Death and Dark Money

by Seeley James

  Tania ripped open the door and Pia pressed her Glock to Walid’s head. The uniformed cop held a pistol in his hand, aimed at the Prince’s bodyguard and advisor. Pia removed the cop’s gun and ordered him to the foyer floor, where she darted him.

  The bodyguard exhaled.

  Pia faced the butler. “Get the other employees into a bathroom. The marble and tub should keep you safe from stray bullets.”

  “Bullets?” the prince asked. “Surely you’re overreacting.”

  “The local cops staged the attack earlier. I’m not sure if the Director General is in on it or not, but we’re going to the roof. Tell your pilot to spin up those blades.”

  Prince Taimur’s advisor gasped and shook his head.

  The bodyguard watched everyone speaking English, but clearly didn’t grasp the rapidly evolving situation. Pia spun him to face her, reached in, and pulled his pistol. She checked it, chambered a round, and handed it back to him, then pointed to her eyes.

  He nodded.

  Tania checked the hall, and ran to the emergency stairs. The very same path they’d taken only hours earlier.

  Pia took the hallway and glanced over the rail to the lobby below.

  No one in sight.

  Not good.

  She motioned for the prince and his men to follow Tania.

  When they hesitated, she pushed them. “They’re coming. We have to get—”

  The elevator doors dinged softly. Pia faced it and waited.

  The doors opened painfully slowly, revealing only an empty space at first. But the mirrored walls showed four men pressed to the sides. She fired three darts that hit only metal but held her attackers at bay.

  She bolted to join the prince and his entourage as they followed Tania into the stairwell.

  This time the assassins were already in the stairwell.

  Pia manned the door to the hall, firing a blind shot that actually hit one of the pursuers.

  Tania emptied her pistol and swapped magazines.

  The prince’s bodyguard tensed and bunched his muscles and rocked on his feet. When he wound up his courage, he ran past Tania, firing upward, and took the next floor’s landing.

  Tania and the others ran past him to the last level, where the fighting intensified.

  “Didn’t we just do this?” Tania screamed over the heads of the prince and his advisor.

  “We don’t have enough rounds,” Pia answered.

  “I heard that.” Tania fired two more up a floor. “I told you that Director General was running this operation.”

  “Once ‘LOCI’ hired a dozen dirty cops, paying the top guy would be an unnecessary expense.” Pia fired down. “Now he has to go along with it to cover it up.”

  Two men in black came up from the floors below, firing on full-auto. Pia waited, listening to their footsteps. When she figured they would be crouching before rounding the next corner, she vaulted the railing, aiming her body as a projectile. She landed on the legs of the second soldier, throwing him face-first into the hard steps and fell on top of him, spread-eagled. Her dart popped in his butt, below the body armor. He slumped.

  While her right hand holstered her pistol, her left hand grabbed the darted-guy’s SMG-PK. Inside the trigger guard, her finger slid overtop his, forcing his finger down. Bullets stitched through the front man’s foot, then calf, knee, lower thigh, and buttock before the body armor protected him.

  In excruciating pain, the injured man turned to face her, hatred blazing in his eyes. He attempted to bring his muzzle around but was hampered by his bullet-shredded leg. He fell on his elbow, pinning his weapon at an awkward angle.

  Pia scrambled and grabbed it by the barrel and pushed it to the floor. The leveraged trigger guard snapped his finger like a twig. The rifle emptied its magazine into the wall. She reached for her pistol and darted him.

  Pulling spare magazines and weapons off the failed assassins, she ran up the stairs two at a time.

  She handed Tania one of the SMG-PKs.

  Tania said, “About time! I had three darts left.”

  “Can we get to the helipad?”

  Sensing the situation, the prince’s bodyguard boldly took the next landing. He drove forward like the hero in a war movie, firing as he went—and paid the price. His body rolled back to them and blocked the corner.

  Prince Taimur stared in mute shock.

  His advisor, an older man with resolute eyes, held out a hand. “I was once a soldier.”

  Pia handed him a pistol, then pointed to Tania. “We work together. You take the rear. Wait for my signal.”

  She leaned out and fired upward. Tania ran underneath her and took the next landing. The advisor kept the area below them secure.

  Pia ran up, repeating the stair-clearing procedure until they burst out onto the greeting area’s deck.

  The four of them ran for the chopper on the helipad. They fired pings at the door at every opportunity to dissuade anyone from taking a look outside.

  The pilot lifted off before they were belted in. He flew an evasive path across the city, using the larger skyscrapers as shields.

  Settled in with headsets and safety harnesses, Pia grabbed the Prince. “How are you connected to Samira Suliman?”

  CHAPTER 28

  Standing in Castle Reichsburg Cochem’s parking lot, the reporter found shelter from the freezing gusts behind the FNC network van. She tilted her face to the sky, shook out her blonde hair, and unbuttoned her Burberry coat. A makeup girl, her jet-black hair brightened with a green stripe, placed an apron around the reporter’s neck, tied it, and dragged an applicator across her left eyebrow. As the girl switched to the right eye, the reporter’s video link beeped.

  A severe looking assistant appeared on her phone. “Ms. Hellman will speak to you now.”

  The reporter held a finger between her face and the makeup artist. “I have to take this.”

  “You don’t have time,” the makeup girl said.

  “Work around me.”

  Katy Hellman sat in her London office and tugged her burgundy Escada suit. A diminutive frame housed a giant personality accustomed to the unquestioned obedience of everyone around her. She pointed at the screen and turned to her assistant. “What’s this? She’s in makeup. Give me her undivided attention.”

  “I go live in three minutes, it’s all I could do,” the reporter said. “Say, you look angry.”

  “Bloody right I’m angry. Who owns your network?”

  “You do, but—” The makeup girl pulled the reporter’s chin from the camera and tweezed her eyebrow.

  “My back is turned for a minute and you’ve turned this insignificant tosser into a household name.” Hellman’s voice rose. “You made a hero out of a dodgy lobbyist.”

  “We thought you wanted us to work him,” the reporter said. “He appeared to be the right material. We thought he’d be in line by now.”

  “You let him get away from you. He shows no respect for my authority. Have him speak to me right away. A few minutes with me and he’ll feel invincible.”

  The reporter jerked from the makeup artist’s hand and faced the camera with a twitching grin. “Invincible?”

  “What do the invincible always deliver?”

  “Ratings.” The blonde smiled until the makeup girl tugged her chin again and applied lipstick.

  “Are you there now?” Hellman asked. “Germany?”

  “All three of us,” she answered without closing her lips. “Bitter cold.”

  “Why is it so dark?”

  “Storm coming.” Again without moving her lips.

  “Who is the interview?”

  “Bobby Jenkins, Jenkins Pharmaceutical. Rumor has it he got mad about campaign donations last night.”

  “Nothing gets on the air about that. Do you hear me? NOTHING.”

  Noise in the background distracted the reporter.

  She ripped the apron from her neck and handed her phone to the makeup girl. “Bring this, hold it so she can hear the
interview.”

  The frightened girl stared dumbfounded into the camera for a moment, then followed the reporter to a place near the castle’s first portal.

  Dark stone walls formed a canyon, eighteen feet wide, with an imposing archway above where boiling oil once rained down. The reporter stood poised at the public entrance, her cameraman rolled out to her left, positioning her, and checking the light. He motioned for her to take a few steps back.

  Two well-dressed men approached, luggage bouncing over the cobblestones behind them.

  “Bobby Jenkins!” the reporter said. “A word, Mr. Jenkins?”

  The short, wiry man stopped. His son stopped two feet back.

  “Why are you leaving the symposium early?” She stuck the mic in his face.

  “Pretty strange things going on around DHK these days.” He took a few steps forward.

  She sprinted in front of him, her cameraman scurried ahead for the angle and light. “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve talked about this before, off the record, so you can interpret what you will. But it’s odd how quickly Koven mourned Duncan after he was dead. Wasn’t it brave of him to kill the killers while they were still high on drugs? He saved us all the pain and anguish we would’ve felt to hear those guards defend themselves against the accusations.”

  “That was several days ago, yet you came here to the rescheduled symposium. Why leave now?”

  “It keeps getting worse. Haven’t you heard? Another junior partner was murdered. Killed by his estranged son, if you care to believe it.”

  “Are you saying Daryl Koven committed a murder in Japan while he was in Germany?”

  “It’s a global economy.” He pushed forward.

  She stuck her mic in the face of the surprised young man following. “You’re Jasper Jenkins, right?”

  He held up a finger and checked out the camera. “Uh, I go by ‘Jaz’.”

  “Will your father go to the police with his theories?”

  “I dunno.” Jaz looked into the camera. “He’s pissed about more than just murder.”

  He kept moving. She put a hand out to stop him. “What do you mean?”

  He pointed back at the castle. “They just asked us to bribe US senato—”

  “And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.” She twisted to fill the video frame. “The founder and CEO of Jenkins Pharmaceuticals boldly accusing Daryl Koven of international assassination. You heard it here first, on FNC.”

  Daryl Koven wrung his hands as he paced the castle’s kitchen again. “He’s spilling everything to that damned witch of a reporter. I just know it.”

  Marthe, her robe and nightgown twisted sideways, her hair a mess, stared at her coffee. “They’re not the ones you need to worry about.”

  “The hell they aren’t.” Koven glanced at his wife. “Darling, get dressed. We have a lot going on today.”

  He watched her dig at something under her fingernails. Moving cautiously toward her, he touched her sleeve. “You’ve spilled half a gallon of wine on your sleeve and stained it.”

  “I didn’t sleep last night.” She wrapped her fingers around the coffee mug and sank to the table. “I haven’t slept for days.”

  Koven looked out the small window again.

  He cursed and ripped the kitchen door open. Barreling outside, he slammed the door behind him and crunched through the thin sheets of ice hugging the cobblestones. Through the first portal and on to the next, he marched like a Marine on parade. As he rounded the bend, he could see Jenkins and his boy, climbing into a waiting limo.

  He charged up to the blonde reporter, rough and angry.

  The reporter started talking with a big smile. “Could I get an interview with you—the king of kingmakers—Mr. Koven?”

  “What did Jenkins say to you?”

  “He babbled mostly.” The reporter brushed her blonde locks from her face. “No usable footage. But he did have what sounded like accusations forming in his head. You’ll want to get on record before he finds a reporter stateside and has his conspiracy accusations firmed up.”

  “You’re playing me.” Koven recoiled. “What are you up to? Why are you here so early? Why interview my guests?”

  “Never ask questions unless you want to know the answer.”

  “I don’t know how you go about your job, but I demand a straight answer.”

  He watched her think up another flippant response and cut her off.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he said. “Yes, I know you can blow over any fool who makes a statement and you can swamp mayors or congressmen. And you can cause an earthquake for presidents. I don’t care about that. Tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “Why not ask Ms. Hellman?” The reporter pointed at the makeup girl holding her phone.

  The shocked girl still held the phone with what looked like a framed picture of Margaret Thatcher. The picture flickered.

  Koven approached her. “Who are you? You look familiar—”

  “What eats you up at night is the thought of betrayal,” Katy Hellman said. “Who has his own agenda to which he’s never invited you?”

  “Are you talking about Rip Blackson?”

  “Ask yourself, who benefitted from all the death? Who seems so sincere at every turn? But enough of this idle banter. My next meeting already started.”

  “Wait! We’ve met before, haven’t we? Where was it? At the firm?”

  The screen froze Hellman’s face in mid-word, her image covered by an endlessly rotating circle.

  Koven snapped his fingers at the makeup girl. “Bring her back. I’m not finished.”

  The makeup girl shrugged her shoulders to her ears and turned her wide eyes to the reporter.

  “It’s the Wi-Fi.” The reporter waved her arm at the town three hundred feet below them. “Bad connection out here.”

  Katy Hellman’s face reappeared on the screen with a flicker. “If we met, you didn’t leave an impression. What firm?”

  “DHK, Duncan, Hyde and Koven.”

  “Bloody bold, aren’t you?” She frowned. “Bill Hyde would never promote you. You’ve stolen your position from him—like everything else.”

  “Tom promoted me just days before his murder.”

  “You have nothing to worry about then. Be brave and proud, don’t worry about little schemes and conspiracies. No one on Earth can attack you.”

  Koven smiled and breathed the cold air deep into his lungs. “Then I can rest as soon as I’ve taken care of that Blackson business. But whom should I worry about? My wife thinks this Sabel girl will be a problem.”

  “Pia Sabel a problem?” Hellman laughed and scowled. “I’ve arranged to have the local police take care of her. And they’ll look after you too. You have nothing to fear until the Oberstdrogen rises from the grave.”

  Koven laughed. “Then I’m good until the second coming of Christ.”

  Katy Hellman nodded at the reporter, who reached for the button to end the call.

  “One more question.” He held a hand out to stop the blonde. “I must know. What about Zola’s son?”

  “Don’t you know?” Hellman raised an eyebrow. “Berkeley has their eye on him for their rugby team. The coach is holding a place for him. Here, watch this little clip the video crew put together for you.”

  She laughed and clicked off, but the video feed switched to a picture of Brent Zola’s face, cold and gray and blood-spattered, lying in the morgue. His face morphed, feature by feature, into the face of a pimpled young man.

  “Horrible!” Koven spun to the laughing reporter. “What is this? How could you do such a thing?”

  “Shocking, isn’t it?” the reporter called as he trudged away. “Don’t act so surprised, this is your work after all.”

  Koven stormed back up the incline, through the portals, to the kitchen.

  His wife was gone.

  He pushed through the heavy doors to the room where the servants waited. Two men, one in uniform, stood eating a brötchen, a G
erman roll.

  Koven pointed at the man he knew, Kasey Earl. “What the hell are you doing here? I had you banned after Tom was murdered on your watch.”

  Kasey grinned from missing-ear to missing-ear. “Sometimes things don’t work out like you want. I’m here with Franz to protect you.”

  The uniformed man put out a hand and bowed. “Herr Koven.”

  Ignoring the officer, Koven faced Kasey. “Did you speak to the Three Blondes on your way in?”

  “Didn’t see no one when I came in.”

  “One drop of alcohol on your breath and you’re both dead men.” Koven shook a finger in Kasey’s face. “Why are you here?”

  “We’re the reinforcements Ms. Hellman ordered. Me and Franz. He’s with LOCI. They got the town covered and I brung some of our guys to man the walls.”

  “Where the hell is Blackson?”

  “He went home.” Kasey fidgeted his roll. “USA.”

  “Damn it.” Koven spun away and paced. “You waste even one precious second, opportunities disappear just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “From now on, I’ll act as soon as I think of it. I won’t allow one hint of insubordination. Not one whiff of betrayal. Do you hear me?”

  “Dunno what you’re talking about.” Kasey thumbed at Franz who shrugged. “And his English ain’t so good.”

  Koven crossed the room, his hands locked behind his back. “These bastards think they can plot behind my back and take these deals away from me. I’ll show them. No more waiting around. No more talking. No more pathetic excuses. I’ll destroy them. Their happy little homes, their wives, their children. I’ll crush them all.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The noise of Washington’s Dulles Airport crashed into my ears despite having eaten ibuprofen like popcorn through the whole flight. The icepack the flight attendant gave me reduced the swelling around my eye. I could see a little. But judging from the way strangers gagged when they saw me, I didn’t look so hot. Maybe that’s why my new love interest, the Japanese detective whose name I had yet to learn, refused to accompany me to the US to find the killers.

  The Major hadn’t heard from the kidnapper about exchanging me for the Zola boy. No surprise. Spiriting a kidnap victim out of the country probably took longer than just leaving, so I had a head start. If he was half a day behind me, my plan could work.