by Tom Wood
‘What’s her real name?’
‘Constance Stone. You were right, what you said. She grew up in the US but her father is Indian, of Persian descent. She was originally CIA, a star of the Special Activities Division. A career operative, straight out of college. No military background, not that you’d know. I worked with her and saw her talents were being wasted. I offered her a job with my unit and trained her up and she became my best operator.’
‘Why did she go rogue?’
Halleck shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Why does anyone move from the public sector to the private? It pays better.’ He looked back at Victor from over one shoulder. ‘Isn’t that your story too?’
‘I’ll keep my story to myself, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘I already know your story.’
Victor said, ‘Keep telling yourself that.’
Halleck turned round and leaned back against a wall. He rolled his shoulders to loosen some tension. He’d been standing up for a long time.
Victor said, ‘Why would she be protecting Al-Waleed?’
‘You’re suggesting it isn’t merely a coincidence?’
Victor remained silent.
‘Al-Waleed has been on our list of problems for a long time. As far back as when Raven worked for me.’
Victor was shaking his head before Halleck had finished. ‘No, she hasn’t been sitting idle for three years waiting for you to make a move on him. She knew when and where the kill was going to take place. So her intel is up to date.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘If it were impossible we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. She’d found out somehow that the prince was a target and I was the shooter. Either you have a leak or she still has access to your data.’
‘Shit,’ Halleck said. ‘But why? Why would she protect him?’
‘Because she’s freelance. Because, like you said, the private sector pays better. If she knows who you plan to assassinate, she can make a pretty penny helping to prevent that happening. If someone was going to kill you, how much would you pay to make sure they failed?’
Halleck looked away.
Victor said, ‘Have you lost any people recently?’
‘Killed? No.’
‘Or captured unexpectedly while spying?’
Halleck exhaled. His lips were tight.
‘She’s selling your people out. She’s sabotaging your operations. Why?’
‘For the money, like we’ve established.’
‘What did you do to her?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She’s coming after your unit any way she can. Maybe she’s cashing in at the same time, but if she’s as good at staying under the radar as you’ve suggested, then bringing herself out into the open like this is incredibly risky. She’s not going to do that unless she has a very good reason. So, I’ll ask you again: what did you do to her?’
Halleck swallowed. ‘Not to her, her boyfriend.’
‘Continue.’
‘She had a romantic relationship with one of my men. He was on her team in Yemen. They were going after a terrorist cell…’ He paused, and looked at the ceiling. ‘But the intel was bad. She narrowly escaped. Her lover wasn’t so lucky.’
‘She blames you?’
‘My sources were reliable, but no one is one hundred per cent, are they? It was bad luck. She didn’t see it that way. Like I said before, she went AWOL.’
‘And now she’s back for revenge.’
‘That’s your conclusion, not mine. But if you’re right, she has lists of our deepest agents and blackest of black operations. She’s already got one of my men locked up for life in a Shanghai prison and sabotaged the Prague job. Who knows what she’s going to do next?’
Victor paused for a moment because he heard footsteps in the alleyway outside and pictured Halleck’s men, but ignored the sound when he also heard children laughing.
‘How did she know I was to be Al-Waleed’s assassin? I shouldn’t be on any list.’
‘The CIA is a spy agency second and a bureaucracy first. Everyone is on a list. We have lists of lists.’
‘Why haven’t I been told about this threat before?’
‘Because until you identified her, we didn’t know who she was and who she was after. In case you failed to notice, she’s good. I trained her, after all.’
‘Which is more likely: a leak, or Raven still having access to your files?’
‘A leak. I don’t believe any of my guys would, but even if Raven was any kind of hacker, there is no way she’d know her way around our system now. A lot changes in three years.’
‘Find the leak.’
‘Oh, I plan to. And I’ll deal with it, don’t you worry about that.’
‘I never worry. When you find out who is doing this, pass me their details.’
‘Hold on there, friend,’ Halleck said with raised palms. ‘If someone is selling us out to Raven, then they’ll get what’s coming to them. But through the courts. I’m not handing them over to a cold-blooded killer. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Victor said. ‘But I don’t plan to kill them. I only want to use them to get to Raven. In the meantime I want her file. I want every sliver of intel you have on her.’
‘Why?’
‘I would think that was obvious.’
‘You’re going after her?’
Victor nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Even though you don’t think she was targeting you directly?’
‘That’s my judgement based on limited evidence. It’s going to take a lot more to convince me. If I’m a target, I want to know about it and I want to know why and most importantly, I want to eliminate that threat on my terms. I have enough people to look out for without adding Raven too.’
‘If you go after her, then even if you’re not a target, you will end up as one.’
‘I have to act like I am anyway. Making it a reality doesn’t make a lot of difference.’
‘Okay,’ the client said with a nod. ‘I’ll have Muir pass on Raven’s particulars.’
‘No. I deal with you directly. I don’t want an intermediary.’
‘What do you have against Muir?’
‘Nothing. But I have plenty against information being shared beyond those who need to know.’
‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that arrangement. I went to Muir in the first place. I know her. She should stay in the loop.’
‘I don’t care what you think. You sent me to kill a target and now I have one of your former assets after me. You owe me. So we do things my way.’
Halleck considered this. ‘Doesn’t sound like I have a lot of choice.’
‘That’s because you don’t.’
‘And what if Muir feels like I’m stepping on her toes if we cut her out?’
‘She’s a grown-up. She’s a professional. She’ll get over it. I’m sure her psych screening didn’t highlight any irrational tendency towards jealousy.’
‘Okay then. You’ll deal with me and me alone.’
‘I have a question about Raven,’ Victor said. ‘Before she went rogue, did she have any assignments in the Dominican Republic?’
‘Yes, maybe three years ago now. One of her last jobs before she went dark. Why?’
‘Did she work alone or with local assets or any former agency people out there?’
‘Yeah, a local asset. Why?’
‘Anyone she might have connected to; any reason for her to go back?’
‘She hasn’t been back there since. We know that.’
‘Who was the asset?’
‘Jean Claude Marte. He’s a fixer. Passports. You know the sort of thing. He’s in real deep with the cartels down there. Does all their documents. You probably know a dozen such guys.’
‘Two dozen,’ Victor said. ‘What’s his cover?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean: Marte doesn’t own a shop called Forgers R US. I mean: what’s his day
job? What kind of business does he run that’s legitimate?’
Halleck thought about this, eyes going up and to the left, accessing memories that hadn’t needed recalling for maybe three years. He said, ‘If I remember correctly, he was a tobacconist.’
Victor opened the door. ‘Email me everything you have on Raven by midnight tonight. I’ll do the rest.’
‘You know,’ Halleck called after him, ‘this whole not explaining yourself thing is really quite annoying.’
‘I know,’ Victor said. ‘But that’s half the fun.’
EIGHTEEN
The Dominican Republic occupied almost two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola in the southern Caribbean, sharing the island with its neighbour, Haiti. Victor travelled by boat from the isle of Grand Turk to the north, having flown to Jamaica, and then on to the Turks and Caicos Islands before disembarking in Haiti.
The port was little more than a seafront, squalid and half-derelict through neglect and natural disaster. Children, underdressed and undernourished, played in the streets, their bare feet shielded with dead skin, thick and cracked. They seemed not to know of their poverty, kicking punctured footballs and chasing after stray dogs and cats.
He took a bus across the border to the town of Monte Cristi on the northwestern coast. A short domestic flight in a twin-prop chartered Cessna had brought him to the capital of Santo Domingo.
The circuitous route had added a day to the journey, but even without the imminent threat posed by Raven, he did not like to travel via direct routes if it could be avoided. She was far from the only enemy he had, and even associates like Halleck and Muir might one day turn on him. They already knew or suspected he would be heading to the country. Travelling there on a direct flight would expose one of his aliases with only the simplest of checks.
The Cessna pilot was a seventy-year-old American, a former naval fighter pilot who insisted Victor sit up front in the co-pilot seat while he recounted stories of the many air raids he’d taken part in during the Vietnam War.
‘What brings you to the Dom?’ the pilot asked him.
Victor said, ‘The women.’
They flew in a more-or-less southeasterly direction, over the lush greenery of the Cibao valley and then flying above the peaks of the Cordillera Central mountain range, passing through wisps of pure white cloud.
‘Look me up next time you’re in Monte Cristi,’ the pilot told him as they shook hands. ‘I’ll take you to a whorehouse that you’ll need dragging away from.’
‘Sounds delightful,’ Victor said.
Jean Claude Marte was a hard man to find. Both Christian name and surname were common in the Dominican Republic. He had been a tobacconist three years ago, but only as a cover. A name, an out-of-date face and profession were not a lot to go on.
Halleck had supplied Victor with the same photograph of the man Raven had been given three years ago. The photograph had been out of date then. It was a copy of a Polaroid. Marte was playing poker in a hot, smoky room. He was distinguished from the other poker players by the red ring that had been superimposed around his face. Halleck could not tell Victor when the photograph was taken, but it was easy enough to guess it was at least ten years old. The Marte pictured was a thin Haitian with dark skin highlighted white under a bare bulb ceiling light. Age was hard to determine: the picture was poor quality, a copy, or even a copy of a copy; the exposure was poor; the smoke acted as a filter. Marte could have been anywhere between twenty and forty, based on appearances.
Now, that made him at least thirty, but he could be in his forties. Not a helpful age range to hunt someone down. But he had done so with less before.
He fuelled up with a late breakfast of traditional Dominican fare: fried plantain with eggs and salami. The portion was so big he could only finish half of it. He assured the distraught bar owner it had been delicious.
It was hot and humid. He wore a cheap linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A T-shirt would have kept him cooler, but the ugly raised scar on his right triceps was too noticeable, as were the tan-less marks to his left biceps. He bore the evidence of many wounds, and though his ethnicity alone made him stand out, the scars marked him as more than just a tourist or aid worker. They invited curiosity and questions and were as identifying as fingerprints. He had scars on his lower arms too, but cosmetic surgeons had helped disguise them, and the hair on his forearms made them less noticeable.
He carried no weapon. It was almost impossible to sneak one through airport security and never worth the risk trying. He had no contacts in the Dominican Republic from whom to acquire one and no stash to draw upon.
He waved a hand to usher away flies and tried not to breathe in as he passed an open sewer. It was too warm to drink coffee, but he saw nowhere he trusted to purchase it from regardless.
He spent the day wandering around Santo Domingo, seeking out tobacconists. He spoke Spanish and made small talk with the people who sold him hand-rolled cigarettes. He lit up as he left each establishment, drawing smoke only into his mouth to encourage the tobacco to burn. He exhaled without first inhaling, and extinguished the cigarette. When the smouldering had stopped and the butt cooled, he smelled the remnants, then threw away the rest of the cigarettes.
After the third tobacconist his mouth tasted disgusting and he had made no progress either with the tobacconists or the cigarettes.
Beyond the modern hotel complexes and skyscrapers lay the old town of Zona Colonial. He walked down narrow alleyways only a fraction wider than his shoulders, past bright painted doors and under windows guarded with wrought-iron bars. He walked by buildings ruined by hurricanes, earthquakes or the unyielding degrade of time.
He carried a satchel and a guidebook to look like a tourist. He had broken the spine of the guidebook in several places and thrown it at his hotel room wall a few times to give it a well-used appearance.
His Spanish was good, but he was not familiar with the African influences of the local dialect and failed to understand some vocabulary, and sometimes struggled with the different grammar and syntax. Asking questions about Jean Claude Marte was proving problematic.
The streets were teaming with Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and Haitians, but also many migrants and tourists. He saw locals wearing baseball jerseys and caps with the logos of Dominican and American teams. The Yankees seemed to be the most popular.
Cigar and cigarette sellers were almost as common as gift shops and souvenir stalls. No one seemed to know a Jean Claude Marte, despite a liberal spending of funds. Victor carried a supply of Dominican pesos but also a substantial amount of US dollars.
He found himself in a square busy with locals, tourists and pigeons. Cigar smoke fragranced the air. Victor took a seat on an upturned plastic crate in the shade of a mahogany tree to let a boy of ten or eleven clean his shoes. They needed no attention, but the boy worked up a sweat scrubbing and wiping them until they looked new. The boy was shirtless and Victor could see every one of his vertebrae like the peaks of a mountain range.
While he worked, Victor’s eyes swept the area for signs of watchers. A man in mirrored sunglasses stood next to a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus and drank from a plastic bottle of sugar cane juice. After a minute, the man screwed the lid back on to the bottle and walked away.
When the boy had finished he rattled a tin cup of peso coins. Victor dropped in some coins, and then a folded one-hundred-dollar bill when the boy wasn’t looking.
Stone buildings surrounded the square. Arched walkways led off in several directions. To the south lay the double archway entrance of the Catedral Basilica Santa María la Menor. He stepped out of the heat and into the interior. There were a few tourists as well as locals inside. He admired the stained-glass windows while he waited to see who followed him in.
No one did.
He performed counter surveillance while he wandered around the shops and boutiques as any tourist might, stopping on occasion to peruse wares as part of the cover. Jewellery items made
from amber or larimar stones were common.
He walked by outdoor cafés where tourists sipped fruit juices and cocktails. The old city had many squares where centuries-old colonial buildings stood proud and elegant, giving him an excuse to loiter in apparent admiration while scanning for watchers or shadows.
A skinny Dominican man in denim shorts and a yellow T-shirt approached him, announcing himself as an official tour guide. The man had bare feet and a huge smile. His hair was slicked back from a broad forehead. The beard was short but untrimmed with sparse and ragged growth up to his cheekbones. Small eyes peered at Victor from below eyebrows that were thick and wild. The nose was long and crooked through injury or unfortunate genes. His neck was dense with muscle but his shoulders were narrow. He was fit and strong, but only through hard work. Nature had made him weak, but hard work and hardship had overcome that disadvantage.
He had as close to zero body fat as anyone not starving to death could hope to achieve. His forearms were a maze of protruding arteries and veins made more prominent from the thump of rushing blood. His small hands were tanned and rough, nails bitten and torn down.
He was no guide. He was a hustler, out to scam tourists. He was perfect for Victor’s needs.
‘What’s your name?’ Victor asked.
‘I am the great Sylvester.’ He grinned. ‘You may call me Sylvester.’
‘How much do you charge, Sylvester?’ Victor asked.
‘Fifty dollars for the whole day,’ he answered with another huge grin.
‘You mean I hand over fifty dollars and you take me to the market and I just happen to lose you in the crowds and never see you again?’
The grin faded. ‘I would never —’
‘Spare me,’ Victor said, and took fifty dollars out of his wallet. ‘I need documents. A passport, that sort of thing. I hear there is a man named Jean Claude who provides such items. Do you know him?’
‘Maybe I have a friend who does?’
‘Well, turn that maybe into a definitely and I’ll pay you another hundred when you introduce us. Deal?’
Sylvester stuffed the fifty dollars into a pocket of his shorts and nodded.
