Mandrick had to agree with Hank’s basic sentiments, though. Gann was not the brightest lamp in the street. But then, neither was he a complete idiot. He had managed to carry out what had to be acknowledged as a complicated sabotage of a Styx ferry that, with a little help from Mandrick, would be difficult to prove had been foul play. Admittedly, there was the Charon factor, of course, but that aside it had been a good effort. And the fact that he had refrained from dropping Hank was a further indication of Gann’s basic good sense. However, he doubted that Gann would forget the insult soon - or ever, for that matter. Mandrick might have misjudged Gann’s ability to hold back his violent impulses in the short term but he was confident that at that very moment the man was plotting Hank’s demise for some day in the future.
‘You people are falling apart,’ Hank said, redirecting his ire at Mandrick. ‘You don’t have the balls to hold this place together.’
Mandrick sighed. ‘We’re tougher than you think. A lot’s happened but we can get away with a lot more.’
‘You always tell people what they want to hear, don’t you, Mandrick? You want me to think you believe we’ll come after you when you jump. But the truth is, guys like you never really do believe it until it’s too late.’ Hank stared into Mandrick’s eyes.‘I’ve been buying and selling truth and lies for a long time and from people far better equipped to play the game than you. You’re lying to me, Mandrick. It’s clear as a mountain stream to these old eyes.You know what’s better than getting even with someone who screws with you?’
Mandrick didn’t bother to try and guess. He was busy assessing Hank’s sincerity and to his alarm he found him convincing.
‘Getting even with him before he screws you,’ Hank said. ‘That’s the smart play. Open the door.’
Mandrick did not react to the threat although more than a tingle of discomfort rippled through him. He opened the door and watched Hank walk out of the room.
There was always going to be an endgame to this whole scenario and Mandrick often felt concern at his apparent powerlessness to influence it one way or another. But perhaps that was not the case any more. It would appear that the ticking clock was going faster than he’d thought a few hours earlier. Hank had shone a narrow beam of light onto the pitfalls that faced all the players in this complicated game. The Agency controlled almost everything, but not quite. Every player had a destructive force that they could unleash and in such a game the advantage went to him who struck first. Mandrick and the Felix Corp were in it for the money but receiving it wasn’t enough. The real issue was holding on to the freedom to spend it when the top eventually did blow off.
‘He thinks he’s in charge around here but he ain’t,’ chirped Gann.
Mandrick glanced at Gann, wondering why Forbes had inflicted such an uncontrollable beast on him.
‘Mr Forbes is in charge of this place. And until he tells me to lay off Charon I’ll do what I think is best for this place.The CI friggin’A can go screw themselves.’
Gann headed for the door. Mandrick considered trying to convince him not to go against Hank but decided not to bother.The seams were cracking all over the place and Mandrick felt it was now beyond his ability to hold them together. Gann was, understandably, concerned about being accused of sabotaging the ferry and therefore had every right to protect himself. There was no way that Gann was going to let Charon get out of the prison alive and so he might as well get on with it.
Gann left the room and Mandrick went back to his desk and slumped into his chair. He suddenly felt more vulnerable than he had ever been and there was only one solution. He needed more control of his destiny. To get that he needed to act first. In short, he needed to escape. But it wasn’t getting free of Styx that was a problem. He could leave that afternoon. He was the warden. The problem was staying free. Hank had underlined that fact most clearly. The only way Mandrick could keep the CIA off his back was to have a value to them. It was that lack of value that was frustrating him.
The phone on his desk chirped, taking him out of the depths of his thoughts, and he plucked the receiver out of its cradle. ‘Mandrick.’
‘Hi,’ a woman’s voice said.
It was Christine and the image of her body immediately acted like a tonic. ‘Hi yourself.’
‘I’d like to see you.’
He never believed her when she was so forward. If she wanted to see him it was nothing to do with romance. ‘See me or interrogate me about the mess hall incident?’
‘What mess hall incident?’
‘That’s very good, Christine. You’ll become more memorable with comments like that.’
She laughed. ‘I was told one of the guards got his timings mixed up.’
‘It’s inexcusable. We’re taking it very seriously, of course.’
‘I wanted to tell you I’m pretty much finished.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. You’re the only breath of fresh air in this place. You’ll be at dinner tonight?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll see you then . . . Perhaps we can talk afterwards.’
‘That would be nice . . . Can I book a ferry for later this evening?’
‘You want to leave straight after dinner?’
‘After our little talk,’ she said coquettishly.
‘I see,’ Mandrick said, the excitement rising in him despite his better judgement. The thought then struck him that he might leave with her. Perhaps they could both depart after dinner and enjoy the following day together in Houston, relaxing at his apartment after the decompression. It was worth considering. ‘I’ll make the arrangements.’
‘See you later.’
‘Bye,’ he said, replacing the phone.
That was pleasantly unexpected, he thought. Christine was suddenly within his grasp and it made him feel far more excited and attracted to her, a very welcome distraction from everything else. Mandrick’s natural suspicion brought up the question of why she had changed from challenging to amenable so suddenly. He decided that perhaps it was not so sudden. He had been working his charm on her from the moment they’d first met. And time was running out for them to get it together which could have helped to encourage her. Or perhaps it was simply one of the mysterious complexities of the female gender.
On the other hand, this was probably a bad time to be leaving the prison. Things could get ugly over the next few days and being topside would lose him any control he might have. Perhaps it was time to put together his endgame plan. It was based on the premise that, when this house of cards toppled, if he could not be of value to the CIA alive he would have to let them think he was dead. Its magnitude was unnerving and challenging, not the most perfect solution but a good one and, more important, the only one he had.
Christine was highly desirable but he couldn’t allow the craving for a beautiful woman to cloud his common sense. That would be fatal.
Christine put down the receiver and stared thoughtfully at the colourful eiderdown covering her small bed that took up almost half of the otherwise drab white-painted concrete room. She sat down at a simple dresser, the only other piece of furniture in the room, and brought up an internet mailing page on her laptop screen. The vent in the ceiling clicked on to adjust the air. She paused to clear her ears before typing a short message that explained to the recipient that she was preparing to finalise her plans for departure.
She had set her own clock ticking. She could quit there and then, throw in the towel, tell Mandrick that she needed to get out of Styx immediately and turn her back on the rest of her plans. But that was not about to happen. Not without reasons better than those she had. She had waited her entire life for this moment, not that she ever knew what it would entail. But it had all the ingredients she had dreamed of as far back as her teens: an operation concerning national security; dangerous and, most significant, operating alone and under cover. She was a woman doing a man’s job in a man’s world and in the highly competitive arena she had chosen to work in that was no small achieveme
nt.
It had been a relatively short and hazard-free journey to the rare, enviable and highly classified position of Secret Service Special Operative to the Oval Office. The post achieved the highest level of secrecy by circumventing the channels used by all other mainstream and military intelligence-agency recruitment procedures. But Christine was nobody’s fool and was aware that getting the important job had been due more to luck than to ability. On the other hand, as her grandmother had always told her,‘The harder you work, the luckier you’ll be.’The words were true enough. Her appointment had had a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time. But she had certainly worked tirelessly towards the job throughout her life.
Right from childhood Christine had refused to conform to the generally accepted standards of her gender - by refusing to wear dresses, for instance. She would only ever agree to put on traditional female trappings after heavy negotiations with her parents, always bartering an occasional act of conformity for things considered too masculine for a young lady. At ten she wanted boxing lessons, at eleven she accepted brides-maid duties only if she could join a boys’ soccer club since there was no local girls’ team. Other demands over the years included baseball, fencing, rock climbing, karate and clay-pigeon shooting, not all of which she persisted with. But her hunger to pursue such energetic pastimes never seemed to diminish.
Christine’s parents regarded her macho aspirations as delusional, superficial and immature until the day she returned home for dinner after a game of ‘Smear the Queen’, a full-contact American football game without pads or helmet. She was clearly in pain as she sat down for the meal but stoically refused any attention. It later transpired that her collarbone had been broken in two places and she had several cracked ribs, a fractured wrist and a broken thumb. What was more, Christine had received the injuries at various points throughout the game but had refused to leave the field until the end.
By the time Christine attended college she had not only grown into a very beautiful girl but her femininity had blossomed along with it. Her interest in boys was growing beyond them as mere objects to compete against physically but although there was never a shortage of admirers she found it impossible to attract one who matched her strength of mind and spirit.
Christine attended the University of Virginia to begin an MBA course but soon after arriving she was invited to take a Juris doctorate. Her parents were keen on her becoming a lawyer and so Christine accepted the challenge but only if she could take up barrel racing. They agreed.
In her final year at university she placed second in the Quarter Horse World Championships and graduated summa cum laude, finishing third in her class.The prospect of becoming a lawyer failed to inspire her but she had put the work in, achieved the grades and had to face the simple fact that dreams were dreams and reality was reality. And so it was with a sense of fatalism and little enthusiasm that she prepared to apply for an internship.
But things were never to develop in that direction and fate played its hand. The law school held a job fair the week of her graduation which Christine decided to visit out of curiosity. To her surprise she happened upon a recruiting booth for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The agent who ran the booth did not make it sound as attractive as she had expected although she reckoned it was still more inspiring than becoming a lawyer. But any desire to sign up was squashed when he explained the qualifications required. Christine would need at least a college degree, an MBA and three years’ work experience or be fluent in a foreign language. She had the degree but not enough work experience and no foreign language.
Christine left the booth and as she headed for the exit she was consumed by a feeling of loss and disappointment. She stopped to look back in the direction of the FBI booth, wondering if there was any other way she might be able to join, when she saw a booth inviting applications for the United States Secret Service.
The Secret Service did not interest Christine as much as the FBI did but for reasons she could not explain she felt compelled to talk to the agent. After telling him about her qualifications he offered her a position on the next recruit intake. He was much older and wiser than the FBI agent and, although her academic certificates were more than enough, what impressed him more were her other accomplishments. He noted that her riding showed dedication, her captaincy of the college hockey team and her position as pitcher for the local baseball team displayed leadership and toughness, and her experience as a hockey referee indicated an ability to make quick decisions and to stick with them. A month later she was on her way to the Secret Service Training Center in Beltsville, Maryland.
The course began with a two-week initiation phase designed to assess the candidates’ general fitness and their skills with small-arms weaponry. On completion, the recruits travelled to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia where they spent ten weeks learning small-arms skills, hand-to-hand combat and basic law concerning arrest, search and seizure. The final phase took place back at the Secret Service School in Maryland, specifically at the famed James J. Rowley Training Center where the remaining students faced gruelling physical tests while at the same time learning personnel-protection procedures and investigation skills. Christine graduated top of her class in all disciplines, including fitness, outdoing all the men. But at the end of it she suddenly doubted that her new career would give her the adventures she had always yearned for.
After graduation the new agents were asked to list their job preferences and, unsure of what she now wanted to do, Christine selected the Presidential Protection Division, a competitive posting with a long waiting list. It was beginning to look as if her destiny was to be little more than a glorified bodyguard. But fate was not yet done with her.
The First Lady wanted a female agent as her personal minder but her son, a keen sportsman in his early teens, baulked at the idea. The President’s wife also doubted whether the service had a woman who would be able to keep up with him but she asked to see a list of candidates anyway. When she read Christine’s resumé she demanded that the agent should be fast-tracked to the residence immediately.
When Christine learned that she was to be a babysitter it gave her even more pause for thought. But with little choice in the matter she took on the job, albeit with forced enthusiasm. The boy was soon impressed with Christine’s knowledge and experience in so many sports disciplines, none of which he could best her in. He was a polite, disciplined and pleasant boy whose company Christine eventually began to enjoy though it did little to erode the lingering doubt that she was wasting her time.
A few months into the job Christine accompanied the First Lady and her son on a short politically motivated holiday to Cape Town. During an early dinner at a popular restaurant three local robbers, one of them armed with a revolver, chose the location to practise their profession. They were unaware that the wife of the President of the United States was dining inside at the time and apparently did not notice the collection of immaculate black-tinted suburbans and limousines outside the front, each with a smartly dressed driver at the wheel.
The robbers, posing as staff, made their way through the kitchen and into the dining room without attracting the attention of the Secret Service agents having dinner at a table in a corner away from the VIPs. Christine was eating with the First Lady, her son and a South African dignitary when the dastardly intruders revealed their purpose with a shout, the one with the revolver coincidentally holding it up near the First Lady’s head.
The robbers ordered everyone to lie face down on the floor and contribute their watches, cellphones, jewellery and the contents of their wallets. Every agent had a concealed semi-automatic pistol but the robber with the weapon was behind the First Lady, thus presenting a difficult situation for them. They could never allow any harm to come to their charges which meant they could do nothing to escalate the situation.
Christine’s pistol was in her tailor-made bumbag around her waist but she was directly under the gaze of the robbe
r with the gun. The First Lady showed her grit when she looked at Christine with an expression of stone-cold malevolence. The robber was swinging his gun around as he shouted, the barrel sometimes moving to aim at the President’s son who was looking extremely nervous, his eyes darting between Christine and the other agents as if he was about to run to them. Christine gestured to him to stay calm, worried that he might do something to increase the nervousness of the robbers.
The handful of people at the surrounding tables began lowering themselves to the floor when the First Lady got up from her chair and looked contemptuously at the armed robber. ‘Why don’t you lower your gun? Then perhaps I’ll do what you say,’ she said.
Christine initially feared that her boss was simply flirting with the danger and then a second later realised she was deliberately trying to distract the man. She was later overheard saying she knew Christine would take the opening.
As Christine lowered herself to the floor she paused in a position not unlike that of a hundred-metre sprinter waiting for the starter pistol.
‘Shut up!’ the robber shouted, pointing the revolver directly at the President’s wife. ‘Get down on the floor or I’ll shoot you.’
When Christine made the lunge she put all her power behind it. On making contact with the robber, her outstretched hand pushed the barrel of the weapon towards the ceiling and she practically knocked the man out as her shoulder struck him in the side of his ribcage. The blow launched him across the room and over a table where his head hit a wall, finishing off the job.
The other agents did not lose a second in tearing into the other two crooks, throwing them to the floor where, seconds later, they were bound tightly in plastic cuffs, napkins secured over their eyes. Christine quickly ushered the First Lady, her son and the dignitary out of the restaurant and into the limo which sped away, followed by a couple of the heavy suburbans.
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