Captive Dove

Chapter 10

A fter enduring an interminable morning of oral arguments, and having already doffed her judicial black robe, Suleema hurried down the marbled corridor toward the private entry to her office suite. She entered a room shared by her three senior law clerks. Seeing her, Patrick Hagan, fair skin, red hair and freckles, rose with a manila folder in his hand and stepped toward her.

“Absolutely not now,” Suleema snapped at him as she forged ahead, her temper frayed by her desperate need to call her daughter, a need she’d put off for over fourteen hours since that abominable creature had cut her with his knife.

Patrick braked to a startled halt. Her two other clerks looked up in amazement as she brushed past them and into her office. She closed the door behind her.

Mistake, mistake, her mind cautioned, in a panic. She ought not do anything to draw suspicion. Certainly she should not begin to show an uncharacteristic ill temper.

Her swivel chair creaked as she threw herself into it. She placed her hand on the phone receiver. She would not use a cell phone, of course. Cell phone talk wasn’t secure. But it was quite natural for her to call Regina. No need to hide the fact of making a call to her daughter.

The answering voice on the other end was Clevon’s. “Hello, hello,” he said, almost shouting. A cold chill ran up Suleema’s spine. Clevon home in the middle of the day?

Suleema had not called the FBI. And no matter what Clevon told her now, no matter what the details were, she knew the man with the knife had not been lying.

“Is Regina there, Clevon?”

“Let me have the phone,” Suleema heard Regina say, her voice shrill. “Mama, I have to tell you something,” Regina said. The terror in Regina’s voice pierced right into Suleema’s heart. “Mama, the people that Alex went with on the trip to South America have all been kidnapped. Alex has been kidnapped, Mama. I’m terrified.”

Remember, act like you know nothing. “How do you know he’s been kidnapped?”

Through sobs Regina said, “The feds came here about half an hour ago. Colette Stone’s husband, Ellis, is dead. They’ve killed him.”

“Who, Regina? Does the FBI know who’s responsible?”

With a clarity that shook her even worse than she’d been shaken last night, Suleema knew that if anything happened to Alex, it would utterly break her spirit. She could not endure the loss of this boy, her legacy. The phone receiver grew slick in her hands.

“It’s Secret Service, Mama, not the FBI. And they don’t know who. They were kidnapped somewhere around Manaus. That’s in Brazil. And the monsters sent Ellis Stone’s hand to Vice President Ransome with a demand for fifty million dollars.” Regina giggled nervously, a grotesque sound. “Ransome being asked for a ransom.”

For a moment Suleema’s mind stuck, baffled by a money demand being sent to “Wild Bill” Ransome when what the man had said last night was that the kidnappers wanted Suleema to vote for the government in the Sharansky versus U.S. government case. It only took a flash, though, and she realized there was no reason for the terrorists not to demand money for all their captives as well.

“Alex will be okay, Regina. You have to believe that. He’s so smart. Even street-smart, for his age.”

“But I don’t know if they let him take his medicine with him. Do they even know or will they care that he’s diabetic?”

“Maybe the Secret Service can find that out from them.” Suleema suddenly remembered that Otis and Nancy Benning were also in the birding party. And likely there might be others whose lives would be valuable. Blackmailing a Supreme Court justice was unusual but not contradictory to a ransom demand. What it implied, however, was that someone in the United States, not some terrorist in Brazil, was the driving force behind the plot. Money they might want—but sewing up her vote, due to be officially announced in seven days, surely topped their agenda.

Big money, military power, and in no stretch of the imagination, ultimately world domination, was at stake in Sharansky. Congress had passed a law authorizing the deployment of lasers on space-based, orbiting platforms. These offensive weapons, touted as being deployed for defensive purposes only, could, of course, also be used to suppress virtually any opposition to American positions in any global conflict over anything, anywhere. The international consternation caused by this U.S. policy was significant, affecting U.S. allies as well as the country’s opponents.

Citizen groups in a number of states were also violently protesting this expansion of human warfare off the planet, and so unless they were stopped by law, men would do what men so love to do—weaponize yet another sphere. They would take their violence right out into space and off to other worlds.

Sharansky, who was the lieutenant governor of New Hampshire, and the lieutenant governors of seven other states had filed suit against the U.S. government on constitutional grounds. Sharansky and the other lieutenant governors argued that the space above the atmosphere over their states was part of the commons and that the federal government could not appropriate the use of space for any purpose, military or otherwise, without the consent of the citizens of those states. Maybe her vote might only slow the process down; Suleema had at least prayed for that. But if she voted against Sharansky, there would be laser weapons in space within her short remaining lifetime, she was sure of it. If the lieutenant governors won their case, numerous powerful interests would be thwarted. Any one of them would want to make sure Judge Suleema Johnson voted their way.

“I’ll come right now, Regina. I’ll be there are soon as I can.”

Suleema hung up. She rubbed her sweating palms against her skirt and then, feeling the urge to throw up, stood and rushed to her small private toilet and knelt over the john. She retched once, but nothing came up. She’d been unable to eat anything for breakfast. Heat flushed over her in waves, and under her arms, perspiration soaked her blouse.

She knelt there for a full minute, then, shaking, she pushed to her feet. She had to make up her mind right now if she was going to call the FBI or the Secret Service or anyone official. “Please, dear God, help me decide.”

Nova sees that there are other people in the small, flying-school plane with her, and every last one is calmly putting on a parachute, getting ready for the drop. But the straps of her harness are crossed, seemingly hopelessly so. And she’s running out of time. Any minute now she’ll have to jump. The jump master keeps demanding that she hurry. She twists the straps one way, then another. Her heart is beating like crazy. Her fingers seem too thick and awkward. She can’t grip the straps correctly, let alone get them untwisted.

But the jump master won’t listen to her protests. The man puts the parachute harness onto Nova and clips it shut. “The straps aren’t done right,” Nova says, her panic now threatening to explode her heart.

He turns around, Nova thinking it’s to help another student, but then a buzzer sounds. The jump door opens, and the other students all rush toward it, shoving Nova along in their hurry, and all of a sudden she’s in the air and falling. Plummeting toward the dark earth she can’t see but knows is below.

She fumbles to find the pull for the ripcord…but…but she doesn’t have one. And if she hits the ground, she will die.

It’s the dream, she says to herself. Wake yourself up! It’s the dream.

She finds the ripcord pull and yanks.

And nothing happens. Her parachute has failed.

It’s the dream! part of her mind protests again.

She’s going to die if she doesn’t wake up.

Breathing hard, her heart racing, Nova pulled herself into consciousness.

She was gripping the armrests of her Varig business class seat so tightly she imagined she might bend them. God.

“Are you all right?” This from the gray-haired woman beside her who had disappeared into a Nora Roberts novel the moment the plane had lifted off from JFK.

“Yes. Fine. I just dozed off.”

This was the single recurring dream of her life, one she’d had so many times when she was in prison that she couldn’t count them. She’d had it less often in her early twenties. In fact, other than once or twice after Ramon Villalobos had loved and left her and right after she’d broken up with Joe, she had been free of the dream.

What had brought it on now? She couldn’t imagine. She didn’t even know why she had had it so often when she was in prison for killing Candido, other than the very obvious fact that in the dream she was in a blind panic. She’d spent many of her days in that monstrous prison cage in a panic.

She had slept very little last night, and the monotonous droning of the Varig’s four big jet engines had caused her to drop off. Whatever the meaning of this terror-inducing, recurring dream, she just wasn’t going to let the damn thing freak her out.

Nova smiled grimly and fetched the BlackBerry from the beautifully designed shoulder bag Marvin had brought this morning. Woven into its dark brown fiber was a pattern of green leaves and vines. The Company knew that she often wore emerald-green, the color of her eyes, and perhaps someone had taken note of that when planning how to design her kit to be tasteful and not stand out.

She’d also purchased two pairs of khaki pants, dark brown sandals, three capped-sleeve tops and a lightweight emerald-green pantsuit should she need something more formal. Woven from fine hemp, the pantsuit would breathe and also wick away the sweat she knew was going to plague her the minute she hit Manaus.

For now, most of the items she’d requested from Smith rested in the bag’s two spacious inner pockets, looking quite innocent. A camera that looked like a pen. A recorder built into her lipstick. The BlackBerry itself. And so on. The brown and dark green camouflage suit and collapsible boots were hidden inside the specially designed lining, along with the broken down Glock, its nonmetallic composition and un-gunlike components assuring that the bag would sail right through any metal or X-ray detectors.

She powered up the BlackBerry and opened up the directory for the files some tech from the Company had downloaded into it. Brazilian terrorists. Brazilian drug runners. Other Brazilian criminal organizations. Kidnap victim profiles.

She had spent most of the night reading about the woman who was supposedly her sister, Linda Stokes, and Linda’s friend, the dance teacher, Annette Coulson. She’d memorized enough details to make her cover story sound convincing to anyone who didn’t know Linda or Annette personally. Now she clicked open the victim folder.

There they all were. The birding guide, Kimball Kiff from the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. The world-class birder, Redmond Obst, who Smith had said was a personal friend of Kiff. Next came Obst’s son, Ronnie, and his son’s friend, Alex Hailey Hill. The boys, being the youngest, would probably have the shortest bios. She’d save them for last. Then there were Otis and Nancy Benning. She already knew a lot about both of the Bennings. They could also wait. Last came the bug expert, Dennis Chu.

She decided to start with the primary victim and clicked open the file on the vice president’s niece, Colette Stone, a woman who may well have watched as her husband was killed and then hacked up. Nova went through all the files, noting ages, professions and possible worth in terms of ransom. She also looked at photos, flashing the pictures on and off numerous times. She needed to recognize these people on sight.

For dinner she chose the vegetarian lasagna with braised mixed vegetables. Varig clearly didn’t stint on their business class food: the pasta, with its hint of basil, was perfectly al dente, and the ricotta cheese on the vegetables melted in her mouth.

Her seatmate, Mrs. Remington, was traveling to visit her daughter, who was pregnant with her first child and married to a Brazilian who’d made a fortune selling gems. Their dinner conversation rotated around gems and kids, Nova thinking wistfully of Star’s children, Maggie, Blake and Bryan, as the closest she was ever going to come to having children. After dinner, for the remaining two hours to Rio, she turned her attention to files on the Brazilian terrorists.

Once off the plane and through customs in Rio, a woman waiting in the receiving area just outside Immigration and Customs held a Cosmos Adventure Travel sign that said, Nora Smith, Nova’s cover name for the op. Cosmos ran a lot of legitimate adventure trips in Brazil. It was also her CIA cover operation.

The contact was a forty-plus stunner, a woman who Nova immediately imagined could still flaunt her body on Ipanema Beach in a topless swimsuit and win the admiration of every man or woman she passed. They’d all say “Ahh!”

“Ms. Smith,” the Brazilian beauty said through a radiant, white smile. “I’m Leila Munoz.”

Chapter 11

L eila Munoz matched Nova’s height of five feet, eight inches, but where Nova had well-toned muscles honed for bringing down men fifty pounds heavier with a single aikido move, Leila was all soft curves in the right places. Her honey-colored skin and wavy black hair were typical of the racial mix of black, Hispanic and Indian heritage of Brazil.

Leila took charge of Nova’s rolling suitcase. “I can manage it,” Nova offered.

“No problem. Part of the service. Love your earrings.”

Nova laughed at the unexpected appraisal concerning her jewelry. The earrings were the silver doves with emerald eyes that Joe had given her. Among friends and within the Company, Nova was the Imelda Marcos of earrings; she never felt quite complete without them. Out of fear of embarrassment, she’d never counted how many pairs and half pairs she owned.

“And I love your dress,” she countered. Leila had wrapped her luscious curves in a lemon-yellow dress cut above the knees and decorated with butterflies in all colors of the rainbow. No one would ever suspect her of being CIA, and station head at that. For cover, Leila held a position as a translator at the U.S. Embassy.

Outside the terminal building, a balmy Rio December evening greeted them. A Ford SUV with the Cosmos Adventure Travel logo on its doors idled curbside. Leila tossed Nova’s bag into the SUV’s backseat and said, “Do you want to go to a hotel? I’ve reserved a room for you. Or would you like to stay at my place? Not so cold and impersonal. I have the files you wanted with me, so either place works.”

Leila’s slight accent was quite lyrical. Nova said, “Your place would be much appreciated. I get sick of hotel rooms.”

As they moved toward town, Nova caught a glimpse of the massive, lit statue of Christ on top of Corcovado Hill. Leila obviously intended to put their travel time to good use. “Our one regular agent in Manaus is Oscar Chavez,” she began. “He knows everything that goes on. All the major players. He’ll contact you in the bar of the hotel where I’ve rented you a room. The Gioconda. It’s modest, discreet, clean. Right in the center of Manaus. If you think it would bolster your cover as a rich American, you can show disgust and move in a day or so to something more fancy.”

“What’s his cover?”

“Government surveyor. It allows him to be out and about pretty much wherever he needs to go.”

They were now skimming beside a row of towering hotels that stretched along the beach south of Sugarloaf Mountain. “Copacabana,” Leila said. “You’ll have to come back and visit me sometime.” Leila gave Nova a long appraisal and then a big smile before turning her attention back to the street. “I like your looks, Ms. Smith. And I’m a great judge of character. Maybe you could come in February for Carnival.”

“I’d like that.”

They soon pulled up to a guarded gate leading into the underground garage of a high-rise condo building. Leila pulled a card from her purse and inserted it into the slot of a reader, the gate rolled upward and Leila waved to the guard in his little stand as she drove inside. “Lots and lots of crime in charming Rio,” she said. “You do know, don’t you, that it is quite unsafe to go out at night.”

Another security guard sat beside two elevator doors reading a comic book. He beamed at Leila, who was now lugging a hefty lawyer’s briefcase while Nova toted her overnighter. When he looked at Nova, the guard kissed the back of his hand.

Inside Leila’s condo, the view of Rio from the tenth floor at night, with the chains of lights stretching along the beach and the huge lit-up Christ and the dark patches that Nova knew were the favelas—dangerous slums housing abject poverty—was nothing short of spectacular.

But what took her breath away were all the butterflies. Butterfly lamps, butterfly pictures, butterfly images on rugs, coffee mugs and telephone notepads. “Go ahead,” Leila said, “ask about the butterflies. Everyone does.”

“I do get the feeling the condo might lift off any moment, but you don’t need to explain. I’ve got my own fetish.”

Leila smiled. “Good. I said I was a great judge of character.”

While Leila showed Nova the guest bedroom, she explained that Manaus was now crawling with Brazilian authorities, not only from Manaus but down from La Paz as well. “Ten very high-profile Americans kidnapped on Brazilian soil, one for certain killed. Big scandal. Bad news all around and a political hot potato, as the English slang puts it.”

“I will appear to be working alone, pretending to be the rich sister of one of the victims.”

“You’re alone!” Leila said, her eyebrows lifting elegantly.

“No, no. Of course I have a backup, but he stays deep. Seeming to be alone works well for me. I’ve done most of my ops that way.” The German and Italian missions, when she’d worked as a photographic team with Joe as her assistant had been exceptional…in a lot of ways. Soon she would see him. She licked suddenly dry lips. What if he was still angry? What if he was cold to her?

She pushed her fears away. “The bad guys tend to underestimate me. And because I’m a woman who comes off as rather gentle—”

Leila laughed. “Yeah, I make you for gentle. I was a bit surprised when you said you were Ms. Smith. Not at all what I expected.”

“Well, I can safely say I don’t live up to that image. But it serves me well because people tend to trust me and often divulge secrets they ordinarily wouldn’t.”

Leila chuckled again. “I guess I fit in that category with everyone else. I rarely bring an agent to my digs.” She put her arm around Nova’s shoulder. “Want something to eat or drink?”

“If you have a diet drink or iced tea or just ice water, I’ll be happy. I need to start to work on the Brazilian files in that big black briefcase of yours. See what you guys have on terrorists and gangs that we don’t. Any action in the Amazon, in particular.”

Leila set Nova up at the small dining-room table and then said, “I’m off to bed. It’s after ten and I like my eight hours of sleep. Do you think you’ll be up long?”

“I don’t need much sleep. Three or four hours is my regular dose.”

“Really!”

“Reading these files will also be good for me. I don’t read or speak Portuguese all too well. This will jump-start me into speaking and thinking in the local language.”

“Well then, I’ll see you early tomorrow. We need to get up about six to make it to the airport in time.”

“Obrigada,” Nova said.

“My pleasure,” her hostess replied, strolling down the hall.

Nova’s fully-booked flight to Manaus took off thirty minutes late. For the first ten minutes of waiting, she fantasized about Joe, who, if he had accepted the mission and was on schedule, was already there, waiting for her. Only two, two-and-a-half hours at the most, and she’d see him.

Surely he wouldn’t have agreed to come if he were still angry. She imagined the strong muscles in his arms and shoulders. She knew every part of that body. The first time she’d seen him naked, on Capri, was after their visit to Rome’s central jail. She’d delivered a message to a terrorist from the man’s son. In Amalfi, she’d caught the terrorist behind the unleashing of a killer virus that, ironically in the end, had killed the bastard’s own son.

On Capri she and Joe had made passionate, hot love for virtually all of their two-day rest and recreation, if you counted sweet talk and petting part of making love. Even eating had been a sort of devouring of food while devouring each other with their eyes. They ate every meal in her room, stark naked.

When she got to Manaus she would look first for his dark brown wavy hair and then those big, dark, chocolate-colored eyes. He virtually always had a deep tan.

This bloody longing she had for Joe felt as if something was burning slowly under her skin. The hours between them would not go fast enough.

She questioned again her decision to refuse to marry him. Had that been a truly stupid mistake? When Star had said Nova was crazy to let a great man get away, actually drive him away, Nova had countered with, “I’ve created a life I’m comfortable with, Star. I don’t know who I’d be if I married anyone, not just Joe. I need to be me. Not Mrs. Someone Else. I didn’t want to split up. He just wouldn’t settle for anything less than marriage.”

Star had snipped back with, “You’re just afraid to give up even a teeny bit of control.”

The businessman seated next to her finished skimming the paper he’d brought along. He folded it, stuffed it in the pocket in front of him, stroked his mustache and interrupted her gloomy thoughts, asking in Portuguese, “Have you been to Manaus before?”

“No. And I fear I don’t speak Portuguese very well.”

“Then let us speak English,” he said without missing a beat.

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