The Gift of the Dragon

by Michael Murray

  Faith

  Faith blushed. She felt genuinely surprised. In every story Northwin and Trevor had told her about this man, he was a ruthless assassin who used people as he used utensils. Here, she could see a different side, a side she almost liked.

  A larger wave sent droplets flying up that caught them both in the face. They shrieked together like children full of the joy of playing in the ocean. The waves breaking on the beach were topped by foam that looked like white horses whipped to a run by the warm breeze.

  Pointing to the shore, Callan said, “I’ll race you to the dry sand!” He took off in a shower of spray. Faith yelled, “Cheater!” as she raced after him. Callan and Faith were neck and neck coming out of the water to the wet sand where the wash rose and fell.

  Callan dove for the dry sand at the top of the line, and Faith dove after him. They arrived together, too close to call a victor, but that didn’t stop Callan from yelling like a nine year old, “I won!”

  Faith leaped on top of him crying, “Did not. I touched it first.” Giggling, they rolled, coating themselves with sand. Callan tossed the pack up on the shore as he landed, and Faith now made the contest the first to get to the pack. Kicking sand at him, she clearly won that race. She grabbed the long, narrow neck of the bottle of Cabo Uno and held it aloft. “To the winner goes the first shot!” she called.

  Wiping sand from his eyes, Callan sat down next to her and made a grab for the bottle, which she waved out of his reach. He rolled on top of her, and for a moment their eyes met, both gleaming with mischief. “Not yet!” she yelled and, wrapping her thighs around his waist rolled him back off her. In a single move, she sat up, pulled the cork from the round bottle with her teeth, and took a swig. “Who-hoop!” she yelled.

  Callan produced a cut lime and handed it to her, and she shoved it into her mouth, sucking the juice out with a loud slurp. “Mmmhmm, what is this?” she said. “That’s some good tequila!”

  Grabbing the bottle, Callan crooked his thumb and poured salt in the hollow made on the back of his hand. With a wide sweep of his tongue, he swept up the salt and took an equally lusty swallow from the bottle. He too grabbed a lime and sucked out its juice. Lips dribbling, he smiled a toothy grin and yelled, “Hijole!” He handed the bottle back. “Yeah, that’s good tequila. Have you never tried a lowland reposado before?”

  Sucking salt herself this time and taking another swig, Faith paused long enough to say, “Shoot, maybe? Not that I can remember stopping long enough to read the bottle.”

  “Ah, there’s your problem Faith. You should always understand your tequila! The wrong kind at the right time can make you do crazy things!” His knowing look as he said that almost sobered Faith then and there. Did he know about Laird Northwin’s love of Centenario?

  Letting out another whoop, Callan got up and ran back into the warm water. He dove under the waves and swam out past the surf line. Faith watched him go, admiring the play of muscles under the faded tattoo. She shook off her concern and ran into the water herself, enjoying a beautiful day on a beautiful beach with a wild and dangerous man. She would not waste it. The tracker was safely hidden. She would have fun with the assassin and return with him. By the time she finished with him, he would think her just a random one-day stand. This time tomorrow, she would be putting together a team of her own operators, to hunt him down and recover the tablet.

  She shelved that plan for later. They swam for a while and then floated in the salty waves, talking about small silly things. Callan asked her whether she felt hungry, and she realized she did. He waded back to get his pack and the tequila, then they half-swam back to the boat. The tide had come in some, and the anchor dragged a bit, so the boat now rode in almost five feet of water. Faith reached the swim ladder first and started up.

  Suddenly something hit her right in the sciatic nerve junction of her lower back. She twisted her head around to see Callan with the tequila bottle in his hand, looking at her with hard eyes. Faith felt the shock shoot through her like a star exploding from the point of impact. Her legs gave out, and she couldn't breathe. She thought, This can't be good, as she fell. Trying to turn for a defensive strike, failing, her limbs going numb, she dropped backward into Callan’s waiting arms.

  Faith woke up to find herself tied hand and foot on the floor of the boat. She lay in the shade of a Bimini top, but the white fiberglass deck of the boat felt like a pan at egg-frying temperature. She was tied with rough deck lines already chafing her skin. She screamed, “Help!” then louder, “HELP!”

  Callan emerged from the cabin with a dark look on his face. He threw a small electronic device at her tied feet. It lay there crushed, with wires hanging out. The tracker! The bastard had found it.

  “Faith, you know what will happen now. I think you should accept your situation. There would be more dignity that way.”

  “Go to hell! Help! S. O. fucking S!”

  Callan laughed. “We are in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, Faith. There’s no one to hear you out here. You can scream for help all day. No one will come. But I don’t like your voice when you scream. I will gag you if you can’t keep quiet.”

  “The people I work with know I’m here, Callan. They’ll find me!” She had not even told Osiel what she had planned.

  “I doubt that, Faith. I found your tracker. Your phone and gun are at the bottom of the Cat Island channel. They can’t find me. That’s why they hired you, remember?”

  Faith tried a different ploy, “That tracker was military grade. It sent out a signal until you crushed it. They have a good idea where to look for me.”

  Callan poked the device with his foot. “That doesn’t look very powerful. My jammer, on the other hand, is technology the military might have in a few years. No one is coming for you, Faith. Let me ask you something. If the job you succeeded at led you to this, of what use was the work?”

  “That’s completely insane,” she said softly. He had a jammer. The tracker she planted had been a gift from Trevor. According to him, power had been sacrificed for battery life and compactness, designed to be easy to hide. Not designed to burn through a strong jamming signal.

  “You mean this conversation is insane?”

  “No, I mean you are insane.”

  “You can psychoanalyze me if that is what you want to do now. I’d like you to keep it to yourself. You are tied up on a boat in the middle of the ocean. You should try to keep me happy.”

  Faith spat up at him, straining against her bonds.

  “Spitting isn’t what makes me happy, Faith. Do you want to know what will make me happy?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Callan went to a side locker and pulled out a folding deck chair. He sat on it. “That would be great for a short time. For the long term, it would make me very happy if you tell me whom you are working for. I’ve a life raft on this boat. I can put you on it, and you can activate its beacon. Or we can do this the hard way. The people who paid you—are they worth it, Faith? Are they worth hurting and dying for?”

  Faith had been trained to resist interrogation. She knew she could hold out for a while. She also knew that if the interrogator were patient and ruthless, no one could hold out forever. How could I have let myself get into this situation? How could I have laughed with him? How could I have kissed him! How could I have turned my back on him!

  Callan walked to a storage box at the front of the boat. He came back with a long, sharp hook on a stick. He sat back on the chair. “Do you know what this is, Faith?”

  “Gaff,” she said.

  “Right! When we catch a large fish, we use this to bring it into the boat. You don’t want to gaff the fish in the side, as that will let salt into the flesh. Ruins its taste. The right way to gaff a fish is to drive this,” Callan’s finger traced the needle sharp point of the hook, “into the fish’s eyes. In one and out the other. That keeps the flesh nice and tasty.”

  “You’re a freaking animal!”

  “Thanks. To think you said I was
a philosopher before. Maybe I am a noble savage? Well, I will freely admit to being savage when I need to. And I will take no bullshit from you.” He paused. "That makes me a no-bullshit savage!” He laughed as he said it.

  She glared at him.

  “Look, Faith, I don’t want to poke your pretty eyes with this gaff. I’d much rather put you on that life raft and let you go.”

  Faith again pulled at the ropes, thinking furiously. Would he let her go? She had seen his face. Trevor had a recent photo of him, so that was no big deal. But, she knew his boat and his habit of doing business at the casinos. He could abandon the boat and find other ways to do business, if he thought it would be worth it to him to spare her life. It won’t be. She thought of a better plan.

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “That’s a good girl!”

  “If you do it my way. Take me back to the island. We’ll leave the boat, and swim back to the island. I’ll tell you everything there, and then you can leave me there. I’ll find a way back.”

  Callan snorted. “Sure. Of course, you’ll just make up a story and run off into the bushes.”

  Faith opened her eyes wide. “A story? What do you mean?”

  “You’ve had some training. I can tell. You can resist my application of pain for quite some time. You will emerge damaged, if you emerge at all. You have to ask yourself why, Faith. Is keeping the truth from me really worth what it will cost you?”

  Faith’s stomach twisted. There may not be a happy ending here today. He could cause her a great deal of pain, and she would eventually tell him anything to make him stop. Or she could tell him everything and hope for the best, realizing he would most likely kill her anyway. She decided folding would be the best she could do with the hand she held.

  Callan

  He drove his boat slowly, thinking about what he had learned. He knew she had told him the truth. He had spiked her salt with powdered MDMA, several doses’ worth. In the seventies, psychiatrists used the drug to make their patients trust them. In effect, it made the user trust whomever they were with. She had given in easily and, by the end of the interrogation, was blubbering that she loved him as she told him everything. He had not had to keep her tied up for very long.

  Now she lay in the cabin, deeply sedated. He thought about killing her to keep his secrets, but there was no need to do that right away. He could leave her under guard in Venice until his business with Northwin was completed and then decide what to do with her. His plan would leave him in a position where he would not have to worry about her knowing what she knew about him. If the plan failed, he would most likely be beyond caring about what she knew. I will most likely be beyond caring about anything. I’ll be with that gull at the end of the one true line.

  Callan turned back to his controls and gave the twin motors gas. The boat rose up and ran swiftly over the water. The warm breeze blew sweet with the smell of the open Gulf as he raced west. He turned his thoughts to what Faith had said.

  Northwin sent Faith.

  Northwin had the key to his tablet.

  Northwin had Alice Sangerman.

  “You are a dead man!” he screamed into the wind.

  A few hours later, and one hundred and eleven nautical miles from Cat Island, Callan’s boat drifted over the Mississippi Canyon. He put the big grouper poles out, but the hooks at the ends of the eighty-pound-test lines were bare, with nothing but weights on their ends. The motors were turning over, providing enough juice for the powerful scrambler attached to his satellite phone. Even if the best minds at the FBI and NSA were listening in, all they would hear would be a shrimper talking to his girlfriend about what they would do when he returned home. Sometimes the best defense is banality. He dialed a number, and on the third ring Franklin McAlister picked up.

  “Mr. Grant, do you have my tablet for me?”

  Mimicking McAlister’s haughty tone, Callan replied, “Mr. McAlister, I have one last thing to ask of you, and then I’ll provide you with the tablet you seek.”

  Callan could hear McAlister sighing over the slightly scratchy line. “What do you need now?”

  “Laird Northwin. He’s been hounding me, but he can’t catch me. Have you been holding his leash, or is he free to harass people you have hired on his own?”

  “No man is free, Mr. Grant. Only fools and children would think that. Laird Northwin is one third of the leadership of the Apple Creek Corporation. His position is equal to mine. There are many things, such as punishing deserters, he works on without seeking my permission or my counsel.”

  “Deserters! You are all such tin-pot dictators! You have a security team, not an army. People quit. You need to get over it.”

  “Apple Creek is larger and certainly more powerful than many nations that have armies. We protect our interests.”

  “You are standing on the beach, ordering the tide to stop. And killing anyone who says you’re a fool.”

  “You signed a contract, Mr. Grant. You broke it. Do not play the child with me. I know how old you are. You knew the cost of quitting when you made that choice. We spelled it out quite clearly in black and white.”

  “And yet you hired me to do your dirty work. Work you didn’t want to pass off to Laird Northwin.”

  “And you took the pay for the work. And you didn’t complete the job. I’m sensing a pattern here, Grant. Are you trying to convince me that Laird is right to want you dead?”

  “If you want to try to kill me, please send that pretty son of yours. The one who fancies himself a warrior, not the cripple. Killing Ian would be most entertaining.”

  “Come, Grant. Sending encrypted threats bouncing off satellites is not what you are spending ten dollars per minute for. What is it you want?”

  “I already told you. Laird Northwin. I want the specifications for his boat.”

  “What for?”

  “I want to get him a birthday present. Replace the AC on that rust bucket. So I need the complete specifications. Including the ventilation ductwork.”

  “I see.”

  “Look, McAlister, Northwin has tried to kill me at least twice. I don’t play nicely with people who do that. He’s a dead man walking. When he is gone, you’ll need someone to take his place. I know Apple Creek needs the Guardians.”

  “That is one thing I like about you, Callan, I don’t have to spell things out to you in great detail. Of course, if you were to take his place, I would demand obedience. For example, I do not hire people who accuse me of being a tin pot.”

  Callan realized that he had been hotheaded. “Right. Sorry. This has been a tough day. I just stopped another of Northwin’s assassins.” Callan sat down on his captain’s chair. “Can we reset, Franklin? In this thing, we have one of those ‘win-win’ situations.” My lawyer masquerade might be affecting my language! “Just get me the specs. When I eliminate Northwin, I’ll send you the tablet. And we can talk.”

  “There is another slight problem, though. If what you are planning proves terminal to Laird, his shares will pass to his wife and then to his children. I would prefer that didn’t happen.”

  “Northwin won’t survive my visit to him.”

  “If that is the course you set, then you must stay on that course until the end of the journey.”

  “If you send me what I am asking for, you’ll get what you are asking for.”

  “I have to be able to trust you, Mr. Grant. My trust for you is fading. I need it back.”

  “I’m in the middle of the ocean right now, McAlister. I can’t get the tablet to you now anyway. Send me what I’ve asked for, and I’ll conclude my business with Northwin and his family. Then I’ll send you the tablet from the first UPS I can find.”

  “I will send someone for it, tell me where.”

  Callan silently clenched his fist in victory. The old lion would play the game. “The plans for the Endurance?”

  “I signed the requisition for that rust bucket. Sam told the old goat that he would build him a brand-new ship, but Northwin f
ound this ex-German navy corvette and wanted to convert it. Cost more than building him a new one! The complete plans were part of the paperwork I signed.” Callan could hear the man taking a breath. Probably trying to control his indignation at the expenditure. Always the cheapskate. “I have them in PDF format, but they are large. How would you like me to send them?”

  “Encrypt them and send them to dr490n99@hotmail.com.” Callan spelled out each character carefully and had McAlister repeat them back. He would get the files via an untraceable IP address–spoofing proxy server when he returned to Venice.

  “They are on their way. If you get me that tablet, I will be grateful, Callan Grant. We can say your desertion was a cover for missions I ordered. If you succeed and if you finish what I have asked for you to finish.”

  “I won’t be your dog, McAlister.”

  “Good luck, Mr. Grant. Until next time.”

  Callan stared at the silent phone. Then he walked over to the downriggers and pushed the buttons that brought them up. He had some bait, and he didn’t want to come into Venice until after dark. This might be the last day he could fish for a long time.

  Alice

  Alice watched Jacob’s broad, tan back as he leaned over, working on the motor. He said he would do something with a setting called “the timing” to change the temperature the engines ran at. He thought that would throw off the satellite tracking at night. He had already rewired the motor that Sanchez disabled. Sanchez whom she had killed and left drifting in the sea. She felt a pang. She didn’t think Sanchez a good man, but what if he had children? A wife? A daughter like Anna? Regret stabbed her in her gut, twisting. Her eyes filled with tears. Maybe I should quit now before I kill more children’s fathers. She shook her head. What’s over is over. I have to find the one who is behind all this!

  She saw sweat running down Jacob’s broad back. He set a little portable stereo to playing a CD softly. Springsteen helped him work, he had said. Now it was playing a song called “I’m on Fire.”