Dark Winter ns-6 Page 3
We were less than fifty metres from the Lite Ace now. Suzy pushed down under my arse with her left hand, the .45 in her right, ready to jump herself off.
The red lights flared and flickered as the target braked for the junction. He’d have to turn right, cross the stream, then do an immediate left.
I approached the Lite Ace on its right-hand side and could smell cigarettes. As we slowed, level with the rear of the vehicle, the bike wobbled. Suzy had leapfrogged off the back as I carried on.
There was a shout from the cab.
I twisted the throttle to get myself forward to block him, but this boy wasn’t for stopping. The Lite Ace crashed into my front wheel and I curled up, taking the fall. My right hip hit the tarmac, then skidded along the road with the bike following until we finally came to a halt in the stream.
I dragged myself to my feet, yanking the helmet back in time to see the vehicle roll backwards down the hill, headlights blazing skyward. Suzy was running after it. I hobbled forwards, trying to get my leg to work. It felt like someone had taken a cheese-grater to my thigh.
The vehicle kept rolling and the lights arced higher into the sky as Suzy dived in through the driver’s window. What the fuck was going on?
It hit the trees fifteen metres further downhill, and came to a halt. Suzy’s legs disappeared inside the driver’s window at the same time as the side door slid open and the interior light came on. A figure leapt out and crashed through the foliage as two shots were fired.
‘Which one? Which one?’
Suzy scrambled out. ‘He’s in the cover!’
‘Wait, wait.’ I drew level with her and grabbed her arm to stop her jumping into the forest. It was the pickup who was dead, his head twisted and pushed up against the blood-soaked seat.
I ripped off my helmet, gulping down oxygen. ‘Sssh, listen.’
It was secondary forest, small bushes and plants growing wherever the sun had penetrated the canopy. This stuff was difficult to move through, especially when it was dark. The target wouldn’t be able to see his own hands in front of his face.
We heard nothing; we’d have to go in after him.
Four paces in and I couldn’t see her any more. I reached out into the inky blackness and gripped her arm, pulling down until she dropped with me on to the wet leaf litter and mud of the rainforest floor. We crawled a few paces, hands and knees sinking into the mud, before stopping and listening. Still nothing.
I’d just started to move again when there was a noise. I stopped. She bumped into me. I held my breath, opened my mouth to block out my own sounds and let the saliva dribble out of me. He was close, a little to my right. It was barely audible above the engine ticking over, but I could just make out whimpering.
I felt behind me very slowly and grabbed her spare hand, passing my helmet to her before feeling my way to her face and pressing my fingers against her lips. She still had her helmet on, which was good: we didn’t want to leave either of them here.
I turned my right ear towards the sounds of a frightened man. He probably didn’t know what to do, where to go, whether to hide or run blindly into the forest. I hoped he kept choosing to lie still and think the darkness would save him.
I put out my hand in his direction, feeling the invisible ground just below and in front of me, then inched forward. Mud, roots and leaves collected between my fingers before I came into contact with the cool, clammy bark of a tree. I moved very slowly round it. I heard Suzy behind me, swallowing a mouthful of saliva.
He was close now, moving his legs. I heard them scrape across the rotting leaves.
My face was getting attacked by whatever flew around here and ate skin. Not that it mattered at the moment. My whole being was focused on finding the target; even the pain in my leg had gone as I inched a little further.
He was so close I could hear him gulp with fear, then he moved his legs again and leaves rippled across my hand.
There was nothing to do but jump in that direction. My body fell clumsily on him and he screamed. My nose landed on the side of his face. He curled into a ball, begging and pleading as I got up on my knees. I didn’t know the language; I wasn’t listening.
Suzy was up behind me. ‘Where is he? Where is he?’
I got my right knee pushing down on the side of his head. His begging became louder.
‘Ssssh, it’s OK, it’s OK.’ My right hand went down and fell on to his sweat-soaked face. I kept hold of his head and held out my spare hand into the darkness. ‘Come to me, quick.’
She moved into me and I grabbed her, feeling my way up her arm. My fingers found the revolver and guided it down on to his head. ‘You’ve got it. I’ll hold him.’
I felt the muzzle digging into his skin as he sobbed and started to struggle. I wanted to get this over with. ‘You ready? I’ll let go on three . . . one, two, three.’
I released his head and pushed myself backwards, and in the same instant she squeezed the trigger. There was a bright flash and the sound seemed much louder than I knew it actually was.
‘Stay still, stay still. Got to make sure.’
I heard the hammer go back.
‘Wait, wait.’
I heard her feeling around for what was left of his head. There was another bright flash and loud bang. The smell of cordite hung between us, trapped by the canopy of leaves, and the pain in my leg returned with a vengeance.
‘So, how the fuck do we get out of here?’ Suzy sounded almost normal.
We were no more than ten metres or so into the rainforest, but we’d only got where we were by following the sound of the target. Getting out was something else.
‘Let’s just wait, calm down, see if we can hear the Lite Ace.’ I held my breath. Gradually, the ringing of the shots in my ears faded, and I came to hear the gentle ticking of its engine. It was easy enough to home in on. I felt about for my helmet, and we crawled out of the trees, hitting the road only three or four metres from the vehicle.
I could see Suzy’s blood-splattered face in the headlights. ‘What the fuck were you doing playing Spiderman?’ I inspected my leg as she did the same with her hand. ‘All you had to do was shoot them.’
‘By the time I got level they were already flapping to get out the side door. The wagon was rolling. I didn’t know what to do. Then I thought, Fuck it, just dive in.’ She was smiling: I could see a big grin in the red glow of the rear light. ‘Anyway, it’s done, isn’t it?’
She was right. ‘We need to get the wagon off the road and you need to clean up your face. The trees are too dense here to drive through – take it down to the Buddha junction, dump it out of sight as best you can, and I’ll follow you if the bike’s still OK. If not, we’re walking back.’
She got into the Lite Ace, engaged first gear with blood- and mud-covered gloves, got it back on to the road, and drove down to the junction. I went over to the grounded bike and hauled it upright. The bike’s clutch was twisted down so it faced the tarmac, but it was still in better nick than some of the machines we’d seen around town. The main thing was that it worked.
I waited at the top of the Buddha junction for Suzy, and as she came back up the hill and threw her leg over the saddle she leant forward. ‘Didn’t we do well? I think we deserve to go jet-skiing tomorrow, don’t you?’
The right side of my leg was raging so badly from the gravel grazes that I had to grit my teeth.
4
Washington DC
Friday 2 May, 07:04 hrs
It was a miserable day. The weather just couldn’t make up its mind – never quite raining but looking like it wanted to at any moment.
I walked along D Street just a couple of blocks south of the Library of Congress, on my way to meet George, moving as fast as I could while trying to sip from a lip-burning Starbucks. I’d got the metro from Crystal City, where I now lived in a large grey concrete apartment block that made me feel like a UN delegate. There was a Bosnian concierge in the daytime and a Croatian one at night. All the cleaning
women seemed to be Russian and the superintendent was from Pakistan. They all understood English really well, until something needed repairing or cleaning. Especially the superintendent – every time I hassled him about the problem with my washer-dryer he went deaf.
I tested my Starbucks again. It had cooled down a little so I took a longer sip through the top cover. I’d been thinking that only George would call me into the office for seven in the morning, but apparently he wasn’t alone. The whole of DC seemed to be on an early start; the traffic was heavy already and plenty of people were walking purposefully past me in both directions, almost power walking, cell phones stuck to the sides of their heads so everyone knew they were doing really important stuff. Not that they needed the cells; their voices were loud enough to carry the message right across town.
I took another swig and checked my traser watch again as I kept moving. I should be on time. The mission in Penang had been simple enough – to kill the target once he’d handed over a box to the source, after prayer that same evening. But just as important, George had stressed, was that Suzy and I both had to see the source physically in control of the box – which must have been why he’d brought it round to the passenger door.
It was a shame about the target’s pickup. He was one of life’s unfortunates: wrong place, wrong time. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that whatever was in those bottles, it sure wasn’t wine, or even Ribena; I just hoped it had been worth him dying for.
The big problem facing Suzy and me afterwards was that we still had four days left of our package holiday. We couldn’t just pack up and take a scheduled flight home: everything had to look normal; we had to brass it out. We did a lot of the tourist sights rather than lying by the pool – I needed to keep my gravel-graze out of view and keep as low a profile as possible. It felt like we spent entire days in trishaws going from temple to temple.
I took the bike back; it cost me $150 for the damage, but I was just dismissed as another incompetent tourist. The killing, even the disappearance of the two waiters, hadn’t made it to the New Straits Times in the remaining four days, which probably meant that no one had come across the Lite Ace or a fly-infested body by the time we left the country. In fact, the main event in the papers was some politician’s wife being accused of khalwat , an offence that involved being in close proximity to a member of the opposite sex who wasn’t a relation. She had been watching television with three students from the International Islamic University when a team from the Federal Territory religious department raided the apartment following a complaint from neighbours. If found guilty, they could be fined three thousand dollars and jailed for up to two years. As Suzy said, she should count herself lucky she hadn’t been sitting with three drug-dealers watching satellite channels with an iffy Sky card.
Suzy’s revolver had been dropped off by a courier in the Firm into a dead-letter box in the women’s toilet at Starbucks. I took another sip of their coffee; globalization was a reality, these guys were getting everywhere. That one had been in the shopping mall in a good part of Georgetown, the island’s capital. The weapon and six rounds were all we’d been given, so Suzy had to make sure she did a good job. No wonder she’d acted like a lunatic, diving in through the Lite Ace’s window. She knew she couldn’t afford to waste a single shot.
It would have been better for us if the handover of the wine box had been done on the last night, so we could have carried out the task and left Penang the following day. But I was just pleased that it hadn’t happened on the first night, which wouldn’t have given us enough time to do the recces and would have exposed us on the island for a whole fortnight. We’d spent a lot of time establishing his routine: the route from his house to the restaurant, what time he started work, what time he finished, whether there was anyone else living in his house. We knew where he kept his vehicle, and we knew the best time to go and tamper with the brake light. We knew almost everything about him, except his name – but then again, it wasn’t as if I’d wanted to have coffee with him.
By the time I reached the mansion block there was still about half a paper cup of latte left. I walked up the six or seven steps of the large Victorian brick building, long ago converted into office space and flanked by modern concrete blocks at either side. Large glass double doors took me into the hallway and down towards a huge black guy in a white shirt and blue uniform at the front desk. I showed him my Virginia driver’s licence, as required everywhere since 9/11. I hadn’t got round to buying a car yet because I had my bike – if I could get hold of it – at Carrie’s house in Marblehead.
I glanced at the security guy’s name badge. ‘Hi, Calvin. My name’s Stone – I’m going to the third floor, Hot Black Inc.’
‘Can you sign the book, sir, please?’
I signed in while he checked the visitors’ list and gave me the once-over. DC was still quite a formal town when it came to dress codes and I was in my jeans, Caterpillar boots and brown leather bomber jacket. I placed the pen back on the desk and gave Calvin a smile. ‘It’s dress-down Friday.’
Calvin didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Thank you, Mr Stone. The elevator is just round the corner there to the right, and you have a good day, sir.’
As I walked away I gave him the standard, ‘And you.’ I had a smile on my face: the name Hot Black Inc still made me laugh. I’d always thought it was only in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. that they invented weirdly named companies as fronts.
I’d been on Hot Black’s payroll for just under a year now. It was a marketing company that didn’t really have anything to market, which was just as well because I didn’t know the first thing about that. Life was good. I got paid a salary of $82,000 a year, my apartment was taken care of, and on top of that I got cash in hand after every job. It was a much better deal than working as a K for the Firm on £290 a day, all in. As a Hot Black employee I’d been given a US social-security number, and I even had to file tax returns. It gave me the chance to have a kind of real life. After George’s daughter, Carrie, had binned me, I’d even managed to have a new girlfriend for about six weeks. She was the area manager for Victoria’s Secret for DC and Virginia, and we lived in the same apartment block. It worked out quite well until her husband decided he wanted to try to make a go of their marriage. I guessed he’d been missing the free samples she brought home.
I even had a pension plan. It was one of the ways George could slip me extra cash without it being noticed in the real world: walking into a bank with $20,000 in cash, these days, would do more than just raise eyebrows. For the first time in my life I was starting to feel a bit secure.
The elevator arrived, pinged open, and I stepped in and pressed the button for the third floor.
5
I still wasn’t too sure what military or government department George worked for and therefore who paid my salary, but I wasn’t complaining. Things had been really busy for me since I’d thrown in my lot with him: in the last few months I’d been in Bombay and Greece on ‘rendering’ operations; the targets were three suspected al-Qaeda operators who, I presumed, were now shuffling around Guantanamo Bay sporting shaved heads and orange coveralls.
I finished my coffee as the elevator doors closed behind me, and turned left down the corridor towards Hot Black’s offices. It was a world of shiny black marble walls, alabaster statues in alcoves, and bright fluorescent lights set into suspended ceilings. The corridor had just been refurbished and the smell of thick new carpet was in the air. Hot Black Inc was no two-bob company.
I went through the smoked-glass double doors into the deserted reception area. A large veneered antique table served as a front desk, but it was unmanned. To the left of it, two long red velvet sofas faced each other with a low glass coffee-table between them. There wasn’t as much as a daily newspaper or a copy of Marketing Monthly in sight. The desk was the same, completely clear apart from a phone. Even the drinking fountain was missing its huge upturned plastic bottle; there were just six lonely crystal glasses to one side.
I carried on to the main office doors, tall, black, very shiny and substantial. When I was just a couple of paces away they were pulled open. George spun on his heel without a word of greeting and strode back towards his desk, framed by the window a good ten metres away. The cleats in his heels clunked on the maple floor. ‘You’re late. I said seven a.m.’
I’d known he’d say that. He’d probably been up since five, gone for a run, said a prayer over his healthy bowl of granola, and left his house at precisely the time he’d planned. Not five or ten past the hour, that wasn’t precise enough, and would have meant time wasted. It was probably eleven minutes past or something like that, to get him to the office at exactly six fifty-six.
I closed the doors behind me. ‘Yes, I know, I’m sorry. There were a few delays on the metro.’
He didn’t reply. The Washington metro was never late. What had made me late was the line at Starbucks, and the not-too-bright people behind the counter.
He rounded the desk. ‘What’s that one called?’
‘A latte .’
The windows were triple-glazed so I could see traffic moving beyond the blinds but not hear it. The only sound, apart from our voices, was air droning through the air-conditioning ducts.
‘Doesn’t anybody just buy a cup of plain Joe any more? You’re paying over two bucks a hit just because it’s got a fancy name.’
The room was well furnished. One wall was panelled with oak and had what looked like an eighteenth-century portrait of a guy wearing a tricorne hat and a mason’s apron, with a bunch of American Indians in the background killing someone.
As George finally turned to face me I realized it really must be dress-down day in Spookville. He wasn’t wearing his normal button-down shirt and tie under his cord sports jacket but a white polo shirt. Maybe next week he’d go completely overboard and undo the top button, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.