Deal with the Dead (9 page)

“That hasn’t stopped you so far,” Deal said.

It brought a dry laugh from Sams. “I need to be absolutely sure, Mr. Deal. That’s where you come in.”

“Why not plant one of your own men somewhere in his organization?” Deal said. “I’m no cop.”

“Precisely,” Sams said. “You are exactly who you appear to be. That is your strength in the matter. I can use you—” He broke off and began again, his tone softer this time. “You will be able to ingratiate yourself with Rhodes,” he said. “From that position, you will have access to certain information, which will tell us what we need to know.”

“Ingratiate myself
how?
If this guy is really who you think he is, he’s not going to come anywhere close to Miami.”

Sams shrugged. “One thing at a time, Mr. Deal. All I need from you at this juncture is your assurance that you’re willing to cooperate.”

Deal stared at the folders spread across the desk before him. His father a government informant, himself about to be conscripted into the same service?

A part of him wanted to deny everything he’d heard, dismiss it all as nonsense, part of some scheme of Eddie Barrios’ meant to somehow pry a few dollars loose from a fat contract. But he couldn’t make it wash. Eddie Barrios was a flea next to the man who sat across the desk from him.

“Why is this so important to you, Sams? You need another big score to get your retirement pay up a notch?”

Sams gave him a neutral look. “I have my reasons and they don’t concern you. All I’m interested in is your cooperation.”

“Cooperation,” Deal repeated, shaking his head wearily. He took another look at the files lying on the desk. “What choice do I have?”

Sams smiled then, and for a moment the gesture seemed genuine. “I’m pleased to have you on the team,” he said. He stood up from behind the desk, gathering his papers. He picked up his pistol and replaced it under his coat.

“That’s it?” Deal asked.

“Oh, that’s hardly it,” Sams said, “but that’s enough for now.”

He stepped from behind the desk and moved briskly toward the door. “You’ll be hearing from me, Mr. Deal. In the meantime, enjoy your good fortune.” He flashed his self-satisfied smile. “You have a brand-new life ahead.”

Then he was gone, followed closely by Tasker, who held Deal’s eye briefly before following out the door. After a moment, Deal stood from the chair and walked out onto the porch.

It was dark now, the moon not yet risen above the screen of the surrounding mangroves. He scanned the dim roadway that led out through the trees, but saw no sign of movement. He leaned with his hands on the rough wooden railing, listening for the sounds of receding footsteps, for a motor starting up, but there was only the distant hum of traffic out on the highway and the screech of tree frogs in the mangroves, a sound much diminished at this time of year.

Maybe they were ghosts, Deal told himself. Maybe he’d dreamed it all. But how to explain the lingering ache at the base of his skull, and the knot of rage that lingered in his gut?

He thought he heard something then, the far-distant sound of a car’s engine grinding to life, the spurt of sand as wheels chewed away in the night. But he couldn’t be sure. He turned from the railing and walked back into the office. He picked up the telephone. He wasn’t surprised to hear the purr of the dial tone restored. He tapped out the only number that mattered to him and stood wondering what he was going to say to Janice.

Chapter Seven

“
This is
the
tunnel
,
isn’t it?” Kaia Jesperson said, glancing out her window as the speeding Mercedes ducked down beneath Parisian street level. “The Alma tunnel?”

Richard Rhodes gave her a look. She looked no less lovely to him than the moment he’d first laid eyes on her weeks before in Turkey. He thought of his father suddenly, and knew it was because of her. Yes, how he wished Grant Rhodes were still alive to meet this woman.

“We made love in the same bed, ate at the same table,” he said, turning back to Kaia. “…now we’re taking the same route to the airport.”

“Made love,” said Kaia. “Is that what you’d call it?”

“I would,” said Rhodes.

“Hmmm.” She was turned away, seemed to be studying the tunnel walls, where graffitists proclaimed their undying devotion to the victims of the famous crash.

He glanced toward the front of the limousine, but Frank and Basil Wheatley sat stoically in the front seat, the glass partition raised.

“Did you have this thing for the princess?” she asked.

Rhodes looked over. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

She turned to face him. “I bear a certain resemblance, you know. People say this sometimes.”

“Is that so?”

She twisted her hair in her hand, pulled it back on her head, gave him a smile meant to be winsome. “I thought perhaps you had a fetish of some sort.”

He watched her skeptically. “I don’t think the princess ever appeared quite so salacious.”

She lifted her brows and let her long hair tumble free. “Salacious,” she repeated. “Now there is a word.”

“It suits,” Rhodes said, and thought to himself that it did. Not only did flames surround Kaia Jesperson, he had discovered, they boiled up within. There had been times when he’d had sex as frequently in the past, but never had it been a single person who’d ignited those desires. Flames, he thought. Acrobatics. Spectacles of violence.

“Can we stop?” she said, bringing Rhodes back.

“Here?”

“I want to see,” she said, shaking her head. “I missed the place where it happened.”

It took Rhodes a moment to get his mind off the sex. When he’d finally understood, he glanced at his watch. “We’re a bit late,” he said.

“For what?” she insisted. “You own the plane.”

He sighed and nodded. He pressed a button on the armrest console. “We need to turn around,” he said.

Basil glanced back at the still-closed partition. It was reflective glass. The big man would be staring at his own reflection. His lips moved, but the sound came from speakers hidden somewhere in the plush upholstery. “What’d you forget?”

“Miss Jesperson would like to see the spot where the accident took place.”

Basil digested this, nodding without comment. He turned and said something to Frank, who raised one hand from the wheel in response. Basil turned back to the partition. “Okay. We’ll swing around just the other side—”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when something slammed into the side of the Mercedes, sending it veering toward the tunnel wall. Kaia gave a nearly inaudible cry, jerking away from the window as the heavy car rode up over the curbing. There was a grinding sound that shook Rhodes in his seat, and a shower of sparks as metal sheared on stone.

The rear of the Mercedes caught something and rebounded back into the traffic lane. Rhodes felt another thud, then hurtled forward off his seat. As he went down, sprawling across the carpeted floor, he caught sight of a pale blue van beside them, its side door sliding back.

“Look out,” Kaia cried in his ear as she flung herself on top of him.

A man in a fatigue jacket and a wool cap jammed on his head appeared in the open doorway of the careening van beside them. The man had an automatic rifle in one hand and was trying to hold himself upright with the other.

But the Mercedes had steadied itself now. Rhodes felt the surge of the big engine as Frank Wheatley jammed the pedal down.

“Tell me you staged this,” Kaia cried. “Say it’s for my benefit.”

Rhodes heard chuffing noises beside them, felt a lurch as the tires of the Mercedes blew. The car sagged to one side, but kept going.

The van flashed past, then hit them again, this time near the front. The two vehicles were locked together now, engines at redline, each straining to drive the other to oblivion. In the end, it was the Mercedes that lost the battle, its tires chewed down to the rims, furrowing the pavement, costing them too much speed. The right fender crunched into the wall and the two vehicles swung about, broadsiding to a halt across the traffic lanes.

And where
was
the other traffic, Rhodes thought as he slid forward, his back and shoulders driving against the rear-facing seats. The moment the Mercedes ground to a halt, he scrambled to his hands and knees. Outside, he saw the rear doors of the van fly open. Two more men in watch caps and camouflage jackets jumped down, automatic weapons braced.

“Dear God,” said Kaia Jesperson. She reached for the handle of the opposite door, ready to run for it.

Rhodes lunged, caught her around the waist, pulled her down. “You don’t want to do that,” he said. He rolled on top of her, thinking oddly,
Smoked black windows, they’ll be shooting blind…
and then the roar of gunfire began.

***

To the men dressed in the yellow fatigues of a Paris roadworking crew stationed at either end of the tunnel, it might have sounded like a choreographed eruption of jackhammer work. To the four men who had leaped from the van fingers held tightly to the triggers of their weapons, it seemed like they had created the roaring at the end of the world.

Bullets slammed into the windshield, the hood, the side windows of the targeted Mercedes in a deadly, seemingly endless hail. Sixty seconds it might have taken to empty the clips and the reloads, perhaps a few more. Every square foot of the expensive, gleaming sheet metal erupted into tight-stitched pustules, pristine window glass transformed into frost-etched sheets.

One of the assassins, the man who’d been in the side door of the van, strode forward toward the Mercedes, his weapon chattering bullets, spewing fire now at near point-blank range. Abruptly he paused, bringing his hand up, slapping at his cheek as if something had stung him there.

He tottered for a moment, then spun sideways. His left ear was gone, along with a section of his scalp, where a pale, fleshy tulip seemed to have bloomed. He was dead before he hit the ground, his weapon silent, his bloody palm thrust upward in a permanent gesture for help.

The three who were left, their own clips spent, stared in amazement at their fallen colleague and also at the steaming, blasted hulk of the Mercedes: the glass shattered, turned white by a million spidery fault lines, the once glossy skin of the hood and doors peppered with hundreds of bullet holes. It was eerily quiet in the tunnel now, though their ears were numb with the residue of gunfire.

“Ricochet,” said one of the men finally, in a language only they understood. He pointed at the fallen one and shook his head, and his two comrades nodded grudging understanding.

The three stood stunned by this freak occurrence, by the roaring that still lingered in their heads. It must have registered in the mind of one man—all that glass shattered, yes, but still intact; as well as the question of what might have caused that ricochet—but by the time an explanation had occurred to him, it was too late. He had opened his mouth to point at the blasted car, was about to pass on his suspicions…

…when the front passenger door of the limo flew open and Basil Wheatley appeared with a stubby-barreled shotgun in his hands. The first blast from the streetsweeper hit the two men closest to the van. One, who had taken the brunt of the tight pattern, flew backward through the still-open side doors. The other threw his hands to his face, where stray buck-shot had tattooed his forehead and cheeks. This man was in the midst of a curse of pain when the second blast from Basil’s shotgun blew his hands, and the head behind them, into a hot pink froth.

The fourth man, who had finally understood that he and his colleagues had been firing their weapons at an armored limousine, did not wait to see what happened to his colleagues. He turned and stepped quickly behind the sheltering rear door of the van, jacking a fresh clip into the magazine of his weapon. There was another boom from Basil’s streetsweeper, but the buckshot was deflected by the van’s door. Another boom, another harmless clatter on the steel at the assassin’s back. One more round, the assassin calculated, then he’d have the chance to take his shot.

He steadied himself, waiting, about to swing around the sheltering door, blow away that hulking man and his shotgun…

He heard the racking mechanism of Basil’s weapon engage, the roar of the shotgun echoing through the tunnel, and knew it was time to make his move.

But there was something wrong. He felt a strange weightless feeling, a numbness where his legs should have been. Instead of stepping forward, he realized he was moving back, toward the flapping opposite door of the van, which itself seemed to have tilted strangely.

His hands felt cold and useless, his fingers turned to stone. His head had jerked backward, affording him a momentary glimpse of the tunnel’s soot-stained vaulting. Then his chin was on his chest, which seemed warm, and dark, and wet. His cheek bounced off the opposite door frame, then struck the gritty pavement below, but he felt no pain.

He lay motionless, his unblinking eyes focused steadily on the back of the door where he’d been hiding. He saw the great rupture in the steel sheathing there, just where he’d been leaning, saw the tendrils of metal reaching inward at what might have been belt level. He felt the slightest tingling at the base of his spine, or where that part of him had been at least, and in the next moment, before he could even try to look down, he felt nothing at all.

***

By the time the blue van emerged from the other end of the tunnel, the blockades had already been cleared, the yellow-clad men posing as roadworkers vanished. Angry motorists, incensed at the delay, eager to make their own way along, paid no attention to what vehicle might have passed them by. It was nearly dark. Who would have noticed a few pellet holes, or paid attention to the driver of some service vehicle after all?

“A scattergun is good,” Basil Wheatley was saying, “but you always want to keep you a deer slug packed.” He was in the passenger’s seat, Frank was behind the wheel. “That’s your ace in the hole, little brother.”

“Pack a deer slug, drive a bulletproof car,” answered Frank, who kept his eyes on the road ahead. “That’s what Daddy always said.”

“Don’t get smart,” Basil said, but there wasn’t any malice in his voice. He glanced into the back of the van and waved his hand to his passengers as if to suggest that what was going on between him and his brother was of little consequence.

One of the passengers was Kaia Jesperson, who sat haggard-faced on a wooden crate in the cargo area. She turned to Rhodes, who sat on the corrugated metal floor opposite her, his back against the rattling side door. “Why didn’t you tell me the car was armored?” she asked.

Rhodes shrugged. “There wasn’t much time for discussion,” he said. “I didn’t want you running outside, that’s all.”

She nodded, watching him in the strobelike effect of the passing streetlights. “Does this sort of thing happen to you often?”

“Babescu had friends,” Rhodes said, his tone philosophical. He gestured dismissively. “We’ll be leaving them behind, now.”

She lifted one of her expressive eyebrows. “They seemed quite determined to me. How do you leave men like that behind?”

He shrugged. “They made a gesture, it didn’t work out. Sometimes that’s the end of it.”

“And if it isn’t?”

The van rumbled across a rough stretch of pavement, making speech impossible for a bit. He stared across the dim interior at her until the rumble had subsided. “You don’t have to get involved,” he said.

“I’m already involved,” she said.

“I’m serious,” he said. “You’re free to go your own way.”

“You would trust me?” There was the slightest tone of mockery in her voice.

“Implicitly,” he said. And it was true. If he knew anything, he knew that he had nothing to fear from this woman.

“You think I’m as soulless as you are,” she said.

Rhodes glanced at the front of the van. What did the Wheatleys make of such conversation? he wondered. Where did it fit in the world of deer slugs and car crushers and down-home aphorisms?

“You enjoy cheating death, that much I know,” he said.

It brought dismissive laughter from her. “I was too frightened to breathe back there. My pants are wet.”

“Even so,” he said.

Rhodes felt a hesitation in the vehicle’s momentum. He glanced forward.

Frank Wheatley spoke over his shoulder. “The turn’s coming up. We still going to the airfield?”

“I’m not certain yet,” Rhodes said.

He turned back to her. “What do you say, Kaia?”

“I like the way you say my name,” she said. “I wish you’d use it more often.”

Rhodes nodded, waiting. The hum of the tires beneath him was muted now.

“Where will you go?” she asked.

“Home,” he told her, as if he had not shared his intentions with her already.

“Home,” she repeated. “An interesting concept for the soulless.”

“I’m going home,” he said. “What would you like to do?”

She smiled at him. The look in her eyes seemed somehow patronizing. Yet her lips were full of promise. “I’ll go with you,” she told him.

Rhodes nodded again. He took no sharp intake of breath, nor any marked release. No variation in his pulse, no dilation or constriction of his pupils, no detectable change in the pressure of his blood. And still…and still…he felt himself a different man.

He glanced at Frank. “You can turn here,” he called.

And, of course, they did.