by Bob Mayer
“May I offer you something?” Farrelli asked.
“What did you tell Riley?” Sarah asked, ignoring his hospitality. “I saw him leave.”
“Lucky you,” Farrelli muttered.
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” Farrelli said.
“Bullshit,” Sarah said. “You play every side, then you are allied with no one.”
“I just run my business here,” Farrelli said. “I take no one’s side. And, I do not appreciate being spoken to like this. Especially in my own place of business.”
She reached into her leather bag to retrieve the binder. “I’ve already had the transfer notarized.” She pulled out a sheaf of papers and turned to the last page. “You only have to sign.”
“Isn’t that backwards?” Farrelli asked. “Doesn’t the notary have to witness the signing?”
“Not my notary.”
Farrelli sat up straighter on his stool and folded his arms. “And what if I decide not to sign?”
“We have a deal.”
“We had a deal.”
Sarah closed her eyes briefly, then graced him with a tight smile. “Sign Bloody Point over to me. I gave you the money to buy it. You keep your percentage. That was the deal.”
“Too many people are asking questions,” Farrelli said. “And I don’t believe you’ve told me the truth about what will happen. Fabrou intimated that this deal is much bigger than I thought.”
“We have a deal,” Sarah repeated.
“Fabrou will make me a better deal,” Farrelli said.
“That’s not how it works.”
“It works the way I say it works,” Farrelli said.
Sarah got off the stool and walked around the bar. She found a bottle of chilled champagne in a fridge under the bar. She slowly opened it, then took down a flute and filled it. She returned to her stool.
“You have no idea how long this has been in the works,” she said. “Not quite a long con, but a long plan. You ever hear that joke about the woman wearing the fur coat?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “An activist is screaming at her: ‘You know how many animals died for that coat?’ And she replies: ‘You know how many animals I had to fuck for this coat?’.”
“Yeah,” Farrelli said. “Cute. But not my problem.”
“Au contraire, Mister Farrelli,” Sarah said. “You’re making it your problem.”
Farrelli thumped the bar with a thick forefinger. “You’re in my joint, on my island. Be careful.”
“I am very, very careful,” Sarah said. “And that’s what should concern you. Yes, I’ve fucked for this deal, but I’ve also killed and kidnapped. As they say, I’m in this from the feet up, full throttle, all the way; whatever cute one-liner you choose to use.”
Farrelli stared at her, a frown on his forehead.
Perhaps re-assessing.
Sarah pointed at the papers still on the bar. “Please sign as we agreed, Mister Farrelli. I will not ask again.”
“No, you won’t,” Farrelli said. “And you keep it up, you won’t be speaking any more either.” He nodded at the two burly men. “You want to leave here in one piece, I suggest you pack your crap up and get outta here.”
Sarah lifted up the flute of champagne and downed it in one long drink. She put it on the bar. “I told you this was a long time in the planning and making.” She stared Farrelli in the eyes. “Think. Think hard. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. You think I didn’t anticipate Fabrou making you an offer? This is a game. With very high stakes. I’m so many moves ahead of you, you’re not even on the board, Farrelli. Sign.”
Farrelli looked down at the paper, then up at Briggs. “Who the fuck are you?”
“You should have asked that question a long time ago,” Briggs said. “Not that I’d have given you a straight answer. Sometimes I don’t even remember who I am. You might find that strange, but if you’ve been through what I’ve been through, you’d understand. But I doubt you would have survived what I’ve been through.” She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “An old friend, a woman who taught me a lot of what I know had a saying: ‘I’ve been everywhere but the electric chair. Seen everything but the wind.’ And here I am now.” For a moment Sarah Briggs looked human; a tired woman fighting the hard fight.
The moment didn’t last long.
“Please sign.”
Farrelli raised a hand and gestured for the two men.
Instead they turned and went out the door.
And Farrelli looked down at the very sharp dagger Sarah had poking him in the groin. “I will start by removing your balls. Which leaves you still able to sign. But if that’s not enough, then I will cut your cock off and shove it in your mouth. Which leaves you still able to sign and has the advantage of shutting you up.” She spoke like she had some experience in the matter. “Then I will jab you with this.” With her other hand, she held up a needle. “You will be infected immediately. Which leaves you still able to sign. But you will already be a dead man. And the infection will be a most horrifying death. Irreversible. I’ve seen it.”
Farrelli’s face was flushed red, anger competing with embarrassment and acceptance of reality. “How did—“
“Don’t ask how, Farrelli. I’m in a bad mood. I’ve had a terrible week with a bad day piled on top of it and the day isn’t over yet and there’re still miles to go before I rest. I’m sick of dealing with the people in this asshole of the world. So. Ten seconds. Sign or I will neuter you, then kill you.”
To emphasize her point, she pushed the point of the blade farther into his testicles.
Farrelli picked up the pen and signed.
But Sarah didn’t pull back the blade. With her free hand, she put the papers into her binder, which then went into her bag. “Now you suppose I would back out, happy to have achieved my goal. Correct?”
Farrelli nodded.
“But again, I am not stupid and I have thought all of this through.” She laughed. “Funny thing is, there’s a woman in Charleston who would have paid considerably more for this land than Fabrou. The fact you didn’t find out who that is tells me that you’re not very clued-in; not like you think you are.”
“Jenrette,” Farrelli said. “I know about her.”
“Very good,” Briggs said. “Why didn’t you go to her?”
“I tried. I called her several days ago. She wouldn’t deal with me.”
Briggs nodded. “The old broad has standards. So you were playing everyone. As usual. That’s a dangerous way to make a living, Mister Farrelli.”
“I got connections in Jersey. They will not take kindly to my being injured.”
“Who said anything about injuring you?” Briggs said. “But I do have to factor in that Italian temper. That Cosa Nostra desire for revenge. I will be forever looking over my shoulder, won’t I?”
Farrelli said nothing. He stared at her, face expressionless.
Faster than he could react, she pulled the dagger back and had it at his neck. “Stay still.”
A muscle twitched in Farrelli’s cheek, but he obeyed her.
Sarah smiled. “All right then.” She slipped the bag over her shoulder. “I’ll take my leave then.” And then she jabbed the needle into his thigh.
“Fuck!” Farrelli yelled as Sarah back up.
“Be glad I lied, by the way,” Sarah said. She slowly backpedaled as Farrelli jumped off his seat, his hand fumbling underneath his jacket for his gun. “It works fast. Not painful, well not for long. And looks like a heart attack to a coroner.”
Farrelli opened his mouth to say something, but no words came. His eyes bulged. He dropped the gun before he could bring it to bear, both hands going to his chest. He dropped to his knees, still trying to say something. Then fell face forward with a solid thud into the floor.
Chapter Six
Thursday Afternoon
Dillon regained consciousness slowly and painfully. He was lying on the floor in Brannigan’s and Wing’s room, cold tile pressed up against his c
heek. He didn’t open his eyes right away. Someone could be waiting and his head hurt enough as it was.
He listened.
It was quiet. He didn’t sense anyone in the room, but he didn’t trust that. He waited until he felt in sufficient control of his faculties and his body. Then he rolled, coming to his knees, hands up in a defensive posture.
The room was empty.
“Fucking Wing,” Dillon muttered, then he had to smile. “Fucking Wing,” he repeated.
He knew it wasn’t the cadet’s fault. Had to be the Topper from the Quadrangle. Or worse: someone from the Supe’s office had alerted the cadets. The Corps was infamous for protecting their own and Jenrette’s death was a dark spot that everyone wanted forgotten. He’d gone into their den and paid the price.
Apparently Mrs. Jenrette’s influence did extend only so far as she had warned. Dillon understood the fundamentals from the Institute and the Corps point of view: Greer Jenrette was dead, Brannigan was gone, let it alone. The Corps had closed ranks and he was on the outside, ring or no ring.
Dillon got to his feet. He looked in the mirror. There was a bruise on his right cheek. Running his hand over his head, he found a lump was forming where the axe handle had struck. He had a bad headache, but time would cure that.
The ass-whupping was something he’d have to cure some other way.
He headed for the door and then remembered something. He went back to what had been Brannigan’s desk. He was sliding the back off the picture frame to remove the photo, when something fell out.
Another photo. This one was of a woman, not quite as old as in the one that had been covering it, and a white-haired man with spectacles. They were standing on the rear of a sailboat. The name of the boat was visible on the stern: Epodes
A piece of where Brannigan came from.
Dillon opened the drawers. Nothing.
He looked around the room, then remembered something from his own time at the Institute. He went to the air vent and used his Leatherman to unscrew the cover. He reached in, then up and to the right. As it had been in his own room, there was a small shelf there, a convenient place for hiding things, such as booze, porn or whatever the powers that be at the Institute deemed contraband. While it was a familiar spot for cadets, investigators would not know of it. Wing didn’t strike Dillon as the type who would even try to hide contraband.
Dillon’s hand closed on something, a leather pouch. He pulled it out. It was closed with a leather lace, which he untied. He emptied it into his hand. A silver bracelet, tarnished with time. Dillon frowned; he doubted it was something Harry would wear; it was woman’s jewelry. He looked inside and there was something inscribed: With You I Should Love To Live; With You I Should Love To Die.
Dillon considered the photo and the bracelet. Someone had left in a hurry. Which is what the official report said: after the incident in the Sinks, no one at the Institute had seen Harry Brannigan again. He’d run fast.
Dillon put the bracelet back in the pouch and then put it in his pocket. He left the room. He took the stairs two at a time and hustled across the Quadrangle, feeling many eyes looking out at him until he made it into the sally port and out of the cadet area.
* * *
“She’s supposed to be dead,” Hannah said.
“She isn’t.”
“That’s the name she’s going by now?” Hannah asked. “Sarah Briggs?”
“Yes.” Cardena was seated across from her in her office three hundred feet underneath the ‘crystal palace’ that was the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Hannah was head of the Cellar and while her office was underneath the NSA, she was not part of that organization, nor did she answer to it. She answered only to a Presidential Executive Order authorizing from the dark days of early World War II giving her free rein as judge, jury and executioner of all the inhabitants (and there are many) of the covert world that the United States ran.
“And she was involved in the Karralkov incident?”
“Correct,” Cardena said.
Hannah fixed her subordinate with eyes the color of dark chocolate. “And you did not make the connection as to who Sarah Briggs truly was?”
“No.”
Hannah was in her late forties, in good shape, the result of a daily workout regime that was intense and brief, as she begrudged the time she spent on it. She had blond hair with gray roots, cut to her shoulders. She was known only by Hannah; no last name, no title.
“That’s unfortunate,” Hannah said. “But you did authorize a Predator strike that took out Karralkov’s boat. And saved Sarah Briggs.”
“Yes. I was focused on Karralkov. I misjudged.”
“Partly,” Hannah said, which was a strong rebuke coming from her.
“I’ve alerted an asset, one who knows one of those involved in events in South Carolina.”
“Knows how?”
“They worked together long ago when the asset was CIA and the person involved was in Special Forces. The asset also has a stake in the Sarah Brigg’s case.”
Hannah rubbed her forehead, a surprising sign of weariness, one Cardena had never seen before in his boss. Cardena was short, wiry and dark-skinned. His hair was completely gray. His eyes mirrored what Hannah was exhibiting: exhausted and haunted.
“Westland.” Hannah did not frame it as a question. “What happened with, let’s call her Sarah Briggs in order not to get confused, was before my time. Under Nero’s reign. Westland was her handler in that unit. I suggested the unit be disbanded and it was.”
“Before my time also,” Cardena said, as much of an excuse as he was going to attempt with Hannah.
Hannah allowed him that. “Nero thought Briggs was dead. He wouldn’t have closed the file if he had had any suspicions she was still alive. I suppose we have no idea how she escaped, if she did escape. She might have been turned.”
“Nothing,” Cardena said. “I’ve been able to track her back only to Hilton Head, fronting this off-shore gambling site. Before that, nothing until we go all the way back to her jump into Russia.”
“Odd place for her to show up.”
“The gambling site was hacked several times by the Russian mob. Paid off millions of dollars.”
“So the hack might not have been a hack,” Hannah said. “Perhaps money laundering and she was in on it. Which would explain how she got out. We know the Russian government and its organized crime elements are almost the same thing. Putin is no fool. He wields power and makes deals as needed. One might say he’s the biggest crook of them all in Russia.”
“That’s a possibility if she’d been turned,” Cardena said. “But she was well trained against torture and interrogation.”
Hannah could not tell Cardena that it would not have been difficult to turn Sarah Briggs given the circumstances around her capture.
“She also had a suicide option,” Hannah said. “Obviously that wasn’t used.”
Hannah leaned back in her seat, deep in thought and Cardena waited on her. She was thinking of the ‘greater good’. How the ability to truly make the hard decisions for those two words was an extremely rare trait. One few humans possessed. Most were ruled by fear; those who weren’t ruled by that most prevalent of emotions tended toward extreme self-interest. Neither were for the greater good.
She was located in such close proximity to the NSA because it was the greatest collector of information in the history of mankind. It sorted a considerable amount of that information into intelligence. Hannah needed intelligence in order to make those hard decisions for the greater good.
Another person might have some empathy for the woman called Sarah Briggs. Might want to understand who she was, why she did what she was doing. Empathy was not in Hannah’s arsenal.
“This is a Sanction in the hands of the field agent,” she said.
Cardena cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Hannah asked.
“The way Briggs has resurfaced after escaping K
arralkov has caused me to investigate why. She’s involved in some sort of land deal south of Charleston. There are other parties involved. One of them is Senator Gregory.”
“How so?”
“The land involved is on an island. Gregory quietly pushed through an appropriation for a causeway to be built to the island, which would then be developed as a resort, vastly increasing the worth of the land. But the existence of this appropriation has been kept under wraps. Additionally, Briggs has involved elements of the New Jersey mafia in acquiring a piece of land on the island. It’s complicated, but there appear to be irregularities involved in Senator Gregory’s involvement.”
“Is Briggs connected to the Senator?”
“Not that I’ve been able to find,” Cardena said.
Hannah considered the information. “Send backup for Westland. She’s to gather information. It’s up to her to determine when the backup will conduct the Sanction. Inform me about the depth of the Senator’s involvement. He’s a powerful man and it’s always good to have leverage on such people.”
Cardena stood. He waited a second to see if she had any further orders.
When there was nothing he left.
The heavy door swung shut behind him, leaving Hannah alone, as she usually was. There were no windows in the office, not that there could be. No personal touches. It was austere, much like her mind. If Cardena had known her background, he would have been surprised: she’d been a suburban housewife in St. Louis before being hand-picked, recruited without her knowledge, tested under fire and then blessed by her predecessor, Nero, to take his place. Because she had that most critical of talents: she could remove herself from the process and analyze, judge and order a Sanction without compunction.
She was not swayed by emotion, by money, by ambition. To her the greater good was the scales on which she made decisions.
The same scales that had tipped against Sarah Briggs so many years ago.
* * *
Kono had his hand lightly on the wheel of the Fina, expertly guiding the former patrol boat through the shallow waters north of Port Royal Sound. Hilton Head was to the south. Several rivers flow in the Sound, primarily the Broad River, but there were also the Coosawhatchie, the Colleton, the Chechessee and the Pocotaligo. With that many coming in, the place was a maze of islands, swamps, marshes and waterways.