Devlin's Defiance: Book Two of the Devlin Quatrology (32 page)

“
We
didn't, so we wouldn't have any record. But now that I've seen that
DVD, we'll open an investigation and do everything we can to find and
recover him and bring the perps to justice.”

“
What
can we do now?” Carie asked.

“
Go
home, leave it in our hands, and we'll let you know when we have
something.”

“
So
we do nothing?” Rosemary asked.

“
Leave
it to us; we're the professionals. But now I've got another
meeting,
and I'll get this DVD to the techs. Thank you for coming in.”

After
the four women left, he leaned back in his chair, rubbed his temples
and picked up the phone.

“
Leon,
we've got a problem. I'll have to check with my dad, but
you
and Charlie need to move that guy today. Get him out to the place in
Lehigh.”

-
84 -

January
11, 2013
9:05
a.m. local time

Casa
Mila (La Pedrera), Barcelona, Spain

When Senora Talsis
opened the door to the roof for the dozens of tourists who'd been
waiting for up to an hour to wander among Antoni Gaudi's amazing
sculptures, nothing in her six and a half decades of life had
prepared her for what was about to occur just beyond the base of the
Helmets.

As the tourists
streamed past her, the Americans pushing and elbowing the others as
they surged to get to the head of the crowd, she stepped quickly
behind the now-open door, sighing to herself at the rude behavior.
But with two weeks to go before her long-awaited retirement, she had
long ago come to regard the Americans with both contempt and
futility.

But when a particularly
heavy American male stepped on her foot and jostled her as he
shielded himself from the wind to light a huge cigar, she pulled
herself up to her full five-foot-four-inch height, waggled a finger
in his face and hissed, “No smoking, sir. Please extinguish
that.”

“
Lady, it's an
open roof. You can't ban smoking up here.”

“
Did you not see
the signs on the gate below?”

“
Signs? What
signs? No.”

“
They are there
and you cannot smoke anywhere in Casa Mila, even up here.”

“
Lady, do you
know who I am?”

She paused and looked
at him closely. “No, I do not.”

“
Well, I'm Sam O.
Brickelmortimer and I'm an American fucking Senator, and you will
give me the respect my office deserves.”

“
Sir, you are in
Barcelona, Spain, and I am Catalan, so no matter what respect you
think your office commands in your home country, it does NOT allow
you to smoke in Casa Mila, even on the roof. Now, extinguish that
cigar immediately.”

“
And what are you
going to do if I don't?” The Senator blew a mouthful of smoke
directly into Senora Talsis' face.

“
Is there a
problem here, Paris?” The Senator turned to face the door and
the uniformed guard staring up at him.

“
Put out that
cigar, Senor. There's no smoking in Casa Mila.”

“
Don't you call
me Senor, sonny; it's Senator,” he blustered.

As the commotion rose,
several of the tourists ahead of and behind the Senator aimed their
cell phones in his direction.

Oblivious, the Senator
continued to bellow at the guard, “And don't you ever tell a
United States Senator what he can or cannot do!”

“
Senator,”
the guard said, his voice dripping with contempt, “if you do
not put that cigar out immediately, I will put it out for you.”

“
Oh, yeah? You
and what army?”

“
Kein rauchen,
Dummkopf (No smoking, dumbhead)!” a high-pitched voice rang
out, and as the Senator turned toward it, he immediately found his
cigar, his face and the front of his four-thousand-dollar suit
sprayed with water. A five-year-old boy kept his squirt gun aimed at
the Senator's face and yelled, “Schweinhund, (pigdog)”
while a distinctively American male voice came from the crowd,
“Asshole!”

Photos and videos of
the Senator's dripping, angry face and his clumsy pursuit of the boy,
who ran nimbly through the crowd, and the Senator's final moments of
life, as he stumbled into and through the guard fence, slid and fell
six and a half stories to the courtyard floor and his squishing,
blood-spattering, scream-ending death, immediately began trending on
social media around the world.

Senora Talsis and the
guard hurried to the broken section of the fence, the guard calling
for security and maintenance on his radio, while Senora Talsis
launched back into her ritual spiel.

“
Move
along, please; siga adalante, por favor; weitergehen, bitte;
d
é
p
é
chez-vous,
si'l vous pla
î
t;
muovetevi, per favore; pade passeur, por favor; lad os gaa videre,
vendligst; Prahadite, pazhalusta, Pazhalusta, prahadite; keep going,
eh.” (The last one for Canadians.)

When
the Barcelona policia were able to analyze the photos and
videos,
they determined that the senator might have bumped into, tripped over
or been pushed by a heavyset gray-haired woman just past the first
set of helmet sculptures. Despite a wide-ranging search, with
assistance from Interpol, the CIA, NSA, FBI and the media, the woman
was never found, so the case remained open, with a tentative cause of
death as accidental.

None of those
agencies ever discovered any trace of a call on an encrypted
satellite phone ten minutes after the incident, made by a slim young
brunette six blocks away from Casa Mila, carrying a bulky shopping
bag. “Authentication 4873645. Target terminated. An
opportunity presented itself and I took it, got away clean, I think.
But
we'll head back to Madrid and then on to –
oh, you can? Great; that's
better. We can be there
in maybe an hour – no, tell the pilots an hour and a half,
okay? Good, great. See ya soon, Amber.” She put the phone
back in her bag.

“
Damn,
Carie Berry, I didn't get the chance to cut his balls off.”

- 85 -

January
12, 2013
1:13
p.m. local time

Aboard
Defiance

In the Gulf of Aden

“
She did?
Good for her. Maybe they're ready to come into the inner circle.
What? Oh, yeah, they'll be surprised. All that time we spent on the
beach and they had no idea. I'll love to see the look on their
faces. And when they meet Pam here, too. Oh, yeah, that'll be
great.

“
So how's
the R&D building coming along? Damn. Any way to hurry 'em up?
Greg and Julie have reached the limits of what they
can
do here. Oh, yeah, it works fine, but the ranges are limited. Did
one test, nineteen kilometers and 84 minutes. I even stuck a pencil
in the thing as it was growing and that went along, too. I was
totally
awestruck at the potential. You've got to
see it to believe it, Amber.
So the sooner you can
get the building done, the sooner you'll get to be astonished.

“
Anything
new from Phil and Nadia or the other teams? Really? Great. Shoot
it over as soon as you can. Pam'll be glad to see that.

“
What
else? Six? Really? Geez, what's this world coming to? Guess it's
just getting more polarized. Can we handle 'em all? Well,
if
you need me and Pam to take one again, let me know. Who? Kitty and
Robin? Oh, right; the newbies. They wanted what? The
Catbirds?
No, that's no good, too cutesy. Tell 'em to come up with something
else. But you think they can do the job? Okay; fine. Let 'em loose
on it.

“
Anything
else? What? And you left that for now? That shoulda
been
the first thing. Okay, okay; sorry. Did you try his chip? Shit.
Well, keep monitoring. So who's got him? Really?
They were the two
dirtiest guys in the Bureau, and
they're still in tight with the asshole's son; at least the asshole
father is dead, thanks to the Mimosa twins. They did? Can you send
that over, too? I want to see that for myself. And send me the
dossiers on those three assholes. Yup, anything we've got. Shit;
twelve days. They've probably killed him by now. We've got to move
fast on that, just in case. I owe him; it's my fault. No, I know he
agreed, but he – shit. I owe him.

“
Our girl
over there still got her cover intact? Good. Get in touch
with
her and let her know we're doing all we can, okay? Good.
Anything
else? Okay. Thanks, Amber. All hands on this, okay?”

He hung up the
satphone and headed up to the deck above the bridge to give Pam both
the good news about her guy and the bad news about his.

- 86 -

January
13, 2013
9:13
a.m. local time

Bonita Beach, Florida

“
Thirteen
days! Oh, Dallas, I'm so afraid he's dead.”

“
C'mon,
Rosemary, you gotta keep your hopes up” Dallas said. “I'm
sure something's gonna happen soon and you'll see he's okay.”

“
Right,”
Jill and Carie chorused.

Sharon added,
“C'mon, Rosemary. Chin up. Look at what we're all doing.”

Rosemary looked
around and saw Gordy's PVC lounge sitting in his usual spot, empty
except for a large sign that read “Where is Gordy O?” and
another with a photo of him and the words “Attention,
FBI.
Free Gordy O. NOW!!!!” Scattered around the beach, several
of
the beachgoers held similar signs or had them
hanging on their chairs or umbrellas. All told, at least twenty
signs were on display.
None were visible near Ron
and Jenny's chairs.

“
We've
also got it on all the social media sites, and it's going viral,”
Janet said. “And I got two of the local stations to come down
and do stories. They should be here soon.”

“
Oh,
gang, thank you for all you're doing. I just hope some of this
works,” Rosemary said. “And I got a call from some
reporter in DC. I have no idea how she found me, but she apparently
met Gordy when he was up there last month. She wants to help, too,
so she's putting a story in her paper. Sondra something, I think.”

“
Uh-oh,”
Dallas said. “What's this?”

A Collier
County sergeant and a deputy walked onto the beach, looked around and
loudly said, “Who can tell me what this is all
about?”