She noticed McCarter lean a little closer as she spoke. His interest seemed piqued.

“I’d share the details with you tonight,” she added, “but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

He frowned and leaned back. “Well, then,” he said, as if making some tough decision, “I choose not to pry, though I must say I’d like to.”

“A gentleman,” she said. “As I’d been told to expect.”

“I admit, it does sound interesting,” he said. “At least to someone like me. But what’s your interest in all this? I thought NRI was a big lab of some kind, a research house working with all the high-tech companies.”

She nodded. “We are. We do industrial design and tech research, for the most part. But we also grant endowments to other sciences. And we do a lot of PR work, things that all our member corporations can claim to be part of.” The words slid from her mouth with ease, unforced and completely believable. She’d said them before in different forms, different places. Neither McCarter or the others would ever know where the money really came from, or what it was for.

“So this is a PR job?” he asked. “I suppose that means we’ll end up with Nike logos on our equipment and a Budweiser sign over our camp.”

“Nothing that drastic,” she said. “Though you may have to dress up as a giant cheeseburger for a series of interviews with the BBC.”

He laughed.

“Honestly,” she said, “there are no strings attached. Except that you do the best you can. And in that vein, I’ll tell you all that I know tomorrow. It’ll be up to you to take us from there.”

McCarter promised not to be late and Danielle said good night before walking off toward the elevators.

As he watched her go, McCarter had to admit that she’d somehow brought out the optimist in him—a quality he wasn’t sure he still possessed. He turned back to the bar and put his hand on the tumbler, tilting it toward him until the ice swirled to the low point. He was fairly certain that the NRI’s crazy theory would be nothing but a gigantic bust, but what the hell, even proving that could be a great deal of fun.

After leaving McCarter, Danielle returned to her hotel room, where the message light on her phone blinked silently in the darkness. A man named Medina had called; another name from Arnold Moore’s inexhaustible supply of contacts. Medina captained a small riverboat and it had been Moore’s intention to meet with him and secure the charter prior to leaving for Washington. But Medina had been delayed and Moore had left without getting the chance.

Danielle dialed and a voice answered on the first ring. “Hello, Medina speaking.”

“Señor Medina, this is Danielle Laidlaw. I work with Mr. Moore.”

“Yes, hello,” Medina said. His English was heavily accented. “I was told to contact you. Señor Moore has gone back to the States, then?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I’ll be your contact now.”

“Okay, no problem,” the man said. “Señor Moore wanted to inspect the boat before we go out. Will you be wanting to see it?”

“Yes, of course. When would be a good time to look it over?”

“Tonight is okay,” he said.

Danielle almost laughed; it was nearly midnight. “Tonight is not okay,” she said. “How about tomorrow, around noon?”

“No good,” Medina said. “We go back out very early. Best to do it now.”

Danielle had no desire to make a late-night trip to the waterfront, especially after what had been a long and grueling day. Before she answered, Medina made another suggestion. “Or we could do it in three days, when we return.”

That wasn’t going to work. If the boat proved to be inadequate, she would be delayed further while they found a replacement. “It’ll have to be tonight, then.”

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. We’re on the west side of the harbor, in the old section, beyond the Puerta Flutante. There are no numbers out there, but we are closest to the dezenove: pier nineteen. If you meet me there, I take you to the boat.”

“I can be there in forty-five minutes,” she said. “Is that soon enough?”

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll still be unloading then, so I’ll wait for you.”

“Forty-five minutes,” she repeated. “I’ll see you then.”

“Buena,” he said. “Ciao.”

The dial tone returned.

“Ciao,” Danielle muttered, unhappy at the options ahead of her.

She walked to the balcony and looked out over the city. Manaus was gorgeous at night, with the city lights blazing. But the danger remained, lying out there hidden in the shadows. This trip to the waterfront would expose her to it. She thought of calling Medina back and canceling, but it would quickly reach Gibbs, and that would just give additional ammunition to her detractors.

The hell with it, she was going. But proving yourself and being foolish were two different things; she would bring help. Verhoven or one of his men seemed a natural choice, but they were bunked down on the north side of the city near the airstrip they’d flown into, too far away to reach her in time. Besides, she’d barely met them and didn’t feel any level of trust there yet. Another face came to mind.

She grabbed her cell phone and dialed. An American voice answered.

“Hawker, this is Danielle. How fast can you be at the hotel?”

“Ten minutes,” he said. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“Not yet,” she said, hoping that the status quo wouldn’t change. “But I have to meet with someone and I’m not interested in doing it alone.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see you in the lobby.”

Danielle hung up, took a last look at the city lights and walked back into her room. She changed into dark slacks and a black sweater, then opened the safe in her closet. From beneath some papers she retrieved a Smith & Wesson revolver. Out of habit, she opened the chamber to make sure it was loaded, then snapped it shut and slid it into a trim holster strapped around her right ankle. If trouble came, whoever brought it would find out just how nice a girl she was.

CHAPTER 6

Hawker arrived in the lobby dressed in black from head to toe, just as she was. “I assumed this would be something formal,” he joked.

She glanced at him for a moment and then signaled for the valet, trying not to appreciate how well he cleaned up. For certain he looked a damn sight better than he had in the sweaty hangar in Marejo.

As they drove off together Danielle thought about the meeting. A friend of a friend of someone who owes me a favor. That’s how Moore had described Medina. The thought made her smile; in all their travels, she couldn’t recall a place they’d ever been to where Moore didn’t have a friend of a friend of someone who owed him a favor.

She turned to Hawker. “How well do you know the waterfront?”

“Is that where we’re headed?”

“We’re going to see a man about a boat. Our charter, actually.”

“And you’re expecting trouble?” he said.

“Just being cautious. The guy is docked at one of the smaller jetties, out near the old harbor somewhere, but we’re meeting him at pier nineteen and following him back.”

Hawker grew quiet for a moment. “Nineteen’s one of the big commercial docks at the west end. It’s a cargo pier, pretty wide open, but just up from there everything gets cluttered. Narrow alleys and blind corners. A lot of small buildings. The locals tie up over there, fishermen mostly, and some of the ferries. If this guy’s a local, that’s where he’d be.”

Danielle had expected as much.

It took twenty minutes to get from the hotel to the harbor, and another five to find their way to pier nineteen. But even so, they arrived on site ten minutes earlier than Danielle had promised. She pulled up against the wall of a massive warehouse that ran along the waterfront.

At this hour of the night there was little activity. A few slips down, a Liberian-flagged tanker was offloading a shipment of crude, while out in the channel, a blue-hulled cargo vessel sat idle but making steam, its decks stacked high with multi-colored containers, its crew waiting patiently for a river pilot to come aboard.