by Rob Jones
A look of confusion spread over Jansen’s face as he looked from Hawke to De Jong. “Please, gentlemen – excuse me.”
As soon as Jansen was out of the room, Hawke leaned forward and grabbed Maroni around the throat. “Who’s pulling Zito’s greasy little strings?”
De Jong gasped in horror and pushed back from the desk so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.
Maroni’s tired, bloodshot eyes widened like saucers with the shock of the attack. “You can’t do this to me!” he squealed. “I’ll sue you for this!”
“How dare you?” De Jong said, dusting himself down. “This a criminal matter now!”
“No need to fill your pants,” Hawke said.
Lea and Ryan walked into the interrogation room.
“I take it you’re Jansen’s boss now?” Hawke asked, smiling at Lea.
“I am indeed.”
Hawke looked at Ryan. “And what was your part in this, mate?”
“Teaching Lea how to say Get to my office right now in Dutch.”
Hawke gave an appreciative nod. “Good work. By the way, meet Mr De Jong.”
He turned back to Maroni, whose throat he was still gripping. “Now, I want to know who hired Zito, and I want to know now.”
“Let me out of here!” De Jong barked. “I must call the police at once!”
Without warning, Ryan fired a sharp jab at the lawyer and planted one right on his jaw. The strike knocked him clean out and he slumped down on the shiny tile floor like a drunk at the end of a long night. His head lolled lifelessly on his shoulder and some drool rolled over his bloodied lip.
“Bugger me!” Hawke said.
Lea was aghast. “What the actual fuck was that, Ry?”
Ryan shrugged his shoulders and loaded a cigarette onto his lower lip. It was a Gauloises he had cadged off Reaper earlier. “He was getting on my nerves. Anyway, he was getting in the way of getting intel out of this twat.” He nudged his chin at Maroni and fired up the cigarette.
Hawke didn’t know whether to be impressed or concerned. “Well, good work, Ryan, I suppose,” he said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Take yesterday off.”
“Funny.”
Hawke returned his attention to the Italian. “We all get the situation here, Maroni. Zito’s the engine driver and you’re the greasy rag. I want to know who’s the fat controller. Name – now.”
Maroni’s nervous eyes wandered from Hawke, to De Jong’s sleeping body and then up to Ryan Bale. The young man took his jacket off and rolled his shirt sleeves up, revealing the Russian tattoo. “Why is it so fucking hot in here?”
“Well?” Hawke said, increasing his grip on the man’s throat.
“Kruger. The man who hired Mr Zito is called Kruger.”
*
Tiger cruised the black government Audi A6 along the Liangmaqiao Road until he reached the next exit and then pulled off into Chaoyang Park. The other Zodiacs were quietly contemplating the job ahead, as was he.
Hold out baits to entice the enemy, feign disorder and crush him.
Tiger had studied the great war philosopher Sun Tzu in college and rarely struggled to find a quotation appropriate to any of his missions.
He turned the car through a series of streets, each one a little narrower than the last until they finally reached their destination. Switching off the engine, he checked his gun and knives and then ordered everyone out of the car. He had kept a close eye on Monkey on the drive from the airport and so far so good. None of the usual signs of his many personality disorders had leaked through the young man’s concentration, but he knew they were just beneath the surface; they all did.
Tiger led the way into the enormous apartment block and the four suited men waited patiently beside another man for an elevator to arrive. The other man was holding a back of groceries in each hand. Neon green Chinese celery leaves poked ambitiously from the top of the plastic bag along with some bok choi and a multipack of instant noodles.
He smiled and nodded at the men but they gave no response.
The elevator arrived and a metallic ping filled the lobby. The doors swished open and the Zodiacs stepped inside. Tiger held the door open for the man but he took a step back and let the doors close without him on board.
They rode the elevator in silence for several quiet moments. Each man used the time to process his own thoughts. Tiger didn’t know what his associates were thinking, but he was considering his family across the other side of the city. His wife, his daughter – both safe in their little home.
Unlike the Zhangs.
The elevator pinged and the doors opened. Moments later the four men were standing outside the Zhangs’ apartment. Tiger looked at Rat and nodded.
Rat pushed the doorbell.
Moments later, Tiger watched a sweet old lady open the door. She reminded him of his own grandmother from Chengdu.
Tiger smiled warmly. “Mrs Zhang?”
The elderly woman nodded. “Yes.”
The response was fast and silent. Within a second of her confirming her identity, Tiger pulled his gun from his holster and pushed the muzzle into her forehead. In the same movement he entered the apartment and pushed her back along the hall with his finger to his lips to indicate she should remain silent. She didn’t argue with the command; they never did.
The moment unfolded in seconds. In the living area now, and an elderly man brought himself to his feet as they moved closer to him. He looked confused and started to speak, but Monkey darted toward him and powered a mighty left hook into his face.
The old man crumpled like waste paper and fell back unconscious into the cheap sofa that ran along the rear wall. The woman screamed but a well-timed slap from Tiger silenced her fast.
“Who are you?” she said.
“Just do as you’re told.”
Rat was already tying her unconscious husband up with a roll of duct tape and gagging him. Pig picked up her landline telephone and put it down in front of her.
Tiger said, “Stop looking at the phone and take a look at the clock on your wall.”
The old woman obeyed.
“What time does it give?” Tiger said.
“Four minutes to eight.”
“Correct. You will telephone your daughter now, and you will tell her that her father is gravely ill and that she must return at once. If you do not do this, or try any tricks, neither you nor your husband will live to see eight o’clock. Understand?” He pushed the gun’s barrel into her forehead again, hard enough to leave a little red mark.
“I...”
He saw her torment. He had seen it before on the faces of other mothers and fathers. She was torn between the immediate problem of saving her own life, and that of her beloved husband, or using her own daughter as bait. You could see the cogs whirring behind her eyes as she thought the matter over in her head.
Tiger was happy to give her the half minute she would need to make the choice they always made, and then after a terrified look at her gagged and bound husband she came back to him right on time with the standard reply.
“All right... I’ll do what you want but please don’t hurt us.”
“Make the call.”
They always made this decision. It was human nature. Kick the can down the road. If she called her daughter that would give her extra time to live right now; time to think – space to breathe and come up with some kind of strategy. He knew she was going to make this decision before he had even posed it to her – he had read it in her eyes. He studied his victims with an assiduity most people were unable to match, and his hard work and commitment to the job always yielded the results he was seeking.
She picked up the phone and started to push the buttons.
Tiger pulled the slider and pushed a round into the chamber. It was unnecessary but people almost expected it. They had seen it in the movies and knew it meant business – the final step before the lead started flying and things got ugly. “And make it convincing,” he whispered. “Very convincing,
or...” he glanced over at Monkey who was using his fingers to shovel her husband’s noodles into his face.
The woman nodded. She understood. “Xiaoli? This is your mother. I have very bad news...”
After she had finished the call he took the receiver from her and placed it gently in the cradle. “You did good today, Mrs Zhang.”
“Why do you want my daughter?” she asked. “Who are you?”
“We are the long shadow of your greatest fears.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Dirk Kruger?” Hawke repeated the name with disgust. Lea and Ryan shared a silent glance each knowing what the other was thinking.
Maroni nodded sullenly. “Yes. You know him?”
Hawke turned his head to look back at the mirror. He saw only his own reflection, but he knew the rest of the team were right there, hearing what he was hearing. He glanced over at Ryan, and he could guess what the young man had felt when he heard that name. It was Ryan whom Kruger had kidnapped and beaten and used to help him find the Lost City of the Incas.
Hawke turned to face Maroni. “What’s Zito’s relationship with Kruger, exactly?”
The Italian shrugged. “How should I know?”
Hawke hit the man hard in the face. He had struck him harder than he needed to, driven by the memories of the Seastead battle.
Maroni’s head smacked back on his left shoulder before rolling forward again. Blood frothed and bubbled in his mouth and he looked like he was about to pass out.
Hawke grabbed a tuft of the man’s long, raven-black hair in his hand and held his head up straight. “Don’t piss me about or you’ll get more of that, got it?”
As the Italian mumbled something in reply, Hawke punched him hard in the stomach. He reeled forward, sucking air through his bloodied mouth and coughing wildly.
“I’m a details man, Marco,” Hawke said. He kicked the table over and it crashed to the floor upside down. Then he smashed one of the wooden chairs into pieces, snatched up one of the legs and held it like a baseball bat. “Give me some details, or I’m going to smash your kneecaps.”
Hawke stared at the young man, chained to a chair in an interrogation room. He hoped he had convinced him he could do it, but deep inside he wasn’t even sure himself if he could do it anymore. Maroni was a low-level scumbag, working for a medium-level scumbag like Zito. Now he had just found out that the man pulling their strings was none other than Dirk Kruger. It had lit his fuse and he could feel it burning down, creeping ever closer to the dynamite keg that lurked inside him. Suddenly Marco Maroni was everyone who had ever crossed him, and yet could he break the man’s knees with this chair leg just to get information about Kruger?
He was about to find out.
Hawke eyed-up Maroni’s right knee and swung it back ready for the attack, but then the Italian started singing like the proverbial canary.
“No, please, no! Wait! I will tell you what you want to know!”
Inside, Hawke breathed a sigh of relief. Would he have swung the chair leg and crippled the young man? He didn’t know, not anymore. “Well, go on then,” he said, bringing the smashed chair leg down to his side. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“You must understand that Zito is a very private man, and he has a large organization around him; many, many people work for Mr Zito and he keeps them compartmentalized so only he sees the full picture.”
“Go on.”
“I tell you this so you understand that I only know part of what goes on.”
“Let’s hope it’s a big enough part to save your knees.”
Maroni looked at the make-shift baseball bat hanging from Hawke’s right arm. “I am employed by Signor Zito to guard the island, that is my job. There are many of us on the island, I am but one.”
“Get to the good stuff,” Hawke said, glancing at the two-way mirror. Jansen would be back any minute. “I want to know about Kruger’s part in all this.”
“Zito met with Mr Kruger several times over the past few weeks. The first few times were in Rome and Naples, and then when he thought he could trust him he invited him back to the Isola Pacifica.”
Reaper stepped into the room. His eyes crawled from Marco Maroni’s shocked and bloody face up to the Englishman. “Jansen is on his way, mon ami.”
“You heard him, Marco. Dish the dirt and make it fast. My friend here can hold that door long enough for me to swing this bat. What did they discuss on the island?”
“Kruger is searching for some kind of ancient relic.”
“A relic?”
Maroni nodded. “Si – but not just any relic. The South African was very keen for Zito to understand that this was a special relic, a very ancient and powerful one. He said it had some kind of power that would unlock a great secret. The other guards and I thought it was a joke, but Zito took it seriously enough to take the contract and use his extensive network to locate and snatch the manuscript.”
Hawke believed Maroni was telling the truth. “Tell me more about this relic – what’s this power Kruger was talking about?”
“He was very vague when he spoke to Signor Zito and I did not hear everything. I am part of Zito’s security so when I’m in the room I’m there to protect him, not listen to his private business. If he finds out I have spoken to you he will kill me.”
“The relic, Marco,” Hawke repeated. “Tell me about what Kruger’s looking for.”
“Like I say, I didn’t hear everything they talked about. All I can tell you is that the South African seemed nervous when he talked about it, but also excited. His eyes lit up like diamonds when he described it to Zito.”
“And how did he describe it?”
“He said it contained some kind of special property that gave it an immense power and that it was priceless in value. He said he wanted it because he has an appreciation of ancient weapons and wanted it in his collection – but he would never explain precisely what it was.”
Hawke snorted and looked up at Reaper. The Frenchman returned a similar look of disbelief. Dirk Kruger had zero interest in collecting ancient artefacts and relics and was always about nothing but the money. This was the very same man who had nearly brought a genocidal bacterial plague to the world just for a large pay off from a deranged, rogue Syrian terrorist named Ziad Saqqal.
“So Zito works for Kruger and Kruger wants some kind of ancient relic?” Hawke said, almost to himself.
“Yes.”
“And what’s his next move?” Hawke asked.
Maroni shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know exactly, but I can tell you that neither Zito nor the South African has a clue what that manuscript says, so they are going to need someone to translate it.”
“But we have the manuscript now,” Lea said.
Maroni laughed and shook his head. “Zito had the entire thing photographed and emailed to Kruger. That’s why he took off without a real fight on the island. Now all ne needs is the translator.”
“Name.”
“They found a man named Dr Henk Kloos. He’s some kind of world-famous expert. I have told you all I know, and put the rest of my life in constant danger in the process.”
“That’s your lookout,” Hawke said. “You should be more particular about who you work for.”
Maroni gave Hawke a weary glance. “I’m still getting full immunity from prosecution, right?”
“Don’t ask me, mate,” Hawke said. “That’s Jansen’s department.”
“Talking of which,” Reaper said, “we should get out of here before he returns, non?”
*
Lexi Zhang stood beside her friends outside the two-way mirror and watched Hawke interrogate the young Italian man. Ryan was now walking in circles around them as they spoke. He looked different to her now. The nerd had become a man, she supposed, but then nothing was ever as it looked. She knew there would be more to Ryan’s transformation than met the eye.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the vibration of her phone. Someone was ringing her.
&nbs
p; She fumbled it out of her pocket and saw it was her mother calling. She raised it to her hear and moved a few steps away from the group. “Yes, Mama?”
“Xiaoli? This is your mother. I have very bad news...”
Lexi’s eyes narrowed with confusion. Her mother rarely phoned. When they spoke it was when she called her parents back in their Beijing apartment. “Is everything all right?”
“No... no, it’s not, Xiaoli...” her mother sighed. “It’s so good to hear your voice after all this time.”
Lexi swallowed and lowered her voice to a whisper. It was instinctive; no one standing around her would have been able to follow a conversation in Mandarin. “What’s happened?”
“It’s your father.”
Lexi gasped and felt her heart speed up. “Ba? What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s very sick, Xiaoli... very ill.”
Lexi struggled to hear her mother’s voice over the sound of the blood pumping in her ears, and her head started to spin. She had dreaded the day this phone call would come, flying out of the darkness like some vampire bat ready to wrap its leathery wings around her face and smother her until she couldn’t even breathe. “Ba?” she repeated dumbly.
“I’m so sorry, Xiaoli,” her mother said. Her voice was weak and frightened. She sounded lost and scared. “If you want to see him – if you want to talk to him again, then you must come home at once.”
Lexi breathed deeply and turned to her friends in the ECHO team. They were all captivated by the scene unfolding in the interrogation suite where Hawke was grilling the Italian under the cold, greasy strip light.
If you want to talk to him again
She knew what that meant. Her father was on the edge, dying but still in this world. He was in that terrible place between life and death and her mother was trying to tell her that he wouldn’t stay they for long. It was now or never, and she knew she couldn’t live with never.
She turned away from her friends and stared at the corner of the corridor. The blankness of it brought some weird comfort as she processed her mother’s terrible words. They had hacked inside her like an ice pick, but she had already made her decision. The mission was critical, but ECHO was capable of doing it without her. On the other hand, her mother needed her now more than ever. She had to go back.