Death and Betrayal by Seeley James

Author:Seeley James [James, Seeley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thriller
ISBN: 9781733346733
Publisher: Machined Media
Published: 2020-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 35

In the morning, I was summoned to the main house. We met in a spacious office with a substantial fireplace. Falconer stood behind a desk littered with papers, drawing a map on a whiteboard with a blue marker.

Bonham had found another couch to lounge on and was beside himself with glee.

Falconer stood up straight and faced me. “Jacob. So good to see you again, sport. Slept well, I trust. Bonham here is still against me bringing you in. He says decorated veterans don’t turn into international smugglers. He thinks it’s more likely you’ve turned into an international spy. What do you have to say about his allegations?”

I turned to Bonham and gave him my soldier stare. “Prove it.”

Bonham gave me a dim smile and picked up a glass of orange juice. He tilted it my way in a silent toast, then sipped.

Falconer clapped his hands and laughed. “Exactly what I said. He had his chance, he dug into your records, and he couldn’t come up with a shred of evidence against you. He had you followed for days. No dead drops, no cutouts, no coded messages. You never met with anyone he didn’t like. I’m beginning to think he’s jealous.”

Bonham slugged back the OJ and smacked his lips and looked at us. “I’m over it. Besides, I have several insurance policies named Fido, Spot, Rover, and … well, you get the picture.” Bonham stood and reached out to me. “Welcome to the family, Jacob.”

He didn’t try his bone-crusher handshake a second time. I went easy on him. All friends here. I’d won.

“Now then,” Falconer pointed to his whiteboard. It had a crude map of the Mediterranean with arrows to a cruder outline of the Black Sea. “Here’s the project. There is a package, consisting of several submersible containers, lying in five hundred feet of water not far from the island of Linosa. That’s halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. You’ll mount an operation to recover the containers and take them fourteen hundred nautical miles to the Black Sea. Your final destination will be revealed once you arrive at a certain spot unaccompanied. If you’re stopped by authorities along the way, you are to dump the containers overboard. When you’re clear of the authorities, you will recover the containers once again, and continue on. All recovery operations will be at your expense, so try not to dump them.”

Most customs inspectors are land-based. Coastal enforcement agencies are ship-based. I’d never heard of any law enforcement operation that owned a submarine. Which made his method nothing short of genius. He’d stolen Alvaria by dumping it overboard. Then he waited for the NATO search teams to give up. Now he was ready to proceed. All he needed was a fall guy in case the plan fell apart. Otherwise, he would’ve hauled it up and put it on his yacht.

I’d need an underwater expert of some kind. Captain Rafia didn’t strike me as a submariner. I wasn’t even sure he could swim.

“Nice plan,” I said. “What’s in it for me?”

“What did I tell you, Bonham?” Falconer faced his friend.

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