Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

“Wait!” Ryan shouted, but the man swung again as he jumped off the bed. Ryan spun out of the way and felt the breeze as the brass lamp whipped by his face.

Ryan heard his cousin shout from the kitchen. “Jack?”

Ryan didn’t have time to answer. He stumbled back over the dresser as the man closed quickly, chasing Jack with the heavy blunt object. He swung again, but Jack managed to fall backward out of the bedroom and into the hall before the lamp connected.

He rolled to the left and shouted at the man again. This time he said, “Skála, wait!”

Dom Caruso turned into the hallway from the kitchen, his pistol already out of its Thunderwear holster. Skála swung at the gun before Caruso could fire, and the brass lamp in Skála’s hand clanged against the steel and polymer weapon, knocking it out of Caruso’s hand.

Caruso leapt back to avoid a second swing, but then he moved in quickly, got between the attacker and his weapon, and he slammed the man hard up against the wall of the hallway. The brass lamp clanged to the hardwood floor and Dom shoved the man again. The back of his head made violent contact with the wall. He slid down to the floor, dazed, and Dom stepped over him, fists balled and ready to break his jaw with a right cross.

Jack shouted, “No! Don’t hurt him. It’s Skála.”

Dom looked at the man’s face for a second, then he relaxed his hands, turned, and went to retrieve his pistol.

Jack stood up and looked down at the dazed man in his underwear. “You speak English?”

The Czech man was only twenty-eight, but his blond hair was wispy thin. His eyes were impossibly bloodshot, and he smelled like sweat and urine. Jack’s first impression was the man was some sort of a drug addict.

Skála nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“What the fuck were you doing in your closet?” Jack asked.

He coughed a few times. His throat sounded as dry as paper. “Hiding from you bastards.”

“How did you know we were here?”

This confused the man, it was plain to see. He rubbed his eyes. “You . . . Aren’t you with the North Koreans?”

Caruso holstered his pistol. He was pissed at losing his weapon in a fight with a man with more luck than training, and his anger was reflected in his voice. He snapped back, “Do we fucking look like we’re with the North Koreans?”

Jack added, “We’re American.”

Skála said, “So? The last American I talked to was working with the North Koreans.”

Hazelton, Jack thought, but he did not say it. Instead, he said, “We’re not with the North Koreans. Are they after you?”

Skála just nodded. He was still coming out of his daze, and he was plainly afraid.

Jack said, “We’re going to sit down in the living room and talk a minute. We have a man outside and we are in communication with him. He’ll tell us if anybody else shows up.”

This seemed to relax Skála a little. “I would very much like to have a beer,” he said.

—

While Dom went to the kitchen to get Skála a beer from the refrigerator, Jack went into the bedroom and looked at the little spider hole in the back of the closet. It was two feet wide and five feet tall and only a foot and a half deep, smaller than a casket and certainly just as dark.

The North Koreans had this guy spooked enough to virtually bury himself alive in his own home, and this realization chilled Ryan.

Inside the hole Ryan found Skála’s mobile phone and a laptop. There was a battery charger plugged into both devices. Jack took it all out and headed back for the living room. Here he found Dom standing with a beer in his hand. Skála was in the bathroom urinating, but Dom made him leave the door open so he could be sure he wasn’t trying to escape through the little window high in the wall.

When Skála finished in the bathroom, he came out and sat on his couch across from an archway that led to the hallway to the front door. Dom gave him his beer, then sat next to him. Jack sat in the chair on Skála’s left.

Jack asked, “How long have you been in your wall?”

The man looked down at his watch for a second, then he said. “Almost two and a half days. I came out at night for a few minutes to walk around and use the toilet.”

“Who are you hiding from?”

He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked, “Who are you ?”

“A friend of ours met you at the airport. He wanted us to look you up.”

“What friend?”

“Colin Hazelton?”

Skála didn’t react to the name at all. Jack said, “Big American. Early sixties.”

“Yes,” he said with a nod. “So . . . if you are friends with him—you are working with—”

Dom interrupted. “We told you we’re not with anybody. Somebody killed Hazelton. We think it might have been the North Koreans. We are here to find out why.”

“They killed him,” Skála said softly. He didn’t seem surprised, but the weight of the words affected him. He chugged a third of the bottle of beer. His terror was greater even than his exhaustion, and his hands trembled.

Jack said, “You gave Hazelton some documents.”

Skála nodded. “Yes. Five sets of papers. EU diplomatic passports and Czech travel authorizations.”

“You still have copies of them?”

“No. I deleted everything.” He shrugged. “Of course I did. I didn’t want to get caught with it.”

Jack winced in frustration. “Who were the people?”

“I don’t know. I was given photographs. I made everything else up.”

“Where were they from?”

“I don’t have any idea. I guess they are Americans, because the American was the one who paid me and picked up the documents.”

Jack shrugged. He wasn’t so sure. He asked, “And where were they going?”

Skála cocked his head. “North Korea. Of course. I created paperwork claiming them to be Czech diplomats traveling to the mission in Pyongyang.”

Jack said, “Somebody killed Hazelton in Vietnam and took the documents, but I don’t know who, and I don’t know why. I don’t even know if they made it to North Korea.”

Skála surprised Ryan by saying, “They made it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the North Koreans themselves came here, last week. They said they needed paperwork to get more people into North Korea. They offered big money. Said over time there would be dozens traveling. I tried to explain to them how dangerous it was for me. I almost got caught with the last batch of five I created. There was no way I would be able to pull off forging that many. But they wouldn’t listen. They got threatening. They were animals. I had no idea anything like this would happen.”

Dom snorted. “So when you agreed to work with the North Koreans you never imagined you might be working with the North Koreans?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes I work for an organization in the U.S. that needs forged EU passports.”

“Sharps Global Intelligence Partners?” Jack asked.

Skála nodded. “Yes. They are the ones who came to me. I thought this would be the same as ever, but the man wanted the North Korean letters as well. I was surprised. I thought it was just for some cover story, I didn’t think they actually would be traveling there. The American paid me twice my normal rate, so I agreed.”

“This was Hazelton?”

“No. Another man. An Englishman. Thirties. Very polite. A pleasure to work with.”

“Then what happened?”

“The day before I had them ready he called me. He’d taken ill, something he ate, he said, so another man from his company would meet me at the airport to collect them. I was told to package them up in a way he could not see the contents. This man was your friend. The big American. He took the documents and left.