He tried not to show his surprise. Only an unromantic gringo would miss the opportunity to dine with such a magnificent creature.
An angry rattle of cookware from the rear told him his wife, the cook, was tuned in to the conversation.
Under the scowling eyes of his spouse, the owner apologized that most of his customers were locals and, therefore, he had not had the bill of fare printed in English. Perhaps she would allow him to translate some of the house’s specialties?
He did so, leaning over her shoulder to point out each entree. His enthusiasm might have been attributed to the view down the front of her dress. He took the extra time to tell her the cocina criolla, the local cuisine, was a blend of Spanish, Taino Indian, and American cooking. Only an angry explosion of Spanish from the kitchen put an end to his explanation.
She ordered the chicken and rice soup, grilled fish with a mojo isleño sauce, and a side of plantains fried with rum. She deferred a choice of dessert but did order another Caribe.
As he turned to hand her order to the chef, he noted the customer was again looking intently at the building across the street. He was tempted to explain what strange neighbors lived there and their peculiar comings and goings, but an admonition from the kitchen to tend to his business dismissed the thought.
“Cabra viejo!” his wife snorted as he reluctantly turned his attention to arriving customers.
On the rooftop, Jason’s BlackBerry vibrated. He removed it from a pocket. “Check” was the only word he spoke. Judith was in place.
Holding the penlight in his teeth, he fumbled with the front plate of the air-conditioning unit on the first house. It came free with a clatter Jason could only hope was covered by the drum of rain on the flat roof. Careful to shield the clay pot from the downpour, he inserted it into the mechanism’s housing, making certain it was close to the fan that sucked fresh air into the unit.
Leaving the front plate leaning against the unit, he moved to the next two roofs, Number 23 and the one beyond, and repeated the procedure. At the last, he produced a cheap cigarette lighter and touched the flame to his improvised fuse. He made sure it was lit before moving back to Number 23, setting that fuse alight and then the next.
Then he returned to Number 23 and waited in the shadows cast by the housing of the stairwell to wait.
50
Judith had taken only two spoonfuls of her soup when her BlackBerry buzzed.
She placed it to her ear.
“Ignition,” Jason’s voice said, and the connection went dead.
She returned the device to her purse and continued to spoon the broth. It had a unique blend of coriander, garlic, and spices she could not quite identify. She leaned over her bowl, sampling the fragrance in hopes of recognizing more of the ingredients.
Concentration on matters culinary was interrupted by the sound of shouts and a banging door across the street. Two men and a woman stood coughing on the rain-slicked sidewalk as white smoke billowed from doors and windows. Judith had barely time to take this in when four or five people, the men in sleeveless undershirts, the women in old-fashioned slips, burst out of the house on the other side of Number 23 with a cloud of smoke following them into the street. They did not seem to notice they were instantly drenched by the rain.
Arms outstretched, one of the women was wailing in incoherent Spanish when Judith first heard sirens and the rumble of heavy engines. At the same time, four men stumbled out of Number 23, coughing into handkerchiefs. Judith noted one had a bandaged face. She was certain it was the man from in front of the El Convento who had tried to kill her.
She selected “Call Jason Mobile” on her BlackBerry. “Go!”
On the roof, Jason had already used his electrical lock pick, waiting for Judith’s signal that the house had been evacuated. There was no way to know for sure that no one was left inside, but fear of a fire was the best way to make that possibility as remote as it could be.
He pulled goggles over his eyes and tied a wet bandana over his nose and mouth. A small oxygen tank would have been far better, but there was a limit as to how much he could carry given the swiftness the job required. Glock in his right hand, penlight in his left, he moved down the stairs to the door at the bottom. The beam of his light was diffused by the smoke, forcing him to hold the light in his mouth while he groped for the lock. It, too, yielded to his pick.
Inside, Jason swept the room with the Glock. The smoke bomb had done its job: total evacuation. A metal file cabinet sat against the far wall next to a generator. Puzzled for a moment, he wondered at its purpose. What he guessed was a shortwave radio was on a desk to his left. A table on which rested two computer monitors and a pair of keyboards was next to the door.
All the electronics, of course. That was what made the generator necessary. Dependable power supplies in the Caribbean were rare at best and nonexistent more often than not. The generator he had heard buzzing last night from the other side of the door made certain there was no interruption of communications.
Also on the table was a printer with a sheaf of paper hanging from its mechanical lips. Jason snatched up the papers.
Russian.
His command of the language had been limited to a few standard phrases (“Surrender! Hands High!” “What is your name?”), and even this had faded with disuse, but he recalled enough to know at a glance that these pages alone justified the risk he was taking. He rolled the papers and stuffed them into a back pocket.
One of the computers had been left on, deserted in a smoke-induced panic. An incredible bit of luck. Then his heart sank. The monitor showed a picture of a waterfall in a rain forest, a screen saver. There would be little time to try to penetrate what he was certain would be sophisticated firewalls.
Screen saver? There were no icons for program selection. Jason looked closer. Pretty picture, but hard to believe GrünWelt was using computers to exchange innocuous photographs. What was the word he had read recently? Steganography, that was it. The use of perfectly innocent images to hide messages. Prying eyes would see only a waterfall, mist, and a few orchids dripping from the trees that hosted the plants. Special software could coax text from the images.
Jason touched the Shift key and the screen filled with Cyrillic letters, five to a group. Double encryption, the image and now code. Some contemporary electronic version of the Enigma, the World War II machine where randomly selected wheels made deciphering possible only by a comparable device? No matter. Software was available that could accomplish in minutes what last century’s code breakers had been unable to do in months.
Leaning over the keyboard, Jason made a few clicks that sent the screen’s contents to Sybil. He’d call later with an explanation.
Right now, he wanted to steal as much information as he could in the time he had left.
In the bodega, Judith wondered how the hook and ladder had navigated the old city’s narrow streets. But it had, as evidenced by the firemen hopping down from it. In the first moment, all seemed confusion as every firefighter was shouting at another. Order quickly emerged as a hose was connected to a nearby hydrant, a ladder slowly rose toward the roof of the first house, and two men dashed inside.
Judith keyed her BlackBerry. “Two on the roof, two inside.”
“Which house?” came the reply.
“The one closest to the intersection.”
Jason shoved the BlackBerry back in his pocket. Shit! The roof! When the fireman found what had been put into the air-conditioning housing …
No time to worry now. Just keep calling up files and forwarding them to Sybil.