Countdown: H Hour (25 page)

The problem there
, thought Kiertzner,
is that
I’m
acting, but Feeney is not.

He’s serious
, thought the woman.
Ohmygodhe’sSERIOUS
! She turned begging eyes to Kiertzner. “Please, I’ll be good from now on. Don’t hurt me.”

Kiertzner shook his head, regretfully. “I’m sorry, Madam,” he said, “but you made a request to be released immediately, which request both my commander and the captain of this vessel have approved. You will have to take this up with them.

“Off with her, Sergeant Feeney.”

If anything, the refined accent in which those words were spoken added, and perhaps immeasurably, to the woman’s horror.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Barbarism is needed every four or

five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.

—Edmond de Goncourt

8767 Paseo de Roxas, Makati City, Manila,

Republic of the Philippines

Welch looked ashen, that and confused, as he emerged from the tower fronting the triangular green parkway on the other side of the dual lane road. Lox, waiting at the entrance to the building, had to raise his voice to be heard over the sounds of traffic coming from the intersection to the east and the matching road—amusingly enough named for their principal client—to the west.

“What’s wrong, Terry?”

Welch shook his head. Almost too softly to be heard, he answered, “The bank manager didn’t understand why, either, but the Philippine government has ordered a stop on all transactions involving the corporation or Guyana. They wouldn’t honor the draft.”

“My guess,” Lox said, “would be that the international community of the very caring and sensitive put a little pressure on them, all ‘in the interests of peace,’ of course, and probably all across the globe. That, or it’s just the Philippine government trying to control the usual menu of problems. Shit. What are we going to do, boss?”

“I don’t know. I’d considered asking our principal for an advance from escrow, but she’s almost ready to throw in the towel, anyway. That might just push her over the edge, and without getting us the advance.”

“Better think of something quick. We’ve got two days before they hang one of Benson’s men.”

Terry snapped then, something he rarely did. “God-damn-it, Lox, fucking tell me something I don’t already know.”

Lox blinked several times in shock. “Geez, sorry, Terry.”

Ashamed, Welch shook his head. “No,
I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. But I don’t know what to do. And it’s making me sick. Jesus, I wish I’d never taken on this gig.
Nothing
is working out right.”

Lox nodded.
I understand; fuggedaboutit.
Then he added, “Hey, I got a call while you were in the bank. If it helps any, Malone thinks he’s identified the girl.”

Safe House Alpha, Hagonoy, Bulacan, Luzon,

Republic of the Philippines

The rest of the advance party was clustered around Malone, where he sat in front of a monitor. The sergeant’s eyes were bloodshot and his face slack and weary. He hadn’t slept since his half of the team had been taken. Instead, he’d spent every moment pouring over the on line ads of Manila’s
very
many escorts, prostitutes, and courtesans. There were over one hundred thousand women, and not a few transvestites, in the Manila area. Only the fact that most of them couldn’t afford to take out an ad, that, and the search function, had let Malone whittle them down to a still huge number.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Malone said. “Maybe they shouldn’t all look alike to me, but they do. At least enough alike that it was too hard to tell. But I’m over ninety percent certain this is her. And none of the others fit the bill at all.”

Malone’s finger pointed at a—
Well
, thought Welch,
frankly good looking
—Filipina in a not very flattering or tasteful pose.
Besides, not his fault foreigners are hard to distinguish. To our brains, they
do
look more like each other than they look different to us. Damned shame reality is misogynist, racist, and mean.

“
Not
a hundred percent. After fucking her in every God-damned hole, you still can’t identify her?”

Malone hung his head. “No, sir. Not a hundred percent.”

“Useless fuckwad,” Terry said. Malone’s chin dropped just that much more.

“Well, we’re not going to kidnap and ‘interrogate’ some poor innocent hooker because Malone could only concentrate on his own dick. We need to make sure before we touch her.”

“Graft?”

“Yessir.”

“You take Malone and another man, maybe two—your call who, and how many—and get a hotel room or rooms. Make an arrangement for this girl”—he indicated the image on the screen with a gesture—“to do a house call. If it’s her in person, take her and bring her here. If not, enjoy your blowjob and get Malone back on the computer to find the right girl. And bring me
that
girl.”

“Yessir.”

“Better get an expensive hotel. If she’s in the business of marking clients for kidnapping, she’d never come to a cheap place. Wouldn’t be good hunting territory.”

“Lox?”

Lox felt a sudden wave of something like nausea—or, at least, anxiety—pass over him. He was pretty sure he knew what was coming. “Sir.”

“You’re not going to like this,” Welch said, “but—on the off chance that Malone is slightly less of a fuckhead than all the recent evidence seems to suggest—you’re going to have to interrogate a woman. And you’re not going to be able to take much time over it.”

Lox transformed his face into a stone mask. What he did to any personal feelings he might have had—concerning that or anything else—were entombed with the face. Without a word he left the room, the building, and then went to his interrogation room.

“Aida’s report on TCS is on my desk, Lox,” Welch called to the warrant officer’s back.

Hotel Dusit Thani, Makati City, Manila,

Republic of the Philippines

Welch had said, “A hotel room or rooms.” Graft didn’t feel like being doctrinaire about it; he got two suites.

“The girl’s more likely to make an effort to show up someplace nice,” was Graft’s stated reasoning. “Besides, they’ll be better insulated for sound.”

The suites, well furnished and about eight hundred square feet, each, were nice, and also well insulated. Light gold carpets matched darker gold drapes. The couches were striped, white, and a light green. There were even a few live plants.

Graft had taken three other men, including Malone. One of those, Ferd Franceschi, waited with him in the hotel room. Both had used false passports to register. Another man, Semmerlin, with a very tiny pen camera in his pocket, waited outside. Malone was in a nearby room, watching a laptop linked to both Semmerlin’s camera and another in Graft’s room, poised on the laptop and facing the hotel room door. A couple of unpacked bags had been left on display. It wouldn’t do to make the girl bolt early by looking like anything but a western businessman, lonely and horny. That said, the bags contained nothing but chunks of wood, packed in crumpled newspaper. Everybody was linked by cells with Bluetooths. The laptop linked to Semmerlin and his pen-cam was the only thing that wasn’t there just for display.

Ferd watched the thin parade of girls leaving taxis and chauffeured autos, displayed on the laptop’s screen. Occasionally he whistled and occasionally he sighed. “What did you say these girls cost?”

“About sixty bucks,” Graft answered. “For whatever you want to do to them.”

“Jesus,” the Aussie exclaimed. “That’s shit. Those are some nice looking sheilas.”

Graft laughed, cynically. “You think that’s cheap? Out of that sixty, the girl will be lucky to see two. Shitty world, isn’t it?”

“Yeah . . . right shitty.”

A voice came from each man’s Bluetooth. It was Malone.

“Semmerlin, that girl in the white dress with flowers printed on it. That’s her, to about ninety-nine percent.”

“Are you sure that’s the girl who set you up?” Graft asked.

“No, ninety-nine percent, like I said. Not
much
doubt about it. I wasn’t that sure from the pic on line. I’m that sure now.”

“Well . . . Semmerlin, did you make the car she came in?”

“It was a taxi, Graft, no guard or chauffeur. It’s gone. I got the phone number if you think it’s necessary.”

“Nah, we can probably forget about the taxi.”

“What would you have done if it had been a dedicated driver?” Ferd asked.

All three, Graft, Semmerlin, and Malone, answered simultaneously, “Killed him.” Semmerlin added, “Assuming the girl’s one hundred percent, and then I’d have made it look like a robbery.”

TCS had given Maricel several days off for a job well done. It wasn’t an excessively generous organization, though. After her brief leave, she was instructed to get back to work. Her work, of course, was primarily prostitution, but with the related and significant side line of finding targets. Since TCS allowed her very little of the money she brought in via selling herself, finding an attractive mark to take for ransom, and the resulting bonus, were an important part of her livelihood, however infrequently the opportunity arose.

Fortunately, her mother, long since retired, ordinarily took care of Maricel’s baby when she had to work. Her mother lived in Valenzuela City, well north of Tondo.

She’d worked the Dusit Thani many times before, so many, in fact, that she’d long since lost count. She actually liked it more than most places, because, for a working girl, the Dusit Thani was safe. That’s why she’d been able to take a taxi, rather than have to wait for a guard and driver to take her. And, of course, without having to wait for a guard and driver, she hadn’t had to tell TCS’s “entertainment division” that she was on the job.

Some hotels made a girl registered there take the employee’s entrance. The Dusit, however, didn’t mind if you came in through the lobby provided you didn’t
look
like a hooker. Maricel had taken some pains in that respect. It hadn’t hurt that she’d had quite a bit of practice lately, in Muntinlupa, looking, dressing, and acting like a normal woman. Moreover, some of her unusually large earnings had gone into a couple of tasteful new dresses, a new purse, and a new pair of Italian heels to match.

Gliding past potted palms, she stopped off at the desk, to have the desk clerk call and announce her to the client. This he did in a very businesslike way. He knew, of course, what Maricel did for a living, but any show of knowing that might have detracted from the hotel’s image and reputation.

“Mr. Springfield?” Well, that’s what the guest’s passport had said. “There’s a young lady who says you’re expecting her . . . ah, yes, sir. I’ll send her right up.”

Waiting for the elevator, Maricel thought,
The American on the other end of the phone sounded pretty lonely. With any luck, this could turn into a long engagement and a nice tip, even if he turns out not to be a good candidate for kidnapping. They’ve never yet beaten me for only making a week’s worth of money. They wouldn’t this time, either. And, fair’s fair, at least they leave me my tips.

About ten seconds after opening the door for the girl and saying hello, which is to say, just enough time to close the door, walk to the chair, and start to undo his belt, Graft heard in his Bluetooth, “One hundred percent; that’s her!”

Before the girl could even sink to her knees, Graft spun around, punched her just above her face—
Ugh, I
hate
doing that to a woman
—knocked her down, jumped over her, spun her belly down, and gave her a second punch in the kidneys. The girl didn’t even have time to scream before the excruciating pain in her kidneys had her gasping like a dying fish.

“Ferd,” ordered Graft, “needle!”

Franceschi came out of the bathroom, bearing a syringe in one hand. He tapped the syringe with one finger of the other, then bent and gave Maricel the injection full in the buttocks.

“Semmerlin, car, exit B, three minutes.”

“Roger.”

“Malone, evacuate.”

“Roger.”

“Leave the bags but
don’t
forget to take the laptops. Ferd, give me a hand with this girl.”

Safe House Alpha, Hagonoy, Bulacan, Luzon,

Republic of the Philippines

Lox’s face was still a stone mask when Ferd and Graft carried the girl in, each with her under an arm. She was still groggy, but not completely unconscious. She also had a large welt growing on her forehead that bid fair to turn into a major bruise.

“Take her clothes off and tie her to the table,” he said tonelessly. “Then hook her up. Ferd, get on the field telephone; it’s about time for you to find out just how shitty our job can be.”

“Let’s hope she’s not a subbie,” Graft joked.

“Wouldn’t matter if she were,” Lox said. If anything, his voice had grown even duller. “I don’t know her safe word.”

If he’d ever heard anything more heartbreaking in his life, Lox didn’t know what it had been. Ferd, in a corner where the girl couldn’t see, was wiping his eyes. The girl, herself, moaned and wept, repeating endlessly, “Please . . . please . . . don’t hurt me anymore . . . I’m just a poor girl . . . I’m just a poor girl . . . please . . . ”

Rather than having another witness to check stories against, Lox had had only the file. He began the . . . for lack of a better word, the training, of the girl with questions he could check against information in Aida’s file in which he thought he could place high confidence. He’d also lied to her, telling her that they’d also grabbed another member of TCS to check her story against.

She’d broken very quickly. The problem, however, had been that the file lacked a great deal of the information desired . . . and the girl had lacked it, too. There’d been little choice, then, but to hurt her until it was really obvious,
painfully
obvious, that she just didn’t know.

“C’mon, Ferd,” Lox said, “time for a cigarette break.”

Franceschi looked, quizzically. He knew Lox didn’t smoke. Even so, when Lox went to the door, Ferd followed.

Ferd left Lox alone, sitting on the side steps, with his head in his hands, shaking. That’s where and how Welch found him, though a puddle of pungent puke had been added since Ferd had left him there.

“Did you find out what we needed to know?”

“As much as she knew. It wasn’t enough.”

“Damn.”

Lox raised his head. “Don’t you
ever
ask me to do something like that again. Not. EVER. And we’re
not
going to kill the girl.”

Welch nodded. He understood. “I wasn’t planning on it. And I won’t; you did what had to be done, but there are limits to what you can ask of someone, even of the things that have to be done. As for offing her . . . we’re going to have to think and talk about that one.”