by Adam Hamdy
Rasul had briefed Pearce on Ben Cresci, the head of a massive narcotics business, who used a food distribution front to smuggle product throughout the West Coast and Midwest. Deni and Cresci had been in business for six years, ever since the Chechen had established a connection to Afghanistan. Deni couldn’t give an accurate estimate of the number of people Cresci supplied, but guessed it was hundreds of thousands. Rasul said Cresci moved enough product to supply the population of a large city. He could be selling to millions throughout his territory. The Cresci operation was the perfect way for the Red Wolves to distribute their toxin.
The journey from Laurelhurst to Roosevelt took over an hour. Their destination wasn’t more than four miles away, but the storm had caused mayhem. There couldn’t have been many gyms in the world that had bouncers, but when the convoy stopped outside the three-storey building on 65th Street, Pearce saw this was one of them. Four men in black satin bomber jackets huddled under an awning that proudly announced this was Roosevelt Boxing, the home of Seattle’s own welterweight champion, Bobby Ivan. Tarek stopped the car directly opposite the entrance, and Pearce saw the bouncers fan out a little. The two closest the door reached inside their jackets.
‘Cresci’s kid is a contender,’ Rasul explained. ‘His dad comes here almost every night to watch him train.’
Deni and Rasul stepped into the rain, and Pearce followed them. Three men from the lead and two from the trailing vehicle stepped onto the sidewalk and eyed the bouncers menacingly. Deni and Rasul hurried forward and as they reached the awning, two of the bouncers stopped them and patted them down. Pearce was thoroughly frisked by a third. They took Deni’s gun and a pistol and knife from Rasul. Pearce had nothing but his Ghostlink.
‘You two are OK,’ the nearest bouncer said. ‘But him we don’t know.’
All eyes fell on Pearce.
‘Your boss is going to want to hear what I’ve got to say,’ he replied. ‘Even they don’t know the whole story.’
One of the bouncers stepped away and spoke into a lapel mic, and Deni watched Pearce suspiciously as they waited beneath the awning. The bouncer returned and nodded.
‘You can go up,’ he said.
One of the men held the door open and as they went inside Pearce noticed it was three inches thick and reinforced with steel. These people were ready for serious trouble.
‘What don’t we know?’ Deni asked as they climbed the stairs. Pearce didn’t answer, and the Chechen grabbed him and pinned him to the wall. ‘I told you what would happen. One move. Just one move.’
Pearce held the man’s gaze. ‘We can waste time here, or we can go inside and you can find out exactly what I know.’ There was no way he was risking being locked out of the room by sharing the secret too soon.
‘Dad?’ Rasul asked. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
Deni didn’t reply, but he released Pearce and led them up the stairs to a reception area. The guy behind the counter had the lean, hard look of an ex-military man, and he gestured at a set of double doors, which he unlocked with a remote control. Pearce pulled one of the doors open and stepped inside a huge, state-of-the-art boxing gym.
Strong, fit, ambitious men trained in a free-weights area. Others worked maize balls and heavy punchbags. Some did rope or pad work, and half a dozen were sparring in three full-sized rings in the heart of the space. The gym was alive with the sounds of exertion, and beneath the grunts and cries was an up-tempo dance track. Freshly laundered towels were piled next to a water cooler, and beside them was a stack of coronavirus tests, ubiquitous in any public setting since the pandemic.
Pearce didn’t need Cresci pointed out to him. A trim man in his early forties, Cresci wore a light suit with wide lapels. He had a ponytail, a thick moustache and large tinted sunglasses that made him look like a throwback to the seventies. He sat in one of two worn armchairs on a raised platform beside the centre ring. The platform was surrounded by six men in tailored suits, whose shark-like eyes swept the room in every direction. One of the men noticed Deni, hurried up to Cresci and whispered in his ear. Cresci gave an unmistakeable look of irritation when he glanced in their direction.
‘Keep your gloves up!’ he yelled at a young guy in the ring.
Pearce assumed the kid was Cresci’s son. He had the same eyes, but was even leaner than his father. From the brief exchange he saw, Pearce could tell Cresci junior was light on his feet and could throw a solid punch. He looked as though he was making his opponent suffer.
Cresci walked down a run of steps and came over. ‘You clean?’ he asked before he got too close.
Deni nodded. ‘Tested yesterday,’ he replied.
Cresci looked at Pearce and Rasul, who both nodded.
‘I’m sorry to hear about your troubles,’ he said, drawing near. ‘These things are bad for business.’
‘Thank you, Ben,’ Deni replied. ‘We need to talk. It seems we’ve all been made fools of.’
Cresci studied Deni for a moment. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I can give you five.’
Chapter 103
The locker room had been emptied and there were two of Cresci’s men stationed by the door to prevent any interruptions. Every now and again, they cast suspicious glances at Pearce, Deni and Rasul.
‘So?’ Cresci prompted.
‘Can we talk freely here?’ Deni asked, signalling their surroundings.
‘Sure. We sweep the place once a week.’
‘Remember you said we had to replace your product?’ Deni began.
‘Yeah. About that,’ Cresci said, ‘I might be able to give you more time.’
‘Because you found another supplier?’
‘You think I’m going to sit on my hands? You should be glad I did,’ Cresci remarked. ‘Otherwise we’d be having a serious problem. I can’t sit by just because you got ripped off by East Hill.’
Deni shook his head and Rasul smiled darkly.
‘It was the Red Wolves,’ Deni corrected. ‘We think they sold the product to East Hill to frame them.’
‘The Red Wolves?’ Cresci said incredulously.
‘We think they’re planning to use you and your distribution network,’ Pearce said.
‘Use me to do what?’ Cresci asked.
‘I believe they’re going to attack America.’
‘With blow?’ Cresci scoffed. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Pearce sensed the men by the door shift in his direction.
‘I don’t know who this nutcase is, but the world keeps turning,’ Cresci said to Deni. ‘We had a good run, but I can’t wait for you to get control of your business.’
‘Did Ziad Malek approach you?’ Pearce asked. ‘Is he your resupply?’
Cresci’s eyes narrowed and he studied Pearce closely.
‘Did he offer you fentanyl?’
‘You brought some kind of mind-reader into your outfit?’ he asked Deni, before turning to Pearce. ‘Look, I don’t like synthetics, but my people have been trying to persuade me of the benefits for a while, and junkies don’t give a shit. They just want to get high. They don’t care whether the gear came out of the ground or a lab. So I cut a deal that keeps my business in operation.’
‘What ship is it coming in on?’ Pearce asked.
‘Why? Are you going to rip them off?’ Cresci scoffed.
‘We’re going to sink it,’ Pearce replied earnestly, surprising Deni and Rasul almost as much as Cresci.
‘You’re what? Who the fuck is this clown?’ Cresci asked the Chechen.
Deni was about to answer, but Pearce cut him off. ‘You know the Midas Killer? You know the attacks on the Meals Seattle warehouse and Mr Salamov’s community centre?’
‘I was sorry to hear about that,’ Cresci said.
‘The toxin used in those attacks knocks out the parathyroid glands and causes people to suffocate. Every single dose of fentanyl you’ve bought is laced with the stuff. You’ve ordered a shipment of poison, Mr Cresci. These people are using you to hurt America.’
&nb
sp; ‘What the . . .’
‘I’ve been on the trail of a Thai national,’ Pearce said, producing a photograph of Narong Angsakul. ‘This is the Midas Killer. This is the man who attacked the community centre. I believe he was behind the Meals Seattle deaths.’ Pearce showed Cresci a photo of Ziad Malek and Elroy Lang getting into the car outside Al Aqarab Prison. ‘And this man, Elroy Lang, helped Ziad Malek escape from prison. They killed more than seventy people that day. They’re planning to distribute the same toxin throughout America.’
Cresci’s confusion and disbelief hardened into anger. ‘That motherfu—’
‘We believe they’re using you,’ Pearce said.
‘We?’ Cresci asked, suddenly suspicious.
‘I’m not a cop, Mr Cresci. Beyond this shipment, I have no interest in what you do.’
Cresci studied the photos of Narong. ‘He came to see me with Malek. Claimed to represent the Chinese manufacturers.’ He turned to Deni. ‘I thought Malek was an opportunist. You know how these things are. A young buck sees an opening and an empire is born.’
‘We just need to know when the shipment is coming in,’ Pearce said.
Cresci smiled. ‘You’re going to sink it?’
Pearce nodded.
‘And the Red Wolves? You have any issue with them meeting with a hundred fucking ugly accidents?’
‘I’d like to talk to the leaders, Eddie and Kirsty Fletcher,’ Pearce said. ‘What happens to the rest of them isn’t my concern.’
‘OK, then,’ Cresci said. ‘I can do better than a date. I can give you a name. They’re bringing it in on the Elite Voyager. It’s due to dock tomorrow.’
‘It will never arrive,’ Pearce assured them.
Chapter 104
Leila watched the image on the monitor. It showed a bird’s-eye view of the bike repair shop, its roof pockmarked by rust and decay, as though a giant had taken huge bites out of it. Heavy rain ran down corrugated valleys and poured through the holes.
She and Wollerton were sitting in the back of a modified Ford Transit cargo van, a block away from the building. Clifton had returned with the vehicle from whatever Huxley Blaine Carter facility he’d delivered the fentanyl patch to. The van was a sophisticated surveillance centre with equipment Leila had never encountered before. Clifton had explained that most innovation was taking place in the private sector. Governments had ceased to be at the vanguard of progress. The Hyperloop, space exploration, medical breakthroughs were all privately funded, and one of the most sophisticated intelligence agencies in the world, Mossad, relied on Israel’s innovative technology sector to keep it at the forefront of the espionage business. Leila was aware of the role of private industry in the spy business, but some of the gear in the van smacked of nation-state levels of investment. The drone she was piloting, for example, was a tiny craft designed to look like a bumble bee. According to Clifton, research had shown they were the least likely of all flying bugs to get swatted. It was only close up that the device’s tiny mechanical legs and synthetic wings became apparent.
Once this investigation was over and she’d found her sister, Leila planned to look into Huxley Blaine Carter’s ties to the US intelligence community. Was he really a private citizen motivated by the death of his father? Or a CIA or NSA operative? His connection to Robert Clifton seemed to suggest the latter.
Leila used the intuitive joystick controls to pilot the tiny drone through a hole in the roof. It flew into a large, disused repair shop. There were benches, a few old tools, piles of rubbish, a TV and a couple of tatty chairs. There was a filthy kitchen off to one side and at the back of the warehouse a row of offices separated from the rest of the space by a long panel of frosted glass windows and doors. There were a couple of army surplus cots in two of the offices, but nothing else, and the drone confirmed what the infrared sensor had shown: the warehouse was deserted.
‘They’ll have cleared out as soon as we escaped,’ Wollerton said.
Leila nodded. Her background on the Red Wolves showed the warehouse had once belonged to Lenny Fletcher, Eddie Fletcher’s father; a mechanic and founding member of the notorious Reaper gang that had been subsumed by the Red Wolves. The place had passed to Eddie after his father’s death, and as she piloted the drone out of the building, Leila considered whether the gang leader knew the horror he was bringing to America.
Chapter 105
Essi Salamov woke suddenly. It was dark and she could hear rain outside. A flash of lightning illuminated the room for a split second, and revealed a figure by her bed. Terror rendered her speechless and the silence was filled by a crack of thunder. She reached a trembling hand towards her beside light, praying the intruder couldn’t see her moving. There was a gun in her top drawer, and she pictured herself rolling over and shooting the figure the moment the light came on.
She flipped the switch, yanked open the drawer, grabbed the pistol, turned, and brought the weapon round to shoot the intruder. She stopped suddenly and cried with relief when she saw a familiar face.
‘Ziad!’ she said. ‘You scared me.’
He looked terrible. Tired and drained and soaking wet. He stood watching her, saying nothing.
‘I’m so glad you’re here, Zee. I wrote you a letter,’ Essi said. ‘Did you get it? It doesn’t matter. I can tell you everything. Come closer.’
She patted the bed, and, after a moment’s hesitation, he approached. Was he crying?
‘It’s OK,’ Essi said. ‘It’s OK.’
Tears sprang to her eyes at the thought of Jack’s betrayal, at all the time she and Ziad had lost, at the way she’d treated him. She should have waited. She should have . . . The moment of Jack’s death flashed through her mind, and no matter how much she told herself her actions had been justified, she felt sick as she pictured the bloody holes she’d made in his head. She’d taken another life. The life of a man who, only a short while before, had been inside her. A man she’d thought of as a lover and friend. She didn’t want to cry about another man at her first reunion with Ziad, but she couldn’t fight back the heavy tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, touching Ziad gently on the arm. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He was definitely crying now; his eyes were deep pools of sadness and his whole body shook. He leaned forward and Essi thought he was going to embrace her, but he simply reached out and touched her neck. His hand was cold and clammy. Rainwater, perhaps? But when she rubbed her neck and examined her fingertips, she saw what looked like toothpaste. It was then she noticed Ziad was wearing flesh-coloured latex gloves.
‘Zee,’ she said. ‘Zee, what . . .’ A terrible burning in her lungs cut her off.
The love of her life got to his feet and backed away from the bed as she started to choke. He wept and shook, and Essi tried to find the strength to fight the vice that tightened around her chest. Finally, Ziad turned his back on her.
No, please, no, she screamed inwardly. She just wanted to get three words out. Three simple words. But they wouldn’t come.
I love you.
Ziad Malek looked at a poster of Eminem while Essi Salamov died. He could hear her rasping and thrashing on the bed, and each horrific sound tore part of his soul, rending chunks out until, when she finally fell still, he was no longer crying. He was numb.
When there was nothing but the sound of rain lashing the window and the crack of distant thunder, Ziad wiped the remnants of his tears and turned to look at the woman he’d loved. The woman who’d conspired with her brother and father to betray him. She was still beautiful, even in death.
Awut had come to the house to kill Deni and Rasul, and Ziad had insisted on joining him so that his revenge against the family would be complete. It was their fault he’d been imprisoned in Al Aqarab, their fault he’d joined forces with the Red Wolves, and their fault he was now burdened with the black mark of death. They’d forced him to become a monster. All because Deni hadn’t thought him good enough for his daughter, and Rasul was fearful of a rival within the organizat
ion. Jack Gray hadn’t said so expressly, but he’d insinuated enough to make it clear the one time Ziad had managed to reach him from Al Aqarab.
He hoped the Salamovs suffered a million agonies as they died, but when he looked at Essi’s beautiful face, he felt a pang of regret. Maybe he should have been kinder and just shot her?
Ziad was startled when the bedroom door opened, and he turned to see Abbas Idrisov, the Abacus, hurry into the room fearfully. The terrible sounds of choked screams came through the open doorway. Awut was at work.
‘Masha Allah,’ Abbas said.
The old man properly took in the scene and realized Essi was dead. He froze in horror and looked at Ziad with contempt.
‘Why?’ Abacus asked.
Ziad didn’t answer. Whatever good had once resided within him had died with his love. He simply reached out and touched the old man’s cheek.
As Abbas fell to his knees choking, Awut appeared in the doorway. The Thai gestured at the choking man and the corpse on the bed.
‘Done here? The guards are taken care of but there’s no sign of the bosses. They’ll have to wait; we need to move.’
Ziad followed Awut downstairs without a word, his own ugly task complete.
Chapter 106
My Darling Zee,
I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me. I’ve done too many terrible things to get through this on my own. I need you. Now, more than ever, I need you.
I had my eyes opened today. It’s like they closed when you left and my world became darkness, but they’re open now and I see more clearly than ever. The man I thought I loved was a liar and a fraud. Everything that was between us was built on lies and suffering. He told me how he manipulated me and you. He confessed to his role in separating us. I didn’t know. I swear. Neither did my father or my brother. We’ve all been betrayed by someone who wormed his way into our family. And when he had our trust, he struck. I realize I’m not making much sense, but I’m shaking as I write this, and my mind is a mess.
