The Presence Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoreline. Once over water, it shifted course slightly, briefly following the coast toward Honolulu before veering off to the southeast toward Molokai and Maui.
    Forty minutes later Pedro Santiago peered down through the Plexiglas bubble in front of him as the helicopter swept across the rugged southeast coast of Maui and the dark blue surface of the sea was abruptly replaced by the undulating green carpet of the rain forest. The chopper dropped low, until it seemed to Santiago as if it were barely clearing the treetops. Then the trees gave way to a clearing dotted with several buildings whose green-tile roofs would make them invisible from any altitude higher than that at which the helicopter hovered.
    Quickly, expertly, the pilot let the big aircraft settle onto a lawn surrounded by several buildings. As Santiago unstrapped himself from the seat and opened the door beside him, a man emerged from one of the buildings, but did not come toward the helicopter.
    Instinctively recognizing his employer, though he’d never met him before, Santiago ducked his head protectively low as he dashed out from under the helicopter’s
downdraft, cradling the Louis Vuitton case in both his arms.
    “Mr.—Jennings,” the waiting man said, hesitating just long enough before using the alias to let Santiago know he felt the use of the code name bordered on the moronic. Santiago couldn’t have cared less—code names had kept him alive and fattened his Swiss bank account beyond the dreams of most men who had been born in the slums of São Paulo. Nodding curtly, he followed the other man into the building, down a corridor, and into a small, windowless room bare of any furniture save a small table on which sat a case identical to the one Santiago carried.
    The man nodded toward the table, and Santiago set his case down, then tried the lock of the duplicate. The latch snapped open and he lifted the case’s lid. Though his instincts told him all the money would be there, he nonetheless took the time to count it.
    It was in fifty-dollar bills, as he’d requested.
    He’d had no particular interest in whether the serial numbers of the bills were sequential, but as he began counting them, he noted that they weren’t.
    Whoever he was dealing with knew what he was doing.
    He finished his counting and looked up. “Two hundred thousand.”
    “Exactly as we agreed,” the man replied.
    Pedro Santiago packed the money back into the makeup case, changed its combination, and snapped its latch closed. “Then we’re finished.”
    The man nodded and extended his hand. Santiago ignored the gesture, turning back toward the single door that provided the only access to the room. Accepting that Santiago had nothing more to say, the man escorted him
back to the outside door and waited while the courier got back into the helicopter, closed the door, and strapped himself in. As the craft rose up from the lawn and moved back toward the sea, the man remained near the door, watching.
    The moment the man disappeared from Pedro Santiago’s view, Santiago began thinking about his next job, a run from South Africa.
    That job, he suspected, would be a lot more interesting than this one had proved to be.
    As the helicopter disappeared over the green horizon of the rain forest, the man reentered the building and closed the door behind him. Returning to the room where he had completed his transaction with the person he knew only as “Mr. Jennings,” he closed and locked the door, then opened the Louis Vuitton makeup case.
    His hands trembled as he lifted the lid.
    Inside the makeup case there was a single object.
    A skull.
    Its empty eyes stared up at him.
    The hairs on the back of Pedro Santiago’s neck suddenly rose and a tiny alarm sounded in his head.
    Danger!
    The helicopter was five miles off the coast of Maui, and though he couldn’t have said what it was that set off his internal alarm, something had changed inside the cabin.
    Not a movement—at least not a