Trump Tower (24 page)

He stared at it. “Can't even buy myself a subway ticket with this.”

She had to know, “When was the last time your poor butt sat on a subway train?” She put the box with the ring in it back in the cabinet and locked it. “For next time.” Then she looked at him and shook her head. “Oh what could have been . . . if only I was forty years younger or you were ten years younger.”

He laughed, “Thanks for keeping the place open. You make me feel like the Queen of England at Harrods,” and started to leave.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“Home.”

“This place is locked-down shut. There's no way you, or the Queen of England, could get out of here alive without me.”

Downstairs, she hugged him, said “Love to Alicia,” and the guard let him out. He strolled the few dozen yards along Fifth Avenue to Fifty-Sixth Street, turned left, went into the residents' lobby and then upstairs.

“How did you do?” Alicia kissed him hello.

“Funny you should ask,” he said. “How did you do?”

“I did good . . . I'm doing good . . . working on the book. Why's it funny I should ask?”

“‘Cause I did so good . . .” He handed her the Tiffany box.

She broke out into a huge smile, opened the box, and right away said, “Oh my God . . . Carson . . . I love it.” She kissed him. “I love this and I love you.” She quickly put it on and went to check it in the hallway mirror. “Carson . . . oh I love you.” She kissed him again. “And . . . come to think of it, I have a present for you.”

“Really?”

“Yes, wait here.”

“Where?”

“Right here. Don't move.” She raced into her bedroom, threw off all her clothes, and stepped into the tiny thong she'd bought at Firenzi. “You ready?” she called to him.

“I am.”

She headed out the bedroom door wearing nothing but the necklace and the thong. “Care for a piece of candy before dinner?”

“W
HAT THE HELL
do you mean?” David barked at Zhadanov. “What kind of change of plans?”

“My contacts, the men we were supposed to meet tomorrow . . . they insist that we meet tonight.”

He checked his watch. “Nine thirty on a Sunday night?”

“They have given me an address . . .”

“Y'all said they're businessmen. I thought we were going to someone's office tomorrow morning.”

“They have changed the plans. I told them it's all right. We will need a car to take us. I don't know if you want to spend the night here or go back to New York later.”

David stared at him. “Y'all got us rooms at which hotel?”

Zhadanov hesitated. “Sometimes they do this . . . change plans at the last minute . . .”

“You mean there are no reservations? What kind of shit is this? I come all the way down here, and now you tell me . . .”

Barry cut off the engines and Gavin shouted back to Wendy, “Good to go.”

She got out of her jump seat and opened the front door. No sooner did she have the steps down when a customs officer and an immigration officer came into the plane, saluted, and the immigration officer said, “Welcome to the Netherland Antilles. Passports please.”

They went through the usual formalities—David couldn't tell from the fleeting glance he had of Zhadanov's passport which country it was from, except it clearly wasn't a US passport—and while Zhadanov went to find a car, David asked Barry, “What's the deal with turn-around and crew rest and all that stuff? Can we go back tonight? This asshole is screwing with my head.”

Barry checked his watch and did a fast calculation. “We can hold here . . . maybe four more hours, then we're probably illegal. But what the hell, boss, if you want . . .”

“No,” David said. “You guys go get rooms. There's got to be a hotel around the airport. Go to sleep but stick by your cell. If we're staying, we're staying. If not, I'll phone. Four hours? Call it two in the morning?”

“We'll be fueled and ready to go.”

“Thanks,” David said and left the plane.

Zhadanov was waiting with a taxi. “It's a house about thirty minutes from here.”

The two climbed in the backseat, and the driver left the airport. There wasn't a lot of conversation during the ride. Zhadanov tried to make small talk, but David wasn't interested.

The driver headed up the beach on dark, empty roads until he came to a sharp turn and stopped, almost in the middle of the road. “This is it,” he said.

David looked around but couldn't see anything. “Where?” There were no houselights. There was nothing.

“Down there,” the driver pointed.

Zhadanov opened his window and spotted a small footpath leading to the beach. “This is it, yes, this is it.”

David decided, “I'm not getting out of the car.”

“What do you mean? We're here.” Zhadanov demanded, “You must get out. The house is down there at the water's edge.”

“I'm not going down there. You tell them to come up.”

“What do you mean?”

He didn't like the change of plans, and he didn't like the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere. “What don't you understand? Either they come up or I'm on my way back to New York.”

“Why are you being like this? I have arranged . . .”

“‘Cause you're fucking with my head.” David tapped the driver on the shoulder, “We're outta here. Back to the airport, pal.”

“Wait, wait,” Zhadanov reached for his phone, got out of the car and dialed a number.

David tried to listen through the open window but couldn't tell what Zhadanov was saying.

Zhadanov soon stuck his head inside the car. “The man himself will come up to greet you. It may take a while, but he will come to you.”

“Two minutes,” David said and sat back to wait.

Several minutes passed.

He listened to the waves on the beach and all the usual night noises. “Where is he?” David asked.

“He said he'd come up,” Zhadanov insisted. “Please . . . hang on . . .”

Several more minutes passed.

“What the hell is taking so long?”

Zhadanov reassured him, “The man himself will be here . . .”

“No, no,” David finally decided, “I'm gone. There's something wrong about this . . .” He leaned forward to tell the driver, “Let's go. Back to the airport.” Then he told Zhadanov, “Y'all gotta make your own way home.”

“Wait,” Zhadanov begged, “here he is. He's here now.”

David looked and saw flashlight beams coming up what appeared to be a steep set of stairs. He watched as the beams got closer . . . there were three flashlights . . . getting closer, but very slowly.

“Thank you,” Zhadanov said loudly, “Don Pepe. Thank you so much for coming to greet us.”

The three light beams were at the top of the steps now.

Zhadanov hugged the dark shadow of a small man.

Getting out of the car, David cautiously came around the back to find two very large men carrying flashlights—shining their beams at him, which meant he couldn't see them—but then he heard a voice say, “Mr. Cove, thank you very much for coming all this way.”

David raised his hands to show everyone that the light was in his eyes, and when the men moved the beams down to his chest, he found himself standing face to face with a small man in his late seventies or early eighties.

“This is Señor Forero,” Zhadanov said.

“Please . . .” Forero extended his hand with a smile. “My friends call me Pepe.”

“David.” He said, and they shook hands.

The man had white hair, a pleasant face, with a nice smile and warm eyes.
He was wearing a black silk shirt, not tucked in, and white pants. But then David noticed, he was leaning on a crutch. And when David looked down, he saw that this man only had one leg.

Suddenly he felt terrible, having made a crippled man walk up all those stairs. “I'm sorry if I have inconvenienced you . . . I didn't know . . .”

Forero waved him off. “You have come a long way. It is the least I can do to greet you here. Please,” he motioned toward the steps. “I have put food on my table for you, and there is plenty to drink. I hope you will do me the honor of joining me in my home.”

David didn't know what he was expecting, but a nice old man with one leg wasn't it. “Yeah . . . sure,” he said, “my pleasure.”

Zhadanov ordered the driver to wait. “We'll be a few hours.”

All five men now made their way slowly down the steps to the house.

They came into the living room, which David thought must have been seventy-five feet long and opened onto a wonderful deck. There were several couches, facing the sea—which he could hear but it was pitch-black in the night—and a huge wooden table laid out exquisitely with plates of fruit and fish and several bottles of liquor and wine.

The two large men who'd accompanied Forero up the steps stayed back at the side of the living room, out of the way.

Obviously bodyguards, David decided.

Then two more men appeared. Both of them were closer to Forero's age than David's, and both of them shook his hand.

“Call me Juan Felipe,” the first man said. “Very nice to meet you.”

“And my name is Javier. Thank you for coming all this way to meet with us.”

He shook their hands, “David,” he said to each of them, then watched as they hugged Zhadanov, showing David that they knew him.

Forero suggested they all have something to eat first, so David took a plate of cold grouper with rice and fruit, and an Amstel beer. The others followed him, sitting on various couches with plates on their laps.

Except for Forero. He motioned to one of the large men at the side of the living room who left and came back with a wheelchair. Forero sat in it, and the man pushed the wheelchair right in front of where David was sitting.

That's when David noticed the man was carrying a gun under his shirt.

Looking around, David spotted two other men sitting on the deck in the dark, and from the outline he could tell that one of them was carrying a big, automatic weapon.

“Tell me Señor Forero . . .” David had to know.

“Pepe,” the man corrected him.

“Okay . . . Pepe . . . why are you surrounded by men with guns?”

The old man smiled, “Juan Felipe . . . Javier and I . . . we come from a country where kidnapping is a common occurrence. Unfortunately, we are forced to take such precautions.”

“But . . . we're not in Colombia now.”

“Do the terrorists attack Americans only in America?” He smiled, “In my country, if they can kidnap you outside the country and force your family to pay a ransom, then they can kill you outside the country and the Colombian authorities can do nothing. It is a sad fact of life that we live with.” He pointed to his missing leg. “I know what I'm speaking about.”

David wasn't sure he understood. “They cut off your leg?”

“I was kidnapped nearly ten years ago in Aruba. By the FARC. The
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia
. You have heard of them? They are a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization. They didn't cut my leg off, they . . .” He paused for a moment . . . “They sent a live video back to my family, demanding ransom. When my family hesitated, they shot me in the leg so badly that . . . they left me to die.”

David asked, “And your family didn't pay?”

“Of course, they paid. And the FARC still left me to die.”

“Nice guys,” David muttered.

“Extremely,” Forero agreed. “But let's speak of more pleasant things. Doing business with you. Has our good friend Vasyl explained what it is we want?”

David looked at Zhadanov—he'd found an expensive-looking bottle of
gen-ever
, which is Dutch gin, and was drinking it straight—then back at Forero. “He said you were looking to put some serious money through my business.”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“But . . .” David tried to say this gently, “seeing as how you're all from Colombia . . . you know . . .”

“Drug money,” Forero cut in. “We understand your concern.”

“I'm not going to get involved with anything . . .” David started to say.

And Forero finished it, “. . . like money laundering.”

“Exactly.”

“I don't blame you,” Forero said. “But then, look at Juan Felipe and Javier, and look at me. Do you see Pablo Escobar?”

David forced a smile.

“We are businessmen,” Forero went on, “who have access to large amounts of money in the United States.”