Price shook her head.
“Surprisingly enough,” she said, “he’s clean, at least from China’s perspective. Consensus is that he’s a patriot and incorruptible. That’s earned him more than a few enemies within his own government, as you can imagine.”
“Sure,” Bolan said.
“To take it a step further,” Brognola chimed in, “we think that’s one of the reasons he sticks so close to Chiun. There are more than a few guys on the take who’d just as soon see this Boy Scout taken out of the mix. But no one has the guts to do it, because they know he’s Chiun’s meal ticket. Or one of them, at least. And he’d be damned mad if someone took the colonel out.”
“Are they that close?” Bolan asked.
“Their only bond is money,” Price replied. “Apparently Chiun thinks Deng is a sentimental idiot. Deng thinks Chiun’s greedy and unpatriotic. But neither of them wants to pull the brakes on the gravy train. That’s why they tolerate each other. It’s an uneasy alliance, to put it mildly.”
“And up here is Albert Bly,” Brognola announced.
Bolan turned and saw a photo of a Caucasian man clad in a tuxedo. He was shaking hands with another similarly clad man whom Bolan recognized as a U.S. congressman. Bly balanced a champagne glass in his other hand as the two mugged for the camera.
“This is from the New York Times society page,” Brognola said. “Up until about two years ago, Bly was a very public face for Garrison. He was all over the news shows. Had audiences with congressmen from both parties. Then the company hit some rocky financial times. The board of directors named him chairman, kicked him upstairs and he disappeared from the public eye, seemingly overnight. We think there’s more to it. We’re still digging around to see what we can find out, but there are a couple of theories.”
“Like?”
“His corporate jet has filed a lot of flight plans to the Dominican Republic and Thailand, if that tells you anything,” Kurtzman said.
“It tells me plenty,” Bolan said. The soldier knew that both countries had booming sex tourism trades, an industry he’d confronted more than once. “Seems a guy in his position was courting disaster by going to those places.”
“No doubt,” Brognola said. “And, if either Chiun or Deng know this, it’d be an effective lever to force him to cooperate.”
“If they had to push him that hard,” Bolan replied. “Money alone can be a hell of a motivator.”
“It could be any combination of things,” Brognola agreed.
“So what’s the request?” Bolan asked.
“We need someone to find Serrano,” Brognola said. “We have to know what she learned, what her team learned. It had to be big for Bly to risk snatching and killing those agents.”
“ If he was the one who took those agents,” Bolan said. “Do we know that yet?”
“There’s a chance that someone else did it, but I’d be surprised. This was a very coordinated snatch-and-grab operation. It’s not something Chiun would’ve pulled,” Price stated.
“Why is this our gig?” Bolan asked. “I mean why won’t the CIA go in and pull her out?”
“Two reasons,” Brognola said. “First, all these operatives are nonofficial cover. That means that our government can’t officially acknowledge any relationship between them and the agents. We aren’t worried so much about the kidnappers themselves, since they’re probably nonstate actors. But, what we can do is send in a Justice Department agent to look for an American kidnapped in another country. And there’s another reason, which more specifically has to do with you.”
“And that would be?”
“The President doesn’t like how this went down, and neither do I. Bly has a lot of contacts in the intelligence world. Not just in the United States, but intelligence agencies in Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Jordan. Name it. He knows people. We want to handle it because we operate outside normal channels. You’ll have a handful of vetted contacts when you hit the ground, but all the interfacing with other government agencies will happen through us.”
“Did you just say ‘interface’?” Bolan asked.
“Will you take the job?” Brognola asked, ignoring the gibe.
“Of course,” the Executioner said.
“Grab your gear then,” Brognola said. “Jack’s already warming up the plane.”
2
What the hell was happening? Were they going to kill her? What did they know? The thoughts raced through Maria Serrano’s mind as she regained consciousness and found herself seated in a wooden chair, hands bound behind her back.
Think, she told herself. Don’t panic. Use your brains. Use your training, not your emotions. She took a deep breath and looked around the room. She was positioned in the center of the cramped cell. A naked bulb hung from the ceiling and beamed down meager white light that the dark brick walls seemed to absorb. She still wore the blouse and pants she’d had on when she had been captured. Her shoes, belt and watch were gone. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been unconscious.
Her mind still was fuzzy from whatever drug they’d used on her. But she could vaguely recall being brought here by a pair of hulking men, one of whom spoke in heavily accented English.
On the other side of the door a bolt slammed back, then the door swung inward without a sound. A tall man filled the doorway and stared down at her.
Even with his face partially obscured by shadow, she recognized Albert Bly in an instant. He walked slowly to her, reaching into his pocket. Her muscles tensed involuntarily until his hand came back into view holding a white card laminated in plastic. He studied it for several seconds.
“Gina Lopez,” he said.
“Yes. That’s right,” Serrano said.
“What brings you to Bogotá, Gina?”
“Business,” she said.
“Business? Of what sort?”
“I’m not at liberty—”
“Of what sort, Gina?” The volume of his voice didn’t change, but she detected a hint of menace, cold, quiet, unspoken. A seething rage that was, at once invisible but seemed to fill the whole room.
“What business?” he repeated.
“I’m an auditor.”
He waited for more.
“I work for the government. The U.S. government.”
“Of course you do.”
Her mouth went dry, her throat tightened. Something in his tone left her feeling suddenly exposed, as though he knew everything about her, about her classified status. She swallowed hard.
“I work for the Government Accountability Office,” she said. “We investigate things for Congress. I’m not a criminal investigator. This was a fact-finding mission.”
“And what facts did you find?” Bly asked.
“Who are you?” she asked, feigning confusion.
“I think you know,” he said.
“Why are you holding me here?”
He didn’t respond.
She knew that playing the indignant bureaucrat wouldn’t move Bly, but it fit in with her cover.
“I mean it,” she said. “I’m an employee of the U.S. government. If this is some half-assed kidnapping plot, you might as well let me go. You won’t get a dime from me. We—”