As for Godsen and Westwood, I’d invite, they’d accept or decline. I think I’d enjoy all of us going together. That way, I could leave Therese in their hands, and do a little club-hopping. Ted Dawson was somewhere in the vicinity of Zurich. We assumed. If that were true, he’d want to get out once in a while even if he was keeping his head low. The Niederdorf was the place to loosen up a bit, maybe even get lucky. I’d give it a shot, and in the process, I’d have a bit of pleasure myself. The Niederdorf was a place that got under your skin once you’d been there.
“Well anyway, look. We’ve got about an hour and some before full dark, yet. When it’s full dark, I’m going out for dinner, and I’d be pleased if you would join us.”
“Us?”
“Therese is coming with me.” Therese was curled up on the couch in the corner, but when I mentioned her coming with me she smiled without opening her eyes.
“You feel that we’re safe going out for dinner? After all of this effort to keep ourselves hidden out and incommunicado?”
“In a word… yes.” Godsen smiled and shook her head. “Okay. I’m in. What about you Evie?”
“I’m not sitting around here by myself all night watching Italian game shows on TV. Count me in.”
“Great. I was hoping you’d all be up for it. Can I ask you something, Ronnie?”
She gave me a defeated look. “Yes, Jeffry. What now?”
“What sort of weapon do you usually carry? For example, now?”
“Fair enough.” She reached under her jacket and produced a compact, matte charcoal, automatic pistol. “As you can see,” she held it sideways so that I could see the make and calibre marks, “the lady is prepared. It may not match the kick of your .45’s, but it comes pretty damn close, and because of its compact size,” she reached behind her back and brought out another one. “it’s easy to pack two.” The second one disappeared back where it had come from. She pressed a stud on the one she’d first brought out and the clip dropped noiselessly from the handle, right into her left hand. Then she handed me both the clip and the pistol. “Check it out.”
The pistol was practically weightless without the clip. The clip weighed about what the bullets weighed, not much more. There was a lot of reinforced nylon/plastic parts, without a doubt. I think the main frame of the pistol had been made from this material, with just key parts being made of steel, the barrel, and springs, guide slots, like that. A good job all around, from the looks of it. It was made by Glock, and it carried a .40 calibre round. In my hand, I could make it almost invisible. It was compact, no doubt about it, and, it had Tritium sights. The coating on the gun felt like thin rubber, giving the gun a good hold even in wet conditions.
“I like it. This is a very nice gun. What kind of range and impact force do you get with this?”
“The accuracy factor is less than the full size barrel, naturally, but I can get a grouping of eight rounds within a six to seven-inch radius at a distance of fifty feet. The impact force will knock a two-hundred-pound man wearing a bullet-proof vest flat on his back at the same distance. It meets my needs.” She held out her hand, and I handed her back the clip first, then the gun.
She slipped the clip in, and the only thing I could hear was a very small ‘click’, as it locked into place. Compact and quiet. Nice.
Westwood carried the same H&K that she’d talked me into using, so I knew she had firepower at her disposal. And like she’d said earlier, she had a whole new attitude after the limo fiasco. I didn’t think anyone would get the drop on her a second time today.
I suggested a quick nap, about an hour, then we could hit the dinner trail. With the jet lag, and the day we’d all had, everyone agreed. Both bedrooms had two doubles. That put me with Therese, and Godsen and Westwood together.
I took off my jacket and shoes, and my guns, leaving them draped on a chair next to my bed, within reach. Then I lay down on one of the beds, fully clothed. Therese used the en-suite WC to change into a nightshirt that stopped just short of her knees, and just short of transparent. She looked pretty damn good no matter what she wore.
She stopped at the foot of my bed, and stood looking at me, saying nothing. There was nothing to say, really. I was on the top of the duvet, and that was where I was staying. I reached over to the other side of the bed and pulled the covers up, and patted the sheet underneath. That was all she was waiting for. She came around to the other side and slipped under the covers, turning her back to me, but snuggled up close. I could feel her body heat through the covers after about five minutes, but she was safely in dreamland by then.
I was getting to know this girl/woman in ways that weren’t meant to be for just friends. I could tell by her breathing exactly when she fell asleep. I’d be glad when we were done with the whole thing.
I tried to doze off, but there were too many things running through my mind. I used to be able to drop off on a ten second lead, but that was a while ago, now. I was thinking of George, for one. He never should have been allowed to go to Beirut, but knowing him, that was probably one of his demands for being involved.
Therese was sleeping soundly, and she never blinked as I quietly rose from bed and hooked the loop of my gun belt with one hand as I left the bedroom and closed the door on my way out to the sitting room. The other bedroom door was closed as well, so I had some privacy for the call I was going to make. I had to find out what George was up to. I shrugged into my holster rig, because it was easier than carrying it around, and when you have a round in the chamber, it just isn’t wise to lay them down any old place.
I went and stood over by the window with the view of Zurich. I drew the drapes about three inches, and stood to one side, looking out on the downtown streets while I made my calls. Using my digital cellular, I placed a call to his hotel in Beirut. The hotel reception was more than happy to put my call through to his room. He picked up on the first ring, not even allowing it to finish.
“Hello?” There was an anxiousness in his voice as well. He must have been waiting for a call. From whom, only God knew.
“Relax George, it’s me.”
“Oh. Was I tense? I mean, did I sound tense?” Geez this didn’t sound like the George that I knew and loved. The tough guy was missing. He was definitely out of his territory, and his depth.
“George, let it go, Okay? We’ve got more important business on the agenda right now. One question, though. Who, exactly, were you waiting to hear from?”
“The final contact, Ahmed Bashir. I got through. This guy is a first cousin of the couple, by marriage, I think. My interpreter gets vague at times. Anyway, he says he has the ear of the old man himself. Rashid, I mean.”
“Did you take my advice concerning bodyguards?”
“I sure did. I’ve got two pro’s working for me now.”
“Good. Now here’s the update. No questions from your side, just implementation. Straight from the Colonel, as well as me. Do you understand what I’m saying? These are ‘Orders’, got it? Yes or no.”
“Uhh…”
“Not now George. For real.” I could feel him switching modes.
“Yes.”
“Fine. Walk away from the entire contact net you’ve established. Speak with no one. I repeat, speak with no other persons. Regardless of your relationship with them. Regardless of their nationality. Is this understood? Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Pack and leave. Get to Paris ASAP. You’ll be met. Pay in advance at the hotel where you’re staying now for the next four or five days. Say you’re going sightseeing, whatever. Then get to the airport and take the very next flight out of Lebanon and the Middle East altogether. You’ll make a connection to Paris once you’ve gotten out, not before. Change taxi cabs when you go. Don’t let the hotel taxi driver know you’re going to the airport. Try the downtown bus terminus. It’s local enough, and extremely busy. Then head for the airport after you’ve made sure that you’re not being tailed. Is this communique understood?”
“Je
ff…” I broke in right away.
“This is not open for discussion or interpretation. These are the Orders. Are they understood?” I asked him again, without treating him like a child and demanding a yes-or-no answer. He surely had it figured out by now.
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll catch up in Paris. We’ll sort it out there. Okay?”
“Okay. I’d better get moving.” He sounded a bit better about it then, accepting that something must have happened that changed the situation, which had. Also I was acting as Godsen Second now. By rank, I think I was anyway.
“Exactly. Later.” I rang off. Then I called Walter, and asked him to flash me with George’s arrival info in Paris as soon as it was available. I was putting the cell phone in my shirt pocket when I heard the second bedroom door open and close quietly.
I turned around and Evie walked over to the window, standing beside me and taking advantage of my little view of the street below. She was standing close enough that I could smell her. Not her perfume, unless she wore one drop spread lightly over her entire body, but her. She carried a faint scent of woman, and it smelled quite nice. Maybe it was her hair conditioner, but I doubted it.
She was barefoot, and had slipped on a pair of Levi’s, and a tank-top undershirt. Just like in the commercials. Her hair was just brushed back with her fingers, and she looked as good as she smelled. Her only concession to the situation was an inside clip holster in the back of her jeans. It looked like her backup gun was one of the compact Glocks that Ronnie used. I only noticed it because of the way she fit her Levi’s.
This hiding out with three women was getting to be frustrating. I thought of Cynthia, and how much I’d like to see her, talk with her. Hell, make love to her for about forty days and nights would be more like it.
The problem was that the case was getting far too dangerous for any casual contacts that might be traced. I was positive the ‘other guys’ would treat every contact the same. Hostile. Someone who was an enemy.
Cynthia would have to wait until this was over. At least I hoped she would. Maybe I could get something to her through Sarah? Maybe, but common sense was telling me that if I really did care for this woman, I’d stay as far away from her as possible until this whole case was wrapped. Even if I didn’t like her at all, moral duty dictated the exact same response. No contact whatsoever. Oh, Joy. It was such fun being me.
In the meantime, Evie was standing closer than she had to, and the ballerina’s body heat was still tingling where our bodies had touched through the covers. Neither one of us said a word, and we stood like that for a few minutes. It seemed like a long time to me, breathing in her scent with every breath. Eventually Evie said something, but it was just to hear some words, it didn’t break the spell of the moment. Not yet.
“You couldn’t sleep, huh?” A rhetorical question, but I answered anyway.
“Hmm. You either.”
“If you concentrate hard enough without blinking, you can still see some of the sundown light being reflected upwards from the other side of the Alps.” Then she shifted gears completely on me. “I wonder if we’ll get a shot at doing a duo together before the mission’s over?”
I thought about that for a second or two before answering. The spell was fading as we spoke, but I still could have read what she was saying a couple of ways. There was a charge in the air between us, maybe because we were standing so close together, but I think it would have reached across the whole room at that particular point in time.
“We’ll have to wait and see. Is Ronnie sleeping?”
“Yup. How about your dancer?”
“Yup.”
“Maybe when we get home, you could give me a call.”
“That sounds good.”
We both smiled at ourselves at the same time, and then the spell broke and the fragments dissipated.
She pulled one of her business cards out of a back pocket, and handed it to me. The front was a standard card, defining her as Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Special Operations, Communications Engineering, and her office number and extension. I flipped the card over, and saw that she’d written her home number on the back in red ink, with a little note underneath. ‘Call anytime, Evie’. She’d made it for me only. I pocketed the card.
“I will.” I don’t know what made me say I would. Maybe it was the Levi’s. I’d always had this thing for a woman in a pair of jeans, and for the first time I had noticed that she made the jeans look good.
“There’s still some coffee in the carafe from this afternoon. Want a cup?”
That seemed safe enough, and a coffee wouldn’t hurt right about now.
“Sure, let’s have one.” There was a slight hesitation to move on both our parts. It was feeling good, standing close like that, but we turned and went to the sideboard table on the left of the room, and we got our coffee. When we sat down we sat beside each other on the main couch, but not close, more like at either end of the couch. Safe, but close enough to talk in low tones, so as not to wake either of the other women in the suite. If we’d been alone that night… who knows? Maybe it would have been harder, or just plain simple. That’s why we have dreams. To purge our minds of built-up stress.
Evie started talking first.
“Ronnie told me what you’d said about the files being passed around, and about the passionate speech that followed.” She smiled as she said it. That caught me off balance.
“She did? Well, I guess that I still get upset about the people I used to work for, and the methods they used. None of that makes it into the jacket, though. The file you get when you requisition it on the best of terms contains nothing of importance whatsoever.
The real files are accessible only within the higher ranks of the SAS themselves, and there are regions within the SAS itself that do not report to the main body of the standard ‘Chain of Command’.
Those ones tell the fairly true story, as the editors say, and after they’re edited, they’re buried so deep in the quagmire of protocol and red tape, that unless you had first-hand knowledge of their existence to start with, they’re virtually non-existent.”
“I gathered that you had been telling Ronnie the truth after that—whatever the hell it was—this morning. I’ve seen a lot of our people who rank at the top when it comes to reflexes, shoot or no-shoot, survival courses, all that crap.
It’s always under test conditions though, like you told Ronnie. I’ve been on a few field missions myself by now, but I’ve never seen anything like what you did today.”
I thought about the two men left dead on the street, and the blood. Splattered, and running in rivulets to the curbside, seeking the path of least resistance, headed down for the sewer system. It was a lousy way to die, but if anyone had come up with a good way to die, I hadn’t been on the copy list.
Sitting and talking with Evie like this was feeling good to me, and I did something I rarely ever do. I opened up. Not all the way, but a fair amount, judged on a need-to-know, and the reserved right to a 'go/no go’. I could stop anytime I wanted to, but somehow, I wanted to talk with her, and connect. At the least we might work better together, at the worst, I’d stop immediately.
“I want you to know something, Evie.” I was staring down at my coffee cup, and I didn’t raise my head while I spoke. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her do that thing that women do, tuck their legs up underneath them when they sit. If I tried that I’d probably break something.
She didn’t say anything, she just waited for me to say what I was trying to say. I watched my coffee swirl in the cup after I took each sip.
“What you saw this morning was only partially under my control. The part I control is called ‘Stage One’. That’s when you make the conscious decision to act, be it defensive in nature, or if necessary, offensive.
Once that decision is made, you enter ‘Stage Two’. ‘Stage Two’ is when you take the actions that are required for you and your team to come out on top. During that period, most of the actio
ns are automatic, and it can get pretty bad. I can get pretty bad.
There’s a cold spot I go to during ‘Stage Two’, so that nothing I do can touch me emotionally, interfere with my required actions. ‘Stage Three’ is what happens when the odds are stacked against you something awful. In order to enter ‘Stage Three’, though, there has to be a natural talent relating to physical and mental capabilities, that are reinforced by special training. Special trainers, as well.
This is something that will be denied if spoken of, and will make it dangerous for you if it was known that you knew, so feel free to stop me at any time…”. I gave her enough time to think it over, it wasn’t complex. “…Okay, here goes.”
“Most of the guys I worked with could get a fair approximation of ‘Stage Two’, but a natural for ‘Stage Three’ is hard to come by. Then, they often don’t come back from a mission when they’ve had to enter ‘Stage Three’. During the third stage, there is no willful decision capability whatsoever. Normally.
It’s all automatic. It has a lot to do with brain chemistry, as well as specific and extremely difficult training.
You’ve heard of the stories where the mother lifts the car that’s run over her child. It’s not possible. Normally. But it’s true, it happens. To say the military studies these kinds of incidents would be a heavy understatement. In general, we refer to this as ‘Hysterical Strength’. A situation where the mind doesn’t get to process the facts, never gets a chance to tell the conscious mind ‘That Can’t Be Done’, before the animal mind takes over.
The animal mind, holder of the uppermost levels of desperation, pumping out chemicals we still can’t identify into the system, that would sometimes kill under ordinary circumstances. Aside from the good old blast of adrenaline of course. That one we know about. But the levels. It can be staggering to contemplate the capability of the brain to command virtually instantaneous production of massive amounts of adrenaline and to monitor how fast the body responds.
The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Page 49