Shot Clock

by Mark Parragh

  Something felt off as he opened the door. A moment later, he realized someone was there. It was a woman with electric blue hair, cut short. She wore nothing but a white dress shirt.

  Swift.

  She stood in the middle of the room, putting a golf ball across the carpet at a drinking glass. The ball broke right and missed the glass by inches, but Swift didn’t seem to notice. She looked up at him with a flirty smile and said, “Hello, John. How’ve you been?”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” said Crane before he had time to think.

  Her face fell. “Oh, John. Would you like to go out and come in again?”

  He closed the door and drank in the sight of her. She was beautiful and alluring, but he knew she was also unpredictable and dangerous, and that she came to him when she wanted something. He’d thought a great deal about exactly what she wanted from him and why she fed him the particular bits of information that she did.

  And of course, there was the time she’d kissed him on a remote Mexican airstrip as the plane that had come to take him to safety kicked up dust in the background. He thought about that a great deal too.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, watching the fabric of the shirt play over her thighs as she moved. “I just wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Half the people in Skala’s archive are here,” she said. “Surely it can’t be that surprising that I’m here too.”

  “They didn’t let themselves into my room. And they’re not dressed like that. You had an impact.”

  She smiled at him once again as she came closer. “Well, good. I was trying to make an impression. The least you can do is be impressed. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get my hands on a putter around here at this time of night? Not to mention a man’s shirt. I thought that part would be easy. Why don’t you have any luggage?”

  Crane sighed. “Long story.”

  She stopped in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Not dressed like this.” Her other hand slid down to his waist where it began untucking his shirt a small bit at a time.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he said softly.

  “Oh, yes,” she answered. “It’s a very good idea. I’ve put a lot of thought into it.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.” He started to unbutton her shirt.

  Then his lips were on hers, and her hand slipped inside his waistband to pull him forward by his belt. They tumbled onto the bed in a pile of limbs and raw need, and Crane’s questions about the gun in Josh’s bag seemed suddenly far, far away.

  Chapter 5

  Later, they lay in Crane’s bed in a tangle of high thread count sheets, pillows scattered on the floor. Swift lay at an angle to him, her head resting on his abdomen and her legs dangling off the side of the bed. She picked up his hand and traced its contours with her fingertips.

  “Are you glad I came all this way to see you?” she asked.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I assume you’ve got half a dozen reasons, all ranked in order of priority. I’m probably near the bottom of the list.”

  He was expecting some kind of bantering reply. That seemed to be the pattern they were building. Cut and thrust, wordplay that built, layer on layer, before it suddenly erupted into something more physical.

  But she said nothing, and he suddenly realized he’d hurt her. He hadn’t realized he could.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Come here.” He pulled her up to lie beside him and kissed her. She traced his jawline and looked into his eyes, considering. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision.

  “Two reasons,” she said. “I’m here because Redpoll’s here. But that’s his reason, not mine. My reason is because you’re here. You’re special, John. There’s nothing else like you in my world.”

  She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Did that sound silly?”

  “Silly isn’t a word I associate with you,” he said. He might call her ruthless or bloodthirsty, but never silly.

  “Good,” she said. “I’m not caught up in some schoolgirl infatuation. My heart powers me, John, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it rules me. I’m very clear-eyed about the things I want from this world. I think you might be the only man I’ve ever met who can help me get them.”

  They lay quietly as Crane stroked her hair. He wondered what made him so special, but there was something else he was even more curious about.

  “Who’s Redpoll?”

  For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer him, and then she said, “The man in charge.”

  “Of Kilo? The whole thing?” That is something worth knowing, Crane thought. Team Kilo had terrified Branislav Skala, one of the most brutal men Crane had ever encountered. Someone who could do that must be formidable indeed. And he was here.

  “He runs the whole show. And he’s my father.”

  Despite himself, Crane tensed a bit.

  “Not really,” she said quickly. She paused and then added, “Adoptive father. He raised me. I’ll say it that way.”

  If that was true, she was much more than the operative he’d taken her for. It would help explain her seemingly comprehensive knowledge of the hidden world Skala had tried to map out in his digital archive. But did it also make her more dangerous? Was he making an enemy of one of the world’s most powerful men by sleeping with his daughter?

  Well, that part can’t be helped, he thought. He’d done it, and he didn’t regret it at all. Indeed, if she was willing, he meant to do it again.

  “And you go where he goes?” he asked her.

  “I go where he sends me mostly. Redpoll doesn’t go anywhere if he can help it. It’s too dangerous. It took something very special to get him here.”

  “What’s that?”

  She nestled against Crane. “He runs arguably the most powerful organization in the world, and he’s getting old. It’s a big, fractious group, and he can’t run it forever. While he still can, he’s doing some transition planning. He’s here to evaluate potential successors.”

  Crane wondered if she were one of those potential successors, but didn’t want to ask. He chose a different angle of approach.

  “And you’re his bodyguard? The one person he trusts?”

  She laughed. “Oh, you’ve no idea what you’re saying. No, he doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t trust anybody. He lives on a yacht that never strays out of international waters if he can help it. This is the first time he’s been on dry land in more than a year. But if he has to take along someone he doesn’t trust for protection, I’m who he picks. Because I’m the one he made himself.”

  “How did that happen?”

  She smiled. “Long story.”

  Crane gestured to direct her attention to his nakedness. “Well, I’m not going anywhere, not dressed like this.”

  She smiled and kissed him.

  “He was born in Afghanistan,” she murmured. “His father was an opium warlord. I never met him. He died before I came along, but I gather he was someone to be reckoned with. Governments came and went. The old man lived outside all that. Ruled his own little kingdom. But he sent his son to America to be educated, to give him a foot in both worlds. He wanted him to take over the opium empire someday, but he also wanted him to move among the elites the way he couldn’t.” She chuckled to herself. “Old bastard got a lot more than he bargained for.”

  She rolled over on her back and nestled her head in the crook of Crane’s arm.

  “So Redpoll went to Harvard. I guess that was where he developed his…his grand vision. And he set out to make it happen. He began in the seventies, establishing his networks, building out a block at a time. It was all he did for twenty years, squirreling away money and knowledge and favors. By the nineties, he could move the world with one hand.”

  Crane could tell this was difficult for her. She wasn’t someone who revealed herself easily. But she pushed on.

  “Getting there consumed his life,” she said. �
�He had no wife or family. But in the culture he came from, family was very important. So were lineage and legacy. This was during the Yugoslav conflicts. Eastern Europe was in chaos. So he went there, and outside a UN safe haven in Bosnia, he found me. I was, I don’t know, maybe three or four. I don’t remember much. Apparently I was traveling with a family of refugees, but I wasn’t theirs. They were fleeing the Serb militias, and they told him they found me wandering alone in some shelled-out village and took me with them. He gave them five hundred euros for me.”

  She paused with a smile Crane didn’t buy for a moment.

  “He raised me like a daughter,” she went on. “But he used me too. My life was never mine. It was endless training, everything from Swiss finishing schools to Krav Maga. I’m his daughter, but I’m also his tool and his weapon. I’ve spent a long time trying to slip his leash. That’s a lot of what I need from you.”

  Crane took it in, struggling to keep up with the implications. His relationship with his father had always been complicated. But this took that to a whole new level. And perhaps letting her draw him into the odd game she and this Redpoll were playing was an even more certain way to bring down his wrath than sleeping with her.

  “That’s what I think we could have together,” she was saying. “With your help, I could get out. There’s nowhere to run from him, but we could protect each other. We could make him understand I’ve more than paid back what he gave me. I’ve earned my own life. We can make it more trouble to drag me back than I’m worth to him. Then we could go where we want, do what we want, build whatever life we want.”

  Crane heard the intensity in her voice, felt her heartbeat race. Was she in love with him? More to the point, was he in love with her? She was unlike anyone he’d ever known. And he had to admit, if nothing else, together they would make a formidable team. She had an in-depth understanding of the new world he’d been trying to wrap his head around ever since he came back with Skala’s hard drive. She was capable of sudden, intense brutality, but that was what this Redpoll had made her. If she wanted a different life, perhaps she could learn to control her violence. Maybe they really could forge a life together, helping Josh make the world a better place.

  Then he cautioned himself. It wasn’t wise to move so fast. He had feelings for her, but it was important not to let them run away with him. He knew so little about her, not even her real name. There was so much more he needed to know, both about her and about her mysterious father.

  “Why did he choose a daughter?” he asked. “Why not a son? Especially being Afghan. Someone to carry the name.”

  She ran her fingertips down the side of his torso, and Crane felt his body begin to respond to her.

  “I think a son would look too much like a prince,” she said, thoughtful, as though her mind and body had two entirely different agendas. “Like an heir apparent, and that would upset all those people waiting to step into his shoes someday. If he had a son, that would make things awkward, make it harder to control his organization. Being from the culture he’s from, I think he thought a daughter wouldn’t cause trouble.”

  Suddenly, she threw a leg over his and rolled on top of him. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked down into his eyes.

  “So we know he can make mistakes,” she said.

  Crane’s hands fell to her hips.

  “So what’s this grand vision you mentioned?” he asked. “What’s Team Kilo about?”

  “Later, John,” she said, her voice going low and husky. “There’s a lot I need you to understand if you’re going to be any help to me. But right now, I’m done talking.”

  Then she began to move against him, and Crane realized he was done talking too.

  Chapter 6

  By the time Kirk Wexler came on shift, the excitement had died down, but everyone in security was still gossiping about it and spinning theories. The parts Kirk could confirm were pretty basic. The x-ray scanners picked up a couple guns in guest bags. Chief Horton had questioned the guests who owned them, but they claimed they didn’t know about the guns, and Chief Horton believed them. He’d sent them back to their rooms, and now he was off duty and asleep. Nobody had any idea who the guns belonged to, or how they ended up in different guests’ bags.

  Kirk had been on the Cambie’s security team for a little less than a year. He came from Prince George, about a three-hour drive to the west. He worked four days on, three days off, and he liked his job. He was working on his criminology diploma at the College of New Caledonia, and he figured between that and a couple years of solid experience at a world-class hotel like the Cambie, he could pretty much write his own ticket. He could work security at tourist destinations around the world, take in the sights on his days off. It sounded good.

  But right now, he was paying his dues on the graveyard shift. There was little to do; about the worst was drunk guests getting up to nonsense. But Kirk kept his eyes open and learned what he could from people who knew the ropes, like Chief Horton and Kirk’s boss on second shift, Ms. Worede.

  It was a little after one in the morning, and Kirk was passing the maintenance shed, his breath fogging in the night air. The door opened, and his friend Walter leaned out.

  “Hey, Kirk, you going by the loading dock? You mind running these over?”

  Kirk angled over to the bright doorway to join him. “What you got?”

  Walter produced a cardboard box. Inside was a rack of bright orange plastic devices with pistol grips and digital readouts. A thick power cord lay coiled next to it. Kirk recognized the RFID readers they used to read the tags on guests’ bags. He looked up at Walter in surprise.

  “This all of them? The hell happened?”

  Walter laughed. “Yeah, transformer crapped out in the rack. Nobody noticed the bastards weren’t charging until they were all dead. Swapped in a new transformer, charged them up again. No worries.”

  “So they’ve got no readers in the dock?” Kirk asked. “How’d they get the bags to the right rooms?”

  Walter shrugged. “Well, I guess they read the labels and checked against the guest register. Anyway…”

  Kirk took the box. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll run them over.”

  Walter thanked him and vanished back into the warmth of the workshop. Kirk headed toward the loading dock as an idea began to form in his mind. It was probably nothing, but it was easy enough to check.

  He walked up cement steps into the dock, quiet at this time of night. Most of the bags had been delivered to their owners’ rooms, but there were still a few in small clusters on the floor. In the secure cage on one wall were the two they’d found the guns in. The guns themselves were gone, but the bags were still here, waiting for the police to release them in the morning. Kirk wasn’t authorized to enter the cage, but the bags were close enough to its woven metal sides to read.

  Kirk set the box down on a tabletop, took out one of the readers, and switched it on. He walked over to the cage. The two bags were the only ones inside. One was black with green trim, the other brown with black, white, and yellow stripes. The label on the brown one said it belonged to a Joshua Sulenski. Hanging from its handle was the RFID tag attached when it was checked into the system. The tag would have the owner’s name and room assignment, the location where it was received, and the date and time. But nobody had actually read the tags on this end because the readers were down. Kirk pointed the newly recharged reader at the brown bag and pulled the trigger. The device beeped, and the screen displayed the tag’s data. The bag had been checked in yesterday morning at Kamloops airport. Then Kirk drew in a breath.

  The names didn’t match.

  He pointed the reader at the black and green bag and tried again. The handwritten label had a woman’s name, but the RFID tag matched the one on the brown bag. Something was very wrong.

  An open laptop on a nearby table displayed the day’s luggage manifest. Kirk checked the list. The guests who owned the bags had rooms on different floors in the west wing. But the RFID tags said b
oth bags belonged to a Jason Mardo with a room number in the north wing.

  Someone screwed up when they were tagging the bags, Kirk realized with a sinking feeling. That had to be how the guns ended up where they did. Both guns were supposed to go into this Jason Mardo’s bags, but whoever planted them there went by the tags and didn’t realize they were the wrong bags.

  He pulled his radio handset from his belt and called the front desk.

  “I need ID confirmation on a guest,” he told them. “Room North Three Three Two.”

  There was a pause while they looked it up, and then, “Did you say North Three Thirty-Two? Nobody’s in there. Facilities has a lockout on it. Looks like the lights aren’t working?”

  Kirk’s instincts were going off like fire alarms in the back of his head. “Okay, look up a room assignment. Mardo, Jason.” He spelled it for them.

  “I’m sorry,” came the answer. “No such guest.”

  He had them check upcoming reservations, and then cancellations. Finally, he thanked them and let them go. The guns had gone into the wrong bags, but the plan was to deliver them to a non-existent guest in an empty room.

  He looked at the two bags in the cage. Okay, where were the bags the guns were meant to be in? Where were Jason Mardo’s bags? He checked all the remaining bags, but they all matched their tags and the manifest. Mardo’s bags had vanished as completely as he had.

  The same scanners that found the guns in the wrong bags would have found them in the right bags, he realized. It had to be someone here at the hotel—someone who would recognize those bags without having to read the RFID tags and would make sure they weren’t scanned.

  Kirk switched channels on his handset and thumbed the button. “Dispatch, this is Wexler. I need to talk to Ms. Worede right now. It’s urgent.”

  Angela Worede was Chief Horton’s number two on the security team. Horton ran the hotel during the day, but she owned it at night. She was Ethiopian; the rumor was her family had come to Canada as refugees from the famines back in the eighties. Kirk had been surprised when she came on. Growing up in Prince George, he hadn’t encountered many black people, and he wouldn’t have expected to find a woman running a large security operation like this one. But Ms. Worede was sharp, tough, and professional. Kirk thought she had what those luxury hotels in exotic locations would look for in a security officer, and he figured he could learn a lot from her.