Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) (24 page)

A year earlier, in a bid to win the old demon’s trust, Sebastian had tipped off Mendosa to an imminent government raid, enabling the drug kingpin and his two ruthless sons to escape Mexico City minutes before the SWAT team arrived. What Mendosa never found out was that the raid was a scam, staged by the Mexican government to provide their undercover man, Sebastian, with credibility. A few additional small “favors,” and Sebastian could do no wrong in Pedro Mendosa’s mind.

Sebastian used their relationship to begin mapping out the intricate hierarchy of Central American crime families. With luck, in six months or a year, he might be able to present Mexican President Juarez with enough damning evidence to shut down thirty-percent or more of the drug trafficking and related violence in their part of the world.

The downside? Until that day came, he had to live with the torment of suspecting that Mendosa was the man who’d ordered his father’s murder. Every cordial word that passed between them sliced away a piece of Sebastian’s soul. Asking a favor of the man was no less painful than thrusting a dagger into his own breast.

And yet…there was nothing Sebastian wouldn’t do for Mercy O’Brien.

For days after he’d left her in Washington and returned to Mexico, he had stormed about in the ugliest of moods. At Rancho Hidalgo, his men steered clear of him. Even his housekeeper threw up her hands and told him he had become impossible to please. He knew it. He didn’t care.

What he wanted was Mercy.

He wanted her with him. In his bed. In his life. Permanently. But since that was impossible, at least for the time being, he wanted her safe and in a place where he could find her and go to her when his body and heart demanded. If she had told him she didn’t love him, never wanted to see him again, he believed he would have been strong enough to walk away from her with his pride intact. But she had done just the opposite. When they made love, she opened herself physically and emotionally to him in every way a man could possibly desire. 

Yet he knew that she held back something other than her body. The truth.

She was preoccupied with the trip she’d told him she would be taking, to a location she refused to disclose. It had something to do with finding her mother, that much he was sure of. But he hadn’t pressed her for details. Why force her to lie to him?

Not knowing what risks she might be about to take nearly drove him mad with worry. She was leaving the country; he knew that much. Although how she’d managed to get around the freeze on her passport he couldn’t imagine.

On the day he left her in DC, he’d started making calls. Before long he had appreciably reduced the list of possibilities for her destination. Then a friend of a friend, working for one of the airlines, told him that a Mercy O’Brien had flown out of Dulles to the U.S. Virgin Islands that same morning. So, somehow, the restrictions on her passport had been lifted, at least to this one destination.
Why?
he asked himself.

To carry out some task on behalf of the U.S. government?

That seemed the most likely answer. If she’d been traveling to pick up new art for her gallery, she’d have told him. It never entered his mind that she might be flying off to have an affair with another man. She would never do that; she loved him. And she wasn’t the kind of woman who took love lightly.

It came down to figuring out who in Washington had enough power to force the State Department into re-instating her documents, despite Interpol’s pressure to keep her on American soil. Mercy knew people in high places, true. But she’d been fighting tooth-and-nail for months to get out of the country and search for her mother. What the hell had suddenly changed?

It seemed to him that his only chance of keeping Mercy safe was by finding Talia O’Brien and bringing the woman back to her daughter. Preferably alive. But even if retrieving Talia’s body and giving her a proper burial in her home country was the best that could be done—it might be enough. Mercy needed and deserved some kind of closure.

Thus, despite the emotional torture of facing Mendosa, Sebastian contacted the man he always thought of as his father's assassin. And when they met he explained what he knew of photojournalist Talia O’Brien’s situation.

The drug lord seemed sympathetic. “How very tragic,
amigo
. But if the woman has crossed the Tambovs, you know as well as I do, she is as good as dead.”

“I don’t believe she was involved with them at all. I think there was a misunderstanding of some sort.”

Mendosa eyed Sebastian curiously. “Interesting. You believe this?”

“Absolutely,” Sebastian lied with conviction. He’d never met the woman. All he had was Mercy’s word of her mother’s innocence.

“Then, according to what you’ve told me, Interpol thinks she’s aligned with Tambov, and Tambov believes she’s an Interpol spy. Not an enviable position for anyone.”

“Exactly,” Sebastian said, wondering if Mendosa, even as they spoke, was thinking:
This is the son of the man I murdered. This is the son of the man I blew to pieces in his car.

Did the bastard feel remorse? Or did he gloat over his secret? Delaying revenge felt more difficult with every passing day. Had it not been for the sake of his country and his pledge to President Juarez. . .

“And your connection with this Talia?” Mendosa asked.

He had to be careful. Too much information would put Mercy at risk.

“No need to explain,” Mendosa said with a dismissive wave of his hand before Sebastian could answer. “I am wise to the ways of love.”

Sebastian’s breath caught in his throat. Did the bastard already know about Mercy?

“Your mistress, in grave danger, maybe kidnapped…” Mendosa tapped his chest with the middle fingers of one hand. “We are men of a kind. The heart, it is our weakness. No?”

“Indeed,” Sebastian agreed with relief at the man’s misunderstanding. He thought Talia was his mistress.

“This is what I will do,” Mendosa continued, leaning forward, his gaze intent. “My associates, they know people who know people, even as far away as Prague. I will have a name for you soon. Maybe even more than a name. I’m sure you will know what to do then.”

“Thank you.” Sebastian bit off the words that tasted of vinegar and burnt rubber on his tongue. His heart careened within his chest. His hands itched to choke the life out of the man. But that would destroy Sebastian’s value to his president and their long-term plans for Mexico’s future, not to mention ruin any good he might do Mercy and her mother.

There will come a time for vengeance, Father. I promise you.
 

                                          26

Mendosa was a king among felons, and therefore as ruthless as any of his kind. But his word was gold. Within three days Sebastian received a telephone call from a man who said he was calling from Belarus.

“This is bad, very bad,” the voice that identified itself as Sergey said. “We have heard Tambov wants this woman. She is, as they say, the walking dead. Plan the funeral.”

“But she isn’t dead yet,” Sebastian insisted, “or you’d have heard. Right?”

“Do you not understand?” The words from the other end crackled with impatience. The man’s accent was thick but not so much that Sebastian couldn’t figure out what he meant. “There is nothing to be done for her. Nothing! The Tambovs are vile, wicked pigs. They have no compassion. They would kill their own mothers to protect themselves. No one crosses them.”

“No one?”

“No one who isn’t crazy, my friend.”

Sebastian sighed. “Can they be bought?”

“Crazy people like that? I don’t think so, no. This woman, she knows something of their dark business. She will cost them more in future profits than they can ask for her life.”

“Then a ransom is—”

“Not possible. A pity.”

Sebastian drew circles on a pad of paper beside the phone. Every loop closing in on itself, an endless maze. Trapping each new circle within those before it. Like a trap. The predicament of extracting Talia O'Brien from wherever she was on the other side of the world was more complicated than he'd thought. Was Mercy aware of how truly hopeless her mother’s situation had become? His heart ached for her.

“Do you have connections across the border, in Ukraine?” Sebastian said. “Someone who would like to see the Tambovs lose business.”

“I, personally, would be greatly amused to see this happen.” He imagined the man smiling on the other end. “There might even be some benefit to my people.” His people? A competing gang?

“Indeed.” Sebastian inked in another circle. “Sergey, if I wanted to get into Ukraine, without an official government visa, could you see a way to make that happen?”

The voice on the other end of the line answered after only the briefest hesitation. “Normally, this would cost many kopeks. But, you are friend of friend. I give you good deal. New passport and visa—top quality. Driver’s license, too, and,” his voice took on the tone of a used-car salesman, “I throw in Automobile Club card, in case you break down. Rental cars, they are not so reliable here.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes. He could already tell the “good deal” would cost him dearly. “We’ll need a guide. A Kievian who knows the countryside.”

“We?” A flicker of apprehension.

“It’s vital that I not travel alone. For security, you understand.”

“
Tak
! No problem. You pick up very good bodyguard in Kiev. All foreign businessmen do. Ex-KGB. A kopek a dozen.”

“No, I’m bringing my own security,” Sebastian insisted. “And cost isn’t a problem. How much for two traveling together—a woman and a man?”

“A woman bodyguard?” Sergey chuckled then started mumbling calculations. “American dollars?”

“Whatever nationality you want.”

“American best. Twenty thousand for papers, each. A guide is absolutely necessary. He will charge you additional five thousand American dollars, maybe more. Is very dangerous defying border patrols, government agents, police, revolutionaries. Worst of all, the Tambovs. So much to avoid, my friend.”

“Arrange it. The names are—“

“No names!” Sergey hissed. “I don’t want to know. Anyway, makes no difference. You will receive new names when you arrive in Warsaw. That’s how you get in, through Poland. Understand?”

Frowning, Sebastian put down his pen. “But there must be an airport in Ukraine.”

“Ukraine airports too dangerous these days. I will arrange letter of introduction from—” Sergey searched for the word “—authentic Ukraine citizen. If you are stopped by the FSB and can’t show a letter, you are cooked.”

The FSB, the federal police. Not much of a change from their KGB predecessors, Sebastian suspected. The Ukrainian government was under-funded, demoralized, and fair game for bribes from the
Vorovski Mir
— loosely translated―the thieves’ world.

Sebastian promised he’d wire Sergey a deposit then hung up. Now all he had to do was find Mercy.

There was, he mused, one good thing about possessing a great deal of money, other than the obvious ability to afford luxuries. A man with unlimited funds could locate anyone. No one could hide or be hidden from him forever. Not a missing photographer and certainly not her daughter.

                                          27

It was called the Kon Tiki. The retired dredging barge had been converted into a motorized, floating bar by the addition of plastic palm trees, strings of paper lanterns, a homemade bamboo bar, and a thatched-roof. The monstrosity floated out through the mouth of Charlotte Amalie harbor and toward Cruz Bay every afternoon at the same time, carrying with it a payload of thirsty passengers.

Mercy nursed a rum swizzle decorated with a tiny orange-and-pink paper parasol while Glen awkwardly hefted a mug of Smithwick’s ale with his left hand.

He’d suffered a dislocated right shoulder and concussion when they leaped from the Seafarer. It could have been far worse. Mercy had filed her report at Tickles. Neither Margaret nor Geddes, she’d been informed in the return message left for her there, were particularly happy with the outcome of the container ship operation. After all, she and Glen had very nearly been caught, had found no evidence of the stolen opal ore, and might have alerted the enemy to their presence in the islands.

Now, as she sipped her sweet, rummy concoction, she tried to come up with new ways of eliminating the Seafarer as a suspect carrier of the valuable stones that were the key to terrorist money laundering schemes. She was all but certain that Amos’s Mystic Voyager was clean, although the innocence of the yacht’s owner and captain still gave her pause. If she could convince Red Sands that the cargo ship was only carrying legitimate cargo, in fact was an ordinary merchant ship, and the yacht was just a yacht, Geddes would have to look elsewhere for the opal ore. The important thing was—she would have done her part. She’d fly home, plant herself in Geddes’ office, and refuse to move until he delivered on his promise to either bring her mother home or cut a swath through diplomatic red tape to get her passport completely untagged and provide her with a visa into Ukraine. And then, come hell or high water, she’d find Talia.