Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel)

by Giles O'Bryen

  ‘Describe the men who took you.’

  ‘The one in charge is small, close-cropped hair and nasty eyes. I heard them call him Etienne. The car is a black Jeep Cherokee.’

  The man who had held the pliers while Mansour cut him. James hadn’t told Nat his name. Hearing it on her lips was like a hammer-blow to the heart.

  ‘I’ll find him.’

  ‘I have to turn the phone off now. It was Grey Tony who paid Zender to take the IPD400 and have you abducted. Be careful, James. He’ll do anything to get it back.’

  She cut the call. The horse-faced man blinked up at him from the floor. Tony Schliemann, of the National Security Agency – the final piece, and what grotesque sense it made. James felt hatred flare and spit inside him – hatred for the man at his feet, for Zender and Schliemann, for Silk, Strang and de la Mere, and all the rest of them who felt entitled to make the world dance to their ugly tune. He pulled another cable from the back of the TV and dragged the horse-faced man into the bathroom. He stretched him out on the floor, pulled his shoes and socks off, and bound his feet to the chrome pipe that ran up the tiled wall to the shower head. The man tried to pull his legs away, but he was still groggy and his movements had no strength. When James gagged him with a hand towel, he started to struggle in earnest, but it was too late. James went and turned the clock radio on loud, then returned with the marble lamp from the bedside table.

  ‘I’m going to hurt you until you tell me what I want to know.’

  The lamp was heavy, with a square base and sharp corners. He smashed it into the middle toe of the horse-faced man’s left foot. He howled through his gag. Chips of tile fell from the wall. James started to swing again, then realised he hadn’t even asked the man anything yet. He was just venting his bile like any old jailhouse sadist. But what did the state of his soul matter now? He had to find Nat.

  He pulled the gag aside and the man started to plead. James slapped him until he shut up.

  ‘Zender’s address.’

  ‘Non, non monsieur. Je ne connais pas ce monsieur. Je vous jure que je ne le connais pas.’

  James re-fastened the gag and swung the lamp base.

  ‘Zender’s address.’

  He released the gag and the man started to gabble. He gagged him, pulverised another toe. He held his fingers to his lips – Ssshhh! – and lowered the gag again.

  ‘Zender’s address.’

  The horse-faced man stared into James’s eyes and shook his head. ‘Je ne sais pas, monsieur,’ he said sadly. ‘Laissez moi, je vous en prie, je vous en prie.’

  He looked down at the man’s bloodied eye, his face red and lopsided from his collision with the door. Zender doesn’t tell anyone where he lives, Nat had said. He went back into the bedroom and saw the horse-faced man’s cellphone on the bedside table. He picked it up and looked at the message again. Who was he sending it to? He checked the message details.

  Etienne.

  He went back into the bathroom.

  ‘Take me to Etienne’s place. Then I’ll let you go.’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur, d’accord.’

  James pulled out the MAB handgun and checked it over, then untied the man’s hands and feet and stuffed the cables into his pockets.

  ‘Put your shoes on.’

  His broken toes had already swollen to twice their original size and he winced as he packed them into his trainers.

  ‘I know what Etienne looks like, so don’t try to trick me. Stand up. Do you have a car?’

  ‘Oui, Monsieur.’

  ‘Take me. Do not try to run or I will kill you.’

  ‘Why didn’t Grey Tony tell me to take a hike when I tried to sell him the IPD400?’ Nat said, pushing away the plate of untouched food.

  ‘Because you offered to destroy his career. Are you sure you will not try this exquisite dish?’

  Nat folded her arms. Zender studied her plate.

  ‘And because your offer made him suspect that I would not be able to deliver unto him what he and his people craved. Tony doesn’t trust anyone, least of all me,’ Zender went on, pulling her plate towards him and spearing a piece of raw lamb with his fork. ‘You presented him with a plan B. He spoke to me after you made your pitch, demanding results in the most irate terms – this, you will recall, was shortly after that enchanting afternoon at the Riad when you favoured me with a procession of unforgettable delights, then asked me to get the IPD400 back.’

  Nat did not like to be reminded of the occasion and her voice was tight with anger.

  ‘You were never going to sell it back to me. You just played me along.’

  ‘How much did you persuade him to pay, I wonder?’

  ‘Why should I tell you that?’

  ‘In any event, it simply remains for Dr Palatine to trot along with the miraculous device tucked under his arm, and the deal can be concluded. To that end, Tony is flying in tonight. I expect him imminently.’

  ‘Grey Tony. . . Here?’

  ‘Yes. I thought it for the best.’

  ‘He wants to kill me, you said so yourself.’

  ‘I dare say he can be pacified, once we have put this blackmail plot of yours to rest.’

  As he spoke, they heard a long, fretful whine from the buzzer in the hall.

  ‘Go upstairs,’ said Zender. ‘Find my bedroom. I will let you know when to make your entrance.’

  She took off her shoes and ran into the hallway, up the red-carpeted stairs to a large landing. She stepped away from the banisters, heard the clack of the door lock, then the bland west coast accent, the voice that always sounded as if it needed to unburden itself of a minor gripe:

  ‘It’s over an hour since we left the airport. Seems we’ve been followed by every fucking birdwatcher in Algiers.’

  ‘Etienne looked after you, I am sure.’

  ‘Did he? It would’ve been simpler to meet in town.’

  ‘Now that you are here, we can be confident that our meeting will remain private. Come in and have some Champagne.’

  ‘Is this where you live? It’s like an old people’s home.’

  She heard leather-soled shoes striking the tiled floor.

  ‘You haven’t retired, have you, Zender? Maybe you should.’

  James would never find her – how could he? Nat thought of trying to sweet-talk the chef and his wife into letting her out of the house; but no one who worked for Zender would ever disobey him. They would alert their boss and then she would be forced into an encounter with Grey Tony. She dreaded an encounter with Grey Tony. The thought of it set ripples of fear lapping at her heart.

  She did not care to wait in Zender’s bedroom. The next room down the corridor had the numb, disinfectant-tinged air of a place that has not been touched since someone died there. She went and sat down on an ottoman on the landing instead, then got up and opened the door to the room opposite, so she could run there if someone came. Grey Tony won’t stay the night, she thought, he’d die without his twenty-five square metres of Hilton, his power shower and sachets of branded body wash.

  After a few minutes, she started to feel sleepy. That was all the wine she had drunk. The vintage Champagne, the perfect white Burgundy and impeccable claret. Zender’s palatable poisons. She lay back on the ottoman and drew her knees up. It was uncomfortable, but strangely peaceful. If this is all I am, she thought, a woman resting on an ottoman in someone else’s house in Algiers, that’s fine. I’m not the woman I thought I was anyway. Not the woman I was three weeks ago, when I sold arms for Grosvenor Systems and fucked over anyone who got in my way. Not the woman I was before I got Magda attacked and Nikolai beaten up, before I got mauled by a Mauritanian prince. I’ll doze here until Grey Tony leaves, then I’ll stroll out into the night. I’ll wait tables in a smart café and one day James will be sitting there, reading a newspaper. I lean down and kiss him, his lips are warm and I taste salt on his skin. His fingers tremble with wanting to touch me.

  The horse-faced man’s car was an old Renault saloon parked in a
sidestreet two blocks from the hotel. He drove carefully, while James kept up a flow of threats and instructions to stop him thinking about possible means of escape. They entered the district just off the harbour front where Nat had been stared at by the gang of youths, and pulled up in front of one of a row of tatty apartment blocks.

  The horse-faced man pointed at the entrance to a stairwell. ‘Etienne. Apartment there. Number forty-one.’

  ‘Where is Etienne’s car?’

  ‘Garage.’ He pointed down the street.

  ‘Drive there. What sort of car is it?’

  ‘Jeep Cherokee.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Black.’

  They turned down a sidestreet and arrived at a row of three lock-ups.

  ‘Drive on.’

  When they were thirty yards past, James had him turn the car round and draw up behind a parked van. He checked the time: 9.35.

  ‘Call Etienne,’ he said, handing back the horse-faced man’s phone. ‘Tell him to go to Zender’s. Tell him he has to pick up the woman he drove there earlier. Tell him Zender is busy and will not take any calls.’

  The horse-faced man looked appalled. ‘I not tell Etienne these things,’ he said. ‘I cheat him, put knife in.’ He pointed to his stomach.

  James aimed the gun at the same place. ‘I’ll put a bullet in if you don’t. Say Zender is angry and you’re only doing what he told you to.’

  The man looked at him and started to protest. James got out of the car, then reached in and pulled his captive into the passenger seat and shut the door. He walked round to the driver’s side, watching the horse-faced man in case he decided to make a run for it. Not that he could run very well, with his damaged toes. There didn’t seem to be much fight left in him anyway. James got behind the wheel and took the cutting tool out of his pocket, switched it on and tested it on the glove compartment door. A wedge of mangled plastic landed in the horse-faced man’s lap. James held the whirring grinder up to his prisoner’s nose.

  ‘Call him.’

  The horse-faced man drew his head back sharply and banged it against the window. ‘No. Please. I call him. I call him.’

  James switched the tool off. The horse-faced man fumbled at the keypad, unable to get his shaking hands to dial. Eventually he put the phone to his ear.

  ‘Etienne? Djamel. . . ’

  Even without the phone next to his ear, James could hear the viciousness in Etienne’s voice. He pressed the revolver into Djamel’s bruised cheek to stiffen his resolve. Djamel spun the line James had given him. Etienne stopped shouting and listened, then shouted some more and hung up. James took the phone back.

  ‘He not believing me,’ said Djamel. ‘He pick up man at Marrakech airport, take him to house. Now he have to go back. Why?’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘American man. I not know.’

  He took out the MAB handgun and slugged Djamel on the temple. The man slumped sideways against the passenger window. James lowered the seat-back until Djamel was lying flat, then tied his hands and feet with the cables from his hotel room. He turned the ignition and the engine fired readily enough. He turned it off again, got low in his seat and watched the lock-ups. Three minutes later, Etienne walked up to one of them, swung up the door and disappeared inside. Headlights lit up the shopfront opposite and a big Jeep Cherokee bounced out. As soon as it had cleared the end of the street, James threw the Renault into a tight half-circle and went after it.

  Etienne drove fast through streets that were familiar to him, and James had to keep his distance or risk Zender’s driver noticing that he was being followed by Djamel’s Renault. Then he lost him. Etienne had zigzagged up a series of backstreets and was gone. James kept pointing the Renault uphill through the series of bends, driving as fast as he dared. Just as he was turning the last corner at the top of the hill, he caught the high rear lights of the Jeep as it joined a main road and accelerated away towards the outskirts of town. A minute later, he was back on Etienne’s trail, following the Jeep up a long, unlit avenue on a steep incline, higher and higher into the darkness stretched out above the southern hills.

  The Jeep’s brake lights blinked and it heeled abruptly right, then stopped outside a tall, shuttered house screened by a fig tree. James took a left and started looking for a house that might be empty. He found one with no cars and no lights, and drove the Renault up a short drive to the garage. Djamel was still out cold. He’d work the cables off his ankles and wrists eventually, but it might take him all night. Good enough. He got out of the car and locked the doors, then ran back towards Zender’s house. When he got to the corner diagonally opposite, he hunched down low and watched. Etienne was standing in the light from the porch, being harangued by someone inside the house. After a minute, the front door slammed and Etienne walked back to the Jeep. He unlocked the door, then checked up and down the street, hand hovering over the lapel of his jacket. Watching Etienne stand there, spiky hair fringed with red from the interior lights of the Jeep, James was jolted by a powerful compulsion to kill him there and then.

  Not now, he ordered himself. You can’t risk a gunfight. Anyway, you know where he lives.

  Nat woke to a shout of laughter from the salon downstairs. The mood of languid fatalism that had stolen over was gone. She sat up and checked her watch: she’d been dozing for twenty minutes. She listened with increasing irritation to the voices below: Zender humorous and affable, Grey Tony businesslike and urbane. The faces they showed to each other, and to the world – sophisticated fronts, carefully wrought and practised over many years. But what were they really like? Different in most ways, but at heart the same: cold, greedy men. Whatever they’re plotting now, I’m not going to be part of it, she thought angrily. I won’t let Grey Tony satisfy his insatiable lust for the IPD400 at James’s expense, or mine. And how dare Zender lock me up in his hideous house! She ran downstairs and threw open the door to the salon.

  ‘Natalya,’ said Zender. ‘We were just talking about you.’

  He was seated in a library chair by the fireplace. Grey Tony was on the sofa, with his back turned. The NSA procurement chief stood and faced her, an expression of schoolmasterly reprimand on his not-quite-handsome face.

  ‘Claude thinks I’m being too hard on you,’ he said. ‘He’s a persuasive fellow, but I’m not convinced.’

  ‘So shoot me,’ Nat shouted at him. ‘Do it yourself, you spineless dickhead. Not got a gun?’

  She ran to Zender’s desk, yanked open the drawer and upended it. Amid the torrent of pens, notepads and paperclips, a Remington automatic clunked onto the desktop. She pulled the clip, saw it was loaded. Grey Tony was edging towards the door. She flung the gun at his head. He dodged and the gun crashed into the mirror above the fireplace, sending shards of glass cascading onto the marble hearth.

  ‘Shoot me,’ Nat screamed at him. ‘You can’t, can you. You want to shoot me and you want to fuck me, but you can’t do either because you haven’t got the balls. You dress up in your fancy suits and flash your NSA badge and run your clever little scheme to make yourself rich, but underneath it all, Grey Tony, you’re just a dreary fucking faceless wimp.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Zender, greatly enjoying himself. ‘That is harsh.’

  ‘You had my friend Magda beaten half to death,’ Nat croaked, unable to shout any more but still shaking with rage.

  ‘She deserved it. I won’t be blackmailed.’

  ‘Well you’ve fucked yourself over big time. I’m giving everything Magda found out to Internal Affairs. Unless you kill me first.’ She held out her arms and glared.

  This threat goaded Grey Tony into action. He stooped and picked the Remington out of the broken glass strewn across the hearth.

  ‘You’re a stupid little whore, Natalya Kocharian,’ he said. ‘And stupid little whores have to be slapped down, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I would urge against, Tony,’ said Zender. ‘A glass of Champagne to soothe the nerves, then I’m sure we can find a more pr
opitious way to settle our differences.’

  ‘She’s overstepped the mark,’ said Grey Tony, pointing the gun at Nat. ‘There’s nothing to discuss.’

  Despite these resolute words, Grey Tony was staring at the gun gripped tightly in his hand as if it had nothing to do with him. Sweat beaded his temples and his jaw bulged. At that moment, the door flew open and James stepped into the room. He aimed the MAB at Zender, then swung it round to the man pointing a gun at Nat.

  ‘Dr Palatine,’ said Zender. ‘How timely. May I introduce Tony Schliemann of the NSA. A fanatical admirer of your work, whom I don’t believe you’ve met.’

  ‘No,’ said James.

  He studied the tall, well-groomed man standing in front of the shattered mirror, noted how awkwardly the gun was perched in his hand, and laced three bullets in a diagonal across his heart.

  The NSA man stretched out one arm to steady himself, closed his hand over nothing, swayed for a few seconds, then rocked back. His skull cracked against the hearth, and across his ashen face, framed by the florid marble fireplace, there spread a grimace as horrified as you might expect from a man who thought he was untouchable but finds himself nearly dead.

  ‘I’m glad I introduced you,’ said Zender, ‘for that is something I have often been tempted to do.’

  As he finished speaking, Zender threw himself forward and reached over the corpse of Grey Tony for the gun which had fallen from his hand. He moved with surprising speed, but Nat was quicker. She kicked the Remington away, picked it up and joined James by the door.

  ‘A charming sight,’ said Zender, regaining his chair and smiling at them as if nothing had happened. ‘You were made for each other, I dare say. But Dr Palatine’s sangfroid is alarming even for an ex-soldier. I would be very wary of him, Natalya.’

  ‘Hold your hands out in front of you. Don’t move.’

  ‘You have dispensed with the master,’ Zender said, doing as James had ordered, ‘as was your right, and even your obligation, given his murderous intentions towards Ms Kocharian. But why trouble your conscience with the hired hand?’