Redemption (5 page)

  “Hi,” he answered uncertainly.

“You’ve aged, you know, since we last met,” said Danny Namara.

“Excuse me? I don’t recall…” Andy babbled a bit out of shock.

“Colombia? The Antidrug Task Force? We crossed paths when you came out to investigate steamship traffickers.”

Now, he remembered. He’d met Danny Namara in Colombia when he was a soldier on the Task Force. They’d consulted with one another for intelligence – the unit was the best, most well-informed, and least merciful in the country. Andy was kept ignorant as to their methods, but he’d been able to hazard a guess after meeting several group members. They were all certainly Special Forces, hardened commandos who were charged with locating and assassinating traffickers and destroying their processing plants. These systems were most often hidden in the heart of the jungle, well-concealed, but their unit was masterful at infiltration while sweeping away their tracks.

All they’d managed to gather on that unit was their killing-machine nature, ready to destroy the trade and traffickers by any means, and to survive in the atmosphere of unique violence that raged in Colombia. It was multi-national scourge supported by any nation that feared the trade crossing their borders. No governments denied the existence of the unit, but none would reveal the official mission. CSIS was told that the goal was to investigate the cartels, contribute any intelligence and support the army, and thus Colombian enforcers, so that justice could prevail according to the rule of law, and that the criminals were tried before adequate juries. In truth, the involved nations had nothing to do with the Colombian authorities; it was common knowledge that corruption reigned from top to bottom. Their real goal in Colombia was to find the chiefs, subordinates, drugs and facilities, and to cover their tracks as though they’d never existed. The Antidrug Task Force was beyond expert in their methods, and a veil of secrecy overshadowed all.

During his time in Colombia, Andy dealt mainly with Danny Namara and James Guerra. They were courteous and cold. When Andy was finally able to get the gist of what they did, he didn’t like it one bit. He’d believed in democracy and the justice system. To bring the traffickers to court,
that
was a solution that would jive with his rights-driven values. These men didn’t share his values, or anyone’s values. Rules meant nothing. In Andy’s eyes, there was no difference between the traffickers and their hunters. They’d appeased him well enough, promising that all pertinent information would be in his hands immediately. Andy knew very well he would never get anything, and he never did.

“Did you get a hold of that guy you wouldn’t admit to tracking at the time?” said Guerra.

“No. He turned up with a slit throat. The Colombians sent me that little news nugget a few weeks after I left.”

“Too bad. They rarely live long in those working conditions,” said Guerra smoothly.

“Apparently.”

“I’m guessing you weren’t enamoured of our methods,” said Danny.

“You’re not wrong. I thought your techniques were amoral, no better than the ones you were after.”

“It’s too bad you looked at it that way. In my experience, you have to fight fire wit. You need men you trust with your life, men putting themselves voluntarily in these situations where you know damn well you could come back dead or crippled just as well as you could come back in one piece. You have to look death in the face to understand what we did. You thought we were simple killers. I assure you, there was no resemblance between them and us. You and I, we’re from two different worlds. Our definitions of ‘justice’ clash because, simply, you haven’t seen the shit I’ve seen, you haven’t had to make those decisions. Go wave ‘hello’ to six men armed to the teeth and anxious to kill you. Maybe if you come out alive, you’ll understand what I’m talking about,” Namara spat.  Andy had hit a nerve.

“A few years ago, I would have told you to go fuck yourself. But today… you caught me on a very, very strange day,” said Andy.

Andy studied Danny Namara. He’d been in his twenties when they last met; now, he was definitively thirty-ish. He’d aged as well. Danny was athletic looking with a quite small stature. His face, framed by a precise brown “chin-strap” beard that ended in a goatee and moustache, sharpening the angles in his face. His hair was cut into a slight Mowhawk. His tanned skin gave way to piercing brown eyes. His expression was serious, his face hard, no joking whatsoever in his air; but he exuded a certain charisma in his symmetry and intensity.

“I’m surprised, Andy,” said Namara. “What made you change your mind?”

“Well... maybe I’ve seen one to many of those fuckers walk free. Or maybe I’m going soft in the head.”

“I don’t think you’ve gone soft. I think you’re sharpened up. You know, when the Task Force was dismantled and everyone dispersed, James and I continued to take contracts that we considered interesting and worthwhile for good sums. We never had much money until we augmented our numbers, but what I’m getting at, Andy, is that we decided to be our own masters. We chose a side: our own. We’ve all waded through enough shit to deserve enjoyment in our lives. When a client pays well, and if it’s not against our code, well… I think you know the rest,” Namara finished.

“So now as I hitman... how are you sleeping these days, Danny?” Andy demanded.

“Better than ever, thank you. Our business is rolling in gold
and
purging the trash. What more could you want?”

“Yeah… maybe,” Andy responded noncommittally. “I suppose Victor is another of your targets?”

“Truth be told, Victor is actually a personal affair, but between you and me, by now I think it’s appropriate to speak of him in the
past
tense.”

“That fucker got what he deserved for killing my sister. By the time his bodyguards wise up the old fool will have been dead for ages,” Ming Mei spat.

“Amen,” added Kamilia Stone.

“He must be going hard as we speak. Hard as a
peanut
,” added Shinsaku with a smirk.

“As you have probably noticed, we are now a group. Don't take it personal, but you don't know the others so it's better to conceal their identities for now” said Guerra solemnly referring to Kamilia, Ming Mei and Shinsaku who were still wearing a hood.

From what Andy remembered, James Guerra hadn’t really changed. He was half a head taller than Danny, bound in muscle. He combed his hair slicked back. His few-days’ beard didn’t conceal his hard face. He was a hardened soldier from his hair to his toenails. With his lilting British accent, solid step and husky voice, he looked like a modern gladiator. He couldn’t hide what he was. It was written in his face, every physical trait: former SAS, British Special Forces.

Shinsaku’s peanut comment went straight over Andy’s head. What CSIS’ research had failed to turn up was that Victor Leung had exactly one weakness: he was severely allergic to peanuts. He was dead of anaphylactic shock. Victor Leung had killed Yanling, Ming Mei’s sister, several years ago. They had both been strippers in one of his businesses. Ming Mei was the younger of the two and Yanling was her protector. They were each other’s only family. Ming Mei was petit and Chinese. Her black hair cascaded halfway down her back and a straight bang made her green eyes pop. She had sworn to be the one to kill him when the time came. In the meantime, the only peace she found was in the study of Tai chi. When she practiced, she prevented herself from sinking into madness. She repeated the fluid movements for hours. She would lose all notion of time; she was alone in a universe for one. Her agility and suppleness was almost ethereal.

She was a cloud, high and elusive. A Tai chi master. When attacked, she mirrored the movements of her adversary until she had him ensnared in an inescapable net. She floated. Everything that was soft and mild would give way in an instant to her true lethal power: for, though to the untrained eye it seemed like a dance-based relaxation technique, there was a merciless weapon under the calm sanity.

Yanling had been dead for years, and today was the day for which Ming Mei had been waiting. She had taken her time in studying her target and visualized his death routinely. She was there at the clinic’s entrance when Victor arrived – she requested a session and took a place in the waiting room when asked. Later, she slipped into a bathroom in a tight connecting corridor. She waited several minutes for an assistant to pass by and, in a fraction of a second, she silently pulled her into the bathroom and rendered her unconscious. She donned the assistant’s uniform and easily found Victor’s treatment room – two hulking guards were posted outside the door. Calmly, she walked between the two into the room. Inside, another assistant was already present, preparing the needles with her back to the door. Victor was lying prone on the table, naked to the waist. Like a drift of air, Ming Mei slid a hand over the assistant’s mouth and hit her with enough pressure in the neck to knock her out almost instantly. She caught her under the arms when she crumpled and lowered her still body to the ground, concentrating on her target, who was still utterly unsuspicious. Ming Mei pulled out a little flask of concentrated peanut oil and set it down on the table. She stick four needles along the spine. The man tensed completely, back arched like a fish, ironically unable to writhe or scream. He was paralyzed from the head to the toes, but alive and breathing. He was now a prisoner of his own body. A master in acupuncture, she had managed to understand the human energy channels. Years ago, she had perfected the five-needle-death strike by studying how sushi fishes were killed by acupuncture needles. By sticking five needles into human specific spots, death was immediate. By sticking four into the body, it was complete paralysis except for the brain and breathing.

Let the session begin
. All this was done in a few seconds of complete silence. She sat at Victor’s head with the tray of needles and began to dip them, one by one, into first the peanut oil, and then his back. After a dozen needles, he started to react and convulse. Ming Mei broke the silence, whispering into his ear:

“I hope you choke slowly like my sister did when you shamefully strangled her to death. Remember Yanling? She’s the reason you will die tonight. I was her sister.”

Victor continued to spasm and wheeze anaemically; he was running out of air. Ming Mei didn’t know if he could hear her, or if he even remembered Yanling. All that mattered was that he felt what she had felt before she died, and to pay for all the suffering she’d worn around her neck since then – she knew it couldn’t return her sister. She wanted this garbage to die so that he could never do anything so evil to anybody again. She continued to puncture him and the convulsions became wild. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to die, and she was keeping track. Just before his last breath, she whispered:

“
Bon voyage.
”

She left as calmly as she’d entered, taking care to slip through a slim crack in the door so no passers-by could see the gruesome tableau inside. She returned to the bathroom (which she’d taken care to lock), changed and put the clothes back on the nurse, and left the building in a flash. She had immediately realized Andy was following her and elected to string him along to a discrete place where she could deal with him without witnesses.

“Once again, I’m sorry we met this way, and that we took out your target,” said Namara.

“Victor was a sadist and an unscrupulous criminal with a pile of victims. My heart is not broken,” Andy retorted.

“Now, we’re agreeing on something! You’ve changed...”

“Yeah, we all change. That’s life, isn’t it?” Andy responded.

“True. And I don’t believe in chance by the way... We meet each other after all these years, don't you think there is a meaning behind it!?” said Namara, challenging him with his deep, fixed stare.

But Andy had already made the link back to Schwartz’ offer.
Namara can’t possibly know about it… can he?
Despite himself, he agreed with Danny Namara, that the timing was no coincidence. It seemed to indicate a set-up, a collaboration, perhaps, between Schwartz and Namara. On the other hand, Namara did seem to be the person for the job.

“Well... Maybe... I don’t know. What about the fact that I am looking for let's say... skilled professionals.... to perform a complex work?”

“Ah, you see!? What sort of work exactly?” asked Namara. He seemed interested.

“
Your
work, Danny, the same you always do. Just like Victor tonight!”

“And who are you working for?”

“Influential people. That’s all I can tell you for now.”
Literally
.

“That’s a good enough answer,” Danny offered. “I can live with not knowing my employers. What concerns me is their credibility, because no matter how little work the job entails, it will cost them dearly. Do we understand each other?

“There’s no fear of that. Money is not the problem. The problem is if you are good enough, and if you’re qualified for jobs that are a little more… complex.”

Danny Namara began to pace. Then he stopped and smiled at Andy.

“What you mean is, you’re not convinced of our efficiency, even though you know very well where I come from and what I’m capable of. Is that correct?”

Kamilia stepped forward. “Do you think we really care about what you think, dork!?”

Shinsaku and Ming Mei, who stayed back in the shadows, declined to comment. Shinsaku didn’t move at all. Behind his hood, his stony face, dark smooth hair and black almond-shaped eyes made him look fake, like a wax figure of a samurai.

“Andy’s question is legitimate,” said Namara. “I would do the same. Never rely on statements, take nothing for granted. Well. What kind of proof are you looking for?”

Andy shrugged. “I don't know ok...”

“Ok then. Keep your eyes open.”

Danny turned toward the candle that burned from three metres away. He extended his open palm toward the candle and took a low stance. With a twitch, the candle extinguished, as though blown out by a great wind. Total darkness clamped down over the area. A few seconds later, there was light again as Shinsaku re-lit it a matchstick. Danny was standing expectantly in front of Andy with a little smile. Andy was incredulous.