Elements of Risk: A Noah Stark Thriller

by Ridgway, Brady

  I had all my luggage with me, didn’t have to brave the elbows and trolleys at the baggage belt. I sailed through customs and emerged into the beldam of the arrivals hall. Taxi touts vied for space with tour guides, jostling relatives anxiously awaiting the arrival of their loved ones.

  I instinctively glanced at the display of name boards. Of course no one was expecting me and neither of my names was there. I pushed through the crowd, shrugged off the touts.

  I swapped some euros for rands at an extortionate rate at the Bureau de Change and used a wadge of that money to buy a ticket to Lubumbashi, leaving the return date open. The daily flight had just left so I had to book a seat for the following morning. Finally, I bought a cheap mobile phone and pre-paid sim card from a kiosk on the other side of the hall.

  Johannesburg has a distinctive smell: an indescribable mixture of exhaust fumes and wood smoke. And it was hot; bearable though without the humidity. Cars and busses merged into a chaotic snarl in the narrow road outside arrivals. I saw a bus from the Airport Holiday Inn and climbed into that, hoping they had a room. It was minutes away from the airport, just across the parking lot, miles away from anywhere else.

  I wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing anyway. I needed to get a few things sorted out before the flight the next day and I could do all of them with a phone, a computer and an internet connection.

  After a long hot shower I changed into some fresh clothes, plugged in my laptop, unpacked the new phone and plugged it in to charge the battery. The hotel had a wireless network, so I logged onto the Internet, checked my email: the usual bumf, nothing of interest.

  I logged onto Skype, dialled Piet.

  ‘Piet Hanekom.’

  ‘Hi Piet, it’s Noah.’

  ‘Hey Noah. Where are you man?’

  ‘Johannesburg. I’m coming up tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s great! You on the Airlink flight?’

  I looked at the ticket, ‘I don’t know. It’s SA 1797, I get in at ten to eleven.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at the airport,’ he said. ‘You got a visa?’

  ‘Visa?’ I hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Ja man. You need a visa. Haven’t you got one?’

  ‘No.’ Sheepishly.

  ‘No worries. I’ll organise. What passport you on?’

  ‘Canadian.’

  ‘Canadian! Where the hell did you get that? Your family from there?’

  ‘No… It’s a long story.’ Then I remembered a bit of useful information. ‘Oh yeah, and it’s not Noah, it’s Pavel, Pavel Kalik.’

  ‘Jesus. Is there anything else I need to know? You had plastic surgery? A sex change?’

  ‘No.’ I laughed. ‘Just the name and the nationality. Everything else’s the same.’

  ‘Good. You’d better give me a fax number. They won’t let you on the plane without a visa. I’ll send you a letter that will get you on.’

  I gave him the fax number of the hotel and my room number.

  I called Denis next. Still voicemail. It was time to start worrying. It wasn’t like Denis to disappear, especially when I owed him so much money. I couldn’t do much from South Africa, didn’t know any of his friends in Marseilles, only had his phone numbers, didn’t even know his home address. The only person I knew that might be able to help was Bill. I phoned the office.

  Radkaanswered,‘Dobry den. Všeobecné Vývozní.’

  ‘Ahoj Radka. Is Bill in?’

  ‘Mister Noah! Where you are? When you come back?’

  ‘South Africa. I’ll be back in ten days or so.’

  There was a pause, an intake of breath and then Bill’s extension rang. He answered straight away, ‘Wot?’

  I couldn’t resist a comment. ‘That’s not very polite.’

  ‘It’s only you.’ He had a point. ‘How are things going there?’

  ‘Just arrived, flying up to Lubumbashi tomorrow. I need a favour.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m trying to get hold of a friend: Denis Savin. His phone keeps going to voicemail and I don’t have any other way of contacting him. Could you try to find him for me… use your contacts?’

  There was a long silence at the other end, so long that I thought that I might have lost him. ‘You still there?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah… yeah. I was just writing it down. Isn’t he the geezer you were in Switzerland with?’

  ‘That’s him. Can I give you his number?’

  ‘Yeah. Go ahead.’

  I read out the number to Bill, when he had read it back he asked, ‘Any idea where he might be?’

  ‘None. He lives in Paris, but he said something about taking a vacation.’

  ‘And you have no idea where?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘That’s not very helpful is it? Where are you staying… in case I need to get hold of you?’

  ‘Airport Holiday Inn,’ I replied, ‘but I’m leaving first thing in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.’ He put the phone down.

  There wasn’t anything else to do, so I ordered a hamburger and a couple of beers from room service, kicked my shoes off, sat on the bed, flicked on the television. There was a lot of crap on, so I settled for CNN and the lovely Ralitsa Vassileva.

  Fate had it that the main news item was all about the Iranians and how they didn’t want to have the Atomic Energy Agency sniffing around their patch. I was just getting into it when there was a knock at the door.

  I peered through the peephole. My hamburger had arrived. I washed it down with a couple of beers. Drinking beer in the middle of the day either gives me a headache or puts me to sleep.

  I woke a few hours later to another knock on the door. The television was still on. I turned down the volume, went to open the door. I assumed it was the fax from Piet. I should have looked through the peephole first. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.

  Chapter 35

  I opened the door a crack, just enough to see out. A man was standing in the passage. He had an envelope in his hand and was wearing what looked like a hotel staff uniform. He seemed familiar. For a moment I thought that he must have been behind reception when I checked in. But that thought only lasted a moment; he kicked the door hard, slamming the edge of it into my face. I dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  He was an old pro, came charging in like a pissed off bull, hoping to catch me on the ground.

  He wasn’t quick enough. I slammed both feet into his stomach, sent him smashing back into the door. It closed with a bang. I was still stunned, but knew that if I stayed on the floor a second longer I was fucked. I didn’t know if he had a gun, only a fool would assume he didn’t. I needed to stay close to him, prevent him from using any weapon he might have; but I was in an awkward position, hemmed in by walls on either side, on my back like an overturned dung beetle.

  I rolled onto my side and kicked him in the balls. That gave me the break I needed; I jumped to my feet. But he was back in fighting mood already.

  Most people know bugger all about fighting; it’s nothing like the movies. Most bar fights aren’t real fighting either, they’re just bitch slapping. If they were real fighting there would be a mortuary vans parked outside every bar.

  Close quarter fighting is the most savage thing you can imagine. It’s two people going at each other without reserve, with only one thing in mind: the absolute and utter defeat of their opponent. Anything else is just fucking around.

  I’d like to give you a blow-by-blow, gouge-by-gouge, account of what happened, but I just don’t remember the details. I do remember the bit right at the end though, when he finally got his hand to his gun and jammed it into my ribs. I thought that was the end. But his finger was outside the trigger guard and he was struggling to get it in. I grabbed the top of the gun, shoved the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger in front of the hammer just as he squeezed the trigger. The hammer ripped my flesh, but the round didn’t go off.

  I couldn�
�t let go, didn’t have a free hand. For a few moments there was an impasse. I broke it by using the only weapon left to me, my teeth. We were in an untidy bundle on the floor, his cheek pressed up against my face. I turned my head a fraction and bit his nose, sunk my teeth in as far as they would go, pulled with all my strength. I was left with a bloody chunk of flesh and gristle in my mouth. He had two holes in his face where his nose used to be. I have never heard anyone scream like that.

  The fight left him; he dropped the gun and pawed at the spot where his nose was, screaming like a potbelly pig with its balls in a burdizzo.

  I let go, spat the chunk of nose onto the carpet, grabbed the gun. He stopped screaming, didn’t even have the fight for that, just mewed and slobbered while I dragged him across the room and dropped him into the desk chair, used the sashes from the curtains to tie him securely to it. When he was immobile I cut up the sheet, made a rough dressing and strapped it across his face.

  There was a knock at the door. It wasn’t unexpected. Someone probably wanted to know where the screaming was coming from. It was probably the manager; the police couldn’t have got there that quickly. I took the precaution of looking through the peephole. It was the manager.

  ‘Just a minute!’ I shouted through the door while quietly latching it to make sure he didn’t come in. I went to the television, turned it on, pushed up the volume. Then I dragged my new friend through to the bathroom, grabbed my socks from the floor, shoved them both in his mouth. I fetched the nose, tossed it into the toilet and flushed. Mister no-nose kicked up a bit of a fuss when he saw it going down the bog. I don’t blame him, but I needed him to shut up so I punched him hard in the solar plexus.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I was a mess. My nose was bleeding. There was blood coming from under my eye where a fingernail had tried unsuccessfully to gouge it from its socket. The other eye was turning blue and beginning to swell. There wasn’t much left of my new Lacoste shirt; all the buttons were torn off and there was a circular piece missing at the front where no-nose had grabbed and pulled during the proceedings.

  Ignoring the sorry specimen of whimpering humanity in the corner, I swabbed the blood from my face as best I could, removed the shirt, tossed it into the bath. On a whim I whipped off my pants and undies too.

  The manager must have thought that I’d forgotten him because he started knocking again. I had to hurry. I didn’t want him bringing reinforcements. I returned to the room stark naked, closed the bathroom door, tidied up as best I could. I opened the door a crack. He must have been used to itinerant scumbags in his hotel because he didn’t react to my damaged face, ‘What’s going on in there?’

  ‘I’m watching television.’ The television was blaring convincingly in the background.

  ‘A guest says that he heard a scream.’

  ‘Probably from the television.’

  He was trying hard to see into the room so I opened the door a little, moved into the gap just enough so that he could see I was naked. I guessed he wouldn’t want to come in while my lunch box was on display. I guessed right.

  He flinched, ‘Please turn it down. You are disturbing the other guests.’

  ‘No problem.’

  He turned and was about to go when he swung back to me. ‘You haven’t got anybody else in there with you?’

  The naked thing had backfired; he thought I had sneaked a tart in. ‘No. That’s not allowed. Is it?’

  He didn’t know what to say, ‘No… It isn’t… Just keep the noise down please.’

  When he had gone, I put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door and double-latched it, turned down the TV, went back to work.

  Mister screamer glared at me when I opened the door. My knots had held against his struggles. He’d been a little more successful with the gag and half a sock dribbled from his mouth. I’d left him alone too long. I should have started the questions when he was still shocked and scared. I might have got a decent night’s sleep then.

  But I hadn’t and there was no going back. He was full of vinegar and bile, kept me up most of the night. He’d obviously been trained to withstand interrogation. But they all talk in the end. It’s just a matter of time. It was the water that did it. Every time a coconut. I didn’t bother with any finesse, just filled up the bath with water, tipped him in headfirst: chair and all. Then I started timing.

  Most people can hold their breath for longer than a minute, so I gave him a minute for starters. On sixty seconds I grabbed the legs of the chair and levered him out, just enough so that his mouth was out of the water, leaving most of his head in as a reminder.

  ‘Who sent you?’

  'ёб твою мать!' I had no idea what that meant. I guessed it was Russian. It sounded like ‘Fuck you!’ so I dunked him again, counted a minute and a quarter before I let him breathe.

  'курите мою трубку!' It still didn’t sound very nice so I put him back under for a minute and a half.

  After the fourth dunking - two minutes - he started bargaining. At first it was all bullshit, ‘No speak English.’ But if he couldn’t, he was no use to me anyway and it didn’t matter if he drowned. He knew that too. After two minutes thirty he miraculously learned to speak English; but it was three minutes fifteen before he stopped lying.

  I thought I’d lost him. When I pulled him out he wasn’t breathing. He had a pulse and I thought he was faking; but then he began turning blue and I had to give the fucker mouth-to-mouth to bring him back. That finally convinced him that I wasn’t playing, that I was prepared to drown him. He started to sing. I didn’t much like the song.

  Chapter 36

  I’d been expecting Russian Mafia. What I didn’t understand was why they wanted to kill me. If they wanted their money back they needed me alive. I needed to know why they wanted to kill me.

  I’d got the nationality right but not much else. Boris was Russian. It took so long to get the information out of him because he had no idea what I was talking about most of the time. He didn’t know anything about the Osmium, the drugs, the money. But he had been sent to kill me, him and the two others in Prague.

  They had been on to us from the moment we arrived back in Prague. They knew that Zdeněk was my contact, knew that the Savarin was my favourite hangout. They had planned to stab me with the stick outside the Savarin when Martina and I emerged, but they had not expected us to stay in the casino so long. They’d become impatient come looking to see if we were still there: just as I had guessed.

  Boris was the ‘blind’ man, the one who’d scratched Martina. I’d surmised most of that already. But what really surprised me, what shocked me to my boots was that they weren’t Russian Mafia. Well, not exactly. He was a Russian gangster alright; but a freelancer. There wasn’t time to go over the details, but I gathered that Boris and his associates had been hired by a man named Moshe. They’d done work for him before, knew that he was Israeli, but not much more than that. I asked him how he knew that I was in South Africa. Moshe had told him. And that was it. I was forced to assume that Moshe was Mossad, that there was still a contract out on me, that I’d be hearing from Moshe again.

  What really bothered me though, was how the hell Moshe knew where I was. The list of possible informers was short. Only Bob Grunter and Bill knew where I was. Except for Piet of course; but I was sure that he didn’t have anything to do with it. I didn’t think that Bob would be actively trying to sabotage his own operation; so that left Bill: my partner.

  It was time to wake up Bob. But first there was the small matter of my Russian guest. He’d told me all I was ever going to get from him, so I should have been nice. I should have left him there for the cleaners to find the next morning. But he was the bastard who had nearly killed Martina. So I tipped the scrote back into the bath. I didn’t bother timing, but by the time that I had fired up the computer, logged onto Skype, dialled Bob’s number, I knew that Boris was dead in the bath and that I’d had my revenge. It was as bitter as all revenge is.

&
nbsp; Bob answered on the second ring. He’d been sleeping. Hardly surprising - it was three in the morning in Prague. ‘Hello. Who is this?’

  ‘Hey Bob.’ I tried to sound cheerful. ‘It’s Noah. You weren’t sleeping were you?’

  ‘Noah! It’s the middle of the friggin night! What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to get hold of the chosen people and call them off.’

  ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’ He was still confused, probably groping about in the dark, trying to find the light, trying to make sense of me.

  ‘Your friends from the lake. They’ve been after me ever since, in Prague and now here; and I think you know all about it.’

  ‘Know all about what? You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘Know all about Mossad and the hit team that’s trying to do their dirty work.’

  That got his attention. The line went silent for a while. Then, soberly, ‘What happened?’

  ‘That’s better. They sent the last one out here to finish the job, but he died a little while ago; he squealed before he died.’

  ‘Dammit Noah. I knew nothing about this.’

  ‘Bullshit Bob.’

  ‘I swear. Do you think those people tell me what they’re doing? They don’t. Seriously; I had no idea.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just tell them that if it happens again, if anyone follows me, shoots at me, even tries to mug me, the deal’s off. I’ll come straight back and you can find someone else to play cloak and dagger with.’

  ‘You wouldn’t…’

  I didn’t let him finish. ‘You think I’m worried about the money Bob? Well I’m not. I had some savings a few weeks ago and nothing more. I can earn that again. As for the rest of it, I knew from the moment that the account was frozen that the chance of my ever getting my money back was about zero. So don’t threaten me with the money Bob. It just won’t work. If you want this deal to go smoothly you are going to have to be my baby-sitter for the next ten days, you’re going to have to make sure that everyone’s nice to me. Oh yes, and if anything happens to Martina while I’m away, I am going to come there and cut your cock off. Is that clear Bob?’