Lethal Promise

by Paul Stretton-Stephens

  “Thanks for the ride, and the drinks.”

  It was warm with a slight breeze. Fi and Jago held hands as they made their way along the quayside and ascended the wooden steps to the higher level. Just before they reached the top, they inserted their respective eye lenses and released their personal MPDs.

  When they arrived at the top, they caught sight of some plush, ornate gardens complete with cascading waterfalls and fountains. They could see a large colonial-type house about a hundred metres away from them.

  They walked unhurriedly, taking in the salubrious environment. Jago spotted infrared beams at the top of the stairs, and after scanning the area, he could see that this was the main perimeter defence. Strategic lighting illuminated the walkways and potential dark spots throughout. There were two overt cameras, and presumably several covert ones too. Jago thought that there were bound to be movement sensors in sensitive areas. Any reading on these devices would naturally arouse suspicion, as it was doubtful that there were any indigenous animals living in the environment.

  They arrived at the foot of a magnificent stairway with an elaborate marble balustrade. As they ascended the staircase, a man and a woman appeared at either side of the huge carved wooden front door. Each of them held a security wand and each carried a sidearm.

  The man stepped forward. “Good evening, sir, madam. Please raise your arms. This is just a security precaution. I’m sure that you understand.”

  “Yes, of course. We can’t be too careful these days, can we,” replied Jago as he complied with the request.

  The woman, possibly of South American origin, didn’t speak as she passed her wand over Fi’s body. The wand only sounded an alert as she passed Fi’s jewellery.

  The woman nodded to the man.

  “You may proceed. Just open the door, enter and wait in the lobby. Someone will attend to you shortly.”

  “Thank you,” replied Jago, at which point he heard a helicopter nearby.

  Fi and Jago entered a marble-floored, circular lobby. It was a display of pure opulence, designed to attack the senses upon entry. The décor, the furniture, the mirrors and the lighting cried wealth. There was a round table in the middle of the lobby upon which the centrepiece was a sculpture of a wine goblet with a bee on its rim. Jago walked around it, studying every aspect of the piece of art. Fi was admiring the curved-back furniture that surrounded them when Abbas entered.

  “They’re Italian, my dear; exquisite, aren’t they?”

  Fi calmly continued to examine the piece nearest to her. “Yes, they are beautiful. I’d hate to guess the price,” she replied.

  “All I can say is that they’re rather expensive.” Abbas walked over to Jago and shook his hand. “It’s good to see you again, and of course with your lovely wife.”

  Abbas turned to Fi, who extended her hand for him to shake, and he gently held it, lifted it slightly and bent down to kiss the back of her hand while maintaining eye contact with her.

  He composed himself. “Shall we go through here? I think they have now set everything up for us.”

  Abbas led the way down a short, yet suitably decorated passageway. This led into a large open area which at first glance could have been mistaken for circular, but was in fact hexagonal. The area in which they found themselves was vast, and upon looking upward Jago saw that a magnificent crystal dome formed the roof. From the centre of the dome hung a beautiful chandelier. Fi and Jago looked all around them. Paintings of flowers, vines, grapes and bees of all shapes and colours adorned the walls. On one wall there hung a series of eight transparent hexagonal structures populated with bees. They could see bees travelling back and forth though two tubes that emanated from the structures. Fi walked over to inspect.

  “My dear, they’re marvellous, aren’t they? I think they’re called something like a BEEcosystem. They’re small modules that one can add to as desired. Mr Marne is a very keen apiarist, and this is a way of studying them.”

  “They’re fascinating. I wonder how many of them there are in those eight tiny modules?”

  “I have no idea, my dear; that is a question you would have to pose to Mr Marne. Although I have to say, he has been called away. You have only just missed him. Maybe you heard his helicopter taking off earlier, as you were walking through the gardens?”

  Jago interjected, “Yes, I heard a helicopter. I hope it’s nothing too serious?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I believe it’s just business. Shall we proceed?”

  Chapter 26

  Abbas had already walked off, down a longer corridor, and Jago and Fi followed. Abbas stopped at a set of wooden double doors. He took a golden door handle in each hand and with a slight push he opened the doors wide, revealing a five-row cinema room.

  “Please come in and sit down, make yourself comfortable. Would you care for a drink?”

  “I’ll just have water, please,” said Jago.

  “And you, my dear?”

  “I’ll have the same, thank you.”

  Abbas pressed an intercom button and requested the drinks.

  Jago and Fi sat next to each other in the back row of the home cinema. They noticed a man sitting in the front row on the far-left seat. He hadn’t turned to face them yet.

  “I imagine you’re wondering why we’re here?”

  Neither Jago nor Fi responded verbally. They waited for Abbas to tell them.

  “Let me tell you, shall I? Or should I say, let me show you.”

  Abbas picked up a remote control and photos of Jago, Mikey and Fi transitioned in a slideshow on the screen. There were many photos from the police station CCTV, although a couple were taken at the time of Rich Cassidy’s arrest. Someone had taken these from long range.

  Jago was thinking who on the inside would have had access.

  The screen paused on a photo of Fi and Jago carrying their bags through the police station. Abbas pressed a couple of buttons and the images on the screen flitted forwards and backwards. Then footage began playing. On the screen was a room, empty except for a single chair facing away from a patio window with a sliding door. The door was closed and beyond it was a drop-down shutter.

  Jago and Fi watched intently as the footage showed a woman being dragged to the chair. Her face was bloodied, bruised and swollen. The remains of her clothes hung from her wounded body, revealing tanned flesh. It looked as though something had ripped them from her. The two people who had dragged her in, and who were now tying her to the bolted-down chair, were the same two security guards who had searched Fi and Jago at the main door earlier. On the film, they left and someone entered the room wearing a beekeeper’s outfit. They held a small bottle with a dropper, akin to what you would find in a pharmacy.

  Abbas paused the footage. “This part is brilliant, very clever. Mr Marne is a wizard,” he said excitedly.

  On the screen the beekeeper took droplets of the substance and dropped them onto the woman. He explained, “These are artificial pheromones. They simulate two components, isopentyl acetate, also known as IPA, and something called 2-heptanone. IPA is the principal active component of the alarm pheromone blend and is responsible for the majority of sting-releasing activity. In essence, it is a warning signal that the hive is in danger, and the young worker bees, whose job is to guard the hive, respond by stinging the intruder, the threat. Bees can release the alarm pheromones while thrusting out the sting without actually stinging, or while stinging, and the pheromones can also be released from stings left in the victim. The receiver bees, those that receive the transferred nectar from the forager bees, are programmed for primary defensive behaviour, often in the form of attack against the source of danger.”

  They all watched as Marne pulled a cord, opening the shutter on the window. Once the shutter was up, Marne slid open the patio door, outside of which stood a beehive. The terrified woman in the chair could obviously hear what Marne was doing, and as she heard the bees, she screamed and begged Marne to stop.

  Marne, in his beekeeper suit, walked
over to the woman. “Now now, my dear, there’s no need for all that. You should have thought about the consequences before you infiltrated my organisation. That was very dishonest of you, and you had no reason to enter into my affairs, or those of my wife. I don’t care who you’re working for; we can deal with that as and when the need arises. But I will not tolerate disloyal employees, or associates of employees. In your case, you happen to be an employee of one of my paid associates, and I might add that he’s a close associate, and one I hold in high regard. The truth is, you cannot be dishonest anymore.”

  The bees were bumping into the woman, a common first warning from the guard bees. They sensed that she wasn’t leaving the area; she couldn’t if she wanted to. And one by one, they attacked her, and her horrific screams took over the footage. The bees attacked relentlessly, stinging her until the sun set, at which point the bees returned to the hive.

  Abbas paused the video. “Exciting, eh?”

  On the screen, the woman remained tied to the chair with her head falling to one side in her unconscious, if not dying, state.

  “For some. What happens now, Abbas?” asked Jago.

  “I’m sure that you can imagine what fate has in store for you, Mr Jago, if that is your real name. Let’s not waste any time.” Abbas called over to the man who until now had remained seated. “Matthias, let’s go, let’s get them moved out of here. We want nothing messy happening here in the house.”

  Matthias was a big man. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and his arm muscles bulged menacingly. More alarmingly, he was holding a machine pistol in his right hand. He walked around in front of Jago and Fi and motioned for them to stand and walk towards the door.

  “Where would you like me to take them, Mr Abbas?” asked Matthias.

  “Take them to the building next to the maintenance huts, and don’t walk across the gardens. Follow the red route – yes, that’s it, follow the red line.” Abbas looked at Jago for a reaction.

  Jago had heard the expression, and it instantly reminded him of the long walk to the morgue in the hospital. He looked at Abbas and stared right through him.

  “Oh, I see I hit a nerve there, did I, Mr Jago? You’ve followed a red line recently, haven’t you? Not a very nice experience, I imagine.”

  Jago didn’t answer, and walked out of the room with Fi by his side and Matthias to his rear. They could hear the footfalls of Abbas following them along the passageway.

  Upon arriving at the wide-open space where paintings of bees, honey and wine adorned the walls, Jago and Fi split to the left and right. They knew Matthias was under orders not to create any mess within the house and took complete advantage of his predicament. Both Jago and Fi threw every ornament and item they could find at Matthias, who was in a quandary.

  Matthias moved right, after Jago, who knocked over furniture into Matthias’s pathway. As Matthias negotiated chairs and two sets of drawers, Jago turned around, ran, leapt up a wall and bounced off into a kick to Matthias’s head. Matthias reeled backwards over the furniture, landing heavily on his back. Jago pounced, stomping on the arm that held the machine pistol, and once that was released he dropped his full body weight on Matthias and drove an elbow into his throat. As Matthias rolled and clutched his throat in agony, Jago grabbed the centrepiece statue and clubbed Matthias on the side of the head.

  Fi was on her way to help Jago, should he need it, and noticed Abbas had produced a pistol. “Boss, Abbas has a gun.”

  Jago dived and rolled away from his current position and levelled the machine pistol at Abbas, who was raising his pistol to aim it at Jago. Jago let rip with a short burst, hitting Abbas. He went down and Fi ran to disarm him. She grabbed his pistol and pointed it at him.

  “Where’s Marne? Where’s he going?” she asked Abbas.

  Two rounds had hit Abbas’s upper leg and it was bleeding profusely. “I don’t know, really I don’t know. He just said he had to leave. I only called the helicopter pilot for him. The helicopter will take him to the airport, and he’ll give his aeroplane pilot his destination whilst he’s travelling. That’s what he always does. Please, I need help or I’ll die.”

  The exterior guards were reacting to the commotion and entering through the main door.

  Fi ran across the room to the glass hives hanging on the wall. She was out of the guards’ sight as she reached up to dislodge one of the eight hives. With a slight lift and a tug, she broke it away from the others and then she hurled it down the passageway, where it smashed, releasing hundreds of bees. She grabbed another and repeated the action, and then again and again, releasing bees throughout the building. As she grabbed the fifth mini hive, Jago, who was covering the corridor, noticed that something had dropped out of the hive.

  He called out to Fi, “Fi, see what that is that’s fallen out of the hive.”

  Fi turned and looked around her feet and saw a blue flash drive. She plucked it up from the floor before hurling the fifth hive down the corridor towards the guards.

  Jago, who was searching for an escape route, looked along another passageway that led away from the inner sanctum they were in. He could see French doors at the end, leading out into the gardens.

  Despite the bees, the two guards were advancing along the corridor.

  “Fi, this way,” called Jago, pointing towards the French doors.

  As Fi passed him, he looked upwards and fired the machine pistol at the crystal-domed ceiling, and immediately retreated with Fi before the glass and chandelier crashed on the floor. They ran a short distance before bursting through the French doors and out into the gardens. They could hear the voices of the two guards in the house. They were shouting, calling for help over their radios.

  In the gardens, there was a single post that supported three directional lights shining across them. Jago aimed the pistol and with a short burst disabled the lights, plunging everything into darkness, save the area close to the house. Jago and Fi moved quietly in the shadows and heard someone running close by. They stilled themselves beside the abundant vegetation. While Jago and Fi were in the house, their MPDs had been in inert mode and perched on the roof. Now the pair were in the open, the MPDs had resumed protection mode. Both viewed the area via their MPD lenses and saw the runner pass them and go into the house.

  Jago checked his intended direction before moving off, leaving Fi to observe the easterly side of the island. As they moved swiftly through the gardens, they heard garbled chatter from a radio with its volume up high. They needed to pass through an arched gate which was being guarded by a single man. Jago crept around the man’s right flank, poised to pounce at a moment’s notice. Fi sauntered towards the man.

  “STOP! Who are you? What are you doing here?” challenged the man, raising his weapon.

  “Good evening. It’s a lovely night for a stroll in the gardens, isn’t it?” answered Fi, drawing closer to him.

  “You’re not allowed here; you’re supposed to be in the house. What was all the commotion?”

  “Oh, I’m afraid that a friend of mine had drunk a little too much and fired some bullets into the air – you know, like the Arabs in the desert do.”

  The man relaxed his stance, and Jago pounced. He took the man’s legs out from under him and he landed flat on his face. Jago followed up by striking him hard and fast. He took the weapon from the still body and checked the man’s ammunition magazines. The machine pistol had a few rounds left and Jago took the man’s AR15 and three mags.

  “Come on, Fi, let’s get out of here. Yusef is waiting for us off the eastern coast.”

  They ran through the tropical gardens and past an ornate fountain before reaching a waist-high fence. With their eyes fully adjusted, they could see the ocean beneath them and Yusef in the speedboat about twenty metres away. The guards were closing in and the odd shot pinged past them. They both crouched and retrieved their MPDs.

  “Fi, you go. I’ll give cover.”

  Fi plunged into the water and swam to the boat quickly. As Jago fired in
the guards’ direction to keep them pinned down, he heard the boat’s engine start. He fired again. The boat was getting closer. He paused and then fired more shots at the guards, before diving into the sea, where he punched one arm through a looped rope dangling alongside the moving boat. With his bent arm firmly hooked into the loop, he remained in the water as the boat gained speed and followed the curve of the island, placing it out of sight of the pursuing guards. Yusef put out to sea before slowing to allow Jago to climb into the boat.

  Yusef handed Jago a towel from the hotel. “Where to, Mr Jago?”

  “The airport, Yusef, let’s go to the airport.”

  “Okay, but you’d better hold on, because this baby goes quick.”

  And with Yusef’s comment came a sudden lurch forward as he engaged full throttle.

  Yusef shouted above the engine noise, “I’ll get you there within the hour. All your gear is here, as you instructed.”

  Jago was drying himself and staring back at the island. Fi watched him. He was alone in his thoughts and he concerned her. “Are you all right, Boss?”

  Jago turned. “Yes, I’m fine, Fi. And you?”

  “Yes, I’m good. I wanted to ask you, what was all that stuff about a red line that Abbas was on about?”

  Jago stopped drying himself and heaved a huge sigh. “He was referring to my having to follow a red line on the floor of a long corridor in the hospital’s basement. The red line led to the mortuary where I had to identify Rebecca.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Boss. I didn’t realise.”

  “No problem, Fi, you weren’t to know. The question is, how did Abbas know? And there can only be one answer to that.”

  “Who knew you were there?”

  “Our family liaison, Captain Bennet, or Benny as he likes to be called. We’d better contact Mikey and warn him. But first let’s call Abi.”

  Chapter 27

  As they rapidly passed small atolls, Jago asked Yusef to slow down for a while, just to reduce the noise while he made a call.