The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake 2)

by David Leadbeater

  “It’s the Blood King they’re loyal too,” Drake said speculating just as fast. “Because he offers them the only thing they care about. Money. I bet each and every one is on a special, lucrative contract.”

  “A sort of ‘return whenever and you’ll get paid’ contract?” Kennedy shrugged. “That’d do it for most of ‘em. Scum of the earth.”

  “So even if they get caught and put in jail they still get paid when they get out?” Hayden looked dubious. “Well, I guess it’s a quick way to build a loyal army.”

  Several more bullets thunked into the Tahoe.

  Kinimaka was staring intently ahead. “Say, isn’t that the Bank of America? Always wanted to see it up close.”

  “Can’t you people hear that!” The desk-clerk suddenly screamed, making them all jump higher than if an RPG had just fizzed past. “There’s bullets hitting the car. Bullets!”

  Drake stared at her as if she was mad. “We didn’t think it was kids throwing peanuts, love.”

  Ben patted her hand. “Don’t worry, miss. This is how we roll.”

  Drake groaned. “Give it a rest, Iggle Piggle. We’ll be out of range soon, Miss.”

  Ben said: “That’s right, hit me where - say, where’s Wells?”

  “You’re only just missing him?” Hayden lowered her eyes. “Sorry. He died back there.”

  Drake saw a look pass between Mai and Alicia. The waters ran deep between them, a deluge of bad memories and secrets he was hoping he wouldn’t have to delve into.

  The Tahoe was heading towards one of the police cordons. Hayden eyed it with pleasure. “Thank you, god.”

  “Just remember Jonathan’s words,” Drake reminded her, ever watchful. “Trust no one. Tell them as little as possible.”

  The cordon came up quick. Alicia let the car drift to a non-threatening halt.

  Nothing moved. The barricade was deserted.

  Alicia looked around at Drake and pulled a face. “Fuckin’ great.” English irony.

  Then, a man walked through the barriers, a man walking very fast and with a big metal briefcase bashing his legs.

  Hayden sat up in surprise. “That’s Justin Harrison.” She rolled down the window.

  Harrison came up quick and stopped next to the gently ticking Tahoe. He stared at Hayden. “You really need to strip all your clothes off, Miss Jaye, right now.”

  Drake fancied you could have heard a pin drop.

  Harrison blinked. “For your own sake, naturally.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “We’ve been tracking you the whole time,” Harrison told them as Hayden and Kinimaka exited the car. “You have the controller. I don’t think there’s a more important person in the world than you now, Miss Jaye.”

  Hayden thought about the trackers they’d implanted in her clothing. “Shit, there’s even one in my pants.” She half-laughed. “Hope you’ve brought your credit card, Harrison.”

  Drake leaned out the window. “Is it a case of trusting no one? Or just being careful?”

  “Both,” said Harrison shrugging. “Clearly, I can’t say much. I don’t know much.”

  “Trust a politician.” Drake laughed and then draped himself out the window. “So, you gonna start stripping then?”

  Kennedy slapped him. Kinimaka looked a little affronted. “I didn’t mean you, big boy.”

  “Seriously,” Harrison came around the front as Kinimaka and Hayden climbed back in, “that’s an imperative. If there is a mole on the surveillance side we can’t have them relaying our whereabouts to Boudreau.”

  “Ok, ok, I’ll strip,” Hayden said. “Just get me some damn clothes first. Or at least a blanket.”

  Ben couldn’t hide a grin. “Wish I’d have come up with that ploy.”

  But Hayden was leaning close to Harrison now, no doubt imparting the bombshell that she actually didn’t have the controller any more. That it was lost back at the parking lot. Harrison’s head went down immediately.

  Alicia started the car and drove carefully through the barricade. Military personnel melted back into sight now that Harrison had done his thing, hard-faced men with steel in their eyes.

  Kennedy was rummaging around in the boot. “There’s a blanket back here and a trench-coat. That ok for you?”

  With some difficulty and averting of eyes and intense shuffling both Hayden and Kinimaka stripped totally naked and threw their clothes out the window. Alicia Myles was, perhaps predictably, the only one of the bunch who watched the entire proceedings, examining Mano with enthusiastic interest. In a way, Drake didn’t mind so much. At least it showed the real Alicia was still present.

  Hayden donned the trench-coat. Kinimaka wrapped his bulk inside the blanket. Everyone pretended not to notice the flesh that remained uncovered.

  Hayden leaned forward with extreme caution. “Harrison. Do you guys have a plan? What’s been going on?”

  The Secretary of Defence’s aide smiled genuinely for the first time since Drake had known him. “Ah, yes. Do we have a plan.”

  *****

  Harrison directed Alicia to head back towards the Keys for now. “Just keep driving, Miss Myles, we have a facility on the way.”

  Alicia looked at him. “Did Hudson’s information help you?”

  “Tip o’ the sword, Miss Myles, tip o’ the sword. It was the edge we needed to carve our way into Dmitry Kovalenko’s shady world. And by shady I mean black. In every way. The legend says that the Blood King kills a man every single day, just because he can. If his crew don’t fetch him a worthwhile prisoner, he kills one of the crew.”

  “Where did all this new information come from?” Drake asked cautiously.

  “Using Hudson’s information as a starting point we back-tracked through history. Came up with some interesting links to people within our reach, if you know what I mean. In short, the Blood King has helped some pretty powerful people become powerful over the last twenty years. All we had to do was start squeezing those people and piece together the information.”

  “Squeezing them?” the desk-clerk asked with a tremor in her throat.

  Harrison did a double-take. “Where did she come from?”

  “The front desk,” she moaned.

  Harrison stared around silently.

  “We can’t just ditch her,” Drake said. “Carry on. She’ll be fine, won’t you love?”

  The desk-clerk looked away, straight at Kinimaka, then blushed and stared at the floor.

  “Kovalenko rose to power when Russia was at its weakest, sometime after the cold war. His family owned a vodka refinement plant, which he quickly turned into a world class brand by forcing the best people to work for him. Kind of like what he’s doing now, though we still don’t know how.”

  “Or who.” Drake’s barb was like a left hook.

  “Indeed. Kovalenko then set about acquiring most of the other vodka brands in Russia, in secret. He wanted to be the undisclosed owner rather than partner, the man behind it all, but never seen. His empire, well it is almost unlimited. We’ve just scratched the surface and found over three hundred companies he owns.”

  “So why did he chose to do a Blackbeard?” Ben asked. “You know, live at sea like a pirate?”

  “It’s what gave him his anonymity. You know, someone says ‘he lives at sea’ and wonders why he can’t be found. What most people don’t understand is that the seas are unbelievably vast. There are many, many thousands of square miles of ocean that, though charted, are never sailed or tracked. The manpower required to do so would be nonsensical.”

  Harrison had been talking fast-like-a-fox now for some time. Drake saw no sign of him taking a break. Hayden asked him about Boudreau.

  “Far as we know, he’s just a merc. The Blood King, with his resources, could have recruited anybody. Maybe Boudreau came recommended.”

  “Only by Top Psycho Magazine,” Kennedy shivered despite the heat in the car.

  “So, Kovalenko sailed these waters for twenty years,” Drake pointed out. “And
was never seen? Come on, Justin. Pull the other one.”

  “No thank you. The Blood King was seen, Drake. Of course he was seen. The ship he had commissioned, though we haven’t located it yet, we’re guessing is beyond cutting edge. But it won’t look more than a spit different to any other hundred-million-dollar yacht out there. And, trust me, there’s more than you would think.”

  “He’d send crew ashore for provisions,” Ben said. “Using the ship’s tenders. Why, though, would the crew want to spend their lives at sea with him?”

  “The pirates did it,” Harrison said. “The Blood King is just a modern day version. Maybe he pressed them all into service. A lifetime of indenture to provide their families with riches, or save them from bandits or whatever. You gotta see that when you have the Blood King’s power and resources, nothing is impossible.”

  Kinimaka made a backwards motion. “Like starting a war in Miami?”

  “Just like that.”

  Alicia threaded the Tahoe through some traffic onto a much wider road. “Do I get my pardon, Mr Government Stooge?”

  To his credit, Harrison didn’t even look at her. “Let’s revisit that subject later, hmm? But I will tell you one other thing.”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “That name Hudson uncovered - Stormbringer? It’s not only the name of the device . . . it’s also the name of the Blood King’s ship.”

  “’Dear to our owners heart.’” Alicia remembered the snippet her dead lover had found. “Of course it was. Since he commissioned it and lived on it.”

  “We will find the ship,” Harrison said. “Our only concern is how much warning he will have that we are coming.”

  “Send in the biggest damn thing that you’ve got,” Drake told him. “The bastard likes big odds. Send him bigger odds than even he can handle.”

  Harrison smiled. “Every carrier and warship we have around the world is on standby.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Do you think the Blood King knew of the device?” Ben asked as the darkness began to soften outside the car’s windows. “And named his ship after it?”

  “Sure. The coincidence otherwise just doesn’t wash.”

  “Then why didn’t he fetch it himself?”

  “Well, this leads us in to the next phase of his plan,” Harrison paused. “We think.”

  “Next phase?” Drake came alert.

  “Kovalenko never knew where the displacement device ended up. He could not have known it sank aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge or, as Ben says, he wouldn’t have hesitated to obtain it. They’ve been digging that old wreck up for a decade.”

  “So the TV coverage was most likely his biggest shock since he came firing down the birth canal?” Drake wondered.

  Hayden nodded. “And then he sent a team to grab the CIA agents in charge of investigating the case. Full circle.”

  “We beat him to the controller,” Ben pointed out. “That’s why he sent Alicia to grab us in Key West.”

  “But you said something about a next phase,” Kinimaka said.

  “This isn’t the Blood King’s big play,” Harrison said. “It’s something that has diverted him momentarily from his plan. I mean, think of the sheer fortune of seeing the device, the chance that it would be shown on TV, and then the gut reaction. It all smacks of a man seeking his dream rather than his goal.”

  “Is that all you got?” Drake screwed up his face.

  “No. A good third of the people we, um, spoke to, told us the Blood King had been searching for something extremely precious for his entire life. Something even he, with all his power, couldn’t get his hands on. They also said he was nearing the end of his quest. He has properties all over the world in addition to his floating home you know, and it is one of these that he plans to retire to soon and so fulfil a lifelong quest.”

  “Still ball-all to go on,” Drake snapped. “Do you have locations?”

  “Some. Every time Kovalenko elaborated on this quest, he would simply refer to it as ‘reaching for the gates of hell’. He also apparently banged on about Cook finding it first. That bastard Cook found it first, to quote one source.”

  “Captain Cook?” Kinimaka sounded surprised. “The man who came to Hawaii?”

  “Most likely. We don’t know.”

  “That all means nothing,” said Mai who had been so quiet up until then that Drake had almost forgotten she was there. Calm, but taking everything on board. “And if we destroy him now?”

  “I so admire the plain thinking of the Japanese,” Harrison said. “Our thoughts too. Once we have him in custody - or dead - his plans evaporate with him.”

  Kennedy was squirming about on the leather seat, still trying to pull those jeans up a little more. “You can bet your ass on one thing. In addition to an army, he’ll have some radical defences on that ship.”

  Hayden gave the New York cop a sassy look. “I’ll take those jeans off your hands if you like, Ken. You got no idea what bits I’m getting stuck to the leather.”

  Kinimaka shifted a bit. “I do.”

  “Hey, talky dude,” Alicia barked. “How much friggin’ further do you want me to go? Normally, people pay to keep me in one position for so long.”

  “Key Largo,” Harrison stared at a passing signpost. “We have a facility there. A most interesting one. Won’t be long now.”

  “Will it help you find the Blood King’s ship?” Drake asked.

  Harrison smiled but the emotion didn’t touch his eyes. “With this masterwork of technology, Mr Drake, you could see through the walls of . . . ” he gulped a little. “Well, you’ll see. It’s good.”

  *****

  Key Largo might well have been the largest of the Keys’ archipelago but within twenty minutes Alicia was unhappily waving the famous Caribbean Club goodbye and pulling into a concealed entrance. Within seconds a small, squat building appeared. Harrison directed Alicia to pull up outside and indicated a masked entryway to the side.

  “Let’s go.”

  Around the side of the building they entered the main complex. Harrison showed his credentials and immediately ordered new clothes for Hayden and Kinimaka. The facility administrator eyed the big man dubiously.

  “We may have to send out for you, sir.”

  Kinimama nodded, used to it. “Whatever, man, whatever you can do.”

  “And this woman,” Harrison indicated the desk-clerk. “Needs to be debriefed.”

  Harrison led them towards the inner workings of the facility. Drake walked behind Kennedy, aware that the two white elephants who shared their room had only gotten bigger during the last few days. He felt driven to help Hayden, to enable her to come to terms with the loss of her men, but at the same time he knew Kennedy and he hadn’t fared well recently.

  Was it some kind of comedown for her? Not being able to quietly keep in contact with some of the relatives. Or was she continuing it by mobile, through Twitter maybe. In any case she remained distant and uncommunicative, which made him worry further.

  Life had been so much simpler in the SAS. Listen, obey, execute. Just do your job.

  Real life made everything turn to grey. It slowed him down and sucked away his fighting and thinking prowess. This was because real life wasn’t as straightforward and simple as living the army life. It was because real life was the toughest boot camp in the world.

  And now it tore at him that when he needed his army skills the most he had sat on his arse, diluting them for over seven years.

  The main room in the facility was round, and circuited above by a walkway that provided access to banks of flashing terminals that lined the walls. Three operatives stood around chatting until they saw Harrison speed-walking towards them.

  “Sir?”

  “I need a briefing of where we’re at and how we got there. Now.”

  The facility’s team leader came forward, proffering a hand and then pointing out a row of hi-tech terminals that sat below a bank of TV screens mounted on the wall.
<
br />   “A demonstration is usually quicker,” he said. “Then the explanation.”

  The tech sat down without inviting anyone to join him and started pecking at a few buttons. Within seconds a grainy image started to emerge on the screens.

  “Just tasking our baby,” he muttered to himself. “There she is, there . . .” he finessed a pair of toggles as he pecked away. “It’s normally quicker, but we put her on stand-by. Poor girl’s had a rough few days.”

  Kennedy grunted at him. “Some of us have had a rough few years.”

  Drake laid a hand on her shoulder. At least she didn’t shrug it off. When she turned her head slightly he beckoned her over to a quiet corner.

  “When this is over,” he said, “do you think we could talk? About Kaleb. About the families’ victims. And about Alyson?”

  It was the first time he’d openly invited talk about his late wife since her death.

  Kennedy looked shocked. “You want to? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would,” Kennedy nodded immediately. “That would be good.”

  A series of long beeps interrupted their moment. Drake looked over to see the tech indicating the high screens and a rapidly emerging image. “Ok,” he spoke like a college lecturer, “what we have here is your standard satellite image, as seen . . . ” he bowed his head,“ . . . on many a TV show. This is what you, the general public, are used to.”

  Drake wondered if he’d really lost it that much. Damn, he needed to get back into that tough regimental training that the Hereford boys did every day.

  The classified system zoomed in closer as the tech squeezed a toggle. Within seconds they were looking down at a busy street, so close they could pick out the features of passers-by.

  “Paris.” The tech told them. “It’s around eight a.m. there now. See there? The Park Lane hotel, right in the heart of the Champs-Elysees.” The camera whizzed up to the roof, so close Drake could actually see individual pebbles and bits of litter.