Takedown (An Alexandra Poe Thriller) Read online

  “Right. Only not in that order.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They don’t want Valac to have the codes in hand even for a minute. That’s how paranoid they are. Our job is to snatch the codes before we snatch Valac, make sure they’re secure, then go after the prize.”

  “So we take Favreau down first.”

  McElroy shook his head. “That may spook Valac and nobody wants to take that chance. This is the closest we’re ever likely to get to him.”

  “Then how do you propose we handle it?”

  McElroy took something from his jacket pocket and tossed it to her. “These are hot off the press.”

  Using her phone for light, Alex opened an artfully forged and distressed passport and saw her photograph above the name ALEXANDRA BARNES. Tucked into the back pages was a laminated ID card with the same photo and name, showing her as a “Correspondent” for Travel Planet Lifestyles, an online travel site.

  “Travel Planet Lifestyles?”

  “It’s a Stonewell front,” he told her. “We’ve used it as cover for a number of ops when discretion is needed. It’s fully operational, so if anyone checks, it’s legitimate. It took some quick and dirty finagling, but we managed to snag you a couple days on the island. You’ll be doing a video profile of St. Cajetan for the site, complete with camera crew.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “Not in the least,” he said. “We want you to cozy up to Frederic Favreau at the hotel, locate and switch the codes, then let him lead you straight to Valac.”

  Alex arched a brow. “Cozy up?”

  “I’m told you’re just his type.”

  “Oh, brother,” she said, tossing the passport and ID card into his lap. “I think you’ve got the wrong candidate for this job.”

  “What’s the difference between this and throwing on a prison smock or pretending to be a radiology technician?”

  “For one thing, I didn’t have to ‘cozy up’ to anyone.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. Just flirt with the guy. Lead him on until we can determine how he’s transporting the codes and make the switch.”

  “And who’s the ‘we’ in this scenario? Are you leading the operation?”

  McElroy shook his head. “I’m leaving that to Cooper. He’ll be coordinating and using Deuce and Warlock for support. They’ll be posing as your production crew.”

  “Warlock? Who the hell is Warlock?”

  “Oh, that’s right. You haven’t had the pleasure yet. Warlock’s a prodigy. We recruited him straight out of HMP Nottingham, where he did time for back-dooring a supposedly hack-proof MI6 database when he was seventeen. His only mistake was bragging about it online. He’ll be handling surveillance and comm tech and anything else computer related.”

  Alex didn’t like the idea of working with strangers any more than she liked having to play dress-up again, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized she needed this distraction. It didn’t hurt that she might be doing something worthwhile.

  “If Valac is hot for these codes, why the face to face?” she said. “Why doesn’t Favreau just transfer them electronically? Wouldn’t everyone be safer that way?”

  “The answer’s dead simple. Valac’s old school. He doesn’t trust the Internet. Or Favreau.”

  “Okay, so what’s the method of delivery, then? Data chip? Thumb drive?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “That’s something you’ll have determine before they finalize the deal. Once Favreau arrives on the island, Valac will likely want to keep him at arm’s length until he’s sure Favreau isn’t up to anything that might compromise him. So hopefully you’ll have a couple days to figure it out.”

  She looked at him. “You’re not asking for much, are you?”

  “If I didn’t think you were up to the job, I wouldn’t be asking at all.”

  She huffed. “I thought my participation was a condition of the deal?”

  “I’m trying to give you a compliment, Alex. Can’t you be gracious enough to accept it?”

  “That would require me to pretend I like you,” she said. “And I don’t.”

  “I’m painfully aware of that fact.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Key West International Airport, Florida

  IT HAD BEEN only a few days since Istanbul, but it felt good seeing Deuce again. There was always a certain comfort in that big, goofy grin of his.

  He was waiting for Alex on the tarmac outside the Key West airport terminal, standing under a sign that read GOLD KEY CHARTERS. He wore a yellow and blue Hawaiian shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts, his pockets loaded down with photography gear and peripheral equipment. A bulky Canon 5D camera hung at his neck and two large packing cases sat at his feet. Alex assumed they contained video and lighting gear.

  During a telephone briefing with McElroy and Cooper, they had all agreed to travel in character in case anyone was watching, and Deuce was playing his part to the hilt.

  After giving him a hug, Alex asked, “Do you even know how to use any of this stuff?”

  He shrugged. “What’s to know? It’s like a gun. Point and shoot.”

  “Come on, Deuce, this has to be convincing or it’ll never work.”

  “Don’t sweat it. I’ve been studying the manuals. Besides, nowadays, anyone sees me hefting anything bigger than a cell-phone camera, they’ll figure I must be a pro. Otherwise, why bother?”

  True enough, she thought, wishing she had some kind of prop that would sell her role in this as easily.

  A full day had passed since her early morning meeting with McElroy. She had spent a lot of that time going through the rest of the junk in the Shimmy Shack’s storage shed, trying to decide what to keep and what to toss, half wondering if she’d stumble across another mysterious gift.

  She didn’t, but then one such gift was already more than enough.

  She had watched the video at least ten times since the first viewing, and still couldn’t fathom why her parents had never told her about the marriage, or why whoever had planted the box wanted her to know. It was obvious her mother had a whole other life prior to coming to America that she had kept a secret, but what did that have to do with Alex all these years later?

  Repeated viewing had not yet produced an answer.

  Alex had been in the middle of one of those viewings when Thomas Gérard called her, wanting to know why she had sneaked out of his hotel room. He thought they had “found a connection” and wanted to see her again.

  Exactly what she’d been afraid of.

  “Will you meet me tonight?” he asked. “We could actually have dinner this time.”

  Alex struggled to find a way to let him down easy. She carried way too much baggage for the average relationship. Instead, she said, “As much as I’d like to, I can’t. I’m leaving the country tomorrow.”

  “Oh?” He sounded surprised and disappointed. “Where will you be going?”

  “Stockholm,” she lied. “I’ve got some business to take care of.”

  “Bounty hunting business?”

  “Fugitive retrieval, remember?”

  “Yes, that’s right, you’re a specialist.” She could almost hear the smile in his voice. “You seem to specialize in a number of things.”

  It was a pointed remark and felt a little out of character for Gérard, but she didn’t make an issue of it. He was, after all, a man. And no matter how refined, men always want to talk about it afterward, most often in the form of ham-handed innuendo.

  It wasn’t a game Alex had any interest in playing. “Have you heard from your client yet?”

  The abrupt change in subject distanced him. “Yes. I have. He hasn’t had a chance to look at the photographs, so he promised to call me back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be gone by then.”

  “So you said.” Another pause. “Alex, did I do something wrong?”

  It’s not y
ou, it’s me, she almost told him, a worn cliché that so often proved true in her case.

  “No, of course not,” she said. “I’m just a little distracted right now, trying to get ready to go. I’m switching phones for the trip, so I won’t be available at this number. Why don’t you e-mail me when you’ve heard from your client?”

  An even longer pause. “Of course.”

  “Thanks, Thomas. It was great meeting you. We’ll talk soon.”

  “I hope we do,” he said quietly, then hung up.

  Now, standing outside GOLD KEY CHARTERS with Deuce, she felt like a jerk. Why couldn’t every relationship she had be as easygoing as the one she had with Deuce? He was an unpretentious guy who rarely expected anything of her except that she pull her weight, which she was more than happy to do. Sure, there was no romance, but maybe she was better off avoiding those kinds of entanglements entirely.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  She was traveling light, told by McElroy that all necessary wardrobe needs would be waiting for her in St. Cajetan. Cooper and the new guy, Warlock, had flown to the island the night before to secure a room as close to Frederic Favreau’s as possible and begin preliminary surveillance. Favreau had reportedly landed first thing that morning and had gone straight to the hotel.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, in answer to Deuce’s question. “I’m still trying to get a handle on who Alexandra Barnes is supposed to be. How do I play this?”

  “Think of yourself as the travel industry’s answer to Lois Lane.”

  “So what does make you? Jimmy Olsen?”

  Deuce winced and said, “Let’s just get on the plane.”

  They flew to the island on a De Havilland Otter DHC-3 floatplane. Alex and Deuce were two of eight passengers strapped into narrow seats, all with clear views of the cockpit.

  Looking around, Alex guessed there was enough jewelry in the cabin to fund a small war, which wasn’t surprising given that St. Cajetan was known for its luxurious accommodations. GOLD KEY CHARTERS, on the other hand, favored function over luxury. While the plane appeared perfectly maintained, it had a vintage, pre-sixties vibe to it that clashed with the haute couture of its passengers.

  Deuce spent most of the hour-long flight dozing as Alex pulled out her computer tablet and once again fired up the wedding video. Each time she watched it, one thing became clearer and clearer: Her mother was not your typical blushing bride. The look in her eyes suggested she didn’t even want to be there.

  Alex ran it through again, and this time, something new caught her eye. She had been concentrating so much on her mother and the man beside her that she hadn’t noticed it before. As the camera panned past the bride and groom for a brief shot of the attendees, she was surprised to discover that one of the men in the crowd looked familiar.

  More than familiar.

  She froze the video and stared at the fuzzy image of a man with curly blond hair who seemed out of place in the sea of Iranian faces. A foreigner. An American.

  An American she knew.

  She found she had to reach into the memory banks to place him, but it didn’t take long. He had been to their house when she was a child. And not just one time, but many.

  Uncle Eric.

  Not a real uncle, but one of her father’s oldest and closest friends. He called her Allie Cat, and had dubbed her brother Dan the Man, a name that had always provoked laughter from Danny. And there had been magic tricks, too, a new one every time he came to visit.

  Alex hadn’t thought much about him since her mother died, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him.

  Could this really be him?

  And if so, what the hell was he doing at her mother’s Iranian wedding?

  “Who’s the guy with the bad seventies haircut?” Deuce asked. He was awake now, sitting across the aisle from her, his eyes on the computer tablet. “I don’t remember him from the briefing.”

  “He’s not,” she said. She put the tablet to sleep before he could get a good look, and tucked it into her backpack.

  “So, who is he?”

  “Somebody I knew when I was a little kid. Friend of my parents. I’m trying to remember his last name.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m thinking of sending him a postcard. ‘Wish you were here.’”

  “Then you’ll need more than a last name,” Deuce said. “An address might help, too. Who is he really?”

  Alex usually told Deuce everything, but wanted to keep the events of the last couple days private for a while. Until she could figure it all out.

  “He’s got nothing to do with us,” she told him. “I promise.”

  “In other words, mind your own business, Deuce.”

  She smiled. “You catch on fast, don’t you?”

  From the air, the island of St. Cajetan looked like a deformed pear.

  The floatplane approached from the Southeast, giving them a view of the uninhabited side of the island and its jungle of coconut palms and casuarina trees growing out of a thick, vibrant green undergrowth that would take a finely sharpened machete to hack through.

  The plane banked left and began to circle toward the far side of the island, and as they approached civilization, Alex was struck by the notion that it looked very much like the photographs she’d seen of 1950s, pre-Castro Havana.

  But as the plane continued to descend, she could see that this initial impression wasn’t quite true. The Hotel St. Cajetan and the buildings and city surrounding it seemed to be part of a faux, manufactured replica of a bygone era, like an Art Deco Disneyland, or a massive outdoor movie set at Warner Brothers studios—every speck of dirt, every luxurious pool, every sweaty cantina likely the product of a Hollywood production designer.

  Now she understood why this plane hadn’t been modernized. It wasn’t out of place. It was just another part of the image and illusion of St. Cajetan.

  Alex knew from the Stonewell briefing that at eighty miles long and thirty miles wide, St. Cajetan was one of the larger of the seven hundred islands that made up the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, and had been sold to a private developer in the early eighties for a rumored five hundred million American dollars. It was now a sovereign state with its own government and paramilitary police force and economy. Over the last three decades, the developer, an egocentric billionaire named Leonard “Leo” Latham, had built the place into the exclusive tourist mecca it was today, and had reportedly tripled his investment and then some.

  Over the intercom, the pilot welcomed them all to “paradise.” The floatplane made its descent and landed smoothly on the glassy surface of the water in Latham’s Cove—yes, the developer had named it after himself—and cruised toward a large wooden dock. Several hundred yards beyond a wide stretch of sand, the Hotel St. Cajetan greeted them in all its Habana-wannabe glory, while dockside, a cadre of smartly uniformed bellboys waited with their suitcase carts as the plane came to a stop and cut its engine.

  “Welcome to paradise” was repeated several times as Alex, Deuce, and their jewelry-jangling fellow passengers unstrapped their seat belts and stepped onto the dock.

  Alex knew she was supposed to have her game face on, but she was distracted by lingering thoughts of Uncle Eric and his presence in the wedding video. It bothered her that she couldn’t remember his last name. She knew it was sitting somewhere at the periphery of her mind, but until it came forward, she wouldn’t be able to run a check on the guy. She had considered using Stonewell’s facial recognition software, but knew the video was too old and fuzzy for reliable results.

  Setting it aside for the time being, she reminded herself she was now Alexandra Barnes, travel correspondent extraordinaire, and waited as Deuce supervised the loading of his equipment onto one of the bellboy’s carts. She then followed them up the dock toward the hotel lobby.

  Let the games begin.

  CHAPTER 10

  COOPER GREETED THEM with a big smile. “Alexandra…Sticks… Glad to see you finally made it.” />
  The hotel lobby was about half the size of an airport hangar, impeccably decorated with French leather club sofas and chairs, flanked by what looked like authentic Edgar Brandt side tables and lamps. The textured tile floor was polished to such a high shine that Alex almost felt guilty walking across it.

  As Cooper told the bellboy there were more bags in the hotel’s storage room, Alex said quietly to Deuce, “Sticks?”

  “McElroy’s contribution to my cover,” he told her. “Apparently a lot of camera guys get saddled with the name because of the tripod.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He watches too much TV.”

  “What he lacks in imagination he makes up for with a nice, fat discretionary spending budget. If I didn’t like the money he’s paying me, I’d have to kick his ass.”

  “If you let yourself get lured into another poker game, I’ll have to kick yours.”

  Deuce grimaced. “Don’t worry, I’ll never make that mistake again.”

  While the bellboy was away fetching their things, Cooper said, “The good news is, Warlock hacked the hotel’s reservation system and switched us to a four-bedroom suite on Favreau’s floor. The bad news is, it’s across the hall instead of next door, so setting up surveillance could get complicated.”

  “Why couldn’t he get the suite next door?” Deuce asked.

  “It’s been occupied for the last month by some British rock star I’ve never heard of. Except for the parade of groupies going in and out of the room, he’s holed up in there like a hermit.”

  Deuce sighed. “I knew I should’ve kept up those guitar lessons.”

  They took the elevator to the tenth floor, and made their way down a wide hallway with more leather club chairs and a hand-tufted, black and cream Art Deco carpet. It was clear to Alex why staying here cost a small fortune. This stuff didn’t come cheap.

  As they approached their room, Cooper nodded toward the corner door at the end of the hall to their right, indicating Favreau’s suite. Without better surveillance access, they’d have to get creative. Hopefully the new guy, Warlock, had the goods.