Since the tenth of September, Deaver had kept tabs on Drake, knowing he would always land on his feet, knowing he’d need him one day. That day had come.
“Here,” he told the cab driver, thrust what the meter showed and a five-dollar tip over the seat and got out. It was early in the afternoon, but the sky was so sullen with snow, it was as dark as evening. Inside a minute, Deaver had disappeared from the cab driver’s sight.
Five minutes and two city blocks later, he was ringing a bell in an anonymous high-rise, not unlike the building Drake had lived in in Odessa.
It didn’t matter what name was on the bell, he knew which button to press. The top one. Drake arranged little booby traps on the lower floors that would slow down any assault troops on their way up, and the roof was a helipad. It was his MO, and it hadn’t changed, in Odessa, in Ostende, in Lagos and now in Brighton Beach.
A security camera swiveled on its pivot when he rang the bell and Deaver raised two fingers to his brow in ironic salute. Drake had three levels of security, and it took a quarter of an hour to pass through the scrutiny of two very large, very efficient guards in full combat gear outside the nondescript door on the tenth floor. Frisked quickly and impersonally, Deaver was ushered into a large foyer, where he waited for a few minutes, certain that he was being subjected to a full-body scan.
Drake had a lot of enemies and there had been at least five assassination attempts, that Deaver knew of. None of them had even come close. Drake was a very hard man to kill.
Deaver was okay with the security measures and the body scan—he was clean. He’d be crazy to come armed with anything larger than a toothpick into Drake’s presence. So he waited patiently while whatever security protocol Drake had worked itself out.
Finally, another big, silent bodyguard motioned to him to follow, and they walked down a long corridor, stopping outside another nondescript door. The bodyguard knocked, then ushered Deaver over the threshold.
“Dear friend,” Drake’s deep voice said from the darkness, “please enter.” His English was excellent, as were his French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Arabic. Drake believed in doing his own negotiating, and to do that, he had to speak the lingo.
Dark-haired and dark-eyed, Drake was of average height, but he was immensely strong. He was a master of several martial arts, but more than that, he was an uncannily effective street fighter. His hands were the largest Deaver had ever seen, with knuckles the size of airplane bolts with a quarter of an inch of tough callus on the edges. His feet were lethal weapons, too, almost yellow from calluses. Deaver had seen him punch a man in the face with such ferocity that he did almost as much damage as a bullet would have. He’d seen Drake destroy a punching bag with one blow from his foot.
He was dangerous as hell, but he had his own crazy moral code. Drake had never been known to go back on his word, but by the same token you never went back on your word with him. If he became your enemy, you might as well start planning your funeral.
Drake was standing, pointing at a comfortable armchair.
The entire room was built for the comfort of a man. Despite the nondescript building and the barren walls and corridors, in here it was luxurious. Deep leather armchairs, thick luxurious carpets, a sideboard filled with bottles of expensive spirits, a humidor full of cigars.
Legend said that the cigars came in monthly shipments directly from Fidel himself, as a thank-you for something Drake would never talk about.
The room had the look, the smell and the feel of money and power.
Deaver sat, unzipping his jacket with a sigh, knowing he could relax completely for the first time since Obuja. He was definitely safe here. The layers of security, the quiet whump the door had made closing which meant it was blast proof, the deep, quiet luxury of the room—oh yes, he was in safe hands. They’d spent the better part of twenty years technically on opposites sides, but Deaver was on Drake’s side now, and he liked what he saw.
A cut-crystal glass half-filled with an amber liquid was at his elbow. He sipped, appreciating the aged, single-malt whiskey.
“So,” he said finally, putting the empty glass down on the side table and turning to Drake. “You’re Stateside now. Is that going to be permanent?”
Drake shrugged. “Yes, I’m in the belly of the beast, now,” he replied mildly. “We’ll see how it works out. So far I have no complaints. What can I do for you?”
Deaver didn’t presume that any more small talk would be appreciated. Drake looked relaxed, but he ran an empire worth more than many third-world countries and he was a hands-on manager. His time was very precious. Time to cut to the chase.
Deaver leaned forward. “First off, I need a laptop to do Internet research on. A used one will do, I’ll have to throw it away. But make sure it’s got a hard disk with enough RAM to do some serious searching. No fingerprints, and I guarantee I’ll purge the search history before tossing it.”
Drake nodded. “I have one here.”
Okay, first problem over. “Second, I need a new identity that will keep me for a while, until I finish my business. It might take a week, it might take a month. But not much more than that. I’m tracking someone down, and when I find him, I’m relocating permanently OUTCONUS. To Monte Carlo, I was thinking. So I’ll need a passport for later. Not U.S. And the identity has to be a little deeper. I’ll need a birth certificate that will withstand at least a casual scrutiny.”
Drake inclined his head gravely. “Consider it done. One of the guards will take you to my specialist. He has everything. He’ll set you up with a new identity that will withstand a casual check, and more. And he’ll get you a Maltese passport. Malta’s a member of the EU. With the passport and enough money deposited in a Monte Carlo bank, you can get a permanent permis de sejour. Keep your nose clean for ten years, and you’ll get citizenship.”
Now Deaver knew where the passports had gone. The Maltese embassy in Zagreb had reported 190 blank passports stolen, a fortune’s worth. So they’d gone into Drake’s hands. It was good to know.
Now came the hard part. “That’s not all. I’ll need FBI credentials and a number and someone sitting at the other end of that number ready to verify that I’m a Special Agent.”
Drake nodded. “For how long?”
Deaver’s jaw muscles jumped. “For as long as it takes. And I’m going to need some firepower, but I’ll need it where I’m going. I want to fly clean.”
Drake provided an essential service. He not only got you the weapons you wanted, “cold”—untraceable—and in perfect working order, but he could get them to you at a time and place of your choosing. Drake’s network spanned the world, and he could provide just about any weapon short of a nuclear warhead more or less anywhere. It saved trying to smuggle weapons onto aircraft, and it saved trying to track down local suppliers, particularly if you wanted to hit the ground running.
Drake sipped his whiskey and spoke calmly. “Tell me what you need and where.”
Deaver ticked them off. “A Beretta 92 with three clips and shoulder rig and a Kel-Tec P–32 for backup with three magazines, an M40 rifle with a 10X scope, carrying case and four boxes of ammo. They all need to be cold guns.”
“Of course,” Drake said, the even temper slightly ruffled. His reputation was on the line. “And where do you need them?”
The 20-million-dollar question. “I don’t know yet. When I do, I’ll let you know immediately. How much is this going to cost me?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” Drake said promptly, and Deaver barely kept from wincing. It would almost wipe him out. Finding that fucker Prescott became urgent. And when he did find him, Deaver was going to make sure he died slowly and badly, for all the trouble he’d put him through.