The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull (10 page)

Never mind that the bastard was lying to me.

The Fridge was in bed when I went in. I had a hot shower and snuggled under the doona, the aircon blasting above my head. It felt great, the contrast between the artificial chill in the air and the sense of womb-like security in bed. I dozed a little and thought about the day. Curiously, I didn't feel half so bad now. What had seemed a nightmare was only a bad dream and fading with every passing moment. I thought about Kiffo's back as he walked off into the night, and the sense of security that gave. Most of all, I curled myself around an image of someone, carefully, lovingly, cleaning a photograph of a grinning young man.

Yes, it had been a strange day. As I slipped under the surface of sleep, I was bothered by just one thought. I felt somehow that it was important to write down everything I was feeling, to record my thoughts in case they appeared stupid in the morning. Or, even worse, cloudy and insubstantial.

Sometimes diaries are a really good idea, you know. It was a shame I'd thrown so many away.

Chapter 10
Every dog has its night

FBI Special Agent Calma Harrison stepped from the
shower. She got dressed quickly, paying no attention to
the thin scar that ran down the side of her stomach. A
memento of a fight in Beirut. Just before she had broken
his neck, he had slashed her across the abdomen. Later,
she had stitched herself with a sharpened twig and a
length of twine she had fashioned from local native
grasses. A neat job, even more remarkable because she
had no anaesthetic. She preferred to bite on a bullet.One
time, she had been sewing her ear back on in Botswana
when she bit too hard and shot a passing antelope.

Her eyes flickered as she detected a sound in the
corridor outside her hotel room. Nerves on full alert, she
whipped her Walther PPK semi-automatic from the
holster and with cat-like grace backflipped across
the room, pressing herself against the wall. There was a
knock on the door.

‘Who is it?' she breathed.

‘Room Service,' came the reply.

Calma registered the voice and instantaneously
processed its accent. Despite the attempt at disguise –
good, but not quite good enough – she placed it within a
second. A rarely heard dialect from the East Bank of the
Mezzanine Strip. A tiny village called B'Gurrup. The
owner of the voice lived three streets down from the
butcher's shop. Maybe four, Calma thought. She hadn't
been to B'Gurrup in over fifteen years.

Her mind raced. Who had connections with the
Mezzanine Strip? It was a filthy, dangerous place, a
hotbed of mercenaries, hit men and used-car salesmen.

The answer was clear. Only one person would think of
employing the specialist skills to be found in B'Gurrup.

Her arch enemy. The Pitbull.

Calma did a forward roll and in less than three
seconds, two hundred rounds from the Walther crashed
through the spy hole in the centre of the massive oak
door. She opened the door and examined the bloody mess
on the doorstep. The would-be assassin had a small
ground-to-ground heat-seeking missile-launcher in his
right hand. In his left was a Kalashnikov rifle, a cluster
grenade and a Swiss Army knife. This man had come
prepared for action.

‘Too bad, buddy,' Calma growled as she stepped over
him and headed for the elevator. Curiously, she felt a sense
of relief. She still remembered that incident in Miami
when she had accidentally blown away the night manager
of her hotel. She had been certain that his accent was from
a small Shiite community that had ordered her death
through a high-level fatwa. It turned out that he had
simply had a bad head cold.

Calma stepped from the hotel onto the bustling
streets. Kiffing was waiting for her at the agreed park
bench, idly kicking a small Pekingese dog that was trying
to attach itself to his trouser leg.

‘News?' said Calma.

‘The Pitbull is here. We're not sure why, but we think
it might be connected to next week's UN Assembly. The
word on the street is that there is to be an assassination
attempt on a major world figure. As you know, Harrison,
the presence of the Pitbull can only mean one thing.

Terror and devastation.'

‘That's two things,' said Calma.

‘Okay, then. Two things,' said Kiffing.

‘You want me to take her out?' asked Calma.

‘Won't that make her suspicious? A date with a
complete stranger?'

‘No. I mean, kill her.'

‘That's a negative. We want her alive.'

Calma thought quickly. She mentally replayed all the
information she had gleaned about the Pitbull. Simultaneously,
she analysed the Spassky/Fischer sixth game
of the 1972 World Chess Championship, finding an
Enigma Variation that poor Boris had overlooked in the
end game. It was a form of mental gymnastics that
helped her focus. She turned to Kiffing.

‘Any idea of her whereabouts?'

‘We have a deep throat in Mossad. The word is that
she'll stake out the pre-Assembly shindig taking place at
the Hilton tonight.'

That made sense. The trouble was that the Pitbull
was an expert in disguise. Calma remembered the assassination
of an African leader the previous year. It bore all
the hallmarks of the Pitbull's work. Yet one eyewitness
swore that the killer was actually a small bull-mastiff.

‘I'll be there,' she said, ‘but I want full back-up. I'll
need an OP35 with an APB, complete tactical support,
a digitised micro-cam with satellite link-up, solar-powered
Kevlar vest with drop sides and EVA capability.
Is that clear?'

‘Well . . . not entirely affirmative, now you come to
mention it.'

‘Just do it, Kiffing. We are not dealing with amateurs
here.'

Later that evening Calma Harrison, disguised as
a balding oriental dwarf, surveyed the exterior of the
Hilton. She was pressed up against a tree in the extensive
grounds and her camouflage make-up ensured that from
a distance she merely looked like a piece of flaking bark.
Patting the bulge of the Walther PPK, she settled down to
wait, the trunk of the tree pressing a little uncomfortably
into her back . . .

‘Wake up, for God's sake, Calma.'

The voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. I opened my eyes slowly. Surely it wasn't morning already? The first thing I saw was Kiffo's face about two centimetres from mine. Imagine waking up and finding yourself staring at the Phantom of the Opera without his mask at close range, and you'll have some idea of the kind of shock I got.

‘Bloody hell, Kiffo,' I yelled. ‘Don't do that to me!'

‘Shut up!'

I raised my head and it all came back. Kiffo's stupid idea of staking out the Pitbull's house again, on the off chance that she'd be doing another of her early morning assignations. A real stab in the dark. Which is exactly what I felt like giving Kiffo at that precise moment. Obviously I had dozed off. My shoulder was hurting from where I had been pressing up against a knot in the tree. My right leg had pins and needles. That bloody casuarina tree again. The same one I had waited under for Kiffo on the night of my declaration of undying love. I was beginning to bond with that tree, I can tell you. Maybe the Drama lessons hadn't been a complete waste of time, after all. ‘Feel yourself
becoming
the tree, Calma. Feel the sap rising.'

I struggled to my feet, catching at a cramp in my left thigh where the sap was obviously having difficulty getting through.

‘What time is it?'

‘About three-thirty.'

It took a moment to register.

‘Are you out of your tiny mind? But of course you are. Stupid question. Three-thirty? Three-thirty? If I'd known we were going to be out this late I'd have brought a camping stove and a portable TV.'

‘Oh, stop moaning, Calma. There's no point going home at ten o'clock, is there? I mean, when she goes out on one of these meetings, it's in the early hours of the morning, isn't it?'

‘Hang on, Kiffo. You're talking as if this is some sort of regular occurrence, like the orbit of Uranus or something. You've only seen her go out once. Doesn't mean she makes a habit of it or anything.'

‘I've got a feeling about tonight, okay?'

‘So you're clairvoyant now, are you?'

‘Give it a break, willya?'

‘I can tell you exactly what is going to happen, Kiffo,' I said. ‘Absolutely bugger all, that's what. We are going to sit here under this stupid casuarina until dawn and then we are going to go home, get dressed for school, go into her class and prop our eyelids open with matchsticks. And she is going to be even more horrible to us than normal on the grounds that sleeping through her lesson is absolutely forbidden, on pain of death, and then—'

But I never got to finish. The Pitbull's front door opened and that familiar, threatening bulk was now approaching the front gate. I pressed myself further back into the tree. Would I ever get the imprint of bark out of my back? There was a snuffling sound and I could just make out the heaving mass of Slasher. The night was profoundly dark. Just as well, I suppose. The Pitbull and Slasher made odd lumps of darker blackness against the night, grisly silhouettes that moved like one being. It was creepy. Kiffo leaned closer to me and we watched silently as Miss Payne made a right turn out of the gate and moved silently down the road. I became aware that I was holding my breath. Kiffo leaned in closer and whispered into my ear.

‘You were saying, Calma smarty pants?'

‘Where the hell is she going at three-thirty in the morning?' I gasped.

To be perfectly honest, I had taken Kiffo's story with a small pinch of salt. Well, a bloody great handful, in fact. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, exactly. I just thought that maybe he had embroidered things a little. You know, the mysterious phone conversation, leaving the house. I'd figured that maybe she had got up in the night and he had taken the opportunity to get the hell out of there while the going was good. And the rest would have been just a bit of macho stuff. Making a big deal out of what had been a humiliating experience. I wanted to apologise to Kiffo but now didn't seem the right time.

‘I told you, Calma,' he said, a note of triumph in his voice. ‘Maybe once you could explain away. But who in their right mind keeps on going out in the middle of the night, particularly when they've got a job to go to? I tell you, she is up to no good. And we have to find out what it is. Come on.'

Now I know I have given the impression that I was getting a little tired of that casuarina tree. But I can tell you, when the time came to leave, it had never seemed more attractive. It's one thing to hang around outside someone's house, but quite another to follow them down deserted streets at some godforsaken time in the morning. But I had no opportunity to voice my misgivings to Kiffo. He was off like a rat up a drainpipe and I had no option but to follow him. I didn't fancy trailing the Pitbull, but neither did I fancy hiding under a tree, alone, at that time of night.

Let me tell you something. In the movies, following a person looks like the easiest thing in the world. All you do is walk a discreet distance behind. When they turn around you feign interest in the shop window of an oriental emporium or something. It isn't like that in real life. Okay, I know the circumstances were somewhat different. For one thing, there wasn't an oriental emporium within ten kilometres. But the main thing was that there was very little cover. I mean, if the Pitbull turned around, there we'd be, frozen under a street-lamp. Difficult to explain away as a casual late night jog. Kiffo and I zigzagged from one side of the road to the other, moving from bush to bush, crouching behind the odd parked car. But for a lot of the time we were out in the open. It's a horrible feeling to know that just one backwards glance would be enough to pin you in a metaphorical spotlight.

Problem number two. It's quiet at night. Unbelievably quiet. Even the night insects seemed to have taken a vow of silence. So we couldn't stay too close on her heels for fear that either she or the evil hound, Slasher, would hear our footsteps. That didn't bother me, mind. I'd have been happy with a fair distance. Something like twenty-five kilometres, for example. But it did make it difficult to keep her in view. When she turned a corner, we'd run like hell, keeping on the nature strip to deaden the sound. It was okay for Kiffo – he didn't have to keep a protective arm across his boobs. I was running flat out, and mine threatened to knock my glasses off.