[Clean Up Crew 01.0] The Beauty of Bucharest

by SJ Varengo

  “It was,” she said at last, letting out a slow breath to help her rein in her arousal. “And you will be changed by it, Danny. Make no mistake.”

  To her surprise, his body began to quiver, and she looked up to see that he was sobbing. “Shh,” she said, knowing as she said it that the tears were necessary. So instead of saying anything more to discourage them, she simply wrapped her arms around him and held him close as the hot water cascaded down on them both. Far more quickly than she’d expected, the shaking stopped. Although it was impossible to tell the tears from the shower water, Dan wiped his hand across his eyes and took a deep breath.

  When Nicole was sure that he was okay, she continued the thought that had caused his weeping. “You will be changed, but it’s in your power to decide in what way.”

  “You’ve lost me, Cole.”

  “A few days ago when we were discussing all of this, I challenged you to admit that even in your world, the world of corporate boardrooms and computer terminals, there was no shortage of bad people. You never really replied, but I believe you recognized the truth of what I was saying. Am I right?”

  Dan thought back, remembering the conversation and his begrudging admission that she was absolutely right. He nodded.

  “Well, now you’ve been exposed to a far greater level of evil. This is the evil I’ve been tasked with meeting, with opposing. Even though I know I’ll never be able to do more than chip away at it, I have to keep fighting. We can’t let these sorts of men walk among the good people of the world.”

  “Are there any good people in the world?”

  “Oh, yes!” Nicole replied emphatically and without hesitation. “Oh, yes there are, Daniel Porter. I know this because you are one of the best of them!” She laid her head against his chest and heard his heart beating. He pulled his arms tighter around her and a light flicked on in his mind.

  “And so are you, Nicole Porter. I guess I see it a little more clearly now. I guess I agree...”

  She looked up at him. “Agree with what?”

  “There are people in the world that need killing.”

  Nicole dried Dan’s back with a plush hotel towel, made sure the heat lamp was turned on as he finished removing the water from his body, and, slipping into a white robe, went out of the bathroom and picked up the phone.

  “Room service,” came the friendly female voice.

  “Hello, could we have two orders of steak and eggs, one over easy, one scrambled, both with fried potatoes and wheat toast. Two large orange juices and two coffees, please?”

  “It will be to you shortly,” the operator answered and Cole set down the receiver.

  As much as she hated to do so with Dan’s psyche still so precarious, it was time to think through her plan of action, and in order to do that to the best of her ability, she needed food. She wasn’t sure Dan was going to want to eat, but she figured it was best to order him some breakfast and leave the decision to him.

  The man who’d had every intention of killing her, and therefore had nothing to fear for running his stupid mouth (or so he thought), had revealed so much that even if Dan hadn’t killed him, Ileana would surely have if she had any inkling what he’d said.

  A moment later, there was a light tap on the door, and Nicole opened it, allowing the room service waiter to wheel in the cart carrying their breakfast. As he left, Dan emerged from the bathroom, looking almost human, although sniffing the air like a dog.

  “Something smells amazing,” he said, to Cole’s delight.

  “I ordered us some breakfast.”

  Dan plunked down on the bed, his crossed legs forming an acceptable table, as Nicole passed him his plate of steak and eggs. Dan dipped his toast into the over-easy yolk, allowing it to spill out onto the meat and fried potatoes. He began to devour it, to Nicole’s delight and amazement. They ate in silence for several minutes, with Dan finally saying, “So, what happens now?”

  Nicole was engrossed in her own meal and had been actively thinking through just that question, so rather than expressing surprise that Dan had asked it at all, she just began answering. “The gorilla pretty much told me everything I needed to know right before you took him out.”

  Dan laughed, and Nicole realized what she’d done. She was speaking to him as she would a fellow operative, not as she would to a man who had taken a life for the first time. She paused to see how he’d follow up the enigmatic chuckle.

  “That’s what Ali called Frazier before the Thrilla in Manila: ‘the Gorilla.’”

  “Dan, you know I don’t follow hockey.” She paused, waiting for his response. In the best case scenario, he would be indignant at her feigned ignorance.

  “Hockey!” he blurted finally, after almost choking on a sip of juice. “Hockey!”

  She made a sound that was equal parts laughter and a sigh of relief. “Easy, sweetie. I know about The Greatest. I was just puffing you.”

  “Hockey,” he grumbled again. Then he said, “Go on.”

  “Well, in a demonstration of exactly what never to do, even when you’re about to kill the person you’re talking to, he told me in the course of a couple sentences that they would be moving Ana Albu today to meet the buyer, and that the transaction was taking place on a boat. He said that Bogdan himself would be going along, which is really not that surprising, as this deal, should he pull it off, would be his crowning achievement. The Thrilla in Manila of human trafficking.”

  Dan smiled and nodded.

  “Ileana will obviously be leading security.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Now the boat clue is good, but not great. It tells us the meeting will take place on the Dâmbovița River, but little more.”

  “There’s a lot of river in the city. We drove beside it for a long time last night,” Dan noted.

  “Exactly. But the good news is he also hinted at the starting point, and that was to have been my next move anyway. When Viktor briefed me, he indicated that they had narrowed the possible hiding places to a handful; five or six. I was going to start staking them out. But the mouth-breather had said they’d be leaving from Bogdan’s ‘palace.’ All the possible locations were luxurious, but only one could truly be called a palace.”

  “There are actually kind of a lot of places that could be called a palace in this city.” Dan shocked her again, first by continuing to follow along as intently as he was and secondly by actually showing a little knowledge about the city.

  “There are, but only one that’s being rented by Codițã Industries, which is Bogdan’s shell corporation. And that would be Crețulescu Palace.”

  Dan reached for his phone and did some quick research. “It’s big,” he said at last, handing the phone over to Nicole. She looked at the picture of the early 20th Century building, pulling up additional views as well.

  “The trees to the south are good. Some on each side as well. The north side is all street, though.” She showed Dan the new angles.

  “Hmm,” he said after a minute. “They’d leave from the south, I think. That’s where the driveway is, for one thing, and that’s the side you can move from the house to the car without a ton of people watching. So... what are you thinking?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? What was Nicole Porter thinking? What wasn’t she thinking? She was running all the data, she was factoring in the fact that her husband was clearly doing a much better job of recovering from the shock of killing a man than she dared hope, and she was sneaking glances at the clock. She’d spent the night in the catacombs, nearly been killed herself, and aside from the time of undetermined length that she’d spent unconscious, she hadn’t slept.

  Still, if everything came together, she might yet shorten this mission from the full week or so she’d planned on having to spend, staking out, planting listening devices, overcoming what was clearly top notch security, and maybe they could be back in Colorado in time to do some shopping before the kids came home for Christmas break.

  There was one thing bother
ing her. It was Ana Albu. It was the Beauty of Bucharest. It was her and the other women Nicole was sure she’d been kept with. She might be able to find a nice perch in one of the trees on the palace’s south face, and she might be able to squeeze off a shot, taking out Bogdan Grigorescu before Ileana Gabor, even in her constant state of hyper vigilance, had the opportunity to do a damn thing about it. She might even be able to fire a second round and eliminate Ileana herself. But could she get to Ana in time? And could she get into the building to liberate the other women? God damn you, Viktor! she thought. God damn you for showing me this girl’s face, for telling me her story. She was angry because now Ana Albu’s face was all their faces. And Nicole was responsible for them. For every one of them. And, now, she was also responsible for Viktor himself.

  “Well, Danny,” she said at last. “It’s like this. At the very least, I have to kill the fat bastard that’s trying to sell The Beauty of Bucharest to some slime bag from God knows where. In order to survive doing that, I’m going to have to kill the psychopath with the blue hair who has, in the past twenty-four hours, signed death warrants for both you and me. But I think I have to do it not from the safety of a tree a hundred yards away. I’ve got to get inside that building and take out everybody who might try and prevent me from rescuing Ana Albu and anyone else who may be captive there.”

  “You keep saying ‘I,’” Dan said.

  “No, Danny... don’t even...”

  He reached over to the chair next to the bed, on which rested his torn camel coat, and he slid his hand into the inside pocket, pulling out the gun he’d used to kill the gorilla. She reached to take it from him, but he drew his hand back. “There are going to be more people there who mean to hurt you, Coley. And just like I couldn’t let that happen in the catacombs, I can’t let it happen in Crețulescu Palace.”

  Nicole was as taken aback by the perfect pronunciation of the Romanian name as she was by the steel in his eye. She wanted to shut him down. She wanted to tell him, even if it meant being cruel, that having him along was far more likely to get them both killed than not. She wanted to, but as she looked at his face, familiar and comforting, yet at the same time utterly new, she couldn’t.

  “You’re going to have to listen to everything I say. You’re going to have to do whatever I tell you to do.”

  He smiled, his hardened eyes softening as the wrinkles from years of beaming at his wife returned to the sides of them. “You’re the boss,” he said.

  She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Reach under the bed and grab that duffel. We’re likely going to need everything we’ve got.”

  11

  A Visit to the Palace

  Nicole opted for the bus once again, and this time, Dan was aware enough of his surroundings that he thought to ask her about it. She was impressed that he leaned in as he whispered the question, although they sat alone at the bus stop.

  “From this point on,” she whispered back, “everything is about stealth. Believe it or not, it’s much easier to remain unseen in a crowd or on a bus than in a cab, where it’s just you and the driver. Every person we see from here out has to be thought of as a potential witness.”

  “That’s bad. We don’t want those.”

  “No,” she chuckled, “we definitely don’t want those.” Every now and then, Cole would gently tap the duffle bag with her foot to make sure it was still under their bench and hadn’t been liberated by a Romanian street urchin who might creep up unnoticed. This time when she did, it seemed to resist the pressure of her foot and she glanced down to see that Dan had actually stuck his foot through the shoulder strap to keep it from going anywhere. She smiled again. For a fish out of water, Dan was doing swimmingly.

  Dan was looking at his phone; first at his map application, then the transit schedule, and finally at the time. The bus wouldn’t arrive for another ten minutes. “The palace isn’t that far. Want to walk?”

  They were dressed in jogging clothes, Nicole’s theory being that would detract from the otherwise somewhat obvious anomaly that the duffle could have been if carried by people in street clothes. Nicole had actually debated with herself a bit about the decision. There were lots of people who carried gym-style bags without looking as though they were going to the gym. But she finally decided that by adding the workout garb, they might remove a layer of notice that they didn’t need. Plus Dan looked hot in the tight spandex pants she’d brought for him, really with very little hope of getting him into them. He certainly wasn’t likely to start running with her. But he seemed intent on following through with this, and the bonus that was his butt in spandex was a work of art in her opinion.

  “Sure,” she said, “if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Are you kidding? Dressed like this? I at least have to pretend to be up to it!”

  “Good enough! Let’s go.”

  The map showed that the Palace was actually just a little over a quarter mile away, but Nicole didn’t take the straight route down Strada Stirbel Vodǎ, which would have brought them to the street side of the impressive building. Even though she was pretty sure there would be no sniping from a tree branch, Nicole preferred the cover that the park provided as she decided upon a plan of action. Walking at a brisk pace, both to cover the distance quickly and to keep up the appearance of two people looking to raise their heart rates, it took only about four minutes to reach the park. Of course, being December, the trees didn’t provide the verdant cover they would offer had the mission timing been different, but Nicole found one with a wide trunk for cover, and had Dan wait behind an equally hefty specimen not far from hers.

  She had taken the duffel from Dan and now unzipped it. Reaching inside, she opened the case containing the disassembled sniper rifle, extracting the scope. She used it as a telescope to survey Crețulescu Palace. The white building, in her opinion, resembled more of a Victorian mansion from the gilded age of American robber barons than a European palace. The former home of the UNESCO European Center for Higher Education featured a roof with a row of metallic spikes, and its façade featured a mixture of rectangular and rounded-top windows. There was a fence around the perimeter, which wasn’t particularly imposing but was tall enough that an afternoon assault would both be slow and easily noticed. There was also a gate in the fence but opening it and walking through didn’t seem especially prudent.

  “Cole,” Dan said as she continued to move the scope in a sweeping pattern. She didn’t answer. “Coley!” he called again.

  With a little more attitude than she intended, she lowered the scope and said, “What?”

  Dan realized he still had a long way to go before Nicole would fully accept his presence on this endeavor, but he glossed over the tone and pointed to the ground. At the middle of the ring of trees that made up the small park was a large concrete pad, at the center of which was a fountain, not flowing in the winter cold. But Dan was not pointing to the fountain. He was indicating a manhole cover. “I’m not super psyched about going underground again,” he said, “and I doubt you are either, but do you think this might lead under the building?”

  Nicole immediately felt like a shit. While she was gazing through the trees, Dan’s downcast eyes had found them a way in. She smiled and nodded. “I bet it does,” she said. “My survey of the back of the building wasn’t totally wasted, though. I spotted three armed and very cold-looking guards. They shouldn’t be an issue going in this way, but if there’s three out here, I’m sure there’s plenty more where they came from. Well, let’s get this lid lifted. We don’t have a pry bar, unfortunately.”

  Dan did a quick scan of the immediate area, and while staying behind the trees as much as possible, found a long, sturdy stick, a branch broken by the weight of a recent snowfall. “This isn’t ideal,” he said, “but the hardest part of opening one of these is getting it started.” As he spoke, he was already rapidly scraping the tip of the stick across the rough concrete, quickly forming a point narrow enough to wedge into the small ring that woul
d normally serve to accept a metal bar.

  “Opened a lot of manholes, Danny?” Nicole teased.

  “A delinquent’s guide to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There were a lot of good times to be had in the service tunnels under the campus.”

  Dan began to go to work on the lid, using the stick as a lever, eventually raising it enough to be able to slide it to the side. Nicole was grinning broadly. “You’ve never told me that story before.”

  Dan couldn’t let the irony pass. “Imagine that. My dark, secret life.”

  Her smile faded, but only slightly. “Touché,” she said as she slid into the opening and grabbed the rungs that led to the bottom of the shaft. Dan waited until she’d reached the bottom, a climb of about seven feet, then handed the duffel down to her. He started down, pausing to pull the lid back into place. The fact that there had been a slight warming over the past couple of days meant there was no snow on the cover, which would have made the fact that it had been moved more obvious. Now, however, a casual glance even by one of the armed guards Cole had spotted, should indicate nothing was amiss.

  Once they stood together, Nicole fished out her cell phone, once again lighting the flash. Dan did the same with his. The tunnels here were modern, with none of the creepy, damp stonework that had characterized their earlier journey below the streets of Bucharest. The aroma wasn’t fresh and arboreal, but it was a damn sight less sepulchral than the catacombs. Nicole turned to the screen of her phone and activated a compass app. After a moment, she pointed down a tunnel running to the north. “That should at least get us closer. With any luck, it will run right to the building.”