Sphere Of Influence (17 page)

"So, do you know why you're here?" Gasta said.

"Chet tells me you want to steal a shipment of heroin. Is that correct?"

Gasta nodded.

"Then I have to ask the obvious question. Why?"

Gasta looked at the two men flanking Beamon and laughed. They took the hint and laughed along.

"For the money. Why the fuck else?"
,
Beamon acted as though he was considering Gasta's statement for a good thirty seconds. He saw Nicolai as a thinker, a man who didn't speak without carefully considering his words. "I'll tell you, Carlo, my involvement in the drug trade has been fairly limited, so I'm no expert, but isn't the markup on this stuff enormous--ten, twenty times? It seems that with those kinds of numbers, the initial cost of the product is almost irrelevant."

"I don't consider two million dollars irrelevant," Gasta said.

Beamon nodded thoughtfully. "I came here because Chet's proved himself to be smart and reliable, and I respect him. But honestly, if I was going to get involved with this, I'd be more inclined to just invest the money." He knew that Chet just wanted him to suck up to Gasta and say he had a scheduling conflict, but it seemed out of character. Why would someone like Nicolai show up to a meeting like this if he already knew he was unavailable?

"Hey, you want to give me a couple of million dollars? Fine. Give me a couple of million dollars."

Tony and Mikey laughed on cue but they were sounding increasingly nervous. Chet remained silent.

Beamon opened his mouth to explain why he wasn't going to be writing Gasta a check anytime soon but was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He'd just bought it and Laura was the only person who had the number. "Excuse me a moment," he said, pulling it from his pocket and flipping it open. "Yes?"

"Can I talk?" she said.

"Go ahead."

"We found the informant, Mark. He's dead."

Beamon nodded serenely as she spoke, but his mind was racing, trying to recalculate his position.

"We have to assume that they know about Chet." "I agree," he replied simply.

"Are you in Gasta's office?"

"No."

"Can you tell me where you are?"

"No."

"Can you get out of there?"

He thought about that for a moment. "It doesn't look good."

"Talk to me, Mark. What can I do?"

"As near as I can tell, nothing. Just sit tight. I'll get back to you."

He cleared his suddenly very dry throat and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. "I'm sorry about that. Now, where were we?"

"We were finding out that the great Nicolai is afraid of a bunch of sand niggers," Gasta replied with a flash of his infamous temper.

Beamon remembered the reports Chet had written on Gasta. He drank a lot, but he drank even more when he was scared. At first Beamon had assumed the man was just nervous about his first meeting with Nicolai. But it was more than that--an incongruous combination o
f
fear and arrogance. Beamon thought about lighting a cigarette to calm himself down but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Unfortunately, it seemed that Nicolai didn't smoke.

The men sitting next to him had relieved him of his .357 before he'd gotten in the car with them. He hadn't thought much about it at the time--standard procedure. Now, though, he wasn't so sure.

"I am afraid of them," Beamon replied calmly. "Your average Middle Eastern heroin dealer isn't a forgiving man, Carlo. They're violent, unpredictable, and they hold a grudge. Anyone who would cross them for an insignificant amount of money has either very poor judgment or an ulterior motive."

This time Gasta laughed hard enough to get himself coughing. "Which do you think it is, Nicolai? Bad judgment?" He looked over at Chet. "You think I have bad judgment?"

That was it. Gasta's syntax and body language clinched it. Somehow Chet's cover had been blown. Now the only question was what Beamon was going to do about it. He didn't immediately respond, giving himself time to run various scenarios in his head--trying to come up with one that didn't end up with him and Chet dead.

"That would be my guess, Carlo. You probably don't even know that Chet is a federal agent. I'd call that bad judgment, wouldn't you?"

Beamon had to struggle not to look over at Chet in the silence that ensued. Come on, kid. Protest already.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Chet said finally, rising from his chair and pointing at Beamon. "This is bullshit, Carlo. He's trying to fuck us. He probably wants the heroin himself."

"Oh, please," Beamon said, waving a hand lazily in the air and ignoring the fact that the two men who had been on the sofa with him were now standing behind Gasta with guns drawn. He could tell from the orchestration of their movement that they'd known the entire time. The whole thing had been a setup.

"In fact I did know," Gasta said, trying to sound forcefu
l
but not quite succeeding. Beamon beating him to the punch had deflated him a bit.

"What I want to know," Gasta said, jabbing a finger toward him, "is who the fuck you are!"

Beamon looked over at Chet for a moment. The poor kid looked like he was on the verge of panic, but Beamon knew he could be counted on to hold it together.

"You already know who I am, Carlo. Chet and I have a mutually beneficial arrangement. He provides me with useful information and points out opportunities like this one. And for that, he won't have to live on his government pension in his old age. Works well on both sides, don't you think?"

The story wasn't exactly airtight but Gasta's uncertainty was definitely growing. If Beamon could fan it a little more, he and Chet might just walk out of there.

"You're full of shit!" Gasta shouted.

Beamon reached into his pocket, ignoring the added attention he got from the men pointing guns at him, and pulled out a cigarette. Time for Nicolai to start smoking.

"Come on, Carlo," he said, taking a lighter off the table in front of him. "Why would I lie? Why would I even bring it up if it weren't true?"

"Fuck!" Gasta screamed suddenly, jumping from his chair and throwing his drink in Chet's face. A few moments later Gasta was pacing back and forth across the room, running his hand through his hair compulsively.

"What are you so upset about, Carlo? I'm guessing that Chet was going to hit you with this sooner or later. He's a greedy little bastard but he can be damn useful. I'm guessing there's all kinds of evidence that he can make disappear."

Gasta stayed in motion, an expression of panicked concentration etched deeply into his face. Beamon literally would have given a number of fingers off his right hand to know what the man was thinking.

"Carlo . . ." Beamon began.

Gasta came to an abrupt stop and spun to face him. "Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!" His words were punctuated by Mikey pulling the hammer back on his revolver. Or was it Tony?

Beamon watched Gasta take a cell phone from his pocket and start dialing, then stop, then start again. He finally put it up to his ear.

"We have confirmation." There was a long pause as whoever was on the other side of the line spoke.

"There's something else. . . . Yes. . . . We've got information that he's on the take." Pause. "No, I think it's good information. No . . . I don't know. I think it's worth looking into."

The next pause seemed to go on forever. Who was he talking to? The only answer Beamon could come up with was the man Chet had met a few days earlier. John the Banker.

"But it's a-- Yes. I understand, but--"

The more desperate Gasta's tone became, the tighter the knot in Beamon's stomach got. He sucked hard on his cigarette but it wasn't helping anymore. He'd figured he had a fair chance of controlling this Mob moron, but he hadn't counted on the man on the other end of that phone. All he could do was sit there on the gaudy animal-print sofa and watch this thing spiral out of control.

"All I'm saying is that maybe we should check it out. He might . . . yes. I said yes. Okay." Now the desperation had turned to resignation. Beamon dared a quick look over at Chet. He'd heard the change in tone too. Gasta was being convinced to do something he didn't want to do. And that something was almost certainly killing an FBI agent and an unaffiliated criminal named Nicolai.

"I understand," Gasta said, and turned off the phone. He went straight to the bar to replace the drink he'd doused Chet with.

"Carlo . . ." Beamon tried again.

"I told you to shut up," he said without turning around. He downed a third of a glass of vodka and looked at Beamon's reflection in the mirror on the wall. "Do you know how much trouble you've caused me? I brought Chet into my organization because of his relationship with you. Now I'm fucked--I'm going to have to go underground."

The drink, the speech ... He was clearly working himself up to something.

"Goddamn it! He was into all my finances, met the people I work with, knows everything I'm into!" Gasta was shouting now, the spit flying from his mouth visible in the powerful track lights. He walked around his men and grabbed Beamon by the front of his shirt. "Do you know what you've done?"

Beamon grabbed one of Gasta's fingers and bent it backward. The man winced in pain as Tony walked up and pressed the barrel of his pistol to Beamon's temple. Or was it Mikey?

"Don't push it, Carlo," Beamon said, ignoring the gun. "I didn't just come here without telling anyone." He released Gasta's finger and the mobster stumbled backward, fury clearly visible in his face.

"Carlo, take it easy," Chet said, speaking slowly and calmly. "I can make a whole lot of the stuff the FBI's got on you pretty much worthless. You need me. Let's work something out."

Gasta's expression went dead as he looked down into Chet's hopeful face. "It's already been worked out."

Chapter
20

THE moment the helicopter's skids hit the ground, Christian Volkov threw open the heavy door and jumped out. He ran forward, crouched low against the sand tearing at his clothes and skin as the Russian gunship's engine went from a roar to a scream. By the time he'd made it twenty meters, the helicopter was already in the air and accelerating toward distant mountains.

Volkov had no reason to expect trouble, but he also had no reason to be careless. A Russian attack helicopter in the vicinity would be a subtle but effective threat to people who understood the capabilities of such a machine.

He wiped the dirt from his eyes and looked around him as the dust slowly settled. The dead brown land undulated gently, occasionally broken by artificially geometric bursts of green, creating a bizarre patchwork that spread out in every direction before getting lost in the heat distortion.

When the air had completely cleared, he spotted a small group of men moving toward him on foot. There were five of them in all, some dressed in baggy white shirts and pants called shalwar kameez, others in more military dress. All were armed.

"As-salaam alaikum," Volkov said when they got close enough to hear. Arabic wasn't his strongest language, but he could get by.

The man in front just nodded. Volkov had met him before: Wakil. His brown skin was deeply creviced from the sun and wind, making him seem older than he probably was. The long black beard covering the lower half of hi
s
face was devoid of gray, and his teeth were white and strong.

"Your journey was a pleasant one?" Wakil said, looking him in the eye and then gazing past him at the retreating helicopter.

"It was, thank you."

"Please follow."

Volkov was immediately surrounded by Wakil's four companions and marched toward a long, straight column of smoke about a kilometer away. Its source soon became discernible, as did the distinct odor of burning oil and flesh. Volkov's breath became instinctively shallower as they approached the shattered remains of a wood-and-stone structure.

"Congratulations on your great victory," he said as they passed a body hanging from the barrel of a burned-out tank. The men surrounding him smiled blankly.

Volkov wondered idly if he would end up in a similar condition before all this was over. He was still unable to tell with any certainty if Jonathan Drake was continuing his support of Mustafa Yasin's capitalist ambitions. It seemed more likely that the CIA had pulled back and that Drake and his boss, Alan Holsten, were now focused solely on protecting themselves.

Unfortunately, Volkov didn't have the same luxury. He had made commitments to his Asian associates, and based on his word, they had made significant investments of time and money. Despite his own considerable power, he was not inclined to disappoint them. The Asians expected their business partners to live up to their agreements and exacted extremely high penalties when they didn't.

To compensate for the possibility that the CIA was abandoning this operation, Volkov had no choice now but to step in and personally supply al-Qaeda with the instruments to continue their war. Everything had to be made to look seamless: Any disruption in the flow of weapons or intelligence would arouse Yasin's suspicion and possibly prompt him to cease his expansion and focus his resources on holding the ground he'd already gained.