by Tony Bulmer
And then there were her parents.
Yolanda had bought her parents a colonial villa in the smart part of town. She paid them a generous weekly allowance, that never quite seemed enough, and she paid for extras too—cars, holidays, medical expenses, servants salaries. She even bought them a new swimming pool that they never used, but thought they needed, as they felt their neighbors would look down on them unless their villa was the very smartest in the neighborhood.
How ironic it was then, that it should have come to this—the awkward unpopular girl voted least likely to succeed had now become the most famous and sought after celebrity in the whole of India. Too bad success didn’t bring happiness.
But if happiness could not be achieved, there was always refuge and refuge most certainly could be bought, although such luxury came with a hefty price tag, as Mumbai was one of the wealthiest and most populous cities in the whole of India. But for Yolanda, money was no object. She had bought her penthouse apartment at the top of the exclusive World One development in downtown Worli, even before the tower was built. The tower was trumpeted as the most exclusive residential apartment building in the whole of Asia. It consisted of 177 floors of luxury living, everything wealthy citizens would ever need—from a high-end fitness centre, to an exclusive designer shopping mall and state of the art security protection. Security was essential of course. Mumbai was a divided city, just as India was a divided country—extremes of wealth and poverty crammed hard against each other, in an endless struggle for supremacy. Yolanda found it icky to talk about such things, but she knew security was very necessary. Life at World One was far beyond the understanding of millions of poverty stricken Indians. The closest many would get to such luxury was an awed glance at the towering pinnacle of glass and steel as it cut into the sky like a sword of righteousness. They could aspire of course, but they wouldn’t get close.
But, Yolanda reassured herself that it wasn’t all bad. The urban poor had much to be thankful for. World One, the glittering $330million home for the rich and famous stood on the former site of the notorious Bombay cotton mills, where many thousands had toiled over the years, in dangerous and appalling conditions, for nothing more than a few rupees a month. How many damaged children had been mangled in horrible accidents there? How many frail and vulnerable seniors wracked with exhaustion and ill health had been torn away from their looms and cast out into the gutter? Yolanda gave a sad frown. There was still poverty of course, but the modern India was an emergent and upwardly mobile, no longer a colonial flophouse where squalid slave-labor factories kept the people too busy to think or dream.
As the big silver Rolls–Royce Phantom approached the first security gate at World One, Yolanda Madhuri’s driver slowed, so that the duty guards could laser scan his window-mounted credentials. Sitting up back, Yolanda examined her elegantly manicured nails and consoled herself that she was only minutes away from her inner-city sanctuary. How lucky she was. It was very easy, as one sat luxuriating in a foaming bathtub, and staring out across the Arabian Sea, to forget about the workers in the Bombay cotton mills.
Yolanda looked up, and in that moment, her chauffeur slowed to a stop for the security checkpoint. A van outward bound from the complex pulled alongside them. The van was not old, but it wasn’t new either, the shabby dust covered side carried the snowflake logo of an air-conditioning company. It was then she noticed the man—a dark-skinned man, with blood shot eyes, craning out of the van window to ogle her car. His black eyes lingered on her window. She knew he could not see through the tinted glass, but still, she felt uncomfortable. She shrank away, into the dark interior of her limousine. Her parent’s words echoed back to her, Dalit Dalit Dalit. The man was an untouchable, and he was looking right at her, raping her with his eyes.
23
30,000ft above the Himalayas
The silver-grey Gulfstream V had only two passengers, as it streaked high above the snow-shrouded peaks of the deadliest mountain range in the world. Karyn Kane sat in one of the sumptuous leather swivel chairs at the planes mini conference table and ran through the horrific events at the Deng Tao funeral. The past days confirmed only one thing—China was a wild and dangerous place and despite an outward appearance of order, the reality was shockingly different. A vast sub-stratum of Chinese society was boiling under the heavy weight of repression and given recent events, that pressure looked ready to blow at any time. Karyn looked out the window, at the icy, mist-shrouded peaks—what an irony it would be if the missing EMP weapons provided the catalyst to throw the China out of its political malaise, into a full blown state of revolution. Karyn felt conflicted. She had no love for the Chinese autocrats, but the Chinese people were a different matter, they had suffered enough, through generations of despotic rule—they needed a genuine break, not an apocalyptic attack, by a bunch of killers trying to pass themselves off as freedom fighters. She massaged her right temple very slowly. The latent horror of the situation was almost too much to bear.
Finally, after she could stare at the endless mountain ranges no more, she turned her attention to her fellow passenger on the lonely flight from hell. Jack Senegar had a rugged, almost handsome face, deeply suntanned and heavy lined with black crags of experience, that gave him a carved, inscrutable look, like he was cut from wood. But for all the abundant character his face displayed, any kind of real emotion was strikingly absent. Senegar eased back in his seat and rattled whisky around his glass. The thick rocks of ice glistened in the cut-crystal, refracting an aurora of warmth and comfort. Suddenly, his grey eyes rose up from his laptop to meet hers. “The world is on the edge. You know that don’t you Kane?”
“I know that if those devices get to North Korea or some other kookball pseudo-state, we are going to be staring down the barrel of a full-blown apocalypse.” Karyn angled her chair very slightly towards Senegar and said. “I didn’t need your goddamn help back there, Jack. You know that don’t you?”
Senegar’s face creaked fractionally, in what might have passed as a grimace. “Don’t flatter yourself Kane. I got more important things to do than bail your skinny ass out of some Chinese torture prison. As far as I am concerned Chi Wu and his buddies could have kept you locked down in that puzzle-palace of theirs until the trumpets at the end of time sounded their call. Trouble is your antics at the Deng Tao funeral have been tearing through Washington faster than a napalm enema.”
“You ask me, those D.C. suits have been sitting on their over-stuffed-asses for way too long. The only reason those creeps turn up to the job at all is so they can hoover-up cash from the corporate lobbyist community and charge their expenses.”
“The hand that feeds is ever-watchful Kane. I don’t think I need to remind you that Deep Five operations cannot afford bean-counter scrutiny. Too much depends on our mission.” Senegar raised the thick glass to his lips and gulped scotch. He placed the empty glass back on the table, and said. “I have told you before Kane, this Agency runs on multiple levels, like a goddamn iceberg. There are the levels above the waterline that those senate committee saps like to throw mud at; then there is the nine tenths underwater, the silent realm, submerged beneath—the place where the real work gets done. You are part of the silent realm Kane and it will always be that way. So swallow down the attitude, we got work to do.”
“Are you saying I should have given those terrorists a pass?”
“I am saying the covert nature of Deep Five business takes priority over everything Kane, even your misplaced sense of sense of justice.”
“Saving lives Jack, that’s what this is all about right?”
“Our mission is the priority. Every time you leave a trail of corpses, I have to move housekeeping in to clear up the aftermath—that kind of expenditure eats into the budget, which draws bean-counter attention. The committee has been asking questions Kane. All it takes is some nosy Senator with balance sheet skills and we will have a situation.”
“Send housekeeping to see them.”
“If I ha
d the budget I would. But I don’t. So we work within the agreed parameters—covert parameters. You understand?”
Karyn looked at him. “You ever wonder Jack, are there are enough bullets to kill every asshole in the world? Because I’m not so sure.”
Jack Senegar’s cold, grey eyes ate into her for the briefest of moments then flitted away, settling finally on the attaché case that lay on the table between them. Wordlessly, his eyes returned, commanding her to do his bidding.
Karyn stared back at him, her molten eyes burning with the power of pure resentment. There was a long frigid pause. Finally, she reached out, popped the latches on the case and let the lid drift open. All the while she held Jack Senegar’s gaze, her stare ruthlessly defiant.
As the frozen moments ticked by, the contents of the case drew her attention.
Nestling in a series of shaped compartments, were the tools of her trade—a custom smart phone, a DeSantis shoulder holster and a .40 caliber SIG-Sauer 229. They called this model the Dark Elite and with good reason, it was Special Forces modified—light, compact and ruthlessly efficient. Karyn left the weapon in the case, it languished there, black and deadly, as she reached out the phone.
“The usual initiation protocols will be required to upload your settings from the cloud,” said Senegar, his voice hard and businesslike. “No doubt you will be anxious to follow the developments in the life of young Carly. Such a charming child.”
Concentrating on her phone, Karyn didn’t look up. “How is your family Jack?
The cold grey eyes didn’t blink. He just sat there, watching her.
“Your brother is a real family man, isn’t he Jack? Too bad your parents aren’t around to spend time with all those grand kids—life in the Massachusetts countryside is so wonderful this time of year, all those beach barbeques and trips to that summer house of theirs in the Hamptons.
Jack Senegar’s wooden face didn’t move. She was making a point. Showing him she had done her due diligence, reconnoitering the periphery of his life, incase she ever needed to make a move. He reached for the whisky and poured himself another glass. If and when the time came, he would move first. There would be no warning, no cautionary signs. Action would be fast and decisive. There was no margin of error when dealing with monsters. He watched her working the phone like a child with a new toy. His eyes were cold and analytical, no sign of emotion—none at all.
The plane cabin was silent for a long time, just the soft hiss of the A/C and the distant thrum of the twin turbofan engines battling through the high altitude morning. Karyn worked on her new phone, using multiple fingers, to hammer through the startup screens. She pressed her right thumb against the initialize button and brought the phone on line. At last she looked up and said, “If anything ever happens to my daughter Jack, you better know that running and hiding won’t help you.”
Jack Senegar smiled very slightly. “Things happen to people all the time Karyn and nearly always it is to good people like yourself. You would do well to remember that.” The craggy wooden cheeks moved very slightly, but his gaze remained devoid of emotion or pity.
Karyn’s amber eyes glowed like fire, as the morning sun cut in through the cabin window. She said, “If anything ever happens to me Jack, you better make sure it happens permanently, because I am not the forgiving type.”
“You are good at your job Kane. That is the only thing I care about right now. Soon as you stop being good at your job, that’s when we got ourselves an issue to deal with. Now, I hear you talking, but that is all it is, just talk, because this operation is bigger than any one person and if I get even a sniff you are going to act out, we are going to have ourselves a situation, and we don’t want that, do we? ”
“I want to get Lauren Whitaker back.”
“Forget about her.”
“You got people working on it?”
“Hell, no. You kidding me? We got ourselves two state of the art Chinese pulse weapons on the loose, the kind of technology that could kick start World War Three and you want to chase off on a mercy mission to rescue some Washington socialite from the clutches of a bunch of backwoods radicals?”
“Everything is connected. The crew who snatched her at the funeral were involved in the theft of the bomb. They planted one of the devices in the Shanghai Tower. So, I say we find Lauren Whitaker and the men who took her. That way we find the other two devices and bring in the Secretary of State’s wife home as an added sweetener—see what that does to the Agency’s funding status in the next spending round.”
Jack Senegar’s mouth twisted very slightly at the corners, as though some kind of emotion was about to surface. “While you were busy taking out those gun-toting creeps at the Deng Tao funeral, I don’t suppose for a second you wondered where our dear, dead friends big brother was, did you?”
“Ambassador Campanella informed me that Zhàn Tao would not be attending, in accordance with Chinese custom.”
“Chinese custom be damned,” growled Senegar. “Zhàn Tao never intended to show at the funeral, he was too busy partying at Jumeirah Beach, Dubai. We had a team on him the whole time, naturally.”
“I can’t say I am surprised. If he is anything like his brother, the guy must be a real asshole.”
Jack Senegar nodded slowly. “You would be accurate in your assessment. But here is the real fun fact about that little pleasure trip—He was hanging with your old friend General Faz Huq, from the Inter Services Intelligence Agency. Now what do you imagine they were up to?”
“Aside from the worst sort of sexual deviance you can imagine, I would suggest they were talking business.”
“Business, indeed. But what kind of business?” Senegar reached on to the table for his cell phone and swiped screens rapidly with his index finger. “The video I have just sent you is RQ-4 drone coverage taken from twenty miles above the Al Muntaha hotel at Jumeirah Beach Dubai. Unfortunately, we don’t have audio, but I think you will enjoy it none-the-less.”
Karyn finger clicked on the video and watched it stream on to her cell phone screen. The resolution of the video was pin-sharp and the super-magnified view looked like it had been taken from twenty feet away rather than twenty miles. At first it was difficult to recognize who the players were. She recognized Zhàn Tao first, mainly because she had seen endless hours of surveillance footage of China’s corrupt premier already, but this was something quite different, something bizarre and quite unexpected. Karyn stared at the screen, as men in suits pushed and kicked a fat figure across the rooftop. He was dressed in a silk robe that looked like it had been designed for a very petite woman, rather than a shambling overweight man.
She cringed.
“That is one ugly looking sight.”
Senegar nodded. “It gets better.”
The shambling figure looked up, squinting directly into the camera, then shielded his eyes, as he tried to mitigate the burn of desert sun.
“Faz Huq,” said Karyn, she spat the words with disgust. She watched the savage beating that followed without comment, finally she said, “Is he dead?”
“Unfortunately not. But it is the timing of this incident that I think you will find particularly interesting.”
Karyn looked up from the screen of the cell phone.
“The events you see here occurred less than 45 minutes after the explosion at the Deng Tao Funeral.”
“So what else have you got Jack?”
“Those Uyghur thugs that Chi Wu identified—those boys got themselves a history going on—Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen. In addition, they got al-Qaeda credentials up the ying-yang; one of them even served time in Gitmo. So you’ve got to ask yourself, don’t you, just what kind of business those bomb toting Uyghur smugglers were doing with our friends in Pakistan.”
“Faz Huq has the bombs,” said Karyn, her voice emphatic. “He will use them for sure—or more accurately he will pass them on to someone who will use them for him—a tangential play, every possible connection to him eliminated, so he ca
n destroy his enemies, with no blowback on the Pakistani government or the ISI.” Karyn paused. “Wait a minute. You know where the bombs are, don’t you?”
Senegar frowned. “We did know where they were, until the Chinese lost their nerve. Those devices have polonium emergency trackers. We were tracing them from high earth orbit, but right after the Deng Tao funeral, Prime Minister Sung had his people move in on the Shanghai device. He figured that if that thing went off, it would take down the entire Chinese economy and cause a political chain reaction that would topple the government. He panicked, moved too soon—alerted the terrorists that we were wise to their movements. The remaining trackers went black soon after.”
