Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Grace looked at the conference controls in front of her. She hit the zoom button. “Ciudad del Este” leaped into focus. She ran up the sound, but it didn’t help. Only the man in the wheelchair could hear what was being said. She turned the sound down and went back to looking at the two sweaty, exhausted people on the screen.

St. Kilda employees? Grace wondered.

Plainclothes international cops?

Extreme travelers?

Nothing she saw gave her a clue. From what she’d learned about St. Kilda Consulting, any and all possibilities were on the table.

She zoomed out so that Dwayne was center screen again.

“What’s happening in Ciudad del Este?” she asked.

“It’s a big world. Lots of things happen.”

Right. New topic.

But before she could say anything, Dwayne got up and walked offscreen. So she sat and watched the wall with the global clock, hypnotized by the brilliant edge of dawn advancing across the Atlantic toward New York.

Time made tangible.

And Lane’s time is running out.

Steele ended the conference and spun his wheelchair on the wood parquet floor to face his guest.

“My apologies, Judge Silva,” he said as he used both hands to propel himself across the conference area to the desk where Dwayne had been. “One of the few things you can say with certainty about my work is that appointments are only as good as the paper Dwayne writes them on.”

“No problem, Ambassador. Considering the hour, I’m grateful that you fit me in.”

“People who come to us tend to be at the end of their, shall we say, socially acceptable resources. Your love of and respect for the law is the first thing people mention about you.”

“So why am I here, is that it?”

“We aren’t criminals,” Steele said mildly.

“You sure have made a lot of legal agencies unhappy.”

“We operate where they can’t or won’t. Isn’t that why you’re here-you have a situation that no legally constituted American governmental agency can handle?”

Grace looked into Steele’s clear eyes, metallic blue, deep. She saw intense intelligence and something more. Unflinching ruthlessness, if her CIA file was accurate. His natural coloring was pale, made more so because he had a full head of silver-white hair. His face was handsome in an aristocratic way, with a prominent nose that might have been called a beak on a less civilized, less patrician man.

“You said it was a matter of some urgency?” Steele asked, his voice still soft, gentle, and definitely prodding.

Grace had rehearsed her presentation while she waited for the nameless driver to pick her up. It took less than three minutes to bring the head of St. Kilda Consulting up to speed on Lane.

“Admirably concise, much more so than I would expect from a lawyer,” Steele said. “What do you want from St. Kilda?”

“My son. Alive, well, and in the United States.”

“Again, concise. How much money has gone missing?”

“Calderon wasn’t sure. He said Hector had somewhere between fifty and one hundred million in the fund, some of it his own money, some of it invested for others.”

Steele looked like a man making mental notes. “Unless the Rivas-Osuna crime family has had an unusually profitable year, some of that must have come from people outside of the family.”

“Jaime-Hector’s nephew-would be the one selling the fund outside of the family. He’s the one that roped Calderon in.” Then the implication of Steele’s words sank in. “You sound like you know quite a bit about ROG.”

“Drugs are a substantial part of the billions in black money that rolls around the globe every hour. Illegal arms dealing is another chunk. Corrupt, legally constituted governments are responsible for the majority.”

Although Steele hadn’t emphasized the words legally constituted, Grace got the point.

“I know,” she said. “Legal doesn’t always make it right. But it’s better than the opposite, violence and anarchy.”

Steele nodded. “On that we agree. You’ve explained your son’s situation and your own desires. What of your husband?”

“Ex-husband. We’ve been separated-a personal rather than a legal state-for some time. The divorce was final a few weeks ago.”

“Does Hector know this?”

“I told him. He still thinks I know or can find out where Ted is.”

“Can you?”

“If I could, I wouldn’t be here. Ted and I may share an address in La Jolla, but he hasn’t spent three consecutive days there in years. Other than an e-mail or two, and a voice mail, I haven’t heard from him in three weeks.”

“Did any of the communications suggest he was in difficulty?” Steele asked.

“No.”

“Was the divorce adversarial?”

“No. We’re adults and we behaved like it.”

Steele lifted his eyebrows. “Could Hector be your ex-husband’s stalking horse?”

Grace frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“You say the divorce was amicable-”

“It was.”

Steele ignored the interruption. “-yet you’re a beautiful woman in the prime of life, with a very successful career and a brilliant legal future. Quite a catch by any measure, whether it be physical, intellectual, or social.”

She blinked, surprised by his summary. “I don’t see myself that way.”

Steele’s smile was a lot younger than he was. “I know. It’s part of your allure. By nature men are possessive creatures. Losing you must have stung. Ted wouldn’t be the first divorced man to get even with an ex-wife through a child. Revenge isn’t a pretty emotion, but it’s very powerful.”

Grace looked at her hands. Her nails were short, well kept, businesslike, naked of polish. Hardly the hands of a femme fatale. And if Ted had been hurt by the divorce, he sure never showed it.

Looking back, their marriage had died long before the divorce legally buried it.

“Does it matter why Ted did what he did?” she asked finally.

“It might. Revenge can be a more powerful motivator than fear.”

“Then you’ll have to ask Ted when you find him.”

“Is that what you want?” Steele asked. “For us to find him?”

“If that’s what it takes to get Lane home safe, yes. But I was thinking more along the lines of having one of your, ah, employees go to Ensenada and bring Lane home. To be blunt, I want your best Latin American kidnap specialist-Joe Faroe.”

MANHATTAN

SUNDAY, 2:15 A.M.

“COVERTLY REMOVING LANE FROM Mexico is the most dangerous of your options,” Steele said neutrally.

“What’s the safest?” Grace asked instantly.

“Find Ted, find the money, and return it.” Steele ignored the phone ringing on his desk. “Tell me about Hector Rivas Osuna and Carlos Calderon.”

“They’re both rich and well known, but for different reasons. I suspect you know more about both men than I do.”

“My files don’t have anything new to teach me. You do, Judge Silva.”

Grace stared at the image of Steele while she organized facts in her mind. “Carlos Calderon is one of the most prominent men in Tijuana, and in northwest Mexico for that matter. He’s the oldest son of a major Mexican politician, a former minister of the interior. His father, Higoberto Calderon, was a member of the ruling class, a kingmaker, very wealthy and very powerful. He passed all of it on to Carlos.”

Steele nodded. “Hereditary power. Is that how Ted met Carlos? Mutual financial interests?”

Grace looked at her short nails. “Carlos and Ted have been friends and associates for a number of years. Carlos owns a bank as well as other businesses. My husband owns and runs an investment fund with worldwide holdings. Their interests naturally coincide.”

“From your description, Carlos and Ted are rather like mirror images across the border. Both are wealthy. Both are well connected politically. Both have known you for a long time.”

Silently Grace absorbed the fact that Steele knew she’d gone to high school with Carlos Calderon. “His grades were worse than mine.”

Steele smiled. “It was the same for everyone at Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart. To put it mildly, you excelled at what was and is an intellectually demanding private high school. Does Calderon still live in the United States?”

“No, but at least two of his sisters do. And his mother, I believe.”

“That leaves Hector Rivas Osuna,” Steele said. “How long have you known him?”

“If you know where I went to high school, you know that I met Hector for the first time today. Sorry, yesterday, by your time. It’s after midnight in Manhattan.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’m not as much into global time as you are.”

“Globalism is at the very heart of St. Kilda Consulting. What do you know about Hector?”

“He’s almost courtly for a thug, ugly, ruthless, intelligent, a careful dresser in his own cowboy style. He has the crude charisma that a few criminal leaders achieve. I suspect he had it before he went into crime. Triple testosterone. Whatever. He doesn’t respect anyone’s law except his own. He has frightening insight into everyone’s own special weakness. In my case, my son.”

“What about Hector’s business?”

“Put ROG into Google and see what you come up with,” Grace said roughly.

“I’m more interested in what you know.”

She shrugged, hating every second of the conversation, every word that dragged her closer to the barrio gutter her grandparents, parents, and she herself had spent lifetimes trying to crawl out of.

The gutter Lane was trapped in.

Two days.

And one of those was halfway gone.

“The Rivas clan has long been said to control the smuggling trade in Tijuana.” Grace’s words were as tight as the line of her shoulders. “That accusation has never risen above the level of hearsay, in Mexico or in America.”

“Rumors, shadows flickering on the cave wall,” Steele said. “You dismiss them. Is that because the rumors have never achieved judicial proof in either country?”

“What I believe personally and what I believe wearing a judge’s robe are two very different things. You’ve already heard my personal take on Hector.”

Criminal.

“Tell me about your view of the relationship between Calderon and Hector,” Steele said. “What do you know and what do you suspect?”

“What relationship? There isn’t one. Carlos is a businessman and-” Abruptly she stopped.

For a moment she looked past Steele to the glass walls. Far off to the north, through a gap in the picket line of lighted high-rise buildings, was the place where the twin towers of the World Trade Center had once stood. Their absence was a monument to the way the world could change from one moment to the next.

Her world certainly had.

“Sorry,” she said finally. “That was an old reflex, very deep. If you deny the monster in the closet, it doesn’t exist, does it?”

Steele waited with the patience of a former diplomat.

“Everyone,” Grace said, “agrees on one thing about St. Kilda Consulting-what happens here stays here.”

Steele nodded.

Her mouth turned down. “In any case, I doubt my former client is in a position to object if I talk out of school. Ten years ago, before I was appointed to the federal bench, Ted talked me into doing some legal work for Carlos Calderon.”

You owe me, Gracie. Without me, you wouldn’t be considered for a federal appointment. I’m raising your bastard. If you don’t want Lane to know, you’ll climb off your high horse and do something for me for a change.

“Carlos wanted to sue two San Diego journalists for reporting there were links between his business empire and drug traffickers like the Rivas-Osuna cartel,” she said quietly.

“Men like Calderon often fear a free press more than they do the police.”

Grace’s smile was more of a grimace. “As I investigated the matter, it became clear that the only basis for the news reports was a federal law enforcement intelligence report that had never been made public. In an effort to demonstrate that the source material was unverified and unproven, my law firm demanded to examine the report. We argued that the entire matter was an unfair effort to discredit a well-known Mexican businessman on the basis of innuendo. Racism of a sort. That was the card we played.”

“You weren’t the first. You won’t be the last.”

“That doesn’t make it easier to live with now.”

Denying the monster in the closet was a child’s game, one she’d been playing too long. Yet it was still her first and deepest reflex.