Death Echo

DAY ONE

ROSARIO

10:19 P.M.

Taras Demidov shifted in the plastic lawn chair he had put in the back of the beat-up van. He had purchased the vehicle for $850 cash and driven it off a dead lawn in front of a badly kept house. The panel van was a long way from the bulletproof limos and high-tech listening posts once available to Demidov, but he accepted it as he had accepted other changes.

Survivors adapted.

Demidov had survived by making himself as useful to the twenty-first century’s political/criminal oligarchs as his father once had been to unashamed dictators. Information never went out of style. Neither did extortion and execution. Demidov was adept at whatever had to be done.

The van fit in well with the ragged assortment of vehicles in the marina parking lot. Hidden by the interior shadows of the vehicle, taking care to stay well back from the windshield and the lights of the parking lot, Demidov scanned the gate closing off the Blue Water Marine Group gangway.

Nothing moving.

Even the feral cats had vanished into the shadows. He’d last seen one of them chasing a rat around the big refuse bins at the edge of the parking lot, right next to the portable toilet that had been set out for marina visitors. Like the animals, the visitors had disappeared into the night.

The captain, who had docked Blackbird with admirable economy, had climbed the Blue Water ramp, crossed the parking lot, and disappeared into another arm of the marina. The view straight through the van’s windshield didn’t tell Demidov if the captain had stayed wherever he had gone.

He could get a better view by moving to the front of the van, but that would reveal his presence to anyone walking by. Better to limit both his exposure and his view to the top of the Blue Water ramp. In any case, the captain wasn’t his assignment.

Shurik Temuri was.

Perhaps I’ll just kill him now and end the game.

A pleasant dream, but Demidov knew it was unrealistic. His employer wanted to catch Temuri with enough evidence to thoroughly discredit him. Temuri dead was worth five thousand dollars. Temuri caught with his pants down was worth more than a million dollars in a bank on the Isle of Man.

That kind of math wasn’t hard to do. Even in the modern world of recession and inflation, a million dollars was a good payday.

Demidov sighed and set aside the glasses. The van stank of the slops bucket he used rather than revealing himself by crossing the open parking lot to a portable toilet each time he needed one. He ignored the ripe smell just as he ignored the uncomfortable lawn chair set behind the driver’s seat. An ear bug in his right ear monitored the Blue Water office. He monitored the VHF channel to the marina with his portable radio. He would eat, doze, and watch from the van until Temuri appeared.

Standard surveillance-exhausting, boring, and risky for a man working alone. At this point Demidov didn’t have a choice. He must wait, watch, and collect information. Information was his weapon of choice, although he preferred a silenced pistol for close work.

The bug he had put in the Blue Water office before it closed was transmitting nothing but static.

I should have bugged Lovich.

It had tempted Demidov, but the risk wasn’t worth the reward. The office of Blue Water Marine Group gave him much of the information he needed. If and when that changed, he would consider the problem again.

Until then, he would watch Blackbird more closely than a hen with one chick.

As he had every thirty minutes, Demidov checked his cell phone for a text message from his employer.

Nothing.

He switched screens to check on movement. The upper lat/long numbers hadn’t changed. The lower set reflected the location in Rosario.

He settled in for a long, uncomfortable night.

10

DAY ONE

ROSARIO

10:35 P.M.

Carrying a bottle of bourbon in a paper bag, Mac climbed to the top of the marina gangway, pushed open the gate, and headed for the old pickup he used when he was in town. Marina parking was too expensive for anyone but tourists. He always left his truck in a lot a few blocks away, close to the commercial docks favored by fishing boats. As a rule, commercial boats didn’t play well with private marinas and yachties.

Before Mac got a block away from Blue Water Marine Group, he heard a car engine start up in the parking lot he’d left behind.

Just someone going home late, he told himself.

He turned right and headed for his truck. A minute later he stopped to fiddle with one of his shoes-and look over his back trail.

A white Jeep idled in the mouth of an alley. The headlights weren’t on, but the streetlight glanced off the windshield and grille, giving away the vehicle’s location. A shadow figure sat behind the wheel. The driver had been forced to expose himself in order to keep Mac in sight.

Okay, not someone going home late.

Mac stood and walked briskly toward his pickup truck. If someone was dying to talk to him, he’d take care of it after he saw Tommy. Until then, it would be easy enough to lose a watcher among the heaped seine nets and crab traps that stood watch over the commercial docks.

The dark hulls of fully rigged fishing boats tied off at the docks closed in around Mac. He moved lightly down another ramp, took a spur dock, and climbed back to the parking lot via a third ramp. Nobody noticed him. The fishermen who slept aboard were already deep in their dreams of nets filled with seething silver wealth.

When Mac surfaced at the parking lot, there was no sign of the white Jeep. He waited anyway, taking a long look at the shadows surrounding his truck. The only sound was his own heartbeat and the sudden scream of cats fighting or mating in the rough boulders that lined the working marina’s waterways.

Mac unlocked his truck. No light came on when he opened the door. He had spent too many years dodging bullets to ever feel comfortable about spotlighting himself when he climbed into a vehicle at night.

No headlights showed up in the parking lot. No lights came on in any of the moored boats. No one walked or waited near the parking lot exit.

Good to go.

Mac started the truck, wincing at the noise. But there was no help for it. A diesel engine was one loud son of a bitch. Not to mention the whine of a water pump that he should have replaced by now, but he had been too busy driving yachts for Blue Water and other brokers to manage any truck work on his own.

After a last look around, Mac put the truck in gear and headed across the lot, headlights off.

No car lights came on in front or in back of him.

He drove slowly through the jumble of cars, work trucks, crab and prawn pots, gill and seine nets, and the large metal drums designed to pull and store nets during the fishing season. He didn’t vary his speed, easing his way through the obstacle course without flashing his brake lights. He entered the street the same way. When he turned onto a more heavily used street, he flipped on his headlights and began driving like a regular citizen.

There wasn’t much flash and glitter in Rosario to distract Mac as he drove. It was a blue-collar, sweat-stained working town. Or it had been. Those glory days were more than a half-century gone, but the town refused to adjust to the new reality of tourists and boutiques. It was a battle that had been fought through the city council and mayor’s office for as long as Mac could remember.