"Van Lustbader, Eric - Dark Homecoming(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

"Joined and energized, we could not stop shouting," Heitor said. "And Dona came out at the sounds of our raucous commotion."
"It was her birthday. Perfecto." Antonio licked his lips with the tip of his tongue. "She saw the pool and thought we had filled it with pink champagne."
"We'd done that once."
"A truly shocking treat," Antonio affirmed.
"Not as truly shocking as this one," Heitor said.
Antonio nodded. "Not nearly. Dona squealed, stripped off her thong, and jumped in the bloody pool."
"Her hard, brown body in amidst the blood. Didn't we have a laugh."
"We certainly did," Antonio said. "Ah, brother, with everything that's falling into place, la vida es muy buena." Life is good for us.
At that moment, as he canvassed Lincoln Road through the front window, Heitor mouthed, "I see him."
Without turning his head to look, Antonio said under his breath. "Leaving, is he?"
Heitor, looking beyond the gray-eyed woman enjoying her latte and biscotti, kept the man in the periphery of his vision. "As predicted. Your information was prescient."
"Now he's a dangerous man."
"Others, as well," Heitor said.
Antonio's amber eyes seemed to brighten, as if he were shaking off a dream.
"All work and no play is making us acutely dull."
Heitor said, "Madre de mentiras, when you speak in oxymorons, something is not right with the order of the world."
Antonio laughed. "My thought exactly."
The twins turned and removed themselves from the Boneyard like wraiths.
Having purloined and stored the Boneyard's computer data on a floppy disk he carried on his person, Robin Garner walked with an unhurried gait down Lincoln Road. Garner, a federal agent, had insinuated himself into the Bonita twins' sphere of influence with the extreme care of a probe navigating the outer rim of a dark star. That had been eighteen months ago. With sufficient difficulty and hazard, he had gotten his entree and, as per instructions, had crouched like a drone at the edge of their intricate web. Do nothing, his handler had cautioned him, and the Bonitas can suspect nothing Wait and, above all else, watch.
Garner had the eyes of an expert watcher. It was what the ACTF had trained him to do. The Anti-Cartel Task Force was the semiofficial entity within the Justice Department for whom he toiled in darkness and filth. The ACTF had been created to interdict the alarming rise of the exportation of criminal activities from country to country. Governmental studies had established this as a worldwide trend. As such, it was as much a symbol of the new order in world eco-politics as it was a threat to the United States. Instantaneous access to information made every government's-as well as every criminal organization's-actions interrelated. But on a personal level, the ACTF gave him work he could sink his teeth into, work that mattered.
So Garner had waited and watched, becoming a spider just like the Bonitas. It wasn't all that difficult. Why would it be? He was a natural at penetration and camouflage. From an early age, Garner had become proficient at hiding his true nature. When, at twelve, he'd realized that he was profoundly different from the boys around him, he knew he was better off waiting. Two years later, when he'd had it confirmed to him by a sexual incident that he was gay, he knew he'd have to learn even more patience. His parents were not the kind of people to be supportive of alternative lifestyles, and he was no rebel to declare himself and let the chips fall where they might. Family was important to him; at that time, more important than his sexual orientation. If that made him a coward in certain people's eyes, so be it.
Being gay in SoBe provided distinct advantages. For one thing, Garner blended in just fine. Here, you'd better be either gay or bi or you didn't really belong. For another, it made him seem less of a threat to the macho Bonitas. Also, his years as a mole inside his own family that sensitized him to the subtle vibes to which others were blind. This talent, especially, served him well in the warren of offices behind the Boneyard, where he had worked ten hours a day since the day it had opened. Being tuned in to those vibes had allowed him to crack the case he'd been working on.
The worst part of being gay for Garner was the feeling it gave him of being helpless and ineffectual in a straight society. All he wanted to do was make a difference. And bringing the Bonita twins to justice would make a helluva difference. Even if others took the official glory, which they inevitably would, Garner, deep in the Washington shadows, would have his satisfaction.
Slowly, inexorably, through chinks so minute only he could have sensed them, he'd caught quickening glimpses of the Bonita's clandestine operations, suspected but never provable. Only now, having leaped through a sudden crack in their defenses, did he have enough to put them away for multiple lifetimes-if only he could get the data to the safe house where his handler awaited, patient in his own way.
Garner slipped into a side alley that reeked of urine and dried fish. Using a key he had been given, he opened a side door to the White House. This hard-core gay club, which had taken over a long-abandoned movie theater from the 1940s, was named not for the American presidential residence but the similarly named Russian senate building.
In truth, Garner did not know what to make of his handler. Of course, he trusted him with his life, but the disadvantage of Garner's sexual orientation arose when they met.
"They don't fully trust you." His handler always opened their de-briefings in this unsettling manner. "Yes, mea culpa, I'm harder on you than I am on my straight agents. That's because when it comes to you, they're harder on me."
But they trusted Garner enough to embed him within the Bonitas' sphere of influence. That was the paradox of federal bureaucracy that remained, like time, a constant.
Since Garner had joined the ACTF, it had been rocked by turmoil. Most of what he knew came from rumors he had gleaned in the dimness of company bars, of hidden agendas woven deep within the bureaucratic quagmire that was part and parcel of any federal agency. He might have discounted these rumors as simply part of the paranoia that went with the boggy territory. But even he, in those restive periods when he waited to be dangled at the end of a penetration line, had noticed the altered vibrations, as if, down in the center of things, quickened drumbeats could ever so faintly be heard. Nothing definitive, mind you, just echoes of verbal charges: an altered directive here, a change in personnel there, cuts in field teams in Southeast Asia, a beefing up of others in Latin America. That was before Spaulding Gunn was installed as new director of the ACTF three years ago. Quite quickly after that the subrosa drumbeats faded into obscurity and the gossip mongers of Foggy Bottom turned to fresher, juicier items to slice and dice in their mean-spirited way.
What it all meant Garner could not say, except that eighteen months ago his handler had given him the Bonitas as high priority subjects for an undercover operation. Why were the Bonitas suddenly at the top of the ACTF enemies list? Up until last week, Garner had had no idea. Certainly, his handler wasn't going to tell him. Quite frankly, Garner had no business speculating. Hand to his heart, wrapped in the flag, he was required only to soldier on; to follow orders and, hopefully, to win the day.
Garner made his careful way through dark and deserted corridors smelling of old age and new sex. The partying that went on here all through the night and early morning was often inconceivable to him. Like religious sects, there were all kinds of gays. Long ago, Garner had decided that, though gay, he wanted to make his way in the so-called straight world. This required an entire set of attitudes that the gays who inhabited this place found repugnant. The naming of the club was no happenstance, but a form of quasipoliti-cal statement. Here was new territory, as far from the auspices of mainstream USA as was Russia. This was the United Nation of Queers, long may it wave!
He found the old, rickety staircase hidden behind one end of the long sweeping bar on the ground floor and went silently and steadily up it.
But try as he might, he could not be the good soldier, running full tilt into unquestioning battle. He was too good at using his brain. The trouble was, Garner sometimes thought of himself as cannon fodder-clever but eminently dispensable. If this turned out to be a suicide mission, they would not blink an eye, let alone feel the remotest twinge of remorse. He wondered whether his handler would think of him after he'd turned away from Garner's newly turned grave.
Dark thoughts for a straightforward undercover operation. But it was one thing to gather enough evidence to bring charges against subjects for a well-oiled drug operation cleverly hidden within the cracks of an oh-so-legit business, quite another when these men were Antonio and Heitor Bonita. They had no idea how dangerous the Bonitas could be. The twins were fanatically secretive; a sure and unquiet death lay in wait for anyone who they discovered penetrating those secrets.
Coming to the head of the stairs, he shook off such morbid thoughts. He was used to them; they cropped up near the end of missions, when the nerves were rubbed raw, the danger level at its highest, and holding on to patience was his most valuable resource.
He was close to the rendezvous point. Close to bringing to a successful conclusion the most important mission of his career. He could not rid himself of the fantasy that at long last even his handler's handler would recognize his contribution. That, after this triumph, his handler would never again open a debriefing with the words, They don't fully trust you.
Garner's handler thought it ironic to set up a safe house in a place that personally made him want to puke. Garner could not afford to be offended; he could see the logic in it. When in Rome... The old saw still made the most sense.
As prearranged, Garner entered the back office without knocking. It was an anteroom, actually part of the star's dressing room when this place had hosted vaudeville acts between film showings. On the old wooden desk near the door to the back room was an imitation Tiffany lamp that no longer worked, a dried-up blotter, and a pile of out-of-date People magazines. Frosted windows, painted shut long ago, allowed a feeble seepage of light.
Garner went through the gloom and counted the number of People magazines in the stack. There were seven, all aligned. That meant Garner's handler was in the next room and everything was secure. This was part of the handler's job: to keep the safe houses sterile, the rendezvous points secure, the agents-in-place from being terminated.
Garner opened the door to the inner room and was swallowed by darkness. Three paces inside he slipped on something slick. He almost fell, but a strong hand grasped his elbow and steadied him.
"Cuidado, you could hurt yourself."
"Thanks," he said, automatically. But he stiffened. What was that smell?
"It's a shame," the familiar voice said, "but we no longer trust you."
"What?" Garner turned his head so violently he heard a vertebra crack.
"Such a shame," another, similar voice said, "because we liked you."
More than a smell, it was a stench. A closely held beam snapped on and Gainer blinked.
"Madre de mentiras, look what you stepped into."
Garner stared down and his heart almost slammed into his rib cage. Blood and intestines lay on the floor in an almost perfect circle.
"Muy hermosa," said the second voice. Very beautiful.
Garner's gaze followed the beam of light as if it were a magnet. Its uncompromising glare marched across the small room. Garner gave a little groan as he recognized the face of his handler. That was about all he could recognize of him. He tried to look away, but as he did so, a hand of iron seized the back of his neck and he was forced nearer and nearer to the object of their desire. In the uncertain light the human head, floating as if on a sea of silken darkness, had an almost surreal look, like an evil omen in a dream.