The Hunter’s Oath

by Jason Dean

When he reached it, he moved to one side of the doorway and moved his eye to the two-inch gap. The sounds were coming from an unseen TV in the room. It sounded like an old episode of Roseanne. Through the gap he saw a long table against the opposite wall with eight monitors lined up in a row, all showing night-time images in various shades of black and green. Bishop recognized the first one as coming from the camera at the gate. It was a wide-angled shot of part of the driveway and a section of the main road. The other monitors showed parts of fields or woodlands beyond the fence, but none of them showed anything on this side. No shots of the farmhouse or barn. Nothing.

  Bishop suddenly heard the harsh scraping sound of wood against wood and saw part of a chair as it was tipped back on its two hind legs. Sitting in the chair was the short, stocky man he’d seen earlier. He was wearing a shoulder holster over a short-sleeved shirt and dark pants, and chuckling at something coming from the TV.

  At least Bishop didn’t have to worry about hidden cameras on the grounds now. They only seemed to be concerned with possible dangers from outside, which suited him just fine. As long as he was quiet, he might be able to find the answers he wanted and get out again without anyone the wiser. Although getting past the gate without being seen was going to be a challenge. Still, he’d faced harder problems.

  Bishop turned away and looked at the other four closed doors. Probably bedrooms for the three guards and the cook. But he still needed to check. He reached into a pocket and pulled out the wall microphone unit he’d used at the embassy. He’d brought the scope along as well, just in case.

  After inserting both earbuds, Bishop switched on the unit and pressed the contact mic against the door directly opposite. From within, he heard faint breathing sounds interspersed with an occasional sigh, perhaps the result of a dream. To Bishop, the sighs sounded feminine. So possibly the cook. He tried the next door along and heard snoring. Male snoring. Without a doubt. Bishop carefully opened the door a few inches and peered inside. His night vision was back to full capacity again and he was able to see a man asleep on the single bed under the window. The driver.

  Bishop carefully shut the door and tried the last room, the one next to the surveillance room. From inside this room he could hear nasal breathing. Steady and regular. He slowly opened the door and peered inside. It took a few seconds to make out anything, and then he saw it was the wide-shouldered guy he’d seen on patrol earlier. The guy’s baseball cap was lying on the chair next to the bed. Bishop gently closed the door again, then slowly retreated towards the kitchen before letting himself out.

  So that was the three guards and the cook accounted for. But no Klyce. Yet.

  Bishop let himself out and looked over at the other building. Maybe he’d find the answers he wanted in there.

  SIXTY

  Bishop approached the door at the end of the walkway. It was made of steel. There was a steel handle, and underneath that a single keyhole. He crouched down. The lock looked simple enough. He straightened up and began walking around the annexe’s perimeter.

  It was a one-storey, timber-framed structure like the farmhouse. About two hundred feet by two hundred. The timber looked new, and not too weatherworn. Bishop guessed five years old at most. There were two air conditioning units at the rear, and he spotted small air vents in each of the four walls, but he didn’t see a single window. Not one. And the only way in or out was through that steel door at the front.

  He returned to the door, pulled his lockpick gun and tension wrench from another pocket and got to work on the lock. The night was totally silent. No barking dogs. No traffic noise. The only sounds were the ones he was making. It was a refreshing change from the city life he was used to. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard nothing but silence. He liked it. That and the clean fresh air he took in with every breath. He could see how easy it would be to get used to country living. But not for him. At least not in this life.

  Remember why you’re here, he admonished himself. Amy. And Klyce.

  Twelve seconds later he had the door unlocked. Pocketing his tools, he stood up, pushed the handle down and opened the door.

  There was enough natural light to make out another hallway straight ahead. At the end of the hall, about sixty feet away, he saw what seemed to be a glass barrier. And beyond that, a number of tall plants, all lit by the faint moonlight coming in from a skylight above.

  Bishop stepped inside and gently closed the door behind him. The muted light coming from up ahead allowed him to see two doors, one on either side of the hallway. The interior walls were made of cinder block and the floor was tiled. He walked to the end of the corridor. The glass partition at the end ran all the way up to the ceiling, and incorporated a glass door with an aluminium push handle.

  Bishop opened the door and stepped into some kind of indoor garden, or recreation area. It all looked very tranquil. The skylight six feet above his head was only slightly smaller than the room itself, which was about fifty feet by fifty. In the centre of the space was a square stone table with four stone benches placed around it. Various potted plants and flowers were situated in all four corners and all around the borders. And surrounding it all were four concrete walls containing windows and doors. Entrances to the other rooms, presumably.

  Bishop sniffed the air, but couldn’t smell anything. He walked over to one of the tall plants and rubbed one of the leaves between his fingers. Plastic. They all looked real enough, though. Maybe the low maintenance upkeep was more important than authenticity.

  He moved past the fake plants, stepped over to the wall to his immediate left and began checking the windows. The first showed a large, modern-looking living area beyond. Round the corner, the next window showed an office area that was about half the size of the living room. The next room along had a door but no window, so Bishop had no idea what its purpose was. It was clearly a big room, though, as it took up half of that wall and part of the adjacent one.

  Bishop moved on to the window opposite the glass door he’d entered by. The drapes were drawn, but there was an inch gap in the centre. He peered through and saw a spacious bedroom with a king-sized bed set against the opposite wall. Bishop could just about make out an indistinct shape under the covers. Klyce? Or somebody else? Hoping whoever was under there continued to sleep peacefully for a while, Bishop moved round to the next window and tried to look inside, but the drapes were fully drawn. He couldn’t see anything. The next one along was another bedroom, but the bed was empty. The last room was a small kitchen area, and then Bishop was back where he began.

  He went back to the windowless room and tried the door handle. It was locked. He had it open in seconds and saw only darkness within. The faint lightspill coming from behind didn’t help much. He stepped inside, gently clicked the door shut behind him, and pulled out his Maglite. Switching it on, he saw he was in a large, empty, L-shaped space.

  No, not empty.

  At one end of the room were what looked like huge rolls of paper arranged on top of one another, reaching almost to the ceiling. In the corner, next to the rolls, Bishop saw numerous industrial-sized paint pots.

  The rolls were all covered in protective brown paper. Each one was five feet high. Bishop walked over and found a slight tear at the top of one. He made the tear larger, saw white paper underneath, and managed to rip off a corner piece. It didn’t tear easily. Shining the light on it, he held the scrap up close to his eye. Without proper daylight he couldn’t be sure, but it seemed there was a very slight purple, or mauve, tint to the paper. He rubbed it between his fingers. The texture was almost rubbery. And running down one side of the sheet were identical watermarks of Ben Franklin.

  Bishop knew he was holding ‘rag’ paper, that special kind of paper used to print currency. Normal paper was made from wood pulp, but rag paper was 75 per cent cotton and 25 per cent linen. Nobody knew the exact ingredients. The tint came from the red and blue fibres that got mixed into the paper at the manufacturing stage. He also knew real rag paper was suppo
sedly harder to obtain than phoenix eggs. Yet there were reams of the stuff here.

  And the pots over there with the steel strips around the lids? What were the chances they contained that special, colour-shifting, magnetic ink used in most countries’ currencies? The stuff that, when printed, left a slight texture on the surface of the note?

  Bishop felt the chances were better than even.

  And all in a room large enough to contain a printing press. Possibly in parts, to be assembled on the premises. He knew a little about intaglio presses, though, and they weren’t easy to come by. Not legitimately. Back in his close protection days, one of his earliest principals had been on the board of one of the big security printing companies in Philadelphia, and they’d used them there. Mainly for printing share certificates, driver’s licences, passports, birth certificates, food stamps, things like that. But their main use was for printing currency. All kinds of currency.

  As a result, sales of the presses around the world were closely monitored by the federal government. But Bishop knew how easy it was to arrange for certain merchandise to drop off the radar completely, as though it had never existed. It didn’t matter how big it was. Or how closely monitored. With money in the right pocket, all things were possible.

  Was that what was being planned here? Some kind of counterfeiting scheme? Maybe the guy in the bedroom could supply the answer to that one. Along with a few others.

  Slipping the scrap of rag paper in his pocket, Bishop made his way back to the door and pulled it open.

  And saw a man wearing shorts and a T-shirt staring right at back at him.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Bishop noticed a blur of movement to his left and ducked, but too late. The man’s fist connected with Bishop’s left temple, slamming his head hard against the door frame.

  Dazed, Bishop dropped to one knee and immediately felt another punch just above his right eye. He fell back to the floor with one arm covering his face. A sneakered foot kicked him hard in the stomach. He doubled up, received another kick to his spine. He arched his back in pain. It was all happening too fast. Wham, wham, wham. The guy was all over him. Bishop hadn’t even had time to catch his breath yet. He took another hard kick to the gut. Then another. Then he felt a hand grip his shirt and begin pulling him up.

  And the guy had been doing so well up to that point.

  First rule of unarmed combat: when a man’s down, you keep him down. Any way you can. You don’t drag him back to his feet again. Not for any reason.

  Bishop showed him why not. As soon as he was upright again, he slammed his head forward and felt his forehead catch the bridge of the man’s nose. The man released Bishop’s shirt and staggered back into the garden area, one hand to his face. Bishop shook his own head, took a deep breath, and advanced on him with both hands raised. They were edging towards the stone furniture in the centre of the room. Bishop was aware of the butterfly knife in his back pocket, but didn’t reach for it. He had no intention of killing the guy. At least not without knowing who he was.

  ‘Look,’ he said, breathlessly, ‘we don’t have to do this. Just tell me who—’

  Bishop didn’t get to finish the sentence. The man suddenly dashed forward, bending his right arm at the last moment and aiming the hard point of his elbow at Bishop’s face. Bishop jerked his head to the left just before contact, and the elbow caught part of his chin instead. He shrugged it off, then ducked down out of the way and launched a left hook into the man’s stomach, followed by a right to the jaw. The man grunted and stumbled back a few paces, shaking his head, one arm pressed to his stomach.

  Bishop kept with him. He’d had enough of this. Time to grab himself some breathing space. While the man was still disorientated, Bishop ran forward, reached out with both hands and grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt. Then he swung him around in a 360-degree circle and let go, hurling him at the table and chairs five feet away.

  The man hurtled towards the furniture like a sprinter reaching for the finish line. Just as he was about to make contact with one of the stone chairs, Bishop saw his foot slip on the tile and he lost his balance. As he fell, his head slammed against the chair seat with a sickening thud before ricocheting off. His body slumped to the ground in a messy heap and was still.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Bishop said.

  He went over and looked down at him. There was no blood, but his head was lying at an angle that wasn’t natural for a living being. He looked about Bishop’s age. Maybe a little older. His blond hair was cropped close to the skull. He had a Slavic face, with deep-set blue eyes, pronounced cheekbones, a long nose and a thin line for a mouth. Bishop knelt down and checked for a pulse. He stayed for a full minute before giving up. The guy wasn’t getting up again. Bishop stood and rubbed a palm back and forth across his scalp.

  He swore again.

  It was stupid for the man to die like that. There was no need for it. Bishop had just wanted to talk to him. For all Bishop knew, he’d been kept here against his will. Unlikely, but even if he was here by choice, that didn’t automatically earn him a death sentence. The man had simply woken up in the middle of the night to find an intruder on his patch and had decided to take care of things by himself. And Bishop had killed him for it.

  Okay, accidentally. In self-defence. But the guy was still lying there, not breathing.

  He sighed, then shook his head. Self-recrimination was a luxury he really couldn’t afford. Not now, anyway. On the plus side, though, they hadn’t made any noise during the fight. Which meant if somebody else was sleeping in the room with the closed drapes, he or she clearly hadn’t heard anything. So maybe it wasn’t a total disaster.

  Time to find out one way or the other.

  Bishop tried the curtained room first. He opened the door, found a light switch on the wall and pressed it. It was another spacious bedroom, laid out like a suite in one of the better hotels. Huge bed. Large TV. Desk and chairs. Two large cupboards. Connecting bathroom. The centrepiece was a double bed against the wall. An empty bed. There was also a musty smell in the air, which suggested nobody had been in there for a while. Bishop closed the door and moved on to investigate the next bedroom.

  This one was all white and had the antiseptic feel of a hospital room. The bed, though large, had steel railings on each side. Bishop thought back to the information gleaned from the CD and thought this could be where the ‘medical services’ were performed. Whatever they might be. He checked the various cabinets and drawers, but found nothing that held any clues as to the room’s specific use. The kitchen round the corner held a large supply of basic snacks and tinned goods, but not much else. And in the living area he found plenty of books, DVDs and CDs in various places, but nothing that might point to the purpose of this place.

  And more important, there was no Klyce anywhere. Meaning the whole trip had been wasted. A whole day that Bishop could have spent doing something productive had just been flushed down the toilet with little to show for it. And Amy, whose welfare was still his number one priority, was still at risk and no better off than before.

  Unless there was something of note in the office.

  The door was unlocked. There was one large desk in the centre of the room which held nothing but a few legal pads and some pencils, and a smaller one set against the wall. The smaller desk’s surface was taken up by a PC, a large monitor and all the usual trappings. There were two desk drawers. The top one held nothing but some standard stationery items. He closed the drawer and opened the second one. Then closed it again. It was completely empty. He switched the PC on next. Once the monitor came to life, a prompt came up asking for a user name and password. Which pretty much put paid to that approach. Bishop wouldn’t know where to begin. He turned it all off again.

  Useless.

  He checked the dead man’s bedroom next. It had the same layout as the one next door. Bishop opened the cabinet and drawers and found various items of clothing inside. One black suit, some shirts, a sports jacket. In the drawers, he fo
und fresh underwear and two tracksuits. There was a suitcase lodged at the back of the cabinet. It was empty. He carefully went through every item of clothing, but found nothing in any of the pockets.

  In fact, there was no ID for the guy anywhere. No credit cards, no driver’s licence. Nothing. It was as though the man had ceased to exist the moment he’d stepped through the steel door outside.

  Bishop went back to the garden room and looked down at the body. The man’s lifeless blue eyes were still staring up at the skylight above, but it was those Slavic cheekbones that caught Bishop’s attention.

  Back during his visit to the Artemis offices, Klyce had mentioned that Amy had recently been working on a case concerning the tracking down of some Serbian war criminals. And this guy sure looked like he came from that part of the world.

  And Klyce had been correct when he said Amy was a good researcher. Bishop already knew she was one of the best. Always had been. Ever since school. In fact, it was she who’d taught him that the devil was often found in the details. He’d lived his life by that rule. Something else he owed Amy for.

  So maybe she’d found out more than she should have, and a decision had been made to take her out of the picture for security’s sake. And if that were the case, maybe this guy had had something to do with the decision-making. Or maybe not. Either way, the next step was to find out the guy’s identity and see how he linked up with Klyce.

  Bishop thought for a moment, then went back to the office and opened the drawer with the stationery items. He grabbed a small roll of Scotch tape, took a pencil and one of the legal pads from the larger desk, and returned to the dead man.

  First, he rubbed the side of the pencil lead against the top sheet of the legal pad until there was a good large area of dark grey on the page. Then he lifted the guy’s left hand and rubbed the pads of each finger and the thumb across the patch until they were smothered in graphite. Next, he tore off a strip of Scotch tape and pressed it against the index finger. Then he did the same with the other fingers. When he had all five, he tore off a blank sheet of paper and carefully stuck the strip of tape along it. He looked at the results. The prints looked clear enough. Maybe not CSI quality, but you could only work with what you had.