by Blake Banner
“I’m from the James Bond Eshcort Agenshy, Mish Ethelbaum.”
“Funny. I would give serious money to know who you work for.”
“That makes two of us. Change the subject. This one goes precisely nowhere.”
She sighed. “All right, what are you going to do with Frank?”
“I am going to feed him misinformation, and when he has passed it on I am going to arrange for him to visit his friend Colonel Gilbert.”
“How long is that going to take?” She sucked another oyster into her mouth. “Not that I am not having fun, but if you recall, I am supposed to be in DC.”
“It is hard to be precise, but I would hazard an educated guess that by tomorrow evening we will be comfortably ensconced in the first-class lounge of a seven-four-seven, headed for DC.”
“Seriously? That soon?”
“You’re the quantum physicist, Lois, you know how fast information can spread.”
We finished the oysters without talking much more. The empty dish and the champagne were cleared away and the bottle of Rioja was placed on the table. The waiter gave me a drop to taste and I told him it was fine. He went away and the sirloins arrived.
That was when my burner rang.
I told her, “Excuse me,” and answered the phone. “Yeah?”
“Head south out of Cadiz on the CA 33. You’ll come to a long spit of sandy beaches on your right that connects Cadiz to the mainland. After a little more than a mile you’ll come to a turning on your right that leads to a parking lot. A little beyond it you’ll see a restaurant. Ignore the restaurant and walk down onto the beach. I’ll see you there in an hour.”
“Yeah, sure, that sounds great, but listen…” I paused, waiting.
“What? I’m on the clock, friend.”
“Sure, I know, but that’s a kind of lonely place. You understand that this is not the kind of thing you can fix with a pair of pliers and a strong stomach.”
“Yeah, I figured that much.”
He hung up. I shrugged. “He didn’t have the call traced. He’s winging it and flying solo.”
“How do you know he didn’t have the call traced?”
“Because I made it easy for him, but he was in a hurry to hang up. He was scared he was being traced. He thinks I might be Uncle Sam.”
She cut into the meat. It was rare and I saw the tip of her tongue dart out and lick her lips. Then she asked, “Is that good?”
“It might be. I have an hour to get there. We’ll finish this and then you’d better have your dessert in your room.”
Five minutes later my phone rang again. I knew who it was.
“Is Maria.”
“Hello.”
“I give him the note. Now I am alone.”
I told her where to be and when and hung up again.
Diana raised an eyebrow. “I’ll wait for you to get back and we can have dessert together. I fancy something with lots of cream.”
I stared at her a moment. She didn’t look up from her meat until she stuffed a chunk in her mouth. Then she smiled at me as she chewed.
After a moment I cut into my steak and said, “Well, that thought will keep me warm through the long, cold minutes we are apart.”
Jesus!” she said. “See? Sentimental. It’s just biology, Peter. Just biology.”
“Do me a favor, Lois, will you. If we have dessert together, and it involves cream. Try to look just the way you look now, but don’t open your mouth.”
She shrugged. “OK.”
Shortly after that I took her up to our room, told her I would not be long, and went down to collect the rental car. It was one of those nondescript French or Italian bubbles that all look the same. I met Maria and paid her, and refused a further invitation to smoke a joint with her, and then followed Frank Mendez’s instructions and cruised down the broad, brilliant Avenida Ana de Viya, enjoying the balmy sea air. I followed on to the Avenida José León de Carranza and at the intersection bore right along the seafront. Soon the buildings fell away and all I could see was the white sand and the black ocean with its luminous, rolling spray. Then the sand started to rise into tall dunes peppered with gnarled and twisted bushes, and the light of the city began to fall behind me. After a minute or so I saw a turnoff to the right that led into a parking lot, and a hundred yards farther on a large, white building which was brightly illuminated.
I pulled into the lot, killed the lights and the engine and climbed out. The dunes were high at this point, rising to maybe eight or ten feet. Through them there was a wooden walkway that led down to the beach. I followed it.
The tide was out and the waves, rolling and crashing onto the smooth, wet sand, looked very far away. The moon had not risen yet, and the dunes blocked out most of the light. I found myself listening with care to each and every sound.
Pretty soon the dunes leveled out and I was on a vast, flat white beach. That stretched for several miles north and south. Behind me and to the north, maybe a hundred yards away I could make out the noises of the restaurant, music, voices, and a few dim lights. Aside from that all there was all around me was gloom, and the sigh and thud of the waves.
Then I sensed him. I didn’t hear him or see him. I was aware of him, maybe fifteen feet away in the shadows of the dunes. His first words to me were, “I have you covered. Do anything weird and I’ll blow your heart right out of your chest.”
“And say goodbye to ever laying your hands on the NPP. Did they tell you it suddenly went invisible last night?”
“Who the hell are you?”
A sudden rush of anger made me snarl. “Fuck you! Come out of the damned shadows where I can see you. And don’t ask me stupid damned questions, Mendez.”
A darker patch of gloom began to move and after a couple of steps resolved itself into a man. He was short, maybe five ten, with broad shoulders, short legs and thick, curly black hair. He was dressed in what looked like an expensive, silk suit and had his Glock semiautomatic in his right hand. His face was nondescript made ugly by his expression. He said, “You from the Firm?”
“Nope.”
“Who are you?”
“Nobody.”
He hesitated, then snarled, “So you’re no fuckin’ use to me!”
He thrust out the gun and pulled the trigger once, twice, then frantically four or five times to the castrated “click” of a dull striker.
“What the…?”
“Put your weapon away, Frank. Nobody’s going to get shot here tonight.” He hesitated a moment, then let his arm fall by his side. I spoke again. “Now come a little closer, where I can break your fucking arms if you go for a weapon again.”
He came a little closer, until he was standing on the wooden walkway. He was beginning to look nervous because he knew he had lost control of the meeting and he didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t give him much help.
“You ready to listen, Frank?”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m going to tell you exactly how it is. You lost the programmer. She took it from you and I took it from her. Now I have it. Don’t talk. Try to shut up and do something smart for once in your stupid life. You screwed up, Frank. You fucked up. You did it all wrong and you lost the NPP. Now I have it.
“Along the way I killed the four guys you got Langley to send along. You heard about that yet? I don’t think you’re flavor of the month in Virginia right now. Then I killed your nine-man team out on Lake Superior. Colonel Gilbert said to tell you hi. He said that just before I shot him between the eyes in his Zodiac. And then I shot the girl.”
“You shot her? She’s dead?”
I laughed an ugly, brash laugh, playing the part. “Yes, Frank. When I shoot people, they tend to become dead.”
“Describe her.”
“Screw you! Average, redhead, small, pretty if you put makeup on her. Expressionless and crazy. She got on my nerves. She had the damned NPP stuck in her bra and she talked a lot of shit about particles and molecules. But the most i
nteresting thing she said was that there wasn’t a government on Earth who would not pay a billion dollars for that little bay.”
“She’s dead?”
“I said she’s dead! Yes, she’s dead, Frank! Pay attention! And I have the NPP. Have I got your attention yet?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“There are things I want, Frank, and there are things I do not want. I do not want a lot of complications and a lot of people chasing me around the world trying to kill me. So I am prepared to give you the device at a bargain basement price. Then you can take the hassle and the risk, and you can join the Forbes Five Hundred. My advice? Sell it to Bill Gates.”
“Where is it?”
“Man, you are stupid.”
“What do you want for it? How much?”
“Five hundred million.”
“You’re out of your mind!”
“Wrong answer, Frank! Wrong answer! What do you think? Do you think maybe there is one of my old SAS pals lying in these dunes with a sniper rifle trained on your skull? At a guess, what do you think the odds are? Now, with that in mind, what fucking use do you think you are to me if you can’t get me the fucking money?”
My voice echoed down the empty beach and I wondered for a moment if I was overdoing the part. But it seemed to me that the more I yelled and the more I swore, the more submissive he became. When he spoke, his voice was trembling.
“How can I get a hold of five hundred million dollars?”
I sighed and shook my head. “I have the most valuable thing on the planet in my possession and I can’t get a miserable five hundred mil for it? You have hackers! Hack the European Commission’s accounts! Do something! Swing it!”
He was becoming frantic, which was what I wanted. I wanted him with tunnel vision, totally focused on recovering the NPP. He was saying, “I could maybe raise two hundred and fifty, but I need time…”
“Tonight. Beg, steal, borrow. How much can you raise tonight?”
“Maybe a hundred and fifty… But by tomorrow, maybe another…”
“Ah, shut the fuck up, you piece of chickenshit! You know the Woodstock Bar on the seafront?”
He nodded. “Yeah,”
“Be there in one hour. Bring a laptop. You’re going to make a transfer to a bank in Belize. It’s an operation you should be familiar with. You’d better bring enough, Frank, or I walk out of here and you will never see me again. But you,” I pointed at him, “will be having some very long and interesting conversations with those nice men in Langley.”
I turned and walked away, smiling to myself. I didn’t return to my car. I stepped off the wooden walkway into the cover of the dunes and lay down beside a bush. He didn’t take long to follow. He was walking slowly, with his cell to his ear, speaking in a hushed voice.
“You have to help me out. No, no! You’re not listening. Helen is dead. He killed her at the same time as Tom… Tom Gilbert, yes. They’re already finding the bodies at Lake Superior. He is some kind of SAS assassin. I have no fucking idea who he works for, but he is a serious problem. He has the stone and he wants at least two hundred mil for it, tonight! I know he’s insane…”
That was the last thing he ever said. I smashed my knuckles into the back of his neck. He dropped the phone and I caught it as he went down. He hit the ground facedown and I stamped hard on the same spot where I’d hit him, to confirm the kill. Then I spoke into the telephone.
“Hang up. I’m going to send you a WhatsApp. Then you and me are going to talk numbers.”
The phone went dead. A cool breeze wafted in off the sighing, pulsing ocean. I found the last number he had dialed and sent a WhatsApp with the number of my burner. After that I took a photograph of Frank Mendez’s dead face on my burner and walked back to my hire car. Then I drove back to the Occidental, where I had a cream dessert waiting for me.
Fourteen
I didn’t go up for my cream dessert. I called and had her meet me down in the lobby. I parked out front and went in to wait for her. She emerged from the elevator looking a little confused, with fear and hope fighting for supremacy in her eyes.
She came up close, put her palms on my chest, searching my face, and gave me a wifely kiss.
“What’s this about?”
“About?” I smiled. “We had our dinner interrupted. I thought it would be nice to go out for a nightcap.”
“Oh…” Her eyes were still searching. “Is that OK? Is that advisable?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I led her out to the car and we got in. We cruised in silence down the Avenida Juan Carlos I, which was the main drag of the modern part of the town, and turned in to the seafront at Calle José García Agulló. There I parked, practically on the beach, one hundred yards from the Woodstock Bar, and we took a table on the wooden terrace of the Arsenio Manila, a mere fifty yards from, and within clear sight of, the Woodstock.
I ordered a dry martini and a gin and tonic for Diana. I was learning to read her various types of expressionlessness, and the one she was wearing right then meant she was beginning to get mad.
“Is it OK if I order my own drinks? Or at least check with me what I want? Maybe I don’t want a gin and tonic now.”
I gave her a bland smile and asked, “Have you earned that right? The right to independence?”
It was interesting. She remained just as expressionless, but two bright pink patches appeared on her cheeks.
“Excuse me?”
“I asked if you had earned the right to independence, the right to order your own drinks and food.”
She shook her head and her eyes were bright with anger. “You think you know me, but you don’t know me. You don’t know what I have done. You don’t know anything about me.”
“That’s why I’m asking, Helen. Is it Helen? Or is Helen another one of the fake yous who hide behind your expressionless face. Do you remember who you are? Do you know? Did you ever know?”
“What is this, pop-psychology hour on the Peter Ethelbaum Show? Is it Peter? Or is it John?”
“That’s the name you gave me. I was born Henry. Nobody liked it, so by the time I was one and could field strip a Heckler and Kotch, I had become Harry. Since then, I have always been Harry.”
She looked taken aback. “Harry…”
“That’s me.”
“It doesn’t suit you.”
“So what have you done, Diana, Lois, Helen, to earn the right to order your own drinks?”
“How is that any of your goddamned business?”
“It might be. Have you got the stone with you?”
She went very still. “In my bag. Why?”
“Masked with magnets?”
“It’s in a small carton, with forty fridge magnets taped to it with duct tape.”
“Give it to me.”
Her extreme stillness became almost unearthly. “What are you going to do?”
“I am probably going to receive a phone call in a little while. Then a man, perhaps some men, are going to go to that bar over there. Don’t look! Smile like I am being witty and charming.”
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the burner, found the photograph of Frank Mendez and placed it on the table in front of her.
“The men who might turn up, will be his bosses.”
She picked up the burner and stared at the photograph for a long while. Eventually she gave a small, private smile and handed it back.
“Thank you. You’re amazing.”
For a fraction of a second I wondered what it would be like to be told you were amazing for the music you composed, or the philosophy you had developed. But I suppressed the thought and took back the phone.
“He was talking to them on the phone when I killed him. He was telling them I had killed you. They heard me break his neck. Then I sent them my phone number. I am expecting them to call. When they do, I want to be holding the stone. You are too vulnerable.”
“But when they see me…”
“What? They’ll r
ecognize you?”
If it’s Omar…”
“You guys were on first name terms? I thought you were just a lowly lab assistant.”
Her voice became a hiss. “He mustn’t see me!”
“Aren’t you flattering yourself a bit?”
“All right!” She said it through gritted teeth. “I was a senior research assistant! Fine! You caught me out! Bravo! The important point here is that he might recognize me, and he mustn’t!”
“Give me the stone.”
She shook her head and as she did, the phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“I believe I have a message from you.”
The voice was cultured, Eton and Oxford, with a gentle, Arabic modulation to it. It was a voice accustomed to luxury and privilege, accustomed to getting what it wanted when it wanted. This might actually be fun. I looked Diana in the eye and said:
“You know the Woodstock Bar, on the seafront?”
“Of course.”
“If you want to buy what I have to sell, then be there in half an hour. And, Omar? Come prepared to make a grown-up bank transfer. I broke Mendez’s neck because he insulted me by offering me a hundred and fifty million. Please hold the line a second.”
I sent him the picture of Mendez and put the phone to my ear again.
“Please, Professor Arian, take that as a sincere token of my desire to do serious business with you.”
There was a brief silence, then, “You have the stone? How do you know my name?”
“I have it in my possession, and I have it masked. That’s why you haven’t been able to track it for the last couple of days. As to how I know what I know, well, you’ll just have to guess and imagine.”
“What about Helen?”
“What about her?”
“Is she dead?”
I gave a brief laugh. “Let me think back. The list is pretty long. There were four CIA officers from New York. That was before you realized she had actually taken the stone. Then there were no less than nine mercenaries led by Colonel Thomas Gilbert. That was a good night’s work. And just after I had got the stone from Helen, I put a shot through his forehead. Her, I cut her throat, loaded her with junk from the Albatross and dropped her in the lake.”