by Blake Banner
I figured five AM was the least likely time for Cavendish and his wife to rise from bed, so I went down to the kitchen and got more sandwiches and fruit juice. Then I returned to the bedroom and allowed myself to doze fitfully for a couple of hours.
They finally came at nine AM. Two cars winding along the narrow road toward the house. That meant there could be up to six men, plus Cavendish and his wife. If I was going to survive, I would have to tax my knee as little as possible. If that gave out on me I was screwed. What I needed, I told myself, was to get just one semiautomatic from any one of the men. That would be the game changer.
I went downstairs and took up my position beside the door, with the sharpened, splintered table leg held in both my hands like a katana, with the right hand above the left. Outside I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. The engines died and the doors sounded like gunshots in the morning air. Then there was the tramp of feet and the murmur of voices. I heard the key in the latch and the door swung open.
A man in a suit with a semiautomatic in his hand stepped in. There was another just behind him, in the doorway. I didn’t wait or hesitate. I swung fast and hard, putting my hips and then my whole body into the blow. The splintered wood smashed into his face, crushing his nose and splitting his lips.
I used the force of the blow, as he staggered back, to make a small jump so I was blocking the doorway, then rammed the sharp, jagged edge of the splintered tip into his throat, and twisted savagely. Blood sprayed from the gaping gash and he fell back into the men behind him, dropping his weapon outside on the porch as he went down.
Now there were five guys, with the Cavendishes standing behind them: fourteen goggling eyes and seven gaping mouths. I didn’t give them time to react. I exploded forward and rammed the table leg at the nearest face, tearing at eyes and flesh with the splintered end. He screamed. I pulled the fork from my pocket with my left hand, rammed it up under his jaw, hooking into his soft pallet, and dragged him toward me. He stumbled forward, gurgling and screeching. A shot rang out and the ricochet whined under the ceiling. A voice screamed to be careful with Pete. I smashed the butt end of the table leg into what was probably Pete’s bleeding, blinded face, snatched his weapon with my right hand and blew a hole through his belly. Pete was in a pretty bad mess. I emptied two rounds into the mass of bodies outside the door and sprinted the four paces to the kitchen with my knee screaming in agony.
I slammed the kitchen door closed, sprang to the stove, plugged it in and slammed down the master switch. Then I turned and faced the door again. Outside there were voices yelling. One of them, the loudest, was Cavendish, with his wife rising shrill above him: “He’s trapped in the kitchen! Get him, for Christ’s sake!” Feet tramped outside. The handle rattled for a fraction of a second. Then the whole door rattled and a scream that was inhuman in its agony tore the morning in half.
I leveled the semiautomatic and put six rounds through the door. There was more screaming and bellowed orders to pull back. I pulled the plug from the stove, wrenched open the door and fired at four retreating shapes as they scrambled over the bodies by the door.
At my feet were two more men, one of them trembling violently. He had a bullet hole in his chest. I put another in his head and he found some kind of peace. I took his weapon plus the one lying in his dead pal’s hand, and headed for the open front door. That was when I heard the noise behind me, and a cold voice that said, “Freeze, Bauer.”
I stopped. After a moment Tony and another guy, stocky with a moustache, maybe Mexican, peered around the front door. Tony leered and they came in, crouching slightly, training their guns on me. Behind them came Cavendish and his wife. Cavendish was staring around him, at the four dead bodies. His face was drawn tight, his eyes wide with disgust and fear.
“You,” he said, shaking his head, “you’re an animal!”
“What’s the matter, Charles, you like to pay for it but you don’t like to see it? You like to sell the tools but you don’t want to see what they do?”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He shook his head again. “You’re not human.”
“Yeah? Well just thank your god that you had your boy come in the back door.”
“OK, that’s enough.” The voice came from behind me. The accent was unmistakable now. New Zealand. “Tony, get on the phone and get this mess cleaned up. You, Bauer, drop the guns and walk. Get in the front passenger seat of the Range Rover.”
I could have dropped, spun and shot him. But I didn’t like the odds, especially with Tony and his pal behind me. I dropped the guns. The voice behind me said, “Walk.”
I stepped over the now dead Pete and his dead companion, out into the California morning sunshine. My leg hurt, I knew I was probably going to die, but it felt good to be doing something that wasn’t eating exquisite food and seducing beautiful women. I stopped in front of Cavendish and stared deep into his eyes.
“You really fucked up, Charles. We had a good project, and we could have made huge amounts of money, and influence. You blew it.” Karen was frowning. I turned to her. “You too, Karen. You’ll have to go a long way to get a partner like me.”
The Kiwi’s voice rasped behind me. “Keep moving, Bauer. Don’t make me hurt you again.”
I turned, slow, and looked at him, and saw him clearly for the first time: curly red hair, a thin moustache and a short, curly beard. Pale blue eyes and freckles. I knew him, even though I had seen him only in the dark, with a balaclava.
“I’d have known you,” I said. “Anywhere. I’d have recognized you.”
He wasn’t interested.
“Save it. Keep moving. In the truck.”
I climbed in the passenger side and Tony and his last remaining pal got in the back. Tony leaned forward and put his lips close to my ear.
“I have a Glock 19 pointed right at the base of your spine. Give me an excuse, Rambo. Just give me an excuse.”
The Kiwi climbed in behind the wheel and slammed the door. I looked at Tony in the mirror. “Sorry,” I said. “You’re not my type. You’ll have to point your gun at somebody else’s ass, and hope for the best.”
The Kiwi chuckled. Through the windshield I saw Cavendish and his wife climbing into a Cherokee. It pulled away and we followed.
“You don’t remember me.” It was the Kiwi.
I looked at him a moment. “I remember you. I just told you.”
“Nah, not from the other night. From Basra.”
I shook my head. “No. You were in Iraq? Who with?”
“I was with Captain Walker’s outfit. He was a Yank too, like you. Crazy son of a bitch.”
“You were with the Regiment?”
“Man and boy. Taught me everything I know.”
“I don’t think so. We don’t kill innocent women or children.”
“Playing fields of Eton and all that, ay? I never bought into that. Lot of bullshit if you ask me. Life is life, death is death. There is no one life more valuable than another. Kill a soldier, you might as well kill a baby or an eighty-year-old woman. It’s a life.” He looked at me and smiled. It was a nice, friendly smile. “I have no illusions about that, Bauer.”
I frowned. “Well, I guess that makes you an especially disgusting kind of human being.”
“Does it? I wonder if you’d say that if I was dressed in saffron robes and had my head shaved. Either way, I’m not the sensitive type. So I’m not going to throw myself on my bed and cry.”
“Right. Are you going to kill me now?”
“As far as I know, old mucker, that is undecided. My instructions are to get you to the boat.”
“The boat?”
“Yes, we are going for a boat ride, see? During which Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish want to ask you some questions, out where nobody can hear you scream.”
“And your job is to make me scream.”
“I think we are going to take it in turns to do that. Nothing personal.”
“That’s a relief. I thought for a moment there maybe you didn’t
like me.”
We rattled on down the road, following the Cavendishes, toward the small harbor, and the boat, where they were going to try and make me scream.
Fourteen
The Eternal Hope was anchored half a mile off Avila Beach, the small village at the foot of the hills where I had been lodged at a guest house on the Cavendish’s estate. It—the Eternal Hope—was a sixty-foot, ultra-modern cruiser that looked like it had been molded out of steel and fiberglass, and equipped with deuterium fusion reactors capable of taking them to Alpha Centaury and back in time for tea. But it was not just ultra modern. It was ultra luxurious too. The state rooms had molded balconies, four-poster beds, chandeliers and walk-in wardrobes. The decks looked more like Mediterranean terraces and there was a Jacuzzi and a bar on every terrace. I even saw the turquoise glint of a swimming pool.
The yacht dispatched a large, wooden launch to come and collect us from Avila Beach. There were very few people present, and no opportunity presented itself for me to either break away or try to call for help. We boarded the speedboat with Cavendish and his wife riding up front and me in the back with the Kiwi, Tony and the Mexican. The launch reared and tore away from the beach leaving a trail of foam behind it. Two minutes later we were drawing up at the stern of the towering, white cruiser and Cavendish and his wife were climbing a staircase that rose from the boarding platform to the lower deck. The Kiwi smiled at me. “Don’t worry, cobber, if you die today it will be out on the high seas. Not here in the bay.”
I jumped on the boarding platform and climbed after Karen Cavendish. They were waiting for me at a small swimming pool beside a lounge with cream leather couches and armchairs. Cavendish had recovered some of his debonair suaveness during the drive and he gestured me to a chair. A man in a white jacket deposited a tray of bottles, a bucket of ice and some cut crystal glasses on the table and left us. Karen sat on the couch and the Kiwi, Tony and the Mexican sat at the bar nearby, watching us. Clearly, even though I was to be killed, I was considered part of the elite. At least, that was what I thought till Cavendish asked me, “How much do you think this yacht cost me, Harry?”
I ostentatiously stifled a yawn. “I have no idea, Charles. Was it on special offer? Secondhand from Yachting Weekly?”
“It cost me thirty million dollars.”
“Oh, had they run out of top-of-the-line models?”
“Don’t be facetious, Harry. To most people that would be enough to live the rest of their lives without ever having to work again. To me, it’s what I spend on a bit of fun. Are you in that league, Harry?”
“Am I in that league?” I threw back my head and laughed out loud. “Is that how you measure your league, Charles? Well, let me see. I am not sure. I’d have to add up all my savings and see.”
“You have a nice car, I could buy the factory just for the fun of it. You have a nice brownstone in New York, I could buy the whole street. You probably consider yourself a rich man, but I could lose ten times what you own in a morning, and it would not affect my wealth. Are you beginning to understand the gulf of power and wealth between us, Harry?”
“I have always understood the gulf between us, Charles. That’s why I came to you in the first place. Am I in what you call your league? No, but I want to be.”
“Good.” He nodded elaborately. “That’s good. Because I am going to explain to you right now what your options are. In my opinion, you are a disgusting, dangerous monster, and the world would be a better place without you. But we are not in paradise, we are on a lonely, dangerous planet where people like you triumph.”
“Thanks.”
“So, given the choice, I would rather have you as an ally than an enemy.” He gave a humorless snort. “Just look at what you did this morning.”
“Your Kiwi gunman stopped me just as I was getting started. So how do you figure we become allies, Charles? Right now I do not feel really motivated to become an ally with the man who drugged me, locked me up, stole my clothes and plans to make me scream later today.”
He nodded, and said quietly, “That’s understandable. Karen, why don’t you make us some drinks?” To me he said, “I liked your project. It had a lot of potential. It could still be done.”
Deep beneath us the boat began to rumble and vibrate. He gave me a thin smile and took a martini from his wife. She handed another to me and I sipped it.
“If you are trying to surprise me, Charles, you’re not doing a very good job. I know the project was good, that’s why I brought it to you. And I know you’re better off with me overseeing it, because you like to keep these projects at arm’s length. Your problem is you’re spooked.”
“I’m spooked?”
“Yeah, because Sheila told you I had a file on you and you overreacted. Instead of realizing that any cautious man, especially with a military background, would have a file on a prospective partner, you freaked out, killed Sheila, who was a valuable asset to you, and now you’ve abducted me, and you’re threatening to kill me too. Like I said, right now I’m not all that keen to be your ally.”
He grunted. “Well, that might change. The first thing we need to deal with right now, to clear this whole thing up, is to see the file. If it has all been a foolish misunderstanding, then a simple look at the file will clarify that, won’t it? So my first question to you is, where is the file?”
I didn’t bat an eyelid. “I sent it back to New York.”
“Why would you do a thing like that?”
I was aware we had started to move, turning slowly toward the ocean. From where I was sitting, I could see the land gradually moving away from us.
“I didn’t need it anymore. I had read it and assimilated all the information it contained. When I spoke to Sheila that morning, I was pretty sure I had convinced her there was nothing sinister about the file. But even so, I thought it was wise to remove it from her sight, so she wouldn’t get any ideas like reading through it.” I smiled at Karen and then back at Charles. “I think she might have been a little shocked at the sections on arms trafficking. It’s not quite the image she had of you.”
He thought about that a moment, then asked, “So, what is to stop you from blackmailing me, Harry?”
I made a face like I was thinking about it, then shrugged. “Nothing, really. Except that I think I can make a lot more money out of you if we collaborate. But for that you have to untwist your panties and stop killing people.” I gave a small laugh. “For crying out loud, Charles, you have a professional assassin on your staff!”
“Bill? Bill is just a bodyguard.”
“He didn’t look much like a bodyguard when he was killing Sheila in my apartment.”
He stared down at his thumb for a moment while he rubbed it, like he was trying to remove a stain.
“So, the file is not available, and even if you were to recover it, we would never know if it was the same file. So that door is closed. Let’s try another avenue. What are the pellets in your BB gun made of?”
Again I showed no surprise. “Whole wheat flour.”
Bill the Kiwi roared with laughter, sitting up against the bar. Charles chuckled.
“You thought you had killed four of my men, Harry. In fact you have killed five. Larry, I was fond of Larry. He was a good man. He took out the magazine to look at the pellets, he crumbled a few in his fingers, and eight hours later he was dead.”
“And you attribute that to the pellets why?”
“Come, Harry. Let’s stop playing games. You think I didn’t have a full tox screen run on him? Do you think I didn’t have the pellets analyzed? The pellets contained a very high concentration of aconite. You manufactured highly poisonous pellets, which you intended to shoot from your BB gun. That whole theater you performed about not letting Tony take away your gun, was so that we would be accustomed to you carrying your Sig Sauer. What was the plan?”
Bill the Kiwi spoke up.
“I’ll tell you what it was, Mr. Cavendish. He was going to take you to Griffith Park, wasn’t h
e? Yesterday morning?”
Cavendish screwed around in his seat to look at Bill. “Yes, that’s right.”
“He was going to cause a distraction in the woods, weren’t you, Harry? Probably some firecrackers, homemade, no doubt. When the firecrackers went off, everyone would draw their guns, including Harry, and everybody would turn to look up toward the sound of the supposed shots—and away from him. And that’s when he would have put two or three pellets into the back of your neck. They would naturally decompose on impact, driving the concentrated aconite through the pores of your skin and into your bloodstream. Six hours later you’d be dead, with no indication of how, except a couple of possible insect bites.”
Cavendish stared at Bill a while, then turned back to me. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright with anger.
“Is that right, Harry? Is that what you were planning to do?”
I tried hard, but I couldn’t think of a single way out. I heard myself say, “No, of course not,” but it sounded hollow and empty.
He ignored my answer and shook his head. “Why? You stood to gain so much from our association.”
I hunched my shoulders and spread my hands. “You’re answering your own question, Cavendish. I obviously did not intend to kill you. Why would I? Those pellets were planted.”
Past his right shoulder I could see the coastline, now a thin strip fading into the horizon. I knew I was running out of time, and I had no plan. Bill got to his feet and walked toward the table. “There is one, perfectly good explanation. The whole story about setting up a new model for helping Third World communities was a front. We knew that anyway. But it wasn’t a front so he could start trafficking in arms. It was a front so he could get inside your defenses and kill you. He’s just a hit man. The question is, who does he work for?”
Karen Cavendish was nodding her head. Now she said, “Somebody with considerable financial resources.”