Assignment- Adventure A SpyCo Collection 1-3

by Craig A. Hart

  Perry moved toward the bedroom, stepping lightly and slowly. All he needed was a creaky floorboard to bring everyone within earshot to an immediate alert—the downside of sleeping in a house full of trained agents. Some of these people seemed to have several extra senses. If they did hear him and came running, they wouldn’t do so emptyhanded. It was easy to get shot while sneaking around the dark in a place like this, and Perry couldn’t afford to get shot. Not yet, anyway. He still had work to do.

  By the time he got downstairs, Perry’s face was slick with sweat. Moving slowly was hard work, as it turned out, and he had to admit the pressure on him was high. It felt even more dangerous than sneaking out of a house of hostiles, because he knew that, if caught, he would be prevented from achieving his goal of killing Flick. And he couldn’t let that happen. Not again.

  Walking out the front door was out of the question. It surely had security attached, as would the back door. The windows were probably wired as well, but there might be a way to circumvent those. Perry began a tour of the windows, checking each in search of any security vulnerability. He would have preferred to scout the upstairs windows, but with every room occupied up there, that wasn’t realistic.

  Perry heard a noise—something fast and soft, non-threatening on its own, but foreign to the night. It was the sort of stealthy sound a cat might make during its nightly rounds...but Adabelle didn’t own a cat.

  Almost unbidden, Perry’s gun appeared in his hand and he crouched at a corner, the weapon held ready. Was he imagining things? Was it a member of the group? What if it was, and they tried to stop him? Would he, could he, bring himself to shoot? Burke and Adabelle had seemed willing enough to do so, but that had been on orders—at least, they had thought so. This was completely on Perry’s shoulders. Besides, he preferred to think neither of those two would have actually shot him. Not Burke anyway. Perry wasn’t sure about Adabelle, and the thought she might have offed him somehow made her even more attractive. The woman was a bona fide badass. Of course, given the way he was feeling about her, everything made Adabelle more attractive. At this point she could have pushed an old person in front of a bus and Perry would think she was simply ending the victim’s suffering. It all came down to the fact that he wanted her with a growing passion he hadn’t experienced since he’d first gotten to know Trina. He hated making that comparison, but it was true.

  Perry heard the sound again. This time louder and closer. He placed his finger on the trigger. If it had to be anyone, let it be Moore, he thought.

  “Perry?”

  The voice was soft and low, but it struck him like a sledgehammer to the temple. He whirled around, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  “Perry, it’s me. Adabelle. Put the gun down.”

  Even as he turned, Perry saw she had gotten the drop on him. Adabelle’s gun was pointed directly at his chest, steady and unmoving.

  “What are you doing down here?” she asked. “I might have shot you.”

  “I could ask you the same question,” Perry hissed.

  “It’s my house.”

  Perry struggled to come up with a response. “Well...it’s my business.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  Better to be upfront at this point. “That was the plan, yes.”

  “To go after Flick?”

  Perry nodded, then realized she might not be able to see the gesture in the semi-darkness. “Yes,” he said.

  “Surely you haven’t forgotten what Moore said about that.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “And you’re going anyway?”

  “I have to.”

  Adabelle stood there, gun still pointed, her shadowy face soft. She regarded Perry for several long seconds. Then she said, “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

  “More than life itself.”

  “What if I try to stop you from going?”

  “I’ll kill you.” And as he said it, Perry knew it was true. Lust could not yet overcome his love for Trina and the responsibility he felt to avenge her murder.

  “That would be difficult. My gun is pointed right at you.”

  “I have a gun in my hand too. You’d get off the first shot, but I’d get one off just after. If your first shot wasn’t lethal, who’s to say what would happen?”

  “You’re pretty confident for a guy looking down the barrel of a gun.”

  “Not confident. Determined.”

  Once again, Adabelle looked at him for a long moment. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Perry. I’m not sure what to make of it. Your fierce independence is at once admirable and unsettling.”

  “You don’t seem like much of a pawn yourself.”

  “No, not in the sense you mean it. But I’ve always been one to adopt a cause and give it my utter devotion. Once I start something, I put everything I have into it.”

  “That sounds like a positive quality.”

  “It can be. Yet it can lead to blind loyalty, like what I’ve had for SpyCo. It’s been the one thing keeping the world from horrendous acts time and again, so it was easy to see myself on the side of right.”

  “And you don’t anymore.”

  “No, I do. But I’m beginning to understand that loyalty must be tempered by individuality.”

  “Don’t let Moore hear you say that. He might issue some unpleasant, drearily colored code with your name on it.”

  “You may be a little hard on Moore. That’s easy to do, because he’s such a bastard, but inside he really cares about his people.”

  Perry had no real desire to talk about Moore and regretted bringing him up. “So here we stand. I suppose the ball is in your court, as they say. Are you going to try to stop me?”

  “I was awake thinking about you and your situation. That’s why I heard you moving around.”

  “You were thinking about me?” Perry’s heart quickened.

  “And your situation.”

  Perry heart slowed. “What about my situation?”

  “What I would do if I were in your shoes.”

  “And did you come to any conclusions?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “What’s the verdict?”

  “I’d do the same damn thing.”

  Perry felt relief wash over him like a warm ocean wave. “You’re not going to stop me?”

  “Not only that, Perry. I’m going with you.”

  The words hit Perry like a bulldozer. “You’re...what now?”

  “I’m going with you. I can’t stop you and continue living with myself, so I’m going along to make sure you come back alive.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “Can you, though?”

  Perry’s nostrils flared. “I’ve been doing all right so far.”

  Adabelle hesitated, then said, “Please, please don’t take this the wrong way, Perry. But from everything I’ve heard, Flick is not one to take lightly. You’ve been after him for years, and been close twice. Why not take the help? I know the city, I know the people. I can help you. And I’m a damn good partner to have by your side.”

  Perry wrestled with his ego. In his mind, it had always been him taking down Flick, alone and with great fanfare. But his mind now prodded him to take Adabelle up on her offer. Was the goal to kill Flick or to kill Flick alone? Perry felt shame as he realized his desire to avenge the murder for Trina’s sake had morphed into a mission to fulfill some base, personal bloodlust. It was understandable, but selfish. He needed to refocus and perhaps taking Adabelle along would help with that. It would certainly increase the odds of success and that, after all, should be the most important thing.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’d appreciate the help. Now how do we get out of here without waking up everyone in the house?”

  “I could disarm the system, but that involves a series of obnoxiously loud beeps. It will almost certainly wake someone.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Would you believe me if I told you Istanbul has a syst
em of underground cisterns and that my house sits atop a section of it?

  “Believe you? Hell, I’d love you, if it were true.”

  “Then prepare to be smitten, Romeo. Follow me.”

  Adabelle led Perry to a door off the kitchen that led down to a basement. Using the flashlight app on her phone, she walked to the far corner of the basement where a wooden dresser sat against the wall.

  “Help me move this thing, will you? It weighs a ton.”

  Perry grabbed one end and together they shifted it out a bit, angling it away from the wall enough to get past, but not so much that the casual observer would notice anything amiss.

  Behind the dresser, set into the wall, was an ancient wooden door made of thick, roughly-hewn planks and riveted with iron hardware.

  “I’m guessing this doesn’t come standard on most houses?”

  Adabelle grinned. “Hardly. My house is built on the foundation of a centuries old structure. Its history is one of the things that jacked up the price tag. But I fell in love with the romanticism of it all.”

  “I can see why,” Perry said. “There’s no telling who came and went through this door.”

  “Wait until you see inside.” Adabelle grabbed an ancient, oversized skeleton key off the wall and shoved it into the massive lock. With effort, she turned it and the lock made a thunking sound.

  Perry snorted. “May I suggest a little WD-40?”

  “And ruin the suspense? Hardly.” Adabelle pulled on the door and it opened, although not without protest. She stuck her phone inside to illuminate the area beyond the door.

  Perry looked inside and his heart raced. Moving down into the darkness was a set of narrow stone steps. “I’m guessing these lead into the cistern?”

  “You guess correctly.”

  “And it’s a dry cistern?”

  “This one is, yes. Others still contain water. The Basilica Cistern, for example, even has schools of carp swimming around.”

  “I’ve heard of Basilica, but haven’t been there.”

  “You should go, if you ever travel for pleasure. It provided water to the Great Palace of Constantinople, has 336 enormous pillars, and can hold 100,000 tons of water. If you’re a movie buff, you might be interested because it was featured in From Russia with Love.”

  Perry smiled, having seen that, and every other Bond movie at least fifty times. “Will we be going through there?”

  “No. It’s too far from here and has become a major tourist destination. This cistern doesn’t connect anyway.”

  “But you can use it to get out, right? I mean, you’ve tried this?”

  Adabelle huffed. “Now you’re being insulting. Not only have I checked this out, but I made a few modifications to allow for a quicker exit.”

  “Like that lock, for example?”

  “That’s different. The history lover inside hasn’t yet allowed me to replace it. I did, however, have a ladder installed.”

  “And city officials let you do it?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Clever. Where does this secret tunnel let out?”

  “In an alley across the street. I wish it went farther, but then you’d start running into other sections of the old water system and I like having my part blocked off. If they ever decide to excavate all of it, I’m out of a house, but for now it gives me a nice escape route.”

  “Have you had to use it?”

  “Only once.”

  Perry waited for her to continue, but instead she said, “Come on. We need to get moving.”

  17

  “I suppose this is as good a time as any to ask: how do you expect to find Flick?” Adabelle asked after they had safely emerged from a manhole at the back of the dark alley.

  Perry had been a little nervous about the noise moving the metal grate made, but it was late and the alley was abandoned. “Huh?”

  Adabelle snorted. “For such a brilliant agent you can be a little thick sometimes, can’t you? Flick obviously knows you’re here in Istanbul. You nearly killed each other already. I’m guessing he’s not going to be hanging around on street corners, flipping a coin in the lamplight, waiting for you to happen by.”

  The mild insult had been delivered with a smile, and Perry was quickly finding himself incapable of feeling anything negative in its wake.

  “I’m hoping our little altercation will be the key to finding him now.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, although I didn’t get to introduce any lead into his miserable body, I did manage to pour a significant amount of boiling water over his head.”

  “Ah, yes! I remember you saying so. That had to hurt.”

  “Judging from his bitch-like screams, it did. It also left a mark. The water hit him full-on, and he no longer looks like the suave, well-groomed Spaniard. In fact, he’s pretty hideous at this point, and probably even had to seek some medical attention.”

  “So, what then? Hospitals? Clinics?”

  “Probably something more discreet,” Perry said.

  They had emerged from the alley into the well-lit streets. Perry kept them in the shadows as much as possible, and noted the distance the tunnel had taken them from Adabelle’s residence. It was enough he felt comfortable, but not totally so.

  “Well,” Adabelle said, “I know of a few non-registered sawbones not above patching up the random bullet hole, no questions asked. They’re well known among the criminal element, and not all are fanatically loyal to those they help. A handful of lira usually helps ease any lingering issues of conscience.”

  “Lead the way,” Perry said.

  “Because I know where they are, or because you want to walk behind and look at my ass?”

  Perry smiled. “Lead the way.”

  Despite Moore’s distaste for fieldwork, there are certain things that happen to a man so engaged, even formerly so, that are not easily undone. Often, it’s an experience-augmented instinct that already existed. Many times, these traits were triggered…by a sound or a suspicious movement or even a scent. And sometimes they seemed to come unbidden. Sometimes they manifested themselves as a muscle-memory reaction, like a raised gun or a clinched fist. Sometimes they set into motion a series of behaviors that proved successful in the past, like moving into a shadow or dropping to the ground. And sometimes, for no apparent reason, it was an internal tickling at the core of one’s central nervous system, capable of waking one from a dead sleep, maybe during a dream of riding a proud roan through a field of heather.

  Although he’d never admit to the dream, this is precisely what happened to J. Carleton Moore. He lay quietly in the darkened guestroom, awake, his senses on full alert. After a full sixty seconds he said aloud, “Some shit is going down.”

  He slid off the light covers and put his feet on the floor, sitting in this position for another full minute. The room was dark enough that even after allowing his eyes to adapt for quite a while, he couldn’t see a thing. And because there had been no real reason to wake up, he was still unsure if the perceived threat was in the room with him. Therefore, his movements were slow, calculated, soundless.

  Finally, he stood. There were two windows in the corner guestroom, both equipped with room-darkening shades. He moved to the closer of the two and carefully, almost imperceptibly, moved one of the shades enough to peek out the window. The night was moonless, and had this been one of the many poorer neighborhoods in the ancient city, he’d have been able to see very little. But Adabelle’s sector was affluent, and the residents did not want their surroundings to be attractive to the unsavory element making up Istanbul’s underworld. To that end, the streets were almost garishly well-lit.

  He stared for nearly fifteen minutes through the tiny slit into the streets outside. There was no movement. The window itself was pulled up ever so slightly, to allow a trickle of breeze into the room, and through that opening nothing untoward in the way of night noises could be heard. Cars on the highway were out of sight, but their passage was audible. The leave
s of the pedunculate oaks growing in the area rustled slightly in the faint whiff of airflow. But otherwise there was nothing. Not even a dog barking or a cat singing its raucous night song.

  Still, he knew. Someone was out there. Someone with bad intentions. After another ten minutes, he spotted what he’d been looking for. Well-cloaked in the dense leaves of an oak on the opposite side of the street, he saw the briefest glint of light: a reflected streetlight in an eyeglass lens. Focusing upon the spot for yet another five minutes he saw motion again, and this time made out the barrel of a long weapon. There was a rifleman in the tree.

  Moore knew this meant the house was surrounded. No one worth their criminal salt would post only one sniper outside a house filled with secret agents. No, every angle, every approach and way of egress would be covered. They were trapped.

  Moore went first to Adabelle’s room. Not bothering to knock, he flung the door open.

  “Trouble,” he said into the dark room.

  Lyndsey immediately replied, her voice low. “Sshhh! You’ll wake Erol!”

  “Trouble,” Moore repeated, his voice only marginally quieter.

  “Get the boys. I’ll be right out.”

  Moore didn’t wait for Adabelle to respond, moving down the hallway to the room where Hall and Burke were quartered. Burke’s snoring was audible from outside the door, which he opened, feeling the wall for a light switch. When the lights came on, Burke sat bolt upright, his gun retrieved from beneath his pillow and at the ready. When he saw Moore standing in the doorway, he lowered it.

  “Where the fuck is Hall?” Moore said, his rage going from zero to sixty in a nanosecond.

  Burke looked to where Perry should have been lying and saw only a flat and rumpled air mattress. Moving to it, he saw the inch-long puncture.

  “I don’t know, but it looks like he killed his bed.”

  “Into the living room, Burke,” Moore barked. “We have trouble—more than I first thought.”

  Once they were gathered in the living room, Moore began pacing up and down, virtually apoplectic. He stalked silently, struggled to moderate his fury and control the level of his voice. At last, he trusted himself enough to speak.