by Fritz Galt
As soon as Bane and the president departed the restaurant, everybody else reached for their wallets, paid and left.
Inspector Stojanovic and his fellow agent left with Bane and the president, forming Bane’s loose security detachment.
Mick and Natalie reached the elevator lobby just in time to see that Bane and the president’s elevator stopped on the ninth floor.
The two lawyers’ elevator went up to the eighth floor.
Natalie turned to Gerard and Jack and tapped them on the shoulders.
“Such stylish hair,” Gerard remarked. “I said to myself, ‘Who is this beautiful blonde with Mick?’” They embraced.
Then Mick pushed the Up button.
Beside them stood two beefy young men that Mick didn’t recognize. They wore broadly striped suits with something bulging from their pockets.
Jack said good-bye and found a chair for himself in the airy lobby.
The men entered the elevator first and punched the button for the ninth floor. Mick selected floor five. One man checked himself out in the elevator’s mirror and plucked a hair out of his nose. The other studied Natalie and tugged at his crotch.
Gerard, Mick and Natalie stepped off on the fifth floor and walked purposefully away.
“President’s men. Right off the farm,” Mick surmised.
When the elevator doors closed, they stopped and rang for another elevator. They took that one to the eighth floor, Room 850.
Mick knocked four times, paused and knocked a fifth time. The door opened to reveal an engineer huddled over an open suitcase with a built-in receiver, tape recorder and earphones. A tiny speaker already broadcast a Serbian conversation that was taking place directly above them, one floor up. Gerard crossed over to the speakers, turned the volume down and whispered a translation to the lawyers, who only spoke English.
Mick and Natalie listened directly to the speakers.
“Thank you,” Zoran was saying. “You may leave the room.”
“Of course, boss.” It was Dragana’s voice.
“I’m not your boss. Gentlemen, I want it known that I’m not this beautiful girl’s boss. She can come and go as she pleases. I don’t run a bordello.”
“She and I already know each other quite well,” Bane said. His voice was thick and slurred. “Let her stay.”
“As you wish,” Zoran said. “Come and sit by me.”
The voices grew more audible as Dragana moved closer to those who spoke.
The two lawyers shook their heads with dissatisfaction. They probably wouldn’t accept the recording in court, and besides, the president had yet to speak.
“Would you oblige me with some chilled champagne?” Zoran asked.
“No. Just coffee for me,” the president said.
“Certainly,” Dragana said.
They heard the rustle of her dress.
“Psst. Lula. Kafa molim vas. Za sve. Hvala.” Coffee for everyone, please, Dragana asked another woman.
The other voices amplified gradually. They were discussing American coffee.
“For three years I was a walking headache,” the president was relating. “I had nothing but this miserable brown water to drink. It was a psychological prison for me.”
Everyone laughed.
The coffee arrived. There was silence as they swigged it down.
Then a red light began to blink.
“Trouble,” Mick said. He picked up the earphone. “Yes?”
Down in the lobby, Jack Hamlin was speaking into his cufflink.
“Four men just arrived. Doesn’t look good. They’re carrying long thin bags, and I don’t think they’re golf clubs. They’re heading for the elevators.”
“Tell me which floor,” Mick said.
Bane was speaking again. “I’d like to discuss our little venture south of the border.”
“Bad timing,” Mick muttered. “Bane’s about to broach the war just as we coached him.” He leaned into the microphone that transmitted to Jack’s earpiece. “Stop the men before they enter the elevator.”
“Too late. Door’s closed.”
“Natalie, call for the elevator to go up and hold it.”
Natalie rushed out of the room. Mick leaned in closer to listen to the speaker.
“Both of you have worked together well. You’ve produced extraordinary results,” the president said. “I want to officially thank you, Bane and Zoran, for the incidents in Marseilles, Athens, Skopje and Sofia.”
“The place names,” Mick said to the lawyers. “Is that enough?”
The two men consulted each other with glances.
“For your purposes this evening, it should suffice,” the young one said.
“But for the purposes of a courtroom,” the other said, “this recording was made without the legal consent—”
Mick left the room.
Natalie stood smiling across at the men who had already slid short-barreled rifles out of their slipcases. Her hand held the “Open Door” button.
“Good evening,” Mick said, and slipped into the elevator car.
“Evening,” a man responded in Macedonian.
Mick had always heard that those who lived by the gun, died by the gun. His hand dangled against an automatic pistol in his hip pocket. He prayed he wouldn’t need to use it.
They rode up one floor and the elevator door opened.
Mick guided his wife to the right. The men parted to the left and stopped in front of Room 950.
“We can’t let them get the president,” Natalie said.
“I won’t.” He pulled the automatic from the front pocket of his trousers and checked the clip.
They were too late.
A gun blast melted the door lock to Room 950. Their guns blazing, the Macedonians leapt into what turned out to be a barrage of returning fire.
The first two fell into the room, guns rattling away. The other two leaped back into the hallway.
Mick heard anguished groans inside, a few short bursts of gunfire, then silence.
The two remaining Macedonians peered through the doorway into the room. Apparently, nobody on either side had survived, and they advanced boldly.
Mick rushed up to the open doorway.
The two presidential bodyguards in the wide-striped suits lay sprawled on the floor beside the pair of Macedonian attackers. The remaining two Macedonians fired forward as they advanced on the hot tub room where the Deputy Minister of the MUP, the president and the young warlord must have taken refuge.
Men and a young woman shrieked as bullets ricocheted around the room.
When the Macedonians rounded the corner, they were met by a cool burst of gunfire. Their guns exploded in wild zigzags across the tub room as they fell. The two landed on their backs, shaking in a final death throe.
Her long black hair tangled in her face, Dragana ran from the tub room and nearly stumbled over the bodies, a red-hot assault rifle smoking in her hands.
Mick was surprised to see Natalie right behind him. She caught the young woman before she could leave.
“The others have no guns,” Dragana croaked hoarsely.
At that moment, the lawyers, Inspector Stojanovic and the MUP agent entered the room.
“Jesus Christ,” the younger lawyer drawled.
Mick stepped over the heap of bodies and peered into the rub room.
Zoran’s intestines lay gruesomely exposed, his shirt ripped off by bullets. He seemed stapled to the far wall by a row of bullets.
Bane, the dreaded heavy hand of the secret police, had slid into the hot tub in a puddle of his own blood and vomit, one arm draped over a missing lung, his other arm holding a cigarette high overhead, as if to keep it dry.
The president crawled out from behind the hot tub on his hands and knees. He looked at the team in the doorway with bewilderment. Red droplets speckled his white hair. Frightened eyes surrendered as his pale cheeks quivered.
“Killer,” Dragana screamed at him.
“Stop. No more shoot
ing,” Inspector Stojanovic said, and grabbed her by the shoulders as he stepped into the room.
“Dragana,” Mick said quietly. “You have done a good job. You have protected the president.”
“…by killing Macedonians.”
President Nikic was regaining his feet. “You’ll pay for this,” he said in near-perfect English. “All of you in this room will pay for this atrocity.”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” the younger lawyer said. “I’m an investigator for the International War Crimes Tribunal. Exactly whose rights are you defending? Are you defending Bane Djukanovic, the murderer of Dr. Moore of the American Embassy? Or are you defending Zoran Rodic, a gun smuggler, financier of the war effort, bandit of Slavonia and rapist of Bosnia? Both are agents provocateurs in Marseilles, Athens, Skopje and Sofia.”
“You can’t charge me for what they have done.”
Dragana ripped the microphone out of her bra. “You mean what all of you have done. Here it is, you killer. All on tape.”
“That’s right,” Inspector Stojanovic said, an audiocassette in hand. “Should any blood be spilled in Macedonia, it will be on you.”
“What blood in Macedonia? There is no war.”
“That’s exactly right,” Mick said. “And there will be no war, will there, Mr. President?”
The man didn’t answer. He seemed to be collecting his cards, and counting his hand before responding.
“The Americans can’t touch me. Murder investigators can’t violate our sovereignty.”
He looked at the tape in the inspector’s hand.
“That tape can’t stop me.”
Then he looked at the two lawyers who were smugly shaking their heads.
“You can’t try me.”
“The World Court can. With proof like this, we can haul your ass out of the country right now,” the older lawyer said.
Inspector Stojanovic stepped forward, grabbed one of the president’s arms and twisted it behind his back.
“Okay,” the president said. “I’m convinced. There will be no war in Macedonia. Now somebody take me home.”
That was not enough for Mick. He snatched the audiotape away from the inspector and shook it at Nikic. “I want you to remember this tape. When you come to the negotiating table, when United Nations troops demand safe passage, when you get the first twinge of a desire to turn your army loose on some other hapless region, when you decide it’s time to torture and murder journalists and diplomats, I want you to remember this tape.”
Miroslav Nikic looked like a ruined man, as if the world had heaped yet another burden upon him.
Mick had no pity. “Get over yourself. You’re nobody’s victim but your own.”
He stuffed the audiocassette into his shirt pocket and took Natalie by the shoulders. Then he led her back through the scene.
Bodies lay awash in blood. Bullets had riddled the walls, smashed a television set and shattered picture windows. A burst water pipe sprayed water low and hard against the dead.
The two walked heavily down the carpeted hallway.
They passed Jack Hamlin who had just arrived by elevator, his gun drawn. Mick smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
Wordlessly, Mick and Natalie rode the elevator down to the open lobby that was still busy with arms merchants, the nouveau war riche, the mob, their dames and the elegant prostitutes smoking cigarettes in crushed velvet chairs.
The couple’s soiled footprints left a dark red trail across the white marble floor.
The hotel manager dropped a house phone and ran up to them. “Mr. Pierce, what were those shots?”
Mick inspected him tiredly. Then his eyes fell on Natalie. A smile had begun to play on her lips. She arched a mischievous eyebrow at him.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a room for the night?” he said. “With flowers.”
Mick refused to reveal to the hotel manager exactly who had died in the room on the top floor, or why. He only intimated that there were fewer guests to worry about, and that several ambulances might be useful.
He also didn’t reveal that he carried a valuable audiocassette in his shirt pocket and an automatic pistol in his trousers.
While the manager placed a few phone calls, Mick pressed Natalie up against a marble wall, examined the light dancing in her blue irises and contemplated quenching the smile on her lips with a kiss.
“Is that a gun in your pocket?” she asked.
“Would you like to find out?”
Before she could reply, he heard a rattle behind him and turned. The manager dangled a magnetic room card in his hand, but snatched it away before Mick could grab it.
“Room 213 is yours for the night. But there will be no flowers.”
Mick took the card without a word. Dismissing the man’s remark, he guided Natalie up a wide staircase.
“Mick, I’m not sure we should stay here tonight.”
“Why not? Are your espionage instincts working overtime?”
“You know there’s no shred of that in me.”
“Like hell there isn’t. I’ve seen you fire a gun, streak across the Balkans in that Jeep and stay clear-headed in the midst of a revolution. I’ve watched your fabrication skills in action as you passed yourself off as an inspector for the secret police.”
“I just feel creeped.”
He inserted the magnetic card into the door and found the handle slightly warm to the touch. He also found Natalie close to combustion.
He could barely insert the card in the master power switch as one of her legs pinned his arm.
He thought he had clicked the card in place, but the room remained murky and warm.
He slipped the thin shoulder straps of her evening gown down to her elbows, and backed her into the far shadows of the room. He felt his blood throbbing throughout his body as she stood loosening his belt and working her hand into his pants.
She broke her lips away from his, and said, “Nope.”
“Did I ask you a question?” He nuzzled up against the nape of her neck.
“No.” One silky leg climbed up his back. “I just answered my own question.”
His trousers slid down to his ankles.
“What question?”
“You must be happy to see me.”
He groaned. His hands became entangled in her mane as he thrust his body hungrily toward her.
One arm firmly around the exquisite curve of her rear, he swung her toward the bed. She clung to him with one arm, the other tugging the pants off his ankles, then slipping off his briefs.
He lowered her, buried his head in her platinum hair and sucked on her ear while he flipped the backless evening gown off her breasts. She wore nothing beneath.
His fingers traveled the length of her firm body. Her skin was warm, her heart racing.
The bed crashed against the wall, and they tussled in rhythm.
“Mick,” she said between gasps. “Man, you haven’t forgotten a thing.”
“You’re not so rusty, either.”
“I knew we’d make love again.” She paused to blow her hair out of her face.
“The past is behind us,” he said, and licked her throat. “It’s plain old me.”
She caught her breath.
“Like before Yugoslavia? Before Alec disappeared?”
“Before all that.”
“Like our nights in Portugal?” she whispered.
“Before I even was a spook.”
His hands found new angles moving upward and cradled her youthful, round breasts.
“Are you the same man I married, or different?”
His mind raced back to the hacienda, the frustrated attempts at lovemaking, the self-torture. All he could remember any longer was the pleasure. He was unable to remember the pain, now that the knife had stopped twisting in his side.
“The name’s Pierce,” he said. “Mick Pierce. You’ll get to know me all over again.”
Her body suddenly sprang taut, and then she writhed, her breast
s seeking out every inch of his chest, her knees up tight against the small of his back. They fit like never before.
She squealed and blew fiery air against his ear.
He lurched forward. Their bed ground up against the wall and held there as if they were transferring all their powers. Then they released with a final moan, and relaxed in silence.
“Hello, Mick!” she cried.
When the hot wind had finally ceased rushing past his ears, he thought he heard movement.
Natalie stopped panting.
A reading lamp flickered on by a chair near the door.
“Hello, Mick.” It was Bernie Fletcher, mimicking them.
A gunshot split the air.
Natalie’s arm recoiled against Mick’s back.
Mick whirled around. By reflex, he grabbed her gun. It was his own hot pistol dangling from her hand.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
Her voice was steady, almost full of satisfaction. “Another spy bites the dust, that double-crossing bastard.”
A gun slipped from Bernie Fletcher’s hand and thumped against the carpet. He slid to the floor, leaving a glistening trail of blood down the back of his armchair.
His surprised eyes never closed.
“Whew.” Mick waved the stink of burned gunpowder away. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“From you, Mick.”
He squinted in the dark to read her face. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, get real. I’m sure you bagged your fair share during the course of your career.” Light played in the tranquil pools of her eyes.
“Honey,” he said. “I’ve never shot a man in my life.”
Book Two
Thunder in Formosa
This week I see dark clouds on the horizon.
—China’s negotiator on
Taiwan Straits issue
BLUE SKIES
Monday
Chapter 1
The concrete bunker trembled under André’s feet. A muffled boom rose like a moan under the earth’s limestone crust. Four thousand square miles of Chinese desert awoke early that morning.