by Mike Gomes
A turquoise lagoon and a coral reef supplied scuba diving and water sports for all those who came. But the greatest activity on the island, other than having a tropical beverage, was to sit on the beaches, enjoying the gentle breeze and the bright sun.
"Mademoiselle, may I offer you another beverage?" asked the young man dressed in full length slacks, a white shirt, a white coat, and bow tie. Holding an order book in his hand, he held the pen at the ready for the woman to order.
"That would be wonderful, thank you," replied the woman wearing a bikini, her emerald green eyes hidden behind the sunglasses. "If you could get me a martini, neat, please."
The young man whizzed away trying to meet time, knowing that the faster the drinks got in to the tourists’ hands, the larger they would always tip.
Gazing out across the water the woman known as the Mantis, held her breath for a moment and then released it slowly. Her heart still reeling from the loss of her husband, and trying to absorb life without him had become a challenge. No more did she have the ranch that had been set aside in Northern Chile, where the couple had planned to spend their remaining days living off the land. And though the work on the homestead was hard work, they had hoped to enjoy their time together in relaxation from the outside world.
"This is a nice life, isn't it," she sighed.
"It's a very good life," came a voice from behind her that she instantly recognized.
"What in God's name are you doing here?" Gabriella turned, stunned to see her old friend Tyler who was a ranking member within the system who hired mercenaries to go out and complete work for them with complete secrecy.
"You think you’re the only one that likes Bora Bora?" Tyler popped himself down in the sand sitting next to her in the chair. "This place is beautiful, and besides, nobody here talks. You can bet your life that if someone comes up asking for a woman who looks like you, everybody in the place will say they don't know and then tell you about it ten minutes later. And also, the seafood's the best in the world." He gave her a beaming smile.
"Well, I am partial to the cracked conch down in the Caribbean. But there is something to be said when you see your lunch actually coming off the boat and into the pan. In fact, last night, I ordered my meal from the young gentlemen that work here, and they actually made it directly in front of me and the other people on the beach that were ordering. They wound up making a pit and cooking a pig early in the morning, and then by night time, I can't tell you how savory it was."
"Did they use the banana leaf method? I think that's my favorite," Tyler said, squinting his eyes looking out across the water at the catamarans and small boats that zipped back and forth. "Although I will say there was a time in the Hawaiian Islands where I had something cooked by a banana leaf, and I swear they slipped some LSD or PCP into the thing."
They laughed simultaneously, a laugh that was more polite than one that held the value of what had been said. "You never know, maybe they wanted to make you a tribal member." Gabriella glanced over quickly at Tyler, and couldn’t help but notice his rugged bicep sticking out from the short sleeve shirt that he wore. Tyler normally adorned himself in tasteful suits coming from the highest designers from around the world. Though he was a man that was at home with the highest of fashion, he could also get himself down and dirty into the mud, crawling on his belly to succeed at whatever he needed to. A Renaissance man in every sense of the word.
"I was very sorry to hear about Antonio." Tyler turned his head to look at her. "I had the pleasure of working with him a few times, and I had called upon him a few times to help me out. He was a good man and I considered him a friend."
Caught off guard, Gabriella held herself, trying to keep the tears from coming out of her body. As she had been trained so many years ago in the bowels of a KGB building, her emotions did not master her, but rather she mastered them, only giving out what she chose to give at any individual time.
After a moment’s pause, she finally spoke.
"Thank you, Tyler. I appreciate that."
"I was so shocked to hear it, but I'm glad that you got things taken care of. I got a call the other day saying that the KGB is still on the lookout for you."
"So, what's new there?" Gabriella shrugged. "They've got thousands of men to try to track me down, and they never catch me. But here you are on the same beach as me, and I doubt that's just a coincidence."
"No, it's not a coincidence." Tyler smiled. "And you can ask me all day and all night, but I'm not gonna tell you how I found out where you were. Those are the little secrets I keep to myself."
Gabriella laughed, glancing over at the man who she knew had he wanted to, could have ended her life and got a bounty that had been placed upon her by the KGB.
"So, what stops you from dragging me in, old friend?"
"Your skills." Tyler stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his hands. "I need somebody with your particular expertise."
"Whenever you extend the word expertise, I always worry." Gabriella raised her eyebrows in curiosity. "You don't have a lot of tells, but that's one of them. That's when you don't wanna say what you really want."
"Well, what I'm looking for is someone who has the ability to investigate something, and then carry out the orders as needed. I need someone that's got a sharp sense about them to decide how a mission should end." Tyler looked side to side, making sure the people in the area were far enough away not to hear the words that were coming out of his mouth. "You're one of the people that can do that. You can take information, analyze it on the move, and make a good call. I have no doubt what you do during your work is sound and thoughtful."
"Well, thank you, Tyler, but before I give you too much of a thanks, why don't you tell me what it is you've got going through your head right now." Gabriella removed her sunglasses and threw her gaze from her emerald green eyes upon the man.
“Have you ever heard of blood smuggling?" Tyler asked quietly, shifting his body around and crossing his legs underneath him, and placing his forearms on his legs. "It's something that doesn't get a whole lot of press and it's one of those insidious things that nobody likes to talk about. But it's real, very real in several places around the world."
"I've heard something about it. A lot of talk about women in China due to the fact that they can only have one or two children will often try to get their blood tested to see if they're having a male or a female child. If it's a female, usually the fetus is aborted. If it's a male, they're happy. That's about all I know of it."
"And if it was just that easy, I'd say let it go on." Tyler nodded his head up and down. "Mind you, I don't like the idea of an abortion but that's up to them. But from our perspective, we're seeing something quite different in India."
"India?"
"Yes. Something you wouldn't think would be troubling them that bad. You never hear stories coming out from India about this sort of thing. I think the oppressed likes to keep a hold on things that are too damning to the world. They want their own police and their own government agencies to try to take care of it, but with a billion people it's almost impossible to keep an eye on everything and still have a free society."
"So, what are they doing with the blood? Do they export it somewhere else or are they importing it and using it for means that aren't so savory?"
"It's not all of it. There's no way to stop all of it. I could send out every agent we have and never stop it all. There are so many of these little backroom blood dispensaries going on, they draw from people and sell to people out of the backs of cars, and small rooms, anywhere they can do it. But there's a couple of big players, and one in particular that we have real worries about."
"Care to give me a name, or is it secret?" Gabriella smiled at him with a slightly flirtatious nature, that she didn't have the ability to control.
"It is a good name and I'm sure you'd like to know it, but the question is, before I tell you, do you want the mission?" Tyler asked. "And before you ask, it's fifty-thousand do
llars, whether you bring him back or you take care of it in another way. It could fit your bohemian lifestyle."
Gabriella held still for a moment, contemplating the number, but also taking in that Tyler was well aware that she'd moved into a bohemian way of living. She had no residence, no place to go or to call her own due to the onslaught of the KGB consistently following her across the world. Two weeks here, a month there, and another week somewhere else was how she was living her life, trying to keep one step ahead but also finding work that could suit her particular set of skills.
"Fifty sounds fair. Twenty-five upfront, twenty-five when the mission is complete."
Tyler looked down between his knees and a large smile crossed his face. Bringing his head up and looking to her, he winked at her quickly. "Always half upfront with you and half at the end. Sounds fair to me."
Gabriella returned the smile and the wink, and placed her head back gently on the back of the reclining chair, catching the sun under her chin. "So, who is it?"
"His name is Dr. Patel. Friends call him Raj. He's in New Delhi, runs an operation out of there, that's essentially like a service center for giving blood. There isn't any Red Cross mobile van that pulls up and has people line up outside where they give it two at a time. Oh no, he's got a structure over there, at least three that have thirty to forty tables in them and are consistently filled. He makes about four times what he spends."
"What does he do with all the blood?" Gabriella asked.
"He sells it. Blood's in high demand in India. They never have enough to go around, and with so many people in the whole country, it's hard to stay ahead of it. So, he makes himself a nice profit either selling blood, or if he wants to put it through some paces, he'll sell the plasma as well."
"And let me guess, it mostly goes to the rich?"
"You'd think that, but not so much. It's the middle-class folks that want it. The people that are the poor, they go into the hospitals, they get treatment, they get help, and they wind up using a lot of the blood. So most of the middle class, they are in the urban areas and can afford to buy the blood through the black market and through these different dealers. They hire a private nurse or an agency and they find the blood for them. It's completely illegal, but everybody seems to look the other way… well, they did until the last year."
"What happened in the last year?" Gabriella turned her head completely to look at Tyler, now deeply invested in the conversation.
"Dr. Patel got arrested. It seems that he got very sloppy with his work. He decided to stop checking who was getting what blood, and people were having horrible reactions to it. There were more than two dozen deaths from people getting the wrong blood or tainted blood. He did absolutely no checking to see if people carried previous diseases that were bloodborne like HIV. There were half a dozen kids that died by HIV that had gotten blood transfusions that originated with him."
"It is the black market; you never know what you're getting."
"Patel didn't do this before. He acted like it was a humanitarian cause but he accepted some profit with it. Though now it seems like he's only driven by the profit, and couldn't care about the humanitarian part. We have something worse we think is going on."
"And that's where I come in, right?" Gabriella asked.
"Exactly," Tyler nodded. "We have it on good authority that not only does he have his areas where he'll have people come in and donate their blood for a fee, but he also has a large blood farm just outside New Delhi. There are some buildings out there that have been abandoned, and down in the basements he has people that don't have the option to leave, they're essentially blood slaves. He gets them hooked on drugs, or gets them just so weak from giving blood that they have no ability to leave. He stands a few guards on duty all the time and winds up writing a number on the forehead of each person. Every third day, your number comes up and it's time to give a liter of blood. If you fight them, they take it on their own, and if you don't fight them, they take it and then they'll give you either the drugs or some food to try to survive on. But they never give them enough to be able to get away. He does the one thing that any despot ruler will do, he gives you just enough to survive so you rely on him and you need him."
"So, you're saying I'm going to enjoy busting this guy." Gabriella said with a smile. "How soon do you need him?"
"No timetable on this one, my friend. You do whatever it takes, and however long it takes, we have no problem with that." Tyler extending his hand over to Gabriella. "So, do we got a deal?"
Three
Making her way into her hotel room, Gabriella closed the door behind her, with a quick look down the hallway that came out of the instincts of her training from years gone by. Hallways were unsafe. They held mystery and they held difficulty that could erupt at any moment. A simple flash of a person around a corner had led to more than one death of agents who had not bothered to make a check on what was around them. Seeing that everything was secure, she made her way into the room and over to the bed, scanning everything to make sure it was exactly as she had left it.
"Every time you come around, Tyler, you make me paranoid." She shook her head, speaking to nobody in the room but herself. "I still gotta figure out how the hell you found me."
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she removed her shoes and slid off her bathing suit for a more relaxing coverall that dropped over her body.
Her time in Bora Bora had consisted of similar nights, day in and day out. After returning from the pool, she would come to her room, snacking on foods that she had bought at the local grocers, and enjoying a glass of wine on the balcony of her hotel room.
Twisting the corkscrew into the bottle, Gabriella smiled looking down at the label. A Moscato wine that had a light and airy taste to it. A favorite of hers and Antonio’s, and one that reminded her of times that had gone by.
"I feel like I should be making a glass for you, Antonio," she whispered, looking out to the evening sky and the sunset, watching as it turned red and yellow as it dipped behind the horizon.
Moving onto the balcony, she sat down by the small table and extended her legs as she placed the wine on the table and her computer on her lap.
"Time to go to work." Gabriella flipped open the computer and bought up the Internet.
Letting her hands go through the hotel system, she made several searches, none of which pertained to what she was specifically looking for.
"Okay, so which one will this be?" she spoke aloud, racking her brain. "Oh, I got it. India's underground."
A stream of stories came up as the search engine did its work, various stories of excitement and intrigue of past illegal activities that had gone on in the country that sat at the bottom of Asia. Stories of gangsters and small-time crooks doing everything they could to try to make a dime in a world where income was anything but expected.
"And now step two," she muttered, adding in a search for hospitals and blood donations within India.
Creating a staggered system of going from one search to another allowed the algorithm of the search engine to pull up things that it felt would interest her, and within half an hour, blood smuggling appeared in her search.
Clicking the statement, an array of different stories came up, highlighting the blood-smuggling activities that had gone on for years within India.
Letting her eyes run down the screen, she saw one such article that said,
Dr. Patel found innocent in blood-smuggling trial.
"Oh, that couldn't be any better."
Clicking on the story, she read on.
Indian doctor, Patel finds sanctuary in blood dealings.
New Delhi. A local doctor has been acquitted of a crime of selling blood on a wholesale market without government approval.
Dr. Raj Patel, who works at his own... Listed under his own name, maintains a private practice where he sees people with blood disorders and helps work with them. Dr. Patel has been accused over the last two years of illegally smuggling blood to different pat
ients, and the blood was not checked for infectious disease by anybody within the government.
"When you try to help people, it becomes very difficult," said Dr. Patel, speaking to the media after being found innocent of blood smuggling.
Patel's smuggling charges stated that he would pay patients for their blood in order to sell it to other patients, while making a profit at the time, and circumventing the stringent system of accurately tracking blood and where it had come from and who it's gone to.
Patel received his medical degree at New York University in the United States. Prior to being in medical school, he attended Princeton University and graduated cum laude with numerous offers to enter the financial markets in the New York area. Driven by a quest to help others, Patel set his sights on medicine, wanting to return home to New Delhi to help others in need, in a hope that he could develop a system that would provide high-quality medical care to the people of New Delhi.
"Dr. Patel is a Godsend. If not for him, my son would have died. He had a terrible issue with his kidneys. He needed dialysis and then blood transfusions with his operations. If not for Dr. Patel, there would have been no blood for him, no way for him to survive. If I were to have another child, I would name it for Dr. Patel. He's truly an angel of mercy."
The kind words reflected from Mrs. Bhalla are heard from many other of Dr. Patel's patients, who state without his ingenuity and ability to put his patients first there would be no survival for their loved ones.
But a different story is told by the government. Government officials asserted that Dr. Patel ran a business of selling blood for profit, and in the midst of it, made himself rich and powerful over the people that depended on him.
"Dr. Patel should have his license revoked immediately," said the government's attorney who tried the case, Mr. Oza. "Holding blood for ransom over people who need it is no hero. He didn't give the blood away out of the goodness of his heart, and he didn't get it that way either. If people couldn't pay the price that he wanted, they simply died."
