Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

As usual Steele was facing three walls of video screens, speaking into a headset, and sorting through various documents on his desk. Occasionally he typed on one of the computers that stood by waiting to be used, patient as only machines could be. The sixth wall was taken up by electronics and a huge, colorful clock that divided the world into time zones showing light and darkness. The time zones were made by man; they didn’t change. The areas of day and night across the globe did.

Without looking up, Steele covered the mouthpiece of his headset with his hand. “What?”

“You have a video telephone conference at two hundred local,” Dwayne said.

“Who?”

“Federal Judge Grace Silva, Southern District of California, San Diego.”

“Why?”

“She insisted on speaking only to you,” Dwayne said.

“So do a lot of people.”

“The number she called belonged to Joe Faroe’s cell phone. Apparently Judge Silva didn’t have the recent code, because her call was routed through to the public St. Kilda number.”

Steele spun around and looked at Dwayne. “Interesting. Do we have a good background on her?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Work harder. Get help. Anyone who knows Joe Faroe’s cell phone is someone I want to know.”

“Yes, sir.”

Steele didn’t answer. He was talking into his headphone again.

Without a sound Dwayne shut the door behind him and went to work on Judge Grace Silva’s background.

OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA

SATURDAY, 10:55 P.M.

GRACE LOOKED AT THE woman who was driving her to a destination she hadn’t shared. In fact, the woman hadn’t shared much of anything but the car. Her bearing was military, but her smile and long nails weren’t. The glittering tangerine polish was striking against her black skin. The watch she wore was solid gold. Grace knew, because she’d seen one just like it in the window of one of La Jolla’s more expensive jewelry stores.

The driver checked the mirrors as often as the road ahead. Other than making turns without warning, sitting with her lights out, and then taking off in a different direction, the driver was very efficient. So was the car. Dark, Japanese, powerful, anonymous.

Grace had the unsettling feeling that she’d fallen through a hole in reality and was now in a totally different world.

Because I have, she told herself. It’s called the illegal world. What did Faroe call it? The shadow world .

The world where Lane is prisoner .

This can’t be happening .

It’s happening. Get over it and deal .

The night guard at the office park waved the car through without a pause.

Three minutes and six locked doors later, Grace found herself in what looked like an ordinary video conference room. One of the three large flat-screen monitors was on. It showed a handsome black man wearing an expensive three-piece suit and what looked like a two-carat ruby in his right earlobe. He was looking at Grace’s driver.

“Were you followed?” he asked.

“Possibly, but not for long.”

“Just possibly?”

“You told me to keep a low profile,” Grace’s driver said. “Playing tag on crowded streets doesn’t qualify.”

The man frowned. “Steele doesn’t like uncertainty.”

“Then he’s in the wrong business.”

The woman left the room, shutting the door behind her. Firmly.

“Judge Grace Silva?” asked the man on the screen. “I’m Dwayne Taylor.”

“You look awfully good for two in the morning,” Grace said, conscious of her own rumpled clothes.

He smiled. “The world runs 24/7. Mr. Steele expects us to do the same.”

“How do you manage that?”

“I have two well-dressed clones standing by in the closet.”

Despite the tension that made her vibrate, Grace smiled.

“Mr. Steele will be with you as soon as he finishes a debriefing,” Dwayne said.

The view switched to the room behind Dwayne. Grace saw walls of video screens, other glass walls with views of the Manhattan skyline, and one with a projection of a global map and time zone clock. A computer-driven terminator line showed the sharp edge between night and day as dawn advanced from east to west across the globe. Computers and other electronic equipment she couldn’t identify waited at various workstations around the big room. The floor was wood, polished, expensive.

The best money and blood can buy .

The disdainful thought was reflexive. Grace had spent her life studying the law, weighing its nuances, balancing the larger might of society against the rights of the individual.

St. Kilda went against everything she’d worked for in her life.

The law can’t help Lane, she told herself roughly. Don’t look back. Don’t have regrets .

If it would free Lane, I’d cut a deal with Satan and every devil in hell .

A silver-haired man in a wheelchair was talking to one of the screens. Six of the eighteen television sets showed the muted talking heads of American news and business channels. Other screens were tuned to international satellite feeds. On the center plasma computer screen, a sweat-soaked man with a three-day beard and a redheaded woman with a bandanna tied across her forehead talked with tired animation. A line of print ran across the screen.

Grace looked at the conference controls in front of her. She hit the zoom button. “Ciudad del Este” leaped into focus. She ran up the sound, but it didn’t help. Only the man in the wheelchair could hear what was being said. She turned the sound down and went back to looking at the two sweaty, exhausted people on the screen.

St. Kilda employees? Grace wondered.

Plainclothes international cops?

Extreme travelers?

Nothing she saw gave her a clue. From what she’d learned about St. Kilda Consulting, any and all possibilities were on the table.

She zoomed out so that Dwayne was center screen again.

“What’s happening in Ciudad del Este?” she asked.

“It’s a big world. Lots of things happen.”

Right. New topic .

But before she could say anything, Dwayne got up and walked offscreen. So she sat and watched the wall with the global clock, hypnotized by the brilliant edge of dawn advancing across the Atlantic toward New York.

Time made tangible.

And Lane’s time is running out .

Steele ended the conference and spun his wheelchair on the wood parquet floor to face his guest.

“My apologies, Judge Silva,” he said as he used both hands to propel himself across the conference area to the desk where Dwayne had been. “One of the few things you can say with certainty about my work is that appointments are only as good as the paper Dwayne writes them on.”

“No problem, Ambassador. Considering the hour, I’m grateful that you fit me in.”

“People who come to us tend to be at the end of their, shall we say, socially acceptable resources. Your love of and respect for the law is the first thing people mention about you.”

“So why am I here, is that it?”

“We aren’t criminals,” Steele said mildly.

“You sure have made a lot of legal agencies unhappy.”

“We operate where they can’t or won’t. Isn’t that why you’re here-you have a situation that no legally constituted American governmental agency can handle?”

Grace looked into Steele’s clear eyes, metallic blue, deep. She saw intense intelligence and something more. Unflinching ruthlessness, if her CIA file was accurate. His natural coloring was pale, made more so because he had a full head of silver-white hair. His face was handsome in an aristocratic way, with a prominent nose that might have been called a beak on a less civilized, less patrician man.