Hostage Crisis Read online

“Why?”

  “Why?” He rolled over on his side and propped himself up as she was, his head on his hand. “Why do you want to know? Feeling prurient, Olivia? Because the TV is over there, if you are.”

  The one cable station the Insurrectos had allowed the hotel to pipe in to them was a twenty-four hour porn station. All other stations had been cut off. No news had reached them in weeks.

  Olivia shook her head. “No, that’s not why I’m asking.” She mentally groped for the reason herself. “I saw you sliding through the window a while ago. You’re practiced at it. I know you’ve done it a lot yet you haven’t been caught. It’s like…defiance.”

  “You saw me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Defiance, hmm?”

  She could feel herself blushing and was glad of the peculiar lighting in the room that hid her skin tones. “Look, we’re in strange circumstances—”

  He touched her lips, silencing her. His touch acted like an electric jolt to her, running through her entire body and sensitizing it from toe to tip. Her lips tingled. She drew a breath. It fizzed as she pulled it into her lungs. She remained perfectly still as he pulled his hand away. He was aware of none of the maelstrom he’d set off at his simple touch. She would signal none of it to him. She fought to give nothing away and battled to control her breathing. His proximity was a problem. He could hear every little shift and waver of her breath. For fifteen seconds she concentrated on just breathing, slow and easy, as her lips throbbed and her body with them.

  Daniel dropped his hand to the sheet between them, where it lay like a dark shadow on the pale cotton. “Defiance. Good word, that. I like it. That’s one of the reasons I do it. Just because I can and just because they’re telling me I can’t.”

  “What are the other reasons?”

  He smiled. “I’m not a monk.”

  “I’ve noticed you not being a monk. All of us have.”

  His smile widened. “It passes the time.”

  “You limit your activities to a rather small subset of the pool of available women.”

  “More straight talk.” His brow lifted again. “Is that a formal protest at being passed over?”

  Her heart thudded hard. “Truth, Daniel? I wouldn’t touch a man like you if he were served up on a silver platter…or lying in my bed naked. You’re wired the wrong way for me. I’d sooner bed a walrus.”

  Daniel sat bolt upright and turned to face her. “Excuse me?”

  She pulled the cover up around her shoulders, as his movements had disturbed it. “You heard me. I don’t stutter.”

  “Pretend you do.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Fine then. Pretend I’m the village idiot and need it explained in very small words. Pictures are optional.”

  “Village idiot, huh? I could go with that.” She sat up.

  “Thought you might.” He seemed grimly pleased.

  She waved toward his crotch. “There, that’s a perfect example of what I mean. It doesn’t even occur to you to cover up, does it?”

  He looked down, reached for the sheets and pulled them over his thighs. “Why should I? You’ve already seen everything there is to see.”

  She dropped her hands with an exasperated sigh. “We’ve been locked inside the White Sands for…just over four weeks. You’ve bedded every woman under the age of thirty who’s a guest or one of the staff, or not wearing army green and who is within reach of the hotel. After tonight, I’m not sure how far you roam. Your conquests could spread outside the compound, too, for all I know.”

  “You resent the fact that I have sex, or that you don’t?”

  “Neither.” She clasped her hands together. “I’m going to be generous to myself and guess that we’re the same age. I’m young, you even admit I have great legs. Despite that, for the last four weeks, when you have been looking around the hotel for your next bed partner, you haven’t seen me. Your gaze has slipped right over me. I’m invisible to you.”

  He was silent for a long minute. “Then you do resent being passed over.”

  “No, I’m grateful. I told you. You’re the last person on earth I want to take to bed.”

  He pushed his hand through his hair. “And that’s because…?”

  “Because I’m part of the wallpaper to you. That’s why you walk around naked without so much as twitching a muscle when I’m in the same room, even the same bed with you. You’re one of those men who can’t see women once they reach a certain age. It’s hardwired into your genes. I’ve learned the hard way that trying to change a man like you is like trying to change a leopard’s spots. You can’t fight genetics, either.”

  She rearranged her pillows and her side of the covers once more and settled her head on the pillows again. “Good night,” she said firmly.

  He lay down again. “No offense, Olivia, but as a diplomat, you’re as much on the nose as yesterday’s bloody kippers.”

  Olivia rolled over so that her back was to him. It let her hide the shaky breath she drew in. Good. Let him be hurt. At least it would guarantee he would stay on his side of the bed.

  She thought she wouldn’t get any sleep, not with a man in her bed for the first time in more years than she cared to tote up. She thought she would lay awake mulling over their exchange.

  Instead, she found herself thinking of defiance. Of Daniel’s nightly breaking of the curfew, just because he could and just because the Insurrectos told him he couldn’t. The way he had expertly disabled the sound bug and told her how to avoid tipping off the Insurrectos of the transgression.

  Defiance.

  She liked it.

  * * * * *

  Nick rested his hand on Duardo’s shoulder as he squeezed past the big old-fashioned kitchen chair to get to his own at the top of the table. Calli was already sitting next to Josh at the rickety, scarred table. God knows where she had scrounged the table from.

  For now it served as the boardroom and meeting table for half-a-dozen committees and working groups.

  The little room was tucked away in the back of the house, on the south side. The southern wall was made up of small, dirty windows. Nick thought the room might have been a potting shed.

  It was unbearably hot in the room in the afternoons. Right now it was bearable for it was only seven in the morning and the windows had all been thrown open to catch the morning breeze.

  There was no chance anyone might be lurking outside to listen to their meetings, for the cliffs dropped away right beneath the house on this side, straight down two hundred feet to the sea.

  The car bomb that had killed General Blanco had also destroyed the northwest corner of the house where the big formal dining room they had been using as a boardroom had been. The repair work was underway, with Calli coaxing and bribing where she could to hurry it up, yet it was still two weeks from completion. In the meantime, they squeezed into this tiny leftover of a room.

  Nick still had moments of disorientation when he saw Duardo at these meetings, even though he had been back for four weeks. Even Duardo’s short hair was startling, although it was growing out again.

  Duardo nodded at Nick as he sat down. Duardo had a thick, cheap notebook full of handwriting open in front of him. There had been no disorientation for Duardo. He had slid back into full productivity like an otter into water, with barely a disturbed ripple to show his reentry.

  General Flores hurried in, carrying a briefcase exploding with paperwork and another armful of notes. He was panting from climbing the flights of stairs from the beach, where the army generally trained and quartered, up to the big house where Nick and others in the household lived and where this meeting was being held. Flores was a lean man with an abundant moustache. He nodded at Nick and sat at the other end of the table.

  Josh cleared his throat. “I repeat my protest, Nick. I shouldn’t be here.”

  “You know as much about Vistaria’s affairs as we do. Let’s not get into this again. These are extraordinary times. I need the knowledge you have
between your ears. Duardo, let’s begin.”

  “¿Ahora debemos tener la reunión en inglés?” General Flores asked.

  “Yes, we’re having the meeting in English now,” Nick confirmed. “There’s a reason for the inconvenience, General, so you will need to bear with us.”

  Flores grimaced. “If you bear my English, I bear it.” He shrugged and looked at Duardo. “Colonel?”

  Duardo blinked, hesitating. Nick knew why. Duardo didn’t think he deserved the double-promotion. In wartime, promotions were often rapid and extemporaneous. The fact was, they needed Duardo in a senior position. Nick himself had pushed for the double-tap. He mentally shrugged. Duardo was a soldier first. He was used to obeying orders. He’d get used to this one.

  Duardo looked down at his notes, marshaling his thoughts. “When I was inside the Insurrectos’ headquarters, posing as Zalaya, I controlled the intelligence machine Zalaya set up. There were a number of interesting channels of information coming back into Zalaya from around the world. The most interesting one, however, didn’t report to Zalaya at all. It was under Serrano’s control and it came from inside this house.”

  Josh rubbed his temple and sighed. Flores wrinkled his nose as he stumbled through the mental translation, then swore in Spanish.

  “You don’t know who?” Calli asked quietly, putting down her pen.

  Duardo shook his head. “I do know the source was responsible for the bomb that killed General Blanco. Whether they actually set the bomb or just arranged it—that, I don’t know.” Duardo looked across the table at the General Flores. “Sir, we must assume it was someone with military privileges.”

  Flores’ face turned an interesting shade of pink. Flores was an unimaginative general, yet he had been next in line when Blanco died. No one had ever expected he’d be called upon to lead the Vistarian army, least of all Flores himself. Flores would have a hard time swallowing the idea that a military man would ever betray his country and a superior officer the way Duardo was suggesting. Duardo, who’d had to pose as Zalaya himself for weeks, had adapted to the idea with greater ease. Besides, he was younger.

  “The bomb was meant for Señor Escobedo,” Flores protested. “You cannot say this person is army because General Blanco was killed instead.”

  Nick saw Calli’s wince from the corner of his eye.

  Duardo spread his hand, indicating reasonableness. “Yet the car meant to drive Señor Escobedo, or whoever was to attend the event in his place, was an army staff car, driven by army personnel and protected by army security. Apart from Señora Calli and the people in this room, there were maybe eighteen key people who were aware that Señor Escobedo was going to attend the function that night. They were all army personnel.” Duardo smiled a little. “Shall I interrogate Señor Escobedo’s wife, General?”

  Nick saved the General from having to respond. “General, can you see now why we called this meeting so secretively and why we are conducting it in English?”

  Flores cleared his throat and tugged at his tie. He nodded. “We will begin an immediate investigation!”

  “You can’t!” Calli responded instantly, even before Nick could protest, or Duardo could raise his hand again.

  Flore looked at her blankly. “Excúseme, Señora Escobedo. ¿Por qué no?”

  Nick felt fingers digging into his thigh and looked down. Calli was holding him down in his chair, her nails gouging crescents into his flesh through the fabric of his trousers. She didn’t even look at him.

  “We are speaking English, General Flores,” she said, her voice flat. “And my name is Calli. Or you can call me ma’am, if you wish.” She gave the general no time to react. She held up her other hand, her palm out toward the general. “If you start an investigation, the source will instantly know we’re aware of them. They will shut up shop and leave Acapulco. Then we’ll never catch them.”

  “That is no matter,” Flores said flatly. “He goes. Problem is no more.”

  Calli shook her head. “No,” she said, her voice just as firm. “We must find who he or she is and question them thoroughly. We need to find out who else in this house is with the Insurrectos and we don’t want them running back to Serrano with whatever they’ve learned about us while they’re here.”

  Flores’ face darkened further. Intelligence and counterintelligence was not his natural talent. But then, the game had not come naturally to Duardo, either. Yet Duardo had seen the implications immediately, whereas Flores was still struggling with the idea that there might be more of them, or that it might even be a woman.

  Calli gazed at Flores, not sparing him. Nick waited for Flores’ response, hoping the general could overcome the cultural biases he’d grown up with and deal with Calli as an equal.

  Flores swallowed. “Señora Calli—” he began.

  Nick let out his breath.

  Flores lifted his hand. “If we do not investigate, how else do we find this man? This person?”

  “We watch,” Calli responded. “We follow any trail the bastardo leaves. And he will leave one, General. They always do sooner or later. If there are enough of us monitoring for signs, we’ll spot them.”

  “In the meantime,” Nick added, “we need to filter the information we distribute outside this room. It must be as innocuous as possible. Everything will be on a need-to-know basis until further notice. Most of the key information must be kept here, with us.”

  Josh scrubbed both hands through his hair. “Any Vice-President worth his salt would advise you, Nick, that your plan will fall over inside two weeks. You’re setting everyone up in this room to become the most overworked souls on the planet. You can’t operate that way in the long term. There has to be a better way to do this.”

  Nick smiled. “That’s fine for the boardroom, but this is military intelligence—”

  “And you’re still using the same basic commodity,” Josh overrode him. “Human bodies.”

  Nick hid the frustration that bit at him. “You have a better idea?”

  “Sure.” Josh sat back. “You need to sniff out a rat, so put a cat on his trail. Pick out the best counter-intelligence officer still reporting to the loyalist army. Once you know they’ve checked out as clean, assign them to hunting down this guy. Give them free rein of the house, all information and records, whatever it takes to track the bastardo down, as long as it’s done discreetly and doesn’t set off any alarms. Meantime, everyone here goes about their normal duties as if nothing’s changed.”

  Nick nodded. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “There’s just one minor problem with it. General—” He turned to Flores. “Who is your best intelligence officer on staff?”

  Flores frowned his way through a mental translation, then smiled. “If I even had an answer, I would not tell you the name of intelligence operators. It would ruin their work, no?” He shook his head. “Only, I know we have none. All gone. Dead, or with Insurrectos, or missing.” He nodded toward Duardo. “Colonel Peña is best at this than any of us. He has…er…training now.”

  “Ten weeks posing as Zalaya doesn’t make me an intelligence officer,” Duardo protested. “What Josh is proposing is completely different.”

  “Why?” Josh asked. “It just takes a sneaky mind that can outthink the rat you’re hunting and you’ve got a mind that works like a pretzel. That Mexican three-step you pulled off as Zalaya is proof of that.”

  “Duardo can’t do it,” Nick interjected. “For the same reason that none of us in this room can. We’re all visible and high-profile in the house and among the army personnel. If we change our behavior patterns in any way, the rat will be alerted.”

  Josh drummed his fingers on the table. “Something isn’t adding up here,” he said slowly. “Duardo has been back from Vistaria for nearly four weeks, yet you’re telling us about this rat now. Why only now?”

  Nick caught Calli’s glance at him. He’d wanted to avoid this subject, only Calli insisted that within this room, it must be aired. Now Josh had skewered the topic neatl
y through the eye. Nick took a breath. “Mexico broke off diplomatic negotiations with us twenty-four hours ago—to give us time to reestablish our leadership base, they said.” The words tasted like ashes in his mouth.

  There was a little silence.

  Josh blew out his breath again. “Hell’s bells,” he murmured. “Are they talking to Serrano?”

  This time, Nick winced. Calli’s hand curled around his under the table, even though her face was turned to Josh. “No,” she told Josh. “Not as far as we can tell.”

  Josh leaned forward. “And how are we able to tell?” he asked. “We have no…um…intelligence operators, do we?”

  Duardo shifted in his chair. “We do have my brother, Cristián. He has an unmonitored internet connection that is still working and a Facebook account with over a thousand friends. He uses open code and his friends use fictitious names, free email accounts and virtual private networks. They mask their IP addresses and report back to him from across the four islands. I have been receiving status reports on the movements of Serrano and his key personnel for about three weeks. It’s not as good as having someone inside the palace, but for now, it works.”

  “And the Insurrectos haven’t noticed all this news about their activities flowing across Facebook?” Josh asked, with a half-amused, half-baffled expression. Social networking was a mystery to him.

  “Serrano knows as much about the internet as you do,” Duardo replied. “There were few officers of Zalaya’s capabilities that would think to monitor the social networks. However, even if they were to stumble over Cristián’s Facebook account, they would find he has a passion for independent professional wrestling. So do his friends. They discuss individual wrestlers’ latest matches, upcoming appearances and performances with much relish. They’re big fans of a promotion outfit called International Wrestling United, that they spend most of their time obsessing over in minute detail.”

  Josh sat back. “International Wrestling…” He considered that for a moment. “It’s a euphemism for the Insurrectos?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the wrestlers are all Insurrectos they’re watching.”