Lion

by Matt Rogers

  ‘A black guy? A single guy?’

  ‘He followed us into the limo. No-one was really paying attention, I guess…’

  ‘Are you fucking joking or something?’ Forrest said, veins on his forehead protruding, his face turning red. ‘What is this bullshit?’

  ‘He was trained, man. He fucked us all up real bad. Lau’s dead.’

  ‘Lau’s dead?’ Forrest rammed a fist into the front passageway’s wall, gouging out a chunk of the plaster. ‘This is fucked. This entire situation is fucked. The girl’s gone?’

  The man nodded. ‘Yeah, Peter. The girl’s gone.’

  ‘You know what this means?’

  The man nodded again.

  Forrest bared his teeth as he spoke, flecks of saliva spraying out of the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You round up every single person on my payroll,’ he snarled. ‘You get her back. Or I go down, and everyone goes down with me.’

  7

  Slater strode all the way through to the next street, which opened into a dingy overcrowded row of apartment buildings crammed to the brim with Macau’s residents. Only a hundred feet in separation between the extravagant casinos and five-star restaurants lay the grid of complexes home to the working population.

  Slater understood perfectly, even as he stared out at a staggering number of apartments. He had seen the amount of staff necessary in Mountain Lion Casino alone, from dealers to cashiers to security to supervisors to the small army of surveillance staff that would no doubt be in place behind the scenes.

  He couldn’t imagine how many staff the entire gambling industry employed. It seemed like it made up more than half of the population of the country alone.

  He and his new sidekick blended into the smattering of civilians dotting the broad sidewalks, filtering out of the structures behind them as their shifts ended and they headed for bed. Slater made sure to keep the young girl close, shielding her from view of anyone on his right side. He’d tucked the Beretta into the inside pocket of his suit jacket back in the alleyway to prevent any unwanted attention. But he felt it there, bouncing intermittently against his torso, at the ready in case he needed to access it fast.

  They walked for five minutes straight, keeping a brisk pace, before either felt the need to speak.

  The young girl opened her mouth first.

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you killed someone back there.’

  ‘I think so too. You seem pretty calm about it.’

  ‘I don’t feel right.’

  Slater nodded. The drugs — whatever had been administered to her — were suppressing her emotions. She was operating in a murky haze. Slater could tell by the way she moved, her steps laborious and her eyes drifting down to the concrete under her feet. She seemed entirely unconcerned with the fact that Slater had broken her out of a car filled with seven violent men minutes earlier.

  ‘Do you know what’s happening to you?’

  She paused, thinking hard, wrestling with her thoughts so she could communicate effectively. ‘Sort of. My brain is really fuzzy right now. I’m confused. I’m just doing what everyone tells me.’

  She’s suggestible, Slater thought.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Shien. What’s yours?’

  ‘I’m Will.’

  ‘Hi, Will.’

  ‘Hello. Maybe I should have started with that.’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I don’t talk to people in your age range much.’

  ‘I don’t talk to killers much.’

  He paused and glanced down at her, a wry smile curling across his lips. It felt unnatural. He hadn’t smiled in quite some time. ‘Is that what you think I am?’

  ‘You saved my life, mister.’

  ‘Your English is very good. Are you from Macau?’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head, but the silence that unfolded in the aftermath of the single syllable said everything that needed to be said.

  You can’t remember, Slater thought.

  ‘I’m from Hong Kong,’ she said finally, after much deliberation. ‘My daddy is from Hong Kong.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Uh, America. Texas, actually! Are you from Texas?’

  ‘No,’ Slater said. ‘I’m not from Texas.’

  ‘Anyway, we spoke English at home … yes, that’s right. I remember now. We lived in Hong Kong at the top of a building.’

  ‘Lived?’

  ‘Well, I still live there. Sorry, mister, I’m very confused.’

  Slater held up a hand. ‘Maybe we should have this conversation later. When you’re more like yourself.’

  She stared at him and shrugged. ‘Okay. Thanks, Will.’

  ‘No problem, Shien.’

  The tenement housing grew thick, with the squat, unimpressive apartment complexes giving way to more rundown dwellings as they continued heading for the old city. Macau’s glitz and glam had fallen into the background, replaced by the cruel reality. The humidity seemed to increase in turn, as if the enormous five-star casinos and resorts had managed to alter the weather itself.

  The air hung oppressively over them, to the point where Slater strongly considered stripping the suit jacket off his frame and stuffing the Beretta into his waistband. His dress shirt had soaked through with sweat — he hadn’t noticed in the aftermath of the violent brawl, but the intense heat had drawn seemingly all the sweat from his pores at once. He fanned himself uselessly with his free hand, keeping the other resting gently against Shien’s back.

  She didn’t protest.

  He thought it might make her feel more secure.

  He had almost no experience with kids, so he wasn’t sure exactly what she was thinking.

  The sidewalks changed, narrowing as they headed further into the grimy urban grid. Despite the relative hostility in the air in these parts, Slater felt right at home. He preferred to be around people, no matter how dangerous they were. They would act as a temporary smokescreen to whoever might be coming after them.

  And, glancing down at Shien as she strolled unperturbed through the grimy town, he realised there might be an entire army coming after them.

  He had no idea how valuable she was.

  He had no idea what he’d got himself involved in.

  He elected to find out.

  ‘So,’ he said, struggling to find the words that would ensure she remained calm, ‘before all the craziness happened — where were you headed?’

  ‘H204VR68,’ Shien said softly, still staring straight ahead.

  Slater froze. ‘What?’

  She turned to him, half-smiling. ‘I bet you think I’m a robot, mister.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are. I don’t know what I got myself into. But you were in danger.’

  ‘That’s just a string of numbers and letters,’ she said.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I know two more.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  She rattled another two codes off, each an identical length and an equally random mix of letters and numbers. ‘Three of them. Like I told you.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘I’m not completely sure. They’re important, though.’

  ‘Seven men tried to snatch you off the street. I bet those three codes are important. Where did you find them?’

  ‘Um…’ she said, trailing off, falling into the pit of her own mind again.

  Slater gave her time.

  There was no rush.

  He avoided eye contact with the residents of Macau trawling the street at this hour, instead staring far into the distance, predicting the kind of urban terrain they would be headed into before it sprung up on them unannounced.

  From here, it looked like more of the same.

  Cramped, dingy tenement housing drowning in humidity.

  Slater had learned to embrace the uncomfortable decades ago. He didn’t mind the stifling conditions and the poverty a
nd the tension. In truth, he felt more at home amongst these people than the uber-rich back in the casinos and five-star resorts. There was five-hundred thousand dollars in casino chips in his pocket, which could probably buy an entire street worth of real estate around these parts, but Slater had spent half his life with an obscene net worth on paper.

  Black operations paid handsomely.

  More than handsomely.

  It hadn’t ever stopped or faded his drive. Being worth tens of millions meant nothing. Heading into an active war zone to do good and save lives carried with it a deep sense of personal satisfaction that no amount of digits in a bank account could ever rival.

  So the discomfort and violence that lay ahead if he chose to stay with the young girl barely crossed his mind.

  In fact, he welcomed it.

  And he needed to.

  Shien opened her mouth and said, ‘I just remember being kidnapped out of my Daddy’s hands a couple of weeks ago.’

  8

  ‘That’s all you remember?’ Slater said, furrowing his brow.

  He hadn’t anticipated such a strong amnesiac flowing through Shien’s system. If she didn’t even know who her captors were, there would be few solutions to this problem. But Slater had never been one to solve issues with tender care and sensibility. Instead he hit hard and fast until everything in his path wilted and he got what he wanted.

  Shien paused, then shook her head. ‘There’s more. There’s a lot of stuff. But it’s all jumbled up in my head. Whatever’s in my system isn’t good for me at all, mister.’

  ‘I don’t like mister. Call me Will.’

  ‘Sorry, Will.’

  ‘Those three codes,’ Slater said. ‘You can easily remember them, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She rattled them off again, one by one, in the exact same order she’d uttered them last time. Then a sharp look of realisation spread across her face, and she added a final detail to the spiel. ‘Beco da Perola.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Slater said.

  She scrunched up her features. ‘A road. Near here. With a dead end. We’re on Taipa, right?

  One of the islands of Macau, connected to the neighbouring island of Coloane with man-made landfill. Slater had arrived at Macau International Airport on the east side of Taipa just over a week previously. From there, it had been a short trip to Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts, where he’d spent the duration of his stay.

  He got the sense he wouldn’t be returning to the gigantic complex anytime soon.

  He nodded, confirming Shien’s question. ‘Yes, we’re on Taipa. Do you know your way around?’

  ‘Sort of. I’ve been to Macau a few times. Daddy likes to visit the big buildings.’

  ‘The casinos?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. I think so. He doesn’t like to talk about it. Anyway, there’s a bunch of apartments along this street. Like the ones on either side of us now.’

  Tenement housing, Slater thought. Just what I was looking forward to.

  ‘Who told you this? Who released you?’

  She paused. ‘This part’s hard. For some reason I can’t remember faces and names, but I can remember those codes and that address easily. They must have repeated it to me so many times…’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Slater said, reassuring her. ‘You’re doing great. We have plenty of time — it’ll come back to you. I don’t have anywhere to be, so I’ll look after you as long as it takes to sort this out.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes narrowed in suspicion but her face somewhat hopeful at the same time. ‘Why, miste— uh, Will?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you follow me into the car and beat up all those men?’

  He sighed. ‘That’s just what I do, Shien. Don’t ask me to explain it. I don’t know what the protocol is for talking to kids.’

  ‘You can talk to me.’

  He glanced down at her, taking his eyes off the path ahead for a brief moment. ‘You’re switched on for a kid. How old are you?’

  ‘Nine. Daddy says I’m very smart for my age.’

  ‘You sure are. Do you speak other languages?’

  She nodded. ‘My school in Hong Kong teaches us English, but I’ve been learning Portuguese and Chinese on the side. Daddy says they speak those languages here in Macau and he wants me to be flexible with where I want to work in the future.’

  Slater couldn’t fathom how to respond to that. He tried to remember what he was doing when he was nine years old.

  Not much.

  That conjured up a fresh wave of dark memories from those years, and he felt the inklings of rage bubbling to the surface. Fury and unease were palpable in his mind, and he once again suppressed his childhood from memory. He had let it come back to him once — the details of how his mother died came flooding back when he’d encountered a similar situation in Corsica, and by the end of his rage-fuelled frenzy an entire boatload of mercenaries were dead by his own hand.

  He had to control that side of himself for as long as it would take to find the proper counselling and psychological evaluation that he knew he needed. A career in black operations had been compartmentalised through sheer willpower, and in later years Slater knew it would take some serious elbow grease to unpack.

  He left that for another day, though.

  Just as he always did.

  ‘You’ve gone quiet,’ Shien noted. ‘Are you thinking about something?’

  ‘Sure am, Shien,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing I want to talk about though.’

  ‘I want to talk about what’s been happening to me. I just wish I could remember everything properly. Can I try?’

  ‘Of course you can try. You don’t need to ask me to do that.’

  ‘Three men,’ she said suddenly. ‘I was being kept in a small room with no windows. Then three men showed up and hurried me through all these dark corridors. There wasn’t much light around. That’s what I remember most. Everything was in the shadows. The three of them took me to a very bright room and told me those codes over and over again. Yes … that’s right … now I’m getting it. Then they finished with the address.’

  ‘Did they say anything else?’

  ‘It’s all really blurry. Like trying to remember a dream that you can’t put your finger on. Uhh…’

  ‘Take your time, Shien.’

  ‘There’ll be a man waiting for me,’ Shien said, her eyes widening as more details came back to her. ‘At Beco da Perola. One of the apartments is theirs. They have everything ready.’

  ‘You’re a messenger,’ Slater muttered under his breath. ‘Why aren’t they doing it themselves?’

  ‘Are the codes for bad things?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Slater said, then reflected on every dangerous situation he’d ever been involved in. ‘Actually — almost definitely.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Shien said, deep in thought, ‘maybe they want whoever I’m supposed to share the codes with to take the blame. You know, pretend he did it when they might be forcing him to do it. Then none of this would involve them and maybe only the apartment guy and me would show up on any security cameras. Cause there’s lots of those around Taipa. Oh … and you would show up, too.’

  Slater couldn’t take his eyes off the little girl trotting alongside him, staring innocently into space as she unloaded all the thoughts bubbling around in her mind.

  ‘You know what, Shien,’ he said, ‘I think you might have nailed it.’

  9

  Thanks to the wonders of digital web mapping services, Slater found Beco da Perola within seconds of searching. The application on his phone located the dead-end street, dropped a destination pin over it, and provided him with crystal clear instructions on how to reach the area as fast as possible on foot.

  Slater gulped involuntarily.

  He wasn’t sure if he wanted to.

  He didn’t fear what might be waiting for them in a rundown apartment complex buried in the depths of Beco da Perola. In fact, that portion of the coming hours invig
orated him with such intensity that he fully recognised it as an unhealthy character trait. His life had been pain and misery for so long that he couldn’t detach himself from it. If there was a fight on the horizon, he would welcome it with open arms.

  Briefly, he wondered if intervening in this situation had been worth the hassle.

  Then he looked down at the brilliant young girl by his side, and realised that even if he had to give his life to make sure she survived unscathed, he would probably do it.

  That thought sent him down a much darker tunnel in his psyche.

  He’d experienced almost everything he wanted out of life. He’d served his country with reckless abandon and saved thousands of lives in the process. He’d ended lives too, hundreds of them, most of which he felt satisfied with. He didn’t often retaliate unless someone provoked him, and in his previous line of work there was seldom good reason to provoke Will Slater. He had been sent into the worst hell-holes on the planet and made it out relatively intact. At the same time, the millions of dollars he’d earned in exchange for his services had allowed him the ability to purchase the best experiences money could buy.

  But there was one thing money couldn’t buy.

  Family.

  Slater had been alone for as long as he could remember, and preferred to keep it that way. No-one in close proximity to him had ever benefitted from it, and he wanted it to remain that way out of personal preference.

  He would help Shien with whatever she needed, and then he would be on his way.

  They stepped into the dead-end street at close to four-thirty in the morning. Despite the hour, an odd murmuring ran through the grimy streets like soft discharges of electricity. The air crackled with crime and desperation and opportunity. This was clearly one of the most dangerous parts of Macau, and a hot trickle of anger filtered through Slater’s veins as he thought of Shien wandering into these streets alone, drugged to the eyeballs and searching for refuge.

  How dare those motherfuckers send her off like that.

  He considered leaving her in a safe place and returning to Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts to knock heads together until someone told him who was responsible. He considered himself supremely effective at getting what he wanted by applying force, but he was reluctant to leave Shien alone. Even if he could hide her away, there was no guaranteeing what she would do once the drugs wore off.