The Omicron Kill - An Omega Thriller (Omega Series Book 11) Read online

  I felt the presence move and sit next to me on the next stool along from mine. Instinctively I glanced at the other stools around the bar. Most of them were empty. Then I looked at the woman who had sat next to me. She was dressed in Levis, a University of Oxford sweatshirt and a denim jacket. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was watching me. The barman approached her and she said, “Vodka martini, very dry.” Then she turned to me. “Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Marni.” I frowned. “How did you know I was here?”

  She picked up a pinch of peanuts and put them in her mouth. “What makes you think I knew?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “You’ve got a big ego, Lacklan. I come to D.C. regularly, remember?”

  “And you happened to be staying at the same hotel as me?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I happened to be in D.C.”

  “So you were in D.C. to meet with Cyndi and she told you I was here.”

  “Or maybe I just happened to walk into the Round Robin, saw you and decided to join you.”

  I watched her face a moment while she popped peanuts in her mouth and watched the barman. I said, “Is that what happened?”

  “No.”

  “So…?”

  “I was here in D.C. for a meeting with Cyndi. She phoned me after you called her and told me you were coming. She called me again half an hour ago and told me I should come and talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned her head to face me. “You tell me.”

  The barman brought over her drink and set it in front of her. When he’d gone, she picked out the olive and put it in her mouth. I thought how pretty she looked and immediately felt a twist of bitterness and anger. “I can’t imagine what you would have to talk to me about, Marni.”

  “Really?” She didn’t look at me. “What about Gibbons? You think maybe I might have something to say about Gibbons?” Now she turned on her stool to face me. “What about the fact that I told Gibbons you were going after Van Zuydam when you had asked me not to, and he passed that information on to Omega? You think maybe I have something to say about that?”[6]

  “I don’t know. What could you say? You have a greater loyalty to Gibbons than you have to me? I know that already. That you and Gibbons are prepared to negotiate with Omega? I found that out too. That those six months we spent together in Wyoming, when you shared my bed and my home, and we were…” I shook my head and looked down at the ice in my glass. “Whatever. You could tell me that none of that means anything to you anymore, but I already know that too. So, I don’t know what Cyndi thinks you need to talk to me about, but I am pretty sure I know everything you have to say. So I am sorry you wasted your time.”

  She sighed and gave her head a small shake. “You are one hell of a piece of work, Lacklan. Forgiveness doesn’t come easy to you, does it?”

  “I can forgive most things, Marni, but not betrayal. I find it hard to forgive betrayal.”

  She was quiet for a long time. Eventually she said, “I didn’t betray you. I am no longer involved with Gibbons. I am working on my own now. When I realized what he had done, what he was doing, I broke off all contact with him. I had no idea…”

  I turned to face her. “Marni, I gave you the name of my target and asked you not to tell Gibbons. I specifically told you not to tell Gibbons. And you immediately went and told him. Omega were alerted so fast you must have picked up the phone as I left your apartment. Don’t tell me you didn’t betray me.”

  “You have to understand, Lacklan…”

  “Understand what, exactly?”

  “I had no idea he was in contact with Omega! I thought we were all on the same side!”

  “Why did you tell him after I had asked you not to?”

  “Because I was worried about you!”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “You were worried about me? Well, that’s what I call ironic. Because it turns out all along it should have been me worried about you.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “So was sitting in that bar in Brussels watching the news about how the cops had received a tip off that Van Zuydam was the target of a hit.”

  She went quiet again. “I can imagine.”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes, I can.” She looked at me and held my eye. “You forget that you were not the only one betrayed, Lacklan. I was also betrayed. I had grown to love Gibbons as a surrogate father. I trusted him implicitly. He was a hero, a mentor, a guide and a friend. You don’t get this because you are so wrapped up in your own pain, but when he betrayed you, he betrayed me too.” I didn’t say anything and after a moment she went on. “You’re not an easy man, Lacklan. You are so sure that you are right all the time. You are so sure that your way is the only way. But your way is so extreme sometimes… You walk in and tell me—like you’re telling me it’s going to rain tomorrow, or you just bought take out—‘I’m going to assassinate President Van Zuydam!’ And you expect me just to take that and say, ‘Oh, yeah, OK, Lacklan, what time do you think you’ll be through? Maybe after, we can go grab a meal!’”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “To you it wasn’t like that. You did all the preparation and all the planning. You were ten years in an elite black ops unit. I didn’t do any preparation and I am just an academic. I solve problems by analysis, discussion and swaying public opinion through debate. Oxford professors don’t shoot their enemies, they talk to them!”

  I couldn’t bring myself to look at her because I knew what she was saying was true. I stared into my glass instead and said, lamely, “You can’t talk to men like Timmerman. You can’t talk to Omega…”

  “I know that, Lacklan. I get that. But it still scared the bejaysus out of me when you stepped into my apartment and announced that you were going to assassinate a European president. I couldn’t turn to you because you weren’t there. I had nobody to turn to. I was terrified of what you were doing. The only person I had was the man I trusted implicitly. So I made the mistake, the serious mistake, of confiding in him. And he betrayed me and he betrayed you. But in my heart and soul, Lacklan, I didn’t betray you.”

  I drained my glass and thought about going up to my room. Instead I signaled the barman for another drink. I still couldn’t look at her, but I looked at her hands, where she was clasping her drink.

  “There has to be trust, Marni. Maybe betrayal is the wrong word. Maybe Gibbons betrayed us both, like you say. Maybe you didn’t betray me.” Now I looked up into her face. “But what happened to the trust we had?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We loved and trusted each other, since we were kids. What happened?”

  She shrugged and looked away. “You went to England with your mother. You joined the SAS. I felt I had lost you. I didn’t know how to reach you. You remember I went after you? I went to London and I offered you my heart and my home…” She smiled at the melodramatic turn of phrase. “But you said no. You sent me back to Boston. You closed the door and I have never been able to reach you since. You have no room for me in your world, Lacklan. I don’t know who you are anymore.”

  “I didn’t close the door.” But I didn’t say it with much conviction.

  “Yes, Lacklan, you did.”

  “I didn’t mean to…”

  “Yeah, like I didn’t mean to betray you. And let me ask you this. Where was the trust? When I came to see you in London, and asked you to come home, and you said no, because, in your words, you didn’t want to subject me to what you had become, where was the trust?”

  My voice was barely a whisper: “I wanted to protect you…”

  “It’s still the same question, Lacklan. Where was the trust?”

  After a long while, I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too, buddy.” She reached over and took my hand. “I’m working on my own now. Cyndi and I hook up regularly. Gibbons is not on the scene anymore. I am learning who to trust. How about y
ou do the same?”

  I squeezed her hand and looked into her eyes. My mind was on fire and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I gave my head a small shake. “I don’t know, Marni,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  EIGHT

  The sky was blue-white. The desert was ochre and gray, with small bushes like gnarled hands reaching out of the parched dust in search of water they were never going to find. A billowing red cloud twenty feet high trailed me down the road toward Njal’s house. As I approached the gate, it rolled back. I slipped through and it slid closed behind me as the tires crunched to a halt outside the double garage.

  Njal was on the porch, squinting at me through the glare when I climbed out. “How’d it go?”

  “Good. No problem.” I slammed the door. “I need to let her know the names I’m using. She’ll make the introductions and get back to me.”

  He didn’t say anything, but turned and went inside the shaded house. I followed him to the study, where he opened the door and I went in. Jim was sitting by the cold fireplace with a half empty pint glass of beer, and his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He looked up and smiled as I came in.

  “How was Cyndi?”

  “Cooperative. She needs the names you’re putting on my ID papers so she can make the introduction.”

  “Naturally.” He rose and went to the desk, where he rummaged in a drawer.

  Behind me, Njal said, “You wanna drink?”

  “Yeah, whiskey.”

  Jim came back to the table with three manila envelopes. He pointed at a chair. “Sit down.” We sat. Njal joined us. He had two glasses of whiskey, one of which he handed to me. As I sipped, Jim pulled out the contents of one of the envelopes.

  “In Argentina you are Nicholas Eddington, you are a British national and you are an IT engineer. Build yourself a back-story that makes sense to you and that you will remember if you need to. Your address is at 286 Ladbroke Grove, London W11. Everything else you provide yourself. I am sure you know the drill.”

  I nodded, sipped and took the papers from him. There was a passport, a driving license and a credit card. I inspected them closely. They were good.

  Next he took out a number of photographs and a slip of paper. He handed me the paper first.

  “That’s a PIN for the credit card. Reasonable expenses only, please. It is not unlimited.”

  “I’ll reimburse any expenses I have.”

  He glanced at me and went on. “These are photographs of your house, you better familiarize yourself with them. That’s your girlfriend, put that in your wallet, dream up a name and a back-story for her. Destroy everything when you move on to Brazil.”

  I reached over, took the envelope and put the stuff back inside it, then scrawled on the outside, ‘Argentina’. Jim opened the second one.

  “In Brazil you will be Jason Devries, a U.S. mining engineer from Nevada. You live in Vegas. This is your passport, ID card, credit card, PIN and driving license.” He handed me the documents, along with a handful of photographs. “As with Nicholas Eddington, you have photographs of places, things and people that should be familiar to you, build your back-story around them.”

  I studied the Brazilian documents, put them in the envelope and scrawled ‘Brazil’ on it. Jim said, “And finally, for your entry into Mexico, you are Bill Rogers, an insurance salesman from New Jersey, address, passport, et cetera all there.” He handed me the third envelope. “This back story doesn’t need to be so complete because as soon as you get there you’ll be going to ground.”

  I took the envelope and studied the documents, then leaned back in my chair. “Have we got a date for the Mexican trio’s next gathering at the house in Cosalá?”

  Njal nodded. “Yuh, Thursday, July 4th. They will typically stay there till Monday, making a party.”

  “So that gives us three weeks and three days to finalize our plans, make the Argentine hit and the Brazil hit, and then get ourselves to Sinaloa.”

  Jim pulled a cigarette from a pack and lit it. “Can you do it?”

  I nodded. “I’ve been doing some homework.” I stared up at the ceiling, speaking my thoughts aloud: “We arrive in Argentina separately. Njal goes ahead, economy class, puts up at a hostel, writing an article for a travel blog, or Lonely Planet, something like that. I stay at the Hilton on Macacha Güemes, an expensive room, a suite, but not too expensive. I’ll arrive from London Heathrow…” I paused a minute to think. “27th June.” I looked at him. “Njal, you arrive 25th. Don’t tell me where you’re flying from or what your ID says. We don’t know each other and I don’t want to know anything about you. We each carry a burner. If we need to communicate, we use the burner.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’ll make contact with Terry according to Cyndi’s instructions. I’ll call her this afternoon. After the initial contact, I’ll invite him to the Hotel Las Garzas. It’s just outside the town of Navarro, about forty miles west of Buenos Aires. We’ll have booked a room in his name and arranged for a couple of expensive escort girls to meet him there. When we make the reservation, we’ll alert the management that this is a government minister who expects discretion, and for the girls to receive him in his room with a bottle of champagne.

  “I’ll arrange for him to arrive alone and at night. The hotel is remote, in the countryside, seven miles north of Navarro itself. To get there he’ll have to take the RP47. On that road there is an intersection which is signposted to Las Garzas. A mile from the intersection there is a bridge over a tributary to the River Plata. You and I meet on that road before nine PM. I stop him, we pour half a bottle of whisky down his throat, break his neck, put him behind the wheel of his car and push him over the bridge. Then we each make our separate ways to Brazil. That’s the rough outline of the plan.”

  Njal thrust out his bottom lip. “I have two questions: one, why should he meet you in such a remote place? He could find that suspicious. Second, what about his wife?”

  Jim nodded. “My questions too.”

  “OK, first of all, you said his state of morale was complacent, plus I come recommended by a U.S. Senator. Also, you said he likes to visit whorehouses. So as well as the promise of a large bribe, I’ll tell him I’ve arranged for some high class hookers to spend a couple of days with us while we arrange the details of the deal.”

  Jim asked, “What’s the deal?”

  “My IT company wants a contract with the Argentine government for the supply of security software. We are damned good but we also like to sugar the pill. He will get a very substantial commission, plus a lot of other inducements along the way. His greed will overcome whatever misgivings he might have. We also make the deal attractive to Omega, by giving the software an edge. What we, as a company, are seeking to do is to integrate biological components into computer security systems in order to achieve authentic artificial intelligence, so that cyber attacks like the one that brought down the stock exchanges in Wall Street and Brussels, can never happen again.”

  Jim pursed his lips and nodded. “Good, that’s good.”

  “As to his wife, she is not on my hit list, Njal. I don’t care if she is corrupt. She is not one of Omega. I don’t want to kill her if I don’t have to.”

  He shrugged. “OK. We kill him away from his house, it’s not a problem. What about Brazil?”

  I took a pull on my whiskey and peeled a pack of Camels. I spoke as I pulled off the wrapper.

  “We have no choice but to arrive on the same day, but we’ll fly in with different airlines. Again, you go to a hostel, I’ll book in at the Windsor Plaza. It’s close to the ministry and to Rocha’s house, and it’s where he would expect me to stay. Again, I’ll contact him according to Cyndi’s instructions. Meantime, you set up a watch on his mistress.”

  “Joelma Santos.”

  “1st July, when you are satisfied she’s alone, you break in to her apartment and you take her hostage. You’ll need a gun.”

  “We have a contact in Brazil. I can arrange
it.”

  “Good. I’ll arrange to meet Rocha, probably for lunch, and on the pretext of introducing him to my partner so we can discuss the details of his bribe. Once there, I’ll get a message saying that my partner wants to meet us for cocktails or whatever. We go in my car and I take him to Joelma’s apartment. There we kill him and frame her. Then give her a substantial sum of money and fly her to Los Angeles. She’ll need a fake ID and a ticket. I see Joelma off at the airport, and Njal and I make our separate ways to Mexico, arriving late on the night of the 1st July, or early in the morning of the second. That gives us two days to get to Sinaloa.”

  Jim was shaking his head. “Your plans for Joelma are very high risk. That can go wrong in so many ways.”

  “I know. The alternatives are to kill her, which I won’t do, or take him out of the city, which is going to be very difficult to persuade him to do. And we haven’t got the time to build up a relationship of trust. If she is faced with the threat of going to a Brazilian jail for killing a Brazilian minister, she’ll take the option of moving to L.A., believe me.”

  “It seems extravagant.”

  “All other options just take too long, Jim. We could rent a safe house, but that leaves a trail and again, takes time we haven’t got.”

  Njal had been nodding slowly. Now he said, “OK, I agree, if we kill the woman it causes more problems. If we frame her and she disappears, it is better.”

  Jim said, “All right, if you’re both on board with it, I’ll trust your judgment. What about Mexico?”

  “We haven’t got the time to pose as dealers looking to buy, and in any case that would draw too much attention. All we can do is make our way to Cosalá, set up camp in the forest, collect the weapons from your contact and develop a plan of attack once we are on the ground. We will need a lot of fire power.”

  Njal puffed his cheeks and blew. “If we are camping in the forest, collecting weapons and explosives from the Gulf of California is not going to be easy.”

  “You said you could arrange for somebody to collect them and bring them ashore.”