Allegiance Burned: A Jackson Quick Adventure

by Tom Abrahams

I was more interested in the conversation downstairs than in saying goodnight at that point. “Can’t I stay up?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s a school night. Now go to bed.”

  I stood up and my mom kissed me on the cheek before she floated down the steps, her silk nightgown flowing behind her. She looked back at me and I pretended to turn and go to my room. When she turned the corner, I stayed there and eavesdropped.

  “Honey,” my mom said, “you’re home! Welcome back.” I could hear her kiss him on the cheek. “And who is our guest?” She was polite, but there was confusion, frustration maybe, in her voice.

  “Yes,” my dad said, “

  it was unexpected. He met me at the airport. Carolyn, I think you’ll remember the name Spencer Thomas. Spencer, my wife, Carolyn.”

  “A pleasure to see you after all this time,” my mother said in a voice reserved for false niceties. It was the same voice she’d use when answering the phone.

  “Oh, dear goodness,” said Spencer, “the pleasure is exclusively mine. James, you never quite captured the timeless beauty of your wife when describing her to me.”

  “Really?” my mother said, as much to my father, I imagine, as to the visiting sycophant.

  “Only because your beauty is indescribable,” my dad said. Nice save.

  “And why are you here?” my mother asked, dispensing with the pleasantries.

  “He’s my—” my father began before Spencer interrupted him.

  “I’m his supervisor, you may well recall,” he said. “Well, I should say his former supervisor. Your good man here has just informed me of his impenetrable choice to resign his position.”

  “With my full blessing,” my mother said. “That means it’s official, Jim?”

  “Yes,” my father said. “Just some paperwork.”

  “It’s but a formality,” said Spencer. “We will certainly miss him. We’ll miss you too, Ms. Carolyn.”

  “And why would that be, Mr. Thomas?” she asked. “You just met me.”

  He belly laughed. “Oh, but it feels as though I’ve known all of you for a lifetime. James here, of course you, dear Carolyn, and that lovely little boy of yours, Jackson.”

  Seventeen days later, my parents were dead.

  CHAPTER 20

  Old Town Heidelberg is a medieval maze of coral topped Gothic and Renaissance buildings. The streets are narrow, uneven, and filled with tourists. The Haupstrasse, which runs the lengths of the old town, is for pedestrians only. East of the town is the Heidelberg Castle. It reigns over the city atop its perch, guarding against would-be attackers from the Neckar River that flows east to west into the Rhine. It’s humid in the late afternoon, the sun shining on the side of the castle facing the town.

  “How much of a climb is it up there?” Bella asks. She’s holding a note that was stuck to the door of Wolf’s German pied-a-terre. “The note tells us to be there at sundown.”

  “That’s probably a couple of hours from now. The climb won’t be bad. Just a lot of steps. Let me see the note again?” I stop in front of a shop selling glassware, knives, and various sized flasks of Absinthe.

  “It hasn’t changed since you looked at it last,” she says, handing over the note.

  Nicely done, Jackson. You’ve arrived a bit late. But you’re here nonetheless, and with that, I assume you’ve avoided or assuaged our mutual friend. Now to the business at hand. I’ve already recovered the package here, so you may forego the effort. Meet me for a sunset toast at the castle. We’ll tip glasses and sip to a future as bright as the sun.

  -SST

  “What an ass,” I mumble loud enough to draw a reaction from Bella.

  “You just figuring that out now?” she smirks. “What’s your plan?”

  “I’m figuring it out.” I lean on the thick brown wooden window frame of the shop. “You have any ideas?”

  “Not really. You’ve been the brains of the operation from the beginning.”

  I wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my forearm. “Yeah, that’s why we’re where we are.”

  “Hey,” she lightly thumps my arm “we’re alive. We’ve got sixty percent of the process. Blogis is dead.”

  “We’re alive, Blogis is dead,” I mimic. “You sound like Obama during the 2012 election, “Detroit’s alive, Osama Bin Laden is dead!!”

  “I never believed either of those things,” she smiles. “But that’s just me.”

  “You know,” I say, half-seriously, “when this is all over, we should hang out.”

  “Take a vacation.” She licks the beads of sweat off of her upper lip. “The tropics somewhere? A beach. A flavored rum drink. That kinda thing?”

  “Perfect,” I wink.

  “I’ll hold you to it,” she smiles. I can’t tell if the sudden blush in her cheeks is from the humidity or the simmering heat between us.

  I’ve heard that extreme situations often draw people together, intensifying their emotions for one another. I thought it was crap, made up to make action movie romance seem plausible. Maybe not.

  “This is the first time you’ve smiled since…well…since Blogis went into the river,” she notes. “What’s up? You hardly spoke on the way here.”

  “There’s a lot going on here. A lot I don’t fully understand. It’s no accident that Spencer picked me for this. None of this is an accident.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t really know what I mean. We can talk about this later…on a beach.”

  “Okay.”

  “I do know Spencer’s not going to give up the piece he’s got”.

  “Back to business then?” She takes a swig from a bottle of water she bought at a fruit stand a block back. She offers me a sip.

  “Yep.” I swallow a gulp then hand back the half-empty bottle. “We’ve got to figure out what we do.”

  “Well, for starters, we don’t have the pieces with us. That puts a kink in his plans to get all of the pieces together.”

  “That’s assuming we ever intended to give him the other pieces, which we didn’t.”

  “Good point.” She takes another sip of water, finishing it. “I really need us to end up with all four pieces of the process. I’m counting on you, Jackson.”

  My phone buzzes. It’s George Townsend. “Give me a second,” I tell Bella and walk a few steps past her and into the crowd along the Haupstrasse.

  “George,” I say, “you’re late.”

  “What?” he exclaims. “Jackson? This you?”

  “Yep. You’ve got info on Blogis? If so, it’s a little late.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s dead.” An elderly woman, arms full of groceries, smiles at me as she passes. “What?” he asks. “When?” He’s banging away on that keyboard of his.

  “Recently.” A young couple, both of them in green camouflage army fatigues, walk by me hand in hand. Her head, hair pulled into a tight bun, is on his shoulder.

  “I do have some information for you. I was getting ready to send it to you, but I needed to know where to send it. The only number I had for you was this one. And frankly, I’m shocked you answered it.”

  “What information do you have?” A man with bifocals is sitting at a cafe table about twenty feet from me. His wiry hair is shoulder length and gray. He’s blindly peeling an orange while reading a newspaper.

  “Uh,” he pauses, “you want it over the phone?”

  “You can send it in writing too. But I want what you’ve got right now.” A teenager is at the edge of the street, playing Hacky Sack by himself.

  “Okay,” he says. “Liho Blogis is an alias. A guy with the feds hooked me up with some basics.”

  I’m staring up at the castle, my back to Bella, people shuffling by me on either side. Some of them are speaking German, others French, still more English.

  “He’s known as Liho Blogis, Frank Blogis, Frank Blessing, and a couple of other names. Whatever he’s called, he’s on the terrorist watch list. He’s in his fiftie
s or sixties. They don’t know exactly how old he is. They do know he’s pretty high up in the cartels that run the Eastern European black market. He’s essentially got his own syndicate that provides protection, weapons, drugs, money laundering. He used to operate on U.S. soil for some private consortium that had tacit government approval, but after the wall fell, he shifted a lot of his efforts to the other side. The weird thing is, the intelligence on him indicates that, despite how powerful he is, he still likes to get his hands dirty. He’s not some mafia don who orders hits and eats ravioli in the back of a dark pizzeria. He likes blood.”

  “A guy you know just told you all of this?” I ask. “You have one federal contact and he happens to know all of this stuff? That’s a little incredible, George.”

  “I…” he pauses, “I have more than one source. And I’m owed a lot of favors.”

  I turn around to look at Bella. She’s window shopping, or pretending to, respecting my privacy without accusing me of secrecy.

  We’ve reached an understanding.

  “What else do you know?” I ask. “From your incredibly well-placed sources.”

  “The only other thing I could get from my sources, who didn’t feel real comfortable telling me what they did, was that there’s some active investigation involving Blogis and money transfers to the Iranians. Some cash went through a bank that was under surveillance, and it got traced to Iran on one end, some of Blogis’ people on the other. It was a lot of money.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “That makes sense?!” George sounds as though his head’s about to explode. “What are you involved in, Jackson? Nanergetix, Bella Buell, nuclear detectors, and an Iranian-funded project involving a black market cartel? This makes your involvement with the governor seem like child’s play.”

  “Yeah.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but George is right.

  “Is Blogis really dead?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Tell your source he’s dead and floating in a river in southwest Germany.”

  “You’re in southwest Germany?”

  “Yep. On second thought, George, keep it under your hat for a news cycle or two. I promised you a story. You’ll get it.”

  “Jackson, c’mon man. I’ve been patient. I’ve been providing you with a ton of good information. Give a dog a bone, brother.”

  “Didn’t Sir Spencer give you enough of a bone, brother?”

  “Wait, what?” George asks, startled. “How did you—”

  “Just a guess. When did he call you?”

  “About an hour ago,” George sighs. “I did confirm some of it.”

  “How much of what you’ve been providing me this whole time has been from Sir Spencer?”

  George is quiet.

  “What did he pay you?” I should have seen this coming. George is always about George.

  “He knows people at the networks,” George whines. “He promised me interviews at MSNBC and Al Jazeera America. Maybe CBS.”

  “You sold your soul, your allegiance to me, for a shot at the network?”

  “Jackson, please, I —”

  I hang up and walk back toward Bella, tossing the phone into a trash can next to the picture window of the Absinthe shop.

  “I’ve got our plan.” I take her hand, steering her toward the Heidelberg Castle.

  ***

  Bella’s gripping my hand tightly as we navigate the steep cobblestone leading up to the castle. We’re the only ones climbing our way up. Opposite us, a few hundred feet to the south, large clusters of tourists make their way down the long ramp back into the old city. The attraction is closing in a few minutes.

  The castle itself is awash in an electric orange glow, the setting sun reflects off the river and the west facing stone facade of the centuries old fortress.

  We began this journey a mile underground in a lab worthy of 22nd century science fiction. Now we’re ending it atop the world in a crumbling edifice that predates the industrial revolution. Poetic.

  “Come on up,” calls a voice from above. “He’s expecting you.” It’s Mack. He’s bandaged and bruised, but armed and aiming his Ukrainian Fort-12 in our direction. His thumb is on the safety, his swollen, bruised eyes working hard not to make contact with Bella’s.

  Though Bella’s eyebrows arch upward as though she’s about to cry, her resolve is set solid in her clenched jaw. She doesn’t want to make eye contact with him either.

  “Mack,” I say, “working for the dark side, eh?”

  “Aren’t we all, Jackson?” He waves us past him with the black matte steel of his double action pistol. “Last I checked you were on the payroll too.”

  I squeeze Bella’s hand as we work our way to what’s called the Karl Tower, the first of a series of crumbling stone structures that make up the remnants of the castle. We stop at a large open window looking south across the tops of coral colored roofs to the Neckar River. The water looks almost bronze as the sun sinks beneath the buildings to the west. It casts a looping shadow on the water from the ancient bridge connecting Old Town Heidelberg to the large homes on the other side of the river.

  “Move along,” Mack barks from behind us. I can hear the hitch of his prosthetics on the uneven stone path. “We’re meeting the man up ahead.”

  He hasn’t searched us!

  Bella lets go of my hand and turns to face Mack. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m standing right here until you tell me why you betrayed me, why you betrayed my father by doing this.”

  Mack laughs and unconsciously lowers the gun before jerking it back into position, “Betrayed?” He steps toward Bella, and she steps back. “That’s laughable. How did I betray you, Bella?”

  “You gave me a blank drive.” She holds up her index finger followed by her middle finger. “You helped Sir Spencer get the only part of the process I don’t have,” another raised finger, “and as of right now, you’re pointing a gun at me.”

  Mack cracks his neck and closed his eyes for a moment, taking in a breath full of restraint. “If there is any betrayal here,” he breathes, his eyes unafraid of Bella’s now, “any lack of allegiance between us, it is on you and you alone.”

  “How is that, Mack?” she asks. “What did I do?”

  “It’s what you didn’t do,” he spits. “My wife is dying. You know this. The woman who treated you like a daughter is being devoured by her own body. Her cells are turning against her. The very core of who she is, evaporating right before my eyes. And what have you done to help her, Bella?”

  “I —I”

  “Nothing!” he roars, a fountain of spit spraying us. “You’ve done nothing. The care your father provided, the medical assistance he went out of his way to ensure my wife received ended the day he died.”

  “You never said —”

  “Why would I have to say anything?” Venom drips from every word. “She reached her lifetime limit months before your father died. There was no help until he stepped in. I didn’t have to ask him. I shouldn’t have had to tell you.”

  “But why wouldn’t you tell me?” her voice is up an octave and quavering. “Mack, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I tried telling you.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his left hand. “You were preoccupied. Then Sir Spencer asked me, out of the blue, about her health. He cared.”

  “This is about money?” Bella says. “This is about money for your wife’s medical expenses?”

  “It’s about her LIFE!” he’s at the edge of becoming unhinged, before closing his eyes again and taking a deep breath. “You were family, Bella,” he says in a tone diametrically opposed to the one he took a moment earlier. “I thought I was family to you.”

  “Mack, you are fam—”

  “I’m your assassin,” he finishes. “In the midst of everything else in my life,” he shakes his head, running his hand across the top of it, “you asked me to kill a man.”

  Bella has no response. She can’t refute his argument.

  “Now,” he growls, �
��move along.”

  Bella hangs her head, tears running down her cheeks. She takes my hand to begin the march toward what might be our end.

  ***

  Sir Spencer is a parasite. He senses weakness, and selfishness, and he preys upon it. For me, the weakness was freedom. I wanted some semblance of a life so badly, I’d joined forces with a man I knew deep down would betray me. I killed for that alliance. I maimed. I did it so that I could have what I wanted. However benevolent my need, I betrayed my own sense of justice to achieve it.

  Bella joined forces with him out of a need to retain her power. She enlisted a man who, indirectly, killed her father, for the sake of proving her father wrong about her willingness to do what it took to succeed.

  George wanted the story. He wanted the “get” so big it would land him a higher profile, higher paying television job that might come close to satisfying his unadulterated narcissism. He betrayed me to have a chance at that opportunity.

  And Mack, poor Mack, seeking to save his terminally ill wife as much for himself as for her, turned against a girl he thought of as family. Too proud to ask for help, he turned to the first hand that offered it, no matter the stakes.

  In each case, Sir Spencer was there to pick the ripening fruit from the tree. Each of us, he tucked into a basket and carried us, willingly, until we rotted.

  Liho Blogis was wrong when he said that both sides could wear the white hat. Sir Spencer knew it not to be true because, in his world, everyone finds the black hat so much more attractive. In his world alliances are disposable. Allegiance is a matter of convenience.

  Here, at his convenience, stand three pawns. We’re not good foot soldiers, as my father’s token would remind us, but rather played pieces moved and sacrificed as the game master sees fit.

  Appropriate we are in a castle, bending knee to a knight.

  “Jackson,” he greets me with arms wide as he approaches from a dark corner of The Great Terrace. “Nice to see you, good man.” He wraps his arms around me, his heft almost lifting me from my feet.

  “And Bella,” he smiles. “Always the beauty, regardless of the circumstance. Even the wayward strands of hair atop your head seem stylishly out of place, perfectly askew. Beautiful!” He genuflects for effect and then stands with his hands clasped behind his back.