Jack Coughlin - An Act of Treason

“Why are you doing this, Jim Hall? I thought you were to maintain a low profile until the job is done.”

“Why, Selim, this is a low profile for me. I have always had expensive tastes. Got a discount on this baby, seventy-five grand, because I paid cash. Now I don’t have to ride those damned trains anymore. I can take my time getting anywhere in Europe, and in comfort. Hand-stitched leather. Here, you’re cold. I’ll turn on the seat heater.” He clicked a switch, then dropped his hand back to the gear lever, changing to a lower ratio as he found a route marker and turned a corner. Then the car leaped onto the Bundesautobahn, and when he spied a round road sign with the diagonal stripes, the speed limit came off. He opened up the big engine.

“This will only draw attention to yourself. It is madness. My father will not be pleased.”

“He’s your father, not mine. How is the old snake, anyway?”

“He is well. A bit anxious because the political center in Pakistan is still holding together. We had hoped the Islamabad attack might finish off the government.”

The speedometer was pegging at 150 kilometers per hour. The car had been delivered with an electronic device that limited the top speed to that velocity, but Hall had a specialist remove the governor because he had not bought a hot car to only go 90 miles per hour. He pressed the pedal, and the sleek Mercedes leaped at the command. “Yeah, I hear you. Islamabad was a mess. I thought it would finish off the government, too.”

“So now you have to complete the remaining task, the other option. Which is one reason you should still be under cover.”

Hall kept a light grip on the wheel, letting the sensors in the driving avionics keep the car under control as he said without a care, “The assassination. Right. When and where?”

“The president is to meet with other regional leaders in a special conference in Istanbul next week. You take him out while he is there.”

A vision of the Turkish city swam into Hall’s mind. “I can do that. Then our deal is complete, right?” He was well over 100 miles per hour now and coming up fast on the bumper of an Alfa Romeo. Hall flashed his lights, and the Alfa moved over. He zipped past with a rush of air that rocked the smaller car.

“That is correct.” Selim was holding on tight. “You must go back into your old ways, Jim Hall. This will not be an easy task for you. Get rid of this flashy car and those fancy clothes and the high-flying lifestyle until you finish.”

There was a grump of a laugh. “I know how to go about my business, Selim. And the image doesn’t matter because the CIA and I have a special arrangement. They won’t bother me.”

“You do not know everything, my friend.”

“So I’m too busy these days to watch TV news. So what? You will get me the advance information I need to make the plan.”

“So you are unaware that your friend Kyle Swanson not only has lived through the situation in Islamabad, but he also has escaped from prison. The CIA woman, Carson, also has disappeared.”

Jim Hall froze for a second, then lifted his foot from the accelerator, tapped the brakes, and swerved out of the fast lane, all the way across the highway and onto the safety of the broad shoulder. By the time the car had stopped, his face was chalky. “Swanson is on the loose?”

“Yes. Nobody knows where he is,” Selim told him, turning in the seat to face the assassin.

Hall sucked in some deep breaths. “He is coming after me.”

“Perhaps.”

“No fucking ‘perhaps’ about it.” Already Hall’s eyes were nervously surveying the countryside around him and the various mirrors. He pounded a fist on the cushioned steering wheel. “Shit. Double shit.”

“It does not change our agreement. You still must go to Istanbul and kill the president next week.”

Hall put the Mercedes back into gear and regained the highway, this time at an almost sedate pace, watching his mirrors and the passing vehicles. “Yeah. I’ll do it. If Kyle lets me live that long.”

They made the trip back into Berlin in silence. Hall dropped off Selim and drove back to the underground parking lot in the luxury hotel where he had booked a suite. Upstairs, with the door locked, he logged in to the laptop and began reviewing his private e-mail accounts. A little red exclamation point flashed by one from Italy, an urgent note from his property manager. Authorities were investigating an explosion and a fire that had destroyed Hall’s little villa by the vineyards in Tuscany. Some bedsheets that had been sliced to pieces were still hanging outside on a clothesline. Arson was suspected; the agent had been questioned and was asking for instructions.

My villa! That bitch Lauren told Kyle about my villa! They were together and had gone active, removing his favorite place of refuge. Jim Hall fought to keep control of himself as he walked around the spacious hotel room. Things were not hopeless. Far from it. He knew Kyle too well. Additional countermeasures had to be put into place; then he could carry out the Istanbul hit. After that, he would take his time finding Lauren and Kyle and killing them both.

BANGKOK

THAILAND

B Y THE TIME J IMHall received the e-mail about his home in the Tuscan countryside, a tired Kyle Swanson was handing a worn British passport to a customs agent at Don Muang Airport. He had come in on a Thai Airways flight all the way from Rome, more than five thousand miles, the trip made shorter by the customary pampering of the excellent airline. Swanson had slept most of the way.

Lauren had wanted to come, but as much as he wished she could be with him, it would have been a terrible tactical decision. A single white man arriving alone in Bangkok is expected to be drawn to the seedy parts of the city, the massage parlors, bars, and whorehouses that had made Patpong Road a destination for lonely men since the Vietnam War. A farang, a foreigner, could find sex of any sort there, for a small price. Prostitution was a national industry. Kyle would be accepted with hardly a glance, while Lauren’s ivory beauty would have drawn attention.

Also, she was being sought by the CIA and was probably on watch lists around the world, while Swanson was apparently still being considered a fugitive but not a threat.

“Are you in Bangkok for business or pleasure, Mr. James?” asked the busy customs clerk, glancing at his face and the passport.

“A little of both, I hope,” Swanson answered with a smirk.

The clerk sighed. The farang always gave that answer, an impolite joke that held the country up to ridicule. He stamped the passport for a five-day stay and let him go, hoping that the man caught some horrible disease from an unclean woman.

Kyle thanked him and walked through the international arrivals lounge, where uniformed car drivers waved names of their pickups on grease-board placards. Squadrons of other young men, drivers and freelance tourist guides, tugged at his shirt, promising to take him wherever he wanted to go.

A tall, gangly American with shaggy gray hair parted in the middle and falling over his ears caught his eye, turned, and shambled away. Kyle followed the man outside, to where a battered old Mercedes waited at the curb like a faithful horse. The man slipped a handful of baht to the cop who had kept an eye on the parked car, and they got in and drove away before ever saying anything to each other.

“Can’t believe Jim Hall went over to the dark side.” Tom Hodges had a voice like doom, naturally deep and made even more gravelly by years of smoking cigarettes. Originally from Iowa, he had prowled the Quang Tri mountains as a young Marine sniper during Vietnam and had trained under the legendary Carlos Hathcock himself. When Hodges had gone to Bangkok for a liberty pass, he emerged from his first visit to a classy steam-and-cream parlor with a smile on his face and a decision to make Thailand his home. It was not at all like Iowa. At the end of his tour, he spent a weekend in Des Moines at the home of his only sister, then flew back to Bangkok, bought a bar in partnership with a Thai politician, and never looked back.