There were links to the Bahama bank, but no serious business was being done. It was all a shuffle of money back and forth. The gear had to be paid for somehow, and that bank in Sao Paulo was the start. The first movement had been into the bank from inside Brazil, then a transfer to the Bahamian bank. Then a transfer to a Swiss bank. Heidi Meir’s personal corporate bank, the main one used by the Crassberg Group, AG.
Not under her name, of course, but that was a moot point in Swiss banking anyway. From there it was withdrawn by a ‘Mister Jones’, of America. But more important than all of that, I had two names. The first was Ibrahim Khaled Mujahed Atooli.
This was one of the men who had worked the Toronto bank job with the old man’s murdered son-in-law. Maybe he had pulled the trigger, who knew? What made it important was whether or not ‘Old Man Rashid’ knew this yet. If he didn’t, he’d welcome me into his home in order to discuss it. If he did know, he’d welcome me into his home in order not to discuss it.
I had no illusions about what would happen to each and every member of the team that left his daughters new husband dead on the backstreets of Toronto that day if Old Man got to them first. What I had to do was make an agreement with him that would allow me to ask questions, indirectly, through his people. I also had no illusions about who would find this guy first. I had the name. That would be all Old Man needed. I’d guess that twenty-four hours would be enough for him to have his hands on the guy. He was already dead and he didn’t even know it yet. What I wanted was much more than the team that had done the Toronto job. I wanted the connection to Enrico. Old Man and I would have common ground on the bargaining table for these talks.
Of course, that meant that I would have to be heading out to Bahrain as soon as I was rested. From there I could call my school buddy, Rashid’s son, and arrange for a short visitor’s visa. Just long enough to arrange a meeting with the Rashids.
The essential ingredient of getting around town in Taif, Jeddah, or Riyadh itself, was having all of your papers in order at all times, no matter what. The delays resulting from a simple oversight such as over-staying the visa limitation by one day, for example, could dramatically affect any plans you may have had in place for what you thought were going to be the next thirty days or more of your life. Or, it could provide you with a simple opportunity to be on the receiving end of a stern lecture about breaking the law in so silly a manner. In Arabic.
Inside the Kingdom, it all depended. It depended on ‘this’, it depended on ‘that’, and mostly, on who the sponsor named on your visa was. That was key.
The second name was even better than the first. It linked Enrico with an Assistant Deputy Minister for the Interior. I was completely blown away. The whole thing was starting to come together, and it was a conspiracy. A big one as well.
I remembered the conversation not so many nights ago, that George and had had as I sat in his office upstairs at his house and pooh-poohed the idea that it could be a conspiracy. Too large. Too far-fetched. Too civilian. Now here it was shaping up just the way we couldn’t accept at the beginning. What was it Sherlock Holmes had always said? ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, what you have left, no matter how improbable, is the truth.’, or something to that effect.
Anyway, this ADM of the Interior was the one who had done the hiring for all of the survey work, at the behest of the Ministry of Natural Resources. That said a lot about who was in control of the area that was being developed. You would think that the Natural Resources guys would be taking care of things like that, but it all had to pass through the Ministry of the Interior.
There had been a meeting between Enrico and this MOI ADM, at a hotel in Recife. The Hilton, in fact. They were both there on the same day, and the both flew in the night before, and flew out the next day before noon. All of the flights were logged in the e-mail, and Enrico had gone straight from the Hilton in Recife to the town where Ted Dawson had been taking a weekend break. That had been the first contact. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Not unless the sun revolves around the earth, and I think I can speak for the people of the world when I say, ‘It ain’t so, Joe’.
Karl Francesco Mustini. What a family tree this guy must have. The key part was that he reported to the Minister directly, having been given ‘special status’, whatever that means in Brazilian politics. Now we were on the right path to pull off an international coup, creating good will by the bucket load for Canada with the Brazilian President. All we had to do was lay it out on a silver platter, and he would provide the head.
I knew without even considering the issue that we couldn’t touch any politicians. Off limits. But if we had the case laid out properly, the big guys would see to it that justice was served. One way or another. Hard evidence rules.
Now we were just entering the outskirts of Paris, and I had to take this one step at a time. The first thing to do was sit down with George, and get caught up.
Evie called ahead and got the rest of the team on the line. George was with them, and the safehouse wasn’t far from the ring road around Paris proper. A half hour later we were all walking into an upper-class home with a circular driveway, landscaping, a fountain in front of the entrance, centuries-old trees screening the house from the street, and even older stone in the foundation of the house itself.
As we entered it was obvious the place had been totally renovated at some time in the recent past, maybe after the war. If it had been any larger it would have been a Chateau, attached to some family of nobility. One of the handful that survived the indignity of the chopping block during the revolution. The inside was furnished with antiques and tapestries, four-posters and family portraits. It looked very much like the kind of place you would tour as a part of a day-trip. It was nice.
Littlefox met us at the door, and it might have been my imagination but I felt as if something subtle had changed since I had first met her. Maybe she’d been talking to Evie.
“Nice to see you Littlefox. I need to speak to George right away, can you tell me where he is?”
“First left, straight through to the Kitchen.”
Then she caught sight of the ‘entourage’ we were dragging along with us. Evie was right behind the whole gang, and Ronnie followed after me as we came in. I turned to her.
“Colonel, I’m going to catch up with George. He’s in the kitchen. That’s where I’ll be if you need me.”
“Fine. Don’t be too long. We’re having a general meeting in one hour. In the living room.”
“Right. I’ll be there.”
I headed off to find George. He was exactly where Littlefox said he’d be, sitting in the breakfast nook having a coffee. When I walked in he jumped to his feet, spilling the coffee all across the table in the process.
“Jeff! Good God Almighty, man. Why didn’t you call me? What’s been going on? What did you find out…?”
“Whoa, there. One question at a time. First of all, how are you?”
“I’m fine, just fine. I’ve been going over everything we have, and this just gets worse, not better. I’m sorry I got us mixed up in this, Jeff. I didn’t know how high this thing went. Now it’s gotten all political, and I’m not even sure we’re still authorized to finish it. I didn’t do very well in Beirut, either. How’s Therese?”
“First of all, we’re on a mission that’s developed a life of its own, and no one is going to shut us down at this stage without some major grief. What I’m saying George, is that it doesn’t matter who the hell calls up and says ‘Okay boys, come on in, it’s all over’, because it ain’t.
In addition, we wouldn’t know for sure whether the order was being sent down from a high position that was part of the conspiracy. We’re into this all the way up to our necks, and the only out is to see it through. We’re operating under our own rules now, no others. That’s the way this game works, George. If you’d taken some time to discuss this with me beforehand, I would have told you how it works in a New York Minute.
This is all stuff you don’t
know because almost no one does. This is a different world George, and even your ‘Colonel’ isn’t totally grounded yet. She learns fast though, and Evie, one of her staff, is a natural. She’s been a big help so far.
As for Therese, she’s just fine, thank you for asking. As is the Colonel, of course. And Ted Dawson. And Collette.”
“You got Ted? Great! But who’s Collette?”
“She’s the girlfriend of Heidi Meir. She was supposed to be in the Bahamas today to meet with Heidi. She’s had to run for it. Meir, I mean.
It’s finally all coming together. Walter cracked it for us. Indirectly, anyway. We have a link between the guy who runs the bank jobs, and an Assistant Deputy Minister of the Interior over in Brazil who reports directly to the boss, the Minister of the Interior himself. Who, it turns out, bitterly opposes the President, and would like nothing more than to take the job on for himself. If we can get to the President, we can get all the Brazilian authorization that we may require. If this is handled right, we can offer him up the next election on a platter. The one thing that all South American countries share is a deep abiding loathing of corruption in government. If the President is able to expose a corrupt operation at the MOI office, he’ll be an instant hero. The Ministry of the Interior is known for its rough handling of the people on occasion. Especially out on the frontier, which is where all of this is going down. They’d side with the President in a second.
And, I suspect that this Enrico guy is also the same guy who murdered J.D. His description fits with the one Billie Santers gave us for that pick-up he made at the airport the day J.D. was murdered, and Ted gives a pretty credible story of coercion that borders on sadistic terrorism.
We know for certain that Enrico is one of the ‘walking dead’. He kills without compunction, without compassion, and he has no conscience, hence, no soul. Him, we won’t be able to bring in. We’ll have to do a little magic, illusion. Smoke and mirrors. Create our own disparu where he’s concerned.
But none of that is the most dramatic part of it. These people have contacts that we still don’t know about. Military and/or military research and development people. The one’s with secret defense contracts.”
“What?”
“You heard me. The gear they’re using isn’t even available to the special forces groups that it was intended for yet. But he has it. Amazing gear, I kid you not, George, and you know I’m not easily impressed.
For example, full body armour that actually works. These guys have used this gear in every bank robbery so far. None of the police that respond to the alarms are equipped to handle that kind of technology, not even the Special Weapons and Tactics teams. Which only arrived in time on one occasion, the Antwerp job, getting themselves blown up for their trouble, without even having the opportunity to exit their vehicle. The spotter that Enrico had left to watch the main approach to the bank took them out from a two-story roof positioned a block from the bank, with a shoulder fired missile.
That’s what the report says. What it doesn’t say is what kind of missile it was. Odd, right? Usually these kinds of reports are as thoroughly detailed as possible, but in that case, they didn’t say because they didn’t know.
Nobody’s seen this gear except the research and development group, and the agency that financed it. I still don’t know who they are, and chances are we won’t find out, either. It really doesn’t matter, though. What’s important is that we have an idea of the technology they’re using. That gives us information. They have to have access to the source, and that requires a contact at a level so high that we don’t have a hope in hell of touching them without hard evidence even if we do find out who it is.
More importantly, we know what to expect from them because we managed to get our hands on some of this gear for ourselves. The rocket launcher is… well, you have to see them to understand, I think.
It’s a new kind of missile system. It’s quite astounding. You can hide the damn thing under a coat, and it comes with a selection of micro-warheads that can be fitted onto the main missile. Which is also extremely miniaturized. And that’s not the only thing they have. Some of it is so ridiculously advanced that the amount of money that was poured into this on the part of the military must be staggering. Somebody is either hiding the fact that extra gear was produced, or there’s a general somewhere in the Pentagon that’s looking for heads on a plate. With a vengeance, I’m sure.
That’s if it’s even known yet by the military that their gear has been handed out to the wrong party, which may not be the case. I’m in the process of tracking the various pieces of technology involved as we speak, but there’s only one piece that I know for sure we can ID without a break of some kind. Or a psychic. Maybe that one piece will give us enough to track the rest, we’ll have to wait and see.”
“Whew! I thought that the Homicide beat was a rough gig, but this is ridiculous.”
“Just hang on to your hat, pal. It starts to go into Warp Drive now. I think when this breaks, it’ll be breaking on several fronts simultaneously. There’s a general meeting in the living room shortly. The Colonel’s going to be going over the mission status and we’ll be laying out the next set of moves for the teams. I think we’ll be setting up three, with different agendas and destinations. We’ll find out soon enough.
In the meantime, I’m going to take a few minutes before the meeting to clean off the road dust.”
I got up from the table, and George sat there mopping at the coffee spill with a small stack of napkins from a metal dispenser just like the ones in diners and restaurants all over North America. All the comforts of home.
He looked up at me as I rose.
“I want to be in on this Jeff. I don’t want to sit around keeping the bench warm in case someone who’s supposed to know what they’re doing gets injured, or eliminated. I know that my performance so far hasn’t been what you’d call ‘Sterling’, but I’m new to this. I’m getting the feel of it now, and I know I can help, I just need some backing to help me close up this shut-out that’s happening to me here. I have to go around asking everyone what’s up all day long if I want to know anything. Nobody volunteers anything.”
“That’s just the way the game works. First you prove yourself, then you get to be a team member. No one wants to embrace a new comrade-in-arms when they think he’s just going to walk into a bullet or be killed in some other nasty manner the very next time out.
Wait until the briefing and see what the Colonel’s got in mind. I think it’ll work out the way we want it to.”
He looked me in the eye for a second, then nodded his head.
“Okay, Jeff. I’ll wait.”
“Fine. See you at the meeting.”
“Okay, and Jeff?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for… well, the ‘drastic measures’ that I heard about. I had no idea that it was going to be this way, and I had no idea that it would be you that had to walk into these things with guns blazing. If you want to talk about it…”
“Once again, George. If you had asked me, I could have told you. That’s the way it works. Sometimes it’s very bloody, sometimes it’s not. This time it has been, and will get worse before it gets better, and no, thanks anyway, but I’d rather not bother talking about it at all. It’s part of the job, that’s all.”
George was looking at me kind of oddly, but I didn’t feel like making him feel better about it. Not yet. His innocence was a bit disappointing, but I knew everyone had to start somewhere. He had thrown himself into the deep end, dragging me with him. The fact that he couldn’t swim as well as he’d thought was overshadowed by the sharks in the pool. He’d get over it.
I headed off to find the main bathroom, and a shower stall. I was stiff from driving, and my shoulder was starting to act up again as well. Of course, rolling around the hallways of apartment buildings all over Europe and bouncing off the walls as well probably didn’t help it much. Maybe a little hot water and steam would loosen me up.
&nb
sp; I had about ten minutes to myself in there before someone knocked on the door. That had been the best ten minutes I’d had in a week. I got out and wrapped a big towel around my waist. When I opened the door, Therese slipped in under my arm and quickly shut the door behind her, putting her back to it. I heard a slight ‘snick’ as the lock was engaged again.
She was dressed in a white terry-cloth bath robe, one about five sizes too big for her, and I swear, she looked so good and it was outrageous. She had a couple of towels over her arm, and she leaned her back against the door, and just smiled at me. It was one of those funny moments that come on you in life sometimes. Everything else in the world just started to fade away, leaving us in a cocoon of white walls and mirrors, steam and running water. Her face was about six or seven inches from mine, and I could smell her breath, faint and sweet. I could smell her hair, with a hint of coconut in it. I love coconut.
Neither one of us said anything. The only sound was the water running in the shower, and the steam billowed in small clouds, seeming to have a life of their own, swirling around us and the room, creating the final break from the real world.
Nobody was smiling, but there was a heavy emotional current running through the clouds of steam like lightning in a thunderhead. Therese looked up at me with eyes that were more serious than I’d ever seen before. I could feel my heart pounding at a frantic pace, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if it was just me.
She reached with her free right hand across her robe and slowly and deliberately started pulling on one end of the bow on her sash. It was just like we had stepped outside of time and space into our own little universe. I knew that if I didn’t stop her hand from completing that move right now, she’d win. Was it a case of winner and loser? Or was it just something where both sides won?
I was locked in her gaze like the victim of a King Cobra. I couldn’t move, or I wouldn’t move. The result was the same.
The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Page 84