The Sword of Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Dirk Kruger?” Hawke repeated the name with disgust. Lea and Ryan shared a silent glance each knowing what the other was thinking.

Maroni nodded sullenly. “Yes. You know him?”

Hawke turned his head to look back at the mirror. He saw only his own reflection, but he knew the rest of the team were right there, hearing what he was hearing. He glanced over at Ryan, and he could guess what the young man had felt when he heard that name. It was Ryan whom Kruger had kidnapped and beaten and used to help him find the Lost City of the Incas.

Hawke turned to face Maroni. “What’s Zito’s relationship with Kruger, exactly?”

The Italian shrugged. “How should I know?”

Hawke hit the man hard in the face. He had struck him harder than he needed to, driven by the memories of the Seastead battle.

Maroni’s head smacked back on his left shoulder before rolling forward again. Blood frothed and bubbled in his mouth and he looked like he was about to pass out.

Hawke grabbed a tuft of the man’s long, raven-black hair in his hand and held his head up straight. “Don’t piss me about or you’ll get more of that, got it?”

As the Italian mumbled something in reply, Hawke punched him hard in the stomach. He reeled forward, sucking air through his bloodied mouth and coughing wildly.

“I’m a details man, Marco,” Hawke said. He kicked the table over and it crashed to the floor upside down. Then he smashed one of the wooden chairs into pieces, snatched up one of the legs and held it like a baseball bat. “Give me some details, or I’m going to smash your kneecaps.”

Hawke stared at the young man, chained to a chair in an interrogation room. He hoped he had convinced him he could do it, but deep inside he wasn’t even sure himself if he could do it anymore. Maroni was a low-level scumbag, working for a medium-level scumbag like Zito. Now he had just found out that the man pulling their strings was none other than Dirk Kruger. It had lit his fuse and he could feel it burning down, creeping ever closer to the dynamite keg that lurked inside him. Suddenly Marco Maroni was everyone who had ever crossed him, and yet could he break the man’s knees with this chair leg just to get information about Kruger?

He was about to find out.

Hawke eyed-up Maroni’s right knee and swung it back ready for the attack, but then the Italian started singing like the proverbial canary.

“No, please, no! Wait! I will tell you what you want to know!”

Inside, Hawke breathed a sigh of relief. Would he have swung the chair leg and crippled the young man? He didn’t to know, not anymore. “Well, go on then,” he said, bringing the smashed chair leg down to his side. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“You must understand that Zito is a very private man, and he has a large organization around him; many, many people work for Mr Zito and he keeps them compartmentalized so only he sees the full picture.”

“Go on.”

“I tell you this so you understand that I only know part of what goes on.”

“Let’s hope it’s a big enough part to save your knees.”

Maroni looked at the make-shift baseball bat hanging from Hawke’s right arm. “I am employed by Signor Zito to guard the island, that is my job. There are many of us on the island, I am but one.”

“Get to the good stuff,” Hawke said, glancing at the two-way mirror. Jansen would be back any minute. “I want to know about Kruger’s part in all this.”

“Zito met with Mr Kruger several times over the past few weeks. The first few times were in Rome and Naples, and then when he thought he could trust him he invited him back to the Isola Pacifica.”

Reaper stepped into the room. His eyes crawled from Marco Maroni’s shocked and bloody face up to the Englishman. “Jansen is on his way, mon ami.”

“You heard him, Marco. Dish the dirt and make it fast. My friend here can hold that door long enough for me to swing this bat. What did they discuss on the island?”

“Kruger is searching for some kind of ancient relic.”

“A relic?”

Maroni nodded. “Si — but not just any relic. The South African was very keen for Zito to understand that this was a special relic, a very ancient and powerful one. He said it had some kind of power that would unlock a great secret. The other guards and I thought it was a joke, but Zito took it seriously enough to take the contract and use his extensive network to locate and snatch the manuscript.”

Hawke believed Maroni was telling the truth. “Tell me more about this relic — what’s this power Kruger was talking about?”

“He was very vague when he spoke to Signor Zito and I did not hear everything. I am part of Zito’s security so when I’m in the room I’m there to protect him, not listen to his private business. If he finds out I have spoken to you he will kill me.”

“The relic, Marco,” Hawke repeated. “Tell me about what Kruger’s looking for.”

“Like I say, I didn’t hear everything they talked about. All I can tell you is that the South African seemed nervous when he talked about it, but also excited. His eyes lit up like diamonds when he described it to Zito.”

“And how did he describe it?”

“He said it contained some kind of special property that gave it an immense power and that it was priceless in value. He said he wanted it because he has an appreciation of ancient weapons and wanted it in his collection — but he would never explain precisely what it was.”

Hawke snorted and looked up at Reaper. The Frenchman returned a similar look of disbelief. Dirk Kruger had zero interest in collecting ancient artefacts and relics and was always about nothing but the money. This was the very same man who had nearly brought a genocidal bacterial plague to the world just for a large pay off from a deranged, rogue Syrian terrorist named Ziad Saqqal.

“So Zito works for Kruger and Kruger wants some kind of ancient relic?” Hawke said, almost to himself.

“Yes.”

“And what’s his next move?” Hawke asked.

Maroni shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know exactly, but I can tell you that neither Zito nor the South African has a clue what that manuscript says, so they are going to need someone to translate it.”

“But we have the manuscript now,” Lea said.

Maroni laughed and shook his head. “Zito had the entire thing photographed and emailed to Kruger. That’s why he took off without a real fight on the island. Now all ne needs is the translator.”

“Name.”

“They found a man named Dr Henk Kloos. He’s some kind of world-famous expert. I have told you all I know, and put the rest of my life in constant danger in the process.”

“That’s your lookout,” Hawke said. “You should be more particular about who you work for.”

Maroni gave Hawke a weary glance. “I’m still getting full immunity from prosecution, right?”

“Don’t ask me, mate,” Hawke said. “That’s Jansen’s department.”

“Talking of which,” Reaper said, “we should get out of here before he returns, non?”

Lexi Zhang stood beside her friends outside the two-way mirror and watched Hawke interrogate the young Italian man. Ryan was now walking in circles around them as they spoke. He looked different to her now. The nerd had become a man, she supposed, but then nothing was ever as it looked. She knew there would be more to Ryan’s transformation than met the eye.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the vibration of her phone. Someone was ringing her.

She fumbled it out of her pocket and saw it was her mother calling. She raised it to her hear and moved a few steps away from the group. “Yes, Mama?”

“Xiaoli? This is your mother. I have very bad news…”

Lexi’s eyes narrowed with confusion. Her mother rarely phoned. When they spoke it was when she called her parents back in their Beijing apartment. “Is everything all right?”

“No… no, it’s not, Xiaoli…” her mother sighed. “It’s so good to hear your voice after all this time.”

Lexi swallowed and lowered her voice to a whisper. It was instinctive; no one standing around her would have been able to follow a conversation in Mandarin. “What’s happened?”

“It’s your father.”

Lexi gasped and felt her heart speed up. “Ba? What’s the matter with him?”

“He’s very sick, Xiaoli… very ill.”

Lexi struggled to hear her mother’s voice over the sound of the blood pumping in her ears, and her head started to spin. She had dreaded the day this phone call would come, flying out of the darkness like some vampire bat ready to wrap its leathery wings around her face and smother her until she couldn’t even breathe. “Ba?” she repeated dumbly.

“I’m so sorry, Xiaoli,” her mother said. Her voice was weak and frightened. She sounded lost and scared. “If you want to see him — if you want to talk to him again, then you must come home at once.”

Lexi breathed deeply and turned to her friends in the ECHO team. They were all captivated by the scene unfolding in the interrogation suite where Hawke was grilling the Italian under the cold, greasy strip light.

If you want to talk to him again

She knew what that meant. Her father was on the edge, dying but still in this world. He was in that terrible place between life and death and her mother was trying to tell her that he wouldn’t stay they for long. It was now or never, and she knew she couldn’t live with never.

She turned away from her friends and stared at the corner of the corridor. The blankness of it brought some weird comfort as she processed her mother’s terrible words. They had hacked inside her like an ice pick, but she had already made her decision. The mission was critical, but ECHO was capable of doing it without her. On the other hand, her mother needed her now more than ever. She had to go back.

“I’m coming, Mama.”

“You are a good girl, Xiaoli.”

Lexi bit her lip and cut the call. She slipped the phone back in her pocket, sighed and closed her eyes. She started to make plans to fly home to China but her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of men shouting at the other end of the corridor.

It was Piet Jansen and he was with two armed security guards.

“Out of my way!” he boomed. “There was no call from my boss. Who’s behind this?” The Dutch Europol agent raced over to the two-way mirror and gasped in horror when he saw the carnage inside the interrogation room. Before he could speak, the door opened and Hawke stepped out. Lea, Ryan and Reaper were right behind him.

“Ah, Mr Jansen — the prisoner’s all yours,” Hawke said, and then leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “You might want to rethink using De Jong as an official lawyer — the man’s as drunk as a Russian sailor.”

Jansen scowled at Hawke, but the Englishman’s conscience was clear. Thanks to the interrogation they now knew what they had suspected all along: not only was Giancarlo Zito working for someone else but that person was none other than Dirk Kruger.

Jansen and the Dutch authorities could worry about Marco Maroni later on, and as for De Jong — that was nothing a couple of headache tablets wouldn’t sort out. He was already focussing on tracking the South African arms dealer down. They all had a desire to see Kruger caught and brought to justice, but Hawke could see from Ryan’s eyes that he wanted more.

“So what now?” Lea said.

Hawke’s reply was immediate. “We need to speak with this Dr Kloos, and fast.”