Chasing the White Lion

by James R. Hannibal

  The last of the white drippings faded into their wake. A few fiberglass panels, some forest-green paint, and Darcy’s special white stenciling had turned the lodge’s gray runabout into a police boat long enough for the brush-off with the Albanians. But with a major hydroelectric dam coming into view, the boat had to become civilian again. So did Darcy. She finished her work and flipped her police coat inside out, turning it into a plain denim jacket.

  As soon as Atan and Janos had stolen the van, Finn had surfaced, bringing with him the scuba tank and regulator he used to fake his death. The site breakdown took less than an hour, and the crew fled south, away from Prague. They could go no farther than the dam, four kilometers away, but Mac had positioned a second van there to take them to Příbram Airport.

  “Keep it moving, everyone.” Val hopped to the concrete dock with the boat still moving. She tied the mooring line to a post. “There’s no telling how much time we have before Atan gets wise.”

  “Not long, I am afraid.” Atan came walking down the dock with Janos. He held a 9mm close to his body, out of view of the dam’s control station. “Please. All of you. Step out of the boat and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Talia was the first onto the dock beside Val. “How did you find us?”

  “I had a fifty-fifty choice, and thieves run away from their victims, not toward them.” Talia’s arm twitched, and he twisted his gun. “Ah, ah, ah. I said show me your hands.”

  Val gave her a nod.

  Talia moved the hand into view, holding a .38 Ruger, barrel down.

  Scowling, Janos quick-stepped forward and snatched it away, leveling it at the group. The gun was his spare, stolen by Talia when Tyler knocked the brute to the ground.

  “I am impressed, Miss Macciano.” Atan’s eyes tracked Finn and then Mac as they stepped off the boat behind Talia. “Very few have battled Janos and lived to tell about it. None were women, and none have ever taken both his guns.”

  Talia only shrugged.

  “There was one more. The policewoman. Where is she?”

  The chemist peeked out from behind the fiberglass wall of the pilothouse.

  Atan shifted his aim. “You had a rifle. Come here, slowly, and lay it on the dock.”

  Darcy did as commanded, and Atan nodded. “Good. Now. We will retire to your van, where you will return my money.”

  “That’s it?” Finn asked. “And then you’ll let us go?”

  “We shall see.”

  ATAN HAD PARKED the other van behind a utility shed, out of view of the control station. He and Janos kept their guns trained on their captives. Talia still had her Glock, and she knew Mac always kept a blade available, but neither of them made a move. The Albanians positioned them all with their backs against the shed.

  “How did you know?” Val asked.

  “How does the fox know to be wary of the snake? Or the wolf, the sable? Instinct.”

  That was a stretch. Atan had stayed on the hook through 90 percent of the con. Talia would have laughed at his drama if not for the guns pointed at her teammates. “So what gave us away?”

  “The more I thought about it as we drove away, the more I worried the coins were too good to be true. And the timing of the police boat’s arrival was . . . suspicious.” He raised an eyebrow. “But most of all, you lost me with the ridiculous accent.”

  Before Talia could say I told you so, the Albanian continued. “I pride myself on my ear for authenticity.” He pointed his gun at Val and then Finn. “Real New Yorker. Fake Australian.”

  Finn’s eyes went wide. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Give it up, Mr. Scrug, or whatever your name is. Your true origins are obvious. I’m guessing”—the Albanian tilted his gun to the side—“American Midwest? Iowa? Perhaps Illinois?”

  After a long pause, the Aussie tensed his jaw, apparently deciding there was no point in arguing with the mark. “Nebraska.”

  “Do not despair.” Atan lowered his gun, letting Janos keep them covered. “As I said before, I am impressed. You had me until the end, and you stole from Malcom Smythe, which endears you to me. Simply make reparations, and all will be forgiven.”

  Val leaned against the shed and crossed one ankle over the other. “What reparations?”

  “Return my half million, and add to it everything you stole from Tyler and Smythe.”

  Mac rocked forward. “That’s our entire take, you greedy—” A stab of Janos’s revolver pressed him back, shutting him up.

  “Not all the money is for me. Consider the extra million a buy-in.”

  Val’s mulligan, the encore to the brush-off, had worked. Talia made sure. “A buy-in to what, exactly?”

  “To a special organization, Miss Macciano. Anonymous. Global. Ruthless. I am your ticket in, and until you advance to the next level, a portion of all you and your sister provide will go to me. In return, the organization will offer your crew opportunities beyond anything you ever imagined.”

  As Val had hinted on the jet two days before, the plan hinged on Atan not falling for the German Silver con. Instead, he’d fallen for the larger play—offering the team a personal invite into Boyd’s organization.

  Atan tucked his gun away and gave them all a crooked smile. “Welcome to the Jungle. Take care you are not eaten.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-

  SEVEN

  VILLA VÁCLAV

  RIVER VLTAVA

  PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

  “OKAY.” TYLER FOLDED HIS HANDS on the lodge’s gothic dining table. “Where do we stand with Boyd’s syndicate?”

  The blaze in the two-story fireplace at his back seemed a bit much, not to mention the coats of arms above the mantel—stags, lions, eagles, and all manner of manly creatures. Talia had warned him months before that the whole leader-at-the-head-of-the-table thing was an archaic tradition best left to wedding parties and Mad Men reruns. “It makes you intimidating and unapproachable.”

  Tyler had answered with a nod. “I know.”

  Eddie fielded his question. “Atan supplied Talia and Val each with a digital entry code. They’re in the Jungle now.”

  “As panthers?”

  “No,” Val said, seated to his right. “But not as field mice either.” In the poor lighting of the electric candles set in an antler chandelier, Talia found it harder than usual to read the grifter’s expression. “The extra million Atan used as our buy-in took us straight to the hawk level. As of now, you’re looking at Hawk Four One Eight and Hawk Four One Nine—probationary members.”

  “Probation’ry,” Mac asked. “What’s that s’pposed to mean?”

  “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Cowed by her tone, he looked down at his empty place mat, but Mac’s dejection did not last long. Conrad, aided by the fake Winston, arrived with the food. They each pushed a cart, starting at either end of the table.

  “Dinner is served.” Conrad set a plate and bowl in front of Talia. “Braised sirloin in white sauce with minced pork dumplings and a side of rabbit goulash.”

  She inspected the offering. “That is . . . a lot of meat.”

  “Welcome to Bohemia, my dear.”

  The fake Winston took the seat across from her. He looked so familiar, yet he did not introduce himself even as the meal wore on, as if taunting her to figure out his identity for herself.

  “Give up yet, do ya?” he asked twenty minutes later, pushing a touch of Cockney into the question.

  Talia dabbed her lips with her napkin and sat back. “So I do know you.”

  “We’ve met, if that’s what ya mean. But ya don’t remember where, I can tell.”

  He had strawberry-blond hair. Freckles. But those details seemed wrong. “You have a name?”

  “Pell.”

  She felt Tyler watching them, enjoying the show. The phrase You don’t remember rarely applied to Talia. It unnerved her. “How about a hint.”

  “Awright. How ’bout this.” The Cockney manner vanished,
replaced by a drab expression and an equally drab Eastern European accent. “Yeah. Okay. No problem.”

  Sunglasses. A driver’s cap. Blond hair. The images flashed in Talia’s mind. She caught her breath. “Davian. Tyler’s Moldovan driver.”

  Pell offered a short bow over his plate. “At your service.”

  A golf clap from Tyler interrupted them. “Well done. Both of you. I love good dinner theater.”

  Talia failed to suppress a chagrined smile. “You’ve been waiting six months for this, haven’t you?”

  “Correct. I didn’t have another position for him after Moldova, until today.” Tyler gestured at each of them. “Pell, Talia. Talia, Pell.”

  “So he’s another grifter.”

  Talia heard a snort from the far end of the table. She looked, but Val had already turned her attention to Conrad, who had brought out a tray of tortes.

  “Pell is a chameleon,” Tyler said. “In any given setup he might be the moving eyes in the painting, the needle in the haystack, the fly on the wall—”

  “Or in zee ointment, yes?” Pell took on the affectations of a pretentious Frenchman, earning a quizzical look from Darcy.

  Finn, accepting a torte from Conrad, took an interest in the conversation. “So is Pell a first name or a last?”

  “Can’t say as I remember.” The chameleon matched Finn’s voice to a tee. “I hardly ever use it anyway.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what, mate?”

  Finn’s expression went flat. “That put another shrimp on the barbie accent.”

  “My Australian’s better than yours.”

  “Don’t be daft. I’m from Melbourne, born and raised.”

  “Not bad, mate. Not bad.” Pell didn’t miss a beat. “But next time, try sinking your glottis into the schwa.” He stuck his chin out, holding his Adam’s apple. “Mel-buhrn.”

  Finn took his plate of tortes to Mac’s end of the table, muttering to himself. “Twice in one day. What’s the matter with people?”

  Pell became the Moldovan driver again. “What is the thing that is eating your friend, Miss Talia? Was it something I said?”

  A fit of giggles buried her answer. She turned to Tyler. “Okay. Stage One is complete. Where to next?”

  “The Isle of Milos. I’m getting back into gunrunning. Special appearance. One night only.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-

  EIGHT

  HANGAR 13

  LINZ AIRFIELD

  PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

  CONRAD WOULD NOT BE ACCOMPANYING the crew to the Greek Isles. He saw them off at the hangar with a basket of donut-like cinnamon-sugar pastries he called trdlenik, and which Mac called turtlenecks.

  He took Talia aside while the others loaded the aircraft and pressed one of the pastries into her hand. “I want you to be careful from this point forward. Boyd and his people. They are no joke, and they may have connections we have yet to trace.”

  She could read between the lines. “You mean Jordan. Did Tyler put you up to this?” Talia gave him her for shame look. “Don’t feed his hover-mom syndrome, Conrad.”

  “I wish you would learn to lean on him.”

  “Maybe I’m not ready. You know our history.”

  “Then learn to lean in general. This new life you’ve found is not solitary. The children of God have each other, and most of all we have him.” Conrad set his basket aside and took her hands. “You are strong and courageous, my child. So strong, and so courageous. But remember what follows those words from Moses to Joshua.”

  An eidetic memory, and everyone expected her to have the Bible memorized. “I . . . haven’t read that part yet, Conrad.”

  He smiled. “Give it a look. Joshua, like you, was strong and courageous—not on his own, but because God was with him.”

  Twenty minutes later, the stars above the cloud layer twinkled in the morning sky, projected in real time on the walls and ceiling of the jet cabin. Fortunately, Tyler’s supersonic AS2 came well-equipped with an espresso machine.

  Val, knees tucked into a long knit sweater, clutched an oversize mug topped with milk foam. “Why did we leave so early, Tyler? You know my rule about never being up before the sun.”

  “Except when there’s money to be made. And there’s a great big pile waiting at the end of this particular rainbow.” He threw a roll it motion at Eddie.

  “You do realize I’m a human being, right?” Eddie stepped out in front of the whole-wall video display with his tablet. “Not a remote control?”

  Darcy poked his calf with a bare toe. “Don’t be so sensitive, mon chou. Tyler’s hand is the remote, no? That makes you the computer.”

  This seemed almost enough to satisfy his ego. He glanced at Tyler. “A supercomputer?”

  “Sure. Okay. A supercomputer.”

  “Like maybe a neuromorphic, quantum array with—”

  “Hey!” Talia clapped her hands together. “Quit being such a snowflake and get on with it.” The whole outburst came out louder than she intended.

  Finn passed her his coffee. “Take this. Sounds like you need it more than I do.”

  The wall switched from the passing twilight sky to a simple chart with animal pictures and dollar figures. “What the boss was getting at when he snapped his fingers at me—”

  “I didn’t snap them. I rolled one in the air.”

  “—like the man in the yellow hat with Curious George, is that an enormous challenge still lies before us. We’re in the Jungle, but now we have to work our way to the top of the food chain.”

  The chart listed Val and Talia’s current level of hawk at three hundred thousand each in annual earnings for the syndicate. To reach cobra, they’d have to hit one million each.

  Eddie gestured to the next rung up. “Our goal is panther. That’s ten million in annual earnings. Each.”

  Finn let out a low whistle.

  “And I’m just getting started.” Eddie switched to a picture of the Bangkok towers. The text in the sky above them listed the three panthers who had earned invitations to the previous year’s Frenzy. Their dollar figures were higher.

  Talia read the lowest out loud. “Fifteen million buys one seat. We want two. That’s thirty million US, assuming the numbers play out like last year.”

  “And that’s where our next stage comes in. Stage One was Val’s. The plan for Stage Two is Tyler’s brainchild.” He gave Tyler a nod. “Boss?”

  “We need a minimum of thirty million. My plan gets us forty-five.”

  Tyler had mentioned something at dinner about running guns. Forty-five million dollars could buy a whole lot of guns, an idea that didn’t sit well with Talia. She knew Tyler financed his lifestyle by buying up confiscated weapons and ammunition from national governments, usually to recycle them and sell the materials. What was he playing at? “We’re selling a massive load of your secondhand guns to some black-market buyer?”

  “Not my guns.” Tyler flashed a grin. “Someone else’s guns. We’re going to hijack an arms deal, and it’s going to be so much fun.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-

  NINE

  WESTERN TOWER PENTHOUSE

  TWIN TIGERS COMPLEX

  BANGKOK, THAILAND

  “HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN HERE?”

  Standing in Boyd’s penthouse office, Gorev shifted from one foot to the other, praying the glass floor didn’t crack under his weight. He did not relish a fifty-foot free fall into the jungle atrium below, or a visit from the beast lying hidden in the foliage. “One week.”

  “One week.” Boyd stormed out from behind a crescent-shaped desk, unafraid to cross the glass. The young Englishman had more confidence than Gorev in their Thai contractors. “You had one full week to finalize negotiations with Panther Five One and oversee the final construction of the maze floors for the Frenzy.” Gorev had lowered his eyes, but Boyd, the shorter man, stepped into his vision, hand on his hips. “Is either job complete?”

  Gorev c
ould have crushed him where he stood—pounded him through the floor as food for the big cats. “I did order the place cards. They will be here on Friday. The font is Goudy Old Style. Very nice.”

  “You disgust me.”

  The former Spetsnaz reined in his instincts until Boyd left the kill zone and returned to his desk. Gorev let out a long breath through his nose. “I complete Panther Five One job tomorrow.”

  “Wrong.” Boyd’s eyes followed the stock tickers running across the giant picture window behind his desk. “We will complete the job. I’ll go with you and finalize the deal in person. Panther Five One can wait an extra day or two until my schedule allows. Meanwhile, you babysit the contractors. If they keep dragging their feet, throw one from the helipad.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Better yet, feed one to Lionel. We can’t have bodies landing in the plaza.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Boyd chuckled at his own joke and turned from his window, with the sprawling Bangkok metropolis behind him, smothered in haze. “Do you know why I live in penthouses, Anton?”

  “The view, I assume.”

  “Wrong again. Down on the street, where those contractors live and where I found you, the air is oppressive, filthy and toxic—quite literally here in Bangkok. Like the gods of Olympus, I was meant to rise above and breathe freely.” He went quiet.

  Gorev shifted his weight again as a monkeypod tree wavered in the atrium directly beneath him. He cleared his throat. “There is second reason I come to see you.”

  “Spit it out. I’m busy.”

  “We have two new hawks. Sisters. They bought positions at hawk level, under sponsorship of Panther Four Nine.”

  This captured Boyd’s attention. “Aggressive. Do they know the price of earning their wings?”

  “Nyet. I was suspicious. I ask your approval first.”

  The Englishman drummed his fingers on his desk, then nodded. “Go ahead. Send the usual invitation. Let’s see if they have the stomach for Jungle life.”