When Villante finished, Storm said, “So he knew Erik Vaughn was dead before it was announced in the media.”
“That’s right.”
“And did you ask him how he knew this?”
“I did. He was evasive. I couldn’t press the issue without creating suspicion. The deputy director of the canal authority would not be interested in such things.”
“Of course. But you’re thinking he knows more than he’s letting on.”
“I suggested that perhaps he was involved and he responded by toasting Vaughn’s death. Ordinarily, I might have disregarded such a gesture as posturing. Men like Eusebio Rivera are always trying to make themselves seem more important than they are. But you combine that with his seemingly insider knowledge about Vaughn’s death and his insistence that the canal authority director, Nico Serrano, immediately go to Washington….He seemed like a man very aware of the strings he was pulling. I have not played all of the wiretaps for you, but he made sure everyone in Panama City was aware of Congressman Vaughn’s death and that they made plans to act accordingly.”
Storm nodded. They were passing through palm tree–lined streets recently made wet by a brief rainstorm. It was pushing eleven o’clock at night. Panama City was a hardworking town. The sidewalks were empty. Most of the residents had to be at their jobs in the morning and had already turned in.
“So you need me to get him in a confessional mood,” Storm said.
“I am told that’s part of your expertise.”
Storm just nodded. “How am I getting to him?”
“At this hour, he will be holed up at his penthouse in Pearl Tower.”
“What’s security like there?”
“Difficult,” Villante said. “Pearl Tower is high-end residential. The poor in Panama have come a long way since the seventies, but there’s still a pretty big gap between them and the rich. And for all the beautiful buildings you see around you, the slums are never far. It makes the rich fairly paranoid. Rightly so. They make sure they are well protected.”
“Specifics, please?”
“There’s a doorman outside the building, then a twenty-four-hour concierge just inside who eyeballs everyone who comes in. If the concierge doesn’t like what he sees, he locks down the elevators and then radios their on-site security. There are anywhere from two to four of them, depending on the hour, and they’re always armed.”
“That doesn’t sound difficult,” Storm said. “If anything, that sounds like an open invitation to—”
“I’m not finished. Rivera has his own bodyguards, who are with him at all times. He keeps a staff of six, at least two of which are always on duty. The nightmen are named Hector and Cesar. They drive for him, stick near him whenever he’s out in public. When he’s at home, they have a feed of the building’s security cameras that they keep an eye on. I have no doubt you can handle the rent-a-cops on the ground. But he’s on the top floor. You’d have seventy stories to go up, either by elevator or stairwell. They would have all the time they needed to prepare a nasty greeting for you.”
“But being as you work for Jones, you’ve already thought of a clever way around all this.”
“I have,” Villante said. “Jones tells me you like…what did he call them…toys, yes?”
A gleam appeared in Storm’s eyes. “Yes, yes I do. I like toys a lot.”
“And he tells me you’re an expert climber and that you are in good practice at the moment?”
“I am.”
“Good. Because you’ve got quite the climb ahead of you.”
A HALF HOUR LATER, Storm was already forty stories up the side of Pearl Tower.
On his hands were strapped two circular pads. Two similar pads were strapped to his knees. Using aligned carbon nanotubes — a technology that mimicked the microscopic hairs that let a gecko hang upside down with just one finger — the pads allowed him to cling to the side of the building. The pads were wirelessly linked to one another. Controls on the hand pads let Storm control when the pads gripped and when they slid. It meant that Storm could pull himself up with his hands while bracing against his knees; and then, while his hands held steady, he could slide his knees forward.
It was slow going, being that he could only go about three feet with each pull. It was unnerving, being that he had no net or harness. And it made him look like a giant inchworm.
But it made him feel like Spider-Man. Make that Elvis Spider-Man. Villante had outfitted him in a white, one-piece suit that helped him blend into the side of the building, lest any passerby alert authorities that a skyscraper was being free-climbed by a lunatic.
And for as difficult as the climbing was, the thought of being Elvis Spider-Man cheered him enough — or distracted him enough — to keep going. That, and he needed the time to scheme. Villante had given him a rundown on the apartment, its layout and its contents. He directed Storm toward the bedroom, told him where the bodyguards would likely be, and generally gave him a sense of what he would face.
But it was up to Storm to come up with an exact plan, something he had not done by the time he reached the seventieth and final floor of his ascent. He was — not for the first time — going to have to make it up as he went along.
Secured to his back was a disc-shaped object roughly the size and shape of a children’s snow saucer. It had been wrapped in white, for camouflage purposes.
That was the toy that he began putting into use when he stopped at Rivera’s bedroom window. Removing his climbing pads and letting them stay stuck to the wall of the building, he shrugged the disc off his back, unwrapped it, and placed it on the window.
He pressed a button. Without making a sound, with only the slightest shred of vibration, a diamond-tipped blade inside the disc made a full circle, leaving a clean incision in its wake. Storm yanked away the disc, which retained the circular piece of glass, and quickly attached it to one of the climbing pads still stuck to the building.
Then came the dangerous part. Or, rather, it had all been dangerous; this was simply the part that was most dangerous. If the slumbering Mr. Rivera became aware that a warm, moist breeze was suddenly blowing through a hole in his bedroom window and decided to investigate — and then, further, to alert his bodyguards — Storm might be crawling through the hole to face the barrel of a gun.
His only hope was to move quickly. He affixed the one remaining hand pad to the glass and gripped it tight. He released the kneepads and swung himself inside.
In one fluid motion, he rolled and came up with his Dirty Harry Stealth Hunter drawn, a move he had practiced many times.
Except this was not one of the times he needed it. All he heard was a man snoring thunderously.
He crept toward the slumbering figure of Eusebio Rivera, who was on his back, mouth wide open. Each inhale was met with a noise loud enough to rattle the nightstand next to his bed. Storm had never heard such a cacophonous soft palate. The exhales merely sounded like a person being strangled.
Storm reached for his back pocket and a small, plastic container that resembled a package of Baby Wipes. He pulled out a handkerchief that was slightly damp — again, like Baby Wipes — except what had made it moist was not infant-safe: it had been doused with chloroform.
He held the cloth under Rivera’s nose for exactly two inhales — enough to make sure he wouldn’t wake up for a half hour or so, not so much that he would be unconscious all night.
Satisfied that Rivera had been properly dosed, Storm rolled the man on his side. The snoring stopped — to the relief of anyone within ten floors of Rivera’s penthouse who hadn’t been blessed either with earplugs or congenital deafness.