The man reached to the side, and the chamber became flooded with yellow light. A lamp mounted to a collapsible tripod stood by the gray wall. She could make out paint peeling from its damp surface beyond the glare.
She had shut her eyes, pretending to be incapacitated. They might slip if they thought she was still unconscious.
“Come on. Wake up. The drug has worn off by now, so let’s not waste each other’s time. I know you’re listening to every word, so open your eyes, and let’s get down to business, shall we?” the man said. He pronounced his consonants oddly, with a slight lisp, but different. Almost like a speech impediment, the word ‘so’ sounding more like ‘tho’.
Jet opened her eyes and regarded him.
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Sorry about the little bondage session, but I’ve been warned that you are extremely dangerous – that your entire body is literally a lethal weapon, cliché as that might sound. It seemed prudent to restrain you until we’d had a chance to chat.”
“Is that what you call this? Chatting?” Jet snapped.
“Well, you’ll have to forgive my manners. I’ve had to improvise. This was all the hospitality I could arrange at short notice. But yes, we are going to have a nice little chat, and you’re going to discover how you can help me so that I can help you.” The man’s voice and cadence were eerily menacing, even though he was soft-spoken, almost gentle in his cadence, which was more chilling than if he had been screaming abuse at her.
“Help you? I don’t have any idea who you are. Why would I want to help you? You’ve kidnapped me from a motel in the dead of night for God knows wha–”
“Please. Spare me. I know who you are. I know all about you. Again, don’t waste my time with denials or protestations.”
Jet bit her tongue.
“Let’s see if this rings any bells. Your code name was Jet. You were with the Israeli intelligence service for almost six years, during which time you broke every record for effectiveness. Assassinations, kidnappings, blackmail, insurrection, false flag attacks…when the Mossad needed the dirtiest of the dirty done, you were who they sent.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Who are you?”
“Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. So you concede that we don’t need to play around anymore? You may call me Arthur. Nice to meet you…Jet.” He walked closer to her, and the lamp’s glow illuminated his face. There was something wrong with it. The skin. It looked like scar tissue, like…
“Yes, it was the result of a horrible burn. Six surgeries later, and this was the best they could do. But I’ve learned to live with it. A friendly dose of napalm in Vietnam. A long, long time ago. I’m actually very lucky I have sight in both eyes. You can’t have helped but notice that I have a hard time pronouncing some sounds, though. That’s a regrettable byproduct of not having lips.”
“Arthur. Fair enough. Who are you?”
“Why, can’t you guess? I’m very sorry to hear about David, by the way. He was a solid fellow. An honorable man.”
“You knew David?”
“Obviously. I arranged for one of my subordinates to help with information about the Russian. About Belize. I also helped him in sourcing weapons and blueprints…”
“You’re his contact with the CIA?”
“Not exactly – most of the grunt work went through my underling, Terry. But I was the ultimate authority. He couldn’t have done any of it without my approval.”
“Why does the CIA have me tied up in a cell?”
“Now we come to the heart of the matter. Because, my dear girl, I need your help with a matter of some delicacy. A matter that is right up your street.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“I was wondering when you would get to that. She’s fine. I have arranged for her to be cared for by a temporary foster family – good people who will lavish her with love. I’m afraid you have caused some problems for me, and for yourself, with the original couple that raised her. I interceded and clamped a lid on the kidnapping so it doesn’t go viral, but it will leak out eventually. They adore her, and the only thing they know is that she’s been kidnapped. Baby Samantha, by the way. That’s her name.”
“That isn’t what I named her.”
He waved a black leather-gloved hand at her. “Call her whatever you like when this is over.”
“You have no right to steal my baby. She’s mine. You know it. This is wrong.”
“Well, I suppose it is rather wrong, but it is the only way I could think of to have my needs met. I want you to do something for me, and I’m quite sure that you wouldn’t have done it voluntarily, so I needed some leverage. I would say that having your daughter is pretty good leverage, wouldn’t you?”
She struggled against the straps, then relaxed. No point in using energy she might need later.
“See? I was right. It was prudent to keep you restrained for our first discussion. Imagine how unpleasant it could have become if you’d been able to reach me.”
“Unpleasant for you, perhaps. Not for me,” she spat.
“True. Which is why you are perfectly suited to this job.”
“What makes you think I’d do anything for the CIA?”
“I have your daughter. I have no fight with you. But I have an operation I have had nothing but trouble with, and nobody on my team seems to be able to solve my problem. But you? You could solve it, with your illustrious background.”
“You kidnapped my daughter and took me captive to get me to do a job for you? You’re insane. That’s not how this works, and you know it.”
“I do, indeed. I’ve been doing this for far longer than you’ve been alive. Trust me when I tell you that if there were any alternative, I would have let you go your merry way with your daughter, and that would have been the end of it. But extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions, and I have need of your skills. So I have had to take an…unconventional approach. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Arthur executed the hint of a bow, and she could see that his hair was white and that the scar tissue ran across his entire head.
“If you hurt her…”
“I am not an animal. I have no desire to harm your daughter. If these were normal circumstances, I would have removed myself from the entire affair once David died. Yes, I know all about the fire on the Russian’s boat. After considering the plans he had asked for, I guessed that his target was the yacht, and from there it was a simple matter to work out what had happened. He went dark after that night, so I suspected the worst. And then when Grigenko’s jet vaporized…well, let’s just say I surmised that you survived. Which created an interesting opportunity for me.”
“How did you know I would come for my daughter?”
“I didn’t. It was a calculated risk. But I realized that if he had revealed his scheme to you, it would be impossible for you to stay away – so I was willing to devote a few resources in the event that you surfaced.”
“Surface. I see. And how did you track me to the hotel?”
“I had a team across the street from the house, and when they saw a strange car pull up on the street and watched you slip into the house next door, they put a tracker on the car. It wasn’t hard to guess what was happening.” He paused, sucking in a breath with a hiss, his tongue slurping wetly as he blotted the corner of the raw gash that comprised his mouth with a handkerchief. “And so, here we are. The two of us. I, with a proposition for you. And you, in a position to pay very close attention to it, and I would hope, predisposed to accept my proposal.”
“Go to hell. I’ll kill you with my bare hands. You’ll never be safe.”
“Perhaps. But you’re the one who is tied up at the moment, if I’m not mistaken. So save the idle threats for later. I’m not asking you to fall in love with me, and I know that my actions are reprehensible. Let’s just agree that you probably hate me right now, and justifiably so, might I add. That emotion is a luxury you can indulge to your heart’s content later. For now, if I were you, I’d be more i
nterested in what I needed to do to get my daughter back so I could get on with my life than in threatening me or vowing revenge.”
She glared at him and said nothing.
“I have a problem. You are the solution. Solve my problem and I let you reunite with your daughter and I step forever out of your life. You’re free to do whatever you like, and I’ll take the secret of your existence to my grave. Consider it the price of my assistance to you and David in the Grigenko matter.”
“Solve your problem,” Jet repeated.
“Yes.”
“Do I need to ask what the problem is?”
The eerily smooth skin of his face pulled taut in a grimace that could have been a model for a Munch painting. He was smiling.
“Why, my dear, I think it’s obvious. I need you to kill someone.”
Chapter 5
Arthur nodded at the guard outside to shut the door and then walked slowly to the foot of the steel bed she was tied to and looked her over.
“That’s it? You want me to kill someone? For that you need to take my daughter and blackmail me?” Jet demanded.
“I think you would find this more palatable if you regarded it as payback for all of the help I arranged for David on his Russian issue. And as for your daughter, if you accept that I’m taking good care of her while you’re otherwise occupied with this errand, it will be easier for both of us. Again, there’s nothing I want more than for you to have, er, Hannah back. I can only imagine how awful it must be to have finally found her, only to have her torn away from you.”
“Forgive me if I don’t get all weepy at your sentiment.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“So why does the CIA need me to perform a sanction for it? You have people who can take care of that sort of thing – being the best funded and largest intelligence service in the history of the world, and all.”
“This is a delicate matter. We have already tried to attend to it in-house, but haven’t been successful. When you showed up looking for your daughter, it created an opportunity. You specialize in a kind of work that’s a dying art, I’m afraid. Ever since the Wall came down and Russia stopped being the great Satan, our skills and resources have diminished. Sure, the Chinese present a clear and present danger, and the odd foray into the Middle East has kept us in practice, but nothing to hold a candle to your achievements. You could say I’m somewhat of a fan.”
“How could you possibly know about my missions with the Mossad?”
“That’s one of the questions I won’t be able to answer. Suffice it to say, I know what nobody is supposed to, and frankly, your résumé is as impressive as hell. I’ve been a player for forty years, and I’ve never encountered such attributes. It’s truly remarkable. If you were a gymnast or a ballerina, you’d have a cabinet full of gold medals. Alas, it’s a rarified talent, but one that I completely appreciate.”
“Spare me.”
Arthur rubbed his ruined face. “Let me tell you a story. It’s one that I’ve never told another living person.”
“Meaning all the others are dead…”
“Yes. But no matter. It’s a fascinating one. It involves greed, corruption, deception, and betrayal.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Hmm. Three months ago, I was in charge of conducting a transaction in Asia. In its essence, it was a simple matter. The CIA arranged to fund certain factions with interests aligned with our own, whose cooperation was deemed vital. Are you familiar with Myanmar?”
“Burma. Military dictatorship. Rogue nation. What’s to know?”
“Then you’re probably aware that it is not considered friendly by my government. Let’s just say that if you’re an enemy of my enemy, you are my friend, for the moment.”
“That didn’t work out so well for Saddam Hussein, did it?”
“I don’t make the rules. Anyway, there was a group in Myanmar that we felt were deserving of our support. But not the sort that you can go to Congress to sign off on. More discreet. To cut a long story short, one of our top agents in the region was chartered with handling the transaction. Fifty million dollars in diamonds. Untraceable. All of them easily convertible to cash. It was a simple arrangement. He was to go in, give our friends the diamonds, and then report back. But apparently, he had different ideas. The money was too large, or maybe he had just been in-country too long. He took delivery of the diamonds, but our friends never received them. And then we learned that they had been butchered in a gun battle. So it would appear that our man decided to retire and give himself a better than customary pension. Fifty million in diamonds’ worth.”
“So he stole your diamonds. But, come on. Fifty million is a drop in the bucket. Didn’t I read that your defense department can’t account for something like ten trillion dollars? Fifty million is beer money – a rounding error. There are Wall Street moguls who stole twenty times that much who are still walking around New York, who never even got charged.”
“True, but the point is that we can’t have our operatives stealing company property. Sends the wrong message, I think you’ll agree.”
“And why is it that you haven’t been able to deal with this yourself?”
“To be frank, we tried on two separate occasions. Both ended disastrously. This man has decades of experience in the region and is as comfortable there as a native. He’s disappeared into the jungle, where he’s living like a tribal chieftain. It’s proved difficult to even establish where he is on any given day. Add to that, the wrinkle that the Myanmar government is actively hostile to us, and it’s a recipe for disaster.”
“What happened to the last two teams that tried to take him out? What went wrong?”
“Unknown. The first operative was found in Northern Thailand. The indigenous animals had feasted on him, so there wasn’t a lot left to process. Our last attempt, two men, disappeared without a trace. We’ve had no word from them for over a week. They had a sat phone that would work anywhere in the world, so it’s safe to say they’re off the table. Which brings us to you.”
“I might be more receptive to this if I wasn’t strapped in some prison cell.”
“I need you to fully understand the gravity of the situation, and not try to harm anyone here if we untie you.”
“At some point you’ll need to release me.”
“I think I’ll feel better about that once you’ve had a day to think this through. For the moment, I don’t believe you won’t immediately try to rip my throat out. And I’ve grown rather fond of it in my dotage.”
She glared at him. He had so far read her correctly.
“What I propose is that you take on this assignment. In return, upon its successful completion, I will give you half a million dollars – which will go a long way towards paying for your daughter’s education and whatnot. You are free to choose any method you like to terminate the target, but with one caveat. I want the diamonds back. We haven’t seen a flood on the market, so he still has them. Get me the diamonds and bring me his head, and you’ll have your freedom as well as a handsome reward. That’s the deal.”
“Wow. A one percent finder’s fee. That’s very generous.”
Arthur cocked a particularly ugly patch of scar tissue that used to be an eyebrow.
“Ah. Well, at least now we have a negotiation. Fine. I’ll up the offer to two percent of anything you bring back. Up to a million dollars.”
“And these straps? I’ll have to go to the bathroom sooner or later.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
He turned to leave. “Think this over. When I return, I will expect an answer, which will be a binding commitment.”
“So help me, if you harm a hair on Hannah’s head–”
“See? Still with the threats. Look. I just offered you a million dollars to do what you’ve done for almost free for the Mossad for years. I’ll look after your daughter like she was my own while you’re gone. You’ll never have to worry about anything again once this is over. I strongly
suggest you consider this carefully. You’re not going to get a better deal. Ever.”
With that, Arthur spun on his heel and knocked on the door. One of the men outside opened it, and then he was gone. She heard the bolt slide back into place, and then the footsteps moved down the hall to wherever they’d come from, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
For all his experience, Arthur had made a mistake. Two, actually. The first was that he had tipped his hand. He needed her. That gave her power over him. The second was more subtle. He’d left the light on, which gave her the ability to see. That might not have seemed like a huge advantage, but it was enough.
She set to work on maneuvering her left arm, a millimeter at a time, up towards her shoulder as she exhaled, decreasing the expansion of her ribcage to the extent possible. The skin tore against the sharp edge of the strap, but she ignored it, forced even more air out of her lungs, and pulled.
~ ~ ~
Arthur stood in the deserted lobby of what had once been a mental institution in rural Virginia, long since abandoned and condemned for demolition. As the state fought with the federal government over the property and the ultimate use of the land, it sat empty, chain-link fence with razor wire ringing it, keeping looters and vandals out, and presenting the agency with one of several facilities where it could detain sensitive subjects in complete privacy.
Three men stood out of earshot, murmuring among themselves. All wore suits and had weapons in shoulder holsters.
He took a few more steps towards the main entrance, a glass and iron affair with two oversized doors that were scarred from decades of grim traffic entering a facility few ever left unless in a body bag. Plywood had been mounted across both glass panels to prevent breakage, and an armed guard patrolled the grounds day and night. The locals had considered the woods around it a damned place for generations, so it was natural that the facility no community wanted anywhere near it would wind up there. Built as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal construction boom in the 1930s it had been shut down in 2001, the last of the patients transferred to modern hospitals, where they could get more compassionate care. Its history was one marked by questionable treatments and controversial approaches, and it had gained a certain professional notoriety in the Forties and Fifties following a propensity for performing lobotomies on a far greater percentage of its population than anywhere else in the country – fully double the national average.
JET II - Betrayal (JET #2) Page 4
