LA

by Blake Banner

  I turned back to the brigadier. “There is too much at stake to pussyfoot around. I need to talk to this guy and get what information I can out of him.” To Araminta I said, “Where can I find him?”

  “It’s easier if I take you.” Then she frowned. “Are you up to this? A week ago we weren’t sure you’d make it through the night.”

  “I’ll make it through the night. You can put me in touch with this guy?”

  “I know him. I’ve been observing him for some time on behalf of the Company.”

  “The CIA are interested in him?”

  “Of course, they’re interested in Yushbaev, and Yushbaev’s point of entry into Europe is Segundo Lopez, via Marbella. So we have met at cocktail parties, events and a few real estate negotiations.”

  “You have his ear?”

  “Up to a point. If I tell him I have a deal for him, he’ll be interested enough to meet me.”

  “OK, tell him it has to be today because I’m going back to the States tonight.”

  She pulled out her cell and the brigadier stood. “I’ll leave you to it.” He hesitated. “I don’t need to tell you that once you have asked him the question…”

  I nodded. “I know. But if I need to choose between this asshole’s life and the colonel’s, I don’t need to wade through a lot of philosophical angst to reach my conclusion.”

  “Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll see you to the plane.”

  He walked toward the house. He must have been sixty-five if he was a day, but he was tall and strong and moved with the ease of an athlete. At the end of the table Araminta was saying, “Hey, Segundo, my man! How’s it hangin’?” She listened a moment and laughed. “Man! That’s gotta be painful! Listen, tío, I have a good friend here, he’s telling me about a sweet deal and right away I thought of you.” She listened and laughed. “You bet your sweet ass I’m getting a commission. Do I look stupid? But believe me, you are going to like this, and so are your people. You know what I am talking about. This is the Persil deal to end all… You don’t know what Persil is? Ariel? OK, Ariel. Yeah, yeah, washing powder. So this is the Ariel deal to end all Ariel deals.” She looked at me, sighed and rolled her eyes. “It’s a detergent, Segundo, a detergent. And it washes whiter, get it? You do the laundry with it…Jesus! Yeah, yeah, you got it. You wash money with it. That’s it…good boy.”

  I laughed quietly and she went on.

  “So, listen. Here’s the deal. This friend of mine has some land just above Sierra Blanca, roughly where the Quinta Golf Club is…?” She listened for a moment, sighing again. “No, shut up, Segundo. I haven’t finished. See, this friend of mine has secured a permit to build a casino on that land. Now, what he wants to do is sell the land to, say, some wealthy Russians, with a caveat in the contract which allows him to reinvest that money into building the casino on that land… Well maybe some other kind of partnership would be of interest to him, but we won’t know that unless we talk. But, Segundo? Don’t you even dream about cutting me out. I want my commission, capisci?”

  She winked at me and made like she was listening. Then started shaking her head.

  “Nah, that won’t do… Because he’s flying back to the States this evening… So shoot me! I heard about it this afternoon and the first thing I did was call my good friend Segundo. But hey, if you’re too damned busy to spare half an hour to talk, don’t sweat it. I’ll go and talk to Angeles… Oh,” she laughed, “Suddenly you have time, hijo de puta? Yeah, yeah. OK, half an hour. No, no, we’ll meet at Calle Albinone, at the Huerta del Fraile. You know it? Good, be there. Half an hour. And Segundo? This guy has to catch a plane, OK?” She hung up. “Let’s go talk to Segundo.”

  “What is the Huerta del Fraile?”

  “The Friar’s Orchard. It’s a big chunk of wasteland on the outskirts of the city. It used to be an orchard, now it’s just waiting for the market to pick up so somebody will buy it.”

  “And that’s on Albinone Street?”

  “Yup, and on the other side of Albinone Street is a pine forest, about half a mile long and a quarter of a mile across. It’s the basically the beginning of the Sierra Blanca, the mountains at the back of Marbella.” She held my eye a moment. “Don’t worry, it’s a good place for a quiet chat.”

  “What about his car?”

  “I’ll get in his car with him. He’ll like that. You follow. When the track starts to get rough, we stop. You have your talk. When you’re done we leave him in the car with a used condom and a call girl’s number in his wallet. The number will be out of use and untraceable.”

  “Where do you plan to get a used condom?”

  She frowned. “Oh, well, I thought maybe you…” I scowled and she laughed. “It’s part of the CIA’s basic tool kit. Didn’t you know?”

  “You done?”

  “Don’t be silly, stupid, we leave a half-opened condom on the seat beside him. We don’t want to go leaving DNA all over the place, do we?”

  “You’ve done this before, I can tell.”

  She gave a small shrug with a tilt of the head. “Yeah, we tend not to blow things up so much, you know? We’re a little more subtle, a suppressor, a knife, bit of misdirection… You know the kind of thing.”

  “Ninja.”

  She snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Ninja.”

  Three

  The sun was growing hot and there was a buzz of cicadas over the olive groves that Araminta had called the Huerta del Fraile. I climbed out of the Cherokee and leaned against the hood, staring down the potholed blacktop, waiting for Segundo Lopez to appear. The passenger door slammed and Araminta appeared walking with her arms crossed and her eyes squinting slightly behind black Wayfarers. I nodded toward the woodland that started immediately at the side of the road on our left.

  “Is that it, in there?”

  “Yup. A little farther down there’s a dirt track that leads in among the trees. About two hundred and fifty yards in there is a small clearing. A car could roll down there and be lost to view, maybe for a few days.”

  “You got the whole thing figured out already?”

  “Yeah, well, while you were sleeping the sleep of the undead, some of us were working.”

  “So if you had this all figured out already, how come the brigadier didn’t mention any of it?”

  She looked at me like she wanted to slap me around the back of the head. “You still asleep, Harry? In case you hadn’t noticed, Segundo Lopez isn’t Lex Luthor. He’s a bad man, but he is not guilty of crimes against humanity. So Cobra cannot get its hands dirty with his blood. This is operational, like Bill Hartmann or Hirsch. We do this, not Cobra.”

  “So you didn’t tell the brigadier.”

  “That’s why he got up and left.”

  I nodded. “OK. Your man is late.”

  “He’s Spanish, the Spanish are always late. Spain will arrive late to Judgment Day. The world will be full of smoldering embers and brimstone, and there will be forty million Spaniards looking around, shrugging and saying, ‘Que pasa? Guo’ happening?’”

  “You weren’t like this in Puerto Rico. You were different.”

  “That was an act.” She grinned. “I did my homework. I knew what you’d like.”

  The sound of a car made us look down the road. A cream Range Rover approached and stopped a few feet in front of us. The door opened and a short man in a blue suit swung down. He had a yellow bow tie with dark spots on it, and blue-black hair going slightly bald on top, like a monk who’d left his order, and his tonsure was growing back. He strutted toward Araminta with a big grin on his face and his right hand held out.

  “Araminta, Araminta! You gonna make me crazy!” He laughed and looked at me. “Always in the last minute! Womens! Womens are always like this! Last minute!” He held out his hand. “Segundo Lopez, at your service.”

  I took his hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “Good to meet you, Segundo. We have a pretty sweet deal here.” I pointed up in the direction of the woods. “Ri
ght up there. But I am going to need some help to pull it off. Araminta says you’re my man.”

  He spread his hands wide, hunched his shoulders and grinned. “We gonna talk! Tell me what you want. I tell you if I can do it.”

  Araminta pushed off the Jeep and slapped Segundo on the shoulder. “You can do it. Let’s go have a look. You and me’ll go in your Range Rover.” She turned to me and winked. “You follow on behind.”

  Segundo was nodding. “Yeah, OK, OK.”

  I followed them and after about fifty yards they slowed, pulled off the road and started bumping and rolling up a narrow track among tall pine trees, wild shrubs and ferns. We ground through the dappled shade, lurching over rocks and channels gauged into the dry, red earth by rain and wind, and scorching heat. After four or five minutes the Range Rover slowed and pulled off the track, in among the trees, and stopped. I pulled in behind it, blocking the exit, and swung down from the cab. Segundo was climbing down too, and Araminta was walking around in front of the hood. Segundo had his back to me and was saying, “We cannot do this over a map in a bar?”

  Araminta was shaking her head, pointing south, through the trees.

  “Are you kidding me? Down there you’ve got Marbella and Puerto Banus…”

  She didn’t get any further. I slammed my right fist into his kidneys, took a hold of his collar and kicked his feet from under him. He landed hard on his back and I heard his lungs go into spasm. I pulled my knife from my boot and knelt on his chest. He gripped at my leg, struggling to breath. I showed him the knife.

  “Segundo, listen to me. This is really very important for you. Today can end like any other day. Tonight you can have a drink with your friends, have a large whisky and think, ‘Man, that was an intense morning. I’m glad it’s over.’ Or tonight you can be in hospital, on life support, having reconstructive surgery. Or, Segundo, you can be dead in the next minute or two.”

  He’d been shaking his head since “reconstructive surgery;” now he started saying, “No, no, please, no.”

  I ignored him. “This is a truly important moment in your life, Segundo. You have many roads ahead of you and you must choose the right one. Do you understand me? Do I have your absolute attention?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Now, here is what you need to know so you can go home in,” I glanced at my watch for effect, “five minutes, if you’re smart. Don’t lie, don’t try to bullshit me, don’t try to be clever. OK? That’s the don’ts. Now the dos. Do answer every question quickly and precisely. Do tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Do remember that honesty is your path out of this crisis you are in. Understand?”

  His breathing had eased. He swallowed. “Yes.”

  I started with a test question. “Where is Gabriel Yushbaev going in his yacht?”

  He swallowed again, hard, and I knew what was coming.

  “He is going to a Greek Island, Ano Koufonisi.”

  I gave him three full seconds because I didn’t want to do what I knew I had to do. I glanced at Araminta. She trod on his wrist and I drove the knife through the back of his hand. The scream was the kind of thing that haunts your dreams for the rest of your life. I pulled the handkerchief out of his jacket and stuffed it in his mouth until he’d stopped. Then I pulled the knife out and wrapped the handkerchief around the wound.

  “I knew you were going to do that,” I said. “I hoped you wouldn’t, but I knew you would. I told you, Segundo: the whole truth. But that’s only part of the truth, isn’t it? I gave you time. I gave you three whole seconds to continue. But you hoped you’d get away with just Ano Koufonisi. Now you don’t get to go straight home in five minutes. Now you have to go to hospital instead. And it only gets worse, every time you try to trick me or lie to me, it gets worse. So let’s try again, and get it right this time. Where is Gabriel Yushbaev going in his yacht?”

  He was breathless, pale and sweating, almost incoherent. “First he is go to Ano Koufonisi. There he is stay a few days. He was not decided, maybe after he is go to Istanbul. He is going to stay in Istanbul a few days. Not decided yet. And then he will go in Black Sea, to Divnomorskoye, on the coast of Russia.”

  I nodded. “Good, that’s good. Now, why? What’s he got there?”

  Segundo’s bottom lip curled in and he began to sob. “I have a lot pain. Please, if I tell you this he will kill.”

  “I understand your problems, Segundo. It’s tough, I know. So answer me and we can get you to a hospital, fast. As to Gabriel killing you, let me assure you he won’t, because he will be dead long before he can kill you. My advice? Talk to the Guardia Civil, offer to cooperate with them in exchange for protection, because Segundo, your days of helping the Russian Mafia are over. Now, last chance, what has Gabriel Yushbaev got in Divnomorskoye?”

  He said simply, “The girls. They bring them from Poland, from Ukraine, other places, Belarus, Turkey. They keep in a big house he have there, in the forest. The girls are stay in luxury, all the time parties and drugs, marijuana, cocaine, heroin. Until the girls is dependent, then he sell them to the clubs.”

  “Have you been there?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Once, when he contract me. He have drugs there, also. He bring from Turkey, from Caucasus, and from his house he distribute. The house is not a house.”

  I scowled at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Is a palace. It is big, very big, many rooms, three swimming pools, gardens, land, forests…” He trailed off. “Is a palace.”

  I nodded, glanced at Araminta and sucked my teeth for a few seconds.

  “OK, here’s the million-dollar question, did Yushbaev talk to you about Colonel Jane Harrison of the United States Air Force?”

  He went a sickly pale color. “I really want help you, maybe he use different name. Maybe you tell me what she look like.”

  “He never mentioned her?”

  “I never hear the name.”

  “A blonde woman, thirties, good-looking. She’s been with him these last few days.”

  “American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jane?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes, she been with him. I don’t know she was military. They come to my office couple of times. We go for lunch.”

  “She had lunch with you and him?”

  “Yeah. We have lunch.”

  I looked up at Araminta and searched her face for something that would tell me I was wrong, that there was some simple explanation. There was nothing there that said that. I looked back at Segundo.

  “Was there anything about her, anything that struck you as…” I faltered, not knowing what it was I wanted to ask him. He stared at me, curious even in his terror. After a moment he said, “She not talk much. She was quiet, you know? Serious.”

  “What was their relationship? Did they give any indication of what their relationship was?”

  He looked distressed. “I don’t know. I suppose they were lovers. I didn’t talk with her. I really need a doctor, mister. I done what you ask.”

  I could feel Araminta’s eyes on me. I stood and said, “Get up.”

  The report was loud, flat and ugly. His head smacked hard to the side and remained motionless, though his feet and his fingers twitched. There was a neat, scorched hole in his left temple, but lots of blood and gore were oozing out the other side of his head, saturating the dry earth.

  I scowled at Araminta. She didn’t let me speak.

  “Get a grip, Harry. What were you going to do, invite him home for tea?”

  “No,” I growled, “I was going to take him to his office and collect all his files on Yushbaev. Now you’ve made that impossible.”

  She took a step closer. The toe of her boot pressed against Segundo Lopez’s shoulder. She poked a long finger into my chest.

  “Get this into your head, Harry. You are not the FBI, you are not the CIA. You are not out to investigate or uncover crimes. You have one function and only one. You take out targets.”r />
  I curled my lip and snarled, pointing down at the dead meat at her feet.

  “Yeah, but he was not a target, remember? And he could have been useful.”

  “Just stay focused on the job, Harry. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  I took his cell phone, and we turned the Jeep around and rolled back down the track toward the road. As we lurched back onto the blacktop she said, “I’ll go in tonight and get the files. I’ll get the CIA’s Marbella office to hand them over to the Spanish Ministerio de Justicia.”

  I didn’t answer for a while. I knew she was right and I had faltered when I shouldn’t have. Segundo Lopez was a son of a bitch who had earned whatever he’d had coming to him. But I had got squeamish and almost endangered the operation. I wasn’t about to tell her that, though.

  “You know I’m entitled to the spoils of war, right? Now I’ll have to take it directly from Yushbaev.”

  She snorted. “Right, I’m pretty sure you’ll manage.”

  “Yeah, I’ll manage.”

  Back at the villa we found the brigadier in his office. I handed Segundo’s cell over to him but before I could tell him what we’d learned, he held up a hand.

  “That’s fine, Harry. Let me have a chat with Araminta. You’d better pack. I want you in the air before this evening. I’ll come up and see you in a moment.”

  I climbed the stairs feeling unreasonably mad that he wanted to debrief us separately, and packed a couple of cases. By the time I was done he knocked on the door and stepped in.

  “We’ve cleared your gun and your knife, provided they go through in the case. How did it go with the lawyer, Lopez?”

  He sat on the bed and I leaned my back against the window frame.

  “He’s going to Istanbul and then Divnomorskoye, on the Russian coast of the Black Sea. He has some palatial house there where he keeps women he has kidnapped from Turkey, Belarus, the Ukraine, Poland and places along the Caucasus. Lopez had been there. Apparently the girls live in luxury and he gets them hooked on various drugs—coke, marijuana and heroin were mentioned. Once they are totally dependent on him, he sends them out into the world, to the clubs he supplies.”