What she said made sense. Gabriel didn’t like it, but he removed his jacket, stripped off the shoulder rig, and placed it and the Colt under the jeep’s seat. Cierra locked up the vehicle.
Lanterns burned in the limbs of the trees that overhung the driveway. The sweet, heavy fragrance of flowers filled the air. Along with the floral scent, the place reeked of money.
His dark suit wasn’t quite good enough for a cocktail party in luxurious surroundings like this, Gabriel thought, but it would do. Particularly with Cierra on his arm. No one would be looking at him.
After a couple of tough-looking bodyguards waved metal detector wands over him, as Cierra had warned would happen, a poker-faced butler who wouldn’t have been out of place in a British manor let them in the door and escorted them into the ballroom where the party was taking place. It was crowded with exactly the sort of beautiful, brittle people he’d seen a day earlier at the Met in New York. Only with better tans. Gabriel could never understand how Michael could bear to spend his days in circles like these. Gabriel could move among them easily enough…but he didn’t like them.
“There’s Señor Esparza,” Cierra said. She nodded toward a man making his way through the crowd toward them. Like Moses at the Red Sea, the mass of people parted before him, indicating that no matter how much wealth was in this room tonight, this man was the richest, or the most powerful, or very likely both.
He was also, Gabriel thought as he noted the man’s gray hair and distinguished appearance and the two moles above his narrow mustache, the man Stephen Krakowski had described that morning at the Olustee battlefield—the one who had accompanied the broken-nosed killer on a quest for information about General Granville Fordham Fargo.
Chapter 9
“Cierra!” Señor Vladimir Antonio de la Esparza said with a big smile of welcome. “I was afraid you weren’t going to be able to make it!”
“I was delayed,” she said as he put his hands on her bare shoulders and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
“No trouble, I hope.”
“No, just business.” That was an outright lie, of course, and Esparza would realize it if the police showed up looking to question her about Carlos’s murder. Gabriel hoped it would take them a while to get around to that.
Of course, Esparza might already know it was a lie—if he was the one who’d sent the assassins to the museum in the first place.
Cierra turned and held out a hand toward Gabriel. “I hope it’s all right that I brought along a colleague of mine. This is Señor Gabriel Hunt.”
Esparza’s rather bushy gray eyebrows rose. “Of the Hunt Foundation?”
“You may be thinking of my brother, Michael, Señor Esparza,” Gabriel said coolly. “I don’t really get involved.”
“You are too modest,” Esparza said. “My business is communications, but my passion is history and archeology. I’ve been fortunate enough to help numerous museums acquire items for their collections, including our dear Cierra’s, of course, and naturally in the course of those efforts I’ve heard of both the Hunt Foundation and the illustrious Gabriel Hunt.”
He put out a hand. Gabriel shook it. “Illustrious,” Gabriel said. “That’s a new one for me. More often I hear ‘notorious.’”
“Well…one has to be a bit of a pirate to be a successful explorer, eh?” Esparza grinned. “Welcome to my villa, Señor Hunt. Please, make yourself at home.”
“Gracias, Señor Esparza.”
Waiters were moving around the room, carrying trays of drinks. Gabriel’s jaw tightened as Esparza motioned one of the men over. This reminded him too much of what had happened at the Metropolitan Museum the night before. These waiters wore white jackets instead of red, but still, their presence made him tense.
He reminded himself that waiters carried drinks around cocktail parties all the time. It didn’t have to mean anything.
He accepted a margarita from one waiter and sipped it while Cierra made small talk with Esparza. From her appearance and manner you’d never have guessed that she’d gone through a shootout and a friend’s murder less than an hour earlier. He supposed that Cierra’s upbringing in a dangerous area like Chiapas had given her steadier nerves than most people.
Esparza turned to Gabriel and asked, “Are you going to be doing business with the museum, Señor Hunt? Selling some artifact you’ve acquired, perhaps?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve recently put my hands on a nice item Dr. Almanzar might be interested in,” Gabriel replied. “Just last night, in fact.”
Was that a flicker of something more than polite interest in Esparza’s eyes, Gabriel asked himself, or just his imagination?
For a man who didn’t believe in coincidences, he thought, he was asking himself to accept a rather large one: that Cierra would bring him right to the home of the man who was behind the bloody attack at the Met and the ensuing attempts on Gabriel’s own life.
And yet perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence at all. The whole affair was tied in with those flags of General Fargo’s, and the flags’ trail led right to the Museum of the Americas. Esparza’s connection with the museum could have put him onto something that had prompted the violence. Esparza could have found out somehow that Mariella was taking the general’s personal standard to New York and been willing to go to any lengths to stop her from turning it over to the Hunt Foundation.
The hidden flags seemed to burn against Gabriel’s back as that thought went through his head. To incite the ruthless brutality Gabriel had seen since last night, the flags had to be very valuable indeed.
He wondered what Esparza would do if he knew that Gabriel had the flags on him at this very moment.
He didn’t intend for the man to find out. It would be better, Gabriel told himself, if he and Cierra got out of here as soon as they reasonably could.
“You and Cierra are in negotiations concerning this item, then?” Esparza asked, his smile never wavering.
“You could say that. My apologies for keeping her away from your little get-together until now, señor.”
Esparza waved a hand. “De nada. She is here now, blessing us with her loveliness, and this is all that matters.” He reached over, slid that same hand up Cierra’s bare arm, leaned closer to her. “Is this not so, querida?”
Her smile shrank a little, Gabriel thought. He wondered how far she’d had to go in the past to secure Esparza’s help for the museum…not that it was any of his business.
“You’re too kind, Vladimir,” she murmured.
“Not at all, not at all. Your beauty outshines that of any woman here…and your intelligence is far above theirs as well.” He looked at Gabriel. “I’ve always believed that intelligent women are the most attractive, Señor Hunt. What about you?”
“I can’t argue with that,” Gabriel said. “Unfortunately, Dr. Almanzar and I have to continue our business, so we’ll be leaving—”
“So soon?” Gabriel might have been mistaken, but he thought that Esparza’s grip tightened on Cierra’s arm. She kept her face carefully impassive, though. “That is a great pity. Are you certain it cannot wait until tomorrow?”
“I’m sure,” Gabriel said. His nerves had been crawling ever since he entered this luxurious villa, and by now his instincts were yelling for him to get out.
“Well, one cannot stand in the way of history, can one?” Esparza leaned in and kissed Cierra again on the cheek, then shook hands with Gabriel. “Farewell, Señor Hunt. I hope to see you again soon.”
“I’m sure we’ll run into each other,” Gabriel said. He took hold of Cierra’s other arm, and for a second she was caught between them, as if they were about to have a tug of war over her.