“You should. So did you stake out this brothel? Go inside? What happened?”
“After I make my report to Quantico, I’ll brief you.”
“All right… but—”
“Meanwhile, Luis is looking forward to his trip to America.” He added, “I need visas for him and his family tomorrow. This is not negotiable.”
“Everything is negotiable. When you brief me, we’ll negotiate.” He asked, “Where are you? And when can we meet?”
Brodie replied, “I’m lost in the woods. We can meet tomorrow.”
“Tonight.”
Brodie ignored that and said, “Look, there might be some heat on us. So we’re lying low for a while.”
“What kind of heat?”
“Well… unfortunately, when we got to the brothel, a shoot-out started, and—”
“Ashoot-out?”
“Right. And two or three regime guys got hit, and some other people, and, you know, everyone blames everything on the Americans, so—”
“What the hell happened? Did you kill anyone? What the—?”
“Just giving you a heads-up, Brendan, in case you hear about this from an unreliable source.”
“For God’s sake, man, did you kill anyone?”
“?‘Kill’ is an ugly word.”
Brodie listened to Worley taking a deep breath; then Worley said in a controlled voice, “Destroy your fake passports, and put the sat phone, the Glocks, and everything else I gave you in the briefcase and leave it in a safe deposit box at your hotel. Someone will retrieve everything tonight or tomorrow.” He added, “We have an understanding with the hotel.”
“Okay.” But Brodie had no intention of leaving anything at the hotel for Worley to reclaim. Especially the Glocks.
“I strongly suggest that you and your colleague take the first available flight out of Caracas tonight. Tomorrow morning latest.”
Brodie didn’t think anyone at the Hen House could possibly ID him or Taylor—and anyone who could was dead. There was, however, the security camera. Also, the colectivo guy who’d roughed up Luis had probably checked out his ID and maybe taken it or passed it on to someone before Brodie clipped him. And maybe somebody’d got the license plate of Luis’ rental car. The police might not be quite up to U.S. standards, but SEBIN might be competent, and it was possible that they would be motivated to find whoever whacked the regime guys. All the other corpses were just collateral damage.
“Brodie?”
“I’ll call Quantico and get back to you.”
“I am the power and the authority here on matters—”
“We’ve already been through this. Do not impede a criminal investigation.”
“Youhave become the criminals.”
“Interesting point. Okay, see you tomorrow. Bring the family visas.”
“Tonight. Meet me at the embassy.”
“You’re breaking up. Hello? Brendan?”
“I’m here.”
“I think our satellite is over China. Call later.” He hung up and tossed the sat phone back in the glove compartment. “Can’t rely on these things.” He said to Taylor, “He wants us to leave the country, ASAP.”
