Dying Art. Don Pendleton

      He could see beads of sweat beginning to run down Garcia’s cheeks. That told Don Fernando the answer even before the other man could speak. Prescience was another of Don Fernando’s virtues. He could read other men as clearly as a book.

      “Yes, Don Fernando,” Garcia said. He swallowed hard, then continued, “He was taken from the resort in the dead of night.” He took a breath and seemed ready to say more, but stopped as Don Fernando held up his palm.

      Sergio, his only son, taken... But by whom? The reports said that a military-style helicopter had been used in the abduction. Surely none of the other cartels had such equipment. So had it been the Mexican government? Doubtful, since he had heard nothing from his internal sources that they would be mounting such an audacious attack. There was only one certain answer.

      “The Americans?” Don Fernando asked.

      Garcia swallowed again, then gave a quick nod. “We believe so. He has vanished without a trace.”

      Don Fernando took another draw on the cigar. If that were so, it meant both good and bad news. Good news meaning that Sergio was probably alive and unharmed, bad that he was most likely not in Mexico anymore. Looking up at Garcia, he frowned.

      “Where were his bodyguards when this occurred?”

      Garcia compressed his lips briefly. “Four of them were killed. The others, I am having brought here as we speak.”

      “How many of them?”

      “Six.”

      Don Fernando raised an eyebrow. “So you are telling me that ten men, whose loyalty is supposed to be beyond question, could not protect my son from an abduction?”

      “They were taken by surprise, sir,” Garcia said. “They fought back. Four of them died.”

      “Silence!” Don Fernando slammed his hand on the desktop with such force that it snapped his cigar in two. He tossed the pieces away and opened his humidor to retrieve another.

      Garcia said nothing. The sweat continued to cascade down his face.

      Don Fernando snorted in disgust as he rotated the tip of the new cigar in the flame of his lighter.

      “When you have them all here,” he said, “assemble them in the courtyard.”

      Don Fernando felt a growing agony over this situation, but he immediately suppressed it. He placed his cigar into the antique, mother-of-pearl ashtray, pulled open his desk drawer and removed a stainless steel 9 mm Taurus semiautomatic pistol. Pulling back the slide slightly, he verified that a round was in the chamber, then set the weapon on the desk in front of him. “I shall attend to this personally. Show everyone the price of failure.”

      “Yes, Don Fernando,” Garcia said.

      The cartel leader waved his hand dismissively, and the other man scurried out the door. When Garcia had left, he picked up his cigar and spoke to the giant.

      “Gordo, after I have dealt with the traitors in the courtyard, kill him. Slowly.”

      The giant’s face showed no expression. He simply nodded and left.

      Patience... Prescience...

      Don Fernando drew on his cigar as he contemplated one of his other virtues: cunning. He thought about the plan that he already had in place, and how he could modify it to ensure that whoever had taken his son would pay a terrible price.

      Yes, he thought as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. There will be a reckoning... There will be vengeance...

      Two months later

      Istanbul, Turkey

      Clayton Tragg watched as the miserable little man used a jeweler’s loupe to inspect the two halves of the hand-carved ivory spheres. This professor, Higgins, the handpicked expert his employer had selected to accompany them, was almost as pathetic as Lucien Bruns himself had been when he was originally contacted about the artifact. How two grown men could get so excited about a pair of old hand-carved pieces of ivory, much less be willing to pay a fortune for them, was almost beyond Tragg’s comprehension. Still, it was what he was getting paid for, on two fronts if the truth be known, so who was he to complain? With things drying up in Iraq and Afghanistan, lucrative new work for the dark ops section of what remained of Granite Security, Inc., was getting more and more scarce. Plus, it beat the hell out of escorting some US-backed mullah and aspiring politician around a perpetual war zone worrying about snipers and IEDs.

      He watched the Turkish art dealer, Hakeem Karga, who had “acquired” the artifact known as The Lion and the Lioness Attacking the Nubian, purported to be from the Islamic Period, and made even more valuable because it dared to show human figures when such depictions were considered idolatry by Sharia Law. Two corresponding circular spheres of hand-carved ivory and mother-of-pearl over twelve hundred years old...

      Tragg reflected on that. The piece had been around for over a thousand years, the last several decades of which it had spent in the National Museum of Iraq, only to have been “removed” when American tanks rolled into Baghdad. From there it passed through various hands before ending up here, in the possession of one of the biggest crooks in Istanbul, who’d most likely bought it from ISIS or al Qaeda, or one of the other regional bands. Once the militants finally realized they could make themselves some money selling stolen stuff from the museums instead of getting their religious rocks off by destroying it, they quietly set aside their strict ideology of demagogy and covertly entered into the more profitable black market business. Maybe they were smarter than they looked. And then again, maybe not. Tragg was sure that Karga had paid them a fraction of what he figured he could get selling it on the black market to some rich American or European collector.

      Or maybe even a Mexican one. Tragg silently chuckled at the thought.

      The dingy little room had a sour smell to it and the four Turks were smoking those foul-smelling cigarettes with the extended filters that had been mashed one too many times. Tragg could hardly wait to get the hell out of there. His eyes went to his partner, Tyrone Dean, who stood by impassively with his hand in the pocket of his black shirt. His shaved head was gleaming with sweat, but Tragg knew it wasn’t from nerves. He’d been with Dean on too many missions. He was an iceman. No doubt he had his hand around the grip of his Walther PPK, ready in case the art dealer tried to pull something. Not that Tragg thought he would. He’d dealt with this Karga before, and the man always made a substantial profit on these black-market dealings. If word got out that he’d pulled a double cross during one of them, his reputation would take a severe hit.

      Besides, Tragg felt confident that he and Dean could take them all out if it ever came to that.

      The mousy professor squirmed in his chair, his tiny fingers rubbing the mother-of-pearl inlays with the care and tenderness of someone stroking a beautiful woman’s body, all the while murmuring under his breath, “Yes, yes, yes.” Tragg watched with amusement, figuring the little man’s reaction must be a good sign.

      Karga brought his cigarette to his lips, drew on it deeply, and then said with a smoky breath, “See? Did I not tell you it was genuine?”

      The professor gazed up, the loupe still in place over his right eye, his lips pulled back showing a row of small inward-slanted teeth. “I do believe it is.”

      The art dealer cocked his head to the side. His features curved into a knowing expression as he winked at Tragg. “Then we have only to discuss the price at this time, correct?”

      He snapped his fingers and then wiggled them back and forth, indicating that the professor should hand the item back to him. The little man complied with the utmost care.

      “Now,” Karga said, placing the two pieces into a velvet-lined box and then placing that box into a metal briefcase that he secured with a special lock. He handed the briefcase to one of his big bodyguards, who stood close to him. “Are we ready to do business?”

      “We need to phone our employer first,” Tragg said. “In private.”

      Karga