“Lawton Pilgrim would never stand for it. I would be out of Pilgrim Boone in a heartbeat,” Featherhorn ventured weakly.
“Lawton Pilgrim will never know.”
Featherhorn laughed. “Oh, yes, he would. You don’t know the length of that man’s reach.”
“Yes, I do. And mine is longer.”
Featherhorn stared at Bernat, amazed, as always, at the arrogance of the man. Bernat shrugged and held up his hand again, this time to stop Featherhorn from speaking.
“I know, I know. You think I am arrogant. Arrogance has nothing to do with it. I am merely stating facts. Lawton Pilgrim will not be a problem. Your integrity will be protected.”
Featherhorn did not miss the mockery in Bernat’s voice when he said the word “integrity.” He buckled, of course. Bernat had read him right. He lusted after the kind of power Bernat spoke of. If he could have that while maintaining an impeccable reputation, why not go for it? Bernat himself was living proof that it could be done.
And now this, Featherhorn laughed to himself as his thoughts returned to the present. Lawton was dying, and soon Pilgrim Boone would be all his, covering him with an iron cloak of propriety.
He could not believe his good fortune.
For a fleeting moment he wondered if he really needed Bernat and his endeavor. But he thrust that thought out of his mind immediately. Too late now. He was in too deep. Bernat would kill him for sure if he backed out. His thoughts turned to Lawton. Did he suspect anything? He didn’t like the way he had pressed him about his relationship with Bernat. Lawton was a tricky bastard. You never knew what information he had until he dropped it on you.
But it didn’t matter now what information he had, did it? He, Featherhorn, held the upper hand.
Smelling like a rose, he chuckled.
He reached his office, closed the door, and leaned against it. He put his hand on his crotch and fondled his erection. Jesus! He really needed to get laid.
He did a fast mental scroll-through of his address book. At a certain name he stopped, unconsciously pursing his lips as if savoring what was to come. He pulled out his cell phone, punched in a single number, and hit the Dial button.
“I’m waiting,” said a voice with music in it. “Good.”
He flipped the phone shut, pocketed it, grabbed his jacket, and bolted from the office.
23
The taxi pulled up at the Park Avenue address.
A liveried doorman stepped briskly from the apartment building and crossed the sidewalk to the curb. He opened the passenger door of the cab and stood aside, stiff-backed, until the passenger had paid the fare. “Any more luggage, Sir?” he asked as the man emerged grasping the handle of a burnished-leather overnight bag.
“Just one suitcase in the trunk, thank you,” the man said.
He had a French accent, the doorman noted. And, judging by the cut and fabric of his clothes, he was real French. One who spoke the French of Bonaparte.
That’s right, the doorman thought defiantly. Bonaparte! All those people who looked at him with their dismissive eyes would never dream that a mere doorman knew about Bonaparte. But history was the one subject this particular doorman had excelled in at high school, thanks, mainly, to the teacher he had had. Mrs. Robinson. She had brought history to life, recounting the stories of men of like Hammurabai, king of Babylon. Darius, king of Persia, and after him, Xerxes. Hannibal, the great military commander of Carthage. And Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France. Yes, he knew his history. Just like he knew accents. And he could tell the difference between the French of France and that other stuff that Canadians and Haitians and Africans spoke. After twenty years on the job here, with all those Europeans coming and going, why, he’d even picked up a few words from their various languages: French, Spanish, German, even Swedish. He could give the standard greetings in all of them.
The doorman removed a leather suitcase from the trunk. It matched the overnight bag the man carried, he observed. He slammed the trunk shut and tapped the backside of the car to send the cabbie on his way.
The man, meanwhile, had remained on the sidewalk, looking around and up, craning his neck as if trying to count the floors of the buildings. “Shall we go in, Sir?” the doorman said when the man brought his eyes back to street level.
The man turned to him with a smile. “Certainly,” he said.
The doorman almost stumbled as he caught his first full view of the man’s face. Well, I’ll be damned! A black Frenchman! He recovered quickly, though. At least he hoped he did. It wouldn’t do to display emotion in front of the guests. No, it wouldn’t do at all. This man could pass for white, but he’s definitely got a piece of Africa in him. Can’t fool old Oswald when it comes to that. No, Sir. Not this Oswald at all.
He smiled back at the man. Nice to see one of us coming to stay in this building. Now watch this jet-black doorman blow you for six, young fella, he thought gleefully.
“Soyez le bienvenu à New York, patron,” he said in flawless Bonaparte as they moved toward the entrance to the lobby.
The man stopped, turned again to him, and grinned. “Merci, monsieur—” He squinted at the doorman’s badge. “Oswald. C’est Oswald, n’est-ce pas? Oui. C’est ça. Merci, Oswald.”
Oswald inclined his head. “Après vous, patron,” he beamed, gesturing to the open door. Bet he thinks I’m a native, he thought, lifting his chest a little higher.
“May I ring someone for you, Sir?” Oswald said in English when they reached the reception desk. He had reached his limit with the French.
No need to ruin the impression he had made on the visitor.
“Actually, no. No one is home at this time. But I do have a key. I’ll just go up on my own,” the man responded easily in English, reaching for his suitcase.
“Oh, I’d be glad to help you with that, Sir,” Oswald said quickly, appreciating the man’s decency for not pressing on in French. He didn’t doubt for a moment that the man knew he had exhausted his vocabulary. That’s how you can tell the difference between people with breeding and people who were just rich, he thought for the umpteenth time in his Park Avenue career. Manners. True aristocrats, the true nobility, they have the manners.
“Not at all. I can manage,” the man said. He gripped the suitcase firmly as he straightened up.
Their eyes met and held for a fraction of a second. Recognition and understanding passed between them. We’re the same.
Oswald lowered his eyes first. “Would you mind signing in, Sir? House rules, I’m afraid, Sir. It is your first visit here,” he said, stating the obvious.
“Indeed, yes. And no, I do not mind signing in at all. I was informed of the rules.”
He printed his name, “François Lescault,” and signed it with an indecipherable flourish. A real European signature that nobody can imitate, Oswald noted appreciatively. He had seen enough of them in his years on the desk.
“Thank you, Sir. May I know what floor, Sir?”
“Seven. I’ve already written it next to my signature.”
Oswald glanced at the register. “My apologies, Sir. I overlooked it. Thank you, Sir. The elevator is to your left. Have a good day, Sir.”
“Merci, Oswald.”
Oswald studied the register as the man walked toward the elevator. Can’t be too careful, he thought. You have to make these strangers tell you what it is they wrote down. See if the two match. Lots of high-class scamps around these days—white, black, and in between.
He leaned forward discreetly to get another look at the visitor but the man had already stepped into the elevator. Oswald looked at the register again. Apartment 7B, eh? And he has a key. Black man, too. A Paris man. He shook his head and sighed. Oh, well. Like I been sayin’, Oswald, my boy, times ain’t changin’, they revoltin’.
“Yep. Times is just plain revoltin’,” he said aloud.
§
Half an hour later, François Lescault emerged from the steaming shower, feeling totally refreshed.
; He rubbed himself vigorously with one of the huge Egyptian cotton towels he had found in the bathroom, grunting contentedly at the tingling sensation created by the friction of the towel on his bare skin. Not that the flight from Paris had sapped his energy. He was used to traveling from one continent to another at a moment’s notice. The term jet lag had no meaning for him; no place in his lexicon. He hit the ground running wherever he landed.
He secured the towel around his waist and went into the kitchen. The owner of the apartment, Natalie Giroux, was a middle-aged, Frenchborn naturalized American citizen who liked his company whenever she returned to France. She had told him he could stay at her place for a few days if ever he was in New York and needed a place to stay, provided she was away—as she now was.
She had stocked the refrigerator with some of the best gourmet French dishes, brought in, no doubt, from some choice restaurant like The Four Seasons. He had traveled first class, but he had not eaten much during the flight and was ravenous. He decided there and then to sample all of the dishes at once.
In no time he had located plates, cutlery, glasses, and wine. He dined formally in the dining room, savoring the food and wine. As he dined, his thoughts drifted to the assignments that had brought him to New York. “Keep an eye on Grant Featherhorn, a woman named Drucilla Durane, and a man named Theron St. Cyr. St. Cyr is a Frenchman, like you. There’s plenty of local talent that you can use. I’ll let you know if and when further action is necessary,” Bernat had said.
24
Theron plowed through some of the most eclectic and protected databases, automatically filtering out results where “Alejandro” and “Bernat” occurred separately, and entries that were repeats, even if they were housed in different databases.
As far as he knew, he was one of a handful of people in the world who had access to these databases. They had been found and hacked by the genius brother of a young woman who had been abducted at Orly Airport in Paris. The girl had just arrived from Vietnam to begin her first semester as an undergraduate at the Sorbonne. She was the perfect pigeon: alone, eager, careless.
Grief-stricken and enraged, the brother had torn through the dungeons of the Web, a cyber tornado, until he came across Theron’s code name and contact information. He had made contact immediately and offered his services to Theron’s outfit. He demanded pictures of every suspected kidnapper known to Theron. He came to Theron, he said, because he had no time for the official bureaucracies that lumbered through these cases, and also because he had plans for the animal that had taken his sister, plans no authorities had any business knowing about, he added grimly.
Theron did not hesitate. The memory of Tabatha’s mutilated torso was still fresh in his mind. He e-mailed hundreds of pictures to the young man in Vietnam known only to him as “Sanspaix.” Without peace. Among them were pictures that no intelligence agency had, pictures gleaned from the files of the various underground and underbelly groups that prowled about in cyberspace chasing their respective quarries.
Theron’s torment over his own sister’s death had led him to the very bowels of Europe’s biggest cities, into the lairs of some of these netherworld groups. He and Sanspaix communicated frequently. A month after their first contact, Theron received a happy but gruesome e-mail from Sanspaix. “My sister is home. She is safe, but not sound. It will take much time for her to heal,” the electronic note said. “I am grateful to you. Below are two gifts for you. You will not hear from Sanspaix again. But I will always be here when you need me.”
Scrolling down, St. Cyr had come upon a high-resolution picture that made him look away and retch. It was a scene in the middle of what looked like a tropical jungle. It showed the body of a man who had been strung taut between four trees. He had been tied with dried sisal rope and it had cut deeply into his flesh. The photo had been taken from the front and he clearly had been whipped to death with the bloodied length of barbed wire draped across the pulpy, reddish-black mass that his body had become. He had been beaten from head to toe. Caught in the picture were swarms of giant blue flies with tiny rainbow wings feeding along the entire length of his body.
The dead man’s eyes, what was left of them, were bulbous and staring. His mouth stretched grotesquely, baring his teeth where blows had stripped away his lips. Theron knew he had had died in excruciating pain, bawling for mercy, or death.
There was no caption. There was no need for one.
When he turned back to the screen again,Theron kept his eyes tightly closed as he scrolled away from the picture. He opened them to a mug shot of a known trafficker of women and girls. It was one of the pictures that he had sent to Sanspaix.
The message was clear. This was the identity of the dead man.
Theron stared at the picture for a long time, wondering if this man had also been one of Tabatha’s abductors and killers.
Finally, he shrugged and scrolled down again. “Good riddance, bastard,” he said aloud.
He came to a link near the bottom of the e-mail and clicked on it. A blank screen appeared and stayed there. Silent. Empty. He was about to hit “Return” when words began to roll across the screen.
“Brother in pain, the link that brought you here will vanish forever as soon as you close the e-mail so be sure to memorize the addresses and passwords on this page. It is a page that gives you access to some of the most highly classified intelligence databases. Once you end a search, all record of it will vanish. Just like these words. Pouf!”
And vanish the words did. Theron accessed one of the databases and a keyword prompt came up instantly. Just for the heck of it, Theron typed in the name Ramajun Musar. The picture and description that came up made him shudder. Ramajun “Ramy” Musar was a sadist whose criminal activities no ordinary human mind could imagine.
Half an hour later he found the reason why Ramy had gone unpunished so long. Buried deep, in fine print, his name was on a list of “Special Intelligence Operatives,” or S.I.O.s.
Ramy had been an informant for American, British, French, and Israeli intelligence. Freedom was the price he had exacted from them all. Freedom, and a blind eye to his indulgences.
Theron pounded his fist on the desk for several minutes in utter despair.
How many more? he moaned. How many more of him are there?
That very night, he gave up his crusade against the abductors of women and girls. Two days later, he caught a flight to Dominica, a quiet, pristine little island in the eastern Caribbean that few tourists had discovered. He spent a month there taking stock of his life.
On his way back to France he stopped in New York for a few days and engaged a few well-positioned, trusted friends in long discussions on the U.S. and world economic trends, global politics, the state of the black America and the rest of the African diaspora, and business opportunities.
By the time he got back to France he had a plan. Less than a month later, Trans-Global Solutions was in business.
Trans-Global had brought him to Andrew Goodings, Guyana, and the two men who were standing behind him with as much shock on their faces as his.
“It can’t be! No way!”
Dalrymple’s outburst jarred the others out of the shock caused by the picture on the screen. He moved quickly from behind St. Cyr and leaned into the screen, squinting hard, touching the face of the woman in the picture with his finger.
Still touching her face, he turned to Roopnaraine. His eyes were wide and questioning.
Roopnaraine’s mouth was open and his head was moving from side to side. His eyes finally met Dalrymple’s and silently confirmed what they both knew. Yes. It was she. The picture was as clear as day. It was Leila.
Dalrymple swung back to the screen. His hand dropped listlessly to his side. He began to speak. His words came out in a pitiful stutter. “But…but….What is she?… How does she?…”
He broke off and turned to St. Cyr as if he could provide the answers. As if he could give a reasonable explanation about what this ordinary Guyanese woman, hi
s woman, was doing with the two men in the picture captioned “Alejandro Bernat, Ramajun Musar and unidentified woman.” Theron, meanwhile, had fallen back in the chair and was staring at the picture on the screen. His arms hung limply over the sides of the chair.
Finally, he turned first to Roopnaraine, then to Dalrymple. Dalrymple’s eyes opened even wider when he saw the expression on Theron’s face. “You know this woman?” Theron asked in a dull voice.
Dalrymple nodded.
Theron shifted his gaze to Roopnaraine, who also nodded. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Leila. She’s my…she is my….” Dalrymple seemed embarrassed.
“She’s supposed to be his mistress,” Roopnaraine said gratingly.
“And you know for sure that she’s Guyanese.” It was more a statement than a question.
“Yes. How can she not be? She’s from Pakaraima.”
“You’ve known her long, then.” Again an assertion rather than a question. “About a year.”
“That’s just about the time the negotiations on the Savoy deal began. How…”
Roopnaraine could stand it no longer. Compton clearly was still in shock. Just look at him, spouting out answers like a blasted machine. He could be implicating himself in God-knows-what without even knowing it. After all, what did they really know about this St. Cyr, with his state-of-the-art computer and search tricks no ordinary person could ever know?
He speared Theron with his eyes and cut him off gruffly. “Mr. St. Cyr, do you know something about this woman?”
Theron returned Roopnaraine’s stare through half-closed eyes. Roopnaraine could not help noticing how drawn he was. Three deep lines had suddenly etched themselves into his forehead.
“This woman, Mr. Roopnaraine, is what they call in the European underworld an operator. Operators usually are owned by, and operate on behalf of, someone high up in the drug trade or some other criminal activity. They kill, steal, sabotage, you name it. They are deadly but smooth, so smooth they slip in and out of normal, everyday lives, and even in and out of high society, with ease. I have seen this woman’s picture before, but I never had cause to investigate her. She was never linked to what I was involved with at the time.”
The Guyana Contract Page 27
