Valhalla Gold

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Zhang Xiaoli, known to the Chinese Ministry of State Security as Agent Dragonfly, and to the Western intelligence agencies as Lexi Zhang, watched the man enter the bar. Obscured behind a pair of Gucci sunglasses and slumped down in her seat in order to use the menu for cover, she was in no danger of being seen by the man unless she wanted to be seen.

She lit a cigarette and sucked in the smoke. The curve of her lips formed a soft cushion around the tip of the filter and she winced as she drew the smoke down. She hated filtered cigarettes. Passing over the cellulose acetate of the filter imparted a slightly plastic quality to the taste of the smoke, but they were all she could find. No matter, it was time for business.

Having decided the man was alone, she sauntered across the room and stood beside him at the bar. She looked at him casually out of the corner of her eye. He was wearing a dishevelled linen jacket and had a slightly crumpled Panama hat at a jaunty angle on his head. Soft, purple bags around his eyes told her he still wasn’t sleeping at night without the assistance of his faithful Ambitropin.

“I’ll have another rum,” she said to the barman coolly, and turned to the man beside her. “What will you have, Señor Arocha?”

Arocha looked at her with tired eyes and barely any movement of the head. He was a year from retirement in the Cuban Dirección de Inteligencia. What Arocha didn’t know about the region wasn’t worth knowing, and it just so happened he was in debt to Lexi Zhang.

“I’ll have a beer,” he said flatly.

They waited in silence as the barman organized their drinks. It was a little before sunset and the atmosphere of the small bar was relaxed but even with the gentle whir of the wooden ceiling fans above their heads the humidity wasn’t pulling any punches. Lexi wondered how long this was going to take. The thing about Miguel Arocha was you never could tell what sort of mood he was in and how generous he was feeling.

The man at the bar gave them their drinks and Arocha paid with a folded bill, casually waving his change away. The CDI was obviously picking up the tab, Lexi thought, and they walked to a corner table without further acknowledgement of each other.

They reached the table and took a seat. On the small table between them was an unlit candle in a bottle and a torn menu that looked like it had seen better days. In Lexi’s opinion the whole place needed an intimate date with a wrecking ball and a couple of bulldozers, but Arocha seemed to fit right in.

Lexi looked at the menu. “How romantic.”

Arocha glanced briefly over his shoulder before speaking. Lexi thought he looked like he was expecting someone, but too many years in the business had warped both their perceptions for the worse.

“What do you want?” he asked at last.

Straight to the point, she thought. Obviously he was in a generous mood tonight, and not going to play around with her. For that, at least, she could be grateful.

“Repayment for that job I did for you in Santo Domingo last year.”

The man nodded. “You’re calling it in.”

Lexi raised her glass and took more of the cheap rum. “Yes.”

Arocha rested his elbows on the tabletop and began gently drumming his fingertips on the scarred wood. He was starting to look vaguely nervous, she considered. “Name it.”

Lexi ran her finger around the rim of the glass and made it sing for a moment — B flat, she thought. Two men with serious tattoos turned to see what had made the noise, but turned their backs when they saw she was sitting with Arocha. Obviously this was his local. “Word has it there’s an island in the Caribbean that isn’t exactly on the tourist trail.”

A heavy sigh from the Cuban. Life looked like it was getting on top of him. “There are so many islands in the Caribbean, Agent Dragonfly.”

She nodded and sipped the rum. “Do you know what I’m talking about or not?”

A long pause and then a brief nod. “Perhaps.”

“I’m talking about an island owned by a private consortium headed by an English politician. A maverick archaeologist named Sir Richard Eden.”

“In that case, I know what you’re talking about, but not many do. Its location is really only known by a few intelligence agencies and maybe some local fishermen. Why do you want to know about it? I can hardly believe a tiny island all the way out here is causing the Chinese Government any difficulties.”

“I have my reasons, Arocha.”

Another businesslike nod from the Cuban. Lexi thought he looked like he had gained at least twenty pounds since their last meeting.

“And if I tell you, we’re even?”

“Of course. That’s the deal.”

“You’re going to cause trouble down here?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I heard a rumor about an assassination getting played out somewhere in my little sea.” He gestured with his hand out the window of the bar at the vast ocean on the far side of the road.

She smirked and winked at him. “You mind your business and I’ll mind mine. I won’t cause any trouble for you, I promise.”

“Your promises are of very little value to me, Xiaoli,” Arocha said with genuine disappointment. “In a few months I will be out of this business. The most stressful thing in my life will be deciding which fishing rod to use.”

“Give a man a fish, Miguel, and you feed him for a day, but teach him how to fish and you put a trawlerman out of business.”

Arocha suppressed a laugh, and pulled the label off his beer. He drew a pencil from his shirt pocket and Lexi watched with feigned disinterest as the Cuban scribbled down the information she had crossed the world to secure. “I like the old things in life, Xiaoli… pencils over pens, typewriters over computers…”

Lexi smiled as she took the piece of paper from Arocha. “We have a saying in China, Miguel. The palest ink is better than the strongest memory.”

Outside the bar Lexi wasted no time in calling a cab and ordering the driver to take her down to the Cangrejo Arriba district. One glance at the information Arocha had given her told her that she was going to need to take a short flight to a neighboring island and from there get hold of a small boat. Anything less might risk Eden and his team discovering what she was up to and that would be the end of the mission. Arocha had also given her the name of an intel agent by the name of Raoul who might know more.

The cab driver had started to ask questions about what looked like the very heavy tool bag she was carrying, but a hundred dollar bill made him look the other way, and moments after watching Arocha waddle into a side street she was on her way.

As the battered Chevrolet made its way around the north side of the Laguna Los Corozos, she repeated the mantra to herself over and over: All is fair in love and war, all is fair in love war…

All is fair in love and war.

She knew in her heart she should have done this a long time ago, even if it meant the sort of betrayal and deceit she was now ready to engage in. She knew she could never be forgiven for doing what she was about to do. She knew she would make enemies for life who would stop at nothing to track her down and kill her, but she had no choice.

She simply told herself that there was no other way. She went over the scenario in her head once again. They would kill her family if she did not redeem herself in the eyes of the Ministry. She had wasted the opportunity to deliver the Map of Immortality to the Chinese authorities and now they would kill everyone she loved if she did not make amends in the ultimate way: she had to kill Sir Richard Eden, and anyone else who got in her way. Only then could she achieve the redemption she needed to make things right again. Deception and redemption… betrayal and murder… darkness and light.

Was she capable of doing such a thing? She knew in her heart she was. She had done far worse, and she wasn’t afraid of making an enemy out of Joe Hawke. She knew taking Hawke out of the game was simply a case of exploiting the feelings he had for her. Like all men he was weak and she would play him like a violin if she had to, all the way until his last breath.

That last thought made her pause for a moment and she considered who she would have to take out on Elysium in order to get to Eden. How many would be there? She had no idea. Lea? Scarlet — she might be a challenge… and then maybe even Hawke.

With a bit of luck, she considered, most of the ECHO team would be off on one of their wild goose chases in some far-flung corner of the world, leaving Eden alone and unprotected. Sure, he had some moves — he was a former Paras officer after all — but he was getting on in life and no match for a world-class assassin in the prime of her life. Perhaps Raoul would know who was on the island tonight.

She turned to glance over her shoulder and watched dreamily as the setting sun illuminated the skyscrapers of San Juan. A moment later it sank into the Atlantic and a purple twilight began to cross from the eastern sky ahead of them. She could see why Eden had chosen this part of the world for his hideout — isolated from the rest of the planet but still close enough to get to America or Europe in just a few hours by jet.

To say she felt on top of her game was an understatement. She would plow through dozens of armed guards if it meant achieving her objectives and neutralizing the English politician. She flattered herself that she was probably only one of a handful of people in the world capable of storming the island without aerial backup, and with a bit of luck, Eden himself would know it too in a very short time.

Now, as the taxi cruised the final few miles to the airport, she did what she had done so many times before — she started to build in her mind an outline of how she was going to execute her mission. She had completed similar jobs often enough to know how it would play out, but in one way this was totally unique. There would be no going back after this one.

She glanced at her watch. It would all be over sooner than she knew it.