by Jonas Saul
Thanks, Sis.
She put one foot in front of the other and started across the dirty floor toward the ghost at the door. Fatigue set in over her system as her stomach growled. When was the last time she ate anything?
She would sleep on the plane. When this was done, she would bask in the tropical sun of Greece. When this nightmare ended, she would steal away with Aaron and they would vacation somewhere exotic. She needed time away from all this shit. It was starting to wear on her.
“I knew you’d see the light,” Casper said.
They stepped out of the warehouse and into a waiting black SUV.
Sarah stared out the window and wiped a tear from her cheek as thoughts of Aaron called her home.
Chapter 38
The plane was a C-5 Galaxy escorting NATO troops for routine exercises to Athens.
Sarah and Casper were seated near the front, already seatbelted in. When they had arrived, the nose cone was open. A ramp led down to the tarmac where troops were boarding. Casper explained that it would take them three and a half hours to fly the less than three thousand kilometers to Athens.
“This four-engined Lockheed Galaxy can carry over 120 tons at a cruising speed of over nine hundred kilometers an hour. Amazing, isn’t it?”
“You sound like you know a lot about military aircraft.”
“A side hobby of mine,” he said, downplaying his excitement.
He produced a bottle of red wine from a bag on the floor. From inside a small pocket on the bag, he pulled out a corkscrew.
Sarah lunged across him and grabbed the bottle.
“I’ll open it.” She held out her hand for the corkscrew.
“Don’t trust me yet?” He dropped it on her open palm.
“I never will. Remember? I told you at the warehouse that I don’t trust anybody.” She applied the corkscrew to the cork and began twisting.
“You trust Aaron,” Casper said, a smug look on his face. Something gleamed in his eyes, like madness lurking.
Sarah stared for a brief moment, then let it go. Casper was safe for now. Vivian had endorsed him.
“Glasses?” she asked.
He reached inside the bag and pulled two small water glasses out. “Best I could do. Anyway, in Greece they use these kinds of glasses for wine more often than not.”
Sarah frowned as she poured the wine. “Interesting.”
A glass of wine in her hand, she put her head back and closed her eyes. Sarah didn’t think she’d be able to stay awake for much longer.
“We’ve been tracking a relatively new Mexican cartel near Tijuana for some time,” Casper started. “The Enzo Cartel.”
Sarah’s eyes popped open. “A cartel?” she asked, turning to face him.
He nodded. “They’re reckless, strong, fortified and dangerous.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Sarah drank from her glass.
“They have Aaron.”
She spit her wine out. “What?” She wiped at her pants but only a minimal amount had landed on them.
“When you went after Wong’s business—his criminal empire in Toronto—you cut off a lot of his customers.”
The crew had finished loading. The engines revved and the plane began to taxi out, as smooth as if it was riding on air.
“Customers? A cartel was Wong’s customer?”
Casper nodded as he sipped from his wine. “We suspected Wong laundered their money through his prostitution business. A lot of cash trades hands there. America watches cash at the borders, but Mexico and Canada aren’t as touchy about it.”
“And?” Sarah said, exasperated. She waved her free hand in a circle. “Keep talking.”
“You hurt Wong’s business. He fled Canada and came to Amsterdam. When you arrived, he got scared and cleaned a few loose ends up. Now he’s in Athens. The cartel learned of your involvement and now they have probably ten million in unlaundered money, with more piling up. It’ll cost them.”
“So they want me?” she asked, her wine forgotten for the moment. “Is that it?”
Casper nodded.
“And they abducted Aaron to get to me.”
Casper nodded again and sipped more from his wine. “We’ve been monitoring them for some time. Had we known, I would have had men pick up Aaron to keep him safe.” He shook his head in dismay. “We were too late. We got to Parkman and your parents in time. Everyone’s safe and off the map until this is sorted out.”
“Then why aren’t we going after this cartel and getting Aaron back?”
“We are.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“Casper, don’t fuck around.” The engines revved and the huge C-5 Galaxy thrust forward up the runway. “We’re headed to Greece while sipping wine. To an outsider it looks like we’re on a fucking holiday while Aaron is held hostage by thugs who behead people in Mexico and hang them from bridges. I read the news.”
“Getting Wong and his black book is step one.”
Her curiosity bloomed at the mention of the black book. “What’s your interest in that book?”
“It doesn’t just give up names in Toronto. It lists all his clients and customers. It’s not some little book, it’s his ledger. James Wong is a good businessman and any good businessman keeps well-tended records and they never leave his sight. Also, Wong got his roots as a mob accountant. He is the accountant, the business, the money and the brains. Get Wong, hurt everybody attached to him.”
“So all this time, watching me, waiting, you were letting me hunt him to see what I could get for you?” Her anger rose as she felt her cheeks flush.
The plane had taken off and climbed to cruising altitude almost without her noticing. If there was somewhere to set her wine glass down, she would have done so so she could strangle and pummel Casper for faster answers.
“Remember when I said I thought it might be better if you were dead?”
Sarah only nodded, afraid of what she might say.
“If you died in that plane crash when we landed in Amsterdam, the Mexicans might have given up, gone away. When they snatched Aaron, I knew you were needed alive.”
“For what?”
“Bait.”
Without hesitation, Sarah sat up straighter. “Fine. Send me in. When do we go?”
“As soon as we’re done in Greece.”
She sat back in her seat and loosened her grip on the wine glass. Then she drank the rest of it back to calm her nerves. She needed rest to be effective in Greece. They had Aaron. What could they be doing with him? Would they feed him? Would they beat him?
“Sarah,” Casper said, his voice softer. “We’ve got a lot of intel on this cartel. Intel that comes from the NSA, the DEA and the CIA. I’m here to help.”
“Who are you with?” she asked.
“Black ops.”
“Black? Really? Isn’t that fictional? Something you watch on TV?”
“No.”
“Who do you take your orders from?”
“My boss.”
She looked at him. “Cocky bastard. That’s a non-answer.”
“I can’t tell you. All I can say is that we are after the same people and we will fix this. We aim to bring Aaron home in one piece.”
She thought about the military plane taking them to Greece. Casper had a lot of clout, probably more than any government official she’d met. Maybe he was telling the truth and maybe not, but she still feared for Aaron. And it was her fault. But how could she have stopped her assault on the torture club in Toronto? How could she have walked away?
Or was this all on Vivian? If so, and Aaron came home one day, then Vivian would see that as a victory. All the bad guys taken care of with a few blemishes on their side.
But if Aaron died?
Sarah shuddered in her seat.
“You okay?” Casper asked.
Ignoring the question, she held her glass out for more wine. He poured it full. She drank it like water, gave him the glass and closed her eye
s, resting her head back.
“You ever hear of the twenty-million dollar cat?”
After a moment of silence, Casper said, “Can’t say that I have.”
“The CIA once spent twenty-million dollars on a cat equipped with equipment to spy on the Russians.”
“What happened? How did it work out?”
“The cat got hit by a taxi and died. The project died with it. That level of stupidity, that much waste, is another example of why I don’t trust you people.”
“I’m not the CIA.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Shut up. I’m trying to sleep.”
The plane hit turbulence over the French Alps, but Sarah didn’t notice too much as she slipped into full REM.
Chapter 39
Sarah jerked awake when the plane touched down. Casper was still beside her, reading a backlit Kindle. He hadn’t disappeared like the last time they were on the same plane.
She sat up and wiped a bit of spittle from her chin. Her cheek still ached where Dekker had punched her. She opened her dry, pasty mouth, lowered her jaw and tried to crack the pressure out of her ears.
“What time is it?” she asked, then yawned.
Casper checked his watch. “Just after one in the morning, Athens time.”
“Great. What’s first?”
“Sleep. Wong’s being watched. We know where he’ll be tomorrow morning at eleven. So we sleep.”
“Where?”
“A nice place. Don’t worry, you’ll get your own room, too.”
The plane taxied up the tarmac and stopped. Sarah undid her seatbelt, stood and stretched. Soon after, the nose cone rose and they headed outside. Casper noticed someone and headed off to speak to them. Sarah watched as they pumped hands, chatted for a brief moment and departed.
When he was beside her again, she asked, “What was that all about?”
“Had to properly thank him for the lift.”
Once through the airport, without entering any customs as they flew within the Eurozone, Sarah followed Casper across the busy lanes of cars, where even at this hour, people were pulling in, picking up and dropping off.
Once across the lanes, she looked up at a towering white hotel.
The Sofitel.
“Nice place,” she said.
“Thank the U.S. government. Come on, maybe the bar’s still open. Finger food and a shot of something before sleep.”
They checked in, got to the third floor and entered their separate rooms. A sign behind the check-in counter said this was a five-star hotel and Sarah could see why. The room was gorgeous with a cherry oak desk, a black leather desk chair and at least a forty-inch TV. The bathroom was everything a girl could want on holiday. Pity she would only use it to shower in the morning and then be gone.
When they holidayed in Greece, she would be sure to bring Aaron here.
After five minutes, Casper knocked on her door. “You coming downstairs?”
“Yeah,” she hollered back and headed for the door.
Once seated in the bar/restaurant, a shot of Johnnie Walker Black in her hand, Sarah asked, “Shouldn’t we be a little more inconspicuous? It felt like the authorities in Amsterdam knew I was there before I landed. Are the Greeks aware we’re here?”
“Wong told Lars Dekker about you,” Casper said. He was drinking something that came with a little umbrella. Sarah had wanted to question his manhood as a joke, but was too tired for the debate. “Wong has no idea where we are this time.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because my sources confirmed it. I told you, we’re monitoring him.”
“How does he not know?” she asked. Part of her was curious, but another part was just making exhausted conversation. She needed the rest of the whiskey and she needed her bed. Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow she would deal with whatever came and then go to Mexico with or without Casper.
“He doesn’t know because we entered Greece on a military plane en route through Turkey and the north side of Syria to examine the ISIS situation there. Nobody gets access to that itinerary. Not even Greek officials. All they get is the flight plans.”
Sarah enjoyed the feeling the whiskey offered. Her eyes closed then opened slowly. It was late. The stress had worn her down.
“I’m going back to my room,” she said.
“Go, get some sleep. I’ll knock when we need to move out. You should be ready by six in the morning. I’ll come to your door at six or six-thirty.”
“I’ll be ready.”
She got up, downed the rest of Johnnie and left Casper alone with his fruity drink and his Kindle. She idly wondered what he was reading and decided to ask him in the morning.
She entered her room, got undressed and crawled under the covers, asleep before the clock’s second hand did one full rotation.
Chapter 40
A loud banging, a knocking. Something broken. Screaming.
Sarah snapped awake and sat up in bed. For a delirious moment, she had no idea where she was. Sun forced its way around the cracks in the curtain where it was set back off the wall. The hotel. The five-star hotel. Athens. Greece.
The banging again. Someone knocking on her door.
“Sarah?” Casper shouted from the hallway. “You awake?”
“Yes,” she yelled back. “Thanks!”
“It’s six-thirty,” he said. “Breakfast time. Meet me in the restaurant. Shower after. Let’s go.”
When the voice at the door silenced, she dropped back onto the pillows and yawned. Best sleep she’d had in a long time. Guilt set in when she thought of Aaron and what his sleeping conditions were probably like. But she was fixing that situation by going after Wong. The cartel was next.
Yeah, all in a day’s work.
She got out of bed, washed her face in the sink, dressed in yesterday’s clothes and headed down to the restaurant.
Casper was already eating. “Didn’t know if you’d come down or fall back to sleep.”
“Wouldn’t miss breakfast on the government’s dollar. Can’t say this opportunity comes all too often.”
She approached the buffet breakfast table. Once her plate was loaded with scrambled eggs, sausage, ham and bacon, she grabbed a small yogurt and headed to Casper’s table.
“What were you reading on your Kindle last night?”
“Your memoirs.”
She had been pulling a chair out but stopped for a brief moment, then sat down. “My memoirs?”
“Yeah, the series of novels on Amazon that detail your life with Vivian and how you’ve stayed alive all this time. You know, Dark Visions is Book One and so on.”
“Oh.” She grabbed a strip of bacon and bit off the tip. “Maybe I reveal too much in those books.”
“We need to talk about that.”
“We do?”
“You can’t put me in any book if you ever write about your trip to Amsterdam and Greece. No one can know of my involvement.”
“Why not?”
He set his fork down, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and replaced it on his lap.
“Because I’m so unofficial I don’t even exist on paper. Black ops, remember. POTUS has no idea who we are. That’s why I’m Casper. I’m a ghost and still reasonably friendly, right?”
“I know you exist. You’re right in front of me.”
“Sarah, that’s not the point and you know it.”
Sarah cut a sausage in half, jabbed her knife into the next one and looked up at Casper.
“Nail Wong,” she said. “Get the ledger, and let’s deal with this cartel. If Aaron’s still alive and we all make it home, maybe I’ll let this chapter of my life disappear. Maybe I won’t write about it. Trust me when I say I don’t want to relive this one.” She tossed half a sausage in her mouth.
“It sounded like there was an or else in there somewhere,” Casper said.
“Or else you’re in book fourteen and I’ll write about The Cartel in boo
k fifteen. Full disclosure. What I learn goes down as public fucking record. As long as I don’t lie in the memoirs, no lawsuits.”
