Line of Succession: A Thriller (47 page)

He shut off the car engine and opened the car door. A pack of dogs raced out from under the front steps. Skinny, tenacious mutts. All bones and teeth. In the face of a hard drizzle, Carver fended these hounds of hell off with the car door, bonking their bony heads with it as they bit and tugged at his left ankle. He felt the familiar warm trickle of blood dampen his sock. Barking in the distance spared him further bloodshed as the pack suddenly broke away, howling at breakneck speed down the street he had driven in on.

“
We’re closed!” yelled a woman’s voice from the motel office. She spoke from behind a screen. She sounded American. Good. This was definitely the place.

He unfurled himself from the car, smoothed the wrinkles in his gray suit and approached the building with his hands in the air.

“
I’ll shoot,” the voice warned.

“
I’d rather you didn’t,” Carver said as he measured his approach. He stood several feet from the door and could only make out a shadow in the dense screen door. “It’s Madge, right?”

More silence. Then the voice said, “I suggest you get back in the car.”

“
Tell your husband Blake Carver is here to see him.”

He heard her step away from the door. She returned moments later and opened it wide for Agent Carver to enter.

He stepped inside. The house smelled of barbecue. Aside from an expensive-looking entertainment console at the living room’s far wall, the place was sparsely furnished. There were few books and no pictures on the wall except for a cheap print of DaVinci’s
The Last Supper
.

Madge held a sawed-off shotgun. She looked unhappy. She had gained a great deal of weight since she had last been photographed by the CIA. Her long brown locks had been clipped into a short, unflattering cut. Madge was graying around the temples, and judging by the jagged pattern of her bangs, she had done it herself using shearing scissors.

“
Nice dogs,” Carver said. “Yours?”

Madge didn’t smile. “The kitchen.” She pointed to the next room.

Carver found Nico Gold sitting at the kitchen table with three kinds of meat on a plate before him. He looked much as he had when Carver and O’Keefe had first met him in the Lee Federal Penitentiary the previous year. The African sun had added little pigment to his pale skin, and the meat-centered African diet had hardly fleshed out his lanky frame. He had, however, dispensed with his eyeglasses and had dyed his hair blonde. The tattoos that had read “EVA” on both forearms were gone, replaced with a simple heart with a ribbon around it that said JESUS. He wore a t-shirt that said OBEY in stylized font.

“
Close the door,” Nico told him.

Carver sat in the chair where Madge had no doubt been eating across from her husband minutes before. The ex-con’s face was full of dread. He had the sweet smell of alcohol on his breath. There was an empty bottle of pinotage on the table and another that was half-full.

“
Dreamed the grim reaper was coming for me last night,” Nico said. “Couldn’t shake the feeling all day. Never had a dream like that before. So bad.”

Carver said nothing. He watched Nico’s hand shake as he held his wine glass.

“
I need to know how you found me,” Nico continued. “I don’t use credit cards. I’ve taken nobody into confidence. My only bank accounts in this country are in a town 200 miles away under a different name. They draw their funds from banks abroad that have no idea who I am.”

“
Don’t blame yourself,” Carver said. “You were good. The best.”

“
So how in God’s name did you find me?”

“
Your eyes gave you away,” Carver said, referring to the corrective vision procedure he’d had in Durban earlier that year. “Organ theft is a bit of a problem here. The government requires that doctors document every eye that gets the surgery. The images are uploaded into a national database. Naturally, we have a script running that scans every image of every retina and matches them up with profiles on our list.”

Nico pounded the table with his fists, bouncing the dinner plates.

“
Everything okay?” Madge yelled from the other room.

“
Fine dear,” Nico yelled back through the door. He steadied his gaze on Carver and lowered his voice.

Nico reached for the open bottle of pinotage on the table and poured himself a full glass. He offered some to Carver, who politely declined. “I’d forgotten what a teetotaler you are,” he said. “Probably made it all the way to Africa without so much as a wink of sleep or a drop of caffeine.”

“
I’m not here to talk about me.”

“
I read about O’Keefe,” Nico said. “I’m sorry. I could tell you two were close.”

Carver got up, pulled a cup from the cupboard and helped himself to some tap water. He drank eight ounces and put the cup down. “I don’t discuss Agent O’Keefe with anyone.”

Nico finished his glass. “So. I guess Eva sent you?”

“
Careful. Nobody calls her by her first name now. Not even me.”

“
She’s going to hand me over to the Saudis, isn’t she?”

“
She was thinking about it. Then she read Haley Ellis’ report detailing the miraculous way that five Ulysses Bradleys disappeared from the South Lawn just in time for the motorcade to come through.”

Nico folded his arms across his chest, looking partially validated. “Well, if you’re packing a Presidential pardon, I’d say it’s high time you whip it out.”

“
The way the President sees it, you owe her one more favor.”

“
I’m retired,” he said. “Don’t even own a computer. I’ve spent the last year learning Afrikaans and Xhosa. Madge tends to the guests during fishing season and cooks. I make repairs to the place, read books. We’re not hurting anybody.”

“
I don’t have that luxury.” Carver pulled two newly issued passports from his jacket pocket. Nico picked them up. They were American passports containing his and Madge’s real names and digitally aged photos. “We have an issue that needs tending to. Your services are required.”

Then he pulled three South African Airways tickets from his pocket and laid them on the table. The flight was to leave from Johannesburg International Airport and land in Washington some 17 hours later.

“
This flight is tomorrow morning!” Nico raved. “We’d have to drive all night to get to Johannesburg in time.”

Carver gripped Nico’s spindly right arm and pulled him from the table. “Good point. You’ve got one minute to convince Madge that it’s a good idea. I’ll give you ten to pack.”