Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

He worked the small cell phone, crushing and replacing SIM cards as he went, always keeping one eye on his watch. He rang up several message services, one in Spain, another in the States, one in Thailand, and a fourth one in Rio, in Brazil. He listened intently to his messages while he jotted down notes in a small pocket pad.

When he was finished, Liquida sat up straight, adjusted his dark glasses, and sipped a little of the mojito from the tall glass on the table in front of him. He set the glass down and slowly licked his lips, savoring the flavor of the rum as he studied the last entry in the small notepad.

It was a message from Bruno Croleva, a Chechen who in the last two years had risen in Liquida’s eyes to become his favorite rainmaker.

Business from Bruno had lifted him from the squalor of Tijuana and the limited possibilities of the cartels, where retirement usually came in the form of a bullet.

Bruno had connections with Islamic militants as well as other injured and angry ethnic and religious groups. These were people highly committed to killing their enemies, which at any given time might include half the world’s population, mostly Westerners.

The clients were well funded and paid far more than the chump change offered by the cartels. Prices of a good assassination in Mexico had been driven to rock bottom by an army of itchy-fingered teenagers possessing no proper sense of values. Best of all, the foot soldiers used by Bruno’s clients were willing to die for their beliefs. This was an extremely efficient arrangement. It left many fewer tongues to wag when the job was done. Liquida didn’t have to dirty his own blade arranging for the sounds of silence. These were his kinds of people.

According to the message, there was forty thousand euros in cash in a drop box belonging to Liquida, delivered there by Bruno’s courier as final payment for a job Liquida had completed several months earlier.

Liquida had almost forgotten about it. He had given up on the money, thinking he would never see it. He assumed that Bruno was angry with him and that he might never hear from the man again. The last two ventures had not gone well, though it was not for want of trying on Liquida’s part.

Bruno was now paying up. What’s more, according to the message, he was offering Liquida another job and dangling a very tempting commission. The details, along with the money, were in the drop box.

For Liquida the money couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. He was low on cash and he needed the work. You might have thought that Liquida would be happy, but he wasn’t. His first response was caution.

Ordinarily he would have called the courier service and made arrangements to have the stuff in the box collected and delivered by giving them a temporary forwarding address, someplace where Liquida could move in and out quickly and safely.

But things were now much more complicated. The U.S. government had put a price on his head. Liquida had seen it earlier that morning, using one of the guest computers in the hotel lobby to check the FBI’s website. It was something he did on a frequent basis. It wasn’t there yesterday. But this morning he turned up, not on their most wanted fugitive list, but instead, on their terrorist site. There was no picture or sketch, at least not yet. But they were offering two million dollars for tips that would lead authorities to a man known only under the alias of “Muerte Liquida.” There was other information, some of it accurate and some of it not. That was the thing about government; they had a hard time getting things right. If Liquida could have figured a way to stay safe and collect on the reward, for that kind of money, he might have called in a tip or two himself.

Now he had to worry about Bruno. In Liquida’s line of work, two million dollars could turn an associate into beef on the hoof in less time than it took to say the word tip.

His natural paranoia was telling him that the stuff in the drop box could be a trap. He looked at the date on the message. It was two days old. Unless Bruno somehow knew about the reward before it was posted on the FBI’s site, he could not have known about it when he sent the message. In which case it might not be a trap at all. Or else

… Liquida’s mind searched for the hook and its jagged barb.

What if the message wasn’t from Bruno at all? What if the FBI had somehow found the box? Liquida had been using the drop box for about seven months. That was too long. It was time to get a new one, to find a fresh location. But it was too late to think about that now. If the message was real, then the money was there. But if the FBI knew about the box, they could know about the messaging service as well. They might be using the box as bait.

How many times do I have to tell you? I just want to go home,” said Raji. “This is not going to work. That’s all there is to it.”

“It will work if you help us,” said Bruno.

“I already told you, no. I made a mistake. I admit that. I should never have come to Paris.”

“It’s too late for that,” said Leffort. “There’s no way back. They already know. The authorities will be looking for both of us by now.”

“I’ll take my chances,” said Raji.

“Unfortunately, that is no longer possible.” Bruno Croleva was an equal opportunity merchant of death. There was no cause he would not fuel with guns or munitions. He was totally nonpartisan in the same way politicians are who take donations from all sides on every issue. Bruno was in it for the money. Warm bodies or cold steel, it didn’t matter to Bruno. If there was a profit to be made, he would deliver it.

“You know what I think?” said Bruno.

Raji sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“I think you are a little homesick, is all. Maybe you have someone waiting for you back there. A nice woman perhaps?” Bruno wrinkled an eyebrow at him with the delivery of this diagnosis.

Raji looked up at him and winced, as if to tell Bruno that he had an air bubble trapped somewhere between his ears. “No. You’re wrong.” Raji shook his head.

“No need to be embarrassed.” Croleva fancied himself a mind reader, a delusion fostered by the fact that most people were sufficiently terrified of him that any semicivil suggestion from Bruno was generally followed by the word yes.

Larry Leffort sat on the couch against the far wall in Raji’s Paris hotel room. He knew that playing twenty questions with Bruno could end with piano wire being used to make something other than musical notes.

“Listen to me,” said Raji. “You don’t understand.”

Bruno’s forced smile compressed the furrows above his eyebrows. The no-man’s-land between there and the shiny bald dome up top looked like a crooked plowed field. “Tell me. What is it that bothers you? Why do you want to go back?”

“I just want to go home, that’s all.”

“There is nothing there for you,” said Bruno.

“I want my life back. Can’t you get that through your head?” Raji was afflicted more by anger than fear at the moment. “I know that coming here was a mistake. We all make mistakes. I’m sorry if I caused you problems. But now I just want to go home. That’s all there is to it. Understand?” Raji looked up at Bruno, all three hundred and sixty pounds of him and gave the man an annoyed expression, like what part of no don’t you understand.

“I knew it,” said Bruno. “It is a woman. I can see it in your eyes. You miss her. You are in love. Admit it. Dat’s only natural. Young man like you. But soon you will be a rich man. You must learn to cast your net into the open sea, where there are many fish.” Having divined the problem, Bruno’s brain didn’t allow for conflicting messages even from the patient. “You want a woman, I get you one. Beautiful woman. No problem.”