“Buy it? But...” She often forgot just how wealthy he was. He seldom made an issue of it, and now, looking rumpled, dusty and with two days' growth of beard rapidly shadowing the lower half of his face, he looked nothing like the suave billionaire she knew him to be.
“Even the Louvre has a price, love,” he replied with a shrug.
It boggled the mind. Really. “Did they sell it to you?”
“Not yet,” he said, and a predatory, catlike smile curved his lips and crinkled his eyes. “I will wear them down eventually.”
That kind of wealth was astounding to her. She couldn't fathom calling the Louvre, offering to buy something from the collection, then waiting until they were ready to deal. Such patience. No wonder he was worth billions.
Thinking about his power made her think about powerful men in general. The gods of commerce. Trade and commerce.
Staring at the wall opposite where they were sitting, her eye lit on a particular whorl in the pattern. Wait...
“Hold this.” She passed him the canteen she'd just picked up so she could scramble to her feet, hurry to the wall. Following the pattern she'd seen, the glyph for water, she traced it around the space, stepping over his legs when she got to them and moving back almost to the beginning of the glyph. It stopped though, three or four feet short of its beginning.
“The serpent isn't swallowing his tail,” she muttered, stepping back to look for another glyph. She found it high, near the ceiling. Pointing at it, to keep her place, trying not to lose the rhythm of it, she traced it all the way to the same juncture, three to four feet from where it began.
“Carrie?” He heard the impatience in his voice, tightly leashed, but there.
“It's a pattern, a regular thing in these ceremonial sites,” she explained. “The glyph beginsâ” She pointed to the wall, reaching up to tap the fat whorl that began one tracery. “The glyph ends.” She pivoted, her outstretched arm showing the path of the wave. “But they're supposed to connect. The never-ending circle of the elements.”
He could see it, now that she pointed it out. The ending line of the pattern curved back on itself, on its back, then wriggled down the edge of the space. Other lines and whorls and patterns flowed seamlessly across the blank space but not the ones Carrie deemed to be the most important.
With his help, she searched the whole wall. It took them most of the day, but they found the patterns for water and metal and sun. They found at least one more pattern that Carrie couldn't identify that was a continuous line. It was like a winding maze or an Escher drawing, fooling the eye again and again.
All of the main, important lines stopped four feet before they began again.
Hours passed, marked by the sun's path on the floor. They sat again, drinking to clear dusty throats, brushing their hands off as best they could to save water.
“I think the places where the pattern stops, right there,” Carrie said, pointing to the area on the wall where the patterns didn't quite meet. “I think it's important.” She didn't want to raise his hopes, or hers, but she couldn't help but blurt out her suspicions. “Dav, I think it's a door. I can't be sure,” she temporized, “but it could be.”
“Where would it lead? Would it lead out?” She heard the hope, quickly suppressed, rise in his voice. “Or just to another chamber?”
“I have no idea. But it's something, it's something.” Turning to him, she searched his face. “Isn't it? It's something. Maybe something we can use to get ourselves out of here.”
“Yes, it is. You're brilliant, Carrie,” he praised, reaching over to caress her cheek the way he had the night before. He was looking at her with admiration, with approval written all over him. It warmed her right to her soul. He was open and smiling and her heart lurched.
Love was such an ass-kicker. How could fate be so cruel to give her, finally, a man like this, a lover, a friend, someone honorable and amazing? Why would love come now, like a terrible nightmare in these conditions, when today might be their last day?
He must have seen her thoughts in her face. “What is it? Carrie?”
“Nothing, it's just...” She choked on the words. “We finally get together and you're amazing and, and, andâ” She fought for control. Throwing up her hands, she let the tears roll. “Here we are. Stuck. Probably going to die today, or tomorrow. And here you are. Finally.”
“Oh, my flame,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “Hush now. We'll find a way. We will,” he insisted when she shook her head, the gesture lost as she pressed into his chest, wishing the haven of his arms offered more hope. “Carrie? Carrie, listen to me.”
He forced her away, not to arm's length, but enough so she had to look at him. Face him.
“Are you listening?”
“Yes.” What did he want? She felt angry now. Didn't he see how hopeless it all was?
“Look over there.” He pointed to the wall they'd been examining. “You found that. Life and hope, you said, yes?”
Dav stood up, moved to the space where the patterns stopped, stretching to graze his hands over the wall, starting at the top and moving over it to the bottom.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding the edges. If it is a door, and the patterns are stopping in this space, there will be edges. Come help me.”
She struggled to her feet and complied, listlessly following his movements. “What are we doing?”
He grinned at her, his face a mask of dust and sweat. “Where there is a door, there is a doorknob, isn't there? At least in Greece there is. I may be just a poor, young Greek businessman, but even I know that.”
“You're a funny guy, Davros Gianikopolis.” She poked at his bicep again, an excuse to touch him. “Very funny.”
“I try, I really do. Now, shall we look for our doorknob?”
Finding her resolve, and feeling a surge of hope, she nodded. “Absolutely.”
Chapter 8
When Ana and Gates left the garage, they were silent, but not as grim as they had been going in.
“It's a chance,” Gates said, finally breaking the tense quiet.
“If there's any chance, I'm happy,” Ana said, steering the vehicle out into busy San Francisco traffic.
“A whiff of a chance is better than none,” Gates agreed, tapping keys on his small, high-powered laptop. He was zooming in on the high resolution photos of a small plane crossing the Mexican border at an altitude just below radar, but at a significant airspeed. He quickly ran a vector program comparing rate of speed, direction, and the size and capacity of the plane. Utilizing another program, running simultaneously, he initiated a search on the numbers Ana's former colleagues at the CIA had deciphered on the plane's fuselage.
“What are you running first?”
“Flight vector analysis, registration elimination plan.” He grinned with fierce glee, seeing the numbers start to drop into place like slots. “If there's something to find, I'll dig it out.”
“I see you grinning,” she said, and he heard the lift of hope in her voice. “What do you have?”
“The whiff just became a breeze,” he said, his fingers flying over the keys, adjusting the program to run another analysis in conjunction with the first. “This plane's got history. I've got some legitimate landings, and some not so legitimate ones.”
“Which ones are giving you that wicked grin?”
“The legitimate ones.”
“Where?” she demanded, slipping through traffic like an eel, edging past a semi truck with a whisker of space. He didn't even notice, trusting her implicitly.
“Central America. Punta Gorda. Belmopan, and a wildlife reserve. Puerto Cortés and someplace with no name just outside Tegucigalpa, which is the capital of Honduras. Then there are landings in Argentina, and in Guadalajara and Mexicali, and Villa de Ãlvarez in Mexico as well.”
“I thought Punta Gorda was in Florida,” Ana said, frowning. “What country is that? Guatemala? I know the Mexican ones. And I was in Argentina. Once.”
He made a buzzing sound. “That's a miss on Punta Gorda. Wanna go for another try, little missy? And by the way, there is a Punta Gorda in Florida.”
“Ha-ha,” she said, pulling through the gates at the hospital. “Nicaragua?”
“Schools these days,” he tsked. “Neglecting geography.”
“I sucked at Central America. Now, Europe, name your country, I'll give you chapter and verse.”
“We'll try that sometime. For now though, Punta Gorda's in Belize.” He shifted to look at her. “The others are Guatemala and Nicaragua. I looked them up.”
“Ah. Good, I don't feel so dumb. It's a smaller haystack, I guess, but still a haystack.”
They headed into the hospital, going straight to the elevator and up to the intensive care unit without a pause. Once there, Gates sat down in the waiting room, shifting slightly in the chair until he got the best wireless connection.
“Most people can't even get cell service in the hospital,” Callahan said, rising and stretching after hours sitting in the same chair.
“He's not most people,” Ana said with a smile.
“Well, duh,” Callahan said, rolling her shoulders and slipping into her raincoat. “I'm going to take a walk, get some fresh air.” She glanced toward the unit where her partner lay. “I'll be back, though.”
“Stop in the cafeteria,” Ana ordered. “Get something to eat.”
Callahan looked at her, looked away. When she looked back, the tough facade had cracked and Ana saw the fear. “I can't eat,” she said, and her voice shook.
“Try,” Ana insisted, knowing how much harder despair hit you when you were low on fuel.
Callahan swallowed, not meeting her gaze. She stood that way for a bit before saying, “It won't go down.”
With that, she hurried away.
Ana felt her own grief rise up to choke her at the words, and watched as Callahan got into the elevator and disappeared. Behind her the clacking of keys hesitated, stopped, resumed.
“What?” She said it without turning. “What did you find?”
“Another tiny piece of the puzzle just fell into place.”
“What?”
“The plane hasn't clocked in anywhere else in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Private airstrips, then, with no towers,” she summed up.
A different beeping pinged in the waiting room and now she did turn. “What now?”
“Sending an orde... texting a request to have the yacht go down from Key West to the Gulf of Mexico. If we can find him somewhere down there, we need to have a way to get him out. Carrie too.”
“Yeah, they don't have their passportsâno plane ride without a passport.”
“Well, no public planes. I don't want to alert anyone, though, by flying one of the jets down. Especially since we have no idea where we're going.”
“So use an Agency plane,” she said, knowing he had a reason not to, but not sure what it might be. Several agencies had offered the use of personnel, equipment, pretty much anything they might ask.
“Too conspicuous. Besidesâ” He looked up at her now, a frown of frustration on his face. Something wasn't adding up for him and he wasn't happy about it. He'd worn that look a lot when they first met.
That thought almost made her smile.
“Besides what?”
“You're beautiful,” he said sincerely, the frown never leaving his face.
She could feel the blush. More than a year of knowing him, months of marriage, and still he made her blush.
“Thank you. Now, spill.”
“Even if it is some family thing,” he began, shifting in the seat. She could tell he wanted to pace, so she sat down and took the electronics from him, freeing him up to stand. As she had mentally predicted, he began to pace, talking it out. “Like I said, even if it's a family thing behind the abduction, that isn't all it is. There's something else going on here and I can't put my finger on it.”
“Fact or hunch?”
“Both.”
“Lay it out,” she encouraged.
“The pickup was brilliantly planned and executed, right down to the phony film crew and the innocent bystanders supposedly watching an action flick being made. The dupes driving the cars thought it was all part of the camera work. The camera team thought they were really making a film.”
“And?”
“That's layers within layers within layers. If someone in Dav's family is working this, it's not anyone I know or have met. I've checked them all out,
all
of them.” He said that with emphasis, making her smile. He'd even checked the ones he liked, admired or both. His next words confirmed that thought. “His cousin Sophia? She has the brains and the guts, knows the film people, but she genuinely loves Dav. His cousins from his mother's side?”
“The ones who came over for New Year's?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, still pacing. “They're too young.”
“Smart enough I think, but I agree. And they're impulsive.”
“His brother's supposed to be dead,” Gates growled. “We checked, damn it.”
Ana's attention sharpened on that note. “Supposed to be?”
“Yeah. Supposed to be. Reported dead. I checked it out, Dav checked it out. I had them do DNAâthey had a body.”
“If you didn't see it dead, it may not be dead.” She stated the obvious just to get it out there in the open. “Payoff, then. DNA can be gathered from the living too, you know. What country?”
“Somalia, but I had it checked. With all associated bribes paid. They said dead.”
“Huh. So likely that he really is dead.” She wanted to pace with him, but it would only agitate them both. Instead she asked, “But, on the chance that he's not, let's play it out. This brother, he smart enough to pull this off?”
He looked at her, half smiled, but with no humor. “He's Dav's brother.”
“Got it. He's smart enough.” She took the next steps in her mind. “Smart enough, obviously coldhearted enough if Dav turned against him. Is he bankrolled enough to pull it?”
“Ah, now that's what bothers me. He had a hefty cash flow as a mercenary. His funds flipped quickly out of sight when he died, which was pretty predictable. We didn't think much of it.” He kept pacing, a little faster now. “That happens. Partners, brothers-in-arms.”
“So are you looking at him, seriously, or someone else who maybe knew him or wants Dav dead and is trying to lead us that way to divert us?”
“Ah, there's the rub, as the Bard would say. It could be any of the above.”
“Okay,” Ana said, on familiar ground now. Running scenarios was her thing and this tangle meant that they were at least onto something tangible, something that
could
be unraveled. “Let's look at the dead brother. Does he have a name?”
“Real name is Nikolas Gianikopolis, older half brother, cut out of the will by the old man, who pitted them against one another for the right to run the family business. The family biz was half legit, half shady, and Dav didn't want it.” Ana winced at that; she really didn't want to know about the shady stuff. What you didn't know, you couldn't be called on to testify about.
Oblivious to her thoughts, Gates continued. “When the business went to Dav, he brought Niko into the company in a high-level position. He felt Niko had been cheated of what should have been his, at least in part. I think he would have given Niko the business if Niko had proved that he could handle it. Truly, Dav didn't want it. He'd begun to build his fortune here and didn't want his father's shadowy legacy, his leavings.”
“But neither he nor the father left it to Niko,” Ana said, filling in the blanks immediately.
“Quick rundown,” Gates offered. “Niko picked up where his father left off on the shady side of the business dealings. Dav had shut them down, Niko opened them back up. All the while he pretended to be learning the ropes.”
“Dav caught on.”
Gates smiled. “Give the lady a prize. Dav did, indeed. Altercation ensues, threats made, curses and fists fly.” His smile turned feral. “Niko departs in acute pain and disgrace. Six weeks later, the father dies and the empire is Dav's.”
“Good reason to hate your younger, smarter, more successful brother. Especially if he beats you up too,” she said whimsically, reading between the lines that Dav hadn't lost that fight. “A tale as old as Esau.”
Gates looked blank.
“Bible story,” Ana said, shaking her head. Amazing how few people knew the old stuff anymore.
“One I missed, obviously.”
“Stolen inheritance, and all that.”
“Got it. Good analogy then,” he complimented, pacing up, then pacing back. “So, moving on to scenario two, Niko really is dead and someone who knew him is out to either gaslight Davâ”
At Ana's puzzled look, he rolled his eyes. “Tit for tat then, on Esau. You know, the movie,
Gaslight
? Where the husband tries to make the wife think she's crazy?”
The light dawned. “Right,” Ana said. “Got it. So yes, either that or someone who knew Niko learned enough from him to get to Dav and we'll be getting a ransom request.”
“More than thirty-six hours now, closing in on forty-eight. No requests.”
Gates's expression turned grim. “I know.” He paced a bit more, then continued. “Third optionâit's revenge for Niko's death.”
“Then why not just kill Dav outright? That scene at the restaurant was tailor made for a killing. And why kill the gallery clerk?” Ana demanded, playing devil's advocate. “She's a loose end I don't like. Something's there too, and we need to tug that lead.”
“Not us. That one's for Baxter,” Gates insisted.
She nodded, knowing how thin their resources were spread. Not everyone could drop all their tasks to hunt for Dav. “If anyone can, even with all he's got going on and no help, then Baxter can do it.”
“True. So then we have Door Number Four. There's something a whole lot bigger going on here.”
Ana thought for a minute, trying to get a broader, bigger view. Obviously Gates had already taken that step. “Rival?”
“Exactly. But who?” Gates questioned, his frustration obvious. “Nobody legit would do this and the black market dealers are just as happy that Dav keeps it on the up and up. Hell, he'd own them, and their businesses, if he wanted to run on the dark side.”