by Jonas Saul
When she aimed at Wong, he opened his Adidas jacket.
Strapped to his chest were cylindrical canisters of some kind, all linked to each other with tiny wires that shined red and blue in the blazing sunlight.
That stopped Sarah. She lowered her weapon.
“Now we both die, Sarah.” Wong was smiling. “It’s over for me. Too much went wrong, too many people after me now. I could never continue my business as it was. Authorities in almost a dozen countries want me for murder. But they’re not the ones I’m afraid of.”
“Who are you afraid of?” Sarah asked, staring at the units wrapped around his chest. There had to be at least twenty of them. That was probably enough to damage the Greek monument behind him. If she survived this moment, she would never be allowed back in Greece, if they let her leave in the first place.
“I’m afraid of the Enzo Cartel.”
Sarah met Wong’s eyes, the bomb momentarily forgotten.
“What about the cartel?” she asked. “The one near Tijuana? The money-laundering bastards who have Aaron?”
“See, even you know too much of my business.”
“Push the button,” Sarah said. “Or put your hands up and get on your knees.” She raised the gun, closed one eye and focused the other on aiming at his throat. “I will shoot you in the throat. I will sever your spine. Hands up. Now!”
As Wong reached for something in his pocket and Sarah’s finger applied pressure on the trigger, something behind Wong caught her eye.
Then she aimed the gun skyward, and said, “Hey, I’m bluffing.”
The other helicopter, the one that had been out of sight for several minutes must’ve landed because a dozen men in tactical gear had crept up behind Wong and were only fifteen feet away. The helicopter behind her had masked any sounds they might have made on their approach.
But Wong now had a small black device in his hand.
“I read about you, Sarah.” He held the device higher, like he wanted to show it to her.
“Not you, too. Why’s everyone I’m supposed to be fighting reading my stories? If you’re an enemy, don’t read my memoirs.” She needed to keep him talking. “That’s an unfair advantage.”
“I read that you never bluff, Sarah.” He grinned a maniacal and twisted smile. “I don’t either.”
He adjusted something on the black thing in his hand.
Possibly, with only seconds to live, Sarah looked past Wong’s shoulder and gestured for the men in combat gear to hurry up.
Wong caught the movement and looked back at her. “I won’t fall for that,” he said. “You can’t make me turn around. Oldest trick in the book. I remember you did that in one of your books to another character. Not me.”
The tactical team were close. The leader raised his machine gun and took aim on Wong’s hands.
“Wait!” Sarah shouted. She dropped her weapon on the ground. “Any last words, Wong.”
He shook his head. “Sadly, no.”
As she saw his thumb lower to depress something on the black thing in his hand, the machine gun rattled. Before her eyes, his hands were severed clean off. The black thing tumbled to the ground, useless.
Wong shuddered with the burst of gunfire and turned toward it, even as his wrists—jaggedly cut open, sheets of skin flapping in the wind—shot blood out in a heartbeat sequence. The men approached with speed now, subduing their suspect, tossing him onto his back. As far as Sarah could see, the only bombs he had were strapped to his chest.
Blood poured out of Wong’s wounded hands as the men worked on removing the bombs. Sarah advanced. If Wong was going to die here, she needed to know which Greek Island the ledger was hidden on.
She tried to push her way in, but two armed men held her back.
“Get over to the helicopter. Go. We got this.”
“No. I need to find out where he hid the black book.”
She caught a glimpse of Wong’s blanched face, his eyes wide and staring skyward. Then the vest of bombs was off him.
Could he die that fast from losing his hands?
Before they turned her away a second time, she saw the cause of death. It wasn’t just his hands that had been shot. A bullet had entered the back of his neck. Blood filled the dirt and marble under Wong’s hair. He was gone. She had been cheated out. No black book. All this way and no black book.
The defeat was as if she’d been shot.
“To the chopper, Sarah,” one of the men yelled at her.
Resolve gone, fight diminished, Sarah tried to keep her shoulders back as she walked to the chopper. It had landed in an open area on the other side of the Acropolis.
What now? Would Vivian tell her where the ledger was? Would there be a resolution? Or was this all a waste of time?
Casper was dead. How could Wong get the jump on someone like Casper? Or better yet, if Casper was so good, how did he let Wong get to him? That kind of mistake cost lives.
The adrenaline began to fade. Her legs weakened on the way to the chopper. It felt strange being up here without the tourists who had virtually covered the area not fifteen minutes ago.
She got to the open door of the chopper and stopped at the sight of a familiar face.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked over the pounding of the rotors overhead.
“I thought you’d be glad to see me,” Casper replied.
“Wong said you were killed.”
Casper raised his shirt and pointed at bruising about the chest area. “They tried. Succeeded in cracking some ribs and bruising the hell out of my chest. Knowing we were about to go pick up Wong, I had just put on my Kevlar. Idiot who shot me couldn’t tell I was wearing it.”
They stared at each other a few moments.
“This is all fucked up,” Sarah said. “You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded, then winced and raised a hand to his chest.
“No ledger,” she said.
“Nafplio,” Casper said.
“Nafplio? I know that name.”
“It’s where Palamidi is. Where Aaron got shot and almost died. Where Parkman followed Oliver Payne a while back.”
“You memorized my books, or what?”
“Something like that.”
“Why Nafplio?”
“While we were still in Amsterdam, Wong landed in Athens and went straight to Nafplio. He stayed one night and then came back to Athens and was booked in a room at our hotel. We were set up to deal with him near the airport, but he saw us—”
“I get all that. Just tell me about Nafplio.”
“I have a witness that says he arrived with a briefcase and left the city empty handed. The ledger’s in Nafplio.”
Sarah shook her head. “Unless he handed it off to someone, he told me it was on a Greek Island. Nafplio’s not an island.”
“All we have is Nafplio as the last known location where Wong was seen with the ledger. Coming or not?”
Sarah hesitated at the open door of the helicopter, the noise of the rotors maddening already. She looked over her shoulder at the Acropolis and whispered a question to Vivian.
Yes …Vivian said. Go with him …
Sarah climbed inside, took a seat and smacked Casper in the arm. He squealed as the pain from his bruised chest flared.
“Don’t fucking get shot again or I’ll shoot you,” Sarah shouted at him. “Be more professional and stop dying on me. Fuck, you are one frustrating ghost. Every time I turn around you’re disappearing on me. No more.”
The helicopter lifted off and Athens got smaller below them.
“I’ll try not to disappear again. But working with you has been a real pain in the ass.”
“If I was you I would hate to work with me. In fact, I would quit. Someone like me can’t be worked with. I’m just happy I’m me because I can tolerate myself. If I wasn’t me, I’d be fucked. And then I’d fuck me up.”
Casper frowned. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
The chop
per banked left and headed out over the Aegean Sea en route to Nafplio, Greece.
Chapter 45
The pilot expertly landed the helicopter in an empty parking lot by Nafplio’s harbor. Seeing the ancient prison Palamidi from the air had been bittersweet. The stone prison, built on the side of a mountain, was astounding. But it was the location of Aaron’s near-death experience a few years ago when he met up with his sister’s murderer. If it wasn’t for Aaron’s three teachers at the dojo, Aaron would be dead right now and Sarah would never have met him.
Or he could be dead right now because he had met me.
Thoughts of Aaron made her shiver even though the sun baked the earth under her feet. He would be okay. He would make it. Otherwise Vivian would’ve had Sarah do something about it earlier.
Right, Sis?
No response.
Sarah followed Casper into a large parking area nestled by the water, a row of restaurants on the other side. According to Casper, the helicopter’s pilot would shut down and wait for their return. Casper felt this search for the ledger would be easy. No problem. Wong dropped the black book off on his journey to Nafplio, and they were supposed to locate it within hours. Even though she got a confession out of Wong—one she believed was truthful because he was taunting her—that it was on an island.
“Where are we headed?” she asked. “Do you have a destination in mind?”
Casper glanced sidelong at her. “Yes, I do. We’re going to start at his hotel. Then work our way to the wharf where my informant states he rented a boat.”
“Fine. I’ll follow. But take notes. A boat means he went to an island. Which leads me to believe the ledger’s on an island, just as Wong said.”
Nafplio was a gorgeous city. It made her yearn for a time when she could experience it as a tourist … with Aaron.
Thoughts of Aaron intruded. Wasting time like this drove her nuts. Every minute they wandered around was another minute further from freeing her man.
They walked by an Italian restaurant called Scuola. Sarah knew that meant school in Italian. The restaurant’s decor, even the tables outside on the patio, were all very Italian looking. They passed The Trendy Grill, where gyros were advertised for just over two euros.
A vacation was definitely needed. Aaron was needed.
“Wong knew he wouldn’t leave the Acropolis alive,” Sarah said.
Casper looked over his shoulder at her. “Your point?”
“He told me the ledger was on one of the Greek Islands and that I would never find it.”
“He must’ve lied. He left it here somewhere.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Casper slowed his pace and stopped outside a post office. “I told you we monitored his travel to Nafplio and back.”
Sarah nodded. “He came here with it and left without it. I know. That’s what you said. But this isn’t an island.”
“What I didn’t tell you is that the limo driver he hired to bring him here is an old friend, a retired friend. He’s my informant.”
“Wong hired a limo?”
“Not one of the stretch kind. He had a BMW SUV and a driver. You can get that sort of thing in any major city.”
“Right. Okay. So what did this old friend say?”
Casper started away. “Keep walking. I don’t want to waste time.”
Sarah caught up to him after crossing a street. They started down a shopping lane, like a walking street, that appeared to be leading them into old town. Again, it reminded her of Italy with the small shops, little elegant balconies one floor above, with everything draped in bougainvillea. The view of this older part of Nafplio almost brought tears to her eyes. Tourists wandered everywhere, sipping beverages, licking gelato and laughing, their cares forgotten. It was so foreign to what Sarah was used to in her life that she felt like an outsider. Almost like she didn’t belong here, like she stood out for all the wrong reasons.
“My friend told us the hotel Wong stayed in while in Nafplio. That’s how we knew Wong would end up at the Sofitel outside the Athens airport.”
“What about the ledger?”
They entered Nafplio’s main square. Children kicked a ball around while parents looked on with admiring eyes. Restaurants and cafés were jammed, almost every seat taken as the summer sun promised life and hope for this economically torn country.
“The driver confirmed Wong had a book with him, something he browsed, flipping pages in the backseat, on the ride to Nafplio. He didn’t get a good look at it, but thought it was a binder of some kind. When he drove Wong back to Athens, he had nothing on his person. Just Wong, no luggage.”
They exited the main square on the other side and started up a narrow street of cobblestones. It wasn’t where they were going that bothered Sarah anymore, or the fact that she worried this was a waste of time. What bothered her now was that someone was following them.
“Do you have someone shadowing us?”
“No. Just you and me and the pilot. Wong’s dead. It’s over. Don’t get paranoid, Sarah. The only danger now is in Mexico and we’re heading there next.”
“Not in that helicopter, I hope,” she said as a joke.
He blew air out through his lips. “Of course not. The Athens airport. Transfer in Rome, then land in Los Angeles.”
“Why Los Angeles?”
“We’re driving over the border under a cloak of secrecy. It’s being set up and arranged right now while we are here in Nafplio.”
They turned a corner and Sarah stopped. Casper carried on two more steps until he noticed. She held up a hand for quiet. He waited. She counted to five and then jumped back around the corner.
The street was empty.
“Anyone?” Casper asked, doubt in his voice.
Sarah shook her head. The feeling of being watched was almost like an innate skill now, one she just felt and knew to be true. But the evidence was to the contrary, which couldn’t be disputed. If she was right, and someone was trailing them, then that someone was an expert.
She turned and jogged to catch up to Casper who had already started walking again.
They came up on a stunning hotel on their left, the walls constructed of fieldstone. It was built up on a hill overlooking the Aegean Sea. To her right, along the pier, restaurants lined the walkway. Almost every seat was taken. She concluded that Nafplio had to be one of the most popular cities for tourists.
“This is where Wong stayed the night,” Casper said. He stopped and looked around the area. “I’ll go in and talk to the clerk at the counter. Hopefully it’s the same clerk that checked Wong in. Give me a minute.”
Sarah headed to the railing and stared out over the sea. A light breeze had picked up at this level, cooling her skin. Out on the water, someone had built a castle. The plot of land it sat on was the exact size of the castle’s base. Whoever constructed the stone building with turrets used every square inch.
She watched tourists, stared at the waves rolling in softly and wondered what would happen to her, to Aaron. How could she deal with a cartel and walk away with their lives intact? Mexican cartels were known for their brutality. Thinking about the coming fight stirred acid in her stomach. Would she be up for it when the time came?
The only saving grace was she had the support of the American government in the form of Casper and his powerful influence.
She would do anything to get Aaron back. Not following through wasn’t an option. Burning the cartel to the ground and anyone stupid enough to get in her way was all she had left if she lost Aaron. She had never really loved anyone like Aaron before. Without realizing it, Aaron had found a home in her heart more than even she was aware of. When he left California while Sarah was dealing with that maniac Cole Lincoln, it had hurt her. Heading to Toronto to meet up with him and discuss things had been all she could think about. But Vivian had needed her to do a little job that involved shooting and killing a girl in front of the Toronto police.
So much for meeting Aaron, having dinner,
chatting a little.
All that led to this. And here she was in Greece, still looking for a black book. This was supposed to end here. Get the book, fly back and then see where things went from there with Aaron. But now he had been kidnapped because of her actions.
