President.'
'Well, it's a damned shame,' Pete said. 'The point is that the generals had the SOB and they let him go. The world would have been saved a whole lot of grief if they hadn't gotten cold feet. As it is, they wound up in front of a firing squad for their pains.'
Jack said, 'You know the old saying: 'If you strike against the king, strike hard!''
'Ain't that the truth,' Pete said. Scowling, he added, 'Too bad they never heard that saying in Washington. Especially now, with Chavez cozying up to Cuba and Iran. Instead of biting the bullet and doing what has to be done in a timely manner, the politicians wait until it's crisis time before lifting a finger.'
'That's the way it is,' Jack said. He had reason to know, good reason, having been hung out to dry more than once, not only by self-serving politicos and bureaucrats, but also even by some of the higher-ups in CTU. Each time, when the showdown came, Jack had been smart enough, or lucky enough — or both — to have held an ace up his sleeve that managed to resolve the difficulties in his favor.
It was infuriating to have to fight a two-front war, one against the enemy, and one against the incompetents and worse on what was supposed to be the home team. But the good people in CTU far outweighed the bad, the unit's mission was vital to the national security, and so Jack Bauer soldiered on. He knew Pete Malo felt the same way.
'We're the shovel brigade,' Jack said. 'They call us out to clean up the mess after it's made, not before.'
'Maybe this time we'll get a head start on the opposition,' Pete said. Abruptly his mood changed, brightening up. 'On the plus side, if not for Paz, we wouldn't be looking forward to meeting Vikki Valence.'
'That should be quite an experience,' Jack agreed, his tone dry, lightly mocking.
Pete said, 'What makes a gal like Vikki, a stripper and a gold digger who probably never had a political thought in her head, contact CTU and request a meet?'
'Maybe she's patriotic.'
'Maybe,' Pete said, sounding doubtful.
Jack said, 'You can ask her when Colonel Paz leaves.'
'If he leaves. How much longer is he going to stay?'
Jack shrugged. 'I'll say this, though. She sure knew the magic word: Beltran.'
Beltran was a magic word as far as CTU was concerned, all right.
Venezuela's President Chavez was a great admirer of communist Cuba and had moved swiftly to forge an alliance with that island nation. A dangerous liaison, as Washington saw it. In the last twelve months, U.S. intelligence had noticed a heightened level of combined Venezuela/Cuba espionage operations, not only in Latin America, but also in the United States.
Recently Colonel Paz had been assigned to a special branch of the Venezuelan trade consulate here in New Orleans, a hotbed of spies and special action agents that had become an object of no small interest to a number of U.S. military and civilian spy agencies.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, Vikki Valence, stating that she had some important information to disclose, had contacted a special CTU phone hotline established for the purpose of receiving tips and information from the public. What the information was, she wouldn't say on the phone, but she offered up two nuggets that pushed her call to a priority level.
She said that she was Colonel Paz's girlfriend, and that Paz had linked up with a man named Beltran.
More than that she would not add, except to say that she was in some fear for her life and that she would tell all she knew in return for protection.
The vast majority of callers to the hotline were anonymous tipsters, so Vikki's having given her real name went a long way toward establishing her credibility. Colonel Paz was already on CTU's hot list, but it was the mention of Beltran's name that galvanized the agency's action arm.
General Hector Beltran was a high-ranking veteran officer for Fidel Castro's spy service. For decades he'd been a mainstay of communist Cuba's secret police and counterespionage operations, ruthlessly suppressing dissidents at home while exporting subversion to other countries.
A brilliant and ruthless spymaster who'd scored notable successes during the Cold War era and afterward, Beltran had dropped off the radar in recent years, leading to the belief in U.S. intelligence circles, or rather the hope, that he was either retired, imprisoned in one of Castro's jails, or dead.
If he was alive and in the United States, as Vikki's call indicated, he could only be on active duty, engaged in some mission of vital importance to Cuba, one that associated him with the Venezuelan threat in the form of Colonel Paz. Vital indeed, for Beltran to risk his own neck by operating in person on U.S. soil, where he was subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment.
Catching him would rank as one of the intelligence coups of the new century.
So it was that Jack Bauer and Pete Malo found themselves in a stifling hole-in-the-wall just off Bourbon Street, surveilling a striptease club. The plan was to wait for Paz to conclude his nightlong assignation with Vikki Valence, then move in to contact her and remove her to safety after Paz had left the scene.
They had to move lightly, walk softly. Paz was no fool; Beltran was an old fox. A too-heavy CTU presence in the area risked tipping off either one or both that something was afoot. Beltran especially would go to ground at the least sign of trouble, thwarting any possibility of his capture. Jack and Pete were operating alone on the scene, to leave as light a CTU footprint as possible.
A tantalizing view of Vikki Valence could be seen in all her full-bodied glory on the opposite side of Fairview Street. Not in the flesh, but in the form of a life-sized photo image of the platinum-blond powerhouse mounted on reinforced cardboard and attached to a sandwich marquee standing outside the Golden Pole, as the club was named.
The Golden Pole was housed in a big, blocky, two-story rectangle of cream-colored stone that was trimmed with ornate, black iron grille work and topped with a mansard roof. The first floor housed the club proper, while the second floor was given over to private apartments — a useful arrangement for those who sought extracurricular, after-hours trysts with the dancers who occupied them. The upper floor had a roofed-over balcony that extended to three sides of the building, though not the front.
The club took its name from a set of shiny, gold-painted firehouse poles onstage that the dancers entwined themselves around during their sets. It was now closed, neon signs dark, windows curtained, doors locked. Even on Bourbon Street during the weekend, the joints have to close sometime, if only so their denizens could rest up for the next night's revels.
Jack stood at the shop's front door, peering through the smudgy glass pane set at eye level, looking across the street at the long east wall of the club building. There a side door, solid and now shut, stood at ground level. Mounted over the top of the door frame was a low-wattage night lamp, wan in the coming light of day.
To the right of the door, a black iron frame stairway angled up from sidewalk to balcony, accessing the row of apartments on the second floor. He knew that inside the building, several other stairwells also connected to the upper floor.
The apartment doors lining the second-floor balcony were closed and their curtained windows dark, including the third window from the right, Vikki Valence's apartment, into which she and the Colonel had retired several hours ago.
Below, at street level, the curb was painted yellow, and posted nearby in plain view was a NO PARKING sign. Parked alongside it was a long black limousine with diplomatic license plates, accessorized with two of Paz's bodyguards who stood waiting around on the sidewalk.
The vehicle seemed only slightly smaller than a cabin cruiser. Its front thrust forward aggressively and at length, terminating in a snarling chromium grille. The car body hung low and heavy on the chassis, leaving not much clearance between its underside and the street, a giveaway that it was an armor-plated job.
That meant that the tires would be solid clear through, reinforced to carry the extra weight of the plating. Bulletproof, too, just like the windows and windshields.
The machine had arrived at two A.M., and the bodyguards had been standing around outside since then, keeping watch over it and their surroundings. Both men were Paz associates whose identities were long known by
