Breath of Hell (Harry Bauer Book 8)

by Blake Banner

  Araminta was shaking her head, pointing south, through the trees.

  “Are you kidding me? Down there you’ve got Marbella and Puerto Banus…”

  She didn’t get any further. I slammed my right fist into his kidneys, took a hold of his collar and kicked his feet from under him. He landed hard on his back and I heard his lungs go into spasm. I pulled my knife from my boot and knelt on his chest. He gripped at my leg, struggling to breath. I showed him the knife.

  “Segundo, listen to me. This is really very important for you. Today can end like any other day. Tonight you can have a drink with your friends, have a large whisky and think, ‘Man, that was an intense morning. I’m glad it’s over.’ Or tonight you can be in hospital, on life support, having reconstructive surgery. Or, Segundo, you can be dead in the next minute or two.”

  He’d been shaking his head since “reconstructive surgery;” now he started saying, “No, no, please, no.”

  I ignored him. “This is a truly important moment in your life, Segundo. You have many roads ahead of you and you must choose the right one. Do you understand me? Do I have your absolute attention?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Now, here is what you need to know so you can go home in,” I glanced at my watch for effect, “five minutes, if you’re smart. Don’t lie, don’t try to bullshit me, don’t try to be clever. OK? That’s the don’ts. Now the dos. Do answer every question quickly and precisely. Do tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Do remember that honesty is your path out of this crisis you are in. Understand?”

  His breathing had eased. He swallowed. “Yes.”

  I started with a test question. “Where is Gabriel Yushbaev going in his yacht?”

  He swallowed again, hard, and I knew what was coming.

  “He is going to a Greek Island, Ano Koufonisi.”

  I gave him three full seconds because I didn’t want to do what I knew I had to do. I glanced at Araminta. She trod on his wrist and I drove the knife through the back of his hand. The scream was the kind of thing that haunts your dreams for the rest of your life. I pulled the handkerchief out of his jacket and stuffed it in his mouth until he’d stopped. Then I pulled the knife out and wrapped the handkerchief around the wound.

  “I knew you were going to do that,” I said. “I hoped you wouldn’t, but I knew you would. I told you, Segundo: the whole truth. But that’s only part of the truth, isn’t it? I gave you time. I gave you three whole seconds to continue. But you hoped you’d get away with just Ano Koufonisi. Now you don’t get to go straight home in five minutes. Now you have to go to hospital instead. And it only gets worse, every time you try to trick me or lie to me, it gets worse. So let’s try again, and get it right this time. Where is Gabriel Yushbaev going in his yacht?”

  He was breathless, pale and sweating, almost incoherent. “First he is go to Ano Koufonisi. There he is stay a few days. He was not decided, maybe after he is go to Istanbul. He is going to stay in Istanbul a few days. Not decided yet. And then he will go in Black Sea, to Divnomorskoye, on the coast of Russia.”

  I nodded. “Good, that’s good. Now, why? What’s he got there?”

  Segundo’s bottom lip curled in and he began to sob. “I have a lot pain. Please, if I tell you this he will kill.”

  “I understand your problems, Segundo. It’s tough, I know. So answer me and we can get you to a hospital, fast. As to Gabriel killing you, let me assure you he won’t, because he will be dead long before he can kill you. My advice? Talk to the Guardia Civil, offer to cooperate with them in exchange for protection, because Segundo, your days of helping the Russian Mafia are over. Now, last chance, what has Gabriel Yushbaev got in Divnomorskoye?”

  He said simply, “The girls. They bring them from Poland, from Ukraine, other places, Belarus, Turkey. They keep in a big house he have there, in the forest. The girls are stay in luxury, all the time parties and drugs, marijuana, cocaine, heroin. Until the girls is dependent, then he sell them to the clubs.”

  “Have you been there?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Once, when he contract me. He have drugs there, also. He bring from Turkey, from Caucasus, and from his house he distribute. The house is not a house.”

  I scowled at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Is a palace. It is big, very big, many rooms, three swimming pools, gardens, land, forests…” He trailed off. “Is a palace.”

  I nodded, glanced at Araminta and sucked my teeth for a few seconds.

  “OK, here’s the million-dollar question, did Yushbaev talk to you about Colonel Jane Harrison of the United States Air Force?”

  He went a sickly pale color. “I really want help you, maybe he use different name. Maybe you tell me what she look like.”

  “He never mentioned her?”

  “I never hear the name.”

  “A blonde woman, thirties, good-looking. She’s been with him these last few days.”

  “American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jane?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes, she been with him. I don’t know she was military. They come to my office couple of times. We go for lunch.”

  “She had lunch with you and him?”

  “Yeah. We have lunch.”

  I looked up at Araminta and searched her face for something that would tell me I was wrong, that there was some simple explanation. There was nothing there that said that. I looked back at Segundo.

  “Was there anything about her, anything that struck you as…” I faltered, not knowing what it was I wanted to ask him. He stared at me, curious even in his terror. After a moment he said, “She not talk much. She was quiet, you know? Serious.”

  “What was their relationship? Did they give any indication of what their relationship was?”

  He looked distressed. “I don’t know. I suppose they were lovers. I didn’t talk with her. I really need a doctor, mister. I done what you ask.”

  I could feel Araminta’s eyes on me. I stood and said, “Get up.”

  The report was loud, flat and ugly. His head smacked hard to the side and remained motionless, though his feet and his fingers twitched. There was a neat, scorched hole in his left temple, but lots of blood and gore were oozing out the other side of his head, saturating the dry earth.

  I scowled at Araminta. She didn’t let me speak.

  “Get a grip, Harry. What were you going to do, invite him home for tea?”

  “No,” I growled, “I was going to take him to his office and collect all his files on Yushbaev. Now you’ve made that impossible.”

  She took a step closer. The toe of her boot pressed against Segundo Lopez’s shoulder. She poked a long finger into my chest.

  “Get this into your head, Harry. You are not the FBI, you are not the CIA. You are not out to investigate or uncover crimes. You have one function and only one. You take out targets.”

  I curled my lip and snarled, pointing down at the dead meat at her feet.

  “Yeah, but he was not a target, remember? And he could have been useful.”

  “Just stay focused on the job, Harry. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  I took his cell phone, and we turned the Jeep around and rolled back down the track toward the road. As we lurched back onto the blacktop she said, “I’ll go in tonight and get the files. I’ll get the CIA’s Marbella office to hand them over to the Spanish Ministerio de Justicia.”

  I didn’t answer for a while. I knew she was right and I had faltered when I shouldn’t have. Segundo Lopez was a son of a bitch who had earned whatever he’d had coming to him. But I had got squeamish and almost endangered the operation. I wasn’t about to tell her that, though.

  “You know I’m entitled to the spoils of war, right? Now I’ll have to take it directly from Yushbaev.”

  She snorted. “Right, I’m pretty sure you’ll manage.”

  “Yeah, I’ll manage.”

  Back at the villa we found the brigadier in his
office. I handed Segundo’s cell over to him but before I could tell him what we’d learned, he held up a hand.

  “That’s fine, Harry. Let me have a chat with Araminta. You’d better pack. I want you in the air before this evening. I’ll come up and see you in a moment.”

  I climbed the stairs feeling unreasonably mad that he wanted to debrief us separately, and packed a couple of cases. By the time I was done he knocked on the door and stepped in.

  “We’ve cleared your gun and your knife, provided they go through in the case. How did it go with the lawyer, Lopez?”

  He sat on the bed and I leaned my back against the window frame.

  “He’s going to Istanbul and then Divnomorskoye, on the Russian coast of the Black Sea. He has some palatial house there where he keeps women he has kidnapped from Turkey, Belarus, the Ukraine, Poland and places along the Caucasus. Lopez had been there. Apparently the girls live in luxury and he gets them hooked on various drugs—coke, marijuana and heroin were mentioned. Once they are totally dependent on him, he sends them out into the world, to the clubs he supplies.”

  “That is a very expensive way to get prostitutes.”

  “That’s what I thought. It reminds me of the Hashishim. Maybe he’s modelling himself on Hassan-I Sabbah, only he’s using women instead of male assassins. First he gets their loyalty and obedience, then he uses them.”

  He made a soft grunt. “A bit farfetched. We’ll have to see. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, along the same theme, Lopez said Yushbaev went a couple of times to his office accompanied by an attractive American blonde in her thirties who didn’t talk much. They also had dinner together and the blonde came along. Her name was Jane.”

  “That is very worrying. Have they got something over her, or was she, as you suggest, planted in the US Air Force long ago by Yushbaev?”

  “It seems unlikely, because we have never been compromised with the Russians or Yushbaev himself…”

  “But then we haven’t trodden on Russian toes until now. But note how the moment we went after Cavendish, Yushbaev took the Colonel back.”

  “Did he? Cavendish told me they had been watching her because of her association with me. It looks to me like the Cavendish consortium took her because they wanted to know who I was and who I worked for, and Yushbaev snatched her from the consortium when he realized I was going after her. She was the bait to catch me.”

  He sighed. “Perhaps. There is no way of knowing for the moment.” He paused. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded. “What happened with Lopez? Araminta says you hesitated.”

  “I didn’t hesitate. I was debating whether he would be more useful alive. I thought his files on Gabriel Yushbaev could be useful. I also wanted to screw some money out of him.”

  “Good.” He said it absently, like he was thinking about something else. “Good thinking. Well, it seems the CIA will take the files and hand them over to the Ministry of Justice here in Spain, and perhaps you can screw some booty out of Yushbaev before you eliminate him. Will you deal with him in Greece or follow him through to Russia?”

  “As we planned, on the yacht.”

  “Araminta is worried that you are still convalescing. She’s not convinced you’re ready.”

  “That’s why there are no women in the Regiment, sir. They worry too much.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps you’re right.” He stood. “I’ll give you your stuff and last-minute briefing in the car.”

  “Good.” I grabbed my cases. “Let’s go.”

  Four

  I touched down at Naxos airport at eleven o’clock that night. The place was small and ugly, all whitewash and blue wood, and about as dead as Segundo Lopez the last time I’d seen him. I took a cab to the Iria Beach Art Hotel and slept for eight hours straight. In the morning, after I had showered, shaved and dressed, I took a cab to Naxos City. There isn’t a lot to say about Naxos. Narrow streets, some of them cobbled, too many cars and the constant feeling that you’re caught in a time-loop and you’re seeing the Mediterranean the way it was sixty years ago.

  I had the driver drop me at Propopapadaki Street and strolled along the dock to Clive’s Mediterranean Cruises. It was set between two restaurants with large terraces where the sea breeze was flapping the tablecloths, and people who were not Greek were beginning to gather to have breakfast.

  I stepped through a plate-glass door into a dark blue office with huge pictures of yachts crashing through waves on the walls. A blond, blue-eyed guy reading a magazine behind a desk looked up at me and smiled.

  “Do for you?”

  He said it in an accent he had cultivated at a private school in the south of England. He smiled and I smiled back.

  “You have a yacht reserved for me. The Apollonis, a fifty-foot Hans 540E.”

  “Then you must be…” He waited with raised eyebrows and a smile that I figured came to him easy. I handed him the passport the brigadier had given me the day before on the way to the airport.

  “Bob Foley.”

  “Super!” He took a look at the passport, compared the likeness and said, “That’s you then. Always best to make sure. Your delivery arrived from Nikki Supplies in Athens. Your man said it would. We’ve stowed it aboard for you. You found us then.” This last was said while he rummaged in a drawer. I frowned and he said, “Propopapadaki, not everybody finds it at first.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I thought it was a mountain in Mexico, but my cab driver knew better.”

  “Ha!” he said, “Mountain in Mexico. That’s good. Propopapadaki. Pococatapetel. Yeah. Shall we go then?”

  I followed him at a quick walk along the dock while he filled me in on how to start the engine, where the insurance papers were and where to find the stores. He also showed me where my delivery had been stashed in one of the cabins, and where the diving gear was. After that he made me sign some papers, wished me luck and told me to give him a call when I wanted to bring her back.

  Half an hour later I was pulling out of the harbor, sliding across a flat, creamy ocean, but as I rounded the Stelida headland a rolling swell started, and occasionally she would jump and crash as we split a wave, sending a shower of chill spray high into the air. There are few feelings on Earth as good as standing on a sailing yacht with the sun and the sea breeze in your face and the salt spray spattering your bare skin. It’s like flying, only a hundred times better.

  Once past Argios Prokopios and Maragakas, the swell increased and the Apollonis started to leap and crash, sending explosions of white foam across the bows. I was doing a good nine or ten knots down the west coast, making good time, though I felt in no particular hurry to arrive. Apollonis felt like the best company I’d had in a long time, and I would happily have spent the next three or four weeks in solitary island hopping.

  But instead of four weeks it was four hours later when I pulled into the small port at Koufonisia, the only town on the island. On the way I had reviewed the kit the brigadier had arranged for me. There seemed to be everything you might need to storm an average-sized fortress. There were the mines I had asked for: each one carried about eleven pounds of explosive and had a total weight of twenty pounds. There were two Heckler and Koch, one with a mounted GLM, a stash of spare magazines, a spare P226, night vision goggles, and four cakes of C4 with corresponding fuses. There was also a waterproof bag for transporting the weapons. It was all in order and nothing seemed to have been left out.

  On the way to the airport the brigadier had given me Charlotte’s number and I had called her when I was about an hour out of port. She’d said she’d meet me with my Jeep and take me to the hotel.

  The port was ugly. It was a bare cement structure reaching out from an arid, featureless stretch of coast. It was not a natural harbor, or even a headland. Its only natural advantage was the relative protection it was afforded by the islands of Kato Koufonisi, about half a mile to the southwest, and Glaronisi, maybe a mile farther to the south.

  Th
e port itself was a concrete square with a narrow opening in the southwestern corner, maybe thirty yards across. Beyond the gray cement port there was a broad dirt road that stretched away to the west and to the east, and was lost among scattered pines, gnarled cypress bushes, scorched yellow grass and dry earth. There was a handful of sailing yachts moored at the keys, and a couple of cars parked in the parking lot. One was a dark green Cherokee. By the chunky, square shape I figured it was twenty to thirty years old.

  Beyond the beaten earth road there were scattered villas and what might have been hotel complexes. Here and there, there was a glint of turquoise among the whitewashed walls and the parched, russet earth. I could see no houses or buildings older than thirty or forty years.

  I lowered the mainsail, then hauled in the spinnaker and entered the harbor using only the engine. As I turned to bring the stern in to the dock I saw a woman climb out of the Jeep and wave. She was blonde and slim, in jeans and a white sweatshirt. She had big, round sunglasses, and a big straw hat on her head. She also seemed to have tied a green chiffon scarf around her hat, maybe it was to keep the flies away. I waved back and she approached the mooring bollard I was aiming for. She had a nice walk, with plenty of hip swing.

  I killed the engine, looped the rope around the bollard and stepped ashore.

  “Charlotte Fanshaw?”

  She held out a slim, pale hand and spoke in what the Brits call cut-glass English. “You must be Robert Foley. How do you do?”

  I took her hand and it felt very delicate, so I only squeezed it gently. “I do OK, how do you do?”

  She smiled with a pretty mouth and I decided she was attractive. “I muddle through. I’ve brought your Jeep, as requested by your man, but I must warn you, as I told him, there are very few places to drive to on Koufonisi.”

  “I heard there were a few beaches.”