by Cindy Dees
If the poverty of their bare room and lumpy mattress on the floor was any indication, the amount they were paying their hostess, a middle-aged woman, was a good year’s income for her. It was money well spent. The lady fed them three square meals a day, brought them bottled water to drink, and left them alone.
To pass the time while they waited for the call, Taylor pored over Amanda’s father’s journal. On the third evening, he closed the tattered book and rubbed his eyes.
“Any revelations?” she asked.
“He stole something. I’ve heard similar language from convicts time and time again when they’ve nabbed something and are dying to tell someone about it.”
She frowned. “What do you think he nicked?”
“He keeps referring to turquoise in here, but I get the impression he’s talking about a person, not the gemstone. Whatever it was, he believed it was tremendously valuable.”
“At the end, he ranted a lot about how rich we were and I just didn’t know it. I thought he was talking about having a roof over our heads and a family. That sort of stuff.”
“What do you know about Udarsky?” he asked. “That comes up a couple times in conjunction with whatever he stole.”
She nodded. “We know Brodin’s from there, and my father no doubt was familiar with it. Clearly there’s a connection, but I just don’t see the link.”
Taylor pulled out his cell phone with its wireless Internet connection. “Let me run it through the Internet and see what I get.” He fiddled with his phone and looked up at her, frowning. “It’s an old Russian army town in the northwestern mountains of Kyrgyzstan.”
“Do you suppose my father was flashing back to a place he spent time as a kid?”
Taylor sighed. “Who knows? Your father really was loopy by the end.”
Amanda laughed, but broke off when her cell phone rang. It was almost midnight and nobody had this number except her answering service. She picked it up and put it to her ear.
A voice-mail message of a male voice played, recognizable as that of Joe Pees-his-pants. It said tersely, “Caracas International Airport tomorrow—10:45 a.m., private charter parking at the Avinco hangar.” The phone clicked off.
Well, either the guy had kept his word, or they’d just been set up like lambs for the slaughter. And there was only one way to find out.
Fifteen
Harry Trumpman’s telephone buzzed, and he reached across his desk to pick it up. The East Coast tones of his CIA contact’s voice made him sit up straight in his chair. “Harry. How are you? I know you’re busy, so I won’t take much of your time. I’m just checking in to see what Miss McClintock and Mr. Roberts have been up to recently.”
Bull. But he played along to see where the guy was going. “At Devereaux’s request, they put a small-time drug dealer in Mexico out of business. And for the record, they didn’t kill the guy. They just suggested that he retire. Why do you ask?”
“And they stopped pursuing the other case?”
Harry snapped, “If you mean did they lay off your mole, yeah, they did.”
“Any idea what they’re doing in Venezuela at the moment?”
Venezuela? Jeez. The place was a political hornet’s nest. No place for an American and a Brit these days. “Vacation?” he replied lightly.
The CIA man sighed. “What’s the status of your agents? Are they currently active or not?”
“Why do you want to know?” Harry asked stubbornly. He wasn’t fingering Amanda and Taylor for this jackass if he could help it.
Another long-suffering sigh. “My people in Caracas may have spotted your agents. I happen to have another operation that we’ve been setting up for months coming to a head down there. I can’t have your people jeopardize it in any way.”
Harry leaned back, thinking hard. There was no doubt in his mind that Amanda and Taylor were still working the diamond case. What were the odds that the CIA would have yet another totally unrelated operation running that Amanda and Taylor had just happened to stumble across? Whatever was going on with the CIA in Caracas was tied to the diamond smuggling for damn sure.
Harry sighed himself. “Look. My agents know to leave well enough alone. I’m sure it’s purely a coincidence that they’ve bumped into some of your people. It’s a nice time of year in that part of the world, and Amanda and Taylor are probably there to enjoy the tropical weather.”
A harrumph disguised as a cough. “Just a heads-up, old friend. If your people get in the way this time, my agents are going to take them down.”
Harry said casually, “If my team checks in, I’ll be sure to pass the word to steer clear.”
“You do that.”
Harry hung up the phone. Asshole. He muttered under his breath, “Go get ’em, Amanda.”
Max handed a tissue to the young nurse sitting beside him. She wasn’t half-bad looking, even with red, puffy eyes. Another victim of his boss’s vicious mood. Ever since Biryayev had been shot two days ago, he’d been a raging lunatic. Something had snapped inside old Nikko’s noggin. The guy’d been radically pissed off when the gassing at the monastery hadn’t bagged the McClintock girl, but now his rage was in another class altogether. To be standing in front of his quarry and not only fail to catch her, but also get shot in the process seemed to have broken Nikko.
Max would be amused at the way the old guy’s nemesis kept slipping through the net, except it was no laughing matter that Biryayev was well on the way to losing his marbles. Too bad the McClintock girl’s bullet had only grazed the bone and passed on through Biryayev’s leg. The guy could use a couple months cooling his jets in a hospital to get his head back together.
A bellow from inside Biryayev’s room, and yet another nurse came bolting out. Max shook his head. If only Nikko knew how many women he was sending his junior partner’s way to comfort, he was sure the old guy would clam up and behave. Too bad Biryayev was only going to be in here for one more day. Meanwhile, Max pulled out another tissue and patted the next nurse’s shoulder. Best to get while the getting was good.
Amanda had Taylor park the van in front of the international terminal in the wee hours of the morning. Both of them needed to get into place before the various security teams that would no doubt be observing and meeting today’s flight arrived. The two of them had a long, boring wait ahead of them, but better that than trying to sneak past layer upon layer of thugs and security personnel just before Brodin’s plane arrived.
The night was thick and dark, but lights on high poles illuminated Caracas International Airport in pink halogen light. Amanda and Taylor hiked past the long domestic terminal, skirted the edge of a broad fenced expanse of concrete, and headed for the ramp that stretched east toward the ocean where private hangars serviced corporate jets.
One of Amanda’s credit cards under a fake name was duly charged and the keys to a Learjet 60 handed over to her along with a pair of laminated ramp passes. It had cost a pretty penny to get the ramp manager to open up at this time of night, not to mention making sure the plane was parked at the far western end of the ramp. But the unimpeded view of the entire Avinco ramp next door was well worth it.
Amanda unlocked the sleek jet, lifting the upper passenger door as the lower door folded down into steps. The salt smell of the nearby ocean blew in damp and cold tonight, and she could feel her hair going frizzy in the humidity. Taylor, wearing a pair of workman’s overalls, slipped into the plane and squatted in the low-ceilinged aisle. He took the satchel out of Amanda’s hands and flashed a brief, intimate smile, at her. “Is it bad luck to wish you luck?”
She smiled warmly at him. “I don’t think so.”
“Good luck, then.”
“You, too. Give me a half hour to get back to the terminal and in position, and then we’ll do a radio check. Say, on the hour.” She leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss. “Thanks for everything.”
He caught the back of her neck, holding her close for a deep, drugging kiss. “My pleasure,” he replied again
st her lips.
Oh, Lord, she could crawl inside his jumpsuit right now and spend a week or so alone with him in there. She sighed in regret. The mission, dammit. She backed out of the jet reluctantly.
Taylor glanced at his watch, all business. “I’ll talk to you on the hour.”
Amanda latched the door, sealing him in. A voluminous cotton skirt favored by natives tangled between her legs as a chilly breeze caught it and whipped it around her. She hiked briskly back to the domestic terminal and went inside the long building.
A sleepy security guard passed her through the metal detectors and did a cursory X ray of her shoulder bag. He apparently wasn’t alarmed by her cover story that this was the only time she could get a ride to the airport.
She stepped into the main terminal. It was deserted at this hour except for a janitor at the far end mopping the floor. She walked to the first bathroom she encountered, and after a brief look around, stepped into a stall.
Amanda took her time applying a skin-darkening foundation, brown contact lenses and makeup to accentuate her big, now dark eyes. Next, she tucked her chestnut hair into a sleek black wig with a small bun at the base of her neck.
Then she took the radio out of her roomy canvas purse. She inserted a wireless earpiece into her left ear and clipped the radio receiver unit that went with it to the waistband of her skirt. She turned it on. Her ear filled with loud static, and she hastily adjusted the squelch, silencing the noise. There. Better.
Next, she threaded a tiny microphone under the collar of her blouse and pulled its hair-thin wire down the front of her shirt to the radio. She blew out a couple puffs of air and the light sound carried clearly in her ear. She adjusted the volume slightly, then sat down on the edge of the toilet to wait. It wasn’t a glorious place to wait, but it wasn’t likely to be the first place a bunch of men came looking.
Promptly on the hour, Taylor’s voice sounded in her ear. “Radio check. How do you copy?”
“Loud and clear. How me?” she asked.
“Loud and clear also. Any unusual activity in the terminal?”
“No. We got in before Brodin’s people, or the police, or the Russians, or whoever else is after us set up a security perimeter. Have you checked the jet’s emergency escape hatch?”
“Piece of cake,” he replied confidently. “I’ve already practiced with it a couple times. I can have it unlatched and out of the way in five seconds.”
“Good. Get comfortable and sit tight. We’re doing fine.”
“Thank you, Mother Hen McClintock.”
“Hah! You didn’t call me that last night! I’ll call you back in an hour or when someone interesting arrives, whichever happens first.”
“Yes, dear.”
She scowled. He just loved to yank her chain. “Go take a nap,” she grumbled.
She could hear the grin in his voice. “Where? It’s like sitting in a damned drainpipe in here. There’s no legroom.”
“I’ll trade you,” she retorted. “I’m perched on the edge of a toilet, praying I don’t doze off and fall in.” He chuckled at that one. How she loved the sound of his laughter. “Talk to you in an hour,” she retorted laughingly.
And so the waiting began. A few minutes before 6:00 a.m., she was startled to full alert when she heard the bathroom door swing open. She had just enough time to grab the top of the wall behind her stall’s door, lift her legs up and plaster herself as flat as possible before the intruder walked down the row of stalls, checking for occupants.
The door of her stall stood partially open, its toilet innocently unoccupied, while she clung to the wall behind it by her fingertips. She saw a man’s shoes walk past. Thankfully, he strode out of the rest room seconds later and she dropped to the floor.
Amanda whispered into her radio, “A man just walked through the women’s rest room and checked it out. He smelled Russian.”
“Roger,” Taylor replied. A pause. “And how exactly does a Russian smell?”
“Like bad tobacco, sweat and borscht,” she retorted.
Two hours later, she radioed again. “I’m going mobile, now. I’ll call back when I can. Could be a while.”
Taylor’s voice caressed her ear. “Be safe, baby. I don’t like the idea of you roaming around by yourself with Russians crawling all over the place.”
She smiled, warmed by his concern. “It’s not like I’ve never done this before. I worked alone for ten years before you came along.”
He grumbled under his breath, “Ten years too long.”
Still smiling, she took off the radio and stowed it in the canvas bag. She took out the pieces of the ceramic pistol she’d acquired for this job and assembled them into a usable weapon.
She stood up carefully on the toilet seat and removed the ventilator grille from high on the wall behind her. She stuffed the bag into the metal shaft and replaced the grille, securing it loosely with only the top screws so it would swing open easily.
Time to leave her hideout and scope the place out a bit. She didn’t need to get caught with a weapon if someone got suspicious and checked her out more closely. The morning’s travelers had arrived and were moving toward the first flights of the day.
As she’d expected, a man followed her when she walked to the lone coffee shop that was open this early. The guy contrived to bump into her, and she felt his hands briefly on her rib cage. She smiled to herself. He apologized and wandered off while she made a mental note of his face.
Amanda found a seat out of the main traffic flow and hunkered down in it as if she planned to be there for a while. She couldn’t draw any attention to herself for the next hour.
Amanda noticed a trickle of men who looked suspiciously like American intelligence agents start arriving at the airport. In fact, she recognized one as a CIA field agent she’d worked with briefly a couple years back. Now, what in the world were they doing at this party? There was no chance the CIA guy had gone civilian with that regulation haircut and suit he wore.
The Americans scattered inside the terminal. And then another arrival captured her attention. What had to be a full-blown Russian security team practically marched through the double doors in the center of the terminal.
As they spread out, she caught a glimpse of a blond guy carrying a green knapsack peeling away from the clump of men. He looked like a typical college student. Her tail from LaGuardia. Well, wasn’t the gang all here today? The Russians fanned out across the cavernous space, as well.
Had she not been so intent on not being discovered herself, it might have been entertaining to watch the two groups play cat and mouse with each other over the next hour. But as it was, Amanda kept her head down and bided her time, watching a big wall clock crawl slowly toward ten o’clock.
On the hour, she stood up and stretched, looking around as if she was searching for something. Spotting it, she headed directly for the bathroom she’d hidden in earlier. Retrieving her bag, she quickly inserted her earpiece and rewired the microphone. She turned it on. “Taylor, it’s me.”
“Well, I hope nobody else is using this frequency,” he quipped.
“Very funny. The Russians and the Americans are here in force. Brodin should arrive soon, and I’m going out to position myself. Let me know as soon as you spot his plane and I’ll do my best to get eyes on target. Let’s see who this bastard’s here to do his big deal with.” Given the cast of players at the airport right now, it could be practically anyone. There was no doubt something huge was about to go down.
Taylor replied, deadly serious, “You got it.” Then he added lightly, “See ya later, alligator.”
“Do I have to do that ridiculous crocodile response?” she mumbled.
He chuckled, but tension vibrated in his voice. “Be safe.”
Amanda tucked the pistol in the cloth thigh holster she’d sewn for it a couple of days ago. She put her hand into the skirt’s pocket and through the slit she’d cut in it. Her hand wrapped easily around the butt of the pistol, which rested high
on her thigh. She tilted the gun, still in its holster, leveling it at an imaginary target. If she had to use the thing, she’d take the shot from the hip, through the skirt. That way she’d never show the weapon in the open.
She left the rest room, making her way to the ramp side of the terminal, to the big plate-glass windows that overlooked the airport’s bustling activity. She put on a cheap pair of sunglasses she’d bought from a street vendor a few days ago, both to shield her from the sun’s glare and to cover her face.
She was tempted to just shoot Brodin when he stepped off his jet. Her sense of kill or be killed was running high over this guy. He kept showing up every time someone nearly waxed them. And they couldn’t keep running forever from whoever was trying to kill them. Except she wasn’t a killer. And neither was Taylor.
At 10:42, according to the terminal clock, a sleek Gulfstream Six landed, rolling from west to east on the main runway. “Look sharp,” she murmured.
“I see it,” Taylor replied.
She lost sight of the plane on its landing roll out, and counted the tense seconds until it taxied into view again. She concentrated on breathing evenly and slowly as the jet made its way toward the Avinco ramp. And then it kept on going! Right past the hangar.
“Shit!” Taylor exclaimed.
“Stay with it,” she muttered.
“Could be the wrong jet,” Taylor said in her ear.
It was the right jet. She could feel it. She watched it taxi toward the domestic terminal out of the corner of her eye. She took off walking down the terminal as the plane paralleled the building. Thank God she and Taylor had split up to cover different sections of the airport just in case.
The plane finally stopped about halfway down the terminal, a good hundred feet away from the building. A marshaler threw a pair of wooden chocks around the nose gear.
She took stock. This could still work. Brodin would still have to come inside to meet his client, or the client would have to go out to the plane to meet him. Either way, she’d get a look at whom the Russian mobster was here to deal with.