The Infiltrators (5 page)

Righty paused. Halder’s matter-of-fact
tone convinced Righty he was serious.

“Your ability to disappear from me
isn’t as absolute as you might think, stranger,” Righty said, in a
matter-of-fact tone of his own.

Halder’s gaze seemed incredulous for a
moment, but when it was replaced by a certain degree of credulity,
Righty felt perhaps he should not have made even a veiled reference
to the one ace he held up his sleeve.

“Sit!” Righty said affirmatively,
pointing to the chair, and then he himself resumed his seated
posture.

Halder, studying Righty’s face and eyes
in so intent a manner it made his skin crawl, walked back to the
chair, pulled it out, and sat.

“So—what do you say we both cut the
crap. You’re a killing machine. No doubt about that. Hand to hand,
and perhaps even with weapons, you could take anyone on this ranch,
probably myself included. But you want something, and you want it
from me. You didn’t just crawl out of some hole and sniff me out in
order to spit in my face and move along. There’s something I have
that you want, and there must be something significant you think
you can offer me in order to obtain it.”

“Sorry for the drama, Mr. Relder,” he
began, inserting no sarcasm into his use of Righty’s alias, instead
saying it as naturally as if he had known Mr. Relder by that name
for years. “I never feel I’ve fully measured a man until I see him
angry. I was pretty sure you were the right man before I ever set
foot on this ranch. Now, I have no doubt.”

Righty’s quizzical expression urged him
to continue.

“You are right. I do need you for
something. And you need me even more, even though you don’t know
it. You need me for survival. I need you for revenge.”

“Survival?”

“Your entire country is being subjected
to high-intensity covert warfare for the purpose of exploitation
and possibly outright invasion. It is being carried out by the
organization I was once the head of. They export the Smokeless
Green here for the purpose of money and to wreak havoc inside your
country. Selegania is being used as the base from which other
countries are supplied, making it look like Selegania is the
ultimate source. Selegania will eventually become a pariah nation.
Within Selegania, powerful men such as yourself are being allowed
to rise but only for the purpose of one of them eventually being
chosen as the national monster, against whom all police and
military resources will be directed without mercy.

“I’ve closely watched your rival
kingpin in Selegania, and he is without a doubt being supplied
directly by my former colleagues, though he doesn’t know anything
about them. Every other kingpin amongst Dachwald, Sodorf, and
Selegania is either being supplied by your rival, directly by my
former colleagues, or by yourself.

“You’re the only one who has managed to
become fully independent, due to this ranch. My former colleagues
may not yet be aware how you have managed to achieve such high
status without being supplied directly by them, but I can assure
you that the price of your success is that you are going to be the
man they ultimately turn into the national monster.

“But even these things are only
preliminary to larger ambitions.”

“So, there’s a highly sophisticated
organization in a foreign country behind the arrival of Smokeless
Green, and they’re using it to finance themselves, create disorder,
and eventually do something bigger.”

“You’ve understood well
enough.”

“So, what are you offering me, and just
what in the hell do you have to gain by going against your former
comrades?”

Chapter 9

It had been an okay night on the
streets, but Zelven knew something was awry. The first night he had
sold Smokeless Green at half the going rate, he had run out after
just a few hours and had to go resupply and come back.

Here it was after midnight, and he had
only sold half his stash. He considered the possibility other
dealers had lowered their prices to compete, but his men had
snooped about, and no one could sell at his rates without taking a
stinging loss. No, something else was afoot.

He had already sniffed out the problem
with sufficient certainty to formulate a plan of action, but when
his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an approaching buyer, he
thought of a new plan.

Though pretending to be calm, the buyer
betrayed to the hawk-like eyes of Zelven that he was glancing
around a bit too much to just be checking for police.

“What will you have, my good man?”
asked Zelven cheerily.

“A-an ounce, man. That is—well, you
know, if the discount’s still good tonight, man.”

“Oh, it is indeed. But I tell you what,
how would you like to have two ounces if—”

“TWO?!” the haggard man said with
childlike enthusiasm.

Zelven had a nasty temper when
interrupted, but he could conquer it when the prize was
sufficient.

“Yes, my friend. Two. Exactly
two.”

“Ha . . . haha,” the man said
nervously, running both of his hands through his hair like combs,
considering the proposed trade-off. “Well, how much you want fer
it?”

“Oh, it isn’t money, friend. It’s
something far easier, just a little information.”

The man’s eyes grew wide, and he looked
around furtively, as if he were a bandit who had already spent five
minutes in the bank vault and expected the sheriff and an army of
deputies to arrive any second. He looked up at Zelven with shiny,
mischievous eyes.

“Shoot.”

“Well, business has been a little slow
tonight . . . a little too slow, and I suspect perhaps someone has
given the very bad advice to customers that it would be a mistake
for them to come visit me.”

“We ain’t supposed to,” said the man,
with delight in his eyes. “That’s what they say.”

“You know, friend, there’s a lot of
monkey business that goes on with this beautiful plant from the
time it comes from someone like me until the time it reaches
someone like you. Have a little whiff of this.”

Zelven extended the palm of his hand
with a fair share of green powder in it and poured it into the
man’s hands, outstretched like those of a beggar.

“Mmmm, smells sweet,” said the man,
before sucking it up his nostrils greedily. He then gave a couple
of quick shakes like a wet dog drying itself and said, “Okay,
here’s what I know—anyone who buys from you’s gonna wish he didn’t.
That’s what they say.”

“Who’s ‘they’, friend? I’m a man of
details. Specifics are to my mind what colors are to the painter’s
eye.”

“Well, I know where they stay at, but I
don’t know their names. They’s the bosses of this section of
town.”

“Well, friend, here’s what you’re going
to do. You walk towards the place, and when you’re there, stop and
have another whiff of this,” Zelven said, extending an ounce to the
man. “No one will know I’m following you, not even you. Once you’ve
done as instructed, you’ll find the second ounce in your pocket
before you count to a hundred.”

The man’s face grew solemn for a
moment, ageing him twenty years in the process, but then that
mischievous gleam came back, and he turned to walk off down the
street.

Zelven’s hand shot out like a mamba and
went around the man’s shoulder.

“One more detail, friend. Play me like
a fool, and I’ll be very cross.” As he said that, he pinched a
nerve in the man’s shoulder he never knew he had but released it
just as a howl of pain traveling up the man’s throat was about to
depart. The quick cessation reduced it to a soft
whimper.

Soberly, the man said, “Yes, sir,” and
took off down the street, practically trotting.

Zelven disappeared behind several
barrels and appeared no more than a minute later looking like an
unshaven, greasy-haired vagrant. He took off down the street, guide
in view.

To the careless observer, the
unrecognizable Zelven made perhaps a slightly excessive number of
stretches and adjustments of his hat as he stealthily walked down
the street eyes glued to his guide. But to the thirty Varco agents
watching closely with small telescopes atop the roofs, Zelven was
speaking to them quite clearly and succinctly.

The slight adjustments of his hat, the
movements of his fingers camouflaged by his decoy stretches, and
last, but not least, the grinding of his right fist against his
left palm communicated to them fully what they needed to
know.

Zelven was beginning to think he was
going to have to break the drug addict’s neck, toss him aside, and
formulate a new plan, when suddenly the druggie stopped, took a
sniff of something from his lifted palm, and then even tilted his
head slightly towards the left.

Zelven gave another of his disguised
signals, and just when the now-accountant drug addict reached
number ninety-eight someone bumped into him and apologized. The
distrustful druggie checked his pockets, having forgotten about
Zelven’s promise and thinking instead that he had just been
pickpocketed.

Then his face changed quickly from
abject despair to that of a child opening a birthday present as he
discovered his precious ounce now had a twin brother. A mean,
suspicious look then spread over his face, and he trotted off down
a dark alley, perhaps headed towards some hole where he could sniff
at pleasure for a couple months with no thieves to sully the
fun.

Zelven surveyed the building. It was
quite a bit taller than the others, at six stories. Three men stood
scowling at the entrance looking like a collection of granite
statues. There was an alley on just one side of the building, and
it was a narrow one and seemed fully within view of the three guard
dogs.

Zelven extracted a different cigar from
the one he had used to fire steel darts into the throats and eyes
of his late would-be assassins and lit it calmly.

As he approached the three guards, the
nearest one turned towards him, an even meaner grimace now on his
face, both arms crossed revealing forearms meatier than most men’s
thighs, and with a sneer on his lips that looked so exaggerated
Zelven wondered how he could wear it without laughing at his own
ridiculousness.

“What the f--- do you want, old man?
Walk around, would ya.”

“Got any greeeen?” Zelven asked, a rasp
coming out of his mouth along with a cloud of smoke thick enough to
be confused with a forest fire.

“F---, man,” the scowler said with
supreme annoyance, swatting at the smoke as if it were a swarm of
hornets. “Get lost, would ya, or I’ll break you in half,
fool!”

“Eeee . . . nice to meet you, feller,”
Zelven said, belching smoke out of his mouth, and turning to cross
the street.

“Ah, hell naw,” groused the scowler,
taking a step and a half towards Zelven with what looked like the
intention of belting him across the mouth with his right hand, but
the four glaring eyes of his compatriots seemed to quickly draw him
back to his post as effectively as though they had been four
lassoes.

Some of the smoke was drifting towards
them now as well, though Scowler had certainly borne the brunt of
it.

“Fu’s crazy,” Scowler continued, as he
resumed his post. “Man, he like to smoke though, HAA!” he suddenly
exclaimed with what had been his first good-natured laugh in
approximately three months, though as far his two compatriots knew
it was his first ever. They looked at him suspiciously, frowning
deeply.

They then looked back to the front,
hoping the night would get back to normal.

“FU . . . LIKE . . . TO . . .
SMOOOKE!!” Scowler suddenly sang out at the top of his lungs and
then began laughing uncontrollably.

“Hey, Kyle, get real, fool!” his
adjacent guard told him with a vicious punch to the tricep to drive
the point home.

This brought forth more laughter than
if he had tied Kyle down and tickled his feet with a feather. Kyle
collapsed into a ball of howling laughter and began writhing on the
ground. The third guard now joined in on the lecture by kicking
Kyle right in the ribs.

“Yo, Ky, snap out of it, man. I know
somethin’s got you cracked up, but you’s gonna get all three of us
killed, PUNK!!”

He then gave another vicious kick to
Kyle’s ribs, after which he began convulsing terribly.