by Leon, Judith
Running past a downstairs powder room, Nova glanced outside to see the blown-up helicopter still burning, dark black soot of the fuel mixed with red flames. She heard the next explosion almost immediately as she ran toward the entry hall. That would be the poolside bathhouse.
Escurra barged across the room to his office window, yanked back the closed drapes and looked out. “Mother of God!” he bellowed. He turned and fumbled a 9 mm Beretta from his desk drawer.
Joe said, “My partner is going to take you down so fast you’ll think you’ve been hit by lightning.”
Just a bit more, Joe thought. Dammit, just a bit more and I’m free!
His instincts, agent and animal, were yelling that it had to be Nova.
Nova sprinted into the specious downstairs entry and collided with Martinez, who had come running back into the house. She rebounded, and Juan, who was with Martinez, grabbed her gun hand, snatched the gun and twisted her arm up behind her back. He pointed her own gun at her head.
“You again!” Martinez said in English. “Stupid bitch. You should have stayed away. But fine. We can use another hostage.”
“Listen, Martinez,” she said.
He wasn’t listening. They were shoving her up the stairs, all three of them practically running.
“Listen to me. I can offer you a deal. I’m with the American government and I’m authorized to offer you anything I want. Let me go. Just stop right now and leave me and go and get out of here.”
“And go where? The police are here. Where the hell can I go?”
“They’re not the police. They’re not the Brazilian feds. Not yet. They’re my men, and I can take you out of here with me. If you want, I can get you out of Brazil to any place you say.”
She didn’t know if Juan understood English. Maybe she should be offering the deal to him. They turned right, in the direction of Escurra’s office. The sound of another massive explosion rattled the glass of the windows. That should be James using the RPG to take out the fighting pit.
“Prisons in Brazil suck,” she hurried on. “Everyone knows that. Help me get away, and I’ll take you. I’ll guarantee you aren’t charged with the deaths of the Americans.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I swear, I can.” Probably not true, but maybe he’d fall for it.
Another explosion.
She figured both Escurra and Martinez should be pretty shook by now. Martinez opened the door to the office and Juan, still holding the gun to her head, shoved her inside after him. She felt like heaven had opened and shown the light of life on her when she saw Joe sitting, arms bound behind his back, on a chair in front of Escurra’s desk. A warm, liquid joy bubbled up from deep inside her chest.
“Hey,” Joe said. “Better late than never.”
“It’s never too late.”
“Shut up,” Martinez growled.
Like an unleashed bolus from a catapult, Joe sprang out of his chair and charged toward Escurra. Before Nova could turn on Juan, Escurra had raised a gun in his hand and aimed it at Joe. Nova went rigid. Time slowed and in a sudden tunnel vision that was focused on the gun aimed at Joe, she could see Escurra’s trigger finger tightening.
She waited for the shot that would blow away her life.
It didn’t come. Escurra yelled at Joe to stop, and being still too far away to reach Escurra and having no sensible alternative, Joe complied.
Escurra moved quickly to stand behind Joe, pressing the tip of a Beretta to Joe’s temple. So far, both she and Joe were alive in this crazy standoff, but the police would soon arrive and she might lose any chance to take possession of the recording. Assuming that it was still hidden in the sofa. She could not let Escurra take her away from the house.
Felipe said, “The police will be here soon. We can’t get away.”
“Fuck,” Escurra said. “Then we bargain with these Americans. We get guaranteed passage.”
“What’s to bargain, Tomas? They’ve got us. They aren’t going to let us get away. They won’t care about these two Americans. Hell, if the Americans get killed for any reason, they’ll just say we did it. They’ve wanted to get you for a long time.”
“You’re talking shit! We fight it out.”
A gunshot cracked beside her head, and Nova shrank into herself. Escurra, an amazed look on his face, dropped the gun at Joe’s head and clutched his chest.
Felipe had shot Escurra.
Nova was momentarily too stunned to move. She conquered her surprise, though, before Juan conquered his. She stuck Juan an upward blow under the forearm of his gun hand, his hand flew up, the gun cart wheeling across the room. With her other hand she gave him a paralyzing karate chop to the throat. He went down and out.
Martinez strolled across the floor to stand over Escurra, who was bleeding profusely from the mouth. Escurra stared up at Martinez with the baffled look of a hurt lover, his life ebbing fast.
“I know you of all people will understand, Tomas,” Martinez said. “Everyone can be used.”
Chapter 50
“Holy shit!” Joe stood looking down at Escurra as the Eagle sucked in his last breath. Nova rushed to the sofa where Alex said he’d stashed the cell phone. She threw off an end cushion and then the middle one.
There lay the tiny silver and neon-blue treasure. All right! She snatched it up.
Joe had shifted his still amazed gaze to Martinez. Martinez looked at Nova.
She ran from the sofa to Joe, threw her arms around him, pressed her head against his chest and hugged him with all her strength, as if that would ensure that nothing in the world could ever take him away.
Martinez said, “We don’t have time for that kind of shit! The pigs will be here soon. You said you could get me out of here. Out of Brazil.”
Hard as it was to do, she unlocked her grip on Joe. She fished out her cell phone, flipped it open and punched in Ernesto’s number.
Joe shrugged. “What’s going on?”
“Come pick us up directly behind the house,” she said to Ernesto. “It shouldn’t be dangerous. The two top men are out of the picture. The low level thugs will be puzzled, but not likely to blow you away.”
Ernesto’s “Roger” came back at once.
“We’re leaving before the authorities get here?” Joe asked.
“It’s complicated. I’ll fill you in on the fly. We need to get this cell phone to Leila in Rio ASAP.” She turned to Martinez. “Make it fast. Keep in front of me.”
At dusk in Rio, with night rapidly approaching, Nova held Joe’s arm as they strolled into the lobby of the forty-story Copacabana Beach Sugarloaf Ipanema Hotel. They registered as Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the aliases they used in the operation in Italy and for which they had passports.
After delivering the cell phone to Leila in person, they both had showered in bathrooms of the small gym at the CIA offices. Martinez was being kept in a CIA safehouse until he could be gotten out of the country. She hadn’t bothered to say goodbye to the killer and secretly hoped the U.S. government would break her promise and put him in prison forever.
In the elevator, her stomach growled. “Sorry,” she said in response to Joe’s lifted eyebrows and smile. While they were both cleaned up, they hadn’t taken time to eat.
When Joe had called for reservations, she heard him ask for a first-class suite. He’d said after he hung up, “I would have asked for the presidential suite but we’d never get Langley to pay for that.”
Now they walked into an ultramodern living room of glass and brass and white rugs and furniture. A flock of white gulls with gold wingtips soared skyward in the sculpture hung over the whitewashed stone fireplace. She wondered when anyone would ever find a need in Rio to actually use the fireplace.
“This suite is fantastic,” she said.
“Langley should be pleased at what a bargain I’m getting with their money.”
They laughed. My God, she had come sickeningly close to never hearing Joe’s laugh again. She kissed him on the cheek.
; Joe tipped the bellman as Nova strode to the sliding glass door leading onto a private balcony and opened it, letting in a balmy sea breeze. The balcony ran not only in front of the living room but in front of not one but two other rooms. The only view was of the now darkening sea, and the only way for anyone to see into any of the three rooms would be to fly by in a blimp or helicopter or light plane.
A little exploring revealed that the suite not only had his and her bedrooms, it had his and her bathrooms. Joe pulled Nova into his arms in one of the bedrooms. “Not likely we’ll be using all that bedding and linen in the other half of the place, is there?”
The kiss, wanted for so long, began with just the slightest pressure of his lips and then teasing of his tongue, and then she opened her lips to let his tongue enter her mouth.
“We have at least two days,” she murmured. “Maybe we’ll use up everything in the place. Maybe try both beds. The sofas.”
“Hell,” he said. “The beautifully carpeted floor.”
Her empty stomach rumbled again. “Hell, Nova.” He smiled and touched one of her eyebrows. “You want me to order food?”
She pulled him close again and started unbuttoning his shirt. It didn’t take him a millisecond to start on hers. They shed bits of clothing—shoes, slacks, belt, bra, underwear—on a kissing walk to the bed.
“Should I get a condom? I have one.”
“I’ve only been with one man since you, and he wore a condom every time.”
“So, there was someone after me?” He scooped her onto the bed.
“But he wasn’t you. He never could be anything like you, Joe. There’s no one else for me.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I haven’t been with anyone since you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”
“Sure you do. I never lie to you.”
With a tenderness that made her ache, that set fire deep inside, Joe lavished kisses on her. Maybe he’d been fantasizing about this moment for months. She had.
She pushed him onto his back and leaned over, letting her hair fall across his chest, deliberately giving him a dark, silky touch that she followed with kisses. She worked her kisses lower until he moaned when she took his erect penis into her mouth.
“Babe, I’ll come too soon if you do that,” he said.
“It won’t be too soon.”
She felt him let go, and she gave herself up to making him give out low sounds of pleasure. She felt his skin grow slick under her hands as she caressed every part of him that she could reach until he came with a wrenching moan and arching of his body.
“Jesus,” he said, as he relaxed.
She fetched from the bathroom a warm, wet cloth, and then lay down beside him, waiting for him to fall asleep. He liked to fall asleep after. Not long. He’d wake again in a few minutes. She would spend the waiting time visually exploring his body. Ah, yes. Looking at his body, another pleasure she had come close to never having again.
A loud boom awakened her with a start. Joe leaped from the bed, ready to get his gun. The first boom was followed by four others, and outside, four starbursts of color exploded across the night sky.
Fireworks!
She rose and they walked hand in hand to the window and watched the show. She slid the door open so they could see and hear better, and he put his arm around her. They watched the whole display, standing there naked as newborns. She’d stayed on Copacabana before and never had fireworks. Maybe this was something Rio did for the tourists in the week between Christmas and the New Year. Or maybe, she thought with a wry smile, fate had decreed to this show to celebrate the union of Nova Blair and Joe Cardone.
When he took her back to the bed, he returned the favor she’d given him.
Later they turned on music. Some pianist was playing “The Way You Look Tonight,” when Nova ordered a late snack of vichyssoise, champagne and caviar.
Joe sidled up, holding one of their white, fluffy pillows. “Feel this.”
She ran her hand over it.
He said, “Is it cotton? It’s incredibly soft.”
“Lots of fine threads,” she explained.
He sailed the pillow across the living room where it landed next to the fireplace they would never use. “Love these digs,” he said. “I’ve almost forgotten last night sleeping in a jungle. A gigantic difference in a few hours.”
Food arrived, and they sat at the table by the living room window to eat in gold-colored, velvet bathrobes. Joe said, “Maybe we’ll just spend our day tomorrow right here. I can skip the beach and the sea.”
“Works for me. And I have something else I’d like to do.”
“Which is?”
“I think I’d like it if maybe we started thinking about wedding plans.”
At first he just sat still. Then came a slow, very special Cardone smile. And then a lifted champagne glass.
She lifted hers. Her feelings about marriage hadn’t changed. The idea still scared her mouth dry if she thought about it too much. But she had said more than once, to herself and others, that to get what you want in life you have to step out of your comfort zone. No big risk, no big reward.
Joe toasted. “To a partnership for life.”
They downed their champagne, the whole glass, looking into each other’s eyes as they sealed the pact.
He stood and pulled her to her feet. “Come with me.” He guided her to the fireplace and, with his arm around her waist, threw his glass into it. It shattered in a tiny tinkling explosion.
She leaned into his side, as if to make them one, and with a second tinkling explosion, her glass joined his.
Chapter 51
Nova sat beside Joe in a situation room at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. On the desk in front of her lay today’s Washington Post, in which an article on page two informed readers that the highest court of the land had handed down its decision in the case of Sharansky versus the Government of the United States.
Suleema Johnson had been, as expected, the swing vote, siding with the lieutenant governors of seven states and the citizens of the states they represented that the space over their heads was part of the commons. The atmosphere did not belong to the government. The federal government could not put offensive weapons, or any weapons, into that space without the consent of the people. Perhaps this court, or the World Court, would be asked to decide at some future time whether space above the atmosphere belonged to any earthly government. But that would be a fight for another day.
How relieved Suleema Johnson must be, Nova thought, that she did not have to pay a devastating price for her faithfulness to her responsibility.
Claiton Pryce was also present and at the moment chatting in a corner with his secretary and Nova’s friend, Cleo Johnson. Nova had made friends with Cleo during Nova’s initial training days in Virginia, and over the years they had remained fast friends. A striking African American, Cleo was a snappy dresser with an equally snappy sense of humor. Pryce laughed at something Cleo said.
Joe leaned close and whispered, “I wish they would get on with this. I want you back in bed.”
She grinned and squeezed his leg under the table. “Patience, hot dog.”
Also in the room were Pryce’s second in command in the operations division, Dan Gray, an analyst who spoke Portuguese and the brand of Spanish used in Brazil, and a technician with a punk-style, very un-CIA haircut who was in charge of setting up a real-time link with Leila and Oscar in Rio.
“Okay,” the communications technician said. “We’re all set.”
Leila and Oscar were now visible on a big-screen TV monitor, seated side by side in the secure room at the CIA in Rio. Nothing they said could be recorded by listening devices, and whatever they transmitted would be encrypted. Pryce and Cleo took seats.
Nova and Joe had been given a transcript of the recording, both the original Spanish and the translation into English, but this would be the first time they or these people at Langley would hear the actual reco
rding. She and Joe had simply guarded the cell phone, untampered with in any way, until they had delivered it to Leila.
The Spanish translator pushed the play button on a recorder loaded with a copy of the original. Right away Nova recognized Martinez’s voice and then the voice of Escurra.
And then came the critical section of tape holding the voice of Red Dog.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Cleo said at the very moment Pryce said, “Shit.”
Everyone in the room looked at them.
Pryce said, “Goddamn, I know who that is.”
Cleo was nodding rapidly. “It’s him, Mr. Pryce. I couldn’t be more certain. I’ve put him through to you hundreds of times.”
Pryce’s second in command, Dan, asked the obvious. “Who?”
“That’s Skippy Boynton or my name isn’t Claiton Pryce. It would seem that the chief aide to our Secretary of Defense is Red Dog.”
The room fell silent, Nova thinking what probably everyone else was also thinking. If Skippy Boynton was corrupt, how far up did the corruption go? Was it possible that the Secretary of Defense himself had been involved in a scheme to blackmail a Supreme Court justice over the deployment of weapons in space?
Certainly if voiceprint identification verified what Pryce and Cleo felt to be true, the career of Skippy Boynton was not only over, the guy would spend years into the foreseeable future in a federal prison cell.
“Everyone here is to treat this as top secret,” Pryce said. “Nothing you have heard can be discussed outside this room. Leila, Oscar, you understand.”
“Absolutely,” Leila said, her head nodding in the monitor.
“Of course,” Oscar agreed.
Pryce stood and looked at the communications tech.
“You get hold of copies of Boynton speaking ASAP. I want a comparison of the voiceprints yesterday.”
Pryce stomped out, followed by Dan Gray.
Cleo and Nova hugged. “I want you to come to the wedding,” Nova said.
“Ah, honey. You need have no fear. Cleo will be there.”
