“Good.” They had no way of knowing how much Baklanov might have told the Turk, but Rodriguez wasn’t taking any chances. He glanced at the man beside him. “We need that guy shut up, and we need him shut up fast. How much do they want?”
“The usual.”
“Tell them to move. I want Erkan dead by this time tomorrow.”
The night had turned so cold they could see the exhalation of their breath hanging like a white fog in the darkness. Salinger still hesitated. Rodriguez said, “What is it?”
“According to our contact at Aeroflot, Alexander and the Guinness woman were on the last flight to Berlin. The General’s not going to be happy we missed them.”
Rodriguez pressed his lips into a thin line and said nothing.
Salinger said, “You think they found anything?”
“Nothing that’s going to do them any good.”
Salinger nodded. “When do we leave here?”
“When we get the kid,” said Rodriguez, and headed for the back steps.
28
Washington, D.C.: Monday 26 October
3:00 P.M. local time
The call from Rodriguez came through when Gerald T. Boyd was in his room at the Willard, sipping a glass of Jack Daniel’s and reading over his notes for the testimony he’d be giving to Congress over the next few days.
He listened to the mercenary’s report in a tight silence, then said, “You fucked up,” his voice as sharp and lethal as a wire twisted around a man’s throat.
“Yes, sir. The targets are on their way to Berlin. I can leave my men to finish up here and go after them myself.”
“Negative. You focus on getting this fucking kid. I need you back stateside by Friday.”
“I’ll be there, sir.”
“Don’t disappoint me again, Carlos.”
“I won’t, sir.”
Boyd sat for a time, the satellite phone clutched in one tight fist. Then he put in a call to Lee.
“The representative from Washington is moving. If he’s not headed back here, I want to know where he’s going.”
There was a tense silence. “That information won’t be easy to obtain, sir.”
“I didn’t ask for an evaluation of the assignment’s level of difficulty, Colonel. I’ll expect your report first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grand Case, St. Martin: Monday 26 October
3:15 P.M. local time
James Walker strolled through the shadowy, echoing house, throwing open one set of French doors after the other to let the warm Caribbean breeze sweep through the big high-ceilinged rooms.
Walker believed in fresh air. Fresh air, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lots of regular exercise. Let the rest of the world pop the pills that earned Walker Pharmaceuticals billions. Walker himself had long ago learned the real secret to health and longevity, and it couldn’t be put in a gelcap.
He’d bought the estate on the outskirts of Grand Case, St. Martin, at the urging of his ex-wife, Catherine. But over the years he’d discovered a fondness for sun and blue skies and palm trees that would have shocked his dour New England forebears. When he finally decided marriage to Catherine was more trouble than it was worth, he’d insisted on keeping the St. Martin house, along with the houses in Miami and St. Tropez. She’d have given him anything, as long as Walker let her keep her precious daughter. Walker saw his daughter at Christmas and for two weeks in the summer, which was more than enough for both of them.
Lately, though, he’d been thinking about redoing the house in St. Martin. The place had far too much in common with his villa on South Beach: terra-cotta floors, white sailcloth-covered sofas, arcaded galleries framing achingly blue water. The architecture had seemed elegant and sophisticated when Catherine first found the place fifteen years ago. But with the proliferation of millionaires in recent years, Italianate villas had become so…common.
At one point, he’d considered building something new, something in the local style of the island, with carvings and fretwork like the old houses down in Grand Case. But no one knew better than Walker that the next few years would not be a good time to invest in expensive properties. An extraordinary number of luxury homes were about to be thrown onto the market. And there were going to be a lot less people alive to buy them.
In the end, the world would be a better place. No more endless Middle East crises. No more suicide bombers. No more money-grubbing Jews, siphoning off billions in foreign aid, competing with American arms manufacturers, and wrecking havoc on the world financial scene. But Walker was, at heart, a businessman, and he had no doubt that the coming events were going to shake the world economy. Like any good businessman, he’d been reviewing his portfolio, making adjustments to certain key stock holdings. His financial advisors found these changes baffling, now. But in the days to come his actions would be seen as fortuitous. The world was about to change drastically, and Walker had given considerable thought to how a man could capitalize on those changes. It was as if he had been given a crystal ball in which he could see the future. Only a fool would fail to act on that knowledge.
Pouring himself a tall glass of liquefied wheatgrass sweetened with apple juice, he wandered out onto the gallery overlooking the sun-struck sea below and put in a call to Boyd.
“I just got the report from my lab guys,” said Walker, settling into an upholstered bamboo chair framed by a garden of wind-ruffled palms and dark tropical foliage.
Boyd’s voice was a low growl. “And?”
Walker let the moment draw out, enjoying the suspense. He took a sip of his juice. “The shipment was still 60 percent viable.”
“That’s good.”
“Good?” Their best-case scenarios had been 40 percent. “It’s great.”
“When will it be ready?”
“We should be able to sail with it Wednesday morning.” They were transporting the shipment to the mainland on Walker’s private yacht. “We’ll make Miami by Friday.”
There was a pause. Boyd said, “It’s come to my attention you’ve been making some unusual financial transactions.”
Walker sat forward. How the hell had Boyd found out about that?
“This isn’t about money, Walker. It’s about doing what has to be done to save this country.”
Walker let his head fall back, his eyes squeezing shut as he enjoyed a moment of quiet amusement. The General Boyds of this world never could seem to grasp the fact that, in the end, everything always came down to money. Of course this was about money-money that should be going to education, to rebuilding America’s crumbling roads and collapsing bridges, to fixing a medical system that was a disgrace to the Western world. The country was flushing itself down the toilet, wasting billions and billions of dollars every month for-what? To wipe the noses of a bunch of ungrateful rag-heads in Afghanistan and Iraq? To prop up Israel? And why? Because that pissant little country was strategic to American interests? Hardly. Walker supposed there were some people who might actually believe that. Much easier to swallow the standard line than to admit that certain individuals with divided loyalties had grown so powerful that they had every politician in America falling all over themselves to kiss their asses-while all the gullible, Armageddon-obsessed Christians just stood around singing hallelujah and waiting for the Rapture. Walker had learned a long time ago that the world revolved around money. It was only dinosaurs like Boyd who thought life was about honor, and loyalty, and service.
“Don’t worry,” said Walker. “No one’s going to notice.”
“Someone might see a pattern.”
“You mean, like the interesting financial transactions that occurred right before 9/11?” Walker took another sip of his juice. “So some conspiracy nut notices and puts up an Internet site. So what? Americans only believe in conspiracies if they’re hatched in a cave in Afghanistan. If you were smart, you’d make some adjustments of your own.”