Texas Tango: A Flint Rock Novel (14 page)

Flint used some of the final two thousand feet of runway to slow down to taxi speed.
 
Soon he saw the dim outline of Terminal One, recently refurbished and brightly lighted.
 
The airport serves both military and civilian aircraft.
 
Ground control directed the Sabreliner to the military part of the field, assigned a parking spot at the edge of the military buildings.
 
A pickup truck with “Follow Me” in bright florescent lights slowly led the way.

With the plane secured, and refueling underway, Ava borrowed Flint’s phone and called Gina.
 
Thirty five minutes later, Gina herself unlocked the gate to let Ava and Flint
enter
her garden and then the house.
 
Ava brushed her teeth and turned in.
 
Flint accepted a blanket and pillow from Gina for use in the library where he would sleep on one of the leather sofas.
 

Flint draped his blazer over the back of a strait backed chair at the desk and removed the very heavy army .45 from the right hand pocket.
 
The MP
officer
had not asked for it.
 
As Flint examined it closely for the first time, he noticed how perfect the piece was—no scratches, quiet
slide,
magazine came out smoothly, not like the government issue model he had qualified with many years earlier in the Marine Corps.
 
Someone had spared no expense in assembling this one from specially prepared components.

As he laid the pistol carefully on the desk top, Flint’s phone sounded.
  
Laura Syms said, “hi, Flint.”

“Hey Laura.
 
It’ll be 4:00
A.M.
here in a few minutes.
 
Where are you?
 
What’s up?”

“I’m at Casa Chapala, a Mexican café in Austin at the corner of San Jacinto and Caesar Chavez.
 
Do you know it?
 
I’m waiting for Zeta and her partner Christine to meet me for dinner.
 
It is nearly 9:00 in the evening here.”

“Say hi to Christine for me,” Flint requested.
 
He had met Christine and Zeta in Punta del Este, Uruguay two months earlier in a story that has been told in
Erotic Resolution
.
 
“Ava and I landed a little over an hour ago in Naples.
 
We just got to Gina’s house.”

“Zeta told me that a moment ago.
 
She tracked your phone’s GPS.
 
I’m calling to tell you that I have a bad feeling about Freddy.”

“Gina said she can’t locate him,” Flint said.

“I haven’t told you till now, but I sometimes get strong intuitions that usually turn out to be right.
 
I have one of those now.
 
But I don’t know if it means Freddy is dead . . . or if it means he is not to be trusted.
 
I keep thinking I hear him whispering.
 
I’m not sure if I hear him say “help” or if he is saying “hate.”

“When did the whispers start?”

About noon my time, nine hours ago.
 
The fifth time was right before I dialed you.
 
I had parked in the Chapala lot behind the café.
 
I closed my eyes for a few seconds and thought I could see his face moving away from me—but not distinctly.
 
Then I heard more than the other four times.
 
Something
like
“har, hate, help”—I heard separate words that were almost identical sounding.”

Flint thought a second and said, “Maybe it was “Bahaar hates me, help.
 
Or is that too many words?”

“Not too many words.
 
It might have been that.
 
The first part of each word was not quite distinct.”

Laura told Flint about Shana living with her.
 
As she was finishing that, Christine and Zeta walked in to the restaurant.
 
Flint said hello to each in turn with Laura’s phone passed to them.
 
Flint thanked Laura for calling.
 
He was asleep within a minute of hanging up.

Chapter 12

Abdu Koreim reentered the Grande Bretagne Hotel after his twenty-five minute walk.
 
He again took a cross legged position on his meditation mat.
 
That was where he still was when Flint and Ava got to Gina’s house in Naples a few minutes before 5:00
A.M.
, Athens time.
 
He stood up.
 
Knowing the sun was still more than two hours from peeking over the horizon, he showered, dressed, zipped his small meditation rug into his carryon, called the front desk, stopped by the breakfast buffet,
then
entered a taxi.
 

On the way to the airport, 7:17
A.M.
, Rome time, Koreim used his tablet computer to call the number left when Mo Bahaar had phoned him a few hours earlier.
 
Bahaar himself answered.

“Mo, you can see from the caller ID on your phone
who
this is.
 
I am headed to the airport to take a flight either back to India or to Rome.
 
Which place I go, depends on you.
 
If you permanently abandon your plans toward Ava Milan and anyone close to her, I will procure a ticket to Hyderabad.
 
Otherwise I will proceed wherever I need to go to oppose you to the ultimate.”

“Oh my dear Abdu.
 
I had not realized the extent of your interest in the little Italian whore now living in Texas.
 
Please be assured that I will have no further interactions with her.”

“You lie.
 
So it is inevitable that we see each other in Rome.
 
Be advised that all aspects of your scheme, including your plan to infect with a deadly virus four men from different countries, will receive my full attention.
 
I know the first of the four is arriving from Brazil earlier than you anticipated, and I know you are waiting for his flight.
 
I know where you are in the airport.
 
I know who the other three are and that they are in motion to arrive today.”

Bahaar switched to Urdu, began speaking in a loud voice.
 
But the call was over.
 
Koreim had hung up.
 
Bahaar looked at the passengers emerging toward baggage claim.
 
Abdu Koreim was among them.
 
He looked straight at Bahaar.
 
Suddenly a well-dressed, attractive man in his forties appeared, closed the distance with his hand extended.

“Hello,” he said.
 
“My name is Davi Thiago Ruiz Neto dos Santos.
 
From Fortaleza on the northeast coast of Brazil.”

Bahaar was still staring at where he had seen Koreim.
 
He snapped out of wondering if he was seeing things or if Koreim had really been where he saw him.
 
He found himself shaking hands with a tall dark skinned man who was saying, “
everyone
calls me Davi, accent on the final syllable.”

Davi Ruiz was seventh generation Brazilian on his father’s side, with more recent African and Portuguese roots on his mother’s.
 
He had a bachelor’s degree in geology from Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas, a graduate degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
 
He had started life with no money, worked in the Tupi oil field off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, invested there and made multiple fortunes in stock and had sold little of it, preferring to live on a good salary from Petrobras, the big Brazilian oil holding company.

As Davi and Mo shook hands, a phone sounded.
 
Davi excused himself to answer.
 
It was a colleague from Suriname—a small country, a former Dutch colony, between Guyana and French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America.

“Davi.
 
Jonathan Temple here.
 
I am in London at Heathrow.
 
I plan to arrive in Rome about 5:00
P.M.
 
Have you met our host Mohammed Bahaar yet?”

“Just this moment, Jonathan,” Davi replied.

“Any impressions?”

“Several.
 

Jonathan waited,
then
spoke.
 
“Ah—you are not free to speak just now?”

“Sim.”
 
Davi said the most usual word for yes in Portuguese.

“Got it.
 
See you in a few hours.
 
Bom dia, good morning.”

“Later,” Davi responded.

Bahaar escorted Davi to a seriously stretched limo waiting near the taxi stand.
 
On the way to Hotel
L’Orange ,
located a ten minute walk from the Vatican, Mo Bahaar regaled Davi with talk of oil quadrupling in price in the near future.
 

“My dear chap,” Bahaar said in his most cultivated English accent.
 
“You know that OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, at present has twelve members.
 
Only two of those—Ecuador and Venezuela—are in the western hemisphere.
 
That made sense a couple of decades back, but there will soon be discovered more oil reserves in the Americas than in all of the rest of the planet.
 
I have two goals.
 
One is to deny the United States access to as much of this oil as I can.
 
The other is to acquire more money than any person in history has been able to do.
 
In the process I propose to make you and a small number of other men richer than you have believed it possible to be.
 
What do you think of that?”

Davi said with conviction, “the aristocracy in Saudi Arabia controls OPEC overtly and behind the scenes.
 
It is time for a counter force.”

“My thoughts exactly,” echoed Bahaar.

Davi and Mo expanded their shared understandings on the forty-seven minute drive to the Orange Hotel.
 
The time was 8:36
A.M.
at the front desk.
 
As Davi headed for his room after check in, Jafe appeared with the stunning blond named Pagana.

“Excuse me, Mr. Davi Ruiz?” asked Jafe.

“Yes.”

“This is Miss Pagana Sarantos.
 
Mr. Bahaar has asked her to make sure that you are comfortable.”

Pagana curtsied nearly imperceptibly as she extended her right hand.
 
Davi took it, kissed it with a bow.
 
Mo was gone.
 
Jafe disappeared.

Meanwhile, in Naples, Mary and Ava joined Flint who was drinking coffee with Gina and Murphy in Gina’s kitchen.
 
Flint had explained his experience with the Greek military police and their discovery of the Russian truth drug.
 
Ava added her account of being forced to hypnotize Pagana to have sex with four men.

“So this whole Athens thing,” Murphy said, “had nothing to do with Freddy or Gina or Stevenson Karbouski or the angel trumpet society?
 
It’s simply a coincidence?”

Silence.
 
No one answered.
 
Then Murphy’s phone sounded.
 

“Oh, hello Harry,” he said.
 
Two and a half minutes elapsed in silence as Murphy listened.
 
He hung up.
 
Everyone was looking at him.
 
“Harry’s Texas Ranger colleague Zeta thinks it is all connected.
 
She believes Mohammed Bahaar knows about Gina’s and Ava’s and Freddy’s problem with the angel trumpeters and that he is using it as a smokescreen to hide his move to use Ava to help him corner the global market in crude oil.
 
Zeta is certain that the one hypnosis session in Athens is not all Bahaar has in mind for Ava.”