Gun Metal Heart (16 page)

Only thing was: both women had vanished.

General Cathcart had returned to Washington to coordinate the search—quietly, behind the scenes—with the CIA, which seemed most intent on finding this Gibron. America's allies in Europe were helping. Law enforcement had been called in, and all border crossings were on high alert.

Brevidge felt the coke flow through his nervous system. He waited for the drug to give him the perspective it always provided.

Sure: the Florence incident was one of the great screwups in the history of the world. It was the type of incident that ended not with people being fired but with firing squads. On the other hand, the covert war boys were impressed by Mercutio and Hotspur. The company looked to be solvent. The free world would remain safe from the forces of terrorism and communism.

Todd Brevidge almost couldn't believe he'd found the sweet spot between prison and profitability. But he had.

He tapped out another line of coke.

They say war is hell? Try sales.

 

Nineteen

The crew of the Hercules C-130 had spoken no English. The same was true for the trawler that took John across the Adriatic from the east coast of Italy to Slovenia.

The boat was maybe thirty feet long and sixty years old. The crew members were serious fishermen, and the trawler reeked of fish. The lower hull was filled with ice. John stayed inside the moldy wooden cabin on deck throughout the journey. It gave him plenty of time to think about Senator Singer Cavanaugh and the job John had thrown away.

*   *   *

John had arrived at the Cavanaughs' lush and tucked-away neighborhood at 7:00
A.M.

Adair Simon-Cavanaugh opened the cherry red door herself after John rang the bell. She didn't seem surprised to find her husband's aide at the door. “Hello, John. Please come in.”

Mrs. Cavanaugh turned and led him into the house. She was sixty-five and wearing a crisp white blouse, slim black trousers, and red flats. She was the richest person John Broom had ever met, or was ever likely to meet. Singer was the brash New Orleans pol; Adair Simon came from very old Georgia money.

John entered in her wake. “I'm sorry to bother you at home.”

Adair smiled. “It's fine, John. We were half expecting you.”

John himself hadn't known he was coming until twenty minutes before he called the taxi.

Adair led him through the splendidly appointed town house and into the spacious kitchen. The senator stood near a many-paned window that looked out at the backyard. He started every day standing behind a plain wooden parson's lectern he had purchased four decades earlier. Its surface was big enough that Singer could lay out his newspapers with room for a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee. He read eight newspapers every morning.

His reading glasses were perched low on his hawk nose, and he wore a starched white shirt; his bow tie was undone and laying against his clavicle, suspenders tight against his shoulders.

“John,” he boomed.

Adair Simon-Cavanaugh poured John a cup of coffee.

“Thank you.” He turned to the senator. “Sir, it's the Black Swan event in Florence.”

Adair slid into the bench of the bright red and white breakfast nook with her own cup of coffee. She said, “I know about the hotel. I don't know the term
Black Swan
.”

“It's an event—military, terrorism-related, political—that's big and brash and completely unexpected but which has strong repercussions afterward,” John said. “It's a Latin expression.”

Singer pretended to read his paper. “The poet Juvenal.”

“Yes, sir. He said: all swans are white. So a black swan is, by definition, the rarest possible observation. A
rara avis.
It's where we get the term
rare bird
.”

Adair stirred her coffee. “My goodness. The useless information you boys have in your noggins.” But it was said with a smile, and John took it as just a wry jab, nothing more.

John took a deep breath and turned to the senator. “Sir, I think I need to resign.”

Singer and Adair exchanged glances. Adair was a handsome woman, serene and even-tempered in public but known for her steely resolve. She also was known as something of a poker player. John could not read her at all.

When the senator did not respond, John pushed on. “I'm sorry about this. But Daria made contact with me and asked for my help. She also suggested I contact a man to get me there through illegal means. For obvious reasons, I'm going. But I can't … we can't afford any of this to come back on you, or your staff, or the joint committee, or the party.”

Singer nodded for him to continue.

“There's another factor. Whoever was tracking Daria's calls, they know she called me. So I need to inoculate your office from any blowback from that direction as well. I hope you understand.”

Singer Cavanaugh pursed his lips. Adair busied herself with applying a spoonful of sugar to her coffee.

“Resignation accepted.”

John stood there a moment. He had hoped the senator would put up a fight. “Thank you, sir. This is about the hardest thing I've ever done. You're a lion of Congress. Your reputation there, and as a prosecutor, and as FBI director, make you uniquely qualified to speak for all of Washington. For the nation.”

Adair drawled, “Though apparently it would kill him to empty the dishwasher occasionally.”

Singer pretended to glower at her. She smiled benignly.

John said, “I can't put that at risk, Senator.”

Adair turned to their guest. “I'm on the board of directors for the International Red Cross. It's not common knowledge, but the IRC Subcommittee on Refugees is putting together a contact group for Croatia and Serbia.”

John blinked at her. “Croatia and Serbia don't have a refugee problem.”

She flashed him one of her famous high-octane smiles. “Then my friends at the Red Cross will need a contact group to study the great good fortune of Croatia and Serbia. They're looking for a freelance analyst to study the region. The sooner the better. We bypassed the request-for-proposal stage. The contract is yours. Congratulations and good luck.”

John felt the world slip a little from beneath his feet. He wasn't used to being the second-quickest mind in any given room. Let alone third-quickest.

“Wait. I … you knew I'd suggest this?”

Singer waggled his bushy white eyebrows, looking pleased with himself. “We figured you'd get there on your own.”

John felt his eyes tear up. “I don't know what to say.”

Singer flipped a page of the
International Herald Tribune
. “Say yes and get the hell out of my kitchen so I can go serve the taxpayers.”

Adair stood and reached for John's untouched coffee cup. “We won't be able to funnel too much money into this project. Not without raising some eyebrows. My secretary has a list of names and numbers for you. I'll have them messengered to your place inside an hour.”

Singer peered over his glasses. “Or we could trust the CIA to do its job. You're sure we can't go that route, son?”

“Unfortunately, yes sir, I am. Daria did what she had to do last winter, but it resulted in the assistant director for antiterrorism taking early retirement. There was a field agent who was fired over the whole thing. Owen Cain Thorson. Daria made big enemies.”

“Understood. You go do what you need to do. This Red Cross thing will provide you with resources so you don't have to worry about my office. But you have my personal cell phone if you need me.”

John cleared his throat. He tamped down the outpouring of emotion.

“Go take care of your friend, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

Adair led John back through the spacious but understated living room and entry room to the front door. He was still reeling.

“Thank you.”

“Singer thinks the world of you. And he trusts you. You go and get yourself killed over there, he'll never forgive himself. So don't do that.”

“No, Ma'am.”

“Good luck, John.”

She bussed him on the cheek. John hunched his shoulders and hustled to the cab he'd left waiting.

*   *   *

Now here it was two days later and John was in … well, he wasn't sure. Slovenia, probably. The trawler had dropped anchor outside Opatija, overlooking a beautiful bay. The crew used an inflatable raft with a tiny outboard motor to get him ashore.

He found a man waiting for him by an ancient Austin Cooper. The man was dark, with shoulder-length black hair and the flat-planed face John associated with Central America. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, a cowboy hat, and dusty boots. He was tightly built and compact. He leaned on the Cooper. “Broom?”

“Yeah.”

The guy climbed behind the wheel. John threw his messenger bag into what passed for a backseat. He sat. The dashboard was half missing and there were no seat belts.

Away from the icy trawler, John began unwinding himself from his winter clothes.

The guy said, “Diego.”

“Hi.”

“Friend of Daria.”

John said, “Me, too.”

The man put the Cooper into gear. “Better be.”

*   *   *

It now was four days since anyone had heard from Daria.

John discovered he'd been put ashore in Croatia, not Slovenia. The quiet man drove south on a wildly winding road that dipped down to sea level near the towns and zoomed straight up the sides of mountains in between. The view was spectacular, the Adriatic glistening. Any other time and John would have enjoyed the road trip.

They drove for over an hour without speaking. John slipped into a quick nap, but the hairpin curves made that impossible to sustain.

At one point he rubbed at a severe kink in his neck and said, “Why are you doing this?”

Diego watched the road. He drove fast but carefully.

John said, “You're … what? Hired gun for the Viking?”

Diego downshifted through a precarious turn. “Who's the Viking?”

“Right. Sorry.”

They drew closer to Split. The traffic wasn't too bad, although trucks got in the way a lot. John realized there was an elevated inland highway and wondered why the trucks weren't up there.

Twenty minutes later the driver said, “Let me guess. Daria saved your life.”

“Me?”

Diego nodded.

“No. I'm not the kind of guy people have to save. I'm a lawyer. Biggest threat to my life is overaggressive air conditioning.”

Diego seemed to absorb this, eyes on the road.

John said, “I guess, technically, I saved hers.”

That took them another three kilometers.

“You saved Daria Gibron.” Diego sounded incredulous.

“Yeah.”

Four more kilometers. And Diego almost smiled. “Okay. I got to ask…”

“CIA hit squad. This was last November in Milan.”

“She told me. She was sick.”

“Damn near dead. And the CIA field team wanted her all the way dead. I intervened.”

Diego upshifted, smoked a souped-up Z Car.

“How?”

“I found a legal loophole in CIA protocol. Once I did, killing Daria would have led to the mother of all paperwork storms. Bureaucratic nightmare. Not killing her became the easy way out.”

They drove. The signs pointed them south to Dubrovnik and east to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Diego shook his head. “You shitting me. You saved Daria with … paperwork?”

John leaned back. “I'm a D.C. lawyer. I could kill a water buffalo with paperwork.”

And—miraculously—Diego gave him a full-fledged grin. “Damn.”

Lago de Como, Italy

Brook Slate was the Man with the Plan.

A dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Navy might have ended the life of a lesser man but not Brook Slate's. In the fifteen years seen he'd been canned, he'd traveled around South America, Africa, and now Europe, doing a little armed robbery here, a little extortion there, and all the while picking up more tail than any man deserved.

What was his secret? A couple of things.

First, he was a keen observer of the human nature. He could spot potential talent from a nautical mile.

Second, like that line from
Apocalypse Now
: “Never get out of the boat.”

Brook Slate rarely got out of the boat.

In his case, it was a forty-year-old, twenty-foot beaut currently parked in Lake Como, in the north of Italy near the Swiss border.

As for being a keen observer of human nature: take today. Brook sat outside a quaint restaurant on an arc of land that jutted into Lago de Como, just a tad north of the touristy town of Como. He drank a Heineken and wore his leathers well. Not a tall man—maybe five-six—he was economically built, he looked larger than he was. He should have been a movie star. That thought occurred to him virtually every day.

Como was gorgeous. He could look straight up and see crystalline blue. He could look a little lower and see the Alps. He could look lower and see forests. Even lower was the splintered dazzle of sunlight on one of the most beautiful lakes he'd ever seen. To the left were 1920s-era hotels and apartments, teeming with tourists. Or marks, depending on your point of view.

And look to the right, there was tonight's conquest.

She was maybe thirty. She had straight black hair, pulled back and tied with a bandana. She wore a rather simple sundress, but that didn't hide the high-octane bod beneath. She had a heart-shaped face and wore sunglasses.

Best yet, when the waiter came to her table, she had to point to a menu: no Italian.

Best-best yet, after she did, she rifled coins through a small change purse and looked nervous. She glanced around, furtive.

Brook sipped his beer, and then reached into the right pocket of his trousers. His fingers felt the comforting, familiar triangle of the Rohypnol tablet in its plastic packet.