The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1)

by Cole Reid

  Sound came but not as Xiaoyu expected. There was no small sound of a shirt creasing or light scrape of a shoe across the floor. The sound was loud and raucous. It echoed like thunder coming from the corridor leading to Juric’s office. There was thunder and lighting. There was even the roar of a lion. The office became a wilderness. Perhaps the idea of being a prisoner was too much for Juric or perhaps he realized Xiaoyu wanted him alive and needed a clear shot, a shot not intended to kill him. Juric seemed hell-bent on denying Xiaoyu his clear shot. He came running down the hall screaming and firing shots from an automatic rifle. The shots caused a muzzle flash that lit the corridor, but not the foyer where Xiaoyu lied next to the couch. The noise and light woke him out of a dry-mouth trance. Had Xiaoyu decided to stand or sit he might have been hit. But for over fourteen hours he never left the floor. As Juric started to head passed the thin man’s body, Xiaoyu crawled forward under the wave of bullets. The muzzle flash had a side effect; it made Juric visible in a dark room. Juric kept shooting toward the door and shot the glass door to the ground. As he passed through the door, he felt a kick to his lower back. There was a pain in his right shoulder blade. He collapsed to the floor feeling like lactic acid had built up in his lower back and shoulder. He turned back toward the door-less doorway and fired aimlessly into his own office suite. He roared as he fired but his roar was short-lived. His mouth was too dry and body too drained for battle cries. The rifle in his hands was drained and dry like Juric himself. He lied on the floor in the middle of the hall, alone except for his rifle. His breathing was heavy and echoed throughout the blackness of the empty eighth floor. With limited occupancy, the building shuttered the hall lights after 10pm. Juric lied on the floor for minutes that blurred together to look like hours. He could hear footsteps in the man-made darkness. The footsteps passed over floor over glass and then stopped. He could see the feet. It pained him to look up at the man. He breathed heavily in and out with his eyes angled down at the floor.

  “Who are you really?” asked Juric, “You know who I am.”

  “You know who I am too,” said Xiaoyu, “I’m just like you. They wanted me for my crimes, now they want you.” Juric’s breathing was getting noticeably slower.

  “They gave me a deal,” said Xiaoyu, “Maybe they’ll give you one too.”

  “It better already be on the table,” said Juric, “I might not have so much time to consider it.”

  “Why didn’t you call Grebo?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Not their fight,” said Juric.

  “They don’t know who you really are,” said Xiaoyu.

  “If they did, they might kill me,” said Juric, “There wasn’t much of an economy after the war. Filip had his brother and his cousin and that was it. The whole rest of the family was dead. I gave them a job. They don’t care about much else. They have a way to survive.”

  “How bad are you hit?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Bad enough,” said Juric, “If they want me, let’s go now. I’m not feeling any better.” Xiaoyu went behind Juric and tightened his arms around his jugular vein until Juric fell unconscious. He inspected Juric’s body and saw the injured shoulder. The shoulder wasn’t much of a worry. The punctured lung and shredded kidney were the problem. Xiaoyu had beaten up enough bodies to know he needed help for Juric. Fishing through Juric’s pockets he found a set of keys, one with the Alfa Romeo emblem on it. He dragged Juric’s body into the elevator. Hoisting Juric on his shoulders, he carried him through the empty lobby and the motion sensor door unlocked and let him out.

  Xiaoyu walked to the parking garage and found the red Alfa Romeo. He dumped Juric in the trunk and injected him with Ketamine, hidden in the heel of his shoe. He started the engine. Unsure of the fastest way to the Croatian border, he called Mason. It was a regular call, unsecured.

  “Do you see where I am?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Yes,” said Mason, “That’s what Caprice is for.”

  “What’s the fastest way to Zagreb?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Is Juric with you?” asked Mason.

  “He’s in the trunk,” said Xiaoyu, ”I’m driving his car. He needs medical very soon.”

  “Ok,” said Mason.

  Xiaoyu drove in the direction he was given from Sarajevo to Zagreb. He was fortunate. Sejad Mehmedovic didn’t regularly schedule appointments in their office. The thin man’s body wouldn’t be discovered for another two days. The janitor would come to clean the office on the weekend. The night drive moved the car along fast. Xiaoyu left the greater Sarajevo area eight minutes before two o’clock in the morning. The roads weren’t crisp but weren’t crowded. He averaged a little less than 100 kilometers per hour. The border stop between Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina wasn’t precious. A young Frenchman driving an Italian car with a Bosnian number plate wasn’t suspicious. Playboys weren’t suspicious. Juric lived alone. There was no one to report him missing. No one would be looking for the car until the thin man’s body was found. Xiaoyu had a forty-eight hour window and he only needed eleven percent of it. He made one more call to Mason to be sure he had the right location for the safe house. The satellite showed Xiaoyu directly in front of a fabric store in downtown Zagreb. In less than a minute, three men and one woman appeared from inside the fabric store. The light in the store stayed off. One man came toward the driver side door and Xiaoyu opened.

  “Are you Reagan Lee?” asked the man. Xiaoyu nodded.

  “Speak your label here,” said the man handing Xiaoyu what looked like a cell phone.

  “Rainman,” said Xiaoyu. The man took the phone back from Xiaoyu.

  “Where’s the package?” asked the man.

  “In the trunk,” said Xiaoyu.

  “Ok, let me have the car,” said the man. Xiaoyu stood firm.

  “We need to get it off the street, it’s a weekday. The streetcar comes right through here,” said the man. Xiaoyu moved out of the way and let the man have the vehicle. He drove to the end of the street and turned right.

  “Don’t worry he’s just headed around back,” said another man, “Come inside with us.” Xiaoyu followed the three back inside the fabric store. The layout was similar to the Paris safe house. The first floor seemed to be a legitimate business, even an old-fashioned cash register. Upstairs was a different setup. It was an open concept. There were steel cabinets against the wall. Two desks sat against each other on the far wall. There was a steel table in the middle of one half of the room. Three movable IV stands were at the foot of the table. A heart rate monitor was switched off. A utensil drawer cabinet was against the near wall. One thing missing was Mason. Xiaoyu thought he would be in Zagreb to receive Juric.

  The two men and one woman were polite in an efficient way. They introduced themselves: Jacob; Miro and Fabijana. Only Miro extended his hand to Xiaoyu because he was within shaking distance. The other two didn’t bother with such formality. By his accent Jacob was American so was the third man, the one who took the car. Jacob’s phone rang. It was the third man, Andrew. Andrew had pulled the car to the backside of the building. Jacob and Miro went downstairs to assist. Fabijana prepared the table, turned on the heart monitor and slung an IV bag over the top of the IV stand. She extended a white sheet over the steel table with a head pillow looking made from fabrics downstairs.

  “Sit down,” said Fabijana, “You’ve been through a lot no doubt.” Xiaoyu went to one of the desks and sat down. He folded his arms on the desktop and rested his head. He had been awake for twenty-four hours. His mind suddenly buzzed when he realized he left his bag in his hotel room. There wasn’t much. His clothes. Four spray cans, two white and two silver. And the antenna, the one to link his phone to the satellite. He had his passport on him. He asked for a secure connection. Fabijana gave him her antenna to use. While the other three men carried Juric up the stairs, Xiaoyu called Mason. He told him about the items he left in the hotel room and reported he had arrived at the safe house with Juric. Mason didn’t seem bothered by the items left behind and was satisfi
ed that Juric was alive—confirmed by Fabijana. He told Xiaoyu to get some rest in Zagreb and meet him the following evening in Ljubljana. Xiaoyu was surprised Mason wasn’t in Paris. He changed his mind; Mason was still in Paris.

  • • •

  Xiaoyu took a blue Citroen Saxo from the safe house in Zagreb to drive the two hours to Ljubljana. He met Mason at a large country house outside the city near the Smarna Gora hill. Ljubljana was the CIA’s western control post for the Balkan region forming a triangle with Athens and Sofia. The house and grounds was one big operating site. Mason met Xiaoyu out front. He wore a short-sleeve collared shirt and sunglasses, complimenting a sunny day.

  “Let’s take a walk,” said Mason. They walked out toward the back of the house and into the pasture behind the barn.

  “The guys inside don’t need to hear what I’m going to tell you,” said Mason, “First of all, good show. You brought in Juric. That’s big stuff for your first outing. You handled yourself well. I sent someone to get your things from the hotel and check you out. We told them you had to leave quick on business and your assistant had instructions to check you out. They’re in the hotel business not the investigation business. They always believe what you tell them. Speaking of, what I’m about to tell you is hard to believe. I told you before there was no way to deactivate the chip in your head, well apparently that’s not true. One of our Caprice agents has gone off grid.”

  “When?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Almost a week ago,” said Mason, “He killed his project manager then another Caprice agent and that agent’s project manager. Their bodies were found mutilated and dismembered. Hell, maybe he’s gone nuts and it shorted out his chip.”

  “How did he deactivate the chip?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “You’d like to know, so would I,” said Mason, “But we don’t know.”

  “Maybe he killed himself,” said Xiaoyu.

  “No, definitely not,” said Mason, “We have confirmed satellite images of him after his chip went offline.” Mason went silent. The two stepped one foot after the other on the comfortable grass.

  “The people here in Ljubljana aren’t involved with Project Caprice and they know nothing about it,” said Mason, “But the whole idea is that the chips are unbeatable. If it gets out that someone found a way to beat Caprice, we failed. We’ll lose funding for the project and we’ll be shut down.” Mason pulled a small manila envelope out of his jeans pocket and handed it to Xiaoyu. Xiaoyu looked in the envelope and pulled out a head and profile picture of an eastern-looking man with dark hair and a strong chin.

  “Mykola Voloshyn,” said Mason, “He’s Ukrainian. His background is similar to yours. He worked for Russian mobsters, an enforcer type. We have a tail on him. So we know he’s in Rome. We repositioned a few satellites over the city to track him visually, since we can’t track him via Caprice. The thing is he stays indoors and a city like Rome has a lot of connected spaces. As long as he’s inside our satellites are useless. That’s why we have people following him.”

  “You want me to kill him,” said Xiaoyu.

  “Don’t be under any illusions that you can get sympathetic with this guy,” said Mason, “He’s not gonna pity you and tell you how to deactivate your chip. When he sees you coming he will try to kill you, plain and simple. You’ll have to kill him first.”

  “That much is clear,” said Xiaoyu.

  “Usually field agents get time off between assignments,” said Mason, “The mind takes time to adjust to new scenarios. But we don’t have the luxury of time. You can stay here for two days and get some rest before you go to Rome. This project is not official and not officially sanctioned so do everything as quick and as quiet as you can.” Xiaoyu looked at Mason.

  “Rome’s an interesting place though, lots of history,” said Mason, “Do you know what the Romans did in this situation?” Xiaoyu remained silent.

  “The Romans had the best military system in the world,” said Mason, “When the Romans had a deserter they caught him and stripped him of his rank and uniform and let him run free. Then they rode him down.” Mason looked at Xiaoyu with a slight smirk.

  “On chariot.”

  Chapter Twelve On Chariot

  It wasn’t summer in Rome. Rome was summer. The city’s denizens bathed in the sun at cafes around the Piazza della Rotonda or in shaded venues on Via Veneto. The city’s tourists flipped coins into Trevi Fountain and posed for pictures on the Spanish Steps and Capitoline Hill. The sun had a persona that made all conversations personal. Conversations were held over cappuccino, over espresso, over gelato, but over the heat. Tolerance for the city was measured in tolerance for its temperatures. To be in Rome in May was to sweat. The temperature was thirty-two degrees Celsius, a guaranteed thirty-six by late afternoon. But the heat had a flip side, the sun. The sun was so close; Rome might have sat on planet Venus. The goddess herself infected visitors and residents with her flesh-loving attitude. Young women wore tank tops and were rewarded with stares and bronze skin. Young men wore short pants with espadrilles of different colors. In Garbatella, life was getting going.

  • • •

  Xiaoyu landed in Rome on the 21st of May 2003, according to la Repubblica newspapers in Fiumicino Airport. The latticework ceilings gave the impression the airport was a grand scale warehouse. Ironically, it was. People were inventory, waiting to be sent or arriving from their point of origin. Xiaoyu’s mind was comfortable with the warehouse metaphor. He had lived and learned in a warehouse. The warehouse-looking airport brought warehouse-like structure to an unfamiliar place and unfamiliar person, with a new identity. Xiaoyu left Alain Metayer behind replacing him with another man with a short trail behind him, Reagan Lee. Reagan Lee wasn’t French. He was American, a community college drop out born in Hawaii. If checked, all records were in place: birth certificate; driver’s license; transcript. Stepping out into Rome’s ancient atmosphere, Xiaoyu felt a feeling 700 years old—Renaissance. From a darkened womb into new world light, Xiaoyu saw something he had never seen before, freedom. The idea was on his mind from Ljubljana to Rome, but he hadn’t fully realized what the idea looked liked. It was there nonetheless.

  His mind quickly reverted back. He had instructions. His car had been reserved—statistically the most common model and color for Rome, a blue Lancia. As Xiaoyu drove, his thoughts were mixed. They would stay that way. His understanding of Mason’s reasons were clearer than his own. Mykola Voloshyn had found a way out of Caprice. Xiaoyu hadn’t. Voloshyn was more valuable to Mason dead but he was only valuable to Xiaoyu alive, if he would tell his tale. It was for Mason to bury Voloshyn and his secret together. Xiaoyu kept thinking while he drove, driving toward a solution. As long as Voloshyn told how he deactivated his chip, Xiaoyu’s interests were aligned with Mason’s. Xiaoyu wasn’t concerned with killing Voloshyn; he could do that. Getting him to talk beforehand was the problem. Xiaoyu fully understood Mason’s question for the first time. How do you get someone to tell you the truth when they know they become worthless when you know what they know? Xiaoyu thought of the answer, you could not. Voloshyn would take his secret to the grave. Killing Voloshyn was something Xiaoyu couldn’t get around and interrogation was something he didn’t have time for. Xiaoyu drove toward Rome’s fabled city center at below average speeds—traffic. He was honked at twice in the same instance. It was enough for him to refocus on his driving. The sudden sound of a honking horn brought on the sudden idea. Once again Mason was the inspiration. Mason said Project Artichoke was about knowing what the mind knows. It occurred to Xiaoyu he didn’t need Voloshyn to tell him how to deactivate his chip. He needed Voloshyn’s chip to see how it had been deactivated. The chip could tell its own story. Voloshyn wouldn’t talk but the chip couldn’t hide if dragged into the light. And there was Xioayu’s curiosity. What did a Caprice agent with a deactivated chip look like? How had newfound freedom affected him? What look was in his eyes? Was it all worth making himself a target? Xiaoyu felt a certain tranquility. Once again hi
s interests were aligned with Mason’s. Mason wanted him to hunt, find and kill Voloshyn. He would do it. He had to. He wanted to.

  Xiaoyu was made to rendezvous with one of the trackers. There were three trackers assigned to Voloshyn. They monitored him in shifts. The problem was they had lost him and they hadn’t reported it. They would have but when they were told of Xiaoyu’s arrival they decided to tell him and let him report it. The trackers did know where Voloshyn was, just not exactly. He couldn’t have ended up too far from where they last reported him. They had an algorithm running along side the satellite. The algorithm included a map of Rome and its structures. They had a rat trapped in a room. He could run about the room to avoid capture but he couldn’t get out. They were sophisticated but they needed an exterminator to do the dirty work.

  • • •

  Xiaoyu was westbound on Via Aurelia. He turned right on Circonvallazione Aurelia heading south. Via Gregorio IV was filled with traffic and testosterone. Locals leaned on their horns to let their cars do the talking. The lifeblood of Rome was in its streets. Xiaoyu drove toward the Piazza Navona where he had business—instructions. Xiaoyu’s contact would be waiting on the southern end of the long piazza by the Fontana del Moro. It was still early morning and the sun wasn’t high enough to torch the entire piazza. Half the rectangle piazza still had shade. Xiaoyu was to meet his contact at the fountain in front of the Triton that stood between the faces of men with dragons on their back—Mason’s way of saluting Xiaoyu. The contact would be dressed in a light gray summer suit, no tie. He would have a backpack, no attaché case. He wouldn’t be listening to music. He’d be reading a book, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited. Xiaoyu approached the piazza from the north. He walked the length of the piazza from the Fontana del Nettuno passed the celestial Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi toward the south end of the piazza. The Fontana del Moro was named for the Moorish man at the center of the fountain, wrestling a dolphin. Four Tritons—serving as sea messengers—relayed the fountain’s song from double-barreled sea flutes.