Russell Blake - Betrayal

Jet awoke at eight and, for a few seconds, didn’t know where she was. Then the prior day’s events came rushing back to her, and she forced herself to roll out of bed and start the day.

She pulled open a drawer and found a pair of elastic waist running shorts that sort of fitted her and several extra-large T-shirts that didn’t. She pulled one on and studied her reflection in the dresser mirror — not the height of fashion, but it would do.

The orange juice was a welcome breakfast complement to the energy bars she found in the pantry cupboard, and after consuming two, she was preparing for a run when the telephone on the kitchen wall rang.

“I trust you’re up,” Arthur said when she picked up the handset.

“You know I am. The cameras would have told you I was.”

“I’ll arrange for some clothes to be brought in while you are out on what I presume is your morning run.”

“Good guess.”

“Any special requests?”

“Yes. Skip the clothes, and leave a thousand dollars in cash and keys to a car. I want to select my own clothes.”

“Fine on the money, but no on the car. You don’t have any ID yet, including a driver’s license. I can’t afford for you to get into an accident and trigger any questions. I’ll arrange for a driver at whatever time you like.”

She glanced at her watch.

“One o’clock. I want to spend a few hours on the files before.”

“That will work. Is there anything else you need?”

“If there is, I’ll just announce it in a loud voice in any of the rooms. You can take it from there.”

“This is only for a short while. I’m hoping you’ll want to get into the field and take care of this errand.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No. I’ll send someone by at one.”

Just the sound of his voice enraged her while simultaneously giving her the creeps. She swallowed her anger with an effort, then moved to the door and swung it open. No point in locking it with the two agents parked outside. Two new ones, she noted as she stretched, before heading down the sidewalk towards a park at the far end of the block. A male jogger took up position a hundred yards behind her as she crossed the street to the park. The agency was wasting no effort.

An hour later, she trotted back to the front door and did her cool down stretches before mounting the three steps and re-entering. A small pile of twenty and hundred dollar bills sat on the kitchen table along with a smaller T-shirt and a few hygiene items. Someone had been thinking, but it was hardly comprehensive, and she would need to stop at a pharmacy as well as a clothing store.

After another shower, she towel-dried her hair and returned her attention to the files, selecting one of the two she hadn’t yet read.

This one was different. A provisional report; incomplete and filled with speculation.

Anthony Simms, age thirty-two, had been dispatched into Laos after receiving word that Hawker had taken up residence in the hills there and was employing a group of anywhere from ten to fifty armed men, depending upon the source. Simms was an experienced field agent with a ten-year history of successful sanctions in the region — in other words, an assassin who did nothing but kill. His operational background was purely one of executions. No other kind of missions.

Simms had followed up on a tip about the location of the target’s base camp. He had checked in every four hours as required, but one and a half days into his trek he had gone dark. His tracking chip had placed him north of the Mekong river in an uninhabited stretch of jungle infamous for drug syndicates and smugglers. The chip had stopped transmitting at ten p.m. local time. Simms had never been heard from again. His body was found a week later near the Laos border in Thailand, badly decomposed and mostly eaten by the local animals. Final identification had only been possible through dental records.

That wasn’t particularly helpful.

Other than informing her that one of the CIA’s more experienced killers had made his final mistake.

She returned the file to the table and opened the second one.

This time two operatives, both from the most elite of the CIA’s wet teams, had been deployed when the Thai agent in charge had gotten wind that Hawker was involved with a network of human traffickers and a slavery syndicate that supplied one of the larger prostitution networks in Bangkok.

She read the account, which described a series of seemingly unrelated bits of intelligence describing a new gang in the Golden Triangle headed by a farang — a white devil rumored to feast on human hearts and dance in the moonlight covered with his victims’ blood. The rumors were that he was impossibly rich and had a hundred men armed with the latest weapons, and was a ghost that even the Myanmar military was terrified of.

Two men had gone in.

Never to be heard from again.

Both were seasoned combat veterans with extensive histories operating in the most dangerous environments on the planet. Africa. The Middle East. The Balkans.

They had gone into the jungle a week ago.

And disappeared without a trace three days later.

The detail of the report described a group in Bangkok that specialized in underage prostitutes and sadism, offering more extreme versions of the spectrum to an international clientele that traveled from all over the world to partake in the forbidden fruits it provided. The head of the organization was a man by the name of Lap Pu, no doubt an alias, who was almost as much of a phantom as the farang .

Pu was rumored to have a relationship with the white ghost, and acted as his eyes and ears in Thailand.

She read for another hour, but the Byzantine maze of relationships, rivalries and rumored allegiances was overwhelming and would require much more study if she was going to formulate any kind of coherent plan.

But one thing seemed obvious to her.

The trail began in Thailand. That was where Hawker had been based, so that was where his contacts would be. Find a weak link in his associates, and with any luck, they would lead her to him.

After two hours of shopping, Jet was reasonably outfitted, and when she made it back to the house, she was glad she’d decided to get her own clothes. Even though she was as drip dry as they came, it was nice for things to fit correctly and not look awful.

She pushed the door open, toting three plastic clothes bags, and found herself face to face with Arthur, who was sitting in the living room sipping a diet soda through a straw — a requirement, given the state of his face.

“Ah, so you’re back. Did you find everything you need?”

“I got the necessities. What are you doing here?”

“I was hoping you have come up with some preliminary thoughts about our situation.”

“You mean the one where you kidnapped my daughter and are blackmailing me so I’ll kill someone for you?”

He ignored that.

“No, more the question of how to find our rogue agent, and what will be required to do so.”

She set the bags down and stared at him in disbelief.

“I just finished reading the last of the files before lunch. Are you kidding me?”

“You are rumored to be the best. I suppose I was overly optimistic…”

“That may be, but I’m not a magician. This could take weeks to plan. I don’t have a lot of information to go on. Other than some rumors of your man having gone native, the files are thin on supporting intelligence.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that. We’ve actually received new satellite footage, but it isn’t going to be of much help. It’s such a large area. And there are caves, villages, and plenty of questionable encampments set up by the smugglers, any of which could be the target or a red herring.”