She didn’t look scared, and she certainly didn’t act it.
Not that there was anything wrong with fear. Fear was a natural reaction in any number of circumstances. Everybody got scared sometime. You handled it as best you could.
It was the admission, and the look in her eyes accompanying it, that worried him.
Immediately after the assault in Korea, Lia had insisted on going back into the field. She’d pulled off a difficult mission, and if it weren’t for her, half of Europe would have been wiped out by a nuclear-seeded tsunami.
She hadn’t once mentioned the word “fear” or talked about being scared after the assault. Angry, maybe, but not scared.
Dean had never been a person who thought talk did much good. If something bothered you, you attacked it — you stalked and you fought it; you dealt with it. That was what he’d done as a sniper. It was what he’d done as a Marine and as a small businessman and what he did now with Deep Black.
Lia was the same way. Harder, really.
If she was worried, maybe he should be, too, About her.
“You figure that guy is with the Peruvian intelligence service, or somebody else?” asked Karr.
Dean looked up to see who he was talking about: a man sitting in a van across from their hotel’s main entrance. The truck had a florist’s logo on the front and side.
“Probably a local,” said Dean. “
“You think somebody delivering flowers is going to take the trouble to find a parking spot, let alone sit there?” said Karr. “He’d double-park, run inside, get going. Not wait.”
They circled around the block. The truck was still there when they came back.
“I doubt he’s looking for us,” said Dean. “But let’s not fool around. We’ll just go for roof number two. The Leon.”
“OK with me,” said Karr.
The uplink unit was in the trunk and could be set up just about anywhere with an unobstructed view of the heavens. The transmitter looked like a standard satellite dish and had a slot specially designed for the voter card. The transmission rate was relatively slow, and from setup to teardown the process would take about a half hour. Their hotel had been chosen partly because it had a roof terrace that was rarely used and would be perfect for the transmission. But just in case, they had scouted several other possible transmission spots the day before.
Dean took Karr’s handheld computer and brought up the map and a position locator so he could give him directions to the Leon, a business-class hotel in the Miraflores district. The side entrances were not equipped with alarms, and though they were locked from the outside, this didn’t present much of a problem; Dean slid a plastic card into the jamb side and tickled the door open in a matter of seconds. Ten minutes later they were on the roof, leaning against the small service shack above the elevator shaft.
Karr handled the transmitter, donning a set of headphones to help him find the proper angle for the satellite. Dean stood guard, using the PDA to monitor the feed from two different video bugs they had left in the stairwell to warn them if anyone was coming.
“Here we go,” announced Karr finally. He tightened one of the screws on the dish’s tripod, pushed the card into the slot, and stood back.
“Good,” said Karr, practically singing. “So what do you think, Charlie? Can we get in the bank vault?”
“Looked pretty well guarded.”
“Yeah. But that’s what makes it an interesting challenge, don’t you think? I mean, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid couldn’t get in. And we can.”
“Maybe we can, and maybe we can’t.”
“Oh, we
“Easier to take them on the road, once they ship them to the rest of the distribution points Thursday,” said Dean. “And I prefer easy.”
“Too many. We’ll never get it done in time.”
“Then Lia has the easier shot, going in tomorrow or the next day,” said Dean. But as he said that, he reconsidered.
“Ah, you’re no fun.” Karr sat down next to Dean. “You’re worried about Lia?”
Dean shrugged. He was surprised Karr had picked up on that.
“She’ll be OK,” Karr told him. “She’s tough.”
“What did Clint Eastwood say? ‘Sometimes tough ain’t enough.’ ”
“I say we do the vault ourselves. Keep her inspection as a backup.”
“Yeah, that’s probably best.”
“Let’s check out the bar downstairs when this is done. I kinda want to know what Peruvian beer tastes like.”
13
In his last lifetime, Stephan Babin had consummated many of his deals in a Moscow after-hours club, an establishment he partly owned. He liked to fantasize about the place now, picturing the flushed faces and bursting bosoms, the red lips of Lida the hostess, and the purple jowls of Boyce, his German partner. Babin imagined he could smell the sweat and perfume, the overbearing breath of the drunks, and the vague metallic scent that clung to the bodyguards. He pictured it all in his mind, heard the sounds again. He saw himself at his table, watching the others with his quiet smile. He saw himself taking the bottle of champagne — he had sealed his deals with champagne, a trademark-and carelessly filling his glass to the brim. He would raise it slowly to his lips, pause to toast the room, then sip-a tiny, infinitesimal sip, all he would have.
Then he saw himself standing and waving his hands. The room exploded in a fireball. He heard a delicious shriek, a shout of recognition as well as fear and pain: an acknowledgment that Stephan Babin held the power of life and death in his hands and had chosen death.
The dream faded as Babin poked the smoldering rubbish pile in front of him. Encouraged, the fire leapt upward, its red tongue leering at the dark shadow of the nearby hills, as if to frighten the ghosts from the Inca ruins that lay there. The old stones were not quite visible from here-the Indians had oriented them to catch the sun at its zenith-but they loomed in Babin’s imagination, charred and broken, their destruction a foreshadowing or the retribution he planned.
He heard a truck approaching.
Babin leaned his weight on his right crutch and reached into the back of his belt for the Walther pistol hidden there. There were no random visitors up the nearby road. It connected the old Spanish house and its accompanying barn to the nearby highway, where traffic was strictly controlled because of the military installation to the north. The vehicle would belong to either General Tucume or an American spy coming to finish the job they had botched three years before.
Babin listened carefully, trying to decide from the sound which it was. He couldn’t tell. The general used a variety of vehicles, and the Americans — who knew what they would steal?
As the vehicle rounded the sharp switchback and drove onto the small terrace before the old Spanish building and its accompanying bam, Babin’s pulse quickened. It was a small Toyota pickup. He held the pistol to his side, shifting his weight slightly so he would be as stable as possible when he fired. Despite his profession as an arms dealer, he had never been a very good shot. The gun in his hand did not have much of a kick for a pistol, but his crutches would add to the uncertainty. He would have to wait until whoever was in the truck came very close to be sure of killing him.
How ironic, Babin thought, to be discovered so close to his chance for revenge.
The truck stopped thirty feet from him. Belatedly, Babin realized that the fire silhouetted him in the darkness. It was too late to move.
“Excuse me,” called the driver, rolling down the window of the truck. “Could you direct me to
“Why?” said Babin. He held the pistol at his hip, not quite concealed but not obvious, either.
“A package from Kleis.”
