Trader of secrets

Chapter Fifty-Three

Liquida had no intention of unpacking his bags. Two days in the jungle facility and he was ready to leave. What he wanted was his money. “My job was to get Leffort and his information here, and to do it on time. I have done that. Now I want to be paid.”

“I understand. So do I. We both want payment. Believe me when I tell you, I am as anxious as you are to go, to leave this place.” Bruno cast a wary eye, as if the walls in Liquida’s sterile room had ears. “But as I have explained to you, we are not yet finished.” He was stalling.

“We are as far as I am concerned.” Camped in a building with a huge electronic dish over the top of it was to Liquida like placing a neon crosshairs on your roof. He had no desire to look out his window and come nose to nose with a cruise missile.

Whatever was going out or coming in through the gigantic saucer sticking up in the middle of the jungle was none of his business. All Liquida knew was that he wanted no part of it. That and the heavy machine guns, the concertina-wired fences, and the starched military uniforms being worn by some of the people in the building gave him the willies. He had seen prisons with less security. Dying for someone else’s cause was not high on Liquida’s list of priorities. Bruno had described the facility as a Garden of Eden, swimming pools and guest bungalows. If so, they were hiding them well. What the place really needed was a good bomb shelter.

Bruno rattled on, telling him to be patient, that everything would be fine. Sooner or later they would pay him with piles of cash that they kept in a safe down the hall. “I promised them that you would do one more job for them.”

“What is it they want?” said Liquida.

“They have asked me if you would mind disposing of Leffort.”

Before Bruno could move, Liquida turned and opened his suitcase. He pulled out his wrapped bag of stilettos. “No problem.” For Liquida this would be a labor of love. He would do it for nothing.

“Not now!” Bruno reached over and put his hand over the lace ties on the silverware bundle.

“When?” said Liquida.

“When they tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because they need him, at least for now.”

“Tell them I can do it now or they can do it later,” said Liquida. “But I am not prepared to stay any longer. They do it themselves, I will give them a discount if they like.”

“It’s not the money,” said Bruno.

“If it’s not about money, then pay me,” said Liquida. “Next you’re going to tell me it’s against their religion to kill. Tell them they can put on masks, cut off his head, and show it on television if they like. It’s no problem. Happens down here all the time.”

Bruno put a finger to his lips. “You should be careful what you say.” He looked around as if someone might be listening. “Let me remind you that they could just as easily kill the two of us.”

“So we are not free to leave, is that it?” said Liquida.

“That’s not what I am saying.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am asking you to be patient, to use your head. To think.” Bruno fixed him with a long hard stare. “Do you understand? Do that and you will be well paid,” said Bruno.

Yes, but only if I’m still alive, thought Liquida. “How long before they are finished with Leffort?” he asked.

“From what I am hearing, by morning they should be done. Tonight they are supposed to be very busy. Something is happening.”

“What?” said Liquida.

“I don’t know. I don’t ask. Leffort has no idea they plan to kill him. I do know that. He told me they are going to pay him in the morning. He showed me airline tickets they bought for him. An early afternoon flight tomorrow from Belize to Mexico City and from there with connections to the French Seychelles. He is convinced they are going to honor their bargain. To pay him for the secrets he’s given them.”

“But you know better.”

Bruno nodded. “By morning I am sure they will give us the word. Kill Leffort and our job is done.”

Of course, if they were lying to Leffort, they could also be lying to Bruno. Or Bruno could be lying to him. Either way the result was the same. By sunrise Liquida could be sharing a shallow grave with Leffort. It was the one sure way to keep overhead down and loose ends tied up. The question was, how much trust did Liquida have in any of these people? The answer was none. He smiled at Bruno. “Good! Then we shall wait until morning.”

“I knew that you could be relied upon to see reason. You have a good sense for business.” Bruno clasped his shoulders and embraced him, what Liquida took for the Chechen sign of death.

Whether Bruno realized it or not, Liquida was now working for himself. The first order of business was to find a way out.

The FBI finally managed to track down Adin’s flight from Langley Air Force Base. “Better late than never,” said Thorpe. “Right from under our noses. That little bastard is bold as brass.”

“They didn’t file a flight plan,” said Britain. “But radar tracked them out over the Atlantic heading due south. They were picked up again three hours later by Pensacola Naval Air Station on the Florida panhandle. By then they were out over the Gulf in international airspace. It was too late to stop them. But they tracked the heading south-southwest.”

“Mexico,” said Thorpe.

“What it looks like,” said Britain. “We may be able to narrow it down.”

Thorpe looked at him.

“Southcom, Southern Command out of Miami, had one of their AWAC flights loitering over the central Gulf track the C-130’s IFF signal from their transponder,” said Britain.

“I’m surprised the Israelis had it turned on,” said Thorpe.

“I guess they didn’t want to get shot down,” said Britain.

IFF stood for “identify, friend or foe.” It was a system of encrypted data sent by a plane’s transponder to provide radar data and identification as part of the early-warning air defense system.

“You can bet they’ll turn it off before they reach the Mexican coast,” said Thorpe.

“Yes, but by then we may have a fix at least as to heading. It gives us something to work with,” said Britain.

“What about the girl and Diggs?” said Thorpe. “Anybody at Langley see them board the plane?”

“No,” said Britain. “But there was no real reason for them to check. It was pretty much hands off. Hirst had it all well covered. According to the flight documents, they picked up a load of fuel and twelve boxes under consular seal from the Israeli embassy.”

“So nobody was watching,” said Thorpe.

Britain nodded. “Right.”

“He thought of everything.” Thorpe sat silent for a moment. “So what do we know?”

“We know Hirst and whoever else is on that plane is headed for Mexico, but we don’t know where,” said Britain.

“We can be reasonably certain that Madriani and his two companions are there, along with Liquida,” said Thorpe.

“That is, if anything Madriani has told us is accurate,” said Britain.

“I think what he’s told us is dead-on,” said Thorpe. “The problem is he hasn’t told us enough. No cell phone calls from him, right?”

“Nothing,” said Britain. “The last communication was an e-mail from Paris. That and the telephone call he placed to his daughter and the investigator in the condo.”

“According to the transcript of the phone call, we should be looking for a large antenna array somewhere in the Mexican jungle,” said Thorpe, “but where?”

“What about Intel Sats?” said Britain.

“The CIA?”

Britain nodded.

“I thought of it, but unless we can narrow it down, at least give them some kind of a reliable vector from that plane when it crosses over into Mexican airspace, their analysts could be looking at images for days. Something tells me we don’t have that kind of time,” said Thorpe.

“What do we do?” said Britain.

“Let’s hope that Israeli pilot keeps his transponder turned on,” said Thorpe. “In the meantime, get ahold of drug enforcement. Tell them we’re going to need help. Boots on the ground. The Mexican army, the judicial police, the whole nine yards. But only people they can trust. Any kind of political or law enforcement juice they have with the Mexican government, tell them we may need it all.”

It was a helpless feeling, throwing himself on the mercy of another agency, and burning whatever goodwill the bureau may have amassed with a foreign country. Whatever was happening in Mexico was beyond the reach of the U.S. government unless they were prepared to go to war.

Thorpe picked up the phone. It was not going to be a pleasant conversation. He would have to call the White House and tell Fowler that the bureau had lost whatever information they might have gleaned from Herman Diggs and that the Israeli government appeared to know all about Project Thor.