T is for Temptation

by Jianne Carlo

  “Made a bargain with God?” The question seemed automatic, cheerful, but the hollow hope in her eyes pierced his very soul. “How can that be?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s just do it. The doctor said there’s no reason I couldn’t father a child, and you obviously had your doubts. You went to the drugstore to buy one of these, didn’t you?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “And you love kippers for breakfast?”

  Clapping a hand over her mouth, she glowered at him, took a deep inhale and spat out a terse order, “Don’t say that word again, not until I tell you it’s okay.”

  They read the instructions together, and she vanished into the bathroom. An eternity later, or so it seemed, Tee came out and bumped into him pacing a tight circle outside the door.

  “Five minutes, right?” He checked his watch.

  Tee rested the container on the bedside table and worried her lower lip, all the while casting sidelong looks at the plastic, cup-shaped object.

  He snagged her hand and caged it between his, chafing her cold skin, hearing the seconds thundering by. The digital readout advanced so slowly, he was tempted to shake the blasted alarm clock. At last he muttered, “Time,” and gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze.

  “You do it. I can’t. I’m not looking.” With those words, she pressed her lids shut and cupped a hand over her eyes, immediately splaying two fingers for a peek.

  Shifting to her other side, Jake shielded the container with his body and checked the results.

  Positive.

  Elation and primordial male pride crowed through him and he knew he wore a foolish grin because his lips couldn’t close enough to form words.

  Whipping around, he showed her the results. She was in the same position as before, but fixated on the plastic.

  “I knew Elaine was right. I knew it,” she whispered and met his gaze, puddles brimming from her wide, glowing eyes. “For so long, I haven’t believed in my gift, in being a witch. Elaine gave me the confidence to do it. She’s so secure, so certain. When she asked me to bring her grandchild to visit, I knew.”

  “You forgive me?” Jake searched her features.

  “We’re having a baby, darling. Right now I think I could forgive Tony.” She frowned and then added, “I take that back. He’s beyond forgiveness.”

  About to haul her into his lap, he hesitated when the doorbell pealed. He arched his eyebrows. “That’ll be Arthur. What do you want to do?”

  “Can we keep this our secret for now?”

  “Yeah, I think I’d prefer it. I never thought I’d have a child.” Unable to resist, he nuzzled the pulse beating at the base of her neck. “You have life growing within you, Tee. A life we created. It’s the most daunting thing I’ve ever faced.”

  “I’ll never fall asleep tonight.” She kissed him on the mouth and traced the ridge of one cheekbone. “It is daunting, but so wonderfully exhilarating. I think I could conqueror the world. I feel like doing cartwheels.”

  He knew he was the one turning green now, as her equestrian acrobatics flashed through his mind. Wiser than he recognized, Jake immediately resolved to get her ob-gyn on his side before issuing commands about what Tee could or could not do with her blasted horses.

  “Arthur’s here,” Alex’s voice called through the door. “We’re waiting for you two.”

  They found everyone seated in the living room. Mid-afternoon sunlight brightened the area, streaming good cheer through the picture window. Jake and Tee took the love seat, and he instinctively drew her as close as possible. She rested her cheek against his shoulder.

  “Finally. We’re all on tenterhooks,” Henry griped. “Arthur, do we have any new information?”

  “Right. Here we go. Alex, we took your relayed recommendation and leaked the news of Tony Trent being alive to our informants,” he said without preamble. “Initially, we were going to do a media blast and start an international manhunt, but that would only drive him further underground and limit our chances of capturing him.”

  “How are you looking for him?”

  “The usual surveillance methods, credit card watches, and Trent’s photo,” Arthur explained. “All agencies are on critical alert, in particular all points of departure.”

  “Is Tee still in danger?”

  “Yes, but not to the extent she was before, Jake. We’ve completed a background profile on all four individuals, Constantine, Trent, Leandro, and her stepbrother.”

  “There is a connection, then?” Alex asked.

  “Yes and no. First Constantine. He’s a sleeper mole who appears to have been in place for years. Quite frankly, the only organization we believe capable of such long-term planning is the old KGB.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, Jake. While the Berlin Wall came down decades ago, the old Cold War spy cells weren’t automatically dismantled at that time. Many old KGB operatives are now Russia’s newest millionaires. These men have an extensive worldwide network, with contacts from Afghanistan to South America. When we dug into Constantine’s background, we came up with more questions than answers.”

  “Like?”

  “We believe he was born in a village on the Swiss-Italian border. Until the age of eight, he attended the village’s school. There’s no record of him after that until he showed up in California and was admitted to Berkley at the age of seventeen. A brilliant scholar with a knack for finance, he did his Master’s at Harvard, his PhD at the London School of Economics, and was snatched up by Interpol right after his dissertation, which by the way, won him international accolades.”

  “No clue as to the missing nine years?”

  “Nothing, no Baron Constantine in any country we’ve checked. We did learn, however, from his initial resume to Interpol, that he spoke eight languages, including Sanskrit, Japanese, and several Oriental dialects, in addition to his native Italian.”

  “So Tiny was right when he said the man who wrote the riddle knew ancient languages,” Alex commented, casting a sideswipe at the giant. “Then, we can assume the passcode Tiny broke is Constantine’s?”

  “Precisely, although I’m loath to think he would surrender it to Tony’s possession.”

  “I second that, Arthur. I reckon Tony stole the blasted thing.” Jake tugged on his earlobe. “Finally, more answers than questions.”

  “Still no clues as to the second passcode or the optical ID, though,” Alex said and added, “But I digress, continue, please, Arthur.”

  “Actually, Gratnach, if you’re ever looking for employment, we’d snatch you up,” Flood stated. “My superiors are very impressed with your work.”

  Tiny inclined his head.

  “With the focus on the war in Iraq, all efforts in Afghanistan have been minimized, allowing the three major drug lords to grow their businesses exponentially. This resulted in a big problem.”

  “Surplus cash,” Alex muttered. “Nice problem to have.”

  “Is this where Tony comes into play?

  “Indirectly, Jake. The drug lords activated Constantine, who in turn organized the takeover of a Uruguayan bank.”

  Pinballs hit targets everywhere. “Tony.”

  “Yes. In Uruguay, Tony became involved in petty drug trafficking and advanced to robbery and kidnapping. Prime targets were wealthy banking families.”

  “Ready, available cash,” Alex rasped. “Heck, why I didn’t I think of this before? The general’s granddaughter.”

  “Correct on both counts. The general’s family owned the bank. Tony kidnapped the granddaughter. The whole transaction, from capture to ransom, lasted three weeks. During that time, Constantine made his takeover bid.”

  “That’s how he and Constantine hooked up,” Jake stated. “The granddaughter.”

  “The family refused to cede control of the bank.”

  “But, they paid the ransom,” Alex said. “That’s where the 20K deposit came from.”

  “Yes, but Constantine knuckled Tony into giving him the
girl. They kept her hostage to ensure the family’s cooperation.”

  “How did Tony end up in Trinidad?”

  “Me,” Henry said. “I knew the Uruguayan ambassador, and he mentioned him one day and his gold medals.”

  “You can’t take the blame for that, old boy.” Arthur fingered his goatee. “By the time you offered him a position, his gambling debts were so large he had to get out of Uruguay in a hurry. He made a payment on the sum he owed and left.”

  “How much did he owe?”

  “Close to a million. Apparently, while in Trinidad, he hit on the idea of financing his lifestyle by smuggling drugs from South America, and within a few months, he managed to wipe off his debt and started to make money.”

  “He lived at Eight Bells for the first two months,” Tee said. “Mother was redoing Greenbriar, and he couldn’t stay there. That’s when he bought the boat.”

  “And inveigled his old pals Graziella and her brother to Trinidad. Then he ran into the same problem as the Afghan drug lords. Cash.”

  “Did he pick my name out of a hat?”

  “Actually, Jake, I think you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Apparently, you signed the deal with British Petroleum during that period, and the local media did a feature on rising stars in the industry, focusing on you.” Sir Arthur tapped a copy of said article in the file laying open on the coffee table. “We found this in the caretaker’s residence behind Eight Bells.”

  “Blasted hell.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” Alex interjected. “It wouldn’t take a genius to recognize you needed cash to finance the business’s expansion. And we did do the requisite background check.”

  “Blast, Alex. I misjudged the man completely.”

  “No, he deliberately misled you. Made sure you underestimated him. I suppose he approached Constantine and offered to launder a portion of the cash with the deliberate intention of stealing the money. Then he planned his own death.”

  “That sums it up, young Mayfield. What we don’t know is why he showed up today and what he’s after. The other three plainly believed Tee knew about the missing money. Now, they know Trent’s alive, and we believe they’ll focus their efforts on him.”

  “Could he be after the information from the photograph?”

  “I find it hard to believe that he’d have only one of the passcodes. Admittedly, they’re complex and difficult to commit to memory, but the only way he can get at the money is if he has both of them. No, it has to be something more.”

  “He was after Tee,” Jake said and knew it as an unassailable truth.

  “There’s one small incident that none of this explains.” Alex shoveled his hands through his hair and propped his elbows on splayed knees. “Who burgled the Trinidad office and why?”

  “Damned good question. Tee, did you do that inventory after I left Barbados?”

  “Yes, I didn’t discover anything new. Almost all the paperwork was destroyed, and you know they took all the equipment.”

  “Perhaps his colleagues were behind the theft. Maybe they were looking for the other passcode.” Sir Arthurs’s cell phone dinged, he glanced at the LCD, and rose to his feet. “Time for me to get back to the office. If any of you come up with anything new, call me at once.”

  “What are our next steps?” Alex queried.

  “We wait for the trap to be sprung.”

  The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

  Tony Trent studied the blueprints of the US embassy apartment in London searching for the weak link; there was always one. He hated that it had come to this; killing Tee, but he had no other choice. Survival of the fittest, thinking about the old cliché made his lips flatten.

  “There’s a two-second spread when the security guards change, boss.”

  “I see that. They’ve been ordering pizza regularly from the same place.” Tony studied the printout of all calls made from the landline in the embassy’s apartment. He checked them against the cell lines for Alex and Jake and all the recordings his men had made of incoming calls. “This guy, Tiny, he’s the one ordering the pizza.”

  “Yeah, same order every time. Double cheese, double pepperoni, double sausage, and two liters of Coke.”

  “Luciano’s makes great pizza.” This statement came from a man standing guard at the door.

  As if cued, the other men chimed in, and a loud discussion of pizza toppings ensued.

  Tony shut his eyes and tried to drown out the stupidity of the inane musings of the muscle men he’d hired. Once long ago, his friends would have rallied around him, and he wouldn’t have had to buy loyalty. Once, he’d been his mother’s pride and joy. For a second, he wondered what his deceased mother would think of him now, but he set the thought aside. All killers had a mother.

  “Take out one of the delivery men. You,” he said, pointing to the most intelligent of his employees, “you fill out a job app in person at this Luciano’s Pizzeria. Chat up the personnel. You other two do the same. By this afternoon, I expect one of you to be delivering for that pizza joint.”

  “Boss, won’t the embassy have to vet us?”

  One of Constantine’s guys was on the embassy payroll, Tony knew the man, and this particular mole didn’t know of the rift between he and Constantine. “I’ll get around that. Get out of here. Call me the minute you’re hired.”

  Who the hell was this Tiny guy who ordered the pizza? He wasn’t one of Jake’s employees, that much Tony knew. If Graziella hadn’t betrayed him, he gritted his teeth, and for the millionth time wondered how long had she been playing him? How much did Constantine know? And the sheik? His stomach flip-flopped.

  The transfer of the funds from the Isle of Man made no difference now. All the money in the world couldn’t save him from the wrath of Constantine or the Sheik. Damn, but he’d been insane to think he could pull this off.

  He’d figured Jake would be in jail by now, safe for a while, not under circumstances his former partner could ever understand, but safe.

  “So when do we go in boss?”

  By tomorrow, Tony figured, all of them stood a good chance of being dead, he scrutinized the harsh features of the London thugs so recently bought and paid for. Twenty-three, maybe a little older, and with the current odds, their mothers would be grieving tomorrow.

  “As soon as the pizza’s ordered.” He spread out the blueprints. “Okay, here’s the main security camera, and this is the main lobby. The receptionist is a Homeland Security employee, and the elevator’s monitored. What that means is I do the talking and no one else says a word.”

  “Mate, what about the security check?”

  “I am not your mate. I am your boss.” Tony’s temper and mood had soured. No matter what his associates and the rest of the world believed, he’d never actually killed anyone before. Witnessed murders, seen other men strangling the last breath out of another human being with their own hands, yes, but do the killing himself? Never.

  Tony knew the baby-faced cockney men sitting at the kitchen table had at least three deaths to their records, the mafia equivalent of made men, because he’d stipulated that requirement when he’d spread the word that he needed assassins. “And the security check won’t be an issue.”

  He’d have to take the chance that Constantine hadn’t notified his man in the embassy of what had happened recently. Tony paced the flat’s miniscule living/kitchen area, searching his brain for an ally and came up with nothing. He’d alienated too many people in the last few years.

  “I’ll handle the re-routing of the calls, and I’ll answer any phone call that comes in, including the pizza order. You,” he said, picking out the least emotional of the group, “get three pizzas and four liters of coke. Pay cash, and wait for them. Bring them back to the flat. As soon as Tiny orders, we’ll hit the road.”

  That left three of his five hired men in the room. He needed all of them gone. “Clear out all of you. Go with him and get something to eat.” He threw a couple of one hundred pound notes on the tab
le. “No liquor. Drink and you’ll end up dead.”

  As soon as they’d left and he’d scoured the flat for bugs and cameras, Tony headed for the claustrophobic, windowless bedroom, which faced Chanel Four’s Main Studio. He’d chosen the place because of its location to the blasting multi-faceted studios of Britain’s second largest television station, figuring any of his small communications would be dwarfed by the masses emanating from the building across the narrow alley.

  He opened his laptop and hit the power button. Because of the security necessary for his emails, he never used Outlook or Gmail or any regular internet service provider, but sent his missives on a direct loop using BAL or Basic Assembler Language, an outdated form of programming, which used on or off switches at the actual chip level for messaging. Leaving that trail of emails for the authorities and Jake to follow had been a bit of a lark; Tony smiled and stifled a chortle. For a nanosecond, he felt almost cheerful.

  Commandeering his thoughts to the issue at hand, he composed a message, which seemed innocuous on first reading, but he hoped gave a virtual picture of the dire circumstances he now faced. When he hit the send button, Tony sat back, and the sudden realization hit him; this might be the last time he communicated with the only individual who still cared about him.

  Facing one’s death, he discovered, didn’t make you stronger or wiser, just greedy, greedy for more time. All in all, though, if he had to do it all over again, the only things he would change is what would happen next.

  Tony had to race to the toilet at the thought of killing Tee, seeing her draw her last breath. Even after he’d emptied every thing out of his stomach, the nausea didn’t leave him. When he’d first started down this path, he’d been warned; one life taken in the face of saving millions didn’t matter. Soon, he’d have to take four, and hope the future would prove him righteous. Somehow.

  Pinball Wizards