“Now you’re talking. Your place or mine?”
“Well...” Her voice dropped to a provocative purr. “The duchess doesn’t particularly care for pizza.”
“This is sounding better by the moment.”
She laughed and agreed. “Where are you staying this time?”
“Let me check.” He pulled up the travel docs Peggy had loaded to his phone. “The W New York.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll call you when I’m on the way with pizza. You pick the movie. But nothing X-rated,” she instructed sternly. “Maybe not even R. We wouldn’t want to overstimulate your poor, jet-lagged brain.”
“Can’t happen, kid. You walk into the room and my brain shuts down anyway. All that’s left is pure, unadulterated...”
“Lust? Greed?”
“I was going to say love, but lust and greed are right there in the mix, too.”
He disconnected, still smiling. Rafe’s call a few minutes later wiped the smile off his face and put the kink back in his gut.
Eleven
“It’s set,” Mike’s brother-in-law announced tersely. “Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m., at the FBI’s New York office. Ask for Special Agent Dan Havers.”
“Got it. Although I’ve got to tell you, Rafe, I don’t like keeping Zia in the dark about all this.”
“I understand, but...”
“But what?”
“I’m beginning to think there’s more to the situation than we suspect, Miguel. I can’t see a DC-based FBI agent jumping on a plane and meeting you in New York just to talk about fifty thousand in misdirected grant money.”
“I’ve been having those same thoughts,” Mike admitted grimly. “They’re the only reason I didn’t tell Zia about this FBI contact. The more I can find out from this guy tomorrow, the better I can help her navigate through whatever the problem is.”
“Keep me in the loop, too.”
“Will do.”
Mike had the steward pour him another Scotch and nursed it for the rest of the flight. He nursed more than a few doubts, as well. He knew he was setting himself up for some potentially tense moments with Zia if he told her about the FBI meeting after the fact. But he also knew he was in a better position to elicit information than she was at this point. GSI was only one of several corporations contributing to the MRSA study but it had provided significant funding. Naturally Mike would want to investigate any apparent anomalies in the distribution of those funds. Especially if the person ultimately responsible for the disbursement was his fiancée.
The FBI would view Zia in a more cautious light. She was a foreign national in the United States on a work/study visa. What’s more, she had close ties to some very high viz personalities. Jack Harris, Gina’s husband, was the US Ambassador to the UN. And Sarah’s husband, Dev, operated half the damned civilian transports in the country.
Then there was the duchess. And, Mike thought with an inner grimace, the grand duke. He didn’t know much about Dominic’s years as an undercover agent for Interpol. Just enough to appreciate that the FBI might be understandably wary of crossing agency lines. Looking at it from that angle made Mike feel marginally better about his 9:00 a.m. meeting.
* * *
Any delusion that the FBI was the least bit concerned about Zia’s personal situation or connections shattered ten minutes after Special Agent Dan Havers met Mike in the lobby of the FBI’s New York office at 26 Federal Plaza.
Havers was an athletic-looking thirty-six or -seven, with wrestler’s shoulders and a tree-trunk neck that strained his white shirt and navy suit jacket. The lines etched deep around his eyes suggested white-collar crime was something other than sport, however.
“Thanks for coming in, Brennan.”
Mike took the hand Havers thrust out and braced for a bone cruncher that didn’t come.
“Let’s get you ID’d and badged. We’ve got a conference room reserved. We’ll talk there.”
They kept small talk to a minimum until Havers ushered Mike into the twenty-third-floor conference room. Four others—two men, two women—were waiting his arrival. Three clustered around the coffee and pastries at the far end of the room. One stared moodily through the blinds at the Manhattan skyline.
Mike’s chest got tighter with each introduction. One of the women was Havers’s New York counterpart, a special agent working white-collar crime. The other was from the International Operations Division. The two men were from the Counterterrorism Division.
“Coffee?” Havers asked. “A bagel or Danish, maybe?”
“I’m good.”
“Okay, then let’s get to it.”
The group drifted to the table. Mike claimed a seat with his back to the windows. It was a small power play, just one of the many any negotiator worth his salt might employ, but it gave him the advantage of facing away from the bright sunlight.
He didn’t derive much satisfaction from the maneuver. Not when he faced two counterterrorism agents. They left it to Havers to lay whatever cards they intended to share on the table.
“Here’s the deal, Brennan. Your guy Montoya set off all kinds of alarms with his probe into that blocked account yesterday. We had to decide fast what to do about it. Especially when Montoya said you were on your way to New York. So we ran both of you through our computers. Every wrinkle, every wart.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“Montoya is an open book. You read more like a tabloid.”
“That so?”
“We know about the knife fight with the Portuguese cook when you were a ten-dollar-a-day deckhand,” Havers commented. “We know about the navy medal you were awarded after diving into the Sea of Japan to save a crewmate who’d been swept overboard. We know you bought a rust bucket after you got out of the service and parlayed it into a multinational corporation. We know about your friends, your family, the divorce.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is we wouldn’t be talking to you today unless we knew we could trust you.”
“Right now I can’t say I feel the same. Cut to the chase. What’s this all about?”
Havers angled his bull-like neck a few degrees to the right and nodded to one of the counterterrorism agents. Sandy haired and squinty eyed behind his wire-rim glasses, the other agent took the lead.
“What this is about is a guy named Thomas Danville and his five-thousand-dollar-a-week habit, which he feeds by skimming from his clients.”
Mike felt his insides go tight but kept his voice even. “And?”
“And how this guy Danville buys his drugs from an international consortium. One that just happens to be headed by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to wipe Israel—and its evil ally, the United States—off the face of the earth. You’ve heard of Hezbollah?”
Mike didn’t alter his expression, didn’t blink, but they’d just confirmed his worst-case scenario. Zia had gotten caught up in something a whole lot deeper and uglier than fraud.
“Yes, I’ve heard of Hezbollah.”
“Then you might also have heard it has a substantial connection to the Mexican cartel Los Zetas. Two years ago we got an indictment in absentia against one of the middlemen acting on behalf of Hezbollah, a Lebanese drug lord by the name of Ayman Joumaa. Bastard conspired to smuggle more than 9,000 tons of cocaine into the US. In the process, he laundered over $250 million for the cartels.
“Look,” he continued. “We don’t give a shit about Danville. He’s small change. Wouldn’t even constitute a blip on our radar except for this drug connection. Nor would we be talking to you this morning if you hadn’t started nosing around one of Danville’s blind accounts. We need you to back off, Brennan. Now. Today.”
Havers picked up the ball again. “We’ve been tracking Danville ever since one of his employees tip
ped us to his extracurricular activities. Problem is, he fired that employee yesterday.”
Mike’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re worried Danville could be spooked.”
“He could be,” Havers conceded. “Though that’s not all bad. Spooked guys make mistakes. Sometimes they run. Sometimes they turn to their big, bad pals for something to calm their jittery nerves.”
“And sometimes,” Mike said coldly, “they take innocent people down with them.”
“Exactly. That’s why we need you to back off. We’ve got taps on Danville’s home, office and cell phones. We’ll know if and when he makes a wrong move. Let us handle him, Brennan. Don’t get in the middle of it.”
“You’re welcome to him. Like you, I don’t give a shit about Danville. I do, however, care about—”
“Your fiancée. Yeah, we know.”
Havers pursed his lips, as if debating whether to continue. The act didn’t fool Mike for a moment. He sensed what was coming. Still, it hit hard.
“Danville and Dr. St. Sebastian enjoyed a three-hour lunch yesterday. According to one source, they got real close. Some might say cuddly.”
Mike’s reply came fast and flat. “For someone who wants my cooperation, you just went in exactly the wrong direction. This meeting is over.”
He shoved back from the table and strode for the door. Havers had to scramble to catch up with him.
“Hold on, Brennan!”
He reached for Mike’s arm. A low, savage warning halted his hand in midair.
“You really don’t want to do that.”
“Okay.” He dropped his arm. “Look, I obviously pushed the wrong button there. I’m sorry.”
Mike didn’t bother to respond, just made for the elevator.
“Brennan! Wait. I have to escort you out.”
He tried again to apologize but the elevator arrived too quickly. All he could do was follow Mike inside and ride down in silence. When they hit the lobby, though, he reached into his suit pocket.
“Here’s my card,” he said as they approached the security checkpoint. “Call me if there’s anything else you want to talk about.”
Mike came within a breath of telling him where he could shove the stiff, sharp-edged cardboard. He swallowed the urge, stuck the card in his wallet and tossed his visitor’s pass on the security desk.
* * *
He used the rest of the morning to work the fury out of his system. A brutal workout in the hotel’s exercise center helped. A long session in the steam room sweated out the rest. Showered and under control, he called Rafe with an update. His brother-in-law listened without interruption. At the end his only comment was a succinct and very graphic curse.
“Yeah,” Mike drawled. “My sentiments exactly.”
“How much of this are you going to tell Zia?”
“All of it.”
“The FBI okay with that?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I guess you probably didn’t need to. They have to know you’re not going to let her get in any deeper with this bastard Danville.”
Let, Mike acknowledged wryly after he’d hung up, was the wrong verb. If he’d learned nothing else from living with three sisters and a moody ex-wife, it was to be extremely careful with that particular verb.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and wandered across the sitting room of his twentieth-floor suite. The wall-to-wall window offered an unimpeded view of One World Trade Center and, farther out, the Statue of Liberty. Mike let his gaze drift from one to the other, thinking of the jihadist pumping drugs into the United States, determined to destroy it one way or another. Thinking, too, of the thousands of little people caught in his poisonous web.
Like Danville.
And this employee Danville had reportedly fired.
And Zia.
Now him.
He’d charged right in, suspecting there was more to that blind account than mismanagement or misdirection of funds, and firing up like an Aegis missile when Havers and company confirmed it.
The more he thought about that visceral reaction, the more it bothered him. He didn’t want to admit it sprang from that crack about Zia and Danville getting cuddly. He couldn’t get around the implanted image, though. Not after Zia’s wariness when Mike had told her he knew about the long lunch. Which, he remembered grimly, had come right on the heels of her saying she needed to talk to him. Maybe she already knew about Danville skimming his client’s funds. Or maybe...
Christ! He had to stop chasing his tail like this. He’d wait for Zia, talk it out with her, lay what he knew on the line and get it behind them both.
So he was more than ready when she called a little past three o’clock. “I’m just getting ready to leave the hospital. Are we still on for pizza and a movie?”
“I am if you are.”
“Good. I skipped lunch so I’m starved. There’s a John’s Pizzeria right around the corner from the W. I’ll call ahead and have a large regular crust waiting for pick up, all hot and gooey. What do you want on it?”
“Everything but anchovies or anything that resembles fruit.”
“Got it. See you in forty-five minutes or so. In the meantime, you could check out the movies. I’m in the mood for something light and silly.”
“Light and silly it is. See you soon.”
* * *
Smiling in anticipation, Zia hit the off button and grabbed her coat.
“Pizza and a movie, huh?”
She glanced up to find Jordan Elliott smirking across the top of her computer terminal. The microbiologist’s eyes reflected both mischief and envy.
“Sounded more like a little afternoon delight to me.”
“What happens at the W, stays at the W.”
“Oh, sure! Rub it in. You know very well the closest I’ve come to sex in the past month is watching bacteria multiply in a petri dish.”
“I also know,” Zia shot back, “there’s a certain radiologist who’s offered to fix that problem. Several times.”
“Ugh. I’d rather cozy up to the bacteria. Hang loose a sec. I need to go over to the Infectious Diseases center. I’ll walk out with you.”
They exited the school of medicine and took the sidewalk that cut diagonally across Mount Sinai’s sprawling campus. Spring was still weeks away, although the afternoon sun offered a hint of warmer temperatures and a sudden burst of greenery.
Zia was just about to peel off and make for the subway when her phone buzzed again. It was a text message from Tom Danville.
“It’s Danville,” she told Jordan, skimming the message. “He needs to talk to me ASAP about Elizabeth.”
The two women exchanged quick glances. The Wharton School of Business grad’s firing had shocked them both. Maybe now they’d discover what was behind it. When Zia called Danville, however, he didn’t want to talk over the phone.
“It’s an extremely sensitive issue. I need to discuss it with you in private.”
“I don’t have time now, Tom. I’m on my way to an appointment downtown.”
“It’ll just take a few minutes. You really need to know the mess Elizabeth’s landed us both in.”
She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “Where are you now?”
“At the office.”
“All right. I’m just leaving the hospital. I’ll swing by there on my way downtown.”
* * *
Mike expected Zia by four. At four-thirty he hit the speed-dial number for her cell phone. When the call went to voice mail, he tried her office.
Her associate picked up and responded with a throaty chuckle when he identified himself. “Hi, Mike. Don’t tell me you and Zia have already, uh, finished your pizza.”
“We might have, if she’d showed up with it.”
; “She’s not there? Wait. Scratch that. Of course she’s not, or you wouldn’t be calling.”
“So she’s not still at the hospital?”
“She left a couple of hours ago. I walked out with her, in fact.”
“Did she take the subway?”
“That was the plan, but she got a call from Tom Danville. He said he needed to talk to her privately, right away, so she told him she’d swing by his office on the way downtown.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Wait! What’s—”
He stabbed the end button and did a Google search for Danville and Associates. His jaw was tight and the cords in his neck as taut as hawsers. He knew what he would hear even before Danville’s secretary confirmed that her boss had left the office several hours ago.
“Was Dr. St. Sebastian with him?”
“No,” she replied in some surprise. “I’m looking at Tom’s schedule now. He didn’t have an appointment with her. Shall I—”
Mike slammed the phone down to search his wallet for Special Agent Havers’s card. The FBI agent answered on the third ring.
“Havers.”
“This is Brennan. Where are you?”
“On my way to the airport, getting ready to head back to DC. Why?”
“My fiancée was supposed to meet me at my hotel an hour ago. She hasn’t showed.”
“Have you—”
“She was on her way,” Mike cut in savagely. “An associate walked out with her. The same associate just informed me that Zia got an urgent call from Danville. He needed to talk to her. Privately. At his office. But he left, and she never showed.”
The pregnant silence that followed torqued his jaws so tight he could feel his teeth grinding.
“Listen to me, Havers. She’s not having an affair with Danville. Nor is she in any way involved in his schemes.”
When the agent still didn’t reply, Mike pulled out every ace in the deck.
“My next call is to Dr. St. Sebastian’s brother. He won’t hesitate to tap his former sources at Interpol. Then I’m contacting Ambassador Harris at the UN. Then...”
“Hang up. Sit tight. Wait for me to call you back.”
The Texan's Royal M.D. Page 14
