by Rob Sinclair
‘Understood.’
‘You need to get him moved from that block.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Good. Are we done?’
‘No. There’s more.’
Vasquez sighed. ‘What?’
‘Ryker was visited. By a woman.’
‘A woman? Who?’
‘From the British Embassy. I’ve already done what I can to check her out. From what I can see she is who she says she is. I have official papers from the Embassy that back up her visits.’
‘Visits? There’s been more than one?’
‘Two.’
‘And you’re only telling me this now?’ Vasquez could feel himself getting hotter again, and it wasn’t because of the ambient temperature. ‘How the hell do the British even know we have Ryker? He should be there off the books.’
‘I don’t know how they know. But you’re right. We have no official record of Ryker being in our prison.’
‘You’re supposed to bring me answers, Nava, not problems. Look into her further. I need to know who she is and what she knows.’
‘I’ve done what I can. I’m not sure where else to look, who else to ask. It’s not really my, you know, area of expertise.’
‘So you want me to do your job for you?’
‘No, I–’
‘It’s fine,’ Vasquez said, his words a contrast to his tone. But what more could he expect Nava to do. He was a prison guard – a senior one, but still just a prison guard.
‘I’ve got the video tapes of their meetings.’
Vasquez was at least quietly impressed with that. Not that he’d let on to that fact. ‘Get them to me. I’ll take it from here. If this woman is a problem? We’ll just deal with her how we deal with everyone else.’
17
As the guards dragged Ryker away from the cell block into unfamiliar prison territory, it crossed his mind more than once that maybe the guards, backed up by Lozano, were taking him away to a more private location to exact a further beating. Or, even worse, maybe they did have it in them to subject him to the kind of torture that would break any man, the kind of torture that had broken Ryker in his dark past. Lozano certainly held power over the prison guards, and he also knew full well how brutal and ruthless the Mexican drug cartels could be, if that was who Lozano worked for.
The guards hauled Ryker through to a different wing of the prison that was even dingier and more decrepit than the cell block he’d come from. There were no windows of any sorts here. They took Ryker down a flight of stairs and thrust him into a cell.
The door slammed and Ryker took in his surroundings. There was no natural light in the cell – or in the corridor outside for that matter. The cell would have been black were it not for the small service flap in the otherwise solid metal door, which had been left open and through which a faint beam of electric light from the corridor seeped in. The thin illumination cast a sinister glow on the neglected space. It was small, barely seven by seven feet, and empty except for a rusted bedpan that was already part-filled with a foul-smelling brown sludge. The concrete floor, the walls too, were covered in scratch marks and a thick layer of grime. Some of the warts appeared to be simple wear and tear, others deliberate attempts by previous inmates to leave their mark.
Ryker was left alone – for a number of hours, he thought. Although he’d come out on top of the fight in Lozano’s cell, he was wounded. The cut in his mouth was the least severe. The two slashes – to his arm and to his back – were just flesh wounds, but they would need stitches to prevent ugly scars and to minimise the chance of infection which Ryker was certain would set in given the filthy conditions. It was the blows he’d taken to the head though that were the most immediately debilitating. Ryker was concussed, and more than once he drifted off – to sleep or into unconsciousness, he wasn’t quite sure. Nonetheless it made keeping track of time impossible.
When Ryker was finally treated to a visitor, he was glad to find it was a doctor. The smartly dressed young man, lugging a hefty medical bag and accompanied by a crew of armed guards, did a decent enough job of stitching Ryker’s open wounds, applying antiseptic, and giving Ryker a heady concoction of painkillers.
At first, Ryker thought the medication was a kindness to help ease the pain of his wounds. As time wore on though, and the drugs kept coming, Ryker became more and more out of it, the room around him distant, his thoughts lumbered and muddled. He slept, took the water and food he was given – though quite what he was consuming he didn’t know.
Only when Ryker finally came out of the drug induced delirium did he fully comprehend that the medication they’d been feeding him contained sedatives. Not an unusual treatment for violent prisoners in many jails, but it made Ryker feel vulnerable to know he could be controlled so easily. He was slightly disappointed, too, when he regained his senses, as he’d spent a lot of the comatose time dreaming of Lisa. In fact the images had been so vivid and life-like – the way she felt, the way she smelled, the sound of her voice and the way her breath tickled his neck when they hugged – that Ryker had believed it to be his reality.
Clearly his subconscious was keen to remind him of the bigger picture. He’d spent too much of his time inside worrying about Lozano and Vasquez and not about Lisa. It was a coping mechanism, because when he did think of her, it only caused him pain to imagine how she may have suffered – how she may still be suffering.
In his drug-fuelled dreams though, it had just been him and her. Together. Carefree. Happy.
Would he ever feel like that again?
Coming back to the real world and realising he was stuck in a foul cell in Mexico made it hard to feel anything except misery and hopelessness.
Yet with the course of drugs wearing off, Ryker also felt stronger – both mentally and physically.
He didn’t know exactly how long he’d been out of it. The stitching was still in the two knife wounds, but they were both healing nicely, it seemed – he could only feel and not see the wound on his back. Based on the stage of healing, Ryker guessed two or three days had passed since the fight.
After two more bland meals were shoved his way – both consisting of rice along with stewed fatty meat of indistinguishable origin, Ryker finally saw some action when the cell door was opened and he was coaxed out into the corridor by two armed guards. Ryker’s body was achy and wobbly when he first stepped out and it took him quite a few seconds to get his muscles and limbs moving in steady rhythm. Two more guards were there to greet Ryker further down the corridor. It appeared Ryker’s notoriety was on the increase.
No words were spoken as the four prison workers escorted Ryker back toward more familiar territory. Ryker initially thought that his time in solitary confinement was at an end, that he was being taken back to Lozano’s cell block, but instead, to his surprise, he was shepherded along the corridors to the interview room.
When the guard knocked on the door and then proceeded to unlock and open it, Ryker fully expected Willoughby to be stationed on the other side. In fact, he was quite looking forward to seeing her – she was certainly refreshing compared to everything else in Santa Martha. So Ryker was somewhat disheartened when the person sitting at the table in the room was not Willoughby, but a man.
Ryker didn’t recognise him, but, as he stared into the deep brown eyes, he realised this wasn’t just any man. Ryker still had doubts about exactly who Willoughby was – an Embassy worker, as she claimed, or some kind of a spook?
There were no such doubts in Ryker’s mind about this man.
‘Logan. Or do you prefer Ryker now?’ the man asked, his bass voice gravelly, his accent American. ‘Please, come and sit down.’
18
Ryker couldn’t place the man’s accent to any particular state. He was casually dressed – linen trousers, open-necked shirt, loafers. Even though he was sat down Ryker could tell the guy was squat and thick-framed. He looked to have barely any neck between his shoulders and his head because of the large slabs of muscle th
ere. His shaved head was round, his nose fat and flat against his face.
Ryker moved into the room. The only guard in there, the one who’d opened the door, promptly walked out, closing and locking the door behind him. Ryker looked up at the CCTV camera in the corner of the room. Its power cord hung loose from the wall; no red light. And no guards in the room. No witnesses, no snooping. Ryker was standing in the same room he’d been in twice before with Willoughby, but everything about this visit was different.
The man in front of Ryker had a welcoming look on his face, not a smile exactly, but an appearance and aura about him that said I’m not a problem. But Ryker wouldn’t buy that, because what he saw in this guy’s eyes told him a lot. Ryker had wondered whether Willoughby’s digging may have alerted the JIA. Maybe this guy was JIA, maybe he wasn’t, but Ryker knew immediately he was looking at somebody just like him.
More tellingly though, this was another person who knew Ryker’s name. Together with Lozano and Vasquez, there was quite a group now who knew something of Ryker’s past.
Ryker took a seat without speaking.
‘My name’s Marcus Powell,’ the man said, offering a hand.
Ryker scoffed and gave it a cursory shake.
‘You don’t like my name?’ Powell asked.
‘That’s not your name.’
‘It’s not?’
‘Why would you tell me your real name?’
Powell shrugged.
‘Though it does suit you,’ Ryker said.
‘Suits me?’
‘Yeah. You look like you could be a Marcus.’
Powell raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why not? It just works for you. If you’d said Cuthbert or Humphrey or something like that I’d have questioned it. But you look like you could be Marcus Powell. Even though you’re not.’
‘Thanks. I think.’
‘I’ll call you Powell if you want. I’ll call you Princess. Whatever. No skin off my back.’
‘And what should I call you?’
Ryker dwelled on that one for a few moments. How much did this guy already know?
‘Take your pick,’ he said eventually.
‘Ryker then.’
‘Fine by me. So now we’ve got names out of the way, are you going to tell me why you’re here?’
‘A smart man like you must have figured that out already,’ Powell said.
‘Maybe I’m not as smart as I look.’
‘Pity for you then. Cos you look pretty dumb.’
‘Keep working on it, Powell. Humour clearly isn’t your strong point.’
‘Lucky for me I have plenty of others.’
‘I’m sure you do. So go on then.’
‘Why do you think I’m here?’
More games. That was fine. Ryker wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Because your boss told you to come here.’
‘How do you know I’m not the boss?’ Powell asked, just the slightest look of offence on his face. There was tension in Powell’s workplace situation. Ryker noted the fact for future reference.
‘Because you don’t look much like a leader. Not meaning to be rude, but you’re a do-er. Like me. But we don’t know each other. So you wouldn’t know anything about me unless someone else told you. Makes sense if that someone was your boss.’
‘You think you can tell a lot about me just by the way I look. My name, what I do, who I take instructions from.’
‘I’m making assumptions.’ Ryker shrugged. ‘I may or may not be right. But we all make assumptions whenever we meet someone the first time, and you did ask me for my take.’
‘Okay, you’re right. Yes, my boss sent me here.’
‘So who’s your boss?’
‘You tell me. Who do you think I work for?’
‘My gut says CIA. You don’t look like a policeman or a Fed, and on the off chance you were one of those, you’d already have thrown your badge my way. Those guys love to show their authority with their badges.’
Powell nodded in amused agreement.
‘And you’re not a true civilian,’ Ryker said. ‘Not a lawyer or an office worker, or even a diplomat or anything like that. For starters, why would you be here to see me, an Englishman banged up in Mexico, if that’s what you are? So I’ve narrowed it down to two professions.’
‘Which are?’
‘Intelligence services or the armed forces. Whichever it is, your job would essentially be the same. Like I said, you’re a do-er. Someone who gets his hands dirty. Very dirty. You’re either a deep cover spy, for the CIA or some splinter group I’ve never heard of, or you’re special forces. Seal, Green Beret. I see it in your eyes.’
‘You’re a perceptive guy.’
‘No. Not really. I couldn’t tell the difference between a bus driver, an accountant, and a botanist, but when I see someone else like me – a contemporary – I know it.’
‘I guess that saves a lot of explaining from my side then.’
‘No, it doesn’t. For starters you need to put me straight. CIA or armed forces.’
‘Neither. But the first is closer.’
The answer made Ryker uncomfortable. Powell certainly wasn’t from the JIA. If he was he would have said already, he wouldn’t have bothered with the game. And if Powell was from the elite armed forces, that would have at least suggested some sort of officiality to his visit, as would him coming from the mainstay CIA. The fact he was from a group outside the mainstream was potentially a problem for Ryker: he had no idea what interest such a group would have in him or whether that interest would in any way benefit him.
‘Are you going to add to that?’ Ryker asked.
‘No. I think you summed it up pretty nicely.’
‘Fine. So now you can tell me why you’re here then.’
‘I guess I can.’ Powell nodded. ‘Ryker, I’m here to get you out.’
19
‘Where’s the catch?’ Ryker asked.
‘Why do you think there’s a catch?’
‘Because we’re still sitting here, in jail, not sitting outside in the sun, drinking beer. If you can get me out, there must be a condition, some reason why we’re not already out of this shit pit.’
‘It’s not a catch.’
‘What is it then?’
‘A deal. You help us, we help you.’
‘Who’s us?’
‘I thought we covered that already.’
‘Okay. So you want me to help you do what?’
‘Let’s come back to that,’ Powell said, looking pleased with himself; he was clearly enjoying the power he held over Ryker. ‘When we’ve properly established our relative positions.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Tell me about why you came to Mexico.’
Ryker glowered at Powell. Everyone was so concerned about why Ryker had come to Mexico. He was tired of hearing the same question from seemingly very different people. Seemingly different. But just who was connected to who and how? What hadn’t escaped Ryker’s attention was the question of how Powell had come to be inside the prison in the first place. Willoughby was an official embassy worker, or so she claimed. The Mexican authorities could hardly deny her access, not unless they wanted a potential – and unnecessary – diplomatic and political fallout. But Powell – an intelligence agent of some sort – could likely only get inside through his shady connections.
‘You were meeting with Luis Jiménez the day you were arrested,’ Powell said.
‘Yes. And someone shot him in the face in front of me.’
‘But not you.’
‘Not me.’
Ryker thought about mentioning who had pulled the trigger – Comisario Vasquez – but he didn’t. He would come back to the thought if Powell pushed for more answers. Vasquez might be a common enemy, or Powell and Vasquez could be in bed together.
‘Do you know why that happened?’ Powell asked.
‘Haven’t a clue.’
‘Before Jiménez was sho
t, what were the two of you talking about?’
‘Old times.’
‘You were friends?’
‘No.’
‘So?’
‘Why does it matter to you?’
Powell let out a long sigh, making it clear that he was exasperated by Ryker’s attitude. Ryker couldn't give two hoots though. If Powell had a deal to make, he just needed to come out and say what it was.
‘Ryker, I meant what I said. I can get you out of this mess. But to make it work, I need to know exactly what that mess is, how far it stretches. I’m not from Mexico, but this place, what happens here, is my business. We can’t have the likes of you roaming around making trouble.’
Ryker took Powell’s words to mean he was in Mexico tackling the cartels for his employer – much like Ryker had in the past. If that were the case, Ryker could to some extent empathise with Powell’s position. Back in the day, if some rogue ex-operative had turned up on the scene of a job and caused trouble, hassling assets, then Ryker wasn’t sure he’d be as hospitable as Powell was being. That said, Ryker still knew so little about Powell’s agenda.
‘A piece of paper was found on Jiménez’s body,’ Powell said.
He reached down into a leather satchel and slid out a piece of A4 paper. He pushed it across the table. It was a photocopy of one of the papers Ryker had passed to Jiménez – the pictures of the two men who Ryker had linked to Lisa’s disappearance.
‘Who are they?’ Powell asked.
‘I have no idea.’
‘But that’s what you were trying to find out. Why?’
Ryker sat forward in his seat. ‘None. Of. Your. Fucking. Business.’
Ryker’s response left Powell silent for a few seconds.
‘Do you have any clue how much shit you’re in?’ Powell asked.
‘Yeah. It hadn’t escaped my attention.’
‘You think this is a game?’
‘No. I don’t.’