Avenger

by Chris Allen

  “Just some possible new partners who each have a strong supply chain of laborers, one in the Philippines, one in Vietnam, and another one in Guatemala. But I have to check their figures some more. I can take you through that later.”

  “OK. So, how is Ştefania?”

  “Who cares?” he said.

  “Just tell me.”

  “What can I say? She freaked when the shooting started but we got her out quickly. She didn’t see anything.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time we’d lost one” She paused, thinking. “What was her name – the one who got stabbed when the deal went wrong in Cambodia?”

  “Abelina,” he answered immediately. “The Swede. Now she was a great fuck. She loved it.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. She was sweet. Shame. At least she didn’t die in front of anyone.”

  “That would have been hard to explain,” said Dariusz. “As far as anyone knows, you made a miraculous recovery.”

  “What if it was her – Ştefania? Informing on me to the police. Have you thought of that?”

  He remained silent for a while, contemplating this. “I hate that little bitch,” he said. “I should have had one of the boys slit her throat before we got on the plane to leave Hong Kong. I was close, believe me. She talks too much … in the airport, on the plane; ordering the boys around like she’s actually in charge. She’s dangerous.”

  “She’s reckless, but we can deal with that. All it means is that we retire her earlier than usual. Is there any chance she could have been alone somewhere long enough to contact the police? Borrowed a cell phone from a stranger? Left a note somewhere, or even an email?”

  “There’s no way,” he replied emphatically. “I’ve never trusted her. One of us is with her at all times. She’s never alone. I won’t even let her take a piss on her own.”

  “OK. Where is she now? Did you get her back in one piece?”

  “Yes,” Dariusz replied. “She’s here, in her room. I haven’t allowed her access out here yet. Not until I saw you.”

  “Good. Does she suspect anything?”

  “Nothing. The bitch was excited about coming back because she believes you’re actually going to release her.” He laughed. “She’s even fallen for all that shit you tell them about getting a big payout and starting their lives over.”

  “The system works. Anyway, now we have a replacement,” she replied. “Jovana will be ready soon, but not soon enough. I’ll have to make the trip to meet with the investors myself. So, in the meantime, we stick to the plan. Give Ştefania her reward week. Then arrange for her to meet Marcos, and he’ll take care of everything from there. But she must not meet the new girl.”

  “Don’t worry. Ştefania’s in a room at the opposite end of the house, nowhere near Jovana. Besides, Jovana’s just getting started with all the treatments and shit you give them. They won’t run into each other.”

  “They’d better not. Jovana is special. I don’t want anything unexpected messing her up before I need her.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The Rembrandt Hotel

  11 Thurloe Place, London

  “‘I need you?’”

  Elizabeth Reigns was standing in the hall outside room 333, Morgan’s room, brandishing her cell phone, Morgan’s text message still on the screen. He was leaning against the open door, looking sheepish and deflated.

  “You speak to me like I’m trash, wait until I’m almost home and then text me ‘I need you.’ What the fuck, Morgan? Have you been drinking?”

  “No, of course I haven’t. I left the bar when you stormed out.”

  She glowered at him.

  “OK, that didn’t come out right, either. When you walked out. I left the bar when you walked out, and I came back up here. Are you going to come in?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I came back just to make sure you hadn’t done anything stupid. You look like you’re OK to me.”

  Reigns stood her ground, arms crossed, sizing him up. Morgan could almost hear her foot tapping. It wasn’t but it might as well have been.

  “OK, listen, you were right.”

  “About what?”

  “About me being a complete asshole. I’m sorry I spoke to you like that. It was fucked up and wrong and I’m sorry. I’m just not thinking straight.”

  Now she was looking into his eyes. The cell phone had disappeared and her arms were uncrossed. She was softening but still not happy.

  “Please come in, Beth,” said Morgan. “I promise I’ll behave.”

  “If I see that look of ‘asshole’ come over you once, Morgan, just once, I’m outta here.”

  Reigns walked in, kicked off her shoes, dropped her bag and phone on the floor and wandered over to the window. Morgan closed the door, followed her back into the room and sat on the end of the bed. She pushed the curtains aside and looked out across Thurloe Place to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  “It’s even more beautiful at night,” she said. “Have you ever been in there?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Some girl drag you through? I can’t imagine you going in on your own.”

  “Something like that,” he said. “I take a bit of encouraging when it comes to museums and opera.”

  “How did I guess?” She smiled and Morgan caught her reflection in the window. He sat studying the silhouette of her lithe body against the blaze of streetlights. Spectacular, he thought. She returned his gaze through the reflection for just a second, pulled the curtains closed again and sat down on the sofa, tucking her feet up underneath her, just as she’d done the night before.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d come back,” he said.

  “I almost didn’t,” she replied. “Seriously, I’m pissed about what you said to me, but I couldn’t just leave you over here, moping.”

  “I’m glad you did. I would have understood if you hadn’t, though.”

  “I meant what I said, Morgan,” she replied. “So, I hope you’re not expecting me to be all ‘Oh, poor baby, I didn’t mean it,’ because I won’t be. I meant it and you needed to hear it.”

  Morgan just nodded, walked across the room and put the kettle on.

  “Jesus! Are you making tea? It’s, like, ten pm. What is it with you and tea?”

  “It helps me think,” he said. “And just making it takes my mind of other stuff. Besides, it’s better than getting pissed.”

  “I’d already decided before I got here that if you opened that door and were drunk, I was going to turn right around and head home.”

  “Fair enough. So, would you like one?”

  “Sure. Chamomile if you have it. Then you can tell me what’s going on.”

  “You’re over near the Festival Hall, aren’t you?” Morgan found the chamomile and as the kettle finally boiled, dropped the bag into a cup and poured steaming water over it.

  “Yeah, the White House Apartments,” she replied. “It’s close to everything, which is great. And you? I think Mila mentioned you had a place in the country somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “In a town called Farnham, in Hampshire. I love it down there. You should visit sometime. Do you want me to leave the bag in or out?”

  “Oh, in. I prefer it in,” she said, and flicked him a look he definitely didn’t expect to see tonight. He smiled in response. “Maybe I will visit sometime, when I’m invited properly.”

  “There you go,” he said, handing over the tea. He returned to collect his and headed back to the end of the bed.

  “No, you’re not sitting over there. Come sit with me. I won’t bite.” She patted the cushion beside her. Morgan obeyed.

  They were close again. Close like they’d been downstairs in the lounge bar but private now, like they’d been in her cabin aboard the Gulfstream.

  They both sipped their tea in silence, watching each other, thinking, assessing, exchanging glances, and then eventually placed their cups on the floor.

  “So, come on then, Alex Morgan. Enough stalling. What
’s going on with you?”

  Morgan took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said downstairs,” he began. “All of it was true; too true. You hit a raw nerve and I reacted badly. I’ve kept myself going these past few months because I knew that the boss needed me. We’re busier than we’ve ever been and he’s had us all in the field. But I decided before I went to Africa that I was going to take a break as soon as I was finished there. I needed it. I could tell I was close to burning out, you know? Then, no sooner had I wrapped up in Malawi than the call came in to meet Dave and stand by to extract you.” Morgan stopped for a while and rubbed his face. He didn’t want to sound like he was whining but he couldn’t stop the words from pouring out. Reigns put her hand on his shoulder. “Where I come from, we never, ever let down a colleague who’s in trouble. That’s a no-brainer. So, I diverted to Hong Kong, thinking, OK once this one is down, I’ll take a break. And then—”

  He stopped again. He could feel his hands beginning to shake and his face becoming taut. He began pressing his thumbs hard into the flesh of his palms, kneading until it hurt. Reigns reached across and took hold of them. To Morgan, his own hands suddenly felt like bricks in the soft cradle of her delicate fingers. Instantly, he relaxed. Somehow, she had a way of making everything seem OK.

  “I know I’m burned out, Beth. It’s fucking obvious. I know it. You know it. Fuck, the boss probably knows it, too. And, if things were different, there’s no way I’d be getting onboard any flight that wasn’t taking me straight to a beach somewhere with nothing but grass huts, hammocks strung between palm trees, and no fucking phone reception, but that all changed today. It changed when that fucker walked into Dave’s hospital room and killed the poor bastard in his bed.” Morgan stopped. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes. “I can’t stop now, Beth. I can’t. I don’t have any choice in this. I owe it to Dave. He’d do the same for me. So I’m going after these fuckers like a shark after blood and when I’m done, and only then, I’ll rest. Not before.”

  Elizabeth Reigns released Morgan’s hands and stood up. She lifted his face to look at her, holding his gaze, her face full of warmth, understanding and hunger. As Morgan sat, transfixed by her raw power, she unbuttoned her blouse and dropped it to the floor. Then she took his hands and brought them up to the zip at the back of her suit pants. Morgan eased the zip down slowly until the pants loosened around her waist and slipped easily from her body into a crumpled mess around her ankles.

  She stepped out of them and led him over to the bed.

  CHAPTER 35

  Belize

  Central America

  Alex Morgan arrived in Belize on a day when the heat haze across the 9700 feet of runway at Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport obliterated everything beyond the cyclone fencing of the perimeter. Meanwhile, in the distance, he could see dark clouds rolling in from the sea to the east and noticed that the palm trees dotted around the airport’s boundary were being whipped by heavy gusts. He had arrived at the tail end of the Caribbean’s hurricane season and hoped that Mother Nature was simply reminding everyone that there was still a bit of puff left in the low-pressure systems sitting off the coast but that would be it.

  Morgan had flown in on Avianca TACA flight 410 from San Salvador, via Guatemala City. He’d planned the stopovers en route to Belize to bolster his cover as a private security consultant specializing in infrastructure vulnerability assessments and personal security, undertaking aftercare meetings with multinational clients operating in Central America. To enhance the cover further he’d met with two former colleagues, one in Guatemala City and the other in San Salvador, both of whom he’d known for years through the airborne and special forces community and both of whom were actually conducting those tasks for major international security firms, Control Risks and NYA International respectively. The stopovers had added a couple of days to his travel arrangements but they were necessary in terms both of ensuring that, if anybody were to check on his movements prior to arriving in Belize, his story would hold up – at least to a cursory examination – and secondly, to re-establish contact with some trusted allies operating in the area whom he could call on if things became “hectic.”

  The extra day also allowed Elizabeth Reigns more time to confirm certain information that Morgan would be relying on in the field, specifically the identity of the Night Witch and her connection to the crew travelling on the Belizean passports. Of course, once he was on the Night Witch’s turf, there was every likelihood that his contact with Intrepid HQ would be necessarily cut off. So, in lieu of formal confirmation, he’d be relying on the old-fashioned, direct enquiry approach to close in on her, beginning with the bar manager at the Paradise Palms Resort.

  Morgan eventually cleared customs, traveling on an Australian passport under the name Daniel Culliford, and made his way through the terminal to the Tropic Air lounge. He was booked on Flight 551, departing at 15.20 and arriving at Placencia at 15.55. He removed the jacket of his lightweight beige suit and dropped it on the seat beside him as he waited for the boarding call. With the suit he wore a fitted, navy blue military-cut shirt and brown leather shoes and belt. It was appropriate for his cover, formal enough to meet clients in the tropics yet casual enough to cope with the humidity. He checked his watch, the trusted old TAG Heuer that he’d worn for years, wondering whether it was worth getting a drink before they took off. It was 14.50. They’d be boarding soon, he thought. Best wait until he reached Placencia.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was settling into his seat aboard a Cessna Grand Caravan 208B. Despite all of the usual pre-flight activity and scurrying around outside by ground crew, he once again fell into a mood of quiet contemplation. A long-haul flight from the UK to the US, followed by a few days of short flights around Central America, along with a couple of nights sharing stories with comrades, had given him a lot of time to think and, most importantly, to finally accept that his friend Dave Sutherland was dead. But even though he had accepted it, Sutherland’s premonition of death had got under Morgan’s skin. How many times had he himself questioned his own likelihood of surviving a particular situation, or even getting through it without serious injury? To date, he’d beaten the odds, but how long could that last? As he looked beyond Sutherland’s shadow on the slow march toward his own fortieth birthday, his bouts of facing those same questions about mortality were becoming more and more frequent, while the answers became less encouraging. Fuck me, what is wrong with you? Morgan thought, annoyed by his own malaise. Snap out of it, for fuck’s sake, or you’ll definitely get yourself killed.

  The captain came aboard and welcomed his half-dozen passengers, apologizing for the slight delay, as they were awaiting the arrival of two more passengers. No sooner had he spoken than Morgan’s attention was drawn to two men strolling nonchalantly across the tarmac. One was young, late twenties, tall, good-looking but surly about it, with dark hair. He was dressed in the latest jeans, a casual shirt and shoes; one of those young guys who spent a lot of time on his appearance and was constantly on the search for his next conquest. The second man was the complete opposite and Morgan was surprised to see the two of them together. He was a monster: about Morgan’s height, fight-smashed face, buzz-cut hair, and built like a tank – thanks to the ’roids and plenty of time in prison, probably. The ape’s heavily muscled body was covered in tattoos and he’d somehow managed to push it all into a tight short-sleeved shirt and cargo shorts.

  “Ah, and here they are now,” said the captain nervously when he spotted them. “Mr Kawowskee?”

  “Ki-kov-skee,” the big man grunted and with little regard for courtesy clambered awkwardly aboard, shoving past the captain and only just managing to maneuver his body down the narrow aisle between the seats.

  “Welcome aboard,” the captain replied. “And you must be Mister Velasco?”

  The cool kid just nodded and followed silently in the wake of his traveling companion. What a pair, thought Morgan.
Not a combination one would expect. They weren’t gay – well, the big guy definitely wasn’t – they didn’t appear to be related, and there wasn’t a principal/bodyguard vibe going on between them, in fact the big guy appeared to be in charge. All of which suggested that they were required to be together for a reason, rather than by choice.

  Ki-kov-skee. Kajkowski? Morgan was sure that he’d seen that name on the list of Belizean passports Reigns had shown them back at HQ. Could this guy be one of the crew – one of the Night Witch’s bodyguards? Morgan caught the man’s eye briefly but deliberately as he squeezed past. On the surface, Morgan gave him no more than a desultory glance but in reality he took a detailed mental snapshot, instantly storing every line, angle, marking, contour and imperfection. He wanted a clear, up-close picture of the face so he’d remember it when the time came. That said, it would be a hard mug to forget in a hurry. Upon a Slavic canvas, the nose was smashed flat against the face, the ears were cauliflowered and the eyes just slits above shattered cheekbones. Morgan also managed to catch a tattoo on the man’s left jowl, three interlocking triangles – a badge favored by white supremacists.

  Ever since leaving England, Morgan had fought a nagging doubt about whether or not they’d made the right call in following the trail to Belize. Now, those doubts had gone. He was sure they were right after all. He could feel it in his gut. With a welcome sense of purpose and resolve, he returned his attention to the airstrip and watched with faux interest as the withdrawing ground crew readied themselves to release their bird into the air. No matter what lay ahead of him in the seaside resort of Placencia, he knew it was about to become an underworld battleground, with two opposing forces facing off for war, Morgan on one side, the Night Witch and her army of Aryan brothers on the other.