Hard Vengeance (A Jon Reznick Thriller)

by J. B. Turner

The woman’s eyes grew wide. “I heard about that. Terrible. I’m so sorry. An accident, wasn’t it?”

  “I thought so in the beginning. But I don’t know for sure.”

  “Do you think someone murdered her, señor?” She let out a string of Spanish, and Reznick thought he caught the gist—that this was a safe town, good people.

  “I don’t want to speculate. Look, I’ve got a few questions. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind at all. How can I help, señor?”

  “Tell me, the young man who brought me here, he said he saw a man in a camper van, an RV, at an overlook where he was cliff jumping on the night of the explosion.”

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t like it when the children do that. A child many years ago, way back in the 1970s, he died doing that. I tell them not to.”

  Reznick nodded empathetically as the old woman went off on a tangent, remembering terrible memories from decades earlier. “The man in the camper van. The boy said he was living in the villa next door a few weeks back. The pink villa. Do you know if he’s still there?”

  The woman went quiet for a few moments. “The pink villa? Next door?”

  Reznick nodded.

  “I own that house.”

  “You own the pink house.”

  The woman nodded. Her hand had risen to cover her heart. “You think this man might be involved?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he knows something.”

  “I’m surprised. That doesn’t sound like the man I knew. He was very kind. He was very quiet. Studious. Highly, highly educated.”

  “Is he still living there?” When she shook her head, he added, “He rented for how long?”

  “Three months, approximately. He said he was a doctor who retired to Spain. He had a friend staying with him, a young man I never met, but they both had Spanish passports.”

  Reznick took a few moments to process the information. “Tell me about the doctor’s friend. Do you know anything about him?”

  The woman shook her head. She walked over to a small, highly polished sideboard. She took out a folder, and inside were photocopies of Spanish passports. It showed two men. “This is what they looked like.”

  Reznick studied the face of the American man, the older man. He saw instantly the similarity to the handsome, clean-cut guy who had entered his hotel room. He then considered the other, younger man. North African, maybe. He turned over the paper. They both had the same stamps on their passports. He scanned the information and slowly digested it. Then the realization crashed through his head like a concrete block.

  The stamp on the passports was from Melilla, a Spanish enclave in North Africa. His mind flashed to what Mac’s sister had said about finding the fragment in the water with Arabic writing.

  “What else can you tell me about the older man? The American.”

  “He paid me in advance. I had expected them to stay for six months, as that’s what they paid. But they were in my villa in total for three months. March to around June. Three months, early summer. He swam a lot. I saw him swimming. Very quiet, wholesome. Lean. He swam hundreds of lengths of the pool. Hours each day. Very, very fit. Strong.”

  “And you’re sure he was American?”

  The old woman smiled. “Unmistakable. He was an American.”

  Sixteen

  When Reznick got back to his hotel room, the first thing he did was pour all the booze from the minibar fridge down the sink. He paid the bill and asked to be moved to a new room, citing noise from his neighbors. The manager was most obliging. A couple of bellhops picked up his possessions and carried them to the new room.

  Reznick tipped the guys and shut the blinds, then settled into the suite on the floor above his old room, where he had rooftop views of the town and the sea in the distance. He switched out the smoke detector for the one with the hidden camera. Then he sent a photo of the intruder, along with a picture he’d taken of the passport photocopy, to an encrypted email address at the FBI. Then he called up the direct line number for SIOC, the same one he had called before. A short while later he was connected to the same woman. He identified himself after a series of security questions.

  “Jon, I’ve been instructed to tell you, for the last time, that you are no longer operating under the auspices of the FBI. And we certainly have no jurisdiction in Europe. Do you copy?”

  “Yeah, but I hear your guys are out here doing more than just advising. Look, I’ve just sent a photo captured from footage of a guy who was roaming around my hotel room. I believe that this might be the same guy who was seen shortly before Martha Meyerstein died. He’s an American. I want the FBI to try and run him through facial recognition. He claims to be a doctor. I’ve also sent over a copy of a passport I believe belongs to the same man.”

  Silence.

  “Do you copy that?”

  “Jon, I’ve been informed that you have no jurisdictional or operational capacity.”

  “I’m giving you a goddamn lead. Use it. Find out who this guy is. Pass it on to O’Donoghue. I believe this American had a Moroccan kid staying at a villa here with him. They both had Spanish passports. There was a Melilla stamp on the passport. The kid might also have something to do with this.”

  Reznick ended the call. He headed across the street to the bar overlooking the cove and ordered a beer. He sat and drank, trying to process everything he had learned that day. A picture was emerging. The American guy was pulling the strings of the whole operation. Maybe the Moroccan kid was a patsy. Perhaps the Islamist link had been carefully planned to throw investigators off as to the true mastermind of the atrocity, the mysterious American man with a Spanish passport. Misdirection. Misinformation. Did it point to the mastermind having a military background?

  As he stared out over the water, his thoughts invariably returned to Martha. Her body might have been washed out to sea. Or maybe she had been blown to bits, nothing discernible left. That wasn’t unusual with explosions. His years deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq had seemed to provide a never-ending catalogue of such grotesque murders. Explosions often resulted in bodies being ripped to shreds, torn limb from limb. The thought of Martha’s life being ended that way enraged him.

  Reznick was no stranger to death. He had tasted it. The loss of his wife had alienated him from the world. And during his work in Delta in Iraq, he saw humankind at its worst. Depravity on all sides. He saw so much it was overwhelming. Bad, bad things. He could compartmentalize the horrors. Others hadn’t been so lucky. Some of his American colleagues had gone mad at what they were seeing. What they endured. And the descent into hell that they contributed to. Endless night. That’s what it seemed like. Endless goddamn night.

  Ankle-deep in raw sewage, dragging Baathists out of ditches. Seeing the fear in a man’s eyes as he was about to die. It got to a point where he didn’t feel anymore. Not a thing. It wasn’t long before he was plagued by nightmares. Waking in the dead of night, soaked in cold sweat. It was almost inevitable that he had found his way into the arms of the CIA. And on it went. He killed undesirables. Whoever the American military wanted neutralized. He, and guys like him, operated in the shadows. No questions asked. It was pure chance that he eventually ran up against the FBI. In particular, Martha Meyerstein. She’d wanted to use his tradecraft and skills and know-how in highly specialized and classified investigations. She’d convinced him he could be one of the good guys.

  Now she was gone. The terrible emptiness he’d felt after Elisabeth’s death was filling his soul again. He was going to that dark place again. And he had nowhere to turn. Martha wasn’t coming back. And he couldn’t bear to contemplate not seeing her again. Maybe he should see a clinical psychologist. A few months earlier, Lauren had suggested as much. She thought he needed help. His head was full of images of bodies. Bad stuff. Bad thoughts.

  An SUV pulled up opposite the bar, snapping Reznick from his morbid thoughts. A small, stocky white guy wearing chinos, a pale blue linen shirt, and boat shoes walked toward hi
m.

  The guy strode through the bar and pulled up a chair beside Reznick. He sat down slowly as if for effect. “Long way from home, Jon.” The accent was American. West Coast, perhaps.

  Reznick said nothing as the man fixed his steely gaze on him.

  The guy wiped the sweat from his brow. “I work for the State Department.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “You’re asking a lot of questions around here, Jon. You don’t work for the FBI. And even if you did, this isn’t their jurisdiction, is it? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Always interesting to get an update on such legal niceties. Thanks for that.”

  “Pointing a gun at a friend of mine from the Civil Guard was a dumb move. A really dumb move. You don’t strike me as a stupid person, Jon.”

  “Neither do you. So, if you don’t mind, I’m enjoying some peace and quiet. Before I forget, any leads on what happened?”

  The State Department character stared at him.

  “I’m sorry, I missed what you said. Say that again?”

  “Jon, don’t be a smartass.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are? I don’t answer to you.”

  “I’m letting you know that you crossed the line. You don’t understand the big picture.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “So, if this continues, this little investigation of yours into a terrible accident, then there will be consequences for you. You’re so out of line it’s ridiculous. You’re acting as if this was a murder. It was an accident, pure and simple.”

  “It was no fucking accident. I know. You know. The question is, what are you withholding? What is the American government withholding? What are you concealing? Because from where I’m sitting and from what I know, this is starting to sound like a twenty-four-karat-gold cover-up.”

  “Take my advice, Jon. Go home.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You either leave or we will make you leave.”

  “Go right ahead. What’s stopping you?”

  The guy stared at him for what seemed like an eternity. “Get the fuck off this island. You’ve been warned.”

  “Love the outfit, by the way. It’s back in, that look.”

  “Heed the advice, Jon. Before it’s too late.”

  Reznick reached across the table and grabbed the guy by the throat. The man’s face went red. “Don’t ever try the tough guy routine. It doesn’t work with me. Do you understand?”

  The State Department stiff closed his eyes and nodded.

  Reznick loosened his grip.

  The guy took a few moments to compose himself. “You haven’t heard the last of this.” He got up and calmly walked across the street, climbed back into the passenger seat of the vehicle, and the SUV pulled away.

  Seventeen

  Ford watched Reznick grab the guy in the bar. He peered through the telescope and scanned the rest of the patrons. No one seemed to bat an eye. He had quickly checked the plates on a database on his laptop. The SUV was a diplomatic vehicle, licensed to the American consulate in Palma.

  It meant Reznick was ruffling feathers. The way he usually did.

  Ford contemplated the importance of the situation. Reznick’s presence on the island had clearly been noted by the intelligence agencies. The State Department, at least, who’d probably passed on what they knew to the CIA and the FBI.

  He wondered if Reznick was going to be arrested and deported. Had the thickset guy Reznick grabbed warned him to back off? To leave the island?

  Ford didn’t want to get sidetracked. His sole purpose was to kill Reznick. And for that, he needed Reznick here. He wondered why exactly Reznick had changed rooms at the hotel. That was something of a mystery, since the camera clock he’d installed had malfunctioned. Perhaps he didn’t like the view. Or he had a noisy neighbor.

  Whoever took over the room and drank the poisoned whiskey would be an innocent. But that wasn’t what irked Ford. What irked him was that Reznick would have been dead by now if his first plan had worked. But that was only a minor irritant in the grand scheme of things.

  There was more than one way to skin a cat.

  Still, it was a coincidence, Reznick switching rooms like that, and coincidences never sat well with Ford. He liked order. Everything and everyone in their place. He was used to planning every move, anticipating every eventuality, to the point where people’s actions, no matter how idiosyncratic, became predictable.

  Was it just a bit of luck on Reznick’s part that he had decided to move? Or was it something far more problematic?

  The questions raged like a storm in his head. Taunting him. Was it possible that Reznick realized the identical miniature booze bottles had been tampered with? Now, that would be worrying.

  Ford was wired. He hadn’t considered the possibility that Reznick would find out about the switch. The chances were a million to one.

  He kicked over a nest of glass tables, smashing them to the floor. “Think you’re so fucking cute, Reznick?”

  Ford peered again through the telescope, focusing on Reznick’s impassive features. “Well, from where I’m standing, you’re not so smart. Dumb fuck. I see fuckwits like you every day. And I know how to deal with them. Think you’ll get the better of me? I don’t fucking think so.”

  Ford looked away from the telescope, down the hills shrouded by foliage. It was the most perfect line of sight. He should be feeling euphoric. He had been euphoric for the last day or so. But he felt his mood darkening.

  The realization that the bait hadn’t been taken, whether inadvertently or by design, needled him.

  Ford sensed he could be facing a formidable adversary. He tried not to compare himself to mere mortals. But something about Reznick switching rooms bothered him. Worried him. Obsessed him.

  He had Reznick where he wanted him. The bastard had been drawn into the aftermath of Martha’s demise. That was the plan from the outset. But part of that plan was taking out Reznick at a time and place of his choosing. That was plan A.

  When he realized Reznick was in the hotel, the opportunity was too good to pass up. But somehow, fate had intervened to save Reznick. Why on God’s earth was the man not dead? His research had shown that Reznick was a single malt guy. Not a boozer. But a guy who enjoyed a glass or two of the amber nectar.

  Ford could understand him skimping on the temptations of the minibar. But it was quite another thing to change rooms. He couldn’t risk a second attempt. Damn, why had Reznick changed rooms? Had Reznick gotten spooked? And by what? He tried to put himself in Reznick’s shoes. If Reznick did suspect someone had been in his room, it would make perfect sense to get out of that room. But by not leaving the hotel, was Reznick trying to send a message that he wasn’t fazed? Perhaps Reznick was hoping the unseen foe would try again. And if he did try again, would Reznick be lying in wait? It felt as if Reznick was getting in his head.

  These circular arguments went around and around in his mind. Then again, another way to look at it was that Reznick was just enjoying a stay of execution.

  Yeah, that was a good way of looking at it.

  Ford’s gaze returned to the telescope and lingered on Reznick. He wondered what exactly the bastard was up to. He wondered if it had anything to do with Reznick visiting the kindly old Spanish lady. The same woman Ford had rented the first villa from. His base camp in the small town before his final move into the secluded mountainside retreat. Ford had used a trick the dark web hacker had shown him to remotely access the grainy security camera footage the old lady had rigged up to cover her property. But he couldn’t hear a word of what was said. That was frustrating. Reznick was getting closer. Quicker than Ford had expected.

  Ford wasn’t worried. He’d left enough misdirection behind that it would be a while before Reznick uncovered his true identity. But Reznick was inching closer. He needed to know what Reznick knew.

  He began to pace the room before turning and kicking over the telescope and the tr
ipod. The equipment crashed across the marble floor, the lens smashing into the wall. He felt himself getting more and more worked up.

  It was then, in a cold, blind fury, that an idea came to him. A germ of an idea. A moment of clarity. The idea was forming. Oh yeah, that would work.

  Ford made a mental note of what he was going to do. He needed to compose himself. He did what he always did when he was stressed. He went to the bedroom and began to meditate. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting away to another realm. A realm of peace. A realm of tranquility. He felt himself being blanketed in a cocoon of warmth.

  He sensed he was drifting above the wisps of white cloud, toward the rays of sunshine. Basking in the light. It was as if he were floating through space, unhindered by worries. He was lighter. More relaxed.

  When he finished with his exercises, he went into the bathroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror. The lean, handsome face. The golden tan. But his eyes were bloodshot. He sometimes got like that. Yet he also saw a coldness in his blue eyes. And then he thought about what he was about to do and smiled. “Let’s go and have some fun, Adam, huh?”

  Ford picked up the keys to the SUV, headed outside, and got in the vehicle. As he sped off, he caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. His pupils were like pinpricks, and he hadn’t even done any coke. This was pure adrenaline. He grinned as he headed straight for the old lady’s house on the edge of Cala San Vicente.

  Eighteen

  A crimson sunset bathed the waters off Cala San Vicente as Reznick watched Catherine McCafferty walk into the beachside bar. She wore sunglasses and a white summer dress, arms pink with sun.

  She pulled up a chair beside him. “You mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all.”

  Catherine sat down, surveying the sunset. “This is nice. But it would’ve been nicer with David.”

  “Any news?”

  Catherine stared at him as if in a daze before she nodded.

  “You look like you need a drink,” Reznick said.

  “Glass of dry white wine.”