Alice heard a baby crying in the next room. She knew that Iraqi interrogators, believing no sound induced greater psychological stress, were fond of piping recordings of wailing infants into the cells of their subjects. It certainly would explain the twinkle in Dr. Cranch’s eye when he’d left the room a few minutes ago.
“I’d estimate you’ve told me ninety percent of what I want to know,” the interrogator had said. “Most likely the omissions are the result of fatigue and the shock of your having been discovered. So let’s table our discussion until you’ve had a chance to get some proper rest.”
Since the Dark Ages, sleep deprivation had been recognized as an effective means of coercion. In most modern civilized countries, it was an illegal form of torture. Alice knew from experience that after seventy hours, her electrolyte balance would go haywire. She would lose her ability to think rationally. She would say things she shouldn’t. Thankfully, she’d learned this during a training exercise. If the same were to happen here, people would die. And she’d be number one.
As Hector peeked through the transom, a far better scenario presented itself. The nominal butler stood on the other side of the door, a Beretta tucked into the waistband of his too-tight white linen uniform trousers. He’d been peeking through the transom more often than the position of watchman warranted. That he was on duty tonight, rather than the more resolute Alberto, was a stroke of luck.
Twenty-five or so, Hector was tall and dark and built like a Greek statue, with chocolate-brown eyes, waves of glossy black hair, and sparkling teeth. But these classically handsome parts went together poorly, like stripes and checks. He was unaware of it, or at least he didn’t let it impede his efforts as a lothario. Not only was he a chronic flirt but he often called Alice “baby.” Who calls the boss’s girlfriend “baby”?
Still, under the current circumstances, seducing him wouldn’t be easy.
The door opened and he entered to clear her dinner. His eyes took their usual extended tour of her sleeveless dress.
“Hey, baby, how was the grub?” he asked.
She tried but couldn’t think of a single come-on that hadn’t been uttered or performed a zillion times in a zillion cheesy singles bars. Also the crying infant from the next room, evidently a looped recording, was hardly Barry White.
“My compliments to the sous chef,” she said finally.
God, what a flirt, she thought.
Yet he lingered, tensing his arm muscles more than was necessary to lift an empty plastic bowl. In doing nothing, she realized, she was doing all that was required.
“Hector, I’m bored,” she said.
He flashed his Romeo smile. “I’d entertain you myself, but…”
“How about bringing in a TV?”
“The doc said no TV. Sorry, baby.”
“Just for a little while? I won’t say anything.”
“I ain’t worried what you’d say, I’m worried what the boss would say. The smallest TV in this place is, like, fifty inches. How’m I gonna explain why I’m lugging that shit in here?”
“How about a portable radio, then? I’ll make it worth your while, Hector.” She visualized Rita Hayworth batting her eyelashes, then tried it herself.
Flattery tinted his beefy cheeks. “They say you’re a dangerous lady.”
“What am I gonna do with a radio?”
“I don’t know-build a bomb?”
She would put a radio to better use than a bomb. She could sling a channel selection dial at him with nearly the same lethality as a Shaolin throwing star, which wouldn’t draw the attention from the household that an explosion would.
“At least something to read?” Her real aim was a deck of cards.
“He specifically say no books, no magazines, no nothing to read.”
“Bloody hell!”
“Baby, I wish I could.”
Alice sighed. “At this point, I’d be happy just for a pack of cards.”
He shrugged, probably just averse to saying no again.
“Even in maximum security prisons, they let inmates play solitaire,” she said.
“I know, I know, but-”
“What if I play strip solitaire?”
“How do you play that?” he said with indifference. He was a poor actor.
“Each time I lose a hand, I remove an article of clothing. And I only have one article of clothing.”
“You’re probably super-crazy-good at solitaire.”
“How about if I start out with the dress off? Will that do it for you, baby?”
Hector grinned, and still was grinning when he returned with a deck of Bicycle cards in hand. A bonus: Bicycles had “air cushioning,” plastic coating intended to prevent cards from sticking to one another. To a card thrower, it was a full-metal jacket.
She rose to accept the deck. “Hector, have I ever told you that you’re my favorite person?”
He held back. “The dress,” he reminded her.
She unbuttoned the dress and let it spill down her bare breasts and hips to the carpet. Hector’s mouth fell open like a mailbox.
He dumped the cards on the picnic table, then turned away, probably to hide the protuberance at the front of his trousers. Still, he would be able to draw and fire the Beretta well before she could throw a card.
Putting on a lackadaisical air, she took up the deck and extracted a joker from the top. She pinched the center of the card with her thumb and ring finger, as firmly as she could without creasing it, and placed her index finger on the far corner. Card-throwing power is generated by the wrist, but the key to the throw is finesse: The wrist needs to be as relaxed as if propped up by a pillow. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs and stomach, then exhaled slowly. She bent her arm ninety degrees at the elbow, bringing the joker toward her abdomen. With a motion similar to that of a Frisbee toss, but much quicker, she released the card. It sliced the air, likely in excess of fifty miles per hour, toward Hector. The whipcrack alerted him. Just as a corner of the card bit into his jugular. The “crying infant” next door masked his cry.
Alice leaped at him, landing a blow to the side of his head. He sagged beneath her, out cold. She took his Beretta and cell phone, hauled him into the bathroom, used her full strength to lift him into the “water bed,” then lowered and bolted the lid. There was no water in the basin, which was fine-the idea was containment. The villa was big enough that ten minutes would pass before any of the other household staff members or security guards would miss him. If she couldn’t escape in that time, she never would.
“Don’t turn on the water,” came his muffled plea.
To her ear it was serendipity. “But, Hector, that would be like a cone without any ice cream.”
“Please.” His deep breathing was an unmistakable precursor to anxiety-induced hyperventilation. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“What do I want to know?”
“Seor Fielding’s really CIA.”
“CIA what?”
“The real deal: spy, covert ops man-whatever you call it.”
Two days ago Alice more readily would have accepted this-the Drummond Clark connection begged the question. Now she was inclined to dismiss Hector’s information as preposterous. And she hoped it was. What CIA officer would sic the likes of the Knife on an innocent little girl? Hector certainly sounded like he believed what he’d said, though. A CIA link also might explain Fielding’s willingness to subject her to torture. Most criminals feared backlash from intelligence agencies, who famously took care of their own-often, on learning their captive was such an agent, the thugs released him at once and gave him a first-class ticket to wherever he wanted.
“Hector, the way this will work best is if you tell me something I don’t already know,” Alice said, twisting the knob on the face of the tank. Water swelled the hose running from the showerhead into the basin, splashing Hector.
“Okay, okay, okay.” He began to sob.
She turned the water off. “Off for now,” she specified.
“You know about the old CIA guy you talked to up in Brooklyn?” he asked. “Seor Clark?”
“I know a lot about him. Do you know something I don’t?”
“You know Fielding’s gonna snuff him?”
“Why?”
“Something he knows, I guess.”
She scoffed. “CIA men don’t usually snuff one another.” But of course she was here in the first place because Fielding allegedly had Lincoln Cadaret snuff an NSA man, Mariateguia-probably because of something Mariateguia knew.
“He’s not doing it himself.”
“He contracted Cadaret?”
“The St. Bart’s guy, yeah, I think so. And a bunch of other heavy-duty guys.”
So Fielding was a spook who played the role of villain with too much verite. Which happened: When the CIA let the kids play without supervision, things had a way of going Lord of the Flies. Fortunately there were other organizations providing checks and balances, the NSA in this case. Fielding would be brought to justice. Case closed.
Except for the immediate matter of Seor Clark’s continued existence.
“Is Clark still in Brooklyn?” she asked.
“Who knows? His kid’s got the hit teams running all over the map.”
“Charlie?” Alice liked Charlie-she genuinely had been looking forward to drinks with him. She had assumed, however, that he lacked the capacity to care for his father in the best of circumstances.
“He’s giving them fits, that dude.”
Alice intended to marvel at this later. Now, she had a phone call to make. “Hector, I need to go now,” she said, patting the lid. “If you just let yourself relax, it can be quite tranquil in there.”
Hurrying into the bedroom, she heard his screamed protests. Wonderfully muted. He could shout his lungs out, and no one outside the bedroom would hear him.
She rushed back into her dress and crept into the hall as far as an empty guest room. Once inside, she grabbed the plastic liner from the trash can and wrapped it around Hector’s gun and phone so they would stay dry. She loosed two thick cords from the curtains, knotted them together, and tied one end to the frame of the elephantine mahogany bed; then, gripping the free end, she lowered herself out the window, down three stories of the villa’s shadowy exterior, and into the warm, starlit Caribbean.
The throaty gurgle of a motorboat froze her.
So much for her plan of swimming to the dock and borrowing Fielding’s vintage Chris-Craft.
Taking a deep breath, she let herself sink underwater. The Chris-Craft passed overhead, propellers on each side of the stern churning ropes of bubbles. In seconds, the launch was far enough past that she felt confident in resurfacing.
She made out Alberto standing at the helm and Cranch perched on a bench in the stern, clutching an overnight bag. This was more good luck. When Cranch had said he expected to be getting on a private jet to debrief Drummond, she’d focused only on the security lull that might result. Now she might be able to tail him.
Treading water, she unwrapped and flipped open Hector’s cell phone. She dialed the office of a supposed Potomac, Maryland, insurance agency, ringing a phone on a yacht docked in Martinique’s Pointe du Bout. Her chief answered with a chipper, “Good evening,” the optimal greeting.
“It’s Desdemona with a bow on top,” Alice said. “I need you to get the quick maneuvers gang to wrangle the fastest jet possible at Aime Cesaire Airport in Martinique and have it ready in twenty minutes tops for a game of follow that plane.”