The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1) (51 page)

“Good morning Mr. Metayer,” said the thin man, “So good to see you again.”

“I feel the same,” said Xiaoyu walking calmly toward the thin man.  With about two meters distance between himself and the thin man Xiaoyu held out his hand for the shake.  Xiaoyu lunged forward balling his open hand into a fist.  Instead of shaking the thin man’s hand, he back-fisted him in the face.  The blow caught the thin man off guard but he recovered quickly returning the blow with a swing of his own.  Xiaoyu was able to anticipate the direction of the swing and block the punch with his elbow using his lower stature to position himself for an uppercut.  The uppercut sent the thin man backward and made him bite the tip of his tongue.  While the thin man was moving backward, Xiaoyu grabbed the lapels of his suit pulling him forward.  The sudden forward motion gave the thin man whiplash.  As Xiaoyu pulled him forward, he delivered a headbutt to the man’s sternum knocking out wind and forcing the bone to crack.  Xiaoyu raised his knee and lowered his center of gravity.  He thrust his foot and his body weight into the man’s left kneecap.  The man buckled under the strain of his own body weight collapsing sideways to the floor.  Xiaoyu quickly crouched down over the man’s body grabbing his right hand, twisting it toward the armpit waiting for a sign. 
Snap
.  Knowing the man’s wrist was broken, Xiaoyu patted the man’s body and struck gold.  A
CZ-99
pistol was holstered in the man’s waist below his suit jacket.  Xiaoyu felt in the man’s pockets finding more treasure.  A sound suppressor was loose in his right pants pocket.  Xiaoyu screwed the suppressor into the barrel of the pistol and pointed into the thin man’s back.   Squeezing one round into the thin man’s spine insured he’d never walk again.  The thin man screamed before Xiaoyu forced his jaw shut.  Xiaoyu put the suppressor in the man’s mouth and looked into his eyes.

“Is Mr. Stojanovic in his office?” asked Xiaoyu.  No response.  Xiaoyu shoved the barrel of the gun deeper down the man’s throat, choking him.

“Last time,” said Xiaoyu, “Is Stojanovic in his office?”  The man nodded with the efficacy of a seriously wounded soldier who knew death had found him.  Xiaoyu squeezed once on the trigger ending the thin man’s embarrassment.  Xiaoyu had the feeling he was being watched.  He was.  An elegant looking cylinder was aimed directly at him with its only eye.  Xiaoyu looked at the camera.  The camera could do no harm but was harmful enough.  The feed lead directly into Aleksandar’s office.  Xiaoyu guessed Aleksandar was watching the feed.  With this thought in mind, Xiaoyu fired one shot at the camera, leaving him alone in the suite with Aleksandar.  A shrewd feeling ran over him, Jusuf Juric was no longer playing the role of Aleksandar.  He was aware he had been found out.  He was also aware Aleksandar would end up unlucky, like the thin man.  Jusuf Juric would have better odds. 

Xiaoyu lied down in the foyer behind the north side couch and waited.  Going into Juric’s office was the wrong move, so Xiaoyu waited for him to come out.  It would be against Juric’s better judgment, but Xiaoyu guessed he would make the mistake of coming out of the office at some point.  The game was psychological and it was in Xiaoyu’s favor.  Xiaoyu could leave.  But Juric would have to come by him to get out.  Juric would eventually have to come toward Xiaoyu.  Like a thirsty sailor drinking seawater, Juric would eventually give in to a bad decision.  Xiaoyu didn’t have to make a decision.  He had to wait.  Xiaoyu had much of his weight on his chest, with pistol aimed toward Juric’s office.  The wait was long.  His body grew sore under its own weight.  He shifted regularly to relieve the pressure on his ribs.  His stomach grew lonely and his mouth dried out.  Still he waited.  He thought of the Grebo brothers, would Juric call them?  If not, why not?  Xiaoyu expected they would come and shoot at him with the weapons he sold them.  He almost smiled at the irony.  The light through the windows phased from yellow to orange to red and out.  It was morning when Xiaoyu entered the office and the light through the windows was enough.  With that light gone, Xiaoyu lied in an ugly darkness, listening for any sound coming from anywhere.  With no light, sound was the dominant species in the suite and it hunted in small numbers.  The eighth floor had only two occupants, both hunting in silence.  The sound from outside teased the sound from inside to come out and play but eventually even the sound outside died out.  The night grew mature and wasn’t as active as it had been in its youth.  But still the night lived.  Soon, it wasn’t just Xiaoyu’s mouth that was dry, it was also his throat.  And the darkness made it hard to aim.  But he was used to darkness; he had lived in it.  And he was used to waiting out his opponent; he had survived by it.  Aiming wasn’t so important; he would shoot at the sound.

Sound came but not as Xiaoyu expected.  There was no small sound of a shirt creasing or light scrape of a shoe across the floor.  The sound was loud and raucous.  It echoed like thunder coming from the corridor leading to Juric’s office.  There was thunder and lighting.  There was even the roar of a lion.  The office became a wilderness.  Perhaps the idea of being a prisoner was too much for Juric or perhaps he realized Xiaoyu wanted him alive and needed a clear shot, a shot not intended to kill him.  Juric seemed hell-bent on denying Xiaoyu his clear shot.  He came running down the hall screaming and firing shots from an automatic rifle.  The shots caused a muzzle flash that lit the corridor, but not the foyer where Xiaoyu lied next to the couch.  The noise and light woke him out of a dry-mouth trance.  Had Xiaoyu decided to stand or sit he might have been hit.  But for over fourteen hours he never left the floor.  As Juric started to head passed the thin man’s body, Xiaoyu crawled forward under the wave of bullets.  The muzzle flash had a side effect; it made Juric visible in a dark room.  Juric kept shooting toward the door and shot the glass door to the ground.  As he passed through the door, he felt a kick to his lower back.  There was a pain in his right shoulder blade.  He collapsed to the floor feeling like lactic acid had built up in his lower back and shoulder.  He turned back toward the door-less doorway and fired aimlessly into his own office suite.  He roared as he fired but his roar was short-lived.  His mouth was too dry and body too drained for battle cries.  The rifle in his hands was drained and dry like Juric himself.  He lied on the floor in the middle of the hall, alone except for his rifle.  His breathing was heavy and echoed throughout the blackness of the empty eighth floor.  With limited occupancy, the building shuttered the hall lights after 10pm. Juric lied on the floor for minutes that blurred together to look like hours.  He could hear footsteps in the man-made darkness.  The footsteps passed over floor over glass and then stopped.  He could see the feet.  It pained him to look up at the man.  He breathed heavily in and out with his eyes angled down at the floor.

“Who are you really?” asked Juric, “You know who I am.”

“You know who I am too,” said Xiaoyu, “I’m just like you.  They wanted me for my crimes, now they want you.”  Juric’s breathing was getting noticeably slower.

“They gave me a deal,” said Xiaoyu, “Maybe they’ll give you one too.”

“It better already be on the table,” said Juric, “I might not have so much time to consider it.”

“Why didn’t you call Grebo?” asked Xiaoyu.

“Not their fight,” said Juric.

“They don’t know who you really are,” said Xiaoyu.

“If they did, they might kill me,” said Juric, “There wasn’t much of an economy after the war.  Filip had his brother and his cousin and that was it.  The whole rest of the family was dead.  I gave them a job.  They don’t care about much else.  They have a way to survive.”

“How bad are you hit?” asked Xiaoyu.

“Bad enough,” said Juric, “If they want me, let’s go now.  I’m not feeling any better.”  Xiaoyu went behind Juric and tightened his arms around his jugular vein until Juric fell unconscious.  He inspected Juric’s body and saw the injured shoulder.  The shoulder wasn’t much of a worry.  The punctured lung and shredded kidney were the problem.  Xiaoyu had beaten up enough bodies to know he needed help for Juric.  Fishing through Juric’s pockets he found a set of keys, one with the
Alfa Romeo
emblem on it.  He dragged Juric’s body into the elevator.  Hoisting Juric on his shoulders, he carried him through the empty lobby and the motion sensor door unlocked and let him out. 

Xiaoyu walked to the parking garage and found the red
Alfa Romeo
.  He dumped Juric in the trunk and injected him with Ketamine, hidden in the heel of his shoe.  He started the engine.  Unsure of the fastest way to the Croatian border, he called Mason.  It was a regular call, unsecured.

“Do you see where I am?” asked Xiaoyu.

“Yes,” said Mason, “That’s what
Caprice
is for.”

“What’s the fastest way to Zagreb?” asked Xiaoyu.

“Is Juric with you?” asked Mason.

“He’s in the trunk,” said Xiaoyu, ”I’m driving his car.  He needs medical very soon.”

“Ok,” said Mason.

Xiaoyu drove in the direction he was given from Sarajevo to Zagreb.  He was fortunate. 
Sejad Mehmedovic
didn’t regularly schedule appointments in their office.  The thin man’s body wouldn’t be discovered for another two days.  The janitor would come to clean the office on the weekend.  The night drive moved the car along fast.  Xiaoyu left the greater Sarajevo area eight minutes before two o’clock in the morning.  The roads weren’t crisp but weren’t crowded.  He averaged a little less than 100 kilometers per hour.  The border stop between Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina wasn’t precious.  A young Frenchman driving an Italian car with a Bosnian number plate wasn’t suspicious.  Playboys weren’t suspicious.  Juric lived alone.  There was no one to report him missing.  No one would be looking for the car until the thin man’s body was found.  Xiaoyu had a forty-eight hour window and he only needed eleven percent of it.  He made one more call to Mason to be sure he had the right location for the safe house.  The satellite showed Xiaoyu directly in front of a fabric store in downtown Zagreb.  In less than a minute, three men and one woman appeared from inside the fabric store.  The light in the store stayed off.  One man came toward the driver side door and Xiaoyu opened. 

“Are you Reagan Lee?” asked the man.  Xiaoyu nodded.

“Speak your label here,” said the man handing Xiaoyu what looked like a cell phone.

“Rainman,” said Xiaoyu.  The man took the phone back from Xiaoyu.

“Where’s the package?” asked the man.

“In the trunk,” said Xiaoyu. 

“Ok, let me have the car,” said the man.  Xiaoyu stood firm.

“We need to get it off the street, it’s a weekday.  The streetcar comes right through here,” said the man.  Xiaoyu moved out of the way and let the man have the vehicle.  He drove to the end of the street and turned right.

“Don’t worry he’s just headed around back,” said another man, “Come inside with us.”  Xiaoyu followed the three back inside the fabric store.  The layout was similar to the Paris safe house.  The first floor seemed to be a legitimate business, even an old-fashioned cash register.  Upstairs was a different setup.  It was an open concept.  There were steel cabinets against the wall.  Two desks sat against each other on the far wall.  There was a steel table in the middle of one half of the room.  Three movable IV stands were at the foot of the table.  A heart rate monitor was switched off.  A utensil drawer cabinet was against the near wall.  One thing missing was Mason.  Xiaoyu thought he would be in Zagreb to receive Juric. 

The two men and one woman were polite in an efficient way.  They introduced themselves:  Jacob; Miro and Fabijana.  Only Miro extended his hand to Xiaoyu because he was within shaking distance.  The other two didn’t bother with such formality.  By his accent Jacob was American so was the third man, the one who took the car.  Jacob’s phone rang.  It was the third man, Andrew.  Andrew had pulled the car to the backside of the building.  Jacob and Miro went downstairs to assist.  Fabijana prepared the table, turned on the heart monitor and slung an IV bag over the top of the IV stand.  She extended a white sheet over the steel table with a head pillow looking made from fabrics downstairs. 

“Sit down,” said Fabijana, “You’ve been through a lot no doubt.”  Xiaoyu went to one of the desks and sat down.  He folded his arms on the desktop and rested his head.  He had been awake for twenty-four hours.  His mind suddenly buzzed when he realized he left his bag in his hotel room.  There wasn’t much. His clothes. Four spray cans, two white and two silver. 
And the antenna, the one to link his phone to the satellite
. He had his passport on him.  He asked for a secure connection.  Fabijana gave him her antenna to use.  While the other three men carried Juric up the stairs, Xiaoyu called Mason.  He told him about the items he left in the hotel room and reported he had arrived at the safe house with Juric.  Mason didn’t seem bothered by the items left behind and was satisfied that Juric was alive—confirmed by Fabijana.  He told Xiaoyu to get some rest in Zagreb and meet him the following evening in Ljubljana.  Xiaoyu was surprised Mason wasn’t in Paris.  He changed his mind; Mason was still in Paris.

• • •

Xiaoyu took a blue
Citroen Saxo
from the safe house in Zagreb to drive the two hours to Ljubljana.  He met Mason at a large country house outside the city near the Smarna Gora hill.  Ljubljana was the CIA’s western control post for the Balkan region forming a triangle with Athens and Sofia.  The house and grounds was one big operating site.  Mason met Xiaoyu out front.  He wore a short-sleeve collared shirt and sunglasses, complimenting a sunny day.