Avenger (20 page)

Ş
tefania woke with the birds, just as she had ever since she’d begun her new life in this place. It wasn’t hard to fall back into the routine whenever she returned from her trips away. She decided she’d take a swim before breakfast. It was a little earlier than usual for her but it couldn’t hurt and, besides, there seemed to be no one else around.

Her dreams of the past few nights had been full of freedom. She could almost smell Sevastopol in the summer, and the evening breeze drifting into her mother’s living room from the Black Sea. She was on the home straight now and felt relieved beyond words, although something about that scene at Domingo’s two nights ago didn’t make sense to her. So what if that guy Marcos had tried to slip her something? He was cute and everybody did it, and at least it made it easier to forget when they did. She couldn’t understand why he seemed to know Godek, though, and still had no idea what had happened to him afterward. He didn’t come back to the house with them, Dee would never allow that. The last she saw of him was when he’d disappeared back into Domingo’s from the hotel foyer. The only good thing about it all was that last night she’d heard Dee, Dariusz and that cute new guy who’d interfered in the bar, whoever he was, leaving for the airport. After that, Godek and the others were drinking and making noise for a while before it all went quiet again. They’d probably all gone to Domingo’s and, judging by the lack of uproar in the middle of the night – which would mean they’d returned home – she was sure they’d gone up to San Pedro. That meant they wouldn’t get a boat back until later this morning.

For the first time in a long time,
Ş
tefania felt completely unsupervised. There’d been no knocks on her door during the night from any of the guys wanting sex, no check calls to make sure she was accounted for, and no chaperone shadowing her every move. She felt free. Soon she’d be done with it all and the Witch would finally let her go, with enough money to start a new life.

Dressed in just a bikini, a towel thrown over her shoulder, 
Ş
tefania
 strolled from her room in the main house along the tiled path that led to the pool. For a moment she thought she could hear someone in the water but knew that was impossible – no one else was ever up at this time, not even the Witch. She kept walking, a little more cautiously now, wrapping her towel around her waist and listening. There it was again. She slowed her pace and carefully approached the pool.

Even though she was due to leave in just a couple of days, there were strict rules about being outside the house and especially about using the pool. She reached the bed of ferns and palms that separated the house from the poolside and stopped dead in her tracks. There was another girl, someone she didn’t know, pulling herself up and out of the water.
Ş
tefania stood frozen, watching her. Was it the Witch? It couldn’t be. She’d left last night. But the girl in the pool looked exactly like her in every way.
Ş
tefania’s hand came up to her own face, trying to comprehend why there was another girl at the house who could have passed for her own sister or for Dee.

“Hello,” she said timidly, walking out from behind the ferns. “Who are you?”

The girl seemed startled by the unexpected voice. She grabbed for her towel and wrapped it around her.

Ş
tefania walked across to her, each of them sizing the other up, mesmerized by their similarities – height, weight, body shape, hair, even the length of their legs and arms, but above all their blue eyes – everything was as close to identical as possible without an actual biological connection.

“Who are you?” whispered
Ş
tefania, shocked. They were much closer now, just a few feet apart.

“Jovana,” the other girl answered, equally breathlessly. “Who are you?”

“
Ş
tefania,” she answered.

It was as if the two of them were in a trance, standing so close they could study each other in intimate detail.

“What are you doing here?” Jovana asked. “I mean, where did you come from?”

“I’ve lived here for months,”
Ş
tefania answered honestly. “But I’ve been away.”

“You live here?” Jovana asked. “But I’ve never seen you.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Only a week or so. I’ve seen your face in the make-up room. Your picture is on the wall, with all the others.”

“With all the others?”
Ş
tefania asked. “Other girls?”

“Yes,” Jovana replied. “I thought those were pictures of models they were using to make me look like … her.”

“Like Dee,” said
Ş
tefania. She wouldn’t dare say “the Witch” out loud.

Jovana nodded. “And … like you, I suppose.”

“This is too random,” said
Ş
tefania. She sat down on one of the sunloungers and Jovana did the same. The whole situation was starting to make sense.
Ş
tefania was moving out and Jovana was being moved in to replace her. She started thinking closely about her encounter with Marcos. He knew Godek. She’d seen them talking like friends … “We really shouldn’t be seen together,” she realized suddenly.

“But why? No one’s ever told me anything like that. Why can’t we talk?”

“Because every minute of your day is planned for you – what time you get up, what time you can swim, eat, shower, piss – am I right?”

Jovana remained silent.

“That’s because she doesn’t want you to see anybody you shouldn’t.”

There was a clamor of activity coming from the house. Male voices. They’d returned from their night off.

“Fuck! They’re back already,” said
Ş
tefania, frightened. “They can’t find us together. Come on!”

She grabbed Jovana by the hand and the two of them ran back to the house, avoiding the main path as they did.
Ş
tefania led the way through the palms and ferns, the branches whipping at their arms and faces as they ran. Soon they were through and clear. There were just ten feet of open space between the end of the garden and the tiled path back to their rooms in the guest wing. The two of them stood still for a second, watching and listening. There was nothing. The men were all over on the other side of the house, on the floor above. No one had come outside on to the balcony.

“OK,” whispered
Ş
tefania, still holding Jovana’s hand. “They’re all inside. It sounds like they’ve brought some girls back with them. Quickly!”

With that, they broke cover and ran for the door.

Standing just far enough back from the balcony so he couldn’t be seen from below, Godek Kajkowski watched the girls. His right arm was outstretched and in his hand was an iPhone. The phone gave a series of digital clicks, capturing the scene perfectly. He dropped the phone back into his pocket and headed downstairs.

Jovana was in her room. She was on the bed, clutching her legs protectively against her body. Her eyes were closed tight and she was rocking back and forth.

She was thinking about the girl,
Ş
tefania, and what she had said about Dee. Why did they look so alike and why had Dee chosen her, Jovana, when she already had another girl who was identical to her, almost her twin? And what did
Ş
tefania mean about every minute and every day being planned? It had seemed that way at first but Jovana thought that was just because it was all so new. Was she being taken care of or was she being used – again? Why did it always have to be so hard? Why did this have to happen to her? All she wanted was her freedom, her life back. Why did people always think they could own her?

She’d heard a commotion outside in the corridor. A lot of noise, the voices of men, cajoling, howling and whistling. “
Ş
tefania!” they were calling. “
Ş
tefania, where are you? You’ve been a bad girl again.” It was the younger guys. Two or three of them, she thought.
Assholes
.

Tentatively, Jovana got off the bed, went to the door of her room and pressed her ear against it, listening, terrified. What did they want with
Ş
tefania? Had they been seen together? She stayed pressed against the door as the voices passed by and continued further along the corridor, still calling out, taunting.

She reached for the handle and grabbed it, but froze immediately.

A loud series of bangs – one, two, three – in quick succession startled her and she jumped away from the door. It happened again –
bang
,
bang
,
bang
! The sound of a heavy fist pounding on a door down the corridor.

“
Ş
tefania! Open the door!”

She heard the voice and knew it immediately, deep, cruel and older than the others. The leader of the pack; the animal with no compassion – Godek. He had given Jovana the worst of the treatment she’d received on the night they’d brought her back, fucking her as if she was nothing more than a lifeless sex toy.

“
Ş
tefania!” Godek demanded again. And then, when there was no response from the room, she heard him bark at one of the other men, “Open it!”

What followed terrified Jovana. As the men burst into the room, she heard
Ş
tefania screaming, pleading with them to leave her alone, but that wasn’t going to happen. Jovana fell to the floor and curled into a fetal position by the door, shaking and crying, covering her ears, trying to block out the unimaginable trauma of hearing the girl, one just like her, being attacked by the men. Her attempts to block it out proved futile until
Ş
tefania’s exhausted screams became nothing more than muted cries.

Sometime later – Jovana didn’t know how long – she was wrenched from a fear-induced semiconsciousness by a deafening thump on her door. It sounded like a kick. Instantly she was awake. She scurried over to the bed to huddle there before the door opened. She waited in panicked silence, clutching a pillow, shaking uncontrollably. But the door didn’t open. All she could hear was the sound of an utterly defeated
Ş
tefania protesting in vain as she was dragged from her room and along the corridor. Jovana tried to call out, to offer her comfort or even hope, but fear froze the words in her mouth. Outside, the volume of the girl’s cries diminished as they took her away.

A key rattled in Jovana’s door. She recoiled, stumbled into her en suite bathroom, slammed the door shut and locked it, pressing herself as far back into the room as she could, looking for something to defend herself with – realizing that there was absolutely nothing that she could use as a weapon.

An unnerving silence ensued. It lasted for about thirty seconds and then a voice, very close to the door, jolted her.

“You’re lucky you’re not getting the same treatment as your friend right now, little princess,” whispered Godek. “But the Witch has other plans for you.”

“Leave me alone,” she screamed. “Go away!”

“Don’t worry, I will,” he sneered. “But when I come back, you might not be so lucky.”

 “So, the investors want to send some of their people along to attend your meeting with the Chinese. What’s the problem with that?” Morgan asked, purposely rattling Voloshyn’s cage. They were in the Mercedes SUV returning from Placencia Airport. You could cut the air with a chainsaw. The Witch was in the back with Dariusz and Morgan was up front with the driver. Voloshyn had her eyes glued to her iPhone, tapping furiously. She looked disturbed, like she’d received bad news, and Morgan wanted to push her buttons. “Sounds like they’re protecting their end of the deal. Makes sense.”

“Why the fuck does it make sense?” she demanded, annoyed, dropping the iPhone back into her lap.

“Well, from what you’ve told me, they’re investing some serious money in your operation and the uncertainty around this Hong Kong angle seems important to them. Fair enough, too. After the trouble you had there – you said so yourself, something about putting the deal back by weeks? Well, if you ask me, it makes sense that they’d want one of their own people on the ground here.”

“I don’t care what they want. I don’t like being fucking supervised,” she snapped. “And nobody fucking asked you! You’re on the payroll to make sure nothing goes wrong, not to give me fucking business advice. So start thinking about that.”

Morgan remained silent for the rest of the drive. He was pleased with her reaction, albeit with reservations. She was definitely on edge, as he’d seen from the moment she had emerged from the meeting with the investors back in LA. He had been relegated to nothing more than a guard dog, sitting obediently outside the hotel suite. Occasionally Dariusz would come out to see if he was still there, behaving.

Morgan had decided to play the bodyguard role to the hilt. If they wanted him to be a hired gun, then that’s what he’d be. At least now he was on the inside and close enough to see exactly what was going on around her. When the meeting eventually finished, he had escorted her back to her suite – after making a show of clearing it – and withdrawn to his own room until they checked out that morning.

When Morgan had first climbed into the Mercedes for the trip from the airport, he’d known nothing at all about the outcome of the meeting. Now, by listening to their muted conversation, grabbing the few strands he could decipher, picking his moment and choosing the correct strategy, his direct questions had unsettled her. In the space of just a few minutes, he’d confirmed that Wu Ming was coming to the villa in two days’ time to close the deal, and that the “investors,” whoever they were, were sending down a representative. For Morgan, this was a potential goldmine of intelligence and, more than anything, an unprecedented opportunity to rattle Voloshyn’s cage to maximum effect.

“Rather than enduring any more of your silent treatment,” he began, after a few moments, “I’d actually prefer to enjoy the rest of my day. You can drop me back at the hotel. If you decide you’d actually like to utilize my expertise then one of your boys can collect me in the morning. If not, I’m going to squeeze some quality downtime out of the next few hours and wish you all the best with your meeting. I’ll fly out tomorrow.”

Morgan didn’t receive a response but noted an exchange of looks between the driver and Voloshyn via the rear-view mirror. Then, as they approached the Paradise Palms Resort, the driver suddenly spun the wheel hard left off the main road and the Mercedes came to a stop in front of the hotel’s reception foyer. Morgan stepped out calmly and just managed to extract his bags from the back of the SUV before the driver planted his foot again and they all sped away.

“Cheers,” he said to the back of the vanishing car.

“Welcome back, sir. May I help you with your bags?”

It was one of the hotel staff Morgan had met when he’d first arrived in Placencia. He was smiling broadly and holding the doors open.

“Thank you very much,” Morgan replied as he wandered through. “But I can manage.”

“Good afternoon, Mr Culliford,” came an equally pleasant greeting from a young woman who appeared to have been waiting for him personally at the reception desk. Her nametag said “Emily.” She turned and withdrew an old Lockwood key on a tag from a board behind her. They hadn’t quite advanced to smartcard technology here yet. “We’ve kept your room for you.”

Morgan considered the futility of requesting another room within a hotel owned by his adversary and filled to the gunnels with staff on her payroll. He accepted the proffered key without protest. If the Night Witch wanted someone to access his room they would do it. Changing rooms wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. Besides, he had nothing on him or in his luggage that could compromise him. He wasn’t even carrying a gun – or any other weapons, for that matter – which made him feel naked. Even the cell phone he was using was a standard, commercially available iPhone. That said, before he’d left LA he’d managed to get a call through to his friend Bill in Guatemala. He, like Morgan, was ex-Parachute Regiment and they knew each other well enough to call in favors. If things were going to heat up as much as Morgan expected they would, then he was going to need some tools. He checked his watch and looked around the foyer, hoping Bill remembered that today was the day he needed them. Nothing and no one.
Shit.

Morgan made his way back through the hotel, up to the third and top floor, and meandered to his room. Despite the east-facing, ocean-view aspect, and the fact that it was being advertised as a four-star luxury destination favored by international guests, the hotel was three star at best. Morgan didn’t care. Anything that didn’t involve him sleeping on the ground under a square of porous plastic was five star in his eyes. He was just glad to have some time away from Voloshyn and her crew. Over the past couple of days, he had found his necessary association with them, particularly her, nauseating. He knew it was a gamble, leaving her with an ultimatum as he had, but he felt she’d take the bait. She was panicked, stressed and vulnerable. She knew it and she also knew she was surrounded by morons at a time when she could least afford to be. Above all, with the pressure of the visit by Wu Ming and her investors’ watchdog looming ever larger on the horizon, she was desperate. She needed Morgan more than she realized.

When he entered his room, he dropped his bag on the spot made for it, sat on the bed to pull off his R. M. Williams boots, and then dialed reception.

“Hello, sir. This is Emily, how may I help you?”

“Hello, Emily. I wonder if you would book me a flight to Belize City, leaving late tomorrow morning?”

“I’m afraid the earliest flight out tomorrow isn’t until two pm, sir.”

“That’s absolutely fine,” he replied. “Go ahead and make the arrangements for me and I’ll pay the airline once you let me know.”

“Very well, sir. I’ll call you back shortly.”

“Thanks,” he replied, and hung up.

That would take no time at all to get back to Voloshyn. At least she’d know he was serious about leaving. Now he had time to think and knew he needed to focus on how to approach his duties over the next few days. He would be expected to pull out all the stops ahead of an important meeting with her commercial partners involving a deal worth multimillions, in fact billions, of dollars. He’d nettled her enough. When she sent her driver to collect him in the morning, and she would, he needed to show her that he knew what he was doing, and to do that he needed to have a look around her villa without her knowledge.

He walked over to the writing desk and found a map of Placencia among the piles of tourist guff. He laid it out on the bed and refreshed his memory of the key landmarks along the coast between the Paradise Palms and Voloshyn’s villa, about six miles due north. If he took a cab even partway, word would get around within seconds of his leaving the hotel. Scratch that. Alternatively, it’d take him a bit over an hour and a half to walk it or about forty-five minutes to run. That was an idea. He loved to run. It was a rare bonus when an opportunity to strap on the trainers occurred while deployed on a mission.

Back home in Surrey, running was his morning ritual, usually about five miles. Twice a week, time permitting, he’d stretch it out to a fifteen-mile circuit – from his house on the outskirts of Farnham, through the town, up the hill past Farnham Castle toward Odiham, then Fleet, then back via Church Crookham and home. It would usually take him around two hours, give or take. Running kept him honed physically and grounded mentally. The inherent stress of his profession and living in the constant shadow of his own mortality obliged him to take care of himself. If he let the ritual slip when he was at home it would be too easy to fall into old habits from his army days.

Morgan loved a drink to shut down, always had, and never more so than when he could enjoy a few with his closest friends, but with a nagging tendency toward melancholy – which he blamed on his Welsh genes – he wasn’t about to allow complacency to get the better of him. So, he decided, after all the traveling and sitting around he’d done so far on this mission, a run would do him a lot of good right now.

Then there was a knock at the door.

Morgan sprang across the room noiselessly and waited a moment. There was a pause of a few seconds followed by a second tap and then a business card was pushed under the door. Morgan reached across and picked it up.

AJ ARMSTRONG

PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT

IRONSIDE SECURITY

There was an email address and a series of numbers – cells, landlines and faxes – all listed by country and all prefixed with the international codes for Mexico, Guatemala and Belize respectively. Morgan flipped the card. A handwritten note on the back read:
Bill says hello
.

Standing next to the wall for cover, Morgan reached across and opened the door.

“All right, boss?” came a jovial greeting, accompanied by an equally jovial face. The man was about Morgan’s height, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, a rugby player type. He was stocky with dark hair shaved almost down to the scalp, cauliflower ears and a flattened nose. He was dressed in the obligatory soldier’s “day-off” rig: cargo shorts, sports sandals and T-shirt. Looping a finger through the collar of the T-shirt he dragged it down just enough to reveal the cap badge of the Parachute Regiment with the Roman numeral II beneath it, tattooed across the left side of his chest. Morgan smiled warmly, holding up three fingers in response to indicate he had served with 3PARA.

“Right to come in, am I?” asked the new arrival.

“Of course, mate,” Morgan replied, relaxing and shaking the man’s hand. He held a cautionary finger to his lips, indicating that he expected the room was bugged. He got an “acknowledged” nod back from the other man as he stepped into the room. “Come in. Great to see you again.”

“So how are you, boss?” the man asked. The two men had never met before. “It’s been a while.”

“I’m good, AJ,” replied Morgan warmly. “Jesus, I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Yeah, it’s been fucken forever. Kabul, I s’pose, when you was with the Aussies, yeah?”

AJ crossed his eyes and made a wanking gesture with his hand, taking the piss. He knew the score. While he spoke, he slipped a daypack from his shoulder and extracted a heavy but compact parcel from within it. It was an olive drab waterproof dry-sack fastened tight across the top. He handed it to Morgan and made a pistol signal with his finger and thumb, followed by a slitting motion across his own throat. Morgan nodded gratefully and gave him the thumbs up.

“Hope you don’t mind me droppin’ in unannounced and all that but, you know, I was sure I saw you down the bar a couple of nights ago only I was with a client then, know what I mean? So, here’s me, I had time up me sleeve today an’ I thought I’d see if you were still here, like. And, fuck me, no sooner had I walked into the foyer than there you were disappearing into the fucken lift. I’ve knocked on almost every door on this fucken floor.”

The two men laughed.

“I tell you what, mate,” Morgan replied. “Why don’t we go down to the bar and have a drink? You got time?”

“I’ve got time for one, boss,” AJ replied professionally. Morgan walked into the bathroom as AJ continued to talk about his faux plans for the day, and deftly stashed the dry-sack in the cistern of the toilet. “But then I’ll have to fuck off, you know, because I have to fly back to Belize City on the five o’clock. Still, it’ll give us time for a quick catch-up and you can tell me what you’ve been up to all these years.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Morgan replied, stepping back into his boots. He walked past AJ, grabbed his room key from the writing desk and the two of them walked out. “At least we’ll have enough time to swap a few stories.”

Out in the corridor they spoke openly. AJ Armstrong was a former corporal with 2PARA. He had served in Iraq and Afghanistan with Morgan’s old friend Bill, who had been AJ’s former company sergeant major. Now AJ did occasional contract work for him, operating mainly out of Mexico. It was obvious that he held Bill in the highest regard and his willingness to get on a plane from Mexico City the previous night and fly to Belize, just to source and personally deliver an obviously illegal firearm and knife, was testament to the inherent loyalty written into the DNA of the regiment.

Morgan and Armstrong maintained the pretence of being a couple of old army friends catching up over a beer in the bar. They kept it short and sweet. As soon as they’d finished their beer, Armstrong stood up to leave. They shook hands and he said to Morgan, “I don’t know what it is you’re doing down here, boss, but if you get in the shit and you need a hand, give me a fucken shout, all right? I mean it. I’m fed up with corporate assholes who keep gettin’ themselves kidnapped, you know what I mean? My details are on the card or just leave a message for me with George Hemsworth down the road at the Drop Zone Bar. It’s his place. He’s ex-Reg. 2PARA and Pathfinders, back in the day. Good man. He’ll get a message to me. And if you need a good old-fashioned hard case, then go no further than George. They don’t make ’em like him anymore.” And with that, AJ turned and headed out to get a cab.