The Heist

Burnside, too, to hear while he’s in that cell. Trust me, he’ll believe this place is crawling with Viboras.”
    “That’s the idea,” Nick said. “It’s crucial you maintain the illusion while we’re away.”
    “How long is that going to be?” Tom asked.
    Kate looked at Nick. It was a very good question.
    Nick shrugged. “Don’t know.”
    Kate left the house and drove the few miles to Indio, where she and Willie had rooms at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. Williehad spent her night at the twenty-four-hour bowling alley and her day lazing around the pool, fending off advances from old men eager to put their Viagra prescriptions to use.
    Kate stopped by the pool to check on Willie and to let her know that Burnside had spilled that Griffin was in Indonesia, so they might be heading there soon, but she couldn’t tell her what they’d actually be doing once they arrived.
    “Cool,” Willie said with casual acceptance, as if they were talking about nothing more unusual or uncertain than going to a movie.
    “Really?” Kate asked.
    Willie was sprawled on a chaise, looking to beef up her tan. She opened a single eye and squinted at Kate. “It’s an exotic place on the other side of the world. What’s not to like about it?”
    “The possibility that you might not come back.”
    “Sweetie, it’s all part of The Big Adventure.”
    Kate thought that was a terrific attitude. She just hoped The Big Adventure didn’t include a cell in Sukun Women’s Prison in Malang.
    “Okey-dokey,” Kate said. “Stick close to the hotel in case we have to move.”
    “I’m in hog heaven here,” Willie said. “There’s lots of cold shrimp, piña coladas, and twenty-four-hour bowling. What more could a girl want?”
    Kate headed up to her room, wondering as she rode the elevator to the tenth floor what their next move would be now that they knew where Griffin was hiding. If it was up to her, Kate would drop a strike team of commandos onto the island and remove Griffin by force. She doubted that Bolton would authorize an operation like that, since it would require air and sea support andcould attract the attention of the Indonesian military. To capture an Al Qaeda terrorist the U.S. government might be willing to go along with an armed incursion into a sovereign state and risk the political fallout if it went wrong. She didn’t think they’d do it for some Wall Street embezzler, not even one who’d fled with half a billion dollars. Robert Vesco had proved that back in the 1970s when he ran off to Costa Rica with $200 million he’d plundered from his investment firm. He continued to move between countries without U.S. extradition treaties for decades before finally dying in Cuba, where he’d been imprisoned for drug smuggling.
    Kate let herself into her room, called Jessup, and told him everything, including the longitude and latitude of Dajmaboutu, a twelve-acre speck of an island in the middle of Indonesian waters, half a world away.
    “Well, it could be worse,” Jessup said. “He could be in North Korea, Iran, or Myanmar. Indonesia is unique, it’s an archipelago of thousands of islands scattered over seven hundred fifty thousand square miles of open sea, where the rule of law is often either nonexistent or impossible to enforce. That’s undoubtedly why Griffin chose to hide there, but it also works in our favor. Plenty of ways in and out without crossing physical borders.”
    That was true. And because Griffin was on a tiny remote island, they stood a chance of pulling off whatever they were going to do without attracting the attention of the Indonesian military or the police. But they still had to go into the heart of Southeast Asia and navigate a maze of islands in foreign waters that were notorious for being rampant with vicious, well-armed pirates.
    “How are our relations with Indonesia these days?” she asked.
    “Rocky enough that if you get caught, there will be a Katrina-size shit storm that could set foreign policy back decades ifanybody can prove you weren’t rogue. I’ll have to run this all past Bolton, but I’m sure he anticipated an endgame like this, and that he is going to tell you to go grab Griffin and haul his ass back here, or at least into international waters. But if anything goes wrong, don’t expect your country to haul your butt out of the fire.”
    “That’s what I figured.”
    “How are you going to pull it off?”
    “It’s only been a couple of hours since we