Death Echo

have all the skills.”
    Emma blinked. She indeed had been trained by the Agency in recruiting locals. She had been very good at it.
    And she had hated it.
    â€œWhat if he doesn’t want to be recruited?” she asked.
    â€œBuy him.”
    â€œFrom what I’ve seen of him, I doubt that would work. He’s too self-confident, not needy or greedy.”
    Steele let the silence lengthen before he said, “If Blackbird leaves port, you’ll have to follow. Durand is a transit captain. Connect the dots.”
    â€œYes, sir,” Emma said through her teeth.
    Steele laughed again. “Why am I hearing echoes of ‘screw you, sir’?”
    â€œGood ears?” she asked dryly.
    â€œDon’t be surprised to see Grace and Annalise with Joe.”
    â€œFamily vacation,” she said. “Always heartwarming.”
    â€œJoe loves the Pacific Northwest when it isn’t raining,” Steele said. “Ask anyone who knows him.”
    â€œFickle man. I hear it rains a lot here. That’s how it got so green.” But Emma understood what hadn’t been said—Faroe was traveling with his wife and daughter under cover of a vacation.
    â€œResearch is still digging,” Steele said. “We’ll get back to you.”
    He broke the connection.
    Emma rubbed her forearms, feeling chilled. She hoped it wasn’t her grave St. Kilda was digging.
    She settled into the cold Jeep, booted up her laptop, and began reading—keeping one eye out for Mac to reappear. Living aboard a boat was illegal at the marina.
    According to Mac’s file, he had a little cottage in town.
    All she had to do was freeze her butt off waiting for him to go home.

9
    DAY ONE
ROSARIO
10:19 P.M .
    T aras Demidov shifted in the plastic lawn chair he had put in the back of the beat-up van. He had purchased the vehicle for $850 cash and driven it off a dead lawn in front of a badly kept house. The panel van was a long way from the bulletproof limos and high-tech listening posts once available to Demidov, but he accepted it as he had accepted other changes.
    Survivors adapted.
    Demidov had survived by making himself as useful to the twenty-first century’s political/criminal oligarchs as his father once had been to unashamed dictators. Information never went out of style. Neither did extortion and execution. Demidov was adept at whatever had to be done.
    The van fit in well with the ragged assortment of vehicles in the marina parking lot. Hidden by the interior shadows of the vehicle, taking care to stay well back from the windshield and the lights of the parking lot, Demidov scanned the gate closing off the Blue Water Marine Group gangway.
    Nothing moving.
    Even the feral cats had vanished into the shadows. He’d last seen one of them chasing a rat around the big refuse bins at the edge ofthe parking lot, right next to the portable toilet that had been set out for marina visitors. Like the animals, the visitors had disappeared into the night.
    The captain, who had docked Blackbird with admirable economy, had climbed the Blue Water ramp, crossed the parking lot, and disappeared into another arm of the marina. The view straight through the van’s windshield didn’t tell Demidov if the captain had stayed wherever he had gone.
    He could get a better view by moving to the front of the van, but that would reveal his presence to anyone walking by. Better to limit both his exposure and his view to the top of the Blue Water ramp. In any case, the captain wasn’t his assignment.
    Shurik Temuri was.
    Perhaps I’ll just kill him now and end the game.
    A pleasant dream, but Demidov knew it was unrealistic. His employer wanted to catch Temuri with enough evidence to thoroughly discredit him. Temuri dead was worth five thousand dollars. Temuri caught with his pants down was worth more than a million dollars in a bank on the Isle of Man.
    That kind of math wasn’t hard to do. Even in the modern world of recession and inflation, a million dollars was a good payday.
    Demidov sighed and set aside the glasses. The van stank of the slops bucket he used rather than revealing himself by crossing the open parking lot to a portable toilet each time he needed one. He ignored the ripe smell just as he ignored the uncomfortable lawn chair set behind the driver’s seat. An ear bug in his right ear monitored the Blue Water office. He monitored the VHF channel to the marina with his