by Martha Carr
The ketamine was the easiest part of the plan. An ample supply was obtained months ago from the expired military stockpile left over from the war. No one would notice a small supply of drugs that was past their use-before date had gone missing.
One of the men on each team was a trained paramedic who could quickly administer the drug and was on hand in case there was an unforeseen reaction. Everything was taken into account.
After all, the creator of the plan, a coldhearted man named George Clemente, pointed out again and again, to take down a whale you’d better sharpen your harpoon.
Chapter 2
“Wait here,” Helmut Khroll said to the driver. He had hired him back at the hotel on the recommendation of the hotel clerk behind the oversized main desk. It was as good a reason as any in Luanda to hire someone. Fleecing the Westerners was a game amongst the locals and to Helmut it only seemed fair. The Westerners flooding the country to take advantage of the rich oil fields were planning to do the same thing on a much bigger scale.
The man nodded and held out his hand. Helmut tore a few kwanza in two and gave the man half. “You get this part if you’re still here when I get back,” he said, waving his half of the torn bills before stuffing them in his pocket.
“You going in there?” asked the driver.
“Why?” asked Helmut, sensing the driver was trying to keep him alive long enough to get paid the rest of the money. That was fair, thought Helmut.
“You have a gun?” asked the driver, smiling.
“Sure,” said Helmut, nodding his head, lying.
The man smiled and sat back, turning up the radio. Helmut slammed the car door and looked up at the warehouse, wiping his brow and the back of his neck with a worn handkerchief. His neck felt sticky and he noticed the streak of grime he had wiped off. “This country is one long continuous heat wave,” he said.
Someone had strung a piece of plastic green garland around the top of the door. A large plastic Santa was taped to the door with silver duct tape. Santa’s stomach was mashed in the center with a boot print still visible in the stomach.
“Ho ho ho,” whispered Helmut.
At least this was a change of pace, he thought. He cautiously opened the door and waited for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunshine outside to the deep shadows in the cavernous concrete building. A wave of stale air hit him in the face, rolling past him.
He had been camped out in a hotel in Luanda, Angola, on the west coast of Africa, for the past six months, ever since Fred Bowers had found an unexpected way to end the second American civil war by shooting way too many people all in one carefully planned day.
Christmas was approaching, though, and Helmut wanted to return to the states. He normally never stayed anywhere for longer than a week and six months in a city that was in the middle of a building boom after ending its own civil war was beginning to really wear on him. The noise from the construction was a constant in the background.
It didn’t help that the heavy rains in November had dropped a foot of rain at times, leaving him trapped inside the hotel for days on end, checking his sources by phone.
Or that most of the sightings of George Clemente were vague and desperate attempts by locals to get paid.
But before he could get out of Luanda he needed to locate Clemente, the man responsible for starting the war that had spread across the United States. Thousands had died in unexplained deaths in small skirmishes that were explained away as terrorist events or hidden altogether.
Fred was here for the same reason, even if it was more personal, and Helmut had agreed to accompany him to keep an eye on him, and try to contain any further damage from happening to the locals. It was enough what Fred had left behind in the States by taking revenge on Management and leaving behind so many dead bodies.
Besides, the request had come from the President and was more of an order. Even if Helmut was a journalist and not a soldier, he understood no one was asking if he minded and he had started packing his worn out leather satchel.
He was going to help Fred finally find revenge for his wife, Maureen’s death and stop George Clemente from causing anymore worldwide damage. Two problems solved with one bullet.
Things were looking up and he was starting to think he might get back to Richmond, Virginia to check on his old friends, Wallis and Norman before Christmas Eve. He was following an unreliable tip from the woman who owned the beauty salon in a squatty small shack that resembled a colorfully painted pink jail. Reinforced white steel bars covered the only window and door and looked like the best thing on the building. Painted above the doorway on the outside of the building was ‘salao de beleza’ in a wobbly hand-painted script, letting everyone know this was a hair salon for women.
The owner had promised more than once, spilling out the words in a mixture of English and Portuguese that she had seen the man in the picture inside of the large warehouse Helmut was now standing in, more than once. The two women sitting behind her in the worn-down salon chairs had nodded their heads in agreement.
“Meu primo é um dos seus guarda-costas, guarda costas,” she stammered, pointing her finger at Helmut and cocking her thumb.
“He is a bodyguard, her cousin,” said one of the women, her hair wrapped around little pink foam curlers all over her head. The woman next to her, her hair wrapped in a faded yellow terrycloth turban nodded in agreement. “He lives in the warehouse on Rua de Ambaca. He has driven around this man more than once. The man with a scar across his face,” she said, translating for the shop owner, who was running a long fingernail painted in red and black stripes like the Angolan flag down the side of her cheek.
“Apenas ontém,” said the shop owner.
“Just yesterday,” said the customer, adjusting a curler.
Helmut felt himself smiling for the first time since he landed in Luanda. George Clemente was still nearby.
“Be careful of the squatters,” said the woman, making a sour face. “They’ve taken over so many of the empty warehouses in the city. Homens maus,” she said, shaking her head, “Homens maus.”
The shop owner spit in disgust and brushed her palms together. Helmut didn’t need a translation.
“Except for her cousin, of course,” said the customer, feeling the curlers on her head. The shop owner batted away her hand and started to unroll each one with a loud click of the plastic, throwing them into the pocket of her faded, floral apron.
Helmut had already been warned about the warehouses. Locals, mostly men, who lived off of the work they could find, regularly used the warehouse as a place to lay their head and congregate together at night. Scorch marks on the concrete floor and streaks of ash showed where they had made hundreds of small campfires at night to cook the usual dinner of canned beans or the occasional fish. Enterprising owners of the warehouses charged the men ten or twenty kwanza a week for the privilege of sleeping on the cold, hard floors.
Helmut thanked the women and gave his driver the new address, batting away the man’s concerns, promising him an extra five hundred kwanza, the equivalent of five U.S. dollars to drive him there and wait.
Tearing the money in half helped to ensure the second part.
He held open the heavy metal door, listening to the plastic Santa swing and scrape against the outside of the door. The heat continued to roll out in dense, wet waves, making him blink as much from the moisture as the rancid smells.
His eyes adjusted just enough to see that the only windows were at the top, and were narrow and long, typical of old sweatshops from the Portuguese colonial days. Not much heat was escaping the large building.
Still, Helmut was grateful for any of the heavy, humid air that was able to escape the wide open space.
He knew something was wrong as soon as he walked further inside and realized the usual piles of men deposited around the warehouse floor, sleeping off something, were missing. He hesitated, wondering if he should turn around and go back to the car but six long months of trying to find Clemente ma
de him a little reckless. Besides, it wasn’t the first time he had tracked down a lead for a story somewhere he should never have been in the first place.
He only made it inside of the door when he felt the dull thud against his head and a sting against his back, knocking him to the dirty cement floor. The stench of the nearby beach rushed into his nose as he gulped in air, making his stomach roil. He quickly rolled onto his side, trying to regain his senses as quickly as he could as the toe of a soft, leather sneaker caught him in the gut.
“Stay down there,” said someone with an American accent. It wasn’t Clemente.
Helmut shook his head as gently as he could, licking the blood off of his bottom lip. He was sure he caught a glimpse of George Clemente just as the piece of downspout came down on his head again, throwing him back against the ground. Someone dragged him by the arms to the far side of the warehouse, through the few belongings that had been left behind by the squatters.
They finally dropped his arms and let him come to rest by the far wall. A fitting place to be shot, thought Helmut.
He quickly stood up, ignoring another warning and forced himself to open his eyes and put up his hands, at least in defense. He felt the wind rush by his head, rustling his brown curls, as he quickly slid down the rough cement blocks, scraping his back through his shirt. He let out a cry of pain for his back as the aluminum pipe crashed against the wall, barely missing him. He looked up in time to see it bend into a large hook. A cloud of dust billowed out momentarily blocking his view of who exactly was swinging at him.
He pushed himself back to his knees, rocking to his heels and willed himself one more time to stand up in a crouch, stumbling over a pile of trash. A smell of old sweat and rotten fish bones wafted up from the clothes as he tried to kick them aside.
He wanted a fighting chance at staying alive even if he couldn’t hope to win the fight.
“Journalists have never made good fighters. Too soft,” said a familiar voice. George Clemente pushed aside the man holding the bent downspout and came closer. He let out a grunt as he ran a hand through what remained of his greasy black hair. Helmut took advantage of the few second to try taking in more regular breaths, still not sure if it was a waste of time and he was about to die. He couldn’t get enough air to say anything.
George took out a small black comb and carefully combed his hair backwards, plastering it to his head and exposing more of the receding hairline.
Helmut rubbed his face, finally clearing his eyes. “The need for dramatic lines before you could do much of anything has always been a drawback of yours, old man” said Helmut, letting out a long, ragged cough He was relieved, if just for the moment, to still be breathing. “Have you been enjoying Luanda’s hospitality?”
“There is a lot to be said for the Paris of Africa.” George said, patting his ample belly. He took the bent piece of pipe and dragged it across the ground, making a high-pitched metallic squeal before tossing the downspout into the shadows. “You’re better off to me alive, and just a little broken,” he said holding up two fingers close together. “I want to send a message to your traveling companion. Tell Mr. Bowers, I didn’t kill his so-called wife. So much fuss over a planted operative. We have no argument.”
Helmut put out a hand against the wall to balance himself and stood up straighter. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back and felt a small wave of pain. “I think Fred Bowers sees things a little differently than you do, Clemente. Come on, we all know you started the war and probably a few dozen other little dirty tricks that neither side knows about, right? That makes you a little responsible.” Helmut swallowed hard, willing the bile to go back down his throat. “I even hear both the Circle and Management want you dead. That’s a pretty clever place to be in,’ he said, taunting George. “Probably a first in over, what, four hundred years of existence? Got those two sides to agree on something? A lot of eyes looking for you. Fred is just a pair of them. Why worry so much about one man?”
“Your Mr. Bowers has proven to be a little deadlier than most. I heard details about the bodies he left behind. So many Management operatives found dead in one day and so well placed in the organization. How many was it in the end, twenty-two? Twenty-three? Must have made it a little difficult to hide the truth from the mainstream.”
“Why, George, it almost sounds like you admire him,” he said, spitting out a thin stream of blood. That can’t be good, thought Helmut. “Most of those bodies were pulled off the street before the locals in Virginia could notice them. How about the part of the story where he managed to stop you from taking over Management?”
George Clemente’s lip curled into a sneer and he looked to the side where the pipe lay.
“Change your mind about sending a message?” asked Helmut. “Well, chitchat has never been my strong suit. Ask a few of my friends,” he said, letting out a short laugh, even though he knew it might mean he wouldn’t make it out of the warehouse. This was a crappy place to be forgotten, he thought.
“Stopped me for now,” said George, turning around as if he was looking for someone.
“You bring even more backup with you? Father Michael was right, age is taking care of the problem.”
“Enough,” shouted George, pulling out a Fabrique Nationale Browning 9mm Hi-Power gun, a favorite of Angolans, and holding it down by his side, his arm shaking from anger. “Killing you would be satisfying like killing a gnat. But your death would add up to nothing. You’re a threat to no one, even with your annoying little stories you keep writing about Management plans in Africa.”
Helmut felt his face flush with anger even though he recognized all of his stories about Management’s plans for the smaller third world countries must be getting to someone if Clemente bothered to mention them. “Stealing food from the locals to ship to China. Some of that is you? I can autograph something for you, if you like,” he said.
George smiled, showing teeth yellowed from age.
“Tell Mr. Bowers I’m not the one he should be hunting. I had a different agenda. None of that mess in Richmond, Virginia had anything to do with those plans.”
“A lie,” said Helmut, resting his chin on his chest and leaning more heavily on the wall. “An obvious and poor lie.”
“Surely you know me well enough to realize I have bigger plans. Yes, it would have been nice to have the boy on my side. Young Ned Weiskopf. But that was nothing more for me than good marketing. The rightful heir. Who’s to say that his birthright won’t serve us later in the end, anyway? I can wait and see. Tell Mr. Bowers, I do not want Wallis Jones dead, not today,” he said, drawing out the last words. “I want her very much alive, for now. You can imagine that with both sides wishing me a shorter life, having the woman alive whose ancestors come from both founding families is a very nice distraction. A descendant of the Circle, a descendant of Management.”
Helmut looked down and tried to cover his surprise by wincing as if he were in pain. It wasn’t that far off the truth, anyway.
“That’s right. I know all about her mother. Harriet Jones. The second Keeper, or at least she was until the little mess that got Maureen Bowers killed, and right outside of Wallis Jones’ house. I wonder if Management will take such a hands-off approach to Ms. Jones and her family now that they know she doesn’t have the diary. I came so close to having it,” he said.
“Harry Weiskopf wasn’t the traitor you hoped for in the end, was he?” asked Helmut, trying to dig into George a little deeper. Harry Weiskopf, Wallis’ brother in law was an original zwanzig from the Circle who had almost betrayed them all, but in the end redeemed himself and stopped George Clemente with his life.
“Mr. Clemente? We have to go.” A younger man with a distinctive accent stood in the shadows behind George. Helmut took a chance and looked up for a moment in the direction of the American. Their mole was still alive.
“Is that your entire message? Please don’t kill me?” asked Helmut, looking quickly back at George. “Doesn’t seem like your style
to beg.”
“You are an annoyance I will take care of one of these days,” said George, angrily lifting the gun momentarily to aim at Helmut’s head. “Hopefully, not too long from now. Right now, I need to focus on other things more important than your war of words. Tell Mr. Bowers it was more of a local decision to close in on the Jones woman. I believe it was the Richmond director, a Richard Bach.”
Helmut looked up at Clemente trying to see if he could tell if this was all just a distraction. “I know Richard Bach. He’s not that clever.”
George threw a large manila envelope at his feet. “That probably explains why it all ended so badly. Here’s your proof. It took me some time to acquire it or I would have called all of this off a bit sooner. You are in my way here. Listen to the recordings yourself, check the flight manifestos. Bach gave the orders. I was long gone, on my way to this lovely country, before the bullets started to fly.”
“Mr. Clemente, we will be late for the meeting if we don’t leave at once,” said the young man, stepping out from the shadows for just a moment, giving a slight nod to Helmut while George Clemente’s back was still turned.
“Coming, Charlie. You are correct. It would be bad manners. We have a deal to close and then a celebration.”
Charlie Foyle was standing behind Clemente, checking his watch. Helmut had been read in about him by a top level of the cell. He was only in his late twenties and had grown up inside of Management but was a plant from the very start. His mother and father were inactive Circle operatives who were recruited as sleepers to appear neutral in their local community while gathering information on the opposition. They were only to be activated if absolutely necessary. In the end, it was their son, instead.
Management had tried to recruit Charlie at a young age but his mother, despite her training, had resisted their efforts, all the while contradicting herself by telling her young son about the differences between the two sides. Their service to the Circle kept the world in an unseen balance, she said.