“What happened to all that money you saved?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Deuce…”
He sighed. “Okay, I ran into an old buddy yesterday and he talked me into sitting in on a game of Stud. And you know what a lousy poker player I am.”
Alex couldn’t believe it. “Are you telling me you lost it all?”
“I can probably make my rent this month if I don’t go crazy, but that’s about it. Which is why I’m begging you, kiddo. Hear the man out and seriously think about taking the gig. He won’t include me if you’re not there.”
“Then he’s a fool,” she said.
“Yeah, well, that goes without saying. But it is what it is. So do me a solid and listen to his pitch.”
Alex wanted to reach through the phone and strangle Deuce. He was a great partner and one of her very best friends, but for a smart guy, he could be such a brain-dead moron sometimes.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll listen. But only because it’s you.”
“Thanks, Alex.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m agreeing to anything. If I don’t like the sound of it, you’ll have to scrape up next month’s rent some other way. Sell your body or something.”
“Isn’t that what we already do?”
He hung up without saying goodbye. She stuffed her phone back in her pocket and wheeled around, knowing McElroy was waiting in the doorway.
“So is that how it works? First, you use Cooper to help recruit me, now you use Deuce to convince me to stay? What did you do, hire some card shark to cheat him out of his savings?”
“You give me too much credit,” he said. He had his nose in his phone and was typing something.
She scowled. “I should’ve shot you in the kitchen. Answer one question before we get into this.”
He looked up. “All right, what?”
“Why haven’t you asked me where I was tonight?”
McElroy shrugged. “Is it any of my business?”
“Is anything ever your business?” She thought about asking him outright if he’d planted the treasure box, but if he wasn’t involved, she’d just as soon keep it to herself.
“Look, Alex, one of these days you’re going to have to learn to trust me a little. I really couldn’t care less where you were tonight. All I care is that you’re here now. So why don’t you do us both a favor and put the hostility in check for a minute? I’ve got two words I think you’ll want to hear.”
“Which are?”
“Reinhard Beck.”
“The anarchist? I remember reading about him when I was kid.”
“Anarchist, assassin, child killer, friend to genocidal tyrants — take your pick. He’s done it all and he’s still doing it.” He gestured. “I just sent his dossier to your phone. The usual encryption.”
Alex dug out her phone again, saw the alert, and tapped in the password to retrieve the file. “I assume I’m supposed to be excited about this?”
“You should be. This guy’s wanted in about fifteen different countries. And thanks to you, we’ve got the exclusive on him.”
“Thanks to me?”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but my guy from DHS asked for you personally as a condition of the deal. You’re building quite a reputation for yourself. Even the snatch in Istanbul is considered a win since you already had the target in hand.”
“Don’t get me started.”
Her cell phone screen filled with a fuzzy black and white photo that looked as if it had been grabbed from an ancient surveillance video. Reinhard Beck stood in a bank with a sawed-off shotgun pointed at one of the tellers, his head turned toward the camera, giving her a full view of his face, as if to say fuck you. He was a tall, athletic looking man with light hair pulled back in a ponytail, and eyes as cold and dull as a Burmese python’s.
“Is this the most recent photo you’ve got?”
“It’s the only photo, except for a couple of school shots from when he was a child.”
She nodded, then moved past McElroy and went inside, sinking into a chair as she flipped through the surprisingly thin file for such a major player. It was little more than a rundown of Beck’s most heinous crimes, and a series of unconfirmed sightings over the last twenty years. He was a founding member of the German terrorist group known as the Black Hat Battalion. The organization appeared to have no particular political affiliation other than mayhem, and seemed to focus its talents on weapons and explosives trafficking, from which it made a great deal of money. Beck himself was known to his associates as Valac, a nickname with roots in demonology.
Lovely, she thought and looked up at McElroy. “Okay, I can see why you’d want to grab this guy. So where do we find him?”
“Does that mean you’re in?”
Alex hated being so predictable, but she had a weakness for chasing after badasses, and this one was about as bad as you could get. If things went right, catching the bastard might even make up for the last debacle. And there was Deuce to consider.
Of course, that didn’t mean she had to cop to it.
“Where is he?” she repeated.
“Not far from here. You’ve heard of St. Cajetan?”
“It’s in the Bahamas, right? Club Med for the super rich.”
“That’s the one.” He gestured to the chair across from her. “Mind if I sit?”
She did, but granted him permission anyway, and watched him hobble across the room, still clearly in pain after his battle with her grandfather’s coffee table.
Good.
“Here’s the thing,” he said as he sank into the chair. “This isn’t the usual track-and-grab job. It’s slightly more complicated.”
Alex didn’t like the sound of that. “Explain.”
McElroy told her a story about the recent bombing in New York, and how one of the people involved had led investigators to a Serbian nationalist. This, in turn, put them on to a maze of phone calls that clued them in to an upcoming meeting between Reinhard Beck and a man named Frederic Favreau. Favreau was looking for a buyer for a set of codes he’d managed to acquire, and Beck, aka Valac, was first in line.
“What sort of codes?” she asked.
“That, I don’t know. Top secret, eyes only, don’t pass Go, all the usual nonsense. I’m not sure why they don’t just arrest Favreau and be done with it, but I have a feeling our friends at State have gotten greedy. They’re looking for a twofer.”
“And for the sake of political expediency, they want us to execute it,” Alex said. “We grab Valac and the codes, and take the blame if it all goes south.”
“Right. Only not in that order.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t want Valac to have the codes in hand even for a minute. That’s how paranoid they are. Our job is to snatch the codes before we snatch Valac, make sure they’re secure, then go after the prize.”
“So we take Favreau down first.”
McElroy shook his head. “That may spook Valac and nobody wants to take that chance. This is the closest we’re ever likely to get to him.”
“Then how do you propose we handle it?”
McElroy took something from his jacket pocket and tossed it to her. “These are hot off the press.”
Using her phone for light, Alex opened an artfully forged and distressed passport and saw her photograph above the name ALEXANDRA BARNES. Tucked into the back pages was a laminated ID card with the same photo and name, showing her as a “Correspondent” for Travel Planet Lifestyles, an online travel site.
“Travel Planet Lifestyles?”
“It’s a Stonewell front,” he told her. “We’ve used it as cover for a number of ops when discretion is needed. It’s fully operational, so if anyone checks, it’s legitimate. It took some quick and dirty finagling, but we managed to snag you a couple days on the island. You’ll be doing a video profile of St. Cajetan for the site, complete with camera crew.”