Читать книгу Silent Enemy - Lois Richer - Страница 10

“The most effective disguise isn’t.”

Samantha Henderson drew the tattered edges of Bertha-the-street-lady’s shawl around her and wondered if her boss had ever been reduced to this.

Not likely.

The slap of footsteps paused, stopped just behind her. She made sure the brim of Bertha’s straw hat hid her face.

“Look around. She’s got to be here.”

Varga!

Sam hunched over, hacked out a loud, chesty cough and turned it into a long-winded rumble that suggested an unhealthy lung condition. After a loud expletive, the feet moved a safer distance away.

“What do I do now? He’ll kill me if he finds out I lost her.”

“Check the market. If I find her, I’ll hang on to her. We’ve got to be there at four. Now go. El Zopilote doesn’t like complications.”

Four? Sam checked her watch. She had to be ready to move, and that meant getting rid of this disguise. If that statue was going anywhere, she had to know. That’s why she was there.

El Zopilote—The Vulture. Was he the buyer? She’d assumed Varga was a small-time thief, the other guy a pal he’d paid to help. But if they both worked for this el Zopilote…

The wind played with her hat, tugged it against its thin strings. She reached to grab it, noticed Bertha’s nod. Time to go.

While Varga had his back turned, Samantha limped over to the black wrought-iron fence that led to a courtyard, one of many in Lima. This one had a bougainvillea tree in full flower—good cover. From here she could look out onto the square. Varga and friend loped across the busy street.

She tossed her hat onto the ground, peeled off her ratty shawl, voluminous skirt and peasant blouse until all she wore were her jeans and T-shirt. Relief from the heat of two layers of clothing swept across her darkened skin. Repeatedly applying the self-tanner had ensured she was as dark as any native Peruvian, but now she needed a new look. She undid her braids, finger-combed her hair loose so that it shielded her face. Now she looked like a tourist.

While unearthing her backpack from the brambles of the tree, Sam peeked through the branches. On the corner across the street, Varga stood speaking to his friend. He had a package tucked under one arm.

So he still had the statue. Sam pulled on her sunglasses, ducked out of her hiding place and ambled down the street to a bench half a block down. She sat, picked up the newspaper and pretended to read. Following Juan Varga wasn’t the problem. Figuring out why he did the things he did was. He should have handed the statue over long ago instead of traipsing across South America. If el Zopilote had something to do with his actions, maybe this four o’clock meeting would give her an opportunity to find out why.

Making informed decisions about her next move was impossible. All she could do was follow Varga and wait for answers. In the meantime, she’d check in. She dialed Finders, Inc. and waited. For the third time in three days she couldn’t get through. After several attempts she tried a different number. The phone rang endlessly.

A two-hour time difference between here and the offices in Victoria meant that a certain someone who kept erratic hours should be in to take her call on his private line. Except that Daniel McCullough did not pick up. Either the phone system wasn’t working properly or her cell phone was faulty. Both major mistakes for an agent of her experience.

Samantha wasn’t where she was supposed to be. In fact she hadn’t made contact with another agent since yesterday and that hadn’t been through Finders’ regular channels. Nothing about this recovery was going according to plan. In desperation, she called a local number she’d been given for emergencies. A nonhuman voice asked her to leave a message.

“This is Samantha Henderson. I’m in Lima, still with Varga, who is smuggling the statue from location to location. No idea why. I tried the office, couldn’t get through. Sorry.”

Her target was on the move again.

Sam shoved her phone in her pocket, hitched her pack over her shoulder and followed, using the flush of tourists as cover. When he rented a car, she did the same. When Varga climbed on a northbound train, Sam followed, near enough to keep an eye on him, far enough away that most people would think she was part of a tourist group snapping pictures.

Four o’clock came and went as the train chugged in and out of villages, carrying them toward the Andes. When Varga bedded down in his sleeper, Sam kept watch, but her suspicions worked overtime. The man was too casual, as if something had changed, and yet he talked to no one, received no phone calls. He simply rode the train. Three days later she was dirty, tired and fed up when he finally disembarked in Iquitos, doorway to the Amazon.

Varga checked into a hotel long enough to eat, shower and change. Sam bought a new shirt, scrubbed up in the hotel washroom, then waited outside the restaurant until he took off again, across the city this time. When he finally arrived at a small wharf, she tried her phone again, hoping for advice.

“Daniel?”

“Sam? I can hardly hear you.”

The line went dead. She hovered near the pay phones, but had barely finished dialing when Varga and two men who’d obviously been waiting for him climbed aboard a vessel and prepared to take off.

Sam edged closer, pretended to negotiate with a fish seller. Varga and company were boisterous, almost jubilant as they prepared to cast off. She couldn’t hear everything, but the words el Padre Dulce were repeated several times. It sounded like they were traveling upriver to meet this person. Sam had to follow. The question was how.

As Varga’s boat pulled out of the harbor, she made up her mind and approached an older man who was loading boxes onto his flat boat.

“Hola, señor!” In rapid Spanish she asked the man about el Padre Dulce. He nodded and began gesticulating, explaining that he was taking these gifts from an unknown beneficiary to the padre. Was she, too, traveling to see him?

“Sí,” she agreed, smiling widely. The man, Ramon, offered to take her with him. The padre apparently loved visitors. Once the cargo was safely stowed, they were soon chugging down the river.

Ramon had a pair of binoculars that Sam borrowed. Several times she spotted Varga ahead of them. The other boat’s erratic speed puzzled her—sometimes they revved far ahead, sometimes they barely moved—until she saw a bottle go flying overboard and realized the men were drinking. Ramon kept his speed steady, pointed out a toucan that stretched overhead. To relax she concentrated on finding species of birds she already knew: capped heron and three species of kingfishers. But her nerves remained tightly strung.

If only she could figure out why Varga was taking this trip.

The humidity added to her growing misgivings as the river drew them along its coiling, rasping course. The jungle, lush and teeming with life, hung on either side—beautiful, lowering, and filled with foreboding shadows. Every so often a waterfall cascaded down a smooth rock face in staircases carved by time.

The waning afternoon light moved in cubes as the forest grew thicker, bushy, dense and even more humid. Still the boats chugged along. With nothing else to do, Sam harked back to that conversation in Daniel’s office.

You can’t be a loner. You have to follow the rules, Samantha. Just like everyone else. And that includes reporting in, no matter where you are.

She grimaced, pulled out her phone and dialed Finders, Inc. again. “It’s me. I’ve left Lima and am—hello?” They’d been cut off. “So much for your rules, Daniel.”

She slid the phone closed, but a moment later reopened it and dialed again, this time to the routing service Finders had set up to pass on messages from their agents in the field.

“I’m following the statue, as ordered,” she said, after identifying herself. “Varga has been joined by two men. I think they work for el Zopilote, whoever that is. Please investigate that name, see if you can find some background. I believe he’s the one who’s giving the orders, or perhaps buying the statue from Varga.”

Daniel would be surprised she was adhering to his rules so closely, but she wanted that promotion. She tucked the phone back into the pocket of her jeans, leaned against some boxes, constantly scanning the area. Every pore of her body sensed a threat—silent for now, but present nonetheless.

Ramon shared his bread and cheese with her, assured her they were on the right path to this el Padre’s place. Five hours later they finished the last of his sodas. What seemed like aeons after that the motor began to sputter. Sam’s misgivings escalated when her phone showed no signal. She had no means of telling anyone exactly where she was.

When the sputtering grew worse, Ramon steered toward shore and shut the motor off. She could hear the steady put-putting of the other boat not far ahead. At least she hadn’t lost them. Yet.

“What’s wrong?”

Ramon poked and probed the motor. “El carburador.” Carburetor. He grinned when the engine coughed to life.

Given the amount of black smoke they were spewing, Sam worried the other boat would come back to investigate, but as their boat limped along, hugging the shoreline, she caught glimpses of the other craft. Forest-green turned to gray, then brown, then purple as the sunlight faded.

“Can’t you do something?” she begged, peering through the binoculars. She couldn’t see or hear Varga’s boat.

“I’m sorry, señorita. It is an old boat and we must go slowly. Perhaps when we get to el Padre’s camp, he will help us.”

El Padre Dulce. That name again. Sweet Father—an odd title certainly. But Sam wasn’t looking to find a priest. She wanted to know why Varga had come here with the statue.

“El Padre Dulce is a good man. All the people here love him very much.” Ramon patted the engine with pride. “He helped me buy this boat. He helps many people. Today I am bringing him gifts.”

“I’m sure he’s wonderful,” she agreed. “But I was hoping we would catch up with the other boat.”

“All will be well, señorita. God cares for his children. Do not worry.”

How did you argue with that? As the muddy water slid past, Samantha gave up pretending she was in control. Here on the river she was exposed, vulnerable. Using her GPS, she quickly sent the coordinates to Finders’ satellite—just in case. Maybe it was those fingers of dusk creeping down the banks like a stalker, or maybe it was the cackling sound emanating from the forest that freaked her, but her internal radar now switched to high.

The motor coughed, wheezed and then stopped again. Ramon paddled toward the bank.

“Señorita, I must work on this motor. It is not much farther. Perhaps you wish to walk on shore while I work?” Clearly he didn’t want her bugging him while he fiddled with the motor.

Since Sam desperately needed some privacy and a bush, she left her backpack on the bench of the boat, climbed over the hull and jumped onto the beach. Ramon watched her for a moment, and then began to quietly hum as he unveiled the inner workings of his machine. Sam chose a secluded area. Five minutes later she emerged from the grove of trees and froze.

The boat was gone. Poor Ramon floated facedown in the water, a knife sticking out of his back.

Sam swallowed her cry, aware that the killer could be very close, waiting for her. Where was Ramon’s God now? She’d never believed all that stuff about God loving everyone anyway. She didn’t need Him now, either. She’d manage on her own. She was used to that.

Varga, or one of his cohorts must have done this. Ramon had told her the jungle natives of this area were friendly, especially to el Padre Dulce’s friends. Ramon had even waved to a tribal group who stood solemnly on shore, watching as they moved past.

Sam listened for several moments. No motor sounds, no laughing voices, nothing but the soft lap of water against the shore. She inventoried her surroundings and made a decision. Without a boat, climbing uphill was the only way to scout out the land. Trampling through the thick ferny undergrowth proved how quickly the light was fading. She reached the uppermost ridge and looked around. Varga’s boat lay in a little cove several hundred yards downstream. Ramon’s boat was there, too, but the crates and boxes he’d so carefully loaded were missing. She turned around.

A flash of light flickered through the trees. Perhaps the padre’s camp was nearer than she thought. Perhaps Varga was already there, exchanging the statue.

Going forward could be dangerous, but going back was impossible. She walked toward the light. Progress through the damp, slippery forest was difficult in loose sandals, but her sneakers were in her backpack, on the boat. She moved carefully, deliberately choosing each step. Five hundred feet along the ridge Samantha suddenly lost her footing and tumbled down the embankment. The world spun round like a crazy kaleidoscope, punctuated by stabs of bright light and darkness. Her head smacked against a rock at the same time that her ribs met resistance against the forest’s bulging roots.

Samantha fought to stop herself, but the vines were too slippery. She tumbled farther into the impenetrable darkness until at last she came to rest against something big and hard and damp. Pain rolled in waves over her body. She opened her mouth to cry out, then shut it, remembering Ramon’s spread-eagled body floating facedown. A black cloud hovered just above her. She tried to remain awake but her brain wouldn’t obey.

With a little sigh, Sam closed her eyes as the truth hit.

Daniel was right. She wasn’t ready for promotion.

Something was wrong.

Daniel McCullough had built his career around his intuition, had escaped death more than once because he followed his instinct. At the moment it was screaming a warning, but this warning had nothing to do with him.

Samantha.

He jumped as the phone squawked its summons, told himself to get a grip. “Yes?”

“It’s Miss Henderson, Daniel. They’ve tracked her cell. She’s called us a number of times. Communications has found messages and some GPS coordinates.”

“Let me hear the messages, Evelyn.”

“Yes, sir.”

A moment later Sam’s voice filled the room, quiet, steady, determined. If he closed his eyes, Daniel could see her standing there, her shawl of raven black hair cascading down to her waist, emerald eyes bright, focused and unafraid.

“Sir?”

Daniel blinked, realized his assistant had been waiting for several minutes. “Tape it and bring me a copy. I want someone in communications working on her reports full-time. Investigations should check out this el Zopilote. I want to know who he is, what his interest in the statue is. Make a copy of the tape for them. Ask the lab to distinguish some of the background sounds. And have her GPS signal mapped, will you? If anyone hears anything from Samantha Henderson they are to report immediately to me.”

“Yes, sir.” Not long after that his assistant returned, placed the tape on his desk, then left.

Daniel picked up the tape, the same old nerve rat-tatting its warning. Over and over he listened to her voice, each time telling himself he was a fool to have let her go, each time wondering if he’d ever get a chance to apologize. He waited impatiently for the first report to arrive and then pored over the map. “You’re sure this is right?”

“As far as we can tell she was in the Andes, traveling down the Amazon when she sent it. The signal was weak, but identifiable.”

The lab verified that the background sounds were consistent with canopy birds in the Amazon. But still no one was able to reach Sam on her cell phone. Daniel offered himself the comforts he usually dispensed to others in situations like this. She was fine. She’d call in shortly. It was just a communications glitch. He didn’t believe himself.

Investigations were the last to report in. “I’m sorry, sir. We have no one who fits the name el Zopilote. There’s nothing in our intelligence files to lead us in any particular direction.”

“Keep looking.” Daniel chewed his bottom lip while suspicions kept nagging at him—that Samantha Henderson had stepped into a school of piranha.

As CEO of Finders, Inc., Daniel was used to sending agents all over the world to track lost or missing items for its clients. Just because he’d ordered Samantha Henderson to Brazil to recover a statue did not mean she wasn’t going to experience problems. In their line of work nothing was ever a sure thing, but that held especially true in Samantha’s cases. Wait a minute—he’d sent her to Brazil, not Peru.

“You remind me of Grant, all hunched over in your chair, glaring at the desk.” Shelby Kincaid-Austen stood in the doorway, watching him.

“Hey, Shel. C’mon in.”

Grant Kincaid had been Daniel’s commanding officer in Special Ops training. The two had become fast friends when both were assigned to covert work in Malaysia. It was Grant who’d appreciated Daniel’s ability at disguise—an ability Daniel had gained from years of practice avoiding news hounds whose stories unfailingly painted Daniel as the heir apparent to McCullough International. Thanks to Grant, Daniel had completed many successful missions pretending to be someone else, someone without a past.

“You’re wishing he was here, aren’t you?” Shelby asked.

He nodded. Special Ops was ugly, a place Grant had grown tired of after he met Shelby. By then Daniel also wanted a more stable lifestyle, so the three had decided to form their own recovery agency. Finders, Inc. was born. That choice had freed Daniel from the expectations his father’s empire had always engendered and allowed him to do his job disguised as anyone he wanted to be.

“Do you wish you could walk away from here, Daniel?” Shelby touched his shoulder. “I’m very grateful you’ve been running the business since Grant’s death, but you don’t have to stay at Finders, Inc. You don’t owe me or the company a thing. You loved fieldwork. Would you prefer to go back to it?”

“Not at the moment. Staying in one place for more than a day has benefits.” He winked. “The vicarious thrills are easier on this old body than firsthand contact. Don’t worry. My life is okay even if it isn’t chock-full of a daughter and a new husband,” he teased.

“Your life could be very full, Daniel.”

She didn’t say it but he knew she saw past his facade. Shelby was probably the only person in the whole building who could have guessed he was worried about Sam.

“I’m fine, Shel.”

“No, you’re not. You coop yourself up in here for eighteen hours a day, worrying about things you can’t change. You need to get out once in a while. With someone.” Her scolding mother-hen glare challenged him to deny it.

“Maybe.” Been there, done that. Didn’t work. He changed topics. “I was thinking about Finders’ rules. We’ve only ever had three. Maybe it’s time we looked at them again.”

“Three are all we need. Complete anonymity for the client. Nothing illegal and every job completed. Why change what works?”

“Maybe they need updating.” Maybe someone should be grading him on his ability to judge character, he felt like saying. “After all, we’re changing. Tim’s on board now. Maybe we need to rethink things.”

Daniel stayed at Finders because Shelby had asked him to. He never wanted her to know that sometimes, when everyone went home to their families, he sat in the dark, waiting for news of another success, feeling trapped by the office and its never-ending demands.

He could never tell her he yearned to don one of his disguises and take off, because he knew the temptation to get back to working in the field hid a deeper longing, one that had a lot to do with a certain frustrating brunette who had cast him as the bad guy in her world.

“Don’t second-guess yourself, Daniel. You sent Sam because she knows what she’s doing.”

“I hope so. We’ve lost communication with her.”

“She’ll call back.” She headed for the door. “It’s just a statue, Daniel.”

“That was supposed to stay in Brazil,” he reminded, but Shelby had already left. Ignoring the sheaves of files loading down his desk, Daniel moved to the glass wall of his office and looked down onto the semicircular floors stacked below, each one housing an integral part of the finely tuned mechanism called Finders, Inc. All this technology and yet…

Sam was fine. Maybe she had needed to go undercover or had a change in plans. Sam knew her job. She was one of the best recovery specialists Finders had ever employed. It was the job she’d applied for that Daniel had been worried about. He’d turned down her request for promotion the same day the Brazil job came up. Samantha’s departure from his office had been abrupt, bitter. Daniel regretted what he’d said, but there was no way now to take it back.

“Can I bother you again?”

Daniel blinked at the blurry figure in the doorway, fumbled for his glasses. Shelby. “You’re still here?” He squinted at his watch. “Shouldn’t you be home with Aimee? Tim checked out a while ago.” He glanced at the security monitor on his desk, registered the notation.

“As soon as he comes back, home is where I’m headed. In the meantime, Aimee sent you a gift. I forgot to give it to you this morning.” Shelby dropped a picture drawn by her young daughter onto the desk. “She said you’d know what it is.”

He moved back to the desk, sat down behind it and picked up the colorful piece of paper. He wanted to groan. Two figures with black capes stood opposite each other holding what Daniel guessed were swords.

“Do you know what it means?”

“Enemies,” he explained sheepishly. “When she stopped by last week, Aimee overheard me arguing with someone. That engendered a long discussion about enemies. I guess she’s reminding me to forgive and forget.”

As if Daniel could ever forget Samantha’s words.

You cheated me, Daniel. I can do that job with my hands tied and you know it. He could still see the hurt at the back of her eyes. Hurting people—you, your father. Is that a McCullough trait?

“Daniel?”

He blinked, saw Shelby’s frown.

“Sorry. Daydreaming.” He hid his embarrassment by grabbing Aimee’s picture and fixing it to his filing cabinet with a magnet.

“Samantha told me you turned down her application to supervise.”

He glanced sideways at her, wondering if he should have run that one past her, but Shelby anticipated his thoughts and shook her head.

“I’m not second-guessing you, Daniel.”

“Thanks.”

“I know you have to make tough decisions for Finders, but I also know that you’re fair. If you think Sam isn’t ready for additional responsibility, then I agree.”

He should have been relieved by her confidence—instead he wondered if she was mistaken to put so much trust in him.

Shelby’s beeper paged. “That’s Tim. He’s waiting for me. I’d better go.” She stepped around the desk, leaned over and hugged him, the touch of her lips brief against his cheek. “Maybe I forget to tell you sometimes but you’re doing a great job here, Daniel. Know that Tim and I both appreciate all you’ve sacrificed to give us the time and space we need in this new marriage.”

“I only want to see you happy, Shel. Tim makes you happy. Aimee, too. I’m glad.”

“Me, too.” She didn’t need to say more. Her face glowed. “Good night.”

“’Night, Shel.” A flicker of envy went through him. His whole life he’d wanted to know how that kind of love felt. It had never happened. Probably never would now. Daniel pushed away the longing, turned back to the computer. He pulled up a map of Brazil, traced Sam’s progress from the moment she’d landed in Rio, traveled to Horizonte, then São Paulo. It made no sense to go to Peru. He’d seen no Intel that connected the statue to anyone there.

You don’t trust me, Daniel. You never have. Is that because you don’t trust yourself?

It wasn’t trust that tortured him—it was guilt. His choices had wreaked havoc on his world ever since a day long ago when he’d still been a boy.

Peru. In his mind he heard the thunder of breakers in the surf, smelled the briny salt water, saw pristine white sails unfurl in a freshening wind. His skin grew warm from the tropical sun and he longed to cool off by diving into that gorgeous azure water and play with the porpoises. That was the tourist view.

But there was a darker, more sinister side to the land. Drugs, poverty, abuse, crime syndicates—each as dangerous as the piranha that infested the waters. People could disappear without a trace in Peru.

“Be careful, Samantha. Be very careful.”