'What exactly did you do with it?' Grady demanded.
'I told you. I gave it to FedEx.'
'Do you have the tracking slip?' Grady asked.
'Yeah I guess I do. On the desk.'
'When did you deposit it?'
'This morning.' Grady grabbed the tracking slip off the desk, got on the phone to Jill, and gave her the information. The package was sent to a street address in New York. It would be diverted and would end up in LA at Sam's new offices. They put Nemus on the phone for about thirty seconds to confirm the change. Jill would investigate the mailing address, but it would no doubt be newly established and a dead end.
'How much were they paying you for the 1998 copy?'
'I told you thirty thousand. But I don't know who they were. I swear.'
'Where's the money?'
'They were going to give me the money with the rest. The hundred thousand for the copies of the others. Like I said.'
Grady hated this Nemus character for putting her through the last forty-five minutes. She planned to talk to Lyman and make sure this fool was done at Cornell.
'I'll tell the guys to bring the trunks,' Michael said.
'I'm gonna call the cops on you guys.'
'Yeah, needle dick, you do that. We'll call the FBI. And we'll tell them what you stole, show them the FedEx receipt, and have you arrested for a damn felony,' Grady shot back.
Nemus shut his mouth.
Grady went to get the security guys with the two 4-foot trunks and the Ford Explorer. They carried them up to the car like a couple of tiny caskets. After they had packed up the volumes, they left Nemus to his own thoughts and to contemplate the blessing of his intact body and his freedom.
Baptiste and Figgy sat at a table at a convenient restaurant located down the street from the executive terminal at Teterboro Airport. They were trying to be prudent in their eating and so had each ordered blackened salmon on cream-sauced pasta, but had the chef hold the pasta and substitute broccoli. It was boring for a Frenchman but perhaps more palatable to Figgy, Baptiste wasn't sure. It had been three long and hectic days since Baptiste had left France, on a flight to New York-the one following the flight taken by Benoit Moreau.
'Once we're on that plane, we've got no control.'
'Wouldn't you want it that way if you were Gaudet?' Baptiste replied.
'There are better ways to meet people.'
'It seems to me that we need him more than he needs us. As I see it, he makes money with or without us. He just makes more with us. Without him I don't see us making any thing.'
'That's not true. What about the copy of Bowden's 1998 journal you're waiting for? Is that nothing?'
'We won't know until we've had a chance to study it.'
'Does the admiral know you're about to get the journal?'
Baptiste looked at Figgy as if he'd lost his mind. 'No, and he won't until I'm ready. I need you to understand this. Gaudet is a shield, a… How do you say? A prophylactic for us. We need to convince my government that Gaudet stole the journal. Not you, and certainly not me. We're just making a deal with him.'
'A deal with Gaudet?'
'It's complicated, but it'll work. Benoit will handle it all through a Swiss escrow. She knows Gaudet and we don't.' Baptiste changed the subject to an unpleasant topic before Figgy could protest. 'You killed Sam's man. A guy he probably liked.'
'What the hell are you bringing that up for? It's old news. When he recognized me, I had no choice. The man attacked me!' Figgy's face had grown red. 'Where are you going with this?'
'We need you either all the way in or all the way out. All the way in means trusting me to run this show. It also means letting Gaudet execute his Cordyceps plan against the U.S.'
'You're a crazy motherfucker, Baptiste. That was never part of the deal. We were supposed to sell the technology to a foreign government. That's it.'
Baptiste clucked his tongue and shook his head, and when Figgy had quieted, he explained the plan to multiply their cut of the deal as laid out by Benoit Moreau. 'To really make money, we need Cordyceps to happen.'
'It seems you and Benoit have thought of everything. I hope you two haven't outsmarted yourselves. You know she was Gaudet's lover-probably still is.'
'And?'
'She could be with him right now discussing this deal!'
'You are completely out of your mind. I said you need to-'
'Whoa! Don't get touchy. You… you are in love, aren't you? Shit. In love with a black widow.'
Baptiste stood and threw his napkin down. 'That's enough! Worry about yourself, Meeks. Pay the bill and let's get out of here.'
They waited at Executive Air at La Guardia for Gaudet to arrive. They noticed a sleek jet with large engines taxi up in front of the establishment and shut down.
'It's a Citation X,' Figgy said. 'A very fast plane.'
Baptiste had no idea what kind of plane would come to fetch them. Several business types, men and women, disem barked, so it was obviously not Gaudet. Next a single-engine plane with a butterfly tail came taxiing up and they dis missed that as too small.
'It's a Beechcraft Bonanza,' Figgy said. They waited and noted that it was one minute until the appointed time. Two men and a woman got out of the Beechcraft. Oddly, the woman wore an Islamic burka that covered her from head to toe. Her height, if indeed it was a she, was difficult to ascertain under the tentlike garment. That was unusual enough, but it seemed oddly out of place when the two men and the woman boarded the Citation X.
'Probably an Arab princess or something,' Figgy said. 'The pilots are still in the cockpit.'
One of the men, tall, good-looking, with swept-back blond hair and dressed business casual, exited the jet and walked directly toward the lobby where they sat waiting. He came right to them.
'Gentlemen, I am Jack. I have come on behalf of Devan Gaudet to invite you aboard the jet.'
Baptiste retained his poker face but immediately feared that something was amiss with the person under the burka. It wouldn't have been necessary to put someone on in full view-it had to have been done for effect. But what effect?
Then as they walked to the plane, he reconsidered. The whole thing was a carefully orchestrated mind game to throw him off balance, to make impressions about important themes. He just hadn't figured it out yet.
'I will have to ask you to enter the plane one at a time. I regret it, but we will need to search you for weapons,' Jack said.
Baptiste went first into a posh business jet that would seat comfortably perhaps ten people. There was a curtain across the middle of the jet and two armed men sat on their side of the curtain. Jack did a thorough pat down, apologizing once more for the inconvenience. They used a sort of electronic wand to check for microphones and another to check for metal. Baptiste and Figgy took seats facing the two men and the curtain.
'Welcome,' said an electronically scrambled voice.
Baptiste should have known they would neither hear nor see Gaudet directly. Recording such a voice would be useless even if they had managed to smuggle a microphone on board the jet.
'Good afternoon,' Baptiste replied in English.
A stewardess rose from the backseat of the plane, closed the heavy exterior door, and brought a tray of French pastries. They appeared to Baptiste to be of the finest quality. Figgy took one of the delicious-looking chocolate eclairs. Baptiste declined. The engines spooled up and the plane began the long taxi. The man on the other side of the curtain did not speak. As the plane taxied toward the runway, the stewardess and the two men went forward on the far side of the curtain.
'This jet is very fast,' Figgy explained. 'The fastest pri vate jet. Something like Mach. 92. That's even faster than the new Gulfstream.'
'So, you are interested in airplanes,' said the electronic voice.
'May I assume that you are Mr. Gaudet?' Baptiste said.
