by Tom Clancy
The elevator rose swiftly.
* * *
—
The doors opened on the fifteenth floor. Another unsmiling security officer with an earpiece greeted her with a nod. He stepped aside.
She brushed past him toward the double mahogany doors. A third guard opened one of them, and she passed through.
She stood on the polished Carrara marble floor of the vast living area, feeling the suck of air as the heavy door closed behind her. The last rays of the setting sun were swallowed by the blue-black Atlantic Ocean filling the wide picture window.
Fan Min, the CEO of Sino-Angola Energy, rose from the circular red leather couch in the center of the room, a wide, toothy smile on his face. The fifty-nine-year-old man wore a black smoking jacket, black silk trousers, and red velvet slippers. His poorly dyed jet-black hair was combed back and greased, Pat Riley style.
He asked her in his thickly accented Portuguese what she wanted to drink. She told him rum and Coke. He poured one for each of them. She thanked him. He took his blue pill. She smiled. His dark eyes raked over her body as she drank.
She said she had a surprise for him. He lit up like a child at Christmas. She showed him the new condoms she brought him. Three of them, wrapped in gold foil. Very special.
He smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners.
Extra, extra pleasure, she promised.
Like she was supposed to say.
“Lindo maravilhoso,” he said, pouring her another drink.
They sat on the red leather couch together. Ships’ lights like stars floated in the black Atlantic beyond.
She finished her second rum and Coke while he stroked her smooth skin with his long, delicate fingers, whispering “Belezhina” over and over like an incantation.
She smiled at him between sips of her third drink. When his eager face finally darkened, she excused herself to use the restroom.
He retreated to the bedroom, his manhood tenting his silken trousers. He played Céline Dion. Turned the volume up.
She heard it through the bathroom wall. She flushed the toilet. Crossed herself before opening the door. She tried to put the image of her young husband out of her mind.
He wouldn’t understand. He was just a boy.
It was good money.
LOBITO, ANGOLA
The port city five hundred kilometers north of Luanda was asleep at this late hour, save for the three Chinese guards—civilian-clad PLA soldiers—patrolling the perimeter of the construction site against thieves. The Lobito-1 refinery was scheduled to come online within seven months. It would be only the second refinery in sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil-producing country, which, ironically, imported eighty percent of its refined petroleum needs. The Lobito-1 project would go a long way to correct that imbalance while lining the pockets of Angola’s corrupt political class.
Funded by exports of Angolan crude oil and diamonds, Chinese engineering and construction firms were in charge of the entire project. Despite the crushing unemployment and bitter poverty of a country where nearly forty percent of the population survived on less than $1.25 a day, Angolan politicians in the capital were eager to allow China to import its own labor force for the Lobito-1 refinery project, adding three hundred more construction workers to the thirty thousand Chinese already employed in the country, and nearly a million across the African continent.
China was Angola’s number-one foreign investment and export partner in Africa, thanks to the seemingly bottomless seas of crude oil on- and offshore the former Portuguese colony.
Angolan oil reserves were so valued that even the Cold War took a backseat. During the vicious twenty-seven-year Angolan Civil War, American oil companies pumping socialist Angola crude were protected by Communist Cuban forces from attacks by antisocialist rebels backed by the American government.
Money was its own loyalty.
The Lobito-1 project was a significant step forward for both Chinese strategic planners and the Angolan kleptocracy in Luanda. Besides the generous development funds that mostly found their way into the regime’s hand-tailored pockets, the new Angolan president preferred Chinese investments because of China’s “noninterference” policy toward local governments. Western politicians asked too many questions about income inequality, bribery, money laundering, nepotism, pollution, and other meddlesome issues toward which the Chinese happily turned a blind eye.
Repulsed by the predatory greed of the Angolan government, the rapacious neocolonialism of China, and the resulting exploitation of the suffering Angolan masses, a new rebel group arose, the NFLA—Nova Frente de Libertação de Angola in Portuguese.
The NFLA had focused all of its previous attacks in the far-north exclave of Cabinda, where the movement originated, its efforts directed at intimidating corrupt Angolan civil servants and the nonviolent disruption of government operations.
Until now.
* * *
—
The wooden skiff was worn but sturdy, like the old fisherman running the sputtering Honda outboard. His sinewy arms were corded like rope, still capable of rowing the fifteen-foot-long fishing boat on the open Atlantic, but with the load he was carrying beneath the oiled canvas tonight, the two-stroke motor was necessary.
A Coleman lantern swung lazily behind the stern, an irresistible lure to the fish lurking in the oily waters of Lobito Bay. His gap-toothed smile and silver-stubbled face was a familiar sight in the port, selling fresh fish from his nightly catches to the construction crews in the morning. Few knew his ragged shirt hid bullet scars he carried from the civil war. Even fewer had seen the Makarov pistol hidden beneath an oily rag in the bottom of his boat, a prize he’d taken from the young Cuban lieutenant he’d hacked to death with a machete twenty years before.
His callused fingers killed the engine as the boat eased behind the rusted hulk of an ancient trawler lying on its side in the shallow water in the early-morning darkness. He tied off to the hulk and killed the light before throwing back the tarp.
Five black-skinned NFLA commandos slipped noiselessly from the boat into the chill water with their AKs held chest high. Balaclavas hid their faces, despite the warm air. The last of them laid a hand on the old man’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Obrigado, vovô.”
Thanks, Grandpa.
They made their way to the base of a low concrete wall topped by cyclone fencing as the Honda engine puttered away into the dark. They pressed low and hard against it, waiting.
The team leader hand-signaled a silent command, then whispered another on his throat mic.
Thirty seconds later, the crunch of Chinese-made boots passed by overhead. A second after that, the subsonic rush of hot lead from a sniper rifle snapped above them, thudding into the guard’s chest like a cinder block, dropping him in the butt-strewn dirt.
The team leader signaled again and his number two stood up with long-handled bolt cutters, snipping a neat hole in the fence. The leader climbed up and dashed through it in a low crouch, followed by the others.
Careful to keep low behind the steel pipes and girders stacked in the brightly lit yard, the team made its way fifty meters north to the row of single-story trailers crammed with nearly a hundred mainland Chinese steelworkers. Lights in the trailers were off.
The team leader raised his silenced pistol. The nine-millimeter slug ripped through the brainpan of the half-asleep guard, spattering blood and bone against the steel door.
The suppressed shot was the go signal for the others. They dashed forward, tossing grenades and satchel charges through the windows. They sped past the buildings at a dead run before the first explosions erupted, and headed for the north fence.
The last screams of the survivors burning alive in the flaming wreckage echoed in the warm night air as the men disappeared between the cinder-block shanties of the squalid favela in the low, barren hills above th
e city.
43
LUANDA, ANGOLA
He needed to pee.
Fan Min threw off the bedcovers. He was sweaty. In the other bed, knocked out cold by her sleeping pills, his fat wife snored like a ripsaw cutting through sheet metal.
The oil executive sat up and pulled on his glasses, then shuffled toward the bathroom, limping on a cramping leg. He wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand, then wiped his hand on his pajama top as he pushed his way through the door and shut it behind him.
The motion-sensor light popped on but the bulb was dim. He made a mental note to get an assistant to replace it. He had a hard time breathing. He leaned over and lifted the toilet seat. It made him dizzy.
Am I catching the flu? he wondered.
He fumbled with the slit in his pajama bottoms and fished out his flaccid manhood. He pushed, waiting for the flow to begin. Sweat trickled down his back and his nose ran faster. He wiped his face again with one trembling hand as urine finally began dribbling into the bowl. His other shaking hand splattered the yellow liquid.
He farted. The squawk of air turned into a short gush of runny goo as the room began to spin—
Sharp pain stabbed his chest. Fan Min screamed, but nothing came out. He had no air. He grabbed for the over-the-toilet shelving to catch himself. It gave way. He crashed to the floor, smashing his skull on the corner of the marble sink, spraying blood from his broken scalp. Mirrors and perfume bottles shattered on the tile floor.
Clutching his dying heart, he thrashed in agony in the widening puddle of urine and blood. His narrowing pupils dimmed the light as his foaming mouth sucked for a last, gasping breath that never came.
* * *
—
Crashing glass and metal woke Fan Min’s wife from her pill-induced sleep.
She rolled out of bed, cursing her idiot husband as she hobbled to the bathroom on arthritic knees.
She called his name through the door. No answer.
She turned the knob. It was unlocked. She pushed on it. It wouldn’t budge.
She panicked, calling out his name as she shoved feebly against the door. It nudged open.
She saw Fan Min lying on the floor, his back to her. Adrenaline fueled her flabby arms. The door pushed open further. She squeezed her round belly against the crack and wedged a thick leg through the opening. Her bare foot slapped onto the tile floor, splashing urine and blood. But it was the shards of broken glass stabbing her tender sole that made her scream.
44
WARSAW, POLAND
Liliana arrived at the forecourt exactly at eight a.m., as promised, and didn’t bring Jack coffee, as he requested.
Jack was disappointed to discover that the hotel restaurant served only dinner, but TripAdvisor found him a great little place nearby with a walk-up window where locals queued for hubcap-sized pączki and steaming-hot Illy coffee in sturdy paper cups. The allergy pill had knocked him out, which was good, but he woke up in a chemical fog that took two cups of the caffeinated brew to clear away.
Jack yanked open the Audi’s passenger door and fell in.
“Dzień dobry.”
Liliana smiled. “Dzień dobry. Did you sleep well?”
“Like a rock.”
“Then we’ll get started.”
“Great. Where to first?”
“My office.”
* * *
—
Twenty-five minutes later, Jack sat in Liliana’s modest office on the fourth floor of the nondescript and unmarked six-floor building on Rakowiecka Street that housed the ABW. It had all the charm of a Communist-era police headquarters building, which, in fact, it had been.
Jack was greeted at the front door by internal security and issued a temporary visitor’s pass after his passport was scanned.
They spent the next four hours poring over computerized tax records, business licenses and applications, corporate filings, and even bankruptcies.
Jack’s Polish was nil, but the search function on Liliana’s computer was fluent enough to search for word combinations and variants of “Christopher Gage,” “Baltic General Services,” “Gage Group International,” and even “Gage Capital Partners.” Jack wanted to add “Dixon” to the search but didn’t dare drag the senator’s name into this—certainly not at Polish ABW headquarters—and besides, if she were up to something illegal, she’d hardly put her name on it.
Property tax records showed the location of a BGS holding in Gdańsk. “Looks like this building is down by the port.” Jack pointed it out on the computer screen.
“Most likely a warehouse of some kind. Could be a repair or maintenance facility as well. Or some combination of the three.”
Well, that was something, at least.
Liliana checked her watch. “How about some lunch? I know a great restaurant. Best pierogi in town.”
Jack was afraid to count the number of carbs he’d socked away yesterday, but it was so damn worth it.
What’s another five thousand calories at this point?
“Sounds great.”
“You’ve had them before?”
“Never. But I saw the way your eyes lit up when you said ‘pierogi,’ so I know it’s gonna be good.”
Liliana pulled her shoulder holster off the coatrack and slipped it back on. Jack looked away as the straps cinched around her shoulders, emphasizing the curves of her upper torso.
“Nine-mil?” Jack asked as she holstered her weapon.
“You know guns?”
“A little.”
“Are you any good?”
“Haven’t shot myself in the foot yet. So not bad, I guess.”
“Perhaps I can get permission to take you down to the shooting range later. Would you like that?”
“Yes, I would, actually.”
“And to answer your question, yes, it’s a nine-millimeter WIST-94, a Polish-designed and -manufactured pistol.”
She unholstered the weapon, dropped the mag, and racked the slide to clear the chamber, launching a bullet that Jack snatched in midair.
“Nice catch. Here.” She handed him the gun, butt first.
He felt the weight in his hand. Polymer and steel, like the Glock 19, which he personally favored. This one was bigger, like a Glock 17. And like the Glock, the safety was in the trigger. John Clark still preferred an all-steel Colt .45 1911. “Old-school,” Clark said. “It’s how I survived long enough to get old.”
Jack wanted to sight the pistol, maybe even break it down. But he had a cover to maintain, so he played it cool.
“How many rounds?”
“Sixteen in the mag, one in the chamber—well, one in the hand, eh?” She held out her open palm.
“Oh, yeah.” Jack dropped the brass into her hand.
They locked eyes. Jack felt a tingling in the back of his neck. Somewhere else, too. Was she checking him out?
Or just testing him?
He smiled and handed her the gun back, butt first.
She slammed the mag home and racked the slide, putting one in the chamber, then dropped the mag and loaded the last bullet into it, then reloaded the mag and holstered her weapon.
Jack knew she’d keep count of the number of shots fired in a gun battle. Seventeen was her number, and she wasn’t going to screw that up.
“Ready.”
“Lead the way, Officer.”
* * *
—
The Warsaw air was cool but delightful, and the sky clear. A perfect day to walk anywhere, but especially to lunch.
“I can’t thank you enough for all of the help you’ve given me today,” Jack said.
“You’re welcome. It’s a nice change of pace from what I normally do.”
“That’s right, I forgot. You’re an undercover piano player for the Polish security services. What’s
your latest case? Let me guess. The Austrian Mafia is smuggling unlicensed harpsichords into the country.”
She laughed. “I wish. I’m working on a very nasty drug case at the moment, and with a vile human trafficking ring. Young Eastern European girls who were promised the moon, only to be dumped into Dante’s Inferno.”
Jack wanted to commiserate with her. The child-trafficking case in Texas that The Campus had worked on a couple years ago had shocked him to his core. But Liliana had no idea he was working for The Campus or even that it existed. He needed to guard his words carefully.
“Sounds terrible.”
A priest was across the street, walking in the opposite direction. He looked like a freshman in college.
Liliana frowned. “It’s worse than you can imagine.”
“Now you’re making me feel guilty.”
“Why?”
“You’ve been pulled off of two important cases to help me look into what is probably going to be a whole lot of nothing.”
“Trust me, there will be plenty of filth and tragedy to get back to when you leave.”
“Seriously, though. Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not helping you. You’re helping me.”
“How so?”
“We’re investigating a questionable American businessman and his possible dealings with Polish national citizens that you brought to our attention. Our government is grateful.”
“I seem to recall an old Polish proverb about not kidding a kidder?”
“Except we use a different word than kid,” Liliana fired back.
Nothing was more attractive in a woman than a great sense of humor, Jack thought, and Liliana was funny as heck.
“Seriously. It seems like you’re going the extra mile for me.”
“Because I am.”
“I’d like to say it’s because of my winning personality, but I suspect it has more to do with Gerry Hendley.”
“To be honest, sure. My boss is a big fan of the senator’s. And so is his boss, the president of Poland.”
