Captive Dove

Three hours later, showered, rested and dressed in the emerald-green, turtle neck cashmere sweater, a match for her eyes and her favorite, Nova looked into the bathroom mirror. She snatched the hairclip loose and her hair plummeted in a silky cascade to her shoulder blades. David loved to see her hair down, and, she reminded herself, it was David, not Joe, for whom she was dressing. She ran a comb through it as David stepped behind her. He moved her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck.

“We could skip dinner,” he said.

She let the comment pass. Instead, she turned and gave him a slow smile. Already wearing his topcoat, David helped her into her black, ankle-length faux shearling cloak, then followed her into the brightly lit and thickly carpeted hallway. The uniformed Sheraton doorman opened the outer door and they stepped from comforting warmth into the exhilaration of Mother Nature’s cold, thin breath. At the entrance stood a sleigh, complete with bell-bedecked horse and driver. David led her to it.

Joy suffused the child in her who had feasted on Russian fairy tales, read to her by a loving, handsome and doting father. “What a wonderful surprise, David,” she said, grinning.

He helped her aboard, tucked a red-and-green plaid woolen wrap over her lap and joined her. “Maddie Silk’s, right?” said their sleigh master, a man with rosy cheeks and nose and all bundled up in a black parka.

“Right,” David said. They set off surrounded by the music of silver bells in the cold, black velvet, perfect night.

The ride was as lovely as any fairy tale. He poured her a mug of wine, but before he let her drink, he kissed her. He smelled deliciously of spice himself. For a moment she wished with a familiar pang that she could love him, marry him and settle down into a normal life. She took a sip of wine and pushed the pointless longing for normalcy away. She could love a man—she already did love one—Joe—but thoughts of normalcy were a ridiculous indulgence in fantasy. She was with David, could be comfortable with him, because he agreed that their relationship was special but that it wasn’t ever going to be what most of his friends, and hers, thought of as normal.

The elegant dinner setting was a perfect ending for their week. For the first time they talked music. David loved Mozart, too.

“He’s my favorite,” she said. “When I die, I want them to play Mozart. His music is so radiant it seems wrong he wasn’t cherished all of his life and buried with great honor instead of in an unmarked pauper’s grave.” She stared at the bloodred of the wine in her glass and a deep sigh slipped out. “But then, life is often unjust.”

David put his hand over hers, his gaze gentle and understanding. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, for your sadness.”

She smiled and shook her head, regretting that she’d let some sliver of the past tarnish the beautiful evening for even a moment. “I’m not sad. Truly.”

David knew a lot about her now. Obviously the superficial realities: that she was a professional adventure travel guide and that her hobby—if you could call something she worked that hard at, a hobby—was nature and portrait photography. He had also met her sister, Star, on one occasion, and on their fifth date he’d confided to Nova that he’d paid someone to look into Nova’s history. It wasn’t personal, he explained. Because of his wealth, whenever a woman really captivated him, he initiated an investigation.

And so he knew about her diplomat father’s death when she was twelve and about her mother’s marriage to a wealthy Argentinean, Candido Branco. David knew that when she was sixteen, she’d killed the man to keep him from molesting Star. He knew she’d been incarcerated for five years. David knew all that, he said, and it didn’t affect how he felt about her.

What he didn’t know was that she took her first contract job for the CIA when she was twenty-two, and in the line of duty through the intervening years she had already killed six men, as well as a villainously insane woman and a misguided teenage Muslim boy-terrorist bent on killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. Her sadness didn’t come from killing Candido. That had given her nothing but release. Her sadness came from all the others she’d killed and all the evil she’d seen.

She was a contract agent for the Company, not an employee. She never took Company assignments that served the government, such as planting false information or stealing plans for troop maneuvers or for development of weapons. They knew to call her only if the lives of innocents were at stake. She had saved many people. That was true. Still, she often relived the up-close killings in bad dreams, and memories of them had a way of slithering into even the happiest moments.

Like now. But her smile and words seemed to have convinced David. He looked away and gestured for the check. Their feast was over. Time for another magic sleigh ride.

The moment they were back on the snow he slid his gloved hand under their wrap and took hers. He squeezed. She squeezed back. “I know we said no falling in love, no marriage,” he said, “but I want, I need, to change the rules of the game.”

The unnerving shock of his words caused her to gasp, a cold breath. Oh, David. Please, please don’t. You told me—we agreed.

He hurried on. “We are so good together, Nova.” He leaned closer and wrapped her gloved hand in both of his. “I desperately care for you.”

She pulled her hand free. She didn’t love him. Maybe she didn’t even love Joe since when he’d said the word marriage, she’d frozen, her feelings spinning, much like she felt right now. Joe was the only man in her life that she might…just might…love. But even for Joe, she hadn’t been able to wrap her emotions around giving up her dearly won freedom. She’d never do so for David.

She clasped her hands together in her lap. “I told you up front that I’m a difficult person with a difficult life and that love and marriage were to be off-limits. We need to keep it that way.”

“But you aren’t difficult, Nova. And your life, while it involves lots of travel and pressure, isn’t all that different from mine.”

Oh, she thought, how wrong you are.

“Please, David.”

He shook his head and thrust himself heavily back into the seat. She could feel his hurt coming off him like body heat. If she stayed in the relationship, she was going to hurt David terribly. She had thought, wrongly, that she could set up parameters to keep it all safe.

Her spirit, soaring for hours, deflated: a gay balloon slashed by a serrated Ka-Bar, a knife with which she was all too familiar. Sometimes life was good, but too often those times didn’t last long.

“Okay,” he said. “We stay with our original agreement.”

No. That isn’t possible now. You care too much.

Later, when he snuggled up beside her in bed after they’d made love, her heart aching with every kiss, guilty, sad, knowing that she was saying goodbye but unwilling to utterly destroy their last night together, she closed her eyes and sighed, dreading what she had to say to him tomorrow.

Chapter 2

The Amazon—Ten Miles Downriver from

Manaus, Brazil, near the Meeting of the Waters

A birding tour group of ten Americans intending to cruise the great Amazon River for fifteen glorious days, stopping each night at a different site, had rented a two-decker, forty-foot boat. This afternoon they had anchored at a wide spot on the Amazon’s north shore. Half a mile down lay the Meeting of the Waters, the point where the black Rio Negro and the reddish-brown Rio Solimões joined to become the mighty Amazon. A little like pouring molasses and water together, the two feeder rivers didn’t mix right away. For many kilometers they ran side by side, black and red, although eventually the red color would win. That marvelous natural phenomenon thrilled and fascinated them all.

But in the darkness, shortly before eight, their trip took a turn into nightmare. Fifteen heavily armed men boarded their boat.

One of the men, Carlito Gomez, had until now never been much farther than fifty kilometers from his own home in southern Brazil. He stood, bloody machete in hand, over the corpse of the man he’d just killed. The dead man, identified to Carlito and the others by a photo they had brought with them, lay face down on the floor of the cruise boat’s main cabin surrounded by the nine other terrified Americanos, also sprawled on their bellies. They had stopped screaming, but most of the women were crying.

The dead man’s arms were both pinned beneath him. Carlito reached down and pulled the left arm free.

“No, no!” his boss, Felipe Martinez, yelled. “The Eagle says it must be his right hand.”

Quick to obey, Carlito pulled the right arm free and used the machete to finish the job. The other passengers began screaming again. A woman, probably the dead man’s wife, shrieked, “Ellis!” so loudly it hurt Carlito’s ears.

Using his body as a screen, Carlito snatched up what looked like a real gold watch from the dead man’s wrist. Felipe didn’t notice. Felipe’s big concern was the black boy, and he had turned his attention to securing the boy’s hands. The Eagle’s other men were also occupied with binding and gagging their prisoners. Carlito felt a quick flush of greed rev his already adrenaline-fueled pulse. It looked like he could get away with keeping and then selling the watch for himself. He stuffed it into his pocket.

The other teenaged boy, the pretty blond one, attempted to be Mr. Macho and tried to stand. Felipe bashed him in the head with the butt end of his Beretta. The kid collapsed onto the deck, blood running down his forehead and dripping off the tip of his nose.

“Get it up to the iced package,” Felipe commanded. “Now!”

Carlito dropped the machete and gingerly plucked up the severed hand. He scrambled across the cabin, clumsily kicking the machete, and climbed the short flight of steps to the upper deck, which was covered but open on the sides. From the roof over his head came the heavy splatting of Amazon basin rain. He stepped around the boat captain, who was still out cold on the deck and now bound.

Carlito opened the white, insulated box. Felipe had brought it with them, already prepared to deliver this message from Manaus, Brazil, to the office of the vice president of the United States of America. The package, delivered by an untraceable courier, should arrive in Washington no later than tomorrow afternoon.

Carlito slipped the hand into a plastic bag and then took care, using a pair of gloves brought for the purpose, to arrange the dried ice around it before replacing the interior insulation. Finished, he taped the package shut. An address and postage were already on the top.

Felipe emerged from the cabin followed by the other men, shoving hostages. One by one, the men walked the captives on a makeshift plank across the black water onto their own riverboat, stolen earlier in the day for this purpose.

Carlito was now suffering a nagging worry about getting away. There were no roads between here and Manaus. In fact, there were no roads at all going south into Brazil from Manaus. The single road out went north to Venezuela. Plane fare being expensive, common folk left by riverboat, a trip to the coast taking four or five days.

But with their prisoners, they would cruise ten miles back upriver, running under cover of darkness to the small port of Ceasá. From there, a lorry would drive them to Manaus’s international airport, where a plane chartered by the Eagle, using a false name, would return them home. There would be no record of their arrival to or departure from here. Felipe had made it clear, when Carlito had asked about it, that money could buy anything in Brazil.

It would likely be some time, maybe not until midday tomorrow or even later, before anyone cruising the river became curious enough to stop at the boat. They would find the bound and gagged boat captain and notify the authorities, who would be pissed to learn they had a huge international mess on their hands: one dead American and nine missing tourists.

Soaked to the skin but still warm in the tropical night, Carlito watched the heavy drops of rain pour from the boat’s roof to batter the gangplank and shore and pock the surface of the water. Once the Eagle’s other men had all the hostages aboard, Felipe quickly cast them off, heading them back to Ceasá.

Their passage was slow, guided by three men at the front manning strong searchlights. The package would be on its way right on time out of Manaus, but, given the heavy rain, Carlito wondered as he wiped himself down with a dry rag if the visibility would be good enough for them to make their planned quick exit by air.