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“The usual. Nothing fancy.”

  The doorbell jingled. Glancing in the mirror toward the entry, she spied a young woman with long, wavy, bright-red hair looking around, searching. The young woman’s gaze stopped on Suleema. She approached. Andre turned toward her. “May I help you?”

  The young woman held out an envelope to Suleema. “This is for you,” she said. “It’s an early Christmas present.”

  Suleema took the plain white envelope, noting that her name had been written in a pleasant script on the front. “Is this from you?”

  The young woman smiled. “No. I’m just to give it to you.” She smiled at Andre. “Thanks,” she said. She turned and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” Suleema called out. But the redhead left as quickly as she’d come.

  “Well,” Andre said, propping one hand on his hip. “That’s different.”

  Suleema slipped her middle finger under the flap and tore the envelope open. Inside was a plain white card folded in half. She opened it.

  You Shouldn’t Have Opened This Card

  It Could Have Been A Letter Bomb

  She snapped the card closed, fearing that Andre might be looking over her shoulder, and slid it back into the envelope, her hands shaking.

  “Are you okay, Sulee?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It’s from a friend. What a nice gesture.”

  She could not have described what happened during the remainder of the hour and a half she was in the shop if her life had depended upon it. The minute she stepped outside, before she entered the car, she stood in falling snow and read the full note.

  You Shouldn’t Have Opened This Card

  It Could Have Been A Letter Bomb

  I Can Reach You Wherever I Want

  Continue To Keep Your Mouth Closed

  The last line chilled her even more than the words Letter Bomb. “Continue to keep your mouth closed,” it said. “Continue.” She was certain now that someone in the government, someone who wanted the government to prevail in Sharansky and who was sufficiently high up to know whether or not she had informed anyone in authority, was responsible for Alex’s kidnapping.

  Chapter 20

  Joe had been running on adrenaline since arriving in Manaus, so it didn’t surprise him when the flight attendant had to wake him up upon their arrival in Asuncion. He’d crashed into a deep sleep the minute the plane reached cruising altitude out of Rio and turned for Paraguay.

  Standing by his seat, he stretched, grabbed his overnighter and his laptop, and as he strode out of the plane, he wondered if he’d dreamed about Nova. He thought maybe he had. That also would not be surprising. After he had done the stupid thing of making love to her, he’d gone back into Leila Munoz’s living room and kicked himself mentally all over the place. Christ. He wouldn’t describe himself as a masochist, but only someone willing to get hurt again would have done something so stupid.

  Outside the terminal, he snagged a taxi and directed the driver to the hotel and bar Tropica where he would meet their Asuncion contact. The American ex-pat owned the hottest bar in Asuncion and was also the CIA’s man in town. Joe and Nova would both have rooms in the Tropica for the night.

  See, there she was in his thoughts again! His mind just wouldn’t let up on Nova. He wanted her. Hell, he still loved her, no doubt now at all about that. Six months hadn’t begun to cure him.

  And the thing was, the way she’d made love seemed to say that she loved him. His raw animal instinct told him that she hadn’t been faking. What had passed between them was true passion, not just sex. And before this op was over, if she did love him, he would find out. And if she did, he would also find some way to convince her that he wasn’t a threat, that marrying him would not rob her of her independence or freedom.

  He stepped out of the taxi and paid the driver a buck—six thousand guarani.

  One way or the other, I’m going to convince her to marry me.

  The Tropica, a three-story building, occupied the center of a block in downtown Asuncion. Tiny balconies with iron railings hung outside the hotel’s rooms on the second and third floors. At five thirty in the afternoon, the place looked dead.

  He tried the door, found it unlocked and strode inside. To his left was a reception desk. His objective was the bar. He turned right, through the door that led into a room where alcohol fumes were so strong a man might almost get drunk just whiffing. Chairs sat upended on most of the tables. Like virtually all bars seen in daylight, the room looked used and abused.

  The most attractive Guarani girl he’d ever seen stood on a small stage singing “The Night Was Meant for Lovers” in Spanish to the accompaniment of a single pianist. Her tiny, bright-yellow strapless dress looked to be plastered to her skin.

  Four men, the only patrons, lounged at a table watching her. A first-rate voice matched her great body. A stray, bitter thought struck him. Here she was, a young, nubile, talented beauty, probably buried for life in this corruption-riddled, poverty-struck armpit. The thought shifted. Maybe she would find her way out of Paraguay. Or maybe she loved her country and her family and would never dream of leaving.

  A muscle-bound stud wearing three heavy gold chains, one bearing a cross the size of a dollar bill, stood, legs apart, behind the bar wiping dry and then aligning glasses in neat rows. “El jefe?” Joe said.

  Stud pointed toward the occupied table. The girl stopped singing and bent in earnest consultation with the pianist. Joe ambled to the table and delivered in English the words that would identify him to his contact as CIA for this op. “I’m looking for the Tropica’s owner. I was told he could help an American in distress.”

  A rougher bunch of men Joe had never seen. If he didn’t know that, in fact, one of them was his CIA contact, he could have walked into the weekly drug traffickers’ meeting. Or maybe a confab of the kidnappers for which he was searching. All but one looked to be of Spanish or Guarani descent. Jeans and simple, sleeveless shirts that showed off the tattoos on their arms, perfect identifiers.

  All were visibly drunk. Their eyes wavered, their necks held their heads unsteadily. A queasy feeling struck Joe. Unless one of these guys was acting, his contact could turn out to be more trouble than help. How long had it been since Leila Munoz, or anyone else from the Company, had met with their man in Asuncion?

  Joe’s training kicked in. He noted the most distinguishing tattoo of each. For the tall, thin one it was a triple-headed cobra rearing on his right forearm. The chubby one with the nasty scar on his right cheek had decorated his left bicep with barbed wire along which were strung some kind of flowers. A little guy with a sharp face had covered his entire left arm with shooting stars. And a magnificent wolf’s head stared at Joe from the left bicep of the one Anglo in the pack. The Anglo, the Wolf, grinned and said, “What kind of distress can I help you with?” the reply that identified him as Joe’s contact.

  Cobra said, in a booming base voice, “Take a load off.”

  Unlike his forbidding appearance, Cobra’s voice seemed friendly enough.

  “Right. Sit yourself down,” his contact, the Wolf, said, his words slurred.

  The queasy feeling intensified. Joe deposited his overnighter on the floor, his laptop on the nearest free table, took a chair down and joined them.

  The girl called out something in Guarani. The Wolf shook his head and waved her to come over to the table. He pulled her onto his lap.

  The Wolf, Joe noted, was around forty-five. His black hair had gone gray at the temples, and his gaunt face also had a two-day shadow with a lot of silver. He was tall and handsome, but tiny red lines around his nose and bloodshot eyes strongly indicated alcoholism. The girl, seen close up, couldn’t be a day over eighteen. The Wolf kissed the back of her neck. Joe balled a fist against the urge the punch the lecher’s lights out.

  “My name is Joseph de los Santos,” Joe said instead.

  “Ramone Villalobos,” the Wolf replied. “Call me Ramone.”

  Nova would be here in about one hour. She
would likely be as disappointed in this dissolute contact as he was. “I’d like a room,” Joe said, eager to find out whatever was essential from Ramone Villalobos, and then make an escape. “Right away if possible.”

  “Sure, sure,” Ramone said. He shoved the girl off his lap and stood. “Cummon. I’ll get you fixed up.” He patted the girl’s behind. To his buddies he said in English, “The singin’s over. I’ll see you later.”

  Joe picked up his luggage and followed Ramone Villalobos toward the reception desk.

  Chapter 21

  The dead jungle fowl—a rusty-red and glossy black cock with an impressive red comb—kicked its last. Its blood-spattered body lay in the dirt of Escurra’s fighting pit, its gray feet sticking into the air.

  The winning bird’s owner rushed into the ring and snatched up his wild-eyed male. The win qualified the owner to be one of the lucky men to bring a game fowl to the big fights on Christmas Eve, only two days away. Betting during Escurra’s famous Christmas Eve fights was always heavy, the winnings much more substantial than what the bird’s owner would pick up tonight.

  Tomas Morinigo Escurra rose, bored. He signaled Rodrigo and Juan to follow him. His main office was in his home, the Casa Grande, but for convenience he had turned two of the first rooms in the long shed that held the pen cages into a passably comfortable spot to spend time away from the house and the women. Fortunately, his wife and youngest daughter had gone with Felipe’s wife, Escurra’s oldest daughter, to New York. All three of the women in his life would be out of the picture until after New Year’s.

  Escurra kept a tight hold on the key to the shed office. Only he knew that built into its dirt floor was a safe holding two hundred and fifty thousand U.S. dollars, a kind of insurance. Over ten years ago he had dug out the hole right under his desk chair, mixed and poured the cement himself, installed the safe and thrown a rug down to hide the heavy wooden cover. But he didn’t keep all his emergency reserves in one place. He kept the diamonds in the safe in his office in the Casa Grande.

  A big man with wide shoulders and a beaked nose that fit his name from the fighting days—the Eagle—Escurra had purchased an especially outsized swivel armchair. He sank into it as Rodrigo slumped onto a battered armchair. Juan leaned against the wooden wall, crossed one ankle over the other, pulled out a toothpick and proceeded to work it over his gums.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Escurra said to Rodrigo. “I was gonna have two Guarani men fight each other, but I did that last year. I got a great idea. I’m gonna have the black American kid fight a Guarani kid. Can you imagine that! The betting will be hot.”

  “I don’t know, boss,” Rodrigo said. Escurra knew that Rodrigo felt comfortable disagreeing with him occasionally on small things. After all, Rodrigo’s brother, Felipe, had married Escurra’s oldest daughter. After checking Escurra’s face to be sure he wasn’t stepping on his dick, Rodrigo continued. “Doesn’t it figure that a Guarani of the same age as the Negro would whip the Negro’s ass? Who would bet on the American?”

  “Get me a beer,” Escurra said to Juan, who immediately peeled himself from the wall and went to the ice chest. “You’re wrong about that. The Guaranis are short. You haven’t seen the American. He’s tall. And heavier. And blacks are tough.”

  “Well, if you say so.”

  Escurra popped off the beer cap and swigged down a cold slug. “You and Juan steal me a Guarani kid tomorrow. Fifteen or sixteen years old.”

  “Okay.”

  The sound of a car motor intruded. Escurra waited, watching the door. Felipe came in. Pepe, one of Felipe’s men, followed, both of them dressed in gaucho clothing and looking as if they had been out wrangling cattle. They smelled like it, too.

  “Hey, hermano” Rodrigo said. The brothers exchanged a quick, intimate clasping of hands.

  “Beers for everyone,” Escurra said to Juan.

  Juan hustled.

  Escurra didn’t like the frown on Felipe’s face. “Why the fucking black look?” he asked.

  Felipe sat down, took a beer but didn’t open it. He just looked at Escurra with jittery eyes. Escurra’s sense of something wrong strengthened. He waited, letting Felipe stew.

  Finally, Felipe said, “We killed the first hostage, like you said. And the photos are on their way.”

  Felipe kept squirming. Escurra waited him out, feeding his subordinate’s distress.

  “The thing is, the Americans’ tour guide leader got loose right afterward. He ran into the jungle. Pepe and Carlito and Luis went after him. Pepe had to kill him.”

  Escurra leaned forward, palms down on his desk. Fucking idiots! “My orders were that no one was to touch a hair on the head of any of the Americans without my permission.”

  Felipe grew even more frantic. “But he ran into the jungle, Tomas.”

  Escurra looked hard at Pepe. “Did Felipe explain my orders to you?”

  Pepe, who had also been given a beer and who had opened it, now let his arm drop. He didn’t seem able to find his tongue.

  Felipe said, “They couldn’t let the bastard escape.”

  Escurra swiveled his attention back to Felipe. “You really think some soft American could escape through the jungle?”

  No smart comment came back from Felipe since the idea was obviously stupid.

  Escurra looked back at Pepe. “Who killed him and how?”

  Finding speech at last, Pepe said, “We, I, had to stop him.”

  “So instead of running him down, or tracking and cornering him, you shot him? You shot my valuable hostage?”

  “Yes, Señor Escurra. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry wouldn’t teach Escurra’s other men to follow his orders without question. Escurra opened the center drawer of his desk, put his hand on the butt of the Colt .45 he kept there, pulled it out and placed a shot in the center of Pepe’s chest.

  At first, Pepe simply looked surprised. Then he dropped the beer and then dropped to the floor himself.

  Felipe jumped to his feet, his face red. The gaze he turned onto Escurra could strip skin off had it been a knife. “Fuck you, Tomas. I’ve known Pepe since I was five years old. All he did was make a mistake.”

  “What you need to understand, Felipe, is that everyone is useful. Brilliance is in knowing how to use a man. Don’t forget that! My orders are never to be disobeyed.” Escurra looked to Juan. “Go outside and close the door. Tell everyone at the cockfight that we were just fooling around and I shot a hole in the floor by mistake. But you tell my men exactly why Pepe won’t be around any more.”

  He put the gun back into the desk drawer. Tomorrow he might use it for target practice before he had Juan clean it.

  “Sit down, Felipe! Rodrigo, haul this body out of here and stash it in one of the pens. Later tonight you and Juan can dump it in the river for the piranhas.”

  To Escurra’s satisfaction, Juan’s, Felipe’s and Rodrigo’s faces were still rigid with a look of horror. All three would quickly spread around what the penalty was for disobeying the Eagle, a lesson Escurra had learned he needed to reinforce every now and then to keep the men in shape.

  Chapter 22

  At seven o’clock, a taxi let Nova off in front of the Tropica. She was running behind schedule; her flight out of Rio had been delayed an hour and forty-five minutes. Several bad experiences had taught her that air travel within every South American country was never reliable, but that didn’t prevent frustration when it happened.

  No longer fuming but still churning over the loss of time and anxiety for the hostages, she stomped into the building and up to the reception desk. Mercifully, the humidity here seemed to be half that in Manaus. “Do you have a room for me?” she asked. “My name is Nora Smith.”

  “Yes, yes,” said a sleepy-eyed, sixty-year-old man.

  He slid a registration book to her, along with a pen. She slid her passport across to him on the counter and he placed it in a file for passports before turning to the wall behind him. He fetched a key from the message box f
or room 302 and passed it to her.

  A teenage Guarani boy materialized from somewhere. He snatched up her overnighter and was about to take her shoulder bag when she shook her head and smiled at him. His return smile showed beautiful white teeth against his dark brown skin. The desk clerk said, “Ms. Smith, our owner waits for you in his office. The boy can take your bag to your room. I will show you to the office.”

  The man led her down a hallway toward the back of the building. He stopped at a closed door and knocked. “Come in,” said a baritone voice in English.

  The receptionist headed back to his post. She opened the door and stepped inside.

  Joe and another man sat opposite each other and sideways to her. She felt oddly comforted simply at the sight of Joe. But when the two men turned her way, her heartbeat came to a full stop.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Ramone Villalobos.

  She blinked, a reflex to determine if she was hallucinating.

  “I was getting very worried about you,” Joe said.

  His words registered, but her tongue remained frozen, her mind stunned. She couldn’t think what to say.

  Joe tried again. “You’re almost two hours late.”

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Ramone said.

  He was still handsome. Tall and erect. He wore cowboy boots and jeans and she noted that he now had a tattoo on his arm, a wolf’s head. She couldn’t find her voice, the shock of seeing this bastard was too great. The room felt like it had fallen into suspended animation.

  Joe leaned toward her. “Are you all right?”

  That voice she loved finally broke through the shock barrier. “Yes. Perfectly fine.” She looked at Ramone, hoping he got the message. She was perfectly fine.

  She noted now that Ramone’s eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks gaunt. Maybe the years hadn’t been kind to him. Maybe he hadn’t sailed through them all too well. After all, he’d ended up working for the Company in Asuncion, Paraguay. How rewarding for a lifetime of service could that be?