Her Fugitive Heart Read online

“More like what didn’t we do,” he said.

  “Where’s Roger?”

  “Gone,” Cheryl said. “They’ve taken him.”

  “Who’s taken him?”

  “Who do you think?” Ken said with a sneer.

  “All his fancy friends in high places,” Clive said. “They fucking sold him out, didn’t they?”

  I looked around.

  “Where’s Marcie?”

  “Her masters called her home,” Cheryl said. “In disgrace. Nothing left for her here. Probably her fault.”

  “Bloody typical,” Olivia said. “She comes here, makes a bloody great mess of things, then buggers off to do the same thing somewhere else.”

  “So what’s going on here?” I asked.

  “What does it bloody look like?” Ken said. “It’s the end, innit?”

  “Gotta cover our arses,” Clive said.

  “Golden Sentinels is toast,” David said. “And we have to get out of here before they show up.”

  “Bloody right,” Ken said. “We don’t want to be here when Special Branch shows up.”

  Benjamin helped Ken and Clive pour gasoline over the whole office. Once finished, they tossed the cans aside and joined us at the exit.

  “Cheryl,” Olivia said. “Will you do the honors?”

  Cheryl lit a match and tossed it into the office. We didn’t stay to watch as everything went up in flames.

  “No forensics for them to recover,” Benjamin said.

  “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Mark said as he blew a kiss at the burning office.

  Mark and David led us through the door out into the street.

  Farringdon was in pandemonium. Black smoke was everywhere, billowing into the sky. Sirens in the air. Burning cars. Riot police chasing protesters with placards that read “NO MORE LIES!” I heard helicopters overhead.

  “Yes,” Mark said. “It’s gone a bit J. G. Ballard, hasn’t it?”

  Somewhere in the distance, clear as a bell, a boy was singing “Jerusalem.”

  “And did those feet in ancient time,

  Walk upon England’s mountains green:

  And was the holy Lamb of God,

  On England’s pleasant pastures seen! . . .”

  As I looked around for where the singer was, Julia pulled at my arm.

  “Ravi, look.”

  “Roger?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  In the middle of the street was a metal table at the top of a twenty-foot wicker man, and there sat Roger, handcuffed to it. Gone was his expensive Savile Row suit and tie. In its place were the orange overalls you found in American prisons. Roger was unshaven, his eyes red from lack of sleep and from weeping.

  “Ahh, Ravi old son, the bastards finally got me.”

  “I warned you everything would come a-cropper one day,” Cheryl said, her rage barely contained. “You just had to chance everything.”

  “What’s the point in saying sorry, eh?” Roger said.

  We all stood in front of the table like a tribunal, judging him. He looked like an exhibit, a cautionary tale in the middle the street, an art installation by some Goldsmiths College graduate who used found objects to capture the times.

  “All your wheeling and dealing,” Cheryl said. “All your favors, all the dirty laundry you had us hide and clean, and this still happens.”

  “Yes, yes,” Roger said, all fight gone from his body. He looked shockingly frail, broken.

  “You’re not takin’ us down with you,” Ken said. “I’ll tell you that.”

  “I’m not taking you down,” Roger said. “It’s all me. Just me.”

  “Too right,” Clive said, and began to pour gasoline over the wicker man, Roger, and the table.

  “Listen,” Roger said, spluttering. “I can still get out on top. It all depends on you, Ravi.”

  “Me? What the hell can I do?”

  “You know what the big picture is. You know where the bodies are buried now. I want you to use it. You’ll know what to do with it all. We can still come out a win. Work with Olivia.”

  “Sorry, Roger,” Olivia said. “I’m off to run a bank in Shanghai. This is all my past now.”

  “And I look forward to being your kept man, babes,” Benjamin said.

  “We’ll see how long that lasts,” Olivia said with a sniff.

  “Come on,” Roger said. “Just one last hurrah, eh? What have you got to lose?”

  “Enough!” Cheryl said. “We’ve lost everything thanks to you! I followed you for over twenty years, you bastard! I loved you! You were always a disappointment! I waited for you to become the better version of you! But no, you liked the gutter too much because scraping for leftover power was all you ever went after! Once a chancer always a chancer! Now everything we built has gone up in flames! Only one last thing left to burn!”

  Ken passed Cheryl a box of matches.

  “Is this absolutely necessary?” I asked.

  “We have to get rid of all evidence that comes back to us,” Cheryl said. “It’s every man for himself after this.”

  Roger just nodded sadly.

  We watched the wicker man burn in this final ritual. Roger disappeared in the smoke and the flames. I bet he’d never thought he would end up a sacrifice to the forgotten pagan gods of the British Isles. We all turned away.

  “And did the Countenance Divine,

  Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

  And was Jerusalem builded here,

  Among these dark Satanic Mills? . . .”

  Where was the singing coming from?

  It felt like this would be the last I would see everyone. I thought of Ken and Clive. What would become of them now, unleashed from the restraints of Golden Sentinels, where they were barely restrained to start with? They were going to sink back into the fabric of the land, become murderous urban legends, hunting the truly wicked. Why was I so certain of that now?

  I had to call my parents. I desperately wanted to hear their voices.

  “Ravi?” my dad said on the other end of the line. “Is that you? How is London?”

  “Falling apart. You and Mum picked the right time to move to Mumbai.”

  “We saw the writing on the wall,” Mum said. “Are you and Julia all right?”

  “We’ll be fine, Mum.”

  “Good. We’re off to see your grandparents for dinner.”

  “Um, didn’t Dadaji and Dadiji pass away ten years ago?”

  “Good memory, Ravi. They’re cooking tonight. It’s going to be a nice dinner. We’ll send them your love.”

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  “And Ravi,” Dad came on, “keep listening to the gods. You can’t go wrong.”

  “I will, Dad.”

  And with that, they were gone.

  And still the singing in the air.

  “Bring me my Bow of burning gold;

  Bring me my Arrows of desire:

  Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

  Bring me my Chariot of fire! . . .”

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are making our final approach to John F. Kennedy Airport. The time is now 7:40 a.m. Temperature is a mild sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. If you’ll put your seats back upright and store your tray tables, the flight attendants will be along to collect your headphones shortly. I’d like to thank you for flying with us and hope to see you again soon. Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”

  We got through passport control and customs without a hitch. Of course, they eyed me a bit suspiciously because of my skin color, but they must have consulted whatever list Marcie had put me on, and they waved me through, their demeanor changed after they looked me up. I had half expected to be snatched at the airport, and the fact that we weren’t meant nobody was coming after Golden Sentinels just yet.

  THREE

  Julia and I took a cab to Golden Sentinels’ New York City office. It was Downtown, near One World Trade Center, and had a similar design to the offices in London and Los
Angeles, open plan, brightly lit, and ultramodern, with the best feng shui, though the investigators were dressed slightly more formally than we were at the London office, suits and ties for the men and pantsuits for the women, to convey the maximum air of professionalism. We said hello to everyone there. Hector Camacho and Dave Kosinski, their version of Ken and Clive, also ex-cops, only much less homicidal, greeted me with bad British accents as they always did. Julia introduced herself to the gang, since this was her first visit to the New York branch.

  “Omigod, you’re the hot English Rose Roger talks about in his newsletters,” they said. Julia was immediately the object of male lust around the New York office and an object of jealousy amongst the women.

  Their tech guy issued us with fresh smartphones and laptops, complete with Olivia’s security programs installed to keep the connections secure when we had to communicate.

  Before we even settled in, Ed Serrano, the boss, told us we had a job.

  “The client specifically asked for you when he heard you were in the country,” he said.

  “How did he know?” I asked. “We didn’t even know we were coming till last night.”

  “Guess he’s just really well informed,” Ed said. “They sent a car to pick you up.”

  “Who’s the client anyway?” Julia asked.

  “You’re about to find out,” Ed said. “Car should be here any minute.”

  When we went downstairs, we found a stretch limousine waiting for us, and standing next to us was Ariel Morgenstern.

  “Oh Christ,” I muttered.

  “Isn’t this great?” she said. “We never get to see each other this much in a year.”

  She kissed both Julia and me and ushered us into the back of the limousine.

  “Look at us, traveling all fancy,” she said, gleeful like a teenager out on the town, and called to the chauffeur, “Steve, let’s jam.”

  “Where are we going?” Julia asked.

  “Midtown to pick up the client,” Ariel said. “He’s in town to attend upfronts for the new TV season. All the buyers and advertisers are here.”

  “Were you the one who told the client we were in town?” I asked.

  “I mentioned you when we were assigned as his bodyguards,” Ariel said.

  “Marcie must have told her what happened in London,” Julia said.

  The gods sat with us in the limousine. It was big enough to fit everyone.

  “Now you know what your boss was up to for the last few years, right?” Ariel asked. “He was drumming up partners, finance, sponsorship for his coup.”

  “And that’s why he didn’t want us to know,” I said. “That bloody madman. He actually wanted to own a whole country?”

  “The business plan Roger kept hinting at to us was to take over an African country that produces twenty thousand barrels of oil a day and is also rich in uranium,” Julia said. “That’s Bond villain levels of madness.”

  “That’s megalomaniacs for you,” Ariel said. “To run a whole country via a puppet government you put in play, own an entire economy and its natural resources? To be a player at the global table?”

  “Right,” I said. “Roger couldn’t resist dreaming big. He must have spent years putting the pieces in place for that. That must have been what the investors were for.”

  “And what was your boss doing there?” Julia asked.

  “Roger needed soldiers,” Ariel said. “So he asked Interzone to provide training to some cheap-ass army he’d hired.”

  “Roger must have negotiated the use of some ‘advisors’ from Interzone for the coup,” I said. “In exchange for a cut of the profits and a slice of the country?”

  “Money speaks louder than hate,” Ariel said. “Roger offered Interzone a piece of the country. Collins is a lot more power-hungry than Roger. For a PMC to co-own a country with oil and uranium, that would be a good place to store a lot of weapons outside the eyes of the US. And I bet Roger was looking for a way to fuck us over later, after he got everything he wanted.”

  “So how did it fail?” I asked. “Roger wouldn’t be so careless as to get caught just like that.”

  “Somebody must have blown the whistle on him,” Ariel said.

  “Who?” Julia asked. “One of the partners? Could Collins have done it just to fuck Roger over?”

  “Not my boss,” Ariel said. “He stood to lose from this deal falling apart. And Mr. Collins ain’t in much condition to pull any double-dealing shit right now.”

  “Oh? What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say he hasn’t been the same since that weekend in the country,” Ariel said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Turns out the boss doesn’t take naturally to mind-altering magic mushrooms.”

  “Did he have a nervous breakdown? Some kind of trauma?” I asked.

  “I really shouldn’t say,” Ariel said. “Let’s just say he’s going to need to take medical leave to get his shit together.”

  “Then who’s running Interzone right now?” I asked.

  “We do have a board of directors.” Ariel said.

  “The board doesn’t run the company,” I said. “Who’s in charge of the operations?”

  “Right now, it’s mostly Jarrod and me,” Ariel said. “Jarrod hates the contract and admin stuff, so it’s been mostly up to me. I’ve been picking our contracts for the last month.”

  I suddenly felt nauseous.

  “You okay, Ravi?” Ariel smiled, reading my mind.

  “This means that both Golden Sentinels and Interzone are in free fall right now,” I said. “Two of the most dangerous private organizations around and both without proper leadership.”

  “Hey,” Ariel said, mock offended. “What am I, chopped liver? Jarrod and I are holding up the fort.”

  “We’re on the run and scattered to the wind to avoid the British authorities, and you’re . . . Just what the hell are you doing?”

  “We still have contracts,” Ariel said. “Jobs with various governments. Busy as ever. We just don’t have Collins around to make speeches about the Second Coming and the Rapture, which is kind of a relief, I can tell ya.”

  Behind Ariel, Kali snickered. That made me wince.

  “Don’t look so lost,” Ariel said. “You’re living the dream, babe. You don’t have Roger giving you assignments you’re afraid are going to get you in trouble. You’re Arjuna cut loose and free after he kills his guru.”

  “What, that bit in the Bhagavad Gita where he kills Dronacharya, who taught him the bow and arrow? Great.”

  “To win the battle at Mahabharata,” Ariel said. “Arjuna kills his teacher. The pupil becomes the master at last.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “You mean Roger? He’s not my bloody guru. He’s my boss.”

  “Not for much longer,” Julia said.

  “And you gotta admit you learned a lot from him,” Ariel said. “He kind of molded your worldview in the last three years. With Dronacharya gone, Arjuna has to come of age and make his own moral decisions.”

  “Look, I’m not going to kill Roger, figuratively or literally,” I said. “And anyway, he’s fucked himself. He doesn’t need me to end him.”

  “That’s just the beginning,” Ariel said. “The point is, once he’s out of the picture, you’re free to make your own decisions about what to do with your life. Golden Sentinels is done.”

  “You’re forgetting that I might still end up in jail with Roger if everything keeps going horribly wrong.”

  “That’s if you go back to the UK,” Ariel said.

  “I have no intention of becoming an international fugitive.”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it, babe,” Ariel said.

  “How did the authorities know Roger was behind the coup?” I asked. “The mercenaries they arrested at the airport in Lagos wouldn’t know he was the boss of the coup. He must have set up shell companies to write the checks, hire people. Who would have had the know-how to suss out
it was Roger?”

  We all had the same thought.

  “The Americans,” Julia said.

  “More specifically, the CIA,” I said.

  “Did Marcie know?” Julia asked.

  “She didn’t,” I said. “You saw her. She was as much in the dark as we were. That must have pissed her off. Then she must have found out. There are a number of ways she could have done it, like simply interrogate David. He would have folded immediately and told her everything since he was terrified of the whole deal.”

  “Think about it,” Ariel said. “You piss off Marcie Holder, you piss off the CIA. They’re the biggest clients of both our companies.”

  “Does that mean we have the CIA pissed off with us now?” I said. “Just how fucked are we?”

  “La la la la la!” Kali sang as she twirled around.

  “I think you’re good,” Ariel said. “Marcie’s the one who warned you and put you on the plane out of there, right? Means she’s keeping the rest of you guys separate from this meltdown. She’s a goddamned undeclared intelligence officer in London. She needs her assets to back up any play she might make.”

  “But why would the CIA grass Roger up?” I asked, my head spinning.

  “The US has bases in Niger,” Ariel said.

  “Is Niger a US ally?” Julia asked.

  “Well, they’ve been kind of having talks,” Ariel said.

  Lagos. Nigeria. That was where David’s family came from. Now it all began to fit: Roger was using David’s family’s connections for an in over there, so he could use Nigeria as the staging ground for his coup. No wonder David was getting more and more nervous in the last few months. He had to help Roger put together the deals to make this happen. David was in deep shit. More than the rest of us at Golden Sentinels, because he actually knew what was going on.

  Or could he have been the one who grassed Roger up?

  And to Marcie, perhaps? It would fit.

  The coup had fallen apart so quickly and unexpectedly this morning that someone must have talked to the CIA at least days if not weeks in advance. The CIA must have gotten in touch with the governments in Niger, then in Nigeria. The Nigerian president would have mobilized the army to grab the mercenaries boarding the commercial flight to Niger, and the whole scheme would have gone to hell from there. The CIA then made a call to the British government, who then got the authorities to issue an arrest warrant for Roger. This meant MI5 might be involved as well. Police, Special Branch, scrutiny would be on all of Roger’s businesses, including Golden Sentinels. We were all in the shit.