Gold of Kings (11 page)

H
ARRY SLEPT LIKE THE DEAD,
deeper than a coma. When he woke he felt better than he had in a long time. Years.

This was no boat, but sleeping on a boat often brought that drug-like state. Closing his eyes to the soft laughter of waves on the hull, rocked by the wind and the moon. Hearing quiet voices of the watch on deck, smelling the salt and diesel and the sweat of work he loved. He could shut his eyes and just leave. Harry reflected on that as he showered. He had not thought about life on board in a while. In prison, a man learned to focus on the day and the danger at hand. When he was dressed he knocked on the door to the adjoining room and wondered if maybe he was learning to leave the bad behind. Or if it was just an old adrenaline junkie sleeping off his latest fix.

“Storm?”

Through the outer screen door a voice replied, “She's long gone.”

Back in the fifties the line of eighteen rooms had seen duty as a roadside motel. Now it and a neighboring apartment building both belonged to the church. They were sheltered from the main road by a stand of live oaks and bougainvillea taller than a man. Harry stepped into the morning light and found Emma Webb in a metal chair with one peaked shoe propped on the banister. “Storm said you took your coffee black.”

Harry accepted the Styrofoam cup. “Thanks.”

“I assume if we dusted that shot-up Bentley in the church shed, we'd find your prints all over.”

Harry sipped from the cup and grunted a noncommittal reply. So much for the morning's fine mood.

“When I showed Storm a photo of Selim Arkut, I asked if she knew him. She claimed not. Next thing I know, I'm getting word about this guy's house being turned into a free-fire zone, Beirut style.”

“What I told you on the phone was the dead solid truth. Storm had no idea who Selim was until you showed her that photo. She met him later that same night. He sashayed up at the Breakers' reception, gave her thirty seconds, then vanished.”

Emma stripped off her shades and rubbed her face. She looked very tired. “At least you managed to keep your stories straight.”

“Any word on how Arkut is doing?”

“We haven't heard a peep from the guy.” Emma slipped her shades back on. “Can you give me the long version of what went down last night?”

Harry seated himself in the flaking chair next to hers and laid it all out. Started with the Turk showing up at the convention center, the jet, the second limo, the panic room, the painting room, the attack. Emma spent the entire time watching a pair of mockingbirds hunting worms in the strip of green between them and the road.

When he stopped talking, she gave it a couple of beats, then rose from her chair. “You want to take a ride?”

“I ought to go see what Storm's got planned for my day.”

“I've got two junior agents dogging her steps. You've been officially turned loose for the duration.”

When they got to the parking lot, Emma entered the shed, walked past the two riding mowers, and did a slow sweep around the Bentley. When she touched one of the bullet holes, Harry said, “Shotgun.”

She moved on to the trunk's concave depression. Harry supplied, “Palm tree.”

“Know how much a car like this costs?”

“No idea.” Even with the bullet holes and the compressed trunk, the Bentley gleamed as only serious money could. “Hundred grand?”

“Try two fifty.”

“Get out.”

“Funny a guy would lose a car worth a quarter of a million dollars and not bother to report it missing. We're assuming for the minute Selim Arkut is alive. We picked up about a zillion rounds, but no bodies.”

Harry said, “The house was empty. A tomb. Stains on the walls where he'd taken down his art. Selim was definitely on the way out. And seriously freaked over somebody being on his tail.”

Emma didn't say anything further until they were in her car and she had the motor and AC running. “Storm said I should trust you.”

“Yeah, she sang me that same tune about you.”

Emma pulled away from the church, took the bridge to the mainland, and headed west. Taking her time, holding tight to her thoughts and the wheel. She drove like a cop, gunning the engine around slower traffic, impatient with everybody else on the road, as aggressive as an angry man. Only today there wasn't any tension between them. He sat twisted slightly in his seat, staring at her openly.

Emma was dressed in a blue suit as severe as a naval uniform. No jewelry except for a flat gold watch on an alligator band. No rings of any kind. Pale polish on her nails. Ditto for the lip gloss. A single clip keeping her hair in position.

She stopped at a light, glanced over. “What.”

He just shook his head. No way was he going to tell her what he was thinking. Which was that Emma Webb was one fine-looking lady. Shame about the badge and the baggage.

Emma said, “I want you to do me a favor. Pretend we're on the same side for a while. Lay it out for me.”

“I just did.”

“Not last night. The whole deal. How you got here, why you're staying. Everything.”

“Why should I?”

She tightened a notch, then took her mind off the verbal trigger. Harry actually saw it happen. She pointed at the front windshield and replied, “An hour that way is a little town called Clewiston. By the time we get there, I need to make a decision. Either I'm going to make you sit in the car while I go handle something, or I'm going to put my career on the line.”

Harry tried to recall the last time he had gotten complete honesty
from a cop and came up blank. So he used the seat controls to slide all the way back, stretched out his legs, and gave it to her straight. Starting with the moment the toffee-colored gnome sprung him from the Barbados jail, through watching the two-timing London researcher expire in his arms, to today. The whole nine yards.

A half hour beyond the Palm Beach County line, they entered the other Florida, the one big-city types liked to pretend was paved over and archived. Only those pundits were as blind as Miami condo living could make them. Because the truth was, Florida remained the third largest producer of cattle in the United States, and was second only to Kentucky for horse breeding.

The state's famous orange groves were restricted to regions with superrich soil and unlimited fresh water. The Everglades and the state's three other swamps were rimmed by scrublands, populated by half-wild cattle and ranches that measured their size in tens of thousands of acres. Roads were often still paved with oyster shells, and folks wore stained cowboy hats and spiced their speech with a genuine cracker twang. Harry had worked with several salvagers who preferred the Florida countryside to the beachside glitz. He liked the region and the people just fine.

Lake Okeechobee was a placid silver mirror laced with sky-bound streamers from overpowered speedboats. They stopped at Clewiston's only gas station for directions, then drove to a poor segment of an impoverished town. The local grove owners, ranchers, cowhands, and airboat gunners had been overwhelmed by immigrant laborers who worked the Everglade sugar plantations. The north part of town was infested with sawdust bars selling water glasses of tequila and shanties half-hidden in the live-oak groves, where Haitian mulattas plied their trade.

They found the strip mall tucked between the highway and the earthen dike. Lake Okeechobee was forty-six miles from tip to tip and broad enough to throw twelve-foot waves in hurricane season. The flat-topped dike loomed over the dilapidated buildings. Among the dusty pickups and souped-up Japanese models was a police car and two vehicles that could only be unmarked government vehicles. Emma parked beside a black Explorer with tinted windows. “If anybody asks, you're with me.”

They entered a storefront bank advertising payday loans and fund transfers. Latinos stained with sugar-cane tar and swamp muck and ex
haustion crammed the front room. The workers pretended to ignore a blue-jacketed woman interviewing a nervous employee.

The woman spotted them and walked over. “Help you?”

Emma opened her badge. “Emma Webb, Treasury. I'm looking for Agent Drummond.”

The woman gave Emma's ID a careful inspection, then called back, “Ross!”

“Yo.”

“You in?”

“Depends.”

She pointed them down the rear hallway. “He's all yours.”

Ross Drummond was a heavy-set man with a brush moustache and a nylon Windbreaker that read DEA. He inspected Emma with a marbled gaze. “You Webb?”

“Yes.”

“And he is?”

“An associate.”

He shook hands with them both, brusque and perfunctory. “You might've made the trip for nothing.”

“Won't be the first time.”

“Tell me. Okay, here's what we got.” He knocked on the nearest raw-pine door and pushed it open to reveal a closet-sized cubicle. Three adults occupied the chamber's only chairs. All held squirming infants. More children sat on the floor, while a young man and three women slouched against the rear wall. They faced a wide flatscreen that showed two elderly couples. The conversation halted momentarily, until the DEA agent said, “
'Sta bien
.” Soon as he shut the door, Harry heard the conversation pick up where it had left off.

Drummond said, “The nation being in what Washington likes to call a state of heightened vigilance, illegals don't dare plan a trip home. They're afraid they won't get back in. So these videoconferencing services are as close as many come to reaching out and touching the families back home. Money-transfer companies like this one have seen a fivefold increase in profits. All it takes is a similarly equipped hookup at the other end.”

Emma was nodding, so far ahead of Harry, he didn't have a clue where all this was headed until she said, “DEA wired the hookups.”

“Sound and light,” Drummond confirmed. “Clewiston's become a major drop for incoming shipments of Mexican brown and coke. Every now and then we find ourselves staring at some real heavies.”

“But not this time.”

A wiry woman wearing bottle-bottom glasses and a lab tech's white one-piece stepped from a cubicle farther along the aisle. She called, “All done here, Ross.”

“Find anything?”

“The place is jammed with prints. I'll sort through the IDs and get back to you.”

Ross nodded and said to Emma, “Like I told you, this could be a total waste. But our office got red flagged with a high-priority request from Interpol. Attempted hit by a professional assassin, possible terrorist connections.”

Harry said, “Terrorist?”

Drummond's gaze swiveled over. “Your man here is exactly who?”

“The only one who's gotten a clear look at the assailant.” To Harry, she said, “We don't know who he is, Harry.”

Drummond shrugged it off. “So anyway, this morning we got a flag from our regional officer. He claims he's got a match for your BOLO.”

“Your local agent matches a picture off a screen to an interagency alert?”

“Actually, our man on the ground got a heads-up because of where this fellow was calling. We don't get many calls aimed at Paris, France. Matter of fact, this was the very first one. The caller's image doesn't match anybody in our files. According to the manager, this wispy fellow drifted in, waited in line with everybody else. The manager remembers him because he was the only one that shift who came in alone. He made his call, left, came back an hour later, made a second call. Our records show it was to the same number.”

Emma said, “Can we see what you have?”

“Right this way.” They filed into the cubicle. A young agent sat perched on the edge of a hard-backed chair pulled up close to the screen. The screen, the computer terminal, the desk, the chair arms, and the door were all liberally coated with fingerprint dust. Drummond said, “Okay, roll it.”

The instant the image flashed onto the screen, Harry said, “That's him.”

Drummond said, “Freeze it there.” To Harry, “You're certain?”

“No question.”

Drummond asked Webb, “Can you confirm that?”

“I saw him for a total of maybe half a second. Then the guy slipped away, using the crowd as a shield. But yes. I can confirm that this is our attacker.”

Harry said, “I've seen him three times. And there is no question. None.”

Drummond asked, “Does this have anything to do with drugs?”

Emma said, “As far as we know at this point, not at all.”

“If it does, you'll return the favor, right?”

“Count on it.”

Harry stared at the image. The attacker looked no more substantial frozen on the flatscreen than he had in life. Pointed little chin. Almost fragile-looking features. No lips to speak of. Copper-colored skin, eyes as dark as his close-cut thinning hair. Ears small as an infant's and mashed close to his head.

Emma asked, “Can we hear what was said?”

“Sorry, no dice. This is totally off-the-record. But what got us willing to check outside our own division was, this guy encrypted his conversation.”

“You can do that?”

“Officially, no.” He said to his guy crouched by the machine, “Show them.”

The young man pulled an item from his pocket. “Looks like just your basic memory stick. Fits in the USB port here. There's a system developed for our agents in the field.”

“Not just us,” Drummond said. “CIA, DEA, Defense, all their covert agents carry one. We thought it was top-top secret. Until now.”

“May I see it, please?”

The agent got the nod from Drummond and passed it over. “It only works when paired with another on the receiving end. That's the beauty of the deal. Unless you've got the matching decrypter, you haven't got a hope of ever figuring out what was sent or received.”

Emma pointed at the screen. “But that picture is clear as a bell.”