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  “Keep your ears open, Paws,” Heat said. She dropped a fat white envelope next to his keyboard. “I might need you while I’m down there.”

  “You know where to find me.” Paws glanced around Heat’s shoulder before he added, “Be careful. I don’t like the looks of this guy.”

  “I’m always careful. You know me.”

  “Yeah, I do.” Paws turned to his keyboards and monitors and started working on something. “Lock up on your way out.”

  ***

  Max and Heat departed Washington National Airport shortly after midnight aboard a private jet bound for a small airport outside of Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana. They would advance two time zones and arrive shortly before 0800 local time.

  Heat had been surprisingly quiet during their ascent to cruising altitude, her eyes roaming all over the cabin and taking in the luxurious appointments. “Where’s the stewardess?” she asked. “I always thought there’d be a stewardess.”

  “Not necessary,” Max responded. “It’s just the two of us; we can mix our own drinks.”

  Right on cue, a chime announced that the captain had turned off the fasten seatbelt sign.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice.” Heat freed herself from the seatbelt, hopped from the wide leather seat facing Max, and headed for the bar at the rear of the cabin. “What’ll you have? Can’t be anything virgin; that’s my only rule.”

  Though he wasn’t really in the mood, Max thought a drink might do him some good, perhaps drop him into a few hours of dreamless sleep where ghosts and demonic creatures didn’t haunt him. He seldom slept for more than five hours anymore; his dreams simply forbade it. “Double Maker’s Mark if they have it. Splash a little soda in there too.”

  “Looks like you’re in luck.” She got to work at the bar. Max’s drink took all of five seconds to make, hers a couple of minutes.

  “What the hell do you have there?” Max asked when she returned and handed him his drink.

  “Double Bombay martini, extra dry.” She smiled wickedly, a couple of her lip rings gleaming. “Might as well live it up while I can. This drink would cost like twenty bucks on a commercial flight.”

  “Complimentary booze is the least they can offer at these prices.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know; I’ve never flown on a private jet. I’m usually in economy on an Airbus.”

  “Welcome to the major leagues.”

  “You always travel like this?”

  “When I’m on business. As a frequent customer in good standing, this company doesn’t give me a hard time with security. Comes in handy since I tend to fly with a lot of guns.”

  “I see how that would be a problem in your line of work. How do you get through customs?”

  “Fly into smaller airports in obscure locations. A few hundred bucks is usually enough to blind the inspectors.”

  “A little graft goes a long way. Speaking of which, how much is she paying you?”

  It didn’t exactly take a sleuth to figure out Max was in the employ of Senator Pierce; still, he always respected his client’s privacy. “Does it really matter who’s paying me? We both want to get to the bottom of this.”

  “It’s good to know. I’ve been straight with you, haven’t I?”

  “Not completely. You received that final email from Josh four days ago, not ten. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  She raised a placating palm. “Okay, you got me. I told you that at his house because I wasn’t sure if I could trust you.”

  “Understood. I expect it won’t happen again.”

  “Not from me.”

  Max avoided the barb. The whiskey was agreeing with him. He found himself growing fatigued and wanted to change the subject. “So how’d you spend the rest of the day?” Max had booked the plane, gotten his gear out of storage, and called Marklin to see whom he might know in French Guiana—a couple of people as it turned out. No surprise there. He hadn’t called Senator Pierce and had no intention of doing so until he’d secured her son. I hope she’s not expecting status reports.

  “Just got my shit together, then did a little research on Guiana. Never been there but it sounds like an interesting place.” She removed the garnish from her drink and sucked one of the olives off the toothpick. The sound reminded Max of two clumsy teenagers sharing a first kiss. Her dark eyes locked onto his as she daintily chewed the olive. Considering her previous admonishment regarding his ham-fisted attempts at wooing, it seemed a rather lewd gesture.

  So we’re gonna play this game. If that’s the case she can sweat a while. “Yeah, I spent a few minutes looking into it myself.” The main takeaway being that Guiana was a collectivity of France—essentially the only large European holding remaining in the New World. “You don’t happen to speak French by any chance?”

  “Again, you’re in luck. I’m fluent in both French and Spanish. I can also speak Russian well enough to get by, but I have no fucking idea how to read Cyrillic.”

  “Excellent. That’ll get us digging in a hurry.” Despite the globe-spanning dimensions of his profession, Max knew little more than a smattering of any foreign language. In his experience, money and violence seemed to be the universal languages of the world.

  “What’s our game plan?”

  “A contact from the State Department will meet us at the airport.”

  She arched a steel-studded eyebrow. “I see. You do know there isn’t a US Embassy in French Guiana?”

  “I didn’t but so what? Maybe the guy is a consul or something. All I know is he’s the contact I have, and my source usually supplies quality personnel. I’ll deal with him and see what I can learn while you sit tight.” He didn’t bother explaining that his Guiana contact probably worked for the CIA and not the Foreign Service.

  She shook her head. “You’re not the only one on business here, Ahlgren. And I speak French, remember? How about I tap some local resources while you deal with the guy from State? It’s only my job, after all. And you’re sorely mistaken if you think I’m here to tag along and hide behind your back.”

  “Fair enough. But be prepared to run into trouble. Do you carry a weapon?”

  “No, but there’s usually a convenient stool lying around when I need one.”

  How have you lived this long? “I have a pistol you can carry if you know how to use it.”

  “I know how to use one, but that won’t be necessary. I fight with this.” She pointed to her spiky blue head. “It’s kept me alive so far. And I’ve been in ugly situations before.”

  Max admired—no, he damn near adored—her indomitable confidence, even as he abhorred her pitiable lack of wisdom. He didn’t doubt her boasting, yet he wondered how she would have fared at Josh’s house had he not come along. “You may wish to reconsider. From what I’ve read Guiana seems like a somewhat civilized country, but we aren’t likely to be meeting its more respectable citizens.”

  She shrugged and sipped at her drink. “I’ll get by. I always do.”

  Max shook his head and leaned back further in his chair. “Whatever you say. You’re obviously stubborn as hell, so I won’t waste any more words trying to convince you.”

  “Good idea. I accept the way you work, so let’s leave it at that.”

  Max closed his eyes.

  “You seem at a loss for words,” Heat said after a few moments. “Am I boring you?”

  “No.” He opened his eyes. “I’m just trying to figure out why you do what you do.”

  She had a brief laugh. “Well, somebody has to do it.”

  “You’re not the only investigative reporter in the world.”

  “You’re wrong.” She put down her drink and leaned a bit closer. “I am the only true investigative reporter left in this world, at least that I know of.”

  “Feeling a little full of yourself this evening?”
>
  “No.” She scowled at him. “Let me explain something to you. There are two types of investigative reporters: the posers who expose whatever suits their handlers’ agenda and me. I’m only interested in the truth, no matter how ugly it may be. I am the Voltaire of our time—I hold no allegiance to any political party, government, religion, movement, or any other societal institution. We live in an age more dystopian than any in recorded history, but every age needs its luminaries. In a hundred years people will look back on this era with a mixture of pity and disgust. I want to be remembered as one of the few shining lights in an age of darkness, as indelibly imprinted into the zeitgeist as the great crusading journalists of the past.”

  “People called them muckrakers.”

  “A title I’m proud to wear. That’s what I do—stir up and expose all the muck, slop, and shit that the powerful dump on us every day.”

  “But why? There has to be a reason. You’ve got to have something personal invested in all of this.”

  She unleashed a heavy breath, took a drink. “I grew up in a shitty little town in northern Arizona. My parents got divorced when I was a kid, and my father left town to work in an oil sands field in Montana. Vibrant new company, great pay and benefits, all the typical bait corporations dangle to attract new wage slaves. The company even built a new town for the workers right on top of a nineteenth-century ghost town from the silver boom days. My father did really well there for a few years—then he contracted pancreatic cancer and died within two months. A large percentage of the other workers also fell ill with a myriad of diseases, along with their family members.

  “When word got out the company ran for cover. They feigned ignorance and then filed for bankruptcy, just as they always do. I was about sixteen at the time, and when I heard that a big-time investigative reporter from New York was on the case I rejoiced. I won’t mention this fraud’s name, but in the intervening years he’s had his own show on a couple of different cable news networks. Anyway, he went up there several times, snooped around a bit, and wrote a couple of damning articles that would have been a pretty impressive overture to a full exposé on the company. And then he quit.”

  “Somebody got to him.”

  “Yep. But nobody gets to me. Turns out the company was under Enron’s umbrella, and they knew the groundwater was contaminated with mercury, arsenic, and about a dozen other deadly chemicals before they built the new town—all leftovers from the old silver-smelting operation. That was my first story; I broke it on summer recess when I was a sophomore in college. No one had ever heard of me, and they didn’t see it coming until it was too late. I racked up fifty thousand dollars’ worth of debt traveling, conducting research, paying legal fees and bribes, all before I was twenty years old. And it all paid off. My story led to a class action lawsuit in which the plaintiffs—myself among them—split total damages of over sixty million dollars. My share was just enough to pay off my debts. I’ve been living hand to mouth ever since.”

  Max nodded. “I see now where you’re coming from. Enron is about as powerful now as the Catholic Church was in Voltaire’s time. Between that and your other stories you must have enemies crawling out of the woodwork.” Might make sense to carry a gun. I sure as hell would. Yet he understood why she didn’t. A true old-school crusader. She might very well become a luminary... right after she dies a martyr.

  “I’ve made my share. I tend to stay on the move and travel light. I’ve got connections in just about every major city—and I can disappear when I need to. Whatever I have to do to keep the muck stirred up.”

  You’ll never win. He didn’t have to say it—they both knew it was true. Heat simply didn’t give a shit.

  They sat in silence for a while until Heat said, “So what about you?”

  “You tell me, you’re the reporter. I’m sure you’ve looked into the matter.”

  “Other than your personal website for security services and a couple of other things, there really isn’t much out there on you... On the surface, anyway. With a little time, I could dig up more. Much more.”

  “Probably so.” Though he knew it to be selfish—Heat had told him much of her background—Max had no intention of revealing too much of his history. Let her do it. She’ll enjoy it more if she finds out on her own.

  “So what makes you tick? There are a lot of professions in this world—you choose to kill people for a living. What’s your reasoning?”

  “Simple: somebody has to do it.” Max finished the last of his whiskey, leaned back, and closed his eyes for the final time that night.

  “Son of a bitch, that’s all you’re gonna tell me?” he heard Heat say as he drifted off to sleep.

  5

  For the rest of the trip, Heat carefully scrutinized Google Earth images of the ocean off French Guiana’s coast. She saw no island large enough to house the sort of genetics lab and hunt club Josh described, which led her to believe that the satellite images had been doctored to hide a larger island. Her first priority was to locate accurate maps, perhaps from another, less-secretive era. Her instincts said those would be found in a library of some kind. A quick search online pointed her to the New University Library, the principal library within the city of Cayenne, located at the Rectorat de Guyane.

  She would have preferred to walk the couple of miles from her hotel but opted for the bus due to the intense heat and humidity. Her eyes roamed constantly during the trip, taking in her fellow passengers and the street scenes past the windows. The French architecture reminded her of New Orleans, with lots of old and stately houses featuring second-floor balconies hanging over the streets. The buildings and roads were in decent repair, and poverty appeared less pervasive here than in most tropical countries, probably because the people of French Guiana enjoyed the same social benefits as all French citizens.

  As the town flicked by, she wondered how Max was getting along with the State Department stooge, some guy named Matt Ruddick. They had been picked up early that morning at a backwater airport outside the city by Ruddick’s assistant, a poor schlemiel by the name of Shadrack Barnes, whom Heat thought might be the world’s oldest male virgin. Classic cookie pusher. A mild stutterer with horn-rimmed glasses, bungling Barnes had somehow managed to get Max’s combat gear stowed in a storage unit that was allegedly safe before driving them to the hotel. Max probably sat at lunch right now with Ruddick, who hopefully possessed more knowledge and inspired more confidence than his assistant. Yeah, good luck with that! Nothing could be more irritating than dealing with a ranking federal official, most of whom seemed to have majored in obtuse obstructionism.

  She got off the bus before the library, receiving queer and probing looks from most of the passengers. Back in America she was accustomed to standing out from the crowd; down here she felt like a walking beacon of freakdom. I’d probably stare at me too. The vast majority of locals were of mixed African-French descent, and damn few wore any tattoos or piercings, let alone neon-blue hair.

  A handful of students got off the bus with her, bookbags slung over their shoulders as they trudged toward the New Library to face another daunting day of study. But Heat remained rooted to the spot as the bus pulled away. She admired the library’s architecture. A unique timber latticework designed to diffuse the intense tropical sun encased the thoroughly modern concrete structure, which had been built only four years before. The photos she’d seen online hadn’t done the place justice.

  The sun began to sear her bare arms; large beads of sweat formed on her forehead. You gonna gawk all day or get to work?

  She entered the timber framework, walked across the lobby into the library proper, cleaner and more modern than most big-city libraries in America. Pausing before a map and directory mounted on the wall, she searched for a room dedicated to maps and cartography. None was listed. She thought about asking the man at the information desk, a pudgy black student with thick glasses who was far too young to be an act
ual librarian, but instead opted to tour the building and search for it.

  She found the map room within two minutes, located just past the main information desk behind a heavy steel door with a wire mesh window labeled Cartes et Atlas. She tried the handle and found it locked.

  “Special permission is required to enter the map room, madame,” said the man at the information desk.

  Madame? Fuck you, I’m only twenty-eight! Heat flashed him a smile as she responded in French, “And whom must I see to gain permission?”

  “The head librarian, madame, but he is quite busy at the moment, alas.”

  “Rather odd, one needing permission to view the maps.”

  “This is his policy,” the info man stated flatly as he stared at her.

  No apologies and no exceptions, apparently. “But I need to see detailed maps of the collectivity, especially the coastal islands offshore. Is there any way—?”

  “Not without permission. We have a fine collection of world atlases in the reading room that you may peruse.”

  Charm obviously wouldn’t cut it with this guy. But, no worries, Max was playing sugar daddy on this one. She pulled a fifty-euro note from the pocket of her jean shorts and flashed it. “I would rather see more detailed and historic local maps. Do we really need to trouble the head librarian? As you said, he is quite busy.”

  The kid’s eyes darted left then right behind his glasses, then he checked his rear. He stepped forth, grabbed the note from her hands as he passed, and then produced a key from his pocket to open the door. “You have ten minutes, no more,” he whispered as he led her inside. After casting another nervous look over his shoulder, he proceeded to a shelf loaded with oversized atlases. “One of these, perhaps.” He glanced at his cheap digital watch. “You have nine and a half minutes. Don’t turn on the lights. Use the window.” He spun on his heel and quickly exited the map room.

  Heat stood dumbstruck for a few moments. What the fuck? I’ve never heard of a map room being off limits. Realizing she now had less than nine minutes, she looked over the volumes on the shelf and picked the biggest, fattest one, titled A Modern Geographical Overview of French Guiana. She opened the cover and checked the copyright date: 1978. New enough to be accurate; old enough to perhaps tell the truth. Something was definitely up regarding the islands off the coast. Won’t be a mystery for long. She stationed herself in the dim shaft of light from the room’s only window and got to work.