Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

L’Enfant’s single eye glittered as he looked at the nurse. “My last ones were actually twins. Not identical, mind you, but twins nonetheless.” He clapped his right hand into the claw-like pincer of his disfigured left. “Leave us, my dear.” When the nurse had gone, L’Enfant said, “You have not tracked me here to discuss my medical staff, I presume.”

“You presume correctly.” Cabrillo waited for the shadowy man to figure out why he’d come.

L’Enfant studied him for a moment and finally asked, “Why the disguise?”

“I needed to cross through some nasty neighborhoods to get here. I didn’t want to look like an attractive target for a mugger.”

“You always were a careful planner. Okay, what else may I presume? I have wronged you by speaking of the Corporation to Kenin, something for which I must atone.”

Juan nodded while L’Enfant adjusted the oxygen cannula under the ruin of his burned nose.

“I presume that my atonement comes in the form of tracking down Admiral Kenin for you.”

“Correct.”

“And you came to me in person rather than reaching me through more conventional ways in order for me to understand that if I fail to find him, my life is then forfeit.”

“Four for four. You should go into the soothsaying business. Do you know where Kenin went to ground?”

The man shook his reptilian head. “No. Don’t think I don’t have feelers out there, but he knew what he was doing when he rabbited.”

“‘Rabbited,’ really?” Juan said with a smile. “Last time I read someone ‘rabbiting’ was an old spy novel.”

“You prefer ‘on the lam’?”

“I prefer to know where he is,” Juan said sharply to remind the information broker that this wasn’t idle banter.

“I will find him.”

“Now call Amo and have him send the pickup. I’d rather not walk all the way back to where I can find a working bus that will eventually take me to a part of the city that has taxis.” It might have sounded like a joke, but Cabrillo had had to traverse ten miles of urban jungle on foot to get here because buses, let alone cabs, never ventured into this part of the city.

“I will do you one better. I have an old Mercedes that doesn’t attract too much attention. Where are you staying?”

“The Fasano,” he lied.

“I figured a guy like you would go for nostalgia and stay at the Copa Palace.”

Had Juan not been a better poker player, he would have given away that L’Enfant had guessed where he was actually staying. He loved the stately deco-style Copacabana Palace Hotel and stayed there whenever he was in Rio.

“No matter. I will have my man drop you at the Fasano. No buses or taxis. It is the least I can do.”

Juan put a little menace in his voice. “The least you can do is lead me to Pytor Kenin.”

The Container was in play.

That’s what it was called, The Container. Capital T, capital C. The. Container.

That it was finally in play had sent bells ringing at the CIA, FBI, Homeland, Treasury, NSA, and just about every other acronymic entity in Washington, D.C. Cabrillo wouldn’t have been surprised to know his old friend Dirk Pitt and NUMA had been read in on The Container.

The rumors swirling around it were the stuff of legend and myth. No one was certain how or why The Container came into being or who was behind it, but from every souk and bazaar, from one end of the Middle East to the farthest island of Muslim Indonesia, word of its contents had spread.

In the first years of America’s invasion of Iraq, massive amounts of cash were used to buy loyalty, as was custom in many parts of the region, though loyalty ran out when the money did or someone had a better offer. That left Washington in the position of having to pour unimaginable streams of cash into Baghdad, Basrah, and every hamlet up to the Kurdish border with Turkey.

Oversight of this bounty was thought to be foolproof but in actuality was an utter joke. Vast sums of cash were siphoned off by yet another layer of corruption in a corrupted society. The problem for those partaking of Uncle Sam’s largesse wasn’t how to get the money but how to get it out of the country. Sure, individuals could smuggle a few bundles of hundre

d-dollar bills, but what about those on top of the scheming and stealing? Packing a hundred K across a desert outpost was one thing. But what about the billion in hard currency that was unaccounted for? It would take a tractor-trailer to move it, or a container.

So that’s what happened to it. It went into a conex shipping container and then it sat in a warehouse because those who stole it also knew the Americans would never stop looking for it. So they did what Arabs were especially good at. They outwaited their enemies. It took years, but eventually the U.S. drew down its forces. Patrols no longer guarded every street corner and intersection. Tanks and up-armored Humvees disappeared. Black Hawks and Cobras no longer buzzed over the cities in multitudes that rivaled a hornet swarm. After a decade, the Americans wound down their presence in Iraq until the crime bosses decided it was finally safe enough to move the cash. It would need to be laundered, of course, and a deal was struck with several banks in the Far East. To do it locally would set off alarm bells among the international monetary watchdogs.