Pointe Simon pulsated with a variety of music and chatter, a good deal of which was pickup lines, Stanley supposed. He stepped into the relative quiet and cool of the sort of bar no one bothered to name-it went by 107, its number on one of the little streets in the maze near the ferry docks. Neon distillery promotions cast red and purple on the frayed bar island and the establishment’s two dozen patrons, a mix of locals and travelers on a budget. Although 107 served no food, it smelled vaguely of hamburger.
He spotted an attractive brunette sipping a drink. She wore a slinky floral-printed cocktail dress, the sort sold at the tourist bazaar at the ferry docks, revealing a lithe figure. Most anyone would guess she was a young American or Euro tourist bent on a night on the edge.
Settling onto the barstool beside hers, Stanley asked, “What do you think the chances are that I’ll meet my wife here?”
“A sure thing,” she said, leaning over a salt-rimmed margarita and kissing him on the lips. Recognition code, safety code.
This was Lanier. First name or last, Stanley didn’t know. Probably pseudo anyway. Rumint had it that she’d authored the Ayacucho hit, notable not because she trekked a hundred miles alone through Peruvian jungle and snuck past two hundred Shining Path Senderistas, but because she’d put the whole op together during a half-hour taxi ride from the Lima airport.
“So how was your day, honey?” she asked.
“I’ve had better.”
She regarded the mirrored rear wall, which offered a view of the whole place. Turning back to him, she asked, “So what the fuck went down on the boat?”
“The old man kicked a Croc while I was firing and wrecked my shot. I mean, a Croc!”
“How about that?” She spread a cool, comforting hand over his. “Just another one for the list of You Never Damned Know.”
The bartender slid Stanley a tall glass of something redolent of rum.
“What would you have done?” he asked.
“Don’t know. Spilled the milk. Maybe not spilled the milk. Either way, what we have is Hadley in brain surgery. Doesn’t look like she’ll make it, but even if she does, we’ll see to it that she doesn’t. So all is far from lost.”
“What about the other two?”
“The night, as they say, is young.”
Stanley had been trying to devise a way to get at the Clarks. “FBI’s flying down an excessive number of agents to extradite them first thing in the morning. Meanwhile they’ll be at the consulate guarded by an excessive number of marines.”
Lanier licked salt from her margarita glass. “The good news is, father and son are bound for impromptu detention rooms, in the true sense of impromptu.” All embassy and consulate holding rooms were technically improvised because neither the State Department nor the CIA had the authority to arrest or detain anyone. Nevertheless their architectural plans tended to include oversized “storage vaults” and “fallout shelters” that afforded confinement at least as secure as police holding cells. “The only reason there are bars on the windows there is to keep people from getting in.”
Stanley didn’t see where she was headed. “But we’re people.” She flashed a smile. “People with sniper training.”