report ended, and Zavala was about to turn the TV off when a familiar face appeared on the screen.
'Kurt, you've got to see this,' he called.
Austin emerged in time to hear the blow-dried announcer give his report.
'This just in. Alleged Mexican mafia drug figure Enrico Pe dralez was killed today when his car exploded in Tijuana. Two men who may have been bodyguards also died in the explosion.'
The announcer went on to read the Mexican's law-breaking laundry list.
'Looks like our green chopper people don't like loose ends,' Austin observed.
The phone rang, and Zavala picked it up. He listened for a moment, muttered 'You're welcome,' and replaced the phone in its cradle. 'That was FBI Agent Miguel Gomez,' he said.
'What did he want?'
Zavala's mouth puckered in a wry smile. 'He just wanted to say thanks for making his job a little easier.'
Chapter 16
Brunhild Sigurd ran her far-flung empire from a turret office high above the sprawling Viking edifice she called Valhalla. The windowless room was built in an exact circle, the geometric form closest to perfection. The walls were stark white and unadorned by paintings or wall hangings. She sat in front of a flat-screen monitor and a telephone console of white plastic. It was all she needed to be in instant touch with her operations around the world. The temperature was kept at a cool thirty-eight degrees summer and winter. The few who had been allowed into this aerie compared it to being in a walk-in refrigerator, but it suited her fine.
As a girl growing up on an isolated farm in Minnesota, she had come to love the cold and reveled in the purity to be found in subfreezing temperatures. She would ski alone for hours under the stars ignoring the icy chill that stung her cheeks. As she grew in height and strength she distanced herself even more from humanity, the 'little people' as she called them, who saw her as a freak. At school in Europe, her natural brilliance al lowed her to excel at her studies even when she seldom at tended class. Those times when she couldn't hide and had to suffer the stares of others only drove her ambition, fueled her smoldering resentment, and planted the seeds for her megalomania.
She was talking on the speaker phone: 'Thank you for your
support of the Colorado River legislation, Senator Barnes. Your state stands to gain quite handsomely for your key vote, especially when your brother's firm starts picking up contracts for the work we have planned. I hope you've taken advantage of the suggestions I've made.'
'Yes, ma'am, I have, thank you. I've had to avoid the conflict-of-interest thing, of course, but my brother and I are quite close, if you know what I mean.'
'I do, Senator. Have you talked to the president?'
'Just got off the phone with his chief of staff. The White House will veto any bill that seeks to overturn the privatization legislation we passed. The president is a firm believer that the private sector can always do a better job than government, whether it's running prisons, social security, or pumping water.'
'What sort of backing does the Kinkaid bill have?'
'Only a scattering of votes, nothing serious. Damned shame about Kinkaid having that accident. I always liked the man. But without him around to whip up the troops, an override is bound to fail.'
'Excellent. How are the other privatization bills faring?'
'They'll do just fine. You'll be seeing publicly run water facilities being privatized all over the country.'
'So there are no problems?'
'One maybe. The biggest pain in the butt is the editor of the daily paper in my state capital. He's raising a ruckus, and I'm afraid he might bollix things up.'
She asked the editor's name and made a metal note of the senator's answer. Her desktop was free of pen and paper. She committed everything to memory.
'By the way, Senator Barnes, was the contribution to your reelection campaign sufficient?'
'Yes, ma'am, it was very generous considering I'm running unopposed. Having a big war chest discourages the opposition.'
A red light was blinking on the phone console.
'We'll speak again. Good-bye, Senator.'
She pressed a button, and a door opened in the wall of the room. The Kradzik brothers, wearing their usual black leather, stepped inside.
'Well?' she said.
The thin lips widened in identical metallic smiles.
'We have fired Mexican farmer . . .'
'. . . and lawyer as you ordered.'
'No complications?'
They shook their heads.
'The authorities will spend little time on the farmer's case,' she said. 'The lawyer had many enemies. Now to other matters. There have been some developments on the explosion at our Mexican operation.'
She touched the screen, and two photos appeared. One of the photos, taken by a surveillance camera, showed Austin and Zavala in the reception area of the tortilla plant. The other picture was an enlarged shot of the two men standing on the deck of the Sea Robin off Ensenada. Brynhild's eye went from the wide-shouldered man with the silver-white hair for a moment, then shifted to the handsome dark-haired man.
'Do you know who these men are?'
The brothers shrugged.
'That's Kurt Austin, head of NUMA's Special Assignments Team, and Jose Zavala, a member of the team.'
'When can we . . .'
'. . . eliminate them?'
The temperature in the cool room seemed to drop another twenty degrees.
'If they were responsible for the destruction of the Baja facility, they will pay with their lives,' Brynhild said. 'But not now. There's a minor problem to be taken care of.' She gave them the name of the newspaper editor and said, 'That's all. You can go.'
The brothers hastened from the room like a pair of dogs sent to fetch a bone, and Brynhild was alone again. She sat there brooding about the Baja facility. All that work wasted. Even worse, the supply of the catalyst was destroyed in the blast. She stared with hate-filled eyes at the faces of the two men on the computer monitor.
'Little people,' she snarled.
With a wave of her hand the screen went blank.
Chapter 17
Paul Trout turned the shower off and again examined its workings with scientific admiration. Water flowed through a wooden pipe and sprayed out through tiny holes in the hardened shell of a hollowed-out gourd. A simple wooden valve controlled the flow. The water disappeared through a drain hole in the hardwood floor. He stepped from the wooden stall, dried himself with a cotton towel, wrapped his body in another, and went through a doorway into an adjacent room lit by clay lamps.
Gamay was stretched out on a comfortable grass-filled mat tress placed on a platform bed. She had fashioned her towel into a toga, had combed and braided her dark red hair, and was sampling fruit from a large bowl like a woman of ancient Rome. She eyed Paul, whose towel looked ridiculously small on his tall figure. 'What do you think of all this, nature boy?'
'I've seen worse plumbing back in the so-called civilized world.'
'Did you know a civilization can be measured by the sophistication of its plumbing?'
