State of Siege o-6 Read online

  He tucked his passport in his sports jacket and looked around. The courtesy buses were stopping along the curb, and he selected one that was going to a brand-name hotel. He didn’t have a reservation. But when he went to the desk, he would tell the receptionist he did. He had forgotten the confirmation number; it was their job to remember, not his. Even if they couldn’t accommodate him they would scurry to find him some place to stay. Brand-name hotels did that.

  He sat down in the tram and turned around to look out the window. The spidery off-white control tower flashed by. There was rich greenery by the side of the road. The traffic moved swiftly, not like it did in New York and Paris.

  Ivan Georgiev was going to like it here.

  He would have liked South America, too. But things hadn’t gone as planned. Sometimes they didn’t. Which was why, unlike the others, he had an escape route. If everything went wrong, Annabelle Hampton was supposed to send her floaters to collect him. The plan was for him to meet her later, at the hotel, and arrange for her to be paid either from the ransom or from his own funds.

  When she didn’t show, he assumed the worst. Later, when the floaters returned to put him on a plane and get him out of the country, he learned that she’d been taken. She would probably plea-bargain her way to fifteen years in prison by telling authorities about the CIA/ UNTAC link, they said. Which was why he had to leave. The CIA planned to deny everything.

  Georgiev was supposed to fly on from Los Angeles to New Zealand. But the Bulgarian didn’t want to go to New Zealand. He didn’t want the CIA to know where he was. Besides, he had money and he had ideas. He also had connections with Eastern European expatriates, especially the Romanians, who had set up film companies in Hollywood.

  Georgiev smiled. His associates had told him that the film industry was a ruthless, sexy business. A business where a foreign accent was considered exotic and cultured and was a guaranteed invitation to parties. A business where people didn’t stab you in the back in private. They stabbed you in the front, in public, where others could see.

  Georgiev smiled. He had the accent and he would be happy to stab people wherever they chose.

  He was going to like it here.

  He was going to like it very, very much.

  * * *

  In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!

  — Orson Welles

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