by Lilya Myers
“No un hombre de pelo en pecho, quizás,” the bartender called from across the room, laughing as he said it.
“Well, he looked like a real man to me – no perhaps about it. Did you see how he was built?” she said.
Still conversing in Spanish and obviously amused at the girl’s frustration, the bartender couldn’t let it be.
“Maybe he was looking for one of those other bars and took a wrong turn out of California by mistake, you know what I mean?”
He couldn’t stop laughing at his own theory. The girl liked to dream, like she did with almost all her customers. There was always the hope that every next one would be the one to rescue her from this dump. She couldn’t see herself growing old there.
Outside, the man had slipped into the seat of his car and sat there. He just wanted a damn drink. It was still early enough and he wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel. There was a small store up the road a mile or two with a flashing beer sign in the window. He turned the engine over, pulled out, and backtracked to the store.
It seemed that no one around there liked to burn much electricity. That was a good thing for him. At the store, he grabbed a couple of local beers out of the cooler and went to the counter. A young teenage kid was manning the cash register while the voices of older men could be heard in the back, probably playing cards. The kid took his money without looking up. He was too engaged with his pocket video game to care about much else.
The killer took a couple of deep pumps on the first bottle, trying to decide whether to go on the hunt or opt for prey that was right under his nose. He realized he had already decided that when he walked out of the bar. He drove back and pulled into the same spot as before. No one would even notice a car sitting there until daylight. Plenty of time. He finished his first beer and started on the other.
He was glad to be able to observe without being seen. Not that it would matter, really. Hours of drinking and the delirious effects of one of those private booths, any one of them would be lucky to find their feet to walk out. One by one, he watched the patrons of the bar get in their cars to go wherever it was their cars would take them. It was 2 a.m. According to the sign, they stayed true to their hours of operation.
When he was inside earlier, he had counted five waitresses. That included the little senorita who had offered to get cozy with him in a booth. The little slut. The others had left but she was still inside. Unless, she went out the back with her boss. He waited. He had long since disconnected the interior lights and left his driver’s side door open. Finally he heard the door squeal open and shut. Then he heard the click of the deadbolt. Owner was locking up from the inside. He probably lived in back. The girl was by herself. He watched as she walked away from the bar in the direction of what he assumed was home.
He grabbed the velvety roll off the passenger seat. It was compact. The killer always came prepared. With the stealth of a large cat on the hunt, he stepped silently from the car. His shadow was swallowed up by the darkness. There wasn’t a soul on the road. The sound of the sea hitting the shore helped to disguise any sound that might be unusual to the woman. As she turned to start up a pathway carved out of the thick vegetation, the killer sprang. In that moment, he gave her no room to struggle or cry out. With a quick jab to her neck, he pulled the syringe back out. Her body went limp and he carried her back to his car a short distance away.
Got lucky after all. That was his first thought as he headed back toward a remote cove-like area he had passed earlier. It was close enough that the woman would still be trapped in her drug-induced state. It was ideal because it was in a flood zone. No homes were built within a wide area on either side. During monsoon, where rushing waters flowed from the mountains to the sea, houses and people would be washed away.
Desolate.
Private.
Do not disturb. My kind of place.
He pulled to a spot where his car couldn’t be seen from the road. He’d have some improvising to do since restraints might be a problem. And he would definitely need a means of limiting her movement. He walked to the clearing not far from the car. There were rocks the size of car tires strewn about the sand. It looked as though a giant had rolled a handful of dice. He preferred zip ties. They were rigid, could cut into flesh with movement. He grabbed the roll of duct tape out of the trunk. It would have to do.
The woman was beginning to stir. It was too soon for that. He would need to give her another injection. That wasn’t a good thing. He brought only so much of the drug and injecting her again will limit other opportunities. But he wasn’t ready for her yet. He pulled out another syringe and injected her again. He lifted her effortlessly from the car and laid her on her back between several of the boulders. He put a piece of tape across her mouth, just in case. He stripped down and set his clothes carefully off to the side. When her wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape and secured around the boulders, he sat on his haunches and waited for the drug to wear off.
When he had finished, he walked to the water’s edge and washed. The killer got dressed. He gave one last glance over his shoulder to admire his work before strolling past his car to the road. It was 4 a.m. Not a car in sight. He pulled onto the road and drove back toward his hotel. With one appetite satiated, it was finally time to eat. He arrived back at the hotel and passed the two guards at the door holding submachine guns. He nodded nonchalantly as he walked in, then turned past the lobby and headed for the restaurant that had just opened for breakfast.
He made some phone calls. He couldn’t be derelict about his other responsibilities. It was time, now, to get a little sleep. The beach would be a lot more attractive than the walls in his room. After renting a cabana, he spent the rest of the day on the beach. The excitement of the previous night made sleep impossible. There were other things on the beach that made sleep elusive. He went back to his room, showered, and went to the bar for a drink. Perhaps he’d call it a night after that so he could get an early start tomorrow. In daylight, he could do some exploring. He only had three more days to see if this was a place he’d visit more often.
He called room service the next morning. At his request, breakfast would be taken on his balcony overlooking the sea. The waiter wheeled his cart to the set of French doors. He proceeded to prepare the killer’s table, pulled the chair out for him to sit, and draped a white linen napkin across his lap. Coffee poured and covers on the food removed, the waiter handed the killer the morning paper as a gesture that he was now ready for the tip.
The killer tried to remain impassive as he absently slapped money into the waiter’s waiting palm. As soon as the waiter was gone, the man retreated inside with the paper. There on the front page was the woman from the bar last night, the killer’s gruesome signature in an uncensored photo. The paper was in English, a standard for five star hotels. A couple of teenagers had come upon the body as they headed back from a secret rendezvous of their own.
The article also gave a description of a man, a stranger, a foreigner maybe, just not a regular, who came into the bar where the victim worked. He had behaved strangely but left hours before closing. They had interviewed the owner. The police were investigating other leads. After all, the writer intimated, what she did for a living in a remote area didn’t place her murder as high priority. Perhaps, the woman had a jealous boyfriend. The police were investigating but they were already terribly backlogged and shorthanded in investigating unsolved crimes.
The description of him wasn’t very good. Even though the bar was dark, the one person who had seen him up close was dead. The owner, had seen him from a distance but his accuracy about the killer’s build should have been far more accurate. Maybe he was afraid of retribution from the stranger or putting too much focus on him as a suspect would definitely hurt his business. The body shouldn’t have been found for days, at least, and he would have been long gone and forgotten. This made his position a risky one.
It wasn’t until his flight was in the air that the man could relax. He ha
d a long trip to think about things. About mistakes. Going to a bar wasn’t a mistake. The mistake was allowing a link to exist between him and the event.
Before his plane touched down, he had a workable theory on how to keep a line from being drawn from point A to point B. Expanding one’s horizons is only realized through recognition of mistakes, correcting them, and executing new strategies with thoughtful precision. He had applied it to his other successful endeavors, so there was no reason it couldn’t work for this. Wasn’t there a psychologist who once said that it wasn’t like a killer to change his spots? Apparently the good old doc didn’t know what he was talking about.
CHAPTER 2
A lifetime ago
SHARIF AND NADIA El-Sabati and Les and Aida Somers made plans to stop in Switzerland and have an informal celebration before returning to their homes on different continents. Both men had brought their wives along on their final business trip with the company where they had worked for so many years. It was mostly business for the men and free time for the ladies to shop. The culmination of their trip was a layover in Switzerland, where it all began back in 1959, and where they could reminisce about the places life had taken them and their children, Hashim and Dan.
Hashim El-Sabati had known Dan Somers for what could have been a lifetime. In the latter part of 1959, and within weeks of each other, their fathers went to work for the same international chemical corporation. They just happened to live on different continents.
Hashim’s father, Sharif, had left the military with high honors under King Farouk of Egypt, sensing a political shift was imminent. He left the country to study abroad in France, then England. This was a man who was highly educated, focused, and driven – not of the same mindset as the typical Egyptian raised when Abdel Nasser overthrew the king and nationalized the country. Sharif had strived to instill those same qualities in his son Hashim that his father inspired in him. Sharif was a capitalist. He made sure that his best investment for the future was to give Hashim access to the finest schools in Switzerland, where he would learn that the English language and western culture would provide him many advantages in life.
Dan was also a military brat of sorts. His father, Les, didn’t have the distinction of being a general or some other high-ranking position, but he definitely carried some weight. His military connection was highly confidential and Dan was trained early on to simply say that his father worked for the military in an official capacity. Whatever that meant. It would leave his lips, “My Daddy is a army cappa-city.” This always got a chuckle and no one questioned it – out of the mouth of babes. Dan’s birth came on the heels of Lester’s reassignment orders to the Middle East. Until he was four years old, it was the only real home Dan knew before his father left the military. In those short four years, Dan had been immersed in a culture and a language that would be the cornerstone of so many facets of his life ahead.
Both Sharif and Les were still young men with young families when they went to work for the largest chemical company in the world. Granted, Sharif was hired in Cairo and Les was hired out of Rochester, N.Y, fate would have its way with them. In no time, their backgrounds and expertise landed them together on a project. Les worked as a Country Regulatory Specialist and Sharif as head of Global Facilities Projects.
Les remembered well the first time he met Sharif. He made a habit of arriving at least an hour ahead of anyone for a scheduled meeting. Today was no different. His Swiss timepiece wouldn’t have it any other way. He might have been anal when it came to meetings but it could never be said that he was uptight. Humor was a give and take that he enjoyed. Les was brutally loyal and sometimes too patient. He was well-liked because he never wavered from a balanced scale of justice. He was completely aware that his tall, fit, and handsome self could be intimidating to some, mesmerizing to others, and a strategic asset that was only capitalized on if it meant to benefit some sensitive operation. It came in handy, especially when dealing with a difficult third world country.
Les had done his share of traveling but his accommodations had never been as swank as they were in Switzerland. The Hotel D’Angleterre in Geneva, offered a spectacular view of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc. Built in 1872, it had been conceived as an historical luxury hotel and over the years, became a celebrated and exclusive hotel that attracted presidents and other prestigious guests from around the world. It was famed for its air of composed calm and peaceful privacy. When Les walked into the executive, posh conference room, he was taken aback to see another man already seated at the table facing the door. The man looked up with a warm smile. He was quite affable with a quirky expression that defined him. The lines etched in his face were a springboard for a quick, concealed humor that was coiled and ready to leap and strike his victim’s funny bone.
“Were you looking for the worm? I’m not it.” The man’s nearly perfect English was Middle Eastern accented with British overtones. Sharif ’s odd accent was the product of the ten years he had lived in London with his family. His unexpected presence and peculiar greeting caught Les off guard, etching a look of confusion on his face.
“I beg your pardon?” Les responded.
“Isn’t that the American slang for the early bird catches the worm?”
Who is this guy? Les mused to himself. He speaks English well. Perhaps he’s an interpreter. He’s obviously had clearance; otherwise he wouldn’t have access to this room. He hefted his briefcase onto the table. It was a well-worn leather case. He unzipped the case and rested his hand there.
Les was amused at Sharif ’s quick and pleasant sense of humor. He waited before shooting back a playful retort. “Are you sure you weren’t trying to catch the worm? After all, you were here before me, no?” And then quickly added, “Oh, and to satisfy any curiosity you may have, I’m not it either.” Dan proceeded to spread his papers on the table.
Sharif tilted his head and regarded him for a moment before speaking. “Meaning, you are not the early bird, or you are not the worm?”
A faint glow of pink tinged at the roots of Les’s blonde hair in concert with the huge grin that lit his eyes like twin pilot lights. “Touché.” Both men laughed simultaneously with genuine amusement.
Sharif stood and walked over to Les, hand extended. “I think I’m ahead of you on the caffeine this morning. I am Sharif El-Sabadi.” Les tried to hide his surprise but Sharif caught it immediately. He said, “Ah yes, the name rings a bell? I see that they did at least tell you that much about me.” There it was again, that mischievous smile and eyes that danced with laughter.
Les had been given a small dossier on Sharif, a curriculum vitae that outlined the glowing accomplishments but gave no insight into personality. Sharif didn’t resemble anything Les expected after reading the man’s CV.
Sharif was a few inches shorter than Les but stood ramrod straight in order to meet every inch of Les’s six-foot-two frame. Every strand of his curly brown hair, which appeared to fall in place all on its own, was a stark contrast to an olive skin tone. A neatly trimmed mustache stretched to engage his smile. His grip was evidence of his strength and character. Les liked that. Egyptians were known to be a lot of talk and no action, particularly when it came to business. Sharif ’s whole demeanor belied that stereotype. Hands down.
Sharif had received a bland report on Les, as well. When Les first entered the room, Sharif nearly dismissed him as a poor soul lost in the hotel’s labyrinth of meeting rooms. Almost instantly, Sharif retracted his premature judgment when he observed the way Les carried himself – an air of confidence but not conceit, alert but not on attack. There was a certain deportment in his movements that was unmistakably military.
In fact, both men were ex-military, in high-ranking positions from two different countries – worlds and customs that seemed light years apart. Their military backgrounds could be the common ground from which to set a working relationship in motion. There was an old saying about meeting a potential enemy before the potential battle was in play. Sharif had deci
ded that, in his new role working for Global Facilities, the definition of enemy translated into someone who could not easily engage in friendly banter. This impromptu meeting, however, gave indication of the kindred spirit that would develop between Sharif El-Sabadi and Les Somers. A friendship that neither would have ever imagined.
Sharif spoke as he moved to the edge of the room where a small kitchenette provided food and beverages during meetings. “Why don’t I fix us a cup of coffee and then we will spend a little time getting to know one another? Yes?” Les nodded. “It is the only way we can have an important meeting of the minds before those…how do you say… talking heads arrive. I’m sure they won’t walk through those pearly gates a minute before they absolutely have to be here.” The Egyptian had already gathered up his paperwork and moved to occupy the seat next to Les. He set down two steaming mugs of black coffee. “We might as well get cozy now and create an undivided front,” Sharif said with a wink. “I understand they’ve given us only a minimum of five years to implement this project.”
In a matter of moments, they had gone from being complete strangers to what could be compared to the comfort of an old broken-in shoe. Both were good men of integrity and impeccable character. A deep and trusting friendship was forged that morning.
The travel their jobs afforded them also gave them limitless opportunity to mix a lot of pleasure with business. So, the two men used every one of those occasions to bring their young families into the fold. They had sons the same age. The boys, Dan and Hashim, were inseparable when they were together. The oceans that separated them, at times, were merely a temporary inconvenience. Dan and Hashim were mirror images of their fathers, smart and dedicated to their studies.