Breath of Hell (Harry Bauer Book 8)

by Blake Banner

  Her eyes were wild. Her breathing was ragged. She swallowed three times before she spoke.

  “You have to get out of here. Go back to New York. You have to let me go. Open the door. Let me go.”

  I wasn’t amused, but I laughed.

  “Yeah, sure. But that’s in another universe, Jane, where the bunnies teach physics, the trees dance jigs and the camels all smoke pipes and ride bicycles. In this universe you and me are going to go and talk, and you had better make a lot more damned sense than you are making right now. Come on, get up!” I reached down and dragged her to her feet. Then I held her real close, gripping her shoulders. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, and I am still just about prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, though Christ knows, after what I’ve seen in the last few days, you do not deserve it. But push me, just push me an inch, Colonel, and I will shoot you stone dead, right here where you stand.” I pointed out toward the street. “Or out there in front of a hundred witnesses. So just do as I say and don’t try to run, because I will kill you.” I reached out my hand. “Give me your purse.”

  She handed it to me and I tipped the contents on the oak desk. There was no weapon and nothing of any interest. I frisked her from head to toe and found nothing. So I grabbed the Russian’s shoulders and heaved the body away from the door far enough for a person to fit through. I grabbed the colonel’s wrist and squeezed through, dragging her behind me across the lounge toward the stairs.

  Halfway across the bar she suddenly stopped dead and tried to yank her hand free. She seemed to be on the verge of tears.

  “For God’s sake! You have to let me go! Please just leave! Go away! Go back to New York! For God’s sake, just go away and leave me alone!”

  I turned on her and yanked her savagely to me. “You think after what you’ve done I’m going to go away? Are you out of your mind? You’d better get real, Colonel. You had better start thinking about best-case scenarios, and the best-case scenario for you right now is where you spend the rest of your life in jail. You need to identify your friends, and start cooperating with them. Because as of this moment there are a lot of people who think you should be dead. And that number is going to be growing. So wise up!”

  “You can’t do this to me.”

  “Wrong.” I growled, “Move!”

  I pulled the Sig from my waistband and shoved my arm around her waist under her jacket, then walked her toward the stairs.

  “Let’s be clear. Try to run, scream, call for help, I will shoot you and throw you in the back of the car. Make it hard for me and I will shoot you stone dead on the sidewalk. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  We moved down the stairs to the main lobby, pushed out through the swing doors and into the bustling street. I pulled her close and spoke into her ear. “Lean in to me and make like we are having an intimate conversation. Walk quickly.”

  We moved back up the road, pushing through the crowds. I had the Sig pressed hard against her side and her left arm gripped in my left hand. When we got to the car I opened the driver’s door and shoved her in. Then I climbed in the back, behind her and slammed the door.

  “Drive.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know yet. Head down to the coast. Follow the Kennedy Highway around the horn and take the Galata Bridge. You know the 10 Karakoy Hotel?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s where we’re going. But take it slow and easy. I’ll blow your spine through your belly if you do anything stupid.”

  She pulled out and cruised slowly down the road toward the intersection, among the interminable people spilling from the sidewalk and milling among the cars. She turned right and started moving south down Namik Kemal. I was suddenly overcome with a sense of the situation being surreal. I had taken this woman out to dinner in New York less than a week before, she had been about to come back to my house for a nightcap, possibly more, and now I was holding a gun to her back, threatening to kill her. On a sudden impulse I said, “You haven’t addressed me by name since I walked in on your meeting.”

  Her eyes flicked at me in the mirror, but she didn’t answer. I felt a cold prickling in my scalp. But I didn’t ask what I wanted to ask. Instead I said, “What was your meeting about?”

  “Heroin. And guns.”

  “You buying or supplying?”

  “Gabriel has a poppy plantation about fifteen miles northeast of Divnomorskoye, in the foothills of the Caucasus. He also has a lab there for producing heroin, and other variants…”

  “Gabriel?” She glanced at me again, and again didn’t say anything. I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice. “What is he, your lover?”

  “No.”

  “Just your employer, huh?” I paused, looking at her reflection. “Any reason I should believe you?”

  “No.”

  We moved on, weaving slowly through the traffic, past the seedy shops and the dirty roller blinds. We passed under a concrete railway bridge and her face fell into darkness. We emerged and passed a used car lot, a gas station on the right, and dull light washed over her face again. I noticed she was staring at my reflection and felt a sick hollow in my gut, and cold fear crawled through my scalp.

  “Do you even know who I am?” She shifted her eyes back to the road. I said, “So Yushbaev supplies heroin to Turkey?”

  “The Mexican cartels are finding it increasingly hard to reach the East. With his connections…” She hesitated. “Yushbaev can farm very large areas of remote Russia and produce very large quantities of opium, and process it too. Aslan, the man you killed—”

  “Which one?”

  “The one you stabbed because he didn’t speak English. He was proposing a distribution network that would run from Poland all the way to the Pacific. Yushbaev had clients who needed weapons for a jihadists group. He was trying to put together a drugs for guns deal.”

  “That two-bit punk was going to run a distribution network?”

  “He wasn’t going to run the network, he said he had contacts who would be willing to cooperate.”

  “So what was your role in this drugs for guns deal?”

  “To hear Aslan’s proposal and take it back to…”

  I interrupted her and loaded the name with bitterness. “To Gabriel?”

  “Yes.”

  “When does he expect you back?”

  She took a ragged breath. “Some time tonight.” She looked at me in the mirror and her eyes flooded with tears. “You have to let me go.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer and we wound on through the night, with darkness and feeble streetlight touching her face by turns.

  Fifteen

  I climbed out of the car first, keeping my weapon concealed in my jacket as I opened the door for her. I could see her eyes searching wildly as she climbed out. She was searching for a way to escape, and that drove home for me the painful fact that this was no misunderstanding, no double bluff or clever rouse. She, like Charlotte and Marianne, belonged to Gabriel Yushbaev.

  We pushed through the doors into the lobby and crossed to the elevators. I kept a tight grip on her and let her feel the cannon of the P226 in her side. I smiled down at her and whispered in her ear: “You know me well enough to know that I will do it, Colonel. There is a better way out. Don’t make a mistake.”

  She pressed the elevator button and searched my face with her eyes.

  “Is there?”

  “Being cryptic and feeling sorry for yourself will not help you. We are going to talk now, and you are going to tell me everything.”

  I was aware as I said it that all feeling had drained from my eyes. It was a lack of feeling I recognized. When you are behind enemy lines, when you are in the immediate presence of death, sometimes you have to do things the require you to lose your humanity, if only for a while. When that happens to a person you can see it in their eyes. They shut down their empathy and their compassion and they look at you differently. She saw that in my
gaze and she recognized it. I saw her go pale and pasty. The elevator doors slid open and we stepped inside.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “That depends on you.”

  “Are you going to torture me?”

  I felt myself falter inside. “I have never tortured a woman or a child.”

  I let the ambiguity stand and we stared at each other until the elevator came to a halt. We stepped out and I led her to my door. I slipped in the card, the light turned green and I shoved her inside. As I closed the door behind me I said, “You have a choice, strip naked or I take your clothes off. One way or the other you take off your clothes.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Take them off now.”

  She stripped, I took her clothes and threw them in the bathtub, with both faucets open full. If there was any kind of bug or listening device in there, now it was dead. Then I called reception.

  “Mr. Bauer, what can I do for you?”

  “My wife has joined me unexpectedly and I need a transfer to a suite. I need it to be immediate and I need it to be completely confidential. I don’t care how much it costs, I do need it to be in the next five minutes.”

  He said, “Oh,” a few times, then gabbled, “The, the, the Terrace Suite is available, Mr. Bauer. It is…um…”

  “I don’t care how much more it is. Reserve it for me now for a week. Send me a bellhop with the key in the next five minutes and I will demonstrate my gratitude in a way you’ll remember.”

  I hung up while he was still telling me he would do that. The colonel had wrapped herself in a toweling dressing gown and was sitting on the bed with a cushion in her lap. “How do you expect me to make it to the suite dressed like this?”

  “We’ll manage.”

  I dumped my stuff in my bags and five minutes later there was a tap at the door. I opened it and a young woman in her early thirties, dressed in a pale blue suit with a white blouse, smiled at me.

  “I am Miss Demir, assistant manager of the hotel, I have your key, Mr. Bauer. I can show you to the Terrace Suite now…” Her eyes traveled to the colonel. “If you are ready.”

  “Yeah, can you step inside for a moment?” I closed the door behind her and gestured toward the colonel sitting on the bed. “My wife has just had a very distressing experience. She was robbed at knifepoint, her purse and all her baggage were taken, and there was an attempted rape…”

  Miss Demir looked alarmed. “In the hotel?”

  “No, out on the street. It has been reported and the police are dealing with it. You don’t need to concern yourself with that.” She gave a small involuntary sigh and a smile. “But as I am sure you can understand, the experience was very traumatic. So here is what we need from the hotel. The clothes that are in the bath are all that she has left, but she can’t bring herself to wear them. Please, dispose of them, incinerate them, whatever. We will dine in the suite tonight and my wife will not be going out for the next couple of days while she recovers.”

  “Of course, I understand—”

  “And, please, if anybody comes asking for us, we checked out and left the country tonight. The hotel has no idea where we are. I am prepared to pay extra for the incognito if that is necessary. I just want her to feel safe and protected.”

  “Of course, I understand perfectly, Mr. Bauer, that is no problem.”

  “Now, can we get to the suite discretely, without drawing attention…?” I gestured at the colonel in her bathrobe.

  “Not a problem. The elevator is right here and goes directly to the suite.”

  The transfer from the bedroom to the suite took no more than ten minutes, and while we were in the process the cleaners were summoned to collect and dispose of the colonel’s clothes. If they were bugged, and I was pretty sure they were, we would soon be off the radar, at least for a while.

  When Miss Demir had gone I called room service and ordered a couple of steaks and a bottle of wine. The colonel dropped onto the sofa and I poured her a glass of cognac and a glass of whisky for myself. I handed it to her, but stayed standing. She cupped it in both hands, with her elbows on her knees, and stared at the carpet while she bit her lip.

  I gave her a moment, but she didn’t say anything so I spoke instead.

  “I’m going to call the office in a moment. When I do that they’ll send somebody to get you. You’ll spend the next few months being debriefed. What happens after that is anybody’s guess.” I waited a moment. Only her eyes moved. They flitted over my face, like it might tell her something more than my words. “You need to get to grips with something, Colonel. It’s over. You can never go back. You can never go back to how it was, and you can never go back to Yushbaev.”

  She took a deep breath and sighed. “You…” She bit off the words, then snapped, “You don’t understand!”

  “So make me understand! Believe me, Colonel, from where I am standing there is no great mystery, except how the hell you managed to be so convincing. How you pulled it off is the only damned mystery in this for me. The rest of it is real clear. You are a traitor. You were planted in the US Air Force and worked your way…”

  “No!” Her eyes blazed, but then she closed them and bit hard down on her teeth.

  “No?” I waited. She sighed again. “Listen to me. You are a highly intelligent woman, but right now your behavior is nothing short of rank stupidity.” Again the blaze in her eyes, but this time she held my gaze. “There is only one path for you.” I held up one finger. “One path! You start cooperating with me right now. You tell me everything. And maybe there will be leniency for you. Be obstructive and refuse to cooperate, and you are looking at a charge of treason and spending the rest of your life in jail, if the Company don’t take care of you first.”

  She looked away. “I can’t.”

  There had been a creeping doubt in my mind, and now I gave it voice for the first time.

  “Do you know who I am? Do you know me?”

  She didn’t answer straight away, but finally she said, “Of course I do.”

  “Who am I? name me!”

  “Harry…” She moved her glass around a bit, then took a swig. She swallowed and said, “What, you think I’m a double?”

  “What’s the name of our organization? Who runs the show? What was my last job?”

  “This is ridiculous. You’re Harry Bauer, Alex—the brigadier to you—runs the show, though he has superiors you don’t know about. We work for Cobra, I am a cofounder and I briefed you on your last job just before… You were briefed to eliminate Charles Cavendish.”

  “Just before what?”

  “You won’t believe me, but just before they took me.”

  “Who took you?”

  “Sinaloa, but they were working for Gabriel Yushbaev.”

  “You knew him from before.” It wasn’t a question, but she shook her head. “No.”

  “You called him Gabriel. The first time you mentioned him you called him Gabriel.”

  “He plays mind games. He indoctrinates people.”

  “Did he seduce you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you in love with him?”

  She scowled at me. “No!”

  “Does he own you?”

  She scowled harder and drew breath to answer, then stopped, closed her eyes and sagged. “I don’t know. Perhaps. I don’t know.”

  “What is this bullshit?”

  I pulled my cell from my back pocket and video-called the brigadier on the secure line. His face appeared on the screen.

  “Harry.”

  I switched the camera so he could see her. The colonel looked away. I snapped, “Look at the camera!”

  She turned toward me, stared at the phone for a moment, then looked away again. I said, “I followed her from the yacht, like I told you, after the mosque she went to a nightclub, the Rio de Janeiro Copa Cabana Club on Küçük Langa to negotiate a distribution deal for the opium and heroin Yushbaev is producing in the foothills of the Caucasus,
about fifteen miles northeast of Divnomorskoye, and also to try and work a drugs for guns deal for a bunch of jihadists in the Middle East.”

  His voice was dry. “She was negotiating the deal?”

  “Yes, representing Yushbaev. I entered the club. It was not open yet and there was nobody there except for the colonel’s two Russian bodyguards, Aslan, the Turk they were negotiating with, and his muscle. I killed them and took the colonel. She is not cooperating much, and I need you to send somebody for her soon. You need to take her home and debrief her.”

  “Have you asked her what she was doing at the mosque?”

  “Not yet.”

  “All right. Do what you can. I’ll have a team there in about an hour. Where are you?”

  “10 Karakoy.” I explained the arrangement I had made, then told him, “I’ll inform the front desk that my cousin is coming with some friends, and to let them up. So have your man tell them he’s my cousin.”

  “All right.”

  “You take the colonel home. I am going to fly to Divnomorskoye.”

  “No, they are bound to be looking out for you there. Fly to Anapa International Airport. It’s about fifty miles as the crow flies from Divnomorskoye. I’ll have the team bring you some documents when they collect the colonel, rent a car at Anapa. Meanwhile we’ll see if we can get the colonel to cooperate and keep you posted on anything we learn.”

  I nodded. “OK.”

  I hung up and she spoke with her eyes closed. “You have to stop this.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “What makes you say so?”

  She took a deep breath, still with her eyes closed. “You just have to let me go and stop this!”

  “Do you realize how stupid that sounds? Do you seriously think, after what you have done…”

  She turned on me, eyes blazing. “Stop saying that! What? What have I done, Harry? I got abducted! Aside from that, what have I done? Have I compromised Cobra? Have I compromised you? Have I ever compromised you or Cobra?”