Thirty-Nine

“The room is packed,” Hollis told the room service waiter as she pulled the table from his grasp. “We’ll sort it out ourselves.”

Like Matias, the waiter kept trying to look into the room, but all there was to see was a crowd of people standing in front of the bed. Elsa had thrown a blanket over Bryan, and Levi had joined Peter and Eduardo in standing in front of him. Perhaps she and Finn were a corrupting influence because the honeymooners now seemed to be enjoying the odd turn in their vacation.

“Our agents will make sure that all the lovebirds are safe,” Peter said once the door was safely closed and locked. “And the four of us will continue the mission.” He poured himself a cup of tea. Declan held out a hand for the teapot, but Peter made a point of putting it down as far from Declan as possible. Declan then stretched himself in front of Peter’s tea to retrieve the pot. They were like a couple of kids, unwilling to share their toys. If this was how the four of them were going to work together, they were doomed to fail.

“What happens to Bryan?” Hollis didn’t want to know but, she had to. He was a person, someone loved him.

“We’ll debrief him. If he’s smart, he’ll cooperate and we’ll be able to relocate him somewhere he’ll be able to live out the rest of his life. In freedom, if he plays his cards right,” Peter said.

It sounded like a solid plan, one Hollis wanted to believe. But she figured it wasn’t true.

“Why don’t we ask now if there’s anything he knows that can help us?” She sat on the floor next to Bryan. “When my husband screws up,” she told him, “he gets very stubborn about apologizing. And it just makes me angrier, because then I’m not just upset about whatever he did wrong, I’m also upset that he won’t admit it. He thinks he’s avoiding a fight by not admitting anything. But instead of an ordinary fight, it turns into a blowout. We nearly got divorced a few years ago because he refused to admit he hadn’t read a paper I’d published on global interdependence in an internet-based economy.”

“In my defense,” Finn jumped in, “it was baseball season.”

Hollis looked at Bryan. “See what I mean? My point is that you can make this worse for yourself, or you can just cut your losses.”

Bryan grunted something at her. He was trying to be defiant, but in his eyes, she could see the fear.

“Give up,” Peter said. “He won’t respond to logic. That’s not how killers operate.”

“I get it,” she tried again, focusing herself on Bryan and ignoring the rest of the room. “I had a plan for my life. I was going to be a spy. I trained for it and everything. I was pretty good, top of my class in some things. But then I made a different choice. I had a quieter life. And then, well, things changed again, and I made a choice to go along with that change. So I understand what it is to have a life planned out for yourself, and then to realize that it’s not going to be exactly what you envisioned. I’m not a self-help type person, but there’s a certain sense in being open to new possibilities. I think that’s what Peter is offering you.”

He grunted again, but there was less anger in it. Then he tried to say something.

“Can we take the sock out of his mouth?” Hollis asked.

“He’ll scream,” Peter said.

She looked into Bryan’s eyes. “Please don’t scream.”

“Señora,” Eduardo said. “He wants to kill you.”

Hollis untied the sash around his mouth. “Unless he’s going to bite me to death, he’s not going to succeed.”

Bryan opened his mouth and she pulled out the sock. He spit a few times, said what was likely a lot of swear words in Spanish, then looked over at Eduardo.

“Che, this is worth it to you, dying for a woman?”

“Yes,” Eduardo said.

“Stupid. I told Boss to watch the way you looked at his wife. I told him you would betray him.”

Eduardo stood up. “You wanted me dead? It’s worth it to you, to impress Carlos?”

Bryan shook his head. “It’s not Carlos I’m trying to impress. I need to go to the meeting he has. I need to show the next level what I can do.” He looked over at Declan. “I can help you. I know that Carlos has seen the book. Not what was inside, but he has seen it before. He’s expecting the McCabes tomorrow at the café. He told me to tell them to bring the book with them.”

“What time?” Finn asked.

Bryan bit his lip. “What do I get for telling you?”

“Anything on this table,” Peter gestured toward the room service table, with half-finished pots of coffee and tea, and an unopened bottle of whiskey.

“How about you let me walk out of here?”

Finn and Hollis looked over to Peter. He didn’t have to say anything. The answer was in his clenched jaw.

“What time?” Peter asked.

“If I don’t show up tonight, Carlos will know something has happened to me. They won’t be safe, the McCabes, even if I tell you the time. He’ll know they’ve done something.”

Finn shook his head. He closed his eyes and sighed. “We killed Eduardo as instructed, but then we realized that Carlos had been wrong. Eduardo wasn’t having an affair with Teresa. You lied to get him out of the way, to feed your own ambitions, and then you killed Teresa. So, out of respect for Carlos, we killed you.”

Hollis could see that the last thing Finn wanted to do was concoct a story that would give Peter an excuse to remove Bryan as a problem. But he was leaving them no choice. Bryan looked from face to face. He looked about to say something but instead he just mumbled to himself.

“He’ll want proof,” Eduardo said. “Three bodies is a lot to take your word for.”

“Carlos trusts my father,” Teresa said. “If he backs you up, he’ll believe. But then you have to get my father away from here. He must be safe.”

Peter nodded. “You two go tonight. He goes tomorrow. We’ll make sure of it.”

Bryan laughed a little. “You still don’t know when you are to meet Carlos, and he’s not a man to be kept waiting.”

It was his only card. To convince him to cooperate, they had to take it away from him. Hollis turned to Eduardo. “What’s Carlos’s number?”

He handed her his cell phone. She typed the number into the burner phone Eduardo had given her. Then she took a picture of Bryan. “I can text him this. I’ll tell him you killed Teresa, and we’ve got you tied up. I’ll ask him if he wants us to bring you tomorrow with the address book or kill you now and save ourselves the hassle of keeping you alive all night.”

“Go ahead. I’ll tell him everything,” Bryan said.

“He chose us over Silva, his friend of many decades. Do you think he’ll choose you now? Do you think you mean that much to him?” Hollis kept her voice calm, even light, the way she’d speak to a distracted student, explaining the importance of keeping up with the class. But inside her heart was beating fast. This wasn’t just a moment of no return for Bryan, but for her and Finn as well. They were committing to a mission no matter who got hurt. They were weighing lives saved against lives lost. This was what real spies did. They looked into the eyes of desperate men and made bargains that would probably not be kept.

She wanted to make clear to Bryan that they couldn’t send him back to Carlos without knowing he would help them, and they couldn’t leave him with Peter without Bryan’s proving his value. There was no win for him anymore, there was only a chance to contain the losses.

“Do what Señora says,” Eduardo pleaded. “Just admit you are wrong.”

They all waited. It took several minutes but finally Bryan nodded. “If you give me some coffee, I will help you.”