Clear Skies

by A. M. Murray

  Slade rose at five. By six-thirty, he’d built up a sweat in the hotel’s gym, showered, dressed, and made his way to the restaurant to enjoy a substantial breakfast when a call came from Roche.

  He sat at a table in a corner of the restaurant’s terrace, where, sheltered from the biting wind, rays of the early morning sun lingered long enough to build up a pool of warmth. He poured a cup of freshly brewed coffee from a pot offered by an attentive waiter.

  “Alex. What have you got for me?”

  “I still haven’t cracked Ashton’s password to his Croatian bank account. It’s not the one used by the Palmers for their accounts, and I’ll need his computer or his hard drive. I’ve been in touch with Deacon, and I’m on my way now to join you guys. Deacon asked me to take Fontaine as backup. We’re at the airport now waiting to board, so we’ll see you soon.”

  Roche paused to listen to an announcement, then continued. “I decrypted files in Hewitt’s hard drive and found a white-hot email exchange with Carol Palmer over a six-month period. We were right. They did have a steamy affair, and that’ll be why he set up the onion routing network. She planned to leave Palmer and take off with Hewitt to Brazil with her share of the money. They did not talk, though, about any scheme to deprive Richard Palmer of his share. Sister Chloe added that lethal twist to grab the loot, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Or it was Ashton’s twist,” Slade said.

  “Yes, but not the intention of Carol Palmer or Hewitt. If Carol’s emails to Hewitt were true, she loved Palmer at first, even though he’d not measured up in bed. One day she showed up at their London home from Tokyo ahead of schedule and found him in a compromising situation with a young man. From that time onward, for the sake of the fortune coming their way, she’d kept up appearances as his wife, but with none of the limited intimacy they’d shared before.”

  Slade swallowed a mouthful of coffee and said, “Another internet rumor turning out to be true.”

  “I think Palmer knew about the affair with Hewitt and may even have condoned it,” Roche said. “Hewitt was a loyal employee who supported his boss in the scheme to win the Japanese contract for the conventional fighter and to sell specifications of the Clear Skies über-fighter to the Chinese. He delivered plans to the clients, section by section. Palmer provided the necessary clout, and his wife injected the glamor and bedroom companions to guarantee the deals. Hewitt expected to become wealthy in his own right from a massive bonus after the Chinese delivered their final payment to Richard Palmer, but neither of them lived long enough for that to happen.”

  “Keeping more money for Ashton. Anything else?”

  Roche hesitated before going on. “Isa checked out of the May Fair an hour or so after you left for Washington. She took a late night flight to Tokyo. She’d told us she would return to Tokyo with Ono’s team later in the week, so I looked into it. I checked with the hotel, and Ono’s entourage has not left London yet. I also called Makino in Tokyo. Isa has been and gone. She claimed her sister’s body, had her cremated, and left Japan in the space of twenty-four hours.”

  “Any idea where she might have gone?”

  “I hacked into the major airline manifestos and found her travel itinerary. She left on an Alitalia flight to Pescara in eastern Italy via Rome, but I haven’t been able to track her movements from there. There’ve been no credit card charges or hotel or rental car registrations. She might have switched to another passport and credit card after she arrived.”

  “Thanks, Alex. That explains a few anomalies.”

  Isa was back on Slade’s side of the world in the same time zone and he’d woken her from sleep after midnight last night, not from a travel-weary afternoon nap in Tokyo. It had been a reasonable assumption, but he could not have been more wrong. And Roche’s discovery raised the ugly question of why she’d misled Slade about her whereabouts.

  He ended the call with Roche, shoved his emotions and misgivings about his judgment of women aside, and ate a hearty breakfast to fuel what he expected to be a demanding day.

  Slade still had three hours to wait until Deacon’s group arrived, followed by Roche and Fontaine. He followed the concierge’s advice to see old Dubrovnik’s main attractions and stepped outside for an early morning stroll before the streets became gridlocked with tourists later in the day. At seven-thirty, the sunshine still lacked enough warmth to counteract the icy wind gusts from the northeast. Slade buttoned up his jacket and pulled up the collar to keep out the chill.

  Dubrovnik, known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, had gained fame as an impressive sea power on the Dalmatian coast around the thirteenth century. Despite damage from an earthquake in 1667 and armed conflict in the Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s, the city restored and preserved its historical Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque churches, palaces, and major buildings.

  Shrouded again in dramatic history punctuated by periods of violence, Slade walked through the world heritage enclave, dragged by a powerful time warp into another era. Within minutes, he lost any sense of his own significance.

  Despite the early hour, life was already playing out on the streets. A young mother yelled at her young children lagging behind on their way to school. Three elderly men sat outside a café, two playing chess and the third offering advice. A middle-aged man in a uniform strode into Slade’s hotel, possibly to replace the night-duty concierge who’d helped him the previous evening.

  Slade passed a string of souvenir shops with their restored medieval façades and entered a Franciscan monastery housing the world’s oldest operating pharmacy, preserved intact from several centuries ago. He bought antibiotic cream and bandages for his throbbing arm, then headed back to the streets, where he visualized early settlers bustling along the cobbled pavements, some shopping for remedies at the pharmacy and others plying their wares. He wandered through the main thoroughfares and alleyways, enjoying the transition to another age.

  A gap in the old town’s wall opened to stone steps leading down to a unique café on a rocky platform jutting over the ocean. Slade ordered coffee and made it last while he gazed out to sea, wondering about “Kidney Island” and what Ashton was doing there right now.

  CHAPTER 49

  (Thursday Afternoon—Dubrovnik)

  Before landing, their cruiser circled the island twice. During the first sweep, they’d located the castle standing on the highest piece of ground on the island’s southern tip, its decay halted by Ashton’s restoration.

  During the second sweep, a superyacht approached the island across the Adriatic Sea from the direction of Eastern Italy. Through binoculars, they made out its name, Nile Adventurer, an illogical choice for a massive vessel with a draft too deep to sail the Nile.

  Again, not coincidence. The hotel’s concierge had told Slade that a man called Nile Thanos lived on the island, and Woodcock transferred Carol Palmer’s assets to a Croatian bank account under the name of Nile Investments. That yacht belongs to Ashton.

  The goal driving their clandestine visit to Ashton’s island was simple. Find the password to access his bank account online, transfer the money bagged through his Machiavellian scheme to an FBI holding account, and return it to the Chinese marks. Deacon also needed evidence of Ashton’s role in masterminding the China grift and arranging the deaths of the Harris sisters, Hewitt, Richard Palmer, Carol Palmer’s Filipino maid, and the Japanese assassin, Sakata. That meant getting hold of Ashton’s computer for Roche to extract the hard drive and put his cyber skills to work.

  However, accomplishing the goal would be anything but simple. The plan called for them to enter the residence and retrieve his computer, burner phones, and incriminating documents after dark, but first, they had to evaluate the strength of the security setup.

  Deacon tasked Slade with reconnoitering the security quarters and dispatched the other team members to disable surveillance cameras and identify the number of people inside the residence, using their signal-detecting equipment and infrared, night-vision headgear. They’d me
et again later at the northwestern tip of the island before setting off to enter the castle.

  Now, an hour after landing, the sun began to dip below the horizon. It was that uncertain period between the end of daylight and the onset of evening as Slade made his way to the periphery of the castle, dressed, like the rest of his team, in black cargo pants, rubber-soled boots, black Kevlar vest, and a light, black windbreaker.

  He waited thirty minutes until the sun disappeared. The comforting darkness enveloped him, and salt on the light northeast breeze, bringing the atmosphere of the sea onto the island, sharpened his senses. He savored the taste on his lips. The moon slid in and out of clouds, illuminating the landscape one minute, plunging it into darkness the next. Distant screeching of fruit bats in search of food diffused through the air, disrupting the calm of the night.

  He approached a recently constructed annex that looked like the security wing and slipped behind the bushes next to the building to catch a glimpse of Ashton’s enforcers through the window. Once he knew their number and weapon strength, he could develop his team’s action plan.

  Slade’s thoughts skipped the planning phase entirely when he saw a familiar figure seated on a chair facing the door. Isa looked like she had every right to be there, her hands leafing through a pile of papers.

  If she’d slammed him in the head with a baseball bat, the impact would have been the same. His brain tried to process what he saw. Roche had tracked Isa’s travel to Pescara on the Adriatic coast of Eastern Italy, and now it made more sense. She must have arrived on the island a few hours earlier on Ashton’s yacht after he picked her up at the deep-water marina north of Pescara.

  Isa appeared to be alone. Slade threw tactical theory and common sense aside and stormed into the room, his facial muscles tight, jaws clenched.

  He looked at Isa point-blank for a few seconds and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She stood up, still clutching the papers, but didn’t answer, her eyes unfathomable. She did not even acknowledge that he’d asked her a question. The change was so complete. His judgment of human character had never failed on this scale before. He gave her a look that could invert an erupting volcano.

  Before he could ask anything more, two burly members of Ashton’s security team strode out of the shadows behind him and charged through the doorway, bellowing expletives. Slade identified Fox, the surviving Aculeus goon who’d been involved in the Hewitt kill in Nice. He was the tougher-looking of Ashton’s two enforcers and seemed to be in charge.

  They grabbed Slade by both arms, frisked him, and removed his newly acquired FBI weapon from the holster strapped under his left armpit. He’d been distracted by Isa’s presence, but even so, his confidence took a hit from the speed at which they charged into the room and disarmed him.

  The men dragged him across the room into a storage area, threw him to the floor, cuffed his wrists around a thick leg of a low-standing steel table, then slammed and locked the door behind them.

  On the way down, he saw boxes of ammunition stacked on the table, along with enough military paraphernalia to supply a small army.

  Isa had seen Ashton’s men approach through the door, but apart from an uneasy glance, chose not to warn him. Slade could think of two reasons for her presence and behavior. The more palatable was that she’d been schooled in special operations for an elite team or black-ops group of the CIA and was more deeply involved in this case for the US authorities than she’d led Slade to believe. Her silence and inaction, when confronted, screamed of self-control learned from training way beyond the level of Espionage 101 instruction she’d have received from Aculeus.

  The other, unavoidable explanation placed her as a member of Ashton’s team or, worse, as part of his personal life.

  Through the door, he heard Fox shouting questions about why she’d entered the security wing, and Isa shouting responses back at him. She claimed to have seen Slade rifling through papers on the desk when she walked past the window and then dashed into the building to confront him.

  She’d lied about her presence in the security building, so he knew she wasn’t a member of Ashton’s security team. It was what he didn’t know, though, that unsettled him. She could still be Ashton’s accomplice, or, like Deacon’s team, she could have been searching for information to access Ashton’s illicit stash of wealth. Whether that action was for personal gain or for a bona fide employer remained obscure.

  Without knowledge of the truth, Slade had little choice but to regard Isa as an adversary and depend on his own resources.

  Luckily, Fox hadn’t killed him outright, but Slade knew he’d soon return with others, perhaps even Ashton himself. They’d interrogate him about the strength of his team and how much the Bureau knew of Ashton’s activities. And then they’d put a gun to his head.

  With luck, Deacon and his team would start searching when he failed to show up for their prearranged rendezvous in half an hour. The trick would be to stay alive long enough for them to find him.

  The shouting match next door gave way to a friendlier conversation, and Slade gave Isa ten out of ten for skill in crafting her own version of reality.

  He heard them walk outside, their footsteps receding along the concrete path leading to the castle. For the moment, at least, he was alone.

  Slade pushed thoughts of Isa aside and focused on his circumstances. He was in a bind, but after several minutes maneuvering the position of his body, his confidence grew.

  Fox and his companion were heavyweight goons employed for physical strength rather than strategic acumen. Fox’s colleague had not put Slade’s arms behind his back before cuffing his hands around the table leg. Nor did he pay attention to the floor, covered with slippery marble tiles that would minimize friction between it and the table leg. Though a deadweight with solid legs, the table would slide across the ground if Slade pushed it hard enough.

  He pulled himself into a crouched position and, drawing on all his physical strength, used his shoulders to push his end of the table a foot backward to wedge its far corner against the wall.

  With his hands and cuffed wrists flat on the floor, he raised his body until the arch of his back contacted the tabletop. He forced himself to raise his back further without lifting his wrists and managed to jack up the front corner a few tenths of an inch, leveraging the wall to prevent the table from sliding away. After three more attempts, he raised the table high enough to slip the central link between the cuffs under the leg. He worked it free and released his arms.

  If he’d been fitter, the entire operation would have taken under a minute, with less physical strain. His resolve to increase the frequency and length of his workouts in Tokyo surged to a new high.

  With his wrists still cuffed, Slade could take little offensive action, but his chance of survival had crept up a notch. He looked for a tool to pick the door lock but heard footsteps when someone entered the security wing and approached the storeroom door.

  He threw himself on the floor in front of the table leg with his arms behind his back.

  The door opened and another of Ashton’s muscle-bound henchmen, a Beretta tucked into his waistband, strode into the room.

  “Why you here on Bubreg? Who you with?”

  Slade did not respond.

  His questions unanswered, the man went on with a menacing demeanor. “I am Tomic, war hero. I come back from Somalia. Shoot hundreds of scumbag rebels there.”

  “Who, no doubt, were unarmed. That doesn’t make you a competent fighter. You look like a fat bum with a gun, nothing more.” Slade hoped to rile him into blurting out information and keep the conversation going long enough for Deacon’s men to arrive.

  “You no answer question? I hurt you. You tell everything to stop pain.”

  “Bring it on,” Slade said with more bravado than he felt.

  “Don’t think I can’t do. I make you scream like stabbed pig. I am professional fighter. Twenty years in Croatia, Serbia, Africa. You name it, I been the
re. Important people use me to get information from scum like you. And I don’t get it, I cut them up alive before shoot them.” He thrust out his chest.

  “That’s why you’re stuck here on a tiny island that nobody’s ever heard of, right?” Slade said.

  “I asked you in real friendly way. Now, one more time. Why you here, who you with, and where they are?”

  “I don’t talk to brainless thugs who brag about themselves to cover up their weakness.”

  Tomic’s angry expression changed to murderous, and he responded with a poorly executed kick to the head that still left Slade with a bleeding mouth.

  “Where did you learn that move? At your grandmother’s dance club?” Slade said, taunting him into making a mistake.

  Consumed with anger, Tomic aimed at Slade’s head with his clenched fist.

  Slade responded to the first sign of movement of the man’s arm. No longer shackled to the table leg, he pulled his head well out of range of the intended sucker punch.

  Tomic’s fist slammed into the steel leg at high speed, and Slade heard one or two knuckles shatter from the impact.

  Tomic screamed in pain.

  “See what I mean? You’re full of shit.”

  Tomic, furious at missing his target, pulled out his weapon with his uninjured hand and stood over Slade, eyes fierce with pain and rage.

  Imprisoned in a storeroom with a Beretta 9 mm pistol pressed against his temple by a garrulous moron eager to kill, a grim calculation of life and death played out in Slade’s mind. Plan A was to keep the man talking and his mind off taking the shot. He hadn’t come up with plan B yet, but if plan A failed, he wouldn’t need it anyway.

  Slade had already sensed a recent, gradual weakening of the attitude to relationships and work he’d clung to all his adult life. He promised himself that if he escaped this predicament, life would change.

  “Afraid to tackle me with your bare hands?” Slade taunted him again. “I knew you were all talk. You’d be nothing but a weak punk without a gun in your hand.”