Bargain With the Devil: A Historical Espionage Thriller Read online

  “Kidnap? Me? What about the guards?” For the first time, Spencer looked back over his shoulder. “Where are the guards?”

  Avakian put his sunglasses on with his free hand, and mentally paid himself off on his bet. “Your bodyguards were either going to do it themselves, or sit back and watch while it happened.”

  “But we always use that firm.”

  “Yeah, we’re going to have to talk about that back in Johannesburg. I’m thinking someone made the guys a better offer. The worst trouble always comes from inside your own team.”

  The upper crust cool was gone, and Spencer was now stammering and off-balance. “What?”

  “Didn’t you ever see The Godfather?”

  “But why?”

  “Why would anyone want to kidnap you? You mean, besides this being Nigeria and you being an executive of one of the richest companies in South Africa?”

  “I meant…”

  “Yeah, I know. A nice guy like you, and all. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that one of the Nigerian officials you’re negotiating with happened to accept a larger suitcase of cash from one of your competitors than the one you offered him. You get kidnapped, the competition gets the lease, and he gets to keep both suitcases plus a piece of your ransom. Sounds like a big win for him. They must have a term for that in business school, don’t they?”

  Spencer was beginning to focus. “How do you know I’m about to be kidnapped?”

  “I don’t. The only way to know for sure is to let you be kidnapped. This way, if nothing happens then I have to listen to you bellyache for the rest of the flight home. But I save your life.” Avakian glanced over at him. “Don’t make me reconsider my decision.”

  The conversation had taken them across the large parking lot to the rear gate. The complex was circled by the inevitable Nigerian wall topped by razor wire. Being a government complex of course there were a load of armed guards, and they were all staring at them, wondering why two white men in suits were going out the service gate on foot. Avakian just waved to them. You never had any trouble leaving somewhere, only getting in.

  Avakian paused at the curb to check up and down the street. “Ah, there we are.” About thirty yards away was a white Kia 2700, a light 4-wheeled delivery truck. This particular one had an open back like a pickup truck, empty. A Nigerian in sunglasses and a wild afro was slouching against the hood. At Avakian’s arrival he straightened up. “Peter, how goes it?”

  Avakian shook hands. “Good to see you, Idris. Everything ready?”

  “The little item you requested is under the front seat.”

  “Everything better be working, Idris. And it better be clean. I get stopped by the police, I’m going to be very put out.”

  “That’s how I stay in business, man. Everything as promised. You don’t exceed the speed limit, you don’t get stopped by the police.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Avakian. He turned to Spencer. “Get in.”

  Spencer’s tone was incredulous. “This?”

  Avakian’s voice dropped two octaves. “Get in.”

  Spencer climbed up into the passenger’s seat with the same gingerly distaste as if he’d been forced to ride a donkey bareback in his Saville Road suit.

  Avakian got behind the wheel.

  Idris said, “Peter…”

  “Just a second, Idris.” Avakian started the engine. Sounded all right. Full gas tank. He leaned over and yanked a shopping bag out from under the seat. Inside was a Glock 19 9mm pistol, two loaded magazines, and a plastic Fobus holster. Avakian stripped the slide off, examined the mechanism, and did a function check. Reassembling the weapon, he slapped in a magazine and racked the slide to chamber a round. The pistol and holster went in his waistband. When he dropped the extra magazine in the pocket of his suit coat, he removed an envelope and handed it down to Idris.

  Idris thumbed through the cash.

  “Okay?” Avakian said.

  “Very okay, man,” Idris replied.

  “I’ll call and tell you where to pick it up.”

  “You get in any trouble, don’t bother.”

  Avakian thought that over. “I’m serious about the police, Idris.”

  “Don’t you be worrying, my friend.”

  Avakian shut the door, and Idris was already gone.

  “Who in God’s name was that?” Spencer demanded.

  “Friend of a friend,” Avakian said. “Having yourself a reliable fixer in the country you’re working in is a major part of the job.” Spencer’s expression was blank. “Guys who can come up with anything you might possibly need?” It wasn’t registering. “Networking? Never mind.”

  Spencer looked around the inside of the delivery truck as if he’d never seen one before. “And why are we driving in…in this?”

  “Perfect camouflage. No one would expect to see you in anything so down-market.”

  “And where are we going?”

  “The airport.”

  “But I have a dinner with the deputy minister tonight.”

  This was what happened when you let them sit down, Avakian thought. By all rights he should have made the bastard run alongside the truck. “We’ll send your regrets once we’re in the air.”

  “I have to make that dinner.”

  Denial was such a wonderful thing. Avakian pulled over by the side of the road. “Okay, I’m going back to South Africa now. You want to go to the dinner, get out.”

  “What?”

  “Enjoy. If you get there in one piece, my advice is to savor every course. It’ll probably be your last real meal.”

  The door didn’t open. “What about my luggage?”

  Well, it finally seemed to be dawning on him. Slowly. Avakian pulled out into traffic. “I’ll have the hotel send our luggage along.”

  “I have to go back to the hotel.”

  “No. Dumb idea.”

  A long pause. “I left my passport at the hotel.”

  Avakian did not approve to taking your eyes off the road while driving. Even so, he turned to look at his passenger. “You don’t have your passport with you?”

  “No. It’s back at the hotel.”

  Walking around in a foreign country without a passport. But it’s your own fault, Avakian, he told himself. If you were a little more used to doing details, and a little less old and dumb, you’d be carrying the idiot’s passport for him. Great. He had to make a couple of turns to head them out of the Central District, where the Federal offices were located, to the Maitama District in the northern part of the city. Very exclusive and expensive, where most of the foreign embassies were located.

  Abuja was still under construction, and probably would ever be, so it was a common sight to see huge grassy lots littered with building debris spread out between shiny beige office buildings. Everything had a wall around it. Which you understood immediately when you saw that the fronts of the walls had sprouted impromptu nailed-together open-air stalls with mattresses stacked up on the sidewalks or pots and pans or boxes of pirated CD’s and DVD’s. Every gas station was a used car lot.

  The Hilton was a whole walled compound, and the guard at the southernmost gate eyed the truck dubiously. Avakian showed him the room key and receipt, but two and two just weren’t coming together. Finally, unable to come up with any alternate explanation, he let the two crazy white men pass.

  Inside the hotel grounds were neatly bricked sidewalks, columns of palm trees, and manicured grass. Avakian parked in the lot nearest the southern wing, opposite the pool. He thought briefly about leaving Spencer in the truck, but that was a bad idea for a great many reasons. He’d have to come along. “Okay, let’s make this quick.”

  They avoided the lobby, and any surveillance that might have been lounging around there, along with the always-for-sale front desk. Just a phone call away from anyone who might be paying for information.

  Spencer had recovered from the initial shock of being taken out of his routine, and bitched mightily about being made to take the stairs up. Avakian ignored him. Stairwells weren’t perfect, but at least you could go up or down. While an elevator was a potential deathtrap whenever the doors opened.

  Avakian used the key card with his left hand. The drawn Glock was in his right, but concealed under his jacket like a portrait of Napoleon. “Stay out here until I call you,” he ordered.

  The lock blinked green and the card was already in his pocket. Avakian turned the latch and hit the door with his shoulder at the same time. He charged in, the Glock out in front in a tight, two-handed grip.

  The bathroom door was open and the shower curtain back, so no one was in there. Sweeping into the room, pistol trained on the far side of the bed until he saw it was clear. Then quickly dropping down on one knee and lifting the bedspread with his non-shooting hand. Yes, that under the bed thing had actually happened once or twice.

  After a quick poke at the curtain to be sure the balcony was unoccupied, he turned around to call Spencer in. But the door was closed, and from the hallway on the other side came a series of timid knocks. Avakian shook his head. Stuck out in the hallway, and not even enough sense to put a foot in front of the door to keep it from shutting in his face.

  Avakian holstered the pistol and opened the door. “Grab your passport and let’s get out of here.”

  With Spencer safely inside, he followed his own advice about the bathroom. He’d have to make sure Spencer did, too. More often than not being a bodyguard was like being dad on the family vacation.

  While washing his hands, Avakian looked up and couldn’t believe what he was seeing in the mirror. Spencer had his suitcases open on the bed and was busy packing. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m not leaving without my things.”

  “You had your passport all the
time,” said Avakian, walking toward him. A statement, not a question.

  Spencer was smiling triumphantly, like a kid who’d gotten away with something. It was the smile that did it.

  Avakian swung his arm and delivered a full-force open-handed slap to the side of Spencer’s head. It wiped the smile off his face and put him on the floor. Other than trained fighters, people who are hit automatically bring their hand up to the point of impact. When Spencer did, Avakian bent down and delivered another slap to the other side of his head. The message delivered, he gave Spencer a quick frisk and relieved him of his passport and his cell phone. Grabbing a fistful of Spencer’s hair encouraged him up on his feet and propelled him out the door. Spencer could piss in his pants for all Avakian cared. Probably had already.

  Spencer actually had tears running down his cheeks. “I will report this to my firm.”

  Jeez, what a wimp. “Going to tell on me?” Avakian said. “Well, you’ve got to get back to South Africa to do that. And you might just have thrown a monkey wrench into that little plan, genius. Now, I suggest you take a deep, cleansing breath and pull yourself together.”

  Out through the ground level door of the south wing. Plenty of security cameras if someone had bribed the monitors to give them a call. Avakian was mentally ripping himself for all the mistakes. Getting old. Getting complacent. Getting sloppy. Not good, not good at all.

  Unhealthy paranoia was one of the main pitfalls of the job, along with that deadly complacency. You either fell asleep and missed everything until the roof fell in on you, or you started pulling your gun on people reaching for their phones.

  So was he jumping at shadows and slapping a client for no good reason? If every jerk client got slapped, there would be fifty thousand bodyguards competing for about six clients.

  Well, there wasn’t much choice now. Get the jerk home and start coming to grips with retirement for real. Still, embarrassing as hell for a last job. Everyone asking: what the hell happened to Avakian? He just lost it in Nigeria.

  All this was churning through his mind when, just after they left the hotel compound, the tail showed up behind them. Avakian was definitely not pleased, since all his labors up to then had been directed toward avoiding this very thing. Yet he was not totally displeased, in the way of a paranoid who suddenly discovers that he does in fact have real enemies.

  “Buckle your seatbelt,” he ordered Spencer.

  “What?”

  “Buckle up. We’re being followed.” Then he added, “And do not turn around and look out the rear window.”

  Spencer had been about to do just that. “Who is following us?”

  Avakian sighed. The captains of industry. “Well, I’m just guessing, mind you, but I’d have to say your prospective kidnappers. This is what happens when you show up someplace you’re expected, and the people after you are pros.” Two white men in a truck was great camouflage. Two white men repeatedly getting into and out of a delivery truck wasn’t. And now that they were made it was something slow and easy to follow in traffic.

  Avakian took a few turns, but there was just the one car behind them.

  Spencer was locked onto his side mirror. “I can’t see anyone.”

  “Imagine that,” said Avakian. “Black Mercedes, four cars back. Want to bet they’re talking to someone else on the phone even as we speak?”

  Avakian knew that if it went on much longer two or more cars would show up and they’d be driving into some jackpot for sure. He had no intention of letting that happen. Mainly because the first move in the kidnapping playbook was to always blow away the bodyguard in front of the victim, making them easier to handle and leaving one less piece of excess baggage to drag around.

  A phone was vibrating on Avakian’s belt. He had to feel around, because he was carrying three. Ironic for a man who bitterly hated mobile phones. It was his regular phone, and a familiar number. “Hi, Judy,” he said cheerily. “Couldn’t sleep, or did you just get out of surgery? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Okay, but what kind of crash?”

  Avakian laughed loudly, while Spencer looked at him as if he were a madman.

  “What do I keep telling you about motorcycles?” Avakian demanded into the phone. “I know, right? Look, honey, I’m in the middle of something right now. Uh, huh. No, just the usual work stuff. Let me call you back when I have a little more time. Okay. Miss you, too. Bye.” He snapped the phone shut and secured it back on his belt. “Girlfriend’s an orthopedic surgeon in Denver. Like every woman in the world, her timing is immaculate. Now, what were we talking about?”

  “The car following us!” Spencer burst out. Then he flinched, as if expecting to get hit again.

  But Avakian was utterly calm. “Right. Black Mercedes. It’s all coming back to me now.”

  Not getting hit emboldened Spencer. “Are you going to shoot them?”

  Avakian glanced over at him. “Bloodthirsty little businessman, aren’t you?” He popped the clutch, stalling the truck out in the middle of the road.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?”

  “Stopping the truck,” Avakian said. As horns began to blare, he turned on the emergency flashers and began to languidly wave for the cars behind to pass. “You see, there’s at least two guys in that Mercedes, maybe more, and we’ve got to assume they’re all armed. Problem with gunfights is that people get shot and, despite all your best efforts, it’s not always the other guy.”

  The first three cars behind them had passed around. The Mercedes hesitated, and Avakian could imagine the debate inside. They had to pass or be blown, and could always turn around at the next block. “Brace yourself,” he said to Spencer, shifting into reverse and flooring the gas pedal.

  The wheels spun and shrieked, and the truck lurched backward. The rear bumper bar smashed into the front of the Mercedes but didn’t go over the hood.

  Avakian quickly shifted to first and floored it again. To rip them free in case the two vehicles were locked together, and to get the hell out of range before the occupants of the Mercedes recovered from the impact and started shooting out the windows.

  Avakian ran through the gears as quickly as he could, which wasn’t at all quickly in a Kia delivery truck. The rear tires felt all right. In the rearview mirror he watched people running toward the Mercedes, which was pumping steam from its hood. His stop had cleared out the traffic in front up to the next intersection. And he blew right through that, nearly clipping a Toyota sedan and ignoring the frantic waving of the traffic cop in his dark blue uniform and beret.

  Once through and out of sight, he dropped his speed even with the surrounding traffic and turned back to Spencer and remarked, “Traffic accidents, on the other hand, happen all the time.”

  Spencer’s face was gray from the lack of blood his body, in terror, had called back to its core. He was gripping the front of his seat so hard the tendons stood out in his neck. He managed, “Are we going to the airport, now?”

  “So now you want to leave,” said Avakian. “Problem is, there’s just that one road to the airport. If we take it I’ve got a feeling we’d be running into some kind of problem. Kidnappers dressed as Nigerian cops, or maybe real Nigerian cops doing a little moonlighting. Nope, it’s time to go to Plan C.” He produced the local pre-paid cell, and when the number picked up, said, “Peter Avakian for the General.” And after a long pause, “Yes, sir, how are you? Good, good. It seems that I’m going to need to take advantage of your hospitality. Yes, that’s just about what happened. Yes, you know me. I can be on my way right now. Yes, I’m sure I can find it. If not, I’ll call back. Excellent. Looking forward to seeing you, too.”

  Chucking, Avakian now began dialing a third phone, a Thuraya SG-2520 satellite model. Thuraya was a provider based in the United Arab Emirates with excellent coverage of Africa and a handset the size of a regular cell. “Allo? Jean Francois? Avakian here. Oui, c’est un emergencie. I need you to launch. Right now, damn it. Yes, the same location we discussed. And the same destination we discussed. No. Don’t worry, I’ll have it. What’s your ETA? D’accord. Okay, get moving.”

  Avakian could feel Spencer’s curiosity, but he kept his eyes on the road and offered no information. He had been heading south toward the airport but now made a rapid series of turns to clear their last location and eventually circle back to the north. He didn’t see anything behind them, but felt it was no time to lose that healthy sense of paranoia. The cube-like red and white roadside crash barriers were perfect to put a rifleman behind. Every intersection seemed to be a gathering spot for crowds of people, parked cars with their hoods up, and sun-glassed Africans sitting on motorbikes. At best it was a vaguely threatening sight as you drove up and slowed down. You had to slow down, since most of the intersections had speed bumps. At worst it made every stop a possible ambush. But that was just the Third World.