The First Casualty (13 page)

Emphani gave a theatric sigh. “As you can see, unlike my Moslem forebears, I am no longer the head of my house, nor the terror of my children.”

Margot leaned on tip toe to kiss his cheek. “But you are the sweetest papa in all of Marseille, perhaps all of France.”

Jason was fairly certain that had it been possible to detect a blush, he would have seen one.

“Tell that woman, your mother, that I am discussing business with an old friend, one she would also like to greet into our home.”

Margot was scrutinizing Jason. “You are an American?”

“I am.”

“Do you know anyone at Harvard near Boston, Massachusetts? That is where I wish to go to school when I finish the academy here.”

Jason could not miss the sadness in Emphani's eyes, the look of a parent who knows his child's dream will never come true. “I'm afraid not, not a single one.”

Clearly disappointed, she managed a smile. “No matter. I will find someone who can help me gain admission.”

Jason stood, aware that traditional Moslem hospitality would require an invitation to a festive dinner, one that could take hours he did not have to spare. “I fear I must go, though it saddens me that I will not be able to see your beautiful wife again. I must be satisfied I have met such an attractive child.”

Emphani held up a hand. “Wait but a minute longer. I will go with you.”

“Not necessary. I have a few more things to do. I'll give you a destination and an airline ticket in a day or two. In the meantime, you can explain that you will be gone to your wife.”

Emphani shrugged as he led Jason through the bistro. “They understand. My . . . er . . . other businesses frequently require sudden absence.”

“You are blessed with an understanding family. But then, I suppose were you not, you could take another wife. Does not your religion allow this?”

Emphani grinned. “It does. If your culture permitted it, would you have taken a second wife?”

Jason smiled at the thought of Laurin's reaction to a polygamous relationship. “Are you kidding? Laurin would have made my life miserable.”

“Just so. And why do you think wives of Moslems are different?”

“Mohammad took multiple wives.”

“Possessing the wisdom and patience required to live under the same roof with more than a single woman is why he is the Prophet and ascended into paradise. I am but a man. Come, we will drive you to the airport.”

From the rear door, they entered a car park that extended behind the adjacent buildings. Margot was already in the driver's seat of an ancient and diminutive Peugeot Junior, a box with a tiny wheel at each corner.

Emphani climbed in beside his daughter leaving Jason to squeeze in behind them. “The airport,” he informed her.

Jason was trying to get comfortable in less square feet than his body occupied. “Yes. I'm headed to . . .”

Emphani somehow found the space to turn around, a finger across his lips. “One cannot unintentionally tell what one does not know. We must act as though the enemy has ears everywhere.”

Good advice.

30

Plage de Gouverneur

Saint-Barthélemy,
French West Indies

12:40 p.m. Local Time

The Next Day

Day 4

The beach at Gouverneur is a three-quarter mile crescent of golden sand embracing turquoise waters. At the moment, it was populated by winter visitors in various states of dress and undress at the eastern tip, to the more avant-garde at the western, where the sand ended in a sheer hundred-foot hill, and swimwear was notable only for its absence.

In swimsuit and T-shirt, and with a beach bag containing his weapons, Jason was not interested in the lithe, nude, and semi-nude bodies frolicking within a few feet of the beach blanket he had borrowed from his hotel in the hills above Saint-Jean. Instead, his eyes were fixed on a pair of burly men in black shirts and shorts who were busily planting beach umbrellas in a twenty-foot square.

These men were definitely staking out territory. As a practical matter, a slice of sand was being carved out for the owner of a large villa, a former Rockefeller property that fronted on the beach, the only habitation that did so. Information Jason had received during the Paris–Saint Martin flight had revealed a certain Viktor Karavich, recently of Yekaterinburg, had joined the growing number of Russian industrial oligarchs acquiring property on the island, either by purchase or mere possession, such as what was transpiring in front of Jason.

A third man, also in black, trudged over the sand dunes that separated the villa owner's property from the beach. This one was carrying a stack of folding chairs. His shadow fell across Jason. Jason looked up. The man was larger than the other two, perhaps somewhere north of 250. His biceps filled the short sleeves of the shirt that didn't quite reach his waist. Jason shaded his eyes to get a better look. The man's face had the look of one that had been rearranged violently: a nose pushed to one side, scars in the brows that overhung ratlike eyes, ears that would delight a cauliflower farmer. And there was only one thing that left those pock-shaped scars right above his belt buckle: bullets. Beyond that, he had the slightly Oriental look of a Russian peasant.

The man set his burden of chairs down next to Jason. “Is necessary you move, please.”

There was nothing polite in the tone.

Jason shook his head slowly. “Is public beach.”

The guy was obviously not used to being refused. It seemed to take a second or two for the response to register. “You not move?”

A threat.

“I not move.”

“Is Mr. Karavich's property. You must move.”

Jason did move. To a squatting position, his legs bent as he looked up at the man. “Is the property of the public.”

“Mr. Karavich not like.”

“Mr. Karavich can get fucked.”

The big man moved with a speed belying his bulk. Had Jason not anticipated it, a knee would have smashed into his skull hard enough to cause a concussion at the least. As it was, Jason ducked. Springing up from knees bent beneath him like springs, he was able to put every bit of his weight into the open-handed punch that smashed the heel of his right hand into the Russian's nose.

The snap of breaking cartilage was quite audible.

Though rarely fatal or even dispositive, there are few blows more painful than one to the nose. Pain, in and of itself, is disabling, distracting an opponent's attention from an effective counterattack. So it was here. The big man staggered backward, both hands unable to staunch the blood that was making Rorschach blots in the sand. The steep incline of the beach caused him to stumble, nearly losing his balance.

Only a fool gives his antagonist a chance to recover from the initial assault, and Jason was no fool. He chose that instant to charge the tottering Russian, lowering his shoulder to slam into the other man's midsection. Two things were simultaneous: a
whoosh
of expelled breath and a
splash
as the man fell backward into the water.

Jason thought he heard one or two screams from the beach bunnies as he pounced. Ignoring the painful sting of the salt water in his bandaged wound, he knelt in the surge. He locked his right and left forearms around the Russian's neck, tightening the grip by grasping his elbows. With pressure on one arm, Jason could crush the larynx. Sufficient pressure on the other separated the second and third cervical vertebra and, quite likely, the spinal cord.

Jason's opponent realized the futility of struggling. He went dead still, other than the arms he raised above his head. Surrender.

Jason maneuvered him around so they were both facing the beach. He was not surprised to see the man's two comrades racing toward him.

“Right there,” Jason shouted above the crash of the surf. “Hold it right there, or your pal is so much shark bait!”

The two came to an abrupt stop, each looking at the other as though seeking a solution to the problem. The bleating of a police siren was getting louder. The curse of cell phones.

Someone shouted words Jason didn't understand. A man stood at the top of the line of dunes. The light breeze whipped a bathrobe around him, but what Jason found most noticeable was he had the immediate attention of the two men headed to aid their comrade. They stopped dead, tide swirling at their knees. Then they turned back toward Jason.

“Don't worry, American, they will only collect the mess you have made,” the man in the dunes yelled.

Jason grinned and waved his acknowledgment before handing his choking, sputtering former adversary off to the two men from the beach. He sloshed his way back ashore, picked up his bag, and scrambled up the dunes. A small crowd of the curious had gathered. Only on a French beach would a fight draw more attention than topless young women.

“Hello, Viktor.”

The man in the bathrobe smiled, a metallic grimace of Soviet-era dentistry, and held out his hand. “Did you have to, er, destroy one of my men? He will be useless to me for days. Could you not come to my door instead?”

Jason shook the hand. “And how do I get to your door? I'm sure you have more deterrents than the
no trespassing
signs in English, French, and I'm guessing Russian. Knowing your background, I wouldn't be surprised if you had some really nasty surprises for those who come uninvited.”

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of two men in police uniform from the eastern end of the beach, the only access for the public. Viktor put a finger to his lips, motioning Jason to stay where he was. Sliding down the sand to the beach, the Russian greeted the two cops, apparently by name from what words the wind brought to Jason. The body language, including handshakes and shoulder patting, gave the definite impression Viktor was well acquainted with the local gendarmerie. Now Viktor was dismissing a young man who appeared to have a version of what had happened somewhat different from his. Within minutes, the police were gone and the beach returned to normal.

Viktor trudged up to resume his spot beside Jason. “Now, American, perhaps we may attend to whatever you have in mind. Come.”

Jason followed him along a bougainvillea-lined path. The red and purple flower-bearing branches of the bushes made it impossible to walk side-by-side. Rounding a turn, Jason was looking at what at one time had been a village brought intact from the South Pacific: bungalow-­style houses scattered around round, elongated, or irregular-shaped pools. Winding trails were dotted with native-style statuary. Jason would not have been surprised to see long-dead author Somerset Maugham step out from under the low thatch roof of the veranda. Between him and the house, a lawn cut to putting-green standards surrounded another pool, this one fed by a trickling stream from rocks high above on the hill.

Viktor was aware of the impression the place made, for he stopped, smiling. “Is nice, no? Far nicer than a simple
soldat
would deserve, no?”

Viktor had never been a simple soldier, a fact of which Jason started to remind him when they were suddenly surrounded by a laughing, chatting group of ten or more teenaged girls, all dressed for the beach.

Viktor took a girl by the hand, a pretty blonde who had not yet put on the weight that seemed to follow Russian puberty. Like her female companions, she wore a brief bikini. “My daughter, Vasillisa. Say hello the American, Vasillisa.”

She dipped a shallow curtsy. “Hello, Mr. American.”

Before Jason could reply, she tried to slip from her father's grasp. He spoke to her in Russian. Ignorant of the language, Jason still knew a reprimand when he heard one.

Vasillisa replied in English. “But, Papa, it is no more naked than my friends . . .”

A tirade of Russian followed, making Vasillisa blush. She did not reply. With the hint of a tear in her eye, she made a dash for the house.

Viktor snorted. “The young! Wants to parade about without decent clothing because her friends do.”

“Didn't look to me like her swimsuit was any smaller than the others­,” Jason observed mildly.

“I have no control, really, what her friends do, but I will not have my daughter parading about like some . . . some French . . . French . . . What do you say, like a pastry?”

“Tart?”

“Tart, yes. Those French tarts on the beach. I bring Vasillisa and a few of her friends here each winter. Winter in Yekaterinburg miserable, snow, wind blow off Urals. No sun for weeks. Anyway, I bring to sun, warm, along with teacher so school, it not missed. Only thing they learn is to show tits.”

Jason was trying to stifle a smile. This was serious to a Russian parent. “What does her mother have to say?”

Viktor looked at him as though he had not heard correctly. “Mother?”

Jason had forgotten that in the Russian peasant class from which Viktor had come, the man's word was more than law: It was an edict from heaven. “Nevermind. Where can we talk?”

Silently, Jason followed Viktor into the dark coolness of the house, his mind racing backward.

It had been April 1989. Near Bagram, Afghanistan. Jason's first overseas assignment, the U.S. not-so-covert aid program to the mujahideen, those largely unorganized tribal guerrilla fighters who had opposed the Soviet puppet regime whose call for help had provided an excuse for Russian invasion ten years earlier.

The Russians had had it. Not only was their army tired, hungry, and ill equipped, the economy back in the mother country was rapidly collapsing. Intel reports were full of desertions, both by the Russians and the Afghan Communists. The Reds were beat and they knew it. So beat, they had become sloppy in their duties, including guard duty. That had caused a problem.

In the early morning darkness of that day, Jason's patrol of freedom fighters had slipped past a slumbering sentry, not even pausing to slit his throat. The urgency had come from word by the increasing number of Afghan defectors to the mujahideen that a specific Russian was encamped here, a Viktor Karavich. What made Karavich so special was his talent with explosives. Not only roadside bombs (improvised explosive devices had not yet found their way into the lexicon of war), but cleverly designed and hidden remote explosives. Karavich boasted he had once blown a man's head off with a bomb concealed in a pair of stereo earphones without getting a splatter of blood on the victim's shirt. Rumor had it Karavich occasionally wore the garment in question. He was a prestidigitator of plastique, conjurer of combustion, and necromancer of nitramine.

Rumor or truth, the sleepy Russian had been drugged and dragged out of his tent and smuggled past inattentive sentries in the darkness.

That caused the problem Jason faced. Aarash, the leader of Jason's group and the only member who spoke a smattering of English, wanted to turn the Russian over to Mullah Osman, the local leader of the Taliban, the fundamentalist religious militia that Jason suspected was going to cause problems long after both the Russians and the Americans were gone. The problem with Mullah Osman was his habit of slowly removing body parts from infidels, frequently making video recordings.

Atrocities had been common on both sides. Flaying skin from living bodies and burying alive were only a couple of the quaint local customs Jason had seen. But it was over. Karavich had made his last bomb, at least there. His agonizing death would accomplish no end Jason could see other than an evening's entertainment for Mullah Osman and his demented followers.

Jason left camp for a short scouting mission, or so he told Aarash. Instead, he had doubled back, entering the tent from ther rear, where the Russian bomber lay awaiting interrogation, hands and feet tied like a hog prepared for slaughter. Karavich's eyes doubled in size as he wordlessly watched Jason slide a long knife from his boot.

“No sweat, Viktor, old buddy,” Jason whispered, using the blade to pry knots apart. Cutting them would be too obvious to Aarash and his men.

Moments later, Viktor Karavich stood, rubbing arms and legs. Jason listened carefully. There was no sound of anyone nearby. Lifting the canvas at the rear of the tent, he motioned to the Russian, who looked confused, to say the least.

“C'mon,” Jason urged. “I'm not standing here, risking my ass all day.”

The Russian understood the tone of urgency, if not the English. He stooped to slide under the canvas, paused, stood, and embraced Jason. Then he was gone.

It was sometime later Jason noticed his dog tags were missing from around his neck.

Cut to a miserable, blustery December night a year later. It was a Sunday night. Second Lieutenant Jason Peters was in the small efficiency he rented in the basement of a Georgetown townhouse. He was packing his gear for a joint training exercise with select Marines at Paris Island that would begin the next day when the doorbell of his apartment rang.

Certain someone had the wrong address, he trudged to the door and swung it open. He didn't recognize the big man with the fur coat and hat standing in the swirling snow until a hand came out of a pocket and dangled a military dog tag on a chain.