by Adam Hamdy
She glanced at Jack and caught him frowning. ‘Don’t worry, you’re still my hero,’ she said, but she wasn’t sure she meant it.
Jack seemed puzzled for a moment, as though his mind was somewhere else. Then he broke into a smile.
‘Do I look worried?’ he asked, stepping away from the window. ‘How long are we going to be stuck here?’
Essi joined him on the double bed that dominated her room. She hadn’t lived at home for years, but her father had kept everything the same, and she was surrounded by posters of Eminem and Pink and programmes for climate-change events. She’d been a dedicated environmentalist as a teen, but her zealotry had worn off when she’d realized how hard it was to get from the coast to the city without a car.
‘I don’t know,’ Essi replied. ‘Dad says we should stay here until it’s safe.’
‘So is this place a fortress or a prison?’ Jack joked.
She lay with her back to him and looked out of the rear windows of her dual-aspect room. Dark clouds hung low above the water, which heaved and rolled as though it was drawing in a storm from some distant place.
‘You know one of the best ways to amuse yourself when you’re bored?’ Jack said suggestively. He pulled Essi round to face him and lifted the hem of her dress. He ran his hand up her leg and she leaned forward and kissed him.
Chapter 98
Pearce, Deni and Rasul were in a study that overlooked the lake. French doors, closed against the weather, looked onto a terraced garden that was abundant and beautiful. The room was lined with packed bookshelves and at its heart were two Chesterfield leather couches that faced each other. There were no signs of Deni’s heritage anywhere. The room could have belonged to any moneyed American. Pearce sat next to Abbas, opposite the Chechen gang boss and his son, and told them what he knew about the Red Wolves. He didn’t mention that the fentanyl they were smuggling was actually a chemical weapon.
‘So this has been about taking our business?’ Abbas asked.
Pearce nodded.
‘I know these bikers you speak of. They used to be called the Reapers,’ Deni said. ‘They’re fucking amateurs. Village pushers. And that cop, Hill, he’s a nickel and dimer. He came to me years ago, offering protection. I have his fucking bosses in my pocket. They’re gonna put the hurt on him.’
‘This is being run by the Red Wolves,’ Pearce said. ‘They’re well-financed and highly organized.’
‘And Ziad?’ Rasul asked. ‘I saw him with them at the community centre. He betrayed us.’
‘Looks like it,’ Pearce replied.
‘Why?’ Deni said. ‘I treated him like a son. He was dating my daughter. It broke my heart when he was arrested in Cairo.’
‘Maybe he blames you for the arrest,’ Pearce suggested.
‘Bullshit!’ Deni exclaimed. ‘Why would we do that? We sent him to Egypt to open a new supply route. It was supposed to cut our costs if we could bring product through Suez and Panama.’
‘Why would we betray him?’ Rasul asked. ‘It broke my sister.’
‘We treated Ziad Malek like family,’ Abbas confirmed.
‘Who arranged the trip?’ Pearce asked, studying the two men.
Were they telling the truth?
‘We did,’ Deni responded.
‘True,’ Rasul said. ‘But Jack Gray suggested it.’
‘Jack Gray?’ Pearce asked.
‘Our attorney. My sister’s new boyfriend. He said we could save a lot of money using the Suez route. He and Essi started dating after Ziad . . .’ Rasul tailed off. He and his father shared a look of disbelief. ‘He was the one who suggested we send Ziad.’
Pearce followed the two men upstairs. He could feel their fury radiating in hot pulses that seemed to grow more intense with each hurried step. They raced through the house and Rasul tried a closed door, which was locked. He stepped back and barged it open, and he and Deni spilled into what looked like a teenager’s bedroom. Pearce followed and saw Essi naked. She was straddling Jack Gray. She screamed and grabbed the bedspread.
‘Get out!’ she yelled as she wrapped herself in the cover.
But Deni and Rasul ignored Essi and bore down on Jack, who scrabbled for his clothes.
‘What the hell is going on?’ he demanded.
‘You’re coming with us,’ Rasul snarled, before punching the man and knocking him cold.
Chapter 99
The dazed, naked man moaned as they propped him up on a chair. Rasul used a thick cord to bind him, and Deni loomed over their captive. Pearce stood a few paces back, near a gym that took up much of Deni Salamov’s basement. Light coming through the high windows cast long shadows everywhere, and Essi hugged the darkness by the door. Unlike her boyfriend, she was now dressed, and Pearce could see conflicting emotions playing out on her face.
‘Dad, please don’t do this,’ she said.
‘You can go,’ Deni responded calmly. ‘But this man is staying. He will tell us the truth.’
‘If he didn’t betray us, he has nothing to fear,’ Rasul added.
Essi bit her lip and Pearce thought she would cry, but there were no tears.
Deni slapped Jack, and he came to his senses.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asked, pulling against the cord.
Deni crouched down and looked him in the eye. ‘You have one chance to tell me the truth, before my son goes to work.’
Essi blanched.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jack replied.
Deni nodded at Rasul, who drove a fist into Jack’s face. The man’s head snapped back before falling limp. A few more of those and they’d kill him.
Pearce noticed Essi had started weeping.
‘Let me try,’ he said, crossing the room. ‘I’m not sure how much more of that he’ll take. I have some experience of interrogation from the army.’
Rasul glanced at Deni, who nodded.
Pearce lifted Jack’s head. The man stank of sweat and fear. ‘You got a blade?’ Pearce asked Rasul, who nodded and produced a butterfly knife.
Pearce opened it and checked the edge. It was sharp. He turned to Jack and pressed the point against the man’s thigh. Not hard enough to break the skin, but sufficient to bring the man round.
‘Please let me go,’ Jack whined.
‘You tell these men what they want to know and I won’t cut you,’ Pearce replied, brandishing the knife.
‘I didn’t sign up for this,’ Jack said, his voice trembling. ‘I’m a lawyer, not a fucking gangster.’
Rasul scoffed.
‘You can leave any time,’ Pearce said. ‘All you have to do is tell the truth.’
Jack fell silent. He looked across the basement at Essi, who couldn’t hold his gaze. ‘Ess, please,’ he implored her. ‘Please don’t let them do this.’
‘Don’t look at her,’ Pearce said, turning Jack’s head to face him. ‘Look at this.’ He signalled the blade. ‘Think about how it will feel when I cut you open.’
Jack whimpered. ‘They said they’d kill me.’
‘They’re not here,’ Pearce countered. ‘I am.’
‘You fucking bitch,’ Jack yelled at Essi. ‘You’re supposed to love me. You just gonna stand there? Once a fucking dirty—’
Pearce drove the knife into Jack’s leg, near where the thigh and knee met. It wasn’t a deep incision, but it didn’t need to be, the area was packed with nerves. Jack shrieked, jerked back, and almost toppled over.
‘I told you not to look at her,’ Pearce said.
Jack’s face was the colour of snow, and tears rolled down his cheeks, which were inflating and deflating rapidly with each hurried breath. ‘I don’t know how they knew I’m your lawyer,’ he said to Deni, his voice teetering on the verge of breaking. ‘But they did. They started small, offering me cash for little bits of information.’
Deni grimaced and Rasul started towards the captive, but Pearce held him back.
‘It wasn’t anything important. The names of your
businesses. Where you hung out. They gave me a lot of money. It didn’t seem so bad. Nothing a half-decent private investigator couldn’t have found out.’ Jack took a deep breath. ‘Get me a bandage!’ he said, looking down at his leg.
Pearce shook his head. ‘Things get better when you’ve talked.’
Jack sighed and brought his breathing under control. ‘Then they wanted more. And they threatened to expose me. They said they’d tell you I’d been working for them. They forced me to tell them everything I knew about your operation.’
Pearce glanced over and saw Essi sobbing.
‘Ziad,’ she lamented softly.
‘Everything we had,’ Jack shouted at her. ‘It was all real. Everything.’
Pearce gripped the man’s cheeks hard, and looked him in the eye. ‘Me. You’re talking to me.’
‘They told me about Egypt,’ Jack revealed. ‘They said I should convince you to send Ziad out there.’
‘Did you know they were planning to have him arrested?’ Essi asked, moving across the room.
Jack looked at Pearce pleadingly. ‘They had me by then. If they’d exposed me . . .’ He glanced at Deni and Rasul, who were watching him murderously. ‘They told me to get you to change your phone numbers and email addresses. To say they’d been compromised by Ziad’s arrest. That way he couldn’t reach you. And when he tried to make contact with me, I was to tell him you’d disowned him. They made me do it,’ he whined.
Pearce marvelled at the simplicity of the set-up. Using Jack as the go-between meant he could control what Ziad was told. Whoever was behind this operation truly understood human nature. Send Ziad to prison and make him believe the Salamovs had set him up and he’d do almost anything to avenge himself against them.
‘Did they tell you to start seeing me?’ Essi asked. Her voice had taken on a cold edge.
Jack didn’t reply. ‘They . . .’ he sighed. ‘It was real. However it started, it became real.’
‘Who’s behind this?’ Pearce asked. ‘Eddie Fletcher? Elroy Lang?’
‘Fletcher is just muscle,’ Jack replied. ‘Elroy is higher up, but there’s someone else.’
‘Who?’ Pearce asked.
Essi paced the area directly behind Pearce. He glanced at her and saw she was no longer weeping. Her face was a mask of pure anger.
‘Ziad,’ she said. ‘You took him from me. You—’
‘But we were happy,’ Jack protested. ‘He’s a street thug. I’m a good guy.’
‘Talk to me,’ Pearce said, slapping Jack’s face. ‘Who is the other guy? Who’s calling the shots?’
‘Some guy from Ukraine or somewhere like that. Some Eastern European.’
‘Name?’ Pearce pressed.
‘I don’t know,’ Jack confessed. ‘Please. That’s all I know.’
‘What about the shipment?’ Pearce asked.
‘What shipment? I don’t know anything about any shipment,’ Jack said. ‘Don’t you get it? They used me. They fucking used me. That’s all. I’m not part of whatever it is they’re doing. Ess,’ he looked beyond Pearce at Essi, who glared back. ‘Ess, please. You’ve got to believe me. They used me.’
Essi looked away, and walked over to her father. She collapsed against him and he drew her into a tight embrace.
‘Zee,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry, Zee. I didn’t know.’
‘It’s OK,’ Deni said, stroking her hair.
‘Please let me go,’ Jack begged. ‘You’ll never see me again. Please. Don’t hurt me.’
‘I need to know about the shipment,’ Pearce said. ‘I need the vessel.’
‘I don’t know anything about any vessel,’ Jack moaned. ‘Why can’t you people get it through your heads? They used me.’
Pearce sensed movement behind him and turned to see Essi step away from her father. She moved towards Jack, and Pearce saw the gun too late to react. She raised the pistol she’d pilfered from her father’s holster and fired two shots into Jack’s head.
Chapter 100
Rasul brooded by the French doors. The other side of the lake was lost to heavy rain, which shrouded everything in sheets of grey. Pearce sat on one of the Chesterfields watching the man who’d just seen his sister murder her lover. How did people rationalize this kind of horror? How did they cope with lives that took them so far from mainstream society? Pearce smiled wryly and looked away, suddenly questioning how he rationalized his own life. Taken in isolation, few events in his life made sense, but people’s lives weren’t snapshots; they were stories, coherent only as a chain of causation. This afternoon’s snapshot of Essi’s life, her murder of Jack, could have been seen as a brutal execution by a mobster’s daughter. But within the context of her story, his death was revenge for betrayal. She’d lost the man she’d loved and been manipulated by the man who’d supplanted him. Her brother and father had been falsely implicated in the betrayal and the damage to their business and all the friends and associates they’d lost had been as a result of Jack Gray’s treachery. In that context, his death made perfect sense.
The study door opened, and Deni and Abbas entered, looking grave.
‘She’s resting,’ Deni said. ‘Tarek and Waheed have disposed of the body.’
‘She killed him before he could tell us the name of the ship,’ Rasul responded.
‘I don’t think he knew,’ Pearce remarked. ‘He wasn’t holding anything back. Not by the end. He would have given up the vessel if he’d known.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Deni said. ‘They stole the shipment of my biggest customer. My guess is they did it to create a shortage so he’d do a deal with them. It’s what I would have done in my younger days.’
‘Cresci?’ Rasul asked.
Deni nodded. ‘Ben Cresci, the head of the Cresci crime family. He threatened us if we didn’t replace his product. Then he went quiet, like we don’t matter to him anymore. If he’s done a deal with the Red Wolves, he’ll know when the ship is arriving. And if we know when it’s coming in, it won’t be difficult to figure out which ship is carrying their product.’
‘How do we reach this Cresci?’ Pearce asked.
‘We go see him,’ Deni replied. ‘Tell the men to get the cars ready,’ he instructed Rasul.
The Chechen’s son nodded and left the room.
Deni turned to Abbas. ‘I want you to stay with Essi. Look after her.’
Abbas nodded and left, and Deni took his son’s place at the window. Moments later, Pearce’s Ghostlink sounded its familiar tri-tone and he answered.
‘Go ahead,’ he said, aware Deni was watching him.
‘Sure. Uncle NSA is back,’ Leila said, referring to Clifton. ‘He and our French friend are working on the operation. They want to know when you’ll be home.’
‘Soon,’ Pearce said.
‘Kyle and I want to check out the bike repair place where I saw Angsakul,’ Leila revealed. ‘Check if Malek and Elroy are there. Uncle NSA brought some new toys. It’ll give me a chance to field-test them.’
‘Eyes only,’ Pearce said. ‘No engagement.’ He hoped she’d have the sense to follow his instruction.
‘Copy that. Stay safe,’ Leila replied, before she hung up.
Pearce pocketed the Ghostlink and looked up to see Deni studying him.
‘Cop?’ the Chechen asked.
Pearce didn’t answer.
‘I worked counter-intelligence during the Chechen War,’ Deni revealed. ‘It looks enough like one to fool most people, but whatever that thing is, it’s not a cell phone. And the way you talk, the way you move, the way you handled the interrogation.’ He shifted slightly and opened his jacket to reveal his holster, which was now home to a new pistol. ‘So I ask again, are you a cop?’
Pearce shook his head.
‘Spy?’ Deni asked.
‘No,’ Pearce said. ‘I have no interest in you or your organization. I’m here for the people who’ve tried to destroy you.’
Deni frowned. ‘Does Rasul know?’
‘
No.’
‘My family and friends owe you their lives, but if I see you make one move against us, I will kill you,’ Deni said. ‘I won’t even hesitate.’
Pearce stared at the man, who held his gaze, and they stayed locked like that until Rasul entered.
‘The cars are ready,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Chapter 101
Pearce followed Deni and Rasul as the old Chechen and his son hurried through the grand hallway towards the front door. A convoy of cars waited outside, but Pearce sensed movement and hesitated. He looked up to see Essi Salamov standing on the landing. She leaned against the balustrade, her eyes distant and unfocused, her body sagging like a drunk’s. The effect of a sedative?
‘You,’ she murmured as her unfocused eyes settled on Pearce.
She tried to move towards the stairs, but stumbled and fell heavily.
Pearce bounded up the wide staircase and hurried over to her. She was disorientated and made ineffective attempts to get up. Pearce crouched to help her.
‘Ziad,’ she said, and for a moment Pearce thought she’d confused him with her ex, but she pressed something into his hands. ‘Give this to him.’
Pearce looked down to see a crumpled envelope.
‘Ya Essi,’ Abbas called out, and Pearce turned to see the old man coming up the stairs. He slipped the envelope into his pocket and helped Essi to her feet.
‘She fell,’ Pearce told Abbas.
‘Are you coming, Amr?’ Rasul yelled from the front door.
Pearce handed Essi to Abbas and hurried downstairs.
‘Tell him I’m sorry,’ Essi called out, as he left the building. ‘I’m sorry.’
Chapter 102
Pearce was in the second vehicle in a convoy of three. There were four men in the lead car and three more in the trailing SUV. Pearce was travelling with Deni, Rasul and Tarek, who was driving them through the treacherous storm. The wipers were working furiously, but they did little to mitigate the effects of the downpour. The road ahead was a glittering starfield of red and white lights, all inching along in the slow traffic. Heavy clouds had brought night early to Seattle, and the streets were devoid of pedestrians. The rain was too heavy and the winds too strong for all but the foolhardiest.
