'With a c-condom?' he stammered.
'No condom. I am clean.'
'How would I know?'
'Recently I got myself tested. You read the records. Who in here can I have had sex with since? No one. But maybe you assume a guard. How dangerous is that? They're all married and their wives are like coal mine canaries.'
'You're insane.'
'You aren't man enough to take a woman? So be it. I don't do business with eunuchs.'
'Where would we have sex?'
'I go on outings when we make a deal. Remember? Sex in a government lab wouldn't be bad. When the glory of France is at stake, something can be arranged. You'd like that, wouldn't you?'
'No. We can't be intimate. Something else. Choose some thing else.'
'I want you. And I insist on you. But there is something else as well that you can do right this minute.'
'What is that?'
'Tell me about this Sam man, who put the case together that sent me to jail.'
'You want revenge?'
'Hardly. I want to know if the two maniacs have had any success trying to kill each other. I will need them both alive to help me solve your problem-after you sleep with me.'
'I don't understand,' Baptiste answered.
'Simple question: are they both alive?'
'Yes. As far as I know. And Sam, whoever he is, still hunts Gaudet.'
'Where has Gaudet set up his operation?'
'We think he travels. The man is completely elusive. He could die and we would never know it.'
'I am ready to help you get all of the technology for the glory of France. The rest is up to you.'
She reached for the door and turned the knob. The door wouldn't budge. Outside, a guard seemed to have a large foot placed as a doorstop.
'You aren't going anywhere until I say.'
'Big man with no balls, huh?' she countered.
'You slept with Chellis. Now he's crazy and locked up.'
'Chellis hit me. Chellis humiliated me. He became a murdering, bellicose asshole. It is the explanation for his failure, not an excuse for mine. I chose Devan Gaudet. It was wrong to go in league with Gaudet, but he's rich and on the loose. Now I choose you. Think about your pathetic pension. I'm here because you already contemplated your retirement. It's written on your forehead. I can do it for you and for France. I can cut you in for a piece and we can both get out of this sewer. Think about it. You know what Chaperone is worth. You've already thought about what you could do with that kind of money. Now all you need to do is make it happen for France.'
'I thought I was a cold bastard.'
'You're tough. With me you'll be tougher. You'll get Chaperone for the greater glory of France and we'll get a piece for ourselves. You will retire a hero.'
'How in the hell are we going to share in what rightfully belongs to France?'
'You're not getting my ideas until we make a deal and I get what I have coming.'
He needed time to think. He had behaved like an amateur. Benoit Moreau had controlled the discussion. At that mo ment he wanted to kill her and he knew that in matters of the ego there wasn't a lot of difference between doing that and ravishing her.
Afterward, Benoit was satisfied with her meeting with Baptiste, although waiting to get to the admiral was a major frustration. Knowing that Gaudet was alive was a huge relief and knowing that he had not killed Sam an even more en couraging confirmation. Already the admiral had sent an emissary, indicating that she might call him if she wished. Of course she would not call him. It was imperative that he be the first to initiate contact. Carefully she wrote down the name of each person she would communicate with and their motivations. She tried to crystallize in her own mind what would be driving them and how they would react to the situation that she expected to create in concert with history. Her list was six long:
Baptiste
Admiral Larive
Gaudet
Georges Raval the man they called Sam
Michael Bowden
Next she wrote down the themes that she would stress with each and she tried to picture the world as that person would see it as the critical circumstances unfolded. Finally s he imagined leading them to a certain vision in keeping with her plan.
Being stuck in the cell while she waited for Baptiste and the admiral was agonizing beyond words. Her only relief was thinking about the man that would one day be her lover.
Chapter 5
The fat fox waits by the right rabbit hole.
They came up the river at thirty miles per hour, Sam at the bow of the twenty-five-foot boat, watching the mud brown Yavari River disappear beneath him. Even a quarter-mile distant, the giant trees that created the highest layer of jungle canopy seemed immense. It bore no resemblance to the conifer forests of northern California. Here, one experienced layers upon layers of green, things growing up and down the enormous trees, things flowering, things sprouting, things dying in a never-ending cycle witnessed by few and understood by no one.
Sam's party had come down the Amazon from Iquitos to the Yavari and from there up the Yavari and finally to Angamos, where they refueled before proceeding toward the black water of the Galvez River. Two hours later, they were forty miles up the Galvez.
Sam waved for the guide Javier to stop.
Grady announced her intention to use this opportunity to run into the jungle and pee. Yodo, a big Japanese man whose body was about halfway between a sumo wrestler and a pro fessional basketball player, with a round cherubic face and hair drawn back tight to a smidgen of a pigtail, followed at a discreet distance. At the moment his job was to protect Grady, and he was a man who took his job seriously. Javier grabbed a small fishing pole and some chicken bits for bait and proceeded to pull in piranha and toss them in a plastic tarp.
Sam called the office on the sat phone. They connected him to Jill.
'Where are you?'
'Not far from Bowden's. About ten miles downstream.'
'Well, you may want to hurry. We have word that a boatload of white men is headed up the Tapiche, one of them traveling under a French passport. I'm convinced that Girard is really Gaudet. Figgy says he's not so sure. The Tapiche would be the back way to the Galvez if somebody didn't want to be detected. They could walk from the Tapiche near where it joins the Blanca. That would take maybe two or three days.'
'Damn.' Sam consulted a map of the region.
'The spooks are getting their Brazilian general friend to turn 'Big Eye' in your direction. Nothing yet.'
'I sure didn't expect this.'
'Neither did we.'
'I have Grady. I can't go all the way back to Angamos. And even if I did, I can't just drop her off on the beach. I'd have to leave Yodo and the guide as well.'
'All true. But Grady can fight.'
'Yeah,' Sam said without enthusiasm. He could handle dying in a firelight with Gaudet, but he wasn't sure he
