The Libra Affair

by Daco

  She turned back to the window. “I will tell you this — if and when you do figure it out, you won’t say or do anything about it, not without risking your life … or the lives of others.” She looked over her shoulder and stared back at him. Her meaning was clear — Jordan, the girl, his family, friends, and who knew whom else.

  A silence passed between them.

  “I have a proposition,” he finally said.

  Chapter 24

  “We can’t go,” Jordan announced to Isbel as she walked into the room. “Not yet anyway.”

  “Is everything all right?” the girl asked.

  “We’ve been delayed, that’s all.”

  Jordan dialed Snake’s number as she walked toward the balcony. “I’ll be right back,” she told the girl, then opened the door and stepped outside. When the connection went through, a recorded message played, advising the caller that the number was no longer in service. She expected as much; however, she also knew the no longer in service recording was only a front. She left her message for Snake and then returned to the room.

  Snake would come through one way or another; she had faith.

  Jordan switched on the television set. Together, she and Isbel passed the better part of their morning watching local news until Jordan had had enough. “Are you up to anything like playing cards?”

  Excited, Isbel said, “Do you know Rami?” which was the Persian name for Gin Rummy. “My father taught me just this year.”

  Jordan sat down on the bed with Isbel and together they began playing, with the girl giggling as she won most of the hands.

  “Are you sure you only just learned this game?” Jordan teased.

  Isbel smiled. “Yes, only two months ago, but we played a lot at school during breaks.”

  “And I suspect you soundly beat everyone there, too.”

  Isbel laughed. “Yes, quite a lot,” she admitted, then shyly flashed Jordan a loving look like a daughter might to her mother. They played awhile longer before Isbel said to her, “Thanks for helping me, Jordan.”

  Jordan glimpsed over her hand of cards. “No problem,” she said and soon found herself lost in thought. She didn’t want to take the girl; she didn’t want to help anyone. She didn’t want Ben to follow her; she didn’t want him to get hurt. She just wanted Ben to forget about her and move on with his life. And most of all, she just wanted to get this job done and over with so she could start over again. Falling for Ben was hard. Way too hard. She would never, ever, make that mistake again.

  “You’d make a great mother,” Isbel told her.

  Jordan felt the air catch in her throat. “Thanks.”

  “It’s funny, me, I have no mother, and you, you have — ”

  “Isbel!” Jordan said quite abruptly.

  The girl almost dropped the cards she was holding in her hands. Then she lowered her head to hide her face.

  “I’m sorry,” Jordan apologized. Isbel was only a kid. She had been through a lot and deserved a moment without feeling trampled upon by the only person she had left to trust.

  The girl wouldn’t look at Jordan.

  “Isbel,” Jordan tried again, but this time in a kinder voice. “I want to tell you something. Will you listen to me?”

  The girl glimpsed at her.

  “I lost my mother, too.” When Isbel raised her head, Jordan looked kindly at her. “And my father,” she added.

  “I’m sorry,” Isbel said softly.

  Jordan folded the cards in her hand and laid them across her leg. “I was a little older than you when it happened.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Barely fifteen.”

  “That’s not much older than I am now.”

  “You’re right. Not much.” Jordan had had her grandmother. Isbel had no one. Who knew if Farrokh would make it back alive for her.

  “You miss them?”

  Jordan looked into the girl’s scared eyes. “Yes,” she said. “All I can tell you is that it gets easier as time passes.”

  Isbel didn’t say anything. She seemed to accept what she’d been told.

  “And if you look in the right places, you’ll find a friendly ear. You know, for those times when you’ll need someone older to help you understand things.”

  Isbel looked puzzled.

  “You know … when you … begin to mature in new ways,” Jordan finally said.

  “Oh, that,” Isbel said knowingly.

  “That sounded kind of awkward, didn’t it?” Jordan laughed at herself. Isbel laughed, too. “I guess the whole point is that boys become more interesting.” Jordan grimaced; she knew she sounded preposterous.

  Isbel just smiled.

  “Did I really just say all that?” Jordan asked.

  “Oh gosh, I don’t know.” Isbel giggled. Then she lifted her head and drew in a deep breath. “Do you smell something?”

  Jordan did the same. “That’s odd, I sure do.”

  The girl’s face showed immediate concern. “You don’t think it’s a fire, do you?”

  “No, no. It smells like something’s burning … like food or … ” Jordan drew in a deeper breath, then stood. “Like burnt rice.”

  “Rice?”

  “Yeah. I think I might just have a look around downstairs. You stay put.” She tossed the cards from her hand to the bed.

  At the door, Jordan looked back at Isbel.

  “I know,” the girl said. “Don’t answer the door.”

  Jordan winked at her. “That’s right.”

  The smell factor read nothing but stink, which equated in real terms to something was wrong downstairs. Before leaving the room, Jordan slipped her weapon from its sheath. She checked the ammo and released the safety, then concealed it underneath the sleeve of her dress.

  She opened the door — less than an inch — and listened. There was no sound in the hallway save the hum of an overhead fluorescent light. Most of the guests — not more than half a dozen — had already checked out or left for the day. Nevertheless, there was a distinct smell of burnt food in the air.

  She pushed the door open the rest of the way, checked both directions, then slipped quietly down the hall to the top of the staircase. She stopped and listened. It was quiet. Too quiet.

  She started down the stairwell, taking each step one at a time.

  A few steps before bottom, the wall cut away, revealing the lobby.

  Not a soul was in sight, the front desk stood unattended, and while the room was lit, it felt dark as light gray smoke lined the top edges of the ceiling.

  Jordan looked toward the kitchen and listened; she heard nothing.

  Then a gust of wind suddenly slammed against the front of the building. The windows creaked and rattled and the front door burst wide open, smacking against the outside wall.

  Jordan made for the door.

  Stepping outside, she grabbed the door just as a police vehicle zipped past the hotel and down the street. Across the street, a family was walking down the sidewalk. Not waiting, she muscled the door shut before anyone noticed her or the smoke spilling outside through the open door.

  On the way to the kitchen, she checked the front desk. Nothing appeared out of place, but then no one was there either. Jordan rushed to the kitchen — across the room, a burner was lit and smoke rolled from a pot.

  The only explanation was that the owners must have left in some kind of hurry and forgot about the pot.

  Jordan hurried to the stove to turn it off and as soon as she turned to go open the backdoor, she saw the horrid truth. There on the other side of the work island, the owners were lying in a pool of blood. Their throats slashed with a butcher knife thrown recklessly to the side as though dropped to the floor.

  Red flashed through Jordan’s mind — Isbel!
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  Without a moment to spare, she scrambled out of the kitchen, through the lobby, and flew up the staircase.

  At the top of the stairs, she heard the girl crying her name.

  “Let go!” the child’s voice penetrated through the closed door of their room. “Let go!”

  Jordan raced to the end of the hallway and kicked open the door with her weapon aimed and ready.

  Chou!

  The man turned and aimed his weapon toward Jordan as he clutched Isbel by the neck. He fired.

  Jordan ducked for cover.

  Isbel struggled under the weight of Chou’s arm.

  Jordan took a chance, advanced, and returned fire.

  Missed.

  Isbel screamed frantically.

  Jordan rolled over the bed.

  Chou pivoted, aimed, but the girl bumped his arm.

  His bullet was lost.

  Jordan returned fire, popping him in the shoulder.

  His body jerked from the impact. He stumbled and released the girl from his grasp.

  Isbel scrambled to the corner behind a chair.

  Chou regained his footing and fired again, but with his aim impaired, he missed.

  Not waiting, Jordan pulled the trigger.

  Chou took the bullet to the chest. He dropped to his knees.

  Jordan gripped her gun.

  Chou dropped his gun.

  Jordan raced forward, kicked his gun toward Isbel, and shouted, “Get the gun.”

  Chou was still alive.

  Not missing a beat, Jordan faced Chou. “What are you doing here?” she shouted.

  “I,” Chou choked, “could ask you the same.” He rolled his eyes toward the girl, who was cowering in the corner.

  “Answer me,” Jordan demanded.

  With a hand to his chest, he struggled. “To read your horoscope,” he said in Mandarin Chinese, which was code for I’m here to help.

  “Why? Everything is on schedule. There’s only a minor delay. It’s nothing.” She had to keep up appearances even though the man was dying, but only because she knew this could be a set-up.

  He shook his head. “It’s a good day to be a Libra, Jordan Jakes.”

  Without a doubt, he was there to help. This shoot out had all been a big mistake.

  Chou smiled, showing his teeth, while grimacing from the pain. Blood poured freely from the hole in his chest. His clothes were soiled, the rug soaked.

  “Why did you shoot?” Jordan asked the dying man.

  She knew he was there because of the delay in the rocket launch. And because of Farrokh’s call to Fat Su. He was there to help her, to make sure the mission went as planned. He’d had no intention of killing her. But with the unexpected presence of Farrokh’s daughter there and not Farrokh himself, Chou must have sensed the set-up. The hotel owners must have been cold assets — disposable.

  Jordan realized that they’d both acted on instinct. It happens — it was part of the job.

  Seeing Chou perched upon his knees in his death pose, Jordan regretted that it had come to this. She questioned whether she could have said “Wait” in that second before he fired. But he was just as much to blame. All she could do now was to give him some peace in his last moments of life.

  “I’ll get the job done. I can promise you that,” she told him.

  “You double-crossed us.” Chou clamped his eyelids shut. “I should have known you — ”

  He stopped, unable to speak.

  “You’re wrong, Chou. Wrong,” she yelled at him, still playing the dying man.

  He keeled over and fell facedown to the floor.

  “All you had to do was ask. I would have explained the girl,” she cried.

  He rolled his head to the side and looked up at her. His eyes were glazed, blood seeped from his mouth, and in his dying breath, he told her, “Farrokh. You have to — ”

  Jordan nodded to indicate she understood what he wanted her to do. Even though the man was dying, she wasn’t about to reveal to him her role as a double agent for the CIA in this plot. The hotel could be bugged from top to bottom; he could somehow be recording their conversation; it wasn’t worth taking a chance Fat Su was listening in on them this very moment, however unlikely it was. And he was well beyond discovering the truth; this wasn’t a movie where all was revealed in the last moments of life.

  She relaxed her shoulders and waited for him to pass.

  Chou suddenly sprang up. He had a knife in his hand.

  Jordan jumped back.

  With one dastardly swing, he plunged the dagger into his heart. For a moment, his body froze like ice. His face drained of its color. Then he dropped to the floor and his body was still.

  He had lost face.

  She approached the body and kicked it over with a single shove of her foot.

  Chou was dead.

  The room was silent.

  Not waiting, Jordan searched his clothing. She took his papers and wallet. He had nothing more. She knew as long as Chou remained a John Doe, there was a chance Fat Su would be kept in the dark … for a while.

  Jordan looked over at Isbel. She was curled into a ball behind the corner chair. In a calm and deliberate voice, she spoke to the girl. “We’ve got to go now. You’ll be fine.”

  Isbel shuddered.

  “You’re okay.” Jordan started toward the girl. She secured Chou’s gun, which was lying exactly where she had kicked it, and when she reached the girl she squatted down next to her. “We can’t stay here,” she told the girl in a gentle voice.

  Isbel nodded compliantly and held out a hand.

  Jordan helped Isbel to stand and as they passed the body, she said, “Don’t look at him.” Before leaving the room, Jordan stopped at the closet, where she grabbed Isbel’s crutch and their bags.

  Isbel looked back at the dead man. “That man,” she said to Jordan in a shaken voice, “he said my father’s name.”

  “Come on,” Jordan said and held a finger to her lips to quiet the girl.

  “But that man — ”

  “Never mind about him,” Jordan said as she helped Isbel through the door.

  “But he knew my — ”

  “Forget it. You heard wrong.”

  Not arguing, the child became silent, then began to whimper.

  “You’re fine,” Jordan tried to comfort her. “You’re with me.”

  “I just want all of this to stop.”

  “It will.”

  “When?”

  Jordan stopped and took the girl by the shoulders. “I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you. You have to believe that. Okay?”

  Isbel nodded, then reached out and hugged Jordan tight.

  Jordan stroked her hair and comforted her for a brief moment. “I’ll carry you down the stairs,” Jordan told her. “When we get to the bottom, you can wait in the lobby until I pull the car around.”

  But when they reached the staircase, they both stopped. Farrokh was standing at the foot of the stairs.

  Chapter 25

  “Baba!” Isbel cried when she saw her father.

  “Quiet,” Jordan said.

  Farrokh hurried up the stairs.

  “Are we secure?” Jordan spoke to him as he climbed two steps at a time.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Front-back doors locked?”

  “Yes, we’re tight.” When he reached the landing, Isbel flew into his arms.

  Jordan glared at the man. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m going with you,” he said.

  Jordan leaned into him and whispered into his ear. “This place may be wired. Maybe even monitored remotely. And we’ve been through this; it’s not a good idea for you to tag along.” />
  Then Jordan stopped to think. What if Farrokh did come along? He could do two things: one, clean up the mess here at the hotel, and two, dispose of the Samand after she secured the Jeep at the storage unit in Sarakhs.

  That alone would be worth his coming along. From there, he could take Isbel and the two of them could split. Now that she had the codes — the correct codes — she didn’t need him to get the job done. It made sense for him to accompany them, at least part of the way.

  “You need me,” Farrokh mouthed the words. “Think about it, Jordan.”

  “Was that you in the kitchen?” she asked him.

  “No, no. How can you say that?”

  Jordan read the truth in his eyes. “Okay,” she said. “On one condition and one condition alone.”

  Farrokh pulled Isbel to his side.

  Jordan whispered in his ear. “You come along, but only as far as Sarakhs, then you two leave. And I don’t mean just cross the border. You leave like we talked about. You go someplace where no one will ever think to find you.” Farrokh wanted to argue, but she said, “It’s not a choice.”

  “Jordan, I need protection,” he replied.

  “No, you don’t. You can take care of yourself. Just get going, make contact, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I need — ”

  She cut him to the quick. “No one’s offering you anything else.” Her words were harsh. “If you stay, you’re a dead man. This is your only chance and it’s no guarantee.” The truth stung. She knew he knew it.

  “I don’t know where we could go.”

  “Try Peru.” She pulled back from his ear.

  “Peru? I don’t know anything about Peru.” He mouthed the words, looking into her eyes.

  She leaned forward again and spoke in his ear. “All the better. Your life here is over.” She didn’t have to say anything further; he understood exactly what she wasn’t saying. “Are we agreed?”

  When she pulled back, he nodded reluctantly. “Okay.”

  “And another thing.” Jordan motioned back up the stairs, then leaned in to him. “You’ve got a mess to clean up. Last room on the left.”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Chou.” She drew back to gauge his expression.