At the Edge of the Sun (Maggie Bennett 3)

“The hell with how he drinks his goddamned coffee,” Ian exploded. “Where has Flynn gone to?”

“Ever hear of Hole in the Wall?” he countered.

“No.”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “Wasn’t that the western town somewhere in the Rockies where all the outlaws hid out? Butch Cassidy, Jesse James and the gang? And the law left them completely alone.”

“That’s what Cul de Sac is. It’s in Northern Africa, somewhere in Salambia, and it’s sort of a cross between a modern hotel and a fortress. The dregs of the earth hang out there—vacation time for terrorists.” His voice was lightly bitter.

“Why hasn’t anyone done anything about it?” Holly demanded.

“What can we do? For one thing, we’re not sure where it is. For another, even if we did know, we can’t very well send bombers or an army into another country—it would be looked on as an act of war. Not that the Salambians have much of an army, but any act of aggression like that could trigger some heavy aid from Russia. We don’t dare.”

“Who’s this we, white man?” Holly demanded.

Randall shrugged. “CIA, Interpol, any of the good guys.”

“Are you one of the good guys?”

“Sometimes.”

“Can we find out where it is?” Ian intervened.

Randall’s chilly eyes met his. “Maybe. We can’t very well call on your sources, can we? Considering your recent unhappy discharge from Her Majesty’s forces I’d think the British army wouldn’t be terribly helpful. And whoever’s been feeding you information has gotten us into nothing but trouble. I doubt they’d give us much help this time.”

Ian’s face grew slightly mutinous. “Maybe that’s the best thing we can do. We … I … have been led into a trap time and time again. Maybe whoever’s been pulling the strings would want to lead us straight to the heart of the matter.”

“Maybe.”

Maggie looked at Randall with a question in her eyes. Ian didn’t know Maeve O’Connor was dead—no one did but the two of them; Maggie hadn’t even told Holly. She opened her mouth to say something, when the imperceptible shake of Randall’s elegant head shut it again, and she leaned back in the fragile chair.

“You try your sources, Ian,” Randall said, “and I’ll try mine. Maybe between the two of them we’ll come up with something.”

Ian was a perceptive man. His green eyes swept between the two of them, suspicious, wary. “I’ll find him,” he said firmly. “I have too big a score to settle with him not to.”

And Maggie, remembering Maeve’s butchered body, shivered in the bright winter sunlight.

seventeen

Maggie shut her suitcase, snapping the locks with her usual efficiency, her mind on the task ahead of them. For once the four of them had worked together, pooling their information, and it had been easier than she had expected. Holly had worked the cocktail circuit, mingling with the diplomatic types that abounded in

Venice. The first ambassador she’d zeroed in on had been the most helpful, possibly because he was the most besotted with Holly’s magnificent aquamarine eyes and her perfectly formed body. From him she learned the general location of Cul de Sac (in the western plains of Salambia), the average occupancy of the compound (around one hundred guests, not counting the staff), and the defenses of the place (generally impregnable).

They’d gone on from there to find that Salambia was a small, emerging nation tucked in between the starving desert vastness of Ethiopia and the equally drought-struck wastes of Somalia. In better times it had been a rich little country, with a leftist dictatorship that nevertheless respected American capitalism and the vast amounts of money the capitalist system could engender. But the drought had wiped out half the economy, and the thirty-seven attempts at a military coup had decimated the rest. Now it was just another starving Third World nation, flirting with Russia, toying with the U.S., struggling desperately to survive and not be absorbed into its more powerful neighbors.

Into this mess had come Timothy Seamus Flynn and his ilk, pouring money into President Mbubu’s coffers in return for amnesty. Murderers from all over the world could hide out in what had started out as the first Holiday Inn in northeastern Africa. They could come and vacation, recuperate with the best of hospital care, and no one could touch them. No one, that is, until now.

Maggie had done her bit, calling Mike Jackson back in Washington. Apart from a plaintive request that she eventually come back to work, her boss at Third World Causes, Ltd., took no more than twenty-four hours to come up with the goods. The current head of operations at Cul de Sac was a retired American agent who’d turned. His code name was Lazarus, and he was considered extremely dangerous. While official Washington couldn’t sanction any sort of attack, the demise of said Lazarus would be greeted with relief and perhaps even some monetary reward.

Maggie had shrugged that one off. For the time being all they could concentrate on was finishing off Tim Flynn. There was little doubt that every inmate of Cul de Sac deserved a swift, bloody death, but Maggie didn’t feel like appointing herself judge, jury, and executioner. If Lazarus tried to stop them it would be a different matter. But their main plan was to get in, take care of Flynn, and escape without anyone being the wiser.

Ian had gone back to the little shop in the Calle del Porco. Maddelena, fresh from Christmas mass, had been stubborn and uncommunicative until Ian had suggested she might be forced to accompany them to Cul de Sac. Rather than have her incompetency revealed, she had provided the most important link in the puzzle—the current password that would get the four of them into the fortress.

Not that the four of them should go. They all knew it was stupid, but not one of them was willing to stay behind. With Maddelena an incommunicado guest of the state of Venice, there was no one to warn Lazarus and his guests that they were coming. All they needed was transportation and visas.

Randall took care of that. Maggie didn’t even want to ask how. He had connections with everyone, and whether it was the CIA, Interpol, or something more nefarious she didn’t need to know. When he arrived back at the Palazzo Carboni with four forged passports and the information that a hired plane would be ready at noon the next day, the others had merely nodded. It was finally going down.

Maggie didn’t want to leave Venice, the decaying elegance of the Palazzo Carboni, the dark room with its sagging bed and cold floors. She didn’t want to leave the first place she’d been happy in years.