LITMIR.BIZ

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light clothing.” He set his glass down, earnest again. “The kidnap took place on the Amazon River, not far below something called the Meeting of the Waters, a few miles downstream from the last little town that has a road into Manaus.”

      “Ceasá,” she said.

      “Correct. So tell me what you’ll need.”

      “This is an isolated area.” She turned ideas over in her mind a moment. “I need to anticipate whatever might come up. There’ll be no getting anything special quickly.”

      “I’ll have Operations working on it tonight. You’ll have everything you want before you fly out tomorrow.”

      “A Glock, broken down. Thin jungle camouflage top and pants and light-weight pull-on boots and socks for climbing or hiking. A BlackBerry. And could you send some quinine to me tonight? I might not have a mosquito problem in the city, but I’d be better off having some malaria protection if things go native.”

      “Why don’t you have your own BlackBerry?” Smith groused, frowning. “I always have to leave phone messages.”

      “I don’t want to be that connected to the world unless I’m working for the Company. Could you also please have the techs put onto it whatever they think I might be able to use?” She continued compiling her mental list out loud. “Pen recorder and the smallest video/still camera that’s resistant to water. A GPS in a locket I can wear and one built into the kit. It’s all got to be able to fit without detection into a woven, not flashy but still fashionable, shoulder bag, between the cover and a thick, quilted inner lining.”

      “You’ll have it.”

      She could feel excitement bubbling strongly now. She was going on a hunt once again.

      “You going to have any problems getting away?” Smith asked.

      “I’ll tell my agent I’ve decided I can’t take the time to stay and shop in New York after all. She won’t ask any questions I can’t answer.”

      “Good, then,” he said and rose.

      She stood. Marvin handed her a packet with the necessary papers and tickets. Smith had the last words. “Marvin will pick you up at your hotel in the morning. You’ll be met in Rio by the head of station, Leila Munoz.” That was it.

      She walked toward the elevator with mixed feelings about seeing Joe. How would that go? For a moment, she’d had a refusal on the tip of her tongue; maybe he would refuse the job.

      She jabbed the elevator button three times. She wasn’t ready to see him again. She should have said no to Smith.

      She turned, looked back toward the room, but her feet stayed planted. For all the reasons Smith had laid out, she probably was the best person to find Colette Stone and the others before anyone else got killed.

      But I have to find some way to get Langley to stop throwing Joe and me together.

      The elevator door opened, she turned and stepped inside, hit the first floor button as though she’d like to punch it clean out. I hate it, I absolutely hate it, but the truth is, I can hardly wait to see him.

      Chapter 10

      A fter enduring an interminable morning of oral arguments, and having already doffed her judicial black robe, Suleema hurried down the marbled corridor toward the private entry to her office suite. She entered a room shared by her three senior law clerks. Seeing her, Patrick Hagan, fair skin, red hair and freckles, rose with a manila folder in his hand and stepped toward her.

      “Absolutely not now,” Suleema snapped at him as she forged ahead, her temper frayed by her desperate need to call her daughter, a need she’d put off for over fourteen hours since that abominable creature had cut her with his knife.

      Patrick braked to a startled halt. Her two other clerks looked up in amazement as she brushed past them and into her office. She closed the door behind her.

      Mistake, mistake, her mind cautioned, in a panic. She ought not do anything to draw suspicion. Certainly she should not begin to show an uncharacteristic ill temper.

      Her swivel chair creaked as she threw herself into it. She placed her hand on the phone receiver. She would not use a cell phone, of course. Cell phone talk wasn’t secure. But it was quite natural for her to call Regina. No need to hide the fact of making a call to her daughter.

      The answering voice on the other end was Clevon’s. “Hello, hello,” he said, almost shouting. A cold chill ran up Suleema’s spine. Clevon home in the middle of the day?

      Suleema had not called the FBI. And no matter what Clevon told her now, no matter what the details were, she knew the man with the knife had not been lying.

      “Is Regina there, Clevon?”

      “Let me have the phone,” Suleema heard Regina say, her voice shrill. “Mama, I have to tell you something,” Regina said. The terror in Regina’s voice pierced right into Suleema’s heart. “Mama, the people that Alex went with on the trip to South America have all been kidnapped. Alex has been kidnapped, Mama. I’m terrified.”

      Remember, act like you know nothing. “How do you know he’s been kidnapped?”

      Through sobs Regina said, “The feds came here about half an hour ago. Colette Stone’s husband, Ellis, is dead. They’ve killed him.”

      “Who, Regina? Does the FBI know who’s responsible?”

      With a clarity that shook her even worse than she’d been shaken last night, Suleema knew that if anything happened to Alex, it would utterly break her spirit. She could not endure the loss of this boy, her legacy. The phone receiver grew slick in her hands.

      “It’s Secret Service, Mama, not the FBI. And they don’t know who. They were kidnapped somewhere around Manaus. That’s in Brazil. And the monsters sent Ellis Stone’s hand to Vice President Ransome with a demand for fifty million dollars.” Regina giggled nervously, a grotesque sound. “Ransome being asked for a ransom.”

      For a moment Suleema’s mind stuck, baffled by a money demand being sent to “Wild Bill” Ransome when what the man had said last night was that the kidnappers wanted Suleema to vote for the government in the Sharansky versus U.S. government case. It only took a flash, though, and she realized there was no reason for the terrorists not to demand money for all their captives as well.

      “Alex will be okay, Regina. You have to believe that. He’s so smart. Even street-smart, for his age.”

      “But I don’t know if they let him take his medicine with him. Do they even know or will they care that he’s diabetic?”

      “Maybe the Secret Service can find that out from them.” Suleema suddenly remembered that Otis and Nancy Benning were also in the birding party. And likely there might be others whose lives would be valuable. Blackmailing a Supreme Court justice was unusual but not contradictory to a ransom demand. What it implied, however, was that someone in the United States, not some terrorist in Brazil, was the driving force behind the plot. Money they might want—but sewing up her vote, due to be officially announced in seven days, surely topped their agenda.

      Big money, military power, and in no stretch of the imagination, ultimately world domination, was at stake in Sharansky. Congress had passed a law authorizing the deployment of lasers on space-based, orbiting platforms. These offensive weapons, touted as being deployed for defensive purposes only, could, of course, also be used to suppress virtually any opposition to American positions in any global conflict over anything, anywhere. The international consternation caused by this U.S. policy was significant, affecting U.S. allies as well as the country’s opponents.

      Citizen groups in a number of states were also violently protesting this expansion of human warfare off the planet, and so unless they were stopped by law, men would do what men so love to do—weaponize yet another sphere. They would take their violence right out into space and off to other worlds.

      Sharansky,

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