“Hold on, I’m going to patch in Jessica.”
“
No,
you’re fucking not. Someone in that room is involved. Listen to what I’m saying: You have a mole.”
“All right, all right. Are you okay? Where are you going?”
“I’m getting out of Colombia before someone puts a bullet in my head. I need the location of the Cali airport.”
“Why the airport?”
“Terry, you can help me right now or I can hang up. Your call.”
“Are you still near the pickup site?”
“Yeah, heading west on Granada.”
“Hold on.” The phone clicked as Dewey kept the accelerator pressed to the ground. Dust from the dry Cali road shot up from behind the speeding car, clouding the air between the Mercedes and the first police cruiser, now less than twenty feet behind him.
The phone clicked again.
“You need to head east. Granada will take you away from where you want to go. In a few miles there’s a small highway, Route twenty-three, Autopista del Sur. Take it north to Highway Twenty-five. Aragón International is about five miles from there.”
“Thanks.”
“You must know something. Or at least they think you do.”
“Yeah, that occurred to me.”
“We need to exfiltrate you.”
“
Exfiltrate
me? I’m being hunted in the streets of Cali. I have two police cruisers on my back bumper. I’ll be lucky if I’m alive in ten minutes. I called to tell you you have a rat. You got some serious problems to solve on your end before we talk again.”
He flipped the phone shut and pushed the sedan’s gas pedal to the ground, sending the black car lurching even faster along the crowded city streets. He was a block in front of the first police cruiser, whose siren pierced the air. He ran the Mercedes in and out of traffic, weaving into the oncoming lane as he tried unsuccessfully to build distance between himself and the police cruisers.
At the next street he swerved left. He had a clear lane for a block and he turned and looked at the woman as he kept the car speeding forward. Dewey reached his right hand back and cupped the young assassin’s hand. It was a small hand, cold, and he held it in his own. He could see her eyes beginning to flutter as death approached. At this point, force would not elicit the words he needed. Only one thing would: Dewey held her hand, comforting the woman who’d been sent to terminate him.
Looking up at Dewey from the backseat, the woman’s eyes found his and she again attempted to move her lips. Blood oozed from the small of her neck as she exerted herself, dark red pouring down over a silver pendant that hung from a necklace at the nape of her tanned neck. She tried desperately to say something, at first softly, then louder, until Dewey could understand.
“
Padre,
” she whispered. “
Me perdóne por la vida que he vivido.
”
Prayer. Through clotted throat, now filled with blood, she was praying, asking for forgiveness. But it was not the words she said that sparked something in Dewey’s memory, rather the way she said them. He recognized something. It was the stilted, short, harsh imprint of the word
perdóne.
The peculiar accent to her Spanish triggered a recollection from long ago. Noriega. The endless weeks in the sweltering, dirty city, waiting for the order to move in and kill the dictator. He would never forget the way the locals spoke.
Panama.
FORTUNA’S APARTMENT
Fortuna kept an eye on the television in the bedroom, set now to Fox News, though the news had broken on every network. Fox showed a split screen, with live images of Capitana Territory on one side of the screen, and an eerie nighttime scene of Ted Marks’s ski house in Aspen, still smoldering, on the other side. Fortuna stared for several minutes at the screen, with the volume down. The Aspen footage gave way to the site of the destroyed Savage Island dam.
Across the top of the screen, the banner read:
AMERICA UNDER ATTACK
.
In his hand, Fortuna held a small green book with Arabic writing embossed into the leather cover. He opened the book up and removed a small photograph. It was a color photo of Esco and him, taken at the Crimea camps.
Fortuna felt the pain of Esco’s death more than he ever would have anticipated. When you share a tent with someone for a year, when you learn to plan, to fight, to kill together, when you share so much, you can never remove that bond.
But far worse was Fortuna’s fear of what Esco might have told Dewey Andreas. Esco knew
all.
That’s what really ate at Fortuna now. They’d both learned to endure interrogation, but Fortuna knew that ultimately
the one doing the torturing would always win out. And an ex-Delta could win more quickly than most.
If Esco were tortured, he could have revealed the full breadth of Fortuna’s plan, plus laid a trail leading directly back to him.
Fortuna replaced the photo and put the book back on the shelf. He turned the television off.
It was almost 9:00
P.M.
Buck should have succeeded in taking out Andreas by now. When Buck would be at liberty to call Fortuna with an update, Fortuna had no idea.
He went into the bathroom and showered, then put on a pair of jeans, loafers, and a plain white button-down. He put a gray sweater on over that. He walked down the hallway toward the elevator.
“Tell Jean to bring the car around,” he said to Karim.
“You’re going out? What about dinner?”
“I’ll be back later. Keep an eye on the news. TiVo anything on the rig or the dam.”
Karim handed Fortuna a dark gray overcoat with black velvet lapels.
The car, a Mercedes S600, glided peacefully down Fifth Avenue. At Twenty-first Street, the car turned right and drove for several blocks. It stopped in front of a large brick building, in front of a line of waiting limousines and sports cars.
It was an old warehouse that had once served as a meatpacking plant. For more than a century, the building housed a factory that took large pieces of cow and turned them into steak and hamburger that was packaged up and delivered to restaurants in lower Manhattan. Today, $365 million worth of renovations later, the building housed expensive loft condominiums and on the first floor an exclusive, members-only nightclub called “11.”
Fortuna climbed out of the car and walked to the door. A large doorman opened the door for him.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Hi, Jack. How are you tonight?”
“Great, Mr. Fortuna.”
“How’s the crowd?”
“Not bad for a Thursday. I did notice Miss Haviland is here.”
Fortuna smiled and handed him a wad of bills, a couple hundred dollars in twenties.
“Thanks, Mr. Fortuna.”
“No problem. Stay warm.”
Fortuna walked down a hallway, then went through another set of doors, also opened by a large doorman. He handed the doorman his overcoat, along with another wad of bills.
The club looked more like a large, dimly lit living room than a nightclub. Smoke filled the air. To the right, a small alcove housed a wall of liquor bottles. Fortuna walked to the bar. Behind a large block of highly polished wood, a young, pretty brunette stood, smiling.
“Good evening,” she said.
“Hi,” Fortuna said. “What’s special tonight?”
“We’re having a Screaming Eagle tasting,” she said in an Irish accent. She raised a large wineglass and poured a glass of dark maroon Cabernet into it.
Fortuna took the glass and sipped.
“That’s nice,” he said, smiling. He took another sip. He stared for a moment at the bartender. She had large green eyes. Her nose was slightly long, sharp. Her brown hair was combed back neatly.
He looked down her body, at her tight black blouse, full breasts pressing underneath. She let him look, unapologetically, appreciatively.
“I’m Alex,” he said after another sip. “Are you new?”
“I’m Darien.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too. Have you been a member here for a long time?”
“A couple of years.” He took another sip. “This is nice. I think I’ll trade it in though. I need something to pep me up. Would you mind pouring me a vodka and Red Bull.”
“Sure. What kind of vodka would you like?”
“Jean-Marc, if you have it. Otherwise, Grey Goose.”
She mixed him the drink and poured it into a heavy crystal glass. Fortuna sipped it and looked around the room.
“11” was a series of informal rooms, seating areas, large sprawling leather couches surrounding massive low-rising tables. Music filled the
room, but it wasn’t so loud that you couldn’t talk. Groups of people spread throughout the large room, sitting in the different areas, smoking. In a few areas, large plates of cocaine were passed around like hors d’oeuvres. Fortuna saw many people he knew; models, a few hedge fund types, the art community, actors and actresses, but mostly old-line New York City socialites.
He turned back to the bar. “So what’s your deal?” he asked. “Actress? Writer?”
She laughed. “Dancer,” she said. “Ballet and modern.”
“Interesting,” he said as he took a sip from the glass.
“Juilliard. I graduate in May.”
“Do you have anything lined up?”
“I’ll be training in London, under Stephen Greenston.”
“I don’t really know much about ballet.”
She laughed.
“Greenston is kind of the godfather of the modern European ballet, what they call the ‘literal’ ballet.”
“Good for you. Where are you from?”
“Ireland. A small town on the coast, near Kildare. And what do you do?”
“Boring stuff. Kind of like a mutual fund.” Fortuna took another sip from his glass. He looked at his watch. It was almost 11:00
P.M.
“I’m going to walk around a bit. Thanks for the drink.”
“Sure,” said Darien.
Fortuna walked through the nightclub, nodding several times at people he knew. At one couch, a group of three men and two women were seated.
“Alex,” said one of the men sitting on a couch.
“Hi, Joe,” said Fortuna, shaking hands. “Good to see you.”
“This is Alex Fortuna,” Joe Lombardi said, introducing Fortuna to the group. “Won’t you join us?”
“Yes, won’t you join us?” asked one of the women, a blond-haired woman in a stunning red dress. She smiled at him. He’d never seen her before.
“Please join us,” said another woman, another blonde. This one he did recognize. It was Charlotte Haviland.
“Hi, Charlotte,” Fortuna said, smiling. “How are you?”
She didn’t answer, instead reclining in the large sofa with her wineglass, smiling and shaking her head.
In front of the group, on the table, a silver tray sat. On it, several dozen lines of cocaine were neatly cut into lines.
“If you insist,” Fortuna said, smiling. He sat down next to the blond woman. She reached forward and lifted the tray, placing it on her lap. She handed him the rolled-up $100 bill on the tray.
Fortuna leaned down and Hoovered up three lines. He took another sip from his glass.
“How do you two know each other?” asked another woman, a brunette who was slightly overweight.
“Alex runs a hedge fund,” said Lombardi. “We’re in the same line of work.”
Fortuna smiled. “Ours is much smaller than Joe’s,” he said. “He’s much more successful. If you want to invest your money, do it with him.”
Lombardi laughed. “Yeah, my ass. What are you looking at these days?”
Fortuna picked up the rolled-up bill again and leaned down, doing another line. He smiled but declined to answer.
They talked for a while longer. Every so often, Fortuna turned and glanced at the bar. If she wasn’t pouring a drink, Darien returned his look.
After an hour, Fortuna stood up. He walked through the room, elated from the drugs, nicely wired but not out of control; the way he liked it.
He walked back to the bar.
“Good night,” he said.
“Leaving?”
“Yes. Early meeting tomorrow.”
“I thought you were the boss.”
He stood at the bar for a moment longer. They looked at each other, locked eyes. After a moment she averted her eyes.
“I’m done in a few minutes,” she whispered without looking back at him, in shyness, just loud enough for him to hear.
They kissed in the Mercedes on the way uptown. When they arrived at Fortuna’s apartment, she made him walk her through the entire apartment, room by room. She was astounded by the sheer size of the place, the view, the art, everything.
In his bedroom, they took their clothing off. Fortuna unbuttoned her black blouse. Her body was a hard, sculpted thing of mastery, of beauty, toned from a lifetime of dance.
He took her hand and they walked to the hallway, down to a stairwell that led them up to the rooftop. He opened the door and the cold winter air blew at them ferociously, but they laughed. They ran across the deck to where clouds of steam arose in the lit-up area where the hot tub was. They jumped in, laughing. She moved to him; they kissed. Soon they were making love in the heated water.