Smoke and Mirrors (8 page)

“But you don’t think I can pull it off,” I said, having secretly wondered the same thing myself.

He plucked away a few of the petals. “You’ve not done fieldwork before.” They blew off over the dusty rocks. “It’s a dangerous bloody job, but I’m trained for it.” He let go of the stem, his look grim. “And I know what can happen. Expect it around every corner.”

I didn’t want to think about that ‘it’ for one second. “But you didn’t think it would happen to Nigel, did you?”

I couldn’t tell in the growing darkness if he were angry or just surprised. Either way, he grabbed the bottle of wine and poured two glasses. “To Nigel and Sammy.”

I echoed his toast, and our glasses clinked once before we sipped in silence. At length, he set his down and stared long and hard at me. “He was a crazy son of a bitch, Ms. Brothers. Always outdoing everyone to take the hardest ops, assignments that landed him in a Moscow jail or worse more times than even I care to think about. Sometimes I thought he was on a mission to destroy himself.”

I sat, waiting for something I had not expected until now.

Truth. Always truth, even when one lies for a living. “So when we returned that last time – the time I thought they’d gone and permanently fucked with his mind – I decided to introduce him to Sammy.” He shook his head in self-loathing. “I think I thought they could save each other. You see,” he all-but-whispered, “she was with me first. We only dated a few months, not much of a match for one another.”

I touched his flower-stained hand and realized somehow, I had always known. “You’re wrong; she was a dear friend to you and you to her. That’s more than can be said about most exes.”

“It’s my fault she’s dead.”

I was genuinely surprised. “You didn’t kill her, Brad, any more than you killed your parents or Nigel. Any more than you’ll kill me.”

He ran a finger over my toes for a brief moment. “It doesn’t matter. I realize I can’t be with anyone. Not in this profession. Not when I know bad things happen.”

While my mind celebrated its coveted autonomy, my heart was stripped bare. “I’m not looking for a husband nor am I naïve about what being an agent means. As for Sammy and Nigel, it was not your fault. None of it. You didn’t restore that car incorrectly or put the wrong fuel in it. It
wasn’t
Nigel’s job or Sammy’s connections that got them killed. It was a terrible accident that could’ve happened to anyone.”

His eyes moved to the starlit darkness above us. “Do you think they’re together?”

“Are you asking me if I think there’s a heaven?”

His hand flickered against my toes like a butterfly passing. “I just wondered if you thought they were together.”

“Nothing could separate that love.” And the more I thought about them, the more I knew, somehow, it had to be true.

He turned from the view and studied me for a long minute. His mouth held no mirth. “I’m going to destroy Sanchez and this whole fucking operation if something happens to you.”

It was more than a bit unsettling to realize it wasn’t Giovanni speaking.

D
e Torres’s driver, a gift from Trades and Services, picked me up at nine o’ clock. I was wearing a ludicrously expensive Ralph Rucci gown, reveling in the silky touch of its grey-blue silk. My hair was long and straight, my makeup elegant and transforming. I had taken the cue from Alberto’s file back at SIS, and used it as a sketchpad of ideas that I had in turn presented to Alasdair, who had fine-tuned my legend.

When we arrived at the villa’s gates, I had to refrain from gaping. Two local boys, dressed in the old style, held lanterns and directed the sea of oncoming cars. Seeing De Torres’s Mercedes approach, they moved aside as he turned into the curved driveway. A butler I had never seen before, opened my door and held out a white-gloved hand.

“Buonasera, Dottoressa.”

“Buonasera, Signor.”

He led me up the stairs, a hand outstretched under my own, half-a-step behind me, until I reached the top. Then, bowing graciously, he stepped back to help the next guest alight her vehicle. I gathered the left side of my dress, and lifting it off the immaculate floor, glided in the direction of the atrium.

The guests were, as one would expect: striking, prosperous and ferociously competitive. The men wore women who might have stepped from the runways of Milan, and the women wore jewelry the Queen would have coveted. It was the ultimate place to people watch, and that was exactly what I was there to do. Taking a flute of champagne, I sipped from it and let my eyes wander the flower bedecked inner sanctum of Giovanni De Torres’s empire.

Several of the more recognizable guests were big hitters in the diamond mining industry. De Torres supplied them with raw emeralds he purchased from Alberto Sanchez. It was the perfect cover for their primary transaction of money for drugs.

C had laid it out for me and made the world smaller than I’d imagined. Nigel’s Russian mob work had led him to a thread that pulled enough marionette strings to make men on six continents dance. He’d nailed Ivan Drasnov and several of his top men for their part in a ‘cocaine for arms’ deal. It had also led to the arrest of a handful of Jordanian airport officials paid to look the other way when the huge, hollow Russian IL-76 cargo planes touched down to refuel on their way back and forth between the Columbia and Siberia.

Ivan’s arrest and Nigel’s coup had not only dealt a blow to a powerful arm of the Russian mafia. It had been an even bigger accomplishment outside of Europe, where it led to the arrest of Columbia’s EPIC leader, a left-wing extremist named Raul Fernandez.

Fernandez, the eldest son of a displaced Andean landowner, had risen to power alongside other Marxist based organizations like FARC and ELN. His own group, Ejército Pueblo de Colombia (the People’s Army of Columbia), made a name for themselves by blowing up foreign owned oil lines and kidnapping workers all in the name of ‘equal distribution of wealth amongst native peoples.’ It had gotten them noticed and tagged as a terrorist cell.

They had purchased Ivan’s AK-47 assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades, surface to air missiles, and even an Aerospatiale SA-365N Dauphin 2 SAR helicopter stolen from a St. Petersburg hospital. It was thought that EPIC had planned to mount a large scale war on both the oil industry and Colombia’s anti-terrorist government.

Rumor had also reached Russia that one of the left-wing groups was in the market for a dirty bomb. That had perked SIS’s ears, and it was given number one priority. Feared to be a high-ranking member of FARC, ELN or EPIC, the elusive buyer’s whispered presence had vanished when Nigel’s net was dragged in.

Then another theory had started to form. Perhaps the buyer was one of the multitudes of right-wing, paramilitary groups drug traffickers and landowners paid to keep them safe. If uranium landed in right-wing hands, it could be covertly used to keep the government focused on protecting the cartels’ interests at the expense of other more philanthropic intentions. Or, it could be a way to scare the petroleum companies out of the cartels’ cocaine fields.

The theory had been begun to take shape when Intel from SIS’s Chechen mafia plant gave credence to it. And the theory involved none other than Alberto Sanchez.

It was SIS’s belief that Alberto used his emerald mines as a money laundering service for his other criminal dealings. Certainly, it was the way Giovanni and Alberto had covered their transactions. Giovanni pretended to be a diamond and precious gem importer. He paid Alberto handsome sums for rough-cut emeralds that came in containers holding premium grade cocaine. Then he sold it to buyers all over Europe and Northern Africa, giving SIS enough evidence to arrest Sanchez for transporting Class A drugs.

But something bigger kept SIS from arresting the Colombian. In part, it was C, hoping for an even bigger pull that would land SIS the ‘uranium buyer’. It had also been a nasty suspicion that Alberto’s success and squeaky-clean image were being helped in part by another group.

Enemies on paper, Brad had begun to wonder if in fact Alberto Sanchez had a private deal going with EPIC. No one had ever found Alberto’s fields, and EPIC patrolled huge tracts of land where their kidnappings and assaults on petroleum pipelines went unanswered by even the savvy US troops the Colombian president had invited in.

Was Raul helping to hide Alberto’s fields? Or was Alberto selling Raul’s cocaine for a split of the profit? And if that was the case, what did Raul get out of it? Was he protected from Alberto’s mercenaries? Did Alberto help cover Raul’s arms dealings? And what would they both gain from helping one another? Mutual protection? Power on both sides of Columbia’s polarized political scene?

The questions were endless.

I took another sip from my Veuve Clicquot and scanned the room. A few guests were regular buyers whose invitation had come as a perk for their insatiable consumption of the Earth’s rare gems. And those remaining were men who helped supply illegal narcotics to Giovanni’s territory.

Yet the one man I was searching out was nowhere to be seen. Circumnavigating the throng, I flashed a demure smile at appraising sidelong glances and made my way to the staircase.

Hand on the newel post, foot on the first stair, I felt a hand on my back. It was De Torres’s maid. I’d seen her out of the corner of my eye as I headed for the stairwell.

“Signora, I am sorry to say the upstairs is off limits. Signor does not like his guests to use the upper floor. There are several powder rooms here.”

I turned, startling her.

“Mi scusi, Dottoressa. I did not see that it was you. Please, if he is expecting you.” She flourished a hand upwards.

“Grazie, Signora.” I climbed the circular stairwell, conscious that several women I had passed were watching my every move.

Envy, thy name is woman.

I reached the top, adjusted the wrap that hung from the crooks of my arms and proceeded with confidence to Giovanni’s bedroom. I opened it without knocking. Purposefully, as we had planned at Nora.

“Giovanni?”

No answer. I pressed in further, past the inviting bed and over to his opened wardrobe. Suits designed by the likes of Roberto Cavalli, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Brioni and Ermenegildo Zenga hung with respectful distance from one another, each vying to be worn by the man who was fortunate enough to own them. Below them, neatly arranged in rows, were stacks of pressed shirts: Hugo Boss, Armani and Gucci oxfords that were obviously in Giovanni’s signature color, white.

A tray of monogrammed silver lay in the very center of the ebony wardrobe, glinting in the candlelight of the room’s many sconces. On it stood a leaded crystal decanter filled with water. I unstoppered it and poured a measure into the matching tumbler. Then, pulling the drawstrings on my Chanel clutch, I removed a small pillbox and withdrew two innocuous looking tablets. Placebos, but convincing in their likeness to high blood pressure medication.

“Giovanni?”

A hum of voices could now be heard. They were on the large balcony, hidden from the view of anyone on the piano veranda or in the gardens beside the pool.

Giovanni’s hoarse voice echoed back, “Alexandra?”

“Would you like me to leave the medicine on your wardrobe?”

The wind blew apart the drapes as if it too was in his hire, and De Torres entered like a wolf parting tall grasses: linen khakis topped with an immodestly buttoned white shirt, partially hidden beneath a camel blazer. The requisite whisky rested in his right hand beside a Cuban cigar. This one, obviously being enjoyed with a greater degree of sobriety than the last.

‘I have my maid bring me my first drink and all the subsequent refills. It fits with my reputation for being O.C.D. and allows me to give the impression of drinking a hell of a lot more than I actually do…’

‘And the cigar?’ I had asked.

A grin of hedonistic pleasure infused his face. ‘The cigar is genuine, and I enjoy every bloody moment of it.’

“There you are.” I sashayed forward, trying to look relaxed despite the fact my heart was hammering. “Take these; I’ll hold your drink.” I took it from him, sipping the watered down Macallan with secret disappointment.
Wasting Jim Beam was an excusable offense, but 25 year-old Macallan?

He tilted his head back, tossing down the pills with a long draught of water. He exchanged glasses with me.

“How are your hands?”

His mouth moved toward mine, answering my question with an unexpected brush of his lips. I knew the plan was to let Alberto believe we were loosely together. Our chemistry might be something we could keep from exploding altogether, but it didn’t seem likely we could fool someone as sharp as Sanchez. Brad’s hand came up, and I felt his palm hot against the back of my tingling neck. He brushed his lips over mine a second time, and without needing to act, I pressed myself to his chest. The material of his shirt wasn’t enough to keep my state of arousal a secret. His eyes flared in surprise when my nipples brushed him. And I, in turn, gasped when his tongue trailed along the lower edge of my parted lips. He tasted of whisky, cigar and desire. I closed my eyes to the penetrating darkness of his stare and let his tongue spar with mine. The crystal tumbler met its end, unnoticed by either of us, but brought in the man who had, until now, remained hidden.

His tread was soft, and I only knew he was there because of his overpowering cologne. A gust stirred the curtains, pushing Brad’s cigar smoke ahead of the sickening scent, but I had already lost all sense of propriety.

His whisky-laced tongue swept from my mouth, down my neck and across the flesh of my exposed cleavage. “Ti sta bene, ti dona, Signora.” His words were rough and honest.

“I bought it for you, for tonight.” And I had.

We were close to a chaise bed I had not noticed before, and he laid me upon its luxuriously upholstered length, setting his drink beside it, cigar deftly balanced on the diameter, his hands free to roam my slick, fevered skin. I moaned unintentionally, my fingers curling into his hair to pull him closer. Damning the fitted quality of my gown, my thighs pushed at the garment’s seams. I wanted him between my legs. Wanted him to fill the sweet ache with his incredibly slow strokes.