The room off the front hall in the castle-like building on James’s compound looked like a high-end home office on massive steroids.
Across from where Lou sat was a fireplace the size of a doorway, twenty-foot-high ceilings with wood beams, heavy red curtains bookending arched cathedral-like windows.
Drumming his fingers atop a gilt antique desk at the center of it, Lou thought it might have had the dimensions of his grammar school basketball gym. Or maybe even the church he was married in.
This place was a trip all right, he thought as he crossed his feet on the Persian rug. An actual damn castle would have been over-the-top in NYC let alone literally in the middle of the jungle.
And what a hellish damn jungle it truly was, Lou thought angrily, glancing out the cathedral window. Just now as he and Alessandra were coming in from the car through the twilight something indistinct and large flew past in front of them. They both thought it was a bat before they registered the buzzing insect sound of it, and he had to race Alessandra for the front door.
They were there coming on a quarter of an hour of waiting when they heard footsteps and two women went by in the open doorway of the hall. They were nice-looking white girls in bathing suits, laughing together. One was in a flaming orange one-piece that did a thong thing at the back and the other was wearing a flowered beach towel in such a way as to make Lou think that was all she was wearing. Late twenties. Hard-eyed. They didn’t even so much as glance in at them.
They were call girls, had to be, Lou thought. Pricey ones.
Lou exchanged a WTF look with Alessandra but neither said anything as the room was no doubt bugged up the wazoo.
After another minute, techno began thumping from somewhere within the huge building. Lou walked to the window and looked out. Beyond their car above the jungle fronds, there was a mellow blue light in the sky now after the setting of the sun.
As they continued to wait, Lou noticed that his cool-as-a-cucumber partner, Alessandra, actually had a nervous habit of grabbing at her earlobe.
His daughter had done that as well when she was like three, Lou remembered. It was usually accompanied by sucking her thumb. He and his wife used to laugh that she was a little air traffic controller talking into a microphone.
Lou suddenly wondered if his other daughter had done it as well.
His forgotten daughter, he thought. The one he was now here risking his ass in the middle of the Amazon jungle so that she would remain gloriously forgotten forever.
Gee, Lou. What a guy you are. You need to apply for father-of-the-year.
When James came in through the front door into the hallway five minutes later, he was wearing midnight blue jeans and a crisp white shirt the color of starlight. There were three other men with him. Two large white guys and one shorter, younger Hispanic. James said something, and they all laughed. The three soldiers kept going as James stuck his head in the doorway.
“Hey, guys. Sorry I’m late,” he said as they got the handshakes out of the way.
Lou looked at him. His hair was slicked back now. He looked like a guy about to go out clubbing.
“How do you like my place?” James said.
“It’s wondrous,” Alessandra said.
“Isn’t it?” James said, looking up at the beamed ceiling. “It’s a French manor house from the 1400s. It was brought here in the forties. This room, found in all manor houses in the Middle Ages, stood in for the town hall. Here, they would make decisions, hold trials, count the taxes that were paid to the marquis. I love this room.”
“It’s incredible,” Alessandra said.
“So, what do you have for me?” James said.
Lou already had the marked map and photographs open on the desk’s tooled leather top.
“The runway is done. Right here where you wanted it,” Lou said. “I even had my guys improve the drive down from this logging road for better access.”
“What’s this opening here in the photo for?”
“The space to get tanks in for fuel storage that are on order.”
“On order?” James said with frown. “I thought you were done.”
“I am. It’s fine. We are ready to go. While we wait for the order, I brought barrels out and a pump you plug into a truck. A fuel truck from Iquitos is on standby for the first refuel. We are ready to go as soon as you want.”
“Excellent,” James said, nodding as he looked at the papers again. “You guys really are the real deal. Very professional. Nice job. I love it. Efficiency and speed are two of the three things I love most in a partner.”
“And the third?” Lou said, smiling.
James gazed coldly into his eyes as he gave Lou’s shoulder a slap.
“Undying loyalty, of course,” he said.