It was a difficult and potentially ugly situation for Ricci and his men. If they got into a pinch, there would be no U.S. liaison — no one at all — to provide a bailout. They were entirely on their own string.
You asked for it, he thought, you got it.
Thompson had turned to him from the multiplex transmitter.
“What’s next?” he said.
Ricci leaned back in his chair. The answer to that question depended on his assessment of what the Wildcat had or had not come to suspect and, moreover, what his degree of suspicion might be — which meant Ricci needed to slip into the skin of a mercenary killer and international fugitive. The scary part was that it came easily to him. So easily it had made him close to dysfunctional when he was working undercover with the Boston P.D. So easily he’d eventually requested a transfer out of the Special Investigations Unit on psychological grounds.
And here he was again. Back where he didn’t want to be. He could know his enemy, see the world through his eyes, walk in his shoes. Sure he could. It was a natural inclination that he distrusted for the lines it blurred, an effortless reach into the darkness within him.
If he were the Wildcat, what would he do?
Had the topic of conversation in the locker room been the weather or hotel food, had the two men inside been exchanging war stories about fatherhood, home repairs, deadlines, simple stuff, chances were that the Wildcat would have hardly paid attention to them, and they’d have been able to make their intended move on him as he got ready for his swim. But instead, they chose to gripe about the local taxi service, and that had seemed unconvincing even to Ricci. An American traveling to this country for a business conference, staying at an expensive, first-class hotel, was no small potato with whatever firm he represented. It was far more likely than not that a courtesy car would be waiting for him at the airline terminal. And that the driver engaged by his corporate hosts would treat him like royalty.
Okay, then. The two men’s small talk had struck a false note, and their quarry had been sensitive to it. But not all hosts were equally hospitable. It wasn’t inconceivable that they’d have taken cabs from the airport, and it wasn’t as if they’d done anything that was a tangible and conclusive tip-off — revealing their firearms too soon, for instance. Would their clumsiness have been enough to make the Wildcat drop out of sight, abandon an immensely profitable deal that was well on the way toward finalization? Or would he instead opt to take extra precautions and accelerate the pace of his talks, clinch things before leaving the country?
Ricci stared at the ceiling and thought in silence a while longer. He imagined the tactile sensation of holding the illicit diamonds in hand, their weight and smoothness, his fingers clenched tightly around the forbidden gems.
Then he sat forward, looked at Thompson and Gallagher.
“We’re shifting to our fallback options,” he said. “Let’s have the intercept teams keep close tabs on the airport and other departure routes just in case. But five gets you ten our guy isn’t going anywhere before he pays Obeng another visit.”
Ricci’s bet was on the money.
It was late afternoon when Le Chaut Sauvage appeared. Two of his bodyguards had preceded him out of the hotel, looking up and down the street, scouting for any indication of a threat. Then one of them made a discreet all-clear gesture with his hand, and the Wildcat emerged onto the sidewalk, another couple of guards trailing a few steps behind.
Minutes earlier, a line of five police vehicles had arrived at the entrance, two standard patrol cars followed by a diesel-fueled South African Lion 1, reinforced from frame to engine block with ballistic-and-blast-resistant carbon fiber monocoque. After pulling the big, armored four-by-four up to the curb, several of its uniformed occupants had exited and leaned against its heavy flank with their arms folded imposingly across their chests.
The group from the hotel moved straight toward the Lion 1. One of the uniforms standing beside it opened the rear door, and the Wildcat climbed in back between the original pair of bodyguards to have left the hotel. The second two hovered beside the vehicle until his door shut and then went to the lead police car and got into it.
Behind drawn shades in the office across the street, Ricci and his techs watched on an LCD panel as the motorcade pulled into the two-way avenue bisecting the downtown area and then rolled eastward, the pictures feeding from 180-degree trackable spy eyes suctioned to the windowpane.
Ricci glanced at the city map on the wall above the monitoring station. East was toward police headquarters, Obeng’s official seat of corruption, its location circled on the map with a red highlighter. His unofficial cradle lay west of the downtown area. Ricci had penned the words “Gang Central Station” above the blue circle that marked its coordinates.
A vertical crease etched itself in the middle of his forehead. Something wasn’t kosher about what he’d just observed. A few somethings. If the Wildcat believed he might be under surveillance, why stroll out the front of the hotel, head so openly to the cop station, make the trip there surrounded by a goddamned cortege?
“Alert the strike team at Gang Central that company’s on its way,” he abruptly said to Thompson.
Thompson spun around in his chair and looked at him. “Will do,” he said, sounding confused. His eyes went to the wall map. “But—”
“I can read that as well as you,” Ricci said. “The whole scene in front of the hotel was a dupe. Like a game of three-card monte. Soon as Wildcat reaches police HQ, he’s out the back door and into a different vehicle.” He paused, his mind racing. “We’ll keep one of the tail cars on him. Let’s have the others sit outside the cop station, make themselves just conspicuous enough so our man feels comfortable he’s outsmarted us,” he said.
Comprehension dawned on Thompson’s face. He nodded briskly and turned to the multiplexer.
Ricci chewed the inside of his mouth, still thinking hard, making sure he’d covered all his bases. Then he rose from his chair and grabbed the shoulder-holstered FN Five-Seven pistol that was hung over the backrest.
“Have Simmons and Grillo bring around the tac van,” he said, and strapped on the holster. Basics first; he would finish gearing up en route. “I’m heading out to meet them.”
Since before the civil war, Antoine Obeng had presided over his rackets from a five-story commercial frame building set back from the street on a low hill in one of the city’s quieter outlying neighborhoods. A paved blacktop turnaround gave motor access to the main doors and led to the entrance and exit ramps of its sunken parking garage. Descending behind it were three or four yards of terraced slope and manicured shrubbery, below which the neat plants yielded to a snarl of wild, thorny growth that went down another thirty feet to the bottom of the hillside and then extended outward into a small, flat, muddy barrens.