Hot Ice (31 page)

Clad in the fireman’s attire, Jason stood, leaned over, and took the strap from around the man’s shoulder and the small radio attached to it. “If I hear a peep out of you, you are dead,” he said to the trembling fireman, who was still prone. “
Comprende?
”

A violent nod was his answer.

Jason forced himself to walk slowly to the place the ladder jutted above the roofline, praying the lights from below would only silhouette a figure in a fireman’s helmet and bulky jacket. If not, he made a perfect target.

Just as he reached the ladder, the radio he had confiscated crackled with words he didn’t understand. He could only hope that, if someone were calling the fireman left on the roof, they wouldn’t come looking for him for a few seconds yet. He swung a leg over the roof’s edge and looked down into a maelstrom of flashing lights and upturned faces.

At the bottom, he was greeted by relieved firemen, slapping him on the back and chattering in Spanish. Until one got a look at his face.

For an instant, there was a shocked silence punctuated by the idling of big engines.

Jason didn’t wait to see what happened next.

He ran without looking back.

If there was pursuit, he never heard it. Instead, he shed the hat and jacket as he alternated turning corners of the narrow streets. Finally, he glanced over a shoulder. The street was deserted. The chase, if there had been one, was over.

He called Judith’s BlackBerry.

“Where are you?” were her first words.

He looked across the street into a small plaza. In the center was a bronze statue of what looked like a conquistador. He told her as much.

“Plaza de San José,” she informed him. “The statue is of Ponce de León and was cast from English cannon captured in the late eighteenth century. You are panting like a dog.”

“Did a little roadwork. Good for the heart. You know how to get to this Plaza …”

“Plaza de San José. I can be there in a few minutes.”

“Best come in a cab if you can. I have a feeling we may have worn out our welcome.”

How the hell had she known the name of the plaza? Or the history of the statue?

“You want to go
where
?” Even with the heavy Latino accent, the cabbie’s disbelief was quite clear.

“Mercedita Airport, Ponce,” Jason said. “You know, the city on the south side of the island.”

“It will cost you a hundred fifty.”

Jason managed both shock and indignation. “For an hour-and-a-half ride?”

The driver shrugged. “It is late,
Señor
.”

Jason knew what the man meant: They had been lucky to flag this cab down. After dark, tourists tended to move between the casinos at the big beach resorts, not the old city.

Guessing GrünWelt would immediately put the San Juan airport under surveillance, Jason had opted for the other Puerto Rico airport with flights to the States, Ponce. The problem, as revealed by using the BlackBerry’s Internet app, was that the next plane to the continental US was a JetBlue flight to Charlotte at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon. By that time, Ponce would likely be watched as well.

“You have a hundred fifty dollars,
Señor
?”

The taxi driver was getting nervous, not wanting to miss other fares if these gringos did not have the money.

Jason waved a wad of bills in front of him. “And a tip if you get us there in a hurry.”

“You have your passport?” Judith asked.

“Of course. You?”

Jason knew well the wisdom of carrying cash, credit cards, and travel documents at all times in case an expedited departure became necessary. Although passports were not required of US citizens or legal residents traveling to or from Puerto Rico, the precaution was fortunate. The first flight from Ponce was to St. Maarten, an island half Dutch, half French. From there almost hourly flights departed for the mainland United States.

By seven o’clock that evening, the weary travelers were in another cab, this one from Dulles International.

“You have no idea what you sent to your computer expert?” Judith asked.

“Nope.” Jason was staring out the window. “But if any of it was half as incriminating as the papers I swiped, I’d say GrünWelt is finished.”

“You don’t think there will be reprisals?”

He shook his head. “No point. The organization will already be exposed for what it is. I think everyone connected to GrünWelt will be scattering for cover like cockroaches when you turn on a light.”

She leaned back into her seat with a sigh. “I hope so. I’ve had about as much excitement as I can stand.”

“That’s why you insisted on coming along.”

“If I do that again, you have my permission to slap my face until I return to reality.”

The cab pulled up to Judith’s contemporary-styled town house.

“No point in your going all the way back to the base tonight,” she observed as she climbed out of the car.

“No point,” he agreed as he paid the driver.

The inside of her home was as modernistic as its exterior. Chrome and glass was far more in evidence than wood tone, if the blond Danish modern pieces could be described as having any tone at all. Canvases paraded as contemporary “art”—blank, single-colored earth tones hung above a pair of acrylic cases housing blobs of metal in no ascertainable shape. One corner was occupied by a bust only vaguely human. It might have been life-sized, had any such creature existed.

In short, the place was hideous, a physical assault on his artist’s eye. Even worse than he remembered from his first visit. It did, however, awaken a question he had about so-called metal sculptors: did they have any form in mind when they began, or did they simply let the laws of physics determine the end product?

But then, the decor was not the reason he was there.

He was headed to the kitchen, where Judith kept the liquor. “Make you a Martini?”

She was standing in front of one of the cases, staring at one of the metal slugs as if she had never seen it before. She didn’t answer.

Jason walked up behind her, putting hands on her shoulders, “Tired?”

Reaching behind her, she ran a hand along the back of his neck, her touch tingling like electricity. “A little. And I think I feel a headache coming on.”

Jason turned to look at her. “That old excuse?”

“Not that kind of headache. But I do have bottle of aspirin in the glove box of my car. Would you be a good boy and go down to the garage and fetch it? I’ll start drawing a nice, hot bath for both of us.”

Jason stepped away. “An offer I can’t refuse. I didn’t even know you had a car, thought you used the Metro.”

“I almost always do going to and from the base, but it’s nice to have your own wheels on weekends when …”

“When what?”

She shook her head. “The keys, that’s it, the keys.”

“The keys?”

“The keys to the car. I used to lose them every other day, so I started putting them right here.”

She pointed to a roundish lump of metal that might have begun life as a compressor for a household appliance. “Right here, next to
Complaint
. That’s the name of the sculpture.”

Full title
Complaint: The Fridge’s Compressor Has Gone Belly-Up
? he wondered.

But he said, pointing, “That looks like car keys to me.”

She was staring. “It is. But I didn’t put them there. I left them next to
Complaint
when I took the cab to the airport.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Jason scooped them up. “Take a quick look around. See if anything else is not where you left it.”

Her eyes widened. “What are you saying, that those … those people have been in my house?”

“I’m not saying anything. Just take a look around. If everything else is in its place, then the odds are you simply put your keys in a different spot.”

A few minutes later, she returned from an inspection tour. “Everything looks normal. Guess I was mistaken.”

Jason tossed the keys up and caught them. “Then get on that hot bath. I’ll get the aspirin. By the way, why do you lock your car when it’s in the garage?”

“Man at the service department where I bought it said to, something about cutting down on the drain of the battery.”

Jason chose not to admit he had never heard of an electrical system that went into slumber mode when the car was locked. A few years ago, he’d never heard a GPS that spoke to you either.

Two flights down, Jason entered the garage. A flip of the wall switch illuminated stacks of cardboard boxes on the far side of a concrete pad, the River Styx of unused but not-yet-unwanted items. Between them and Jason a red Mazda MX-5 Miata gleamed under the fluorescent lights.

Jason took a step forward and stopped. The driver’s window was not flush with the convertible top. Moving to the side, he could see the door wasn’t shut tight.

Locked?

Not with the door not completely closed.

An unlocked car that should have been locked.

A key not where it was supposed to be.

Absurd.

Rather absurd than dead.

Kneeling, Jason looked under the car. At first, he saw nothing unusual. Only when he lay on his back and inched underneath the automobile did he find what he suspected was there: a bundle duct-taped to the frame. Two wires, undoubtedly a negative and positive, ran up into the engine compartment, most likely attached to the ignition. That was why the keys had been needed: to get to the hood lock inside the car.

Jason knew only two things about homemade explosive devices: he was not qualified to do anything but call on the experts, and that they were often unstable. The device might be set to explode when the ignition was turned on, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t go off on its own.

Judith was in a flimsy bathrobe when he returned upstairs. Under any other circumstances, the bathwater would have long cooled before they got into it.

“What do you mean, ‘Get dressed and get out’?” she demanded.

“I mean there’s something attached to your car, most likely an explosive device.” He was reaching for the phone. “I’m calling 911.”

She stared at him as though he had announced the landing of space aliens. “An explosive … A bomb? But who, how … ?”

“I think we can guess who.”

“But you said you didn’t expect reprisals. Besides, how did they know … ?”

Jason had the phone next to his ear. “I said I didn’t expect any reprisals
after
GrünWelt was exposed. It’ll take a day or two for the info on that computer to be circulated. As for the how? Who knows? Anyone who can use a computer can find out pretty much anything they want. Your registration at the El Convento, the fact we were both on the same flight out of Ponce. GrünWelt may be a criminal organization, but no one said they were stupid.”

“But where I live … ?”

“My bet is they not only know where you live but your birth date, where you’ve traveled in the last few years, your favorite restaurant, anything they want to know. Like it or not, privacy died with the World Wide Web. Now, we can stand here and lament the fact, hoping that bomb beneath our feet doesn’t go off or …”

She turned toward the bedroom. “I hear you five by five.”

The flashing red, blue, and white lights gave an otherworldly pall to the residents of the condominium complex who had piled out into the street at the sounds of sirens and large diesel engines. Two fire trucks, half a dozen police cars, and an ominous, boxy-shaped truck with
BOMB DISPOSAL UNIT
stenciled on the side blocked the street already closed by yellow crime-scene tape. Four men in heavily padded uniforms had entered Judith’s garage as the crowd murmured and waited.

A burly black cop in uniform made his way through the assemblage to where Jason and Judith stood. “You Ms. Judith Ferris, the owner of that condo?”

Without taking her eyes off the place where the four bomb-squad members had gone, Judith nodded. “That’s
Dr.
Judith Ferris and yes, I am.”

The policeman produced a notepad, turning to Jason. “And you are?”

“Jason Peters, a friend of the doctor’s.”

The officer seemed to struggle to get this down on his notepad. “You the one who called 911?”

“Yes.”

The policeman nodded to a pair of men in cheap, off-the-rack suits who were making their way through the spectators as he shoved the pad back into his pocket. “I’ll have some more questions when they finish.”

The two were like Laurel and Hardy. The thin one, Laurel, was black and appeared to be in his forties. Hardy, white and losing his hair, was wheezing from the exertion. As though on cue, they both flashed their creds.

Hardy announced, “Franklin. Firearms, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Explosives.”

Laurel said, “Johnson. Firearms, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Explosives.”

Jason said nothing.

Hardy asked, “You got ID?”

Both Judith and Jason produced driver’s licenses.

Franklin handed Judith’s back. “Mr. Peters, your license shows an address in Chevy Chase. That your residence?”

Jason shook his head. “That’s my US address. I reside outside of the US.”

Franklin and Johnson exchanged glances.

“And just where might that be?”

“Most recently, Italy. My employer requires I live abroad.”

“And just who might that be?”

Jason handed them a business card with his name on it. Below that was “Contract Defense, Inc.” If anyone checked, they would find the company in good standing with the State of Maryland. A closer inspection would reveal a lawyer in Baltimore was the sole agent named in public documents, all that was required for a corporation whose stock was not publicly traded. The attorney-client privilege would block further inquiry.

Johnson put the card in his wallet. “Any idea how that bomb, if it is a bomb, came to be in Dr. Ferris’s condo?”

“None whatsoever.”

Johnson’s eyes narrowed. “But you did recognize it as an explosive device, did you not, Mr. Peters?”

“People don’t usually leave gifts wired to other people’s cars.”