“This is bad…so, so bad,” Gage murmured to himself, clamping the bridge of his nose. “Look, man, my supplier fell through. Disappeared one day like a ghost. And when I explained it to the brown-haired girl last night, she told me she was certain Yuri could replace my guy.”
Dmitry released Gage, assuming a look of innocence. “We don’t sell drugs here.”
“Hey, man, I understand.” Gage looked up and down the sidewalk in desperation, as if he might find a cocaine supplier nearby. “It’s just that this is going to be the first big weekend of the season…I guess I’ll just tell my, you know, merchants…that they’re going to have to go elsewhere.”
The Russian’s ring-adorned hand clamped down again. “You wholesale to dealers?”
“I really don’t want to broadcast that.”
The Russian’s poker face evaporated as big money entered the picture. “Exactly how much product you look to buy?”
“You’re not a cop, are you?” Gage asked. Dmitry’s instantly contemptuous expression provided the answer. Gage glanced around again. “A ‘key’ would do me. But two would be even better. I can go as high as three…” Gage added a toadying smile, “if I get a quantity discount.”
The Russian licked his lips as he processed this. “That is lot of money.”
“You’re telling me, pal. One kilo is going to run me twenty-three, maybe twenty-four.” Gage was guessing at this amount based on a job he’d worked a few months back. Thankfully, the Russian didn’t flinch. “And just imagine what I’m giving up on my end if they have to go elsewhere. Cut up and stepped on, I’m clearing quadruple my cost in Tossa and sometimes seven, eight times cost here in Lloret, especially when it’s high season.”
That got his wheels turning. This thug’s thinking about rolling me for my cash. Okay, Dmitry, just take the bait.
“Come. You go inside club,” Dmitry said, his voice softening somewhat.
“You know what?” Gage said, faking nervousness. “Let’s just both walk away. I’ve got a bad vibe about this whole deal. I probably should drive down to Barcelona.”
“No, no, no, my friend. Come inside. I get you good drink and I call my boss. We help each other, okay? Good friends.”
“Are you sure?” Gage asked, still resisting.
“We help,” the Russian insisted, flashing his humorless gold smile. “And we become good friends for long time. This good thing for all of us, yes?”
As Gage reached the threshold, he stopped. “Just so you know, I don’t have the money with me.”
The Russian peered back with a cloudy face. “Why you say?”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve had a few bad experiences with…you know, with Russians. You might have some of your friends downstairs ready to beat me up.”
The Russian laughed. “You watch too many German movies, zalupa. Come…it’s just me and worker girls.” He motioned in front of his chest, as if he were hefting melons. “You might see nice boobies, yes?”
“That never hurts,” Gage replied.
He followed Dmitry down a flight of painted red stairs, again noting the cut of the man’s jacket and the twin bulges under his arms. Harsh light blared from above, made worse by the walls’ shiny red paint. At the bottom of the stairs, to the right, were thick double doors with the letters CCCP emblazoned diagonally in bright yellow. The Russian smiled reassuringly at Gage as Gage glanced up at a security camera. He wasn’t concerned about the Russian turning him in to the police, but there was no point in having a video record of what he hoped to accomplish.
Not here. Wait a moment.
After entering a five-digit code on a keypad, the Russian pushed his way inside. Music was the first thing Gage noticed, playing at half the volume it would later, but plenty loud for Gage’s taste—a throbbing modern beat of some sort. The club was very dark and looked like any nightclub does when it’s without the swarms of people it’s designed for. There were columns throughout, each surrounded by dancing platforms and yellow rails, large enough to hold one or two dancers. The left side of the room was elevated. The right side, several feet lower, claimed a long bar with a curving neon countertop running nearly the entire length of the club. The upper half had a small bar halfway back and that’s where Dmitry gestured Gage to sit.
“You want drink?”
“A beer will do.”
Dmitry stepped behind the bar and popped a beer, sliding it in front of Gage and pointing at it. “Baltika…bring on jet here just for club. You not find Baltika anywhere in Spain.”
Gage pretended to sip the beer, tasting just a hint on his lips. “I feel like I’m in Moscow already.”
The Russian roared laughter and came around the bar. “I be back five, ten minutes, yes? I make call about your kilos. Enjoy beer and…” He screamed a name Gage couldn’t understand, afterward motioning with his hand. Gage turned to see light briefly spill in from the far side of the room as a lithe figure glided into the darkness. A woman. The Russian met her halfway across the club, harshly speaking to her as he went out the way she’d come in.
After he passed through the door, Gage watched as Dmitry stared back through the glass.
The stare was malevolent.
Gage turned his eyes to the woman. She stood still for a moment, then allowed a zip-up jacket to slide off her torso and fall to the floor, making her way to Gage in only a bikini and heels. Under the red lights of the bar, Gage quickly decided that stunning wasn’t a powerful enough word to describe her.
She moved beside him, standing close but keeping her eyes averted. Gage couldn’t help but notice her scent—it was one of summer, the way a freshly-tanned woman smells after a shower. Her eyes were still turned away, her beautiful face drawn.
She doesn’t want to be here.
Gage studied her, drinking in the woman’s full triangular face with wide cheekbones. Her eyes were large and were either blue or green—it was too dark to tell. Guessing she was in her early twenties, Gage instantly marked her as sad—probably exploited by her Russian club-owning masters. She began to speak to him but he couldn’t understand.
“I can’t understand you. Do you speak English or German?” he yelled over the music.
She focused on him. “English is okay.”
“Whatever you were speaking didn’t sound like Russian.”
“Polish. I’m Justina.” She said it with a silent “J”, sounding like “Yoos-tina.”
“Pleased to meet you, Justina,” he replied, glancing to the door she’d entered from. “You thought I was Polish?”
“I wasn’t really thinking,” she replied.
“Are you here alone, Justina?”
“What’s your name?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“My name is Gregor,” he answered, using the German version of the false name he typically used. “So is it just you and him here?”
“No. The other girls are back there working,” she curled her lip, “and him.”
“You’re a waitress?”
“And bartender. And janitor.”
“Why are you here so early?”
Justina laughed, though it was more of a snort. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“You do not live in Lloret.” It wasn’t a question.
“Just during the season.”
“All the Russian clubs are like this one. The girls, we get here in the early afternoon. We do everything to run the club, yes? We clean. We stock bar. We prepare food. We take out the trash. We scrub the bathrooms. Then we must cross the street and lay in the tanning bed to stay tan. After that, we use shampoo and shower under the hose out back and make pretty in the mirrors and work until four in the morning. We have to remove our tops and show our tits after midnight so we can get grabbed by disgusting men. Then we go to the tiny house with all the bugs and mice, sleep six hours and repeat everything. We do this seven days a week.”
“Your English is good.”
“Language is not hard for me. Being he
re is, though.”
Gage turned on the stool, screwing up his face. “Why don’t you just leave?”
“Where do I go?” she asked, taking a step back. “I have no money. No education. They know all this when they come to Poland and hire us.”
“Don’t they pay you?”
“At the end of summer. While here they feed us bad food and clothe us in skimpy things. If we get very, very sick we might go to doctor. That is all.”
Gage listened to her explanation without outward emotion—he couldn’t afford it at the moment. “Hang in there,” was all he said as he turned back to the bar, trying to put what she’d said out of his mind.
“You’re not German,” Justina said, moving around so he could see her. After her pronouncement, her full lips tilted upward.
“Excuse me?” he replied in perfect German.
“No. You’re not German,” she said with conviction. “I know this. Like I said, I am good at language.”
Gage had studied several languages at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, a government institution that claimed to be the finest training facility in the world. And even during his time living in Germany, no one had exposed him the way this Polish woman had just done.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Just doing some business with Dmitry.”
“No.”
“No?”
A corner of her mouth turned up. “You’re up to something.”
“It’s just as I said.”
She leaned closer. “Can you help me?”
“Excuse me?”
“I cannot stay here.”
“Then leave.”
“I can’t just leave.”
“Not sure what I can do to help.”
Her hand gently touched his shoulder. “I can tell you’re different than the men who come in here.”
Gage turned to her. Her eyes glistened as she stared at him.
“I’m just a man.”
“I need a man—a good one.”
“Do you ask all men things like this?”
She appeared hurt. “No, I do not.” Nibbled her bottom lip. “The last few days have been bad and…and I’ve got to leave.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. The changes are here,” she said, tapping her temple. “The things I was able to put up with in the past years I cannot deal with anymore. Make sense?”
Gage nodded.
Before he could answer, light spilled into the room again as Dmitry the Russian reentered the main portion of the club. Gage watched him, seeing the Russian reflexively touch his pistols.
Gage turned back to Justina. “Do me a favor, okay?”
“Yes?”
“Go behind this bar and get me another beer.”
“You haven’t touched that one.”
“Please,” Gage said, placing his beer on the shelf beyond the bar.
Justina shrugged, moving away from Gage, making him briefly gloomy at the absence of her close presence. But, as pleasant as the five-minute interlude had been, it was time to finish this diversion and move on to the big meeting at Tossa de Mar.
Just as Justina ducked under the moveable bar hinge, the Russian stepped to the spot where she had just stood, again gripping Gage’s shoulder in his irritating manner.
It was like replacing a bouquet of beautiful and fragrant flowers with a smelly turd.
“I have good news,” Dmitry said majestically. “For twenty-six thousand euro per kilo, cash in your hand, we can—”
Gage’s left hand struck like an angered cobra.
Using his entire body, he swiveled, his left hand whipping around like a bolo. But, instead of a fist, he held his palm flat with his thumb outstretched. The effect was similar to a karate chop, and it struck the Russian squarely in the throat, on his larynx. Predictably, shut down by his body’s limbic system, Dmitry crumbled in a choking heap.
Gage pounced on him, straddling his torso as his hands shot inside the Russian’s splayed suit jacket, spiriting away the matching pistols. As Dmitry lay choking, Gage gave the handguns a quick appraisal, realizing he hadn’t been too far off in his original estimation. Star pistols, model SS in .380 ACP. .380 was not Gage’s favorite caliber, not by a long shot, but it would do for now. Both pistols were finished in handsome Starvel nickel and outfitted with excellent grips. He jabbed one into his waistband while raking the slide on the other, ignoring the round that arced to the floor. Gage was far more concerned with the round that replaced it.
As the stunned Russian recovered his air, Gage aimed the freshly cocked pistol at him. “Do not move, zalupa—I will shoot you.”
The Russian had been trying to get up but instead he lay back, gagging and coughing loudly.
Gage stood and backed away to the door. He kept the pistol trained on the Russian, subconsciously adjusting his hands on the pistol, familiarizing himself with its weight and feel. When he reached the door, the Russian rose to his elbows, screaming a torrent of curses and gesturing with his balled fist.
Gage opened the door with his rear end and the last thing he saw in club Eastern Bloc was Justina the Pole, eyeing him in shock. But, just as she had earlier when outing him as a non-German, the corners of her mouth turned upward.
She gave Gage a small wave.
Unable to move for a few seconds, Gage shared the gaze with Justina. Then he turned, ducking his head for the camera’s sake, and ran up the stairs, exiting into the gloaming of the Spanish evening.
Chapter Four
While Gage had been to Lloret as a post-teen in the Army, he’d never been to neighboring Tossa de Mar. Now, seeing it from the water, with the lights twinkling against the backdrop of the reddish hills, the town overlooking a crescent beach, Gage made a mental note to come back someday. While the sun had fully set behind the hills, there was probably another hour of twilight left. Gage’s two favorite hours of the day were morning and evening twilight, especially in the summer months, when the dusky conditions lingered on and on. He could see why movie directors called it the “magic hour,” because of the richness and layers of depth the low light provided. And Tossa de Mar looked especially handsome during such a flattering hour, especially when viewed from the water. White buildings were the norm, interspersed with cheerily-colored buildings and the occasional rock outcropping. Above the small boat, towering over the water on its rocky promontory, was a Spanish castle, lit by strung lights, a beautiful painting.
As they trolled in a few feet of water, well inside the foot-high waves, Gage motioned to the small boat’s pilot to beach the craft here. After one final thrust from the motor, it went silent before the sand could be heard gently scrubbing underneath the bow. Gage hopped off, not caring that his boots and pants legs were soaked. He paid the man his required seventy euro, adding in a generous tip, before turning the 22-footer back to sea and giving it a shove. As the motor burbled to life, the pilot turned, giving Gage a two-finger salute before he chopped through the small waves, headed back to his slip just north of Lloret.
With two Star SS pistols weighing down his already wet pants, Gage cinched his belt tighter and skirted the narrow sand of the promontory. A check of his Timex showed he was expected in ten more minutes. Without caution, because he was certain Navarro’s man—or men, if I’m correct—wouldn’t be expecting him to arrive by sea, he walked straight into Tossa de Mar, heading up a steep pedestrian street to the southwest of the restaurant.
Like most towns on the Costa Brava, Tossa was built directly onto the side of the rocky Catalonian hill. Having scrutinized and memorized the map on Google Earth, Gage was confident in his approach to the restaurant. The street he climbed was lined with shops and cafés, but too narrow for any large restaurants with outdoor seating. This was good. He was searching for a landmark, a fountain outside of a church and, after five hundred meters, found it. At that point he was to make his way into a narrow alley to his right. If Navarro had broken his promise and b
rought more than one man, and if his people had any sense at all, this was where the hidden men would be stationed.
Gage was no longer moving normally. His steps were each lifted and slowly lowered to the earth in front of him. A scraping sound was not desired at the moment. Before he turned the corner, he removed one of the Russian’s Star SS pistols, gripping it in his right hand as he glanced at his Timex. It was now time for the meeting.
Ahead of Gage, at the end of the narrow alleyway, was a rusty railing that had once been painted black. Running with the railing, just as Gage had memorized, was a narrow alleyway that ran parallel to the street he’d just ascended.
Pistol extended, Gage made his way up the alleyway until, around a slight bend, he saw what he suspected. Standing behind a narrow copse of saplings was a man. He was wearing black slacks and a shimmering short-sleeved button down. His skin was light brown and, other than the large caliber pistol in his right hand by his leg, he might have passed as a worker in the alleyway having a smoke.
But Gage knew by his own pace count that where the man with the gun was standing was above the side street that housed the Italian restaurant Il Dipinto—his meeting place. The man’s back was partially turned to Gage and, after a few more steps, Gage could hear the man murmuring. A few more steps and an angling to Gage’s left showed a small hands-free device on the man’s ear—a Bluetooth. He was obviously talking to someone posted elsewhere.
This was going to be delicate.
Deciding not to overthink it—because he was only ten feet away—Gage prowled forward. In a swift movement, he moved within a foot and pressed the Star into the small of the man’s back as he controlled the man’s right hand with his own right hand.
“Do not move,” Gage said loudly enough to be heard on the Bluetooth device. “And whoever is on the other end of the line, don’t you move either. I’m Señor Navarro’s dinner companion. We agreed that he would post only one guard.” The man in front of him stiffened but said nothing. Gage slid his hand downward. “Let’s all be peaceful. Hand that over and I will lower my weapon.” As he tugged on the large handgun, Gage could hear something being said through the Bluetooth device and, just afterward, the man released the gun.
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