Redback. Lindy Cameron
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Room 55, Grand Hotel Cravat, Luxembourg
Tuesday 2.15 pm
'You are such a beautiful boy.'
'Not any more, Ilia. I believe I'm quite the man, now.'
'So you are, sweet one. And you are my man. Yes?'
'Oh yes forever, if you'll have me.'
Ilia Dushenka smiled at the reflection of her latest conquest in the gilt-framed mirror. He was sprawled naked and unashamed on the huge bed he'd paid so handsomely for and in which they'd been making love for two days.
Conquest? She tried not to laugh out loud at the word she'd used for such an easy victory. Justin West, like all the visiting American college boys, was so like a puppy, so like the lap dogs her crazy mother used to pamper.
Ilia had chosen Justin because he was pretty, because he had money, and because she knew who his father and great-uncle were. She could just as easily have seduced either of his friends though, or even his sexy young stepmother. Now she would have been an interesting diversion. But this time Justin was the one; the latest in a succession of fresh virginal toy boys. They were not meant to last; which was just as well, as it was not good to get too attached.
'Do not be too eager with your promises,' she said. 'You will soon grow tired of me.'
'Never. And I am already growing eager again, Ilia,' he announced, fingering his penis as an offering. 'Come back to bed and I will show you.'
'You will miss your train, Justin.'
'I've got hours yet,' he said, with a delicious pout.
Ilia smiled. 'Your stepmother and friends will not like it if you keep them waiting.'
'Do I look like I care?' he asked, already doe-eyed as he stroked himself and got to his knees.
Ilia laughed and joined him on the bed, turning her back to him and spreading her legs so he could enter her from behind. His thumbs stroked the intriguing tattoos of stone-carved Greek statues that graced her lower back, on each side of her spine. 'To keep her body strong', she had told him.
'You will come with me then?' he asked, thrusting into her.
'Yes,' she breathed, gripping the sheets.
'I meant to Paris,' his right hand squeezed her nipple, 'on the train,' he said, finding a rhythm that was perfect for them both at this angle.
'Yes. I will catch it from near my place. And we will go to Paris together.'
'Excellent,' he said, slapping his groin into her arse and discovering again what heaven really was. 'Fu…fucking, excellent.'
Khyber Hotel, Peshawar, Pakistan
Tuesday 5.25 pm
'Pass me a cola Bamm-Bamm,' Mudge requested.
'Why do you call me that? It's really irritating.'
'Gawd, you don't like being called anything today. What's up your clacker?'
'Nothing, Mudge. And it's the not knowing that's irritating; not the name.'
'Well you only had to ask, you didn't need to be irritated all this time.'
'Well?'
Brody, out on the balcony, took a break from scoping the narrow street, pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted at his companions. They're both fuckwits, he thought, at a loss as to how he came to be stuck here with them. Granted Mudge was his best friend, but that was only half a good reason.
'Okay,' Mudge began, using the edge of his bed to whack the top off the drink bottle. 'Your name's Dwayne, right? Same as The Rock, you know, the actor. Only he's a Johnson not a Kennedy.'
'And?' Kennedy said after a few seconds silence. 'So?'
Mudge rolled his eyes as if his explanation had been enough. 'Well duh. We couldn't call you The Rock coz it's already taken by a Dwayne, Dwayne. And you'd have had your Agency buds send us to Gitmo if we'd chosen Pebbles, right? So, you get Bamm-Bamm.'
'What's wrong with calling me Dwayne?'
'Um,' Mudge began, 'nothin mate, if you don't…'
'We Aussies never do real names,' Brody interjected before Mudge could launch into his awful Duh-Wayne limerick; then continued the lie. 'It's like friendly code. And in our line of work it's safer that way.'
'Yeah?' Kennedy said, as if Brody had made sense; then he shook his head. 'Do you have to go to special classes to learn how to think so convoluted though?'
'No mate,' Brody laughed. 'But there is an Aussie slang-gene.'
'So why did you think we call you Bamm-Bamm?' Mudge asked.
'Because I'm all muscle?' Kennedy suggested. 'So how do you get to 'Mudge' from Jason…'
'You don't,' Mudge snorted, as if that too was bloody obvious. 'I come from Mudgegonga, mate.'
Kennedy closed his eyes as if he didn't want to go where that statement had taken him.
'Bugger me!' Brody exclaimed looking down at the street. 'Of all the gin-less joints, ours is getting screwier by the day.'
'What?' asked the other two men.
'We're sitting in this flea pit waiting - according to your intel Bamm-Bamm - for mid-ranking al-Qaeda stooges to front, but all these other bastards keep turning up instead.'
'Like who?' Kennedy slid from his bed onto his knees and stuck his head out the door.
'Like Jamal Zahkri,' Brody stated, grinning like he'd won the eighth at Flemington.
'You're kidding me?'
'Nuh. Here, take a look.' Brody tossed the scope over and picked up his camera instead. 'He's about mid-street, on the right. Him and three other blokes are approaching Ashraf's home away from home.'
Kennedy zeroed in on the relevant 'blokes' and focussed on the tallest one. 'Christ!'
'Wrong prophet, I reckon.' Brody declared, taking photos as they watched the casual progress, down their street, of one of the West's most wanted men.
Jamal Zahkri al Khudri: American-born, Moroccan-based, arms dealer, drug smuggler, hijacker and international terrorist.
There wasn't a lot that was known about Jamal Zahkri; but all of what was known was bad. He'd put his mark on a shit-load of bloody carnage in the last five years: bombs in Paris and London; plane hijackings in Germany, Australia and Turkey; and hostage-taking all over Europe. The biggest mystery was his lineage. Born in New York he was variously of Iraqi, Saudi, Turkish, Afghan, Chechen and/or Canadian descent. The Yanks really didn't want to claim any part of him.
Brody smiled. Zahkri's origins might be unknown, to all bar his long-dead mother, but right now there was one thing for sure: the murdering bastard was within easy, easy sniping range.
Fuck that! The arsehole is practically in spitting distance.
Brody rubbed his head in frustration, as that was about all they could do. None of them had a rifle.
'It's too bad spitting would just draw attention to us,' he said aloud.
'There was talk Zahkri had been meeting with Osama's boys,' Kennedy said. 'Guess this clinches it.'
Brody looked at the CIA's official North-West Frontier Rep in astonishment. 'Where on earth do you guys get your intel, Dwayne? Osama nearly killed Zahkri years ago for mutiny. The guy's been running with Atarsa Kára for at least 18 months that we know of.'
'What the hell is he doing here then?'
'Dunno,' Brody shrugged. 'But he's about to join Ashraf, which would support our intel that al-Qaeda has no part in whatever is really going on here.'
'Fuck. So what do we do about this?' Kennedy asked, primed to bolt out and do whatever it was.
'We