by Allen Eskens
“Did he ever hint at where he went?”
“The first year we lived together, he said he had to go visit a sick relative. I tried to pry, maybe get him to take me along and introduce me to his family. Later, after I learned that he didn't have a family, we got into an argument about it. I thought the worst. I thought he had some woman on the side.”
Ianna stood up and walked to the large window with its view of the river. The bright midday sun passed through the weave of her cotton dress unhindered, creating a near-perfect silhouette of her form. At first, Alexander averted his eyes, but she kept her back to him as she spoke, and soon his gaze rose, climbing her legs and backside. Did she know he could see her that way? Did she want him to see her that way—the way he saw her in the photo? Alexander swallowed hard and forced his attention back to what she was saying.
“The next year,” she continued, “he told me he had to go out of town to visit an old friend. I pushed him for more information, but he said that it was just something that he had to do—that he couldn't tell me about it. He told me to trust him…” Ianna broke into an embarrassed laugh, turning to face Alexander. “Trust him? I didn't even know his real name.”
“And he went every year?”
“Without fail.” She started back to the couch, paused, then came over to the love seat and sat next to Alexander, her arm stretching across the backrest. She tucked one leg up underneath her so that she could turn sideways and face him. The scent of her lavender bodywash found its way to Alexander and briefly quickened his pulse.
“Last year,” she continued, “we got into our normal argument. I told him that I wanted to go along. I wanted to see this friend. I wanted to see for myself that it wasn't another woman.”
“And did he take you?”
“We compromised—if you can call it that. I didn't go with him, but he didn't stay overnight. He left at noon and came back just after eight that night.”
Alexander considered the timing. Eight hours—at the most, four hours there and four hours back, giving him a radius touching four, maybe five states. “So…not another woman?”
“If it was another woman, he didn't have sex with her. I made sure of that.”
“You made sure?”
“When he came back that night, I took him…” Ianna gave Alexander a demure smile. “Well, I doubt he could have survived the acrobatics we had in bed that night if he'd been with another woman that day.” She leaned slightly toward Alexander, making sure that her placid, green eyes held his gaze, and said, “Like I said, when it comes to men, I have talent.”
Her words dripped with dare. Alexander smiled at the prospect that she was testing him, trying to see if she affected him the way she probably affected every man she ever knew. He looked back at her, his eyes never leaving hers as he absorbed her advance. She did have a talent.
“And you never learned who this person was?”
“Never. But I'd bet that person can tell us where the money came from. How it ‘fell from the sky.’” She shook her head in slow contemplation. “Can you imagine getting half a million dollars every year—for free? It'd be like winning the lottery.”
“Except that winning the lottery is legal and blackmail's not.”
“You think it was blackmail?”
“Did he ever mention anything to you about something bad happening in his past? Did he ever talk about what might have happened on that yacht?”
Ianna narrowed her eyes as if trying to remember. “No…I can't think of anything like that.”
“No secret phone calls you might have overheard? You were with the guy for three years and you never asked him about his past?” Alexander watched Ianna for any sign of deception, a crossing of her legs, one hand rubbing the other, a sideways glance. He saw none of that.
Her eyes surrendered their coquettish spark, and she answered him in a tone choked with old scars. “We all have secrets, Alexander. No one gets though life without doing something that they wish they could take back. James never asked me about my past, so I never pushed him on his. It was a matter of fairness, I guess. He let me keep my secrets, so I let him keep his.”
Drago Basta settled in behind Wayne Garland's enormous desk and connected to Patrio's internal surveillance system. The cameras gave him a view of almost every room in the building, complete with audio. Drago knew how to switch from camera to camera and follow a person throughout the facility; he had helped to design the system. It had been at his insistence that an overriding master control had been wired into Garland's desk.
From there, Drago and Garland watched as Louise Rider entered the lobby of Patrio International and was escorted to a waiting area. After letting her wait for twenty minutes, Garland telephoned down and instructed the guard to show her to a conference room. Garland waited another five minutes before he headed down to meet with the detective—leaving Drago alone to observe the meeting through a camera hidden in the light fixture of the conference room.
“What can I do for you, Detective?” Garland began.
“I'm here to talk about the incident on the Domuscuta,” she said.
“That was so long ago,” Garland said. “I don't know how much help I can be.”
“A man died that night. That's normally a traumatic event. I just assumed you would have a pretty clear memory of it.”
Drago leaned forward in his chair, getting his face closer to the monitor. “She's testing you,” he said to the screen. He gritted his teeth, angry that he hadn't made Garland use an earwig so he could keep him from fucking this up. “She wants you to correct her—tell her that two people died that night—not one.”
“Of course, I remember it,” Garland said. “Richard Ashton was a good man. He founded this company with me nearly thirty years ago.”
Drago sat back in the chair. She knows that only one man died. She knows that Jericho Pope survived. If she knows Pope survived, she has to have an idea where he is hiding.
“Could you tell me what happened that night?” Detective Rider asked.
“You have the reports. It's all in there.”
“Could you just go over it one more time? I wasn't assigned to the investigation back then, and I'd like to hear the story from you. Besides, you may remember something new.”
“Why are you reopening those painful memories?” Garland asked. “That was one of the worst nights of my life. Did something new come to light?”
“Please,” the detective said. “What do you remember?”
Garland frowned, leaned back in his chair, and tapped his fingers on the marble tabletop as though he were contemplating whether to give in. Then he started talking, telling the story that she had read in the reports, reciting it like a child would tell a well-rehearsed lie about his missing homework. She occasionally wrote notes on a legal pad, but for the most part she seemed to be studying Garland.
When Garland finished his story, Detective Rider started deconstructing the story from back to front. “So,” she began, “you weren't on deck when the dinghy exploded?”
“No. I was in the salon, having a nightcap.”
“Where was Drago?”
“He…” Garland caught himself before he said anything more, but his slip seemed to echo off the walls. “I'm sorry, Detective, who did you say?”
Drago Basta wanted to travel through the monitor, reach into that conference room, and kill Garland. The man had become careless to the point of being dangerous. The cunning edge that had once been Garland's greatest asset was gone, suffocated beneath a fat and lazy shell. An abundance of money had made Wayne Garland soft. How could he fall so easily into her trap? She wanted to see his reaction to the name Drago, and he gave her more than that. In that single utterance, Garland confirmed Drago's existence.
She knew his name. How? He had been so careful. Drago thought back to that day on the yacht. Had Garland called him by his given name? Yes. Yes he had. And the captain must have heard it. This detective must have already interviewed the captain. W
hat else did she know?
Garland said, “I'm afraid I don't know anyone named Draco, or whoever.”
“Must be confusing this case for another one,” she said. “But there was a third man on the yacht that night?”
“Yes, a security consultant, Mr. Prather,” Garland said, his impatience starting to show. “I believe I already gave a statement about all of this. Is there—”
“Is Mr. Prather available?”
“He worked for us under contract that year. He is no longer affiliated with this company, hasn't been for years.”
“Well, if you have a forwarding address, I'd like to get ahold of him.”
“I'll see what I can do, but last I heard he was somewhere on the African continent.”
“Now, the dinghy was already in the water when Mr. Ashton decided to leave?” the detective asked.
“You'll have to ask the captain,” Garland answered. “I don't remember.”
“Is it possible that the captain left the dinghy in the water after Mr. Pope returned?”
“He might have, but again, you'll have to ask the captain.”
“And what time did Mr. Pope return with the dinghy?”
“Probably about—” Garland halted his answer.
Drago dropped his head, his anger at Wayne Garland seething in his chest. Garland had fucked up again. They had reviewed the police reports in preparation for Detective Rider's visit. In those reports, Garland hadn't told the police that Jericho Pope took the hookers back to shore because he never mentioned the hookers at all. Now, by admitting that Pope had returned in the dinghy, he had to acknowledge that Pope made a trip to shore.
“Wait a minute. I don't recall…” Garland cleared his throat. “You're getting me all confused. I can't remember what happened all those years ago. Like I said, I gave a statement, and you have it. I suggest you read it.”
“We know about the girls,” Rider said.
“Girls?” Garland cocked his head as if to suggest that he had no idea what Detective Rider was talking about.
“We talked to Captain Rodgers already. We know that you brought a couple working girls on board. This isn't about that. I don't care if you had a little consensual fun. I'm here to talk about the death of Richard Ashton.”
“I think you're here to screw with me,” Garland said. He pointed his finger at Rider. “A good man died that night,” he snarled. “Richard Ashton and I went back a long way, and I'm getting a little tired of your tone.”
The detective leaned back, gave the conversation a pregnant pause, then said, “Didn't two men die that night?”
Drago sat at Garland's desk, shaking his head slowly back and forth. This wasn't the Wayne Garland he knew—the man who funneled millions of tax dollars through the shadows and into their pockets. Drago had seen this happen before. Men like Garland start to believe in their own greatness. They accept that they are special, that they deserve their kingly existence. Then they get sloppy. After that, some nobody—like a local detective—comes along and with a single whack of an ax brings it all crashing down.
Drago would have to kill Garland. Not that day, maybe not until he had recovered the property that Jericho Pope stole from him, but soon. He would kill Garland for becoming weak, for losing his edge. If anyone ever investigated Patrio for all the kickbacks and assassinations that Garland orchestrated, Garland wouldn't go down like a man. No. Garland would seek leverage. Like a cuttlefish spraying its ink to escape, Garland would try to dirty the waters with as many names as he could give out. Garland would turn on Drago with the speed of a ricocheting bullet.
In the conference room, Garland tried to recover. “Of course two men died. I mention Richard because I knew him. I didn't know that other guy…what was his name again?”
“Pope,” Rider supplied.
“That's right,” he said. “Terrible shame.”
“As it turns out, he didn't die that night,” she said, her eyes fixed on his, watching his reaction.
“I don't understand,” Garland said, taking a more intellectual tone. “That kid, the first mate, he was in the dinghy too.”
Garland displayed no obvious signs of deception, but neither did he summon a look of genuine surprise upon learning that Jericho survived the dinghy explosion.
“He didn't die that night,” she said.
“How do you know this?” Garland asked.
“Because,” she said, “Pope died in a car accident last month in the Twin Cities.” She paused again. “Now, Mr. Garland, you want to tell me what really happened on the Domuscuta that night?”
Garland seemed to relax in his seat, the corners of his mouth angling up ever so slightly in a pensive smile.
She continued. “Why would a guy who gets blown up in a dinghy swim for Coney Island instead of swimming a few hundred yards back to the boat?”
“I'm sure, Detective Rider, I don't know.” Garland's demeanor flipped to complete disinterest. “Sometimes people do stuff that you just can't explain. Now, if you will excuse me.” He stood up and started walking toward the door. “I have some pressing business to attend to. I have indulged your trip down memory lane long enough, but I am a busy man.” He paused at the door. “Please remain here. I'll send a security officer to escort you out.”
“I have a couple more—”
“Good-bye, Detective.” And with that, Garland walked out the door.
In Garland's office, Drago typed a query into the computer, looking for car accidents in Minneapolis in the month of September. It took two minutes to find the story of the accident that killed a man named James Putnam. Drago looked at the picture of James Putnam from the newspaper report and saw the face of a man he had been hunting for nearly fifteen years.
Drago smiled as he gazed out the window of Garland's office and dreamed about killing his former mentor. How would he do it? Drago loved knives. He loved the glide of the blade as it severed tissue, the feel of it as it tore through gristle and sinew. He fed off of the way a man's body would turn rigid with terror in that moment when his imminent death became real to him, and how he fell limp when the heart ran out of blood to pump. Knives were beautiful and visceral and messy, requiring close proximity, even intimacy with the victim.
But knives weren't always practical. During the war, he had killed most of his victims—Albanians, Bosnians, and Croatians—with a gun. He had drawn his first blood with a gun, Albanian blood that spread across the floor of his home where it later mixed with the blood of his mother and father. Since that day, his knowledge of guns and his skill in handling them had become surgical. But he found little pleasure in killing with a gun, the way he found little satisfaction in playing checkers once he had discovered the intellectual challenge of playing chess.
As he contemplated killing Wayne Garland, he regretted that he wouldn't get to cut Garland's throat with his knife. He had to be especially careful with how he killed Garland, because Garland had powerful friends, men who controlled national budgets and dark operation personnel, friends Garland inherited upon the death of Richard Ashton.
In the beginning, Patrio International had grown out of a synergy of two talents, Garland, the man in the shadows, and Ashton, the man with connections on Capitol Hill. Richard Ashton rose through the ranks of the CIA as a moneyman. He knew the system from the inside and made friends with all the right people.
What Ashton had in insider power, he lacked in field experience. That's where Garland came in. Also a child of the CIA, Garland wandered the earth, kicking up dust storms, creating unrest where it helped American interests, and tamping down fires that hurt those interests. He spent his career stockpiling relationships, kings and killers who valued their own personal wealth over any particular ideology. These weren't friendships—no more than the man who feeds a lion could claim to be the lion's friend—but Garland made certain that the relationships remained mutually beneficial.
In 1981, Garland and Ashton left the CIA and went into business for themselves. Their timing cou
ldn't have been better. It was the Reagan era, a time of massive buildups in both military and intelligence-gathering infrastructures. It was also a time when the conservatives began preaching the gospel of privatization. If government could do it, then the private sector could do it better and cheaper—so the theory went. By 1985, Ashton had secured enough black-ops funding to start their private mercenary army.
Later, Patrio became heavily involved in the Balkans when that part of the world blew up. That's how Garland found Drago.
By 1999, the war in Kosovo had turned against the Serbs. The UN chose sides, propping up the KLA, removing it from the official list of terrorist organizations, and striking an alliance with it. Then came the bombings, also sanctioned by the UN. It seemed as though the world had turned against the Serbs. Slobodan Milošević had been declared a war criminal, and the United Nations convened a meeting to determine whom else to add to the list. Garland had been watching Drago from a distance, gathering intelligence on this one-man killing machine. Spotting talent had always been Garland's forte. He could sniff out the mercenaries long before they themselves knew who they were.
The legend of Drago Basta had taken root across the Balkan Peninsula, the magnitude of his cruelty growing with each new whisper. By the end of the war, those who feared him no longer called him Drago Basta; to them he was known as Psoglav the Beast. Psoglav, a mythical creature from Serbian folklore, walked with the legs of a horse, had the torso of a man, and the head of a savage dog with iron teeth and a single eye in the middle of his forehead. The mythical Psoglav feasted on human flesh and haunted the dreams of children. Drago Basta spent his war years murdering soldiers, farmers, women, and children without remorse. It was he who came to haunt the dreams of the Bosnians and Albanians, or anyone who had the misfortune to cross his path.
When Garland saw the end coming in Kosovo, he reached out to Drago—to Psoglav the Beast—and offered him a job.
Now, as Drago stared out of the window, he came to the realization that Garland had become a liability. It would be only a matter of time before Garland stepped over the wrong line, killed the wrong warlord. Maybe this Detective Rider came as a harbinger of that end. And Drago knew that when the end came, Garland would give up Drago to save his own neck. For that reason, Garland needed to die, and his death would have to look like an accident. Drago detested such artifice. It deprived him of the satisfaction of feeling the life ebb from his victims. But sometimes that's how it had to happen.
