by Blake Banner
BREATH OF HELL
Copyright © 2021 by Blake Banner
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
One
“Vengeance is mine,” he said, and Araminta dropped with a splosh into the turquoise cool of the swimming pool. “I will repay, saith the Lord. Romans, chapter twelve, verse nineteen.”
I glanced at the brigadier, then returned my gaze to Araminta’s liquid form warping like a fish beneath the water in the brigadier’s Marbella villa. I spoke absently.
“You’re quoting from the Bible?”
“Deuteronomy, the Fifth Book of Moses, originally from the Jewish Torah, but also the Old Testament. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all branches from the same monotheistic tree. I was brought up an Anglican, obviously. I have since become more of an agnostic.” He sighed and gave a slow, reluctant shrug. “There is something of an evidential issue. But, that said, there is much in the Bible that is worthy of thought and reflection.”
I watched him while he spoke. Wondering what he was driving at. “Yeah?”
“You may be familiar with the maxim in Budo, ‘Look not into your enemy’s eye, lest you become your enemy.’”
I nodded. “Sure.”
“‘Vengeance is mine’ runs along similar lines. The idea is that vengeance belongs to God, not to man. Once you seek revenge, you have looked too deeply into your enemy’s eye, and you risk becoming the very thing you seek to punish.”
Araminta erupted from the water, blowing fine spray from her lips, and pushing her wet hair back from her face. My words were for the brigadier, but I was watching the sun reflecting off her wet skin.
“Where does that leave Cobra?”
“That is precisely the point I am trying to make to you, Harry. We are not about vengeance. We are about cleansing. When you take the rubbish from your kitchen out to the bins in the street, you should not hate the rubbish, or wish to punish it, because you would become emotionally and mentally unstable. It is the same with what we do. In order to decide who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad,’ you need to be a god, an ultimate moral arbiter or judge. Humans are not up to that standard, but we can decide who is a detriment to human society, by a series of objective criteria. Cavendish had to go, not because he was ‘bad’ and we hated him, but because he had committed acts that meant he was harmful to human society. Harmful, in simplistic terms, means caused more pain than pleasure.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”
“Very seriously. We are mere human beings, Harry. We are the accidental custodians of this planet, and until either a fiery chariot or a flying saucer settles in Parliament Square or on the White House lawn, it’s up to us to make the best decisions we can, based on objective criteria. How do we base our decisions on objective criteria?” He raised one hand, palm up, like he was showing me something. “Pain is harm, pleasure is good.”
I sighed. “If I had time for philosophy I am sure I could pick holes in that. I might ask you something about how sadists and masochists fit into your argument. But I haven’t got time for philosophy, and in any case I have a feeling you are telling me that when I go and bring the colonel back, I should not indulge in wanton revenge against those who took her.”
“A suggestion. You may not believe it right now, Harry, but you are extremely vulnerable at the moment, physically and emotionally. As Yoda would have it, you could easily be drawn to the dark side. Your job is not to seek revenge, but to clean out the trash.”
I watched Araminta backstroke across the pool with her eyes closed to the sun. I sighed.
“Do you believe that?”
“Just because it is difficult, Harry, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
I grunted. “Well, sir, if it’s all the same to you, I am going to leave the philosophical, moral high ground to you, and when I get hold of the people who have taken the colonel, I am going to make sure that anyone who hears the story of what happened to them, will think very, very carefully before doing anything similar again.”
He arched his eyebrows and nodded. “I should hope so. But that is not revenge, Harry. That is just doing a thorough job. Take out the trash, and make sure the house remains clean. We do not kill to avenge, we kill to clean.”
Araminta pulled herself out of the pool and stood glistening and looking desirable in the sunshine, pulling her hair back from her face. Across the lawn, in the shade of the patio, a man in a white jacket with white gloves on stepped out through the sliding glass doors. He approached us and, as the brigadier turned toward him, he said, “Señor, the lonch is ready. Will the señores eat out here, or going inside?”
Araminta answered as she wrapped her head in a towel like a turban.
“We’ll eat out here, Sanchez. And I’ll have a Beefeater and lime first.”
He bowed, giving his head a little sideways twist, which made it somehow less servile, and he withdrew back into the shade of the house. Up in one of the palm trees a parakeet laughed at him. It was a harsh, ugly laugh.
After that Sanchez and a couple of cute Spanish girls with long black hair, big brown eyes and voices about as harsh as the parakeet’s went about setting up a table in the sunshine beside the pool, while Araminta sat and browned herself behind large, tortoiseshell sunglasses.
“Who’s dead?” she said suddenly, then answered her own question. “Captain Bill Hartmann, your arch enemy in the Ben-Amini affair[1], he’s dead. Raymond Hirsch, apparent leader of the ‘Find Harry’ department of the CIA, he’s dead. Captain Seth Campbell, alleged Air Force Intelligence, but according to my research a CIA officer, probably attached to Hirsch’s ‘Find Harry’ team and, indirectly, working for Cavendish—” She paused a moment, having lost herself in her overly long sentence, then shrugged and said, “He’s dead too.”
I shook my head. “What I don’t get is, if Cavendish wanted me alive so he could interrogate me, why’d he send Campbell to kill me?”
She raised a hand to wag a finger at me. “I said indirectly working for Cavendish. As I understand it, after Panama[2] Hirsch didn’t really care much who you worked for. I think he bought your story that you were independent. One way or the other, he came t
o the conclusion that your employer was not the problem, you were. Hirsch and certain elements in the CIA collaborated with Cavendish—Cavendish pulled a lot of weight, but ultimately it was a collaboration—and Hirsch wanted you dead. Cavendish wanted to interrogate you but Hirsch was clear, he wanted you dead.”
“So Hirsch sent Campbell to kill me in defiance of Cavendish.”
“Defiance is probably putting it a bit strong, but yeah, pretty much.”
“And Colonel James Armitage?”
“Nothing to do with Central Intelligence or Cavendish. He is legit 25th Air Force.”
“Is he still interested in me?”
She shrugged, with her face still turned to the sun. “Irrelevant. He wants the colonel back, and you are going to bring her back, right?”
“Right.”
Sanchez had set the table with a white linen cloth, white linen napkins, silver cutlery and an ice bucket with two bottles of very cold white wine in it. Now he emerged carrying a huge paella pan full of sizzling yellow rice, mussels, prawns, squid and chunks of chicken. The girls followed him in a kind of improvised procession bearing olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and baskets of fresh-baked spongy white bread. The brigadier smiled at me.
“You need building up, old boy.”
I smiled, more ruefully than happily, and we moved to the table. As I sat, Sanchez was dishing up the paella for Araminta.
“I’m built up,” I said to the brigadier, though it wasn’t strictly true. “What I need is to get out and start doing something constructive. I’ve been locked in here for a week.”
Araminta accepted the plate from Sanchez and glanced at me.
“Quit griping, you were a wreck when I brought you here[3]. If you’d gone after the colonel in the state you were in, you’d have been dead inside twenty-four hours.”
I leaned sideway to let Sanchez load up my plate.
“You’re right,” I said, and nodded. “But that was a week ago.” One of the cute maids poured wine. When she and Sanchez had left I went on. “I feel OK and we need to start doing something. We can’t just sit around…”
I trailed off and shoved a forkful of yellow rice into my mouth. The brigadier wagged his fork at me.
“Just because you are convalescing, it does not mean that we are sitting around scratching our posteriors.”
Araminta snorted a short laugh, glanced at me and grinned.
“Posteriors. That’s like asses in English. ‘Git your posterior over here, boy! Boy, I is gonna whip your posterior!’”
I smiled, but the brigadier ignored her and went on.
“Jane is not as easy to move as you might think. Within the defense and intelligence communities she is relatively high profile, so moving her around requires a high level of control and secrecy, and that itself, ironically, leaves a large footprint. We have been watching the ports, maritime and aerial, the railway stations and roads. There has been no sign of her until now.”
Araminta stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth. I said, “Until now?”
“I heard this morning. We are fairly confident the colonel was seen, at about seven AM, boarding a yacht at Puerto Banus.”
I scowled. “Why are you telling me now? Why didn’t you tell me at the time?”
He raised an eyebrow at me that could have frozen lava. “Because I don’t have to, Harry. I am telling you now because it seems to me to be the appropriate time. The agent who saw her knew the colonel well and he reported that he was confident it was her.”
“Was she OK?”
He nodded several times as he picked up his fork again. “Oh, yes. She was unaccompanied and boarded the yacht of her own free will.”
There was something cold and hard in the way he said it. My scowl deepened. I asked: “What yacht?”
“The Bucephalus.”
“The who?”
“The Bucephalus is a luxury superyacht which belongs to Gabriel Yushbaev, a Russian billionaire with links to both organized crime and, some thirty years ago, the KGB. His worth is estimated by Forbes to be approximately nineteen billion US dollars.” He gave a thin smile. “He is one of the few men in Russia to have benefited from the Covid crisis. Some people have benefited, you know?”
“No kidding.”
“The Bucephalus has not left port yet, though sources tell us it is due to leave very shortly.”
I felt a hot jolt of anger in my gut. “Sir, if you had told me this morning…”
Araminta interrupted me, wiping her mouth with her napkin. “What? You could have driven down there, killed everyone, blown up the yacht and dragged the colonel home by her smoking hair?”
The brigadier winced. “Thank you, Araminta.” I sighed and started eating again. He went on, “The thing is, Harry, whether I had told you at seven AM or whether I tell you now, it makes little difference, because all we can do at present is watch. Araminta has a point. All we could do right now is storm the boat, and aside from having cutting-edge security and heavily armed guards, it is also under the protection of the Spanish authorities. And we don’t really want to get into a conflict with them.”
I laid down my fork. “So what do we do? We can’t just sit back and watch.”
“Clearly.” He gestured at me with an open hand. “What do you suggest?”
“Do we know where the yacht is headed?”
“Yes, its first port of call is Ano Koufonisi, in the Cyclades islands, about a hundred and thirty miles southeast of Athens. After that it seems they carry on to Istanbul, and after that they may enter the Black Sea, but we don’t know for sure.”
I frowned. “So not the Middle East. If they are handing off to Al-Qaeda, they’re going to do it in Istanbul.” They glanced at each other, but remained silent. I said, “What?”
Araminta took a deep breath and sipped her wine.
“The picture has changed, Harry.”
I felt hot anger rise up in my belly and fought to control it.
“What do you mean, the picture has changed?”
“Well, for a start the behavior you described.”
“What behavior I described? What are you talking about?”
“The way she reacted to you in Le Jardin d’Eden,[4] that was abnormal behavior, Harry. And the way she failed to help you, even after you had stabbed Cavendish. She just left you lying there, Harry, and when those men took her away, she didn’t put up a fight. But most of all, the way she boarded that yacht this morning, unaccompanied, of her own free will…” She paused, shrugged and drew down the corners of her mouth. “That is not the colonel I know. I don’t recognize that person.”
“Are you saying you suspect the colonel of being a double agent?” I looked at the brigadier. “You know her, sir. Are you saying that?”
“No, what I am saying, Harry, is that her behavior is out of character.”
“But there has to be an explanation!”
“Of course there has. Clearly, but we don’t know what that explanation is, so we can’t make any predictions based on it. All we can say is that from what we have observed, the colonel is behaving in an atypical, unpredictable way. We don’t know how far that atypical behavior will extend.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re driving at.”
Araminta answered. “What I am driving at, is that we cannot be sure anymore whether the colonel is going to be handed off to jihadists or not.” She looked at me with something like pity. “Harry, we don’t even know for sure if she is a prisoner anymore. All we know is that they have got her, and we want her back.”
I frowned at them like they were crazy. “You want me to kill her?”
“No!” It was the brigadier. “Certainly not. I want you to find her, get her and bring her home. That is all.”
I ate in silence for a while. I grabbed a piece of bread and tore it in half to mop up the saffron rice.
“Suppose I bring her home and we find she’s a double agent?”
The brigadier raised a finger. S
wallowed and sipped his wine. “In the first place, it is clear from the success rate of our operations that, if she is a double agent, she was turned very recently. It stands to reason that if she had been turned earlier, not only would a percentage of our operations have been compromised and failed, but also Cavendish and his associates, not to mention the CIA, would not have been at such pains to find out who you were and who you worked for. They would merely have had to ask her. She didn’t inform them and from what we can tell, so far she still hasn’t.”
I nodded. “That’s a good point.”
“The second point is that we need to know why she has turned—if indeed she has. Is it money? Is it blackmail? We simply don’t know, but we need to know.”
Araminta had been busy wiping her plate clean with bread. Now she stuffed a piece in her mouth and spoke around it. “But her weird behavior remains unexplained. We need to know what is going on. We can’t just ignore it.”
I nodded. “OK, point taken.”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think you do understand, Harry. This is not about blame. This is about predictability. You were going to die, and she sat there and watched. She did nothing.”
“You said that.”
“So what I am saying now is, when you try to bring her home, you don’t know how she is going to react. She might turn on you. She might alert her…,” she hesitated and made inverted comma signs with her fingers, “‘captors.’ So you need to be ready for that.”
“I get it. She is unpredictable right now, and I have to be ready for that.”
“So—” The brigadier reached out and helped himself to more rice and prawns. My own plate was still half full. He handed the serving spoon to Araminta with an inquiring lift of his eyebrows and she made an affirmative, “Mm!” and took it from him.
I sighed. “So the question is, how do I get aboard that damned boat?”
Two
“So what do we know about the yacht?”
Sanchez was clearing away the plates and the girls had brought a big cheese board, a bottle of cognac and a bottle of whisky on a tray, and a pot of coffee. The brigadier cut into the stilton and balanced a piece on a cracker.
