Unchained

by J C Ryan

  Rex was smiling broadly.

  In English, he said quietly, “Don’t. Let him have his fun. But Rehka, I know this celebration will have taxed their pocket. May I give you something to help them? I know it would insult them if I tried to give it to them directly.”

  “Do not worry about them. I have just come into some money a few days ago and I also had an excellent job offer, which I’ve decided to accept. I will send money for their keep. I will take good care of them.”

  Rex had a wide smile on his face as he shook her hand to seal the deal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MARISSA AND JOSH eventually caught up with the Phoenix team member who’d stayed in Afghanistan. After following lead after lead, they’d finally come back to Kabul and discovered him hiding in plain sight – at the former Phoenix headquarters. There was a new name on the discreet sign at the gate. They gave their cover story and the man at the gate called for permission to let them enter.

  Inside, they found their target, a youngish, maybe mid-thirties, American man, former Army Rangers according to his file, surrounded by half a dozen cell phones, a fat cigar gripped in his teeth, his feet on the desk.

  “Help you?” he asked, grinning around the cigar.

  Marissa deferred to Josh, who asked if they could talk to him about his former employment with Phoenix Unlimited. The grin faded, and he took his feet off the desk, sitting up abruptly.

  “Who sent you?” he asked. “And cut this journalist bullshit. If you’re journalists, then I’m the Easter Bunny.”

  Josh looked at Marissa, who nodded.

  “We’re here to get more information about your former team and a man who used your outfit for logistics support.”

  “Rex Dalton,” the former Phoenix operative stated.

  “Exactly.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Obviously, you were not part of the team who went out on the ill-fated mission. By the way, are you taking over the Phoenix contract?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Too dangerous. Import export.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and waved it around. “Can I offer you a fine Cuban?”

  Marissa wrinkled her nose, but Josh accepted. He put the unlit cigar in his shirt pocket ‘to smoke later’ and leaned forward.

  “We’re interested in ascertaining that everyone on that mission, including Dalton was killed in the explosion. Have you heard anything that leads you to doubt it?”

  The guy leaned forward and offered his hand to Josh to shake. “Jerry Blake, by the way. And as for doubt, that depends. I’ll tell you a story, and you can decide if it answers your question.”

  Josh shook the proffered hand, and then Jerry offered it to Marissa, who also shook it. He pointed to the empty chairs in front of the desk and invited them to take a seat. Then he leaned back in his chair and heaved his feet back onto the desk.

  “It seems that explosion wasn’t the only thing that destroyed a house around those parts that week,” he said. “Rumor had it that the top dog drug dealer in the whole country was attacked and killed in his own house, along with several guards and three other high-level dealers. That happened a day or two after the explosion”

  “Is that so?” Josh interjected. Marissa frowned at him. They already knew that. But she remained quiet.

  Jerry continued. “Yep. Whoever did it used an antique sword to make their heads part company with their necks. Then set the place on fire. When cops and fire trucks arrived, there wasn’t much left. Funny thing, though. Safe was open but empty.”

  He paused, waiting for another expression of interest. This time, it was Marissa who spoke.

  “Go on. Did they ever find who did it?”

  “Nope, not that they’ve said. All I hear every now and then is that it’s an ongoing investigation,” Jerry answered. “But I hear tell that the cops think there was a fortune in cut diamonds in that safe, along with quite a bit of cash, and the backup drives for the top guy’s computers.”

  “Interesting,” she murmured.

  “I’d say so. They’re still running around like headless chickens, squawking about some mysterious ninja type assassination team. Don’t know what they know for sure, but they think the culprits lit out for a neighboring country.”

  “Which direction?” Marissa asked.

  “Police ain’t saying. But in my mind, quickest way across the border is to Pakistan. Relations aren’t too friendly between here and there.”

  “I don’t know. That’s unfriendly territory, like you pointed out. Not a clever move I’d say,” Josh objected.

  “Maybe, but depending on which route you take, it isn’t far into India. And with a handful of diamonds and cash, they could disappear there, no problemo. Those Indians are giving the Chinese a run for their money when it comes to population numbers. With one point three billion of them you could disappear like the proverbial needle in the haystack. Don’t you think?”

  Marissa nodded thoughtfully. “It’s worth a shot,” she said to Josh.

  After a bit more back and forth and some pleasantries, they thanked Jerry for his help and left. Before contacting Brandt, they decided to make some discreet inquiries at the local CIA office to find out if they’d heard more from Kabul police than Blake had heard.

  It turned out the police had hedged their information with disclaimers that they couldn’t guarantee it was accurate. All they had to go on was former employees’ intelligence that there were diamonds and cash in the safes. The drives from all the computers were missing, and if the drug dealer, whose name was Usama, had a laptop, it too was missing. The former employees insisted he’d had one.

  When they finally reported to Brandt and asked for new instructions, he agreed with Marissa’s assessment. It was worth a shot. The MO sounded like Rex, Brandt told them that incident was his main reason for believing Rex was still alive. If there was a man who could do that much damage and killing on his own, it was Rex Dalton. And if it was him, he now had enough money to hole up forever if he decided to do so. Even so, Brandt suggested, Rex wouldn’t be splashing money around. He’d conserve it, go to ground, and stay hidden for as long as he needed to cover his trail.

  What Brandt didn’t tell them was his fear that Rex was going to turn up out of the shadows one day, in America and then there would be hell to pay. Usama and his friends’ killings were going to look like a Sunday school picnic.

  Marissa and Josh returned to their hotel, packed, and took the next flight out of Kabul to New Delhi, the nearest city where Rex could have found help with new identities, exchanging the diamonds for cash, and possibly plastic surgery. They assumed if it was him, he wouldn’t want people who knew him to be able to spot him on sight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  WHEN THE KING of Saudi Arabia heard about his distant relative’s death, he made a show of piety, expressing his belief that his dear fourth cousin twice removed would be waiting to greet his family at the day of judgement, and would be found worthy of Paradise. Privately, he asked, “Who?”

  While pretending sadness over a relative of whose existence he barely knew, he was genuinely shocked at the carnage that was privately reported to him and outraged at the ramification it suggested, which was that there could be rebellion in the ranks of a harem. Even more so when the king was told that there was a possibility of outside help.

  Several headaches would no doubt emanate from the situation. First, as the head of the House of Saud, it was his job to sort out the protection of the three wives and dozen or so other women in the harem, along with their children. They would either be sent back to their families, or if that proved impossible taken under his wing or another family member’s. Nothing about the process was simple, and as a head of state, it was beneath the importance of his attention, and yet he must do it. Maddening.

  Next was controlling the publicity. He gave orders immediately to the state-controlled media and to the law enforcement agencies involved, from the local police to the border control agen
cy, that no word of the deaths of anyone but the princeling himself was to be leaked. The henchmen were unimportant, he decreed. They were to spin the whole thing as an untimely but unremarkable death for Mutaib from a heart attack or stroke, coinciding with an escape by a few women who were inexplicably unhappy with so much luxury and preferential treatment. The hue and cry for the escapees was to be contained as well. News outlets must not report it, not even that the women had escaped, much less that they were suspects in the death of their lord and master.

  This, he reasoned, would prevent copycat crimes, which could not be allowed to occur. The very idea of uprisings and murders by harem residents in other households could lead to social unrest across the kingdom.

  At the same time, he had to worry about publicity. What if these women fled to their families and reported inhumane conditions in his relative’s harem? Why else would they have fled? He ordered a well-trusted advisor to oversee the media response to any such allegations. They were to treat it as unreliable propaganda of western troublemakers. Women living in harems had a life of privilege and extravagance which very few women in the kingdom would ever have.

  And finally, though it was imperative he keep his own hands clean of such dealings, his advisors made him aware of at least two terrorist organizations and several criminal bosses who were clamoring for delivery of unfulfilled orders from Mutaib’s arms business. They were also demanding to be given new suppliers. Until all such unrest was settled, his empire was at risk. He handed that chore off to another trusted advisor as well.

  The whole thing was a damned inconvenience. Despite a public showing of prayer with the extended family during the mourning period, but once he’d sorted out who the misborn son of a diseased camel had been, he cursed the name Mutaib in private.

  ***

  ON THE OTHER side of the coin, quite a few security agencies across the globe were elated with the news of Mutaib’s death and the chaos it had caused among his customers. Among them were MI6, the Mossad, and the CIA.

  Mutaib had also been on the CRC’s database of scumbags. Through the CIA, news of his death came to the attention of The Old Man, John Brandt. A sixth sense made him wonder about the details that weren’t being given. He requested more information about the circumstances of the death from the CIA, and he wanted it warts and all – not the media version.

  The CIA in turn tapped their assets in Saudi Arabia to get the real story, not the media version, which everyone knew had been sanitized. Only Brandt, who was still looking for Rex Dalton, gave a care about the details. The other agencies only cared to know Mutaib was gone and were watching for who would take his place. In the meantime, they were all grateful to whoever it was for clearing a bit of trash off the international lawn.

  Brandt didn’t know and couldn’t tell from the dry report he got back from the CIA whether the information had shocked the messengers. He didn’t even hear whether they had any theories of their own or anticipated any action in response. For all he knew, it could have been a Mossad or MI6 operation. Definitely not CIA — it wasn’t their style. They would have outsourced something like that to CRC or some other black ops outfit.

  Reading through the report, which included the statements of witnesses, some eyewitnesses, others hearsay, it first struck him that they mentioned only one man doing all of this.

  Rex Dalton, if he was alive could’ve done this. If he’s alive he’s on the run, though. He wouldn’t engage in this type of activities. Or would he? But why?

  He kept on reading and then came across the mention of a big black dog accompanying this man. It was unclear to whoever had interviewed the women whether the dog was a djinn or a real dog. The women were too agitated to be clear on the subject, and only one claimed to have seen it. The others were repeating her assertions.

  Nah, not Rex Dalton. He has no dog-handler skills and as far as I know he does not work with djinns or any other evil spirits. He prefers to work alone. A dog or djinn would have cramped his style.

  Nevertheless, Brandt couldn’t help but think that if Rex were alive, this was a mission he would have been assigned. An audacious stunt like this would have been exactly his style, and he had the skills to get the job done.

  In the end, Brandt decided to inform Josh and Marissa and let them decide whether it was worth investigating or not.

  Rex Dalton, the Ghost aka El Gato, the cat, in Spanish, aka Alshaytan, the Devil, in Arabic…

  He shivered.

  ***

  REX WAS UNAWARE of any of the speculation. He watched the news but reports of a manhunt had dropped from Saudi Arabia’s media, and as usually happens when anything of only local interest was in world news, global media followed suit. If the Saudis weren’t interested, why should anyone else be? He could find nothing even in the back pages of online news outlets. Saudi newspapers of course were not available in Bilaspur.

  By the sounds of it he’d gotten away clean, along with the other women and his new charge, Rehka. That didn’t mean that the king had not ordered a secret mission of assassins to find and eliminate them. After all, the word assassin had its origin in the Arabic language.

  To Rex’s relief, one by one, the phone calls from the women came in and he started a file with their addresses, employment situations or prospects, and in the case of the four who’d elected to stay in Oman, which ones had chosen to live together for the time being.

  Two of the four were still tentative about being responsible for themselves, having been taken from or sold by their families or someone else when they were just children. Rex was happy to hear that each of the older women, who had some idea of how to live as independent adults, had taken one of the younger ones under their wings. Nevertheless, he considered it of top priority to get their lifeline of funds in place.

  Hande had elected not to return to her village, but to remain in Ankara as an independent woman. She had confided to Rex that she knew it would be difficult, but she was going to find a school with female American or European teachers who would support her ‘modern’ views.

  Rex found it poignant that Hande believed she could only be befriended by women, and that those ‘modern’ views were nearly a century old in some parts of the world. Nevertheless, he didn’t express those thoughts. To do so would have taken the wind out of her sails, and he had no intention of ever doing that. She was heading in the right direction and would find those things out along the way.

  The woman with the little girl reported that her family had accepted her return without recrimination. Her mother was especially happy to have a grandchild, even though the child had no father. She went on to explain that her mother’s opinion didn’t mean that the father was dead, but that, since she was not married, the child was a bastard and literally had no father. It would be difficult to find a husband for her now, but she didn’t care if she never had to share another man’s bed. A husband was not one of the thoughts that occupied her mind at all.

  Rex believed that the woman might eventually heal and change her mind about that. The money that would be coming to her might make a marriage more palatable to the man her parents chose. He hoped, though, that she would come to understand that she didn’t need to be dependent on her father or any other man. She only had to make her way to a country where she could be her own woman, whatever that entailed for her.

  To facilitate that transformation, he gave her Hande’s cell phone number and encouraged her to stay in touch. Then he called Hande back and confessed what he’d done. Hande didn’t mind. She thanked him and said she would do her best for her ‘sister’.

  ***

  THAT LEFT ONLY Rehka’s employment and personal situation to settle. They’d been in Bilaspur for a few days and Rex had visited once or twice. He wanted to give Rehka a chance to reconnect with her family and process her new freedom before taking her back to Mumbai. They’d discussed setting her up in Bilaspur instead, but Rehka had demurred.

  “I’d rather go back to Mumbai. There is more opportu
nity there for me to normalize my life.”

  Rex had agreed but had urged her to take a few days for herself, and then let him know when she was ready. He was in no particular hurry and hadn’t yet decided where he’d go next. For now, being in Bilaspur where there was a lot to see in the surrounding areas, was as good a place as any to be.

  A couple more games of Chaturanga and a few more opportunities for Digger to play with the Gyan grandchildren occupied Rex’s time between seeing to his own needs. As he’d always done after a mission, he used the down time to rest and recuperate physically, emotionally, and mentally. However, only so much rest was required before the itchy-feet syndrome set in and he had to move on.

  He had resumed his physical training regimen, and residents of the town grew used to seeing the man running miles before dawn and practicing a strange form of martial arts with very slow and weird movements, which none of them had ever seen but were told was tai chi, from China. He always had a big black dog at his side.

  Rex also visited a school where the Indian martial art known as Kalaripayattu was taught. He was fascinated by the history and philosophy of the art form, said to be three-thousand years old. One of its early masters, the Buddhist monk Bodhi Dharma, may have introduced its principles to the Shoaling Temple that popularized kung fu. Originally practiced in South India, Kalaripayattu was enjoying a modern revival as a source of inspiration for self-expression in dance forms, fitness, and the theater and movie entertainment industries. Like many of the cultural expressions in India, it drew its own inspiration from the power and graceful movements of wild animals.

  About ten days after their arrival in Bilaspur, Rehka met him at the door when he visited for a game of Chaturanga with her father.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Now?”

  “No. Father is looking forward to this game. I have told my mother we will leave in the morning. She asked me to invite you to dinner tonight.”