“Make sure it’s charged. You might have to plug it in.”
He leaned back and idly flipped through the pages. An earthquake in the
Gujarat state in India. A California utilities company facing a
shareholders’ lawsuit. World leaders set to gather at the International
Children’s Health Forum. He put the paper aside and shut his eyes, but
only to rest. He’d had enough sleep. He listened to her talk to the
hotel in La Recoleta, her voice lulling. She had a lively, infectious
laugh.
She appeared to have lost her sharp edge, her defensiveness. Now she
seemed confident and assured, but without the brittleness. Maybe it was
his weakness that allowed her to be strong. Maybe she liked to nurture.
Maybe it was the shared adventure they had just been through, or his
concern for her, or maybe it was pity for what had happened to him, or
misplaced guilt. Maybe it was all these things.
She ended the phone conversation. “Well, this is interesting.”
“Hmm?” He opened his eyes. She was standing beside the bed, her hair
tousled, her breasts outlined beneath the white cotton T-shirt. He felt
the tug of arousal.
“I got a message from Sergio the private eye, apologizing for being
late, he was tied up on a case. Sounds entirely innocent.”
“Call was intercepted at the hotel, probably.”
“I’m going to meet him.”
“Are you crazy? Haven’t you had enough traps for one lifetime?”
“On my terms. My arrangement.”
“Don’t.”
“I know what I’m doing. I may screw up–I do screw up sometimes-but you
know, I’m actually considered pretty good at what I do.”
“I don’t doubt it. But you don’t do organized crime or drugs, you don’t
do shoot-’em-up stuff. I think we’re both in over our heads.”
He felt oddly protective of her, even though she was no doubt a far
better shot than he, more equipped to defend herself. Yet at the same
time–even more perplexing–he felt safer with her around.
She came over and sat on the bed next to him. He edged over a bit to
give her room. “I appreciate your worrying about me,” she said. “But
I’ve been trained, and I have been a field agent.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply–”
“No apology necessary. No offense taken.”
He stole a quick glance at her. He wanted to say, My God, you’re
beautiful, but he didn’t know how she might take it. She still seemed
pretty defensive.
She said, “Are you doing this for your brother or for your father?”
The question caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected such bluntness.
And he realized the answer wasn’t simple. “Maybe both,” he said.
“Mostly for Peter, of course.”
“How well did you and Peter get along?”
“Do you know any twins?” he asked.
“Not well.”
“I suspect it’s the closest relationship there is, closer than many
husbands and wives. Not that I know about that firsthand. But we
protected each other. We could almost read each other’s mind. Even
when we fought–and we did, believe me–afterward we each felt more
guilty than angry. We competed with each other in sports and such, but
not really in any other way. When he was happy, I was happy. When
something good happened to him, I felt like it had happened to me. And
vice versa.”
To his surprise he saw tears in her eyes. For some reason that brought
tears to his own.
He continued, “When I say we were close, that seems so inadequate. You
don’t say you’re ‘close’ to your leg or your hand, right? He was like a
part of my body.”
It all came back to him suddenly, a jumble of memories, or really,
images. Peter’s murder. His mind-boggling reappearance. The two of
them, as kids, running through the house, laughing. Peter’s funeral.
He turned away in embarrassment, covered his face with his hand, unable
to stanch the sob that welled up.
He heard a low keening and realized that Anna was crying too, which
surprised him and, most of all, moved him. She took his hand in hers
and squeezed tight. Her cheeks glistening with tears, she put an arm
gently around his shoulders, then both of her arms, and she embraced
him, seemingly careful of his wounds, and laid her face damply on his
shoulder. It was a moment of intimacy that at once startled him and
felt natural, part of the complex, passionate Anna he was slowly coming
to know. He took solace from her, and she from him. He could feel her
heart thudding against his chest, her warmth. She raised her head off
his shoulder and slowly, tentatively at first, placed her lips against
his, her eyes closed tight. They kissed slowly, tenderly at first, then
deeply and with abandon. His arms encircled her lithe body, his fingers
exploring her as his mouth and tongue did the same. They had crossed a
line each of them had invisibly and firmly drawn some time ago, a
boundary, a high wall between natural impulses, containing and isolating
the powerful electrical charges that now crackled back and forth between
them. And somehow, when they made love, it didn’t seem as awkward as
he’d imagined it might be, when he’d allowed himself to imagine it.
Finally, exhausted, they napped for half an hour or so, entwined in each
other.
When he awoke, he saw that she was gone.
The gray-haired man parked his rented Mercedes and walked several
cobblestone blocks down Estomba until he located the house. He was in
the heart of a barrio of Buenos Aires called Belgrano, one of the
wealthiest residential sections. A young man passed by walking six dogs
at once. The gray-haired man, in a well-tailored blue suit, gave him a
neighborly smile.
The house was a Georgian-style mansion built of red bricks. He walked
past it, seeming to admire the architecture, then he turned back, having
noted the security booth on the sidewalk in front of the house: an off
white windowed sentry box in which stood a uniformed man wearing an
orange Day-Glo reflective vest. There seemed to be one of these
security booths on every block around here.
A very quiet, very safe neighborhood, Trevor Griffiths thought. Good.
The security guard looked him over. Trevor nodded in a neighborly
manner, and approached the booth as if to ask the guard a question.
Anna carefully packaged Ben’s photograph and brought it to a DHL office,
paying to get it to Denneen’s home address in Dupont Circle as quickly
as possible. Everything she did now involved some degree of risk, but
she hadn’t mentioned DHL on the phone or even to Ben in the room, and
she made sure that no one followed her there. She was reasonably
certain the photo would arrive safely.
Now she stood in a doorway of a shop beneath a red Lucky Strike sign,
watching the windows of a cafe at the corner of Junin and Via monte,
just down the street from the Facultad Mededna. The cafe’s name, Entre
Tiempo, was painted on the plate glass in jumbled letters, presumably
signifying wacky fun within. Couples strolled by absorbed in each
other, gaggles of students wearing backpacks. A slew of passing yellow
and-black taxis.
This time there would be no surprises.
She’d reconnoitered this site in advance, arranged to meet Sergio Ma
chado here at six-thirty precisely, arrived a full forty-five minutes
beforehand. A public place in broad daylight. She’d asked him to take
a seat at a table in the window, if one was available, or as close to
the window as possible. And to bring his cell phone. Machado seemed
more amused than annoyed by her precautions.
At twenty-five after six, a silver-haired man in a blue blazer and open
neck button-down blue shirt, fitting the description he’d supplied over
the phone, entered the cafe. A minute or so later he appeared at a
table by the window and looked out onto the street. She pulled back
into the shop so she couldn’t be seen and continued to watch through the
glass door. She’d already explained to the shopkeeper that she was
waiting here for her husband.
At six thirty-five, Machado hailed a waiter.
A few minutes later the waiter set down a bottle of Coca-Cola.
If Machado’ had been comp licit in last night’s kidnapping, there would
surely be others stationed nearby, but she saw no sign of anyone. No
one lingering, pretending to window-shop, dawdling at a newsstand,
sitting in a car idling by a curb. She knew what to look for. Machado
was alone.
Were there others in place in the cafe awaiting her arrival?
Perhaps. But she was prepared for the possibility.
At six forty-five, she switched on Ben’s phone and called Machado’s
cell.
It rang once. “Si?”
“It’s Anna Navarro.”
“You get lost somewhere?”
“God, this city’s so confusing,” she said. “I guess I got the wrong
place would you mind terribly meeting me here, where I am now? I just