by Marc Cameron
Next he started to work on his competition. Lucile had worked for a minor dealer in the south of France, a human stain of a man who possessed no charm or charisma. It had taken little more than a wink to get Lucile to cut his throat and come to work for da Rocha.
There was, he supposed, always the chance that she would do the same with him. She was certainly capable of it. But that was what made it interesting.
The elevator was incredibly slow, the canned music accompanied by the noise of banging cables and sliding counterweights. Lucile appeared to hold her breath during the ride, and gasped audibly when the door hissed open on the third floor. A thick Russian man was waiting outside the elevator. A metal railing behind the Russian came up to just below his belt. Lucile hummed under her breath, a tune da Rocha knew she always hummed when she was thinking of how best to kill someone. She gave the Russian a wicked smile, surely pondering how easy it would be to give a little shove and send him crashing to the floor below. He smiled back, surely with murderous thoughts of his own. The tattoo of a dagger rose above his collar indicated that he was bratva—Russian mafia. Da Rocha had no doubt a man like this would have an abundance of other ink under his shirt. The rose impaled by a dagger was a badge of honor, meant to intimidate and let others know this one had done time in prison before he’d turned eighteen.
The man grunted and tossed a glance over his shoulder before turning and walking down the hall without a word.
Da Rocha exchanged glances with Lucile, and the two followed dutifully. This meeting was, after all, what they’d been working toward for the past three months.
Rose Neck halted at the door to room 314, a suite, from the looks of the placard, and gave two sets of three sharp knocks in quick succession. Da Rocha was surprised the man hadn’t patted them down as soon as they got off the elevator, but when the door opened he understood why.
The Russian with the odd haircut waved them inside with a flick of his hand.
“Disrobe,” he said, while they stood in the cramped alcove next to a vanity and mini-fridge. A curtain made from what appeared to be the bedspread hung from the ceiling at the end of the entry, blocking da Rocha’s view of the room’s interior. He caught the odor of something he could not quite put his finger on, but the order to take off his clothes put his mind on other things.
“If we are going to strip,” he said, “perhaps it is time I learned your name.”
“You may call me Gregor,” the one with the bad haircut said. His thickly accented English made it sound as if he were talking around a mouthful of food.
Da Rocha’s eyes narrowed. “Is that your name?”
“No,” the Russian said. “But you may call me Gregor just the same. Now, please to undress. There will be robes.”
Da Rocha put a hand on his belt and then stopped, canting his head to one side.
“Why?”
“Guns, listening devices, all of those reasons,” Gregor said. “You have proven with devastating effect that a man in your line of employ has access to many weapons. Perhaps you have technology that could defeat our scanners.”
“I see,” da Rocha said, smiling at Lucile. “My dear, you take the bathroom first.”
The Russian stepped sideways to block the door. “You will undress here,” he said. “Is safer for all of us this way.”
Lucile pushed a lock of hair off her forehead. “May I remove my pistol?”
The Russian produced a heavy foil envelope approximately a foot square and held it open. Da Rocha recognized it as a Faraday bag, designed to stop electrical signals from getting in or out. “Put in this.” Gregor’s eyes narrowed. “But very slowly.”
Lucile grabbed the diminutive Beretta Nano from a holster inside her waistband under the tail of her T-shirt, letting it dangle between her thumb and forefinger before dropping it in the bag.
“I do not need a pistol to kill you,” Lucile said through a serene smile.
“I am sure they know that, my dear,” da Rocha said.
“You make killing complicated,” Gregor said, leaning in to encroach on Lucile’s body space ever so slightly. “Silent pistols, specialized toxins . . . Why you go so much trouble?”
“Oh, mon petit nounours.” Lucile smiled, batting her lashes. “It is no trouble.”
The Russian glared down at her, clicking his front teeth as if chewing on his next words. If he understood that she’d called him her teddy bear, he didn’t mention it.
“Mobile phones,” he said at length, and then put the Faraday bag in the mini-fridge once they’d dropped their devices in. “Now your clothing, if you please. Shoes as well.”
Both Rose Neck and Gregor watched with rapt interest as Lucile stepped out of her shorts and then her underwear without so much as a fumble. They took particular interest in the thin white lines that scarred her legs. Parallel and roughly an inch apart, there were nine of them, from the hollow of her hip well down her thigh on each side. Some might think she’d cut herself, but da Rocha had seen them before, and knew the wounds had come from a straight razor when she was only fourteen. Her own father had tried to mark her as his property. Lucile had dosed his beef broth with some sleeping pills she’d found in his kit—and then done a little work on him before enlisting a boyfriend to help dump him in the river. Her young age and the horrific wounds on her legs had kept her from doing more than eighteen months, and all of that in what the French called a “closed school.”
Completely naked, she gave a little twirl to demonstrate to the Russians that she was in control of the situation. “See,” she said. “No weapons, but for my naughty bits.” Gregor retreated a half-step when she shoved the tiny ball of black silk that was her panties out toward him. “Shall I put this in the bag, or do you wish to hold on to them for me?”
Rose Neck gave a crooked grin. Gregor hooked a thumb toward the top of the minibar. “There will do.”
Da Rocha shot her a sideways glance, which she returned with a little C’est la guerre shrug.
He followed Gregor down the short hallway with Lucile close in behind him. Rose Neck brought up the rear.
It was only when Gregor pushed the makeshift drape aside that da Rocha was able to identify the smell that had previously eluded him.
* * *
—
The floral scent of oranges mixed with the aroma of horse manure from the carriages of Barrio Santa Cruz drifted up on the hot evening air to Ding Chavez’s perch inside the third-floor window of La Giralda, a block south of the Russians’ hotel. During the day, the centuries-old minaret turned Catholic bell tower was one of the most visited places in Seville—and in all of Spain, for that matter. The tours stopped at five p.m., giving Chavez and Caruso the stairwell all to themselves. The night watchman was a big-bellied man who appeared to believe that as long as he watched the base of the stairs, there was really no reason to expend the effort to check out the space above. The biggest danger the operatives faced now was being seen by one of the hundreds of tourists milling around on the cobblestone streets below, snapping hundreds of photos in the dusk that they would surely delete later. To avoid detection, Chavez wore dark clothing and stayed well away from the opening.
He stood behind the eyepiece of what looked like a tripod-mounted SLR camera. Dominic Caruso was a few feet to his left, also back from the adjacent window, with a similar setup. An infrared beam from Caruso’s laser microphone was aimed directly at the Russians’ terrace window. If things worked as they hoped, conversations occurring inside the room would cause the window to vibrate, modulating the light from the laser when it bounced at an angle to Chavez’s receiver and digital recorder. He’d picked up a few terse phrases when they’d first come on station twenty minutes before, mainly jokes about Spanish women and bitching about the Seville heat. There had been another sound, like the squeak of a twisted balloon or duct tape coming off a roll. Then nothing.
Clark and Adara, who w
as now sporting a curly auburn wig and nonprescription glasses, had set up shop two rooms down from the Russians, monitoring the cameras and GSM listening devices they’d installed under the metal railing three feet from the door to the junior suite and against the glass of the fire extinguisher on the wall outside the elevator halfway down the hall.
Midas and Jack sat at a sidewalk table of a tapas bar near the hotel entrance, almost lost among the crush of tourists as they nursed a couple of local beers and nibbled on thin slices of rich ibérico ham.
“Okay,” Clark said over the net. “Jack, Midas, time to scoot over to da Rocha’s room and do a little snooping. Be alert for anybody he’s got babysitting the place.”
“Roger that,” Ryan said. “On our way.”
“We’ll give you a heads-up when they leave the room,” Clark said. “Ding, how about a sitrep?”
“They can’t be that quiet,” Chavez whispered into the mic on his neck loop. He shot a sideways glance at Caruso. “You bump the laser?”
“Nope,” Caruso said, his words muffled by the pair of binoculars he used to peer at the Russians’ hotel window. “I’m good on this end. I have eyes through a small crack in the blinds, and you’re not gonna believe what they’re doing in there.”
27
Da Rocha’s hands shot up, as if to fend off an attack. A guttural, animalistic growl escaped his throat.
Clear plastic sheeting covered the floor and hung from the ceiling along the far wall, tacked up and fixed to the floor with black gaffer’s tape. Lucile ran into his back, her skin hot against him.
“Merde!” she spat when she saw the plastic.
Gregor stepped aside and gave a sinister chuckle.
“Relax,” the Russian with the long upper lip said from inside the room. “Is not what you think. Is makeshift bubble, not kill house. That is, unless you decide you no longer wish to work with us—in which case, we can repurpose our antisurveillance material . . . if we need to, say, dispose of your bodies.”
“No,” da Rocha said, hoping his face looked far more nonchalant than he felt. “That will not be necessary. My fervent hope is to work with you. I have, after all, been chasing after you like some sort of lovesick teenager. Have I not?” A series of deep, purposeful breaths began to slow his heart rate from the sudden shock. For a moment, he’d been certain he was about to have his brains blown all over a sheet of plastic. He’d used the technique himself, to protect his own carpet and furnishings from the blood of an unfaithful mistress.
The idea of a bubble was ingenious, really. Many secure intelligence facilities, including the American CIA’s newest headquarters building in Virginia, were constructed on the same principle, a building within a building. Music or white noise could be played in the dead space between the two layers, making surveillance with laser or microwave devices next to impossible and rendering even the most sophisticated wall-or appliance-mounted electronic bugs ineffective.
All the furniture had been pushed to the walls, outside the sheeting, the queen-size bed tipped against the inner wall, creating a secure box of plastic, absent anything but four throw pillows. The light coming through the plastic was diffused and flat, giving the sterile “room” a surreal, otherworldly feel. The three Russians in their dark sport coats, with da Rocha and Lucile standing naked as Adam and Eve, would have been laughable but for the severity of the Russians’ faces.
The Russian with the long upper lip handed each of them a white terry-cloth robe. “Please,” he said. “You may call me Vladimir.”
Da Rocha shrugged on his robe, which was a little too snug in the shoulders, tying the knot in front. Lucile put on hers but left it open in front, her breasts parting it like hands through a theater curtain.
“Please sit,” Vladimir said, gesturing to the pillows on the floor with an open hand. “To begin, I have to say that your ability to neutralize your rivals at will . . . is impressive, if uncalled for. We have done our research on you, Mr. da Rocha. It seems as though you may be able to be of service to my employers. I must impress on you the sensitivity of what we discuss . . . and the danger of violating our trust.”
“I understand,” da Rocha said without hesitation. “I’d hoped the route I took to gain your attention might prove I am serious, and certainly no friend of the authorities.”
“Perhaps,” the Russian said. “But the authority of a higher bidder, more money, if you will, often causes lines of trust to blur.”
“I hope our business arrangement will continue far into the future,” da Rocha said. He caught the hint of an eye roll in Gregor. It was a micro-expression that would have gotten the man shot if he’d been da Rocha’s employee, but he ignored it for the time being. The long-lipped man called Vladimir was the decision-maker in this group, so da Rocha focused all attention on him. “I value trust as well. You have no worries in that regard.”
“Outstanding,” Vladimir said. “Shall we cut right to the meat of the matter?”
Da Rocha’s shoulders relaxed a notch, while at the same time, his guts churned at being so close to securing the deal. “I would appreciate that.”
The Russian’s head bobbed up and down several times, as if he were just now choosing his words. “Very well. I represent a group of businessmen who wish to move a sensitive product to a group of people in a . . . shall we say, politically volatile region of the world.”
“I have routes in place for such movement,” da Rocha said. “Some are better than others, depending on the end point.”
“Iran,” Vladimir said, eyes focused intently on da Rocha, studying his reaction.
“That will be no problem,” da Rocha said. “I know of several covert airstrips in western Iran where the IRGC allows certain types of cargo to come in so long as they are paid a tidy—”
“The Revolutionary Guard—or anyone in the Iranian regime—cannot be a party to this.”
“They will not be,” da Rocha said. “We pay them to leave us alone.”
Vladimir shook his head. “This is large cargo. A sea route would be better.”
“Also possible,” da Rocha said, undeterred. “Where is the cargo now?”
Vladimir gave him another long look. “Muscat,” he said.
“Okay.” Da Rocha pictured the Gulf of Oman in his mind. No matter their cargo, smugglers were experts in languages and geography. “The trip from Muscat to Bandar-e-Jask is eminently possible, less than two hundred fifty kilometers, I believe. But I have access to large transport aircraft. I could have, say, an Ilyushin 76 in Muscat in a matter of hours with no problem.”
The Russians looked at each other.
“All right,” Vladimir said. “How you move the cargo makes no difference to me, so long as it gets moved. The buyers will take possession as soon as it reaches Iranian soil.”
“We have not discussed money,” da Rocha said.
“That is true,” the Russian said. “We have not. There are two . . . parts . . . to this cargo. We estimate the wholesale price of each one to be fifteen million American dollars.”
Da Rocha blinked hard to try and mask the growing twitch in his eye. The incessant demand and uncertainty of supply of weapons in the black market often made for exorbitant prices. Buyers paid a handsome premium so someone else would run the risk of going to prison. A two-hundred-dollar Bosnian Kalashnikov could go for over two thousand in Mexico. Still, he had a hard time picturing a deal where he could come out on top after laying down thirty million dollars on the front end.
“That is a great deal of money for me to pay for something sight unseen,” da Rocha said. “I am not even sure what the buyers have agreed to.”
Vladimir raised an open hand. “You must excuse my understanding of English. ‘Wholesale’ was not the correct word. My employer would pay you, not the other way around.”
Da Rocha struggled to remain composed. “You will pay me to take the
se items off your hands? What is the benefit in that?”
Vladimir rubbed his eyes. “The benefit is of no concern to you, my friend. Let us just say that my employer wishes to assist the cause of a friend without becoming personally involved.”
“I see,” da Rocha said, though he did not—not quite, anyway. He’d learned years ago when running women and drugs for Ochoa that product never went out for free—something was always expected in return.
“We pay you to move the items,” Vladimir said. “To act as a go-between. To be the . . . face . . . of the transaction.”
Da Rocha leaned on one arm, trying not to slip on the plastic with his sweating hand. His legs were getting sore from sitting sideways on the floor. “I have many shipping routes and mechanisms,” da Rocha said, turning up the bravado like the salesman that he was. “I can move anything from palletized crates of rifles to the largest helicopter gunship. Whatever your cargo is, it will be no problem, but how will I know the retail price if I do not know what I am shipping?”
Vladimir took a quick breath through his nose. “Two things, Mr. da Rocha. The retail price is also set at fifteen million per item. So you will be paid twice.”
Da Rocha tried to remain impassive, but he was certain that the notion of sixty million caused his eye to twitch even worse. For a time, he’d thought he might be dealing with some rogue separatist group, but only states dealt in that kind of money, and not for conventional weapons. “Forgive me for being blunt, but is this cargo . . . nuclear in nature?”
Vladimir looked down his nose. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” da Rocha said honestly. Death was death. He might as well sell nukes as sarin gas or computerized guidance systems.
“Outstanding,” Vladimir said, raising his hand again. “You will be well paid, but I cannot stress enough the importance of your discretion. Without it, there can be no future business.”
Future business, da Rocha thought. That was a promising sign. “You will not be disappointed,” he said. “That French fool Gaspard was fond of whispering into the wind to make himself feel more successful. It was from him that I first heard of your interest in doing some sort of business.”
