by Mark Parragh
She was stunningly beautiful, Crane realized. It was a shame she was probably going to do something horrible to him.
“I am Comrade Comandante Azul!” she shouted at him suddenly. “Of the Indigenous People’s Liberation Front! You are a spy from the colonialist multinational corporate states!”
“Is it because of the hair?” said Crane. “Is that why they call you ‘Azul’?”
She ignored him. “Our comrades in the Obregon Cartel have agreed to turn you over to us. You will be tried in a military tribunal for your crimes against the people!”
Crane sighed. Back in freshmen year, he’d seen suburban kids wearing Che Guevara T-shirts to impress girls who made more convincing revolutionaries.
“You really make a terrible communist,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, dropping the barking tone.
“Well, for one thing, those are Manolo Blahnik boots.”
She broke out in a wide, joyous grin, whipped off the beret, and playfully swatted him with it before she tossed it away onto the bed. “Oh, John Crane, you are going to be a delight! But how in God’s name did you get yourself into this mess? If I didn’t have ears in places I shouldn’t, I wouldn’t have known you were here at all, and that jackass downstairs would have killed you by now. He really wants to, you know. Did you really blow up his yacht?”
“It seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” said Crane.
“Things do tend to explode around you, don’t they? Very impressive work in Brno, by the way. Even if you didn’t actually kill Skala yourself.”
That caught Crane’s attention. Even Malcolm had assumed that he’d been the one to kill Branislav Skala. Crane had told Josh what happened. The only other person who knew Crane hadn’t pulled the trigger was the man who actually pulled it, a Czech gangster named Anton Kucera. Conclusion—Kucera must have told her.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said.
“I do, don’t I?” she said in a flirtatious tone, and licked her lips. “Whatever … oh, you mean that. I do know a few secrets about you. But then, you keep popping up everywhere I go. Brno. Buenos Aires …”
Buenos Aires. He’d been following a blackmailer and gigolo that Skala’s coded archive referred to as “Tamarind.” Tamarind had been romancing an heiress named … something Calvo. He looked more closely at her, replaced the blue hair with a blonde wig, the revolutionary costume with a white dress.
“You killed Tamarind!”
She shrugged. “Only because you made me. If you’d left him alone, there would have been no need.”
Skala had been convinced that Crane was part of a mysterious group he referred to in his notes as “Team Kilo.” Crane had no idea who or what Team Kilo was. But Skala was terrified of them. That night, after Kucera had killed Skala in the garden behind his estate, he’d told Crane that the mysterious Team Kilo had sent someone to make him an offer that involved getting rid of Skala. That meant …
“You’re part of Team Kilo,” he said in amazement. What the hell was she doing here?
“That’s what Skala called us, yes.”
“It’s kind of an awkward name,” he said. “What do you call yourselves?”
She smiled. “We don’t have a proper name. Whatever someone else calls us, that’s what we are to them. My … our founder didn’t want the organization to become its own thing.”
Whatever that meant.
“How about you?” he asked. “What do I call you?”
“Again, we’re not much on names. Call me ‘Swift.’ It’s very uncomfortable in here, isn’t it?” She crossed to the French doors. She pulled the curtains back and opened the doors to let in the breeze. They looked out onto a balcony with a view across the ridge toward the airstrip.
“That’s better. You’re full of questions, John. You’re the one tied to the chair, remember?”
It was a fair point, he supposed. “But you already know so much more about me than I do about you.”
“I don’t know as much as you think I do,” she said with a wan smile. “You’re not easy to investigate, which by itself tells me a little something. You’re not US Government, but I bet you used to be. They scrubbed you squeaky clean. You graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in philosophy.” She raised an eyebrow at that. “Really, John?”
Crane just smiled and shrugged.
“And then you just drop off the map. I’m meant to believe you spent most of the intervening years working for a non-profit that helps identify organ donations for critical patients.”
“I wanted to help people,” Crane said with his most disarming grin. She grinned back at him. He could tell she was enjoying the give and take. He’d be enjoying it more himself, he considered, if he weren’t tied to a chair in Jason Tate’s guest room.
“The first time your head pops above water is in Puerto Rico, actually. So you left the government before then, but maybe not too long before. Were you Hurricane Group, John?”
“I’m sorry. Who?”
She discarded the idea with a toss of her head. “Timing could be a coincidence. Doesn’t matter, really. The important question is who you’re working for now. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to rule out every faction we know about, and we know all of them, believe me. That’s what makes you so exciting.”
She threw a leg over his and sat down in his lap, facing him. Her lips were just inches from his, and he felt her taut thighs against his legs. She smelled like orange blossoms.
“You, and whoever’s behind you, I mean. Providing the apparently very ample funding, choosing the missions, calling the shots. Collectively, you’re a new player,” she said, her voice suddenly breathy and seductive. “Nobody knows who you are, what you want. Nobody has a read on you or a mole in your organization. You’re so deep under the radar that nobody even knows you’re there.”
Josh would be disappointed to hear that, he thought.
“I think we can help each other, John. I mean, if nothing else, I can get you out of this chair.”
“I could stand to stretch my legs,” Crane admitted. “What do you want from me?”
She looked into his eyes for a long moment. Crane tried to read what he saw there, but his instincts told him that wasn’t going to work. This was someone who layered personas one atop another until even she didn’t know who she was anymore.
“Just your complete, unthinking obedience, of course, darling,” she said. “I want you to be my puppet as I conquer the world.” She said it in a bantering tone, but then she immediately thought better of it. The grin faded, another layer fell away, and Crane realized she was struggling to speak the truth to him and accept the vulnerability that came with that.
“I need help,” she said at last. “You can act freely. I can’t. I’ve managed to gain a little freedom of movement, but I’m still on a very short leash. So you can do things for me that I can’t do for myself.”
“That actually does sound a little like being your puppet,” said Crane.
She flicked his chin with a fingertip. “That’s uncharitable of you! I can’t pull your strings, John. But I can provide insight, and you need that. I don’t think you have any idea what you’re doing right now, do you? You’re thrashing around at random. Skala, poor Tamarind, and now, of all the things you could be doing, you’re going after Jason Tate?”
“The guy’s an asshole,” said Crane.
“Point taken,” she answered. “But there’s no shortage of those. Why this one? It makes no sense. You have no grand design.”
Crane couldn’t help chuckling to himself. She was starting to sound like Malcolm with his insistence that he needed a guiding vision.
She stood up and paced around him in agitation. “I have another theory. Stop me when I make a mistake. You have no idea what you’ve stumbled into. You came back from Brno with Skala’s archive, and it blew your mind. A whole new world behind the curtains. Factions and rivalries and secret wars. But you can’t make
sense of it, can you? You don’t have the context to translate Skala’s code names and shorthand, so you’re still groping around in the dark. You’re not stopping me, John!”
She turned and met his eyes. Crane said nothing. She was right—spot on—and he saw no point in trying to deny it.
“Well, it’s no mystery to me,” she said. “I grew up in this world. Literally. I can explain every note he took, correct his mistakes, and tell you things Skala never dreamed of. I have the understanding you need, and you have the freedom that I don’t. Think about it.”
She turned away and went to the French doors. In the distance, Crane heard aircraft engines. Then a helicopter flew past the house, heading south. A few moments later, two airplanes appeared in the distance, climbing out of the airstrip and heading in a different direction. One was an aging DC-3, while the other was a smaller passenger plane.
Swift stood looking at them as they slowly receded into the distance. Then she turned back to him.
“Better think fast, John. We may not have much time.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“They’ve cleared the airstrip. Everything parked there just flew out.” She took a breath. “Including the plane I flew in on. My pilot wouldn’t have willingly left me here.”
She moved quickly across the room to stand behind him.
“Things are moving faster than I expected,” she muttered. She bent down with one hand on his shoulder, and with the other, she pressed something into his hands. It was a knife, he realized. It felt like an out-the-front automatic blade. He wrapped his fingers around it, felt the release button pressing into his skin.
“I’m not the enemy, John,” she whispered in his ear. “Not today, at least.”
Then the doors burst open, and men with guns flooded into the room.
CHAPTER 40
Eight men were dead. The engineers were all gone. The place was shot to hell. Worse, the outside world knew where he was now. Someone knew how to find the engineers, and now they’d no doubt tell the Mexican authorities. The only good thing about it was that he’d finally gotten his hands on that son of a bitch, John Crane. And now a blue-haired woman from the only group he found more frightening than the cartel was in his upstairs bedroom right now, taking Crane away from him.
Jason Tate was not having a good day.
He stalked around the pool as the household staff cleaned up broken glass and shell casings. Esteban was on the phone with his superiors, and he kept glancing over at him in ways Tate didn’t like.
He was probably going to have to move after this, and despite his earlier bravado, that was going to suck. He’d put a lot of time and effort into this place. He’d gotten used to it. And it didn’t help that the cartel was angry about all this. They’d lost people, and now they’d lost this place that they’d sunk a lot of money into, and they didn’t see what any of it had to do with them. But it would be all right. They might resent him, but they still needed him. If nothing else, having Turnstone’s fixer show up would remind them of that. They needed the connections he could provide, and the cover.
Tate looked into the pool and shook his head. One of the cartel men had managed to get himself shot and fall into the pool to bleed out. They’d removed the body, but the water was tinted faintly pink. It would have to be drained and cleaned, and he wasn’t even sure anyone would bother.
I should get a bag packed, he thought as one of the servants headed his way with a satellite phone. Who the hell knew what was going to happen next?
The servant handed him the phone, and he looked at the number on the screen. Not his cartel contact. The number was unfamiliar, and two digits too long. Keating, he thought, or another of Turnstone’s people.
“Hello,” he said.
“Tate?” He’d only heard the voice once before, but there was no mistaking it. He was speaking to Turnstone himself. He swallowed involuntarily.
“Yes, this is Jason. How are you?”
“I want you to listen carefully,” Turnstone said. “There’s a woman there from my organization.”
“That’s right,” he said, “we’re showing her every courtesy.”
A shrill and discordant tone cut him off. It sounded as if Turnstone was using a touchtone phone and holding down several buttons at once. It went on for a good five seconds before it cut out. Then Turnstone spoke again.
“I want you to listen carefully. There’s a woman there from my organization. Anything she may have told you, any representations she may have made, are inoperative. She is acting without authority. I’m coming there with soldiers to take her into custody. Detain her and keep her there until I arrive. Don’t let her leave, and take away any communication devices she may have with her. She doesn’t talk to the outside world under any circumstances. Detain anybody who came with her. Kill them if they resist. But she is to be unhurt. Do you have all that? Am I clear?”
Tate stammered for a moment. What the hell was going on? First the business last night, and now this?
“I hear you,” he said at last, “but I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“You don’t need to! This is an internal matter. Do you have cartel support there?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“Then use them. She’s very dangerous. Be careful. Send one man with a pistol for her, and she’ll kill him. Do you understand me? Use everyone you’ve got, and keep her there until I arrive.”
“Yes, I understand. But what about Crane?”
“Who?”
“The man I asked you about. John Crane.”
Turnstone made an exasperated noise. “Irrelevant. Kill him.”
Then the connection went dead.
Tate looked at the satellite phone in disbelief. Madness. This was madness. He glanced up to the second floor where the blue-haired woman was interrogating John Crane. Kill him. Well, that’s just what he was trying to do before the blue-haired woman had come along and stopped him. It sounded as though she’d gone rogue somehow. And while Turnstone might think John Crane was unimportant, the blue-haired woman obviously didn’t, and Tate was inclined to side with her. He’d have to find out why she was interested in Crane before Turnstone arrived to take her off his hands.
He dropped the phone on a side table beside a chaise lounge and looked around for Esteban. He was still standing in the open double doorway that led into the west gallery, talking to someone from the cartel in hushed tones.
“God damn it, Esteban! Get off the damn phone and get over here! We’ve got trouble!”
Esteban murmured something to the phone and then set it down and walked over. Tate explained his call. Esteban glanced up at the second floor just as he had done.
“Is she still up there?”
“Hell would I know? If she hasn’t come down.”
Esteban pulled his radio handset from his belt and summoned a pair of his lieutenants. They arrived within a minute, hurrying back from cleanup operations.
“The woman,” he asked them. “How many people did she bring with her?”
“None,” one of them answered. “Just her pilot. He’s still at the airstrip.”
Esteban considered his orders for a moment. Tate didn’t like the sense he was getting that he was being ignored.
“Go take him,” he said at last. “If he gives you any trouble, kill him.”
“Jesus!” he cried out. “You can’t do that! These people are major league!”
“These people want the woman taken care of,” Estaban snapped. “She’s not under anyone’s protection anymore. We’ll lock her down and take care of the pilot for you, but then we’re gone.”
He turned to the lieutenants. “Get Chago, Manuel, Hector, and Dacio for the helicopter. Fly everything out, back to Durango, before they get here.”
“What are you doing?” Tate asked.
“We’re locking the place down,” said Esteban. “We take away anything that flies and she’s stuck here. Unless she wants to try driving down the m
ountain.”
He may spin it that way, Tate thought, but what they are really doing is getting their expensive aircraft out of harm’s way. As well as the one that, from the sound of things, they were planning to steal from the blue-haired woman.
“And put the men on the transports,” Esteban said. “I’ll clean up here and go with Dacio.”
They were abandoning him, he realized. They were pulling out and leaving him here with just his small locally hired staff. Everything was coming apart suddenly.
Esteban seemed to read his mind. “This place is no good anymore, anyway. And like you said, these people are big league from the north, flying in with soldiers. My men are already on edge. Best we get out of their way, let you deal with your friends. We’ll come back for you when it’s settled.”
He turned and clapped one of the lieutenants on the shoulder. “Go.”
Tate stood there beside his expensive, bloodstained pool. A bird landed in the ivy on the archways he’d always admired. It sat there, repeating the same sequence of notes over and over again, and Tate wished he had a gun so he could blow the damn thing into a cloud of feathers.
Everything was coming unglued around him. But the basic truths of his situation hadn’t changed. He could provide the connections to people and money and opportunities in the States that the cartel would otherwise have no access to. And he could still work in the other direction as well, connecting Turnstone’s organization to the reach and power of the cartel.
They both needed him. Once the dust had settled, they would still need him, and somehow this would all get worked out. He would end up with a new home, which was unfortunate, but once this had been a refuge as well. He would get used to it.
In the meantime, he should be looking out for himself. Someone had to go detain the blue-haired woman, but that wasn’t going to be him. He was going to check his bug-out bag and be ready to get the hell out of here if things went sideways.
One thing he’d learned about living down here was that things could always go sideways.