by Dana Arama
Guy Niava,
Motel room, November 12, 2015, 9:35 p.m.
At around ten thirty I heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and the landlady’s voice explaining something. The young Mexican girl, who had brought us the equipment not available at the old man’s store, was exceptionally beautiful and most probably young enough to suit one of the landlady’s sons. I understood enough, to hear her invite the girl for breakfast tomorrow morning. I opened the door before she even managed to knock on it and stood in the doorway. In my left hand behind me, I held a knife and with my right hand, I reached out to collect the bags.
“Gracias,” I said and pulled out a ten dollar note from my pocket.
She lifted her hand and signaled ‘no’ with her finger. And just in case added a movement of her head and repeated ‘no’ a couple more times, as if her life depended on it. I kept on holding up the note and in the end, with a shy smile she took the ten-dollar bill.
Now I could have a quick shower and get into bed. Sleep had become a necessity.
I had managed to sleep slightly more than three hours, when I heard hushed whispers from the lower floor. Immediately afterwards, I heard the noise of the creaking stairs, of someone going up them. I knew it was the third stair from the top and I didn’t have much time. I held my gun under the pillow and rolled quietly off the bed. I managed to avoid the spot which creaked in my room, then rolled under the bed. I wanted to know which door they were going to stop at. If it was Laura’s, I would have to take in account three more steps, but then the assailant would have his back to me when I opened the door. If it was my door, then I’d hear the door opening in a moment. Of course, they might not stop at any door, because there was always a chance that it was one of the household coming up to use the toilet.
Whoever it was, stopped by my door. The door opened quietly and skillfully. In the doorway, I could see black tactical training shoes and leopard pants tucked into them. I expected to hear a popping sound, the sound of a bullet going through a silencer, but that didn’t happen. Instead I saw a pair of hands untie the shoelaces and take them off.
“I’m excited the way I used to be before a competition, and I want you…” I recognized Zorro’s deep voice and, carefully, I peeked from under the bed. She didn’t have a gun. On the contrary, her hands were busy taking off her clothes. I thought it was a pity, because I loved taking women’s clothes off them.
“We really have to eliminate this tension,” I said and rolled over to her. I was already naked.
I caught her arms and put them behind her. Her breasts were tight against my chest and I could feel her nipples harden. With one hand I kept her arms bound behind her and with the other, I stroked her passionately on her neck, on her shoulders and on her stomach. From there my hand touched her buttocks. With the help of my knee, I spread her legs, and my hand searched between them. The fire was mutual. Hot fire, one of passion, not of one who has a knife stashed away somewhere. Once I made sure she wasn’t armed, I unbuttoned her pants. Now I relaxed enough to lay her fully down on my bed and to pleasure her perfect body.
An hour later, while she was still lying in my arms, she asked: “How much do you trust her?”
“Who, Laura?”
“The Puritan queen. Yes, Laura.”
“Do I have a reason not to trust her?” I replied, questioningly.
“Did you ask yourself why she is here? Why didn’t they send in a team for this mission, or a commando unit of some sort, or to get the Anti-Drug Authorities to send their men to kidnap El Desconocido? Why Laura, of all people?”
This question had surfaced in my thoughts when we got the plane, but I didn’t mention it. Instead I asked, “And do you think you have the answer to this question?”
“Not really. But I, as opposed to you, don’t trust her. There is definitely something behind her insistence in going there herself. Maybe someone… whose goal is different from the one you told me about. I am sure of it. I think you are merely bait, and there is an elimination team on your tracks that you know or don’t know about.”
“We explained to you already,” I reminded her, “We are going on an almost private mission for --”
“To save your nephew. Yes. Yes, I remember. But a mission that needs to equip itself, without drones, without aerial photos, without all the advantages her status has to give us? Something doesn’t smell right.”
“Would you have gone on this mission if you had known that the Anti-Drug Authority was behind this and had supplied all the equipment?”
Zorro thought for a moment and smiled. “No. In that case I wouldn’t have had the motivation to help.”
“What is motivating you to help?”
“Besides the fact that I owe Gideoni my life? Because I like El Desconocido. I like him enough to meet him once again and to warn him that he ought to cooperate.”
“Like?”
She smiled and blushed, as if caught in a big lie. “Okay… Maybe more than just like. He was the one.”
“The one as in the love of your life or as in the best sex you ever had?
“I just had good sex now,” she smiled. “With him it was sex with love, Slow sex, one of intimacy and smiles. To look deep down in each other’s eyes and to flutter kisses in unusual spots. We were always touching one another. Even when we weren’t in bed. Have you ever had something like that?”
“I did,” I answered shortly. Hadas, my pregnant wife, her smile always appearing in front of my eyes and, as always, after that, her bleeding body on the pavement on that street in Jerusalem, where the bus had just exploded. And my mind, which refused to accept her death, stubbornly continued to focus on the details… the color of the metal embedded in her neck, which was the same color of the iron fence behind her; the wind which gave life to her hair her chiffon blouse with black dots, speckled with red as well… Anything to not have to focus on our togetherness, which was forever changed. She would no longer be waiting for me after one of my missions. Some days it felt impossible to not give into the longing and lose my mind.
“I don’t know what you call it, but I felt it when we were there. We made love. How do I know? Because that is how it is when you want to close your eyes out of passion but also to keep them open, so as to not miss the sight before you.”
The feeling that one of them was leading us into a trap and the warning my boss gave me was suddenly reinforced as the sweat of lovers and sticky hearts. “Do you have a child by him?” I asked. An affirmative would turn him from mythological lover to an integral part of her life and maybe show where her loyalty was.
“No. I don’t have any children,” she answered immediately. “I have never considered myself a motherly type, but since I have taken upon myself to care for lost women and young girls, I find it very satisfying. This is the first time that reaching out to others has given life a meaning. That is as close as I have come to being a mother. I feel as if I am important in someone’s life.”
I stroked her neckline and massaged her ear. She groaned with pleasure. “Do I have to doubt your motives too?” This has been one of the most pleasurable ways of gathering intelligence.
“You doubt everyone’s intentions. I understand that you ask yourself what makes me leave my nice warm nest I have made for myself and go on a risky adventure in the jungle. But I am asking- --Why not?”
“I can find a lot of reasons why not,” I whispered and then asked, “What happened with El Desconocido?”
She hesitated before answering but in the end, she seemed to come to terms with the story and blurted shortly, “He ran away from me with a young American girl who came to celebrate her spring break, on the beaches of Cancun. Of all the beaches in the world, of all the bars on this strip, she had to come into mine, and made my man fall in love with her.”
“How did it happen?”
“Do you know what happens here over spring br
eak?” I nodded but she continued as if she hadn’t seen, “Cancun is one of the favorite tourist destinations of the American students on their spring break. Imagine the following picture…” She raised her hand and drew a long line in the air, “Forty miles of white beaches full of free youngsters… Clubs and hotels are all inclusive… Beer and alcohol all pouring out without restraint and the drug dealers passing through the party-goers and selling everything you can just imagine. Making sure the partying doesn’t stop.”
“What does that have to do with the young girl and your boyfriend?”
“Because I am the only woman running a business here, my place became known as a refuge for women in distress.”
“Distress? You mean the lost girls you mentioned earlier?”
“Listen, when you load your body with alcohol and then add ecstasy, it causes anxiety attacks or loss of consciousness up till heart failure. Sometimes the distress of some girls is much more complicated than that. Because under the influence of drugs they are raped. A lot of them come to me in that situation. They are totally high from the drugs and are bleeding.”
“How did your name get around, those who you helped?”
“Because of the girls who work for me. I don’t allow the customers to touch the girls. They aren’t goods and their bodies aren’t part of the show. As far as I am concerned, they are professional dancers like any other dancers. You wouldn’t in your right mind think of touching a ballet dancer and so you won’t do it to a pole dancer in my club. They spend hours of practice. Return with tight muscles, with inflammation in the joints and tendons, with black and blue bruises. Everything that happens to professional dancers.”
I laid on my side. I wanted to test her when I asked, “Is she still with him?
“I don’t know.” She smiled, “I hope she got a hold of herself and went back home, for her sake. Actually, for all our sakes. I hope she is gone from his life and broke his heart.”
I watched her face. I listened to her voice and thought that she was a dangerous woman and that she doesn’t plan for El Desconocido to live to a ripe old age. “I have to get information from him. So, if you are planning on killing him, do it after I have all the information I need.”
I passed my hand over her right breast, down her stomach and between her legs. She moaned with pleasure and immediately responded. It may have been a mistake to get into bed with her, but it was a pleasurable mistake. Dangers have never deterred me.
At two forty-five in the morning I heard a knock on the door. I opened it and found Laura dressed and ready to go. “I wanted to make sure you were awake,” she said. Her eyes wandered behind me. Zorro was just finishing getting dressed and Laura added, “But I see it was already taken care of.”
“Now that everyone is awake, we can be on our way.” Zorro smiled at her like a cat next to a bowl of cream.
Laura’s response was to slam the door shut.
Murat Lenika,
An apartment somewhere in New York City,
November 12, 2015, 11:00 p.m.
I’d been too busy all day to take notice of the kid. Maybe I was also still a bit high from the drugs we’d taken after the conversation with El Desconocido. I awoke at noon, sent the guys to pick up a new disposable cell phone, then used it to phone my contacts on their own disposable phones. That was how I kept up with all that was going on around me without having my every word recorded. I hated that the American government had that ability, but I couldn’t ignore it either. Life had taught me to not shrink away from my challenges. I reminded myself that the delay in investigating him was a good thing, because it was tenderizing him into a well-done piece of meat. Soon I would be able to peel it off the bone, licking my fingers all the while.
After making a few phone calls, I was updated about the rifles. The doctor’s container had arrived and had been dismantled. The rifles had been placed in a marked crate and my workers had been instructed to put it aside on a specific forklift, which then was driven to the pickup truck. No one had noticed, because it was taken away at the same time the rest of the goods were dismantled. Slowly and naturally, in the same manner, the truck made its way to another hideout apartment in the Washington area, one I hoped the authorities wouldn’t find.
I awoke with exceptional hunger and wondered if anyone had fed the kid the previous day. I thought not. We were all strung out from the drugs and had completely ignored him. I walked out of my room and found him in the corner of the room, bent over, sleepy and wet. He had pissed himself. I wondered if he was scared or he’d just had to pee and there was no-one to take him. Either way it was a situation that had to be taken care of.
I woke Aldo up and pointed at the kid. “Talk to one of the girls and get them to clean him up… and the floor as well. I want to interrogate him without having to suffer his stench.”
He only answered, “Yes boss,” and jumped up as if he hadn’t been partying a few hours before.
“And bring food. I’m hungry!”
“I’ll send Alex. What do you feel like? I think the Greek restaurant on the corner is still open.”
“Yes. Bring a lot of meat. And bring some for the boy as well. We have to feed him. We’re not animals.” Something from the Albania Besa code had taken hold of me. I suddenly felt responsible for him, which was the least desirable outcome in a situation such as this.
Our noise woke up the kid, and he started shaking in the corner. Aldo went over to Marina and ordered her to clean up the kid without taking off the handcuffs.
“Help me pick him up?” she asked Aldo, and he went over to the boy, put his arm out and lifted him from the cold floor. I heard the kid weakly object and I ignored him, just as I ignored all the others around me. There was a Sudoku puzzle, partly solved, open on the table. I took it and was concentrating on it. I had time to kill before the food came and until the kid was cleaned up.
Marina softly assured the kid that she wouldn’t hurt him. I knew that if he behaved himself, he might even get a bonus from her. He had earned himself a shower from the beautiful Marina, and she might do him a favor along the way. The kid would most probably burst in her hand as soon as she touched him.
Twenty minutes later Alex arrived, drenched from the rain outside. He was preceded by an aroma of barbequed meat. He held two paper bags, which contained enough food to feed half a battalion of very hungry soldiers. Alex had been with me since England and knew my hunger proceeding a serious trip. Without saying a word, he removed the contents from the bags and spread them on the low table. Aldo and Alex sat silently opposite me on the couch and began to eat.
The kid and Marina came out of the adjacent room. “He’s clean,” she said in her heavy Russian accent.
“Good, take off his handcuffs,” I said, knowing that Aldo would be the one to get up.
The boy rubbed his wrists and looked hungrily at the heavy-laden table. I signaled him with my head to sit in the available armchair and so he did.
“Eat,” I ordered him, and, without objecting, he reached a hesitant hand towards a wooden skewer. There was tasty food and there was manna. For this kid, such was the food. Warm, delicious and surprising, and arriving as if from heaven, a bit before his interrogation started.
***
At the end of the meal, I ordered one of the girls to clean the table and then two others came out of their rooms to take everything away and clean up. That was also a sign for Aldo and Alex and in a few minutes, they were ready with the cooking equipment to prepare the drugs, needles, a variety of colorful pills and lines of white powder, which they cut up finely with a credit card. At the end of the process, Alex took out his wallet and chose a new hundred dollar note.
The boy couldn’t take his eyes off it. “Do you know why they use a new rolled up Franklin?” I asked. It was amusing to see him swing between being intrigued and disgusted.
“No. Why?”
�
��Because it is such a large note and not many people get to touch it. Least likely junkies from the street.”
I let the kid into the secret of things. “That is the kind of thing one always needs to know.”
“Why?”
“Because you never know when you are going to need that kind of information, when you become addicted… Remember poor, beautiful Ashley?” I asked the kid and I put my arm on his shoulder. Without waiting for an answer, I continued, “A girl with a wasted future. Do you want to know why?” Once again, I didn’t wait for a response, and carried on, “Because of all the stuff here.” I pointed to the table, with its remaining few white lines waiting to be sniffed. Aldo and Alex had already sniffed two and what was left was for me and the boy.
“Was she a junkie?” he asked in surprise and by the look on his face, I realized that the idea was horrific to him.
“A whore and a junkie. Wasted future.”
“But she wasn’t into computers,” Aldo smiled. I wondered when his two front teeth had fallen out, but I wasn’t going to get into that now. He looked frightening.
“Aldo is right,” I nodded my head, “She was just a junkie hooker who never dealt with computers and still her future was wasted. But you, who have already been offered a scholarship and amazing future pay checks… for you to fall into this shit… what a pity, isn’t it?”
“I am against drugs. I didn’t come to her for the drugs,” he quickly explained.
“So why then did you go to her?”
“To give her details on her father. She had been looking for him for a long time.”
“And why did you come to the casino?”
He didn’t answer.
I said, “Alex, start warming the crystal meth. After the kid tastes a dose he will understand.”
“What will I understand?”
“What the taste of life is all about…” The kid’s Adam’s apple moved nervously. I smiled and continued, “In the beginning you will feel high. Your heart will start racing quickly, your blood pressure will go up. It’s a bit frightening, but that’s from the drug. And it’s an excellent drug, crystal meth. It will run through your veins and when the blood reaches the brain, you will feel an immediate euphoria. The high from crystal meth lasts a long time. Especially the first time. Then comes the feeling you are king of the world. You will know you are the fastest, most righteous man, smarter than anyone around you. Much more so than you feel today. And then the binging… you will want more and more of the drug. Your body will want it. You will become the drug and the drug will become you. And then the downers and the depression and the unbearable thirst compared to the wonderful high you had when you were on the crystal meth. You will feel upside-down, as if you are sick with a bad flu. You will have hallucinations that bugs are trying to crawl into your skin, and you will try and scratch them out, until your whole body is full of pot-holes. The walls will start closing in and people will hunt you down. Do you know that ninety nine percent of the people who used crystal meth become addicted after using it the first time?”