“Mmmm,” Julio said with half lidded eyes. “Gimme a hood.”
Robin handed him his. Julio smiled like a man about to get what he wants. He patted Robin on the cheek. “Go home. I’ll watch her until morning.”
Julio was brilliant, cunning, and a street fighter who took no prisoners. He was also a ladies’ man, and something in Julio’s posture made Robin fearful for Antonia Valera. “I thought we were letting her go,” he said.
Already turned, tucking away the money, and heading toward the lighted room, Julio replied, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, Julio,” Robin said, following him, grabbing the other hood and putting it on. “You said this was a short deal. Ask low, get paid quick, and walk away.”
“Did I say that?” Julio said, pulling on the hood and stepping into the room. He stood there, looking at the girl on the mattress.
“Yes, you did,” Robin said from behind him.
Julio looked over his shoulder, sneering. “I changed my mind. Ten’s not enough.”
He looked over at Antonia Valera and said softly, “Not nearly enough for someone as pretty and dear as she is to her daddy.”
“What?” she said, starting to cry again. “You’re not letting me go?”
Julio soothed, “Once your daddy has paid me twenty-five thousand. By tonight, I’m sure you’ll be home.”
“That’s what you said—” she moaned. “No, please. He did what you—”
Julio tossed the corked rum bottle on the mattress, snatched up the gag, got around behind the girl, and forced the fabric into her mouth. He raised his head, looked over at Robin with stone-cold eyes showing beneath the hood, and said, “I told you to keep her gagged, didn’t I? Go home. Now. You screwed up.”
Robin said nothing. He was watching Antonia Valera, who was looking at him as if he were her only hope.
“Leave,” Julio snapped. “I’ve got business to take care of here.”
Robin hesitated, glancing from Antonia Valera to Julio and back again. He did not want to leave her with him. But Julio ran the Brotherhood. He’d founded the gang. Robin owed the man his loyalty and his obedience. And there was no way he could physically stop Julio. The man would tear him apart.
“Go!” Julio roared.
Blood roaring in his temples, his cheeks on fire beneath the hood, Robin turned and left the room. He ripped off the hood, feeling ashamed and then angry at his powerlessness to protect Antonia Valera. He started down the stairs, a hollow sensation occupying his chest. He reached the door, turned the lock.
Upstairs, the girl began to scream against the rag.
“Don’t be scared,” he heard Julio say. “I think you’re going to like this.”
* * *
“Rogue, copy?”
Monarch moved forward, pistol held loosely in his right hand, not responding to Barnett’s call in his earbud. He double clicked on the mike to let her know he could not speak. He was too close, no more than fifty yards from the intruder who was heading toward the other end of the factory.
“Rogue, you’ve spotted an intruder? Copy?”
He double clicked again, his mind ripping off more questions than answers: Who was the man right in front of him? Was he connected to the attack on the autobahn? Or was he a different player? A local who heard noise coming from a supposedly abandoned factory? Were there others with him? Or was he a lone wolf?
When he was forty yards behind the man, Monarch slipped off his shoes. At thirty yards, he eliminated all thoughts except the physical movements required to creep up on a man who’s doing a fair job at creeping himself.
Fixed on the vague silhouette of the man’s back, Monarch rolled his now cold, wet feet inside to outside, his toes groping the ground, alert for any branch he might snap as he closed to twenty yards, and then ten.
They were almost to the parking lot now. When the intruder started to cut diagonally from the shadow of the woods toward the corner of the factory, Monarch flanked him in the darkness, staying to his blind spot off his left shoulder. He realized the man wore a hood and held a gun loosely at his side.
Monarch cursed the fact that his own pistol was not sound suppressed. The village was not a large place. There were homes close enough to the factory that a gunshot would be heard, and that could bring very unwanted attention to the nefarious activities of Mr. and Mr. Pale, and to Monarch and his rendition team. He had no other choice. He would have to disarm the gunman.
Monarch changed the hold on his pistol so his fingers gripped the barrel. He went up on the balls of his feet, and took three bounds toward the intruder with his right arm cocked back low, holding the pistol like a tomahawk.
* * *
Robin shut the door firmly, scratched his key against the deadbolt, and then threw it. He stood there in the darkness listening to Antonia Valera pleading for her innocence behind her gag, and Julio saying drunkenly, “A girl needs to have a real man her first time. Show her what’s what.”
Robin went barefoot, stalking up the staircase on all fours, using every bit of thieving skill he had to make no creak, no skuff, no noise that might lead Julio to believe he was anything but alone, free to do what he wanted with a captive fourteen-year-old rich girl.
Near the top of the stairs he caught a glimpse of Julio standing above Antonia Valera. The jeffe of the Brotherhood was enjoying the power he held over her no doubt.
“Gonna show me them little-girl titties?” Julio asked. “Your little mystery?”
Antonia Valera’s sobs were shot through with humiliation now, which only made Robin firmer in his resolve as he reached the landing and slipped along to the edge of the doorjamb.
“First thing you got to learn?” Julio announced. “This here’s not your enemy. This here’s your friend of all friends.”
Robin heard the clink of a belt buckle, followed by a quick unzipping.
The girl’s cries stopped, replaced by a low, mournful sound.
“You quiet down now,” Julio said. “I’ll take care of that gag for you, show you how you can show your appreciation to me for all I’ve done for you today.”
Antonia Valera began to wail against the gag again, and to thrash. Robin took advantage of the noise to dart around and into the room. Julio’s pants were around his ankles and he was crouched over the girl with his back to Robin, blocking his view of her upper body.
“C’mon, it’s just like candy, you’ll see,” Julio said.
She turned hysterical. He snorted in amusement, picked the rum bottle off the mattress beside him, uncorked it with his teeth, spit out the cork and drank the bottle dry
Robin snatched up that sock filled with sand, took a long silent step toward the leader of La Fraternidad, who tossed the empty rum bottle, roughly grabbed the crying girl’s hips, and began to lower himself to his knees behind her.
Robin swung the sap with a whipping motion just the way Claudio had taught him.
* * *
Monarch chopped at the intruder’s forearm.
But the hooded man sensed something the instant before the butt of Monarch’s pistol could strike him. His body sagged ever so slightly inward. The side of Monarch’s pistol grazed the fabric of his jacket, causing him to lose his balance forward. The intruder encouraged that by striking with the barrel and butt of his own gun as Monarch tried to twist his upper body to face him. The blow hit Monarch on the inside of his right elbow, throwing a numbing shock through his entire arm. His pistol fell.
Instincts honed through thousands of hours of training took over, and Monarch’s left hand jabbed at the man’s temple, hitting it square with his knuckles, causing enough disorientation that the man staggered. Monarch punched his temple again, pivoted, and tried to knee the man in the side. The intruder tried to block it with his gun arm, and took the full force of the kick in his wrist, causing him to drop his weapon.
Monarch made to punch him again, this time to the side of the neck. But the guy had uncanny reflexes even after taking two shots
to the head. He dropped under the line of Monarch’s blow, spun, and lashed out with his left foot. It connected with the side of Monarch’s knee. He heard a crunching noise, started to fall, and then went with it into a roll.
He tried to come up on his good foot, but slipped in the wet grass and went down. Twisting immediately to his right, he felt the intruder’s next kick whistle by his ear. He acted like he was going to roll again, but then got up onto his knees, ignoring the flaming pain in his right knee and offering a clean target.
Monarch saw him coil his body, readying himself to kick, read the angle of his attack and, as the blow came, adjusted the corresponding angle of his own body. Then he reached in his left hand along the intruder’s right foot and ankle, grabbed him by the calve muscle there, and heaved upward.
It was like the man had been clotheslined.
The back of his head hit the ground first. Monarch threw himself on the intruder, pinning him, knees on his shoulders, left hand around his throat, even as he heard footsteps and saw the cutting beams of flashlights.
* * *
The sap hit Julio right where his spine met his head. His whole body turned to jelly and he slumped forward and to his left, his pants and ankles still on Antonia Valera, and the rest of him sprawled and out cold on the floor.
She saw Robin standing there and involuntary shudders ripped through her at what might have been. He said nothing, just pushed Julio’s legs off her, stepped behind her, released her wrists, and worked at her ankles while she tried unsuccessfully to remove the gag. Both of them kept looking at Julio, who was breathing, but lay there, unmoving, still unconscious.
At last he got her ankles free, stood and offered her his hand. She looked at it in a daze, and then took it. He hauled her to unsteady feet. He offered her his arm to hold on to and they turned to leave.
Claudio stood in the doorway, arms crossed, looking at them.
* * *
“Rogue, copy?” Barnett said in his earbud.
“Copy,” Monarch gasped as he flipped on his headlamp. “New friend is taking a nap. Cavalry galloping in.”
“Good. And we got a hit on the prints we took off the GPS transmitter.”
Monarch pulled off the man’s hood, trained the headlamp on his face, and was surprised he recognized it. “Don’t tell me. An Israeli?”
“Why, yes,” she said. “Is our friend?”
“Copy that,” Monarch said as Tatupu and Fowler got closer and shone their lights on the intruder, a swarthy, muscular man who was starting to revive.
“Local?” Fowler asked as Monarch made to get off him.
“Mossad,” Monarch said, standing and wincing in pain. “I think he tore something in my knee.”
The Israeli squinted into the lights, held up his hand to shade his eyes, blinked, and then said in great confusion, “Rogue, is that you?”
* * *
“Hey,” Robin said, still holding on to Antonia Valera.
Claudio glanced over at Julio sprawled on the floor..
“He got a lot drunk,” Robin explained. “He got dizzy, fell, and hit his head.”
Claudio took in the homemade sap and said, “I could see that.”
“You could?” the girl said in a squeak.
Claudio did not look at her, but kept his gaze squarely on Robin. “Poor guy got too drunk, tried to take advantage of the girl, and then passed out. She used the knife that was in his pocket to cut herself free, and she stole the keys to the Mercedes—they were in his pants pocket, too—to make her escape.”
“A potentially embarrassing event for him,” Robin observed.
“Very embarrassing for Julio,” Claudio agreed. “Something he won’t be talking about any time soon.”
Robin hesitated, then said, “Too bad she took the ten thousand dollars her father paid to ransom her. It was in an envelope inside his jacket.”
Claudio glanced again at Julio and made a soft clucking sound. “An awful thing that should be kept quiet. Am I right?”
* * *
Uri Ben-Shahar sat by the heater in the safe room drinking coffee and holding a cold pad to the back of his head. Monarch sat opposite him, holding a cold pad to the side of his knee.
It made sense, Monarch had realized. The Mossad would have targeted DeGrave the second he entered Iran. Simply a coincidence was the fact that the agent the Israelis sent to oversee their own rendition was a man Monarch had worked with several times during his years with the JSOP Unit.
“Shotguns on the autobahn?” Monarch said. “Hardly subtle, Uri.”
The Mossad agent grunted, shrugged, and said, “We didn’t know what the fuck was going on. We were tracking a GPS bug on his car and had DeGrave heading for his house, where we were waiting, and then suddenly he drives right on by. And his car’s inside a truck? For all we know, you were the Iranians or the North Koreans.”
“Sorry about your windshield,” Monarch said.
Ben-Shahar shrugged again. “A miscommunication.”
“More like no communication,” Barnett groused. “Can you believe post 9/11 we’re still not sharing this kind of stuff with allies?”
Before either Monarch or the Mossad agent could reply, Tatupu stuck his head in the room. “Mr. and Mr. Pale have informed me that they are done with their interrogation.”
“And?” Ben-Shahar said.
The Samoan said, “They’re not exactly the sharing type. I think it goes along with the extreme lack of melanin.”
The Mossad agent looked confused. “No, I meant DeGrave.”
“Sorry, Uri, but he goes back into his bed for now,” Monarch said. “You want him, you’ll have to go after him there another time.”
Ben-Shahar thought about that. “Easier to access whatever your interrogators got.”
Monarch got up, winced, and pointed at him. “Always took you for a smart guy. You good to drive, or do you need a lift back to Germany?”
“I’ll be picked up,” the Mossad agent said, following Monarch as he limped back to the loading dock.
“By the way, how’d you track us here?” Monarch asked.
“When we not so subtly shot at you back on the autobahn, there was a GPS tracker in one of the shells,” the Israeli said.
“You shot a beacon onto us? I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Latest thing,” Ben-Shahar said. “Uses a—”
Mr. and Mr. Pale appeared and relinquished control of DeGrave’s gurney to the doctor and two nurses, who wheeled it into the truck around the South African’s Porsche. Without a word, the interrogators went back the way they came, disappearing toward the torture chamber they’d built inside the factory.
“Who are those guys?” Ben-Shahar asked, his distaste evident.
“Honestly, Uri,” Monarch said, “I don’t think we want to know.”
* * *
Robin wore gloves as he drove through the city an hour before dawn, pulling to the curb close to the tennis club where they’d grabbed Antonia Valera less than fourteen hours before.
“You can make it from here,” he said.
“I’ve never driven a car before,” she said.
“Which will make the story of your escape even more amazing,” he said, reaching for the door handle.
“Wait,” the girl said. “How … how can I thank you?”
“Forget I ever existed,” he said. “My name, my face, my friends, where we live. We don’t exist. We were just some nightmare you woke up from.”
“What about the other guy?” she asked. “The one who…”
“I think he’ll try to forget you ever existed.”
Antonia Valera hesitated, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll never forget you.”
Robin nodded, climbed out, shut the door without looking back, and trotted up the street. As he did, his thoughts were not of the girl, but of what he had done to Julio to save her, and he realized for the first time that it was not enough for him to follow the eighteen rules of La Frater
nidad. There were personal rules that you had to make up as you went along.
Then he thought of how quick he and Claudio had been to form a secret alliance against the leader of the Brotherhood. Without a doubt, life would never be the same for either of them.
What if Julio figured it out? What if he was not as drunk as he had appeared to be? Robin decided right then and there that he did not like kidnappings. They were always messy dramas.
Robin heard the Mercedes put in gear, a squeal of tires and the chirp of brakes. He looked back and saw the taillights of Antonia Valera’s car slowly moving away from him toward a life he could not imagine.
When she was gone, Robin started to run back through the streets of Buenos Aires toward the Villa Miserie and his brother thieves. It would be dawn soon. Before then he wanted to be far from where he did not belong.
* * *
Dressed in workout gear, and with an ice pack on his knee, Monarch sat in a chair in his room at the Ellington Hotel around midnight, two days after the thankfully uneventful conclusion to the DeGrave rendition. He was sipping a cold Berliner and thinking of how peaceful the nuclear scientist had appeared lying in his bed after they’d left him with an almost empty bottle of Petrov Vodka on the bed stand, and his Porsche parked on the front lawn, driver’s door open, keys in the ignition.
He compared that image to another of DeGrave, hooked up to Mr. and Mr. Pale’s devious drugs and devices, his eyes bugging out of his head in abject terror of whatever had been conjured and blown out of all proportion in his mind. Monarch considered the information that the South African may have coughed up to his interrogators, and how he had been forced to make those admissions, trying to make them balance each other out.
A distinctive three-tap knock at the door to his room interrupted all that. He went to the door, opened it without looking through the peephole, found big John Tatupu dressed smartly in a leather jacket, jeans, and a collared shirt. Abbott Fowler leaned against the wall behind him, wearing a long dark coat and a black turtleneck.
“Let’s go out on the town,” the Samoan said.
“It’s midnight.”
“In Berlin, that’s like cocktail hour,” Tatupu said.
“Yeah,” Fowler said. “The best places are just opening.”
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