The caravan of eighteen-wheelers from San Miguel de Allende pulled into the Mexican customs compound at Nuevo Laredo on the Texas border around four. They had left San Luis Potosí early that morning, but the journey was nearly over. The lead truck was driven by a young mestizo called Pele. He was a bit nervous until he saw a familiar face on the agricultural inspector walking toward his rig.
"¡Amigo!" he called with a broad grin on his own squarish brown face.
"Mario," said the inspector. "Haven't seen you lately. Where have you been?"
The young driver climbed down from his elevated perch in the tractor. "I've been going south recently, but I'm headed for San Antonio now." A couple of years ago, he would have had to unload no farther than ten miles across the border. But thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexican drivers could now continue on to their destinations.
The inspector checked his papers. "Melons, eh? Let me take a look at a sample crate." His job was to inspect for grade. Although most fruits and vegetables entered the U.S. through Nogales, Arizona, there was enough produce traffic here to keep the few inspectors busy. Like their American counterparts on the other side of the border, they would only do spot checks unless they had some reason to dig deeper.
Mario was anxious to get on across the Rio Bravo, or the Rio Grande as the gringos called it, and go through U.S. Customs. He had been hesitant about this run when they first approached him. But with the size of the bonus promised, and the assurance that the odd-looking crates beneath the melons did not contain narcotics or anything a sniffing dog could detect, he had been satisfied that it was well worth the risk. When the inspector gave him a thumbs up a few minutes later, he climbed back behind the steering wheel and headed for the border, a happy grin on his face.
Adam Stern stood at his office window, his gaze sweeping from the earthbound traffic that clogged the Queensboro Bridge to the airborne glut that swarmed around La Guardia, looking like hornets seeking entry to their nest. But his mind was elsewhere. General Zakharov had called about the problem of Colonel Rodman and Yuri Shumakov. Stern was not worried about them as long as they continued to hide out in Mexico. But this damnable Burke Hill was another matter. Bernard Whitehurst had given Hill's boss the job of looking into the possibility that his actions might cloud their plans. Stern would much rather have taken care of the situation his own way, but both the Chairman and Laurence Coyne had vetoed it. Hill was no candidate for suicide, Coyne chided. Whitehurst cautioned that the man was too well known to risk some overt action that might go wrong at this stage, possibly blowing the whole operation. But if Nathaniel Highsmith couldn't control him, or if he showed signs of interfering with Romashchuk's mission, they would be forced to re-evaluate.
The telephone interrupted his thoughts. He turned back to his desk.
"Adam," said a low, husky voice, "this is Brad. I have some information that may or may not indicate a problem."
He recognized Bradford Pickens, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a former Chicago police commissioner who had earned a reputation as an uncompromising, tough-on-crime administrator. He was also a loyal, dedicated Roundtable member. "What's up?"
"An agent in Philadelphia queried the computer for your file today. He got the message to contact the State Department. I don't know if he followed up. You might want to check it out."
"Any idea what his interest is?"
"He's working a case involving some non-profit organizations, so it could be related to that. The Roundtable isn't one of the targets, however." He gave a slight chuckle. "I wouldn't let things get that far out-of-hand."
"Do you have the agent's name?"
"Special Agent Clifford Walters. Does that ring a bell?"
"No, but I'll look into it in the morning. By the way, there are two men the police are looking for down in Mexico who could cause us some trouble. One is an American named Warren Rodman, the other a Belarusian named Yuri Shumakov, alias Ivan Netto. There's a chance the Mexicans may want to look for them here. Let me know if you hear anything."
"Sure, Adam. Be happy to. Are you going to Colorado?"
"No, I have too much to do here. What about you?"
"I'll be there unless the Attorney General orders otherwise."
Stern gave a dismissive grunt. "He wouldn't dare."
Evelyn Tilson stuck her head in Burke's door shortly before five, squinched up her eyes and shook her head. "My headache's got a headache. I think I'll cut out."
"Why didn't you say something earlier?"
"I had lunch with Toni. She has the same problem but said she couldn't leave with the Chief buzzing around in New York. I didn't want to look like a malingerer."
"You women. That sounds like one-downmanship."
"One-downpersonship, please."
"Go home, Evelyn. Hope you feel better in the morning."
"Are you camping out here tonight?"
"No. I'll be leaving pretty soon. I didn't get much sleep last night."
"I thought you said the twins were better."
He smiled. "They are. A little personal project kept me up. See you tomorrow."
After she had left, Burke leaned back in his chair, propped a foot on his desk and opened a report from Berlin that had come in during the afternoon. It dealt with the situation in the Commonwealth of Independent States. He wanted to read it before he went home.
An account executive who had just returned from a business trip to Minsk reported a contact, high in the ranks of the Minsk militia, confided that there was growing concern among the Belarus leadership about the possibility of some sort of disturbance during the CIS summit starting on the fifth. He questioned the loyalty of a faction of the military and said there was growing animosity between the government and the Commonwealth Coordinating Committee.
Burke had made it halfway through the lengthy report when his eyes began to drift shut. The loss of sleep had finally caught up with him. As he attempted to fight off the drowsiness by stretching his arms, the phone rang.
"This is Brittany," said a soft, pleasant voice. "I'm surprised you're still there."
"I didn't expect you to be working this late, either."
"You know me. When I get absorbed in something, time completely escapes me. Want me to come up and give you a report, or shall I hold it until morning?"
"My door's open. Come on up."
A few minutes later, Brittany walked in with a yellow legal pad and a large brown envelope. She pulled a photograph from the envelope and laid it on his desk.
"Adam Stern is the one on the left," she said.
The picture showed a rather ordinary-looking man with a stocky build, dark hair, his jaw slightly off-color as if he needed a shave. He was holding a cocktail glass and had a one-sided grin on his face. Dressed in a dark suit, he stood talking with a tall, nattily-attired, white-haired man.
"That's Bernard Whitehurst, isn't it?"
Brittany nodded. "International banker, Foreign Affairs Roundtable chairman. It was shot by a news photographer at a reception last year. You can see Stern wasn't looking directly at the camera. When he realized his picture had been snapped, he cornered the photographer and demanded that his face not appear in the newspaper. They didn't have room to run it anyway. But they filed it for future reference."
"How did you get it?"
She smiled. "It cost me an arm and a leg. Well, more like a full body. I had to agree to a dinner date. It's a cute guy, though. I met him at the paper recently while looking up info on some other people for a PR campaign."
"Fantastic, Brittany. What else do you have?"
She sat down and propped the yellow pad in her lap. "There's a real dearth of information about the Roundtable, as well as your Mr. Stern. From open sources, I didn't get much more than he's in his mid-forties, unmarried, has worked for the Roundtable for about four years. But I learned from an ex-CIA friend that he came to the Agency right out of Amherst. He served as a case officer in Eastern Europe for ten years, then became a covert operations specialist. He was involved in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, among other hot spots. His title at the FAR is executive assistant to the president. But he's known variously as a 'facilitator' and as 'the enforcer.'"