Russell Blake - Betrayal

“You kidnapped my daughter and took me captive to get me to do a job for you? You’re insane. That’s not how this works, and you know it.”

“I do, indeed. I’ve been doing this for far longer than you’ve been alive. Trust me when I tell you that if there were any alternative, I would have let you go your merry way with your daughter, and that would have been the end of it. But extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions, and I have need of your skills. So I have had to take an…unconventional approach. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Arthur executed the hint of a bow, and she could see that his hair was white and that the scar tissue ran across his entire head.

“If you hurt her…”

“I am not an animal. I have no desire to harm your daughter. If these were normal circumstances, I would have removed myself from the entire affair once David died. Yes, I know all about the fire on the Russian’s boat. After considering the plans he had asked for, I guessed that his target was the yacht, and from there it was a simple matter to work out what had happened. He went dark after that night, so I suspected the worst. And then when Grigenko’s jet vaporized…well, let’s just say I surmised that you survived. Which created an interesting opportunity for me.”

“How did you know I would come for my daughter?”

“I didn’t. It was a calculated risk. But I realized that if he had revealed his scheme to you, it would be impossible for you to stay away — so I was willing to devote a few resources in the event that you surfaced.”

“Surface. I see. And how did you track me to the hotel?”

“I had a team across the street from the house, and when they saw a strange car pull up on the street and watched you slip into the house next door, they put a tracker on the car. It wasn’t hard to guess what was happening.” He paused, sucking in a breath with a hiss, his tongue slurping wetly as he blotted the corner of the raw gash that comprised his mouth with a handkerchief. “And so, here we are. The two of us. I, with a proposition for you. And you, in a position to pay very close attention to it, and I would hope, predisposed to accept my proposal.”

“Go to hell. I’ll kill you with my bare hands. You’ll never be safe.”

“Perhaps. But you’re the one who is tied up at the moment, if I’m not mistaken. So save the idle threats for later. I’m not asking you to fall in love with me, and I know that my actions are reprehensible. Let’s just agree that you probably hate me right now, and justifiably so, might I add. That emotion is a luxury you can indulge to your heart’s content later. For now, if I were you, I’d be more interested in what I needed to do to get my daughter back so I could get on with my life than in threatening me or vowing revenge.”

She glared at him and said nothing.

“I have a problem. You are the solution. Solve my problem and I let you reunite with your daughter and I step forever out of your life. You’re free to do whatever you like, and I’ll take the secret of your existence to my grave. Consider it the price of my assistance to you and David in the Grigenko matter.”

“Solve your problem,” Jet repeated.

“Yes.”

“Do I need to ask what the problem is?”

The eerily smooth skin of his face pulled taut in a grimace that could have been a model for a Munch painting. He was smiling.

“Why, my dear, I think it’s obvious. I need you to kill someone.”

Arthur nodded at the guard outside to shut the door and then walked slowly to the foot of the steel bed she was tied to and looked her over.

“That’s it? You want me to kill someone? For that you need to take my daughter and blackmail me?” Jet demanded.

“I think you would find this more palatable if you regarded it as payback for all of the help I arranged for David on his Russian issue. And as for your daughter, if you accept that I’m taking good care of her while you’re otherwise occupied with this errand, it will be easier for both of us. Again, there’s nothing I want more than for you to have, er, Hannah back. I can only imagine how awful it must be to have finally found her, only to have her torn away from you.”

“Forgive me if I don’t get all weepy at your sentiment.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

“So why does the CIA need me to perform a sanction for it? You have people who can take care of that sort of thing — being the best funded and largest intelligence service in the history of the world, and all.”

“This is a delicate matter. We have already tried to attend to it in-house, but haven’t been successful. When you showed up looking for your daughter, it created an opportunity. You specialize in a kind of work that’s a dying art, I’m afraid. Ever since the Wall came down and Russia stopped being the great Satan, our skills and resources have diminished. Sure, the Chinese present a clear and present danger, and the odd foray into the Middle East has kept us in practice, but nothing to hold a candle to your achievements. You could say I’m somewhat of a fan.”

“How could you possibly know about my missions with the Mossad?”

“That’s one of the questions I won’t be able to answer. Suffice it to say, I know what nobody is supposed to, and frankly, your resume is as impressive as hell. I’ve been a player for forty years, and I’ve never encountered such attributes. It’s truly remarkable. If you were a gymnast or a ballerina, you’d have a cabinet full of gold medals. Alas, it’s a rarified talent, but one that I completely appreciate.”

“Spare me.”

Arthur rubbed his ruined face. “Let me tell you a story. It’s one that I’ve never told another living person.”

“Meaning all the others are dead…”

“Yes. But no matter. It’s a fascinating one. It involves greed, corruption, deception, and betrayal.”

“Don’t they all?”

“Hmm. Three months ago, I was in charge of conducting a transaction in Asia. In its essence, it was a simple matter. The CIA arranged to fund certain factions with interests aligned with our own, whose cooperation was deemed vital. Are you familiar with Myanmar?”

“Burma. Military dictatorship. Rogue nation. What’s to know?”

“Then you’re probably aware that it is not considered friendly by my government. Let’s just say that if you’re an enemy of my enemy, you are my friend, for the moment.”

“That didn’t work out so well for Saddam Hussein, did it?”

“I don’t make the rules. Anyway, there was a group in Myanmar that we felt were deserving of our support. But not the sort that you can go to Congress to sign off on. More discreet. To cut a long story short, one of our top agents in the region was chartered with handling the transaction. Fifty million dollars in diamonds. Untraceable. All of them easily convertible to cash. It was a simple arrangement. He was to go in, give our friends the diamonds, and then report back. But apparently, he had different ideas. The money was too large, or maybe he had just been in-country too long. He took delivery of the diamonds, but our friends never received them. And then we learned that they had been butchered in a gun battle. So it would appear that our man decided to retire and give himself a better than customary pension. Fifty million in diamonds’ worth.”

“So he stole your diamonds. But, come on. Fifty million is a drop in the bucket. Didn’t I read that your defense department can’t account for something like ten trillion dollars? Fifty million is beer money — a rounding error. There are Wall Street moguls who stole twenty times that much who are still walking around New York, who never even got charged.”