“Somehow it figures,” Moore said, the tone of a disgusted veteran in his voice.
With that, he picked up the pace, heading out onto the bridge deck, out over the river, where it would be colder and Sven’s thin clothes would be less adequate than they already appeared to be.
Sven seemed aware of that fact. “Where the hell are we going?” he whined.
“We’re not going
Sven laughed. “Am I supposed to take that seriously?”
“Take it however you want,” Moore said, continuing the walk. “Not like they would miss you anyway.”
Sven seemed to clench his jaw, and Moore guessed the remark had hit the target.
“I don’t think you understand the situation,” Sven told him. “You’re the one who needs us. I’m just here to find out if you’re worth the time.”
“Really?” Moore said. “Important errand they’ve sent you on. You must be so proud.”
Moore turned away from him, but Sven grabbed his shoulder to spin him back around. “Listen to me, old man—”
Moore knocked the hand away and bore into Sven with fury in his eyes. “No, you listen to me, you worthless little fuck. I don’t deal with pawns or messengers. Forty years in this business—that’s what I’ve got. So if the people who sent you have anything to say, they’d better have the balls to come see me themselves. Or at least send someone who matters.”
Sven began to say something but Moore cut him off.
“You’re a fucking nobody and you don’t know jack shit about this operation. You don’t even know how your people contacted me.”
Sven’s face was red with anger.
Moore’s eyebrows went up in mockery of his opponent. “Come on, then. Let’s hear it. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me how important you are and just what it is that you know.”
“I know enough,” Sven said finally. “I know they pulled you off an important job and you don’t like that. I know that your career is pretty much done and you don’t like that either. Forty years you’ve got. I say forty years they used you, now you’re getting kicked to the curb, and that must burn you up pretty bad or you wouldn’t be here in the first place, would you?”
Moore stared at Sven and the anger, both real and pretend, seeped away. When he spoke again his voice was like gravel. “As a matter of fact, it does,” he said truthfully. “But coming here was a mistake.”
He looked at Sven with a trace of pity in his eyes. “Go home,” he said. “Go home before you get yourself killed. You think this is going to happen? You really think so? If people switched sides every time they got pissed off, then where the hell would we be?”
Sven didn’t answer and Moore shook his head in disgust. “Go home and tell your people that I’m not interested. You tell them that money is not enough to get me. And the next time they want to offer me something, they better not send some punk kid who’s wet behind the ears and worried about his lips chafing in the cold.” Moore shook his head even more dejectedly than before. “I’ve got files older than you.”
With that he turned his back on Sven and looked out over the stone railing of the bridge. With a gloved hand, he brushed the snow from the section in front of him and rested his forearms on it, gazing out at the black water rippling gently beneath the gray-white sky. “Forty years,” he mumbled, “and this is how it ends. What a joke. What a fucking joke.”
In a heated room far from the bridge, Gibbs listened to every word, and for the first time he began to understand why Moore was held in such high regard. He’d played it masterfully. Sven was furious, angry enough to tell Moore volumes just to prove that he mattered, or to run back to his superiors and insist that Moore had balked and would need more prodding to come aboard. A sure sign that Moore was legit as opposed to being bait for a trap.
It was almost enough to make Gibbs wish the drama were real. But the situation was not as Moore had been led to believe, and despite his work, Moore was involved in a game he couldn’t win.
Back at the bridge Sven smiled for the first time. “Why don’t you come with me?” he said. “You can tell them yourself.”
Moore turned to face Sven, his back to the railing. He was tempted. He and Gibbs had planned for this eventuality. The two cars would be able to track him, follow him to whatever site Sven had in mind, but it felt rushed. Moore declined. “Not until I know who I’m dealing with.”
Sven shook his head and looked down the road. Moore realized it was vacant. “Wrong answer,” Sven said, pulling a slim pistol from his coat.
Before Moore could react, Sven fired twice into his chest. Moore fell back against the railing and then stumbled forward. Sven caught him as his knees buckled, holding him up and shoving him backward against the railing and then forcing him up and over the top.
Moore tumbled toward the river, his coat fluttering like a cape, until he plunged into the icy, black water and disappeared beneath the surface.
Back up on the bridge, Sven watched for several seconds. The foam of the impact receded, smoothed over by the flow of the river. Only Moore’s orange scarf reappeared, floating to the surface and twirling in the current before passing out of sight underneath the bridge.
Satisfied, Sven turned back to the street. A shiny black Audi pulled up and the rear door opened. He jumped in and the car sped off.
Farther away, Stuart Gibbs listened through headphones that issued nothing but static now. He turned to the control panel, found the switch for Moore’s wire and flicked it off.
Moore was gone. Blundin was gone. And within twenty-four hours the entire team in the Amazon would be gone. Vanishing with them would be the last evidence of the NRI’s Brazil project.
CHAPTER 24
Mark Polaski’s face turned ashen at the news. The message from NRI headquarters had come directly from Stuart Gibbs. Polaski’s daughter had been struck by a car while jogging. She’d been taken to the ER with severe head and neck injuries and wasn’t expected to regain consciousness. A ticket had been purchased in his name on a direct flight from Manaus to Miami, where a private jet would meet him. The Manaus flight left at 9:43 A.M., if he could get there in time.
He looked at Hawker. “Can we make it there in time?” he asked, quietly.
“If we leave now,” Hawker said.
As Polaski climbed aboard the Huey, the others wished him well. Devers handed him his pack and McCarter, suddenly reminded of his own losses back in the real world, promised to look him up on their return to the States.
Polaski barely acknowledged them. He sat in the copilot’s seat, staring blankly at the deep, azure sky, fumbling in his backpack for something.
Beside him, Hawker ran through a short version of the checklist, pressing the ignition switch and waiting for the needles to come up. The blades above them wound up slowly. As they began to hum, Hawker pulled back on the collective and the helicopter’s weight came off the skids.
Once they became airborne, the helicopter pivoted to the east, lowered its nose and began to move off, gathering speed and altitude as it went.
Before long, they were cruising, droning along at five thousand feet and 120 knots. In three-and-a-half hours they would cover what had taken the group ten days by boat and foot.
Inside the cockpit Polaski had lapsed into a state of silence. Hawker let him be.
