JET - Forsaken

by Russell Blake

  “You looking for anything special?”

  She turned and appraised him: shaggy haircut, jaundiced skin, the sickly emaciation of an end-stage alcoholic, eyes as dark as coal that skittered from point to point like a frightened rodent’s.

  “That depends. I could use some help with documents.”

  “I might know some people.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Buy me a shot and I’ll see if I can remember who’s dealing with that sort of thing these days.”

  Jet sighed and pointed at the bar, and then held up a finger to the bartender, who nodded. He’d obviously put out the word to some of the local bottom feeders, as she’d hoped, and her bait had drawn the first bite of the night.

  The drink arrived, a water glass with three fingers of clear liquid in it, and the man drained half in a thirsty swallow, belched loudly, and laughed, revealing a set of decaying teeth. Jet’s expression remained unreadable, her emerald eyes regarding him evenly. He took another pull on the drink, and she slid a bill to the bartender before turning back to her new friend.

  “Well?”

  “What kind of docs you need?”

  “Refugee.”

  His ferret eyes darted across her face, sizing her up. “Those are expensive.”

  “Nothing in life’s free.”

  His gaze lingered on her breasts before meeting her stare. “You police?”

  “No.”

  “Mind if I frisk you?”

  “Good way to wind up with broken arms.”

  “I need to make sure you aren’t wearing a wire. Follow me to the bathrooms.”

  The lowlife finished his drink and slid off the barstool. He cocked his head at her and walked to the back of the bar. Jet drew a deep breath and stood, and then trailed him into a darkened hallway with a door on either side and an exit sign over a steel slab at the end.

  The man’s hands roamed over her and she endured the groping, which went on far too long to be strictly business. When he stepped away from her, he was leering in the dark, and her stomach muscles tensed as she fought to keep her voice calm.

  “All right. You had your fun. Now cough up or we’re done.”

  “This way.”

  He led her to a booth near the bathroom, where a small mountain of a man sat, his shaved head glistening, a beard and blue knit turtleneck sweater doing nothing to hide his three chins. The drunk motioned to the bench seat opposite the man and then pulled up a chair and sat on the end.

  “This is Milun,” he said, indicating the big man.

  Jet nodded and waited for the weasel to continue. He leaned in and murmured in Milun’s ear. One corner of the big man’s mouth twitched, and he studied Jet for a long beat.

  “You have cash?”

  Jet shook her head. “Not on me.”

  “It will be two thousand euros apiece.”

  “That’s fine. I need three. But they have to be perfect. Otherwise I don’t pay.”

  “The people I deal with only do perfect.”

  “I had a bad experience with someone making the same claim.”

  They stared at each other, and Milun nodded slowly. “Satisfaction guaranteed. Cash only.”

  “How do we do this?” Jet asked.

  “I make a call. Bran here will introduce you to my man. You meet, tell him what you want, come back here and give me the first half of the payment.”

  “How late will you be here?”

  “Till it closes.” Milun removed a cell phone from his pocket and placed a call, his eyes locked on Jet the entire time. He had a short discussion in rapid-fire Serbian and then hung up and tilted his head at the weasel. “Bran will take you there now.”

  Bran pushed back from his chair, and Jet slid from the booth. “I’ll be back before closing time with your money, assuming your man is competent.”

  “Oh, he’s competent. Like I said, satisfaction guaranteed.”

  The forger turned out to be an elderly man who lived four blocks away, on the third floor of a brick walk-up whose stairway stank of urine. Jet sidestepped a used syringe in the hallway outside the forger’s door and followed Bran inside as the older man locked the door behind them.

  They sat in the kitchen at a cheap breakfast table, and the forger slid a blue refugee passport to her. “Made that yesterday. Indistinguishable from the genuine article,” he said.

  Jet studied it carefully and then nodded. “Nice work.”

  “Yours will be the same. Our friend says you want three?”

  “Correct. Two adults and a child.”

  “You’ll need to come tomorrow so I can take photos.”

  She shook her head and reached into her pant pocket for the small envelope containing the headshots. “I already have them.”

  Jet tossed the forger the pictures. He tapped them out onto the table and frowned. “No, these are wrong. I need black and white, not color. You can see that from the sample.”

  “I was told color.”

  “You were told wrong. For passports, yes. Not for the new refugee documents. They changed it last month.” He paused for a moment, working out some schedule in his head. “Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon work for you?”

  “How long will it take to create the docs?”

  “Three days.”

  “I’d prefer to have the photos taken somewhere professional and bring them to you.”

  The forger shook his head. “That’s not how I work. I’m a one-stop shop. Two o’clock tomorrow. Be on time.”

  The trip back to the bar passed in silence, and Jet left Bran outside. “I’ll be back in a few hours. What time does this dump close?”

  “Three.”

  “Plenty of time. Tell Milun he’ll see me before then.”

  Jet hurried to the corner and flagged down a taxi, anxious to conclude the transaction. The passport had been high quality and the price reasonable, although something about the old man nagged at her.

  She shared her misgivings with Matt, and he shook his head when she finished.

  “Your instincts are good. If you think something’s off, it probably is,” he said.

  “But the document was good. If there’s a burn, that isn’t it.”

  “Then what?”

  She counted out three thousand euros, folded the wad in half, and slipped it into her back pocket. “I don’t know. Let me think about it on the way back to the bar.”

  “If you aren’t comfortable, keep looking for someone.”

  “I know. I’ll figure it out.”

  She eyed Hannah, asleep in the center of the bed, and pecked Matt on the cheek before heading for the door.

  “Call if you run into trouble,” Matt said.

  “It won’t be tonight, I don’t think. Milun seemed like the typical mob boss.”

  “Still. Don’t take any chances.”

  She smiled at his concern. “Hard part’s done,” Jet said, and let herself out, mind racing as she made her way down the stairs, sure there was a catch but unclear on what it might be. For now, there was little to do other than fork over the money, and if she was right, that part of the transaction would go through smoothly. She was a fair judge of character and made Milun for a dependable criminal enabler rather than a cheat. Which meant that if the payment part of the deal went smoothly, if there was a scam, it would be either the forger or Bran who’d attempt it.

  And get far more than they’d bargained for. She’d see to that.

  Chapter 8

  The following afternoon Jet arrived at the forger’s district twenty-five minutes early to reconnoiter. She had the taxi drop her off three streets away and approached the man’s block draped in her refugee robe, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Unlike the area by the hotel, the neighborhood was quiet, with only a few pedestrians in evidence, and she felt conspicuous in her attire as she made her way down the sidewalk.

  She paused at a corner market and pretended to study a magazine rack under the watchful gaze of a merchant who eyed her as though sh
e was going to make off with it in a mad dash. Jet took in the buildings and studied the parked cars for signs of watchers. Seeing nothing, she continued along the street and slowed at the sight of an empty police car in an alley near the forger’s building. She continued past it, senses on high alert, eyes roaming the area as she strode with deliberation past the building and proceeded to the corner.

  Jet stopped and withdrew her cell phone, thumbing it as though texting as she scrutinized her surroundings. Halfway down the block a vendor pushed an overloaded cart toward a shop, but other than that, the area by the forger’s entrance was empty. She shifted her focus across the street and spotted two men seated at a table near the display window of a small café, and swore under her breath. To her eye they looked like plainclothes police, their overfed faces and interest in the forger’s building as obvious to her as a neon sign.

  She rounded the corner and walked away at a measured pace, leaving the area before pressing speed dial on her phone and holding it to her ear. Matt was waiting for her go-ahead before catching a cab to the forger’s, and she was glad she’d taken the precaution of arriving before the meet. She knew at a glance what would happen – she would show up with her family, and then the police would burst in and shake her down for cash. It was a common scheme and one of the risks of dealing with unsavory types in Serbia, who were often in league with the police, preying on the desperate.

  Matt answered on the first ring.

  “No go.” She filled him in as she walked.

  “So now what?”

  “I get our money back from Milun.”

  “It’s not worth endangering yourself.”

  “I won’t be in any danger. He’s the one who’ll have to worry.”

  She hung up and considered her next move. Matt was right that the money was incidental in the scheme of things, but that wasn’t the issue. Jet wasn’t going to let Milun sandbag her. If he’d arranged for the ambush, she’d be able to tell by his reaction; and given that they had no other options, it was worth the effort to confront him. At worst he was guilty and she was out the money, leaving her no poorer than if she did nothing at all.

  Jet was beginning to regret their decision to pose as refugees. What had seemed viable before arriving in Serbia now seemed hardly worth the trouble, although their reasoning was no less valid: by joining the multitudes fleeing the war, they’d be effectively below the radar, since the tracking systems were inadequate to deal with the sheer numbers that threatened to overwhelm it.

  Back at the hotel, Matt greeted her with Hannah by his side. Jet’s heart melted at the sight of her daughter, radiant as the sun in her innocence, joyful at her mother’s return. Jet knelt to hug her and looked up at Matt as she embraced the little girl.

  “So much for that,” she said.

  “Nothing worth doing’s ever easy.”

  She smoothed Hannah’s hair. “What’s gotten into you?” she asked.

  “I love you, Mama.”

  Jet’s voice cracked when she answered. “I love you too.”

  “I think somebody’s tired of being cooped up,” Matt said softly.

  “Maybe we can go to a park? Not like we have anything more productive to do.” She paused. “At least until tonight.”

  Matt frowned. “There’s no way to talk you out of it?”

  She met his serious expression with a smile. “You can try.”

  Jet arrived at the nightclub district at dusk and took up position across the street from the bar in a darkened doorway. Several men mistook her for a prostitute and propositioned her, but she blew them off without escalating the interactions and continued to watch for Milun. Her vigil was rewarded just before nine o’clock, when his distinctive bulk stepped from a black SUV and lumbered into the bar, trailed by two heavily built men with ponytails and slab faces.

  She waited ten minutes, and when Bran failed to appear, Jet crossed the street, pushed through the doors, and made straight for Milun’s table. The big man looked up from his drink and frowned. One of the two hired musclemen bristled as she neared, but Milun held up a hand and waited for her to speak.

  “Surprised to see me?” she asked, her tone neutral.

  “I expected him to take longer. You have the second payment?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “It was a setup. You double-crossed me.”

  Milun’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about?”

  Jet studied him and concluded that he either genuinely didn’t know or deserved an academy award.

  “There were a couple of undercover cops waiting for me and my family by his place today when I was supposed to show up.”

  Milun didn’t blink. “How do you know they were cops and they were waiting for you?”

  “I spotted their car. They were watching his building. Sloppy.”

  He sat back and motioned for her to take a seat across from him. The pair of goons got the message and moved away, leaving them to discuss their problem. She slid into the booth, her eyes locked on his, and waited for him to make the next move.

  “You want your money back? I don’t have it with me,” he said, his voice low.

  She sized him up. “I’d prefer you honor our deal.”

  “I had nothing to do with a shakedown.”

  “Which still leaves me needing papers, and you with my money.”

  He appraised her with interest. “You don’t strike me as a refugee.”

  “What I am is someone who gave you what you asked for and got nothing in return.”

  “I can fix that. Ivan must have gotten greedy.”

  “How can you fix it?”

  He frowned at his watch and exhaled heavily. “We’ll pay him a visit.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  Milun pushed his bulk from the booth and Jet trailed him to the door, where his men were standing like bookends. He growled instructions and one of them raised a cell phone to his ear and spoke a few words before nodding. Milun held out a hand the size of a ham and Jet opened the door, wary of a trick. The rumble of the SUV’s engine approaching told her what the call had been for, and she waited as the crime boss joined her on the sidewalk while the vehicle rolled to a stop.

  He opened the back door for her and she climbed into the car, keenly aware of her lack of a weapon. Then again, proximity could work in her favor if she were forced to engage – her training had taught her fifty ways to kill using her bare hands, and one of the easiest was in a car, neutralizing first her target and then the driver.

  Milun wedged himself beside her and barked the forger’s address. The driver nodded once and accelerated away from the curb. Milun turned to Jet with the trace of what might have been a smile on his face.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not taking you to a field to whack you.”

  Jet decided to play meek. “Is it that obvious?”

  “I’d be nervous about getting into a car with strangers at night if I were you.”

  Her stare was unreadable. “What could go wrong?”

  That drew a laugh. “Seems like Ivan picked the wrong woman to cross.”

  Jet saw no reason to respond, and they sat in silence until they reached the forger’s building. Milun huffed like a water buffalo as they mounted the stairs, and when he pounded on the forger’s door, his glare could have melted steel.

  “Go away,” the forger said, voice muffled by the door. “Don’t want any.”

  “Ivan? Open up,” Milun said.

  The lock snapped and the door cracked open three inches. The forger’s face appeared in the gap, wearing an expression of surprise. “Milun! What brings you–”

  Milun pushed the door the rest of the way, and Ivan registered Jet behind the big man. The forger sputtered in bewilderment. “You! You were supposed to show up today. What’s going on here, Milun?”

  Jet followed Milun to the dining room, where his girth filled most of the cramped space, his glower fearsome to behold even though she wasn’t the object of his wrath.r />
  “My young friend here thought she saw a couple of police loitering when she came to get her picture taken. Know anything about that, Ivan?” Milun asked, his tone suddenly velvety.

  The color drained from the forger’s face, telling them her suspicion was correct. “N-no. She must be mistaken.”

  Milun held Ivan’s stare. “That could be. But seeing as she’s nervous about things, I’m thinking that you might want to give her the specifications for the photographs you need, and she’ll get them taken and delivered to you. One of my men can bring them tomorrow.”

  “That’s highly–”

  “Doable,” Milun finished, nodding as though they’d reached agreement, his expression conveying that it wasn’t a request.

  “Yes. Yes, of course it is. I prefer to take them so there are no problems, but if it’s important to you…”

  Milun continued nodding. “It is.”

  Ivan scratched out the size of the photos he needed on a pad of paper, underscoring that they had to be black and white against a neutral background, and handed Jet the note with a trembling hand. She took it and cocked her head as she read it, and then slipped it into her pocket.

  “I’m hoping we won’t have any more difficulties, Ivan,” she said, her tone sweet.

  “There was never any problem,” he insisted, but his words rang hollow.

  “Great. Glad we could settle things. Will you still have the documents for her in three days, as promised?” Milun asked.

  “I’ll do everything I can, Milun.”

  Milun slapped his thigh. “Then we’ll leave you to your work.” He turned to Jet. “See? I told you everything was fine. You have nothing to worry about. Ivan will treat you as though he were dealing directly with me.” He narrowed his eyes at the forger. “Won’t you?”

  Ivan swallowed with difficulty and managed a nod, Milun’s message received. “Of course.”

  “I’ll send my man around one,” Milun said, and trundled to the front door, Jet in tow.

  Back in the car, Milun looked furious. “Sorry about that. He’s the best, but he obviously stepped over the line. You won’t have any more problems.”