The Ninth Orphan (5 page)

“
You never should’ve put so much faith in one man,” Naylor said accusingly. The Omega director appeared to be looking at someone over Kentbridge’s shoulder, but the senior agent knew better. Naylor was looking right at him through his lazy eye.

Ignoring the criticism, Kentbridge studied a framed color photo on the far wall. It was of the abandoned hydro dam one mile above them. He deliberately allowed himself to daydream for a few seconds. Kentbridge found clarity often came to him doing that. Finally, he turned back to Naylor.

“
What do you suggest we do?” Naylor asked. Although Kentbridge had made a judgment error in sending Nine to the Philippines, Naylor still had the greatest respect for him. Kentbridge had the sharpest of minds and was rarely wrong.

“
The only way we'll ever locate the treasure is by playing his game, one-on-one,” he said. Pointing to the Hasid in the photo, he added, “I have to go after him.”

Naylor nodded. “Agreed, but I want Seventeen to go with you. Just in case.”

Kentbridge squirmed in his chair as he glanced at Seventeen. She gave him a cold stare. While she, too, respected Kentbridge, she didn’t particularly like him. If she was honest, she didn’t particularly like anyone. As with all the Pedemont orphans, her strange upbringing had left her with more than her share of hang-ups.

“
Seventeen knows things about Nine that maybe you don't,” Naylor added.

Kentbridge nodded reluctantly. He would have preferred to go after Nine alone, but was in no position to argue.

T
he winter sun broke through the clouds above China. It shone into the Ministry of State Security’s headquarters near the Summer Palace in Beijing’s Xiyuan district.

Inside one of the building’s boardrooms, senior intelligence agent Ji'an Yang squinted as the sunlight reflected off a photo he was studying. The image, which was similar to the photo the Omega officials had, was of the elderly Hasid in London.

Four Chinese agents waited for Ji'an Yang to speak. All were members of the Ministry of State Security, or MSS, China’s equivalent of the CIA. As with the Omega Agency, the MSS was hellbent on obtaining the last of Yamashita’s Gold.

Unlike the Americans, Ji'an Yang understood the opportunity offered more than material riches for his country. He knew Japan had methodically stripped China of numerous rare and precious artifacts during the war. Many of these items were ancient relics confiscated from Chinese temples. As the site Nine had found was apparently full of such artifacts, the discovery was deemed to be of great cultural importance.

When Nine had contacted the MSS about the treasure find, China had made it a top priority. Besides the enormous monetary value, Ji'an Yang and his colleagues sensed that regaining the artifacts
–
many of which dated as far back as the Shang Dynasty
–
would help erase some of the loss of face China experienced during the Japanese occupation.

Among the MSS agents present was Cho-Wu, a fit-looking operative in his late twenties.
At six foot, he was significantly taller than most of his countrymen. But what really set him apart were his broad shoulders. For someone so slim and wiry
,
they were abnormally wide and left no doubt about the power this formidable agent possessed.

A ruthless assassin with a record that included hits against elite operatives of a dozen countries, Cho-Wu had been called in to replace the MSS agent Nine was to have met in London. That agent had been killed by an unknown agency shortly before the planned trade. Not one to stand on ceremony, Cho-Wu tapped his fingers impatiently.

Although he didn’t show it, the tapping infuriated Ji'an Yang. The senior official despised everything about Cho-Wu. He considered the special agent an uncouth loner, but tolerated him because he was the best around. Cho-Wu only ceased tapping when Ji'an Yang leaned forward to address him in Mandarin.

“
The American made contact with Lhozang, our agent at the Paris embassy.” Ji'an Yang put the photo down on the table. “Lhozang said the American is ready to trade with us.” The senior official slid the photo over to Cho-Wu who instantly pocketed it.

“
We need the precise co-ordinates of the Yamashita site,” he continued. “Go to Paris and locate this rogue American operative.”

The other agents looked on as Cho-Wu stood up and left the room without a word.

#

As he passed through Customs, Kentbridge studied a Union-Jack hanging from the ceiling of London’s Heathrow Airport. Out of habit, the senior agent scanned airport personnel, their faces, the objects they carried, even their uniforms.

Having endured a six-and-a-half hour flight across the Atlantic, Kentbridge felt drained. Yet he was also feeling more alive than he had in a long time. In a way, even though the circumstances weren’t ideal, he was pleased to be back in the field as a working operative. He’d spent the last three decades managing the Pedemont orphans. To his way of thinking, that was akin to a police detective doing a routine desk job.

Special Agent Tommy Kentbridge had always yearned to be where the action was
–
in the field. After all, he was a highly trained operative, skilled in martial arts, surveillance, assassination and the other dark arts common to the world of espionage.

After being recruited into the Omega Agency at the age of nineteen, Kentbridge had completed intelligence missions in Cambodia, Panama, Syria and Cameroon with outstanding results. By twenty two, he was already one of Omega
’
s best operatives.

It was almost inevitable his superiors decided he
’
d be the perfect man to train the Pedemont orphans in the craft of espionage and take the Omega Agency into the next phase
–
something he
’
d been less than enthusiastic about at the time.

Further back in the queue was Seventeen. She also absorbed her environs acutely.

A Customs official approached her. “Are you visiting the UK for business or pleasure, madam?”

Seventeen stared at the man rather coldly. “Pleasure.”

The official handed her a form then continued on his way. Seventeen looked straight ahead at Kentbridge's back. She wondered if he could sense her eyes on him.

Once through Customs, the pair caught a taxi to Kensington Gardens and followed the route their fellow Omega operative had taken in the guise of an elderly Hasid.

Kentbridge wondered what his protégé’s next step would be. He knew he had to find Nine before any more damage could be done, but he was also aware this was a man he’d personally trained in the art of disappearing without a trace.

I
t was early afternoon in Paris. Within a small room of a shabby inner-city hotel, Nine sat, half naked, staring at his reflection in yet another mirror. Ignoring the traffic noise outside, he studied his face as if looking at a stranger.

After his foiled trade with the Chinese, Nine had vanished from London. He knew his fellow Omegans and operatives from other agencies would all be converging on London in their bid to obtain the Yamashita information he alone held. He had decided on the French capital as the best place to complete his bid for freedom.

Nine’s eyes darted to the precious flash drive as he mentally retraced recent events. He recalled finding the last Yamashita treasure site in the Philippines, saving all the information on the tiny flash drive, then destroying all the maps and other evidence. Knowing how good Omega’s tracking methods were, he didn’t trust storing the information anywhere but on him.

From now on, he hoped, things would be fairly straightforward. All he had to do was meet a Chinese agent, exchange the site co-ordinates on the flash drive for the agreed sum, then disappear to his island in French Polynesia.

Nine stood and stretched his athletic frame. Long periods of enforced inactivity sitting in taxis, airport departure lounges and passenger aircraft didn’t agree with him. He felt stiff and slightly jaded. Wearing only underpants, his slim, toned body exuded power and revealed no outward sign of how he felt.

His left forearm remained bandaged
–
a
reminder of the surgery he’d performed on himself in the Philippines. Fortunately, the wound no longer ached
.

Behind him was a wardrobe of various disguise-aids which included hair-pieces and costumes. On the dressing table next to him was a full range of cosmetics, a selection of jewelry
, eye glasses, contact lenses and facial prosthetics including a fake nose and ears.
The cosmetics included
foundation, lipstick, eye shadow, blusher, cleansers and hair dyes.

Nine resumed sitting and began to don a new disguise. Firstly, using dark-dyed cottonwool balls, he widened his nostrils, making them appear bigger. He then blackened his face, ears, neck, arms and the back of his hands with a natural skin dye to resemble an African. Then, as he’d done for his Filipino disguise, he inserted contact lenses to change his eye-color from their usual green to black. An Afro-wig completed the masquerade. Finally, he slipped into some fashionable, casual clothes.

The entire transformation took only thirty minutes and the end result was amazing. For all intents and purposes he was now African.

Such were Nine’s skills in the use of make-up and facial prosthetics, his linguistic abilities and his innate understanding of human behavior, he could almost literally
become
someone else. Israeli, African, Filipino, Mexican. No matter. Nationality and race presented few problems. While the African guise was certainly one of his more intricate, he had the ability to adopt simpler guises at a few minutes notice – even when on the run.

Nine recalled a time as a boy when Kentbridge had shown him and the other orphans a chameleon lizard. “You will one day be just like this lizard,” Kentbridge had told them. “See how she changes color? I’ll teach you how to blend into any environment like that.”

Thinking of Kentbridge reminded Nine drastic guises were essential if he was to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.

Studying his reflection, he felt satisfied he was now unrecognizable. He talked to himself in the mirror. “My name is Aslam Linguere. I was born in Dakar, Senegal.” He spoke in a deep, rich voice with a flawless French-African accent.

Nine continued to practice the accent until he was sure it was faultless.

#

Later that day, walking along a busy street in Champs-Elysees, Nine didn’t look out of place in his African guise and scarcely attracted a second glance as he mingled with local Parisians. The animated conversations of pedestrians, the sirens of passing fire engines and other sounds of industry combined to produce a cacophony of sound, bombarding Nine’s senses and filling him with an exhilarating sense of independence.

The fugitive agent entered a travel agency and purchased airline tickets to the Marquesas Islands. He used a French passport that matched his African identity. Once he had the tickets in hand for his final destination, Nine relaxed slightly. He knew all he had to do now was hand over the flash drive to the Chinese and freedom would be his.

#

The shadows were lengthening as Nine, still in his African guise, strolled among the market stalls in Paris’ famous artistic community of Montmartre. He entered the square of Place Du Tertre where a variety of artists exhibited paintings, ceramics and statues.

Nine needed more makeup supplies and had been told the best cosmetics retailer in Paris maintained a stall there. As he looked for the stall, he passed a dreadlocked Jamaican who smiled at him.

“
What's happenin', brother?” the Jamaican asked him in French.

“
Just chillin', my friend,” Nine responded in his best French-African accent. The operative smiled at the Jamaican and continued walking along the rows of market stalls.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a photographer taking a photo of him about thirty yards away. Shocked, Nine quickly stepped back behind a stall. He’d reacted so quickly, he hadn’t even established whether the photographer was male or female.

Who could that be?
He assumed the photographer was an intelligence operative, or at the very least someone contracted by one of the agencies.
How the hell did they get onto me?
He didn’t know the answer to that question either, but suspected his stalker to be a fellow Omegan.
No other agent in the world could have tracked me
, he reasoned.
Nine peered around the corner of the stall to catch another glimpse of the photographer. His stalker was female. She’d moved further away and appeared to be taking snapshots of a juggler who was amusing onlookers by juggling a variety of fruits.

Even from a distance, Nine could see she was an exotic beauty of mixed race. He noticed her striking features and instinctively knew she was not a fellow Omegan in disguise. Keeping a row of stalls between him and his target, he ventured closer.

Slender with long, black silky hair and caramel-colored skin, there was an air of sophistication about the young woman that reminded Nine of an ancient Egyptian princess
. She was still photographing the juggler, seemingly unaware
he
was
watch
ing her.