Payoff

by Douglas Corleone

  I made it to my feet just as the guard on the right came within striking distance.

  I dodged his right blow. As I did, I bent back the wrist on my right arm, keeping my hand close to my body. I stepped forward with my left foot and thrust my palm directly up under the guard’s chin. I rotated my right hip and threw my body weight into the strike. When his head snapped back over ninety degrees, I realized I’d overcompensated for my injuries. As the guard hit the ground, I felt in my chest that I’d inadvertently killed him.

  I swung my head around in time to see the kid flee the room. The other guard must have run out directly ahead of him.

  I looked down at the fallen guard, knelt, and searched for a pulse—but he was gone.

  I quickly undressed him. I then pulled on his pants and slipped into his shirt without buttoning it. His shoes were a bit tight, but they’d do.

  As I ran toward the door, I looked back and saw the diamond pendant on the floor. I knelt down, stuffed it in my pants pocket, and took off.

  Wherever I was, the place was deserted. The walls were an institutional green, the floor a yellowed linoleum covered in black streaks. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, reminding me of a particularly eerie medical clinic in Minsk.

  Through a cruddy window, I could see the sun slowly rising in a cloudless sky.

  I checked room after room, looking for Mariana and Tejata. I shouted their names but received no response.

  When I finally found Tejata, my heart nearly stopped. He was naked and beaten all to hell. As I ran into the room, I was certain he was dead.

  But no, he was breathing.

  I knew I couldn’t move him, so I left him for the time being.

  In the next room over, I found Mariana. She was fully clothed and appeared more startled than anything else. She looked fine and she confirmed it after a fleeting embrace.

  “We need to get the hell out of here,” I said. “But first I’ve got to find a phone and call an ambulance for Jorge. He’s in a bad way.”

  She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from my battered face.

  Finally, she said, “There is an office across the hall. I saw it when we were dragged in.”

  We shot across the hallway and rushed over to an empty metal desk. I picked up the phone and sighed with relief when I heard a dial tone. My racing mind tried to summon the emergency number in Venezuela.

  “One-seven-one,” Mariana shouted, pointing at a piece of paper tacked to the wall.

  I punched in the numbers, and a female voice instantly came on the line.

  “Hola, Centro de Emergencia. Cómo se llama, por favor?”

  I searched my mind, but in this condition, the words weren’t going to make it to my tongue. I handed Mariana the receiver, said, “Better you talk to her.”

  As Mariana spoke to the dispatcher, I spotted my thrift-store clothes balled up on a plastic orange seat. Beneath the clothes, I spotted my gun and the passports. I tucked the gun in my waistband, then emptied my pockets and stuffed the passports, my wallet, and BlackBerry into the pants I was wearing. I buttoned a few buttons on the shirt as I stared out the window.

  At first I saw nothing but the onset of dawn.

  Then I spotted movement. The kid and his guard were running toward a large black vehicle. It looked exactly like the Hilux I’d driven in Colombia.

  I turned to Mariana and tried to hurry her with my eyes.

  She said something into the phone, then set the receiver gently on the desk. “They will trace the call and find him,” she said to me.

  “All right, then,” I said as we shot out of the office. “Let’s go get the only guy in Venezuela who can lead us to Olivia Trenton.”

  She stopped me. “Where is he?”

  “Just drove off in a black SUV.”

  “He was here?”

  “Can’t you read it on my face?”

  “My God, Simon,” she said as she studied the cuts and bruises again. “Who is he?”

  I hurried her down the hallway.

  “Apparently someone with a taste for the Caymans,” I said through short, rapid breaths. “And a father with some serious influence inside the Venezuelan government.”

  Chapter 62

  After running back into the room that held Jorge Tejata and grabbing his keys, Mariana and I darted into the parking lot. I took the wheel, turned over the ignition, and slammed on the accelerator, crashing through a small wooden gate at the entrance.

  “Your face, Simon. Your neck, your back. What did they do to you?”

  I thought of my father.

  “Nothing that hasn’t been done before.”

  The sun was fast rising over Caracas and as we sped along, more and more cars entered the roadway, heading toward the center of the city. Probably waiters and waitresses, bartenders and bouncers, all getting an early start on what was bound to be one hell of an eventful day. Call it what you wanted—Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras—this would be the final and most chaotic twenty-four hours of Carnaval.

  “We lost them,” I said once I was absolutely sure of it. We’d been on the road twenty minutes without seeing their vehicle, and traffic was now slowing to a halt.

  “We will find him, Simon. He is in Caracas. How far can he go?”

  “Now that he knows we’re looking for him? Anywhere. And worse, by now he may well have decided to kill Olivia and dump the evidence.”

  She placed a hand on my sore arm. “You must not think like that.”

  I wished I could share in Mariana’s optimism, but there was just too much riding against us. Finding anyone on a day like today would be a near impossibility, let alone someone running scared. The kid, whoever he was, could don a full-length gorilla suit and not appear the least bit out of place. We could walk right by him a dozen times without being any the wiser.

  Meanwhile, the Venezuelan police and military would be looking for us. We’d already had one close call and one capture. This time, they wouldn’t be taking any chances. The cops and soldiers would have standing orders to shoot us on sight.

  Truth was, Mariana and I should have been on a road back to Puerto La Cruz, where Cliff Shermer might still be with his yacht. He could possibly smuggle us out of Venezuela, perhaps as far as Grand Cayman. Without Shermer, we didn’t stand much of a shot of getting out of the country alive. Our faces would be posted everywhere by now. There would be checkpoints at every border, from Colombia to Brazil to Guyana.

  And here we were—instead of looking for a way out—moving deeper into the country, heading directly for its core.

  But what choice did we have now? We knew the man responsible for Olivia’s abduction. As far as I knew, I had been the only person to see his face. Maybe Tejata had, but he’d be in no condition to point him out for days, maybe weeks. And Olivia didn’t have nearly that long.

  I still didn’t have the “why” in the palm of my hand, even though the picture had been steadily growing clearer. This kid, whoever he was, had been in Grand Cayman when Olivia and her friends arrived. He met the girls either near their hotel or at the Next Level, and he’d been infatuated with Olivia Trenton.

  And she’d evidently been infatuated with him. Probably spent the night with him in her room at the Ritz-Carlton; it would have been why she wanted to be left alone. She’d spent that missing Tuesday with him too. Doing what, I didn’t know. Except having lunch at Hemingways and maybe taking a drive up to Rum Point, where the kid bought her that pendant from that old, red-faced guy named Barney, who’d wanted to blow my head off in his store.

  As soon as we entered the land of skyscrapers, I parked and we exited Jorge Tejata’s SUV for the last time.

  “We’ll need disguises,” Mariana said. “Costumes.”

  I smiled at her even though it pained my entire face. “Maybe you do,” I said, pulling the red beret out of the dead guard’s pants pocket. “I’ve already got one.”

  Chapter 63

  By the time the festivities kicked off, I looked like
a genuine Venezuelan soldier (albeit one who’d just returned home from a bloody war) and Mariana was dressed as a blue macaw, her outfit so revealing, I’d never see birds the same way again.

  We waded back into the ocean of people. I wore sunglasses, my red beret low, to hide at least some of the deep red swelling and bruises on my face. Most remained visible, of course, but there was nothing I could do. Because I needed to carry my gun. Seeing a soldier with a gun, revelers wouldn’t think anything of it. If I were carrying a piece while wearing a full-length chicken suit, that might just set off some alarms.

  We quickly took notice that I wasn’t the only Venezuelan soldier trawling the streets. There were dozens of them, all appearing more alert than ever. It was possible that not every member of the military was looking for us, but after all we’d just been through, paranoia would supersede logic at every turn, at least until we were out of the country.

  We began our search in earnest.

  Before we knew it, an hour had gone by.

  Then another.

  And another.

  There were plenty of kids his age—late teens, early twenties—on the streets, but none looked even remotely familiar, and we didn’t have a name. I’d done a search on my BlackBerry to look for photographs of children of Venezuela’s top-ranking officials, but there was nothing to be found. Venezuela wasn’t exactly a bastion of freedom these days, and the press captured pictures only of the people, places, and events that the government wanted the electorate and the rest of the world to see.

  “We’re here again,” Mariana shouted in my ear, temporarily freeing me of my thoughts.

  “Where’s here?”

  She pointed.

  I looked up. Saw the stark white face of the Caracas Cathedral, which we’d passed just an hour ago. We were literally running in circles.

  As we stood at Plaza Bolívar, bells gonged from across the way. It was already noon; I could hardly believe it. Six hours had passed since we’d made our escape. And yet here we were, no closer to finding the kid.

  I considered dropping in on Cardinal César Zumbado—maybe he could identify the kid if I described him in enough detail. But then I recalled that the archbishop was performing a wedding today—in the early afternoon, if I remembered correctly. He’d no doubt be busy preparing for the ceremony.

  Besides, Zumbado hadn’t been all that helpful or friendly to begin with. It didn’t come as a complete surprise, not given the years I’d spent in Catholic institutions.

  But maybe it should have raised a red flag.

  Zumbado was, after all, a human being. Except for those who opposed me, most people I’d come into contact with over the past two years offered their help whenever I told them I was searching for a missing young girl. My friend Kurt Ostermann, a private investigator in Berlin. The lawyer Anastazja Staszak in Warsaw, and her brother Marek, the politician. A top Ukrainian law enforcement official named Martin Rudnyk, the South African Interpol agent Jess Kidman. An entire family of strangers in Belarus had taken us in when our car broke down and Ana and I became stranded in the freezing cold forest of Gomel.

  Hell, the beautiful woman standing beside me was proof of the good in humanity. Mariana Silva had risked her life to help me find a complete stranger and return her to her parents. As had my old friends: Aubrey Lang, RN, in Costa Rica; and Samuel “Grey” Greyson of the DEA in Colombia. Cliff Shermer, bastard that he was, had given me a gun. Even the alcoholic journalist Jorge Tejata had put his life on the line for Olivia, or at the very least for her story. He was no doubt lying in a hospital bed right now being pumped with morphine and treated for broken bones and internal bleeding. Of all the people I’d come across since Edgar Trenton called me from Calabasas, only the archbishop and the bureaucrat Walter Brewer had been ice cold.

  “Cardinal César Zumbado?” Jorge Tejata had said. “He’s no help to anyone. All he does is preach politics here in Venezuela. The Catholic Church in Venezuela is nothing more than another political party. If César’s not yapping about ‘sins of the flesh,’ he’s screaming his stupid red hat off about homosexuals and abortion.”

  I turned my head and looked at Mariana. While she was staring at the Cathedral, holding her crucifix between her fingers, her eyes had grown moist again. As they had when we were inside the cathedral speaking to Zumbado.

  “He’s attacked the pope?” I had said to the archbishop just before Mariana became upset. “Didn’t the pope visit with the president recently?”

  “Not recently. Years ago, and only because I asked him to, in order to get the president’s assurances that Venezuela will keep in place our strong laws against killing the unborn.”

  A few blocks later, we’d found ourselves seated at Restaurant Beirut, where Mariana told me her terrible story.

  “Last year, one of our keepers drove me into San José to work for the weekend.… He brought me to this terrible apartment.… He said nothing, this big man. Just struck me with a closed fist, then threw me onto the mattress and dropped his tremendous body on top of me.…”

  She’d been touching her fingers to the small gold crucifix hanging around her throat, just as she was now, when she told me, “I was pregnant, yes. But I could not have this baby, this product of a rape.… But I am Catholic, and the Church says that you cannot end a pregnancy, no matter what. Even with a rape, they say it is a gift from God.”

  I’d tried to tell her it was okay, but she had pulled away, her head down, hair falling over her wet face. “But it is not okay, Simon. I took the life. Every night I have to think about it before I go to sleep. I have to beg of God forgiveness for this. I have to pray.…”

  “Christ,” I said, gazing up at the cathedral.

  Mariana turned to me. “What is it, Simon?”

  But I couldn’t answer her. My mind had returned to the Trentons’ estate in Calabasas. It was as though I were there now, standing in Olivia’s room.

  “She stopped taking the Paxil before or after the trip?” I’d said to her mother.

  “After, I believe. Maybe just before, I’m not sure. But the doctor I spoke to—her pediatrician, actually—told me that her stopping the Paxil abruptly is probably what was causing the afternoon sluggishness and occasional nausea.”

  “Any vomiting? Maybe an eating disorder?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Just the nausea. It would come and go.”

  “Did she lose any weight?”

  “No. If anything, she gained a pound or two since the trip.”

  That conversation had taken place only a few minutes after I got off the phone with my FBI hacker-turned-mommy Kati Sheffield.

  “By the way, how are you feeling?” I had asked Kati.

  “Fat, hungry, tired, fat, and nauseous.”

  “First trimester still?”

  “Just started the second.”

  “It gets better, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll have to let you know; it’s different with every pregnancy.”

  But even with all that, what really struck me—what really stood out in my mind as I stood there silently at Plaza Bolívar—was what Alysia had written to Olivia on her Facebook Timeline:

  Don’t freek but I made the appt. I love love love love love love love love you.

  The hell with going to get tongue rings. Alysia had lied to my face about that appointment. Of course she would have, sitting there in front of her father.

  Standing there, across from the Caracas Cathedral, Mariana continued talking at me, shaking my arms.

  “Simon?” she was saying over the music. “Are you all right?”

  The echo of the last of the gongs faded away.

  “I’m fine,” I said, gently pushing her away and making for the cathedral across the street. “Come on, Mariana.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You and I, we’ve got a wedding to crash.”

  I pulled out my BlackBerry. First I had to make a phone call.

  As much as I hated to do it, I needed to as
k for one last favor.

  Chapter 64

  “The Cathedral is closed,” Cardinal César Zumbado called from the altar as we stepped through the tall double doors.

  He was dressed this afternoon in full regalia, red from head to toe, still preparing for the ceremony. He hadn’t even looked up when we entered.

  “Where is she, Your Eminence?” I called out from the rear of the church.

  Finally, Zumbado looked up. Squinted but couldn’t seem to make us out. “Who?” he boomed.

  “The blushing bride.”

  I started up the aisle, with Mariana right behind me. The cathedral was empty except for the three of us, my words still echoing off the vaulted ceiling.

  From behind the altar, the archbishop stared down at us. He cringed when he saw the cuts and bruises on my face but then quickly regained his composure. Calmly, he said, “I am afraid this is to be a private ceremony.”

  “Then would you kindly introduce me to the groom, Your Eminence?”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I’d like to give him a few words of advice before the nuptials.”

  The archbishop forced a wide grin. “I am sure his father is doing a fine job fulfilling that role.”

  “His father is a man of some esteem, I presume.”

  Zumbado hesitated. “He is.”

  “But not the president.”

  “Of course not the president.”

  “Which leaves Vicente Delgado, Venezuela’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.”

  The archbishop remained behind his altar, a smug smile threatening to appear on his face.

  Mariana squeezed my forearm. “Simon,” she whispered, “I do not understand.”

  “The president had nothing to do with Delgado’s phone call to Don Óscar in Colombia, did he, Your Eminence?”

  The archbishop remained silent, but his eyes confirmed what I already knew. The Minister of Foreign Affairs had threatened Don Óscar without the president’s authority.

  “You are meddling in something that is none of your concern, Señor Fisk. Return to the United States and tell the parents that the girl is unharmed.” He paused. “And please, inform her mother and father that she is happy.”