It’s not too late to do the right thing.
Celeste
Bretta stared at the end of the message for longer than was prudent. The poisonous words swirled through her mind, twisting and spreading, like a drop of blood in water, until she had to close her eyes. She took a deep breath through her nose, trying to gather herself, to remind herself that she was still on mission, that she was certainly not safe here.
Get your dumb ass back to the hotel. You can feel sorry for yourself there, but not now.
She bit her lip, logged out of her email account and closed the browser window. She unplugged the USB drive and slipped it into her pocket.
She was aware that she was going to have to be careful leaving the internet café in case she had activated some sort of IP tracker when she had opened the email. If that was the case then the Kidon would know where to come but, unless they happened to have set up shop opposite the tobacconist’s shop, she would have ample time to get away.
She hoped.
Bretta got to her feet, adjusted her mask, and pulled her hood back over her head. She stalked back into the main room of the tobacconist’s and slapped a yellow-orange fifty-euro note onto the counter.
“Back door?” she barked, over the high-pitched whine of a passing motorbike out in the street.
The shop owner turned away from the television he had been watching and regarded her with raised eyebrows.
“Puerta…um…” Bretta said, gesturing towards the rear of the shop door. “Puerta… Ah, screw it.”
She marched through the shop, wrenched open the only door that she could see, walked through a grubby storeroom, pushed open another door and stepped out into the sunlit alley behind the shop.
Above her the sky was a cheerful blue. A crisp, fresh wind blew persistently down the lane. It was weather that made a mockery of her current mood. The few pedestrians Bretta could see out in the street at the end of the alleyway were huddled up in their coats.
As Bretta hurried away, her footfalls resounding off the close brick walls of the alley, the final words of the email echoed accusingly in her head, chasing her back towards El Hotel Arintero.
I’ll be seeing you soon. You can count on that, as it turns out I could never count on you.
It had been a superb stroke of luck––a coincidence that had the finger of God in it somewhere, perhaps––that Celeste happened to be cruising along Avinguda Diagonal on her pine-green Kawasaki Ninja 400 motorcycle, when the tracking software on the small tablet attached to her handlebars came alive and a ping sounded in her Shoei Neotec 2 helmet. She had been driving around the city since dawn, more out of a need to feel like she was doing something proactive than anything.
That ping could only have meant one thing: Death Angel had finally opened the email she had sent her. It had been such a longshot that Celeste had not expected it to pay off. As often was the case though, the unexpected had eventuated into a lead. According to the satellite tracking software, she was only an eight-minute ride from the street on which the IP tracking signal was issuing from. She had clicked the Ninja into second and the lightweight motorbike had taken off like a streak.
Now, Celeste stood in the shadow of a coffee shop doorway—they offered no seating, but were still open for pickup and delivery. She nursed a soy turmeric latte, while her motorcycle’s twin-cylinder engine clicked as it cooled on the curb.
She had driven past the tobacconist’s shop where the beacon had issued, and then around the block again. She had seen only the man behind the counter close to the door, but no other customers.
Tradecraft dictated that Bretta would exit via the rear of the building if at all possible, and so Celeste had driven her bike opposite the adjoining alleyway. She was prepared to turn back if there was no back door, but she spotted one. So she parked her bike and stepped into the cover of a nearby coffee shop and waited.
Her hunch had paid off only a minute or so later, when the rear door opened and the same hooded figure, wearing a blue surgical mask over the face stepped out. The person checked left and right, then began moving down the alleyway in Celeste’s direction. Upon exiting, the figure turned right and began to head in the direction of the El Raval district.
Ten meters, perhaps. That was all the distance that Celeste needed to see the figure walk to know it was almost certainly Death Angel. The calm, predatory poise with which she moved was unmistakable. It was the stride of someone who knows that they are, without a doubt, the most dangerous person on the street––the apex predator. There was something about the hunting cat in the way she moved, a little of the coiled viper ready and quite willing to strike. When she casually fiddled with her purse and dropped some Euros, then turned around to pick them up, Celeste was completely sold. The art of checking to see if one was being followed while pretending not to do so, was something Celeste was very well familiar with.
“Shalom, Death Angel,” she whispered as she watched the figure through her sunglasses.
You haven’t changed a bit.
Having been taught the same techniques and tricks in the art of clandestine movements, it was no real task for Celeste to follow Bretta. She could anticipate every move the other woman was going to make, and knew exactly how she should avoid being spotted by her former Mossad colleague. She followed the woman that she thought of as Death Angel back through the streets, sometimes cutting through an alleyway or hurrying around a block in the direction she anticipated Bretta was going to take.
“Nice touch,” she muttered approvingly, as Bretta hopped a fence and darted into the revolving doors of a hotel, only to emerge five minutes later now wearing a white surgical mask and, what Celeste assumed to be, a purloined baseball cap instead of her hood.
You just can’t disguise that walk though, Celeste thought, as she continued to follow Bretta. Can’t disguise that latent lethality.
“What a Kidon you would have made,” she said to herself as Bretta turned into a narrow cobbled street that was lined with unlit Gothic streetlights, about fifteen minutes later. What a waste of potential.
Celeste had taken off her leather motorcycle jacket when Bretta had walked into the hotel and picked up the baseball cap, and she shivered a little now as the breeze freshened. The wind blew chill through the giant corridors that the buildings of the inner city effectively made and she narrowed her gray eyes, even behind her sunglasses. She watched her quarry hurry up the steps to a rather nondescript hotel with one last surreptitious glance left and right. Instinctively, she knew that she had reached the lair of the DIA.
She smiled. A sense of triumphant accomplishment swept through her then, but it was mingled––diluted––somewhat by a sadness of sorts. As soon as her target had stepped up and into the hotel, Celeste dashed across the road and down the cobbled street. Slowing to a casual walk as she approached the doors to the hotel, she tossed a small disk toward the window. The device attached with a soft thud in a discreet location close to the lower right, and she kept walking.
Celeste stopped a few meters down when she was out of view of the window, and drew out the packet of cigarettes that all Kidon members carried. They were such a convenient and instantly identifiable reason as to why someone was stopping that, for this kind of work, they really were indispensable.
She accessed the remote feed from the disk on her sunglasses. Death Angel was inside, with her back to the main door. She stood in front of the concierge. After several seconds the concierge smiled and nodded obsequiously––You always knew how to charm the boys, didn’t you?––then reached behind him and procured a key from the rows of cubbyholes that lined the wall behind his desk.
Celeste smiled as smoke plumed out of her nostrils and was carried away on the breeze. Then she walked off, tossing the barely-smoked cigarette away. She rewound the feed on her sunglasses and zoomed in.
Room four-two-three. She took off her sunglasses and rubbed at her granite gray eyes. The fourth floor. We have you now.
As she strol
led away, pulling on the jacket that she had been carrying, she dwelt on how sweet it was going to be to be the one delivering this retribution on behalf of the Mossad. It was time that Death Angel paid for what she’d done, and it was only fitting that she, more than any other, was going to be the orchestrator.
“Four-two-three,” she said, murmuring the numbers like a mantra. “Four-two-three.”
17
Ethan spent quite a rare and enjoyable day inside his room, doing not much at all. After Bretta had left him first thing in the morning, he’d watch her from the window as she vanished from view down the street. He’d waited there for the half hour until she returned, and when she was back in her room he waited for the call he knew was coming.
Soon enough, the phone by his bedside rang, the noise of it jarring in the quiet of his room. Ethan realized he had been on the point of dozing off in his chair––something that he had never ever done while technically on a job. Silently rebuking himself, he picked up the phone. The line would be encrypted, courtesy of the DIA front that partially owned the building.
“Yeah?” he said.
“It’s me,” came the reply.
“Bretta?”
“I just wanted you to know I was back,” she said.
“So how did it go?” Ethan asked.
“It was bait,” she replied. “Meant to piss me off more than anything else. And to keep me reading the email for as long as possible. I probably set off a tracker. I told the concierge to beef up the watch.”
“Good idea,” Ethan told her. He did feel somewhat safe in a building that was partially owned by the DIA. Even so, that was never any good reason to let down one’s guard, especially while on a mission. He’d set up his own surveillance camera at the window to keep an eye on the street. He also had a camera placed in the hallway outside, watching from a surreptitious spot next to a ceiling lamp. It functioned as a motion sensor as well, so that he was alerted every time someone moved out there, which wasn’t very often, given the current lockdown.
Bretta had done the same for her room, as had William.
“Everything all right?” Ethan asked into the lingering silence on the line.
Bretta exhaled wearily. “Yes. An amateur attempt at psychological warfare.”
Sounds like it worked to me.
“All right, Maelstrom,” he said, using her codename as a not-so-subtle reminder that they were still on task. “We both know that you’re too smart for that sort of bullshit, so shake it off and hang tight. You’re no blue falcon, and anybody that matters is aware of that.”
“Blue falcon” was an army euphemism for a buddyfucker or backstabber––a traitor.
“The only traitorous things in you are those goddamn thoughts that make you doubt yourself,” he continued.
“Roger that,” Bretta replied, injecting her old steel into the two words. “You heard from Black Swan yet?”
“No,” Ethan replied. “I’ll let you all know as soon as that changes.”
He assumed that the reason she had not gotten in contact with him immediately had something to do with––what the newspaper on his coffee table was now labeling, at least––the global pandemic.
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later then––oh, Copperhead?” Bretta said.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
Ethan smiled at the phone. “Anytime.”
The line went dead.
After his call with Bretta, he spent the morning flicking through the news channels. After a barrage of emergency news bulletins and breaking stories and shocking exclusives, Ethan turned the flat-screen television off and blew out his cheeks. He didn’t much like the media at the best of times. He had been personally involved in too many incidents that had then been spun into complete and utter fantasies––first by his own government, admittedly––by almost every major news corporation under the sun. The hold COVID-19 was taking on the world––on peoples’ fears and the imaginations of the unscrupulous men and women who ran the tabloid presses––was almost biblical in its scale. The combination of what the virus was actually capable of doing, coupled with the modern world’s ability to broadcast live updates from every corner of the globe even as they were happening was seemingly producing a panic the likes of which had never been seen in human history.
It was enough to get anyone’s head spinning, and Ethan was glad to turn off the television and remind himself that that sort of business was well above his pay grade. One good thing about being a soldier, he got to look his enemy in the eye––at least some of the time.
He had no idea who was picking up the hotel bill, but hoping that it wasn’t going to be him, he ordered an early lunch consisting of pan con tomate, which was a Catalan staple of good bread rubbed with fresh tomatoes, sprinkled with salt and drizzled with the sort of olive oil that would bring a tear to any foodie’s eye, and Esqueixada. He had no clue what that might be, but when the waiter brought it up for him he told Ethan it was a salad made with peppers, tomatoes, onions, red wine vinegar and shredded “bacalao”––this being a salted cod that was typical of the region.
After that, Ethan sat back and waited by the phone, quite content to do nothing. He had no doubt that Black Swan would know that they had arrived by now––Aaron must surely have reported back to her––and that she would know, too, what rooms they were in. He felt, very much, though he could not adequately explain the feeling even to himself, as if this was the moment that rock climbers faced; when they had reached the top of a face and the only way to continue upwards was to throw themselves into space and hope for a hold.
The afternoon wore away and Ethan’s thoughts inevitably returned to Bretta. At about five in the evening, after not having heard a thing from Sam all day, Ethan decided to stretch his legs a little. He got up off the floor, where he’d been doing some push-ups in an attempt to work off his rather decadent––for him at least––lunch, slipped on his boots and went to check on the others.
He knocked on the door of the room that William and Kiana were occupying first and the big Texan let him in.
“How goes it, Copperhead?” William asked, closing the door behind Ethan.
“Not bad,” Ethan replied. “How’s everything here?”
“Good, man, good,” William said. “Just been refueling’ the tanks, you know.”
“I see that,” Ethan replied, grinning and taking in the stack of room service plates sitting on a side table. “You might be in for a bit of an Alpha Charlie from Black Swan when she finds out you’ve blown the national defense budget on biscuits and gravy.”
At the mention of biscuits and gravy, a wistful expression passed over William’s face. “Biscuits and gravy, wouldn’t that be somethin’! I always knew you were a cultured man, and now I know you think I am too.”
“Biscuits and gravy is cultured?” Ethan said, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Shit yeah, it is,” William replied with a half-cocked smile. “When I think that my Granddaddy considered a possum and a six-pack a seven course meal…”
Ethan laughed. “God, would you listen to yourself? You’re a damned walking, talking stereotype.”
“Besides, they ain’t all my plates,” William said in his defense. “Dr. Avesta has had a couple of salads too.”
At the mention of the scientist, Ethan’s gaze was drawn to the coffee table in the corner where a laptop was set up, along with a few folders. But there was otherwise no sign of her. He glanced toward the bathroom door, presently closed.
The door momentarily opened and Kiana emerged. Her eyes widened, her expression seeming a mix of both fear and relief.
“Is it time?” she asked.
“To leave?” Ethan replied. “No.”
She slumped at that, evidently relieved. “Good. If I never set foot from here again, I wouldn’t regret it. I’ve had enough excitement for my lifetime.”
Ethan pointed at William. “Has our mutual friend been treating you well?”
�
��Will has treated me very well,” she said.
Ethan turned so that his back was to the Iranian scientist and mouthed, “Will?” at him and made a simpering face.
William ignored him.
“He’s very polite,” Kiana continued.
“Well,” Ethan said, not trusting himself to keep looking at the blushing Texan, “I’m glad that he’s been behaving himself, Dr. Avesta.”
“Yes, very polite,” Kiana said. She leaned forward. “Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“Why is it we can’t dine together, even if it’s just in one of the rooms?” Kiana asked him, her eyes boring into his. “I mean, you visit us. Why not stay for a while? I realize this is not a holiday, but this place is safe, no?”
Ethan shook his head. “Not entirely. It’s not a fortress. We still have to be careful, Kiana. I told you that we would keep you safe, that we’re good at surviving, didn’t I?”
“You did,” the woman said, bobbing her head in agreement.
“Well, the reason that I’m able to say that is because us three are some of the most distrustful and cynical bastards you’re ever likely to meet. Trust me when I tell you that the sort of security that is going to keep you in one piece is not, in any way, fun. You’ll have plenty of time to go out on dinners when you get State-side.”
“With you––with the three of you, I mean?” Kiana asked. She dropped her eyes and then looked up at him, giving him a bashful smile.
Ethan kept his face carefully blank. “We’ll have to see about that.” He glanced at William. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything. I just wanted to make sure you two were all right.”
He moved to the door.
“Where are you off to now?” William asked.
“To check on Maelstrom,” Ethan replied, “then back to my room. I’ll talk to you a bit later. Enjoy working your way through the rest of the room service menu, cowboy.”
“It’s not that big…” William replied.
Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4) Page 16