Dreamboat Ch. 09

His mind was whirling, trying to work out who this Mr Black represented. The obvious answer would be Ukraine's Internal Affairs: even though that department had been shaken up badly after Viktor Yanukovych was removed from power in 2014, there was still a lot of the old guard in place. Not enough of them to prevent his role in some ... counter-demonstrations, as it had been delicately termed ... coming to light, but sufficient to warn him of his impending arrest and removal to a quiet grave in the forests with a double tap to the back of the head. And with their dander up in their sudden zeal to show that their own hands were clean, actions had been taken to try and track him down. He knew of at least three small undercover squads in the country working to try and find him and several other ex-employees of Internal Affairs now hiding in the USA. Crimes against the state - hah!

"We need to sit down together in conference, Mr Hordiyenko, yes? It seems that we have similar business objectives and may be able to work out some sort of agreement, a contract whereby both of our interests might best be served."

Moving from room to room and window to window, almost like a ghost, Hordiyenko checked the perimeter of the house, frustrated at seeing no one, but not really expecting to. The organisation that had tracked him down obviously had sufficient resources to hire the best. They wouldn't be easily seen.

But then he had been the best in his homeland, so he wasn't easily going to be trapped and killed either. He had been well-trained at a camp nowhere near Moskva, but it might as well have been in Red Square itself. And Russia always laid out the best training for its undercover workers.

The voice in his ear was becoming irritating. He sounded like some wealthy senator expounding on the ills of the world in some Southern mansion with a glass of bourbon in his hand while some aide blew him. Cunt.

"Our business interests overlap, but do not coincide. We are interested in the safe maintenance of an asset, and you wish to have an asset returned to you. There may be a way for us to cooperate in this and both achieve our aims, yes?"

Hordiyenko ran upstairs, slipped into the bathroom, and retrieved several bundles of cash from behind a loose wall tile in the shower. These went into the bag along with three small bags of white powder. Sometimes even cash couldn't get you what you needed, while the powder had trade value everywhere.

He took a very careful quick look out of the bathroom window, making sure that he wouldn't be in sight for more than a second. The bathroom was on the side of the house overlooking the nearest neighbour. The Ukrainian had a clear view of the side of that house and its back garden...

He ducked and crawled out of the bathroom on hands and knees, dragging the holdall behind him and drawing the automatic from its holster.

In the back garden of the neighbour's property had stood a man in plain view, staring up at the bathroom window. He had no idea who the man was, as the house was owned by an elderly couple whose two middle-aged daughters lived in New York and somewhere in the Los Angeles area respectively. But he had an idea that the man was there for him. There was something in the way he stood on the balls of his feet, casually alert but ready to move at any instant. Just staring up at the house.

Hordiyenko felt a thrill of disquiet for the first time since the phone had rung just minutes before. They knew where he was and what he was capable of, so why stand out in the open?

He knew that the call was meant to distract him, but he needed as much information on his enemies as he could get, and that meant continuing the pretence.

"How could we work together on maintaining this asset?" he asked.

"Oh, that would have to be discussed and negotiated, yes?" The voice had not changed in any way, revealing a slight interest in him agreeing to some or other terms, but not revealing anything else.

"Perhaps a meeting could be arranged," he said, keeping his own voice completely neutral as well. Voices revealed more than they said, he knew. As an interrogator he had learned that through long experience of listening and then checking. In his experience, at some stage even the most accomplished liars would reveal something more than they had meant to. Just the tone or they way a certain word was said could reveal a lot.

But the smooth-talking bastard on the line was showing nothing.

He moved into the master bedroom at a crouch, taking a hand mirror his wife used and risking a reflected glance through that window. The house backed onto a field whose occupants were usually just a few horses grazing here and there. Now, that occupation had increased by one - a single man, standing and staring up at the bedroom window.

Hordiyenko sank down again, thinking hard. Two men, dressed in similar fashion, watching him and seemingly knowing exactly where he was. Someone had to have infra red detectors on him, some of the really good expensive ones that could pick up body heat even during the day, and was at that moment watching his heat signature move through the house and directing the observers accordingly.

But why hadn't they simply moved in? His wife hadn't shifted from her seat during his speedy collection of weapons and money, so perhaps he could somehow merge their signatures... No, what would that accomplish? He would be stuck in her room with nowhere to go. He thought of trying to mask his signature with a blanket, perhaps soaked in ice water from the fridge, but discarded that idea as well. A moving blob of blue cold was just as distinctive as red heat.

Quickly he descended the stairs, using the mirror to check on the other side of the house through the little window at the landing. Another man was doing the same thing as the first two.

Despite the certain knowledge that all sides of the house would be covered, he had to check the front. Squatting down, he ran in an awkward crouch to the lounge, using the mirror once again from the side of the picture window. On the other side of the road, standing on the sidewalk was a fourth watcher, this one an Asian woman. She was doing the same as the others, simply staring at the window he was using. There was no escape. The attic and basement were simply traps. All it would take was a phosphorous grenade and he would be caught in an inferno. It was an effective method he had used himself on several occasions.

"...to me! Mr Hordiyenko!" He realised that the voice was trying to get his attention back.

"Who are you?" he asked, wanting to know who was about to kill him.

"My name is John Black. I am CEO of the ABC Corporation, and we simply want to talk."

The Ukrainian spat on the floor, a habit he had picked up as a child in a mining town, where men would often spit on the ground, the spittle as grainy as the coal they dragged out of the earth and as black as their lungs. He had worked hard to get rid of that habit, and here it was, back again. Reverting to type, he sneered at himself.

"All lies," he said, trying to think of some way out of this trap, and cursing himself for moving in and blithely marrying the ugly cow upstairs. Despite all his training, he had put himself into a place with limited exits. All for the sake of that big-titted cunt he had seen one day at the garage while her father had worked on his Ford. He had seen her, and instantly wanted her - not just her body however, but her mind and soul as well. He would break her to his will. He knew how.

He stood and turned, knowing he was a dead man but with a stolid obstinacy bred into his genes by hundreds of generations of peasant farmers, he was more than ready to die fighting.

As he turned and saw the small Asian man standing close behind him, he started and cursed in sudden fright. He hadn't heard a thing.

The man - Chinese or Japanese, somewhere in that region, he decided - was standing still, seemingly almost at attention, his feet together and arms down by his sides. He was old, but with an ageless quality that denied any pinpointing of his true vintage.

Hordiyenko cursed again and brought the automatic up.

The man's hand moved and the interrogator, torturer and assassin felt a sudden shock through his skull. For a moment, there was only bewilderment, but no pain. Then there was. Followed by blackness.

*****

The woman rubbed her eyes, the glow from the monitor making the smooth skin of her pretty face look pale and slightly ill.

She sat back with a sigh and looked out of the window on the other side of the office, taking pleasure in the vista of green lawns that stretched out to the security fences and the guard post at the gate. She wondered idly what it had looked like before MacVeigh's Oklahoma City attack and the subsequent requirement for all DEA buildings to have high security measures. Usually the place and its surroundings were full of bustling people coming and going, but today the car park was almost empty and her little car was prominent in its solitude.

After a moment of quiet contemplation, she stretched, her breasts pressing against her tailored white blouse in a pleasing fashion, if anyone had been there to look. With a sigh, she rose to her feet, smoothed her gray skirt down over her thighs, noting that she had been sitting still long enough for creases to form in the garment from hip to hip.

She walked to the coffee machine and poured a cup, needing the caffeine. While she sipped at the bitter brew, she scanned the open-plan office, seeing that she really was alone. Although it was a Sunday, there was usually a few other analysts who would come in over the weekend to catch up, or to study and analyse some new intel. Now, she was alone. She had never been in that situation before in the three years since she had finished her training. Perhaps there was a flap on, or perhaps a big operation she hadn't been invited to.

"Miss Pelletier?" She turned suddenly to see the elegant starkness of Janet MacDonald, the section head. "On your own today?"

Elaine Pelletier smiled at the woman who was almost twice her age, but with probably a hundred times her experience.

"Yes, I was wondering if there was a party I hadn't been invited to."

"There's always a party somewhere. And always an invite lost in the mail."

Elaine wondered about that. Was it a private message of some sort? Then she realised she was doing the agent thing again and trying to read layers into innocent, off-the-cuff remarks.

MacDonald was looking around. "Damn, I was hoping to see either Travers or Naidoo."

She waved the piece of paper in her hand to demonstrate the reason for her search for the agents. She looked at Elaine, and came to a decision. "This came direct to my secure, internal email an hour ago. Nobody should have that address outside the agency, and they definitely shouldn't be able to get it into my inbox. I.T. support is sweating bullets right now trying to work out who carried out the hack, but while they're doing that I want its contents investigated. Travers and Naidoo aren't here, so you get the job. Keep me in the loop, Swan. I want to know everything that's behind this: who, how, when, where - everything."

Elaine Pelletier had been three years old when she decided that she should be a princess, and insisted on being called that by her parents, grandparents and anyone else who knew or even met her. So she was Princess until her baby sister came along and insisted that she be called Princess as well. Their parents, faced with daily head-to-head battles and screaming matches between their two daughters had finally compromised. Elaine became Princess One, and Sally became Princess Two. Over the years, the name had shortened to Swan and Stu. When Rebecca turned up almost two years later, she automatically became Princess Three, shortened to Strey. From then on Swan, Stu and Strey rarely answered to any other name - even at the DEA, where they all worked in different divisions.

She took the paper and gave it a quick glance. At first sight, it seemed like any other email: a straightforward sender address, and rather more complex receiver address which was definitely the one used for in-house emails.

She nodded at the older woman. "I'll get right on it, Mrs MacDonald!"

As she turned to go, Janet called her back. "I'll get I.T. to forward the original to you within an isolation folder once they make sure it doesn't have any nasty little surprises in it. Oh, and Swan... I was sorry to hear about Charles."

Swan pursed her lips and nodded, looking down at the floor for a moment. "Thanks, Mrs MacDonald. I'll get right onto this."

The twenty eight year old agent, recently engaged to be married to the handsome, charming, eminently eligible and inevitably cheating Charles Rackham, and now left lonely in her apartment for one, returned to her desk. She was determined to put Charles the Cunt, as she now thought of him, out of her mind and immediately set to work.

The email wasn't a message as such, but simply a quote and mug shot picture from a local newspaper from the south east USA. She had to look the place up on Google to discover it was on the Gulf coast, in the armpit of Florida.

It referred to the discovery of the corpse of a homeless man when a dumpster had been emptied, a bored worker noticing a hand flopping amongst the avalanche of refuse bags as it was tipped into the truck. The police had been called and, after an inspection which discovered knife wounds in his back, realised he had been murdered and cordoned off the area to start what she suspected would be a fairly desultory investigation. Homeless people didn't really count for much when it came to votes and taxes allocated to local police forces.

There was a photograph of an alleyway, partitioned off with police tape, and a dumpster parked halfway down it. That was it. Nothing revealing. No sudden inspiration.

Swan ran the man's name, or rather his nickname, through the system, and waited for it to chug its way through millions of records. She had no idea how computers actually did things mechanically, but she could make them sit up and beg through her keyboard.

She got bored and went and washed out her cup, opening her drawer to put it away. She never left her belongings out on her desk. Even the DEA had some weird people who would delight in stealing a stupid cup with a picture of Kennedy Space Centre on the side of it. For a moment she got caught up in the picture, remembering her parents taking her to see the Space centre and discovering that the space shuttle Endeavour had been delayed on launch the day before, and was due to go up while they were there. She could once again almost taste the excitement that had run up and down her eight-year old body, when in the far distance, a cloud of smoke had suddenly erupted around the base of the rocket and gantry, and within seconds the rocket and its human cargo were soaring up into the blue sky. They had stood and watched for long minutes after the little flare that marked the rocket had finally disappeared.

At that moment, Swan Pelletier knew that she was going to be an astronaut. She wasn't disappointed however, when she left college fourteen years later and joined the DEA at her father's gently persistent encouragement. She had been followed by her sisters, and the DEA became a second home to all four of them. Thinking about it, she wondered for the first time whether her mother had felt left out.

Her musing was interrupted by a soft sound and a flash from the monitor. The nickname 'Fade' hadn't raised a single record on the DEA register. It had, however, found a partial facial recognition on the Interpol database. Swan shook her head. She hadn't even realised that they were hooked up to Interpol, although when she thought about it, it made complete sense. Twenty per cent of the drugs mooching their way to America came from Europe, where Interpol had a much greater presence.

Noting that the picture definitely seemed to show a younger Fade, she read quickly. Apparently Fade had been christened Johannes De Groot when he was born in a little village just outside Bruges. After four undistinguished years in the Belgian army, he had disappeared, surfacing briefly into the view of officialdom now and again - usually connected with drugs and murder. He was an assassin in the pay of drug cartels in Europe. So what was doing lying murdered in a little backwater town in the USA?

Swan worried at a thumbnail with her teeth, a habit both parents and several teachers had been unable to break her of during her childhood.

Accessing local records, she examined the coroner's report, noting the cause and estimated time of death, and then sitting forward to stare at the diagram showing the wounds. Now this changed things considerably! An assassin's kill!

Her fingers flew across the keyboard, entering the wrong search parameters, and coming up with a worrying, albeit surprisingly correct answer. There had been a string of murders, possibly gang related or possibly not, across the eastern Gulf Coast. Some of the people were related to drugs, while other victims seemed to have no connection whatsoever.

The problem was, there wasn't a drug gang of note all along that coastline. There was a smallish operation headed by somebody calling himself the King, which was unsurprisingly not an unusual soubriquet in the drug business - she made a note to look that up - but nothing of a size that would lead to a war with this number of casualties. So someone was either moving up or moving in. Either way, it looked as if they were cleaning house with professional help.

She read up on the murder reports, trying to establish a firmer link. There was no specific method, no particular weapon, not even an established area. But people were dying violently in a wider geographic area than would have been expected. There was a link, but she just couldn't see it.

Then she came across two reports from confidential informants that referred to a boat. Her mind cleared. Where there was a boat on the south coast, there were drugs. It was almost inevitable. The convenient proximity of the Caribbean Islands and their more relaxed ideas about the legality of drug use, meant that any boat that could travel between mainland USA and a Caribbean island was involved in drugs. Either small scale amounts for personal use, or trying to smuggle bushels of powder past the coast guard and the port authorities.

So, someone was looking to set up a network of dealers and expand the drug trade in the Gulf Coast states, and was using professional wet-work specialists to clean house and move their own people into areas where they could deal without competition, and they were setting up a supply by boat.

She shook her head in wonder at the stupidity of it all. It was a dumb idea; one that had been tried so many times that the prisons were full of dealers with a nautical bent.

Perhaps if she had had more than just three years hands-on experience in analysis, or if she had been a little more reluctant to fall into the trap that said the first guess is the best, things might have been different.

Because Swan was completely wrong on almost every count. It wasn't about selling large amounts of drugs. It was about someone stealing a very small amount of them.

She went to inform Janet MacDonald of her findings, making a mental note to ask what IT had discovered. Perhaps there would be a further clue there.

*****

Wren giggled as she and Lachlan bounced on the bed, wriggling away to the side to turn the lights down to a romantic level. In the semi darkness she stripped her dress off, leaving her in her bra and panties. Delighted, she noticed that his eyes flicked downward to take in and appreciate both areas.