The Job: A Fox And O'Hare Novel Part 17

There was a wrought-iron balcony outside the study and the bathroom, and an awning over the French doors that opened to the study. She climbed onto the railing, grasped the awning's wrought-iron supports, and hoisted herself onto the awning, careful to put her weight on the support struts and not the fabric. She crawled onto the roof and went straight to the satellite dish. Crouching down, she slipped off her right shoe and slid the sole off, revealing a hidden compartment. She removed the thin thumb-drive-size bugging device that she'd picked up in Lisbon.

She clipped the device to the cable that ran from the satellite dish to the house. The device was designed to bug the data stream and send a copy to the FBI using the same satellite that it was all flowing through. It was simple and ingenious. Jessup would be able to take down Violante and his whole organization with the information obtained from the bug.

Kate slid down the awning, slipped back into the bathroom, and closed the window behind her. She splashed water on her face and flushed the toilet. She left the bathroom and returned to Reyna.

"I'm going to skip dinner and go to bed," Kate said. "I'd avoid the crab if I were you."

Back at the guesthouse, Kate found a large platter of golden chocolates on the kitchen table. She doubted it was delivered as a gesture of hospitality. More likely, it was a pretense so the guards could nose around and see what she'd been up to all day. Or maybe it was like a maid checking the hotel minibar. Maybe they were keeping track of what she'd eaten so they could deduct the cost from the $17.5 million.

She settled herself onto the couch and switched on the television. She surfed around, looking for a show she wanted to watch, and fell asleep before she found one. When she awoke, the television was off and her father was standing at the kitchen table.

"We're going to have to work on your unconscious alarm system," he said. "I've been here moving around for five minutes, and you've only now opened your eyes."

He was dressed in black and was studying the platter of chocolates.

"I don't see much difference between these and a Hershey's Kiss except that you can eat the wrapper on these," he said.

"What the heck are you doing here?"

"You told me to have fun," Jake said. "This is fun."

"How did you get past the cameras and the guards?"

"I came in through Violante's secret escape tunnel. I found the hidden exit at the bottom of the gorge. It wasn't hard to spot if you know what you're looking for. The other end is right here in the coat closet." Jake gestured to a closet beside the front door. "The whole closet is actually a small elevator. You turn a particular coat hook counterclockwise and off you go."

"They're holding me hostage in the same room as their secret escape route?" Kate shook her head. "How dumb is that?"

"You didn't know it was here, did you?" Jake said, taking a bite of chocolate.

"No," she said.

"There you go. That's why they call it a secret escape route."

She was glad to see Jake, but having him here complicated things for her, and it left Nick and the crew vulnerable.

"What about the boat?" she asked. "Without you, there's n.o.body in charge or watching out for the crew. And what about Willie? She can't handle the boat on her own. She doesn't know what she's doing."

"Relax. They are all in good hands. Billy Dee has hijacked plenty of boats, most of them a lot bigger than this one, and steered them through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea with just two men. So this is a pleasure cruise for him. And Nick is on top of everything else."

"Does he know you're here?"

"Nick didn't send me," Jake said. "But he was glad when I told him where I was going."

"He wasn't concerned that you were putting the entire operation at risk?"

"He cares more about you than any operation."

"Only because I keep him from being arrested." She saw her father sway and grab the table for support. "Dad? What's wrong?"

"Feeling sleepy ... too sleepy. Gotta be the chocolates."

Kate rushed forward, catching her father before he hit the floor. She took his pulse and noted his color. He was out cold, but he wasn't critical. His vital signs were all strong. She looked over at the candy display.

Reyna had drugged the chocolate.

At least she was fairly certain the candy wasn't laced with lethal poison, and that her father would eventually be fine. There was no upside for Violante or Reyna in killing her. At least not yet.

So why did Reyna need her helpless and compliant? There were only a few possible answers, and none of them were pleasant. The one thing Kate was sure of was that Reyna would be paying her a visit tonight.

Kate dragged Jake into the bedroom and stretched him out beside the bed, out of sight from the door. She turned the lights off in all the rooms and waited in the darkness for Reyna.

Reyna arrived about an hour later. Kate could see her outside, through the edge of the closed drapes, propping her AK-47 outside the door. Kate a.s.sumed the rifle was a sign for the guards, letting them know where she was. Reyna adjusted the large satchel that she had over her shoulder, slipped inside the house, and crept toward the bedroom with remarkable stealth.

Kate flattened herself against a wall in the bedroom, and when Reyna entered the room, Kate whacked her in the head with a frying pan she'd commandeered from the kitchen. Reyna went dead still for a moment, then crumpled to the floor with a hiss of air.

Kate flipped the light on, lifted the satchel off Reyna's shoulder, and emptied it out onto the bed. It contained four nylon cords, rubber gloves, a pair of needle-nose pliers, and a filet knife. She looked back down at Reyna. "I don't even want to think about what you were going to do with this."

Jake started coming around as the tiny, rickety elevator dropped down the narrow shaft. He was on the floor, his back against one of the three elevator walls. Kate stood across from him, watching the sharp, rocky face of the shaft pa.s.sing by on the open side where the closet door had been. The only light in the pitch-dark shaft came from the flashlight app on her father's cellphone.

"Take it easy, Dad," Kate said. "We're in the elevator."

"What happened after I pa.s.sed out?"

"Reyna paid me a visit with pliers, a filet knife, and some nylon cords."

"She was going to tie you up, pull out some fingernails or teeth, and maybe peel off a few layers of skin," he said. "That wasn't very friendly."

"I'll say."

"Did you strangle her with your underwire?"

"Nope," Kate said. "The garrote is in my other bra."

"Another missed opportunity," Jake said. "Is she alive?"

"Of course she is. Killing her would have messed up the whole con. But she'll be tied up for a while. I bound her arms and legs to the bedposts with the nylon cords and gagged her with a towel. She'd left her AK-47 outside the guest house, warning off the guards, so we have some time before she either escapes from the ropes or is discovered."

They hit bottom, and Jake got shakily to his feet. "There's a deer trail through the gorge," he said. "I left a Jeep on a fire road about two miles south of here."

"Are you up for a walk?"

"Sure am," Jake said. "I had a nice, restful nap."

"What's the plan after we get to the car?"

"We've got rooms at the Marbella Club."

It was a five-star hotel, the posh resort of royals and movie stars. It had put Marbella on the map back in the 1950s, and it hadn't lost any of its cachet since then.

"Nick has been a bad influence on you," Kate said.

"Nick made the reservations for us. He said it was the FBI's treat to thank us for our trouble."

Nick knocked on Violante's door and took him up to the deck shortly after daybreak. The skies were clear and there was nothing but wide-open sea in all directions. They could have been anywhere on earth.

Billy Dee operated the crane, lifting up the ROV and lowering it down to the water on the starboard side of the boat. Violante stood at the starboard railing, intently watching the process.

Nick handed Violante a cup of coffee. "It will be a half hour before it reaches the bottom," Nick said. "Then the fun begins." They stood at the rail and watched the ROV sink below the surface, slowly disappearing into the murk, until all they could see was the tether line and umbilical cable that the ROV was dragging down with it.

Rodney Smoot was sequestered in the cargo hold, ready to put his render farm to work. "We're all set down here whenever you are," Rodney said into Nick's earbud. "We can pick up the video feed on descent if you want to get an early start on the show."

"We could watch the feed on descent, but it's pretty boring stuff," Nick said to Violante. "I suggest we grab some breakfast and then make our way to the command center."

The message was said to Violante, but meant for Rodney.

"Gotcha," Rodney said. "The opening credits and theme song are all cued up."

"Are we on top of the s.h.i.+pwreck?" Violante asked, following Nick to the deckhouse.

"More or less," Nick replied. "We'll have to do some traveling underwater to get there."

Violante followed Nick to the galley and helped himself to bread and ham and fresh figs. He topped off his coffee, and stood. He was ready to get on with his adventure. Nick took the hint and walked Violante down the corridor to the command center.

Violante paused for a moment in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He stared at the array of b.u.t.tons, monitors, keyboards, and joysticks. It wasn't necessary to know what any of it did. It was a big, s.h.i.+ny thing, and he was drawn to it like a salmon to a fis.h.i.+ng lure.

"This is the heart and soul of our operation, the driver's seat of the ROV," Nick said to Violante.

Tom Underhill had been at the controls, but he gave up his chair to Nick when Nick came into the room. Nick took the seat and steered the ROV slowly over the seabed.

In the silence and darkness of the command center, Violante's eyes fixed on the screen, and he felt as if he were swimming in the depths toward the treasure himself. His throat was dry and his heart was pounding. He hadn't been this anxious or excited in years. The antic.i.p.ation was almost unbearable and yet wonderful at the same time.

"Would it be possible for me to take a turn at the joystick?" Violante asked.

"Sure," Nick said, vacating the seat. "Just think of this as a videogame. There's a large outcropping of jagged rock coming up. You want to make sure you steer around it."

Violante wrapped his hand around the stick and cautiously moved the ROV. The outcropping of rock appeared on the screen and Violante veered off to one side to avoid it. When the ROV cleared the rock Violante caught sight of the golden table, sticking upright out of the muck ahead, gleaming in the light cast by the ROV. The picture Hartley had shown him in Marbella hadn't fully captured the grandeur of the riches in the murk of the ocean floor. The radiance of the gold on the table, and the intricate engravings on the legs, showed through the concretions that stuck to the table like dollops of brown plaster.

Violante was so caught up in what he was seeing that he stopped paying attention to his driving, and the screen shuddered as the ROV sc.r.a.ped the side of a large rock.

"You break it, you buy it," Hartley said. "You've sc.r.a.ped the entire left side of the ROV against that rock. Looks like you took a light off."

"Sorry about that," Violante said, allowing the ROV to hover in place. "But it hardly matters in comparison to this vast wealth."

It mattered to Tom, who heard Nick's helpfully precise description of the damage through their earbud communications system. Tom signaled to Billy Dee in the crane to bring up the ROV. They'd have to replicate the damage to the vehicle before Violante showed up on deck. And they had to do it without damaging the vehicle so much that they revealed it was a hollow fake inside. It pained him to have to take a claw hammer to his beautiful creation.

The only thing that could have made the vision in front of Violante more dreamlike for him was if a mermaid swam by, beckoning him with her smile.

Beyond the splendid table, as far as the scope of the lights could reach in the murk, were piles of coins that had once been stored in wooden crates. The crates had long since rotted away, spilling the coins onto the ocean floor. Golden plates, goblets, flatware, candlesticks, and trinket boxes were scattered along with the coins, concretion-covered cannons, and cannonb.a.l.l.s. It was a field of splendor, wealth, and legend beyond Violante's wildest imagination. It was a boyhood fantasy come true.

He looked past the gold and noticed something that didn't fit. There were black boxes, the size of bricks, with tiny antennas on them. The boxes were spread in strategic spots around the table and the piles of coins and they were connected to one another with a blue cable.

"What are those boxes?" Violante asked.

"Insurance policies," Hartley said. "Explosive charges capable of reducing all of this gold to dust and scattering it over a wide area, perhaps miles with the current."

It sickened Violante that Hartley could even think about destroying something so glorious, so rare. Blowing up priceless riches that have withstood centuries in the deep would be a terrible crime, certainly worse than anything he had ever done. People could be replaced. But good luck finding a one-ton solid gold table anywhere.

"Destroying those priceless, irreplaceable artifacts would be sacrilege," Violante said. "Unforgivable."

"As an archaeologist by training, I agree with you," Hartley said. "So don't make me do it. If you want this, pay me for it."

"You don't have a very high opinion of me."

"Just being careful," Hartley said. "Would you like to take some souvenirs home with you?"

"Absolutely."

"Pick a pile of coins, and we'll scoop some of them up," Nick said.

Violante pointed to the pile directly in front of them. "Those will do."

Nick showed Violante how to use the left robotic arm to remove a white plastic bucket from the ROV and hold it steady on the seabed while using the right robotic arm to shovel coins into it. The process took about forty-five minutes, and Violante enjoyed every second of it.

The experience brought back a childhood memory. He was at an arcade with his dad and tried one of those coin-operated machines that gave you a chance to scoop up a stuffed rabbit with a joystick-operated claw hand. He wasn't able to get the animal and threw a fit. His father smashed the gla.s.s and gave him the stuffed animal. When the manager came over and chastised them, his father shot the man in the face. It was a happy moment. This would be too. Maybe he'd shoot Nick Hartley in the face to come full circle.

Violante used the right arm to put a lid on the bucket, and used the left arm to secure the bucket to the ROV.

"Excellent," Nick said. "You've really got the hang of it. Time to bring the ROV back up to the surface. I'll take over the controls now."

Violante stood behind Nick and watched the ROV trace its path back around the outcropping of rock, skim over the ocean floor, and make a slow ascent. The screen went black and Violante gasped.

"What happened?" he asked.

"The crane operator has taken over," Nick said. "Our ROV is being lifted out of the water. Time for us to go on deck."

Nick and Violante reached the starboard railing just as the ROV was carefully set on the deck. The left side of the ROV was badly sc.r.a.ped, chrome hanging from the nacelle and a large gash where one of the side lights had been. Nick thought Tom had done a great job replicating the damage Violante had supposedly caused.

There was a white bucket on a shelf underneath the nose of the craft. Tom stepped up, lifted the wet, heavy bucket out of the ROV, brought it over to Nick and Violante, and set it down at their feet.

Nick handed Violante a pair of rubber gloves. "Put these on. The concretions on the gold can be sharp."

Tom lifted the lid off the bucket, which was filled with murky water and smelled like rotting fish. Violante reached into the cold water and came out with a handful of coins. The coins were dripping with muck, but the gold still shone through, glittering in the sunlight.

"Magnificent," he said, and dropped the coins back into the bucket.

"It's time for you to go back to your room," Nick said. "Take the bucket with you, if you like."

Violante replaced the lid and carried the bucket back to the deckhouse. He stopped at the door to his cabin and turned to Nick.