Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

Redpath nodded.

  “When Laurel finds out how badly she was used,” Gillespie said, “she’ll cut Cruz’s heart out and feed it to the ravens.”

  “At least Cruz will know he has a heart.”

  “Bloody hell. I hope we have the Ruby Surprise by then, whatever it is.”

  “So do I. Do you have anything on those numbers Laurel dialed yet?”

  “First one was a cellular registered to someone in Manhattan whose name doesn’t ring any bells in any file we have.”

  “Interesting. What about the second number?”

  “It’s not a number here or overseas. It’s a code.”

  Redpath’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.” Gillespie smiled with unwilling approval. “Cruz has himself a real smart lady tiger. She looked at the letters above the numbers on the phone, pulled the numbers she needed to spell out danger, and hung up.”

  “Who do you think she was warning?”

  “Jamie Swann.”

  “She doesn’t trust us at all, does she?”

  Gillespie laughed humorlessly. “Like I said, Cruz has caught himself a smart one. It’s going to make our work bloody hard.”

  36

  Los Angeles

  Tuesday 12:25 P.M.

  As the limousine cruised through Los Angeles, Claire Toth accepted a refill of her half-empty champagne glass. Damon Hudson topped off his own as well. Before she drank, she paused, waiting for him. Hudson took the second glass, saluted her, and touched it to his mouth. Toth lifted her glass and let the cool, bubbling wine brush against her upper lip. She lowered the glass and used the tip of her tongue to taste the liquid that clung to her mouth.

  The man next to her watched each motion with an intensity that was purely sexual.

  She smiled and shifted in her seat, presenting him with a fine view of her cleavage. Every bit of distraction on his part was a plus in her bargaining column. She and Hudson had been playing sexual cat and mouse since the window went up. So she licked at a bubble of champagne like there was nothing else on her mind. She could lick tulip glasses with the best of them.

  “You’re sure the glass partition is soundproof as well as bulletproof?” she asked.

  A small smile shifted the line of Hudson’s thin lips. He leaned back in the seat and inspected the tulip glass whose stem he held between thumb and forefinger.

  “I have my share of enemies,” Hudson said. “Every powerful man does. I take as many precautions as I can.”

  “So do I.”

  Hudson glanced at the back of Swann’s head. “Is he one of them?”

  She settled into the seat and stretched her elegant legs in front of her. The scarlet sandals glowed like rubies against the smooth dark skin of her feet. She wore no nylons, having no need to make her skin look tanned and supple. It already was.

  “One of him is all it takes to get the job done,” she said.

  She turned a bit more toward Hudson and put her elbow on the armrest between them. Coolly she sipped her champagne, letting the clean, yeasty wine rest on her tongue for a moment before swallowing it.

  With every breath Toth took, Hudson’s eyes were drawn to the deep, alluring shadow between her breasts. Today she wore no lace camisole, only a thin bra, a nearly sheer blouse, and a necklace of leering crimson faces that threatened at any moment to stick plastic tongues into her cleavage.

  “Taking Jamie out of the game won’t solve your problems with me,” she said easily. “Taking me out will put you in a world of hurt with the Russians. You’ve got more money than God, so why don’t you just transfer six million American into this numbered account and say goodbye to us?”

  She handed Hudson a slip of paper with the account number on it.

  “Six? I thought it was three.”

  To Toth’s surprise, his voice was amused rather than angry.

  “Inflation,” she said casually. “Tomorrow it will be nine.”

  “It takes time to gather that much cash.”

  “Cash?” She laughed. “Do I look stupid? Wire transfer, babe. From one of your companies here to one of your companies in Brazil and from there to a Panamanian bank. Routine stuff. You do it all the time.”

  Hudson made a soft sound with his lips and shook his head sadly. “Your socialist friends would be disappointed in you if they knew what was going on.”

  “Maybe. More likely they’d just up your ante and take a share.”

  “You don’t care if they find out?”

  “Babe, you can print it on red cloth and fly it from every flagpole in the former Soviet Union. I’ve got enough on my socialist friends to keep their mouths shut until hell freezes solid.”

  Turning away, Hudson studied the back of Swann’s head. The weathered, taut skin, the easy flex of tendons, the muscular rise of deltoids, and the clearly outlined blood vessels all shouted of a man who didn’t have to sell his soul to stay physically fit.

  Hudson’s body suffered by comparison and he knew it. But he had something Swann didn’t have.

  Power.

  And Hudson had learned enough about Toth in the past twenty-four hours to know what she really liked and how she liked it.

  Without a word, he turned back to the woman whose primal sexuality surprised him every time he saw her. While he watched, she removed several sheets of folded paper from the outer pocket of her scarlet leather bag. She held the papers out, inviting him to reach for them.

  Hudson’s eyes flicked from the woman to the papers, then returned to her. “Your proof against me isn’t necessary. I believe you.”

  “Just like that?”

  He laughed softly. The dry, rustling sound was like a snake sliding through dead leaves.

  “Hardly,” he said. “I’ve checked you quite thoroughly. I wonder if the editors who purchase your stories would be interested in knowing that the documents you use often come directly from the files of a hostile intelligence service.”

  Toth shrugged. Journalistic unemployment would be the least of her problems if she got Hudson to put millions in her Panamanian account.

  “I can see a screaming headline now,” he said. “Reporter Ruined Top FBI Agent, Won Pulitzer with Fake Documents from KGB!”

  Surprisingly, she laughed. “Wrong, babe. Journalists don’t write about other journalists. Impeach one, impeach all.”

  “An exception might be made in your case.”

  “All you have on me is gossip from your Russian friends. You don’t have the kind of proof a reporter would demand before he took on a journalist of my reputation. But I have that kind of proof against you.”

  She flicked the papers in her hand.

  Reluctantly Hudson shifted his glance from Toth’s breasts and looked at the folded papers.

  “I suppose I must,” he said, sighing. “If nothing else, I’m interested in the general quality of the documents.”

  He set the tulip glass in a velvet-lined holder and took the two sheets of paper.

  She sipped champagne.

  “There are more papers, I assume,” he said.

  The offhand comment was a richly colored dry fly, floated by a master of the cast. He saw the instant of faint unease that showed beneath the sculpted perfection of Toth’s face.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Satisfied that there was a weak point if he chose to probe, Hudson settled back in the seat and unfolded the papers. The documents were copies, of course.

  And he quickly realized that the original, wherever it was stored, was absolutely authentic. The reproduced state seals in the margins, the letterhead with its endless titles and initials that took up almost as much room as the text, the eight-digit document number, all were in place. The USSR had evolved the most stifling bureaucracy ever seen outside of China.

  Most convincing to Hudson was the dull, bureaucratic prose style of the text itself. Soviet intelligence agents were masters in qualifying everything, avoiding analysis that might prove to be faulty, and never making direct sta
tements that might later be used to hang the author of the text. Report writing was an important part of the KGB training process.

  The document in Hudson’s hand contained no analysis, no conclusions, just facts. It was a chronological recitation of a set of international wire transfers that began in a numbered Swiss account and ended in a numbered Panamanian account.

  He knew from personal experience that the Swiss account belonged to the chief of intelligence of a small, vastly ambitious Middle Eastern country. The account holder was the younger brother of that country’s president, which is to say he was blood kin, errand boy, and chief executioner all in one.

  The elder brother had become an international outlaw among civilized countries. In addition to political extortion and theft, he’d devoted millions of dollars to the creation of a chemical and bacteriological warfare capability second to none in the world.

  A vital component of that capability was a germ-culturing lab in the middle of the desert. It had been state-of-the-art, containing the most recent Western technology, and it had been a month from operational status when a flight of Israeli F-16s appeared out of the sun at noon one day and turned the lab into high-tech trash.

  The attack was a stunning setback to the outlaw’s ambitions, for the plant had been paid for, cash up front. The most important components had been funded through the numbered Swiss account whose statement was part of the record Hudson was holding.

  Hudson also recognized the numbered Panamanian account, the one that had received the outlaw’s funds. The account belonged to Hudson International, which had supplied the equipment for the clandestine lab through several of its international subsidiaries. Neither the Americans nor their Israeli clients had ever penetrated the smokescreen of secret bank accounts and shell corporations that obscured the identity of the Western firms that helped build the plant.

  The document in Hudson’s hand would hang him in any national or international tribunal.

  “There are thousands of numbered accounts in Switzerland, and thousands more in Panama,” he said mildly. “Wire transfer requests are as anonymous as eggs. That’s why you use them yourself.”

  Casually he refolded the papers and held them out to Toth.

  She smiled like a cat and waved the papers away. “The second sheet, babe. Look at it.”

  Hudson slipped the top sheet to the bottom and looked. The second sheet was a copy of the Swiss account’s signature card. The baby brother/executioner’s signature was quite legible.

  “Since the United States has old Pineapple Face’s records from Panama,” Toth said, “it won’t be difficult for them to find out who owns the account that received the money.”

  As she spoke, she watched Hudson for signs of stress. None showed. Instead, there was something oddly like satisfaction in the line of his mouth.

  “I assume there are more files such as this one?” he asked.

  “Everything the Russians had on you, we have on you.”

  “Interesting. I assume there are other targets for this shakedown?”

  Toth’s dark eyes cut toward Swann. They hadn’t discussed what to do if someone asked about other victims.

  “Not your problem,” she said, turning back to Hudson. “Either way, you’re lip-deep in shit.”

  “That’s the sort of thing he might say,” Hudson said, nodding toward Swann. “I was hoping you were bright enough to take a different approach.”

  For the space of three slow breaths, she stared at Hudson, trying to read his mind through his cool, ageless eyes.

  “How different?” she asked, her voice flat.

  He picked up his crystal tulip glass but didn’t drink. “I’ve always found that I can neutralize an enemy and turn him into an ally, if I can demonstrate that his interests and mine coincide.”

  “Him? His?” she asked sarcastically. “You should learn a new vocabulary, babe. In today’s world, some of your enemies are going to be female.”

  “I don’t consider you an enemy. How many other files are there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hudson couldn’t decide whether Toth was telling the truth. Not that it mattered.

  Yet.

  “Are the other files as good as this one?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Get them. Bring them to me. I’ll make you the most powerful woman in the world.”

  “I’ll have more money than I—”

  “Power,” he corrected with a flash of perfect teeth. “Not money. Surely you know the difference? You, who love your own sexual power so well?”

  She lowered her eyelashes, shielding her black eyes. “Keep talking. You just might say something interesting.”

  Satisfaction uncurled in him, a thrill of heat that was partly sexual. He understood Claire Toth very well. Watching her was like looking into a gender-bending mirror.

  “I can make you powerful.” Hudson waved a hand at Swann. “Your muscle-bound friend cannot.”

  She glanced through the glass. Both Swann and Cahill were watching the traffic behind the limousine through their rearview mirrors. Swann was saying something to the driver, but neither man looked away from traffic around them.

  “Don’t let the muscles fool you,” she said. “He’s dangerous in other ways.”

  “Of course he is,” Hudson said, amused. “Why else would you bother with him? Leave him to me.”

  Toth had been wondering what to do about Swann. Now she knew.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Good. Do you know where the files are kept?”

  She almost laughed aloud. “I know. But I may need some help decoding them.”

  “Is it difficult?”

  “Does he look like a rocket scientist?” she asked, glancing toward the partition. “If he figured it out, you can.”

  Hudson smiled and said softly, “Get the files. Then we’ll worry about decoding and translating them.”

  He lifted the crystal glass in his hand. Tiny bubbles still rose through the champagne.

  “Agreed?” he said, question and invitation in one word.

  She raised her glass, touched his to make a bright crystalline sound, and nodded. “Agreed.”

  They both drank. This time Hudson took the level of his glass down by half. He was still swallowing when the intercom buzzer sounded. He touched a button on the armrest, opening the channel.

  “What is it?” he asked curtly.

  “There’s somebody behind us.” Cahill’s voice was thin and tinny on the intercom.

  Swann spoke quickly. “Rental car. Big guy with a beard.”

  “He must have picked us up when we stopped for our passengers,” Cahill said.

  Hudson looked at Toth.

  She shook her head. “He’s not mine.”

  “Her partner spotted him,” Cahill said, “so it’s probably a third party.”

  “Lose him,” Hudson said.

  “In this limo?” Cahill asked. “That will be some trick.”

  “That’s why I employ you. To do tricks for me.”

  Hudson snapped off the intercom.

  The limo began picking up speed at a surprising rate.

  37

  Karroo

  Tuesday afternoon

  “Do you think she’s going to run for it?” Gillespie asked, looking past Cruz to the desert beyond the shaded window.

  “Without a hat or a canteen?” Cruz said. “Not a chance. Laurel isn’t a fool.”

  “Not according to her own estimate.”

  “Shit,” was Cruz’s only response.

  For the space of a few breaths, both men watched Laurel walk through the desert landscaping that surrounded the house. She wasn’t following a path. She didn’t look back over her shoulder to see if anyone had noticed her leaving. The loose tunic top she wore over her jeans shifted in the wind, blurring her outline.

  “She’s heading right for that ridge,” Gillespie said, pointing.

  “She probably wants some space around
her. You and the ambassador grilled her pretty hard while we ate lunch.”

  Laurel hadn’t touched a bite. Nor had she said much. Her tension had eaten at Cruz. He’d wanted to pick her up, put her on his lap, and reassure her that she was all right.

  Safe.

  “We avoided the subject of her father,” Gillespie said rather bitterly. “And she still didn’t eat.”

  “She doesn’t trust us. She doesn’t completely trust her father, either. That’s why she’s here.”

  “Bullocks. She’s here because you’re here.”

  “Yeah. Right,” Cruz said, but his tone said Gillespie was dead wrong.

  “Wake up, laddie boy. She looks at you like she wants to spread you on a biscuit and lick up every last crumb.”

  “Hell of an idea,” Cruz said, grinning involuntarily.

  “So why don’t you do something about it?”

  “For instance?”

  “Get off your arse, go after her with a picnic basket and a bottle of wine, and get her trust the old-fashioned way.”

  “Close my eyes and think of God and country, huh?”

  “Whatever loads your magazine,” Gillespie said impatiently. “Just get the job done. We’re on a short clock.”

  “Does Cassandra know about this?”

  “She’s the one who assigned you as Ms. Swann’s bodyguard.”

  Cruz looked skeptical.

  “Listen up,” Gillespie said. “Either we win Ms. Swann’s trust and get a chance to set up an ambush, or we stand around sucking wind while the competition takes the high ground. By the time we find out what’s really at stake, it will be too late to do anything but pray for the dead.”

  Saying nothing, Cruz looked out the window. Laurel was silhouetted against the burning sky. With each breath he took, she got farther away, smaller. Soon she would be consumed by the yellow violence of the sun.

  “Bloody hell,” Gillespie snarled. “She has turned your brain to bean dip. If the Ruby Surprise was never made by Fabergé, who did make it? Why did they make it? And who dies before we find out?”

  “I don’t know. Three times over.”

  “Then go after her and get some bloody answers!”

  Cruz turned to face Gillespie.