Read The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne Online
Authors: Barry Jonsberg
FBI Special Agent Calma Harrison stepped from the shower. She got dressed quickly, paying no attention to the thin scar that ran down the side of her stomach. A memento of a fight in Beirut. Just before she had broken his neck, he had slashed her across the abdomen. Later, she had stitched herself with a sharpened twig and a length of twine she had fashioned from local native grasses. A neat job, even more remarkable because she had no anesthetic. She preferred to bite on a bullet. One time, she had been sewing her ear back on in Botswana when she bit too hard and shot a passing antelope.
Her eyes flickered as she detected a sound in the corridor outside her hotel room. Nerves on full alert, she whipped her Walther PPK semiautomatic from the holster and with catlike grace backflipped across
the room, pressing herself against the wall There was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” she breathed.
“Room service,” came the reply.
Calma registered the voice and instantaneously processed its accent. Despite the attempt at disguise—good, but not quite good enough
—
she placed it within a second. A rarely heard dialect from the East Bank of the Mezzanine Strip. A tiny village called B'Gurrup. The owner of the voice lived three streets down from the butcher's shop. Maybe four, Calma thought. She hadn't been to B'Gurrup in over fifteen years.
Her mind raced. Who had connections with the Mezzanine Strip? It was a filthy, dangerous place, a hotbed of mercenaries, hit men and used-car salesmen. The answer was clear. Only one person would think of employing the specialist skills to be found in B'Gurrup. Her archenemy. The Pitbull.
Calma did a forward roll and in less than three seconds, two hundred rounds from the Walther crashed through the spy hole in the center of the massive oak door. She opened the door and examined the bloody mess on the doorstep. The would-be assassin had a small ground-to-ground heat-seeking missile launcher in his right hand. In his left was a Kalashnikov rifle, a cluster grenade and a Swiss Army knife. This man had come prepared for action.
“Too bad, buddy,” Calma growled as she stepped over
him and headed for the elevator. Curiously, she felt a sense of relief. She still remembered that incident in Miami when she had accidentally blown away the night manager of her hotel. She had been certain that his accent was from a small Shiite community that had ordered her death through a high-level fatwa. It turned out that he had simply had a bad head cold.
Calma stepped from the hotel onto the bustling streets. Kiffing was waiting for her at the agreed park bench, idly kicking a small Pekingese dog that was trying to attach itself to his trouser leg.
“News?” said Calma.
“The Pitbull is here. We're not sure why, but we think it might be connected to next week's UN Assembly. The word on the street is that there is to be an assassination attempt on a major world figure. As you know, Harrison, the presence of the Pitbull can only mean one thing: terror and devastation.”
“That's two things,” said Calma.
“Okay, then. Two things,” said Kiffing.
“You want me to take her out?” asked Calma.
“Won't that make her suspicious? A date with a complete stranger?”
“No. I mean, kill her.”
“That's a negative. We want her alive.”
Calma thought quickly. She mentally replayed all the information she had gleaned about the Pitbull. Simultaneously, she analyzed the Spassky/Fischer sixth game
of the 1972 World Chess Championship, finding an Enigma Variation that poor Boris had overlooked in the endgame. It was a form of mental gymnastics that helped her focus. She turned to Kiffing.
“Any idea of her whereabouts?”
“We have a deep throat in Mossad. The word is that she'll stake out the pre-Assembly shindig taking place at the Hilton tonight.”
That made sense. The trouble was that the Pitbull was an expert at disguise. Calma remembered the assassination of an African leader the previous year. Itboreall the hallmarks of the Pitbull's work. Yet one eyewitness swore that the killer was actually a small bullmastiff.
“I'll be there,” she said, “but I want full backup. I'll need an OP35 with an APB, complete tactical support, a digitized microcam with satellite linkup, solar-powered Kevlar vest with drop sides and EVA capability. Is that clear?”
“Well… not entirely affirmative, now you come to mention it.”
“Just do it, Kiffing. We are not dealing with amateurs here.”
Later that evening, Calma Harrison, disguised as a balding Oriental dwarf, surveyed the exterior of the Hilton. She was pressed up against a tree in the extensive grounds and her camouflage makeup ensured that from a distance she merely looked like a piece of flaking bark. Patting the bulge of the Walther PPK, she settled down to
wait, the trunk of the tree pressing a little uncomfortably into her back….
“Wake up, for God's sake, Calma.”
The voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. I opened my eyes slowly. Surely it wasn't morning already? The first thing I saw was Kiffo's face about two centimeters from mine. Imagine waking up and finding yourself staring at the Phantom of the Opera without his mask at close range, and you'll have some idea of the kind of shock I got.
“Bloody hell, Kiffo,” I yelled. “Don't do that to me!”
“Shut up!”
I raised my head and it all came back. Kiffo's stupid idea of staking out the Pitbull's house again, on the off chance that she'd be doing another of her early-morning assignations. A real stab in the dark. Which is exactly what I felt like giving Kiffo at that precise moment. Obviously, I had dozed off. My shoulder was hurting from where I had been pressing up against a knot in the tree. My right leg had pins and needles. That bloody casuarina tree again. The same one I had waited under for Kiffo on the night of my declaration of undying love. I was beginning to bond with that tree, I can tell you. Maybe the drama lessons hadn't been a complete waste of time, after all. “Feel yourself
becoming
the tree, Calma. Feel the sap rising.”
I struggled to my feet, catching at a cramp in my left thigh where the sap was obviously having difficulty getting through.
“What time is it?”
“About three-thirty.”
It took a moment to register.
“Are you out of your tiny mind? But of course you are. Stupid question. Three-thirty? Three-thirty? If I'd known we were going to be out this late I'd have brought a camping stove and a portable TV.”
“Oh, stop moaning, Calma. There's no point going home at ten o'clock, is there? I mean, when she goes out on one of these meetings, it's in the early hours of the morning, isn't it?”
“Hang on, Kiffo. You're talking as if this is some sort of regular occurrence, like the orbit of Uranus or something. You've only seen her go out once. Doesn't mean she makes a habit of it or anything.”
“I've got a feeling about tonight, okay?”
“So you're clairvoyant now, are you?”
“Give it a break, willya?”
“I can tell you exactly what is going to happen, Kiffo,” I said. “Absolutely bugger all, that's what. We are going to sit here under this stupid casuarina until dawn and then we are going to go home, get dressed for school, go into her class and prop our eyelids open with matchsticks. And she is going to be even more horrible to us than normal on the grounds that sleeping through her lesson is absolutely forbidden, on pain of death, and then—”
But I never got to finish. The Pitbull's front door opened and that familiar, threatening bulk was now approaching the front gate. I pressed myself farther into the tree. Would I ever get the imprint of bark out of my back? There was a snuffling sound and I could just make out the heaving mass of Slasher.
The night was profoundly dark. Just as well, I suppose. The Pitbull and Slasher made odd lumps of darker blackness against the night, grisly silhouettes that moved like one being. It was creepy. Kiffo leaned closer to me and we watched silently as Miss Payne made a right turn out of the gate and moved silently down the road. I became aware that I was holding my breath. Kiffo leaned in closer and whispered into my ear.
“You were saying, Calma smarty-pants?”
“Where the hell is she going at three-thirty in the morning?” I gasped.
To be perfectly honest, I had taken Kiffo's story with a small pinch of salt. Well, a bloody great handful, in fact. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, exactly. I just thought that maybe he had embroidered things a little. You know, the mysterious phone conversation, leaving the house. I'd figured that maybe she had got up in the night and he had taken the opportunity to get the hell out of there while the going was good. And the rest would have been just a bit of macho stuff. Making a big deal out of what had been a humiliating experience. I wanted to apologize to Kiffo but now didn't seem the right time.
“I told you, Calma,” he said, a note of triumph in his voice. “Maybe once you could explain away. But who in their right mind keeps on going out in the middle of the night, particularly when they've got a job to go to? I tell you, she is up to no good. And we have to find out what it is. Come on.”
Now, I know I have given the impression that I was getting
a little tired of that casuarina tree. But I can tell you, when the time came to leave, it had never seemed more attractive. It's one thing to hang around outside someone's house, but quite another to follow them down deserted streets at some godforsaken time in the morning. But I had no opportunity to voice my misgivings to Kiffo. He was off like a rat up a drainpipe and I had no option but to follow him. I didn't fancy trailing the Pitbull, but neither did I fancy hiding under a tree, alone, at that time of night.
Let me tell you something. In the movies, following a person looks like the easiest thing in the world. All you do is walk a discreet distance behind. When they turn around, you feign interest in the shop window of an oriental emporium or something. It isn't like that in real life. Okay, I know the circumstances were somewhat different. For one thing, there wasn't an oriental emporium within ten miles. But the main thing was that there was very little cover. I mean, if the Pitbull turned around, there we'd be, frozen under a street lamp. Difficult to explain away as a casual late-night jog. Kiffo and I zigzagged from one side of the road to the other, moving from bush to bush, crouching behind the odd parked car. But for a lot of the time we were out in the open. It's a horrible feeling to know that just one backward glance would be enough to pin you in a metaphorical spotlight.
Problem number two. It's quiet at night. Unbelievably quiet. Even the night insects seemed to have taken a vow of silence. So we couldn't stay too close on her heels for fear that either she or the evil hound, Slasher, would hear our footsteps.
That didn't bother me, mind. I'd have been happy with a fair distance. Something like twenty-five miles, for example. But it did make it difficult to keep her in view. When she turned a corner, we'd run like hell, keeping on the nature strip to deaden the sound. It was okay for Kiffo—he didn't have to keep a protective arm across his boobs. I was running flat out, and mine threatened to knock my glasses off.
Problem three. When we reached a corner, we had to peer round very carefully. For all we knew, she could have been a yard or two away and a couple of peering, sweaty, disembodied faces might just conceivably have drawn a little unwanted attention. This meant that all the time we made up on the mad sprint was lost on gingerly peering around the next corner. God, it was a nightmare. Once, we turned a corner and there was no sign of her at all. A couple of roads radiated off and she could have taken any one of them. So we had to take a chance and run to the point where we could get a good view in every direction. As luck would have it, we spotted the pooch's backside as it turned yet another corner.
Finally, we came to a large intersection. This time, though, we could hear voices. Kiffo and I crouched down and very carefully looked around the corner. About ten yards down the road, the Pitbull was talking to a man. They were standing under a streetlight and we had a clear view of them. The man was small, thin-lipped and bloodless. Like a ferret. He reminded me of the little guy you see in gangster movies. You know, the one who's always next to Robert De Niro, the one who's completely off his head and liable to shoot someone in
the groin if he doesn't like the look of him. The runt of the litter, but mean as anything.
They were having an animated conversation, two sets of arms flapping all over the place, though we couldn't make out the actual words. It was a residential street, but they were outside a large hall, a likely meeting place for Scouts or other paramilitary organizations. You know the sort of thing. The man was jangling a bunch of keys. After a few more moments of semaphore practice, he unlocked the door of the hall and they disappeared inside. A few seconds later, a light came on. I glanced at Kiffo, raised my eyebrows, and he gave me a quick nod. Having come this far, there was no way we were prepared to give up now.
Kiffo and I padded around the side of the building, looking for a convenient window, the kind that in movies are invariably positioned to afford maximum spying potential. It soon became obvious that the builder of this place had wilfully ignored this architectural necessity. The only window likely to offer any view was impractically positioned about eight feet above the ground. A possibility if you were a member of the Australian basketball team, but not a great deal of use to us. Fortunately, a quick exploration of the grounds revealed a number of milk crates, and we piled these up in a rough pyramid underneath the window. It didn't look particularly safe, but unless we stumbled across a cherry picker in the undergrowth it was going to have to do. Kiffo and I climbed gingerly up the crates, stopping every few moments to sway gently as the whole arrangement shifted under our
weight. Finally, we were able to grab hold of the windowsill and peer into the room.