Agent with a History

  *****

  The man at the ferry looked at me and then shrugged, “I hope you know what you’re doing, lady. That island ain’t the friendliest by all accounts, but you’ve paid me more than enough to take you there.”

  “Thank you,” I said getting out of my car.

  I walked to the railing of the small ferry and stared out at the waters of the sound ahead and the offshore islands that dotted the outer coastline of the Outer Banks.

  It took a little over an hour to get to the little ferry dock on the island. There were no buildings, just the dock.

  The ferry man opened up the gate and I walked up to him.

  “Will you wait for me?” I asked.

  The ferry man looked uncomfortable, like he was about to say no.

  I reached out and touched his arm lightly, “Please!” I begged softly.

  He looked down and then back up, as if he was weighing me in the balance.

  Then, finally, he spoke, “You look like a nice girl. I can’t imagine why you would want to come here!”

  He seemed to be waiting for an answer, so I told him the truth.

  “A friend of mine was killed. I think I may be able to find out from someone on this island who it was that killed my friend.”

  “Lady, the people that killed your friend could be on this island!”

  “I know. I won’t ask you to wait long, just a few hours, please?”

  He sighed and slapped his pant leg hard, disgustedly. “All right, I’ll wait for you for two hours only; but not here. I’ll wait offshore and, if I see you drive up alone, I’ll come back.”

  It wasn’t like me, but I reached out and hugged the old man.

  The man patted me awkwardly on the back in return and said, “Take care of yourself, honey!”

  The road twisted and meandered around the island’s topography. There were no houses or signs of habitation other than the black asphalt road I traveled on. After five minutes of driving, I rounded a sandy knoll and there it was on the steepest part of the island, my father’s version of the white house, only this mansion was probably larger.

  It had to be to house my father’s many children. Not to mention grandchildren and probably a few greats by now. My father was one of those super rich tycoons that nobody knew about. A Bill Gates without the recognition, which is how he liked it.

  I couldn’t vouch for how honestly gained Bill Gates fortune might be, but almost to a penny I would say my father’s wealth was the product of thievery, extortion, blackmail, drug running, human trafficking, swindling, and the list went on. What I wanted to know was, had my father added international terrorism to the list of sins for which he was responsible?

  Everything within me wanted to stop the car and turn around from this place from which I had escaped, but I kept driving, my hands white knuckled on the wheel.

  I wished I had a gun, but having one was more likely to get me killed in this place than not having one. There was the problem of what I would do with a gun, too. I’d probably put a bullet in my father’s brain without a moment’s hesitation.

  They’d kill me, but I would die doing the world a favor.

  I pulled up at the gatehouse with its massive wrought iron gates. Men, my half brothers, armed with submachine guns stepped out from the gatehouse and spread out around the car. My father had a lot of enemies and rarely, if ever, left his island fortress anymore.

  I rolled down a window at the approach of one of the men. He stared at me for a second and I saw the moment when he recognized me.

  “Lisa?” he said, with evident surprise.

  “Hello, Marshawn. Can I go through?”

  He ignored my question, “Why would you come back here? Don’t tell me you’ve come to do us all a favor and kill the old he-bull.”

  I met his gaze without blinking as I responded, “I wasn’t intending to, but if I have to, it could become a possibility.”

  His face broke into a big grin. “Welcome back, sister.”

  He straightened up and waived his arm. They opened the gate as he walked around the front hood of the car and opened the passenger side door to slide in beside me. The submachine was casually pointed at my side.

  “What’s the matter Marshawn, don’t you trust me?”

  He laughed. “I don’t trust any of my siblings, but for you I will make an exception.”

  He angled the gun barrel away from my side by a couple of inches.

  “How trusting of you, dear brother. Where is our patriarch of this sordid tribe of sinners?”

  Marshawn just grinned, “South lawn.”

  I pulled the car up under the massive portico and got out. I disregarded the stares of playing children and adults alike and walked through the lavishly landscaped surrounds of the massive palace on the hillside.

  A tall form of a man stepped into my path and I halted. It was Rocco.

  I hated him perhaps most, second only to my father.

  “Well, if it isn’t the detective come home for a family visit, or have you come for some other reason? Now I wonder?”

  I fought to keep my eyes from straying to the snake's head tattoo on his cheek, but it was hard not to, which was its purpose.

  He had approached as he was talking and I didn’t see the knife in his hand until he was dragging the point of it up my dress only to pause over my left nipple through the dress. He pressed on the knife and it hurt.

  It only helped to jog my memory as to what the sheer horror of growing up in this place had been like.

  “I see you haven’t changed any for the better over the years, Rocco. Now go play with your little toy somewhere else and get out of my way!” I said savagely.

  He smiled and pressed a little harder on the knife, but I didn’t move. He removed the knife with a show of fake gallantry and stepped to the side of the path, giving me a half bow.

  I stepped past him, half expecting to have my throat slit or the knife rammed into my back, twisted and then broken off. But the strike didn’t come and I continued on down the path.

  My nipple hurt!

  I glanced down without appearing to do so and was glad for the orange and red material of the dress I had worn. It helped to hide the little spot of blood that had seeped through my bra. If that was the only injury I came away from this place with, I would be extremely lucky.

  Everything was a power play on this island realm of my father’s. You were either vicious wolf or hapless victim. There was no middle ground.

  All that was respected was strength. It was a terrible way to have to live and yet I had managed, until I had turned sixteen.

  One night, when things had looked especially bad for me, I had stolen what cash I could find and swam the several miles distance across the sound, in the dark of night, to the mainland.

  Nearing the beach, I had been caught in an undertow current which I had barely survived. I managed to get out and had been surviving life’s strong currents ever since.

  I saw him then, sitting under the canopy of an umbrella, on a small patio out in the middle of the lawn that lay behind the house, with the beach below. I walked through the perfectly manicured grass toward him.

  My father, Iya Muatombo, had been born in a grass thatched hut made of mud, in Ethiopia. You could say that he had removed himself as far as he could from the humbleness of his beginnings.

  His back was to me and when I was still twenty or so feet away he stood, the massive muscles of his shoulders and arms bunching the material of the perfectly tailored suit.

  How he heard my approach over the crashing of the waves below and the landward breeze, I could not fathom. He had the senses of a cat and the instincts of one, too.

  My father was a brutal monster, but that was objectifying him somewhat. He was also cunning. He had not risen so far on sheer strength alone.

  Never before had I seen that raw magnetism of strength combined with extreme intellect in a single person, until just the o
ther day. Flint was such a man. I hoped he wasn’t a monster, too.

  My father turned to me with that familiar, not sure what to make of it, half smile and revealed a mouth of pearly white teeth. His skin was as black as coal and he still shaved his head bare.

  His conditioning hadn’t slumped a bit and he still stood at an even seven feet in height. The only way I could tell that he had aged at all was that his eyebrows were a little more grey.

  He was seventy five years old and could have passed for a man of forty five. What kept him so young, I didn’t know, but it couldn’t be clean living that was for sure.

  His deep voice broke the wall of silent study that was between us. “So, the prodigal daughter has returned. Is your unexpected appearance indicative of any intention on your part to kill me?”

  “I could ask the same of you, father?” I replied evenly, standing still in the grass, waiting to see what would become of me.

  He smiled a little broader and indicated the chair across the table from him. I moved to it and sat down. He did not follow suit, but instead followed me. I started to rise, but his hand on my shoulder held me down.

  I tried not to let it show how much he had unsettled me, but I couldn’t help the quiver that rocked through me, as his hand slipped under my hair and closed around the back of my neck securely. He lowered his head, until my eyes could meet his, as I tried to hold my breathing steady and not let the fear I felt show.

  This was nothing but another power play, an effective one at that. I tried to relax under the grip of his hand, but it was hard.

  “Lisa, I could have killed you at any point over the past two years, since I’ve known of your whereabouts, if I had so wished.”

  I met his gaze unflinchingly. “Perhaps you were waiting till you could do it yourself,” I said evenly.

  “I have to admit your sharp tongue has been a pain at times, but killing you would be such a waste!” As he said that, his hand left my neck to slide around and pull my chin up.

  His smile disappeared, as his thumb stroked the healing cut on my cheek bone. “Who did this?”

  “One of your men!”

  “I will see that he is dealt with!”

  Which meant killed, I dryly acknowledged in unspoken terms.

  “You needn’t bother, he’s already dead.” I replied.

  “Good girl!” he said, stroking my cheek once more with his thumb before letting go entirely, for which I was grateful.

  He moved to his chair and sat down a little too heavily. He was getting older.

  He studied me for a little while.

  “Since we have settled the issue of you not being here to kill me, nor I you, what is the real reason for this visit?”

  “What’s going on, father?”

  He looked away, out over the ocean, and then back to me, “The same thing that has been going on for thousands of years, ever since Alexander the Great! The world wants our treasure!”

  “It’s not your treasure! It’s the people's!”

  His gaze grew stormy.

  I shook my head slightly, “How do you expect me to trust you when you say you have no intention of killing me? You were ready to kill me at sixteen, when I wouldn’t tell you what I know about the treasure. Tell me father, what’s changed?”

  His expression grew serious. “Despite what you may have thought, I was not going to kill you, but I did push you too far. That was very foolish of you to swim across such an expanse of water at night. But it also took strength and courage, both of which, you know, I admire. To be the success you have become in your own right without any help from me, well that has been exceptional to see. You have exceeded all your brothers and sisters in that one regard alone. I look at you and I see more of myself than I can say of any of them!” he said, gesturing towards the house.

  “You have made me proud!” he finished on a deep note, but I was not impressed.

  “Flattery won’t get you any closer to the treasure of our people, dear father.”

  His expression turned rueful and he shrugged his massive shoulders, “It was worth a shot.”

  I shook my head and looked out toward the sea. “Why did you have to torture those men like that? Couldn’t you have just put a bullet in their heads, if they had betrayed you in some way?”

  “They were warned what would happen to them if they talked. They thought I would forget. NO! Examples had to be made of them! You do not cross Iya Muatombo and live!” he said, slamming his hand down on the table for emphasis.

  “It’s because of their betrayal that your life is now in danger!” he exclaimed further.

  “How is that possible?”

  He looked at me disgustedly and reached across the table to smack me in the head.

  “I taught you to think better than that. What have your years of being a detective not taught you? They both, after betraying me, moved to New York City because it’s one of the best places in which to hide. Philippe, ever the gambler, got into debt and had to pull off risky jobs in order to feed his expensive habits! He got caught and he told the Americans what he knew to get out of the bind he was in. The stupid Americans let the Chinese steal the information away from them, right under their noses, and now they too want the treasure and that isn’t the worst of it! Ahmed did Philippe one better! He sold his information to terrorists, who will stop at nothing to get the treasure. Imagine a terrorist network in full control of an unlimited source of wealth such as the treasure of our people! It would be a disaster! I have taken what I wanted and I have broken the laws of many nations, but never have I wanted the world wide chaos of anarchy that might come of such a terrorist group. It is they that tried to kill you. Even though they do not yet know you are my daughter, they know you are a capable detective and they don’t want you to decipher the riddle before they do. And, as far as the Americans are concerned, they too will try to shoot you in the back. As for the Chinese, they would kidnap you and torture you more vilely than I ever would, in order to learn of your secrets! Because of these two men, your life is now in danger!”

  “I didn’t know you cared so much for me!” I said, with heavy sarcasm lacing my tone of voice.

  Father pointed a stern finger at me, “I did not lie when I said I was proud of who you have become!”

  We both looked at each other for a long moment and then I glanced away at the ocean, as we, by mutual agreement, let the silence lengthen.

  Well, I had my answers. My father was guilty of murder once again, and yet he was one of the few people in the world that, because of wealth and connections, would never be brought to justice.

  I had a terrorist cell that wanted me dead so I didn’t spoil their fundraiser for their next global jihad. I was a prime candidate to be seized by the CIA or some other agency and water boarded until they had what they needed to reinstate the gold standard and kill inflation, all done in the name of what was best for the greater good of the people. And then, of course, there were the Chinese who would throw me in a hell hole somewhere and rape and beat me practically to death until I told them what they wanted.

  Then, they would let me mercifully die, rotting in a cell somewhere far from the range of any media attention. It was a rather bleak future to consider.

  I really should have just kept driving, but it was too late for that now.

  “I can protect you.”

  I looked over at father, studying him and his offer.

  He appeared sincere enough, but it was a self evident truth that my father’s deals always got back far more than they gave out.

  “Does anyone know of what significance I am in finding the treasure?”

  “No, I don’t think so. That is, other than your brothers and sisters, and you can be sure that they have plans of their own!”

  He looked away, his gaze troubled, and then, surprisingly, he admitted, “I’m no longer in control of everything like I used to be. It is hard to grow old.”

  That was a
shocking revelation coming from my father. I was surprised his ego would allow him to admit such a thing.

  I got up and he looked at me speculatively.

  “Am I free to go or are you going to hold me here as your prisoner?” I asked uncertainly.

  “You are free to go, but I will be watching.”

  “I never doubted it, father.”

  I turned to go, but he caught my arm.

  “The detective that saved your life, I am very grateful to him. I set up trust funds for his two children to be managed by their mother.”

  That further revelation shocked me. I knew he was just trying to buy my affection, but he hadn’t had to do it in that way.

  “I thank you for that.”

  He nodded and let go.

  I had taken several steps, when I came back to stand before my father. He looked up, a little surprised I think.

  “What do you know, if anything, about a man who goes by the name of Flint?”

  His eyebrows rose dramatically and he stood up, “What has he to do with this?”

  “I think he wants the treasure too. You know of him then?”

  “He very nearly succeeded in killing me once!” Father boomed out loudly.

  I smiled, feeling a little knot of tension unravel inside of me.

  He stared angrily at me, not liking my smile. “What are you thinking?”

  It was a little daring, but I couldn’t hold myself back from saying, “Knowing that he wanted to kill you is something of a personal recommendation to me.”

  His face clouded up and I realized then that I had said too much. But then he further surprised me by bursting out laughing, “I have missed you and your sharp tongue! Will you not stay for dinner?”

  I wouldn’t even begin to dream of that!

  I stepped back quickly, “No, the ferry is waiting for me and I must go!” I said quickly.

  “Very well then, go; send Marshawn down to me on your way out.”

  I nodded and headed back to the car.

  Was I really going to get out of here? He had to have some plan in play, but what was it?

  I drew near a group of gathered men that had been standing and watching the entire interchange between me and father.

  They were all my brothers and yet they looked at me with calculated dislike, which I let sheet off me as best as I could. It would not do to show that I was intimidated at this stage of the game.

  Picking Marshawn out of the bunch, I jerked my head back toward father and said, “He wants you.”

  And that was all. I got in my car and left, thanking God all the way for a miracle.