The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4) (25 page)

I scrambled 20 yards to the apex, and took marginal cover behind some brush. The sky had lightened some, and I soon located the vans, maybe a quarter-mile away, parked by a fallow field of ridged earth. Beyond lay more fields, these planted in neat rows, the crops bright green and low to the ground. I zoomed closer. Green, dotted with red.

Strawberries.

I moved my sights to the vans. The headlights were still on, but nighttime was dissipating quickly. The heavier-set man hurriedly unloaded his human cargo. I swept the glasses left, looking for the other driver. I couldn’t locate him anywhere.

Not good.

My nose smelled him first. I stood up slowly and turned. Ponytail’s stance was casual, but his nasty assault rifle was anything but. He reeked of cologne, some chemist’s idea of lavender and musk.

“On knees,” he said. “Hands behind back.” Balkan accent. I’d been hearing them all week.

My Smith & Wesson screamed for attention from the right-hand pocket of my windbreaker, but my fingers were full of binoculars. How had he climbed 20 yards without my hearing him? I felt like a complete idiot.

“On knees! Now!”

I knelt.

“Why you here?”

I decided on the same ploy as the last time I got caught spying on Agvan Supply.

“I’m a private detective. I’m looking for a missing person.” I took a gamble. “His name is Sasha Radovic. Do you know him?”

“No,” he said. “Not on list.” So this guy wasn’t a close acquaintance of Stasic. He also wasn’t very bright—he’d just given me more information than I’d asked for.

I took a bigger gamble. If I guessed wrong, I’d soon be worse off than Tank’s rodent. I shifted my binoculars to my left hand and reached for my pocket with my right.

“STOP!” He stepped close, and I was staring down the barrel of a lethal killing machine, a Heckler & Koch HK416. Top of the line—Stasic wasn’t fooling around when it came to arming his people.

Next time, I’d choose the Wilson.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I was just going to show you my business card.” I slipped my hand inside.

Ponytail may not have been brilliant, but he was remarkably cooperative. He even lowered his gun to reach out for the card.

I flung the binoculars at his head. He flinched instinctively and I followed up with a sharp punch to his forearm. The barrel jerked sideways, causing his deafening shot to miss wide. My eardrums exploded, but I launched into his chest and jammed my little Airlite under his chin. Good thing Ponytail had been picked to follow me—no way would this move have worked on the burlier guy.

“Okay. Your turn,” I said. My voice sounded weird, through the ringing of my ears. “On the ground. Weapon first.”

He placed his assault rifle on the dirt and knelt. My foot nudged it out of his reach. I picked up the assault rifle. Now I had a different dilemma: both hands full of weapons, and a sudden need to look through my binoculars again.

Back inside the pocket went the Airlite. I kept one eye on Ponytail and focused the other on the field. The second driver was peering our way. He wielded his own top-of-the-line burp gun. The passengers under his charge were milling around haphazardly. He motioned them still with his weapon.

I patted down Ponytail and found a burner phone in his pocket. I slipped it into my own.

“Let’s go,” I said.

I marched him down the incline. As we drew close to the field, I saw his partner’s muzzle, pointing upwards.

I flicked the safety off the Heckler. I was about to experience my first Serbian standoff.

Ponytail rattled off a burst of gutturals to his mate.

“Speak English,” I said.

“I told Bozo you looking for missing person, someone we don’t have.”

Bozo?
It was too easy. I resisted comment.

Bozo lowered his weapon, but I kept mine trained until he was within earshot. “You don’t want to get hurt,” I called. “I don’t either. Give me some information, and we can all go home.”

After a moment, Bozo nodded. I, too, lowered my weapon, but kept it close. I halted with Ponytail about ten yards from the hostages and their captor. They looked anxious, but not overly so, considering the artillery involved.

“Where are you taking these people?”

“We stop in this place. A larger vehicle come to pick them up. Here soon.”

Was he telling the truth, or employing the timeworn “backup’s on its way” tactic?

I addressed my next question to the group of silent men.

“I’m not here to hurt you. Do any of you speak English?”

An elderly man, thin to the point of emaciation, raised his hand like a schoolchild.

“I’m taking these two men into custody.” At this, Ponytail let out a sharp comment, probably a Bosnian curse, which I ignored. “Tell everyone you’re safe now. Help is coming.” My plan was to call 911, plus the local cops, and wait for more good guys to arrive.

But apparently, I had it backwards.

The elderly man spat a rapid stream of invective at me. At his words, the other men’s voices merged into a swelling growl of complaint. A couple of them took a few steps forward, their expressions threatening.

“Go away,” the old man said. “Leave us alone.”

“Uh.”

He motioned to the vans and their two captors.

“This job our only hope.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We pay good money. Our families, they sell everything to send us here. Do not send back to Kosovo. We die there.”

“Shut up,” Ponytail snarled. I nudged him with the rifle butt, and he went quiet.

The old man’s laugh was bitter. “You cannot frighten us, even with death. We have nothing—we count for nothing. We are dirt.” Despair coated his every word, and centuries of poverty, of bitterness, informed his grim features.

“Maybe we die,” he said, “but here, at least, first we can work.”

“Where are they taking you?”

He drew himself up. “We work in restaurant. Pay good money.”

I looked at Ponytail. He shrugged. Not his business.

“What kind of restaurants? Where?”

“All over,” the old man said.

A thousand questions hammered at my brain, but the biggest one was whether or not to take the action that would insert them into an impersonal system, conspicuous for its cruel disregard of individual circumstances. These were not child victims, but grown men who had paid dearly to come. Once I brought in the cops, Immigration would be close on their heels. The do-gooder in me pulled hard in that direction. But was that really a choice for good? Maybe the compassionate act was to leave these men alone. Maybe I needed to respect their wishes, however misguided.

We are dirt.

I didn’t know what to do.

An engine rumbled behind me. A large yellow school bus lumbered along the gravel road, the most innocuous backup imaginable, but backup, nonetheless.

What was I doing here, beyond trying to be a hero to a group of grown men with no interest in being saved? But leaving felt just as wrong.

I was about to do something very ill advised, and not for the first time.

I motioned the old man close. Still keeping the rifle trained on Ponytail with my left hand, I used my right to reach into my jeans, praying I still had a few spares.
Yes.
I shook the old man’s hand, transferring the business card from my palm to his.

“I can help. Call if you change your mind,” I said.

I aimed my next words at Ponytail’s partner, Bozo. “I’m leaving now. Don’t do anything stupid.”

I herded Ponytail into the driver’s side of his van and jumped into the passenger seat.

“Back to my car. Quick!”

He slammed the van into gear and made a slithering U-turn, then gunned us toward the trees. We flew past the school bus, and I glimpsed a handful of startled faces peering out the side windows. We reached the trees in minutes.

“Stop,” I said.

I shoved the barrel of the Heckler under his nose. “Tell your boss he only gets one free pass. And this was it.”

I climbed out. He wrenched the van around and sped away. I kept the Heckler steady and trained until long after he was out of range.

C
HAPTER
23

Dawn had come and gone as I entered Los Angeles via Hollywood, on the 101 South. I decided not to exit at Topanga, but continue toward downtown. I pressed voice control on my cell and heard the double tone that signified my phone was poised to act: “Call Mike K., mobile.” “Calling Mike K.,” a mechanical female voice replied. I mentally crossed my fingers. Mike, a cyber-jockey and amateur techno DJ, lived a night-shift life, and 7
A.M.
was right around bedtime.

“Yo.”

“Oh, good. You’re still awake.”

“Barely.”

“I need to see you. I have a few questions. Mind if I pay you a visit?”

“Long as you’re not driving from Bosnia.”

That reminded me. Things had gotten so crazy over the final 24 hours over there, I’d never found the right moment to tell Bill about the Stasic connection. I calculated the time, adding nine hours. Four
P.M.
, worth a shot.

“Call Bill Bohannon, mobile.”

Bill sounded harried.

“Hey, Ten. You home?”

“Yes.”

“Heard from Martha?”

“Not yet. Bill, I forgot to tell you something. Something strange I found out from Mila. You remember that address you had me follow up on in Van Nuys? Agvan Supply? It turns out the owner may be one of Mila’s half-brothers. Bill, I need to know how you got that address.”

Silence.

“Bill?”

“The fever’s broken, Ten.”

“Sorry?”

“The fever’s broken. Listen. Hear that?” He must have held up his phone. I heard ambient noise, the low hum of people talking, a female voice making some kind of announcement over a loudspeaker. “That’s the sound of my flight about to board. The sound of my sanity returning. It’s over. I’m heading home. Well, technically I’m headed home via Zurich via Belgrade, God help me, on some Serbian flying tank.”

“Bill …”

“They want me out of their lives, Ten.” Another announcement. “Okay, gotta go … I’ll see you on the other side. Don’t tell Martha, I want to surprise her. I just pray she’ll unlock the front door.”

Well, okay. I tested this new knowledge. One less thing to worry about. Which begged the question—why was I worrying about any of this anymore?

Because it wasn’t over for me.

Mike’s building was a modernistic stack of granite and glass, as elegant as it was practical. Mike called it a meta-living space. Before I punched in his code and pulled underground to park in a visiting guest slot, I had one more call to make. I leafed back through my notebook, praying I’d tucked it in here somewhere, and found the information on a rain-wrinkled business card.

After a few false tries, I managed to maneuver through the overseas codes.

“
Da!
”

“Petar? It’s Ten.”

“Who?”

“Monkevic.”

“Monkevic! You find me job in movies already?”

“Sorry, I’m not that connected. But I’m hoping you are … Listen, back when you were a cop, did you spend any time at the Sarajevo Centar station? The one next to St. Joseph’s church?”

“Of course. I work there for years.”

I double-checked the name of the detective who had worked with Bill when Sasha went missing in my notes. “Did you happen to know a policeman called Tomic? Josip Tomic?”

“Yes. Many times. Josip is good man.”

I felt a stab of hope. I explained what I needed. “The information may be in a file, or on a computer, under the name of Sasha Radovic, or maybe Milo or Jovan Stasic. Or even Agvan Supply. I don’t know. What I do know is, that file may hold the key to this operation, and where they’re keeping their victims over here.”

“I will look,” Petar said. “Not many
policija
safe to ask, but Tomic is good man.”

I took the parking lot elevator to Mike’s penthouse loft. Inside was as practical yet hip as out, with a gourmet marble cooking island and a gleaming bamboo floor. A picture window of glass offered a panoramic view of downtown, dominated by the glowing, platinum-winged structure known as the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Both Mike and his girlfriend, Tricia, were in plaid boxer shorts, Tricia’s topped by a skinny tank top, and Mike’s by a black T-shirt with a yellow peace sign silk-screened across the front. I tried not to react to Mike’s pasty, stork-like legs.

The loft smelled faintly of marijuana, and was a futuristic mix of modern art, postmodern furniture, and post-postmodern computer and music equipment. Tricia gave me a vague smile, and wandered about for a minute or two before climbing into their platform bed in the corner and falling asleep.

“Glad you made it back in one piece, boss,” Mike said. “I hear Bosnia’s gnarly, man.”

“Actually, it’s beautiful,” I said.

“Whatever. I’m glad you’re here. I dug up some shit on your mango smugglers. Let’s do some show-and-tell.”

For the next hour, Mike rattled off information while pulling up various sites on his various computer screens, and I tried to keep up, using my notebook and pen.

“So yeah, after I eliminated Silk Road as Agvan’s marketplace, I drilled down a little deeper.”

“Silk Road?”

“The drug marketplace I told you about.”

“Right. With the pirate.”

“A-plus for remembering that. Anyway, Agvan uses another one. Also underground, also untraceable. This one came on the scene pretty recently. Name’s an acronym:
N-D-R-S-N-T.
”

He showed me on the computer, and I wrote the letters down. NDRSNT.

“What’s it stand for?”

“No idea. But it’s got a mishmash of users and suppliers, as far as I can tell. So-called foodie sites like Agvan, fantasy gaming sites. A few I didn’t want to touch, going by the pictures. But also, a few NGOs, you know, nonprofits. Schools for Tunisian children. Libraries for Tibetan refugees. Like that.”

“Weird.”

“Indeed. Even weirder is the fact that they all seem to be shifting from bitcoins to a different cyber currency.”

“There are more than one?”

“Sure. Litecoin. Peercoin. All it takes is code, and people willing to give the currency value. These’re called DNA-coins.”