As if on signal, the waiters poured the glasses full and retreated.
Raising her glass high, she said, “There it is. Take it.”
She put the glass to her lips and took a long drink. The others followed suit as if in a strange communion ritual.
“Good,” she said. “Now for the next step. You will go home and wait for a call. When a request is made you will comply without question. Nothing that transpired at this meeting can be divulged. Not even the fact that you were here.”
She scanned each face. “If there are no more questions,” she said, making clear by her tone that debate had ended, “please enjoy yourselves. Dinner will be served in the dining hall in ten minutes. I have brought in a five-star chef, so I don’t think you will be displeased. There’s entertainment from Las Vegas after dinner, and you will be shown to your rooms. You will leave after breakfast tomorrow morning, in the sequence you arrived. I will see you at the next meeting, exactly a month from now.”
With that, she left the table, strode across the room and through the double doors she had entered by, walking down a corridor and into an anteroom. Two men stood in the room, legs wide apart, arms folded behind their backs, their deep-set black eyes glued to the flickering screens that took up one wall. They were identical twins dressed alike in matching black leather jackets. They had the same stocky physiques, high cheekbones, hair the color of wet hay, and dark, beetling brows.
“Well, what do you think of our guests?” she said with derision. “Will these worms serve their purpose and loosen the soil?”
The analogy was lost on the brothers, who had only one thing on their minds.
Speaking in an eastern European accent, the man on the right said, “Whom do you want . . . ”
“. . . us to eliminate?” said the man on the left, finishing the sentence.
Their monotone voices were exactly alike. Brynhild smiled with satisfaction. The answer reaffirmed her conviction that she had made the right decision rescuing Melo and Radko Kradzik from the NATO forces that wanted to bring the notorious brothers before the World Court at The Hague charged with crimes against humanity. The twins were classic sociopaths and would have made a mark for themselves even without the Bosnian war. Their paramilitary status conferred semi-legitimacy on the murder, rape, and torture they carried out in the name of nationalism. It was difficult to imagine these monsters ever having been in a mother’s womb, but somewhere they had forged the ability to intuit what the other was thinking. They were the same man, only in separate bodies. Their bond made them doubly dangerous because they could act without verba
l communication. Brynhild had stopped trying to tell them apart. “Whom do you think should be eliminated?”
One man reached out with a hand whose clawlike fingers seemed to be made for inflicting pain and reversed the video tape. The other twin pointed to a man in a blue suit.
“Him,” they said simultaneously.
“Congressman Kinkaid?”
“Yes, he didn’t . . . ”
“. . . like what you said.”
“And the others?”
Again the video reversed and they pointed.
“Professor Dearborn? A pity, but your instincts are probably right. We can’t afford to have anybody with even the trace of scruples. Very well, cull him out as well. Do your work as discreetly as possible. I’m scheduling a meeting of the board of directors soon to go over our long-range plans. I want everything in place before then. I won’t tolerate mistakes the way those fools bungled their job in Brazil ten years ago.”
She whirled from the room and left the twins to themselves. The men remained there unmoving, their glittering eyes looking at the screen with the hungry expression of a cat choosing the fattest goldfish in the tank for his dinner.
8
THE RIVER SCENERY had changed little since Dr. Ramirez waved good-bye from his dock and wished the Trouts a safe trip. The airboat followed mile after mile of the twisting and unbroken ribbon of dark green water. An unyielding wall of trees hemmed the river in on both sides and separated it from the eternal night of the forest. At one point they had to stop because the river was blocked by debris. They welcomed the break from the mind-numbing drone of the airplane engine. They tied lines around the entangled logs and branches and unclogged the bottleneck. The job was time-consuming, and it was late afternoon when the leafy ramparts gave way to brief glimpses of open space and cultivated fields along the river’s edge. Then the forest opened up to reveal a cluster of grass huts.
Paul reduced speed and aimed the airboat’s blunt prow between several dugout canoes drawn up on the muddy banking. With a quick goose on the throttle, he slid the boat onto the shore and cut the engine. He removed the NUMA baseball cap he had been wearing backward on his head and used it to fan his face.
“Where is everybody?”
The unearthly quiet was in sharp contrast to Dr. Ramirez’s settlement where the natives bustled about their business throughout the day. This place appeared to be deserted. The only signs of recent human habitation were tendrils of gray smoke that rose from fire holes.
“This is very weird,” Gamay said. “It’s as if the plague struck.”
Paul opened a storage box and pulled out a backpack. Dr. Ramirez had insisted that the Trouts borrow a long-barreled Colt revolver. Moving slowly, Paul placed the rucksack between them, reached inside, unclipped the holster, and felt the reassuring hardness of the grip.
“It’s not the plague I’m worrying about,” Paul said quietly, scanning the silent huts. “I’m thinking about that dead Indian in the canoe.”
Gamay had seen Paul reach into the bag and shared his concern.