Tara Janzen - Breaking Loose

Beranger looked at her for a moment, meeting her gaze, and a small, discerning half smile slowly curved his lips.

“Egyptian,” he finally said, drawing the word out, his gaze still on her. “It’s true, then…yes…yes, I had wondered, had thought as much when Jimmy called me, if indeed my benefactor had sent someone to check on my progress.”

Benefactor?

Now he had her interest.

“Egyptian, yes,” she said. “Twelfth Dynasty.”

“So you are here to see if I have done my job?” He stood there, in front of her, so small and bent and damp and sick, and yet a light had come on in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said, tamping down a small surge of excitement-but this was good, very good. No one believed Remy Beranger had come up with the Sphinx on his own. No one believed he had the skills, the cash, or the balls to have stolen it from the DIA’s laboratory, and he didn’t look like he could “teleport” a gnat’s ass, let alone a granite statue. He was a third-rate broker of low-end junk, and after the Sphinx, the number two item on the DIA’s Christmas list was the name of Beranger’s contact. With that name, they’d go looking for the next name, on up the chain, until they found someone who conceivably could have teleported the damn thing out from under their very noses, some telepathic freakazoid psychic. The DIA had a long list of them. “Thief was General Grant’s preferred term, and inside job was what he had conjectured, and he’d conjectured it loudly and repeatedly on the way to the airport last night, assuring her that the spooks need look no further than their own to find whoever had “hands-on” stolen their statue.

Realistically, he was probably right, no matter how many times the folks at the DIA used the word “teleported.”

“Sent by a congressman, then,” Beranger said, his smile widening for a brief moment. “A congressman from…”

“ Illinois,” she filled in when his voice trailed off, her excitement dampening all on its own. Damn. Beranger didn’t know who he was representing on this deal. It had been a blind contact, maybe even a double-blind. But he’d dealt with someone somewhere, and he’d all but confessed to having the Sphinx.

“Ah, Illinois,” he said. “A very rich state.”

“Have you been there?” she asked, angling for a clue.

“No,” he shook his head. “I was in Miami once, a few months ago, and as you might… ah, know, I do have a piece from the Near East, perhaps as ancient as you wish.”

“Excellent,” she said. “I’d like to see it.”

“Of course… of course.” His gaze went to the door leading back into the main gallery. “You can tell your congressman that I have other very interested buyers for the Egyptian piece, and the sale should-” The ringing of his phone stopped him in mid-sentence. “Excuse me.”

He pulled his phone out of his pants pocket, checked the number, then answered it.

While Beranger spoke softly into the receiver, she did her best to listen in.

“Policía?” he said, his voice suddenly growing sharp.

The police? That couldn’t be good. Oh, hell no, not good at all.

She leaned in a little closer, but didn’t get much out of his half-Spanish, half-French inquisition of whoever was on the other end of the phone.

But she did get the sound of sirens, loud and clear, coming from the street side of the building.

Dammit.

Beranger was getting busted.

She looked around to see which was the best way to go, if things started to go downhill, when a soft, muffled beep coming from inside her purse all but riveted her to the floor.

Good Lord, the GPS had kicked in.

At a hundred feet from the gallery and closing, Dax’s day took another serious dive.

Fuck. A Paraguayan police vehicle, its siren wailing, was approaching the gallery, which could mean nothing or everything, but Dax’s money was on everything. When the squad car pulled to a stop next to Ponce ’s Range Rover, he slowed his pace.

Fucking perfect. Beranger was getting busted-and there wasn’t a doubt in Dax’s mind that it had something to do with the Sphinx and the people who had come to buy it. The Old Gallery was available to the cops 365 days a year if they wanted to shut it down. It was no coincidence that they’d showed up today, less than ten minutes after Esteban Ponce and Levi Asher. Or maybe Suzi Toussi was the guest of honor.

God, he hoped not.

He glanced up toward the rooftops, wondering if the police had overwatch on the gallery, some sniper team primed and ready. They’d obviously been getting their information in a damned timely fashion. He didn’t see anybody, but that meant nothing. There were a thousand hiding places in this block alone-multistory buildings on both sides of the street, dozens of canopied shop stalls on the ground floor, signs everywhere, some handwritten, some giant neon extravaganzas crawling up the fronts of the stores and warehouses.

His only consolation was in knowing he didn’t particularly stand out. He’d bought his clothes in the market yesterday, all local stuff, a pair of beige cargo pants, a dark gray short-sleeved shirt and a white T-shirt, a brown ball cap embroidered with the words Santa Cruz, and a pair of knockoff Nike trail boots making him look like everyone else in Ciudad del Este. Someone would have to be looking for him in order to see him.

Which, he realized, was never out of the question.

Two armed and uniformed policemen exited the police car with lockstep precision, weapons at the ready, both of them carrying Steyr AUG assault rifles. Another police vehicle turned onto the block and hit its lights, clearing a path through the crowds and making a beeline for the gallery.

There was only one thing to do, only one thing that made any sense at all-keep moving, cross back over to the other side of the street, and walk on by. Beranger’s place had turned into an unmitigated disaster. A smart guy would melt into the scenery and let the disaster unfold without him.

Two things kept Dax from being a smart guy-the Memphis Sphinx, and the long-legged redhead in the navy blue dress. He wasn’t going to let the police have either one-so he didn’t cross the street. Oh, hell no. If Suzi Toussi really was working for a United States congressman, there were some pretty damn big gaps in his information-scary gaps, the kind that could deep-six a guy. He needed to fill those gaps, and he needed her to do it. Failure was not an option. The Sphinx was his, one way or the other.

Another armed policeman with a Steyr AUG piled out of the second car, bringing the squad up to three, a little thin for a bust by anybody’s standards, but the police were well-trained, damned serious guys with enough firepower to take down half the block. If it came to a shoot-out, he was putting his money on the police, not the gallery full of gangsters, who were already down by two. The guys guarding the door had been quickly spun out by the first pair of cops and forced to sprawl face-down on the hood of the police car, with one cop cuffing them while the other covered them with his assault rifle.

In the grand scheme of Ciudad del Este, a bust in the market wasn’t going to make the news, and Dax knew that on any given night, the guys busting Beranger might be moonlighting in the smuggling trade, providing security for someone moving a container full of electronics or whiskey, or transporting stolen cars from Brazil into Paraguay, or exporting automatic weapons in the other direction. Paraguay was that kind of country, and Ciudad del Este was that kind of city-up for grabs.

Three policemen, though, that really wasn’t enough for a bust, not when Esteban Ponce’s daddy could have them all shanghaied, never to be seen or heard from again. Ten or fifteen cops disappearing was one thing; three was just too damn easy.