Double Vision (10 page)

The barrel jabbed into her throat, choking off her breath.

“I don't believe you,” he said with deadly calm. “And until I'm satisfied that you don't know where the money is, you and your daughter will do exactly as I say.”

Colombia, one week later

H
eat enveloped Dennison as he stepped out of the Cessna onto the rough grass of a private airfield, the only clear strip of land he'd seen for mile upon mile of thick, impenetrable jungle, except for the arid moonscape that surrounded the Chavez stronghold.

Lopez exited the plane as a dust-covered vehicle came to a stop just beyond the inky shadow cast by the plane. Draping his jacket over one shoulder, Dennison waited for the pilot to unload his overnight bag and studied the vehicle, which looked remarkably like an ancient Rolls-Royce.

The driver, a young Latino, requested their weapons, then held the door. Shaking his head, Dennison waited for Lopez to take his place, then climbed in. As the Rolls-Royce bumped across the airfield, a second vehicle, this one a jeep bristling with a motley assortment of men and automatic weapons, fell in behind them. If he had needed a reminder that he'd left civilization as he knew it behind, that was it. The Chavez compound was situated at Macaro, hundreds of miles east from Bogotá on a mesa overlooking the Vaupés River, smack in the middle of coca country.

The Rolls proceeded at a slow pace through the small village, working its way ever higher. The blunt lines of the compound wavered in the distance; the heat shimmer giving the sprawling casa bounded by high, thick walls an almost mystical aspect.

Fifteen minutes later, the car rolled to a halt outside what could only be described as a
castillo.
From the air, it had looked impressive. On the ground, it was big enough to take up an entire city block.

A plump woman dressed in faded black, reminding Dennison of a dusty crow against the pristine white of the walls, hurried down the steps. The woman, who he guessed was Marco's housekeeper, opened the door for Lopez. Dennison opened his own door and stepped out of the creaking luxury of the Rolls, gaze narrowed against the glare of sunlight off the building as Lopez spoke to the woman. He noticed that she stepped back, her head bowed respectfully. The conversation was brief, the dialect difficult to understand, but Dennison was fluent in Spanish. The woman had indicated that Marco was waiting in the study.

After the glaring heat, it took Dennison long seconds to adjust to the dimness of the casa, which was built along medieval lines with flagstone floors, vaulted ceilings and enormous fireplaces. Dark, heavy furniture gleamed in clusters, decorating a seemingly endless succession of reception rooms and halls. Faded tapestries and what looked like the weapons and armor once used by the conquistadors hung from the walls.

A servant scurried ahead, dressed in what Dennison now recognized as a uniform of sorts—black pants and a white shirt with a black waistcoat. A set of double doors swung open and the servant backed away, melting into the shadows.

Despite all the research he'd done before this meeting, Dennison's stomach tensed as a white-haired man, much smaller than he had imagined, rose to his feet and walked toward them.

Despite having the heavy features and thick build of a peon, Marco Chavez traced his ancestry back to the first conquistadors, claiming that his blood was royal. He enjoyed the connection and the rich history, and he enjoyed the wealth of his empire, originally forged from Mayan and Inca gold and now rejuvenated with the new currency, coca. In a country dragged down by poverty, he lived like a king.

He had taken his obsession with royalty a step further by traveling to Spain for a wife. Maria Beatriz had been chosen for her bloodline, which could be traced back to the House of Aragon.

When Maria had eventually died after a series of miscarriages, Marco hadn't replaced her. He had been nearing sixty and he had what he had wanted, a son.

Lopez moved forward. Marco opened his arms for the traditional embrace, revealing the butt of a shoulder-holstered weapon, and Dennison experienced a curious moment of awareness.

The driver of the Rolls had taken his Glock and Lopez's knife. When they had arrived at the walls of the casa, the jeep load of armed men had peeled off. From the time they'd stepped into the dim entrance hall, he had noticed a number of people, servants mostly, and the security personnel who had kept pace with them as they'd walked. At no time had he seen a weapon on anyone within the environs of the house, and he had been looking.

He logged the movements around him, the weird sense of premonition strong enough to make him break out in a sweat. Two men were behind him, one in the far corner, and at least ten that he'd counted within calling distance.

With a smooth movement, almost in slow motion, Alex loosened off the old man's clasp, slipped his hand inside Marco's jacket and pulled out the automatic pistol. Jabbing the barrel against Marco's chest, he pulled the trigger and stepped back.

Shock reverberated through Dennison as he watched the old man crumple. Breath held tight in his lungs, his hand reached for a gun that was no longer there, the moment impossibly vivid as he tensed against the anticipated punch of bullets as Marco's soldiers reacted.

The silence following the detonation of the gun stretched, and the moment took on a surreal quality. Dennison was reminded of the first time
he
had killed; the thump of adrenaline almost stopping his heart, the weirdness of space and time when, for those few fractured seconds, everything had culminated in a series of freeze frames. But this wasn't a dealer in a back alley in Chinatown. They were in Colombia and this was Marco Chavez.

Dark eyes, blank with shock, centered on Lopez. No one could shoot except Lopez. He had the only gun in the house. Dennison studied the hole in Marco's chest. The lack of movement indicated that the old man had been killed outright.

The irony of the way he had died didn't escape Dennison. Marco had fallen prey to the one weakness in his rigid security regime. He had had the only weapon, but it had been taken off him.

Of all the scenarios he had projected when they hadn't been able to recover the money, this hadn't been one of them. In theory, the loss of billions of the cartel's cash reserves should have signed Lopez's death warrant. If he had belonged to a “normal” crime family, he would be dead already. But there was nothing remotely normal about either Marco or his son.

Dennison hadn't thought that Marco would kill Lopez. For the past twenty-four years, Alex had been Marco's entire focus. The wholesale slaughter Marco had ordered to force Alex's release from a Colombian prison was a case in point. To preserve his son, Marco had destroyed his standing in his own country, necessitating that he live in a virtual state of siege. The hatred the massacres had sparked had been so intense, he had had to take Alex out of the equation altogether and remove him to the States under a false identity.

Unfortunately, the overprotective approach, mixed with the weirdness and isolation of Alex's upbringing, hadn't made the Chavez heir a balanced human being. The casual way he had just gunned down his father confirmed it.

Pedro crept forward, then crossed himself when he saw the blood staining the front of Marco's jacket and spattered on Alex's hand.

Alex leveled the gun at Pedro. “Don't worry,” he said. “It's not mine.”

All the hairs at the back of Dennison's neck stood on end. Any normal person would have been consumed with guilt or terror at killing a parent. Alex had smoothly sidestepped those emotions and instead was calmly assuring his father's servant that
he
was unharmed.

Alex stepped away from Pedro and the crumpled form of Marco. Glancing around the room, he began to speak.

The flatly spoken words echoed in the cavernous room.

He was the line; he had the blood.

He was their king.

 

Dennison watched the slow, deliberate way Alex ate and a shudder moved down his spine. All through this trip, he had been anticipating a downscaling of Alex's role in the cartel and a gold-plated opportunity for his own escape. Marco's murder had put a proverbial spanner in his plans. He had worked through his options and, unfortunately, come up with the same answer: he was back to square one. With Anne in the clinic, no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't disappear. His only hope was that Lopez would be forced to stay in Colombia and oversee the coca operation, leaving him free and clear to make arrangements to move Anne and disappear off Lopez's scope.

Alex set his fork down and waited for a servant to take his plate and refill his glass of iced water. “I've made a decision.”

Dennison almost choked on the odd concoction of reconstituted salted fish mixed with rice that had been ladled onto his plate. He had a sudden, all-too-familiar, cornered-rat feeling.

Alex sipped at the water, his movements as mundane and unhurried as if they were sitting by the pool at his house in San Francisco, but Dennison wasn't fooled. He had the unsettling conviction that, despite his preoccupation with the organizational chaos wrought by Marcos's death, Lopez could see right through him.

“Now that Marco's gone, I need you here. Someone has to run this end of the business,” he stated flatly. “You're not going back to the States.”

 

Xavier le Clerc studied the steaming carafe of coffee that room service had just delivered to his suite, along with a plate of hot biscuits served with curls of butter and a dish of preserves. The waiter deposited a folded newspaper beside the coffeepot. Ignoring the coffee and the food, Xavier tipped the waiter, then unfolded the newspaper.

Marco Chavez was dead.

Finally the information that had been communicated to him twenty-four hours ago via a source within the Colombian government was now official news. Interestingly, there was no mention of the fact that Marco had been murdered by his own son. Instead the story speculated that, as Chavez had been over seventy years of age with a history of heart problems, it was likely that he had expired from natural causes.

Turning to the back of the paper, he found the death notice he had been expecting, and any hope that Esther had survived the “accident” evaporated. When her body hadn't been recovered from the site, she had been presumed drowned. The river and parts of San Francisco Bay had been searched, without success. For a while Xavier had thought it was possible she was alive and in Lopez's hands, but if Cesar had authorized a memorial service, that could only be because he knew she was dead.

His jaw tightened as he studied the formally worded notice. If Esther had entrusted him with her daughter, he believed he could have gotten them both to safety; they could have disappeared without a trace.

He turned to the business section. There was still no mention of the theft from RCS. Thirteen billion dollars had disappeared into thin air, and the crime hadn't registered.

He no longer knew where the money was. Esther had made arrangements for almost the entire sum—minus the amount he needed to pay off his people—to be transferred into an account she had set up at a reputable Swiss bank. He could guess at the bank she had chosen, but unless she had kept a record of the account number, to all intents and purposes the money was now lost.

The money, useful as it had been as a tool to expose Lopez and, more important, the cabal who backed him, no longer concerned Xavier. Marco's death had stirred up a hornet's nest in South America and in the States. Lopez was not only fighting for control, he was fighting for survival. The opportunity inherent in the struggle could finally provide the break he needed.

Finally, after years of patient searching, he was on the verge of picking up a trail that had gone cold, a trail that had started in Lubeck, Germany, in 1944.

C
esar stared at Rina's small, straight body as she lay in the private clinic Lopez had had her removed to. Her head was bandaged and her right arm was in plaster. Unconscious, her face smoothed out, she looked a lot like Esther and a little like him, but he didn't feel the usual rush of warmth and pride when he looked at her. Fear had squeezed him to the bone, and the jab of cold metal in his ribs reminded him that if he did one thing Lopez didn't like, he was dead.

Cesar was in shock. He knew it on an intellectual level, but that didn't begin to describe the reality. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat and he couldn't stop shaking.

He wouldn't ever be able to wipe the stark image of Esther's body or the sight of Rina lying pale and bloodied on a hospital gurney from his mind.

Or the fact that he had betrayed them both.

He stared at Rina through the glass panel of the door and felt panic rise.

Thirteen billion dollars.

There was no way back from that.

The raw fear of what Lopez would do, not to him but to Rina, made him break out in a clammy sweat. His own personal fear of death had been ground away by the past few days. He no longer cared if he lived or died, but Rina
had
to survive.

He had failed Esther; he wouldn't fail his daughter. He would do anything, say anything, to protect her. “I'll do whatever it takes to recover the money—or replace it.”

The offer made his gut hollow out. If Lopez accepted, he had effectively sold himself into cartel bondage. Even trading in illicit drugs, it would take him a lifetime to amass thirteen billion dollars.

Lopez sent him a glance that was utterly lacking in humanity. “I'm afraid I'm going to require much more from you than that. The girl belongs to me.”