Instead of answering, she handed him a cell phone. “Ask him yourself,” she said. “He’s on speakerphone now.”
Noah grinned, and held the phone up close to his face. “Neil? It’s Noah, how’s it going?”
“I’ve still got good feeds from all of the bugs you planted over the past week, including the camera bug under the bar. Your little girlfriend is causing quite a stir.”
“Yeah, well, it isn’t often that a little Mexican prostitute gets the chance to marry a rich American. I would imagine she’s got everyone pretty curious, about now.”
“I’ll say,” came the voice from the phone. “Ortiz just promised her that if everything goes well tomorrow, he’ll see to it you get to take her home with you. She’s pretty excited. He even suggested that he might buy her out from her pimp behind the bar and give her to you as a gift.”
The girl behind the wheel looked over at Noah. “You’re not seriously planning to marry her, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” he said, “but I would like to get her out of that life. If she’s a day over fifteen, I’m the king of Siam.”
“Oh, wonderful, I’ve always wanted to work for royalty,” Neil said. “Listen, your highness, the plan didn’t call for you going back in and actually completing a deal like this. Or have you forgotten that?”
“Last I knew, Univac, I’m the one who makes the plan. That means I get to change it, if I feel the need, and in this case I do. You just make sure you’re ready to spoof the banks once I get the transfer info. If I play this right, we not only get to take out Pablo and company, we can also lay our hands on some genuine black-market nuclear material.”
“Okay, unless I misunderstood something, said material is somewhere in the Middle East. Pablo is expecting you to make the purchase, while somebody over there picks it up. Got someone in mind for that job?”
Noah grinned. “That depends,” he said. “How quickly can we get Moose over there? Nobody knows who the Dragon is or what he looks like, right? I’ve just decided that he bears a strong resemblance to a Moose.”
“I’m checking,” Neil said. “Well, since Moose hasn’t been compromised on this mission, it could conceivably work. I can actually get him onto a flight out of DFW in about four hours. Of course, that’s going to mean getting him on a flight out of El Paso sometime in the next hour or so, which is going to require using our NetJets card. I’ll have him in the air before you even get to your hotel room.”
“Good job,” Noah said. “As soon as he’s taken possession of the material, then I’ll go ahead and complete the mission on Pablo. How long will we have, once we do the money transfer?”
“Pablo’s bank won’t know he’s been scammed for at least seventy-two hours. Depending on where the pickup is scheduled to be, Moose ought to be able to get to it anywhere in the Middle East within no more than twenty-four.”
Noah nodded. “Okay, and I’m going to play a little tighter than that. Since we’re talking about this much money, I think I can get away with demanding that it be inspected before we make the final transfer. If it really is somewhere in the area around Dubai, then we should be able to accomplish it within a few hours. Pablo can tell us how to reach the supplier, so once Moose has checked it with a Geiger and confirmed that it’s real, I’ll tell you to go ahead and make the transfer. Pablo can confirm it, and tell his people to let Moose take possession.”
A new voice came through the phone. “Do I get any kind of say in this?”
Noah’s face broke into a big smile. “Moose, I didn’t know you were right there with Neil. Think you can handle this?”
“Can I pretend to be the Dragon? Yeah, I can pretend all day long, but that doesn’t mean I get out of there alive, let alone with the product. Don’t you think we need a backup plan on this?”
“Don’t worry, buddy,” Noah said. “As soon as we clear this line, I’m going to call Mrs. McGillicuddy. I think I can get her to put another team on you for support, since we got the chance to actually lay our hands on some of this stuff.”
“Don’t you just love the way he says ‘our hands,’ when he really means ‘your hands?’ Does he always act this way?”
“Neil,” Noah said, “why are you asking Moose? You’ve known me as long as he has.”
“Longer, remember, by approximately two minutes. That’s a little bit like being the older twin, you know what I mean? And since you’re the king of Siam, that means were a little bit like Siamese twins. I wonder if they can ever determine which one of them is really the older one, got any ideas on that?”
“The only way to tell which one of a pair of Siamese twins is older is to see which one lives the longest. Since they’re both born at the same moment, the older one is the one who dies ten minutes after his brother.”
“Noah, you say the most comforting things. Okay, boss, we’re on it. Talk to you later.”