Bravery’s Sin: Masters’ Admiralty, book 5, page 28
He walked into the small office, casually looking around. There was a waiting room with four cushioned brown chairs and a coffee table laden with old magazines and mortgage brochures. There was one door to the left labeled conference room and four other doors leading to the private offices of the employees who occupied them.
He’d purposely waited until an hour before closing to arriving, certain that would assure several of the employees were already gone for the day. The fewer people he had to fool with his act, the better his chances of pulling it off.
The receptionist smiled as he approached her desk. According to the placard in front of her computer, her name was Isa. “Hafa adai,” she said.
Grigoris nodded briefly at her casual greeting. She was young, which left him a couple of options as far as which character he should play. He toyed with the idea of flirting with her, but discounted it when she shyly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Intimidation, he decided, would work better and quicker with this woman. “Hello, Isa. I’m here to meet with Tano Apatong.”
The receptionist’s smile faded. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Apatong isn’t in the office today.”
Grigoris knew that. He’d discovered Apatong, the office manager, was off the island, away on business this week. Grigoris shook his head in obvious disgust. “This isn’t going to look good on my report.”
“Did you have an appointment?” she asked timidly.
“I contacted Mr. Apatong two weeks ago to warn him of my arrival. I’m an auditor from the home office of K&H Bank.”
“Auditor?” Isa said, glancing around somewhat hopelessly. Given her alarm, Grigoris suspected his luck was even better than he’d hoped. It appeared everyone was gone for the day.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t made aware of this audit.” She reached for her phone. “If you’ll give me just one moment, I’ll contact Ms. Hocog. She’s running the office while Mr. Apatong is away. She only stepped out of the office for a few minutes.”
It was an obvious lie. He’d bet his home on Cyprus the employees all kicked off early with the boss out of town. When the cat’s away…
Grigoris held up his hand imperiously. “That’s not necessary. I don’t need to speak to anyone. I merely need access to the mortgage and titles records. You know where those are, I presume?”
Isa was clearly new to her position, and if Grigoris had to guess, she wasn’t a day over twenty-two. She hesitated.
“Isa. I spent the entire day yesterday traveling here, and I have a return flight booked for tomorrow. I got a very late start today, thanks to lost luggage and an issue with the rental car. I don’t have time for this. Show me the records so I can do my job, or I promise you, the fact that your boss isn’t here and you’re hesitating to show me what I need will reflect poorly on my report. My audit often determines which offices remain open and which ones,” he paused for dramatic effect, “are closed. I assume you like your position here?”
Isa rose nervously. “Oh, I’m not hesitating. Honestly. It’s just…” Her words faded when he crossed his arms and huffed out an impatient sigh.
She turned to one of the private offices. “If you’ll just follow me, I’ll show you the records.”
Grigoris grinned when she turned her back to lead him inside. He’d just cleared the first hurdle.
Nyx sat beside Langston. The guard Sebastian had arranged to stay with them was standing in parade rest near the door. His silent presence wasn’t threatening, but it didn’t make her feel comfortable either. Between the two of them, she preferred Langston, so she joined him on the couch.
“You are Sylvia’s brother, correct?”
“Do you know my sis?”
“I met her briefly and only once.” Nyx didn’t know how much the young man knew about what was going on in the Masters’ Admiralty. From what she gathered, he’d been offered membership to both societies—a rare, though not unheard of offer—and so far had joined neither.
She wouldn’t tell him that Sylvia’s husband Hugo was, like her, a librarian, and therefore possibly being targeted by a serial killer who had already beheaded one of them.
“So how many languages do you speak?” Langston asked.
“Fluently? Conversationally? Written and oral, or just oral?”
“I’m going to guess a lot.”
“I speak many,” Nyx agreed. “It’s why I should be with them, in case they encounter Petro.”
“But after yesterday, they decided to leave you with me. Us non-dangerous types have to stick together.”
Nyx looked at the weapon pieces he’d laid out on a large square of felt. “I very much doubt you are non-dangerous.”
“Aw heck, ma’am. That’s sweet of you to say.”
Nyx glanced at the clock on the cell phone beside the weapon pieces. They’d been gone just over an hour, and the sky was painted magenta, orange, and gold by the sunset. “It would help if we knew how long this was supposed to take,” she murmured.
“We should distract ourselves. Want to learn to assemble a gun?”
“Yes, I think I would enjoy that.”
The soldier standing in the corner looked alarmed, but only cleared his throat and shifted a bit.
Langston snickered. “How much do you know about how a gun works?”
“Very little.”
“So what you’re doing is creating a small explosion and directing the force of that explosion with the barrel. Here we have—”
There was a knock on the door.
From a tactical standpoint, this was probably going to be a game of cat and mouse. Eric waited as the rest of the team fanned out, trying to cover the many exits and entrances to the sprawling building. They were focused on the larger building, which included a ballroom, restaurant, a few classrooms and, most importantly, sleeping quarters.
They hadn’t been able to get accurate, current blueprints to the building, but Milo had sketched out a floor plan using photos of events and activities that had taken place in the center before it closed. Based on that, he’d assigned tactical entry paths. Eric was going in with Sebastian.
He should have cared that he had a stranger at his back. He should have cared that he and Sebastian had been given the least-interesting entry point—the front doors. He didn’t care about any of that.
It was hard to care about anything. The rage burning in him was so hot that it singed away anything else he might feel.
And that rage was getting harder and harder to control.
Sebastian was standing out in the open, wearing a construction jumpsuit to hide the Kevlar and a hard hat instead of tactical helmet. Hopefully that would prevent anyone from reporting them, since the former MWR site was on the apex of a low hill, with nothing but a few scattered palm trees to obstruct the view from the road on the inland side of the hill. It was one of the reasons they’d had to wait until dusk to enter. From where he stood, if he wanted to, he could turn and look out over the water, a seemingly endless expanse of blue ocean and brilliantly colored sky.
He didn’t because he didn’t give a shit. All he wanted was to find someone he could make pay for what had happened to Josephine.
They hadn’t found her body. All they had was her head.
“Entry team one, go,” Milo said in his ear.
Sebastian stepped up to the door, positioned the bolt cutters, and snapped the chain. Eric slid out of the shadows and through the now-open door. Unlike Sebastian, he was in full black tactical gear, gun raised. He paused by the door, waiting for Sebastian to join him, and once he felt a tap on his shoulder, he moved forward. They were in what had once been a reception area. He paused after sweeping the room.
He could abandon the plan and scream a challenge. Declare that he was there and demand that Petro come out and face him. That would be much more satisfying than playing a game of cat and mouse.
Sebastian, now wearing a black helmet and holding a gun, tapped him on the shoulder. Eric didn’t move because for a moment he couldn’t, the struggle between his control and the need for blood, to let the rage inside him burn away everything, was so real that it caused his muscles to tense, his heart rate to quicken.
“Ericsson?” Sebastian whispered.
“Problem, team one?” Milo’s accented voice was sharp.
“No,” Eric said. The word came out like a growl. He shoved down the rage, and as he did, he could feel the core of it, a feeling much more destructive than hot anger. Grief. And guilt.
Josephine was dead, and that regret was too great for him to deal with, so it turned to anger, an anger that would consume him if he let it. After his wives had died, he’d let guilt take over. He’d lost himself to the berserker for years, taking on missions so dangerous they’d been death sentences, but he’d always made it out. He’d gone from noble young fool to soulless mercenary.
Josephine, Colum, and the time he spent in Ireland pulled him back, helped him find a new version of himself. He would never be that noble young knight again, but sarcastic badass was better than out-of-control rage-monster.
Eric swung open the internal door that should open to a hall. Milo’s plans had been right, and there was a long, dark hallway beyond. Sebastian cracked a couple of glow sticks and slid them along the floor so they illuminated the hallway.
“Reception clear,” Eric whispered. “Team one moving into the hall.”
His control back in place, Eric pulled out a can of Silly String, and sprayed it in the hall, checking for any trip wires. There weren’t any, so a second later, he and Sebastian moved in.
The soldier stiffened and looked at Nyx and Langston. “Are you expecting anyone?”
“No,” Nyx said.
“Please move to the back of the house, out of sight.” The soldier peeked out the front window as Nyx and Langston retreated through the living room. Langston, gallant man that he was, stood in front of her. Nyx kept her back pressed to the wall.
“Can I help you?” the soldier called through the door.
“Delivery.”
“Come back later,” the soldier said.
“I need you to sign.” The voice was, at first, bland and American—but Nyx knew accents, and she knew this voice all too well.
“No!” she shouted, racing around Langston.
There was a crack, and the soldier was blown back, his body limp on the floor. The door smacked against the wall, before bouncing against the guard’s legs.
Petro stepped into the house, through the door he’d blown open, carefully lowering the small box he held in one hand to the floor. The other hand held a gun with a silencer.
Langston grabbed Nyx, started to pull her back.
“Don’t go anywhere, wife,” Petro said in Romanian. “This box contains a bomb. If you come with me, I will wait to detonate it, and that will give your friend time to escape.” Petro’s gaze slid to Langston, and he switched to English. “Let go of my property.”
“What?”
“He means me,” Nyx said quietly. “There’s a bomb in that box.”
“Well, fuck.”
“I’m going to leave with him. He says he’ll give you time to get out. Can you drag the soldier?”
“Wait, wait, you can’t go with him. He won’t detonate the bomb, not with himself inside the blast radius. Call his bluff.”
Petro shifted the gun and shot the guard again. The young man had been breathing heavily but had remained silent as he lay on the ground. Now he cried out in agony after Petro shot him in the knee.
Nyx stepped in front of Langston, shielding him with her body as she spoke to Petro. “I’ll come with you. You have to give them time to get out.”
“I will if you’re a good girl,” Petro said with a smile.
Bile rose in her throat. “I will be.”
“No!” Langston said. “Don’t go with him. I can—”
“You have to get him out.” Nyx looked over her shoulder at Langston, not caring that he was at her back when the real threat was standing several meters away by the door. “Don’t trust him. Move fast.”
“Come to me, my wife,” Petro said, once more speaking Romanian.
Nyx walked across the room and into Petro’s arms.
“Very well. I have all that I need.” Grigoris dismissed Isa once she’d shown him the company’s files.
Once again, she seemed hesitant to leave him alone, but when he raised one imperious eyebrow at her, she scampered back to her desk quickly enough, closing the door behind her.
Grigoris waited for the sound of her footsteps to retreat, then plugged an external hard drive into the computer, downloading the contents, before he took his gun out of the holster and quickly slid out of the private office. It took him less than five minutes to search the rest of the building, carefully staying out of Isa’s line of site. Petro wasn’t here, and it didn’t look like he had been. That had always been a remote possibility.
He returned to the office, checked the progress of the drive, and then started his search of the physical office.
Grigoris quickly rifled through the desk drawers, finding the standard office fare, pens, pencils, several calculators, a stapler. There was a stack of photographs of what appeared to be Mr. Apatong and his family. Grigoris flipped through a few of them, pictures of the middle-aged man with an attractive woman and two young kids laughing in the ocean. He tossed them back onto the desk.
Rising, he walked to the filing cabinets, opening each one, scanning the tabs in search of something that might give them an idea of where Petro might be hiding.
Every file folder tab was written in English, none of the names or services found there standing out. The computer download would give him a list of properties the company had done titles for, and later he’d cross-reference them with their original list, assuming Eric didn’t find Petro at the MWR. Grigoris quickly worked his way through every drawer, his sense of futility growing when he reached nearly the back of the bottom drawer.
There was a tab written in Hungarian that stood out immediately.
Apostolok.
Apostles.
Grigoris pulled the file out and discovered only three pages, a ledger of sorts with code names, also written in Hungarian, followed by what appeared to be a payment schedule. He laid the three pages out on the desk, snapping pictures of each with his phone. His Hungarian was rusty. Nyx would have a better idea of what was written here. There was no time to try to decipher it now.
He quickly put the papers back in the file and tucked it in the drawer where he’d found it. Grigoris scanned the rest of the office then, running his hands along the picture frames on the wall and feeling around the furniture for hidden compartments. He recalled the secret entrance Petro had used to enter Nyx’s guest room at his home. Grigoris was leaving no stone unturned.
He was just about to leave when one of the scattered photos on the desk caught his eye. It was of a man’s bare tattooed chest. There was no face, no distinguishing marks except for the tattoo, which looked like some sort of religious symbol placed over the left pec, just above the heart.
Grigoris tucked the photograph into the pocket of his jacket just as his cell phone rang.
“We have movement.” Dimitri’s voice came over the coms.
Eric froze, Sebastian at his back. They were in the second of four classrooms. There were tables and chairs stacked against a wall, and part of the drop ceiling had been removed near the front, exposing the structural girders and wiring in the ceiling.
“Where?” Eric demanded.
“Hold your position,” Milo commanded.
“Where?” Eric snarled.
There was a pregnant silence, then Milo—brave man that he was—said, “Fleet Admiral, team two is in the hostel area, however, I need you to finish your sweep.”
Milo was right. It was dangerous to go off plan.
Eric didn’t care.
“Have there been any booby traps so far?” Eric asked.
“No, Fleet Admiral, which probably means it isn’t—”
He was no longer listening. The rage made his ears buzz. Eric stormed from the classroom and wound his way toward where the sleeping quarters were. He didn’t check for trip wires or traps. He didn’t wait for his partner. He slammed open doors, his vision haloed by rage.
“Team two, I’m coming to you.” Milo’s voice had a tinge of worry.
“We’re breaching now,” Dimitri said.
“Where do you want me?” Leila asked.
“Southwest corner,” Milo replied.
The conversations were just background noise.
“It’s not our target,” Dimitri said as Eric reached the door he was looking for. He slammed it open, wood cracking. The interior of the large room beyond was lit by the acid-green light of glowsticks. Dimitri and Lancelot stood with a third figure, who was looking up at them, in their full black tactical attire, in terror.
Not Petro. This man wasn’t Petro. It was a young Asian man in disheveled clothes. There was a backpack on the ground near the closest bunk bed.
“Who are you?” Eric demanded. He didn’t stop once he entered the room but kept right on walking. Only Lancelot’s hold on his shirt stopped the terrified young man from scrambling backwards.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’ll go, I’ll go!”
“How do you know Petro?”
“I don’t know anybody.” The young man shook his head, the large gold cross he wore on a chain swinging out from under his shirt collar, which had been yanked to the side, thanks to Lancelot’s hold.
Dimitri opened and then upended the young man’s bag. No gun, no bomb-making supplies. Clothes, toiletries, a passport, and a bit of cash.
Eric reached for the young man, but Lancelot hauled him back out of Eric’s grasp.
Eric turned cold eyes on the English knight. “What are you doing?”
“This target is a bust.”
Milo slid into the room, Sebastian right behind him.
Eric considered Lancelot. He was a big man, but it wouldn’t be hard to incapacitate him. It might even be fun.
