The Assassin's list

by Scott Matthews

  “That wasn’t my concern, and you know it. I was worried about you. You’re not the only one who knew what yesterday was. I’m mad that you didn’t call and say you needed time away. You think I had a party here myself?” Margo asked.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking right yesterday. I just called to say I’m headed to Hillsboro to meet with a new client. Thought that would make you happy. I should be back shortly after lunch. I’ll explain things then, okay?”

  “Sure, new clients are good, right? Means maybe we’ll be able to pay the bills this month.”

  She wasn’t mad. They’d been through too much together over the years for either of them to misread the other’s mood. Drake knew Margo was just worried about him. Hell, he had to admit he was worried too.

  “Margo, before you hang up, do me one favor and call your husband. Find out what he’s heard about the murder of the secretary at Martin Research in Hillsboro. That’s where I’m headed, that’s our new client. I know it’s out of his jurisdiction, but senior detectives hear things. Anything I can learn about this will be helpful. Could you also check into the security company Martin Research uses? It’s ISIS, or something like that. Call me right away if Paul knows anything, and tell him lunch is on me.”

  “Do I get to come along, or is this a guy thing?”

  “Depends on how well he comes through, so I guess it’s up to you. Call me.”

  The city of Hillsboro, where Drake headed, was west of Portland on the Sunset Highway. The city grew, along with Oregon’s metropolis, when the high-tech boom exploded. Intel and other Silicon Valley firms expanded there, and the area was dubbed the Silicon Forest. But with the tech bust in the nineties, satellite offices downsized, leaving a lot of Porsches and BMWs on the dealer’s pre-owned lots. The tough survived, and Martin Research had been one of the survivors.

  Twenty minutes after talking with his secretary, Drake pulled off the freeway. He followed 185th Ave. for a block or two, then turned west onto a parkway lined with sweeping lawns and modern sculptures. He was driving past these modern monuments to art, when his cell phone buzzed.

  “Paul talked with the head of detectives in Hillsboro. They’re sort of friends. They don’t think much of the burglary motive. The surveillance system was turned off, and they can’t find fingerprints or any physical evidence. Burglars aren’t that careful. That’s all they know at this point,” Margo relayed.

  “Tell Paul I owe him lunch. I’m going to meet with the head of security after I take a look at Martin’s office. I’ll call when I’m finished, and yes, you can join us for lunch.”

  Martin Research occupied two modern buildings at the end of a cul-de-sac. The buildings were surrounded by lawn, with a small lake that had a fountain in the center. An amphitheater with rows of cement benches sat to the south. Drake doubted that lectures took place there, but the scene suggested learned discussions taking place in a park-like setting. Investors would be impressed.

  A crime lab van was parked in front of a glass and steel building that had to be Martin’s headquarters. Drake parked his car behind the van and entered the fashionable reception area that opened all the way to the top floor. The whole area was illuminated by a giant skylight above.

  The receptionist sat behind a raised teak surround, with two security guards standing at each of the two doors leading from the reception room.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Martin.”

  “He’s not seeing anyone today, sorry.”

  “Just let him know I’m here. I’m his lawyer.”

  “Oh Mr. Drake, I’m glad you’re here. The police are here, they’re going through everything. It’s awful what happened to Mrs. Lewellyn.”

  Drake looked down at her identification plaque.

  “Kimberly, I need you to reach Mr. Martin immediately, can you do that for me? He doesn’t need to speak to the police without me there.”

  With tears beginning in her eyes, Kimberly entered the numbers for Martin’s office and waited for someone to answer.

  “Mr. Martin’s attorney is here, would you please let him know?”

  After a moment, she looked up at Drake.

  “The policeman said they’re busy right now.”

  “Kimberly, I need to get up there. Tell security to show me the way. Now, please.”

  The security guard on Drake’s left had been listening, and motioned for Drake to follow him. He held his door open and led Drake to the bank of elevators beyond the reception area.

  “Mr. Martin shouldn’t have to put up with the crap the police are giving him. We run a tight ship here, it isn’t his fault Mrs. Lewellyn was killed,” the man said. Beefy, in his sixties, the man looked like a former cop.

  “You know any of these guys he’s talking to?”

  “Only the detective, and just by reputation. Name’s Carson, and he’s a mean son of a bitch. He had Kimberly crying because she wouldn’t let him up to see Mr. Martin without calling ahead. Kimberly was just doing her job.”

  Mean son of a bitch was an understatement where Detective Steve Carson was concerned. Drake knew him well. Carson had been prepared to perjure himself in one of Drake’s drug cases. The felon had agreed to accept a favorable plea deal in the middle of the trial, which prevented the perjury from occurring. When Drake was forced to explain the plea arrangement, he’d refused to cover for Carson. Carson was demoted and later terminated from the Portland P.D. Rehired in Hillsboro, Carson had apparently worked his way back to detective rank.

  When the elevator door opened on the fourth floor, Detective Carson was waiting for Drake.

  “I heard they kicked you out of the D.A.’s office. You doing criminal defense work now?”

  Carson had changed. He’d been a tough cop, crew-cut hair, five nine with a barrel chest and thick shoulders. He was still five nine but now just thick all over, with a shaved head and droopy mustache. The man looked like a heavy G. Gordon Liddy, President Nixon’s break-in “plumber,” famous for putting cigarettes out in the palm of his hand. Drake doubted Carson had ever done anything as painful, though he probably wanted people to think he had.

  “Where’s Martin? I want to see him, now.”

  “No problem, counselor, no problem. We’re just doing our crime scene investigation and asking questions. Why does Mr. Martin think he needs an attorney? They’re the victims here, right, or do innocent people need attorneys now?”

  “You’d know that better than me, right? Take me to my client.”

  Drake saw a flicker of understanding that quickly flamed to anger before Carson turned and walked down the hall.

  The hallway to the right took them past two offices before they reached Richard Martin’s executive suite. Two plain-clothes detectives stood in the outer office where Martin’s secretary had worked. In his office, Richard Martin stood beside his desk, talking with a young detective taking notes. When she saw Drake enter with Detective Carson, she quickly asked another question before Drake reached them.

  “Richard,” Drake called ahead, “before you continue, may I speak with you for a moment?” He motioned to Martin to follow, and walked to the back of his office.

  “Have they been here long?” Drake asked.

  “For an hour or so. They’re asking, ‘Was I having an affair with Janice? Who could have turned off the security system? Did I suspect any of my employees?’ This is a nightmare. This is the stuff you see winding up in the tabloids.”

  “Relax, that’s why I’m here. Go tell your people everything’s under control, this is routine, and you’ll brief them before the end of the day. I’ll talk with the police for a while.”

  Martin left, and Drake walked up to Detective Carson.

  “Steve, I want you to listen carefully. There’s important work going on here, and we’ll cooperate fully with your investigation. You need to minimize the disruption, though. You’re scaring these people.”

  “Well, I’m sorry all to hell, Drake. There was a murder
here. It’s my job to find the lady’s killer. If that disrupts some new video game this company is working on, then the consumers will just have to suffer a while.”

  “As usual, you haven’t done your homework. Martin Research is a defense contractor for the government. The consumers are us, and no, we can’t wait for you to plod your way through this investigation. Now, why don’t you tell me what you need. I’ll make sure you get it, as quickly as possible.”

  Detective Carson looked like he wanted to settle old scores with one punch.

  “Drake, I don’t like you. I’ll never forget what you did to me. This is my investigation. What I need to know is how this buttoned-up, high-tech place allowed some killer to get in and kill this lady. Was this an inside job? Does someone know something he’s not telling me? If you can help me with that, great. If not, get out of my way or I’ll arrest your ass for obstruction of justice.”

  Drake smiled and gently put a finger on the detective’s chest.

  “Steve, as much as we both don’t like it, we’re on the same side here. But don’t ever threaten me again. I kept you out of jail once. I won’t do it again. Do your job and remember, I know the rules better than you do. If you need to talk with Richard Martin again, call me.”

  With that, Drake left, in search of the CEO, and some answers.

  Chapter 7

  The United Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Aruba via Charlotte, North Carolina took nearly thirteen hours on the same day Drake was meeting with the police at Martin Research. The man sitting in the rear window seat of first class, however, didn’t mind.

  He wore the casual dress of a business traveler, comfortable with the anonymity it provided. Of course, he also had a false passport and altered appearance. Most observers would remember dyed-gray hair, stylish wire-rimmed glasses, and the cane he used when he moved, if they remembered anything at all.

  His private jet would have been faster and more comfortable, but it could be tracked. At this stage, he didn’t want anyone to know where he was going or who he was meeting. Especially not the man he was meeting.

  David Barak was known as Malik, or the Leader, to his followers. They knew him by no other name. He was traveling to meet the man coordinating the war against the West from the Tri-Border Area of South America. Of the three-quarters of a million residents there, more than twenty-five thousand were Arabs. In that number, a significant number of jihadists and international terrorist organizations were represented.

  Western intelligence hadn’t been able to identify all the players in the TBA because it was a wild frontier, for the most part lawless. The various agencies knew the cartel and jihadist organizations were getting along, or at least cooperating with each other in unusual ways. The reason, Barak knew, was that one entity, known as the “Alliance,” coordinated the efforts of the cartels and the worldwide Islamist jihad for their mutual benefit. It also took a healthy profit for doing so, but it was deserved.

  Barak took a glass of champagne from the first-class attendant and considered what little he knew about the upcoming meeting. The encrypted message from his sponsors simply directed him to the island of Aruba and a villa on the eastern shore. There, he was to meet a man who would identify himself only as Ryan. He was instructed to brief the man on plans he’d been putting in place for twenty-five years. Actually, longer than that if you counted all the years since he’d decided to become a warrior. That was two days after his eleventh birthday, when his father had been hunted down and assassinated. The Jews had learned of his father’s close relationship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the head of Hitler’s SS Muslim Panzar Division in World War II, and had sent a team of young Israelis to kill him. Barak had vowed his revenge on the Jews.

  His father had fled to Egypt after WWII. He lived under the protection of Gamal Abdul Nasser, until the Jews tracked him down. He had worked with the Mufti to plan the liquidation of the Jewish population in the Middle East after Hitler won the war. Those participants the Jews found, they killed, often in front of their families. Barak remembered. He had watched his father, on his knees in the street in front of their home, still cursing the Jews when he was executed. He would never forget. It was a memory he kept alive each night, as part of his evening prayers.

  With the help of the Muslim Brotherhood, his mother fled to France and opened a small village bakery. A lot of Arabs were in France after the war, and Barak assimilated easily and did well in school. After de Gaulle rose to power, France reached out to the Middle East to assist it in limiting the powers of Russia and America. Barak was soon courted by the military for service in its special operation forces. His ethnicity and physical prowess were factors, of course, as well as his reputation for a fierce determination to win at any cost. While still in secondary school, his red flags playing soccer were legendary.

  After the selection process and recruit training, he was given specialized training to work with foreign local forces that France wanted to support militarily, especially in the Middle East. Colonialism was a thing of the past, but providing the assistance of its Quiet Professionals, as its special forces were known, often reaped some of the same benefits.

  While he was in Iran working with the Shah to assist the Sultan of Oman to put down a rebellion, he came to the attention of the movement. When the Shah fled Iran in 1979 and the Savak, Iran’s secret police, was dissolved, Barak and other foreign sympathizers were imprisoned. When his true sympathies were discovered, albeit under torture, he was asked to join the Islamic fundamentalist movement. He hadn’t hesitated.

  In the end, a farsighted plan was approved with his unique gifts in mind. It required him to assume a new identity and move to America, to establish a base for training fifth column forces capable of striking deep into the heart of the Jews’ ally.

  With a nest egg of twenty-five million dollars and twenty-five years, he had accomplished everything that had been asked of him. Now he was directed to discuss it all with someone he’d never met and had little reason to trust.

  When his United Airlines flight landed at Aeropuerto Internacional Reina Beatrix in Oranjestad, Aruba, Barak collected his Hartmann carry-on and deplaned. After passing through customs, he made his way directly to the taxi area in front of the island airport. Waiting beside a white Mercedes S600 sedan he saw a driver wearing the dark green cap he’d been told to look for. He nodded to the man and glanced around. Several men seemed to be interested in the Mercedes, but no one seemed to be overly interested in its passenger. Aruba was only twenty miles long, and six miles wide at its widest point, so the five hundred ten horsepower of the S600 Mercedes was transportation overkill on the small island.

  The chauffeur opened the rear door without offering to take his carry-on. They drove east and then southeast on a road to Boca Daimari, a beach area on the rugged east coast of the island. The terrain was mostly flat, with few hills and only scattered vegetation. It offered little in the way of scenery to enjoy.

  As they neared the sea, however, the view of the Caribbean along the highway south was breathtaking. The ocean stretched to the east as far as the eye could see, and small beaches carved from the black rock of the island’s crust passed by on the left. Occasionally, he saw a villa or small resort perched on a rocky outcropping, isolated and private. At least Ryan understood their need for privacy.

  Beyond a desolate stretch of shoreline, a white villa came into view atop a rocky finger reaching out into the sea. Its outline suggested Moorish architecture, with square lines, a scalloped roof, and arched windows. The white-graveled drive leading to it from the highway was lined with palms. The villa itself was surrounded with beds of bougainvillea, hibiscus, and frangipani.

  When the chauffeur pulled to a stop in front of the villa, a tall blond man stood in the shadows of the arched portico spanning the front of the villa. He wore white linen slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Large aviator sunglasses hid the color of his eyes, but Barak knew they would be blue. The man was a po
ster boy for the Aryan race, military bearing and all.

  Barak got out of the Mercedes and walked to greet the man in the shadows. As he approached, the man turned and led him into the interior of the villa before turning and extending his hand.

  “I never know which of our enemies might be watching. I’m Ryan. Did you have a pleasant flight?” he asked.

  “I usually don’t fly commercial. It was a long flight.”

  “Quite. Sorry it was necessary. Travel here is carefully monitored, thanks to the antics of Venezuela’s El Presidente. The Americans were used to watching Cuba, but when Chavez invited the Cubans to run his intelligence apparatus, you don’t fly down here without caution. That’s why we’re here instead of Isla Margarita. Hamas and Hezbollah are almost as numerous there as they are in the Middle East. Come, sit by the pool and we’ll talk.”

  With that, Barak’s host turned and led him through the villa. Dark-tiled floors and heavy, dark wood furniture contrasted with the alabaster walls and drapery. Bright floral paintings, however, gave the place vibrancy and spirit. If the villa wasn’t someone’s permanent residence, it certainly was a beautiful safe house.

  White tiles outside the villa surrounded a large zero-horizon pool. Ryan, or the Aryan, as Barak was beginning to think of him, signaled a servant and a tray of beverages and appetizers was brought to their umbrella table. He saw his host knew he drank Glenmorangie Scotch, but he didn’t recognize the small potato tapas that filled the serving platter.

  “I thought you might be hungry and, perhaps, thirsty. Salud,” Ryan said.

  “Salud. Do you come here often?”

  “Shall I call you David or Barak?” Ryan asked.

  “Barak will do.”

  “I know you have many questions. I will answer the ones I can. It isn’t important how often I come here, who owns this villa, or who I am. You trust the people who told you to come here, just as I trust the people who told me to meet with you. I was told to find out if there are services you might provide us, in exchange for financing your cause.”