Dead or Alive: A heart-pounding assassination thriller with a shocking twist (Eliot Locke Thrillers Book 1)

by Dean Carson

  I raised an eyebrow. “How is that a present for me?” I asked.

  “Think it through,” she said and winked at me. She walked into the inner room. I thought it through. Then I grinned. Roll on bedtime.

  She emerged ten minutes later and I had the rashers already frying. I threw in the eggs at the last minute and did them over easy. It is one of the few culinary tips I have picked up from Bill, and the eggs taste so much better fried that way. I slid the eggs and rashers off onto two plates and quickly browned a few slices of bread on the frying pan. Yachts may be considered luxurious, but few of them have the luxury of a toaster.

  We ate in companionable silence, then I told her that my new name was Gerry and I was glad to meet her. She was delighted with the success of Bill’s mission. I think she could finally see that it was over. We had beaten the bad guys and made our escape. There could be a future with me in it if she wanted there to be. I really hoped that she did.

  “I’m going to catch a bit of sleep,” she said after we had finished. “A fry-up always makes me sleepy. Why don’t you go up on deck and read the paper for a while? I’ll be up in an hour.”

  Sounded great to me. I took my coffee — with proper milk in it — and the newspaper and went up the narrow steps and through the hatch into the sunlight. I found a spot on the deck that faced the sun. I sat down with my coffee by my side and the boat’s small transistor radio on the other side. I tuned it in to a light classics station and opened the newspaper. She had managed to get hold of the Sun, a terrible rag. But it was a familiar terrible rag, full of celebrities I didn’t care about, actresses I had not heard of and soccer games I had no interest in. I revelled in the banality of it all. It was a touch of home.

  With my stomach full, warm sun on my face, a beautiful woman downstairs and something silly to read, I felt all was right with the world for the first time in a long time. Well, most was right with the world. The sunlight was a bit harsh. So I moved to the other side of the boat, with my back to the sun. Now I could read the paper properly.

  I had been in the new position only five minutes when a shadow crossed the deck.

  FORTY-ONE

  The shadow was moving silently and slowly, and I almost missed it. It was behind me and to my right. I caught a fleeting moment of darkness in the corner of my peripheral vision. Enough to fill me with unease. If it was Jelly coming up to join me, she would not have been silent. She would have just walked up to me and sat down.

  Sometimes when you are confronted with sudden danger, your instincts take over and you react before thinking. That can save your life. It certainly saved mine when my room in Mostar had been bombed. But sometimes instincts can lead you astray. Sometimes a more measured response is called for. I kept reading the paper. Now my eyes were not on the lines of print, but on the shadow that was moving around behind me, drifting further to my right. I was tracking the shadow with my peripheral vision, which is never fully reliable. But if I had just looked, the person behind me would have been alerted immediately. And what if he had a gun?

  The bastards — would I ever get away from Dugalic’s thugs?

  I waited. The shadow came closer. What had I around me that I could press into service as a crude weapon? I rustled the pages slightly and turned a page. This movement was enough to allow me steal a full glimpse of the shadow. I went back to the paper, but now I knew. Someone was a little more than a metre behind me and to my right and that someone was crouched forward, moving stealthily towards me. From the quick glimpse I could not tell whether the shadow had a weapon. If it did, so did the person casting it.

  It’s not La Donna back for a third go? I shouldn’t think things like that. I almost laughed, but right now I didn’t want to do anything to alert my attacker to the fact that he no longer had the element of surprise.

  I rustled the paper a bit more. That was my one help now. I could shift position and be ready to react instantly to the first move without arousing suspicion. He would just see a man reading a paper. What was his weapon? In a marina, however quiet it was at this time of day, he would not want to risk a gunshot. So it was probably a knife. Knife fights are the worst; everyone gets hurt. And normally they are won by the guy who gets the first cut in. Rarely are they won by the guy who didn’t bring a knife to the fight. That would be me. I hoped it wasn’t a knife.

  Then he made his move. I saw the shadow of the hand rise quickly over his head. Probably a knife. Damn.

  I moved quickly. I made no effort to get away from the blow that would come as soon as his hand reached the top of its arc. If he had a knife, his reach would be extended by a number of centimetres and getting away only put me out of striking distance of him. The way to nullify a knife is to get too close to let the assailant use it. So I didn’t turn from him. I turned towards my attacker. I came in low, and the weapon missed my head and hit me hard on the shoulder. The injured shoulder. And I screamed in agony.

  The pain was the first surprise. It wasn’t a knife that hit me. It was a blackjack, and a professional one at that. A blackjack is a long leather pouch, normally filled with lead shot. If you hit someone on the hand with it, you can break bones. Hit someone on the head and it’s lights out for the rest of the day, then a headache for a week. A clever plan — cosh me and toss my unconscious body overboard. The autopsy would show I had drowned. Any bruise on my skull would be put down to hitting the side of the boat when I went into the water.

  The second surprise was that the blackjack was not being wielded by an unknown assassin. I was stunned to see Jelly crouched in front of me, the vicious cosh in her hand. I didn’t have time to process it; the pain in my arm was excruciating and the muscles were dead. I was fighting one-handed.

  But Jelly had to try to get her arm back up over her head to slam it down on me again. As she raised her arm, I hit her in the chest with my shoulder. She hit the deck hard, then scrambled away. I took the opportunity to regroup.

  Jelly scuttled back from me on the open deck and dropped the blackjack.

  That was not good for me, because she went for her jacket and came out with a gun. I froze.

  Slowly she got to her feet, keeping her distance from me. I was on one side of the deck, she was on the other in a crude shooter’s crouch.

  “Jelly?” I asked.

  “Fuck you,” she spat back.

  Sometimes our lives are like stuck records, repeating the same pathetic notes. I asked the same question I had asked La Donna. “Why?”

  And I got the same answer. “Because I was paid well.”

  “From the beginning?”

  She smirked. “Think it through,” she said. “When you saw me first in Mostar, I was waiting for you to walk past. You weren’t meant to see me, but typical man you were thinking with your dick. I could have died when you stopped and said hello. I was the one who planted the bomb, and I had to wait until you were inside to activate it.”

  “Cell phone and a sound-activated detonator?”

  “It’s worked before,” she said defensively.

  “So when I saw you at the airport…”

  “I was tracking you. And when you came to Dubrovnik, I put another plan into operation.”

  “You were working with La Donna?”

  “She was working with me.”

  How could I have fallen for it so easily? Perhaps she was right: I had been thinking with my dick.

  “So how much am I worth?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, because now it is personal. La Donna was my mentor. She was like a big sister to me.”

  I could see the rage in her eyes and the raw hatred, and I was hurt. “Did you ever have any feelings for me?”

  “Grow up. I told you when I first saw you that I don’t have daddy issues.”

  “I’m only five years older than you, for Christ’s sake.”

  “And not going to get a day older.” She raised the gun and aimed right at my heart.

  I ignored the gun and looked at a spot above her an
d to her left. “Just in time, Bill,” I said.

  It’s an old trick and it never works. But it often buys just enough time. Her attention faltered briefly, and the gun barrel wavered as she thought for a nanosecond of turning around. It was all that I needed.

  I stepped up to the boom, the horizontal beam under the sail. And I pushed it with all my strength. It flew across the deck and caught her squarely under the ribs. She staggered backwards and the gun flew from her hand. I stepped forward and kicked it out of her reach. Then she was on her feet and coming at me. And from her first move, I knew I was in trouble.

  I was fighting one-handed. She had two hands and two feet and knew how to use them. I had twenty kilos on her. She had youth and speed on her side. For as long as it lasted, it was a good fight. She opened with a front kick that caught me on the hip and followed with an open palm strike that missed my Adam’s apple by a whisker. I countered with a spinning hammer blow that caught her on the side of the head. I felt the dull ache as my hand slammed into the hard bone of her skull.

  Then she went for my eyes and I side-stepped the crude clawing blow and kicked her behind the knee. She went down on one leg.

  That’s when she made the mistake. She went for the gun. I dived onto her back and pinned her. She struggled, her fingers stretching towards the pistol that was agonisingly out of reach. She jerked her body violently, and the movement gave her another few centimetres. It is very easy to pin someone but difficult to prevent them from moving entirely. A few more jerks and she might inch across the deck to reach the gun. I grabbed for anything I could use as an impromptu weapon, and the first thing my fingers locked on was a length of the anchor chain. I wrapped it around her neck and pulled tight, using it as a garrotte. I strained both ends, pulling back on her neck. Her eyes registered surprise and pain, but nothing else. The chain was too cumbersome to cut off the jugular and choke her out.

  So I just wrapped it twice around her neck and dragged her to her feet. Her hands clutched at the chain and I pushed her away from me. She staggered backwards and teetered on the gunwale of the boat. It could have gone either way. For an instant she seemed frozen in time, like a tightrope walker struggling to maintain balance on the high wire. Her fingers clawed at the links around her neck while her body tried to maintain equilibrium. It looked as if she might fall forwards onto the deck. Then I picked up the anchor, which weighed about twenty kilos, and I threw it towards her.

  Instinctively she threw out her hands to catch it. The anchor caught her in the chest and she toppled backwards, over the gunwale and into the water of the marina.

  She hit the water with a splash and sank head first, the weight of the chain around her neck dragging her towards the bottom. The rest of the chain began to cascade over the edge, following her down. I looked over the edge of the boat and saw her panicked face looking at me pleadingly, her eyes wide with fear. A few bubbles rose to the surface.

  I reacted without thinking. The anchor chain is always secured to the boat, and I stopped its headlong rush. Then I grabbed the chain and began hauling it on board. I took in the slack and began to drag her up from the bottom. The marina was about three metres deep at that point, and the chain was heavy enough. But its weight was supported by the density of the water and I managed to pull her towards the surface, the chain still secure around her neck. Her head broke the water and she took a deep, grateful gasp.

  She was safe now. The chain was holding her and I was holding the chain. I wrapped it once around my hand to keep it secure, then reached down with my other hand to take hers. To hell with the pain from the wound. I could get her out.

  “Hold my hand,” I said. “I’ve got you.”

  She reached out and our fingers touched. I tightened my grip and began to straighten up, hauling her towards the deck.

  Then her other hand came up, flashing silver. She screamed at me and drove the knife hard for my throat. I jerked back and it caught me under the rib, drawing blood. I let go of the chain. I let go of her hand.

  Her scream was cut short as she was pulled beneath the surface of the sea. This time there were no bubbles.

  FORTY-TWO

  When Bill and Ben returned, I was sitting on the deck, finishing the newspaper. I had bandaged the cut to my abdomen crudely, but it wasn’t deep. I would survive. I had all our luggage in three bags by my side.

  Bill tossed the passport onto my lap. “Gerry Kaplan, glad to make your acquaintance.” He and Ben laughed. “There’s an embassy loaner car at the gate and we are good to go. I have a good hotel booked and dinner in a great restaurant.”

  “I chose it,” said Ben. “You know Dad and food.”

  Bill looked around. “Where’s Jelly? Downstairs?”

  I shook my head. “Long story. But the gist of it is, she won’t be joining us. It will have to be a boys’ night.”

  Bill looked at me, his eyes soft with understanding, and said nothing. Ben, less used to the ways of our peculiar world, said: “Don’t worry, Uncle Eliot. If it’s meant to be, she’ll be back to you. And if it’s not, there’s somebody else for you.”

  Then the three of us stepped off the boat and walked up the marina towards Venice.

  Two days later, Bill and Ben left me in London. I flew to Edinburgh and took a taxi to the hospital where I lived. The hospital was empty; it had been for two years since the funds ran out and construction stopped. Someday it would be finished, equipped and pressed into service. Until then it was unoccupied, and the insurance on unoccupied buildings is astronomical. So many buildings like that are occupied by caretakers like me. We get free accommodation and in return we treat the empty properties as our home.

  So far I have lived, for periods ranging from four months to two years, in an apartment block in London’s East End, the Edinburgh hospital, a factory near Swindon, an insurance office in Marseilles and a villa near Barcelona. And in each of those places, in case of emergency, I have stashed passports and other documents, money and weapons. A shame I had never lived in Croatia. I could have spared myself a lot of pain. And not just the physical pain. When I thought of Jelly, it was not my arm that ached, but my heart.

  But home was home and the best place in which to recover. I went through my mail, throwing most of it aside to be dealt with later. One, I opened. It was from my sister. Inside the padded envelope was a DVD, which I put into my laptop. It was her porno.

  I have to say it was tasteful. The porno turned out to be a Channel Four documentary on the thriving London burlesque scene. Jane, as a classical dancer, performed in some of the cabaret venues. It is a bit odd seeing your sister in a basque with it all hanging out, but there were strategically placed diamanté pasties to save my blushes. I texted her: “Well done, Sis.”

  Then I texted my brother. I couldn’t help myself: “Shocked. Don’t know how she fitted it all in her mouth.”

  I smiled for the first time in two days.

  Then I began to do some serious research. Strike-back time.

  I keyed in the name Amel Dugalic. Nothing came up on Google or Bing. So I went over to the dark side, using a search engine only known to a few of us. My screen filled up with a bewildering series of links. There would be days spent in compiling my file and my plan of action. I clicked on one of the links and a photograph came up. It was a man with a thin face and dark eyes and hair that may once have been a dirty blond but was now darkening with age. The texture of the skin looked rough, and he was not smiling. His eyes were set far apart, giving him an intelligent look. But they were hard eyes.

  I looked into those eyes and I thought of La Donna, dead. No loss to the world, but she had been a friend. Sort of. I thought of Jelly, dead. She had been no friend in the end, but I would miss her terribly, at least for a few days. I thought of the two Italian mobsters lying mangled in a print factory in Dubrovnik, dead. And I thought of the teenage girl whom I had sprayed with chloroform and photographed. And I thought, Sometimes this is a seedy way to make a living.

  I t
hought of all those people and my hand closed into a fist. I extended my index finger, making a mock gun, and I pointed it at the face of Amel Dugalic on the screen.

  “I’m coming for you, mate,” I said.

  EPILOGUE

  Four weeks later,

  Sarajevo

  Two black Mercedes cars, top of the range, pulled up in front of a fashionable restaurant in Sarajevo. The windows were tinted. They were also bulletproof, but this was not obvious to the trendy couples and poseurs on the sidewalk.

  Three men, dressed in black with dark glasses, got out of the front car. They went into the restaurant. A moment later, the sign on the door was turned, showing Closed to the world. Relaxed, the three men went from table to table, confiscating the mobile phones of the patrons. The building was in lockdown and incommunicado.

  After a few minutes, one of the men emerged from the restaurant and nodded to the second car. Immediately, the driver got out and opened the rear door. A middle-aged man in a business suit emerged, followed by a stunning blonde in her late twenties. She linked his arm and they walked inside. She looked amazing, like an actress or a catwalk model. In fact, she was a very expensive call-girl, quite beyond the price range of most of the diners in the expensive eatery.

  Immediately the restaurant manager, looking pale, bustled up and almost bowed before the new arrivals. “Monsieur Dugalic, what a pleasure, as always.”

  “No — Mr Smith,” said the man, with a slight smile.

  “Certainly, sir. Mr Smith, always glad to see you,” burbled the manager, trying to catch up. If the man had wanted to be called Kermit the Frog, that was fine by him. “Can I get you a table? A menu? And for your lady friend?”

  The man allowed himself to be led to a table near the edge of the room with a view over the entire dining area. The best table in the establishment. He smiled graciously at the patrons whose meals had been interrupted. Most of them smiled back at him. His three heavies had told them that all their meals were being comped and they would get their phones back as soon as the special guest left. Whether they were happy or not, they knew better than to argue.