Blood Whispers (20 page)

‘Tried you at the house, but no reply,’ said the cop, addressing Keira from the landward side of the small bridge. ‘Just checking everything’s okay.’

‘Was my mother not there?’

‘No answer.’

‘She’s probably in the back garden, or taking a nap.’

‘You two all right?’ asked the cop again, addressing the question to Rebecca.

‘We’re good,’ she replied. ‘Just about to head back.’

‘Grand,’ added Keira. ‘Out for a walk and drumming up some new business.’

‘Aye, good luck with that round here,’ said the cop, eyeing Abazi.

‘Anything I can help you with, sir? You look a bit lost?’

The sniper slid his forefinger through the trigger guard and squeezed gently until he could feel the shot-break point. Abazi had one hand behind his back clenched into a fist: if he spread his fingers wide, that was the signal to open fire.

‘I’m fine.’

The cop stared at him for a few seconds, but seemed satisfied.

The sniper followed him until he was back inside the squad car, then adjusted his grip back to a neutral firing position.

Abazi waited until the police car had driven off before moving to stand in front of Keira. ‘I still haven’t heard you say the words.’

‘I agree to represent you,’ she said flatly.

Abazi extended his hand towards her, but Keira didn’t take him up on the offer.

‘I don’t have to shake your hand for it to be legally binding.’

Abazi stared back at her, wondering which way to take it. He admired her for having the balls to stand up to him, but on the other hand it could be seen as a challenge. He could take offence and smack her one, or just hand over the cheque and get down to business.

After a curt nod he held out the cheque.

Keira took hold of it and slipped it into her back pocket without even looking at it.

‘So, what d’you want to tell me?’

‘Not here. We go for a cruise. When I’m finished, I drop you off in time for dinner.’

‘How do I know you won’t just get us on board and kill us, then dump our bodies out at sea?’

‘I just took you on as my lawyer, why would I want to kill you? And even if I did, what do I care where they find your body? Why give myself the hassle of taking you out to sea? I could just leave you here on the quayside.’

‘Can I say no?’

‘To what?’

‘The boat trip.’

‘Sure.’

‘What happens then?’

‘You don’t learn the truth.’

‘About what?’

‘A lot of things.’

‘Like?’

‘Why Kaltrina Dervishi was really killed. Why that asshole Sellar released her from jail. Why CIA officer Edwin Kade got hit . . . you want me to keep going?’

‘I know most of the answers to those questions.’

‘You think you do, but all you’ve got is the Hollywood version. Edwin Kade was not the name he gave to us. We knew him as Nicolas Kent. When we first heard that a CIA agent called Kade got busted we thought they were talking about someone else, before we realized.’

‘So?’

‘So, chances are the guys you’re dealing with are not who they say they are either. I’m just throwing that into the mix as a little taster of what’s to come.’

Keira stood for a moment weighing up the pros and cons. There was no doubt that Abazi’s view on the situation would be worth hearing, but he was a dangerous man who just a few weeks earlier had tried to have her killed.

‘You need more convincing?’

‘Would you get on a boat with a heroin smuggler who trafficked girls for prostitution, and had previously tried to have you murdered?’

‘I didn’t order the hit on you, but I know who did.’

‘Who?’

‘Get on the boat.’

‘Just me.’

‘Has to be both of you.’

‘As your lawyer, I would advise against taking a police officer hostage.’

‘Don’t get smart. I’m not in the fucking mood for smart. I’m going to give it one more shot then I’ll have to terminate our contract . . . leave you here on the quay, like we just said.’

Keira wasn’t sure if that was a death threat, but that’s the way it came across.

‘Okay, one more hors d’oeuvre. Let me ask you this,’ continued Abazi. ‘Did one of the CIA guys make a call when he was at your house?’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Yes or no?’

‘One of them did make a call, yes . . . to cancel a meeting.’

‘That’s what it looked like to you, but what was he really doing?’

Keira shrugged. ‘I don’t know, is “cancel a meeting” a code for something?’

‘His phone’s menu has “Location services” switched on. There was no meeting. He’s letting someone know where he is and – at the same time – where you are. Someone who has a contract to kill you and is probably on their way here right now.’

‘You seemed to find me without too much difficulty. How do I know that someone isn’t you?’

‘If it was me, you’d already be dead.’

As soon as they stepped on board, the two women were separated. Rebecca Rey was taken down into the small galley, out of sight, where her wrists and ankles were bound together and her mouth taped over, while Keira stayed topside with Abazi. She was sitting beside him on a padded leather bench that ran in a U-shape around the rear of the cockpit watching the water ripple along the side of the boat as it left the shelter of the harbour and started to pick up speed. The boat powered west across to Castle Bay, then swung left in a tight arc, hugging the craggy shoreline as it passed Culwatty Bay heading south toward the bottom end of the Gare Loch.

‘Bit of a cliché,’ said Keira, having to raise her voice to be heard over the noise of the engines. ‘The boat.’

‘Maybe, but it goes like the shit. Got two, staggered twelve-hundred-horsepower Mercury racing engines. Can outrun anything, except maybe a jet fighter. As far as I know, the cops over here don’t fly that kind of kit yet. Used to be called a rum runner during Prohibition, now it’s called a cigarette boat. Won’t be long before they change it again to smack skiff, or dope dinghy, or some shit like that, ’cause that’s all they’re used for these days. That’s what the boat’s name means: it’s
HEROIN
in Serbian.’

‘Doesn’t having the only boat in Scotland that looks like a Miami dope dealer’s make it easier to spot?’

‘This boat is virtually invisible to radar, unless the sea’s flat calm, but who says that’s the way I want to play it. I drop you off, you phone it in; next thing the cops, the navy, the whole lot are out chasing this boat – it’s easy enough to see with the naked eye. Maybe it’s not so easy to catch, but that won’t stop them trying to run it down. That’s where you got to understand tactics. There’s nothing in the rules of engagement says I still have to be on board when they do.’

‘Why’d you try to plant a kilo of heroin in my apartment?’

Abazi gave her a stare, again deciding which way to take it. Eventually he asked her, ‘Do you always come at things head on?’

‘The very first time I cross-examined a witness in court the Sheriff advised me to ask simple questions. My first is always, “Why?” Also, if you want me to represent you, you have to trust me, and in order to do that you have to know what I’m thinking. Right now I’m thinking, “Why did you plant heroin in my flat?”’

‘That was a black flag SAD operation.’

‘Black flag?’

‘I didn’t plant it, but it was heroin taken from my stock. I wasn’t too smart there, because when I found out, naturally I wanted it back. But that was the mistake I made. Straight away I’ve confirmed to everyone that it belongs to me and no matter how many times I deny putting it in your place, no one is going to believe me. The CIA played me: they knew if I tried to recover it I’d land myself in the shit. Is called a black flag operation: they do some sneaky shit and someone else gets the blame. No way you can trace it back to them. It’s what this whole thing is about. Although catching me out wasn’t their original intention. The original intention was to land you in the shit: make it look like you were involved in the drug scene. It’s their insurance policy. You go down, I get the blame, CIA aren’t even on the rap sheet. Black flag.’

‘What about the SAD? What’s that stand for?’

‘Special Activities Division. They operate within the CIA, but they’re a law unto themselves, do what they like.’

‘Why? Why would they want to take me down?’

‘If the Dervishi girl told you everything that is going on, you’re a threat . . . Did she tell you everything?’

Keira gave Abazi a look and said, ‘I don’t discuss my other clients’ business with anyone.’

Abazi smiled. ‘I like that. You’re on the ball. Okay,’ he continued, ‘let’s suppose she has, and you don’t like what you’re hearing, so you decide to do something about it. You got the CIA’s balls in your mouth ready to bite, then suddenly you’ll find you’re not so hungry ’cause you’ve been neutralized by a bag of heroin. No matter what argument you come up with against them, no one’s going to believe you, because in the eyes of the twelve good men and true, you’re a drug dealer. Those two agents work for SAD. If they saw you and me talking right now they’d pull out their guns and shoot us both dead, wouldn’t matter who saw them. I know everything they’ve been up to and they know I know. They’re scared that if the girl has told you all there is to know as well, and I come along and back up the story, they are in the shit. Sneaky sons-of-bitches. Only thing that’s true about them is they are all liars. They are like worst second-hand car salesman you ever met. They sell you a bright shiny Corvette with a little extra horsepower, and when you get outside you realize the extra horsepower is the fucking donkey that’s standing behind the Corvette. And try getting your money back! They deny they ever saw you before, and if you make enough noise they sneak into your room at night and shoot you through a pillow. You and me, Miss Lynch, we’re going to bring them down, and this is why we need to talk. They have already started on me: tipping off my business rivals to everything I’m doing. Your friend the Holy Man’s been making moves against me because someone has been feeding him intel in an American accent. It’s reached the point where the only way I can move is out, which in some ways is fine by me; I can go enjoy some of the riches I’ve acquired. I’m not anti-American, I’m anti getting fucked in the ass by Americans.’ Abazi was smiling to himself as he continued. ‘They’re going to try to hang me for the Edwin Kade killing, too, I know it. What did they tell you I was doing?’

‘They said you were smuggling heroin, with the help of someone in the US military and a rogue agent in the CIA.’

‘Edwin Kade?’

‘That’s what they claim.’

‘All of that’s true, except there’s more than one rogue agent involved. Joe O’Donnell and Mitch Taylor – which, I’ll give you a hundred to one, are not their real names – are in it as well, but they set Kade up to take the fall.’

‘Are they in it for the money too?’

Abazi screwed up his face. ‘They tell you that’s what Kade was doing it for?’ He shook his head, then continued, ‘They ain’t in it for the money. They’s fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, is the way they see it. They don’t handle the drugs: they got no direct connection. They help with transport, supply of arms and a little protection every now and then: that’s it. But they don’t get involved in the messy stuff.’

‘Indirect complicity.’

‘In your speak, maybe; in mine they’re back-stabbing, fucking car salesmen. Everything boils down to money in the end, though. The CIA support the Asian trade through Turkey and eastern Europe, make the supply chain secure and reliable so the producers can charge less to the dealers and the dealers charge less to the users and everyone’s got the daytime-TV smile on – except for the Taliban and Mujahideen in Afghanistan, who are being undercut. No one is buying their drugs any more because it’s too expensive, and there’s a war on in their country so the supply is unreliable, and they’ve got no money coming in to support the struggle against the West. But how d’you think that scenario is going to play on prime-time in the USA? The CIA are smuggling heroin for the competition in their fight against terrorism . . . Not good! So rather than let that shit out, they order a hit on a twenty-year-old girl, take out one of their own and try to whack whoever else happens to get in the way.’ Abazi stopped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘A twenty-year-old girl who wouldn’t have been involved in any of this if you hadn’t brought her here. You’ve a long way to climb before you get anywhere near the moral high ground.’

‘You think what I do is fucked up? The American government is spending all its money trying to protect something that doesn’t exist: the American way of life. They got more people unemployed than the population of most other countries. They got people can’t afford to get ill. They spend more money trying to protect all this shit than it would take to make everyone in the USA a millionaire. They give off all this crap about the war on drugs, but what kind of war you ever heard of where the main player is fighting on the same side as his enemy? They may not be getting drugs from Afghanistan because this week they’re not talking to the Taliban, but they’re still getting drugs from central and south-east Asia. They’re smuggling the goddamn stuff themselves. They’re killing people to save lives – fucked up! They’re smuggling heroin to stop terrorism – fucked up! They’re telling people who are sick there’s no money to make them better, because they’re spending it all to keep them safe – fucked up! If you think I’m telling you all this to make me sound better, you’re missing the point. I’m not trying to come across as the good guy. I’m telling you what you need to know so you can screw these assholes into the wall. The CIA asked me to provide the Watcher with whatever was needed to eliminate the girl, but I didn’t order the executive action on her, or on you or on anyone else: that came from them.’

Keira was suddenly aware of the engine noise easing and the boat starting to slow.

The sun had now set behind the forested inclines of Benmore: a small hill that broke the horizon some way in front of them. Its black silhouette rose into the sky as it sloped away from the deep waters of Holy Loch, just west of their current position.

As they steered into Kilcreggan Bay the driver pulled back further on the throttle and let the boat glide through the twilight towards a large jetty protruding into the water like a long ghostly finger.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Keira.

‘This is where you get off.’

‘Are we done?’

‘For the moment. I’m keeping a few things of interest back for later: can’t throw everything at you all at once. When I get to where I’m going I’ll be in touch, tell you some other things you need to know: dates, times – the specifics of how the operation works.’

‘What happens if I don’t feel like getting into a fight with the CIA?’

‘You’re already in a fight with the CIA. If you don’t believe me, call them. Tell them you’ve met with me; see if you survive the next few days.’

The
ХЕРОИН
coasted to a stop alongside the jetty: the driver expertly manoeuvring it into position for Keira to step off.

She turned and looked at Abazi expectantly.

‘The cop stays on board,’ he said before she’d asked the question. ‘My insurance. I give you my word I won’t kill her. As long as we have no interference, she’ll be released when we reach our destination. This boat is very fast, but it doesn’t like too much ballast. If we do get chased, she will be shot and thrown overboard.’

Keira could tell from the expression on his face that he meant it.

Realizing she had no option but to leave Rebecca behind, she climbed on to the gunwale and stepped over on to the dry, wooden planks of the jetty.

‘When you speak to the agents, they’ll tell you to stay put till they get there. If that’s the case, stay put, but do it somewhere else, ’cause someone’s gonna come calling with a nine-mil tucked into their belt.’

The driver slid back the throttle levers and started to reverse away from the pier, pulling the boat round in a tight arc so that it was facing back out to sea.

Keira shouted over the boom of the engines, ‘Wait! What’s the deal with Sellar?’

Abazi lifted his fist to the side of his face with his thumb and pinky extended and mouthed, ‘I’ll call you.’ The gesture looked odd, Abazi signalling to her like an old friend who had just met her for a coffee and had forgotten something as they parted.

There was no doubt that some of what he had told her was bullshit: lies to cover his own culpability. But that wasn’t the point – enough of it was true.

Fifty metres to the right of where the jetty met the main road, Keira spotted a red telephone box. She checked her pockets for coins. An idea was coming together in her head: a course of action that might give her some control back over her life.

Her first move would be to make some calls: one to her mother to tell her to leave the safe house as quickly as possible, one to the Holy Man and one to the agents calling themselves O’Donnell and Taylor. It would set the play in motion and leave her with two possible outcomes. By the end of the evening she would be either in the back of a van on her way to jail, or in the back of an ambulance on the way to the morgue.

At that moment, Keira didn’t much care which of the two outcomes prevailed; at least it would all be over.

She stood alone in the gloaming watching the white wake fan out and fade behind the narrow stern of the boat as it disappeared into the distance.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the sound of the water lapping against the upright pillars of the jetty. Every day for nearly twenty years she had performed the same ritual of self-crucifixion. Not for killing another human being, but for asking herself the same question, over and over again. A question she didn’t dare answer for fear of what that answer might be.

Standing, alone, at the end of the jetty, the memory of a feeling she’d once had flooded her mind: a certainty of purpose she hadn’t felt since she was eight years old.

Keira opened her eyes and stared out to sea.

The question was ‘Could she kill again?’

The answer was ‘Yes.’