Game of Shadows

by R. J. Patterson

  The man glanced at the woman in the passenger seat, who nodded at him. “Okay, we’ll take you in.”

  When they arrived at the gate, a guard asked to see their invitation. He examined it closely before handing it back. Then he inquired about their passengers.

  “They are employees for the catering company,” the man said.

  The guard ordered Black and Shields to get out. After the car was waived through, the guard radioed to someone, requesting that they come help him at the entrance.

  Shields nudged Black. “Let me take the lead on this one.”

  “It’s all yours,” he said as he stepped back.

  “Sir, we’re here with Bellisimo,” she said in Italian, nodding in the direction of the catering company’s van.

  “I need to report this,” he said. “No one enters this property without being cleared on our list. Your names weren’t on it.”

  “That’s because Mr. Duca requested extra workers at the last minute,” she said. “I’m sure you’d hate to disappoint him.”

  “Hold on,” he said. “Let me check.” The guard stepped back and engaged someone on the same radio frequency in a conversation about how to handle the two Bellisimo employees.

  Black eyed Shields closely and spoke in a hushed tone. “Are you sure this is going to work?”

  “If it doesn’t, I’ll resort to tears,” she whispered.

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “If you had any idea how much I hate having to conjure up tears.”

  As the man returned, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but Luis, the catering director, is here on the premises and said he didn’t know anything about a request for more workers at the last minute by Mr. Duca.”

  “This is outrageous,” Black said as he started to walk around, flailing his arms and speaking in a loud voice. “We drove all the way up here, and then my car broke down, and now you’re telling me there’s no work? You tell Luis he needs to tell me to my face that I came all the way up here for no reason.”

  The man huffed and shook his head. Then Shields sprang into action, sobbing softly at first and then loudly.

  “I need to pay rent, and if I don’t work tonight, my daughter and I are going to be evicted from our apartment,” she said.

  The guard grinned wryly. “There are other ways to make some quick money.”

  Black shoved the man. “Would you say that to Mr. Duca’s daughter? Call Luis now.”

  The guard radioed for Luis to come outside. While they waited, the man watched both of them, checking for any illegal objects. Shields set off the alarm as it whooped in wild fashion.

  He scowled and she lifted her pants leg, revealing her prosthetic.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  She shrugged. “Happens all the time.”

  Moments later, a bald man wearing a furrowed brow twaddled toward the gate.

  “What’s this all about?” shouted Luis, as he wiped his hands on a towel. He was flanked by a pair of servers. “I don’t have time for this. I don’t know these people, and Mr. Duca never requested any more workers.”

  Upon reaching Black and Shields, Luis set his jaw and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but Georgio sent us,” Black said, referencing Bellisimo’s owner. “Here’s the letter he handed us this morning.”

  Black handed the faked document over to Luis for inspection. Researching the best way to get onto Duca’s estate in time for his daughter’s grand party, Shields had managed to get a copy of the owner’s signature on his letterhead through some publicly available documents. She forged the letter and used her hacking skills to re-route all his calls and texts to a burner phone.

  After perusing the letter, he pulled out his cell. “Let me check with my boss.”

  Half a minute later, he returned with a shrug. “This is from my boss. I would know that signature anywhere.”

  “And?” the guard asked.

  “And he’s not responding,” Luis said.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Would you go against your boss’s wishes?” Luis asked the guard.

  He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  “Neither do I. I’ll assign them to stay with me just to be sure. I know how careful you are with security.”

  The guard nodded and gestured for them to follow Luis. As Black and Shields fell in line behind Luis, he explained how the evening was supposed to go and what they would be doing. But Black was hardly listening. He was scanning the area for signs of Antoine.

  After half an hour of chopping vegetables, Black excused himself to use the restroom. Night had fallen, and more guests had poured into Duca’s mansion. They were still enjoying the hors d’oeuvres in anticipation of the evening’s meal. As Black was walking around, he noticed Antoine at the back of the room.

  When Black returned to the kitchen, he told Shields they needed to go.

  She walked out onto the floor and over to Antoine. “Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Duca would like to speak with you in the back.”

  Antoine pointed at his chest and furrowed his brow. “Me?”

  Shields nodded. “Right this way, please.”

  She led him down a long corridor before ushering him toward a hallway on the right. He glanced down it and then darted straight ahead.

  Black, who’d been waiting in the shadows, let out a string of expletives and then raced after Antoine. The assassin was leaping over a balcony when Black exited the house. In an effort to keep eyes on the target, Black followed suit, jumping blindly over the edge and trusting that Antoine knew what he was doing.

  Black sank into the fresh snow and could see Antoine a few meters ahead, slogging through the powder. Seconds later, Antoine picked up speed before he sprinted toward a nearby shed that was covered with skiing and snowboarding gear. Antoine secured some straps around his shoes and took off on a board.

  As the ground hardened beneath Black’s feet, he picked up steam and continued pursuit. By the time he reached the shed, Antoine already had a twenty-meter head start and was gaining more ground every second.

  “Come on, Black,” Shields said over their coms. “I’ll meet you at the bottom.” She raced toward the gate and disappeared into the night.

  Black tightened the bindings and shoved off, zooming down the hill in search of Antoine. The path twisted around the mountain and reconnected with the nearby Celeste Ski Resort. Lighted paths made it easier to navigate, but Black struggled to locate Antoine. Moments later, Black heard some young people shouting and shaking their fists as a man in a dark jacket zoomed past them.

  Gotcha!

  Black zeroed in on Antoine, who started to wobble. While Black was certain Antoine had been on a snowboard before, he hadn’t been on one in a while. Black found the fastest line behind Antoine and closed in on him. Antoine looked over his shoulder and made eye contact with Black. Instead of staying the course, Antoine dashed toward a clump of trees and disappeared. Seconds later, Black sped into the trees and was summarily knocked to the ground. He looked up to find Antoine towering overhead.

  “What took you so long to find me?” he asked with a sly grin.

  CHAPTER 9

  National Personnel Records Center

  St. Louis, Missouri

  BLUNT STRODE INTO the front doors of the National Personnel Records Center, emptied his pockets, and placed everything in his hands on the x-ray machine’s conveyor belt. The guard on duty nodded at Blunt’s shoes. But instead of removing them, he held up his security badge. The guard shrugged.

  “I don’t care who you work for. Everybody has to take off their shoes to get past me,” he said.

  “That’s not a wise idea,” Blunt said. “Dr. Sholls can’t even help me. You’re going to regret this in about ten seconds.”

  The guard rolled his eyes as he pulled up on his holster, the leather creaking as he did.

  “Don’t say you weren’t warned,” Blun
t said.

  Blunt adhered to strict hygienic guidelines, even for his feet. But removing his shoes in public was a pet peeve. Modern technology had long since eliminated the need to take them off and have them x-rayed, but it was a practice still common at most airports.

  He begrudgingly complied. The guard smirked as he watched Blunt.

  When Blunt finished, he collected his visitor’s pass and trudged down the hall. A few minutes later, he was speaking with one of the archivists in the special collections section, inquiring about where he might be able to find some war records from Vietnam. She helped Blunt find all the corresponding numbers to locate the files he was after. Once he turned in his request slip, he went to the cafeteria and bought a cup of coffee while he waited for the first set of returns.

  “How are we looking?” Blunt asked in his coms after a half hour.

  “So far, so good,” answered Alex Duncan, another Firestorm handler. Alex primarily worked with agent Brady Hawk, but on occasion she helped Blunt with some of his side projects.

  “Let me know when you think I should head back upstairs,” he said.

  “Any time now is great,” she said. “I’m sending the schematics to your phone along with directions on how to reach the section with all the sealed files.”

  “I’m on my way,” Blunt said as he lumbered toward the elevators.

  “You know, you’ve got to be about the most unassuming operative ever,” Alex said.

  “That’s right. I’m just an old fart gathering some research.”

  “Okay, the archivists will be delivering all the requested documents in ten minutes. Once that happens, they’ll gather all the new requests made in the last hour and go get those. I’ll loop the security footage after the archivists leave, and you’ll be on your own. Think you can handle that?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “The microdot tracker you placed on your request form enabled me to give you the exact location where all the sealed files are stored. You’ll have to hustle. Do you have the card I gave you?”

  “Retrieved it from my shoe in the restroom earlier this morning,” Blunt said.

  “Sounds like you’re all set. Just wait for my signal.”

  Blunt ambled up to the desk and waited for the archivists to return with the boxes of information he’d requested. After five minutes, several workers paraded out push carts leaden with gray boxes containing records of military personnel for the various researchers. Blunt took his boxes and spread them out on a table. Ten minutes later, the archivists collected all the latest request slips and disappeared again.

  “You’re up,” Alex said.

  Blunt crept up to the door and waved his access card in front of the security pad. The lock clicked, and he tugged the door open. He walked down a long hallway before entering a vast room where files were arranged in an alpha-numeric system. Using the file Alex had sent, he meandered toward the back where a large enclosed room housed all the sealed files. He shook his head as he stared at the shelves packed with files.

  The secrets contained in here.

  “How am I doing, Alex?” Blunt asked.

  He waited for her reply, but she didn’t answer.

  “Alex, do you copy?”

  Still nothing.

  Blunt cursed under his breath and looked at the numbers on the file from his phone. With the special system, he needed a few minutes to figure out how it worked. Once he did, he walked down the center aisle and located the file on the bottom of a shelf near the end of the row.

  “Hello?” called a woman.

  Blunt swallowed hard before whispering, “Alex, can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  His palms started sweating as he heard echoing footsteps marching toward him.

  Come on, come on.

  “Is anyone else in here?” the woman asked again.

  Blunt shuffled against the end of the row in an effort to avoid detection in case the prying archivist made a horizontal sweep along the rows.

  Then the noise stopped.

  He exhaled slowly as the woman turned and headed back toward the door. Reverberating off the polished tile floor, the latch clicked open.

  Blunt threw his head back in relief, resting it against the side of the shelves. She was gone.

  Or was she?

  He strained to hear more faint footfalls, wondering if they belonged to someone else outside the room or if the woman was moving more stealthily.

  Blunt didn’t want to find out, though he was certain that he couldn’t stay hidden in the sealed files room much longer.

  “Stop playing around, Chris,” the woman said. “I know you’re back here.”

  She edged closer.

  Blunt’s heart pounded.

  CHAPTER 10

  Merano, Italy

  BLACK WINCED AND GRABBED his chest while lying on his back in the snow. The ice around him quickly chilled his body, while the blow he suffered left him in throbbing pain. Instead of celebrating Antoine’s capture, Black had become a prisoner, staring up at the barrel of Antoine’s pistol.

  “Now I can send your boss the message I’ve been dying to give him,” Antoine said.

  “I can assure you that he isn’t interested in talking with you,” Black said as he grimaced while easing to his feet.

  “Is that what he said?” Antoine asked.

  “My boss is a man of few words,” Black said.

  “Just like I thought,” Antoine said with a laugh. “What a coward. However, since you’re so good at understanding what people are saying without actually saying it, I don’t think you fully understand the kind of thing I want to communicate.”

  Black shrugged. “How difficult can it be? You want to kill me.”

  Antoine wagged his finger. “No, I want to sit down and talk with him. I need some answers.”

  “What kind of answers? You want to know why Blunt chose another operative over you?”

  “I know why. I just want to hear him say it for myself. And then kill him. Now that I’ve captured one of his precious top assets, perhaps he’ll be interested in listening.”

  Their conversation was interrupted when shouts and screams came from the distance. Antoine cursed as he turned to survey the scene.

  “Trouble?” Black asked.

  “For you and me both,” Antoine said as he eyed his captive carefully. “Those are Duca’s men out there, and if they catch us, they’ll kill us both.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “This is one theory you don’t want to try and disprove.”

  Black smirked. “So what do you want to do? Stay here and freeze to death? I’m not sure that’s a good option for you either.”

  “Just keep your mouth shut,” Antoine said, keeping his weapon trained on Black. “You are the one who created this mess by making such a scene at Bella’s party. And Mr. Duca isn’t the kind of man to allow such interruptions to go unpunished.”

  They both sat quietly for the next half-hour until the men moved on to search higher up the mountain. Satisfied that it was safe to venture back onto the slopes again, Antoine explained how they would get to safety.

  “There’s a service trail we can get to easily from here,” he said.

  “And then what?” Black asked. “Are we going to walk back to Merano?”

  “We’ll walk down to the parking lot and borrow a car. When we get to the valley, we’ll give your boss a call.”

  “This isn’t going to end well for you,” Black said.

  “Says the man who’s only a heartbeat away from his last breath. If I were you, I would take this moment to reflect on your good fortune and be thankful that you’re still alive.”

  “Point the way,” Black said.

  Black and Antoine snowboarded to the service trail and then tossed their gear in the woods. As they trudged through the snow in silence, a voice pierced the air, causing both men to freeze.

  “Drop the weapon,” a woman said.

  Black recogn
ized Shields right away. He turned around and watched Antoine kneel and place his weapon on top of the snow.

  “That’s right,” Shields said. “Now, hands in the air. You’re coming with us.”

  “Not if I start shouting for help,” Antoine said. “Duca’s men will be crawling all over this place in a matter of seconds.”

  She shook her head. “Now why would you suggest doing a thing like that? I don’t think Duca is your friend right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been hiding out for the last half-hour waiting for them to leave the area.”

  Antoine cursed as he followed Shields’s commands. The trio continued on along the trail until they neared the parking lot. Black scanned the area and signaled that it was clear.

  “Black, have I told you how much I hate the cold?” Shields asked. “This is insane. My leg is frozen now.”

  “Don’t you mean legs?” Antoine asked with a furrowed brow.

  She looked at Black. “Can I, just this once?”

  “Just this once?” Black said with a stiff laugh followed by a shrug. “Why not?”

  She didn’t hesitate, spinning around and smashing the side of Antoine’s head with her prosthetic and knocking him out.

  “Yeah,” she said with a chuckle. “Why not?”

  Black heaved Antoine into the back of their car. “Now, it’s time to get some answers.”

  CHAPTER 11

  St. Louis, Missouri

  BLUNT BRACED FOR his confrontation with the archivist. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt the woman, but he needed to see what was inside those files and who was using their office to protect themselves from high crimes. And he doubted she would just let him take a peek and forget that he was ever here. Blunt’s palms beaded with sweat as the clicking of her heels sped up as she hustled down the row.

  “Chris, I mean it,” the woman said. “This isn’t funny.”

  She was so close that Blunt could smell her flowery perfume. He kept his back to the shelf and edged slightly away from the end.