though the particular circumstances had turned the matter into more of a Shakespearean tragedy. Her heart pounded hard as she considered the implications of the man's death. There were many of them.
"Is there news of Middleton?" she asked.
"Detained by the Russians. I doubt we need concern ourselves further with the amateurs."
"They beat us with Balan," she replied, "but we made that work to our advantage, no?"
It was the overhead mirror that betrayed Pierre Crane. Jana might not have noticed the journalist if she'd been scanning the room at eye level, but reflected in the ceiling mirror, the slight movement of the door to the suite's living room was clear, as was its cause.
She neither lowered her voice nor changed her tone. "So then, when do we move the equipment?"
Archer said, "Soon. It is set. It will be done. The wise control the world."
"The wise control themselves," she said quickly, pressing the button that ended the call.
Jana returned the BlackBerry to the drawer and, as she unpacked her small duffle, thought of Crane, who lurked in the next room. She had mixed feelings about the reporter. Her sources had given her a lot of information about him. He wasn't about money or power. He was about journalism and the Story--with a capitol "s." Which meant she could trust him up to a point. Jana, though, never believed in trust; daughters whose fathers are murdered rarely do. But Crane had access to important facts.
And in this murky business, facts were what she needed.
Besides, the gawky reporter was lusting after her and therefore it would be easy to tap the spigot of what he knew about the Scorpion, Middleton and the others.
After the girl she thought was Charlotte Middleton had escaped in London, Jana had cut Crane free and he'd behaved just as she knew he would: like a puppy with no desire to stray from his mistress, leash or none. She'd tried to charm from him what information he had but he'd continued to withhold details, other than the lead was centered in Dubai. Jana had immediately sized up what was going on and suggested that they go there together. She'd find the connection to the Scorpion first hand while he continued his research for the story.
It's what he'd been hoping for all along. He immediately agreed.
Now, Crane approached with deliberately noisy steps and knocked.
"Come in."
"You people do yourselves well, Jana," he said in French. "The bedroom on the far side of the living room is spectacular. Plenty of room. Lovely view, too. You can see all those odd little boats." He changed gears quickly. "Tell me about yourself."
"Questions," Jana said, "always questions."
"I gave you Dubai. You promised me the truth for my story. So?"
"Really, Pierre, yet another question? Can we concentrate on something other than talk? We've been on airplanes for hours." Jana let her voice fall, but kept her eyes steady. She knew how to play this game, a matter of tone and body movement rather than words.
Crane took the bait. "You are a very attractive woman, Jana."
"A compliment from a man who tells lies for a living--what is that worth?" Again, her words meant little.
"I'm a journalist. I don't lie . . . Well, not very often. Besides, beautiful women don't need compliments from homely men."
"So now I am beautiful?"
"You know perfectly well you are."
"Ah, but you call yourself homely? That's absurd. To a woman, being handsome is about making a woman feel like a woman. I think you understand what I mean." Smiling, Jana folded her arms under her breasts, giving them an unnecessary boost.
"Well, we do tend to try harder," Crane said.
"But how could you and I achieve mutual trust?"
Jana's eyes, Crane noticed, had flecks of caramel, almost gold, in the iris. Her lashes were long and thick, like her hair. "Perhaps we would have to start by searching each other," he said.
Jana lifted her chin and lowered her lashes. "Really?"
"If you wouldn't mind."
She held his eyes for a moment, then slowly turned her back, lifting the heavy hair from the nape of her neck with her left hand, exposing the thin zipper that ran like a snake down the length of her navy sheath. "Women, as you know, must be carefully and thoroughly searched."
The third time Connie Carson woke, she didn't feel nauseous. She was aware she was recovering in a hospital room and the cool white light no longer terrified her. Nor did the lack of feeling in her right arm, an absence so strong she'd been afraid to look down, sure she would see nothing but a stump.
But she was startled by a face peering down at her. Langer, she thought, the Ken-doll cop.
"Do you think you can stand? Move?" he asked hurriedly.
The quiet intensity of his voice flooded her system with adrenaline.
"You sure stirred up a hornet's nest." He looked around as if he anticipated action. "Come on. We've got to go."
If she hadn't needed all her strength to sit up and swing her legs over the side of the narrow bed, Carson would have said, that's exactly what I meant to do. Her phone call, and Middleton's response, must have grabbed somebody's attention.
"Let me help." Langer reached for her left elbow.
"I can, thank you. Does Dr. Ahmed know you're--"
"Ahmed's way too interested in you already. He's not our friend." Now that she was standing on her own, Langer tossed her a robe, then quickly grabbed her chart from the end of the bed and tucked it into a carryall. "He's been on the phone to friends in Pakistan."
The room didn't spin exactly. It did a lazy half-circuit, an aborted pirouette.
"Whoa, come on, Connie, stay with me." Langer jumped to her side, arm around her waist, helping her don a blue chenille robe twice the size of her slender frame. "We're on the third floor. We turn right out the door, twenty steps to the second door on the left, three flights down, handrail all the way. You hear me? Push-bar door at the bottom opens directly outside. There's a black van at the end of the path. The back doors will open as you approach. There are clothes for you inside."
"Why?" Carson whispered as she sank back onto the bed, deciding for the moment not to press the button that would summon a nurse. She was wondering whether Langer could be trusted--whether she had hallucinated the entire episode. Suddenly the door opened and he was back, this time pushing a gurney.
"Get on."
"You didn't answer me."
"What was the question?"
"Why should I trust you?"
Langer lifted her like she was a three year old and set her firmly on the gurney. She had already parted her lips to scream by the time his response reached her ear.
"Wiki Chang."
"Wiki--"
"We're trying to save your life, Connie."
In bed, Jana thought of herself not as the girl in the movie, the slut who spread her thighs for any hero, any villain, but as the great film director. She was the girl, yes, but she was completely in control. Sometimes the girl looked like Jana's own reflection, a sultry twin with shiny dark hair. Sometimes she was a younger Jana, a Jana as she had once been, the naive younger sister of brothers who'd taught her too soon what girls like her were good for. Sometimes she was a remote ivory-skinned blonde. The director in Jana rarely enjoyed the kind of opportunity afforded by the Dubai suite: champagne glasses on the bedside table; satin sheets glinting in softly diffused light. This was no cheap porno reel, but a James Bond-like thriller, an upscale fantasia.
Crane, she admitted to herself, hardly looked the part. His long limbs were fish-belly pale. His hair was dull, his nose long, but he was surprisingly muscular, very sturdy. Jana watched the reflection in the ceiling mirror, studied the splay of Crane's limbs as he lay across her dark skin.
There was little Jana would change about her body. She was pleased with the swell of breast and hip. She wished her nose were shorter, a touch more retrousse. More than that, she wished she did not sweat. The movie girl always looked glossy and cool in bed, during and after the most passionate of exertions. A Bond girl shimmered and glowed. Jana sweated; it interfered with her close-ups, making them uncomfortably real.
Crane snorted. Jana tightened her hand at the base of his spine, murmuring in his ear, rotating her hips slowly, encouraging him to stay longer. Film directors, she found, concentrated on the man's pleasure. Jana, the director, concentrated on her own. Why not? she thought. She had time to kill.
Crane considered himself so clever, so subtle with his veiled questions about the Scorpion, about Ian Barrett-Bone. As if they were important, as if they were the movers and shakers, the planners and undertakers of the mission. It was like the Buddha said, in the ancient Sanskrit motto engraved on the copper bracelet: The irrigators direct the water, fletchers fashion the shaft, carpenters bend the wood. The wise control themselves.
Perhaps Archer had been right to alter the last phrase, the wise control themselves, making it the wise control the world. Already he had altered the second phrase: no longer the fletchers fashion the shaft, but the archer shoots the arrow.
Jana smiled at the conceit. Then her thoughts of Archer faded and an image of Devras Sikari soon followed.
Her mood changed instantly. She faked a second, more theatrical, orgasm. When she squirmed her discomfort, he dismounted and lay beside her, one ungainly arm draped across her belly.
He seemed entirely pleased with himself, a schoolboy who'd passed his final exam with flying colors. When he caught his breath, he said, "Now, don't you think I deserve the answer to a question or two?"
"Certainly, Pierre." That's what any pliant Bond girl would reply. "But I must use the bathroom, darling."
If he had any doubt that he'd won her over, this was the danger point, this was when the man would protest, try to grab her, or flee. Jana, the director, watched the action on the overhead screen.
"Hurry back," was all Crane said.
Clanging bells announced the elevator. Turning her head to the side, Carson read a sign warning hospital staff against discussing patient care in public places. Langer had his SIG Sauer P226 under the top sheet where he could retrieve it quickly. Carson wondered whether she'd be able to reach it--Langer had convinced her she might need to.
She watched the white light as the elevator descended. Each time they passed a landing without interruption, Langer said, "Steady, Connie. We're closer. Closer."
At the basement level, Langer pushed the gurney out of the elevator, his eyes searching left and right. "This corridor leads to a loading dock," he said.
Carson stared helplessly at the ceiling.
"Ready?" Langer asked.
Her throat dry, Carson nodded.
Suddenly, Langer began to run, speeding the gurney along the endless corridor. The whoosh of automatic doors preceded warmer air, the scent of ocean, sunlight.
As they rolled down a ramp, Carson saw a black Chevrolet Express waiting at the end of the path.
She heard the squeal of tires in the near distance.
Langer raced her toward the van where Jimmy Chang, the man Jean-Marc Lespasse had christened "Wiki," waited near the open hatch. He called to her, waving his hand frantically, his eyes wide.
A black town car bounded toward the loading dock.
She knew it was someone connected to Sindhu Power. The company might be defunct but the people who
wished to keep its secrets were alive and well.
The detective said, "Here's where we say goodbye, Connie."
"What?"
"Don't think my jurisdiction includes wherever you and your people are going to follow up leads in this case. The best thing I can do is play defense here. Now get moving!"
He pulled out his SIG and turned to face the oncoming Lincoln.
The car slowed.
"Langer . . . "
"Go!"
"Thank you."
Chang jumped out and lifted Carson from the gurney, her injured body stiffening in his arms. He bundled her inside and the van took off, roaring toward the exit.
"Hey, you look great," Chang said as he settled into a seat.
Carson could only imagine how she looked standing there with no makeup, a huge bathrobe, bare feet. She felt a tingling in her right arm.
"I mean, you're just like your picture. I mean, you're pale but otherwise . . ."
The van's bay was converted to a cross between an ambulance and a computer lab, a workspace for Wiki that came complete with a cot. Along one side, three glaring widescreen LCD monitors and a couple of gooseneck work lamps nested on a long shelf twined with cables. Small green lights pulsed.
Chang said, "Do you want to get into bed? Dammit, that sure didn't come out right. What I mean . . . I mean, there's a cot . . . Because of your operation. Your arm must hurt like hell."
"I'm glad to see you, Wiki." He looked like his photo, too, not at all like his glamorous well-muscled Second Life avatar. In person, Chang was like an elongated twelve year old, with a round face, oversized spectacles and a bad haircut. "Whatever you did to that cop, you turned him into a pussy-cat. I thought he was gonna arrest me as soon as I revived."
"Langer's not bad. His people were keeping an eye on the industrial park, the one--"
That blew up. The one where Jean-Marc died.
Chang seemed to hear her thought. "Yeah, Tampa PD had information that one of the outfits in the park was a front for a bunch of Mexican narco-traffickers from the Juarez cartel. They had it under surveillance. The department even put someone on the front desk."
An image of Jean-Marc danced before Carson's eyes. "Too bad the man didn't--"
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