The Silent Blade (Harry Bauer Book 6)

  THE SILENT BLADE

  Copyright © 2021 by Blake Banner

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  One

  The sand was white. The ocean was turquoise and transparent. You could see that the sand which was under the water was also white. There was an improbably large number of beautiful women, half of them were in bikinis, the other half were only half in their bikinis. I was sitting on the terrace of the Number One Beach Café-Restaurant and Hotel, on Calle Santa Ana in Puerto Rico, sipping a dry martini and waiting for my contact from Cobra to show.

  The idea was he was going to supply me with papers: a new identity with which I could leave the Caribbean and return to New York without arousing too much interest. I had arrived in Trinidad and Tobago a couple of days earlier in a yacht which I had stolen in St. George a couple of days before that. St. George had grown a little hot after I’d taken out Gonzalo Herrera, the head of Bloque Meta on the island, and his rival, Luis Aguilera, the local head of the Libertadores del Vichada. They had not been the objective of the assignment, but it had seemed advisable at the time, for the sake of completeness[1], to bag them too.

  The downside had been that their deaths had been a little spectacular, and had drawn too much attention. That was something Colonel Jane Harris, the head of operations at Cobra, was kind of tired of telling me not to do. She was all about being discreet and deadly, like a ninja. I’m not a ninja, I’m a soldier, and I’m all about getting the job done. What can I tell you? Sometimes you get the job done faster by setting fire to ten drums of aviation fuel.

  So when I got to Trinidad and Tobago and called the office they told me Bloque Meta were crawling all over Venezuela and the Western Caribbean looking for me. They were not alone. The CIA were also hunting for me, as were MI6 and the Libertadores del Vichada. So I should take an air taxi to Puerto Rico, book in to the Caribe Hilton as Mr. Smith and meet Tobias, on Saturday, at one thirty PM on the terrace of the Number One Beach Café-Restaurant and Hotel, on Santa Ana. So there I was, making a desultory study of incomplete bikinis and sipping my dry martini.

  Tobias appeared like something out of a John le Carré novel. He stepped out onto the terrace through the sliding glass doors in a Panama hat, a purple paisley cravat under a crisp white shirt, a navy blazer and beige chinos. His eyes were concealed behind black Wayfarers and he held a gin and tonic in his right hand. His left held an unlit Balkan Sobranie.

  He looked this way and that, as though enjoying the view. He was about five or six paces from my table and, as instructed by the brigadier, the head of Cobra, I said, “It’s a great day to go fishing, but you never know what you’re going to catch.”

  When he spoke his English was a little too perfect, and his accent a little too German.

  “In this day and age, if we catch anything it is Covid-19. Better keep the fishing for another year. May I join you?”

  The elaborate, Cold War password was correct. I said, “Please do.” I gestured to the chair across from mine. He didn’t click his heels and bow, but you felt he wanted to. He sat and removed his hat and revealed a short back and sides of platinum hair with an unruly fringe over his brow, which he pushed back with his fingers. He was maybe thirty-eight or forty and looked in good shape.

  I said, “You got something for me, Tobias?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “No, just instructions from the big cheese. It seems you are very popular at the moment and extra security is necessary. I tell you who you are, you check with Mr. Stilton on your burner, he confirms that the ID comes from him and is correct. He gives you an address and you go to that address. There you collect the goods from me. Elaborate, but it seems you have been a bad boy, Mr. Smith.”

  I sighed. Puerto Rico was no great hardship, but I was keen to get home to New York. “OK, so apart from my name, what can you tell me?”

  “You are to become Paul Hemmings, of Hartford, Connecticut. You are divorced and have two daughters aged ten and twelve, whom you miss terribly. Your wife is a harpy, one of those Midwestern puritans who have sex only on Friday and only to procreate. They never wear makeup and have no cleavage.”

  “What’s her name?”

  He looked at me, raised a blond eyebrow and smiled. “Prudence, naturally. Her father was a farmer named Seth who spoke only when quoting the Bible, and procreated according to the cycles of the year: Fuck once in August, God willing a newborn in April. His wife, her mother, was twenty years younger than him and died in childbirth aged twenty-five, nine years after marrying him.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “It is actually the very real biography of one Enoch Smith. He had nine children before his young wife died in childbirth.”

  “OK, what else? My job?”

  “You’re a middle manager in a medium-sized furniture factory.” He shrugged and smiled again. “You are a boring man with a boring life, and all you want is to go back with your boring wife and your boring daughters…,” he gestured out at the beach, “when you could be enjoying all these gorgeous dusky maidens.”

  I nodded a few times, gazing out at the gorgeous dusky maidens, but seeing myself arriving at JFK in an air taxi as Mr. Boring Hemmings of Connecticut.

  “What’s a middle manager at a furniture factory doing traveling in an air taxi from Puerto Rico?”

  “Your CEO called you back from your holiday-cum-convalescence on urgent company business. You don’t know the details, but should they be necessary you provide the company’s telephone and they can phone your boss. Everything will be in the envelope.”

  “Superb.” I said it without much feeling, because I had decided I didn’t like Tobias. He threw back his head suddenly and laughed loud. Then, still gazing at the half-naked girls sunbathing on the beach, he leaned toward me sideways across the table.

  “It is as well to appear we are just chatting amiably, as recent acquaintances.”

  “Sure, well, it was nice meeting you. I am going to make a phone call and then I’m going to have lunch. I’ll hope to see you later.”

  I stood and offered him my hand, which he received with his elbow and an admonitory, “Ah-ah-ah…!”

  I offered him a smile that wasn’t really all that amiable. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to get infected, would we.”

  I left him and went out onto Calle Sa
nta Ana where I’d left my rental Mustang. I fired her up and growled out onto the Avenida Ashford, the main drag that leads from Ocean Park to San Juan. The main drag was two lanes, one going and one coming, but it was long and roughly straight. I called the brigadier on my burner and he answered after a couple of rings with his cut-glass English.

  “Harry, what news?”

  “Seems I have to call you for some confirmation.”

  “That’s correct. It seems your funeral has done very little to reduce your popularity.”

  “That’s a shame. It was a nice funeral. I wish I could have been there.”

  “You’re not alone in that wish. Tell me, what nationality is Tobias?”

  “His English is too good to be an Englishman. He has a hint of a German or Austrian accent. He would probably call it an ‘Orstrian’ accent.”

  “Good. Height?”

  “Six one, platinum hair, fit.”

  “Good. Did you like him?”

  “He’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Good, good. Who did he tell you you were?”

  “Paul Hemmings, of Hartford, Connecticut. I’m divorced. I have two daughters aged ten and twelve. My wife is a Midwestern puritan who never has sex on a day with an ‘S’ in it, at weekends or on a Monday. Also, she has no cleavage. She’s called Prudence. Her father was a farmer called Seth whose young wife died in childbirth. I’m a middle manager in a medium-sized furniture factory and my CEO has called me back from my holiday on urgent company business. I don’t know the details but you will provide them should they be necessary. All I need to do is provide the company telephone, which one of our people will answer. Now you need to give me an address where I can go and collect the envelope with my papers.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You sound tired.”

  “I am, but don’t worry about it. All I need is a month back in my own home.”

  “Your new home, on West 128th.”

  “Yeah, I remember. I’m going to miss my little house by the water.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Harry. But the fact is you have attracted far too much attention to yourself. This is not the SAS. Firepower is not the thing with Cobra. It’s the silent blade over the bomb, or even the gun.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. It’s just a shame that after you killed me off, arranged my funeral and took my house away, it was all for nothing. They’re still after me. So where and when do I have to go to collect the documents?”

  “Eight PM, Calle 17, in Pueblo Seco, about seven and a half miles southeast of the Hilton, in the San Juan district.”

  “I’ll find it. Anything else?”

  He was quiet for a while before answering. Then he said, “Just, do be careful, Harry. I value you as a friend, not just a damned fine operative. And we’ll do everything and anything we can to help you. But everything and anything, given the nature of our organization, may not be enough. We guarantee absolute deniability to our clients, you know that. If things get very rough, we may not be able to help you at all.”

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “I understand, sir. I’ll be careful and stay cool.”

  “That’s the stuff, Harry. I’ll hope to see you in a couple of days. Then I recommend a good, long holiday.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I hung up and cruised on past the cute, suburban houses with their pink, white and blue walls, and the banana trees and giant rubber plants in their front yards. The midday sun was hot, but with the top down the breeze was cool and for a while I enjoyed the drive. At Laguna del Condado I crossed the bridge and turned right to the Caribe Hilton. There I gave my keys to the valet and went inside to shower and prepare myself for a luncheon of oysters and sirloin steak. I didn’t feel right then like I was about to be assassinated, but if I was I figured I might as well have the condemned man’s rightful due, a damned good meal.

  * * *

  It was dark when I arrived at Calle 17, Pueblo Seco, in the San Juan district. It was a quiet, suburban street of bungalows and two-story houses, each with a front and back yard, most planted with palms, bananas and yucca, some paved in concrete, all with elaborate bars on the doors and windows. They all had their drapes closed, revealing thin slits of light. The only other light came from dull streetlamps, one of which was flickering like a dying moth.

  His house was the fourth on the left as I approached from Calle 13. It was a small, ugly, two-story box in adobe orange and yellow. It had a short, chipped and cracked drive leading to a garage, and on the left of that a small patch of lawn with two sad palm trees, and not much besides.

  I parked outside his front gate, killed the engine and the lights and sat for a while looking and listening in the dark. When I was satisfied there was nothing to look at or listen to, I climbed out and locked the car.

  There was a low wall with an iron gate that gave on to the front yard and the lawn. I stepped over it and crossed the lawn to the front door. There was no sign of light in any of the windows, and the house, like the street, was silent. I pressed the bell beside the door, heard it ring softly inside the house and waited. Nothing happened.

  To the left of the house, partly secluded by the palm tree, there was a narrow strip of grass with a couple of unkempt flowerbeds. I slipped down there and made my way to the back of the house. There I found a small swimming pool lapping softly and reflecting the dull light from the streetlamps on Calle A Este. There were trees framing the backyard, a couple of garden chairs and some empty beer cans. A couple of broad, shallow steps led up to a back porch and some sliding glass doors. The drapes were open, but the lights were off and it was impossible to see anything inside the room.

  I examined the lock. It looked like a standard Yale. I thought about a possible alarm, but safe houses, ironically, tend not to have alarms connected to the cops because most times, if you’re using a safe house, the last people you want turning up if something goes wrong are the cops. You deal with it “in house.”

  My Sig and my Fairbairn & Sykes were both at the bottom of the Atlantic some fifty miles off Trinidad, but I still had my Swiss Army knife. I pulled out the screwdriver and hammered it hard into the lock. Then I waited. Nothing happened. I turned, slid the door open, waited again, hunkered down and slid inside.

  The room was empty. I stood, slid the door closed again behind me and took a moment to listen, and allow my eyes to adjust to the dark. Still there was no sound, no movement, nothing. I inched across the floor, feeling with my feet for anything in my path. I came to the door and opened it onto a small hallway with a passage going one way to what I figured was the kitchen and the bathroom, and a dark staircase climbing to the bedrooms upstairs. I paused again. I had no doubt about what I was going to find, I just wasn’t sure where I was going to find it.

  I checked the kitchen. It was small, cramped and probably hadn’t changed since it was built in the mid ’60s, but Tobias wasn’t there. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. He wasn’t in the small bedroom and he wasn’t in the bathroom. He was lying, fully dressed and grinning, on the big, double bed in the big bedroom. He wasn’t grinning because he thought anything was funny. He wasn’t thinking anything at all anymore. He was grinning because the piano wire that was twisted around his neck had sent him into an involuntary spasm and he had died baring his teeth and tearing at his neck with his fingernails.

  The colonel would have approved. It was a silent kill, with no guns or explosions. But it was a bad way to die. One of the worst.

  Two

  I played the flashlight from my phone over his fingernails. The only thing he had under them was blood and gore from his own neck. There were no toothpicks, and all the fingers were there. None had been removed with pliers. I took my time and examined him carefully. Apart from the fact that he had been strangled and almost decapitated with the wire, there was no sign that he had been tortured.

  I peered out of the window. The Mustang was still there and nobody seemed to be taking much interest in it, so I took a
half hour to explore the house. I was thorough, made sure to leave everything as it was, and not to leave any prints. There was no envelope with documents, cards or instructions, and no sign of where it might be kept: no safe, no drawer with a false bottom, no compartments in the wardrobe, no floorboards, loose or otherwise. This was nothing more than a safe house. I knew Tobias didn’t live here. It was just a place to hide or a place to meet.

  So that meant whoever had killed him, had also taken the envelope. It also meant they knew about the house.

  I took a couple of seconds to think and decided my first imperative was to get out of the house and out of the neighborhood. I made my way back to the car and drove at a moderate speed down to Calle A, then made a circuitous route back to downtown San Juan via just about every part of town I could think of. All the way I had one eye on the mirror. I didn’t spot anybody tailing me, but that didn’t mean they weren’t. There was plenty of traffic, and a good pro could have kept me in sight without being seen. For a professional team it would have been a cinch.

  On the Avenida Ashford bridge I hurled the burner out of the window and into the lagoon, then I made my way back to the hotel and back to my room. I had a problem, and it was not small. It was hard to tell just how big it was, but it could be really big.

  It could be too big.

  In my room I took an unused burner from my bag and called the brigadier. It rang once and a woman answered.

  “Harry.”

  “Colonel? I called the brigadier.”

  “He is temporarily indisposed. Talk to me.” I hesitated. She said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Tobias is dead.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  I felt a surge of anger. “Of course not!”

  “Give me the details, fast.”

  I told her what had happened, then added, “We have to stop communicating.”

  “You need instructions.”

  “No. Right now I am a liability to the organization. If I can fix it I’ll come in. If I can’t, you need to erase me.”