The Ninth Orphan (17 page)

Isabelle rolled out of bed as fast as her stiff joints would allow and rushed straight to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Nine emptied two of his shopping bags on the bed.

His latest purchases included make-up supplies, which he immediately stowed in his black kit, and items of women’s clothing. He was folding a pink sweater and matching track pants when Isabelle emerged from the bathroom. “I didn’t know your size, so these may be a little baggy,” he said, slightly embarrassed.

As much as she wanted nothing from him, Isabelle had been longing for a change of clothes. Hiding her relief, she noted there were also socks, panties and pajamas, and even some cosmetics and toiletries. She coolly accepted the items.

At the same time, she marveled at the complexity of the man before her. He routinely mistreated her yet made sure she was safe and well-kempt. She also hadn’t forgotten how he’d shielded her from gunfire by throwing himself on top of her in the mall’s elevator. Risking his life for her like that seemed out of character to say the least.

Isabelle briefly looked into his eyes. Her abductor was an enigma to her. He could shift from caring to ruthless and back to caring again, all in the space of an hour. It was as if he suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder.

From another shopping bag, Nine pulled out food he’d purchased. Isabelle snatched a large slice of quiche from him. She began devouring it without bothering to heat it in the room’s microwave, so famished was she.

She stopped eating when Nine placed before her a bottle of
Lemon, Lime and Bitters
–
her drink of choice. Not just the drink, but the exact brand.
She wondered how he
’
d known, then remembered the decorative bottle of the drink she kept in her lounge. Isabelle realized Nine must have noted the bottle when he
’
d broken in to her apartment.

Lastly, Nine pulled out a camera. Isabelle looked at him, bemused.

“
I thought you might like to take some photographs,” he offered lamely.

Isabelle glared at him condescendingly, then continued eating. Nine shrugged then switched on a television set and tuned into a game of American Football screening live on a cable channel. His team, the Chicago Bears, were playing the Green Bay Packers.

Nine had followed the Bears since he was a young boy. He became absorbed in the game. It was a home game for the Bears. They were playing at Soldier Field Stadium, next to Lake Michigan. Seeing the stadium took Nine back to his childhood when Kentbridge occasionally used to take some of the orphans to Bears’ home games.

Behind him, Isabelle was wondering what made her abductor tick. She started to drink from the bottle, then
paused as she noticed Nine
’
s reflection in one of the room
’
s windows. Having never studied his face properly, Isabelle stared at the reflection intently.

She reluctantly admitted to herself he was very handsome. Somehow, that made her detest him even more. His face was perfectly chiseled, but what was most striking were those shimmering green eyes
–
they contrasted sharply against his olive skin and dark hair.

Unlike all the other good-looking men she
’
d known, Nine didn
’
t seem narcissistic.

Vanity is probably the only bad trait he lacks
.

Isabelle hastily averted her eyes when Nine noticed her staring.

#

Cho-Wu aimlessly walked the city streets. He’d been told by his MSS superiors to lay low until they received word from Nine that the Yamashita deal would take place.

If there was one thing Cho-Wu hated, it was downtime. He’d have preferred they’d given him basic intel assignments, or anything for that matter, to keep his mind off sex.

Inevitably, his thoughts always drifted back to kinky fantasies and it was no coincidence he ended up in Pigalle Place, in Montmartre, one of Paris’ red light districts. The Chinese agent was like a kid in a candy store as he soaked up all the place had to offer. His X-rated meanderings took him into adult shops, peep shows, strip clubs and the famous erotic museum, Musee d’Erotisme, on Boulevard de Clichy.

Cho-Wu became progressively disoriented at the sight of the gorgeous young white women displaying their wares. He found himself fantasizing about hardcore activities, or more specifically, his sadomasochistic fetishes.

It wasn’t long before the agent found himself in a seedy side-street where there was a wondrous selection of underground S&M dungeons. In one of these, he discovered the perfect femme to satisfy him. Willowy and provocative, she looked no more than sixteen or seventeen, although she was most likely a few years older than that. Everything about her was alluring – even her name which, according to her name-tag, was Virginie. Her on-the-job name no doubt. A sleazy-looking, middle-aged pimp hovered nearby.

Ignoring the pimp, Cho-Wu approached Virginie and was relieved to find she spoke English. Virginie said it was her first day on the job and she was a virgin. The pimp nodded, indicating his trick spoke the truth. Cho-Wu had been around long enough to know it wasn’t true, but for the sake of the sick fantasies in his head, he didn’t argue.

The whole set-up was perfect. Tying up such a seductively innocent-looking French girl and doing almost anything he wanted to her short of murder was a dark enough fantasy for him. He was beginning to feel incredibly excited just thinking about it.

Cho-Wu only acknowledged the pimp’s presence when the conversation turned to money. Desperate to satisfy himself, he dispensed with the usual negotiating routine and promptly paid the exorbitant sum Virginie’s pimp asked for. He then took Virginie into a private dungeon where she immediately disrobed.

Nearly beside himself with lust, the horny operative tied Virginie up and spanked her shapely butt with his bare hand to warm her up for what was to come. As he looked at the selection of fetish equipment at his disposal, the cellphone in his pocket rang.

Cho-Wu cursed. Not having relieved himself since arriving in Paris, the sexual tension was getting to him. His throbbing erection was becoming painful and he was fast reaching breaking point. He considered not answering the call, but eventually lost his resolve. “Dwai,” Cho-Wu mumbled as he finally answered.

The caller was Cho-Wu’s Paris-based MSS superior, Lhozang, who had received the text message Nine had sent him an hour earlier. As he listened to Lhozang, Cho-Wu’s thirsty eyes roamed over Virginie’s young body. He forced himself to tear his eyes away from her as Lhozang gave him his instructions.

“
Meet the American under the Eiffel Tower at eight thirty tomorrow morning,” Lhozang said. “You will be meeting this Changing Face Dragon alone. Come to the Embassy now and I will fully brief you.”

The connection went dead. Cho-Wu couldn’t believe his bad luck. Yet again he was being forced to cut short a bondage session before he’d had a chance to even begin to satisfy himself. He didn’t know how much more of this torture he could take.

Fuming, the agent left without a word of explanation, leaving Virginie tied up.

25

O
nly a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower, Naylor, Kentbridge and Seventeen had been brainstorming all evening inside the Hilton Paris hotel. The team were deep in conversation around the kitchen table in the Omega director’s plush suite. They were exploring all angles, determined to capture Nine before he traded the Yamashita treasure location to another party.

The two men watched as Seventeen used her laptop to hack into the DST’s French Intelligence grid. She scanned live security footage of airports, train stations and even the departure terminals of France’s main sea-ports searching for anyone who could be Nine.

Although they didn’t express it, all three Omegans knew locating the rogue operative would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack or, more appropriately, a chameleon lizard in a jungle. They’d been throwing around ideas all evening, but suspected they would probably have to wait until either Nine, or more likely Isabelle, gave them another trace.

Kentbridge decided to take a break from the brainstorming. Unlike Naylor, he knew solutions often came when not dwelling on a problem.

The senior agent walked to the fridge, retrieved a can of beer and wandered through to the lounge where he plonked down on a couch in front of a television set. Not by chance, the same Chicago Bears game Nine was watching screened live from Soldier Field Stadium. Seeing the venue made Kentbridge homesick for Illinois.

He wished like hell he was in Chicago with his wife. For that’s exactly where he’d have been if Nine hadn’t decided to jeopardize the entire Omega program.

Kentbridge suddenly thought back to a bright summer’s day in Chicago’s Lake Shore Park. Nine, who was only seven years old at the time, played hide ’n seek in the park with the other kids. All of the orphans were found one by one, except for Nine.

At dusk, the other orphans still hadn’t found Nine so Kentbridge had been forced to search the park himself. He eventually found the stubborn orphan hiding in a hollow beneath a pile of leaves. Nine’s entire face was covered in mud and he’d selected leaves to camouflage himself. Kentbridge recalled looking down into his bright green eyes and thinking the boy looked like a wild animal facing capture.

As he continued to watch the televised game, some ideas came to him on the sort of guises Nine might resort to. Kentbridge grabbed a pencil and notepad from a coffee table next to the couch and sketched a few characters he felt Nine could possibly adopt.
It’s a long shot, but what the hell.
The first character was a handicapped man, the second a vagrant and the third a university professor.

In all, he drew a dozen characters, each totally different. After studying the drawings, he took them through to the kitchen where his fellow Omegans were still trolling through the seemingly never-ending security camera footage on the laptop. He threw the pad down in front of them. “Sebastian might look like any one of these.”

Seventeen flicked through the drawings, memorizing each one. She handed them to Naylor and resumed studying the CCTV footage from France’s key departure points.

#

Across town, Nine was so absorbed in the Bears’ televised game he ignored the scowls Isabelle directed his way as she finished her meal and went into the bathroom. The Bears’ game was a close encounter. Two late touchdowns gave victory to the Green Bay Packers, beating the Bears by eighteen points to six.

Nine took the loss as a reflection of his current situation. Just like the valiant Chicago team in that particular game, he felt like whatever he tried lately, he just couldn’t win. Using the remote, he flicked over to a news channel where a French foreign correspondent was reporting on the latest famine in Africa.
Images of starving children flashed across the screen.

As the seemingly well-intentioned French journalist spoke about Africa
’
s
scarcity
and its
limited resources
, Nine smiled to himself almost condescendingly. He considered such statements an absolute joke. Africa did not, nor did it ever have,
limited resources
.

Nine knew something the journalist obviously didn
’
t: Africa was the most abundantly resourced continent on the planet bar none. Like the despots who ruled much of the region, and the foreign governments who propped them up, he knew there was more than enough wealth in Africa
’
s mineral resources such as gold, diamonds and oil
–
not to mention the land that nurtured these resources
–
for every man, woman and child.

He thought it unfortunate Africa had never been able to compete on a level playing field. The continent
’
s almost unlimited resources were the very reason foreigners had meddled in African affairs for the past century or more. Nine knew it was Omega
’
s plan, and that of other greedy organizations, to
siphon as much wealth as they could out of vulnerable Third World countries, especially in Africa.

The same organizations had the formula down pat: they indirectly started civil wars in mineral-rich regions by providing arms to opposing local factions, and sometimes even helped to create famines, in order to destabilize African countries. This made the targeted countries highly vulnerable to international control. Once the outside organizations had divided and conquered, they were then able to plunder
the country
’s resources.

The defeated eyes of the starving children on screen reminded Nine of his fellow orphans growing up in the Pedemont Orphanage. Although he had never experienced malnutrition, he knew what it was like to be born into a living hell.

The report went on to show
kids
who had been turned by their rebel captors into ruthless killers before they had the maturity to know right from wrong. Coming from his Omega-
controlled
background, Nine could
empathize
with these
child
killers.