Far From Ordinary

by M James Murray

  He wasn’t here for rest and relaxation, after all. He had a mission, and that was where his focus needed to be. It was nice, however, that his target had picked a tropical destination to spend the weekend.

  Adrian massaged his aching joints and muscles, cursing his body for getting older. He kept himself in excellent condition, but he found his body recovering more and more slowly as he aged. Injuries long since healed reappeared as aches and pains which would never truly go away, he knew.

  He had requested to dispatch this particular target, a prominent politician opposing Abelard Lochte in the Bundestag himself. He was becoming a nuisance, this man, and would continue to be one.

  Adrian would make an example out of him.

  Abelard had agreed to his request, although he didn’t say much else. “It will be an accident,” the powerful German politician had said. Adrian had been a little offended at this, although he would never say so himself. He always defaulted to causing “accidents” when he could, although slitting someone’s throat was so much more satisfying.

  Accidents meant fewer questions, fewer investigations. They were ideal for a secret operative.

  Still, he mused, Lochte has been preoccupied lately. Overthrowing a government was time-consuming work.

  Adrian laughed to himself. I dare say that nobody considered that in our plans, he thought to himself. That was, of course, a fallacy. He got up, stretching away his aches and walked towards the balcony, not minding his nakedness.

  Below him was the beautiful tropical sprawl of Ibiza, with the pure white buildings of the old town visible to his left and the royal blue waters of the Mediterranian to his right. Adrian had been here many times in the past, but never for pleasure. Always for business.

  It was easy to slip in and slip out undetected in a place like Ibiza, an island paradise known for its electronic music and dance clubs. He’d killed many people in Ibiza over the years. Too many to count, not that it mattered.

  Adrian placed a Parliament cigarette in his mouth and sparked a lighter, moving the wavering flame to the tip, and inhaled deeply.

  It had been years since he’d had a cigarette. But he deserved it. He had come through brilliantly for the Black Eagle in the end, and that justified a reward. The nicotine traveled through his bloodstream rushed to his head and made him dizzy for a moment.

  It was euphoria, the closest he could get to that feeling of taking a person’s life without actually going through with the deed. It made him wonder why he quit in the first place.

  He walked back inside slowly and with intention. He looked at the bed, where a woman with olive colored skin and black hair was still sleeping. He considered her, and his cigarette.

  How easy it would be to take the cherry stub of the cigarette and burn it on her arm, or her face, or her dark nipples. Mark her as his for the rest of her life.

  Seducing her had been easy. Adrian had walked up, said a few compliments that he didn’t honestly believe and had bought her a vodka martini. Forty-five minutes later they were up in his hotel suite, and she was begging him to stick his member inside her.

  “You slag,” he told her. She’d been vigorous, entirely willing and adventurous. It hadn’t been until their second lovemaking session had ended that she’d confessed that she was here with her boyfriend. That she thought it was serious, that he was maybe considering proposing to her.

  “I care not for such matters,” he’d answered. Maybe he did have enough in him for a third round, after all. He’d pushed the girl back onto the bed and entered her from behind, like a dog. She’d whimpered and moaned and begged for more. More than once he’d felt her contract deliciously.

  Finally, they fell asleep together on the big king-sized bed with the balcony door wide open to let the salt breeze of the Mediterranean caress them to sleep.

  Now he stood above her, in the warm light of the morning sun with a lit Parliament in his hand.

  Why not, she’s mine anyway. I’ll mark her, then send her back to her incompetent boyfriend.

  Adrian sighed and stuffed the cigarette out in a weighty, ornate marble ashtray. Cheating began with neglect and inattention in the bedroom, after all.

  “Bloody hell, get up!” Adrian snarled. He hadn’t bothered to learn her name, hadn’t even asked in fact. The olive-skinned girl sat up the look of sleep on her face, her perky breasts exposed, her hair messy pigtails.

  Adrian tossed her white mini-dress towards her. The same one that had attracted his attention the night before.

  “Leave me,” he said. They always seemed to overstay their welcome. The girl, sleep still heavy in her voice, suddenly felt very conscious about her body and decided to cover it with a sheet. She complained in a high pitched tone.

  Called him an asshole and many other unsavory things, as though they would somehow get him to change his mind.

  She slipped the dress over her head and ran out of the luxurious suite, tears of mascara streaming down her well-formed face. Adrian watched her go, noting that she wasn’t wearing the white, cheeky knickers that she’d had on when he’d first taken off her dress.

  Those belonged to him now.

  Adrian ran his fingers through his short blonde hair and lit up another cigarette, blowing the smoke towards the old town. How long had he been here? It must be nearing a week now.

  Always arrive early, if possible, so to not attract undue attention. But today, his target, a member of the opposition in the Bundestag, had finally arrived.

  Adrian walked over to the safe in the room, ran his flexible fingers over the combination and keyed in his chosen passcode. He took a drag from the cigarette in his hands and pulled out a dossier.

  He already knew the contents. He’d memorized them several times over, front to back, but old habits died hard. He forced himself to reread the entire document, front to back and back to front before placing it back in the safe and sealing the door with his passcode.

  That completed, he began his morning calisthenics routine. He massaged the bullet scars on his toned abdomen and stretched. The blood flow to his muscles and joints would help alleviate the pain he was feeling, this he knew.

  That evening, he would kill a man. The thought excited him as much as taking that girl in the white dress. He had done his recon, thought of every little detail which could derail the operation.

  The only thing left now was the fun part – the actual deed. Adrian would enjoy watching the man die, seeing the impotence in his eyes, the terror as he shed this mortal coil.

  His death would be glorious, Adrian knew. Better than any cigarette. But that didn’t mean that he could neglect his daily routine.

  Adrian smiled, thinking of the man whose life was about to end mere hours from now. His victim had no idea, of course, that the God of Death was coming for him. He was merely here on a weekend trip to watch his daughter perform in a dance show.

  The British man smiled, a wolfish grin stretching across his sun-tanned face.

  Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.

  Signifying nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Are you serious?” Sarah snarled at Special Agent in Charge Mohammad Al-Azhar. “You can’t mean that.”

  “What can we do?” Al-Azhar asked. Sarah knew that this was not an easy conversation for him to have with her. “We’re way out of our jurisdiction.”

  “I know, but there has to be something that we can do. Richard Mitey in a prison cell for chrissakes, Mo!”

  Al-Azhar shrugged. The matter was a national one now. The CIA had no say what the Interpol chose, or did not choose to do.

  “Drop it, Sarah. Isn’t there better things to be focusing your attention on right now?”

  Sarah knew that Al-Azhar was right. Dick Mitey had consumed her attention for almost a year now. She’d petitioned the government for help, to extradite
him to the United States, but her requests had fallen on deaf ears.

  Something wasn’t right here, Sarah could tell. Extradition requests from the United States government were usually taken exceptionally seriously by other countries, especially an ally like Germany.

  But, as far as she’d been able to tell, there hadn’t even been a formal request submitted.

  “Listen, Sarah,” Al-Azhar said, his old eyes wrinkling kindly, “I know how difficult the past few months have been for you, but-“

  “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it Mo. I’m deadly serious.” Sarah pushed the thoughts from her mind. The guilt was almost unbearable at times. She took a few deep breaths.

  “Connor’s death wasn’t your fault,” Al-Azhar said anyway. “You know as well as I do that Internal Affairs exonerated you fully.”

  “And that’s somehow supposed to make me feel fucking better?” She retorted.

  Connor Browne’s death had indeed been very hard on Sarah Nieminen. A few weeks following the car crash Browne’s condition had suddenly deteriorated. Trauma from the accident had caused a hemorrhagic stroke, resulting in a brain bleed which had taken the doctors much too long to diagnose and treat.

  How can a healthy man like Browne die from a stroke? He wasn’t even forty-five yet. Sarah’s face, with her bloodshot brown eyes and dark bags, was haunted by the memory of her partner.

  The big man had slipped into a coma and had never recovered. After a few weeks without brain activity, his wife had made the difficult decision to remove him from life support. Sarah had wanted to be there, just as she’d wanted to attend the funeral.

  But one look at Connor’s wife, who had never liked the pretty CIA agent anyway, had told Sarah that her attendance would not be welcome.

  At least one person, other than Sarah herself, blamed her for Connor Browne’s death.

  “No, not better,” Al-Azhar said wistfully, responding to her question. “Never better.”

  Sarah wanted to scream. She’d had many conversations like this with Mo over the past few months, and they’d always ended up the same way – with her fighting off the tears that threatened to spill down her face.

  She’d promised herself a long time ago when she faced sexist instructors at Chantilly that she would never cry at work, and certainly not in front of her boss.

  The truth of the matter was that she would cry eventually anyway. Cry like a goddamned infant baby. Maybe not in front of Mo, but she would cry until her sides hurt and she started hiccupping. Not a matter of if but a matter of when.

  Her daddy would have scoffed at her for that, she thought. He was just a ghost to her now, haunting her thoughts every single day.

  “I want you to reconsider the administrative leave,” the bearded man said. Sarah looked Mohammad Al-Azhar right in his brown eyes, her face was a cloud of betrayal and frustration.

  “Mo, please,” She whispered. The Dick Mitey case was all she had right now. She wondered if it was the only thing that was helping her keep a grip on reality.

  “I get it, I really do,” he stroked his beard with his right hand, “And I can tell you that I feel your pain as well. Connor was a dear friend to me too, don’t forget. So do this, for him. What you need is a break to clear your mind. To grieve properly.”

  No, what Sarah needed to do was to find the blonde haired man and destroy this Black Eagle Organization. The one who had caused all of this, who had crashed the car and abducted an American citizen. She needed to find him and put a bullet in his brain. That would make her feel better.

  He’d been so close to her at the party a few months back in Germany. She’d caught him looking her up and down with his eyes. She’d memorized his face, how he walked and his mannerisms. She’d seen the scars on his hands.

  She’d learned his name, which now played on her lips every night as a mantra.

  Adrian Vandervoort.

  Vanderfuck.

  That was before Connor had died, of course. The mission had been different back then. Simpler. She’d left with a smile on her face, had even visited him in the hospital room. He’d been so much like himself. He had been recovering, damn it!

  “It’s not fair, is it?” Sarah asked.

  Mohammad Al-Azhar didn’t say a word. Some questions didn’t need an answer, after all. She knew that Mo was feeling the guilt as well – he had to be. Leadership was a lonely venture, however. He would have to shoulder that responsibility alone.

  In a way, Sarah Nieminen truly understood Mohammad Al-Azhar. When Sarah was fighting her way up through the sexist chain of command Mo had been doing the same thing.

  As a Muslim man in the Southern United States, he’d faced racism more times than he could count. But instead of being held down by oppression, Mohammad Al-Azhar had soared above it, becoming stronger, more resilient in the process.

  He was a better leader than Sarah would ever be, she knew.

  “You’re taking some time off,” he said. His tone suggested that the decision was final. “Here, I’ve even bought your ticket.”

  “Ibiza? Not my scene. If I wanted sweaty twenty-somethings grinding against me, I’d go to a nightclub downtown.”

  “I think you should go,” Mo said. “I hear that there’s a lot of blondes there.”

  Sarah looked at her boss with realization dawning on her face. She could feel her pulse start to quicken, and a rare smile blossomed across her face.

  He was there. Adrian Vandervoort.

  “Don’t let me down,” Mo said, walking out the door. “I don’t need to tell you that I’m sticking my neck out for you here.” He paused for a moment, then added:

  “Don’t let Connor down, either.”

  “You’re fucking rights,” Sarah called to him. “You’re fucking rights,” she repeated to herself.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Touching down in Ibiza the first thing that Sarah noticed was the lack of humidity. The arid air of the large island contributed to the legions of pine trees which seemed to be everywhere.

  She was far from home, with no back-up.

  Sarah had spent the better part of a day in the air, crossing seven time zones in the process. The petite agent flexed her muscles and stretched out the soreness and stiffness of the long flight across the Atlantic.

  Her skin was pale, but her long brown hair which she had plaited into braids made her look like a local.

  Good, she thought. That would make it easier to fit in, look like she belonged there.

  She looked in the mirror. Her eyes had bags under them – symptoms of the exhaustion that she was feeling in her bones. But she also looked resolute, determined. Sarah recognized the person staring back at her in the mirror with only a little bit of unfamiliarity.

  She looked different somehow. All the trauma and stress of the past year had begun to take its toll on her appearance.

  I’ll sleep soon enough, Connor, she thought. Her dead partner weighed heavily on her mind, as usual.

  To distract herself during the lonely trans-Atlantic journey she’d reviewed every scrap of information that the CIA had been able to compile on Vanderfuck once again, although it had all been committed to her memory a long time ago.

  She mirrored, had she known, Adrian’s own process in pursuing a target.

  The countryside indeed was beautiful. Everything was vibrantly green except the flowers, which stood out with their neon colors beside the carob trees.

  It was apparent why this was a favorite destination spot for young twenty-something-year-olds looking for a party, or a quick roll in the sheets with a willing stranger.

  She checked into the hotel which intel suggested Adrian was staying at, went up to her room and unpacked. In the airport, she had bought a few flowing dresses that the locals seemed to wear, bright colors and sheer material.

  She picked a blue floral print dress out and laid it on the bed, wiggled out of her clothes and stepped into the shower to wash off the grime and stick of a trans-Atlantic flight. Sarah tur
ned the water temperature up until it was almost at the point of scalding her skin.

  She stayed under the water for a long time, feeling the heat work out some of the stiffness in her joints. The water cascading down her body and her long brown hair felt good, purifying.

  This was a second chance to fix some of her mistakes. Knowing Mo, she wouldn’t get another one. For Dick Mitey, sitting in some prison in Germany, definitely – the young man hadn’t done anything to warrant his incarceration. The way she saw it she was indirectly responsible for that.