by Chris Allen
“Overnight our Intel team has been scouring every known source to identify the Europeans I described. Through Interpol Beijing’s sub-bureau in Hong Kong, we’ve been working closely with HKPD and authorities at Hong Kong International Airport, and one of our analysts stumbled upon an anomaly over a certain batch of passports.”
“How so?” asked Davenport.
“Well, to start with we were looking for people traveling into and out of Hong Kong under EU passports and of course there were literally thousands to review. However, overnight one of our analysts decided to take a different approach and started looking for European names traveling under non-European passports. She eventually found these guys.” Reigns tapped another series of commands into the iPad and the screens flickered as new images appeared. They were the scanned front pages of passports and showed one young woman and half-a-dozen men. “In terms of their ages and general physical descriptions, all resemble the people I observed at the factory, all have European names, but they are all traveling on Belizean passports.”
“Didn’t I read an Interpol report recently about a passport racket operating out of the Belizean immigration department?” said Morgan. “A number of senior officials were charged or at least under investigation over it.”
“Correct,” Reigns replied. “Did you Google that as well, Morgan?”
“Hey, don’t knock open source,” he replied.
“So, over the past ten years, hundreds of blank passports have been stolen and ended up on the black market, but more recently there has been evidence that a group of officials were actually facilitating the issue of passports to non-Belizean citizens who didn’t meet the official criteria for holding one.”
“And you reckon that’s how these guys got hold of their new identities?” Morgan asked.
“It certainly looks that way,” said Reigns. “I’d say they’ve changed their names but kept them European so as not to raise suspicion. Plenty of Europeans have relocated permanently to the Caribbean over the years, but most of them have done it legally. Holding a Belizean passport not only gives these people new identities and a new nationality, it also drastically simplifies their travel through the borders of the fifteen other member states of the Caribbean Community.”
“Gives ’em plenty of options if they have to scatter unexpectedly,” Morgan noted.
“Where are these people now, Elizabeth?” asked Davenport. “Do we know?”
“According to our most recent information, they dispersed in pairs when they left Hong Kong. Two flew out to Taipei – the girl with one of the men. The name on her passport is Ştefania Yovenko. Two flew to Manila and the last pair to Bangkok. But all indications are that the Witch and her flock are now converging on home.”
“Which is where exactly?” Davenport asked.
“Belize.”
CHAPTER 26
Conference and Operations Briefing Room
Intrepid HQ
Broadway, London
“We were working as private contractors on that Grenville case for the British Government.” Tom Rodgers, Intrepid’s close-quarter combat chief instructor, had joined them. Turning to Morgan and Reigns he said, “Grenville was a British millionaire who’d gone missing while holidaying in Florida. He came from old money, good family, in line for a knighthood … that kind of stuff. Only thing was, he went a bit off the rails after his divorce, chasing younger women, lots of ’em, and spending heaps of cash. It was a no-brainer he ended up targeted – wealthy, good-looking, not quite in his fifties. When he went missing in America, well, it was just the type of job for Peter Fleming to look into. Jobs ‘requiring discretion,’ as Pete used to say. He used to get a lot of off-the-books-type work, mainly in the US, because he’d moved there with his wife, Madeline, when he retired from the army. That’s how I ended up working for him when I left the Bureau. It was all legit stuff but sensitive, you know; stuff that government folks couldn’t show too much interest in without other people paying attention. So they’d get Pete to take care of it for them.”
General Davenport, Morgan, Reigns and Haddad were all sitting around the table listening to Rodgers recount a long-past mission he’d worked on with Peter Fleming. Davenport and Fleming had served together as officers in the Special Air Service for many years. Davenport was best man at Fleming’s marriage to Madeline Clancy and godfather to their daughter, Charlotte-Rose – Charly. In 2006, Peter Fleming had been killed in Central America while investigating Grenville’s disappearance. Last year, an attempt had been made on the life of his widow, now the Presiding Judge of the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia, and then Charly had been abducted; part of a grand scheme by a fugitive former Serbian general and indicted war criminal, who was attempting to subvert the course of international justice. Fortunately, those issues had since been resolved, but now Davenport smelled a connection between Reigns’ trafficking operation and the murder of his old friend. Rodgers was the link.
“Tom, while she was in Hong Kong, Ms Reigns observed a woman, identity yet to be confirmed, at an illegal factory in Kowloon run by a senior Triad figure. It’s the woman we’re most interested in. To all intents and purposes she was welcomed there as a VIP. Ms Reigns heard one of the local enforcers refer to her as the Witch. So far, all we have is this reference and a physical description: young, tall, Eastern European. Now, some time ago, I recall you mentioning something about a young woman associated with the Grenville case. Possibly even something to do with the name Witch. What can you tell us about that?”
“Well, that was the whole thing. All of the information we received told us Grenville was with a young European girl. We tracked their movements from south-eastern USA all the way through Central America. The various border-protection agencies we spoke to all confirmed that he was traveling with a young woman and that her name was definitely kind of Russian.” Rodgers furrowed his brow. “Dasha … Devora … Darja … Darja! That’s it. Darja. Darja Voloshyn. Jesus, I haven’t thought about that for a long time. And, yeah, as far as we could work out, she was nicknamed the Witch, too. We never managed to find a picture of her, with or without Grenville. It was the strangest thing, like they had a constant shadow always in the background to make sure that if anyone did manage to snap a pic then it disappeared, pronto. And when we traced their steps through the various places they’d stayed or visited, no one except border control had the slightest recollection of her using the name Darja Voloshyn. There were a string of other names that staff recalled – I can’t remember them now, it was a long list – but no Darja Voloshyn. So she’d been hiding her identity everywhere they went together, and for all we knew, probably kept it hidden from Grenville, too.”
“I recall he ended up in Belize,” said Davenport, with a swift glance around the table to emphasize this further connection. “Why there, of all places, do you suppose?”
“Pete could never make sense of it either,” Rodgers said. “He couldn’t imagine a guy with Grenville’s money and connections ending up there – but I could.”
“What do you mean? Had Peter missed something?”
“Well, you knew him better than I did, general. He never missed a trick,” Rodgers answered. “But one thing about Pete – he was a real gentleman. Old school. I grew up in Detroit and we didn’t have much call there for being gentlemanly. Pete found it difficult to accept that a guy like Grenville could be, well …” Rodgers paused, looking uncomfortable.
“Come on, Tom,” Davenport urged.
“Led around by his dick, general.” He immediately turned to Reigns and Haddad. “Sorry. No other way to say it.”
“I see,” Davenport replied quietly. The others were all smiling. “I gather you felt otherwise?”
“For sure,” Rodgers answered. “I told Pete as much, too. Grenville was doing whatever the new girlfriend wanted, and it looked to me like she intended for them to end up in Belize all along. I don’t know why but it just seemed that way, the further along the trail we got.
I mean, the places they were going … the bars and restaurants they were frequenting in Florida and then in Mexico, Cancun, wherever they were – they weren’t the sort of places you’d expect to find Grenville, but they were definitely the right places for a young Russian bride with a sugar daddy on her arm and no money worries.”
“Russian bride. Are you sure about that?” asked Davenport.
“Nothing conclusive, only what the circumstantial evidence was suggesting to us at the time. Like I said, we couldn’t find an image of them together and, apart from Voloshyn, we couldn’t find any other name we could definitively assign to her; just a series of nicknames or pseudonyms and then that Witch thing …”
“I know the two of us talked about this before, Tom,” Davenport said, “but never with any real attention directed toward the girl and, more particularly, the Witch angle. How did the tag originate? I knew Peter very well, and I know you, and I can’t imagine either of you using a term like that unless there was an actual reason; something that sparked the reference in the first place.”
“I guess we must have picked up what people were saying about the girl during our investigations. I remember we interviewed a guy who owned the bar at a place called the Paradise Palms Resort down there. Grenville and the girl used the bar a lot because they were staying at the resort. It’s all coming back to me now. The guy’s name was Vasquez. He limped real bad, and the bar was called Domingo’s. I guess that was his name. He was the first one who really impressed upon us that she was, well, in his view anyway, a witch.”
“How so?” asked Davenport.
“He said it was a feeling he got from just being around her,” Rodgers said, clearly trying to make sense of it himself as he recalled the details. “I even remembered kidding around and asking if she put a hex on him or something, but the guy didn’t laugh. He was freaked. He said that she was like a chameleon, could almost change her appearance right in front of you.” Rodgers scoffed. “I mean, Pete and I put it down to a little too much tequila, but the guy was adamant. It was like a voodoo thing to him. He said if she came into the bar with Grenville and she was happy, then the whole place was happy. If she wasn’t, then the mood was dark and there’d almost definitely be violence. And then she’d just sit there watching it all happen. He also said that they only ever saw her at night. If Grenville was in the bar during the day then he’d been on his own. She only surfaced when it was dark.”
“Were you able to get a physical description of her?” asked Reigns.
“Yeah,” answered Rodgers. “Tall, gorgeous and blonde … you know, like half a million other European girls backpacking their way around the world, right? But her real name, the one she kept off the hotel registries as they traveled, was definitely, like I said, Voloshyn. Darja Voloshyn.”
CHAPTER 27
Intensive Care Unit
D Block, Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Kowloon, Hong Kong
Lam sat quietly at Commander David Sutherland’s bedside, keeping silent vigil. The room was dimly lit except for the single fluorescent tube behind the bedhead and the gentle glow of a dozen life-saving machines going about their business. Their soft noises were a calming, almost hypnotic undercurrent.
Lam had been officially discharged from the hospital. After some clothes and personal effects had been collected from his flat and delivered to him by his daughter, he’d washed, dressed and thanked the hospital staff who had looked after him so well, including the two young uniformed officers who’d stood guard at the entrance to his room for the past twelve hours. Now, he was tired and his injuries were still causing him pain, but he wanted to check in on Sutherland; he had promised Mei-Zhen and her colleague that he would. Thankfully his daughter understood and had decided to wait for him down in the hospital’s main reception area. He’d told her he wouldn’t be long.
Victor Lam had had to be granted special dispensation just to be inside Sutherland’s room. Only the medical staff specifically responsible for the patient, and the US Marines allocated to his protection, were allowed within five feet of the door. But on the personal authority of Assistant Commissioner Kwong, Lam had been authorized to make a brief visit. After all, even in his own battered and weakened state, he had somehow managed to maintain enough pressure on Sutherland’s most critical wounds to keep him alive until the medics had arrived.
Right now Sutherland was in an induced coma. He would remain that way until the surgeons agreed otherwise. The doctor on duty outside had told Lam that Sutherland had pulled through by the skin of his teeth but was now in a satisfactory and, above all, stable condition. His vital signs were considered to be well above average for a person who had just endured ten hours of drastic, life-saving surgery. Lam wasn’t surprised. The man lying still on the bed beside him was one of the strongest, fittest-looking people Lam had ever seen. Behind the strips of white gauze and the tubes that ran into the nostrils and down the throat, the face was lean and hard and the jaw strong. The shoulders and arms above the textured white fabric of the hospital blanket were heavily muscled. Sutherland’s silent, dormant power, coupled with an occasional twitch of the hand closest to Lam, gave the impression that the simple flick of a switch would restore the man to full consciousness. Lam knew now that there was much more to Mei-Zhen and her colleagues than he had previously imagined. They were specialists, that much was clear, but exactly who they belonged to, what country or agency, he had no idea. One thing he knew for sure, they were nothing like any of the Interpol people he’d ever come across.
Lam heard a voice, loud and authoritative, in the corridor: one of the Marines, calling out, “No! Don’t shoot!” followed immediately by a single explosion that boomed unnaturally within the quiet sanctuary of the ICU recovery ward. A heavy-caliber gun fired at point blank range. A cacophony of panic-stricken screams for help immediately ensued, accompanied by the anxious clamor of terrified people running to safety. Lam instinctively leaped to his feet, unsteady at first, but then he was up and moving fast toward the noise. The door was thrust open as far as it would go, hitting its limits with a loud bang. A man, short and dressed in hospital overalls, raced in. His right arm was up and he was clutching a revolver. Lam’s unexpected presence clearly took the gunman by surprise. For a moment they both stood frozen, staring at each other with just a couple of feet between them. Then the man in the overalls turned fast and brought the gun around to aim directly at the chest of the policeman. Lam was unarmed and too far away – he had to close the distance between them if he was to have any chance at all of survival. He did the only thing he could think of. Drawing in a deep breath, he launched himself upon the gunman with all the force his damaged body could rally.
The two men fell to the polished floor in a death struggle. Not a word was uttered by either of them, just an exchange of primal grunts and short, sharp breaths as each fought to conquer the other. Lam’s strength was failing him already. The past twenty-four hours had taken their toll. His hands were wrapped around the weapon but he was grappling clumsily, fighting to keep the muzzle away from the center of his body and away from Sutherland’s bed behind him. But the man in the overalls was strong and his assault was frenzied and Lam was growing weaker by the second. His hands were slipping from the gun. The small man obviously felt it and saw his chance. The weapon was torn from Lam’s grasp and he instantly felt the muzzle being jammed hard into his gut.
“No!” he cried.
The muffled blast impacted like a heavyweight fighter’s sucker punch into Lam’s gut. His mouth fell open in shock and an involuntary gasp for air. He clutched protectively at the wound just as the warm treacle of blood spilled through his shirt and oozed over his hands. Victor Lam felt himself being pushed off the other man. He tumbled on to his back on the floor. His vision was tunneled, fixated on the image of the other man staggering to his feet then standing, raising that short, deadly arm in the direction of the bed. Directly at Sutherland.
Again, there was a thunderous boom from the
gun, followed by another. Then there was light, coming in from behind Lam. He felt and heard a deafening succession of crack-crack-crack as a second pistol fired multiple rounds over the top of him. The gunman in the overalls was turning to the door. He let off another round and then nothing but click, click, click. He fell to the floor beside Lam.
Everything went dark.
CHAPTER 28
General Davenport’s Office
Intrepid HQ
Broadway, London
“This information from Tom is a game changer,” said Reigns.
She and Morgan were facing the general across his desk. Following the briefing in COBRA, Reigns had dragged a very reluctant Morgan “down to the dungeon” to observe the Intelligence Section. As a result of Rodgers’s debrief on the Grenville case, Reigns had initiated an immediate search of Intrepid’s database, which included access to almost every intelligence and law-enforcement network in the world. They were searching for one name in particular: Voloshyn. She told Morgan that the experience of seeing analysts at work, witnessing all the effort that went into providing him with information in the field, would be good for Morgan’s “professional development.” He had acquiesced because he enjoyed being around her. Three hours later they were back in Davenport’s office.
“We got literally dozens of hits, including photographs, physical descriptions and a criminal history,” said Reigns.