“Yeah.”
Marion seemed to sense that something was wrong. But before he could slip away, Crocker grabbed him by the forearm. He had the SIG Sauer hidden under the back of his black pullover.
“Bob, I need to talk to you in private,” Crocker said.
Marion maintained his cool. “Now?” he asked, trying to shake free. “This is a little awkward. This lady and I are discussing something important.”
Crocker wouldn’t let go. “It can’t wait.”
“Really, we have to do this now?”
Crocker tightened his grip on Marion’s arm.
“Give me a minute and I’ll meet you in the lobby,” Marion offered.
Crocker escorted him to a door in the corner, pushed it open, and punched the call button for the service elevator.
Marion started to struggle. “I don’t know what you think you’re-”
When the elevator door opened, Crocker shoved him inside, so that he stumbled backward and hit his head on the back wall of the car.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Marion groaned, holding himself up by the brass rail.
Crocker pushed the button for the basement, then pulled Marion up by the front of his suit. “I’m a little fucking upset. First, me and my men were ambushed when we got to the house in Puerto del Hiero. And when we returned to the FBI safe house, we found Lane, Steele, and two others dead with their heads cut off.”
“What?”
Crocker clocked him hard in the solar plexus.
Marion doubled over and groaned, “Maria.”
“You mean Claudia. She’s with us now, and she says it was you.”
“No.”
The elevator door opened into the badly lit basement. Crocker tried to quickly get his bearings, when Marion pushed him and bolted. But Crocker managed to stick his right foot out and trip him from behind, causing Marion to fall face-first to the concrete floor. Crocker picked him up by the back of his suit and saw blood dripping from his nose onto the front of his blue shirt.
“You’ll pay for this,” Marion growled.
“No, you will,” Crocker said, holding the SIG Sauer 226 to Marion’s head. With his left, he removed the walkie-talkie from his back pocket and spoke into it. “I’m in the basement, by the service dock, and I’ve got Marion with me.”
Seconds later the black Range Rover screeched to a stop in front of them and the back door opened. Crocker shoved Marion inside.
“What have we got here?” Max Jenson asked, leaning over the passenger seat.
Crocker: “Wait. Where’s Suárez?”
Mancini: “He’s meeting us out front.”
“Okay,” Crocker instructed. “Then find a deserted place to park.”
The CIA driver found an empty parking lot behind an office building under construction two blocks away. The workers had either quit early or had taken the day off.
The SUV sat in the shade with Mancini, Akil, and Suárez crowded in back and Crocker, Marion, Claudia, and her son on the middle bench. Marion held a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.
Jenson grabbed him by the front of his jacket and pulled him up against the back of the passenger seat. “Where’s the fucking Jackal?” he shouted. “Where’s he holding the Clark women?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit!” Jenson reached out and grabbed Marion by his wounded nose as Claudia covered her son’s eyes. “You can make this easy or real, real hard on yourself. Your choice.”
“Okay. Okay. Let go!”
Jenson loosened his grip.
“I don’t have contact with the Jackal or his men,” Marion explained. “Never have. But I think I see what happened.”
“What?”
“Ivan Jouma is a client.”
“You mean of Global Banking and Investments?” Jenson asked.
“Yes. We help him locate investment opportunities.”
“The fuck you do!” Jenson screamed, his neck and face turning red with anger. “You help him launder drug money, through Guatemalan cutouts into U.S. banks.”
“I know nothing about that.”
Jenson slammed Marion in the chest so that he rebounded hard against the back of the seat. “Don’t give me bullshit, or your financial doublespeak! You work for the enemy and were pretending to help the FBI. When you heard that these brave men were going to raid the house where Lisa and Olivia Clark were being held, you called the Jackal and warned him. Didn’t you?”
“No!”
“You lie to me, and I’ll break every bone in your body, then throw you in a secret Polish prison for the rest of your life where you’ll rot to death. I’ll grab your wife and I’ll sell her to the Russian mob.”
“I don’t have a wife.”
Jenson reared back his fist as though he was about to clock him.
Marion held up his hands and pleaded, “All right. All right. Maybe I made a mistake. But I didn’t call Jouma or any of his people. Legally, I’m not allowed to have any direct contact with them.”
“Then what did you do?” Jenson screamed.
“I told an associate.”
“You mentioned the impending raid to someone else who works at GBI?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Do I need to tell you that?”
“Hell, yes.”
“All right…Tony Alvarez.”
“You sure about that?” Jenson asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ll wager your life on it?”
“I will.”
Crocker asked, “You got your cell phone with you?”
Marion nodded. “I do.”
“Call him. Find out where he is.”
“Tell him you have some more information but think your cell phone is tapped and need to see him in person,” Jenson added.
As Marion made the call, Crocker checked his watch. Less than eight hours remained until the midnight deadline, and the minutes were ticking away.
A medium-height guy in a fancy suit, no tie, stood in front of a shiny thirty-six-story office building on Avenida Hidalgo, which was about a quarter mile away from the FBI safe house where Lane and the others had been brutally executed. He looked pleased with himself, listening to his iPod and looking down at his Sony Ericsson Black Diamond, then up at two tight-suited señoritas strolling past on stacked heels.
When he smiled, they smiled back.
“That’s him,” Marion said, pointing.
Crocker thought he seemed like a typical banker-bland looking, self-important, expensively dressed.
The CIA driver braked the Range Rover in the bus lane, and Suárez and Crocker got out, grabbed the guy by the front of his suit, and threw him into the front passenger seat.
By the time Crocker slid back in, Jenson already had his hand around Alvarez’s throat and was choking him so hard he couldn’t speak.
So Crocker said, “Max, ease up. Let him talk.”
Alvarez coughed, looked deeply offended, and feigned innocence at first. But when Jenson explained who he was, and how he was so pissed off he was going to order the men in the SUV to beat Alvarez to a bloody pulp and then throw his useless body into a secret Polish prison for the rest of his life, Alvarez started to talk.
He admitted that he had called one of the Jackal’s associates and told him about the upcoming raid.
“Where is he now?” Jenson asked, showing remarkable restraint this time, Crocker thought, because he wanted to punch Alvarez in the face himself.
“I don’t know,” Alvarez said. “I really don’t. And I don’t think it’s fair to hold me accountable for what happened, because I had nothing to do with that. I was simply passing information on to a client.”
Without warning, Jenson reared his right fist back and smacked Alvarez in the mouth so hard that his head slammed against the passenger-side window.
“I really don’t like you,” Jenson said, grabbing him by the neck and getting ready to smack him again as Claudia shielded her son’s eyes. “You’ve got five minutes to find out where the Jackal is and where he’s holding the Clark women before I tell these men to take you to the top of the building and push you off.”