Russell Blake - Betrayal

“Do you really think that I’ll need that much?”

“You’re going up against very powerful, very rich men. They routinely deal in billions. Trust me. Fifteen million total firepower is not overkill. You may find yourself having to buy your way into or out of some difficult situations. Specialized weapons. I have no idea. But I do know that I don’t want to hear about how you failed because you didn’t have adequate resources. As an example, to avoid any customs unpleasantness, you should charter private jets to get to Europe and then to the U.S. — it’s a completely different system from the airport cattle lines when you’re a diplomat on your own jet. That alone will run a few hundred grand, easy. And then you have to plan your getaway. That won’t be cheap. Not to mention that if you need to bribe anyone in the U.S., it could cost a few million for anything truly risky.”

“Fine. I’m not going to argue. I’ll bring back the fifty.”

“Just get your daughter. We’ll figure the rest out once you’re done with this adventure. Deal?” He smiled, obviously enjoying playing Santa Claus, and reached his hand to her.

“Deal,” she said, and shook it.

They stayed together like that, her hand in his, for an uncomfortable time, and then he rose and leaned across the table and kissed her. She found herself responding, her pulse quickening in her throat and her breath slowing, a rush of adrenaline hitting her at the unexpected contact.

The bathroom door opened, and Lawan stepped out, and they quickly separated, the moment over. She studied them both with no expression, then the hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth.

Matt finally released her hand, then cleared his throat.

“Just do what you have to do, and come back safe. There will be plenty of time to figure everything else out,” he said, his voice thick.

“That’s a lot of surprises in a very short period of time.”

“Agreed. But seeing as I’m leaving in a few minutes, I wanted to get it out on the table.”

Matt turned to Lawan and told her to get her backpack and to put her small hygiene kit in it. He moved to the bed and picked his up, hefting it.

“I got a set of night vision goggles and a sat phone. Number is on the slip with the bank info, but scrambled — start on the left then right outermost numbers and work your way inward to the middle. Then add a zero after the fourth and seventh numbers.”

Jet nodded. “How are you planning to get to the border?”

“Nothing quite as fancy as a private jet. I rented a car under one of my throwaway IDs, and I’ll ditch it once we get there. But it’s better than riding the bus.”

“I think we’ve established that.”

When Lawan had finished packing, Jet held out her arms. The little girl ran to her and hugged her, tears running in rivulets down her cheeks. Jet held her for a full minute and then gently pushed her away, got down on one knee, and stared into her eyes. She wiped Lawan’s tears away and smoothed her hair, and nodded. Lawan returned the unspoken affirmation, and then they both faced Matt, Jet rising and meeting his gaze unflinchingly. He leaned in to her and kissed her again, this time cradling her face with his hands, then stepped away and motioned for Lawan to join him. She trailed him as they walked to the door. They both turned and waved to Jet before disappearing into the hall, the door closing softly behind them.

Jet sat staring at the briefcase for several minutes and then carefully repacked everything. She checked the time and moved to her backpack to retrieve one of the six cell phones she’d bought that afternoon. After carefully slotting the battery in place, she powered it on and walked back to the desk, then searched in her purse for a card she’d scrawled some numbers on earlier in the day at an internet cafe.

Half an hour later, she had confirmed her first charter — a Global XRS out of Hong Kong that would fly her to Zurich, non-stop, at fifty thousand feet — close to Mach 1 — for the bargain price of a hundred and seventy grand. For that, the company would also supply catered food and get a visa for her. They explained that it was a deal because they had to fly the plane in from Hong Kong, which was over a thousand miles away, at an internal cost of roughly ten grand an hour.

She confirmed that she’d be ready to go that night, and after some calculations, they told her that she could depart Bangkok by eleven p.m..

Jet spent the rest of the evening in the hotel room, unwilling to go out anywhere and leave the briefcase, or take it with her and risk being robbed — even though it was hard to imagine anyone doing so successfully. She called the plane company back and told the concierge she wanted a late dinner ready upon takeoff, and he assured her that they would happily prepare anything she wanted. She punched the phone off, then lay on the bed and thought about Matt and the strange rush she’d felt when they’d kissed — a rush that confused her, especially so soon after David’s death. She’d kissed Rob as part of their cover and had felt nothing, even though he was a handsome man. But Matt, for some reason, had triggered something that warranted more consideration.

Her thoughts shifted to Lawan — a brutalized child who now had a second lease on life. It would be rough on her living in the wilds with Matt, but not nearly as hard as being forced into prostitution while she should still have been playing with teddy bears. Jet swallowed the rage that boiled to the surface whenever she thought about it. There was no point in getting angry. But it brought back so many of her own unpleasant memories, of her foster father when she had been that age…

The trip to the airport was predictably tardy, with traffic still heavy even at night due to the dense layout of Bangkok coupled with a conspicuous lack of urban planning. As she watched the suicidal motorcycle drivers dart past them, Jet wondered what the morose cabbie would have thought if he’d known he was driving sixty-three million dollars and change around. She smiled inwardly. The world was an odd place, made more so now that she was carrying a king’s ransom in her briefcase.

The airport experience was lavish, with two armed guards accompanying the executive from the charter company due to the large amount of cash involved, and two stewardesses waiting to attend to her every need. After a few minutes of counting money and shaking hands, she was speeding down the runway, en route to a frigid country almost six thousand miles away.

Zurich customs turned out to be a non-issue, her passport and arrival on a private jet ensuring that the ever-discreet Swiss waved her through without a glance, and once she was finished with the formality, she approached the taxi line. The driver nodded in approval when she told him to take her to the Widder hotel, right in the center of everything and only a long block from the river. She had been in Zurich once before on an assignment. As she watched the streets glide by, she was reminded of how antiseptically clean everything seemed — the streets, the buildings, the cars and people — especially after Bangkok, which was a kind of controlled chaos. Switzerland oozed civilized order.

The drizzly, cold dawn had barely broken, but when she got to the hotel, the staff leapt to attend to her in spite of the early hour. The suite was fifteen hundred dollars a night, with every amenity she could have wanted. She unpacked the briefcase and secured the fifty million dollar package in the room safe, then retired to the bathroom and savored a long hot soak in the bath — her first in months.

The diamond buyers weren’t expecting a call until nine a.m. at the earliest, so she went downstairs and imbibed a pot of steaming dark roast coffee in the restaurant as she read the newspaper, which was thoughtfully provided in six different languages by the front desk.