Sienna didn’t give him a chance to finish. Her hurried question to him included a word that sounded like proprietor. The waiter’s reply, accompanied by gestures, suggested that the proprietor wasn’t necessary to deal with this problem.
Sienna turned to Malone. “Do you remember the owner’s name?”
“Pierre Benét.”
The boss’s name made the waiter pay closer attention. Then Sienna told the waiter Malone’s name, pointing at him as she did, adding something in French that might have been “Your boss is expecting us.”
The effect was immediate. The waiter jerked his head back. A torrent of words from him left Sienna looking shocked.
“What is it?” Malone asked. “What’s he saying?”
“They know who you are, but they weren’t expecting us.”
“What?”
“The operation was canceled.”
“Jesus, not another screwup.”
“Worse than that. They think you’re dead.”
6
“Chase, this is terrible! I can’t tell you how rotten I feel about this!” Jeb said. It was twelve hours later. They were in an apartment above the café, where Jeb, out of breath from having charged up the stairs, looked heavier than the last time Malone had seen him, his blocky face redder than usual. “I was in Washington when I heard. I got here as soon as possible. I don’t want you to think I left you hanging.”
“It occurred to me.”
“Christ.” Jeb slammed his hands against his legs. “Buddy, we’ve been through a lot together. You saved my life. I swear to you — I’d never knowingly fail to back you up. Have they been taking care of you?”
Malone pointed toward a stack of used cups, glasses, and plates on a counter. “Whatever you said to them on the phone, they’ve been coming up every hour, it seems, with food and coffee.”
“My God, your face. What happened to it?”
“You should have seen how bad it looked before I got cleaned up.” Malone explained how he’d received the injuries.
“The bastard.”
“I can think of stronger ways to say that.”
“And what about …” Jeb turned toward Sienna. Malone had introduced her as soon as Jeb had entered the room, but since then, Jeb’s apologies had taken up most of the conversation. He seemed self-conscious, as if trying not to stare at her beauty. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” Sienna assessed him. “But after what happened, I’m not exactly filled with confidence.”
“I don’t blame you for thinking I don’t know my job. Please, listen to me for a minute.” Jeb ran a flustered hand through his short blond hair. “Chase, after you picked that fight with Bellasar at Sotheby’s, you disappeared from the face of the earth. The last time anybody saw you was when Bellasar jabbed you with his ring and his men dragged you out of Sotheby’s.”
Sienna hadn’t heard the details of the confrontation. She leaned forward, troubled.
“We know you were driven away in Bellasar’s limo. And after that — poof. Two days later, a body too mangled to identify — I’m talking no fingers and no teeth — was found floating in the East River. The face had been burned with a blowtorch.”
Sienna paled.
“It was dressed like you. It had your height and weight. It had a Parker Meridian room key in its bomber jacket pocket, the same hotel where you were staying. You can understand why we made assumptions.”
“Except Bellasar’s men had already picked up my luggage and checked me out,” Malone said. “When you learned I wasn’t registered there any longer, it should have been obvious the body wasn’t mine.”
“The problem is, nobody checked you out of your room.”
“What?”
“You were still listed as a guest. Your clothes and things were still in your room when we went there.”
“Somebody’s, but not mine. My bag was on Bellasar’s jet. Did you bother to compare the hair samples on those clothes with ones at my home on Cozumel? Did you try to match DNA samples from the body —”
“With what? Chase, your home doesn’t exist anymore! After you left, the bulldozers leveled it. Trucks hauled the pieces away.”
For a moment, Malone was speechless. “But Bellasar told me the bulldozers had stopped. He told me he was going to restore … ” His voice became hoarse. “Just like he told me his men checked me out of my hotel room.”
“Even then, I didn’t give up,” Jeb said. “I tried to find out if anybody had seen you get on Bellasar’s jet. No luck. I checked with the airport authorities at Nice to see if they had any record that you’d entered the country. No luck there, either. I waited for a signal from you. Nothing. It’s been five weeks, Chase. For God’s sake, we had a wake for you. I never expected to see you again. I did my best to convince my supervisor not to do it, but he finally pulled the plug.”
Malone peered down at his hands.
“I can understand if you’re pissed at me,” Jeb said, “but what would you have done that I didn’t? I swear to you — it wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
Jeb’s suit was rumpled from the long flight. His eyes were swollen from lack of sleep. His burly frame looked puffy from sitting too long.
“It’s okay,” Malone said.
“Really, I want to put this behind us, Chase. I don’t want you thinking I let you down.”
“I’m not. Everything’s fine. We’re back on track.”
“You’re positive? No hard feelings?”
“None.”
“But in the meantime, my husband’s still looking for me.” Sienna’s stark tone made clear that whatever Malone felt, she herself was not reassured. “I keep worrying that he and his men are going to smash through that door any minute. How are you going to help us?”
For the first time, Jeb looked directly at her. “It’ll be my pleasure to show you I can do my job.”
7
After nightfall, twenty miles east of Nice, a van stopped along the narrow coastal road. Malone and Sienna got out, accompanied by Jeb and three other armed men. As the van drove away, they clambered down a rocky slope to where a motorized rubber raft waited in a cove. A half mile offshore, they boarded a small freighter and set out for Corsica.
“Two days from now, you’ll be transferred to a U.S. aircraft carrier on maneuvers in the region,” Jeb said after using a scrambler-equipped radio to verify the schedule. “From there, you’ll be flown to a base in Italy, and from there” — he spread his hands — “home.”
“Wherever that is,” Sienna murmured.
The three of them sat in the dimly lit galley while their escorts and the crew remained on deck, watching for any approaching lights.
“Can I get you anything?” Jeb asked. “Coffee? Hot chocolate? Something stronger?”
“The hot chocolate sounds good,” Sienna said.
“Same here,” Malone said.
“Coming up,” Jeb said. “And after that — given all you’ve been through, I’m sure you’re exhausted — there are bunks in the stern.”
“I’m too on edge to sleep,” she said.
“Then why don’t we talk about why we’re here.”
“Can’t this wait until tomorrow?” Malone asked.
“I’m not trying to force anything.” Jeb tore open an envelope of hot-chocolate mix. “Whatever Sienna wants.”
The smell of diesel fumes hung in the air.
“It’s okay.” She exhaled wearily. “Let’s get it over with.”
“This is going to take a lot longer than you think,” Malone told her.
The freighter rocked as it passed through waves.
“Chase, I’m trying to make this as pleasant as possible,” Jeb said. “We’ll move at whatever pace she wants.”
“Then I’ll go first,” Malone said, giving her a chance to rest. “I saw two men at the estate.”
Jeb paused in the midst of pouring the hot-chocolate mix into a cup.
“They were Russians,” Malone went on. “One of them
brought in several crates of equipment via chopper. When the guards mishandled the crates, the Russian got very nervous, as if he was afraid of what might happen if something inside broke. I managed to get over to the building where the Russians were staying. I got a look through a window. The crates contained lab equipment.”
Sienna frowned, realizing how little she had known about what Malone had been doing at the estate.
“Lab equipment?” Jeb asked. “What for?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“Describe the Russians.”
“I can do better than that.”
“What do you mean?” Jeb’s look of curiosity was matched by Sienna’s.
“Have you got any sheets of paper around here?”
Jeb freed the latches on several drawers and peered inside, finally locating a pencil and a pad of eight-by-ten yellow paper.
Malone ordered his thoughts, then began to draw, calling not so much on his memory of the men’s faces as on his memory of the numerous drawings he had done of them two nights previously. He had reproduced the faces enough times that he had little trouble replicating the strokes that filled in their features. On occasion, when the freighter shuddered from the impact of a wave, his pencil missed its mark, but he quickly erased the errors and added more details.
Time seemed to stop. Only later, when his pencil quit moving and the faces were complete, did he realize twenty minutes had gone by. Silence had seemed to envelope him. Now he shoved the sketches across the table to Jeb. “Look familiar?”
“Afraid not.” Jeb held them closer to the light. “But these are vivid enough, I’m sure somebody in the Agency will be able to identify them. Vivid? Hell, they’re close to being photographs. What you just did — I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Malone turned toward Sienna. “If you’re not tired, I’d like to try something.”
“What is it?”
“I think it’ll save time in your debriefing. But we can wait until tomorrow if … ”
“No, you’ve got me curious.”
“Did the man your husband met in Istanbul ever give his name?”
The reference caught Jeb by surprise. He leaned forward. “What man?”
“I never knew the names of anybody Derek did business with,” Sienna said. “Whenever he used me as window dressing, the people he met avoided referring to one another even by their first names.”
“Istanbul?” Jeb asked. “When was this?”
Sienna gave him the details. “It was an important meeting. Derek was very tense about it.”
“We’ve been trying to keep track of your husband’s activities,” Jeb said, “but I had no idea about this meeting.”
“That’s not a confidence booster,” Sienna said.
Jeb looked down at his cup.
Malone readied his pencil. “Describe the man.”
Sienna nodded, understanding. “He was Middle Eastern.”
“Describe the shape of his face.”
She looked across the galley, focusing her memory. “Rectangular.”
“How narrow?”
“Very.”
“Any facial hair?”
“A thin mustache.”
“Curved or straight?”
As Jeb watched, Malone began putting a face to Sienna’s description. Most of his questions were based on geometry — the shape of the man’s lips, his nose, and his eyes. High or low forehead? How old was he? Late forties? Malone put crow’s-feet around the eyes and added wrinkles to the forehead.
“Is this starting to resemble him?”
“The lips were fuller.”
Malone made the correction.
“The eyes looked harsher.”
“Good.”
Malone tore off the page and started a new one, copying details from the first rough sketch, leaving out smudges from erasures and the clutter of needless lines. He went to work on the eyes, adding the harshness that Sienna had mentioned. “What about his cheekbones?”
“He often looked like he’d tasted something sour. His cheeks were sucked in.”
Malone’s pencil moved faster.
Jeb peered over Malone’s shoulder. “Jesus, I recognize this guy.”
“What?”
“When I was assigned against Bellasar, I had to familiarize myself with other black-market arms dealers. This is Tariq Ahmed, his main competitor. A couple of years ago, they agreed on which territories each could have without interference from the other. Bellasar took Africa, Europe, and South America. Ahmed took the Mideast and Asia. Bellasar cheated when it came to Iraq. Ahmed cheated in Ethiopia. But basically they got along, especially when they had problems with other arms dealers trying to take some of their territories. So what did they need to meet about? Is their truce falling apart?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Sienna answered. “My husband never talked about business in my presence. It was only indirectly that I learned how he made his fortune.”
“You’re telling me he never once mentioned a name or a detail about a transaction?”
“That’s right.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Very little. Once Derek married me, I was just another possession.”
Jeb looked frustrated. Obviously, he’d expected more.
“That’s why I wanted to give you these drawings right away,” Malone said. “They’re the only things of substance you’re going to get out of this.”
“Maybe not. Once we debrief the two of you, it’s hard to say what might turn up — something you remember, some reference you overheard but didn’t understand or think was important.”
“The sooner I do it, the sooner I’m free. First thing in the morning?” Sienna asked.
Jeb nodded.
As Sienna and Malone stood, moving toward bunks in the stern, Jeb added, “Uh, Chase, I wonder if I could talk to you a minute.”
“Sure.”
“On deck.”
“Sure,” Malone repeated, puzzled. He touched Sienna’s shoulder. “See you later.”
She returned his touch, then disappeared into the shadows of the stern.
Malone followed Jeb up the steps to the murky deck. The canopy of stars was brilliant. He couldn’t recall ever having seen so many. A cool breeze ruffled his hair.
“I need a little clarification,” Jeb said.
“About?”
“I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t my imagination. The way you’re so concerned about her … the way you touched her shoulder just now … Do you and she have something going?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not a hard question to understand. Are the two of you emotionally involved?”
“What the hell business is it of yours?”
“Look, as your case officer —”
“Case officer?”
“You haven’t had the psychological training, so let me just tell you it gets messy when an operative becomes emotionally involved with an informant. Among other things, you lose your objectivity. There’s a risk you’ll miss something we need to know.”
“You’re talking as if I work for you,” Malone said.
“Well, isn’t that what we’re doing here?”
“When I went into this, I told you it was personal. It had nothing to do with the Agency.”
“Well, you sure need us now,” Jeb said, “so maybe you’d better rethink your position. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. It’s understandable you’re attracted to her. But she’s Bellasar’s target more than you are. If you stay with her, you’re doubling the chances he’ll catch up to you.”
“Not if you do your job.”
Jeb looked toward the pitch-black sea, working to calm himself. “I’m just trying to be your friend. You’re making a mistake.”
“The mistake would be to pass up the chance to be with her.”
“Hey, I’m doing my best to be tactful about this,” Jeb said. “This isn’t the first time this kind of
situation’s come up. Nine times out of ten, when an operative gets romantically involved with an informant, the romance collapses as soon as the pressure of the assignment passes. Buddy, you’re setting yourself up for a fall.”
“I think, from now on” — Malone’s voice became severe — “you’d better assume I’m not one of your operatives.”
“Whatever you want.”
“That’s right,” Malone said. “Whatever I want.”
8
The debriefing began the next morning. It continued into the next day, until they were transferred to the aircraft carrier. They had a rest while they were flown to the base in Italy, but as soon as a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane took off from there, carrying them toward the United States, Jeb resumed the debriefing. One of the armed escorts assisted him, sometimes questioning Malone, sometimes Sienna, always in separate areas where they couldn’t be overheard. Jeb and the escort sometimes changed places; the idea was that the person being debriefed shouldn’t get accustomed to a particular style of questioning and that one debriefer might take a question the other had already asked and rephrase it in a way that opened the memory of the person being questioned.
It wasn’t an interrogation, although the polite but insistent, seemingly inexhaustible sequence of questions had aspects of one. For Sienna, the daunting task was to reconstruct the five years of her marriage. For Malone, there were only five weeks to account for, but the more he was asked to reexamine, a weariness set in that made him sympathize with how exhausted Sienna, with so much more to try to remember, had to be feeling.
From the start of the debriefing, Malone and Sienna were never allowed to meet with each other. The theory was that they might compare what each had said and inadvertently contaminate each other’s memories, making the two versions conform. Jeb and his associate were the only ones allowed to compare, eager to find inconsistencies and use them to ask more refined questions that would perhaps open new memories.
After the transport plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base, the group was flown by helicopter to a clearing in a wooded estate in the Virginia hills. There, to Malone’s displeasure, he and Sienna were kept apart again, driven in separate cars to a low, sprawling modernistic house made of metal and glass. The house was smaller than Bellasar’s. Its materials and design were not at all similar. But he couldn’t suppress the disturbing sense that little had changed, that he was back where he had started. The gardeners who showed no interest in gardening and who seemed out of place in late March reinforced that conviction — they were guards.
Burnt Sienna Page 17
