The Silent Blade (Harry Bauer Book 6) by Blake Banner

Author:Blake Banner [Banner, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-28T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

It was a forty-five-minute drive. On the way I stopped at a gas station with a convenience store where I bought a couple of burners. Back in the car, driving into the night among the hills and forests, I agonized for twenty minutes, then called the Cobra emergency number.

The line was dead.

Absolute deniability. I had pushed too far and become visible. The price for that was excommunication. As far as they were concerned, I did not exist. And if I went rogue, named them or tried to implicate them, I would be just another nut with a conspiracy theory.

I drove on, trying to think, trying to find answers, but finding only a dark, winding road through dark landscapes of jungles and wilderness. One way to go. Only one way out.

There was only one way out.

I got to Panama City at just after ten. Over the Bridge of the Americas, I turned right into the El Chorrillo district, where the poor, desperate and dispossessed hang out. I took the Cinta Costera Road, made the circle and came off onto the Avenida de Los Poetas, and from there wound in among the dilapidated apartment blocks and warehouses, where girls in small groups stood on street corners, displaying their cleavage and their hips, and the red gashes of their lips, as they watched the cars crawl by: predators hunting predators in a game where the prize was more despair.

I parked on Calle el Chorrillo, checked the trunk and the back seat for anything useful, found nothing and walked a hundred and fifty yards to a filthy, dingy bar painted peeling blue outside and peeling, oxblood red on the inside. There were mismatched tables and chairs on a floor littered with cigarette butts and spit. Some of those tables were occupied by middle-aged couples who were drunk enough to feel amorous, but too drunk to do anything about it, so they gave each other toothless kisses and laughed.

Up at the bar there were younger guys with dangerous eyes that said they didn’t like strangers, and they especially didn’t like Yankee strangers. I ignored them and walked to the counter. The barman, bald, with a big moustache and mean black eyes, jerked his head at me.

I said, “Whisky, Johnny Walker, sin hielo.” Without ice.

As he poured it, under the hostile gaze of the men beside me, I pulled out Fedora’s wallet, checked the money inside it and extracted the credit cards, the ID card and the driver’s license. I did it so that anyone watching could see it wasn’t mine.

I paid, then took my drink and the wallet to a table in the corner. I sat sipping and thinking for a long time. Finally I took Fedora’s cell and dialed a number I had memorized in Puerto Rico: Don Francisco Cejudo.

A voice answered immediately in Spanish.

“¿Quien llama?”

“My name is Harry Bauer. I want to talk to Don Francisco Cejudo. You can find me on this number.”

There was a long pause. “’Arry Bauer? You say you are ’Arry Bauer?”

“That’s what I said.

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