Then they took the main road south.
The Canopy Tower rises well above the thick jungle surrounding it. Hundreds of species of bright-winged birds, toucans, red summer tanagers, and eight different varieties of woodpeckers, flock to the forest, which is also the habitat of monkeys and sloths, according to the tourist brochures at the airport.
The lodge nestled close to the top of a steep hillside; half a mile higher was the observation platform, with a rest area below.
They encountered a gaggle of bird-watchers upon arrival. Three middle-aged couples in comfortable shoes hiking down the hill from the observation tower, binoculars around their necks, bird books in hand.
“Look!” cried one of the women, giddy with excitement at a rare sighting. “There it is again!”
A huge white-bodied bird circled, riding wind drafts high above the forest.
Cameras clicked, binoculars were raised. They were jubilant.
“It’s a rare scavenger,” one of the men explained. “Never seen in North America and rarely here.”
“What is it?” Danny asked.
“A King vulture!” they chorused.
They watched the bird vanish into the clouds, then went on their way.
“I don’t like it,” Danny said. “A bad omen.”
The accommodations were far from four-star. Small rooms, no air-conditioning, simple meals, few luxuries. They checked into rooms across the hall from each other on the same floor. No messages. No one called. “I guess we wait,” Danny said.
They did a recon of the lodge and its outbuildings, then climbed the half mile uphill to the deserted observation tower, took in the view, and memorized the narrow paths through the dense forest. Few vehicles. Other than their own, most seemed to belong to the hotel.
Back at the lodge, they ate dinner in the dining room and found themselves the only guests. The bird-watchers they had seen must have departed. The meal was simple, served with red wine.
As night fell, the jungle outside their open windows came alive with exotic sounds and smells.
Keri would love the place, Venturi thought, wondering if she’d found the rare white ghost orchid she had hunted in the Everglades.
Danny ranted against Jimmy Carter, lamenting the loss of the Canal Zone’s strategic advantage. “Worst president we ever had. Should’ve stuck to growing peanuts.”
“He’s a better ex-president than he was in office,” Venturi said.
“Nah, he runs around shooting off his mouth like a nasty little old lady with no clue what he’s talking about. Guess he’s senile and forgot the mess he made with Cuba and Iran. Remember the hostages?”
“Looks like no action tonight,” Venturi said.
Even the hotel staff seemed to have vanished, leaving them alone in the deserted dining room.
“Think they wanted us out of the way,” Danny said, “so they could go after Micheline and the others without us interfering?”
“Nothing would surprise me,” Venturi said. “We should stay in the same room tonight.”
“Bro, I’m a married man. You need to find yourself a woman.”
“I’m serious. We’ll take turns standing watch.”
“Actually, I was about to suggest that myself. Toss you for first watch.”
Danny crossed the hall and rolled up some towels and a bath mat to make his bed look occupied as Venturi checked on the others by phone. Andrew’s fishing boat had sailed on schedule. Richard was at an Irish dance festival with his tourist group.
Micheline surprised him. She was at the convent. “They were expecting me,” she whispered. “The nuns are wonderful. I feel so safe here in my little room, a crucifix over my bed and a Bible beside me. I’m glad I followed Danny’s advice. He has my best interests at heart. Is he all right? Can I talk to him?”
“Briefly,” he said, as Danny walked in and locked the door behind him.
“It’s spooky out there,” he reported. “Dark as a coal mine. The power’s out. Not a light in the place, bro. Not a sound. I don’t like it.”
Venturi offered him the phone. “Micheline wants to say hello. Guess where she is?”
“Better not be on a fishing boat,” he muttered. “I’ll take first watch.”
He sat on the floor, his back to the wall between the door and a large window, his gun in one hand, the phone in the other.
“Bonjour, baby.” His soft murmurs into the phone lulled Venturi into an uneasy sleep. He had taken his mattress off the bed and shoved it into a corner away from the windows. Lying there, a .45-caliber handgun and an assault rifle beside him, he dreamed of Miami. He awoke still feeling the city’s hypnotic pull on his psyche.
He blinked. Danny was still on the phone. How long had they been talking? He listened, drowsy, wondering what time it was.
“Love you, love your body, darlin’. If I could be there I’d rub your back and kiss you all over. What are you wearing?…I can’t wait to lie down beside my warrior woman again. I can never find the words to say how much I love you. Kiss the kids, and tell them Daddy loves them.” His words faded as Venturi relaxed and dozed again.
Sergey’s cell rang, like an electric shock in the dark, just after 2 a.m. It seemed even later. Danny silently handed him the phone. Venturi cleared his throat and shook his head before he answered, hoping to sound wide awake and alert.
“Mister Venturi? Vasily here.” The slick, oily voice sounded energized and in control. “I hope you and your friend find your rooms comfortable.”
“They’ll do. I’ve been wondering where you were. Let’s meet at last. Are you here? On the premises?” Silently, he rolled off the mattress and crouched in the dark near the window, the gun in his hand.
“In a manner of speaking. On the observation deck, half a mile up the hill.”
“Come down, we can meet in the dining room.”
“Come up. Someone else is here, an interested party eager to meet with you in private.”
“When?” he asked, aware he’d be crazy to go.
“Now. What better time?”
“It’s private down here, and easier. I’m unfamiliar with the grounds. There are no lights. It’s the dead of night in a jungle.”
“I’m from New York myself and in the same position.”
“You picked the place,” Venturi said shortly.
Vasily sighed deeply. “I thought it was of utmost importance to you to meet as soon as possible.”
“How about dawn?”
“Our interested party has pressing commitments. Time is fleeting. Does the dark disturb you?”
“No. Do you fear the light of day?”
The Russian laughed unpleasantly. “This meeting was arranged to accommodate you. If you’re no longer interested, we can revert to our prior status and see what transpires.”
“I wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t interested. But it’s foolhardy to climb up there on strange turf in the dark.”
“What strange turf? Birds are most active at dawn. Every day tourists hike to the observation deck through the dark before dawn. The trail is well marked, used by bird aficionados, tourists, even senior citizens. It’s easy to find, even in the dark. Pretend to be a tourist,” Vasily wheedled.
Venturi sighed, weary of cat-and-mouse. Danny, his face in shadow across the room, gave a thumbs-up and whispered, “Go. Go.”
“All right. Where are you exactly?”
“Up on the deck, of course, where the view is most excellent. I will watch for your approach.”
“I don’t like it,” Venturi said.
Danny smeared camo paint on his face and the backs of his hands, then passed it to Venturi.
“Didn’t think I’d be using this stuff again.”
“It’s the new one. Repels insects, too.” Danny picked up a pair of night-vision binoculars. “I’ll see how many are out there.”
Venturi was still donning his gear.
From a room above them Danny looked down on the jungle paths between the lodge and t
he observation deck.
“I’m seeing six armed between here and the deck,” he said softly into his radio. “Two moving around on either side of the main path halfway up, at that huge ficus. One stationary at the front foot of the tower, two others at three and eleven o’clock along the path, another at five o’clock about a hundred yards up. I’ll take him first.”
“Roger that,” Venturi said. “What about the tower?”
“I only make out two up on the deck, one overweight, the other about our size.”
Danny ran down the stairs taking two at a time. “I always knew we’d be shooting at Russians someday,” he said as they met in the hall. Locked and loaded, they slipped out into the night.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“Like old times, bro,” Danny whispered. He drew his knife from the scabbard. “You and me against the world.”
“Watch yourself,” Venturi said. He adjusted his night-vision goggles, looked up, and realized he was talking to the dark. Danny had already disappeared into the steamy night like a ghost.
Venturi moved stealthily up the hill, listening for sounds and movement in the jungle, most alert for what he didn’t hear, insects and native wildlife reacting to intruders with sudden silence.
Danny’s quiet voice spoke in his earpiece. “One down.”
Danny was the best. He hadn’t heard a thing.
He didn’t see the man who should have been on his side of the path halfway up the hillside. He stopped to listen, then heard whispers in the dark and smelled cigarette smoke. The two were together on the far side.
Before he could take action, he heard the thup thup of gunfire from a silencer-equipped weapon.
He heard Danny’s whisper in his earpiece.
“Three down.”
Three to go. Venturi accelerated his pace toward the deck.
A brief, low cry in the night stopped him in his tracks, unsure if it came from man, bird, or beast.
Someone else heard it, too.
He heard a murmured exclamation. He didn’t know much Russian but believed it to be “What was that?”
As if in answer, the whisper in his earpiece said, “Four down.” That had to be the man at eleven o’clock. The exclamation had to have come from the one at three o’clock. He moved toward the sound and saw him holding an assault rifle, staying low.
He fired once, and the man fell. He moved up, crouched beside him, took his gun, and checked his pulse. Weak, erratic, going, going, gone. He couldn’t be sure, couldn’t risk a light, but the dead man appeared to fit the description of Ivan Kazakov, the burglar who had triggered all of this.
“Five down,” he whispered into his radio.
“Roger that. About time. Can’t see six. Go see the Russian.”
Venturi circled through the undergrowth to the rear of the tower and threw his rope up to one of the metal supports. The hook caught, with a metallic click that resounded like an echo. He froze for a moment, then heard muffled words less than fifty yards away, a one-sided conversation as though on a cell phone.
From sixty feet above, someone on the observation deck must have called the lookout down below.
He began to rappel, hand over hand, up to the deck, hoping that Danny had his back if he was spotted from below.
He pulled himself up onto the wooden platform and lay still, listening for a moment, then began to inch forward, toward the small, slightly elevated screened-in room at the center.
When he and Danny had checked it out earlier that day there was only a rough, round wooden table and a few chairs inside.
Now a Coleman lantern, its light turned down low, and a pistol—it looked like a Russian-made GSh-18—were on the table, along with a bottle of whiskey and paper cups. An AK-47 rested against one of the chairs. Two men inside spoke in low voices as they peered down into the darkness through binoculars. Both wore suits, strangely out of place in the wilderness setting. The Russian—a bald, shorter, mustachioed man—was overweight and looked rumpled. The taller man’s attire was expensive and well tailored. His voice sounded sickeningly, gut-wrenchingly familiar, but in that moment more than two thousand miles out of context, Venturi couldn’t instantly place it. Then he did.
He kicked the door open easily and burst into the room, gun in hand.
Both men looked astonished, as though he’d dropped from the sky.
“Surprised?” he asked. “I thought you expected me.”
The paunchy Russian dropped his binoculars and lunged for the pistol. Venturi upended the table. The lantern hit the floor and went out. The whiskey bottle and the weapon spun across the wooden planks just out of the Russian’s reach. Venturi snatched up the rifle.
The other man never moved.
He and Venturi stared, their eyes locked for a long moment.
“Why?” Venturi finally asked, outwardly calm, reeling inside. It all made sense now. How could he be so wrong about someone he trusted?
He remembered Keri saying: “If it involves sex or money, trust no one.”
“Don’t move,” he said.
“As you can see, Michael, I haven’t. I know you too well.”
At gunpoint, Venturi ordered the two men to right the table, pick up the lantern, and sit down.
The Russian sat quietly, still breathing hard from his recent exertion.
“We’re here to talk,” Venturi said, his heart weary. “Tell me, Jim. You owe me that much.”
“I owe you a helluva lot more,” said his former FBI colleague, friend, and financial adviser. Jim Dance smiled ironically, lowered his head, and massaged both temples. “I wish you hadn’t spilled that good whiskey. I could use a drink right now.”
“Talk to me, Jim.”
“Obviously, you’re now aware that my career path, from the bureau into business, failed miserably.
“My wife is young and likes to live large. She wants…wants, wants bigger, better everything. Her lust for life, her enthusiasm, her acquisitiveness was contagious. She knew how to make me feel successful, as though I could work miracles. So I quit government work to do so, for her. Unfortunately, I was a better FBI agent than a financial adviser.”
“But you were successful,” Venturi said. “The big office, the assistant, the new house in Connecticut.”
“All for show. If you want to be a millionaire, live like one, look like one, act as though you are one, and it will happen. That’s the theory. That’s what the book said. Unfortunately, I gave bad advice and made worse investments.
“When I had nowhere else to turn, I laundered money for the Russian mob—our friend, Vasily, here. When things got worse I was forced to use a great deal of their money. Soon they wanted their cash or my head.”
Vasily nodded in agreement.
“Tiffany liked going to Vegas. I tried to win the money back. Remember what a good poker player I was?
“A losing streak coincided with my attempts to recoup. The cards can sense desperation. I couldn’t do anything right and lost more. Now I owed money to the casinos, the Russian mob, my creditors, and the IRS. Only one way to stay afloat. I dipped into your portfolio, over and over. Based on your prior disinterest, it seemed safe.”
“So, all those positive financial statements…”
“Bogus. Faked.” He sighed. “Right about that time Tiffany decided she wanted a baby and we got pregnant. She also wanted a lake house for weekends. I was out of my league, under pressure, with an expensive lifestyle to maintain. Remember, I still pay alimony and child support to my first wife. My oldest is starting college.
“Your money saved me, Michael. I thought I could replace it eventually. My luck had to change. But it got worse. Suddenly, out of left field, you began to draw on the money. Again and again. Spending like a drunken sailor. A house, a boat, God knows what else. I couldn’t let you keep it up. I needed that cushion. Only one way to stop you—destroy your reputation, send you to jail, frame you for the murdered witnesses.”
“Now I remember,” Venturi said. “We did
work on two of those relocations together before you left the bureau. But what about the third witness, Cuccinelli?”
“Not difficult to find. My ex-brother-in-law, still with the bureau, worked with you on it. He has the proverbial loose lips after a few drinks.”
“You killed them?”
“Of course not, Michael. I’m not that off track, wouldn’t have the stomach. That’s where Vasily and his organization stepped in.”
Vasily nodded modestly, as though proud of his role.
“They agreed to assist if it meant complete restitution with interest of their laundered money and future use of my services in their various enterprises. When I heard from a friend in the Marshals office that you’d apparently weathered the storm, Vasily sent one of his people to take your computer. We had to learn precisely what you were doing, where the money was going, in order to stop the bleeding.” He frowned. “I’m still puzzled. My best guess is that you were relocating individuals at your own expense for reasons that totally escape me. I was sure you’d stop if they were killed. It worked, temporarily.
“I didn’t expect you to react so aggressively, or swiftly. Frankly, Michael, I liked you better when you were drinking—numb, grieving, and somewhat ineffective. We were friends,” he conceded, “but things change.” He shrugged, his pale eyes suddenly wet. “Love happens. My God, Michael,” he said passionately. “You know what love is! You had it and lost it. I didn’t want to lose my wife. You of all people should understand that.”
Venturi noted Dance’s use of the past tense. “How is she?”
“The financial pressures severely strained our relationship.” His sigh was ragged. “She changed the locks and hired a lawyer. She’s seeing someone. But I’m hoping everything will settle down after this, and I’ll be able to go home.”
It was all about the blood money, Venturi thought, the settlement he’d refused to touch for so long. Sex and money.
“How can you believe that now,” he asked Dance, “with blood on your hands? You think Tiffany will visit you in prison?”
Vasily smugly raised an eyebrow.
“No,” Dance said. “Because I won’t be there. Sorry, Michael.”
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