corporations and proxies of the same Western interests he’d supposedly been excommunicated from. When a man is listed as a threat by his own country, he is presumed to be open to offers from all sides.
Depending on who was asking, the questions took different forms. The dictators, generals and warlords were refreshingly, if disturbingly, direct. The agents of the various Western governments were far less clear, their words always couched in the hypothetical.
He told himself that he’d rejected all those that might be patently evil, but in places that reeked of madness it was often hard to tell the difference. Guns begat guns; one dead warlord was replaced by two with a blood feud between them; an oil terminal that gave money to a mad dictator also gave jobs and food to people who worked on and around it—was it moral or immoral to blow such a thing up? Finally, he couldn’t tell anymore. He’d left Africa and arrived in Brazil, ready to vanish forever. It seemed for a while that he had, but the call had come anyway. Apparently some people were not allowed to disappear.
Hawker stared at the woman across from him, realizing, at least, that her offer had not been phrased in the hypothetical. “You have security issues.”
“Anonymous threats and a break-in at our hotel. Items were taken, others destroyed. Things of little value, but the message was clear: someone doesn’t want us going out there.”
“Any candidates?”
“Plenty of them,” she said. “From radical environmentalists who think we’re out to destroy the rainforest, to mining and logging concerns who think we’re trying to stop them from destroying the rainforest.” She paused. “But we have reason to believe it goes deeper than that.”
He understood what she was saying: there was more at stake than she could or would tell him. But she needed him to know it in general. It made him wonder how much she knew. She seemed a little young to be in such a position and making such a request. No, he decided, “young” wasn’t the right word. More like “keen” or “zealous.” Perhaps that’s what people looked like when they still believed in what they did. He couldn’t remember.
“No questions asked?” he guessed.
“Not many that I can answer.”
He’d try another tack, one she’d be able to confirm, at least to some extent. “And what do you know about me?”
“Enough,” she said.
“Enough?”
“Enough to wonder what someone with your reputation is doing in the middle of nowhere.”
“People who trusted me died,” he said, thinking that if she didn’t know that, she didn’t know
She appeared unfazed. “The people I work for do. You were the only name on a short list. Chosen personally, it seems.”
“By whom?”
She took another sip of the coffee, maneuvering the glass carefully and examining the chips in the rim as she placed it down. For a second he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then her eyes flashed at him again. Apparently she’d made him wait long enough. “Stuart Gibbs,” she said. “The NRI’s director of operations.”
The name rattled around in his head. Hawker didn’t know the man, but he’d heard of him. Gibbs had been fairly high up in the Agency when Hawker had left, a rising star with a reputation for arrogance and ruthlessness. And now he ran the NRI, or part of it anyway. Such a nice little organization.
As he considered the offer, every instinct in his body shouted at him to turn it down, to tell this zealous young woman that Director Gibbs could go to hell and take his offer with him. After all, the only right that those in exile retained was the privilege to remain that way. But another thought had begun to form in his mind: the possibility of a door opening, one that he’d expected to stay forever closed. It began with Director Gibbs and his personal interest in the operation.
“How long have you been with them?” he asked.
“Seven years.”
“Almost from the start,” he said, showing her that he knew a little something about the organization. “And Gibbs?”
“From day one,” she replied, annoyed by his probing. “As you’ve probably guessed.”
Hawker had guessed exactly that and it only reinforced his intention to say no, but she didn’t give him the chance.
Suddenly, the tiger was tired of playing. “Look,” she said, “I can see this is going nowhere. I didn’t come out here to waste your time. We just want an American pilot for what is essentially an American expedition. Obviously, you’d prefer to remain here.” She looked around. “And why not? I mean, who’d want to give up all this.”
She handed him a business card. “My problem is time—I don’t have a lot of it. Here’s my number. Call me before noon tomorrow if you change your mind. Wait any longer and I’ll have someone else.”
Hawker watched in detached amusement as she stood and turned to leave. He stole a quick glance at the battered old Huey. Whatever the other considerations were, the job would pay well. More than he could make in a year or two in a place like Marejo. Not to mention the half-dozen things on the Huey that he could repair or replace and bill to the NRI, things that weren’t likely to get fixed any other way. Simple choice, simple compromise—that’s how it always started.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m interested. But you have to understand: I don’t take checks.”
She halted her departure and looked him in the eye. “Somehow, we didn’t think you would.”
The next thirty minutes involved negotiations over timing, charter fees and operating costs. Formalities really, and for the most part quickly out of the way. When they were done, Hawker stood and walked her back to the waiting Land Rover.
“I should be in Manaus by tomorrow night,” he said, holding the door as she climbed in.
“That works,” she replied, her lips curving upward into a perfect smile. “I’ll see you then.”
Hawker slammed the door, just as the engine roared to life. As she drove off, his mind replayed the conversation and the decision he’d just made. There would undoubtedly be more to the journey than archaeology, but how much more was difficult to determine. The presence of civilians made it unlikely that anything too outlandish was in store, but the personal attention of NRI’s director suggested just the opposite. The contradiction bothered him; it left him wondering which direction the danger would come from, a sickly familiar feeling.
As he watched the Rover take the main road, another thought occurred to him, the kind that flashes into one’s head and then pretends to disappear, only to lurk in some dark corner of the mind and whisper incessantly at the consciousness.
He could understand why the NRI didn’t want a Brazilian pilot. Having someone like himself enhanced security no matter what type of operation they had in mind. But the NRI was a big organization, with people all over the world. They had to have their own pilots; probably had them in spades, and
CHAPTER 3
The man in the black jacket stared down the alleyway that ran out before him, a street made of dust and sand and cobblestones held together by what appeared to be dried and hardened mud. Most of Manaus was modern, even thriving in a way not seen since the rubber boom of the 1920s, but every city had its barrios, and Manaus was no different. The nameless jumbled street lay in one of them, and as he started walking down it, the man in black could feel the eyes of its inhabitants upon him.
His name was Vogel, and he had a business meeting to attend in such auspicious surroundings. He followed the street back, walking between faded buildings that sagged with age. Halfway down, where the road bent slightly
