King Pirate

by Tom Stern

  Three minutes ago.

  Sanjay leaned into the phone. “A job interview?” Again transitioning back to Malay. “There’s nothing like that on the schedule.”

  “That’s what he says,” the main lobby receptionist answered. Sanjay frowned. This made no sense. Unless…

  “What does he look like?”

  “White guy. Blonde. Good looking. Tough guy, maybe a shipsman or a soldier or something.”

  She was practically purring. Sanjay wondered if the guy was standing right there, and if he understood Malay.

  Sanjay immediately thought of the moron call. A hand flew to his forehead. “Tell him to go away!”

  “No. Send him up.”

  The disembodied voice came from the tiny speakers hidden throughout the IPC offices. Loud and sudden. Like God interjecting. A man. Irish brogue-inflected English, thick enough that ‘Send him up’ became ‘Saynd hem oop.’

  “Tell Han” – ‘Tayell Hehn’ – “to stop whatever he’s doing and see this guy. I’ll pull his ID from the security desk and run ‘im.”

  Whenever the boss spoke, Sanjay’s eyes unconsciously drifted to the ceiling. There was nothing for him to see. It was a reaction to what might as well have been a voice from the sky. The boss could hear and see everything that happened in IPC. The men and women who worked at IPC rarely saw their boss in return. Like the Great and Powerful Oz, he preferred to direct the agency’s efforts against Pan-Asian piracy from behind the scenes.

  Cuchulain was a private man.

  …

  Now.

  Kelley stepped off the elevator. He took one look at the neat, officious East Indian man behind the desk and knew this was the prick on the phone. But Kelley wasn’t here to start trouble. At least, not with this guy.

  “Director Han.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “You know I don’t. That sweet little piece behind the front desk called me up. You know my name, you know the lie I told. But you buzzed me up, anyway. Which means he’ll see me. Quit wasting my time.”

  Sanjay briefly imagined stabbing this rude idiot in the heart. But he smiled in his headset and pushed a button on the phone.

  “Director Han? I have Ryan Kelley here to see you.”

  Listened. Nodded. Met Kelley’s eyes.

  “He’s available to see you right now. Just step through to the door to your left. Can I get you something to drink?”

  Kelley ignored him and went through the door on his left.

  The moment the door latched behind Kelley, Sanjay’s phone rang.

  It was Cuchulain. Calling on the inter-office phone line so Kelley wouldn’t hear the speakers. “It would be difficult to find another office manager fluent in six languages. But not impossible. Quit wasting IPC’s time and giving our visitors shit. Understand?” Click.

  Sanjay kept his face impassive. Stared straight ahead. Knowing he was watched. Inside he boiled. Getting a hard time from two white guys in the space of a minute could turn a rational man into a racist.

  …

  Kelley found himself in a tiny foyer. Three doors. He tried the knobs. All three were locked. He thought the East Indian guy was fucking with him. Kelley turned to go back in the office and dump him out of his chair when the center door opened.

  William Han. Director of the Center. A moon-faced Malaysian in a white shirt. He wore a badge. Han was fat. He moved slowly, like he was full of rocks. Short cop hair. Graying at the temples. Flat, black, Malaysian eyes. Seeing everything. Giving away nothing. Except a calm smile.

  “Mister Kelley?”

  They shook hands. Kelley followed Han.

  They went into IPC’s chic-but-functional conference room. Three walls of glass looked out upon the IPC office. The fourth wall was opaque. Dominated by a map of the world. Red pins marked spots in the Caribbean and off the cost of Africa. Many more stabbed the area around Kuala Lumpur, concentrated on the Straits of Malacca.

  Kelley knew unseen people were running his whole life history right now. Han didn’t start with the usual who-are-you preamble. Han got right to it.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Kelley walked over to the map, looking it over. “I’m looking for a pirate.”

  Han said, “We don’t keep pirates here, Mister Kelley.”

  Kelley cocked his head.

  “You’d do better looking for pirates where they operate,” Han said. He fluttered a hand at the wall map. “Those are all recent piratical activities.”

  There were a lot of pins.

  Han joined Kelley next to the map. His cold eyes flicked across the pins. He plucked one pin out. Held it in front of Kelley’s face.

  “This one. Pirates killed everyone on a tugboat pulling a big barge of copper ingots worth ten million dollars. We had an informer inside the dockworkers, so we took the pirates down when they landed. Only their leader escaped.”

  “King Pirate?”

  Something flickered across Han’s face. “No. One of his top three lieutenants. Fong Sai-Yuk. We’ve been after him for years. He’s too smart. Even with our inside men giving us info, he’s always three steps ahead. Fong’s like a ghost.”

  Without turning, Kelley asked, “Do you have any pictures? Anything distinctive about him?”

  Han nodded. “Fong likes bling. Necklaces. Earrings. Bracelets.”

  “Rings?”

  “He likes rings best of all. He buys new bling after every raid. The only piece he keeps no matter what is a ring. Gold. Three dragons, each biting the other’s tail. Their eyes are jade. We’ve heard it’s an heirloom. His mother gave it to him.” Han finally got to the inevitable question. “Is he the pirate you’re looking for?”

  Kelley answered with a wry half-smile. Mirthless. It made him look like a sniper squinting into a scope.

  “You’re wrong about Fong Sai-Yuk. That ring. It was from his stepmother. On his eighteenth birthday. A week later, he hit the seas on a raid. A rival pirate gang came looking for him. They found her instead. Fong was gone for three days. The gang stayed in the house with his stepmom. Having their fun. They finally got bored of waiting and split. Fong eventually came back and found what was left of her.” Kelley nailed Han with his eyes. Letting the mental image sink in.

  “Each one of those guys, Fong tracked down. Cut off their dicks and shoved them down their throats. Every member of that gang died choking on their bloody cocks. Fong proved he was no one to fuck with. But he still had a soft spot in his heart for poor old stepmom. That’s why he kept the ring.” He paused.

  “This ring.”

  Kelley reached into his pocket. He took out Fong’s gold dragon ring. He flicked it like a quarter. It landed on the conference room table. Its tinging and rattling filled the room. The ring at last rolled to a stop.

  Han considered Kelley for a long time in silence. He finally picked it up. Gave it a close look. Han had spent a lot of time staring at grainy, black-and-white surveillance photos, zoomed in on the ring Fong wore. Photos in their database. A detailed description from witnesses given to their agents. And here it was, between thumb and forefinger.

  Cuchulain’s disembodied voice boomed from the speakers. Breaking the silence. “Yer hired.”

  Kelley did a double-take. “What the hell is that?!”

  “I’m Cuchulain. I run the IPC. I’m the top guy here.”

  Kelley’s eyes roamed everywhere and nowhere. Searching for whatever camera this guy was using to watch him. He motioned to Han. “Then who’s this cat?”

  “My right-hand man in the office.”

  Han was used to speaking with Cuchulain through the speaker. Instead of searching the ceiling like Sanjay and others did, he picked a spot on the wall and addressed it as if Cuchulain were standing there. He held up the ring.

  “This could be a fake.”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Where do you think, a pawn shop? I pulled it off of Fong’s hand. H
e didn’t need it anymore.”

  “Why did you bring it to us?”

  “I’m looking for King Pirate.”

  Cuchulain and Han chuckled. It was an odd effect; one live in the room, the other coming over a speaker.

  Kelley frowned. “I ain’t kidding.”

  “Didn’t think you were, Mister Kelley. You say ‘King Pirate’ as though he could be found in a bar. Like it’s that easy. We’ve been hunting him for years. The man has never been caught on film.”

  “I found Fong Sai-Yuk. Took me three weeks, but I found him. And he was in a bar when I caught up. The same Fong you guys have been tracking for years. The guy Han here called ‘a ghost.’” Kelley grimaced. “He is now. So you are the last two guys in KL who should be laughing like I’m some chump. This office. These ‘inside men.’ Your cute little conference room. Fuck you.”

  Kelley could tell that, behind the placid Malaysian exterior, Han was ready to go ape shit. He liked it that way. Angry men didn’t think. They reacted. To what Kelley did or said. That made him in control.

  Cuchulain was a different story. He was completely removed from the situation. This office was his realm. Kelley realized this Cuchulain knew what he was doing. But the absolute control only extended to the boundaries of the office. Kelley looked around. Just as Han had said, no pirates in here. Just pictures of pirates, and a bunch of peckers like Sanjay and Han staring at them. For all the good it did. The pirates were out on the water. So who gave a shit? Kelley wondered if even the pirates did. He was already losing patience with these limp-dicks.

  But they might know something about King Pirate. Kelley had come up dry. Now he was here.

  Han took a deep breath. Re-asked his first question, this time measuring his tone. “What can we do for you, Mister Kelley?”

  “I asked around. I checked out your website and did some research. You guys have a database. I can hunt, but I’m just one guy. I’ve only been looking for King Pirate for a month. I’m sure you guys have some pile of information in these hard drives. I figure, if I could check it out, it’d give me a lead. One lead’ll turn into another. And I’ll find King Pirate.

  “To be perfectly, one-hundred percent clear: I want access to your pirate info database. That’s all I want.

  “I understand this is all super-secret, and I’m not in here pushing pencils and listening to some fat guy yell into a speaker at people – “

  “Fat guy?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  Cuchulain didn’t answer.

  “You’re in an air conditioned office all day watching Han answer a phone. I’m out there looking. On the water. In the heat. I’m out there looking. I don’t need inside men. I am an inside man. With some leads, I’ll find King Pirate. And I’ll kill him. It’s a win-win situation if you gimme a lead. Gimme access to your database. What do you say?”

  “Why do you want him dead, Mister Kelley?”

  “He sent me something in an envelope, and I want to return it,” Kelley said. He left it at that. Kelley didn’t feel now was the time to let them know Brody’s ear was in a cooler full of dry ice in his rented storage unit. It might give them the wrong impression of the kind of man he was.

  Han said, “I’ll have you know, we work in this office between raids. Our security is tight because we hit the pirates head-on, where it hurts the most. We take out crews where we find them. The lucky ones don’t make it to prison.”

  Kelley gave him an up-and-down. I’m sure you’re out front with a machine-gun in each hand, pal.

  After pondering in silence, Cuchulain made himself known. “By international mandate, only members of this agency are cleared to fully search our database. You want leads, you’d have to join us.”

  Kelley cast a disdainful gaze at the cold office around him. “I don’t do office work.”

  “Didn’t say you would,” Cuchulain continued. “What I’d like to know is, how’d you find Fong Sai-Yuk? And can you find the other two lieutenants?”

  “Probably. Especially if I’m not doing everything by myself.”

  “You won’t be,” Cuchulain said, the words coming out ‘Yeh wun.’ “And you’re right. We have a lot of information compiled. But we don’t always know what we’re looking at, or what we should be looking for. If you join, you’ll earn the clearance we both need to get you involved. And with you involved, we’ll find King Pirate’s two lieutenants. They’re likely the only way to get to the King, at last.”

  It seemed like the way to go. But the last thing in the world Kelley wanted to do was join a government organization, wear a badge and take orders from a speaker voice. Hell. He tracked down Fong. The other two would be more alert by now. Would make things harder, but not impossible. Nothing is impossible in this world, if you set your mind to it and sacrifice everything to see it done.

  Kelley shook his head, musing. Simply said, “Bullshit,” and headed for the door. Out of here. Into the open air. He threw open the door.

  And almost ran straight into the perfection of the female form.

  Everyone’s born with a sexual type, something in someone that flips their ultimate switch. It could be a nationality, an attitude, a style. Kelley had several types. The biggest one, nestled at the base of his psyche, was a deep longing for haughty Russian women.

  When he was a kid, Kelley watched a movie called Weird Science. In it, these two high school geeks invented a woman-making machine. You type in everything you want in a woman and, poof, out she comes. If Kelley ever got a crack at that machine, the woman who popped out would be no different from the one now standing in front of him.

  One arched eyebrow cocked in vague curiosity. Soft brown eyes floating in white skin. It was beyond Kelley’s ability to take his eyes off her pooched lips. Russian women did this thing where they press their lips together just a tiny bit whenever they notice a man watching them. If they have thin lips, it creates something like a miniature duck bill. But if those lips were full, Lord help weak men. In her heels, she was almost exactly as tall as Kelley. Every kiss would be a bed kiss. She moved smoothly into the room. Grace and power in her body. Kelley was a fighter. He could tell at a glance if someone had training. Three steps in, Kelley knew she was a dangerous woman to cross. In her eyes. In her movements. In the scent of expensive perfume, mild enough to merely entice. She wore an outfit that cost enough to buy a Malaysian house and the family in it. All tailored, form-fitting silks. Expertly put together. Kelley forgot about the receptionist downstairs. That girl was like a potted flower, pretty but forgettably common. This Russian goddess was a collector’s orchid. She was more woman than any man anywhere would know what to do with.

  Except him.

  With the same total, immediate devotion with which he had sent himself on a deadly road to avenge himself against King Pirate, Kelley decided he would rather die than suffer a life that didn’t include having this woman.

  He would pursue her. Win her. Take her.

  And he didn’t even know her goddamn name yet.

  She blew straight past him. Dropped a thin stack of files on the conference table.

  Han said, “Ryan Kelley, this is Anastasia Petrovskya. She works in Investigation.”

  Kelley casually shook her hand. Met her eyes. She saw the desire gleaming in his. Kelley was trying to play it cool. She was too smart. She taunted him with an icy smile. It sharpened her high cheek bones. In most women, it would have given her a witchy look. For Anastasia, it only made Kelley wonder why a woman who could dominate any modeling agency in the world was chasing pirates. He’d find out.

  “You seem bewildered, Mister Kelley. What did Cuchulain do to you?”

  Cuchulain laughed to himself, a low rumble echoing through the hidden speakers. “I offered him a job.”

  Anastasia idly flipped open one of the folders. Leafing through photos. “You’re in luck, Mister Kelley. Getting you to work at IPC is the worst thing Cuchulain can do to anybody. After you leave, you can go about life knowing everything wi
ll be happier and easier from here on out.”

  Her voice lilted with a light St. Petersburg accent. Kelley felt goose bumps rise on the back of his neck. He zeroed on the photos.

  “What are those?”

  Without looking up, Anastasia told him, “They’re surveillance photos of the men we’re almost sure are King Pirate’s two remaining chiefs.”

  How did she know he’d -- ? She saw the question in his eye. “Cuchulain asked me to pull the files while you were busy giving Director Han your atrocious American attitude, Mister Kelley. Though I do commend you for finding and eliminating Fong Sai-Yuk. You probably don’t know how many lives you’ve saved.”

  Thirty seconds into each other’s lives, and they were already communing, unspoken. Kelley hated every moment he’d lived before meeting Anastasia. He’d never let her see it, if he could help it. She’d know, anyway. She heard his thoughts, saw them written in his eyes. She knew everything. He was helpless.

  Which is why it was time to leave. Kelley scooped up one of the files. Headed back for the door.

  “That file’s IPC property!” Han barked. Kelley ignored him.

  “Where are you going?” Anastasia asked.

  “I’m gonna find a bar and huddle over these until I work out how I’ll find these two.”

  Cuchulain backed up Han. “I told you, our information is only for members of the IPC.”

  Kelley looked hard at Han. Anastasia. “You can give me a badge when I come in tomorrow.” He gave them a hard smile they didn’t understand. “Nine o’clock precisely.”

  Han watched the unspoken exchange with eyes downward. Expressionless, but aware of the interplay between Kelley and Anastasia. He frowned at the wall spot he’d chosen for referring to Cuchulain.

  “Don’t I have any say in this?”

  “Of course you do, Director Han. So long as what you say has to do with making Kelley a member of the IPC.”

  Han kept at it. “We’ll need a week to clear him with Interpol.”

  “Are you an international criminal, Mister Kelley?” Anastasia crossed a leg. Bouncing her foot.

  “Not yet.”

  “I suppose I should say welcome aboard, Mister Kelley. Or should I call you Ryan?”