Reckoning

by James Byron Huggins

  He saw nothing.

  Finally, weary from a long and fruitless day, he arrived at the hotel. Moving steadily but slowly he got out of the car and walked toward the door, leaving the papers in the car. He held his door key in one hand, the .45 in the other, concealing it inside his coat pocket. He planned to open the door, then move the papers inside a few moments later with subsequent trips, always keeping his hands relatively empty.

  He was too old a war horse to be caught shambling across the parking lot, both hands hopelessly filled with ridiculous paperwork while some idiot hitter walked up to him and put out his lights with something like a bull-barrel Ruger—a favorite of professionals because of its superb accuracy and natural sound suppression.

  No sir, thought Kertzman, not me. If they want it, they can work for it.

  He opened the door and carefully checked out the room. Then he moved back to the door, and in moments unloaded the car. Finally, with one last look across the parking lot, he closed the door behind him, relieved.

  *

  With the bored expression of long-term surveillance, Robert Milburn took another sip of coffee. He looked at his watch, noting the time.

  Carl, the German, looked back at him. "It seems that Mr. Kertzman is turning in for the night, ya? Is that what you think, Mr. Milburn? Or perhaps Mr. Kertzman, the great hunter, is outfoxing us." He laughed.

  Ali, the giant Nigerian, also laughed brutally at the joke.

  Milburn blinked, said nothing. Stoically he continued to stare at the distant hotel door that Kertzman had just shut.

  Parked on the distant side of the lot, the surveillance van was unpleasantly crowded with him, Carl, and the Nigerian. Milburn didn't know where Sato was, but he knew that the Japanese would not miss another opportunity at Gage. He would be close.

  Milburn had only barely survived the nightmarish car accident, leaping clear before the vehicle crashed into the embankment.

  Badly injured with four cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder, he had been treated at a very private, very expensive hospital. Confidentially. He was using painkillers to get him through the rest of this.

  Later that same night, after Milburn had returned to the safe house, Sato had also come back with Stern, cursing repeatedly that Gage would die. Horribly. But Milburn had noticed that the big Japanese moved with an unusual stiffness, his ribs heavily bandaged, the arrogance slightly subdued.

  Earlier, before Kertzman had left New York, Carl had planted the microwave locator in Kertzman's vehicle. And during each of Kertzman's excursions into the forest during the day, Sato had followed. Fading carefully into the trees, he had followed at an extreme distance.

  Caution was the rule. For even Sato recognized that Kertzman was crafty, especially in the woods. He was forced several times to retreat to a distance where he could not even keep Kertzman in visual observation. But when Kertzman would return to his vehicle in a relatively short period of time, they knew this meant that the hunting foray was unsuccessful.

  They also knew that Kertzman was well onto something and might find their prey before the week was through.

  Milburn leaned his head back against the seat, seeing again and again the image of Gage lying bleeding and beaten in the backseat of the Cavalier before the LTD had driven them off the road. Something had snapped inside him at that moment, though Milburn had revealed nothing. But in that moment he had actually considered turning on his employers, had contemplated smoothly drawing his Beretta and firing a round through the Russian's brain.

  Money wasn't worth this, he had thought.

  Nothing was worth this.

  Then the LTD had appeared out of nowhere and they had gone together into the embankment. He had leaped clear before the head-on, escaping serious injury. And, standing in the open, in full view of the mysterious driver of the LTD, he watched while Gage was pulled, unconscious, from the backseat and piled into the car. The bearded driver wasted no time clearing the scene, looking strangely experienced at that kind of thing.

  Once, while the fat man was lifting Gage from the Cavalier to the LTD, Milburn absently touched the handle of his Beretta, considering how easy the shot would be. But enough was enough. The sirens were still three miles off when the LTD pulled away from the embankment. Milburn watched it leave, laughing.

  Afterwards, obeying orders from D'Oncetta, he had joined the surveillance on Kertzman. Because everyone from D'Oncetta to Stern to even Sato seemed to believe that the stone-age cowboy would eventually run Gage to ground. And for the moment they had decided to wait, and watch.

  Milburn hoped that Gage was buried so deeply that Kertzman would never find him. But he knew, or felt, that the end was coming on hard.

  *

  THIRTY-TWO

  Gage packed a black duffle bag with clothing and an assortment of weapons, much the same as he had done before the trip to New York, except he included the specialized fighting knife—the Dragon.

  "It will be cold on that mountain," Sarah commented, studying his equipment. "You're going to need mountaineering gear."

  Gage smiled, nodded. "I'm taking crampons, boots, and I've got North Face gear that will protect me from the weather. Anyway, I won't be there long. A quick trip. Up and down. Get the book and get out. I should be airborne again in thirty-six hours."

  "You're going to need sleep."

  "I'll sleep going over, sleep coming back. It's a seven-hour time difference. I'll fly out late tonight and get there early tomorrow afternoon by their time. I can make it to Ortles by nightfall. Then I'll find the path and go up. I'll do all the work through the night. Less chance of discovery."

  "How will you find the tomb?"

  "Well, I think the path will be easy to find," he replied, concentrating. "Has to be, or Simon would have said more. And Malachi was right. The tomb will be at four to six thousand feet. There's a full moon, so I'll find it easy enough. And I've got the night visor for anything else. I'll have plenty of light for the job."

  Sarah watched him stuff a pair of Asolo mountaineering boots into the heavy canvas bag. Crampons followed, and a small ice ax.

  "Where'd you get all this stuff?" she asked, impressed.

  "I did some training on the Eiger," Gage replied. "It was only a two-week thing. But a lot of climbing. A lot of battle scenarios on the rock." Gage cocked his head, a movement of remembered fear. "Now that was scary. High altitude combat is different. Ballistics are different. There's no room for evading. I wouldn't ever want to do it again."

  Gage continued to check and load equipment. Sandman and Chavez were in the hills together. They would continue to rotate shifts until Gage returned.

  "Something's been bothering me." Sarah's remark received Gage's immediate attention.

  "What?" he replied, alert.

  "You said you used to sanction people," she said carefully. "You said you were part of a special unit, Black Light, that was used to assassinate people. But we both know that intelligence agencies are real careful about that kind of thing. And you thought that some of the missions were personal for someone inside the government. Like with those two Geneva bankers you were ordered to sanction in Beirut, right before your team was ambushed. You even told your supervisor that you thought Black Light was being used for something besides national security."

  Gage stared at her. "Yeah. I said that."

  "Why?"

  "Because too many of the hits didn't make sense," he answered, unblinking. "Not in terms of jurisdiction, or even intelligence priorities. The targets weren't defectors or terrorists or drug runners. They weren't foreign assassins planning a hit against one of our people. They weren't players at all, as far as I could tell."

  Sarah placed her elbows on her knees. "So what do you think the missions were about, exactly?"

  Gage fixed on her intensely. "I'm not sure. What are you thinking?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know yet. But there's something. I just want to hear a little more."

  He waited a moment. "Al
right. The Geneva sanction was an investment banker. The two Geneva sanctions I refused to do were also investment bankers. I hit a few OPEC members. They were movers, financiers, but they only had the vaguest connections to any intelligence groups. They were people with power, but they weren't real players. More like watchers, investors. They were powerful in their own way but not in intelligence or counterintelligence."

  "What countries did you work in?" she asked. "Where did these people live?"

  Gage stopped loading the bag, stood watching her. After a moment, his gaze wandered the room, remembering. "We... hit a couple of money targets in South America. They moved a lot of gold. Then we hit in Argentina, moved through Mexico City. We did a lot of surveillance in the Middle East and Europe. We even hit a few oil money people funding Al-Fatah, and the PLO, in Beirut. Then we went down and hit somebody in San Paulo. And, like I said, we did the investment banker out of Geneva. All the deaths were made to look accidental."

  Barto had wandered over.

  "Why did you move around so much in South America, Geneva, and the Middle East?" Sarah asked.

  Gage shook his head. "I don't know. I just took orders. Like I said, in those days I didn't really care that much. I just did what I was ordered to do."

  "Who gave you the orders?"

  A pause.

  "My supervisor," Gage answered, staring at her, finding his way in it. "A guy named Robert Milburn. He relayed the messages from the DCI."

  "The DCI?"

  Barto chimed in. "The Director of Intelligence."

  "By the way, Milburn was in New York," Gage added.

  "Your old supervisor?" Sarah's eyes widened with the question. "The one who betrayed you in Israel? The same guy who set your team up for the ambush?"

  "Yeah," Gage continued. "But he's freelance, now." He shrugged. "I don't know if anything is related. Might be. Might not be. In this business you run into a lot of old pals. And a lot of times they're on the opposite side."

  On the far side of the room Malachi had turned, stood listening.

  "Don't you think that's unusual?" Sarah asked. "Isn't it strange that you would run into Milburn?"

  After a moment Gage replied, "Yeah. It's strange. But I don't know what to make of it."

  Her intensity was complete. Mesmerizing.

  "Alright," she said. "Then let's forget Milburn for a minute. Let's talk about the sanctions. What if these assassinations weren't political and they weren't personal? What if they were for something else altogether?"

  Gage absorbed the thought, waited. "Like what?"

  "Well," she began, "what did all these places have in common? Why did you hit targets in South America and Geneva, Argentina and Ontario? Let's say, just for argument, that it was all part of a larger plan. What did all these big money people have in common that would benefit someone? What do financiers in Argentina, Ontario, Geneva, and San Paulo have in common?"

  Gage concentrated. "I don't know. Do you?"

  She nodded. "It's simple. They've got money in common. They're all rich. That's what ties them together. It's so simple it's hard to see."

  Barto sat back against the table. "Can you remember the specific cities you worked in?"

  Gage focused on him. "Johannesburg. Beirut. Leningrad. Moscow. Ontario. San Paulo. Buenos Aires. Soweto. Pretoria. Durban. Cordoba. Geneva. London ... a lot of work in Colombia ..." Gage paused. "That's about it."

  Barto nodded.

  "What is it?" Gage asked.

  Sarah looked away, concentrating.

  "Just an idea." Barto glanced at Sarah. "Soweto and Durban are two of the major towns in South Africa for processing mining ore."

  "Mining ore?" she repeated.

  "Gold," he said. "And Pretoria and Johannesburg are where a lot of the heavyweights stay who control the mining operations."

  "Two of the people I sanctioned were into heavy construction," Gage said slowly. "Movers. They might have been into mining."

  Sarah rubbed her eyes for a second, head bowed in concentration. She looked up suddenly. "Aren't Geneva and San Paulo major international exchange points for the gold market?"

  Gage held her questioning gaze for a moment, then turned slowly away, to the bright, sunlit window. He walked over, stood looking out through the glass. Training prompted him to move away from the uncurtained opening; it was an easy shot for a sniper. But at the moment he didn't care. Something was coming to him, something horrible. Awakening, he began to look at his old life for the first time in almost four years, finding the courage to put it all together, exploring the depths of what he had truly done. Far better than they, he saw the mosaic.

  "Alright," he continued grimly, "let's go through it again. Forget the legitimate sanctions for a moment. Let's say that those were for justifying Black Light's existence for the Intelligence Committee. Let's focus on the hits against financial people." He paused. "What does South Africa, South America, Ontario and Russia have in common? Gold, right? They're the largest gold-producing countries in the world."

  He turned to look at them both.

  Barto nodded.

  "Just one thing," Sarah added. "The United States is also a major gold-producing country. They still dig up a lot of it out in Nevada and North Dakota."

  Gage shook his head. "We never worked in America. So let's forget America for a moment. Let's just concentrate on what we've got. If a number of international bankers and gold movers died, who would benefit?"

  "Whoever wanted their empires," Sarah answered.

  "Right," Gage added. "And how would a person inherit these empires?"

  Barto leaped in. "By buying heavily into a company's interest beforehand. Then, when the big guy dies, that person gains a controlling interest. It's the perfect plan. Buy big and when the owner dies this mystery guy's wealth doubles in value, maybe even triples, because the owner's share is no doubt divided up into smaller portions, automatically making his one of the largest. A fortuitous, accidental death doubles the amount of this person's influence in the gold market without changing the amount of gold he actually owns. It's a stepping stone to possessing more, setting the price, controlling the market."

  "But why gold?" asked Sarah. "Why not stocks and bonds?"

  "Because stocks and bonds are just paper," said Barto. "They're not immune to recession. Gold is the really old-fashioned way of building an empire."

  Gage nodded grimly.

  "Right..." Barto continued slowly, also nodding. "That's it. Accumulating gold is the recession-proof way of gaining economic power. And the oldest. A person can do it quietly, without attracting attention. Except for a privileged few, nobody even knows your name. But among those who know, the people who really count, this guy's a major player, a real force. Somebody who can make things happen in any country in the world."

  Sarah looked at Gage again, gaining his attention. "So let's say that this person wanted to use force to make it all come together. Let's say that this person wanted a really elite team of assassins who could eliminate his competition, or his enemies. Let's say that he wanted to make sure that nothing would come between him and his dreams."

  Gage frowned. "He would need an assassin. Except assassins can make mistakes. They can get caught, or killed. And then it would all come home. Unless this smart guy hired a government hit team to do his dirty work for him. Then nothing would come back on him. Even if things went wrong, he wouldn't take the fall."

  No one said anything for a moment.

  Sarah's green eyes locked on Gage. "If he did that, then he would be safe," she said. "Whatever government he used would take all the risk."

  Gage stared out the window again. The sun was high, bright, and somehow starkly disturbing. "It's the perfect plan."

  "But how could it happen?" Sarah asked. "How could a unit of our government be used for this kind of thing?"

  Gage laughed bitterly. "Easy. This nation is obsessed with secrecy. After a while, secrecy itself becomes the enemy. It becomes too broad an umbrella.
People become so concerned with protecting it that they're scared to lift covers and see what's hidden beneath. And other people, the dirty ones, use that tendency as a weapon. Remember, use lies on lies, like I said before. Destroy evidence, file false reports, mix truth with untruth. Make it so complicated that nobody can ever truly figure it out. And the truth is just lost. It's easy to do. People can speculate all they want. But they'll never really know."

  Gage nodded at his own words. "And now it all comes together."

  Barto and Sarah stared at him. Gage turned back toward her. She shook her head.

  "It can't be that big," she said.

  "Yeah," he answered, "it can be. Even bigger."

  Tension in the room was almost corporeal.

  "OK," she continued, "maybe it is. Then let's assume that this megalomaniac used your old unit, Black Light, to set this plan in motion, to eliminate his competition so he could corner a large portion of the gold market. What does he plan on doing with it?"

  No one had an answer.

  Then Malachi spoke, for the first time. "A man who would perpetrate this crime would be a madman," he intoned. "And mad-men always have the same dream. To conquer. To command. To forge a new world from the dark fire of their dreams, to destroy all those who stand in the way of their dominion."

  Silence.

  Gage spoke. "That would be a difficult thing to do."

  Malachi shook his head. "Not so difficult, no," he answered. "Nothing created by man is outside the dominion of man. And perhaps there is something else. Perhaps it is no coincidence that your former comrade, Milburn, is involved in all of this, Gage. If this man, Milburn, betrayed his country and attempted to dispatch both you and your old unit in Israel, he is a traitor. And traitors seldom betray twice. Once a man has turned against his country to serve another government, or power, he usually remains with that power, knowing that he has cut himself off from much of the world in his treachery, and he does not wish to lose what little he has gained in the loss. If Milburn had already betrayed our government before the incident in Israel, it is likely that he serves the same interest today." He stepped forward. "I would even submit to you, Gage, that the same enemy that misused your old unit, the same enemy that destroyed your team, is the enemy that hunts us now, working for the same ultimate purpose."