The Anti-Gravity Steal by Gary Phillips

Author:Gary Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stark Raving Group
Published: 2014-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

“You’re not feeling sorry for yourself, are you?” Ella Navarro asked.

Brenner had more of his scotch. “I should have caught her.”

“You’re too damn competitive.”

“Very,” he admitted.

She had more of her Cabernet sauvignon. Hiram Templesmith entered the darkened tavern. He stopped at the bar and ordered a beer on tap. His ordered filled, he brought the highball glass to their table and sat down.

“All set,” he proclaimed.

“Good,” Navarro said.

“Where we’re going, Montserrat,” Brenner began. “I googled the place. It was damn near abandoned after a volcano blew not too many years ago. Forty square miles with a sixty percent exclusion zone.” He hunched a shoulder. “I’m just saying, it damn sure seems Prospero takes his role seriously.”

“You didn’t think this was going to be a cake walk did you, son?” Templesmith chided. “Like how casually you fleece the sheep in one of your card games.”

“You said to apply myself.”

“Indeed,” the professor said, raising his glass.

“To success,” Navarro said, lightly knocking her glass against her colleague’s.

“To staying alive,” Brenner said, joining the toast.

“Here, here.” Templesmith clinked his glass against Brenner’s too hard, shattering both.

“Oh my goodness,” the older man said, “very sorry about that.” He produced a handkerchief and dabbed at a small slit of a cut on the side of Brenner’s hand. “How embarrassing.”

“No worries, Doc,” the younger man said. “I’ll get us refills.”

Brenner left the table, and Ella Navarro exchanged a look with Templesmith as he folded his handkerchief and tucked it into his front pocket.

• • •

Efrem Koburn dozed. Waking suddenly, he was momentarily disoriented. He glanced out of the ferry’s porthole and wondered who he was this time and where was he going. Then he remembered, and the role he was playing clicked back into place. Being Ismael Villalobos had to be as second nature to him as walking and breathing. It had better be, so as not to make his host suspicious. Their research hadn’t indicated that Prospero and Villalobos had even met, but this was no time to get sloppy. Particularly, given the cartel boss had been flipped and was the presumably unwilling bedmate of some damn intelligence branch of the government.

The agent pretending to be his daughter sat next to him on the padded bench. Cocktails had been offered and served on the trip over from Antigua by pretty women in bikinis and sarongs. Koburn recognized two other underworld types on the boat and was sure the agent did as well. They’d made small talk in accordance with their cover, and she’d indulged in a vodka martini.

A bland appearing man in rimless glasses tipped his server for his beer. He looked like a desk clerk from the Building and Safety department on vacation. Koburn didn’t know this man but did recognize an individual named Gavin Soderberg, a Wall Street denizen who’d been in trouble with the SEC more than once. He had a cobra’s eerie attractiveness, and research by Vigilance speculated he was a buttoned-down front for mob interests.

Most of the men on the ferry had given the attractive Agent Z-9 an appreciative look.

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