The Blood King Conspiracy

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“We’ve been tracking you the whole time,” Harrison told them as Hayden and Kinimaka exited the car. “You have the controller. I don’t think there’s a more important person in the world than you now, Miss Jaye.”

Hayden thought about the trackers they’d implanted in her clothing. “Shit, there’s even one in my pants.” She half-laughed. “Hope you’ve brought your credit card, Harrison.”

Drake leaned out the window. “Is it a case of trusting no one? Or just being careful?”

“Both,” said Harrison shrugging. “Clearly, I can’t say much. I don’t know much.”

“Trust a politician.” Drake laughed and then draped himself out the window. “So, you gonna start stripping then?”

Kennedy slapped him. Kinimaka looked a little affronted. “I didn’t mean you, big boy.”

“Seriously,” Harrison came around the front as Kinimaka and Hayden climbed back in, “that’s an imperative. If there is a mole on the surveillance side we can’t have them relaying our whereabouts to Boudreau.”

“Ok, ok, I’ll strip,” Hayden said. “Just get me some damn clothes first. Or at least a blanket.”

Ben couldn’t hide a grin. “Wish I’d have come up with that ploy.”

But Hayden was leaning close to Harrison now, no doubt imparting the bombshell that she actually didn’t have the controller any more. That it was lost back at the parking lot. Harrison’s head went down immediately.

Alicia started the car and drove carefully through the barricade. Military personnel melted back into sight now that Harrison had done his thing, hard-faced men with steel in their eyes.

Kennedy was rummaging around in the boot. “There’s a blanket back here and a trench-coat. That ok for you?”

With some difficulty and averting of eyes and intense shuffling both Hayden and Kinimaka stripped totally naked and threw their clothes out the window. Alicia Myles was, perhaps predictably, the only one of the bunch who watched the entire proceedings, examining Mano with enthusiastic interest. In a way, Drake didn’t mind so much. At least it showed the real Alicia was still present.

Hayden donned the trench-coat. Kinimaka wrapped his bulk inside the blanket. Everyone pretended not to notice the flesh that remained uncovered.

Hayden leaned forward with extreme caution. “Harrison. Do you guys have a plan? What’s been going on?”

The Secretary of Defence’s aide smiled genuinely for the first time since Drake had known him. “Ah, yes. Do we have a plan.”

Harrison directed Alicia to head back towards the Keys for now. “Just keep driving, Miss Myles, we have a facility on the way.”

Alicia looked at him. “Did Hudson’s information help you?”

“Tip o’ the sword, Miss Myles, tip o’ the sword. It was the edge we needed to carve our way into Dmitry Kovalenko’s shady world. And by shady I mean black. In every way. The legend says that the Blood King kills a man every single day, just because he can. If his crew don’t fetch him a worthwhile prisoner, he kills one of the crew.”

“Where did all this new information come from?” Drake asked cautiously.

“Using Hudson’s information as a starting point we back-tracked through history. Came up with some interesting links to people within our reach, if you know what I mean. In short, the Blood King has helped some pretty powerful people become powerful over the last twenty years. All we had to do was start squeezing those people and piece together the information.”

“Squeezing them?” the desk-clerk asked with a tremor in her throat.

Harrison did a double-take. “Where did she come from?”

“The front desk,” she moaned.

Harrison stared around silently.

“We can’t just ditch her,” Drake said. “Carry on. She’ll be fine, won’t you love?”

The desk-clerk looked away, straight at Kinimaka, then blushed and stared at the floor.

“Kovalenko rose to power when Russia was at its weakest, sometime after the cold war. His family owned a vodka refinement plant, which he quickly turned into a world class brand by forcing the best people to work for him. Kind of like what he’s doing now, though we still don’t know how.”

“Or who.” Drake’s barb was like a left hook.

“Indeed. Kovalenko then set about acquiring most of the other vodka brands in Russia, in secret. He wanted to be the undisclosed owner rather than partner, the man behind it all, but never seen. His empire, well it is almost unlimited. We’ve just scratched the surface and found over three hundred companies he owns.”

“So why did he chose to do a Blackbeard?” Ben asked. “You know, live at sea like a pirate?”

“It’s what gave him his anonymity. You know, someone says ‘he lives at sea’ and wonders why he can’t be found. What most people don’t understand is that the seas are unbelievably vast. There are many, many thousands of square miles of ocean that, though charted, are never sailed or tracked. The manpower required to do so would be nonsensical.”

Harrison had been talking fast-like-a-fox now for some time. Drake saw no sign of him taking a break. Hayden asked him about Boudreau.

“Far as we know, he’s just a merc. The Blood King, with his resources, could have recruited anybody. Maybe Boudreau came recommended.”

“Only by Top Psycho Magazine,” Kennedy shivered despite the heat in the car.

“So, Kovalenko sailed these waters for twenty years,” Drake pointed out. “And was never seen? Come on, Justin. Pull the other one.”

“No thank you. The Blood King was seen, Drake. Of course he was seen. The ship he had commissioned, though we haven’t located it yet, we’re guessing is beyond cutting edge. But it won’t look more than a spit different to any other hundred-million-dollar yacht out there. And, trust me, there’s more than you would think.”

“He’d send crew ashore for provisions,” Ben said. “Using the ship’s tenders. Why, though, would the crew want to spend their lives at sea with him?”

“The pirates did it,” Harrison said. “The Blood King is just a modern day version. Maybe he pressed them all into service. A lifetime of indenture to provide their families with riches, or save them from bandits or whatever. You gotta see that when you have the Blood King’s power and resources, nothing is impossible.”

Kinimaka made a backwards motion. “Like starting a war in Miami?”

“Just like that.”

Alicia threaded the Tahoe through some traffic onto a much wider road. “Do I get my pardon, Mr Government Stooge?”

To his credit, Harrison didn’t even look at her. “Let’s revisit that subject later, hmm? But I will tell you one other thing.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“That name Hudson uncovered — Stormbringer? It’s not only the name of the device… it’s also the name of the Blood King’s ship.”

“’Dear to our owners heart.’” Alicia remembered the snippet her dead lover had found. “Of course it was. Since he commissioned it and lived on it.”

“We will find the ship,” Harrison said. “Our only concern is how much warning he will have that we are coming.”

“Send in the biggest damn thing that you’ve got,” Drake told him. “The bastard likes big odds. Send him bigger odds than even he can handle.”

Harrison smiled. “Every carrier and warship we have around the world is on standby.”