The venue was readily agreed upon. Glasses were refilled, and a few people munched on pretzels and nuts.
“About next year.” Frik got ready for what needed to be a convincing performance. “I have something to propose. Something urgent that I cleared with Arthur, on condition the rest of you agreed.”
He too glanced toward the bedroom where Peta had gone, then sat back and put forth his proposal. He went over what information he wished to divulge: the discovery of the artifacts; the fire that had killed Paul Trujold; a description of how he had sustained third-degree burns on his face and left hand.
Having gained the group’s attention, he went on to talk about his suspicion that Selene Trujold had at least one piece of the device, sent by her father, and he recounted her threats to destroy Oilstar. Of course, he said nothing about his true purpose, making it easy for everyone to agree upon a treasure hunt for the missing pieces of the artifact.
“I don’t mean to minimize what you’re suggesting, Frik,” Keene said grimly, “but shouldn’t we be putting our energies into finding out who killed Arthur?”
“You’re right, Josh,” Ray said quickly. “Given the relative skills of the rest of you, you’ll have no difficulty divvying up Frik’s search. I’ll handle Arthur’s death on my own. I can always call on the rest of you if I need help. Sound reasonable?”
Frik held his breath.
There was silence while the others thought everything through. “Sounds more than reasonable to me. I’ll dive for the piece that was left behind,” Brousseau said, not mentioning what Frik already knew—that his doctor had warned him that his heart condition made deep-sea dives not just dangerous, but potentially suicidal.
Frik said nothing about it. Simon’s reaction was perfect, imperative to his plan. The only risk was that Simon could mess things up by dying underwater before retrieving the piece, but that was a chance he was willing to take. “You can fly back with me,” he said.
Simon shook his head. “I have to take care of some things in Miami first. Tell you what. Bring theAssegai to Grenada. I’ll fly in there in a couple of weeks and you can sail me to Trinidad. I could use a good sail, a little time on top of the ocean.”
Keene and McKendry volunteered to track Selene Trujold and her gang of ecoterrorists. From her father’s notes and earlier comments, Frik knew that she had tended to focus her Green Impact activities in the main Venezuelan oil fields, near Maracaibo. If he was right, that was about to change. Now Oilstar’s large newValhalla rig, just beginning production in the Orinoco Delta, would become her prime target.
“There is something elseyou can do,” Frik said to Ray. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that you told me you were building a state-of-the-art laboratory adjacent to your penthouse.”
“Yeah. In my guilty moments I tell myself that I built it to develop a new means of detecting and neutralizing land mines and live shells in war zones. Really, though, I’m just a kid with a four-million-dollar chemistry set,” Ray said, grinning.
“A useful one. If you don’t mind, I’ll have Trujold’s computer models and results transmitted from our mainframe in Trinidad to your computer in Las Vegas. I need you to study them and determine if his findings were correct.”
“Okay with me,” Ray said. “Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have to check on preparations my people are making for an important guest at the Daredevil.”
He left the room to use the phone in Arthur’s kitchenette. By the time he returned, Peta had reentered the room. Frik could see her closed suitcase standing upright on the floor near the open doorway.
“Fly back with me in the Oilstar jet,” he said to her. “I’ll divert and take you to Grenada before going on to Trinidad. Sure you won’t come with us, Simon?”
Simon shook his head. “Aside from anything else, there’s some diving gear I want to pick up in Miami.”
“Diving gear?” Peta sounded shocked. “Are youtrying to kill yourself?”
“What are you talking about?” Ray asked. “He’s been diving forever.”
“I’m a doctor, remember,” Peta said. “I don’t need to do an EKG to see that he has a heart problem.”
“Is that true?” Ray looked at Simon as if he hadn’t really seen him before.
“Leave him alone, both of you,” Frik said, more brusquely than he had intended. “He’s over twenty-one.”
“Yes. Stop fussing over me. I’m going to do this.” Simon crossed his fingers, put his hand behind his back, and grinned like a little boy. “Tell you what, though. I promise you, this will be my last dive.”
11
“We’re hanging out in the wrong places, Terris. Let’s go get dirty.”
McKendry grunted in agreement. He didn’t need to comment further; he and Keene had been working together long enough that they often seemed to read each other’s mind. For that reason, they had hardly spoken about Arthur’s death. Each knew how much the other would miss him, but since no amount of talk would bring their friend back, they mourned him in silence. Having lost friends before, McKendry understood his own process. For him, acceptance would come slowly, but come it would, ultimately turning the open wound of loss into one more scar on the body of his life.
“The sooner we get out of Caracas, the better.” Keene slurped the last of hismichelada, a concoction of lime juice, beer, ice cubes, and salt. He had taken a great liking to the drink, which he compared to acerveza margarita . “We need to start sniffing around the oil operations. I’m betting Selene’s moved from Maracaibo and is headed east to focus on Frikkie’s operations near the Orinoco Delta.”
McKendry knew that at any other time, Joshua Keene would have enjoyed hanging out in nightclub after nightclub, where the dancers were topless and the salsa music too loud. Not now. “You just want to get into the jungle,” McKendry said.
“And you don’t?”
McKendry gave a small, unintelligible response which seemed to satisfy his partner. In any event, Keene was right about Caracas. Someone like Selene was unlikely to be here by choice. Besides, at this moment in their lives, the city was far too civilized a place for the two of them. Yes, it was magnificent, the jewel of Venezuela, but a postcard would have sufficed. Shining buildings and upscale restaurants, sidewalk cafés with bright yellow awnings, lavish marble-and-brass hotels and wild nightlife never had been his idea of a good time.
Still, McKendry thought, the search for Paul Trujold’s daughter needed to start somewhere. This had seemed to be as good a place as any. He hadn’t actually expected to find her here—Frikkie’s information said that Green Impact worked primarily in the western oil fields of the Maracaibo Basin—but this was where he had contacts in Venezuela. He knew people who could potentially lead them to Green Impact, or lead them to someone who could lead them to someone….
People like Rodolfo. The Spanish action-film star, one of McKendry’s former employers, was very popular in South and Central America, though his career had gone nowhere in the United States. He had hired McKendry as a bodyguard and tough guy, a brawny piece of furniture to hover behind him every time he went out, even when they went where nobody knew who Rodolfo was.
The work had been a profitable and not unpleasant contract job. The star was less obnoxious than several full-of-themselves celebrities McKendry had guarded in the past. But when the six-month contract came up for renewal, he politely declined further service and moved on to another freelance assignment. He preferred to provide real protection rather than testosterone-filled eye candy.
When the two Daredevils were arranging to fly down to Venezuela and begin their search for Selene, McKendry had called the action star and asked what connections he might have, what help he could offer.
Rodolfo seemed delighted to hear from him and offered to do what he could. At Simón Bolívar International Airport, in glistening tropical sunshine, the star had welcomed them both with all the enthusiasm of a long-lost Italian uncle. During their first few nights in Caracas, the grinning and too-tanned film star showered them with free champagne and front-row tickets to all the hottest nightclub shows. He took them to dinner at Tambo, Il Cielo, and other jet-set favorites, and provided them with a spacious suite in the Eurobuilding Hotel, far from the outlying shanties and slums and the lush jungle-covered mountains that rode high on the horizon; they were further yet from the political, economic, and natural disasters that inevitably piled one upon the other in various parts of the South American continent.
McKendry played along for five days, asking questions and enduring the pampered treatment. Five long days; five noisy nights in nightclubs. They had been seen by all the local celebrities, by important political people in Caracas, by hotel managers and casino owners. Rodolfo was doing his best and glorying in the doing of it.
For a different assignment, perhaps, McKendry might have been able to use these new connections he had made, to pull strings and apply leverage. But not this time. No self-respecting member of Green Impact would ever hobnob with such people.
“We’re getting nowhere,” Keene shouted across at McKendry. He pounded on the table, signaling the nearest waitress for another michelada; so far, they had experienced no difficulty meeting the nightclub’s expensive minimum-consumption requirement.
The music picked up tempo. Several topless showgirls jiggled coffee brown breasts as they danced past the table en route to the small central area cleared for occasional performances. “Nice,” McKendry said. “Very nice.”
Keene ran his fingers through his curly hair. He smiled appreciatively but said nothing. When his fresh michelada arrived, he slurped salt from the edge, tasted it with an extravagant flourish, and handed the waitress a large tip.
The dance number finished with a brassy finale followed by a shower of applause from well-dressed Venezuelan businessmen and their various foreign guests.
“If Selene Trujold is an ecoterrorist, self-proclaimed or otherwise, she wouldn’t be caught dead in Caracas,” Keene said. “She wouldn’t let any of these bozos so much as buy her a drink.”
McKendry drained his too-sweet drink and stood up. “Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll check out tomorrow.”
“Not quite yet.” Keene made a motion with his hand and forearm, parrying with it as if it were a sword. “Zorro the Gay Blade approaches.”
McKendry turned toward the door. He really does look like George Hamilton playing Zorro, he thought, watching Rodolfo weave his way through the crowd.
“So soon you leave me?” The star arrived with his latest accessory. “But I have just found a wonderful man for you to meet. Quite a coincidence. I have brought him over here to you.”
A stranger accompanied Rodolfo, a small, wiry man with quick eyes and a feral smile. His mode of dress, not glamorous but prosperous, made it clear that he was in the Venezuelan government, and well placed at that. More important, as far as McKendry was concerned, the man’s furtive glances and calculating stare showed him to be in a security field—police, military, or something even more useful.
“Don’t think of it as leaving you, Rodolfo.” Keene rolled ther and lengthened the vowels. “Think of us as lost sheep and know we’ll find our way home.”