Just to the west of New Orleans and its suburbs of Metairie and Kenner lay a tract of uninhabited bayous and swamps known as the Bonnet Carré spillway. A bowl-shaped expanse that stretched from the Mississippi to the lake, the spillway served as a safety valve when the river reached flood stage. Locals knew it as a great place to fish and hunt and trap crabs. The area’s less savory inhabitants knew it as the perfect spot to dump bodies.
Paul Fitzgerald turned his pickup off onto a narrow rutted track that wound down through ancient cedars and water oaks to a half-forgotten dirt boat launch. The pickup had been bought secondhand from a dealer out on Airline Highway who knew better than to ask questions. In a few days it would be found, torched, on the side of the road in some abandoned neighborhood in New Orleans East. No one would think anything about it.
Backing the pickup down to the water’s edge, Fitzgerald opened his door to a thick, hot night scented with the fecund smell of wet earth and green growing things. He stood for a moment, his well-trained senses alive to all the subtle nuances of the marsh. He was alone.
He closed the door with a quiet snap, then went to launch the small aluminum skiff from the back of the pickup truck. The rattle of metal against metal sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness as he piled the chains in the bottom of the boat. He hesitated, listening to the slap of murky water against the bank, the hum of a car engine somewhere in the distance. It faded quickly into the night.
Wiping his sleeve across his damp forehead, he went back to the pickup for the Iranian’s body and dumped that in the skiff, too. The man had served his purpose. All the carefully arranged pieces of incriminating evidence were in place. Now the time had come for him to disappear. After tomorrow night, the authorities would assume he had fled the country. They wouldn’t think to look for him here, in the back swamps of Louisiana.
Dipping his paddle with the effortless grace of a born outdoorsman, Fitzgerald eased out into the middle of the channel. At the other end of the skiff, Barid Hafezi’s sightless eyes stared open and wide at the starry night sky above.
Belmont, Virginia: 5 June 10:20 P.M. Eastern time
Adelaide Meyer flashed her pass to the guards at the gates of Clark Westlake’s sprawling country estate on the outskirts of Belmont and floored her Boxster up the long, winding drive. Like the Randolphs, the Westlakes were old New England money. They’d grown rich—like the Randolphs—on the slave trade of the eighteenth century. They’d grown richer on the ruined lives of hundreds of thousands of exploited immigrant workers in the nineteenth century, then richer again thanks to some nasty deals with European factories using slave labor during World War II. There was plenty of mud there, if anyone cared to dig for it. But what was the point? No one would ever be able to get it to stick.
“Adelaide,” said Westlake, meeting her at the door. “I’m glad you’re here.” He led the way to his library and barely waited until the door closed behind them before he exploded. “What the fuck are your boys doing down there? Car bombs, for Christ’s sake? You told me these guys are good.”
“They’re good.”
“Are they? We’ve been planning this thing for months, Adelaide. There’s too much at stake here to have the whole thing come unraveled at the last minute.”
Adelaide tossed her Prada purse on the leather sofa and went to pour herself a drink from the wet bar. “It would all have been taken care of by now if you hadn’t sent one of your field operatives down there to get in the way.”
Clark shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Some turkey named Jax Alexander. He killed one of my men and now he’s protecting the girl.” Adelaide knocked back the shot of neat vodka and poured another. She’d learned to drink on the oil rigs, working with roughnecks and roustabouts. She could drink almost everyone in Washington under the table, and had.
Westlake came to pour himself a brandy. “How do you know he’s one of my men?”
“Because the people I have on this have contacts. And those contacts are telling them this Jax Alexander is a real loose cannon. You’ve got to get him out of there.”
“What are you suggesting? That I just head on over to Langley and order Chandler to pull this guy out? You don’t think that’s going to set off alarm bells someplace?”
“I don’t care how you do it, Clark. Just get that guy out of New Orleans. I’ve spent a fortune setting this thing up. If it starts unraveling, all those threads are going to lead right back to me. Not you. Not your boss. Me. I did that so that you and your boss could keep your hands clean. But I should think the least you can do is avoid sabotaging me.”
“Give me a break, Adelaide. You’re not doing this out of the goodness of your heart. You’re doing it because it’s a good investment. The contracts that are going to come out of this will make Iraq look like a boondoggle in a banana republic.”
Adelaide threw down another shot. “No one’s going to get any contracts if this thing blows up in our faces.”
Clark took a sip of his own brandy and coughed. “I’ll take care of the idiot from Langley. Just tell your guys to get this thing back on track and keep it there. We’ve got less than twenty-four hours.”