Buenaventura—literally, “good fortune”—has evolved into a twenty-first-century hub of trade and commerce, blessed by proximity to Chile and Mexico and direct access to trade routes with the Asian markets. It hadn’t always lived up to its name. Javier was a product of the old port of Buenaventura, one of the deadliest places in Colombia, where “good fortune” meant living to see another day in the never-ending cocaine wars for control of the port.

  “Stop here,” said Javier.

  His driver slammed on the brakes, overreacting to the command, which nearly sent Javier flying through the windshield.

  “Comemierda,” Javier said, as he slapped the “dumbass” with the back of his hand. “Don’t you know how to drive?”

  “Not really,” he said, cowering.

  Javier reminded himself that he was just a kid, which was probably the reason Patrick Battle had let him live after killing the others. Javier had found the kid cowering in the corner, clutching the cellphone he’d used to call Javier—the same cell Javier had then used to call Kate.

  “She knows it was a different caller this time,” said Javier, as he stuffed Inkface’s cellphone into his pocket. “She said my voice sounded different.”

  “You don’t sound at all like my brother,” he said, meaning the dead negotiator.

  Javier pulled his pistol from his belt and pressed the business end of the barrel to the kid’s temple. “You told me everything that was said, right?”

  “Yes! Everything!”

  “You didn’t leave anything out?”

  “No!” he said, his voice quaking. “Manuel let the hostage talk first, and then he got on the line. He said two million, no police. I told you every word I heard.”

  “And what about Olga?”

  “What about her?”

  “You didn’t join in the fun with the other slobs?”

  “No! I got sick on rum.”

  Javier pressed the barrel of the pistol harder against his head. “So you would have, if you could have.”

  “No. I swear! I know Olga is yours. I would never disrespect you like that.”

  The teen closed his eyes tightly, bracing for execution Buenaventura style. Javier considered squeezing the trigger, and he definitely would have, had he thought the boy was lying about not defiling Olga, his prize possession. Mercy would have been in order had he called Javier and ratted out his fellow kidnappers at the Hostage Hotel before they’d all ended up dead on the floor. But he’d done right by calling soon enough for Javier to reach out to his contacts at the port. Anyone seeking to escape Buenaventura would head to the port, and it had taken all of ten minutes for a call to come in with the first sighting of the six-foot-plus American with the mop of blond hair on his head and the gorgeous brunette at his side.

  “Please, don’t kill me,” the teen said, sniveling.

  Javier had heard many such pleas. But the smell in the air, the stench of the port, was triggering memories of his own. It had happened at a place like this one, alongside a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, where towering cranes worked around the clock to unload mountains of metal containers from Chinese freighters loaded with electronics and other goods. Javier and his older brother, two of the FARC’s newest foot soldiers, had gone there to collect payment for a shipment of California-bound cocaine. The delivery wasn’t up to the buyer’s standards, an infraction for which the sentence was death. His brother got a bullet to the forehead that had literally blown off the top of his skull. For some reason, the buyer had decided to let Javier live.

  Javier put the pistol away. “Congratulations. You, too, are now a survivor of Buenaventura.”

  The kid could breathe again, but he seemed unable to move, frozen by a trauma-filled night.

  “Go!” shouted Javier.

  The teen snapped into action, hopped out of the Jeep, and was off like a sprinter out of the blocks.

  Javier dialed his cell and called the boss—el jefe del jefe—for an update.

  “I’m on them,” he said into his phone. “They boarded a freighter about half an hour ago. MV Ali Bey. Panamanian flag.”

  The reply was all business. “That should make your work easy. How did the call go?”

  “She wants to know what code we want.”

  “The kid can tell you. If you make him.”

  “Just to be clear. The hit is off?”

  “No. It’s postponed. Until I get the code I paid for.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Javier hung up, checked his ammunition, and climbed out of the Jeep. He didn’t know the details of the code or the transaction, but he was all too familiar with the consequences of delivering less than promised.

  He took a long look down the dimly lit street. The kid was still running, guard dogs barking from the other side of the long chain-link fence as he flew past them. Javier had no regrets about letting him go. But it would be his last show of mercy.

  He tucked his pistol away and started walking toward the berth for the MV Ali Bey.

  Chapter 39

  For the first time since their dating days, Kate found herself at Noah’s front door on a Saturday night. He probably guessed she wasn’t there to see if he wanted to walk down to DuPont Circle and catch a movie.

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  He was standing in the open doorway and glanced back over his shoulder. “I actually have company.”

  If it weren’t clear enough what “company” meant, she came up from behind and put her arms around him. “Oh, is our pizza here already?”

  “We didn’t order pizza,” said Noah.

  Kate rolled her eyes. For such a smart man, Noah could be so dumb sometimes.

  “I got a call from Colombia,” she said, cutting to the chase. “It’s not good.”

  Noah unwrapped himself from his date and grabbed his coat from the hook on the wall. Kate started slowly down the sidewalk, giving Noah a moment to explain the situation to Pizza Girl. She was halfway to the corner when he caught up.

  “Patrick’s been kidnapped,” she said.

  Noah stopped and reached for his cellphone. “I can help. The Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell operates twenty-four/seven. They are literally five blocks from here.”

  “No,” she said, and she told him why.

  “Kidnappers always say no law enforcement,” said Noah. “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “It’s not your decision,” said Kate.

  “Kate, listen to me. Not a day goes by without an American being kidnapped somewhere in the world. The fusion center and its cell are the best of the best. They know more than any private security firm. Use their expertise.”

  “Put your phone away. That’s not what I came here for.”

  Noah tucked it into his coat pocket. He seemed to grasp quickly that this was going to be no small request. “Okay. Talk to me.”

  “I want clearance to know everything there is to know about the code you think Sandra Levy stole from Buck Technologies.”

  “I promised you that I’d work on that, and you promised to help us figure out who Sandra Levy was working for. That’s the arrangement.”

  “I need clearance now.”

  “That wasn’t our deal.”

  “Patrick’s kidnappers changed the deal on me, so I’m changing ours.”

  Noah glanced toward the busy traffic circle down the street, then back at her. “I understand Patrick’s kidnapping changes everything for you. But I can’t just go back to Justice and say the kid Kate used to babysit got kidnapped, so we need to give her clearance on Project Naïveté. Work with me. What’s changed?”

  Kate wanted someone to trust, and she’d once trusted Noah more than anyone. Still, the man standing in the glow of the streetlamp, hands in his pockets, ready to call the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, wasn’t the old Noah. She was negotiating with an assistant U.S. attorney whose loyalty was to the Department of Justice and whose new girlfriend was waiting for him back at the apartment that, for all practical purposes, Kate had once treated as her own.

  She took the indirect approach. “Let me ask you something—hypothetically. What if Patrick’s kidnappers wanted something other than money?”

  “It’s pretty common to demand ransom payments in Bitcoin. Is that what you mean?”

  “No. Let’s say they don’t want dollars, euros, cryptocurrency, gold, frankincense, myrrh, doubloons—nothing like that. What if they want—”

  She stopped herself. Noah waited. Kate didn’t want to say too much, but she couldn’t effectively negotiate with Patrick’s kidnappers without first negotiating with Noah.

  “If they wanted what?” asked Noah.

  “Code,” she said.

  “You mean code from Buck Technologies.”

  “Yes. Hypothetically.”

  Noah seemed to catch his breath. “You need to be very careful here, Kate.”

  “I’m trying to be careful.”

  “It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are. Even if you think it’s the only way to save Patrick’s life, you can’t just hand over code from Buck Technologies.”

  “I didn’t say I was handing over anything.”

  “I hope you’re not even thinking about it, hypothetically or otherwise. If you give Patrick’s kidnappers code that isn’t classified, that’s corporate espionage. One to five years. If you deliver code that is classified, that’s ten years. And it gets worse, depending on who the kidnappers are. If they’re a terrorist organization, tack on violations of the Patriot Act. If they’re a foreign government, you could be talking treason—the death penalty.”

  “Wait. Who said anything about a foreign government?”

  He didn’t respond, but Kate wasn’t about to let it go.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Noah, so don’t go silent on me. You and the whole Department of Justice are so sure Sandra Levy stole code from Buck Technologies. But you said it yourself: the FBI moved in and arrested her too soon for prosecutors to have the evidence they needed to prove at trial that she actually stole anything. Right?”

  He seemed reluctant to answer, not because he hadn’t told her, but perhaps because he regretted having told her too much.

  “Right, Noah?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “What if she didn’t actually steal anything? Isn’t it at least possible that Patrick’s kidnappers are demanding Buck code as ransom in order to get their hands on the very thing they didn’t get from Sandra Levy?”

  Noah paused, and even in the dim glow of residential streetlights at night, Kate could see that her words had him thinking.

  “It would depend on what code they’re asking for,” he said.

  “They haven’t said. But that’ll change soon. If I’m going to negotiate for code, I need to know what code I’m talking about. I need clearance.”

  “Even if you get clearance, you’re not going to be able to hand over classified code in order to save Patrick.”

  “I’m not asking for permission to hand it over. I know I’m in an impossible situation here. But I need the ability to talk a good bluff. And I need you to help me.”

  Noah took a deep breath, but he seemed to be coming around a little, perhaps enough to at least try and help her. “This is a really big request, Kate.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I mean this is really big.”

  “I understand. But if you come through for me, I’ll bring you a pizza. I’ll bet what’s-her-name doesn’t even know you actually like anchovies.”

  He forced a little smile, but it didn’t hide the nervousness. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Chapter 40

  In a port lined with countless ocean freighters, some of them longer than soccer fields, the MV Ali Bey was a 100,000-ton rust bucket. And it appeared to be deserted.

  Cargo of every description floats into Buenaventura from China and elsewhere, much of it in twenty- and forty-foot containers stacked like giant Lego blocks, eight to ten units high, on the main deck. Patrick guessed the MV Ali Bey carried thousands of units when fully loaded. From the looks of things, however, this old ship hadn’t carried anything in ages. Vessels at nearby berths showed signs of life—lights on inside the bridge, glowing orange dots from the lit cigarettes of bored crew members on deck, and the white-hot spark and flare of welders doing repair work late into the night. The MV Ali Bey was completely dark, no sign of a crew. Weeds had sprouted from crevices on the main deck, which was littered with debris. Patrick and Olga minded their step in the glow of a full moon, as they walked along the ship’s portside rail.

  “It’s like a ghost ship,” said Olga.

  Their escape plan—hopping a freighter at the port—had been hatched on the run from the Hostage Hotel. Olga had put the odds at fifty-fifty that going to the police would put them in the hands of a corrupt cop friendly to the kidnappers. They had no passports or identification, so the airport was no option. All they had was the cash Olga had plied from the dead men’s pockets, which could buy them a spot on a freighter out of Colombia. The destination didn’t matter.

  A breeze was blowing across the harbor, and a slight shift in direction brought a hint of smoke from the ship’s stern. Patrick and Olga both noticed it.

  “Smells like charcoal,” he said.

  It was coming from the other side of the navigational bridge. In a seafaring phase of his virtual building career, Patrick had designed the world’s largest cargo ship, big enough to haul the equivalent of a freight train forty-four miles long, so he recognized the multistory structure rising from the main deck as crew accommodations. They started cautiously in that direction.

  “Maybe we should hop a different freighter,” said Olga.

  Patrick looked around the harbor. The nearest alternatives were in various states of loading or unloading. Massive cargo cranes were designed to move one container unit at a time. It might be days before the nearest ship was ready to leave port.

  “This could be a good place to hide until we figure things out,” said Patrick. “If we’re alone.”

  Olga pulled the pistol from inside her belt. “Yeah. If.”

  They continued toward the stern and climbed a set of stairs to the poop deck, where they discovered that the ship was not quite as dark or deserted as first thought. A long yellow extension cord ran from somewhere inside the superstructure to a mechanic’s trouble light that hung from the poop deck’s covering. Across the deck, at the starboard-side rail, a man was warming his hands over a smoldering can of burning charcoal. Olga called to him in Spanish, asking if it was okay to approach. Olga translated his response for Patrick.

  “He says we can come if we have his money.”

  “Tell him we might be able to get it for him, if he can help us.”

  She did, he waved them forward, and they started toward him, taking cautious steps.

  “This guy could be expecting a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills,” Olga said quietly, so only Patrick could hear. “How are we going to pay him his money?”

  “I’ll figure that out,” he said, thinking of Kate. “As long as he can get us out of here.”

  The smell of burning charcoal intensified as they approached. They were ten feet away when the man told them to stop. Even Patrick could tell that Spanish wasn’t his first language, but he was able to make himself understood to Olga.

  “He says he’s from Indonesia,” she said, translating. “He’s not leaving the ship until he’s paid the wages he’s owed. Fourteen months’ worth.”

  “Ask him why he wasn’t paid.”

  She did, and she translated. “The ship is old, and the company decided it’s not worth fixing. They scrapped it and left it here. None of the crew was paid. The others left, but he has nowhere to go without his money.”

  “Tell him we’ll pay him his wages and more if we can use his cellphone.”

  She did, and the man laughed through his reply.

  “He doesn’t have a cellphone,” said Olga. “He says all he has is rice. That’s it. Nine bags of rice left to eat. He’s been eating rice for the last three months.”

  The man stepped away from the smoldering can, opened the door to the nearest cabin, and invited them inside to see for themselves. Patrick didn’t need the proof of rice, but the man apparently had another deal in mind.

  “No cellphone,” he said, as he started toward the counter. “Radio.”

  Patrick’s hopes soared, thinking he meant a ham radio. He didn’t. He switched on a portable AM/FM radio resting on the countertop. Salsa music filled the cabin.

  “Baile, jóvenes amantes,” the man said with a smile.

  “He wants the young lovers to dance,” said Olga.

  “Tell him we’ll dance all the way to the United States, if we can find a way out of this place.”

  Olga stepped closer. “Dance with me.”

  Patrick thought she was joking, but the look in her eyes was serious.

  “I don’t feel like dancing.”

  “No better reason to dance.”

  He realized it was her way of saying that they’d had enough stress for one night, that his constant intensity wasn’t helping, and that it wouldn’t kill them to relax for thirty seconds.

  “Maybe later,” he said.

  “Come on. It’s been so long since I danced with someone.”

  She was immediately embarrassed by her own words, and Patrick didn’t let on that he’d caught her implicit juxtaposition of dancing for someone—some creep who found pleasure in forcing a sex-trafficking victim to do much worse than dance against her will. If he could make her smile for a minute, if only by tripping over his own feet for her amusement, it was the least Patrick could do for this Shakespeare-quoting enigma from the dark side who’d risked her life to save him and asked for nothing in return—so far, at least.

  “All right. I’ll try my best.”

  She started to move her hips and took his hand. “I will teach you to dance like a Colombian.”

  She pressed the palm of her right hand against the palm of his left, then took his other hand and placed it on her hip. Patrick felt the warmth of her skin through her jeans, but he was equally taken by the sheer mechanics of movement, all between her thighs and narrow waist.