G 8 Read online

  G8

  Also by Mike Brogan

  Business to Kill For

  Dead Air

  Madison’s Avenue

  G8

  A suspense thriller

  ___________________________________

  Mike Brogan

  Lighthouse

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013

  by Mike Brogan

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-0-9846173-0-2 (Hardcover)

  Library of Congress Control Number 2013952635

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published in the United States by Lighthouse Publishing

  Cover design: Vong Lee

  First Edition

  For Marcie, Brendan, Chloe, Jay,

  and Ms. Brogan Dolata who’s almost six.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Thirty Five

  Thirty Six

  Thirty Seven

  Thirty Eight

  Thirty Nine

  Forty

  Forty One

  Forty Two

  Forty Three

  Forty Four

  Forty Five

  Forty Six

  Forty Seven

  Forty Eight

  Forty Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty One

  Fifty Two

  Fifty Three

  Fifty Four

  Fifty Five

  Fifty Six

  Fifty Seven

  Fifty Eight

  Fifty Nine

  Sixty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To all my European colleagues, all you Belgian, French, English, Dutch, Italian, Scandinavian and German folks… who provided me with the background and knowledge to make this story possible… and for teaching this naive American the mysterious ways of Europe.

  To my writing pals: Four-time Shamus Award winner Loren D. Estleman, and distinguished writers like Pete Barlow, Phil Rosette, Len Charla, Jim O’Keefe, Annick Hivert Carthew, and gracious friends like John and Mary Ann Verdi-Hus – your helpful suggestions and guidance have made this story better. To Rebecca M. Lyles for her excellent, thoughtful editorial assistance and guidance.

  And finally, to the late Elmore Leonard who advised me to spend a lot of time with the bad guys. I’ve tried to do that in G8.

  ONE

  BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

  Katill hid behind a thick oak tree in the Forêt de Soignes. He watched the lights go out in the master bedroom upstairs. Donovan Rourke and his wife, Emma, were going to sleep for the night.

  Only one would wake up.

  Two hours later, Katill pulled down his mask and climbed a rope to the second floor balcony. The balcony doors, as expected, were unlocked. He checked his suppressed Glock, stepped inside and walked past an exquisite Louis XV desk and an antique mahogany china cabinet. The scent of lemon curry lingered in the air.

  He walked down to the master bedroom and entered. Moonlight filtered through the lace curtains onto a human shape in the large bed. One shape. Female. Emma.

  Where is Donovan Rourke? I was told he was here! Most unfortunate.

  So… Plan B.

  He moved to the bed and stared down at the woman. Attractive face… inviting body.

  Her eyes began to move beneath the lids. She seemed to sense his presence. He leaned closer. Her eyes opened, then her mouth. His hand muffled her scream.

  Fighting back hard, she reached up and yanked his mask off and looked at his face. He was shocked! No one had ever seen him as he worked! Enraged, he slashed her neck with his knife. Her eyes widened as she realized what he’d done. He watched blood pump from her severed arteries.

  And moments later, he watched life drain from her eyes.

  Noise. Behind him.

  Donovan Rourke?

  Stahl spun around. No one. He hurried down the hall, accidentally knocking the Mickey Mouse nightlight from the socket. The night-light was next to a door marked TISH in big sparkling letters. The door was open. He looked in.

  Standing beside her bed, staring at him, was a young girl, maybe four. Old enough to remember.

  She saw his face.

  And maybe what he’d done.

  TWO

  MANHATTAN

  “Who’s Fuzz… ?” Donovan Rourke asked on his cell phone as he sat in Heltberg’s Bar, sipping his second beer.

  “BUZZ!” Tish said.

  “Oh… ”

  “Buzz Lightyear!”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s a space ranger!”

  “Wow!”

  “And he’s at Macy’s. Can we please go get him?”

  “Hmmmmmm… ”

  “Tonight, please?”

  “Hmmmmmm… Well, okay.”

  Her squeal might have injured his eardrum.

  After hanging up, Donovan admitted yet again that he was a push-over when it came to his beautiful, five-year-old daughter. Tish was the love of his life. He’d do almost anything to make her happy, and help make up for the loss of her mother.

  Donovan looked around the bar. Some New York University students drinking pitchers of beer. A businessman nursing his third scotch. A fat guy sleeping on a barstool who hadn’t moved a muscle in thirty minutes. The guy could be dead.

  Dead like Benny Ahrens, Donovan thought. Benny, his friend, was killed because of a piece of paper. The same paper Donovan now held in his own hand.

  A cute, green-haired waitress walked by and winked at him. He smiled back and figured he must not look too bad for a thirty-four-year-old guy who’d spent the last ten years of his life avoiding people trying to end it.

  So far, no bullet scars above the neck. Four limbs that worked. The family jewels intact. And a six-foot-two inch frame that could still run five miles in thirty-six minutes, and even faster if he was being shot at, which was quite likely because of the paper in his hand.

  Green Hair placed a bowl of roasted peanuts on his table.

  “Peace,” she said, winking and sashaying away.

  And may Benny Ahrens rest in peace.

  Yesterday, Benny, a Mossad agent, had discovered the deadly note. The message on it was written in some ancient cryptic symbols that meant absolutely nothing to Donovan.

  But meant death to Benny. And Donovan feared it could mean death to Professor Sohan Singh who was meeting Donovan here in twenty-five minutes, unless Donovan phoned him and told him not to come.

  But Donovan had strict orders – Give the message to Singh. He’s our best shot at translating it. And orders must always be followed, right?

  Wrong. There’s a time to screw orders. Like when his gut told him to. Like now.
He pulled out his phone, dialed Sohan’s cell and was bounced into voice mail and left a message saying, “Sohan, everything worked out. We don’t need your help now. But thanks anyway. I’ll call you later.”

  It bothered Donovan that he lied so easily. But then his job paid him to lie.

  As he hung up, the bar door opened. A strong blast of Manhattan bus fumes swept in… along with Professor Sohan Singh, twenty minutes early. Singh, a slender, well-dressed man in his early sixties looked around and smiled at Donovan.

  Donovan waved his former NYU French professor over. They shook hands and sat at the table.

  “So,” Singh said, “you’re going to beg me for another racquetball rematch?”

  Donovan smiled. “I’m going to beg you to walk back out of this bar.”

  Singh stared back.

  “This thing is too risky, Sohan.”

  “A translation thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  Singh glanced down at the note in Rourke’s hand.

  “Would that be the translation thing?”

  “It would.”

  Donovan scanned the bar and made sure no one was paying attention to them. No one was.

  “Sohan… this note is deadly.”

  Green Hair appeared. Singh ordered a Heineken and seconds later she set a frosty bottle in front of him.

  “Why so deadly?”

  “We don’t know yet. But my Mossad friend was just killed a mile from here because of it. He intercepted the message and told me it was very serious and very urgent. The NSA cryptographers are at a loss to translate it. They’re convinced the symbols are some very ancient Middle Eastern language. They say you can translate it much faster than they ever will.”

  Singh sipped his beer.

  “But Sohan, trust me, this note is – ”

  “Hazardous to my buns?”

  “Very.”

  “And one’s buns are still pro-choice, right?

  Donovan nodded.

  “And this note is important to our country’s security?”

  “Benny Ahrens said it was.”

  “So give me the damn message or I’ll bore you again with amazing but true saga of how my poor dear mother scrubbed floors on a Calcutta steamer coming to this land of the unwashed masses yearning to be free.”

  As Donovan started to protest again, Singh snatched the paper from his hand and began studying it. Singh sipped some beer. A drop splashed onto the message, but he didn’t seem to notice. Donovan studied his former professor. Still scholarly and relaxed. Maybe a bit more gray around the temples, another crinkle around the eyes, an extra liver spot on his hand. His brown tweed sports coat matched his turtleneck. And his pipe ashes, as usual, had sprinkled onto his Hush Puppies.

  Donovan worried that Singh was helping.

  But then the CIA paid Donovan to worry. And lie. And get shot at.

  “The NSA is right,” Singh said.

  “Very old symbols?”

  “Old as dirt. In fact, they were first written in dirt. I’m quite certain they’re Sumarian, maybe Mesopotamian. Around 3,500 B.C. Each cuneiform pictogram, or mark and symbol represents a word.”

  Can you translate it?”

  “Depends… ”

  “On what?”

  “On whether certain symbols are in some old books at my apartment. Which reminds me, I have to get back there. My daughter, you remember Maccabee, she’s coming in from Princeton tonight and I promised to cook dinner. I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”

  Donovan nodded and remembered Singh’s daughter. Singh had been incredibly proud of her when she followed his footsteps and became a professor of foreign languages.

  “How is Maccabee?”

  Singh smiled. “Beautiful, and smart like me.”

  * * *

  “Dumb like you!” whispered Milan Slavitch, a thickset man, sitting in a dark blue Toyota van ten feet from Heltberg’s Bar. He’d listened to Rourke’s conversation with Singh through a laser eavesdropping device that picked up their voice vibrations from the bar’s window.

  Slavitch sipped absinthe from a silver flask, then rubbed the flask down his five-inch facial scar, the relic of a Serbian bayonet. The man who held the bayonet died quickly when Slavitch slit his neck with a razor-sharp Yemeni jambiya dagger.

  He punched in a number on his cell phone, relayed what he’d overheard and hung up.

  Moments later, Rourke and Singh stepped outside the bar and got in a taxi.

  Slavitch followed in the van. Singh was dropped off in front of a five-story brownstone on 73rd Street and went inside. The taxi drove off with Rourke.

  Slavitch parked, but as he started to get out, a woman and two small kids walked out and began playing in front of Singh’s apartment. Slavitch decided to wait.

  A half hour later they left.

  Slavitch shoved a fifteen round magazine into his prized Croatian Army Beretta that he’d smuggled into the states years ago.

  He got out of the van and strolled toward Singh’s apartment building.

  THREE

  “It’s Gramma Anna time!” Donovan said, closing his laptop in his small East 83rd Street apartment.

  Smiling, Tish grabbed her new Buzz Lightyear and ran to the door. At times, her robin-egg blue eyes, thick brown hair and especially her smile reminded him of Emma so much it hurt.

  Outside, they took a taxi. On the way, Tish played with her new Buzz Lightyear. He smiled as he watched her. Tish was the best part of his day. And his life. He marveled at how much better she was doing compared to the first weeks after Emma’s death. Back then, she’d often stare at her mother’s picture for minutes on end.

  Sometimes she had nightmares that ‘the mean man who hurt mommy, might come back for me.’ And when she asked him, “Why did the mean man make mommy go to heaven?” Donovan could not tell her the real reason.

  Because of me.

  Still, each week she seemed a little better. And having Emma’s wonderful mother, Anna, nearby was a godsend for Tish, and for him.

  After dropping Tish off, he returned home and microwaved some not-so-lean-cuisine, a cheese-laden lasagna. He popped the lid on an icy Killian’s Red and plunked down in his Laz-E-Boy to watch the Yankees-Tigers game. His phone rang. Caller ID flashed Sohan Singh.

  “My favorite professor!”

  “Lady Luck is with us,” Singh said. “My books have most of the ancient Sumerian symbols and logograms in your cryptic message.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  “No, the Sumerians were. Around 5,000 years ago, they were scratching these logograms and pictograms into mud tablets on the banks of the Tigris. They created the world’s first known full-fledged written language. Fortunately, your message has only about thirty words. So give me a few more minutes and I’ll phone the translation to you.”

  “Don’t phone it.”

  “Why not?”

  “The bad guys have very sophisticated listening devices.”

  “I’ll e-mail it….”

  “The bad guys have too many sophisticated hackers.”

  “How about an unsophisticated fax?”

  “Same bad guy problem. How about I pick it up in twenty minutes or so?”

  “Works for me.”

  “Thanks, professor. What would we do without you?”

  “Weep and gnash your teeth?”

  “This is true.”

  Minutes later, Donovan stepped from his brownstone into warm, humid night air. Thick gray clouds, like wads of steel wool, were rolling in from the West. He heard the distant rumble of thunder and sensed rain coming. He liked how rain cleaned the city streets and left them smelling fresh. Too bad it didn’t also clean the terrorists off Manhattan’s streets.

  He flagged down a taxi, gave Singh’s address to the thin Haitian driver and they drove off.

  Donovan’s thoughts turned to Sohan. Over the last seven years, the man’s translations had helped the CIA prevent two terrorist attacks in Germany, a Metro bombing
in Paris, and a nerve gas release at a Los Angeles amusement park. He spoke twelve languages fluently, plus some obscure ones like South American Amerindian and Navajo. His linguistic gifts were a national treasure.

  Minutes later, the cab stopped in front of Singh’s brownstone building.

  Donovan got out and waved to Ned, the friendly doorman, who buzzed him in. Donovan looked around the charming 1930s lobby, a pleasing blend of gleaming Italian marble, crystal chandeliers and Carpathian burled elm walls. He took the elevator up and walked down to Singh’s fifth-floor apartment. He paused when he saw the door slightly ajar. Maybe Ned called Sohan and he left it open for him.

  Donovan stepped inside.

  “Sohan… it’s Donovan.”

  Nothing.

  He looked around.

  “Sohan… ?”

  Still no response. His pulse kicked up a notch as he walked through the foyer to Singh’s study. He was surprised to see copies of Translation Journal scattered across the beige carpet. Singh was a very tidy man.

  Then something else on the carpet caught Donovan’s eye - specks of tobacco sprinkled like a column of ants over to Singh’s pipe.

  Donovan hurried over.

  And saw a foot behind the sofa.

  Heart pounding, he looked behind the sofa and saw his friend Sohan lying on his back in a pool of blood draining from the large bullet hole in his head.

  Donovan yanked out his gun, swept the room. No one.

  He felt Singh’s neck, but couldn’t detect a pulse. His skin was still warm. Donovan began pumping Singh’s chest, praying for a heartbeat.

  He jerked the phone off the desk and called 911.

  “An ambulance is on the way,” the operator promised. “Keep doing CPR and stay on the line.”

  He placed the receiver down nearby and continued CPR. He listened to Singh’s chest, but the only heart he heard was his own.

  As he pushed down, again and again, Donovan’s anger rose. Anger at himself for involving Singh. Anger at his CIA bosses and the NSA for insisting that he ask for Singh’s help. Anger at himself for not grabbing the note back after Singh grabbed it. And mostly anger at the shooter and whoever overheard them at the bar.