Hot Ice

2

Brush in hand, Jason Peters stood in his villa’s loggia before the easel, not quite content with the seascape he thought he’d finished. The jagged rocks of the coast were right; he could almost feel the spray. There was something not quite right with the color of the sea, though. Of course, that color changed hourly as the sun moved. A dark, almost black morning ocean became cerulean by noon, electric by sunset.

Perhaps the fishing boat needed to be painted out.

Perhaps acrylic was not the proper medium.

He bobbed his head as the mathematics of a Mozart concerto danced through the villa. Then he put down his brush and simply admired the same view he had enjoyed for the last three years. Half a mile away, the medieval Cathedral of the Assunta crowned a hill that dropped into the sea. He could also see the fifteenth-century causeway that joined the tiny hamlet to the larger island, a rugged bit of rock that jutted out of the water like some legendary sea monster about to devour a ship and its crew.

His view was not entirely for aesthetic purposes. With the high, rocky coast, the only approach to his villa was by that path and the single road that came up the hill to his front gate. There had been a time when he had first come here that security was more important than scenery.

A loud snore was audible over the music, disrupting his artistic thought. Turning, he saw the large dog sprawled across the tiles of the floor. It was difficult to even look at Pangloss without smiling. Part German shepherd, part collie, part whatever had been available to a promiscuous kinsman, the animal personified the description “mutt.” He also had been the only friend Jason had had for a very long time, a time from the death of his wife until Maria …

The dog awoke suddenly, lifting his head, and whined softly.

“Yeah, I miss her too,” Jason said, kneeling to take the big furry head in both hands. “But she had to go to Hawaii to observe the eruption of that volcano. You understand?”

A long tongue polished a black button nose before the animal gave a sound that could have been a sneeze or a snort. With Pangloss, one was never quite certain what was going on.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

Having assented, the dog stretched, extending shaggy legs in a move that, had it been made by a woman, might have been sexy. Well, maybe not exactly sexy, Jason thought, but it did somehow remind him of Maria waking from the afternoon nap indigenous to the island and all of Italy.

Maria. God, but he missed her.

Whenever she was not actively pursuing her profession as a volcanologist, she had shared Jason’s villa and the dog’s affection. An eruption somewhere on the globe — Indonesia, the Italian mainland, or northwestern America — meant days of absence. Worse, boredom.

Jason had gotten used to living alone before she came into his life. He had actually enjoyed having only Pangloss’s company for days on end. The peaceful serenity of obscure islands had appealed to him since his life had undergone a violent change over a decade ago. He could paint without interruption and had no social obligations to waste his time. He also could keep fully apprised of who came and went, an unfortunate necessity of his former employment.

Maria had changed all that. It was well and fine that he lived what most would consider a dull life while she was in it. But when she was gone …?

He sighed, turning back to the easel and reaching to pick up the brush. She was all the excitement he needed when she was there. When she was gone, memories of past adventures seemed sweet indeed. He had lived up to his promise of retirement, but that pledge might be hard to keep if the opportunity arose, the chance …

His BlackBerry beeped and he frowned, hands on hips.

There were no phones in the house, no landlines, anyway. Jason detested them. Always ringing at inconvenient times, bringing news he either didn’t want to hear or didn’t care about. There was no need on the island anyway. It wasn’t as if he had to call ahead for a dinner reservation at either of the two trattoria. If he showed up, they were glad to see him. If he needed to speak to his housekeeper or one of her cousins, grandchildren, or in-laws who comprised his staff when they were off duty, he got on a bicycle and rode to their nearby house.

Since Maria’s arrival and subsequent business trips, he had agreed to the BlackBerry. She was the only one who had his e-mail address. Her infrequent messages lessened the burden of her absences.

No doubt it was Maria e-mailing. What the hell time was it in Hawaii, anyway?

Jason stepped into the relative cool of the villa’s interior, where the sunlight would not make the tiny screen difficult to read.

At first, he thought he was not seeing what was clearly printed: COME TO MOMMA. NAPLES A’PT 0800 TOMORROW.

Jason glanced over his shoulder as though he suspected someone might be watching the fulfillment of what might have been a wish. Mephistopheles never sleeps. His first reaction was to return text something short and obscene. That didn’t work. UNABLE TO TRANSMIT appeared on the screen just as he knew it would.

“Fuckers!” he snorted.

Pangloss opened one eye.

How the hell had they known how to contact him? Why now?

He went to a seventeenth-century buffet deux corps, fussed with the iron latch, and opened the bottom doors. Removing a half-full bottle of Antinori Solaia 2006, he fumbled with the recorking mechanism and poured himself a generous glass before crossing the room to sprawl onto a couch.

The heavy Tuscan red would have gone well with the mustard flavor of a lamb dish or the garlic of roasted pork loin, two of Jason’s favorites once winter’s chill replaced the heat of summer. To hell with the seasons. At the moment, he wanted something thick, almost viscous.

Pangloss got up, stretched again, and came over to sit in front of him, brown eyes looking into Jason’s from a cocked head.

“So, what are your thoughts on the matter?”

If he had any, Pangloss kept them to himself.

Jason took a healthy swallow of wine, the hearty red sticking to the back of his tongue for a moment. Almost instantly, his anger faded along with the lingering taste. Drinking during the day usually put him to sleep or at least made him drowsy. He wasn’t thinking about that. He had been angry that the wall of privacy, if not secrecy, he had taken so much trouble to erect had been breached.

But, his logical mind interrupted: You were just thinking about the good old days and how bored you are.

“Maybe so,” Jason said aloud, “but I don’t think they’ve perfected mind-reading. At least, not yet.”

“Mi dispiace?”

Gianna, his housekeeper, was standing in the doorway, a plate in her hand. From what he could see, his lunch would consist of frutti di mare freddo: octopus thinly sliced and tender, prawns, clams, and squid, all served cold. Sometimes it included a half l’aragosta—small warm-water lobster. The dish was one of his favorites.

“Prego.”

The Italian word that means everything from “quickly” to “pardon me” to “you’re welcome.”

He pointed to a long oak table, a piece he had rescued from the refectory of a Umbrian monastery. Gianna lifted an eyebrow as she noted the red wine. Jason rarely had alcohol with lunch. Even on the occasions he did, he invariably had a single beer or a glass of a Gaja, a buttery Piemonte white.

Jason managed a smile as he took the plate from her and pointedly said, “Grazie.”

He waited until she left the room before he sat down. He was immediately joined by a ball of orange fur that plopped down on the table from nowhere. Robespierre, the cat. Robbie, as he was known, never slunk into a room with the hauteur common to felines. He dropped from something, pounced, dashed, or exploded like a missile.

“Never see you till there’s food on the table,” Jason observed, moving the plate away. “Fine friend you are.”

Robbie licked a paw, pretending not to care. Jason knew that trick: the minute his attention was distracted a good part of his seafood lunch would disappear.

The cat had simply appeared in Jason’s villa, origins and return address unknown. The only thing clear was that the animal had come in a very distant last in some feline dispute. Half an ear was missing, as was a good bit of fur and skin. The creature was so pitiful that Jason, not a cat lover, felt compelled to take him to the local undertaker who, in absence of a medical doctor, served as the community’s physician and veterinarian. After their first encounter, Pangloss and Robespierre had reached a tenuous truce if not a friendship. The association involved no effort on Jason’s part other than vigilance at the dining table. Besides, since no one really owns a cat, how do you get rid of one?

His logical mind returned to the text message. So, it persisted, you were feeling deserted, bored, and generally sorry for yourself. Then, like a genie in a bottle, along they come and you get pissed off because your precious privacy has been violated. Jeez, give me break!

Jason methodically peeled a prawn and began to chew. Robespierre still feigned indifference.

So?

So, I promised Maria I was through with them. No more killing, no more violence.

That’s not exactly what you promised.

Oh?

She left you after that episode in Sicily when you fed that terrorist to a feral hog….

Actually, it was in Sardinia.

OK, Sardinia. She left you because she couldn’t stand violence. If she’s not here, she won’t be exposed to anything that’s distasteful to her. What you promised was that if she stayed with you, you’d give up working for them and you did. Now she’s not here.

I doubt she’ll see it that way.

I doubt she’ll see it at all. If you can do a job and be back here before she is …

Jason started on the cold slices of octopus, took a bite, and put his fork down. Mozart was starting over. He stood, moved Robbie to the floor, crossed the room, and changed CDs, switching to a Mendelssohn. Son of a German philosopher, the composer’s sonatas had a logical cadence helpful in resolving moral dilemmas.

He finished his meal without further intrusion.

True, with Maria gone, he was bored. Also true, she could be gone for a month or more. He hadn’t been off this rock in … He couldn’t remember. What was the harm in catching the early hydrofoil, meeting someone at the Naples airport? He could always walk away, spend the day at Italy’s finest archaeological museum and be back by dinnertime.

He would not have liked to explain why he put his paints away and began to search the villa for a suitcase.

As the cab from the next morning’s ferry climbed above the harbor that is Naples’s front door, the twin humps of Vesuvius marred the western horizon like a malignant wart. Jason remembered the observation station on the slopes of the volcano, now largely a museum, where Maria had worked and where the last part of what he recalled as the “Hades matter” had begun.

Maria.

The thought had returned that morning as he regarded his face in the shaving mirror. What kind of a guy promises the woman he loves to abandon his previous life and then goes back on his word as soon as she’s gone?

I’m not going back on anything; I’m just going to the airport, he argued with himself. To say “no.” After all, I’m rich because of that organization, well-off for the rest of my life. I owe them the courtesy of a face-to-face reply.

His reflection had grimaced back at him. Yeah? Then why the packed suitcase?

Answer: shave faster.

The taxi exited the four-lane, passed the rental-car lots, and turned into the mass confusion that surrounds the Naples airport. Fat buses farted clouds of diesel fumes as they went through the useless ritual of honking at cars blocking the entrance. Tiny Fiats discharged entire families like circus acts. Men pushed carts stacked above their heads with plastic luggage while their wives restrained small children and dogs the size of rats.

Jason climbed out of the cab while the driver was still yelling at the stopped car in front and making those obscene gestures that are part of every Italian male’s vocabulary. He looked at the meter, retrieved his single bag, the one he wasn’t going to need, from the trunk, and peeled off several euros. He checked his watch as he walked toward the single-story structure that was the terminal building.

07:58. Right on time.

He looked around. His guess was that he would be contacted before he entered the chaos inside that made the disorder outside look like a military drill by comparison. Italians tend to all speak at once. When several hundred are confined in a single large room, all clamoring for tickets, flight information, or simply directions to the nearest restroom (always out of order at the Naples airport in Jason’s experience), the decibel level becomes ear-shattering.

He was almost to the entrance when a man in a Polizia uniform detached himself from a group of his fellows whose sole function appeared to be the inspection and critique of the dimensions of female passengers, a favorite pastime if not the national sport.

“Signore Peters?”

Jason nodded, instantly alert. He was searching the shifting mob for anyone who might show interest in the encounter.

“This way, please.”

Jason followed the man to a small white Alfa Romeo with the blue markings common to Italian police cars. Before he tossed his bag into the backseat and climbed into the front, he gave the crowd a final look. If there were an observer, it would be pure luck if he spotted him in the mass of seething humanity.

The Alfa drove around the edge of the terminal and out onto the tarmac. Ahead, on a deserted concrete slab, was a Gulfstream G4, There was no corporate logo, nothing to distinguish it from other private aircraft other than the United States N-number and the fact its clamshell door was slowly swinging open. The car stopped at the bottom of the stairs built into the door. Jason got out and grabbed his bag. Before he could say anything to his driver, the police car was gone.

He looked up at the plane. He could hear the whine of its engines at low rpm, and the distortion of its exhaust rippled the air behind it. Clearly the occupants intended to keep the aircraft’s systems functioning.

At the top of the stairs, he blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust from the blinding sunlight to the dim interior.

“Hullo, Jason. Come give Momma a hug.”

He didn’t have a chance. Before he could respond, he was smothered between breasts that would make a silicone-enhanced Hollywood starlet look anemic while being crushed by arms the girth of telephone poles. He smelled the familiar odors of flowers, charcoal, and sweat, the odors of the woman’s native Haiti.

When she finally pushed him away to look at him, he saw a huge black woman, perhaps three hundred or more pounds, swaddled in a flowing caftan with a bright African print. She was the president and sole shareholder of Narcom, Inc.

She shook a gigantic head wrapped in a turban that matched the other print. “My, my! Ain’t seen you in forever! You ain’ ’zactly stayed in touch with Momma. How you doin’?”

Jason suspected she showed the same affection for all of her “boys,” although he couldn’t be sure. By the nature of its business, Narcom was strictly compartmentalized. Other than this woman he knew only as Momma and a few of the permanent staff in Chevy Chase just outside Washington, he had met few of the company’s “contractors,” as they were euphemistically called. He was aware that Momma had fled her native land with the fall of the Duvalier regime and the subsequent abolition of the Tonton Macoute, Haiti’s secret police, whose brutality would have shocked Stalin’s NKVD. Momma had been the second in command.

Peering around her, Jason saw an office setup: desk and two chairs. He eased into one of them.

“I’ve been OK.” He arched an eyebrow. “Retirement agrees with me.”

She waved a dismissive hand the size of a football. “I figure you bored.”

He started to disagree, tell her he simply was no longer available. He didn’t. Hell, he was bored.

How had she known? He wasn’t willing to even consider the supernatural possibilities of the voodoo she claimed as a religion. More likely he’d been under surveillance before her call. Professional surveillance, or he would have noticed. He found the thought both annoying and mildly intriguing.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “What makes you think that?”

The Gulfstream’s door whispered shut and Jason became aware that there were no windows. No Plexiglas panes to vibrate with voices to be picked up by long-range listening devices.

“That gal o’ yours, she been gone awhile.”

He had never mentioned Maria. Annoyance at having his privacy invaded was quickly overcoming curiosity. “She’ll be back when she’s finished what she’s doing.”

“But while she’s gone …” Momma sat at the desk, the chair groaning with her weight. “Mebbe you want to look at these.”

She handed him three black-and-white photographs. The grainy quality told Jason they had been shot at a distance and the subject was probably unaware they had been taken. As he studied the face, he felt as though he had magically been transported to the Arctic. The chill made him wince and his hand shook with pure rage.

“Al Mohammed Moustaph! Where did you find him?”

Momma shrugged. “We didn’; CIA did.”

“So, why didn’t they …?”

Momma reached out a massive hand to take the pictures back. “Time they had someone in place, he gone.”

Jason’s voice had become nearly a growl. “You didn’t bring me here to tell me the son of a bitch escaped.”

Momma waved a hand as though to calm a small child. “They didn’t get him, no. But they know where he’ll be in five days.”

Jason stood, making no effort to conceal his eagerness. “Where? I’ll take that bastard out for free.”

Momma leaned back in her chair. “Knowin’ the special feelin’s you got for him, I thought of you the minute the business came our way, figured you’d be interested. But ain’ nobody gonna kill him, least not yet.”

“But …”

Again, the wave of the hand. She smiled, her teeth a crescent of white. “Jason, you always impatient. Just sit ’n’ listen to Momma a minute. Job pay a flat million, your share th’ reward, put in the same Liechtenstein bank. ’Course, you want to stay retired …”

Since its fees were paid by the US government, Narcom’s only customer, freedom from taxes had always been part of the bargain. As administrations changed, however, promises were sometimes forgotten, and the jobs too risky or too dirty for official action by Washington could stir periodic outrage by the increasing number of voters who believed America could prevail against Muslim fanatics with rules more applicable to the playground than the real world. Narcom gave the government the shield of plausible deniability and numbered bank accounts were a bulwark against climates that changed, the quicksand of public opinion, politicians who routinely reneged, and the IRS who was … well, the IRS.

Jason forced himself to be calm. “OK. What’s the catch? Even the most bleeding-heart American can see the need to get rid of Moustaph. Why can’t the government do the job itself?”

Momma handed Jason another photograph, this one of a black man in a coat and tie and obviously posed. “Because this is the man you take out.”

Jason recognized the face. “Bugunda? I admit few people would mourn his passing, but, far as I know, the US has no interest in his country other than wringing its diplomatic hands like everyone else over what he’s done to the poor bastards living under his regime.”

Momma leaned forward, a shift of so much weight so suddenly that Jason imagined he could feel the floor quiver. “Five days from now Moustaph will be visiting Bugunda, who’s supposed to give a speech welcoming his fellow opponent of Western tyranny, oppression, et cetera. The United States can’t afford to be caught meddling in African politics; enough people hate us there already. So, we get the job. We got men in place, Bugunda’s guard, ready to snatch Moustaph. What we need is a diversion. You the best marksman I got.”

“Used to got,” Jason corrected.

Momma shrugged and Jason thought of Vesuvius shifting its axis. “We don’ get the confusion, we don’t get Moustaph.”

“Why not just shoot him instead of Bugunda?”

“Bugunda’s got no information we want.”

Jason was silent for a moment. Despite the current political sympathy for terrorists, if Moustaph were taken prisoner, it was unlikely he would be brought to the United States and questioned politely in an air-conditioned room and served coffee and doughnuts with his court-appointed lawyer present to frustrate the investigation.

In the hands of Narcom, the Muslim terrorist would be taken someplace where human rights were of little concern. They might not kill him, but after a couple of days in the company of Narcom interrogators, Moustaph would wish he were dead. And not just because of the number of virgins allotted in paradise to such brave martyrs with the blood of children, women, and innocents on their hands.

Amnesty International, the ACLU, the World Court, and others that were not charged with fighting terrorism or that were simply closed-minded might decry torture as a means of retrieving information from an uncooperative subject. Their mantra assures the civilized world that inducing pain rarely produces the desired result. Jason’s experience pointed to the contrary. Every person has a breaking point, a state in which the information withheld is no longer worth the agony of physical abuse, lack of sleep, or sensory deprivation. The mind and body can take only so much before the strongest will break. Some take longer than others but, in the end, all talk. Or die in the process.

The thought of Moustaph’s less-than-bright future made Jason smile. There was no torture, no agony, that would adequately repay the debt the Arab owed him.

And a million dollars wasn’t exactly chump change either.

“OK, Momma, you got yourself a shooter.”