by Trevor Scott
“Where is this going?” Bayla asked.
“Patience,” Yousef said. “Do you see all of the activity on the south side of the port?”
Bayla forced another glance. “Yes, so?”
“That is a Chinese port being built,” Yousef said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I have a contact in the Egyptian government here in Suez. And this base is not simply for shipping. It will be a Chinese Navy facility.”
“Shit,” Sirena said into her mic.
“Why is this not in the news?” Bayla asked.
“Because the Chinese are secretly buying up properties throughout the African continent. Our government is getting concerned.”
They should be, Sirena thought. She considered typing a secure text to Jake to see if he knew about this, but something caught her eye. Movement down the street. A man on each side of Canal Street moving in their direction. Both men keeping pace with one another.
“We have company,” Sirena said into her comm.
Bayla took out her phone and got next to the Saudi man, pretending to take a picture with him. But she was really confirming Sirena’s intel. “There we go,” Bayla said. “Got it.”
“What are you doing?” Yousef said. “I cannot be in a photo with you. You work for. . .”
“Why is a trade rep so concerned about what the Chinese are doing?” Bayla asked the Saudi.
“It impacts our trade throughout the world,” Yousef said.
“Did you tell anyone about our meeting?” she asked.
“Of course not,” the man answered.
“Why should we care if the Chinese are making moves in the Red Sea and Suez Canal?”
“Because you have much more in common with us and the Palestinians than the Chinese. Other than religion.”
The man had a point, Sirena thought. She put her phone away and settled her right hand on the butt of her Glock inside her jacket as the two men got closer.
“They’re getting way too close,” Sirena said. “I’ve got left.”
“I’ve got right,” Bayla said.
“Right what?” Yousef asked.
The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. The two approaching men drew their weapons almost simultaneously. Sirena and Bayla did the same.
Bayla grasped the Saudi by the robe and flung him to the ground just as the first bullets started to fly. But the shooters were using suppressors, so their shots were like loud coughs.
When Sirena opened fire, those in the immediate area started to scream from fear. She caught the men off-guard, her bullets striking the man on the left at least three times and dropping him to the street.
Bayla crouched down and nearly emptied her gun. But she too hit her mark, killing the shooter.
“Are you hit?” Bayla asked Yousef.
Getting to his knees, Yousef shook his head. “What’s going on?”
“Good question. Thanks for the info. I was never here.” Bayla ran toward the two dead men.
Sirena caught up with her friend, pulling out her phone as she ran. Before leaving, she took photos of their faces. Then she and Bayla took off together.
“What the hell is going on?” Sirena asked.
“I have no idea.”
14
Portugal
Jake sat comfortably in the first-class compartment on the train from Porto to Lisbon. For Jake, this was his favorite mode of transportation. He could finally relax and get to his destination without hassle.
The Portuguese intelligence officer, Carla Matos, had gone down to the bar to get them a couple beers. He should have told her to get two each, he thought.
Turning on his phone, he pulled up the tracking he had on Sirena’s phone. Just as Sancho had said, she was in Suez, Egypt.
He couldn’t help wondering what she was doing at this very moment. In the past few years they had rarely been apart for long. Gomez kept the two of them quite busy. And when they weren’t working for the Spanish billionaire, they were traveling or simply hanging out on Pico Island. Now that would have to change, he knew.
As he was watching her GPS location, he got a text from Sirena. Attached to the text were three photos. Two of the men were obviously dead, and the third one had an enormous hawk nose out of proportion to his face.
Jake fired back a response. ‘Snuff photos?’ he asked her.
Seconds later came a text, ‘We were attacked. Can you work on facial recognition?’
Before Jake could send the images, his phone buzzed.
He picked up Sirena’s call, “Yeah.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know if you were sleeping. Then I tracked your phone and saw you were traveling about a hundred kilometers per hour. Since you don’t drive that slow, I’m guessing you’re on a train. Where you going?”
“Lisbon.” He explained what had happened to two of their people in that city, and how he was now working with a woman with Portuguese Intelligence.
“Is she hot?”
“She’s young,” Jake said. Not really an answer, he knew, but she would understand. “What’s going on there?”
“We were meeting a contact from the Saudi consulate,” she said. “He was supposed to be a trade rep.”
“But he was an intel officer,” Jake surmised.
“More than likely. But now he’s probably dead after what happened here tonight.”
“And the two dead guys?” Jake asked.
“You saw them. Chinese. Can you see if our people can ID them?”
Just as Jake was about to answer, Carla slid the door and came back in carrying four beers. She handed one to Jake, kept one for herself, and put the other two on the small table by the outer window. Then she took a seat across from Jake and tried on a slight smile.
“Don’t get burned on the beach,” Jake said to Sirena. “The sun in Palma de Majorca can get intense.”
“She’s back?” Sirena asked.
“Yes. I will.”
“Through the Agency or by our people?”
“I think we can handle it,” Jake said. Then he glanced at Carla and added, “She’s a very nice young woman.”
“She’s hot,” Sirena concluded.
“That’s irrelevant,” Jake said.
“Keep it in your pants.”
“I’ll let you know.” Then Jake hung up on Sirena and shoved his phone into his pocket before taking a long swig of beer.
“Your girlfriend Sirena,” Carla guessed.
This woman knew way more than she should, he thought. “She gets a little jealous. But I told her you were really young and would never want an old guy like me.”
Carla smiled. “I don’t know. Portuguese women tend to go for older men. Especially distinguished men with some gray and who can kill with their bare hands. That’s hot.”
Jake put his finger in the air and took out his phone again. He forwarded the two images of the Chinese men who had attacked Sirena in Egypt to his people in Porto. Sancho sent a smartass comment back about Jake killing more people, which Jake ignored. Then he put his phone back into his pocket and leaned back against the seat.
“Anything I should know about?” Carla asked.
Shaking his head, Jake said, “No. A different case.”
Carla gave Jake a wry smirk, sipped her beer, and finally said, “You might wonder how I know about your girlfriend.”
He knew she couldn’t know much, since Sirena’s file was nearly non-existent to other agencies. Jake shrugged.
She continued, “We have a file on her. But it might be only two pages and much of that is simply speculation.”
Jake said nothing.
“Which tells me more than a thirty-page dossier,” Carla concluded. “This Sirena must be an important and dangerous officer.”
Jake guessed she was fishing. “Like me, she’s retired.”
“Yet, she works for Carlos Gomez.”
“What’s your point?”
“No point. Just stating the facts. We don’t
even have a good photo of her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, I lied. We didn’t have a good photo of Sirena. Not until our friends from Spain forwarded one to me. She’s quite beautiful.”
He wasn’t sure where this was going. But he also knew how to play the game. “She would rather be known for her competence.”
“You can have both,” Carla said.
Based on her expression, Jake guessed she might be talking about herself.
“One comes with time, and I’m afraid the other fades over time.”
She smiled and nodded understanding. Then she said, “That’s true of women. But certain men seem to get better with age.” She set her beer down and pulled out her phone. After finding something, she typed for a second and shoved her phone back into her small purse.
Jake felt his phone buzz in his jacket. He ignored it for a moment as he drank more beer.
“I just sent you a file on our contact in Lisbon,” she said. “Also, a brief file on myself.”
Pulling out his phone, Jake opened Carla’s file first. “This wasn’t necessary.”
“I know a little bit about you, so you should know a little bit about me.”
He already knew more than she knew he knew. But he read a quick briefing on her background, from her rearing in Lisbon and her education to more personal proclivities.
Jake raised his brows and said, “It says you’re bi-sexual.”
She shrugged. “I told my agency that so they would not preclude me from certain assignments. Trust me, I like men.”
Good to know, he thought. “I don’t care either way,” he said. Then he moved on and read a quick intelligence briefing on their contact in Lisbon. He was a man who had been working for the Chinese, but he was Portuguese. Jake memorized everything of importance and then deleted both files from his phone.
Jake finished his beer and picked up the second one that had been waiting for him.
“What do you think?” Carla asked him.
“It didn’t say just how deep the man is in with the Chinese,” Jake said.
“That’s not in the file,” she said. “I’ve tracked his finances. The Chinese have been paying him quite well for the past couple of years.”
“Why do you think he’ll be willing to help us?”
“I’ve heard you can be quite persuasive.” She finished the last of her beer and found the next one.
Jake guessed that was a lie. There was no way this woman knew much of anything about his background. But he simply gave her a knowing smirk. Let her think what she would, he thought. Even though he knew she was right.
After his second beer, Jake left the compartment to find the toilet at the end of the train car. When he was done, he slowly wandered back toward their compartment.
As he got closer, he heard a slight muffled scream, which made him rush down the corridor. Just as he got to their compartment, a man rushed out, nearly knocking Jake over. He was about to draw his gun, but he saw Carla laying on the floor inside in obvious pain.
Jake went to her and helped her to a sitting position. “Are you alright?”
Carla let out a deep breath and said, “I think so. He hit me pretty hard a couple of times. But I got in a few blows, including a beer bottle to the side of his face.”
He helped her to her feet and assessed damage to her body. Her face and head looked fine, so he suspected she had been hit in the torso.
She rubbed her ribs now and shook her head. “I feel like an idiot. I should have been better. When the door slid open, I thought it was you.”
“He must have been watching,” Jake said, helping her onto the bench seat.
Carla lifted her shirt and showed bruises to her left side from strikes to her ribs. “I don’t think they’re broken.”
He noticed her flat stomach and said, “The bruises will be gone by bikini season.”
“I don’t wear a bikini,” she said. “Well, the bottom part, yes.”
He noticed she had been hiding well-rounded breasts under her heavy sweater and leather jacket. Perhaps her clothes had softened the blows to her upper body, though.
She covered her skin again and shook her head. “I should have been better,” she repeated.
“The man wasn’t Asian,” Jake said. “He looked Portuguese.”
“He was. He swore in Portuguese.”
Jake sat across from her, his eyes studying her disposition. He had been thinking all along that there must have been a leak in the Gomez organization. But what if that wasn’t the case?
“Who knows you’re on this train?” he asked her.
“My agency. Why?”
“You told them you were on the way to Lisbon?”
“Of course. Do you not tell your people where you’re going?”
“Not really. Sometimes I tell them where I’ve been.” He didn’t mention the fact that Sancho and a few others could track his movements by his SAT phone.
“It must be nice to be that independent,” she said. “But I still have rules to follow.”
“So, they knew you were down the Douro Valley earlier today?”
“Yes, of course.”
Now things were making a little more sense to Jake. “Someone has been giving away your position to the bad guys. The shooters today were probably not trying to kill me. They were after you.”
She looked confused. “But why? I am just a low-level officer.”
“Maybe so. But you were assigned to deal with me. Somebody wants to make that permanent.”
“Who?”
“The Chinese.”
“But you said yourself that this attacker was not Asian.”
“I know. But if we had seen Chinese operatives on this train, we could assume they might be the bad guys. By hiring out to locals, the Chinese can now keep their hands clean. And we won’t see them coming.”
She lowered her chin toward her chest and shook her head side to side. “Who do I trust now?”
“You can trust me,” Jake said. “Does SIED track you by your phone?”
“I’m sure they can. Why?”
Jake had an idea, but it would take some time to implement it. They had a couple of more hours before they reached Lisbon.
“We’ll take care of this in Lisbon,” Jake said.
“You really think someone from my own agency wants me dead?” she asked.
“Not likely,” he said. “It’s more likely that someone there is feeding your information to the Chinese. Unless they somehow have access to your phone tracking. Either way, you’ll need to cut ties with them for a while.”
“They won’t be happy,” she said.
“Tough choice. They can be happy and you can be dead, or you can live and piss them off. I prefer the second choice.”
She nodded her head with approval.
15
Panama City, Panama
Billionaire Bobby Barnes was a giant of industry. This wasn’t just because everything he seemed to touch turned to gold. Barnes was also nearly seven feet tall, with his skinny frame held together by sinewy flesh and indistinguishable muscles. His white hair and pale skin made him appear like an albino, but most quickly came to compare him more with a vampire, since he would buy companies and suck the life out of them before selling the pieces for a huge profit.
Barnes held citizenship in both the UK and Singapore, the place of his birth. But the man had properties all over the world. His shipping interests were usually flagged in Panama, with crews made up of Filipinos. He knew they were the hardest working people worldwide, and, nearly as important, they knew how to keep their mouths shut.
The billionaire stretched out in the leather chair at one end of the large conference room table in the office of the most prestigious law firm in Panama. From the two floor-to-ceiling bank of windows, Barnes let his eyes gaze out at both the skyline and the Pacific Ocean. A couple of his ships sat out in the harbor waiting to enter the Panama Canal.
Along the right side of the
table, his people sat with the best view of the room. Barnes guessed this was on purpose. Distract the guests with the view so they would have their guard down. A power move, for sure.
But this was a done deal, he knew. Barnes was here only for ceremony. He would make a hundred million U.S. dollars simply to act as the face of the deal. In reality, his friends in China were making the purchase. But nobody could know this fact. So, Panama was the perfect place for an arms-length deal like this. Panama had become the new Switzerland.
His associate, Wu Li Jin, sat just to his right, a nervous look on his face. Wu Li Jin was a slight man barely five feet tall. He resembled a small child who had been brought to work by his father and was now swiveling in a leather chair nervously. But Wu Li Jin was the real power in the room. He was the first cousin of the current president of the People’s Republic of China. This was his deal.
“Is everything alright, Li Jin?” Barnes asked in English. Although Bobby Barnes was fluent in a number of Chinese dialects, he almost always conducted business in English.
“I hope so,” Wu said. “I’m a little tired from my flight from Portugal. Are you certain this will work?”
“Absolutely. We run it through a number of my holding companies and everything will look great.”
“What about the government of the Bahamas?” Wu asked.
“What about them?”
“They make no money on this transaction. Plus, they have zero corporate taxes or income taxes. How do they make money?”
This, of course, wasn’t a concern for Barnes. But he played along. “They make most of their money from sales tax.”
“But how do they know what we sell? After all, this is a private island.”
“They made zero from the previous owner,” Barnes said.
“The perverts?”
“That’s right. They sold nothing, so the government made nothing.”
In fact, the island they were buying had been owned by a corrupt billionaire from America. He had used the island for his own personal playground—bringing in young girls and boys for decadent orgies. Rumor had it that the island had been liberated by a small force of non-governmental special forces, who had killed many of those in attendance and freed those there against their will—which was all of the young people and most of the staff. Unfortunately, many of the regular attendees, including a bulbous-nosed former president of the United States, had not been on the island during the raid.
