Page 119 of One Minute Out

Hall immediately slipped on his own jacket, then radioed his team through his cuff mic. Within moments the six men appeared in the foyer and formed around their boss and their principal.

Hall gave the men last-minute instructions, then radioed Jaco Verdoorn. He had no idea where the South African and his men were stationed outside, but he knew they would be trying to spot Gentry, if he was even in the area at all.

Verdoorn acknowledged Hall’s message that the movement was beginning, but he gave the American lead protection agent no more information about his and his team’s dispersement around the route to the auction.

With a head bob by Hall in the direction of the exit, the point man on the Cage detail opened the door and the entourage began filing out. It was eleven forty-five p.m., nearly nine hours after they’d arrived at the safe house.

Cage walked along through the surprisingly cool July night, wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief as he did so. He wasn’t feeling great right now; he’d done enough Viagra, cocaine, and ecstasy this afternoon and evening to flare up his angina to the point where it felt like a steam hammer was pounding around inside his chest.

For Ken Cage, a full day of sex required no small amount of external assistance, and the side effects of all the stimulants were as wearing on him as the physical activity itself.

He’d slept for a few hours after his exertions; the girls had been moved to the market in the early evening so there was nothing else for him to do, but it was an uncomfortable sleep with the drugs pumping through him.

He put away the handkerchief and, from the same pocket, pulled out a few Valium he’d staged there to calm his heart, swallowing them dry.

Still, despite his chest pain, he felt he’d had a pretty good day. He’d had sex with three of the girls, all of whom would be sold off in the next few hours to Saudi sheiks or Asian billionaires or diamond-level prostitution agencies in Belgium or Holland.

He’d been rough with the merchandise, even rougher than usual, in no small part because he was frustrated by the events of the past few days. In all his working life, this was the first time that some entity seemed to have a personal stake in upsetting one of the most lucrative veins of his wealth. He’d dealt with rival operations, mobsters in competition with mobsters who worked for him, but that was just business.

But this? This uber killer chewing his way along the pipeline? This was something else.

And Cage was angry at his employees like he’d never been in the past. At Hall for showing fear and doubt when up against one lone man, and at Verdoorn for being unable, despite all the resources Cage had afforded him, to find and end this persistent threat.

As the entourage turned down a narrow side street, he looked up to the roofs and immediately saw a man looking down on them. He didn’t say anything to Hall, because he knew this would be one of Jaco’s guys, and Hall would only freak out until this was confirmed.

He walked on, thinking about the girls who would be sold off tonight. He’d looked over each and every one. He’d also paid a short visit to the cream of the crop here. The two girls he’d ordered sent to Rancho Esmerelda and been waiting to get his hands on both occupied their own quarters on the third floor, and Cage had gone to visit them both. He found Sofia to be compliant, but Dr. Claudia Riesling had told him she’d administered a large amount of Xanax to the eighteen-year-old Hungarian shortly after her arrival because she hadn’t had time enough with the girl to bring her into line.

Maja, on the other hand, had not been drugged. Cage found her inquisitive, obstinate, the same free spirit he’d encountered in Bucharest months earlier. She had nothing but questions about where she’d go and who she would be around, and Cage thought, a few minutes into their conversation, that the doctor should have plied her with pills, as well, before he came.

But Maja had not been any real trouble, per se. Claudia had told Cage upon his arrival that she’d worked especially hard with the young Romanian, and she felt that her psychological reprogramming had been successful.

Cage had not laid a finger on either of the Rancho Esmerelda–bound women. There would be time enough for that when they got to Southern California in a couple of days.

Now it was approaching midnight, and the entourage walked through the Calle Larga Vendramin after being dropped off by a pair of eight-meter-long speedboats a couple blocks from the casino. The boats had rumbled away, and everything was perfectly silent around Cage apart from the men’s footsteps in the narrow alleyway.

The coke was wearing off; he told himself he’d need one more line when he got to the market.

His phone chirped in his pocket and he answered it loudly and abruptly, showing that perhaps his coke had not, in fact, worn off to the extent he’d first thought.

“Yeah? Who is it?”

“Daddy,” a young female voice said, “it’s Juliet.”

Cage shook his head to clear his mind. He’d been thinking of sex and drugs and hit men and bodyguards, but quickly he had to morph himself back into the family man role he played.

“Hey, honey. How are you?”

“Mom won’t let me go over to Madeline’s tonight. It’s summer. I’m bored here. Can I tell her you said it’s okay?”

Cage sighed and continued walking while talking to his twelve-year-old daughter, his voice echoing off the stone buildings all around him.

•••

Chris Travers took the call on his sat phone at midnight, just as he found a position on the Rialto Bridge that gave him incredible sight lines along the Grand Canal. The phone was Bluetoothed to his earpiece, so he flipped off the interteam radio and took the call, stepping away from the group of tourists he’d blended with to avoid detection by Gentry. “Zulu Actual.”

“Iden, six, six, four, November, Alpha, India.”

He recognized the voice of Suzanne Brewer, an operations officer who worked directly for Deputy Director Hanley. He recognized her identity code as well.

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