Jet (12 page)

“Is this your first time in the Central African Republic?” Hassan asked.

“Yes.”

“We are a poor country, Mr. Filipov, plagued by internal political problems, but you’ll find that there are certain…attractions to the place. Virtually anything you can imagine can be obtained for you. Nothing is off-limits.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Leo said noncommittally. He’d researched the area on the long flight, and what he’d read hadn’t whetted his appetite for any of the local attractions. With an average life expectancy of forty-five years and estimates of nearly twenty percent of the population HIV positive, the CAR was the last place on earth he wanted to spend any more time than necessary to finalize the transaction he was working on. He had no doubt that his host was referring to child prostitution, which was infamous for its pervasiveness in the region, but his tastes didn’t run in that direction, and all he aspired to was to seal the deal and leave without being bitten by any of the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that swarmed over the jungle nation. “Are we going to our meeting?”

“Ah, no, not yet. We’re taking you to your hotel, and then we’ll return later when arrangements have been finalized on our end,” Hassan said.

“Is there a problem?” Leo asked.

“No, no. Just a small delay, nothing more. It will not affect your business, and you were planning on spending the night anyway…”

“We’re at the Ledger Plaza. By the cathedral.”

Hassan nodded. “Yes. Of course. It is the best we have, although still in sad shape for world travelers like yourselves.”

“It’s safe?”

“Completely secure. The grounds are fenced and have armed guards round the clock.”

“I noticed your guns.”

“Yes, a regrettable requirement, but a prudent one, especially if one must venture out of the city.”

Leo didn’t ask any more questions, his thoughts on the capture of the woman who had killed his brother. As soon as he could get out of this dung hole, he would deal with her, dragging her torture out for days. Leo’s connections with the mafia gave him access to specialists of all varieties, and it would give him immeasurable pleasure to see her in agony, paying with blood for her crime. His discussions with his contacts had convinced him that she could be kept alive almost indefinitely, every moment a nightmare, the pain unbearable.

He smiled at the thought and then reluctantly returned to the present. He was here to authenticate and verify the quality of merchandise that would make him even richer than he already was. The transaction was simple at its core – his African contacts had fifty million dollars’ worth of diamonds that would be problematic to move on the legitimate market. Conflict, or blood diamonds, as they were commonly referred to, had grown increasingly difficult for the Africans to sell through their own channels. Leo had found a home for them with the Americans, who wanted them for their easy portability and untraceable nature, presumably to pay for favors they couldn’t write a check to cover. The Africans needed weapons, but the U.S. couldn’t do business with them due to sanctions – the warlord in question having a spotty human rights record and a penchant for quelling disagreement by massacre rather than discussion. Enter Leo, who could broker a deal, obtain weapons from his Russian sources, and exchange them for the diamonds.

The transaction was worth far more than the fee he charged, however, because of the way the Americans had paid him: in heroin, freshly produced in Afghanistan and transported within driving distance of the Russian border by military transport. Leo had arranged for his mafia associates to smuggle the heroin into the country and distribute it in Moscow, in exchange for a further, generous cut of the proceeds, which had worked out extremely well, even after paying for a container-load of AK-47s and RPGs to be traded for the diamonds.

His hope was that after this first transaction, it would become a regular event. The quality of the heroin had been top grade, and his distribution network wanted more. Arms were easy to come by, with seemingly half of Moscow in that trade. And the warlord, working with the CAR government, would arrange for the diamonds to arrive in Russia on a freighter, so he didn’t have to risk carrying them himself – he’d take delivery at the port, the Africans would load their container of goodies onto the same ship, and off they’d go, the diamonds in the hands of the American representative from the nearby embassy.

It was foolproof, he bore no risk, and he’d clear ten million dollars by the time the first exchange was complete.

Not oligarch-level money, to be sure, but certainly enough to keep him in iced premium vodka, jet fuel, and ballerinas, all of which seemed to increase in price with every passing hour.

He caught sight of a corpse lying facedown in a garbage-strewn field, limbs twisted at an unnatural angle, bare torso bloated in the heat as pedestrians walked by with bundles on their heads, and looked away.

The sooner he was back on his plane and winging away from Bangui, the better. If his pilots hadn’t informed him that he couldn’t fly back tonight due to a massive storm scheduled to hit the area by nightfall, he would have done the inspection and turned right around the same day. As it was, he’d be stuck in a slum that smelled like a latrine for longer than he’d like; but he was earning the equivalent of half a million dollars per hour for his trouble, and for that, he’d suffer.

As would the woman upon his return.

He’d see to that.

Jet regained consciousness slowly; whatever her captives had injected her with was wearing off in fits and starts. The floor was vibrating and the air was filled with the distinctive sound of an airplane in flight. Her ears popped, but she kept her eyes closed, offering no indication that she was coming to.

She was lying on her side, and she could feel that her hands and feet were bound. Men’s voices floated somewhere in front of her, and she guessed that she was in the back of a private plane, judging by the floor, which was soft carpeting against her skin. She chanced shifting one of her feet a few centimeters and felt a wall against the ball of her foot – a bulkhead, which confirmed her initial impression of her location.

The plane hit turbulent air and bounced several times, but she didn’t move. If anyone was watching her, they’d believe she was still out cold, which she might be able to use to her advantage. She willed the drug fogginess from her mind and tried to concentrate on the discussion, which she realized was in Russian, as the words became clearer.

“You talked to him?”

“Yes. It was a bad signal. I thought it was our end, but he said he was in Africa finalizing his deal there.”

“That’s going forward?”

“I’ll know more soon. I’ve already spoken to the head of Novorossiysk port security, and he can be bought relatively cheaply.”

“Some things never change. Not that Leo’s ever been price sensitive.”

“True. He’s paying through the nose for us to bring him that bitch.”

“Well, that’s personal, though. I’d probably do the same thing if she’d killed my brother.”

“Ha. You’d probably thank her and buy her a Rolex.”

“You’re right. Do we know why she did it?”

“Could have been anything. He was a prominent attorney. Fingers in a lot of pies. We’ll let Leo figure it out when he gets back and interrogates her. That’s not our job.”

A chill ran down Jet’s spine as she realized who the Russians were talking about. The lawyer who’d taken out the contract on her. Filipov.

The brother – Leo – wanted revenge.

More conversation, which she didn’t catch, and then one of the voices approached her as it spoke. “The Americans didn’t catch the other one?”

“No. Idiots. But it’s not our problem. We upheld our part of the deal.”

Jet sensed a figure kneeling by her, and fought to control her breathing. She smelled alcohol and the stink of stale nicotine, and fingers brushed the hair from one of her eyes.

“Maybe we can have a turn at her before we drop her off? She’s not bad.”

“That’s not the deal. Although I wouldn’t mind.”

“Who’d know?”

“We’re being paid too much to take the risk, idiot.”

“Come on. I’ll never tell.”

“Think with your brain, not your dick.”

The plane shuddered, and she sensed the man stumble to keep his balance, felt his hand bump her shoulder as he reached to steady himself. He cursed in Russian and stood as the pilot’s voice echoed over the speakers, warning them that it was going to be a bumpy approach to Moscow. Footsteps moved away from her and the man spoke again. “Why start now?”

Laughter drifted down the aisle and then the plane dropped with another sickening lurch. Her ears popped again and everything spun, and then she faded back into numbness, the cocktail in her blood reasserting its command over her physiology as the aircraft shed altitude.

When Jet drifted back into consciousness, she was on the floor of a van or truck, bouncing along at moderate speed, the cold, ridged metal jostling her to full awareness. She kept her eyes closed, but one of the men must have detected a difference in her breathing, because he leaned over her and then called out.

“She’s coming to.”

“Right on time. We’ll be there in a few more minutes.”

Seeing no reason to continue her act, she cracked an eye open and took in her surroundings. She was in a van, the floor filthy, still bound, tossed in the back like a sack of grain. A man with the hard look of a mercenary sat across from her, staring at her with dead eyes, a faint white scar tracing from his left ear down to his jaw. She flexed her fingers and her hands throbbed from circulation slowly returning. She gazed up at the front of the van and could see that it was daylight – by the way her bladder felt, only hours since her capture in the field. She licked dry lips and tried to muster some saliva. Her mouth was a desert, the metallic taste when she dry swallowed another unpleasant residual effect of the drug used to knock her out.

After five minutes the van slowed, and the driver rolled down the window. He growled at someone in Russian and continued forward until grinding to a stop after another thirty or so meters. The engine died and the man opposite her rose to one knee, and then the rear cargo doors opened.

Two more men stood in the gap. They reached in and dragged her toward the opening by her feet, and she flinched at the bruising she was receiving from the rough treatment. They pulled her out and stood her up, and then the leader, the same man who’d been in the helicopter with the police, pointed at a gray building.

“That’s your new home. At least for a little while. Rumyantsevo Incarceration Center number two.”

Her emerald eyes gave nothing away, but the man nodded to himself. “I know you speak Russian. You have to in order to have pulled off your little stunt here. But pretend not to understand if it amuses you. You’ll soon discover that it doesn’t matter.” He switched to English. “This is where we say our farewells. You will be processed into the prison population, and from there you’re out of my hair.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked in Russian.

“You killed the wrong man.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Save your energy. Prisons are full of the innocent.” The man barked an order, and one of his companions flicked a switchblade from his pocket and severed the rope binding her ankles.

“I want a lawyer,” Jet said.

The man laughed, the sound abrasive in the crisp late-afternoon air. “Oh, you’ll soon have one. Don’t you worry. Be careful what you wish for.”

The hard-looking mercenary type grabbed her arm and she tried to twist away. His fingers were like a vise, and his grip tightened. “This way,” he growled, and half dragged her toward the building, where two uniformed guards stood by the entrance. She took in the bars on the few windows and the five-meter-high wall circling the grounds, a tower in each of the four corners housing guards with rifles she could make out even from a distance. Where, exactly, in relation to Moscow she was, she had no idea; her knowledge of the metropolis’s outlying areas was limited, and the name of the incarceration center meant nothing to her.

But wherever it was, the expressions on the guards’ faces as she stumbled on numb feet toward them told her that her stay wouldn’t be a pleasant one.

Bangui, Central African Republic

Leo and Levi waited in the hotel lobby for the Range Rover to reappear. The hotel was larger than they’d anticipated and nicer, albeit still far below the standards they would have expected anywhere else. But on balance, the air-conditioning worked, the food they’d ordered in the restaurant had been edible, and the rooms clean, so they considered themselves lucky.

Hassan had called Leo’s room to alert him that he was coming by in ten minutes. That had been almost half an hour ago, and Leo and his Israeli diamond expert stood impatiently near the glass doors as the hotel staff went about their business in a discreet hum of French. The marble lobby was about as far removed from the shanties they’d passed on the way there as imaginable, and the desperation and poverty that hung over the city like a pall of pollution seemed a world away.

“Filthy place,” Levi remarked, as though reading Leo’s thoughts.

“One of the poorest countries in the world. The irony being that it’s actually rather wealthy in terms of natural resources – gold, diamonds, copper. But every ruler steals anything he can get his hands on, leaving the nation bankrupt, and it’s been that way since it got independence in 1960.”

“The French weren’t much better.”

“True. As with Russia, it doesn’t matter who’s running the country for the majority of the population. Life’s tough no matter what for them. Just as things are comfortable for the elite. It’s the same everywhere – the only difference is how well the bottom lives, not the top.”

Levi laughed softly. “Another reason to never be on the bottom.”

“True enough.”

Headlights bobbed up the drive and the Range Rover appeared. The doorman, clad in a starched white uniform that would have made an admiral blush, swung the glittering glass wide and held it for them. Even as the sun was sinking into the jungle like a molten ball, the heat was intolerable, a wall of swelter that slammed into them with the intensity of a furnace once out of the building. A flash of lightning lit the sky, and a moment later the heavens let forth a deafening roar, signaling that the anticipated storm’s arrival was imminent.