Guardian Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  And she gave him a grim smile. “Mon ami, Jacques. You better hope you do. Before I do.”

  Brand decided he should control the situation before she really did kill the poor man for trying to scare her.

  So, like a shadow, like a phantom, like a creature of the night, Brand appeared at her side with an extremely capable, extremely lethal Walther, looked ruefully at Jacques still struggling to get up. “You better believe her, mate. This one manages to do exactly what she wants.”

  Then, like two people who had not a care in the world, they walked away. Into the dark of the night. Like nothing had happened.

  Jacques Lefevre’s body washed up in La Siene two days later and was reported as a suicide in a tiny obit in Le Figaro.

  The last words he ever heard were of the man and the woman as they were walking away. He didn’t hear Brand’s sigh, because it was snatched in the wind.

  “Why is it that every time we meet your life is in danger? And I have to save it?”

  And she answered, “Why is it that you’re compelled to?”

  Seventeen

  An hour later, in a small hotel off the Champs Elysees, Akira asked the question again to the man who was planning to dump her on the nearest plane to sanity. And farthest away from the truth.

  Brand looked inscrutably at her. Only the smallest clenching of his jaw gave her any indication as to how angry he really was at her.

  Brand didn’t deal with emotions. At all. She delighted in provoking them out of him.

  “Why is it that you have to save my life, Brandon?” she asked again. “I didn’t ask you to. In fact, I was fully prepared to--”

  “What, Akira?” he interrupted, in sudden anger. “To die? To have your brains blown out in the middle of a deserted alley? To have no one find your body? To have everyone you love, grieve for you just because you are too stubborn to back off?”

  “The people I love understand what I do.” Akira crossed her hidden fingers on her lap. “I’m not going to back off, Brand. I can’t do that…” She swallowed. “I owe Stephan Flaubert that much.”

  Brand ran a hand down his hair, contemplated the sticky sweat on his palm. “It’s not your fault,” he said in a low voice. “Stephan didn’t die because of you.”

  Her chest hurt and she swallowed useless tears back. “He was meeting me, Brandon. I was the reason he was there in that café. If I’m not responsible who is?”

  Brand shrugged. “When you put it like that, I’m tempted to let you carry this cross.” Bizarrely, he gave her a crooked grin. “Maybe it might put some sense into your insane brain. And you’ll go back to working from the Locker.”

  Akira shook her head. “I am not going back.”

  He looked contemplatively at her. “You have a death wish, don't you?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I just have to know the truth.”

  “Because it shall set you free?” This time he gave a small, wry smile.

  The amusement faded from her eyes and she answered, “Yes, it will. The truth must be told. You should know that. Because it’s right.”

  “I don't care what you do, Ariana. Just don't be anywhere near me when you get yourself killed.” He shrugged and picked up his leather jacket from where it was lying on the back of the chair he hadn’t occupied.

  “Why? So you won’t have to save me?”

  The look he gave her was equivalent to a yes. “I am not the praying kind but I hope our paths never cross again.”

  It hurt, a lot, to hear him dismiss her so brutally and unequivocally. She knew he didn’t care about her, regardless of how fun their emails were. They weren’t even really friends, not so that they trusted each other.

  “You followed me to Paris, didn’t you?”

  Brand’s sexy mouth tightened. “You flatter yourself, Akira. I came to beat some sense into stupid Flaubert so he’d keep his goddamn mouth shut. I didn’t come here for you. And that’s why I said, you’re not responsible for his death… I am.”

  Akira nodded, disbelieving. “Right.”

  Brand hesitated for a moment. “What are you going to do next?”

  “What I should have done in the first place. Go back to where it all started.”

  He looked incredulous. “Go where, Akira?”

  “I have the necessary permissions. And my visa came through yesterday,” she said coolly. “I’m going back, Brandon. I’m going to San Magellan.” She looked steadily at him. “And you can’t stop me.”

  “You really do have a death wish.”

  She didn’t contradict him. There was no point. He would either leave in which case, good riddance. Or he would try to change her mind and there was no way in hell that would happen.

  Akira saw his eyes narrow and she said simply, “You can physically restrain me, your training is superior to mine. But you can’t keep me restrained forever, Brandon.”

  Brand closed his eyes. “You’re going to die, Akira. And not in a sexy Frenchman will blow your brains out way.”

  She shrugged. “You don’t know that. Not unless you’re planning to kill me yourself.”

  “I have half a mind to do that just to save myself the aggravation.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “This is not a joke,” Brand snarled. “What exactly is your plan, Akira? You’ll just barge into Baja Madeira and they’d give you the gates to the fucking city?”

  “I’m a journalist. I have access. Official access for a series of articles I’m contracted to write for The Political Independent on behalf of FPAI,” she named a website with global reach and a penchant for in-depth reporting. “I’m going to use it to see if the cabinet has any useful information that I could use.”

  “To do what?”

  Akira gave him a cool look. “Why Sebastian Delgao died.”

  “Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind?”

  “Why do you care, Brandon?” She snapped back. “We aren’t friends, emails doesn’t count? And we kissed once. Big deal. So why do you care what happens to me…unless there is something in San Magellan you don’t want me finding out. Is there?”

  Brand let out a deep breath and drew her unwilling eye to his chest. The muscles sculpted to statue perfection on him. There was one thing he could do to make her change her mind…

  Akira stiffened her back against the traitorous desire stirring to life in her womb. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Brandon?”

  He ignored her pointed question. “I need to make a phone call.”

  “What for?”

  He gave her a brief, pointed glance. “So I can join you on your blasted crusade.”

  Her lips parted on an ‘o’. “I don’t think…”

  “No,” he snarled. “You don’t think at all. All you care about is finding the truth, as if it is the Holy Grail. But…” His throat worked, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the force of his emotion. “Sebastian would want me to look after you. And so would Henry Rousseau. So if you’re going back to San Magellan then I am coming with you. And you can’t make me change my mind.”

  Incredibly, Akira smiled. It was one of dizzy, delighted relief and totally incongruous considering how pissed he was. “I was actually hoping you’d say that…so thank you!”

  Brand gave her another aggrieved look and exited the hotel room, his curses low but passionate.

  Akira lay back on the bed and felt two hot tears trickle down her eyes. Stephan, Sebastian…I promise I’ll avenge your deaths.

  ~~~~~~

  The man puffed contentedly on his Gauloises. The cigarettes were made especially in his country by a bunch of talented people who knew how to make cigarettes,

  The man was deep in though. It was easy to see that from the way he vaguely regarded the Monte Carlo Boardwalk and promenade where the tourists and hoi polloi milled in apparent unconcern.

  He contemplated their fates, and his, while he blew out a lazy stream of smoke.

  The man was in his late forties, of av
erage height, barely five-eight, but he gave the impression of someone larger. Not in terms of height or weight, (he weighed a modest one-sixty pounds), but from the way he carried himself.

  There was arrogance in the tilt of his head while he looked down from his perch, almost floating between earth and sky. There was calm confidence in the way he periodically smoked one cigarette after another, flicking the ashes overboard into the placid, shimmering waters of the Mediterranean.

  He was casually dressed in a white cotton shirt open at the throat. It billowed in the slight wind that always favored this part of the world and made the climate seem so pleasant, so right; year round.

  His pants were a dull brown made from a coarse material, fisherman’s pants, and he wore them at his summer palace, a fact that was not known to a lot of people.

  On his feet were thousand dollar moccasins.

  The man was perfectly put together, and had often been mentioned in the society pages of most tabloids and magazines, as much for his dark, Mediterranean looks as for his choice of escorts in the last two decades.

  The looks were ruthlessly handsome and molded him to the image of a young Omar Sharif. The escorts were all beautiful, glossy and looked perfectly sensual in evening wear.

  He was alright with the consuming playboy image he cultivated.

  His eyes, a keen mixture of black and brown, gave him away to those who knew him. The image was just a façade. It wasn’t who he was.

  The man thought of himself as a visionary, a savior, and he was perfectly comfortable with those images too. Now he stood wondering how he could manipulate fate, and defy the Gods yet again to gain what he wanted.

  “Call for you, sir.” A nervous young man held a buzzing phone to him; dressed in casual clothes just like the man he called Sir. But there was an air of restlessness in the young man, and a feeling of fear.

  “Who’s it?”

  “It’s your…It’s Mr. Castle, sir,” the young man, his personal assistant, said.

  “Aah. Finally. The call I’ve been waiting for.” There was a peculiar accent to the way the man spoke. Mixing Italian with a totally flat tone.

  He’d studied at the best schools, completed his business education at Harvard and he still hadn’t totally lost his accent. That was deliberate too. He couldn’t afford to sound completely like the Westerners.

  His people would never forgive him for it.

  “Castle, it’s a beautiful day in Monaco. You should be here,” he began, flicking his latest cigarette away.

  Whatever the other man said wiped the smile and the contentment off his face. Made his eyes flat; his nostrils flare. “But you said the hired guns were enough, Castle,” he said. “You assured me they would do the job.”

  “I know,” Castle said, on the other end. “I did not…anticipate Rice’s intervention.”

  “Brandon Rice,” the man spat the name out like it was the foulest thing. “He is a problem.”

  “I know where he is going next. His itinerary has popped back on the grid,” Castle said. “I’ll take care of him, Khalifa.”

  The man ended the call with no further words being spoken.

  “Jehan, you know what happens when the falcon turns on its master and tries to hunt prey on its own?” he asked quietly.

  He turned on the railing to look at his nephew on his mother’s side. The boy could be molded, given the time and the incentive. For now, the man could barely stand him.

  “No, sir,” Jehan answered.

  “The master breaks the falcon’s neck.”

  The young man felt a sliver of sweat run down his back, even though the temperature was in the pleasant fifties.

  “Well, what’s done is done. Please contact Castle and get instructions to assist him with whatever he needs. Funds. Travel papers. Ammunition. Ground crew.”

  Jehan was rapidly entering the instructions on his calendar app.

  “And get me the files on Brandon Rice and Akira Naik. They are in my study.”

  The young man was surprised enough to stop typing. “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  “You heard me. I want the files on those two.”

  “Of course, sir.” Jehan nodded rapidly.

  He couldn’t show too much obeisance, it would be despised. He couldn’t not show deference, it was expected. Any moment on board this cursed ship, he expected his head to be chopped off and thrown into the sea for the slightest infraction.

  His Lordship didn’t suffer fools gladly, even though he didn’t look like it.

  “And please call Senhor De La Hoya. Invite him to come meet us. It’s a matter of some importance so do not forget to stress on it, Jehan.”

  As Jehan swallowed and took leave of his employer he thought, it was the eyes. It was definitely the eyes that made him wish he’d never taken up this apprenticeship at his mother’s insistence. His mother who was cousin to His Lordship.

  Those eyes were bottomless and without mercy.

  He’d horror stories about this man and was afraid every single one of them was true.

  It was why he slept with a ceremonial dagger under his pillow every night in the stateroom occupied by him.

  Sheikh Kharaan Al Hassan Wajidi, Sovereign and Prince Regent of Asharfil, a tiny but important principality at the very edge of the Middle East, would have been pleased and amused that he aroused such loyalty in his men. And more importantly, such fear.

  Kharaan set great store by fear, as men who’d crossed him knew it.

  As he idly smoked his fifteenth cigarette of the day, he wondered at the way lives had to be ended so that a country could go on.

  Part Two: Blind Sight

  If Hindsight is twenty-twenty, then Blind Sight means tossing a snowball into hell and seeing what hope it has of surviving.

  Eighteen

  “You know, I never met a guy before who could make planes wait for him.” Akira told him almost twenty-four hours later, opening the door to her messy apartment in a residential suburb in Navi Mumbai. She bent down to pick up the stack of mail swept back by the door.

  Brand couldn’t resist peeking at the mail – it was all bills and catalogs. He again felt that acute connection with her as she thumbed through the mail absently. Here was someone who lived as alone as he did.

  “I’m a bit of a slob so don’t judge me, okay?” Akira looked around the living room, depositing the mail on a dusty coffee table.

  She groaned.

  Brand grinned, delighted with her. “Wow. It’s like Hurricane Akira hit here.”

  He took in the food wrappers, the soft drink bottles and sheer amount of papers that were littered in the eclectically decorated living room. It wasn’t a huge space, but it was warm. It bounced with color and it had personality.

  “My maid comes in once a week to sweep and mop,” Akira muttered defensively.

  “I didn’t say a word,” Brand said genially, studying her photo wall.

  There was a print of Cody Kasch’s Winston Churchill, and another of the rolling Nandi Hills. Mumbai’s famed Queen’s Necklace had also been captured in a wall-length black and white photograph.

  One wall was taken up by a bulging bookcase. A shag carpet covered the area before the roomy couch and a coffee table somewhere underneath the mass of papers she’d left on it - newspapers, legal pads and torn up sheets of white foolscap paper.

  He was entranced by the mural on the remaining wall that had an arch over it. It was the wall that led to the kitchen and beyond.

  The mural was of a half-misted, almost untethered Worli Sea Link and it showed a brilliant moon glowing over the sea, with a single boat moored on it. Figures could be barely made out, but it was haunting and the color scheme was black, blue and silver. Obviously the work of someone very talented.

  “Nice mural.” He nodded his head towards the mural wall. And she beamed.

  “I know. Isn’t it? I keep on telling Rumi she should quit documentary films and start painting full time. She doesn’t listen. Although, if she h
ad listened to me then she’d never have met Henry and that would have been…” Akira pursed her lips here. Like it was a pleasant thought, because her eyes gleamed in the dim night lights.

  “Well, it would be bad for Rumi,” She conceded.

  “I take it Henry isn’t one of your favorite people?” Brand asked dryly. “Is it safe for me to enter or do I need a protection suit?”