Brotherhood and Others (11 page)

“Now, Stephan,” the second Mr. Pale said softly, “tell us about the Iranians, and what they have paid you to do.”

*   *   *

Still wearing the hood, Robin heard Julio shut and lock the downstairs door behind him.

Antonia said softly, “What if my father still says no?”

“I can't help that,” Robin said, removing the hood, which was making
him
feel suffocated. He pulled her up into a sitting position, then sat against the wall opposite her again, got a cookie from the box, and ate it.

She said, “Why are you doing this to me?”

Robin made a scornful noise. “You can't possibly understand, can you?”

“Understand what?” she said. “What could drive someone like you to do this? To help those men kidnap me, and ask my father for ransom?”

Robin felt disgusted, and then angry. “Your world is so little, so protected, so perfect. You have no idea what real life is like. To live on the street. Nowhere to sleep. Digging through a garbage pile for your food.”

Antonia Valera's face fell and she looked away from him, as if she had not considered this justification.

“Have you done that?” she asked softly. “Dug through garbage for food?”

Robin did not answer. But the pressure of those memories built in his head, and he saw himself that way not too long ago, a creature more than a human, desperately clawing for his existence in the stinking garbage pit that was once his home. His eyes began to tear and he looked away, rubbing at them with his sleeve. When he glanced back, she seemed to be reappraising him.

“Where are your parents?” she asked.

“Dead,” he said. “Murdered in front of me.”

“What? When?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice. “How?”

“It doesn't matter,” he replied coldly.

“So you're an … an orphan?”

“Well, isn't that kind of obvious when your parents are dead?” he snapped.

The girl shrank from him. “I'm sorry. I was trying to—”

“Don't bother,” Robin said, angry again. “Living in your compound with your servants, with your tennis and ballet, and piano, and skiing trips. You couldn't possibly understand what most people have to do to just survive for one day.”

During this attack, Antonia Valera's cheeks had rippled with emotion before she screamed back at him, “What the hell do you know about my life?”

“It's perfect!”

“Then you know nothing!” she shouted, infuriated now. “You couldn't possibly imagine spending your life in a cocoon, where there's an exact way to do everything, and if you don't, you're ridiculed, torn down, made to feel stupid. You couldn't possibly imagine having only two friends in the whole world you can see outside of school. You couldn't possibly imagine having parents who are gone almost every night, all the time. And a mom who is beautiful, and everyone compares you to her. And a father who's like a genius, and everyone compares you to him.”

She breathed hard and her shoulders fell. She looked forlorn when she said, “You couldn't imagine any of that.”

Robin blinked and said sadly, “You're right. I couldn't.”

*   *   *

“Who did you meet with in Iran?” the first Mr. Pale asked as his partner fiddled with the IV line into the back of DeGrave's right hand.

Monarch watched the South African blink as if drugs were sapping his last bit of will before he said in a slight slur, “Ahmadinejad.”

Monarch didn't recognize the name straight off. But then again he wasn't exactly up on Iranian nuclear officials.

But the second Mr. Pale knew the name and looked surprised. “The presidential candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?”

DeGrave nodded. “Crazy man. He plans to begin enriching uranium with the equipment in Isfahan the moment he is sworn in. And he wants to finish the IR-40 heavy water reactor as soon as possible. He said he would pay me to tell him how, right after the election.”

“How much?”

“Twenty million Swiss Francs.”

“What did you say?”

The South African laughed as if wandering cynically through a drug-induced nightmare. “What do you think?”

Monarch stepped back, his mind churning through what he'd seen and heard. There was no doubt in his mind that whatever Mr. and Mr. Pale did to DeGrave was torture.

Monarch was not in the habit of abetting torture, and that pissed him off. He'd been deliberately deceived about the nature of his mission by men and women much higher in the CIA food chain than he was, and that pissed him off even more. Yes, they'd told him there would be drugs involved, cutting-edge truth serums. But nothing about invading the man's brain, chemically amplifying his nightmares.

He turned and began to pad back down the catwalk toward the window he'd used to enter the factory, thinking:
But is it torture if DeGrave never remembers it? If he wakes up and thinks it's all a dream?
There was also the fact that the information the South African had given up was potentially huge should Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win the election and become president of Iran.

That counted, didn't it?

Monarch had no answers, but felt used and confused to a certain extent by the events of the evening and by his own reactions to those events. He climbed out the window and was side shuffling back along the ledge toward the drainpipe when he decided to turn down all future rendition offers. Nothing had changed. Kidnappings, for him, were never good, always filthy affairs.

Several feet from the drainpipe, he paused, feeling better for having made the decision. He'd get through with this op, and then tell his handler he was done with that particular area of tradecraft once and for all—

Monarch thought he caught movement in his peripheral vision, below and to his left, out there in the shadows where the matted grass turned to forest. He stayed perfectly still, kept adjusting the angle of his left eye click by click until—

There it was again. Something large. Make that someone large, moving from the tree line in a crouch.

Shit,
Monarch thought.
Shit
.

How many were there? How had they known they were here? Should he risk talking and alert Barnett, Tatupu, Fowler, and Mr. and Mr. Pale?

Instead, he started clicking the mike on and off, using Morse code to spell out, “Intruder moving in from east.” Then he slid over onto the drainpipe, and climbed down it, half expecting a gunshot to find him there, and thinking that no matter what you called them, kidnappings were always a cluster-fuck like this.

*   *   *

Robin came to consciousness slowly, confused, but hearing pounding somewhere. He saw the light on in the room and jolted awake, looking around and seeing Antonia Valera waking on the mattress.

His heart raced. Was it the police? Someone who'd heard them arguing?

Robin got up, completely alert now and shaking. He went to look down the stairwell, and heard more pounding below. He turned, meaning to climb to the roof and make his escape, but then heard Julio shout drunkenly, “Robin, you dick head, open up. I lost my key.”

Robin wanted to get down on his knees and give thanks, but instead took the stairs two by two, twisted the lock and flung open the door. Julio stood there, carrying a half empty bottle of
cachaca
rum, shining a flashlight on his sweaty shit-eating grin.

“We hit it, my thieving genius!” Julio said, barging by him and starting up the stairs. “Ten thousand dollars!”

“Ten thousand? Where's Claudio?”

“Who cares?”

Julio stopped on the landing, and tugged an envelope from inside his shirt. He opened it and showed Robin the wad of American cash. “As soon as daddy heard her voice on the tape, he did exactly what we told him. It went down so slick.”

Now Robin was excited. “A quarter of all that's mine?”

Julio took a drink of rum, gazed at him without commitment, and said, “We talk of money in the morning.” He took another sip of rum. “Where is she?”

“In there, on the mattress,” Robin said.

“Mmmm,” Julio said with half lidded eyes. “Gimme a hood.”

Robin handed him his. Julio smiled like a man about to get what he wants. He patted Robin on the cheek. “Go home. I'll watch her until morning.”

Julio was brilliant, cunning, and a street fighter who took no prisoners. He was also a ladies' man, and something in Julio's posture made Robin fearful for Antonia Valera. “I thought we were letting her go,” he said.

Already turned, tucking away the money, and heading toward the lighted room, Julio replied, “You're kidding, right?”

“No, Julio,” Robin said, following him, grabbing the other hood and putting it on. “You said this was a short deal. Ask low, get paid quick, and walk away.”

“Did I say that?” Julio said, pulling on the hood and stepping into the room. He stood there, looking at the girl on the mattress.

“Yes,
you did
,” Robin said from behind him.

Julio looked over his shoulder, sneering. “I changed my mind. Ten's not enough.”

He looked over at Antonia Valera and said softly, “Not nearly enough for someone as pretty and dear as she is to her daddy.”

“What?” she said, starting to cry again. “You're not letting me go?”

Julio soothed, “Once your daddy has paid me
twenty-five
thousand. By tonight, I'm sure you'll be home.”

“That's what you said—” she moaned. “No, please. He did what you—”

Julio tossed the corked rum bottle on the mattress, snatched up the gag, got around behind the girl, and forced the fabric into her mouth. He raised his head, looked over at Robin with stone-cold eyes showing beneath the hood, and said, “I told you to keep her gagged, didn't I? Go home. Now. You screwed up.”

Robin said nothing. He was watching Antonia Valera, who was looking at him as if he were her only hope.

“Leave,” Julio snapped. “I've got business to take care of here.”

Robin hesitated, glancing from Antonia Valera to Julio and back again. He did not want to leave her with him. But Julio ran the Brotherhood. He'd founded the gang. Robin owed the man his loyalty and his obedience. And there was no way he could physically stop Julio. The man would tear him apart.

“Go!” Julio roared.

Blood roaring in his temples, his cheeks on fire beneath the hood, Robin turned and left the room. He ripped off the hood, feeling ashamed and then angry at his powerlessness to protect Antonia Valera. He started down the stairs, a hollow sensation occupying his chest. He reached the door, turned the lock.

Upstairs, the girl began to scream against the rag.

“Don't be scared,” he heard Julio say. “I think you're going to like this.”

*   *   *

“Rogue, copy?”

Monarch moved forward, pistol held loosely in his right hand, not responding to Barnett's call in his earbud. He double clicked on the mike to let her know he could not speak. He was too close, no more than fifty yards from the intruder who was heading toward the other end of the factory.

“Rogue, you've spotted an intruder? Copy?”

He double clicked again, his mind ripping off more questions than answers: Who was the man right in front of him? Was he connected to the attack on the autobahn? Or was he a different player? A local who heard noise coming from a supposedly abandoned factory? Were there others with him? Or was he a lone wolf?

When he was forty yards behind the man, Monarch slipped off his shoes. At thirty yards, he eliminated all thoughts except the physical movements required to creep up on a man who's doing a fair job at creeping himself.

Fixed on the vague silhouette of the man's back, Monarch rolled his now cold, wet feet inside to outside, his toes groping the ground, alert for any branch he might snap as he closed to twenty yards, and then ten.

They were almost to the parking lot now. When the intruder started to cut diagonally from the shadow of the woods toward the corner of the factory, Monarch flanked him in the darkness, staying to his blind spot off his left shoulder. He realized the man wore a hood and held a gun loosely at his side.

Monarch cursed the fact that his own pistol was not sound suppressed. The village was not a large place. There were homes close enough to the factory that a gunshot would be heard, and that could bring very unwanted attention to the nefarious activities of Mr. and Mr. Pale, and to Monarch and his rendition team. He had no other choice. He would have to disarm the gunman.

Monarch changed the hold on his pistol so his fingers gripped the barrel. He went up on the balls of his feet, and took three bounds toward the intruder with his right arm cocked back low, holding the pistol like a tomahawk.

*   *   *

Robin shut the door firmly, scratched his key against the deadbolt, and then threw it. He stood there in the darkness listening to Antonia Valera pleading for her innocence behind her gag, and Julio saying drunkenly, “A girl needs to have a real man her first time. Show her what's what.”

Robin went barefoot, stalking up the staircase on all fours, using every bit of thieving skill he had to make no creak, no skuff, no noise that might lead Julio to believe he was anything but alone, free to do what he wanted with a captive fourteen-year-old rich girl.

Near the top of the stairs he caught a glimpse of Julio standing above Antonia Valera. The
jeffe
of the Brotherhood was enjoying the power he held over her no doubt.

“Gonna show me them little-girl titties?” Julio asked. “Your little mystery?”

Antonia Valera's sobs were shot through with humiliation now, which only made Robin firmer in his resolve as he reached the landing and slipped along to the edge of the doorjamb.

“First thing you got to learn?” Julio announced. “This here's not your enemy. This here's your friend of all friends.”