Shoko, gliding in behind him, was neither bored nor strained. She always just was-oddly present in the moment and dangerously ready. Even considering the size of the room, he was well inside her “reach out and touch you before you can blink” perimeter again-and her boss was unhappy with him.
Sometimes he thought he needed a new job.
“I haven’t failed,” he said with the utmost confidence. “Do you have the information?”
No information, and Dax would kill the bastard himself.
In answer, Warner pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. “A terrorist cell, the names you need, just as we agreed. You sounded so sure of yourself when we spoke earlier,” the German said, stepping over to the front of the desk and pouring himself a short shot in a highball glass. He downed it in one swallow and poured himself another. The envelope went back into the inside pocket on his jacket.
Nerves. Yeah, Dax understood. The night was wearing on his nerves, too. The same way the whole damn day had worn on his nerves.
“When we spoke earlier, I was headed into a meeting with one of the dealers from Beranger’s. I made it clear that I was willing to beat anybody’s offer on the Sphinx, and was told to wait for a phone call. The phone call came shortly after Ms. Shoko arrived.” He nodded in the bitch’s direction. He was a good liar, so he didn’t have many qualms about Warner not buying his line.
“And Beranger is now dead, you said?”
“Yes.” And probably still lying on the floor in his gallery.
Warner downed his second shot and set the glass back down.
“It makes more sense, really,” he said, “him being dead, than it ever made that this unknown little Frenchman in Paraguay had acquired the Memphis Sphinx.”
Dax agreed. He’d been running in the art world for a few years now, and while it wasn’t unusual for some rare and wonderful thing to show up in a dump every now and then, the Memphis Sphinx was not merely a rare and wonderful artifact. It was a legend. The name of Howard Carter, its finder, attached instant cachet. That the piece had never been formally or academically displayed had created a mystery that had remained unsolved for nearly a hundred years.
“And this phone call? This Suzi, the dealer, did she give you the location of the Sphinx?” Warner’s tone sounded a little frayed, and he glanced toward the Blade Queen, looking, Dax supposed, for some kind of reassurance, and for a moment Dax wished that he’d been spending a little more time at the range. Marksmanship was a frangible skill, and if that woman made any kind of a move whatsoever, his skill in that area was going to be put to the test.
“Suzi gave me the first mark. I’m to call her when I reach it, and she’ll give me the second.”
“And the first mark is?”
“Five kilometers up the Paraná. I was just heading out when Ms. Shoko arrived at the Posada.” Mostly true. He’d cut the distance in half, not wanting to give too much away, but needing them headed in the right direction.
“You do understand the time constraint we’re dealing with here, don’t you, Mr. Killian?” A more frazzled edge definitely crept into Warner’s voice with the question.
Of course he did. Time was the whole raison d’être of the quest. Warner was looking for immortality, actually thinking he was going to get it off a hunk of granite in the moonlight.
“Yes, sir. I do. My plan was to get up there tonight, make the deal and call for a funds transfer, just as we’d planned, and have the Sphinx back here by tomorrow afternoon, in plenty of time for the…uh, ceremony.” He didn’t know what else to call this unlikely transfer of immortality that had Erich Warner’s boxers all in a wad. All he knew was that he’d hoped to be long gone before that moment arrived.
“That seems a bit risky now, doesn’t it?” the man said, lifting the iguana off his shoulder and setting the reptile on the desk. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wiped at his brow.
“Not if I leave immediately. The dealer I’m meeting, Suzi, she knows the time constraints as well as we do. She knows her price drops through the floor after moonrise tomorrow night. Trust me, she is ready to sell.”
Dax needed Erich to push him, not back off, but he was playing it cool, watching the man fret and hoping for the best.
“The timing will be closer than either of us anticipated or wanted, that’s true,” Dax continued, “but we have to try. I need to leave immediately.” He meant that with all his heart. Again, he wasn’t selling a lie. Geezus, Suzi was up there.
Warner tilted his head to one side, giving him a very discerning look, as if he’d come to a decision-and he had, the absolute correct decision. “You’ve had your try, Mr. Killian, and you’ve taken us up to the final countdown, and still don’t have the Sphinx. From here on out, I’m taking over the operation, and far more drastic measures than you’ve been able to bring to bear must now be employed.”
He could hear Warner swear under his breath before he poured himself another shot and finished it off in one swallow.
Normally, Dax was fairly wary of drastic anything, but in this case Warner was right, and the sooner they all got on board with “drastic measures,” the better-not that Warner needed to hear that from him.
“Well, sir, normally I would agree, but I feel I still have a chance to pull this thing off, and the quicker I can get up there, the more quickly I can get back. If we can cut this meeting short, I-”
“Short?” Warner interrupted. “This meeting is going to go on all the way to the first mark, and then the next, until I have the Memphis Sphinx in my hand. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Warner snapped his fingers, and one of Vargas’s men strode forward into the room.
“Tell Señor Vargas I need a boat with twenty armed men, immediately.”
The man agreed with a nod and turned on his heel.
“You have forced the issue with your incompetence,” Warner said, shifting his attention back to Dax. “We have no choice now but to go with you. I can’t take the risk of not being with the Sphinx by tomorrow night.”
Perfect.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Costa del Rey
Suzi woke in the night to the sound of a river running. Lying calmly in a lavender-scented bed, she slowly opened her eyes.
She didn’t know where she was, but the sheets on the bed were white, and the pillows were soft. A stone fireplace on the far wall crackled and glowed, casting a soft, flickering light over the room.
The door to the outside was open, leading onto a moonlight-washed deck, and beyond the deck was the river she heard-a rippling chorus of running water, eddies, and the deeper pull of the river’s flow.
She’d been kidnapped in her underwear.
She could feel the soft organic undies perfectly in place, the same with Dax’s polo shirt.
She looked down at herself and felt a moment’s relief. She’d been kidnapped, rendered unconscious, and hauled off somewhere, but not molested, and nobody knew better than her what a miracle that was.
It had all happened unbelievably fast. One second, she’d been sitting at the table in the Posada Plaza, and in the next second, she’d been scooped and swooped. The last thing she remembered was being on the balcony at the hotel, being held very close against a rock-hard chest. She’d looked up, still holding her dinner fork, and… and something had happened.
She’d gasped.
She remembered now. Looking over the balcony railing, five floors up from the street, and suddenly realizing that they were going over the side-all of this in the space of a second or two. There had been that first initial sensation of being in free fall, and then nothing, until now.
Nobody could move that fast, could they?
And yet somebody had, somebody with a very expensive house.