Judgement and Wrath

15

'We're here to speak to Bradley Jorgenson.'

'Name?'

'He doesn't know my name.'

'Then he isn't expecting you?'

'No, he wouldn't be.'

'Then you'll have to make an appointment through his office. You have the contact details?'

'No, I don't.'

'Then, I'm afraid you won't be able to see him. We are currently experiencing unwanted attention from the media and I have express orders to send everyone though Mr Jorgenson's press office. Good day, sir. Please move your vehicle so it isn't blocking the access drive.'

The intercom was switched off, the active green light dying. I leaned away from it back into the Porsche and looked across at Rink. His eyebrows jerked but that was the sum of his contribution.

I pressed the buzzer again.

'Sir, I already told you?…'

I didn't listen to the guard's words. I swung open the car door and went up to the gate. Peering up at the CCTV camera above it, my hands clenched by my sides, I shouted, 'Speak to Jorgenson. Tell the ungrateful son of a bitch that Joe Hunter is here. He'd have died last night if it wasn't for me.'

Turning back to the buzzer on the intercom, I pressed my finger to it. Kept the button depressed. Somewhere on the property the buzzer would be shrieking in protest, probably sending the guard insane.

The tableau held for the best part of two minutes.

Then from within the compound I heard the grumble of approaching engines. Letting go of the buzzer, I said into the speaker, 'Now that wasn't so difficult, was it?'

The guard didn't respond. Maybe he was in one of the two dark silver sedans approaching the gate.

The sedans drew to a halt on the road beyond the gate. Four big guys with guns under their jackets got out. They eyed me coolly, the way a pack of jackals would challenge a lion. Together they could likely bring me down, but not one at a time. Rink got out the car and stood beside me. The odds now tipped the scale firmly in my favour. Rink's presence often had that effect.

One of the guards, a self-appointed delegate, stepped forwards. He was a man edging fifty years old, but he still retained a hard body and steady eyes. His brush cut indicated he was ex-army as did his straight back and staccato movements.

'What is your business here?' he demanded.

'None of yours,' I told him.

I wasn't interested in any of Jorgenson's hired guns. Looking past the man to the second sedan, I called. 'You can see me, Bradley. Same guy from last night. You would have died if I wasn't there. The way I see it, you at least owe me a couple minutes of your time.'

I waited and the man with the brush cut continued giving me dead eyes. After what seemed to be an hour, but was only half a minute, the driver's window slid open. The driver didn't say anything. To Brush Cut he just inclined his head in silent communication. Then the second vehicle began reversing up the drive. There was a turning circle twenty paces back and the sedan swung around and back up the road.

'You'll have to step back from the gate,' Brush Cut said.

About to argue, I felt Rink's fingers brush my wrist. One of the other guards had gone over to a box on a pole. He pressed a button and the huge gates began swinging towards us. We were forced to take a couple of steps back to avoid being swatted aside.

'Come with us,' Brush Cut commanded.

'We'll bring our own car.' Rink's tone said he'd brook no argument.

Brush Cut looked at Rink. Then at me. He sniffed once, then turned away, indicating that the others should get back in the car. Only the man at the gate controls waited.

Back in the Porsche, Rink drove through the gate and past the sedan. He pulled into the turning circle, waited until the gate guard was back in the sedan and it had gone past us. Then we followed.

'Well, that was easier than we thought,' I said to Rink.

'Could be taking us somewhere less public to shoot us,' Rink said.

We followed the sedan along the road, came to a collection of houses, almost a village community in itself. I thought they must be on-site accommodation for the large number of staff that had to be employed on the estate. At its highest point, Neptune Island was only a few yards above sea level. The ground swelled at its centre then quickly dipped down towards the shoreline. The houses built just above the shoreline were large and impressive, more like the stately homes from back in the UK than any I expected to find on the Florida coast. They were set at intervals of perhaps a quarter-mile apart, like the forts the Roman Empire once built to guard their frontiers.

The sedan angled towards the largest house of all. It would only be about fifty years old, but the architects must have drawn inspiration from Victorian times. A bird's-eye view would have seen an immense sprawl of red slate roof, shaped like a capital 'H'. My angle showed me a three-storey wing at either side, attached by a cross section that had windows extending from the roof-line to a yard or so above the ground. The windows were like those seen in cathedrals, but without the coloured glass. Kind of excessive, however much money you had to waste.

The silver sedan I assumed had held Bradley Jorgenson was already there, now empty. The driver was sitting on the hood of his vehicle. His arms were crossed, one hand nonchalantly dipping into the folds of his jacket. A second man stood on the far side, and he was a lot more obvious about the way he held an Uzi sub-machine gun braced across his stomach. The second sedan pulled up next to it, leaving room for Rink's Porsche between the two of them.

Brush Cut and his three companions climbed out of their vehicle, circling the Porsche like sharks. They were all holding sidearms.

Climbing out ourselves, we were clear on our intentions. Our guns remained out of sight and we showed our empty palms. Brush Cut pointed a Glock 17 at my chest.

'You can drop the posturing,' I said to Brush Cut. 'We're not here to cause trouble. We're here to help Jorgenson.'

'We don't need any help.' Brush Cut waved us towards the house with a jerk of his gun. 'We can handle things.'

Beside me, Rink grumbled to himself. He wasn't the only one bemoaning how amateur these guys were. What kind of bodyguards allow armed men to bring a vehicle directly up to the house where their principal is in residence? We could have a bomb under the hood for all they knew. Despite their guns, I was pretty sure Rink and I could draw and fire and all six of them would be dead or incapacitated in seconds. Any other time, I imagined Rink would have laughed in Brush Cut's face. But Rink wasn't in the best of moods. Neither was I.

'Where's Jorgenson?'

'Inside.'

He made it sound like an order, but that's where we wanted to be at any rate. We walked quickly towards a large wooden door, causing the others to stumble into a ragged skirmish line behind us. They were like children falling in behind the toughest kids in school.

The door swung open before we reached it and we were greeted by another couple of rent-a-punks. These two were your typical intimidators, men mountains with shaven-heads, broken noses and tattoos on their depressed knuckles. I brushed by them, not intimidated in the least. It's not guys with smashed-up faces that you have to fear, it's the unmarked ones; the ones who win all the fights. Sounds a little arrogant, but neither Rink nor I has the face of a second-rate pug.

Jorgenson was waiting for us in a huge room shelved floor-to-ceiling with a library of books to rival a university for knowledge. A cursory glance showed me that most of the titles were in northern European languages. Jorgenson was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk, elbows splayed, his chin resting in his hands. He watched our entry with a look of bored resignation.

'You made it out the house, then? I thought I saw you looking over the wall afterwards.'

'Yeah, I made it out. With no thanks to you,' I said. 'Didn't help being crowned with a bottle just before the place went up.'

He sat up a little straighter. His palms fell open. 'I couldn't be sure whose side you were really on.'

'I wasn't the one shooting at you.'

'You were about to burn down the house.'

'I think that's a little academic now,' I pointed out.

A shadow crossed his face. 'They still haven't found my father.'

Brush Cut and one other had followed us into the room. The rest all stood in various poses of menace in the hallway.

'Relax, Jorgenson, will you? If I was going to kill you I'd have done it by now.' I held his gaze and he finally gave a nod in return. He waved the pack away, but indicated that Brush Cut and the other man should stay handy. I said, 'Better if we spoke in private.'

'You haven't killed me yet,' Jorgenson replied. 'Doesn't mean you won't.'

Rink laughed sardonically, 'You think these frog-giggin' assholes would stop us?'

'Hey!' Brush Cut said. He stepped up close, realised just how big Rink was and faltered. Rink turned his head to regard the man as though he was something he'd tracked in on his boots.

'Try it, buddy,' Rink said. 'Go on. I'm in the right mood for slapping someone down.'

Jorgenson smiled at the testosterone-charged atmosphere. 'Mr Seagram is a highly regarded executive protector. He came from the Marine Corps with top recommendations.'

'Hurrah,' Rink grunted. 'What did you do in the service, Seagram? Cook?'

'West Point,' Seagram stated.

Rink sniffed, unimpressed. 'Yeah, they have cooks there. Decent cooks, I'll give you that.'

Seagram looked like he'd been slapped. But I could tell his mind was caught in flux. Rink had insulted him and paid a compliment in the same breath. Rink grinned, showing he was just ragging him. It was one of those forces things where all soldiers put down anyone who wasn't in their own troop. Seagram moved away, at a loss as to how to respond.

'Are we all finished now?' Jorgenson asked.

'We haven't started yet,' I told him.

'That's true. I don't even know who you are.'

'Where's Marianne?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'Because we're here more for her than for you.'

'Can I ask why?'

'You can ask.'

He shook his head. 'And you are?'

'I'm Joe Hunter.'

'What about him?' Jorgenson looked at Rink.

' He can speak for himself,' Rink said. 'My friends call me Rink. But you can call me Jared Rington.' He turned and shot a wink at Seagram. 'Mr Rington to you.'

Seagram hissed something under his breath. He turned his back on us and went to lean against the bookshelves. The other man, who'd remained silent throughout, blinked rapidly, looking from Seagram to Jorgenson. He was a whip-thin man with spiky, sandy-coloured hair and freckled face. He wasn't long out of high school, judging by his fresh face. Looked like he wished he was back there.

'What's your interest in me?' Jorgenson asked.

'Zero. It's Marianne we've come about.'

Jorgenson's lips twitched down. 'Marianne doesn't know you either. She told me about speaking to you in the garden. But she says that she'd never seen you before that. Is that true?'

'Do you doubt her?'

'No.' Jorgenson stared into my eyes. 'I love her.'

'Tough love,' Rink muttered.

Jorgenson snapped his gaze on Rink. Colour flushed up from his throat, making his cheeks a dapple of red blotches.

'What does that mean?' he demanded.

I leaned one fist on his desk. Time to interject, I thought. Rink wasn't in the best frame of mind to lead the negotiations. 'Forget it,' I told him. 'What I'm concerned with is what happened last night. The man at your house was there to kill the two of you. We're committed to protecting Marianne. Now, you say you love her. If that's the case, you will want Marianne to be protected. Seems to me that we're on the same agenda.'

'We don't need you,' Seagram said from the far side of the room.

'You don't?'

Jorgenson said, 'I trust my staff to protect us.'

'You shouldn't. They opened the gate to men who they know nothing about, allowed us to carry guns inside. We parked a car outside that could be packed with Semtex for all they knew.'

Jorgenson nodded along with my reasoning. But then his finger came up and wagged in my direction. 'But that was after I'd viewed you on the security system. I recognised you. Like you said earlier, if you were going to kill me, you'd have done so by now.'

'Fair enough.'

'I take it you have some kind of offer in mind?'

'Not interested in working for you, if that's what you're thinking.'

Jorgenson shrugged. He acknowledged Seagram. 'I'm happy with who I have already.'

'But I do want to speak to Marianne. If she wants us, then we will work for her.'

'And if I don't allow that?'

'Then we're going to have a problem.'