by Sam Powers
BETRAYER of KINGS
Part I of the Joe Brennan Trilogy
By Sam Powers
Kindle Edition
This edition uses U.S. spellings of common words.
Copyright 2015 J.I. Loome. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
1./
Sept. 18, 2009 LIMA, PERU
The familiar-looking man seemed nervous, fidgety.
He was in his thirties, with short black hair and a wide, angular face, his cheekbones pronounced, his nose thin and his eyes dark. He was dressed unstylishly in black sweat pants, white Nikes, and a denim jean jacket, and he had a small purple-and-black carry-on bag on his lap that said “Puma” down one side in white vinyl lettering.
He sat with his knees close together and his hands on the bag, alone in a row of five red plastic chairs, each attached to another by a long, black metal bar that ran across the backs of the seats. The bus depot was expansive, maybe fifty yards from one end to the other, and lit to tolerable levels, neither bright nor dark.
It was nearly seven o’clock at night, and most of the seats were empty, because most of the long-distance buses were done for the day. The handful of people in the waiting room kept to themselves. A few people shuffled by the small kiosk in the center of the station, glancing over as if a fervent desire for coffee and a quick read might prompt its operator to reopen.
It was a typical night but the man with the Puma bag was nervous nonetheless, and sat worrying about what might lie ahead once the long coach-style bus was rolling along coastal and mountain roads, lanes seemingly too narrow for two vehicles and dropping off into impenetrable brush hundreds of feet below.
He knew he had a role to fulfill, a purpose. The familiar-looking man fixated on the idea; it gave him a sense of reassurance he needed to go through with his task. His family had been part of the cause for as long as he could remember, and the cause would always provide a role. But he did not know exactly what that role would be. They’d made it clear that he couldn’t know, that there might be consequences and his bravery might be pushed beyond normal human limits. That he might fail.
And so he sat, thousands of miles from home, surrounded by people he did not know, heading towards a destiny shrouded in fear and uncertainty.
But he was resigned to it. The dream of freedom for his homeland was one he shared with everyone he knew: his family and friends; his mother Khoka, elderly before her time, stooped, her heavy features always a little sadder than they should be; his fiancée Ekaterina, so serious and political, her dark hair pulled back tightly against her pale white skin and narrow face, her eyes grey-blue pools.
The overhead lights were several dozen feet above him and the station was air conditioned to room temperature, maybe even a bit chilly for most people. But he was sweating. The beads clung to his hairline. He briefly raised a denim-clad arm from his lap to wipe them away. Seconds later, new beads replaced them.
In the plastic row of seats opposite his, a little girl of five sat watching him. She was dressed in her Sunday best, a red dress and pinafore over a white blouse and white stockings. Her shoes were shiny, patent leather, and they dangled a half-foot above the ground. She watched him sweat for a few minutes, her young mind trying to assess why he looked different from other people; then she tugged on her mother’s shirt-sleeve, to her right. Her mother was in her early forties, a serious-looking woman with a pinched face and straw blonde hair. She wore a sensible grey dress and white blouse and she was reading a nearly day-old edition of El Comercio, newspaper pages spread wide in her hands.
The familiar man watched the little girl lean over to ask her mother a question, whispering loudly; not loudly enough for him to hear, but accompanied by a little sideways glance that told him he was the subject.
“Be quiet, Pili,” the woman said softly in Spanish. “It’s not polite to stare, little one.” And then, perhaps with motherly concern or perhaps just plain curiosity, the serious woman stole a quick look herself, and saw a pasty-looking young man with a carry-on bag. Probably gets sick on long bus rides, she thought. Then she went back to her newspaper, and Pili went back to staring at the familiar man.
She didn’t know why he was familiar. She was too young to understand a memory from a day earlier of his face, from when she walked through the living room to get her dolly, past the television and his oversized image on the news. He had a beard in the television picture and had been wearing an olive-colored military style cap. But there was enough of him in front of her for Pili to know he seemed familiar and, by default, interesting.
A passenger about the same age as the familiar-looking man came over to sit with the woman and little girl. Her father, probably. He was thin and his jeans had been ironed; they had stiff creases down the front of each leg. His cream-colored buttoned-down shirt had a faint line pattern to it and his light blue jacket was collarless, a nineteen eighties style. He had a trio of paper cups in a cardboard tray and handed one to his wife and another to his daughter.
“Make sure she goes before she gets onboard,” the woman told him. She made no other comment and did not thank him, the familiar man noticed, but instead merely sipped her coffee. Pili held her smaller cup of hot chocolate between her tiny two hands, her eyes wide as she slurped at the sugary cocoa beverage. The father sat down next to them in the last seat in the row, the little girl between them but hardly the only reason they were separate. The mother read her paper, and he stared ahead, and the familiar man wondered for a moment what fate lay in store for them.
Further along to their right, across from the next set of five red plastic chairs, a couple in their seventies was watching as Pili’s mother ordered a bathroom run. The couple chuckled and stared at the little girl through squinting smiles; the elderly woman had blue-rinsed white hair, pushed up in a bun, and gold-rimmed glasses; her husband was heavyset, balding, with a moustache and spectacles that had square brown metal frames. The little girl frowned, embarrassed. She tried to tuck her head behind her mother’s left arm, behind the newspaper and away from prying eyes.
The familiar-looking man watched the elderly couple for a moment. But once they’d finished observing the girl, they sat in an uncomfortable silence for a full minute, before the woman finally said, in a strangely thick accent, ‘It will be so nice to get back home to Ayachuco, see if my plants are still alive.” She spoke like a rural peasant to the ear of the average Lima resident; but that mattered little to the familiar looking Chechen, who had halting Spanish at best.
The old man fished a piece of gum from the pocket of his green coat. He unwrapped it unsteadily, his hands shaking about as much as anyone would expect after a long life. Then he looked around for a garbage
can to put the wrapper in. The nearest was next to two women, standing at a bar-height grey laminate shelf. It ran along the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the line of buses. The woman nearest to him was in her twenties, black, with red tints in her long, curly hair braids. She was tall, like a model, dressed in business attire; her friend was shorter, blonde haired despite her dark skin tone, wearing a blouse and skirt. They saw him approach and stepped away, and the old man threw the gum wrapper into the bin. The tall black girl smiled at him, and he smiled back, secretly proud of the attention, even if, at his age, it was for different reasons. The old man had observed long before then that, as he’d gotten older, young women tended, once again, to treat him as if he were a cute kid.
“I understand the gum thing,” the tall businesswoman said. “My ears plug up when we get into the mountains.”
“Not mine,” the old man said with entirely false bravado. “I just like gum.” There. That sounded pretty suave, the old man thought. He tried to smile rakishly as he said it. They giggled a little at the comment, although he knew deep down that once again it was because he was the wrong type of cute.
The perspiring, nervous man from the television watched the old man walk back to his wife and sit down sullenly next to her. “Well, I still find you quite manly, Jorge,” the woman said quietly, in a tone that was more like a clinical assessment than a joke or a supportive gesture. A few minutes earlier, they’d shared a humorous moment at the little girl’s expense, so the familiar man knew the elderly couple had that special connection, that connection he had with Ekaterina.
His jaw hurt. The swelling had gone down as the anesthetic had worn off. But it still felt swollen, like he’d been punched by a brick. He kept his hands on the carry-on.
Across from him, little Pili stared at the bag. Then she stared at him. Then at the bag. Then she tugged on her mother’s sleeve again, her feet kicking slightly, the overhead lights glinting brightly off her shoe tips. She just wanted to tell her that the man with the bag looked sick; but her mother wasn’t interested.
Above, a tinny speaker announced the bus was ready for boarding.
The familiar-looking Chechen man found a seat near the back, as instructed, and sat down. He placed the purple-and-black carry-on under the seat ahead of him. It was late, and the bus was two-thirds empty.
The old couple was seated across the aisle. The driver, a large man, looked tired, half leaning on the gigantic steering wheel; he couldn’t restrain a yawn as the people filed by. The familiar young man could see the creases around the older man’s eyes, the telltale signs of a different kind of fatigue, the weight of life experience.
The Chechen was nervous, frightened of the gravity placed upon his assignment.
He was frightened too by the amount of money they’d promised his family. It made him wonder what was in the bag. He knew well enough not to try and find out. But that just made him want to try even more. He knew what his rebel compatriots were capable of in their bid for world attention. He wondered whether he’d ever see Ekaterina again, or whether…
He looked at the bag under the chair again. Perhaps it was nothing nefarious, just something highly secret, a basic courier job. But he didn’t think so. He’d waited in the safe house for three days, as they’d instructed. He’d huddled in the dark, with no television or radio or internet. By the third day he’d begun to feel ill, nearly constantly nauseated. He’d taken to chewing car sickness pills like they were candy.
The little girl was in the seat behind him. Her mother had buckled her in already, so he didn’t have to worry about her kicking the seat, assuming her tiny legs could reach. “Mommy,” she said. “Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy…”
Her mother was talking to her father but broke away. “What, honey?”
“When we get … when we get home…”
“Yes?”
“When we get home, can I meet a prince?” Pili asked earnestly.
“You never know dear,” her mother said. “There aren’t many princes around these days. They aren’t seen in public very much.”
“What’s ‘in public’?”
“That means outside, walking around with ordinary people.”
The familiar-looking Chechen rebel couldn’t help but smile. He thought about his niece Aybika, about the same age as the little girl. It was worth living for, that laugh; able to bring joy to people who saw nothing but hardness. His sister Polla, Aybika’s mother, was the same way. When she laughed it had a chime to it, a crystal ring, bell-like and wonderfully pronounced.
The driver walked the aisle, ensuring everyone was ready and that no one was smoking, a rule they all knew would be ignored by someone on board within the first hour. He returned to his seat and shifted the double-clutch coach into reverse, slowly turning the wheel as it did so, then proceeding towards the main road.
In the seats just ahead, the two businesswomen were talking, trying to sound like old hands at traveling, though both were too young to qualify. “…just hate Lima. It’s so crowded and expensive, and the people are always so cynical about everything,” the black girl said.
“But it’s a big market for us,” her friend said. “If we lock this down, we could both be in management before we’re thirty.”
The Chechen tried to follow the conversation but it was difficult; he had to think of the phrase first in Spanish, then think of the version in his own language, and it still did not feel natural, despite months of practice. But it was obvious that they were not important; important people flew, and avoided multi-hour bus rides.
Soon the bus was rolling at highway speed, following the curvy road that ran out of the city and south along the coast. They would follow it for several hours before turning up into the mountains. The mountain passes were steep, narrow and slow-going, and the trip would take nearly seven hours all told.
The familiar-looking man tried to breathe deeply and slowly but his nerves were betraying him. He wanted to go to the bathroom and vomit. He didn’t want to use the little paper sack they provided in the seat pocket. That was unseemly and embarrassing. But he feared that he would soon be left without a choice. He’d run out of the anti-nausea pills. He felt himself perspire heavily, but the droplets were cold, almost icy. The nausea hit him again and he fought it down, prayed for the strength to keep his dinner down.
“You okay sweetie?” the straw-haired mother asked little Pili.
“Yes, mama!” Pili volunteered.
“You want to listen to Doodlebugs?”
“Uh huh.”
The Chechen smiled again, feeling a small sense of hope. A sense that maybe he had been paranoid, cynical. Perhaps he’d just caught a virus. That would explain the sweating, the difficulty keeping food down. He turned his head slightly to the right and watched the old couple, who were both trying already to go to sleep. The old man had a mask on and a blanket over his lap. He appeared about to fall asleep, the familiar-looking Chechen thought, when he quickly removed the gum from his mouth and placed it…somewhere. His hands went into the pocket of the seat ahead of him, and the on-looking Chechen assumed – hoped – there was a wrapper in there, too.
The little girl was laughing at the Doodlebugs’ song, giggling the way only little kids can, with pure joy; he wondered whether she’d ever reach the same ripe old age as the old man with the gum and the bravado. For the first time in many months, the Chechen felt optimism.
The explosion ripped through the rear end of the bus, obliterating the back end in a second. The gigantic ball of flame ignited its fuel tanks, the air inside the passenger cabin instantly hot enough to cook the travelers where they sat, a column of flame descending on them before they even had time to scream.
The hot gases expanded rapidly outwards, ripping the bus to millions of pieces in violent combustion, scattering the remains like tin confetti, along with those of the little girl and her mother, and her father, and the two nicely dressed businesswomen, and the charming old couple, and the weary, overwei
ght bus driver and the nervous, sweating Chechen. The blast flung the debris for a mile, most of it crashing over the edge of the roadway to the Pacific Ocean below, the carnage partially obscured by dense, black smoke.
2./
MEDELLIN, Colombia, September 16, 2012
THREE YEARS LATER
It had been over a hundred degrees since noon, and Walter Lang was sweating profusely as he sat on the café patio; it was filled with young businessmen and women eager to grab a salad or sandwich before returning to the office.
The armpits of his tan-colored short-sleeve dress shirt were quickly stained through; the odd rivulet of perspiration made its way from his hairline, down past his left ear and into his matted, sweaty chest hair. It had been years since he’d been to Medellin but the heat certainly hadn’t gotten any easier to take. The city was charming, welcoming despite the nation’s sometimes negative reputation for vice and violence. But he was thankful he’d gotten a hotel room with a near-industrial strength air conditioner.
He wore a pair of Ray Ban aviators with steel rims, to ward off the sun and maintain a low profile, just another Gringo businessman. At fifty-six, Lang knew he was too old to be called middle-aged and when he looked in the mirror, he saw a face creased by time, the skin taut; but he still had most of his hair and it was mostly still brown, a fact in which he took a degree of pride. It wasn’t that he was normally a prideful man, quite the contrary; it was the very fact that Lang was so private that made him that little bit more self-conscious when someone actually checked him out.
Not that that had happened on the patio, where the local women all seemed to have walked off of a Vogue cover or out of a Bond movie, all curves and tans and perfect lips.
In movies, he thought, the spy always gets the girl. More typically, Lang knew, he just picked up the check.