Dressed in a robe and some shorts, Terry was taken to a dining room where a fine meal had been laid out. He could not eat. There was beer and wine to go with dinner and liquor and coffee for afterwards. Terry drank sparingly. His stomach was not up to the alcohol.
“You may wonder why we have invited you into our home to watch this little ordeal.” Adam Troy was dressed in his usual silk suit. “Pardon me, would you like a cigar?”
“A cigarette if you have one,” Terry replied, still feeling a little ill at ease.
“Of course.” Adam clapped his hands and a butler appeared with a tray of cigars and cigarettes. Terry took a pack, opened it and took one out. There was an ornate lighter on the table in front of him. It was a dragon and the flame came out its mouth, but it was no cheap piece. It was hand crafted silver.
“You have a strong stomach.” Adam commented.
“Not that strong. I cannot eat and if I drink any wine I’ll probably throw up.”
“The fact that you did not throw up tells me that you have a strong stomach.”
Terry smoked his cigarette and watched his host. He had no idea what was coming next. He was certain he was being watched remotely but could not pinpoint the camera. He was not tied or cuffed but he was also unarmed.
“We need men with strong stomachs, Mr. Barber. We need men who can maintain a good front. We need men who are not afraid to do what is necessary, whatever that may be. Are you such a man, Mr. Barber?”
“You know I am.”
“That is why you are here. You have no family, no woman?”
“No. I find it best to be alone.”
“That is good. Too many men say things to women. Women are weak. They cannot be trusted to keep their mouths shut.”
“I agree.” Terry butted out his cigarette, considered lighting another but refrained.
“Mr. Arganmajc was weak as well.”
In his mind’s eye, Terry saw Randy Arganmajc pleading for his life even after his lips had been cut off. The vision was nothing he wanted to remember but one difficult to forget. “It may have been difficult to be strong under the circumstances.”
“We speak of different circumstances. He had all the benefits and privileges of wealth and power but he turned his back on us. He tried to slither out of the country like a snake when things got tough. He did not have the stomach for it.”
“Let’s assume I have the stomach. What is it you are suggesting?”
“Most of the men employed outside these grounds are lazy or stupid. You have proven to be neither. You comport yourself well under stress. You keep your body in good shape and practice regularly with your chosen weapons. Why did you choose to walk the path you have?”
“I was looking for a job. A man does what he must.”
“Ah, yes. But there are many jobs out there that do not involve personal risk. You could have done any number of things, yet you chose a more dangerous route.”
“I was looking for a job.”
“Are you a leader or a follower?”
“We all follow someone or something. It is not the sort of question one can ask without qualifying.”
“You are a follower then?”
“No, I… Once again, that is a question for posterity. I can lead those I have the authority to lead. When something needs to be done, I can do it or I can order it done. Are you offering me Randy’s job?”
“Oh, heavens no. You are nowhere near ready to accept the responsibility of such a position. I do see in you something, however. I feel you may be able to do a better job than some of the men who are now in power. I do question your ambition, though. You do not seem to care for authority. Could you have ordered what was done to Randy?”
“Ordered it, yes. Done it myself, no. I would have killed him long before.”
“Yes, the outsider that eliminated the Irishman told us you had no scruples when it came to killing. You do have scruples though.”
Terry reached out and pulled another cigarette from the pack. He needed a second to decide how to answer the question. Adam Troy was after something and Terry did not know precisely what it was. It was a cat and mouse game and if the younger man jumped he would become the mouse. He had seen too many dead mice.
“Mr. Troy, I am capable of giving, as well as following, orders. I have no foolish notions about the sanctity of human life. You asked whether I am a leader or a follower, what you are really asking is am I a predator, or prey. The answer is not simple. A crocodile or shark is predator to all around it, even man in the right circumstances. Yet baby crocodiles are eaten by fish and birds. After they get bigger, they eat the same fish and birds that would have eaten them as babies.”
“You have a good mind as well as a strong stomach. I think we can safely say there is a place for you in the organization. Now, is it better to be loved or feared?”
“I have seen women love men they feared.”
“Because?”
“Because they are weak.”
“But…”
“But love is an unnecessary component. They are not mutually exclusive, but fear is more powerful. I have seen men betray the women they love. It follows that fear is better.”
Adam Troy seemed satisfied by the answer, though it was not cut and dried. He seemed to have found what he was looking for.
When his cell phone rang, Gordon saw it was Terry’s number. He hit the connection but said nothing for a second. There was no sound from the other end so he said, “Roberts Pistol Range.” The connection went dead. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. If they had Terry’s cell phone, they had him. There was nothing the Scotsman could do.
The operation had been a success up until this point. They had secured a huge pile of cash. Nobody had seen Gordon’s face. He had left no fingerprints and the only fatality had been the guard, who had been shot with the driver’s gun. He might have killed the guard he ran down as well. There was no evidence linking Terry to the operation except that telephone number.
Sometimes a man needs to cut and run, Gordon MacMaster felt this may be just such a time. There is no place in the world for a white man to disappear quite like the Australian Outback. Of course, everybody there knows the man is there, but nobody else does. It causes a very localized stir when someone shows up but the ripples go no further than the town. There are no cell phone towers and very few telephone lines. A man could disappear in the Outback forever.
Terry had never met Jimmy Cognac before. Jimmy had been brought north to take over the Sydney area after the unfortunate demise of Randy Arganmajc. Jimmy never commented on his predecessor’s demise.
Henry Cuthbert kept his position probably due to the fact that the ranks had been so badly thinned. It took days for the group to be released from custody. The driver was still under indictment since it had been his pistol that killed the guard.
Terry took the spot vacated by the late, unlamented, Victor Wellington. Upon accepting this position he was informed of the manner of Victor’s passing. He felt certain that the slightest slip would cause his passing to be every bit as horrible. Eric Tronquilla, the man who had inherited the position temporarily seemed relieved to hand it to someone else and it was soon clear why.
Randy had not communicated the extent to which recent events had decimated his work force. Between the pre-Olympic sweeps and the recent desertions, the Sydney underworld was in shambles. The only groups thriving were those with a customer base separate from the regular Australians and no ties to them. The Asians and the Russians had been hit by the police actions but had been unscathed by the vigilante operations. They had increased their power base and had begun supplying to their competition. Their customer base was growing rapidly, especially among the drug users.
Terry found he was under such scrutiny that he could not escape for the weekend any more. He could not simply slip away and head for Orange or Molong as had been his habit. The Russians and Chinese were eating his lunch, so to speak, and he was expected to do something about
it. But his hands were tied as well by the fact that the Russians were supposed to be working with the Australians. The last thing either of them needed at this point was a turf war. The Troys had hoped to assimilate the Eastern Bloc immigrants, but the process was slow. The only choice of a target he had was the Orientals, and they were a very close-knit group. There was no chance at infiltration because of the cultural, language and physical appearance barriers. They operated their own gambling operations, transported their own drugs and worked in a different sort of world.
Terry’s new position was as an enforcer in charge of other enforcers. He was expected to be brutal and uncompromising. There had been so many men holding the position lately that many of the men paying for protection or dealing contraband no longer knew who they were supposed to be paying. Terry was also supposed to locate the American who had caused so much trouble lately. This was the second time he was charged with finding himself, but he was only one of several at his level of management charged with the same tasks.
Terry was on his way to talk to a “client” when his phone rang. Gretta, the secretary for the Kingston Agency wanted to retire and wondered when Terry was going to make an appearance in Orange. There were no problems, but they had not seen the owner for months. Terry gave Gretta the number for Linda Pierce and told her to tell Linda that she had been chosen from a limited pool of potential employees. Gretta was skeptical since it was acknowledged that she was the glue that held the office together and not everybody could do the same sort of job she did. She did however acquiesce to the suggestion and promised to make the call.
Ginger got the letter a few days later.
Uncle,
I find it no less than amazing that I have advanced to the point I have when I have nothing but animosity for the organization. This cannot continue. I have painted myself into a corner and cannot wait for the floor to dry. I am now doing things I would never have expected for people I wish to see dead. I have no idea how it got this far.
I’m afraid I need to leave. There is no possibility of staying in Sydney, or indeed in Australia, once I fulfill my destiny. I will be turning the Agency over to a friend of mine. You will be mailed a percentage of the profits. If it looks safe, we will resume communication once I am established elsewhere.
The letter was unsigned.
If it had been difficult to get to Abel and Adam Troy in the past, it was considerably more so now. They had gone into a defensive mode. More and more people were taking swipes at the business, from within and without. They were planning on keeping a low profile until their tracking services had located the most recent danger.
It would have seemed simple to find an American who had been in the country since before June 1st 2001, there are records of such things. There were, however crowds of people moving through the country’s airports because of the Olympics. They came from anywhere and everywhere and while most of them went back to their lives and their families, many did not. At least not on paper. It was not difficult to access the records, but more difficult at that point to decipher them and since their basic premise was flawed, their trackers floundered.
The police were having no better luck. There were those who had been paid to find this new threat to the underworld and there were those who simply tried to do their jobs. The new Superintendent, Theodore Barlow, had taken an unusual stand on the assaults to the underworld shipping lanes. Publicly and officially he had denounced the vigilante nature of the attacks. Less publicly he had applauded them. He was actually sorry to see the case closed with the death of Lee Pierce, but he was also unconvinced. He had some research done on Mr. Pierce and concluded that there was little likelihood of his having real access to knowledge of the shipping schedules. There was something that did not add up, despite the evidence. The fact that the assaults on the shipping lanes ended with his death seemed proof positive of Lee’s culpability but it did not convince him. He was certain there had been a setup. Pierce was a scapegoat, set up and eliminated with evidence planted.
In his new position, Barlow had a great number of political duties and not nearly as much investigative work. He should probably have retired, but the reduction of crime during his reign as Chief Inspector had made him a celebrity. With a few notable exceptions, he had kept the public safe and truncated the drug supply in Sydney. Now he was forced to smile at government functions and represent the police force to the public without any real investigative function. He only enjoyed his celebrity for a little while before it began to gall him. He did not like his role but found that it allowed him to push through funding that he had always lacked when he was on the streets. He was instrumental in getting a $120,000,000 allocated for battling the drug trade in 2001. Another $ 80,000,000 was allocated for compulsory drug education for children but he had not been involved in that portion of the program.
The New South Wales Police were not indicated in the corruption scandal that rocked the Victoria Police for the past year, though there were some questions about evidence being reintroduced to the streets. The individual cases and questions never made it to Theodore Barlow’s level. He had entered the rarified air of the elite governmental employee and was no longer to be bothered with such minor matters. The affair at Hill Top piqued his interest, however. He had never lost his love of the investigation.
According to the police reports, there was a reinforced security van modified to carry liquid funds but the box and the bags were tampered with and no report of loss was filed. There was a guard, allegedly shot by the driver. There were a lot of armed gangland figures that had no business in the small town, and there was a half buried razor strip down the road. Further down the road there was a bridge that had been demolished and a number of stranded vehicles that had no business being there. There was a displaced tow truck driver, a guard who had almost been killed when he was run over, and another who claimed to have been dispatched to a tavern for a beer. The local police had held them as long as they could and released most of them two days after the lawyers showed up.
Superintendent Barlow suspected the Russians. They had been coming into the country in increasing numbers and setting up businesses, many of which were suspect.
Chief Inspector Andrew Slaughter was called in for a conference. Slaughter knew that Theodore Barlow had a habit of looking the other way when the criminals hit each others’ operations as long as normal citizens were not affected. There had been a number of such operations in the past few years where the police could not have been nearly as effective as the other members of the underworld. He also knew that the influx of Eastern Europeans and Russians in the past decade had been a cause for concern. They were ruthless and flaunted their savage methods. Moreover, they exported cash back to their home countries, a most unacceptable practice. It was bad enough they didn’t pay taxes on it but to send it overseas for laundering was hurting the economy. Barlow often likened it to the Cuban boat people crisis in America where Fidel Castro had emptied his jails into the streets of Miami.
Chief Inspector Andrew Slaughter was promised additional funding, taken from the new anti-drug fund, to investigate the incident and those involved. He was also given the nod to go after the emerging power centers in Sydney: the Orientals and the Soviets.
Jimmy Cognac and Henry Cuthbert were together the entire day. They were going over the same thing Andrew Slaughter and Theodore Barlow were discussing and the questions were much the same. Why was everybody there, who knew they were there, and how had they been manipulated so easily? Jimmy did not want to end up in the same condition as his predecessor. Jimmy had been living the high life in Victoria mostly due to the fact that his people had a lot of constables on the payroll. A lot of things were ignored, a lot of competition was killed or run out of the area, a lot of the competition’s merchandise wound up under Jimmy’s control. Things were different in Sydney.
The New South Wales Police Force is divided into 80 different jurisdictions. Coordination had been understandably difficult in the p
ast given the distances involved. The dawning of the computer age was changing all that. Files could be sent instantly and in their entirety. Inventories of the evidence lockers could be brought up and updated constantly as well as who checked out what evidence and more importantly, when the evidence was returned. The Sydney area got the computers first and an initiative was on to supply the entire province with them. Many of the older, provincial police felt there was no need for them and that they would continue doing their jobs as they had for the past number of decades without the damn things. This was more outside the city. The younger members of the force were proficient and eager to use the networked system to their advantage.
Part of the advantage of the new system was in cataloguing photographs. The database could eliminate anyone not fitting the description, saving hours of pouring over the old piles of mug shot books. It also pulled up a photo with an ID number.
The system pulled up Jimmy Cognac’s face in no time. He had dark hair and dark brown eyes with gypsy features. A gap between his front teeth and a scar across his lip, right above the gap made him quickly identifiable.
The system held Henry Cuthbert’s smiling face. He was tall and blond with heavy features and a florid complexion that mixed poorly with the light hair. His eyes were a dark blue and his lips were thick.
The system had no photograph for Thompson Barber. He had never been arrested. He was questioned after the Hill Top affair, but he was never arrested or fingerprinted. Every other man on that job with the exception of John who was still in the hospital was arrested and photographed.
Thompson Barber came up as a non-entity. The population records were incomplete, much of it never got input into any system, records got lost, systems crashed and wiped out years of work. There were many reasons Thompson Barber might have been dropped from the records so there was no red flag flying. Thompson might have been the only man to reach the level he had without having been arrested. He had, after all, gone through the ranks in meteoric fashion and been stuffed into his position out of necessity. He was attracting attention now though. Chief Inspector Andrew Slaughter had instructed his inspectors to find out who the man was and where he had come from. They turned the judicial eye upon him and lit up the spotlight.
Honorable Assassin Page 22
