by Blake Banner
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Never mind. Tell me something, without the help of reverse engineering, could you recreate the NPP?”
She raised her eyebrows, and blew gently between her lips. “Yeah, probably, but it could take years. Don’t forget, this was just a prototype, and it was the culmination of several years’ work that had been carried out before I joined the team. Also, there were lots of specialists, each working on their own, discrete part of the project, often with no idea of what everybody else was doing. If I could assemble most of the original team, with the right facilities and budget… yeah, probably.” She puckered her brow, trying to work out what I was getting at. “But the research exists. They have it on their system. Like I keep telling you, the value of the NPP is in the possibility of reverse engineering it.”
“Yeah, I understand that.”
She stared at me for a while as the eastern horizon turned from dark, grainy gray to a paler blue-gray, while in the west it was still dark night and the moon was still luminous in the sky. Finally, she asked me, “So what are you going to do?”
I held her eye. “Do you trust me?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“I’ll talk to Rand, argue your case and advise him that you are more use to the government outside than inside.”
“Thank you, but…” I waited, knowing what she was going to say. She said it, “What about Gregor?”
“What about him?”
“He will never stop coming after me, especially after tonight.”
“I don’t know what you think I can do about that.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. Tonight…”
I waited, wondering if she would come out and say it.
“You were so… You were incredible.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Emily. Be clear.”
She averted her eyes, looked down at her knees, shoved her hands between them. “Can’t you… Couldn’t you just…”
“Are you asking me to assassinate him?” She raised her eyes to meet mine and chewed her lip, but she didn’t answer. I said, “I have assassinated people professionally. They were enemies of the U.K. or the U.S.A., terrorists or heads of cartels. But that doesn’t make me a hit man. I won’t kill somebody just because they are an inconvenience to somebody else. Killing somebody, or having them killed, is not some magical way to dodge your responsibilities. You created this mess by being stupid. Now you have to clean it up by being smart.”
Her cheeks colored and there was bright anger in her eyes. She couldn’t hold back the acid in her voice. “Yes, Daddy!”
I nodded. “We still don’t know the real Emily yet, do we?”
“Oh, stop it, Lacklan! For God’s sake, stop pontificating!”
“I won’t kill Gregor for you.”
“Thanks.”
On the northwestern horizon, a bright light appeared suddenly. I said, “The Coast Guard are here. I’m going to tell you one last thing, and you would be smart to listen to me.”
She still looked resentful. “What?”
“You have created this mess by being stupid, and you keep repeating that same stupidity and digging yourself deeper into the mess. Stop. Be smart. Do something different.”
There was still a glimmer of sarcasm in her eyes. “What is that, something you learned from your sensei? Is that like Zen wisdom? Only kill when the government tells you to?”
I shook my head. “No, Emily, it’s common sense. Just stop being stupid.”
We sat in silence after that as the light approached steadily through the predawn, growing brighter until after about fifteen minutes, we could eventually see it was two banks of spotlights mounted on two boats. One was a forty-seven foot Coast Guard MLB, the other was a tug which I figured would take the plane back to port.
We were helped aboard the Coast Guard launch, taken below deck and given hot coffee and donuts. The small complement of crew looked at us curiously, tended to the cuts and bruises on my face, but made a point of making no observations and asking us no questions. I figured they’d been briefed to mind their own business by Rand.
Shortly after we’d started our return journey, the skipper came down from the bridge to see how we were. He was a man in his mid forties, with gray hair and intelligent blue eyes. He studied us both a moment, taking in my injuries, and said, “You were lucky we have good weather at the moment. If we’d had a storm, you would have been in trouble.” He paused, then added, “It might have made more sense to land in Corpus Christi.”
I held his eye. “That wasn’t an option. I’m guessing Rand Peabody has spoken to you already.”
He nodded. “Yup. So has the sheriff. They both want to see you when we get in—both of you. But I haven’t been instructed to arrest you.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Is there any reason why you would have been?”
He gave me a smile that said he knew my type and if it were up to him, he’d have us all arrested. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
“Sure.”
He turned and made his way back to the bridge, and after that Emily and I were left alone. We were at a table, sitting on a bench. She was sitting next to me. She dunked the last bit of a donut in her coffee and then stuffed it in her mouth and chewed slowly. She looked exhausted. Before she’d finished chewing, she drained her coffee, swallowed, leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder. Within a few seconds, she was asleep.
I closed my eyes too, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept running over in my mind everything that had happened, and everything that she had told me. It wasn’t just credible, it was all too credible. The problem was, if it was true, the implications were far reaching. I thought of my father, all those years ago, bringing us here for our holidays. It was about that time that things started to go bad between him and my mother. I turned and looked at Emily, her tired head resting on my bruised shoulder, and wondered how much she knew, and how much she was simply a victim of circumstance.
Fifteen
At nine o’clock that morning, we were sitting in an office at Freeport City Hall. Two large windows overlooked a patch of wasteland and the Freeport Marina. In front of those windows, there was a functional, melamine desk, and behind the desk sat the Sheriff of Brazoria County. He didn’t look happy. He had a paper cup of coffee in front of him and he was looking at the contents like they had let him down badly. When he spoke, he seemed to speak to the coffee.
“I kind of had a feeling we’d run into each other again, Mr. Walker.” he said. “You seem to turn up at the damnedest times.”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I said nothing and tried to look innocent. I was sitting across the desk from him in an uncomfortable, low-backed chair made from steel tubing and blue synthetic wool. Emily was beside me and Rand was sitting on a brown vinyl sofa at the far end of the room.
The sheriff tore his attention away from his paper cup and spoke again. “You want to tell me what you was doing down in Mexico, Mr. Walker?”
“I was abducted and taken there.”
He flopped back in his chair and sighed. “You was abducted. Who abducted you, and while you’re telling me, maybe you could explain why. Why,” he said again, before I could answer, “would anybody want to abduct you?”
I chose to answer his second question and said, ambiguously, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know who abducted you?”
“Yes, I was abducted by Gregor Ustinov, the man who runs the Caribbean Island Casino.”
Rand said, “The man has known ties to the Shulaya clan of the Russian Mafia, Sheriff. We have suspected for some time that the casino is being used to launder money, and possibly to move drugs, guns and prostitutes, too.”
“That so? And what would make the Russian Mafia abduct you, Mr. Walker? What would you have that he wants?”
It was a remarkably incisive question which I had no intention of answe
ring. So I ignored it.
“I had appealed to him on behalf of Miss Burgess for him to leave her alone. He had apparently been attempting to force his attentions on her. She had told him she was not interested, as you can imagine. But he became insistent and even threatening.”
The sheriff frowned at Emily. “That so, Miss Burgess?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t y’all come to us, or the police department?”
“I’m afraid that’s my fault, Sheriff. I advised her not to. I happen to know that there’s not a lot the police can do, aside from talk to them. After all, it is not against the law to court a woman. On the other hand, I happen to have some experience with the Russian Mafia, and I know they are contemptuous of the police, they do not take ‘no’ for an answer, and they can be very dangerous if crossed. I advised Miss Burgess, whose father is an old friend of my family’s, to let me deal with it.”
He leaned on the desk with his elbows and frowned at me.
“Is that a fact? You have some experience with the Russian Mafia, do you? We might come back to that, but first of all, how about you tell me just exactly how you planned on dealing with it, Mr. Walker?”
“Sure. I went and had a conversation with him, in which I advised him to leave Miss Burgess alone. I have to admit that the outcome was not what I had expected.”
Rand spoke again. “On the face of it, Sheriff, it would seem that Gregor Ustinov was so enraged by Captain Walker’s courageous intervention that he killed her friend, Jerry, perhaps mistaking him for her lover, abducted her and took her to Mexico. He then abducted Mr. Walker, for the purpose of brutalizing him and torturing him, as we can plainly see from his face and hands.”
I nodded. “I was drugged, Sheriff, taken on board his yacht, handcuffed to a steel pipe and beaten. During the ordeal, he told me that it was indeed him and his men who tortured and killed Jerry, for the purpose of luring Miss Burgess into a trap.”
The sheriff sat quietly for a while and then shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “There’s something missing here. “If you’ll forgive the expression, ma’am, nobody sets up a whole rodeo just to ride one cow. You might be awful pretty, Miss Burgess, but he don’t need to kidnap y’all and take you down to Mexico to seduce you, and to beat seven bells out of… Captain Walker.” He turned to Rand. “And if what you’re telling me is right, Mr. Peabody, and he’s using the casino to run drugs, guns and women, then that just confirms what I am saying. He don’t need to go to Mexico to do what he’s doing. So, why the sailing trip?”
I smiled at him. “That’s a very good question, but I am afraid you’ll have to ask Mr. Ustinov, because I don’t know the answer.”
He raised an eyebrow over an ice-cold eye and then shifted it to Emily. “How about you, Miss Burgess? Why’d he take you all the way to Mexico?”
“I have no idea, Sheriff. You will have to ask him.”
Before he could answer I said, “We are very tired, Sheriff. We will be happy to make full and detailed statements, but if you want to interrogate us, that will have to wait until we have rested. We have been through quite an ordeal.”
He sighed. Rand said, “In any case, I think you’ll find that Central Intelligence will be very keen to supply you with all the evidence you need to bring in the Bureau, arrest Ustinov and close the casino. It will be quite a feather in your cap, Sheriff.”
He gave Rand the same look he’d given his coffee a little earlier and took our statements without any further questions. We signed the statements and Rand accompanied us downstairs, through the lobby and into the parking lot, where his red Jaguar was gleaming in the morning sun.
We climbed into the car in silence and slammed the doors. He pulled out of the lot and we headed across the bridge toward Baldwin Road. He didn’t say anything until we’d turned onto the 332 and were headed for the coast road. Then he said, “We’re going to have to talk.”
I said, “I agree, but not now, Rand.”
“I’m not talking to you, Lacklan…”
I turned to face him as we approached the Bluewater Highway. “But I am talking to you, Rand. You want to talk to Emily, you talk to me.”
He raised an eyebrow and echoed the sheriff. “Is that so?”
He turned left onto the highway and the big Jaguar engine growled as we accelerated toward my house. After a moment, he glanced at me. “What’s going on? You still the auctioneer?”
“What’s going on is that I have been beaten to a pulp, I have killed fourteen men, escaped from a yacht, been chased across a Mexican beach and then escaped again in a seaplane. I need drink and food and sleep.”
“You’re a real James Bond. My heart bleeds for you. But you know that’s not what I’m asking.”
“I have the NPP, Rand. You want it, you talk to me, not Emily. And before you ask, no, she has no idea where it is.”
“So you’re the man to talk to.”
“Not for the next six hours, no. I’ll tell you what you can do in the meantime, though. Put eyes and ears on the casino. Gregor was stranded at Matamoros with no plane and no boat. He’ll have to come back somehow, and I need to know when he does.”
“What happened to his boat?”
“Long story, I sent it off toward Florida.”
He laughed. “You’re such a son of a bitch.”
He slowed as we approached my beach house. I went on, “Put a BOLO out to watch for his return. Don’t let them take him. I want this son of a bitch, Rand. I want him and I want his operation. And something else, put somebody on my house for the next six hours so I can sleep. Somebody good.”
“You’re giving a lot of orders there, boss.”
“Yeah. I have the NPP. That makes me the man.”
He nodded slowly. “You the man.”
He pulled off the road and I saw the Zombie parked under the house among the stilts. Rand said, “I had it towed back for you. Don’t worry, I didn’t take anything. You still have your full arsenal in the trunk. So are we doing a deal or what?”
I scratched my head. “Not for another six hours, Rand. Then, probably. Thanks for bringing my car back.”
I climbed out and Emily got out with me. Rand turned the car around and leaned out of the window. “I’ll be in touch, in six hours. Four thirty P.M.”
I gave him a thumbs up and we moved toward the front of the house. We dragged ourselves up the wooden steps and I pushed open the sliding doors. The place was pristine. All the furniture was brand new. I led her through the living room to the bedrooms at the back and opened the door to the guest room. She stood in front of me with sagging shoulders and stared at my sternum. Then she put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest. After a moment, I realized she was crying quietly.
I took her shoulders in my hands and gently pushed her back so I could look into her face. “Get some rest, things will look better after you’ve slept a few hours.”
“It’s not that.”
I sighed. I desperately needed sleep. I didn’t need an existential conversation.
“What is it?”
“You act like such a badass, ruthless killing machine, but underneath you’re a good person. You’re dead on your feet and you’re still looking out for me, despite everything I’ve done.”
“What can I tell you? It must be your big, blue eyes.”
She smiled. “They’re brown.”
“See? I really am a son of a bitch.”
“Lacklan, I am not coming on to you.”
I laughed. “In this state?”
“I’m serious. Please, let me sleep with you. And I do mean sleep. I am scared. Just to feel that you’re there… I don’t want to be alone. Please…”
I snorted. “It’s usually me making that speech. I must be getting old. Come on. And you’d better not snore or I’ll strangle you in your sleep.”
I followed her into the bedroom, we pulled off our boots and fell back on the bed. She put her head on my shoulder and
I was too tired to care. I closed my eyes and within a few seconds, I was deeply asleep.
Sixteen
I opened my eyes at two P.M. and could not go back to sleep. Emily had rolled over and had her back to me. She was snoring softly. I got up and made my way to the bathroom, stripping off as I went.
I stood under the shower for ten minutes, turning it from hot to cold and back again, shocking my body into full wakefulness. Then, I spent another ten minutes soaping and shampooing myself, trying to wash away all the pain and the blood. Finally, I toweled myself dry and went back to the bedroom. Emily was still asleep. I dressed, threw my old clothes in the dirty linen basket and went down to my car. I checked the trunk. Everything was there. I put my spare Sig in my waistband and then checked under the chassis and the hood to see if there was a bomb. There wasn’t. I figured in any case that right then, most people wanted me alive for a change, but it pays to be careful.
I climbed behind the wheel and drove back to Lake Jackson. Lake Jackson is in the shape of a big letter ‘C’. Emily’s house was pretty much at the top of that ‘C’, the Colonel’s was right down on the bottom tip, on Lake Road. It was a sprawling mansion set among broad, well tended lawns dotted with palm trees and silver birches. The driveway was long and paved, and opened around a fountain in front of a flight of four broad steps up to an arched, oak door.
I rang the bell and glanced at my watch. It was three P.M. I remembered Rand saying he would return at four. I knew he would, and felt vaguely uneasy about him being alone with Emily.
The door was opened by a young, Mexican girl in a blue uniform with a white apron. She smiled a nice smile, though her eyes said she wasn’t crazy about my bruised, swollen face.
“I’m here to see the Colonel. Tell him it’s Lacklan Walker.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, he is waiting for you to call…”
But as she said it, a door opened across the spacious hall and Harry stepped out. “Lacklan! Is that you?”
