'A' for Argonaut (36 page)

“PFLEC?” Maran asked.

“Right. The Free Cabinda rebels, freedom fighters. Looks like he’s after a secret alliance for himself.”

It hit Maran like a hammer. He had thought of dos Sampas as an ally to get to Boyko and Vangaler, free Tony, and unravel the mystery behind his Cabinda ambush.

“Let me guess,” he said, recalling Amber’s earlier revelation. “Vangaler conspires with Boyko’s opposition to take over his operation. Then he runs SSI, controls the entire region.”

“There’s one more wrinkle. Now that the final shipment is ready, Vangaler won’t need Alberta Chiang. He’ll kill her and use dos Sampas to take out Boyko. Then he’ll hit dos Sampas. Winner take all.”

“We could sit, wait for that to happen. Then we’d only have to close in on Vangaler. There’s only two problems.”

“What are they?” Sergei asked.

“Amber and Tony,”

“And?”

“He’ll kill them too.”

Back up in their
room on the top floor of the hotel, Maran joined Amber. They were able to relax for the time being, luxuriously safe in a private lair, hidden from the world. Maran, now back in a terry bathrobe, rose from the sofa to turn on the TV. International CNN was announcing new attacks from some Islamist suicide bombers somewhere. He tuned out, shaking his head.

Just then he heard footsteps outside the room.

Heavy steps. Two men.

There was no time to do anything else. Maran grabbed his H&K from the bedside table. He yanked the sheet off the bed, tied it to the window post. Pulling to tighten the knot, he tested the strength of the post. The footsteps were now right outside the door. He climbed out the window and hid the gun behind a lip on the sill freeing both hands to grip the sheet and hang no more than a foot from the edge of the window. In his hands, he could feel the fabric begin to give. All he could think of now was what would happen if the sheet shredded. He couldn’t look down. Vertigo would be fatal. The muscles in his arms bulged with the incredible strain. His fingers burned.

How long can I hold out before Vangaler gets in?

He heard the door open.

How did he find us now?

The answer came as soon as the question materialized.

The car rental agent.

Using his Walter Q.R. Jackson credit card, he had told the agent to notify Enterprise he would drop the car off at the airport in Knokke-Heist.

They got my “Jackson” cover!

They would have uncovered his “Davis” legend as well.

Panic threatened. All he could think of was Amber and her son‌—‌and his slaughtered team. He concentrated with all his remaining strength.

Victoriae
!

The door crashed. He heard the men’s laughter at discovering Amber naked. Then he heard Vangaler’s by now familiar Afrikaner accent: “Where is he?”

“What does it matter?” another man spoke up. “We’ve got her now‌—‌right where we want her!”

“Never mind that shit!” Vangaler snapped.

Maran heard the refrigerator door open. When he heard the bottle break, his whole body began to quiver. The hands that were holding him sixty feet in the air threatened to fail. It had to be now. Drawing on the thin reservoir of resources he had left, he willed himself to persevere, clenching his teeth so tightly he was afraid they would crack. Slowly the tremors gave way to an internal calm, an assurance that this time right would prevail. He’d make sure of it.

“Spread the bitch’s legs,” Vangaler ordered the other man.

“Aiyeeee!!!” Amber screamed.

It was all the prodding Maran’s taut body needed. He propelled himself up the roped sheet over the sill as if shot from a sling through the window. He grabbed his gun from the sill as he flew into the room, rolling across the floor. His body flipped, crashing into a lamp. The lamp smashed a mirror, toppled a vase. Coming up on his feet in a cat-like crouch, he backed up to the wall, clenching the gun with two steady hands. Tension had twisted his face until it looked like a wild beast’s. His lips grimaced, baring his teeth, jade eyes burning like molten sulfur behind the slits that were his eyelids.

“You killed my people in Cabinda,” said Vangaler, with a deadpan face. It was one of the most ironic lies Maran had ever heard. The terrorist was moving to Maran’s left. Almost imperceptibly, the other man moved to the right.

Maran snarled. “That was just the beginning,” he growled furiously. “Back up.” He moved slowly, rising from a crouch till he stood between Amber and the two men. The second man wore dreadlocks, goateed, short and heavy with the kind of heft you get from a lot of weight lifting. He wore knee-length shorts. A Hawaiian shirt stretched over a gut that rolled over his belt. Vangaler stood on Maran’s far left, holding the broken beer bottle in his hand.

“Stay behind me, Amber. We’re getting out,” Maran promised.

The space between the men had widened. Maran had no idea whether they were armed, and, if so, with what.

“Funny man,” Vangaler taunted. Vangaler’s hand flashed out, spinning the broken bottle neck at Maran’s throat.

Maran’s gun hand whipped around. The barrel caught the missile like a baseball, smashing it to smithereens. Freed momentarily from the threat of Maran’s gun, the fat one pulled a pistol. Vangaler lunged across Maran’s legs toppling him to the floor. The fat one fired. The bullet tore between the two combatants, ripping through both their shirtfronts and creasing Maran’s chest. Blood stained his shirt. In a blur, Maran leveled the H&K as he fell. He fired.

The fat one screamed as he sagged to the floor, a red dot in the center of his forehead.

Vangaler had advanced in the meantime and kicked the pistol out of Maran’s hand. It clattered on the floor two feet away. Amber jumped from the bed and grabbed it. She lifted it with both hands. Aimed. Before she could fire, Vangaler was on his feet and out the door.

She ran into the bathroom and came out with a towel which she handed to him.

“Thanks,” he said as he pressed the terry to his new wound, his face contorted. She touched the still healing wound on his cheek, a previous gift from Vangaler, a/k/a Diederichs.

They quickly grabbed all their stuff and got out. Downstairs in the hotel lobby they pushed their way through the gathering crowd and were out on the street minutes later. Maran hailed a cab. They had to get to Boston immediately. Before they left, they needed new fictitious credentials. Amber knew what to do. One of her contacts in Antwerp had a colleague in Knokke-Heist who could help.

The counterfeiter, Lieve Marchand
, ran a small, cheap hostel for student hikers on the seedy side of Lommergang, a world as far away from the La Luxe and its private golf club as you could get. Marchand occupied one small apartment amongst a beehive of rooms and dormitories on three floors above a bar, inaptly named Le Cap Bruges, specializing, Maran assumed, though a rusty, flaking sign advertised sardines, in pickled eel. He was hurting from his long run. She helped him to limp up the stairs.

“Idiot,” she admonished.

“Not the first time that has been said,” he admitted.

Marchand had everything needed to guarantee a rapid turnaround: cameras, printers, computerized engraving, and chip manufacturing included. They took a cab from the hotel and got out three blocks from the hostel. The proprietor could have been out of a horror movie, teeth cracked and yellowed like a rodent’s, face bombarded by leathery warts and watery wens, eyes reddened like runny fertilized robin’s eggs. He was an ancient leftover, a near cadaver from better days as a diamond cutter in Antwerp before his lower end of the gemstone business was sucked off to Mumbai and Tel Aviv and he was cast off to Knokke-Heist in near hospice conditions.

Compose. Breathe. Trust your instincts. Trust Amber.

Three hours later, after
Maran turned over a small cloth bag of three rough diamonds, the walking corpse had provided them with false visas, passports, driver’s licenses, social security cards, even colored contact lenses, and wigs. Maran’s new credentials had one problem. They identified him as Silva Salazar Menezes, a Portuguese name. He didn’t look Portuguese. It would have to do.

A Chinese scientist working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and General Diamond Corporation in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Why?

The question haunted him. He knew the answer to the riddle lay with her.

For her disguise, Amber chose a sweeping blond wig, long and straight, parted in the middle, framing her face like an exotic version of Gwyneth Paltrow. The tough choice of disguising him was between completely changing his looks and attracting attention or just toning down and blending in. Maran had donned a goatee with a connecting mustache that covered a third of his face. He shaved his head; his cocoa scalp shone under light making him look like a cross between Dr. Fu Manchu and Vin Diesel. They had to get rid of the car now. If Vangaler could find his hotel, he certainly knew the details on Maran’s rental car. They were forced to take a circuitous route through Europe, leave the car in the parking lot at the train station in Bruges, take the train to Luxembourg, take changes for Mannheim, Strasbourg, Nancy, and on to Gare de l’Est
,
and from there to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Forty-Seven

Boston

T
hey took three days to complete their circuitous, hopefully untraceable, route through Europe for a flight to Boston. They arrived at the Park Plaza Hotel in Copley Square with enough time to rent the formal evening wear they would need and get a night’s sleep in preparation for the affair at the MFA where they planned to meet up with Alberta Chiang.

The next day, after playing tourist walking Boston’s red brick Freedom Trail, they drove through the rain along Huntington Avenue, past the Northeastern University campus. Amber sat next to him in the Town Car rental for which he left a hefty cash deposit. Thinking ahead, he picked the car neither for comfort nor for show. Mogadishu, Somalia, taught him that a heavy car is a lot more effective in crashing a roadblock. As they passed the front of the entrance to the MFA, Maran glanced at the large, bronze Cyrus Dallin statue of the Indian chief on horseback, arms stretched, face to the heavens: “Appeal to the Great Spirit,” known to irreverent Bostonians as “Chief Rain-in-the-Face.”

The Museum was holding its Biennial Perspective, an event that attracted New England’s pickiest art savants. The MFA lot was crowded. A sign on the lawn noted the event: “A testimonial honoring Anita Li, scientist and lover of the arts.” Tuxedoed guests crowded toward the front steps; men held umbrellas over their wives’ heads. Maran and Amber got out of their car, he cursing that he had forgotten an umbrella, as usual. They walked up the stairs to stand under the roof of the entryway.

They still wore their disguises, Maran with dark brown contact lenses and shaved head, Amber with the blond wig. Maran wore a single-breasted tuxedo with traditional black tie. She glowed in a shocking blue sequined, skin-tight slinky gown, backless with a draped plunge front accented with rhinestones and high split legs. She couldn’t help herself. Sparkles twinkled across her copious cleavage and dusted her eyelids.

“Check,” Maran told her.

“Done and done,” she said, assuring him that the mini GPS mobile tracking transmitter he put in her bra was secure. She had tucked it under the vintage diamond floral brooch her father had given to her mother. He pocketed its receiver.

Sergei hadn’t yet arrived. Maran looked at his watch. Twelve to six. Early. Maran was as anxious about time as he was about everything else. He wasn’t the only one.

Out of the corner of his eye, Maran noticed a tall, black man hurrying up the steps carrying a bass fiddle. Three other burly men accompanied him.

That face?

Maran turned to look again. Too late. The man had already been swept inside by the crowd.

“Mack!” Sergei came up the steps, stopped cold, stunned. He had never met her. He was with another man, but his attention was drawn to Amber Chu.

“My name is Sergei. I assume you’re the lovely Amber Chu?”

“Nice to be recognized,” she said and threw a glance at Maran.

“Well, we’ve done that. It’s good to see you, Serge,” Maran said. “Did you bring the invitations?”

Sergei produced the tickets. They entered between the massive columns through the neo-classical front entrance. In the lobby, they were welcomed by Henry Forbes Gavion, a trustee. He shook their hands as they passed, exchanging meaningless pleasantries and politely greeting two armed security guards.

“Thank you,” Sergei remarked, crediting the value of their roles today.

On the floor of the open pavilion tuxedoed waiters carried trays amongst the several hundred guests who helped themselves to sushi and champagne. Over the chatter, a speaker raised his voice into a microphone. Maran still couldn’t hear the words.

A tall Asian woman stood in front of the buffet table, long, jet black hair, a dramatic white blaze running down the middle.

“Alberta Chiang!” Amber hissed.

On a stage erected for this event, the speaker introduced the museum director. He waited for the applause to subside. Then he launched into an announcement of the museum’s latest fund drive, its largest in history. Maran strained to hear.