by Matt Rogers
They parted and got out of the car. Klara stretched her arms over her head, relishing the morning sun. ‘Where to?’
King motioned to the narrow path between two residential buildings opposite the bar. ‘That’ll take you straight to the beach.’
‘Meet you there tomorrow?’ she said. ‘Around midday?’
‘Sounds like a plan. Goodbye, Klara.’
‘Bye, King. Thanks for the night.’
She turned and frolicked away without a care in the world. A young, free spirit on a Mediterranean island. King watched her go until she disappeared from sight, then turned and made for the bar, swinging the Mercedes’ key fob in a loop around his finger, whistling softly to himself.
Unaware that the illusion of calm would soon be shattered in devastating fashion.
CHAPTER 6
It happened at ten minutes to one.
The morning had been largely uneventful. Patrons trickled in, stopping by for a drink or two before continuing on their exploration of the seaside town. King served them all with a smile, content with his newfound good fortune, letting the positive aura wash off onto every customer he tended to. As usual, the atmosphere was pleasant and vibrant, soothed by the sound of tropical birds and the faint echo of waves lapping at the shore.
Then a man stepped through the open entrance and wandered towards the bar, walking with a pronounced limp in his right leg.
At first, King thought nothing of him.
He was clearly different to most of the people that came in, but that was nothing to be alarmed about. Instead of the carefree nature of a tourist with no particular destination in sight, he carried himself with a certain level of concentration and focus. Like he had somewhere to be, and not a lot of time to get there. It didn’t bother King. He must be on the island for work.
He was a little taller than the average, somewhere around six foot. His skin was the colour of mahogany, indicating Arabic roots. He had dressed oddly for the climate, wearing cargo pants and a black leather jacket that seemed slightly too large draped across his slender frame. His long straggly hair had been parted at the middle, falling at random to either side. Thick strands were tucked behind his ears.
His beady eyes — wide and alert — flicked across the room in a measured and deliberate pattern. Scanning every corner for potential threats. Always vigilant, always switched on.
The look of a man accustomed to conflict.
Instantly King noticed this, because he himself had very similar tendencies. He studied the man in a new light. It took the guy eight steps to cross the room and reach the bar. He sat at a stool and nodded to King, who nodded back. The exchange was nothing but a pleasantry. There was nothing behind it.
‘Can I get you something?’ King said.
The guy cocked his head and looked at him for a moment too long. The sort of prolonged silence that indicated all wasn’t as it seemed. Then he shook it off and shrugged. ‘Yes.’
‘Beer?’
‘I do not mind.’
King shrugged in turn and slid a Pietra across the table, the same brand he’d given to Klara. Most people seemed to enjoy it. He found it odd that the man hadn’t entered the bar with any idea as to what he wanted. But he recognised the mannerisms.
This guy was clearly some kind of combatant. Either a soldier, or a bodyguard, or something much more sinister. But King didn’t think it had anything to do with him. The man simply didn’t know how to relax. Something King himself had struggled with for too long.
He sympathised.
The guy picked up the beer with his right hand and took a long swig. His left arm dangled uselessly by his side. King quickly realised it was a prosthetic. The sleeve of his jacket rested in an unnatural fashion against the plastic or carbon fibre or whatever the artificial limb was constructed from. King hadn’t noticed it until the man was right near him.
His gaze wandered up to meet the man’s eyes, hazelnut in colour. More importantly, they were cold and detached. And they were boring into him. Like the man was trying to connect the dots of a long-forgotten puzzle.
‘I’m Jason,’ King said.
‘Afshar,’ the guy replied, his accent thick and heavy.
‘What brings you to Corsica?’
‘Work. No time to relax.’
‘I see.’
‘Who are you?’ Afshar said abruptly, refusing to peel his gaze away from King’s face.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I know you.’
‘Do you?’
‘I recognise you. I am not sure where from.’
Under the bar’s heavy countertop, King slowly clenched his knuckles. An inkling of his past began to scratch at the surface. ‘Is that why you came here?’
The man shook his head. ‘No. I come to get a drink. My business is elsewhere. But you are familiar.’
Then King felt it. A sudden twinge from somewhere deep down, like a hazy memory bubbling its way to the surface. He wasn’t sure what it meant, and he didn’t have time to dwell on it. But it wasn’t good. He knew that much.
‘I’m just a bartender,’ he said.
The guy shook his head. ‘What do you know about Ta’if?’
‘Ta’if?’
‘In Saudi Arabia. What do you know about that city?’
Recognition crashed over King in a wave. Suddenly he knew exactly what the twinge signified. He knew exactly where he remembered the man from.
And he knew why the man recognised him.
‘That life is in the past,’ King said, his voice low and controlled. He knew that one wrong step could get him killed. ‘I have nothing to do with it anymore.’
‘It is not that simple, my friend,’ Afshar said. ‘It is not luck that I came across you.’
‘I’m sorry about what happened.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I do not think this makes a difference,’ Afshar whispered. King heard the sound of the man’s teeth gnashing together in rage, grinding the enamel away as he battled to control a wave of emotions. ‘It seems you are living the good life now.’
King had nothing to say. He silently clasped his fingers around an empty glass bottle from the bin underneath the counter, ready to smash it over Afshar’s head and deliver a staggering right uppercut into the man’s throat if such a response was required. For the first time in months, he felt the rush of adrenalin into his chest. His heart rate skyrocketed. His breathing quickened. He would react to the slightest level of hostility.
It would be necessary if he wanted to stay alive.
The two men stared at each other across the bar for what felt like an eternity. It wasn’t the first time they had met. King had expected their first encounter to be the last. He hadn’t anticipated that fate would bring the man into this very bar.
He had forgotten the guy existed.
Afshar’s face had blurred into a kaleidoscope of memories he’d been determined to lock away, mixed into the hundreds of brutal skirmishes that had taken place in the darkest corners of the third world.
‘A very good life…’ Afshar said in a low tone, casting his eyes around the bar.
‘I’m sorry,’ King said again. It was the last time he would say it. ‘It was business.’
‘Of course it was.’
Afshar got off the stool and began to slowly back away from the bar. One hand was empty, and the other was plastic. He was unarmed — clearly telling the truth about the encounter being unintentional.
If he’d known that Jason King owned the bar in Calvi, he would have come armed to the teeth.
He paused by the entrance, refusing to tear his gaze away from King, hate flowing freely behind his pupils. A couple of tourists in their mid-twenties — previously deep in conversation — stopped as their attention was drawn to Afshar.
‘Good to see you, Jason,’ Afshar said. His voice cracked as he spoke. ‘Good to see you…’
He spun on his heel and disappeared from sight, stepping down into the co
urtyard.
King dropped the bottle back into the trash, leant against the countertop and breathed a sigh of relief.
CHAPTER 7
The day drew to a close without incident.
Tourists and locals alike flowed in and out of the bar, but Afshar did not return. King spent the remainder of the afternoon on edge, his skin cold and his hands clammy. At any moment he expected the man to return with an automatic rifle. King knew he would see the barrel of the weapon first as it protruded through the open entrance. Then Afshar would follow, squeezing the trigger, unloading a few dozen rounds of ammunition across the room. King might see a brief muzzle flash before the lead tore into him and stripped him of his consciousness and his life.
Every time a shadow passed across the front patio, he expected his life to come to an end. However, as the sun touched the horizon and began melting into the ocean, the last customers drifted out of the bar and King found himself alone.
He closed up, his actions filled with haste. He moved with the efficiency of an ex-soldier who had been viciously thrust back into the situational awareness of years past. He found it hard to force the cortisol in his veins away after it had been unleashed. He was ready to fight, but there was no-one to deal with.
You’re retired, King.
He locked up and paused on the deck, scanning the courtyard for any sign of activity. Nothing. Not a peep. Convinced that the encounter had been a once-off, he fished the Mercedes’ key from his pocket and made to unlock the coupe.
Something stopped him.
He looked out at the beach curving around the bay, bathed in an amber glow by the twilight. Tourists frolicked in the shallow water, laughing and interacting. He decided to watch the sunset from there. Usually he headed straight home, often making it back to the villa before it got dark. But he wasn’t afraid to admit that the encounter that afternoon had shaken him. It had been a stark reminder of a past he couldn’t just forget.
He wished to reflect.
He left the Mercedes where it was and navigated through Calvi, strolling ambivalently, trying to return to the way things had been. But he couldn’t. His mood had shifted. Every time he rounded a corner he assessed the scene for dangers as fast as he possibly could. It had only taken a single moment in time to revert everything to the way it had been. He feared that all the progress he’d made in forgetting the past had been ruined. He found the beach and dropped down to the sand, sitting cross-legged, watching the sun begin to disappear.
He couldn’t help but think back to Ta’ir.
The operation had taken place during his second year of working for Black Force, a clandestine wing of the Special Forces that existed on no official documents. Already the money had come pouring in, millions upon millions of top-secret government funds heaped into his account in exchange for the devastating services he could provide, services which had been detected during his time in the Delta Force and quickly made use of. It had only taken a year for his reputation to become something of legend. Sixteen times in that first year he’d been thrust deep into enemy territory, tasked with a wide range of objectives ranging from hostage recovery to elimination of terrorist threats. Each time, he’d succeeded in quick and brutal fashion, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
He’d killed ninety-six men that first year. He would never forget that number. It had been the beginning of what would go down amongst those in the know as the most successful military career in United States history.
Shame that those who knew of his feats numbered in the low single digits.
The situation in Ta’ir had surfaced out of nowhere. It had been a matter that required an urgent and unforgiving response, which was why he’d been contacted.
Black Force officials smuggled him into Saudi Arabia under the guise of human traffickers. He’d spent three days buried in the depths of a rickety wagon, barely able to breathe, eating and drinking when he could. Finally, they got him close enough to the Saudi compound to cut him loose. They armed him to the teeth and sent him into a rogue facility containing chemical WMDs.
He could not deny that he had been ruthless. There was no room for speculation in regards to the weapons. They were there, and intel indicated that a mercenary force intended to use them for malevolent purposes.
He had cut a swathe through their ranks, infiltrating their compound through sheer overwhelming force.
Early in his career he quickly found that it wasn’t difficult to shatter morale and break the order of things with a few bullets and a lack of conscience. He’d used the same strategy to escape from a corrupt Venezuelan prison not two months prior to arriving in Corsica.
He remembered Afshar clearly.
King was the reason that the man was missing an arm.
Afshar was a soldier of fortune, and at the time he’d been tasked with protecting the WMDs from any enemy forces — clearly for a hefty sum of blood money. King knew nothing else about the man, but he held no empathy for what happened to men of his moral standing.
King had burst into the laboratory with a trail of bodies left in his wake. He laid eyes on a truckload of nerve agents capable of decimating an entire populated city. Afshar intercepted him from the side, knocking his gun away.
They’d brawled in the cold steel room, wild and violent and animalistic.
King ended up securing the upper hand and — spurred on by the consequences of failure — wrenched a fire safety axe with a fibreglass handle off the wall near the lab’s entrance. He had taken Afshar’s arm off near the shoulder joint with a single calculated swing.
It had ensured that the man would not put up a fight while King secured the WMDs. The loss of a limb had the uncanny ability to freeze anyone in their tracks. Nothing else mattered in that moment except the enormous pain and shock of such a violent action.
The mission had unfolded without a hitch. King had left the compound an hour after entering it. All the enemy forces had been taken care of. He called in U.S. reinforcements to neutralise the WMDs and disappeared into anonymity in the bowels of Saudi Arabia.
Moving onto the next task.
Never resting.
He hadn’t given Afshar a single thought after that day. In his mind, anyone who willingly protected such devastating weapons, keeping them in the hands of terrorists who had every intention of using them, deserved what was coming to them. King had left the man in a pool of his own blood inside the laboratory and thought nothing of it. He’d moved on.
Somehow, some way, Afshar had walked into his bar nine years later, on the other side of the planet. Their paths had crossed again.
King couldn’t help but worry that it wouldn’t be the last he’d see of the mercenary.
He got to his feet as the sun vanished under the horizon and night began to descend over the Bay of Calvi. Street lights flicked on and a pleasant murmur sounded from the Quai Adolphe Landry as tourists emerged from their hotels and headed into the multitude of restaurants lining the bay. King took a long sweeping look around. He couldn’t imagine trouble finding its way into such a peaceful town on such a serene island.
He hoped Afshar would focus on whatever work he had come here for and put the sighting of Jason King well behind him.
King made it back to the Mercedes within moments. The bar lay dormant and dark, locked up until the next day. He made a mental note to erect a sign in the window early the next morning, informing the patrons that the bar would be closing early.
He had a date with Klara that he had no intention of skipping.
He climbed into the leather seat and felt the smoothness of the wheel. He thumbed the “ENGINE ON” button and the coupe roared to life. Luxury cars were an interest he hadn’t anticipated, but he’d fallen deeply in love with the German engineering of the AMG. With an incomprehensible amount of funds still stored in his personal account, he imagined an upgrade would be in order down the line. Perhaps a 458 Italia. He reversed out of the space and took off towards Calenzana.
Towards home.
Four miles up the mountain, unbeknownst to King, a trio of hardened men in balaclavas received radio instructions that their target had left the bar. They thumbed the safety off their weapons in unison.
CHAPTER 8
King stayed alert, but it seemed unnecessary. At this time of the evening, traffic was basically non-existent.
He decided — given the tense nature of the confrontation earlier that day — that letting off a little steam was in order. As the street lights of Calvi fell away and the silver coupe glided into a twisting mountain road ascending past rolling hills and craggy ravines, he pushed the accelerator to the floor and let speed take over. Maybe it was fear spurring him on, but he found himself determined to reach the confines of his walled property.
There, he could relax and de-stress after the fragment of his past life had resurfaced.
The engine roared as the speedometer ticked up to eighty miles an hour. He stamped the brakes as he approached a bend in the road and turned hard. The tyres bit into the asphalt and squealed. He straightened the wheel on the other side and let the car correct course, finding purchase on the mountain road and gaining forward momentum.
King let out a hoot of joy and slapped the roof of the coupe. He didn’t cut loose often. He’d made a couple of mountain runs before, but never at night. The danger reinvigorated him.
‘Don’t do this,’ he muttered to himself, restoring calm. ‘Don’t.’
He knew why the speed excited him as much as it did. He’d lived his whole life skirting perilously close to death. When he strayed too far into normality, he felt like he wasn’t truly alive. It was a bad mindset to hold, and he’d done his best to eliminate it during his time in Corsica. Taking the C63 to blistering speed would not help him. It would only reintroduce the feeling of living on the edge.
He made the decision to slow down.
Then suddenly his whole world went mad.