Harbinger

by S L Shelton

  “So what changed?” I asked.

  “When I was a Gymnasiast—” She paused and looked up from her bottle. “A high schooler…not a gymnast.”

  I nodded my understanding of the difference.

  “When I was a high schooler, we went to Israel on holiday to meet family there,” she said, fidgeting again. “I mentioned I wanted to be an Israeli but that I felt like a spy for keeping my heritage a secret. An uncle asked if that was a problem…feeling like a spy.”

  “I see where this is going,” I said.

  She looked up and grinned shyly before returning her attention to the beer bottle.

  “Anyway…he remembered our conversation and came to see me in the early two thousands,” she said. “Something like two thousand and two or three.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “You couldn’t have been more than fifteen,” I said incredulously.

  “Seventeen,” she replied with a crooked grin. “I’m older than I look.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. So we’re the same age.

  “They wanted me to take notes for them on a student protest they thought was being used as cover by Iranians,” she continued. “I said yes and have been working for them ever since.”

  “So you are an old pro at all this spy stuff,” I said, straight-faced, and then paused before adding, “You seem quite good at it.” My glare was meant to convey a biting rebuke, but my voice wouldn’t play along.

  “You said you had two questions,” she said.

  I looked up at the light fixture and then back down at Kathrin. “Is there a camera in the bedroom?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Not since I got your text. I cut it as soon as you said you were coming here.”

  I laughed. “That was rather presumptuous of you, don’t you think?”

  “A bit…maybe.” That devilish grin spread across her face again. “But let’s face it. You could have gone anywhere in the world to ‘stay low’. Instead, the first thing you did was contact me,” she said, rising from her chair. “You aren’t the only one who can put two and two together.”

  She didn’t give me time to respond. She put her arms around me and leaned in for a kiss. Halfway to my mouth, though, she stopped and asked, “Are you terribly angry with me?”

  I paused for a few heartbeats before answering. “Actually…I’m a little turned on,” I said finally, and then I closed the distance myself.

  I loved stealing kisses with this girl.

  **

  Hours later

  “Hurry,” Kathrin said as I pulled the steaks out of the broiler. “She’ll be here in a minute.”

  As if on cue, the clunk of heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs outside of the apartment.

  “Scheiße,” she muttered as she ran around me to light the candles on the table.

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about,” I said over my shoulder. “She’s spent the last week getting to know me before I even knew she existed.”

  “She doesn’t know you yet like I know you.”

  I turned and raised my eyebrow at her.

  An exasperated expression flashed over her face before she threw an oven mitt at me. “Not like that,” she said, trying to hold back her grin.

  “Oh…okay,” I replied just as Adina entered the apartment.

  I turned the stove off and faced Adina as Kathrin grabbed her by the arm.

  “Scott, this is Adina,” Kathrin said with a nervous smile. “She is my very best friend and partner.”

  I reached out to shake. She stared at my hand for a beat and finally shook it grasping tightly in an obvious dominance play. I simply smiled and let her have the moment—I was on her turf.

  “Come, sit,” Kathrin said, guiding Adina to the table as if she wouldn’t find her way without assistance.

  Kathrin was clearly on edge. I just didn’t know if she was worried about what I would think of Adina or what Adina would think of me.

  Over the course of dinner, Adina spoke very little, and her short answers dotted the meal’s conversation.

  “How long have you two known each other?” I asked Adina.

  She focused on her meal, cutting her steak into tiny pieces before looking up after a moment’s silence. “Sorry,” she said innocently. “Me?”

  “Five years,” Kathrin said for her, shooting the answer in quickly as if she were throwing sand on a slick spot before someone slipped on it.

  Later in the conversation, I had the audacity to bring up work.

  “Do you normally work out of Antwerp?” I asked.

  Kathrin kicked me under the table before Adina looked up with a dumbfounded sneer.

  “What?” I asked, raising my hands.

  “Some people don’t talk about their work,” Adina replied, revealing an accent that wasn’t German—Hebrew? “In fact, aside from the fact that you work for the CIA, we haven’t heard much else as to the reason you are here in Antwerp.”

  “We?” I asked, smiling to hide my agitation. “If I had known about the hidden microphones, I would have spoken directly into them for your benefit.”

  Adina glared at me with hate.

  “I’m sorry,” I said after a moment. “We don’t need to be this awkward about the whole thing. For the most part, we know more than we should but not enough to be dangerous. So how about we relax, knowing we are pretty much on the same side, and enjoy the meal?”

  “The same si—” she began, looking as if her remaining words had been stopped behind a blood clot or a stroke. Apparently, she didn’t feel as lovingly toward our ally status as I did.

  My eyes widened at the red-faced conniption that was building in front of me.

  “Oh!” she yelled when the balloon in her head could no longer take the pressure.

  “Or not,” I muttered as I returned my attention to my plate.

  She stood abruptly, sending her chair sliding backward several inches. Above me, I could feel her eyes boring into the top of my head.

  She wouldn’t dare shoot me in front of Kathrin…right?

  “Adina,” Kathrin said in a soft, soothing tone. “Bitte.”

  “Nein!” Adina snapped. “Er sollte nicht hier sein!”

  I shouldn’t be here? I translated in my head and then it hit me—Kathrin could get into a good deal of trouble for bringing a foreign agent into a Mossad safe house. I continued to eat as if the conversation wasn’t happening, despite the growing tension in my gut. Adina obviously hadn’t yet reported Kathrin’s actions to anyone—possibly out of deference to her “best friend and partner.”

  But this was a conversation they should be having without me present.

  I looked up at her with an innocent smile. “Bitte, Ich spreche nicht sehr gut Deutsch,” I said, apologizing for not speaking very good German. “Sprechen Sie langsam.”

  Asking her to speak more slowly was the last straw for Adina. Rather than take it as a subtle hint that the conversation was inappropriate, she turned a more purple shade of red than she had been before. She turned to leave in such a huff that she accidentally knocked the chair over as she stormed away. I followed her with my eyes as she stomped to the door, slamming it behind her.

  As her footsteps receded upstairs, I turned back to Kathrin, who was glaring at me, her lips pressed tight in anger.

  “I think that went well,” I said as I returned to my meal. “I think it’s clear now why she’s a surveillance tech and not an operative.”

  Kathrin shook her head at me with a disapproving glare.

  “And judging by our sparring match earlier, I’d say you might suffer from the same condition.”

  Kathrin threw her napkin on the table as if spiking a football in the end zone before rising and leaving.

  “It’s a good thing we don’t have any real neighbors,” I said with my mouth full of steak after the bedroom door slammed.

  **

  7:25 p.m.—Antwerp, Belgium, CIA Hangar at Antwerp International Airport

  BARNETT CAMDEN, also
known as “Tex”, was logging the delivery of aviation fuel, his last task for the day. He was looking forward to finishing and locking up the CIA-operated hangar; it had been a long, cold, boring day. The only thing close to excitement had been the fuel delivery an hour earlier. If not for that, he would have been gone hours ago.

  He looked up, noticing motion in one of the security monitors.

  “What the hell?” he muttered, his Texas drawl turning the one-syllable word “hell” into almost three.

  He stood to get a better view and saw a delivery truck backing up to the closed hangar doors. The schedule of deliveries, which he kept impeccably up-to-date, hung next to the door with an empty slot for the time period.

  He shook his head as he checked his computer for any new entries and, finding none, tucked his SIG Sauer into his belt holster before grabbing his coat.

  “Not tonight,” he muttered. “It’s too cold and too late to be sorting out paperwork fuck ups.”

  He left the warmth of the highly armored office and walked across the empty hangar floor, his footsteps echoing off the metal walls. When he was two-thirds of the way to the hangar doors, they parted.

  What the fuck?! he thought in sudden panic. I locked those!

  “Hey!” he yelled as he increased his pace. “No deliveries tonight. Back that rig outta here and schedule an appointment.”

  Two men, one with a clipboard and the other rolling a handcart, came around the tall sliding doors and looked up, smiling.

  “Your parts for the jet,” said clipboard guy in a thick French accent. “Rush order.”

  “There ain’t no parts comin’ into this hangar tonight,” Camden said, waving them away from the door with one hand while tucking the other hand behind his back, fingering the grip on his SIG.

  “There must be some mistake,” clipboard guy said, looking down. “This is hangar 305?”

  “Yeah, it’s hangar 305,” Camden replied, stopping a few feet away, still touching the grip on his weapon. “But there ain’t no drop offs without no appointment.”

  The man with the clipboard took a step forward, extending his paperwork.

  “That’s close enough,” Camden snapped, holding his hand up in the universal sign of “stop.” “Get back in that rig and back your shit outta here. Now!”

  The man shrugged his shoulders and began to turn, but before he’d completed the motion, he tipped the clipboard up. Camden saw what he thought was a gun, but the sudden sting and compression in his chest revealed it to be from a Taser. He fought against the voltage as best he could, trying to draw his weapon, but it proved impossible. He dropped to his knees, helpless to stop the man with the handcart from striking him on the head with a pistol, knocking him unconscious.

  With a jolt of pain to his neck, he snapped his head up a moment later. Two men were dragging him toward the office, his hands tied behind his back. Behind him, he could hear the engine of the delivery van and the hangar doors closing.

  Shit, he thought.

  “Put him in the office and check the perimeter before we start,” said a man from the across the open space behind Camden.

  American, Camden thought.

  As the pair pulled him through the door of the office, Camden abruptly kicked up with his legs against the doorway, sending the two men off-balance. He brought his head up sharply, catching one of the men under the chin, and then kicked backward. As soon as he was more inside the office than out, he tried to shoulder the heavy armored door closed before his attackers could regain their wits.

  Putting all of his weight behind the door, he slammed it shut. A wail of pain sounded from the other side. That’s when he noticed the hand in the doorjamb, preventing the door from closing completely. He pulled back and pounded his weight against the door again, but the door flew in, knocking him to the floor. Three men, one with a clearly broken hand, burst in and began punching and kicking Camden. All he could do was roll into a ball and take the assault.

  A moment later, two more men entered the office—the one who had Tased him and another who looked more military than the others, his haircut high and tight like a Marine or a Ranger.

  “That’s enough,” Ranger man said with boredom—the American. “Put him the chair.”

  The guy with the broken hand delivered one more delayed kick to Camden’s ribs before they picked him up and dropped him in the armchair by his desk. They wrestled him into place and began zip tying him to the legs and arms.

  “Check those doors,” said the American, nodding toward the two doors at the other side of the office.

  With weapons drawn and trained ahead of them, they opened one door but found the other locked. One of the attackers whistled upon seeing the contents of the second office that was used as storage.

  “He has a cannon in here,” the attacker said, also with a French accent.

  Ranger man looked down at Camden and grinned. “I’m assuming you have a permit for that thing,” he said and bent to look the Texan in the eye. “What’s the PIN for the other one?”

  Camden looked up through the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut and grinned a bloody smile. He spat a bloody wad of saliva at the man. The clean-cut man stood slowly without reacting to the spittle running down his shirt and looked at the guy with the clipboard.

  “Cut it open,” he said quietly.

  Within moments, the men had dragged a torch into the office and began cutting into the thick steel door. As soon as they were underway, the man with the military cut looked back to clipboard-guy and nodded. Two men grabbed Camden’s right arm and held it in place as the American pulled a pair of tin snips from his back pocket.

  “I’m only going to ask you one time,” the man said to Camden in a low and unemotional tone. “It’s very important you remember the question because I won’t be asking it again.”

  Camden struggled against his bonds and the grasp of the other two men. But they had him firmly restrained.

  “I have no doubt your intent will be to keep from answering this question,” the man continued. “But as the pain gets worse and your head becomes cloudy, it will remain your responsibility to answer that question.”

  “Fuck you,” Camden said.

  The American smiled. “Yes, yes. Fuck me,” he replied. “Would you like my name?”

  Camden squinted at him and then turned his head.

  “It’s Bellos,” he continued. “Charles Bellos.”

  Camden kept his attention diverted as panic threatened to overwhelm him.

  “You know why I told you my name?” Bellos asked.

  No answer.

  A sharp tug of Camden’s hair brought him face-to-face with Bellos.

  “Do you know why?” Bellos repeated.

  “So I know that no matter what I tell you, you are going to kill me,” the Texan muttered through a sneer.

  Bellos grinned broadly. “That’s right,” he replied as if surprised Camden had gotten it right on the first guess. “So as we begin, just tuck that bit of information into the back of your head. I know it will be hard at first, but as it gets worse, you need to remember that you can bring this whole nasty business to an end with a correct answer.”

  Bellos jerked Camden’s head up again. “Okay?”

  “Fuck you,” Camden replied though all the venom was gone. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Very good,” Bellos said before stepping backward. “Here’s the question. Be sure you remember it because the answer will be the only thing that ends your pain… Are you ready?”

  No answer.

  “On the night of Tuesday, January eighteenth, a CIA Gulfstream from Andrews landed here and then departed an hour later,” Bellos said. “Where did you take the passenger that disembarked from that plane?”

  Camden didn’t even blink in reply.

  “You got it?” Bellos asked and then paused for a second before squeezing the handles on the tin snips several times. “Okay. Let’s get started.”

  Without any lead-
up or fanfare, Bellos slipped the blades of the cutters around the first joint of Barnett’s little finger and squeezed them closed. Barnett was expecting the pinch, but the crunch that followed was an entirely foreign experience, more akin to being burned than cut. The sick feeling that something was horribly wrong swept up his arm.

  Barnett howled in agony as the pain signal caught up with his awareness of what had happened. The tip of his little finger, at the first knuckle, dropped to the floor.

  “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” Barnett screamed as spittle and blood drooled from his angry mouth.

  There was no pause in action. Bellos immediately lined up the next cut at the first knuckle of Barnett’s ring finger. Barnett barely had time to take a breath from his first scream before the tip of his ring finger dropped to the floor.

  “Fuck you!” Barnett screamed again, his voice so strained it was hoarse and grating.

  The next fingertip dropped within seconds of the last and Camden whipped his head back and forth in frantic agony.

  “Pick them up and put them in his pocket,” Bellos said as he centered the fourth cut across knuckle joint of the index finger.

  Clip.

  Barnett screamed again as his head became light, threatening a blackout.

  “There goes the trigger finger,” Bellos said, rolling the fat, bloody tip under the toe of his boot before looking up. “Oh, no… You don’t get to pass out yet.”

  One of the other men produced a vial and held it under Barnett’s nose, snapping him back to full attention. The lingering odor of ammonia burned his sinuses, making him attempt to wipe his eye. But the zip ties reinforced the panic that his whole body was experiencing.

  “This one is really going to hurt,” Bellos said with a grin as the cutters slid across the first joint of Barnett’s thumb.

  “I just took him to the terminal,” Barnett said. “That’s it. He was going to walk, and I offered to drive him. He went through customs and everything.”

  Bellos paused, the snips resting on Barnett’s thumb, and looked at Barnett before pulling two photos from his pocket. He showed him the first.