you probably hate me right now, and justifiably so, might I add. That emotion is a luxury you can indulge to your heart’s content later. For now, if I were you, I’d be more interested in what I needed to do to get my daughter back so I could get on with my life than in threatening me or vowing revenge.”
She glared at him and said nothing.
“I have a problem. You are the solution. Solve my problem and I let you reunite with your daughter and I step forever out of your life. You’re free to do whatever you like, and I’ll take the secret of your existence to my grave. Consider it the price of my assistance to you and David in the Grigenko matter.”
“Solve your problem,” Jet repeated.
“Yes.”
“Do I need to ask what the problem is?”
The eerily smooth skin of his face pulled taut in a grimace that could have been a model for a Munch painting. He was smiling.
“Why, my dear, I think it’s obvious. I need you to kill someone.”
Chapter 5
Arthur nodded at the guard outside to shut the door and then walked slowly to the foot of the steel bed she was tied to and looked her over.
“That’s it? You want me to kill someone? For that you need to take my daughter and blackmail me?” Jet demanded.
“I think you would find this more palatable if you regarded it as payback for all of the help I arranged for David on his Russian issue. And as for your daughter, if you accept that I’m taking good care of her while you’re otherwise occupied with this errand, it will be easier for both of us. Again, there’s nothing I want more than for you to have, er, Hannah back. I can only imagine how awful it must be to have finally found her, only to have her torn away from you.”
“Forgive me if I don’t get all weepy at your sentiment.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“So why does the CIA need me to perform a sanction for it? You have people who can take care of that sort of thing — being the best funded and largest intelligence service in the history of the world, and all.”
“This is a delicate matter. We have already tried to attend to it in-house, but haven’t been successful. When you showed up looking for your daughter, it created an opportunity. You specialize in a kind of work that’s a dying art, I’m afraid. Ever since the Wall came down and Russia stopped being the great Satan, our skills and resources have diminished. Sure, the Chinese present a clear and present danger, and the odd foray into the Middle East has kept us in practice, but nothing to hold a candle to your achievements. You could say I’m somewhat of a fan.”
“How could you possibly know about my missions with the Mossad?”
“That’s one of the questions I won’t be able to answer. Suffice it to say, I know what nobody is supposed to, and frankly, your resume is as impressive as hell. I’ve been a player for forty years, and I’ve never encountered such attributes. It’s truly remarkable. If you were a gymnast or a ballerina, you’d have a cabinet full of gold medals. Alas, it’s a rarified talent, but one that I completely appreciate.”
“Spare me.”
Arthur rubbed his ruined face. “Let me tell you a story. It’s one that I’ve never told another living person.”
“Meaning all the others are dead…”
“Yes. But no matter. It’s a fascinating one. It involves greed, corruption, deception, and betrayal.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Hmm. Three months ago, I was in charge of conducting a transaction in Asia. In its essence, it was a simple matter. The CIA arranged to fund certain factions with interests aligned with our own, whose cooperation was deemed vital. Are you familiar with Myanmar?”
“Burma. Military dictatorship. Rogue nation. What’s to know?”
“Then you’re probably aware that it is not considered friendly by my government. Let’s just say that if you’re an enemy of my enemy, you are my friend, for the moment.”
“That didn’t work out so well for Saddam Hussein, did it?”
“I don’t make the rules. Anyway, there was a group in Myanmar that we felt were deserving of our support. But not the sort that you can go to Congress to sign off on. More discreet. To cut a long story short, one of our top agents in the region was chartered with handling the transaction. Fifty million dollars in diamonds. Untraceable. All of them easily convertible to cash. It was a simple arrangement. He was to go in, give our friends the diamonds, and then report back. But apparently, he had different ideas. The money was too large, or maybe he had just been in-country too long. He took delivery of the diamonds, but our friends never received them. And then we learned that they had been butchered in a gun battle. So it would appear that our man decided to retire and give himself a better than customary pension. Fifty million in diamonds’ worth.”
“So he stole your diamonds. But, come on. Fifty million is a drop in the bucket. Didn’t I read that your defense department can’t account for something like ten trillion dollars? Fifty million is beer money — a rounding error. There are Wall Street moguls who stole twenty times that much who are still walking around New York, who never even got charged.”
“True, but the point is that we can’t have our operatives stealing company property. Sends the wrong message, I think you’ll agree.”
“And why is it that you haven’t been able to deal with this yourself?”
“To be frank, we tried on two separate occasions. Both ended disastrously. This man has decades of experience in the region and is as comfortable there as a native. He’s disappeared into the jungle, where he’s living like a tribal chieftain. It’s proved difficult to even establish where he is on any given day. Add to that, the wrinkle that the Myanmar government is actively hostile to us, and it’s a recipe for disaster.”
“What happened to the last two teams that tried to take him out? What went wrong?”
“Unknown. The first operative was found in Northern Thailand. The indigenous animals had feasted on him, so there wasn’t a lot left to process. Our last attempt, two men, disappeared without a trace. We’ve had no word from them for over a week. They had a sat phone that would work anywhere in the world, so it’s safe to say they’re off the table. Which brings us to you.”
“I might be more receptive to this if I wasn’t strapped in some prison cell.”
“I need you to fully understand the gravity of the situation, and not try to harm anyone here if we untie you.”
“At some point you’ll need to release me.”
“I think I’ll feel better about that once you’ve had a day to think this through. For the moment, I don’t believe you won’t immediately try to rip my throat out. And I’ve grown rather fond of it in my dotage.”
She glared at him. He had so far read her correctly.
“What I propose is that you take on this assignment. In return, upon its successful completion, I will give you half a million dollars — which will go a long way towards paying for your daughter’s education and whatnot. You are free to choose any method you like to terminate the target, but with one caveat. I want the diamonds back. We haven’t seen a flood on the market, so he still has them. Get me the diamonds and bring me his head, and you’ll have your freedom as well as a handsome reward. That’s the deal.”
“Wow. A one percent finder’s fee. That’s very generous.”
Arthur cocked a particularly ugly patch of scar tissue that used to be an eyebrow.
“Ah. Well, at least now we have a negotiation. Fine. I’ll up the offer to two percent of anything you bring back. Up to a million dollars.”
“And these straps? I’ll have to go to the bathroom sooner or later.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
He turned to leave. “Think this over. When I return, I will expect an answer, which will be a binding commitment.”
“So help me, if you harm a hair on Hannah’s head-”
