Vulture Peak by John Burdett Read Free Book Online

with their eyes: I was not a member of their secret society, not an initiate, therefore I hardly existed except in the field of basic courtesy. The woman, though, double-checked my face and saw that I had indeed picked up on certain incongruous phrases:
might have to finesse it; need to pay lip service
. She gave me a split-second chance to ask the question, but I hadn’t decided which way to jump.
    “Can we move on to the next item?” Linda said.
    Now we were all waiting for Jack, who nodded and put his elbows on the arms of his chair and pressed his palms together at the same time as he kissed the tips of his fingers. He let a lot of beats pass before he said, “What we don’t want to have to deal with is a Noriega-type situation.”
    “Right,” Linda said.
    “Those photos of the younger Bush on a certain island not a hundred miles from the west coast of Panama—that little punk in jail after Big Daddy’s invasion and threatening to tell all—how toxic was that, for Chrissake?” Ben said.
    “Bush was a cinch compared to Yeltsin. I never saw so many skeletons in one cupboard,” Ben said.
    “Yeltsin? This is a breeze in comparison,” Linda said. “Try getting instructions out of a terminal alcoholic.”
    “Yeah, Ben bore the brunt of that one,” Jack said with the ghost of a twinkle. Linda coughed. “Except the time he came on to Linda,” Jack added.
    “If he’d been able to get it up, I woulda shot the creep,” Linda said.
    “Well, what do we do?” Jack said.
    Silence. Now Linda coughed again. Jack looked at her. “We’ve got to have more detailed data, so we can analyze the risks,” Linda said.
    “That’s right,” Ben said.
    “So, do we have a conclusion to this meeting?” Jack said.
    “Well, I think we let the detective follow present instructions from the Colonel and keep a close eye.”
    “That’s just the present issue—what about security in general?” Jack said.
    “Like I said, we need all the relevant data—all of it,” Linda said.
    “Like with Yeltsin?” Jack said. He shared a dirty grin with Ben, who was delighted.
    “You boys,” Linda said.
    “How’d you get out of it again?” Jack said.
    “Chrissake, Jack,” Linda said.
    “How’d she do it, Ben?” Jack said.
    “Kicked him in the balls so hard she nearly killed the client.”
    Jack’s eyes took on a new life. “Yeah. The one time they rushed him to the hospital for non-alcohol-related injury.”
    “Okay, okay,” Linda said.
    “So,” Jack said. “We stand pat for the moment and let the detective go to Dubai on business as usual, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily take the thing any further than that. Good. What was the detective’s name again?”
    “Jit—plee—cheep,” Manny said.
    “Right,” Jack said.
    There was a kind of satisfied pause. The three serious Americans seemed to have talked themselves into a mood of indomitable optimism that made Vikorn smile. There was one more item on the agenda, though, something that had perhaps been alluded to so faronly in code. I had a premonition of a knotty problem they were about to share with me. Linda mumbled something impossible for me to catch. Jack mumbled back. Ben said, “Better you than me, Linda.” Linda gave him a stern glance but prepared to speak.
    She looked at me. “Ah, I wonder if you could help us with this, Detective. Thing is, we know the Colonel here is a genius-level administrator, but—ah—put it down to American insecurity, but it bothers us the way nothing at all is
visible
. I mean, no docs, no computer program—there’s nothing for us to look at. How can we know what’s supposed to happen next in any of his multiple operations? To do the job properly, we have to know everything he’s up to to make sure nothing goes wrong. I mean, with Bush we knew exactly how much coke he did and who he screwed when he was wild, and with Yeltsin we actually took control of his vodka supplier for two months prior to the election. What