sonora_coneja (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sonora_coneja) wrote2011-01-23 12:38 pm
sonora_coneja) wrote2011-01-23 12:38 pm
Missed Opportunities - Chapter Two
Pairing: none
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: A year after the jailbreak, the three members of the A-Team are hired under the table by the DoD to take down the two men responsible for the as-yet unresolved theft of the Treasury plates - ex-CIA agent Vance “Lynch” Buress and former Spec-Ops officer Templeton “Faceman” Peck.
The hotel’s cafe was open air, sunny, situated on a wide veranda by the concrete river. Across the waters, the white colonial walls of the National History Museum rose out of a wide green lawn. Tea cooled in fine china as he scrolled idly through the bidder roster on his laptop.
Again.
So many of them, the culmination of months of hard work. Getting the bidders had been simple. Screening them, filtering and obscuring and manipulating according to Buress’ insane little rules was what had nearly driven him up the wall. But the money was good. Excellent, in fact, and he’s gotten to wear Armani instead of blood-soaked combats for the past six months. Martinis instead of charcoal-filtered water.
Fuck, he loved jobs that didn’t involve jungles and drug lords and weeks spent worrying about whether open wounds would go septic.
But Lynch was wrong about this country. The man only saw things in their extremes, the ends of the spectrum. Face knew better. If you looked hard enough, there was rot here, just like everywhere else in the world. Upstream lay the Quays and beyond that, Chinatown, and that’s where it began. All the shit in this town festered there.
The neighborhoods shifted so quickly here. A few blocks, and everything changed. The elegant core of the city giving way to a grid of near-slums that could have been transported from the seediest slums of Beijing. He’d gotten back in touch with a drinking buddy from Hong Kong last night, just in case. He wasn’t sure if he was going to need that resource yet.
Like this issue with Mark Singer. Last minute replacement. Face didn’t like it. The more he thought about it, the more he just didn’t like it.
Which was why he was here, meeting him first thing, just in case there were problems.
Just in case he had to borrow his buddy's warehouse.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text. Face read it, frowned, and went to his email. Checked it, and pulled out his cell.
"Terry... yeah, it's Face. Look, I need you to go check something out for me... no, not yet... we don't know anything for sure..."
The mercenary pulled the banker’s photo back up and smiled as he talked.
Handsome fucker.
So many possibilities.
+++++
“Murdock, stop fussing, I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t like it, bossman. I jus’ don’t like it.”
Hannibal leaned on the edge of the sink and stared at his pilot. Really his pilot for this job, his private pilot, which meant that the man shouldn’t even be here. He should have been back at some hotel near the airport, something like that. But neither he nor BA would leave the still-grieving captain alone. No telling when the hallucinations would start up, when he’d get bad.
But right now, the former colonel found himself almost wishing for one of those episodes. Flying snakes and imaginary dogs were far preferable, somehow, to these increased periods of sanity. And Murdock was making far too much sense right now.
He looked back down at the little plastic containers in front of him. Contacts. One in, one to go, and he didn’t need the distraction. It was like poking himself in the eye. Fuck, Hannibal thought, this better be easier tomorrow.
“Captain, I’m going. It would be suspicious not to respond to something sent by the men that are setting up the deal.”
“At least let Bosco go with you! He’s s’pposed to be security anyhow!”
Scooping the second contact out, Hannibal slipped it into his eye on the first try. Checked himself in the mirror.
He missed his hair, dyed dark now with scattered gray now to match Mark Singer’s passport photo. Eye color, too, brown contacts over the blue of his eyes. Wigs were fine, diguises something the team was used to at this point, but this... not even a huge change, but he didn’t recognize his own reflection. Something was wrong with this job.
He knew it in his bones.
Something was wrong.
And staring at himself, with dark hair, in a suit that he could no way have afforded without Sosa’s generous advance, for the first time almost thirty years, for the first time since he got off the bus at Basic Training, Hannibal Smith felt real fear.
“Boss, you okay, man?” BA asked from the bathroom doorway.
He looked at himself again, saw dark eyes that didn’t belong to him staring back from glass, still fogged by his earlier shower, and shook it off. No time for that bullshit. Fear caused hesitation, and that’s what got men killed in the field. And the colonel was never going to let that happen again.
Not ever.
“I’m fine boys,” he growled, and wiped his hands on a towel. “But this job won’t be unless I get down there right now.”
Murdock took the hand towel from him and wordlessly handed him his jacket. There was something going through the pilot’s mind, but whatever it was, he was done protesting, for now at least. Hannibal hoped like hell he wasn’t retreating back into those dark, craggy little corners that littered his thoughts.
BA, on the other hand, was much more blunt. “Something ain’t right, is it, boss?”
Hannibal sighed and clapped the big black man on the shoulder on his way out of the bathroom. “We’ll work it out and nail this bastard to the fucking wall. I promise you that.” He leaned in. “Watch him.”
“You know I do,” BA replied softly, and Hannibal’s last sight of them as he closed the hotel suite door was the corporal drawing HM in for a bear hug, tight against his chest, two sets of eyes on his back.
He shook his head, and shut the door behind him.
+++++
The waiter showed him to the right table, and Hannibal was glad for it.
Out of all the people taking early coffee out in the sunny little breakfast cafe, the colonel would not have guessed the man he was led over to.
Not just looking over the cluster of occupied tables, anyway. A younger man, probably mid thirties, a certain unique, well-manicured handsomeness about him. Long, caramel hair slicked back impeccably. Rolex, the band just a little loose. But it was the attitude on display, Hannibal decided, one hand lounging on the table, fingers drumming as his other played idly with the laptop, body relaxed and head cocked just a little. The very picture of spoiled wealth, fuck-you money.
Casual, arrogant, perfectly in place here. He might as well have been an investment banker, some kind of stockbroker, one of those assholes who worked at the embassy. But something inside the colonel still flared at the sight of the man, some kind of heat, the one he’d spent nearly his entire adult life trying to ignore, trying to deny.
That did not bode well.
The waiter had to tap the seated man in the Armani suit twice before he looked up from his Apple, slamming the thing shut, irritation on display. “Goddamn it, I said I wasn’t ready to order yet!”
“He’s here, sir.”
“Good, you can go. No, wait.” The contact looked up at the colonel from behind a perfect pair of sunglasses. “You want coffee or something?”
“Coffee would be wonderful, thank you.”
The uniformed man bowed ever so slightly, and walked away. And the two of them were alone.
Hannibal shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at the man, unwilling to make the first move. Two could play at that game. According to Sosa’s forged details of Mark Singer’s life, the man made seven figures a year.
His contact pulled his sunglasses down over the bridge of his nose, revealing a set of blue, smirking eyes, watching the waiter’s retreat. The younger man waved at the chair. “Please, Mr. Singer, have a seat.”
Settling in, Hannibal crossed his legs, making his body language as closed as possible, noting that this guy pushed the glasses back up. Hired help. Arrogant little shit.
“You know my name. I’d like to know why I was hauled out of bed this early in the morning for a deal we’ve already put a substantial amount of money into.”
“We? Why did Brian Yamamoto pull out and send you instead?”
Hannibal looked away, like he was bored with this already. “Who are you?"
"Does it matter?"
"If we’re going to talk business details, I’d like to know I’m dealing with somebody qualified to take notes.”
The younger man laughed at that, pearly teeth flashing, and the sunglasses hit the table. Yeah, blue eyes, Hannibal thought. Very, very blue, soft around the edges, crinkled a little with humor, nothing out of place. Nothing to see there. And a hand was held out across the white tablecloth. “Templeton Peck.”
“Mark Singer,” Hannibal replied, shaking easily. That palm was soft, comfortable against his. Strong. The kid was obviously built under that nice suit of his, probably one of those ones who worked out for vanity’s sake, soft, useless muscle. Templeton smiled at him, and squeezed a little before letting go. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Peck.”
“Of course it is,” this Peck character said, the grin still firmly affixed to his face.
A moment passed between them. The coffee came and Hannibal dropped one of those little brown sugar cubes in, stirring as he tried to size the other man up. No read, no read at all. What the hell was he?
“Why did you drag me out of bed this morning, Mr. Peck?” The grin, Hannibal decided, was tactically unnerving. “I don’t appreciate it, not after a trans-Pacific flight like that.”
"I'd have thought you'd be up early."
And he had been, zero-four-twenty-six, brain turning over on the details. "One gets used to the constant time changes.
"Sure." The younger man shrugged. “The auction’s tonight. I’m wrangling it, on behalf of my employers. You’ve no doubt received your instructions on it.”
“No, I haven’t.” The annoyance in his voice was real - this wasn’t good.
Peck fiddled with an unused fork. “Well, I’ll have to talk to the concierge about that. Bottom line, it starts tonight. And I’m doing a review of all my bidders.”
“No doubt you’ve concerns over the bullshit with those American fugitives?”
“That’s not exactly my area of expertise. I’m just handling the money.” Peck dropped the fork and stared. “What do you do for the World Bank, exactly, Mr. Singer?”
Hannibal sipped at his coffee, the heat from the liquid settling his stomach a little. “My affiliation with that organization is rather... complicated.”
“Isn’t everybody’s?”
“You’re not checking everyone, you’re checking me.”
“Do you expect me to answer that, Mr. Singer?”
“I wasn’t asking about your motives, Mr. Peck,” Hannibal growled, and pulled a small cigar tube from his jacket pocket. He’d decided, for the purposes of this mission, that Mark Singer smoked like a chimney. Fished for a lighter until Peck, inexplicably, produced one instead. Flicked it open and held it out for him.
“That’s good, Mr. Singer. I don’t normally answer those kind of questions.”
“Normally?” Hannibal asked, puffing, tasting, rolling sweet smoke around in his mouth. Delicious.
“Normally,” and that grin changed. Those blue eyes flicked over him. “Client confidentiality and all that bullshit.”
Hannibal felt another stab of warmth. Motherfucker, was this kid toying with him? Disseminating?
Flirting?
He exhaled and played the cigar between his fingers, trying not to let that knock him off-kilter. “I suppose it’s fair, me being a last-minute replacement. I’d be wary, too, especially what happened to the last man who tried to put these plates up for sale. Security’s probably an issue for you.”
“What is the World Bank’s interest in my clients' goods?”
“I said loosely affiliated. My group runs it affairs on the side.”
“How like the bureaucrats?” Peck said, and Hannibal realized just how bitter the kid sounded right then.
But there was no further exploration of the topic, because the young man tucked his laptop into a leather case by the side of his chair. Stood. Dumped the case in his vacant seat. Adjusted the suit jacket around his shoulders, made to leave and then circled back around the back of Hannibal’s chair. Some kind of unconscious sensuality in the movements, sleek and graceful.
Catlike, almost.
“You seem alright.”
“You high enough on the food chain to make those determinations?” Hannibal asked pointedly.
A card was produced between clever fingers, and Hannibal couldn’t stop Peck from leaning over his shoulder and dropping it into the inside breast pocket of his suit. The younger man’s eyes locked with his, close enough to feel breath, and Hannibal grabbed that hand as it withdrew, keeping him still. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Yanked the younger man down a little.
“Close enough.” Peck’s grin widened and he slapped Hannibal’s hand away lightly. Flipped open his cell phone with a wink. “See you tonight, Mr. Singer.”
And if the colonel’s gaze followed the young man as he strolled out of the cafe, after that little display, he really didn’t think anybody would blame him.
+++++
Sosa reviewed the card, using a napkin to pick it up and slide it into a plastic baggy. “Are you sure he touched the envelop?”
“Yeah,” Hannibal said. “It was definitely handed to me.”
“Do you think it was Lynch’s merc?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Guy didn’t seem like a killer.”
“You can tell that sort of thing?”
The colonel stopped walking, right in front of a wide, mossy fountain at the Botanical Gardens. The place was beautiful, wide and verdant, Sosa in a light sundress that fit her perfectly, BA an appropriate few paces behind them, quiet and unobtrusive and Murdock back in his own suite at the hotel, watching cartoons, but Hannibal didn’t see any of it.
He just kept feeling that guy’s arm, sliding around his shoulders. Fuck, how long had it been since he’d had... but he couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t think about the scent of the kid’s cologne.
He didn’t seem the type. Hannibal had known these guys his whole life. Mercenaries, ex-military, spec-ops, the whole gamut, and Peck didn’t fit the profile. He’d never met one that actually seemed comfortable in a situation like this, upper crust, tens of millions at stake. Sosa’s intel was probably bad anyway, and he didn’t believe for a second the boys at the DoD hadn’t fucked with it. He couldn’t trust it, blue eyes or not.
Not that he could trust that kid, he reminded himself.
“Hannibal?”
Interrupting his thinking was, in his mind, nearly as bad as interrupting him talking. “You going to be able to process that or not?” he asked her tersely. What was it about this woman that made his skin crawl?
She frowned and tucked the bag carefully into her purse. “I’ll take it to the embassy later this afternoon. But you know how long it takes to gets prints back...”
“What about mine?”
“I get the report, nobody else is going to knows. Jesus, Hannibal, I’m not an idiot.”
They’d agreed, or rather, Hannibal had insisted upon and Sosa was forced to accept, a rotating schedule for meetings. No phone contact unless it was absolutely necessary. No emails, no emails at all. He had no idea if Lynch was having him followed. His gut told him no, which was somehow more troubling than reassuring.
“I know you aren’t stupid, Sosa, but this situation...”
“Is tricky, I realize.” The captain combed long hair back out of her face, and Hannibal smiled at her. “So what’d the card say?”
“I’ll get you a status update tomorrow, Charisa,” he told her and nodded back over his shoulder at BA. He shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking away, back towards the metro station, knowing his corporal was following. “You have the location?”
The captain hurried after him, weaving after him through the tourists. “Hannibal, that is not our agreement. This is my op and...”
“Sosa, if there’s even a whiff of your cheap perfume anywhere near any of this, they are going to suss you out. And then everything’s fucked.”
“But...”
He put a finger on her lips. Remembering how rude she used to be to him, back when she was dating his lieutenant. How she seemed to take some kind of glee in throwing her DCIS, and now DIA, status at people, like somehow wearing civilian clothes made her more, made her better, made her unanswerable to her rank. He could still hear that arrogance in her voice, and if he was going to have to deal with a shit like Peck, he didn’t need it from her, too. “My op. You’re here to save your career. I’ve got no problem helping you with. But you let me handle this. Understand?”
“You better,” she said after a moment, staring back at him, eyes hard.
“He will,” BA said, coming up beside his commander and crossing his arms over his chest. “But we can’t do it with you here.”
She snorted, turned. “It’s Chanel!” she called back over her shoulder, and BA just rolled his eyes.
Hannibal ignored her outright, thinking about what the card had said.
Room 349
Come alone
The actual auction details, the invitation to what was snarkily titled a reception for that night, to be held in one of the Fullerton's restaurants, had been waiting for him in his suite, shoved under the door, when he'd returned from the cafe.
No, Peck was definitely playing games with him.
Chapter Three
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: A year after the jailbreak, the three members of the A-Team are hired under the table by the DoD to take down the two men responsible for the as-yet unresolved theft of the Treasury plates - ex-CIA agent Vance “Lynch” Buress and former Spec-Ops officer Templeton “Faceman” Peck.
The hotel’s cafe was open air, sunny, situated on a wide veranda by the concrete river. Across the waters, the white colonial walls of the National History Museum rose out of a wide green lawn. Tea cooled in fine china as he scrolled idly through the bidder roster on his laptop.
Again.
So many of them, the culmination of months of hard work. Getting the bidders had been simple. Screening them, filtering and obscuring and manipulating according to Buress’ insane little rules was what had nearly driven him up the wall. But the money was good. Excellent, in fact, and he’s gotten to wear Armani instead of blood-soaked combats for the past six months. Martinis instead of charcoal-filtered water.
Fuck, he loved jobs that didn’t involve jungles and drug lords and weeks spent worrying about whether open wounds would go septic.
But Lynch was wrong about this country. The man only saw things in their extremes, the ends of the spectrum. Face knew better. If you looked hard enough, there was rot here, just like everywhere else in the world. Upstream lay the Quays and beyond that, Chinatown, and that’s where it began. All the shit in this town festered there.
The neighborhoods shifted so quickly here. A few blocks, and everything changed. The elegant core of the city giving way to a grid of near-slums that could have been transported from the seediest slums of Beijing. He’d gotten back in touch with a drinking buddy from Hong Kong last night, just in case. He wasn’t sure if he was going to need that resource yet.
Like this issue with Mark Singer. Last minute replacement. Face didn’t like it. The more he thought about it, the more he just didn’t like it.
Which was why he was here, meeting him first thing, just in case there were problems.
Just in case he had to borrow his buddy's warehouse.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text. Face read it, frowned, and went to his email. Checked it, and pulled out his cell.
"Terry... yeah, it's Face. Look, I need you to go check something out for me... no, not yet... we don't know anything for sure..."
The mercenary pulled the banker’s photo back up and smiled as he talked.
Handsome fucker.
So many possibilities.
+++++
“Murdock, stop fussing, I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t like it, bossman. I jus’ don’t like it.”
Hannibal leaned on the edge of the sink and stared at his pilot. Really his pilot for this job, his private pilot, which meant that the man shouldn’t even be here. He should have been back at some hotel near the airport, something like that. But neither he nor BA would leave the still-grieving captain alone. No telling when the hallucinations would start up, when he’d get bad.
But right now, the former colonel found himself almost wishing for one of those episodes. Flying snakes and imaginary dogs were far preferable, somehow, to these increased periods of sanity. And Murdock was making far too much sense right now.
He looked back down at the little plastic containers in front of him. Contacts. One in, one to go, and he didn’t need the distraction. It was like poking himself in the eye. Fuck, Hannibal thought, this better be easier tomorrow.
“Captain, I’m going. It would be suspicious not to respond to something sent by the men that are setting up the deal.”
“At least let Bosco go with you! He’s s’pposed to be security anyhow!”
Scooping the second contact out, Hannibal slipped it into his eye on the first try. Checked himself in the mirror.
He missed his hair, dyed dark now with scattered gray now to match Mark Singer’s passport photo. Eye color, too, brown contacts over the blue of his eyes. Wigs were fine, diguises something the team was used to at this point, but this... not even a huge change, but he didn’t recognize his own reflection. Something was wrong with this job.
He knew it in his bones.
Something was wrong.
And staring at himself, with dark hair, in a suit that he could no way have afforded without Sosa’s generous advance, for the first time almost thirty years, for the first time since he got off the bus at Basic Training, Hannibal Smith felt real fear.
“Boss, you okay, man?” BA asked from the bathroom doorway.
He looked at himself again, saw dark eyes that didn’t belong to him staring back from glass, still fogged by his earlier shower, and shook it off. No time for that bullshit. Fear caused hesitation, and that’s what got men killed in the field. And the colonel was never going to let that happen again.
Not ever.
“I’m fine boys,” he growled, and wiped his hands on a towel. “But this job won’t be unless I get down there right now.”
Murdock took the hand towel from him and wordlessly handed him his jacket. There was something going through the pilot’s mind, but whatever it was, he was done protesting, for now at least. Hannibal hoped like hell he wasn’t retreating back into those dark, craggy little corners that littered his thoughts.
BA, on the other hand, was much more blunt. “Something ain’t right, is it, boss?”
Hannibal sighed and clapped the big black man on the shoulder on his way out of the bathroom. “We’ll work it out and nail this bastard to the fucking wall. I promise you that.” He leaned in. “Watch him.”
“You know I do,” BA replied softly, and Hannibal’s last sight of them as he closed the hotel suite door was the corporal drawing HM in for a bear hug, tight against his chest, two sets of eyes on his back.
He shook his head, and shut the door behind him.
+++++
The waiter showed him to the right table, and Hannibal was glad for it.
Out of all the people taking early coffee out in the sunny little breakfast cafe, the colonel would not have guessed the man he was led over to.
Not just looking over the cluster of occupied tables, anyway. A younger man, probably mid thirties, a certain unique, well-manicured handsomeness about him. Long, caramel hair slicked back impeccably. Rolex, the band just a little loose. But it was the attitude on display, Hannibal decided, one hand lounging on the table, fingers drumming as his other played idly with the laptop, body relaxed and head cocked just a little. The very picture of spoiled wealth, fuck-you money.
Casual, arrogant, perfectly in place here. He might as well have been an investment banker, some kind of stockbroker, one of those assholes who worked at the embassy. But something inside the colonel still flared at the sight of the man, some kind of heat, the one he’d spent nearly his entire adult life trying to ignore, trying to deny.
That did not bode well.
The waiter had to tap the seated man in the Armani suit twice before he looked up from his Apple, slamming the thing shut, irritation on display. “Goddamn it, I said I wasn’t ready to order yet!”
“He’s here, sir.”
“Good, you can go. No, wait.” The contact looked up at the colonel from behind a perfect pair of sunglasses. “You want coffee or something?”
“Coffee would be wonderful, thank you.”
The uniformed man bowed ever so slightly, and walked away. And the two of them were alone.
Hannibal shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at the man, unwilling to make the first move. Two could play at that game. According to Sosa’s forged details of Mark Singer’s life, the man made seven figures a year.
His contact pulled his sunglasses down over the bridge of his nose, revealing a set of blue, smirking eyes, watching the waiter’s retreat. The younger man waved at the chair. “Please, Mr. Singer, have a seat.”
Settling in, Hannibal crossed his legs, making his body language as closed as possible, noting that this guy pushed the glasses back up. Hired help. Arrogant little shit.
“You know my name. I’d like to know why I was hauled out of bed this early in the morning for a deal we’ve already put a substantial amount of money into.”
“We? Why did Brian Yamamoto pull out and send you instead?”
Hannibal looked away, like he was bored with this already. “Who are you?"
"Does it matter?"
"If we’re going to talk business details, I’d like to know I’m dealing with somebody qualified to take notes.”
The younger man laughed at that, pearly teeth flashing, and the sunglasses hit the table. Yeah, blue eyes, Hannibal thought. Very, very blue, soft around the edges, crinkled a little with humor, nothing out of place. Nothing to see there. And a hand was held out across the white tablecloth. “Templeton Peck.”
“Mark Singer,” Hannibal replied, shaking easily. That palm was soft, comfortable against his. Strong. The kid was obviously built under that nice suit of his, probably one of those ones who worked out for vanity’s sake, soft, useless muscle. Templeton smiled at him, and squeezed a little before letting go. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Peck.”
“Of course it is,” this Peck character said, the grin still firmly affixed to his face.
A moment passed between them. The coffee came and Hannibal dropped one of those little brown sugar cubes in, stirring as he tried to size the other man up. No read, no read at all. What the hell was he?
“Why did you drag me out of bed this morning, Mr. Peck?” The grin, Hannibal decided, was tactically unnerving. “I don’t appreciate it, not after a trans-Pacific flight like that.”
"I'd have thought you'd be up early."
And he had been, zero-four-twenty-six, brain turning over on the details. "One gets used to the constant time changes.
"Sure." The younger man shrugged. “The auction’s tonight. I’m wrangling it, on behalf of my employers. You’ve no doubt received your instructions on it.”
“No, I haven’t.” The annoyance in his voice was real - this wasn’t good.
Peck fiddled with an unused fork. “Well, I’ll have to talk to the concierge about that. Bottom line, it starts tonight. And I’m doing a review of all my bidders.”
“No doubt you’ve concerns over the bullshit with those American fugitives?”
“That’s not exactly my area of expertise. I’m just handling the money.” Peck dropped the fork and stared. “What do you do for the World Bank, exactly, Mr. Singer?”
Hannibal sipped at his coffee, the heat from the liquid settling his stomach a little. “My affiliation with that organization is rather... complicated.”
“Isn’t everybody’s?”
“You’re not checking everyone, you’re checking me.”
“Do you expect me to answer that, Mr. Singer?”
“I wasn’t asking about your motives, Mr. Peck,” Hannibal growled, and pulled a small cigar tube from his jacket pocket. He’d decided, for the purposes of this mission, that Mark Singer smoked like a chimney. Fished for a lighter until Peck, inexplicably, produced one instead. Flicked it open and held it out for him.
“That’s good, Mr. Singer. I don’t normally answer those kind of questions.”
“Normally?” Hannibal asked, puffing, tasting, rolling sweet smoke around in his mouth. Delicious.
“Normally,” and that grin changed. Those blue eyes flicked over him. “Client confidentiality and all that bullshit.”
Hannibal felt another stab of warmth. Motherfucker, was this kid toying with him? Disseminating?
Flirting?
He exhaled and played the cigar between his fingers, trying not to let that knock him off-kilter. “I suppose it’s fair, me being a last-minute replacement. I’d be wary, too, especially what happened to the last man who tried to put these plates up for sale. Security’s probably an issue for you.”
“What is the World Bank’s interest in my clients' goods?”
“I said loosely affiliated. My group runs it affairs on the side.”
“How like the bureaucrats?” Peck said, and Hannibal realized just how bitter the kid sounded right then.
But there was no further exploration of the topic, because the young man tucked his laptop into a leather case by the side of his chair. Stood. Dumped the case in his vacant seat. Adjusted the suit jacket around his shoulders, made to leave and then circled back around the back of Hannibal’s chair. Some kind of unconscious sensuality in the movements, sleek and graceful.
Catlike, almost.
“You seem alright.”
“You high enough on the food chain to make those determinations?” Hannibal asked pointedly.
A card was produced between clever fingers, and Hannibal couldn’t stop Peck from leaning over his shoulder and dropping it into the inside breast pocket of his suit. The younger man’s eyes locked with his, close enough to feel breath, and Hannibal grabbed that hand as it withdrew, keeping him still. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Yanked the younger man down a little.
“Close enough.” Peck’s grin widened and he slapped Hannibal’s hand away lightly. Flipped open his cell phone with a wink. “See you tonight, Mr. Singer.”
And if the colonel’s gaze followed the young man as he strolled out of the cafe, after that little display, he really didn’t think anybody would blame him.
+++++
Sosa reviewed the card, using a napkin to pick it up and slide it into a plastic baggy. “Are you sure he touched the envelop?”
“Yeah,” Hannibal said. “It was definitely handed to me.”
“Do you think it was Lynch’s merc?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Guy didn’t seem like a killer.”
“You can tell that sort of thing?”
The colonel stopped walking, right in front of a wide, mossy fountain at the Botanical Gardens. The place was beautiful, wide and verdant, Sosa in a light sundress that fit her perfectly, BA an appropriate few paces behind them, quiet and unobtrusive and Murdock back in his own suite at the hotel, watching cartoons, but Hannibal didn’t see any of it.
He just kept feeling that guy’s arm, sliding around his shoulders. Fuck, how long had it been since he’d had... but he couldn’t think about that. Couldn’t think about the scent of the kid’s cologne.
He didn’t seem the type. Hannibal had known these guys his whole life. Mercenaries, ex-military, spec-ops, the whole gamut, and Peck didn’t fit the profile. He’d never met one that actually seemed comfortable in a situation like this, upper crust, tens of millions at stake. Sosa’s intel was probably bad anyway, and he didn’t believe for a second the boys at the DoD hadn’t fucked with it. He couldn’t trust it, blue eyes or not.
Not that he could trust that kid, he reminded himself.
“Hannibal?”
Interrupting his thinking was, in his mind, nearly as bad as interrupting him talking. “You going to be able to process that or not?” he asked her tersely. What was it about this woman that made his skin crawl?
She frowned and tucked the bag carefully into her purse. “I’ll take it to the embassy later this afternoon. But you know how long it takes to gets prints back...”
“What about mine?”
“I get the report, nobody else is going to knows. Jesus, Hannibal, I’m not an idiot.”
They’d agreed, or rather, Hannibal had insisted upon and Sosa was forced to accept, a rotating schedule for meetings. No phone contact unless it was absolutely necessary. No emails, no emails at all. He had no idea if Lynch was having him followed. His gut told him no, which was somehow more troubling than reassuring.
“I know you aren’t stupid, Sosa, but this situation...”
“Is tricky, I realize.” The captain combed long hair back out of her face, and Hannibal smiled at her. “So what’d the card say?”
“I’ll get you a status update tomorrow, Charisa,” he told her and nodded back over his shoulder at BA. He shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking away, back towards the metro station, knowing his corporal was following. “You have the location?”
The captain hurried after him, weaving after him through the tourists. “Hannibal, that is not our agreement. This is my op and...”
“Sosa, if there’s even a whiff of your cheap perfume anywhere near any of this, they are going to suss you out. And then everything’s fucked.”
“But...”
He put a finger on her lips. Remembering how rude she used to be to him, back when she was dating his lieutenant. How she seemed to take some kind of glee in throwing her DCIS, and now DIA, status at people, like somehow wearing civilian clothes made her more, made her better, made her unanswerable to her rank. He could still hear that arrogance in her voice, and if he was going to have to deal with a shit like Peck, he didn’t need it from her, too. “My op. You’re here to save your career. I’ve got no problem helping you with. But you let me handle this. Understand?”
“You better,” she said after a moment, staring back at him, eyes hard.
“He will,” BA said, coming up beside his commander and crossing his arms over his chest. “But we can’t do it with you here.”
She snorted, turned. “It’s Chanel!” she called back over her shoulder, and BA just rolled his eyes.
Hannibal ignored her outright, thinking about what the card had said.
Room 349
Come alone
The actual auction details, the invitation to what was snarkily titled a reception for that night, to be held in one of the Fullerton's restaurants, had been waiting for him in his suite, shoved under the door, when he'd returned from the cafe.
No, Peck was definitely playing games with him.
Chapter Three