Rogue Wolves

by James Quinn

  Eventually, Alvarez pulled up and Gorilla quickly got out, eager to move onto the next stage of his journey. “End of the jetty. You can't miss him. He is the ferryman. He's been told that you are coming. Good luck, Senor Grant,” Alvarez called from the car, before speeding off.

  Gorilla made his way along the jetty, a series of small lights illuminating his way in the darkness until he reached the end. He stopped and stared down at the figure that sat in an old and abused panga, a small Mexican fishing boat that was traditionally used to move contraband. The boat looked as if it would hold about three people, but no more.

  “You are the Englishman? The one that wishes passage to La Isla del Diablo?” said the ferryman.

  “Yes.”

  “Then hurry please, senor. The moon is against us tonight, but the tide is with us. We will leave soon.”

  The ferryman was old, hunched and crooked. He was bent over like a man who had spent a lifetime of hard manual toil on the sea. His face was thin, bearded and covered with a cowl to keep out the cold of the night. Only a pair of bright eyes occasionally glinted from the darkness of the hood, and a thick, guttural voice came from within.

  “Have you been the ferryman here for very long?” asked Gorilla.

  “I have always been the ferryman here, senor. I take the mail to the island. Occasionally supplies, nothing more.”

  “And do you take things from the island to the mainland?”

  “No, senor. I would not trust anything from that place in my boat. It would be cursed.”

  “What do you know of the island?”

  The ferryman swore under his breath, hawked and spat into the water. “I do not like to speak of such things, senor. It is bad luck.”

  “Please. I would like to know.”

  The ferryman grunted. “The old ones say that it was a place of the insane, where they would send the mad and the crazed. It was a place of evil. Many people died there, many people.”

  “And now?”

  The ferryman shrugged. “The locals speak of bad things. Strangers go missing. People who visit never come back. They say that there is fornication… witchcraft… unnatural things.”

  “And of the man who lives there? What of him?”

  “El Diablo? I have never seen him. They say he is a genius, but that he has sold his soul to the devil. To own an island like that, he must be very rich, very powerful.”

  “I suppose he must,” said Gorilla.

  “Do you have business there, senor? Do you have business with El Diablo?” asked the ferryman.

  “Yes.”

  “And you will not turn back? You will not let me take you back to the mainland? There is still time.”

  “No. I can't. I have to go there,” replied Gorilla, watching the flow of the water as the panga cut through the tide.

  “Are you a man like El Diablo? Have you sold your soul, too?”

  Gorilla shrugged. “I don't know anymore. I hope not.”

  “Then I will pray for you. It is all that I can offer you.”

  Gorilla sat in silence, listening to the paddles gently moving the water. He was happy for the conversation with the old ferryman to end. It had disturbed him and he needed his own thoughts. It had been what…? A few months, maybe more, that this hunt had been ongoing. What had started as a mission, a job, nothing more, had morphed into becoming a reason for revenge against the man who had disabled him all those months ago.

  Then, somewhere in this dark quest, it had changed. He had found witnesses, talked to sources, travelled the globe hunting this mythical figure. The motivation had changed again when he heard the stories about this man. They intrigued him. To Gorilla, he was an enigma. Now, it was less about revenge and more about solving a mystery.

  How had he reached this point? When had duty become obsession for him? When had revenge turned into that single-minded focus so beloved of the addict?

  Maybe he was more like Caravaggio than he cared to admit. And if he was being honest with himself, that thought scared him more than whatever he might find on this island.

  La Isla del Diablo was located two miles off the coast of Puerto Vallarta and was a heart-shaped ten acres of jungle and swamp. The one main access road split the island like a crack in the heart shape and led from the main quayside on the south of the island, to the private residence and grounds that had been purposely built on a hill in the north. The quayside was where the owner of the island kept his personal yacht and where special visitors to the island would dock their motor launches.

  Gorilla and the ferryman, however, would be taking the shorter and more covert route, which involved moving along the west coast of the island to a small jetty the ferryman knew about, in an open part of the swamp. It was Gorilla's strangest and slowest journey into enemy territory in his entire espionage career to date.

  The journey across from the harbour at Puerto Vallarta to the outskirts of the island had been uneventful. Once they had left the sea behind and had turned off into the rivers surrounding the island, the ferryman had cut the engine and taken out his paddles. Gorilla offered to help him row, but the old man had declined his offer.

  The ferryman had found an inlet along the coastline that led to a small lake and then into a dark and oppressive swamp. Gorilla sat with his hands resting in his lap, trying to ignore the heat, humidity and the brooding jungle that lay beyond the water. This journey up the river had become similar to his hunt for Caravaggio himself; it had been a long and winding path that was now forcing him into a chokepoint, drawing him nearer to the mystery.

  “We are almost there, Senor. Please, no sudden movements,” warned the ferryman, crouching low in the boat. He had lifted the paddles out of the water and was letting the boat coast into the shoreline under its own momentum. Gorilla turned and nodded in understanding.

  “When we dock, it will be a quick drop-off and then I will be away. I do not like to stay here any longer than I have to,” said the ferryman.

  He pulled the small boat into an improvised makeshift jetty that ran along the edge of the swamp. In the distance, Gorilla could hear the eerie sounds of wildlife and the nocturnal predators of the island. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a roll of cash and pushed it into the ferryman's hands.

  The old, hunched figure nodded his appreciation and jumped out of the boat and onto the jetty, quickly securing the rope to stabilise the boat. He shook Gorilla's hand. “Good luck, senor,” he said quietly, his head bowed.

  Gorilla climbed out, straightened his suit and patted the razor in his trouser pocket. It gave him comfort and reassurance. Through the darkness of the trees, he could see lights shining in the distance from some kind of structure. Caravaggio's villa on the hill, he guessed.

  Carefully, he began to move forward, readying himself mentally for dealing with whatever was waiting for him. Then, as an afterthought, he called over his shoulder to the ferryman, “Be careful on the way back, my friend.”

  There was a bust of loud, brash laughter. “Oh, I am not going anywhere!”

  The voice had changed beyond all recognition. It was no longer the guttural voice of a Mexican peasant. Now, it belonged to a cultured European. The effect was jarring. Gorilla Grant slowly turned round to see if there had been someone else on the small boat with them all this time – a ridiculous idea, he knew, and yet…

  The ferryman was going through a transformation. He was hunched over and gnarled no longer. Now he stood stretched to his full height, and he was tall, very tall. He stared at Gorilla, his arms outstretched in a messianic way, welcoming the visitor forward.

  “It was so good of you to join us, Gorilla Grant. You are our welcome guest,” said the ferryman in his new-found accent. Gorilla realised that he had heard that voice before – on the beach in Nice.

  He started to reach for the razor in his pocket, but he was way too late. A strike to the side of the neck stunned him and then dark, slender arms enveloped him from behind, snaking around his neck and throat, tigh
tening up and cutting off his blood supply. Dimly, he recognized that unconsciousness would happen within seconds.

  The last thing he saw before he sank into the blackness of his mind was the determined face of the Chinese assassin, whose arms cradled his head and opposite him, the smiling face of the 'ferryman' who was Caravaggio.

  Chapter Twenty

  Gorilla awoke shivering in the darkness. He was naked except for the hood that had been placed over his head and sat handcuffed to a hard, metal-framed chair. He could feel the coolness of the room and could faintly hear the drip, drip of water onto a stone floor.

  His wrists were locked behind him and he flexed them to see how strong the handcuffs were. Nothing. No give in them at all. He wasn't going anywhere. He tried to rock the chair using his own momentum. Again, nothing; it was fixed to the ground. He definitely wasn't going anywhere. So he did what he had been trained to do in these situations. He sat, calmed himself, slowed his breathing and waited.

  Drip… drip… drip.

  He heard the word, “Chang” before the hood was whipped off his head. So far, he hadn't seen this man's face. In Nice at the casino, it had been hidden behind a mask and on the beach it had been in silhouette. On the ferry across to the island, it had been heavily disguised and now, here in this dungeon, the man was seated far back in the shadows.

  The only visible parts of him were his large, strong hands, which were crossed casually in front of him on a plain wooden table that was illuminated by a small desk lamp. The man wore a black shirt and the only concession to colour was a huge steel wristwatch on his thick wrist. His body and head were laid back in the blackness of the room.

  “Caravaggio?” mumbled Gorilla. He wasn't scared yet. That was to come, he was certain. But for now, it was an open game.

  “Indeed,” said the voice from the blackness. “Please allow me to introduce Chang, whom you have met intimately but not formally.”

  Gorilla glanced over his right shoulder to the dark corner behind him and was aware of a stern-faced Chinese man dressed in a black suit. The man had the mannerisms and composure of an android. He was unnerving, to say the least.

  “Chang is my manservant, bodyguard and apprentice. I have trained him since he was a young man and I have high hopes for his education. I truly think he could be one of the greats of our profession, Mr Grant. Chang has been your shadow in your quest to find me. He has protected you on many occasions, in order that you could follow my little clues,” said Caravaggio proudly.

  Yeah, and taken out quite a few witnesses, thought Gorilla.

  “Did the hand heal well?” Caravaggio enquired. “I am truly sorry that I had to do that, but I needed to slow you down.”

  For the moment, Gorilla couldn't connect the dots, then he remembered. Nice… the shootout on the beach. “It took a while, but now I'm better than ever with a gun in my left hand. You'll find out soon enough,” Gorilla snarled.

  “I have no doubt.”

  “Why didn't you just kill me there and then?”

  “Mr Grant, surely it is obvious, no?”

  “Not to me. No.”

  “Let's just say that I hate to waste promising talent. But that is for later. Here and now, we have more pressing matters.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as you telling me all you know about why you were sent after me.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Oh, Mr Grant, I had no doubts that you would refuse at first. After all, you are the great Gorilla Grant, a hard man, a tough guy with an international reputation as an expert with small arms. A crack shot. But I doubt that you have met anyone like Chang. He has his own reputation, too,” said Caravaggio.

  Chang stepped out of the darkness behind Gorilla's shoulder. His face was still just as impassive and betrayed no emotion.

  “So, it's questions, is it?” asked Gorilla.

  “All in good time,” said Caravaggio from the shadows. “First come the pain and the brutality, then come the questions. It is necessary to show you that I am a man of detail. It is vital that we concentrate your mind on what can happen if you don't co-operate.”

  Chang had worked him over diligently for twenty minutes. It had been hard and brutal and, for a small-framed man, his strength and power were remarkable, thought Gorilla.

  He had fluctuated between strikes to the body and pressure points to the nerves. There was very little bruising on Gorilla's body, it had been mostly internal pain, but that didn't alleviate the amount of agony that had been inflicted upon him.

  The questions, when they came, were not delivered with the bark and rapidity of a torturer, but with the flow and smoothness of the practised interrogator. Caravaggio was an expert in taking his time. The voice that spoke from the darkness came with the usual operational questions beloved of spies and their need to know the bigger picture: What was your mission? Who gave the orders? How did you meet the woman?

  Caravaggio didn't have the bad habits of a less experienced interrogator. No questions were incessantly repeated. Instead, he gently probed his subject, coming in wide and narrowing the focus. He was a professional, looking at his subject through the critical eye of one who has been both the torturer and the tortured in his time.

  But interspersed throughout these standard points were questions that dug deeper into Gorilla's mind. These weren't questions to do with what he had been hired to do, these were questions that he believed Caravaggio wanted to know, in order to better understand the man that he had trapped here: Tell me about your first kill? How did you feel? Have you ever turned down an assignment? Have you ever failed to complete a contract?

  If it hadn't been for the regular pain received from the little Chinese torturer behind him, Gorilla would have thought he was being interviewed for a job. It was if the dark man in the shadows needed to get to the heart of what made Gorilla Grant tick.

  And all the while, as this persistent questioning continued, Gorilla was steeling his naked, shivering body for the next round of pain delivered by Chang – pain inflicted by hands, metal, wood and electricity. Gorilla would gulp in a huge breath, grit his teeth and wait for the agony to begin. Often, he would pass out. Every time, he would scream. His life had been condensed down to moments of violence smattered with a journey deep into his psyche.

  “Tell me about the woman?”

  It was another session. Gorilla guessed it had been hours since the last one. In all of his interrogations, he had tried his best to limit his answers to Caravaggio. Information was the currency at the moment and Gorilla needed as much collateral as he could if he was to survive this thing.

  On the whole, despite the torture to his body, he had fielded the questions well. But occasionally, Caravaggio would throw in a wild card question, trying to get under Gorilla's skin to find that gap in his armour. Nikita.

  “She's a contractor. She's the competition,” mumbled Gorilla, his eyes cast down at the wet stone floor where his bare feet lay on top of one another.

  “So she is an ally?”

  “No, she's a contractor like me. We decided to share information so that we could get closer to the targ… so we could get closer to you. But, at the end of the day, we are on opposite sides. Like I say… she's competition.”

  “Do you always sleep with the competition, Mr Grant?”

  “A gentleman never tells.”

  The shadow barked out a harsh laugh. “Oh, come now, Mr Grant, let us not pretend that you are a gentleman. You are a rough diamond.”

  Gorilla was about to hurl back a rebuke, but before he could finish his sentence, the dark man in the shadows threw down a series of black and white photographs at Gorilla's feet. They lay splayed across the damp floor.

  He managed to catch a glimpse of the top photo that showed Gorilla and Eunice making love. She was riding him, her head flung back in ecstasy, her breasts flung outwards at the moment of orgasm, while Gorilla had his hands on her hips to aid in the rocking motion of their lovemaking. Across their naked b
odies were the horizontal shadows from the window blinds as the electric storm had raged that night.

  Gorilla remembered the moment immediately. It was at the Ranch in Virginia. Caravaggio and his people had had them under surveillance even there.

  “Do you love her?”

  Gorilla remained silent. Let Caravaggio take what he wanted from his silence. He couldn't even admit it to himself, let alone a man who was his captor. “Where is she?” he asked instead.

  “She is safe here on the island. She has been treated with respect. She is a beautiful woman. I congratulate you. I, too, understand the allure of a beautiful woman on a mission. They can be either an asset or a hindrance, depending on the task at hand. I was on a job for the Germans during the War and I, too, fell in love with a woman not unlike your Nikita.

  “I would risk my life to go and see her. On every corner, there were informants ready to kill me if I showed my face in public. It didn't matter. I would prepare elaborate ruses to remain undetected just so that I could hold her. She was one of the bravest and most passionate women I have ever met.”

  Caravaggio stared at the seemingly broken man before him. “When they come for you, they will not come at you directly. Learn from one who has travelled this road before. They will come at those that you love and those that you hold dear. It will be a friend, a saviour, a blood brother that will try to wield the knife, the gun, the strangling hands against you. Very rarely will it be an enemy.”

  “Then you do have a weakness. Love,” said Gorilla weakly.

  There was a deep, throaty laugh from the darkness, but one without humour. “Of course not, Mr Grant, I am a professional. I had a job to do. I killed her.”

  It was another day… or night, Gorilla wasn't certain. Being stuck down in the dungeon altered your state of mind.