Free Half-Past Dawn by Richard Doetsch Page A

an early age that if one was to keep secrets, there was no greater location, no place more impenetrable, than his own mind. Computers could be hacked, vaults could be cracked open, associates could be coerced with everything from bribery to chemicals. But as sharp as his mind was, as good as his memory was, there were some things that needed to be recorded. In his simple homeland, a forgotten world that shunned technology in favor of a more spiritual existence, methods existed whose simplicity had been forgotten by modern society.
    Cristos rose from his desk and stepped to the table where the rectangular box lay. He removed a small billfold from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, opened it, and withdrew two thin strips of metal, one L-shaped, the other with a multiwaved tip. He kneeled before the box and slipped the two sticklike objects into the lock on the near end, and with a surgeon’s careful hand, he picked the lock. After placing his tools back in their pouch and slipping it back into his pocket, he stood up, lifted the lid, and peered inside.
    He stared for a moment and finally reached into the case, withdrawing a single envelope. He tore it open and removed a handwritten note. He read it through twice, before putting it back in the envelope and into his pocket.
    He picked up his cell phone—satellite technology, multiple relays, and encryption software made it virtually untraceable for up to three minutes, which was twice as long as any conversation he ever needed to have—and quickly dialed.
    “Hello,” a voice answered.
    “Good morning,” Cristos said in a deep Eurasian accent.
    “Well?” the person on the other end of the phone asked. “Do you have the case?”
    “I do.” Cristos turned his head and stared at the long black box. “But it seems your intelligence—a word so inappropriate—was wrong.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The case was empty.”
    “Empty?”
    “I never had much faith in you, anyway.”
    “You listen to me, I could end your life with—”
    Cristos tuned out the angry voice. It always made him laugh when his employers would threaten him with death when it was that precise expertise he was hired for. The egos of the rich and powerful blinded them to reality, which always made them so surprised when they found the tables turned, when they didn’t get their way, when death turned its eye on them.
    “Good-bye.” With the man still screaming on the other end, Cristos folded up his cell phone.
    He walked to the door and opened it, nodding his head.
    Three men entered.
    “Where’s Tobin?”
    “Dead,” the blond man said. “Jumped off a bridge, hit a by a tractor-trailer.”
    “I take it, then, we have no files on Keeler, no toys from the girls’ room?”
    The blond man shook his head no.
    Cristos nodded, thinking before continuing. “The intel we received on the box in the rear of the Keelers’ car was faulty. It could be a decoy or just plain wrong.”
    The three stood there
    “Which one of you shot Jack Keeler?”
    “I did,” the blond man said quietly.
    “Your name?”
    “Gallagher.”
    Cristos nodded, his dark eyes staring off into space, although truth be told, they were looking inward. “You knew what was to be in the case, correct?”
    Gallagher gave a subtle nod, like a child in school.
    Cristos lifted the lid of the box, displaying its inside to Gallagher. “So you killed him without verifying its contents.”
    And with a sudden whip of his arm, Cristos’s hand snapped out, wrapping around Gallagher’s neck, pulling him close, staring into his eyes as he slowly began to squeeze. Gallagher’s face grew crimson, the veins at his temples growing with each pulse, throbbing with agony.
    Gallagher grabbed Cristos’s hands around his throat, trying in vain to pull them away. He desperately swung his fists, flailing his arms like a child in his first fight, attacking his assailant with clenched hands, but Cristos’s powerful left arm extended, his grip