Ciphers Read online

  What broke up the machismo was the sea of gorgeous women — supermodels, all clad in tight-fitting dresses. Mostly blondes, with some brunettes and dark-haired girls thrown into the mix. They’d been herded into Rico’s VIP booth as soon as he’d arrived, with the promise of free thousand-dollar champagne and as many drugs as they could feasibly put up their noses or on their tongues.

  And everyone was making full use of the blank cheque.

  Rico wasn’t in New York often, so the burden rested squarely on his shoulders to make sure he and his entourage had a good time. It was rare that his father granted him permission to leave Mexico, but as a young scion with no concrete role in his family’s business proceedings, he had little else to do but wait around until he was given the go ahead to live life at its most lavish.

  He wasn’t good at much, but he could damn well party.

  So he lifted an open bottle of Dom Pérignon out of the nearest ice bucket and danced across to the closest model. She was stunning, even more so in the lowlight. Six inches shorter than him, even in heels, with a physique like something off the cover of a fitness magazine. She had broad blue eyes and white teeth between bright red lips, and she flashed her most alluring smile as he sauntered his way over. He could barely walk in a straight line, but he managed to gesture at the bottle in his hand. She batted her eyelashes at him and bent slightly at the knees.

  Then she tilted her head back and opened her mouth.

  He poured the champagne between her teeth, letting her suck it down. Then he took the bottle away, took a swig of his own, leant in and kissed her. She tasted warm and inviting, and she kissed back hard.

  Rico knew it wasn’t just his status that allowed him to womanise with such ease. He had his mother’s good looks — his father was short and bald and fat, but the man was just as rich and powerful as he was ugly. He was the head of the Guzmán pasador, so he’d married a gorgeous Latino woman from Guadalajara, and together they’d had Rico. Thankfully, Rico had been blessed by the genetic lottery. Thick black hair swept back, a face like a movie star, pale green eyes with long lashes.

  He used his blessings to spin the model around and gyrate against her, and together they descended into a bubble of pleasure. He had to use all the self-control in his arsenal not to drag her off to the bathroom and bend her over the countertop.

  Instead, he thought he’d be a gentleman.

  For once.

  He whispered in her ear, ‘Let’s get a fresh bottle.’

  She turned back around and purred, ‘I’d like that.’

  He drained the last dregs of the Dom Pérignon in his hand, then lowered the bottle to the countertop. He shoved his way over to the ice bucket, but it was empty.

  So he strode straight for the booth’s entrance.

  One of the security put a hand on his chest. The man was a tried and tested sicario for Rico’s father. Not to be fucked with under any circumstances. But Rico couldn’t see straight, so he slapped the hand away. Hard. He didn’t want the guy to have to go fetch him another bottle of champagne like he was a baby that needed coddling.

  The sicario stepped in front of Rico. ‘I can’t let you out there on your own. You know the rules.’

  ‘Fuck the rules,’ Rico hissed. ‘We need more Dom.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘The bar is right there.’

  ‘I said I’ll get it.’

  Rico pulled the man close and said, ‘If you don’t let me go there myself, I’ll tell my father you struck me.’

  The guy went pale. Even in the throbbing darkness, punctuated only by dull flashing neon, Rico saw all the colour drain from his face. He smiled. It helped when your old man controlled fifty percent of the heroin and fentanyl that crossed the border from Mexico to America each and every day. You couldn’t buy that sort of power in a hurry. You had to build it, rung by rung, until the whole ladder was complete. To do that, you had to kill a lot of people.

  Raúl Guzmán was by all measures a psychopath, and he wouldn’t take lightly to the fact that one of his men had hit the golden child unnecessarily.

  So, despite the obvious security risks, the sicario backed down.

  Rico smiled and pushed past. He could see the conflict in the man’s eyes. The guy was in a Catch-22. If something happened to Rico, the Guzmán patriarch would never forgive him. He’d be tortured for weeks on end and then left to die. But if he disobeyed Rico’s direct orders, then Rico would twist reality and the sicario would be as good as dead anyway.

  Lose-lose.

  Rico loved it.

  He staggered out onto the dance floor, enmeshing with the throngs of upper-class civilians who’d emptied their savings just to get into Palantir. Rico would feel sorry for them if it wasn’t for his total absence of empathy. They slaved away in cubicles for most of their lives so they could struggle to flirt with the opposite sex at an exclusive venue. The illusion of success. Rico simply asked his father for a credit card, then went out and seized everything he’d ever wanted.

  It was a beautiful way to live.

  He eyed the bar across the room, but he was seeing double. There was a row of booths behind him, all VIP, all brimming with the most attractive people in Manhattan. He oriented himself in the right direction and took a step forward.

  There was someone in his way.

  A guy had come out of one of the booths, like he wanted a moment to himself. He was African-American, built like a tank, with a shaved head and a cold gaze. He wasn’t looking at Rico. He was watching the dance floor. Either looking for a girl to chase, or simply zoning out. Rico didn’t care. The guy looked tough, and mean, but Rico was invincible. He was on a whole different level to these wannabes. Stern looks didn’t faze him.

  He figured, Let’s create some excitement.

  He dropped his shoulder low and stumbled forward and ran into the bald guy from behind, as hard as he could.

  Thinking he’d at the very least knock the guy off the raised platform.

  Make him stumble at least a few steps.

  Make him look like an idiot.

  Wipe the stern look off his face.

  But the guy didn’t budge. It was like he’d been concreted to the floor.

  He turned slowly, raised an eyebrow, and seized Rico by the throat.

  5

  Unlike his colleague, King had enough restraint to enjoy a casual drink without getting carried away.

  He couldn’t pinpoint why. Every time he conducted a rudimentary character analysis he came away convinced that he should be more like Slater. They were men of extremes, after all. Their careers were likely to get them killed, their daily physical regimes were intense enough to make the eventual degradation of their bodies inevitable, and their ability to tolerate discomfort rested as a far outlier in comparison to not just the general population, but most of their peers too. So, realistically, approaching everything in life with that sort of intensity should have been a character trait.

  One drink should turn to two, then five, then ten, then…

  But it didn’t.

  Not often.

  He and Rory sat under the red glow of an outdoor heater in an exclusive laneway beer garden in Yorkville. The drinks were overpriced, the expected tips were exorbitant, and the patrons were important businessmen and women. The first time King had showed up on the bar’s doorstep, he’d been turned away because of his attire. He wore designer clothing but he didn’t wear suits. Ever. It had taken serious persuasion to be allowed in, but then he’d become a regular. He didn’t take his alcohol consumption to Slater’s level, but at least he drank enough for a warm buzz and tipped handsomely.

  Slater had never been here.

  It wasn’t his style.

  Rory gazed around and said, ‘I thought I was doing well.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Not like this.’

  King shrugged and sipped at an unpasteurised brew. ‘As soon as you get wrapped up in Manhattan’s social contest it’s a guaranteed los
s. There’s always someone doing better than you.’

  ‘Then why are you part of it? From what I can gather, you could be anywhere in the country.’

  ‘I like it here.’

  ‘But you’re not playing the game?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You drink at nice establishments. You own some of the finest real estate in the country. I’m sure you eat at expensive restaurants. I’m sure you indulge.’

  ‘Of course. It’s a byproduct of living here.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘You say you’re not playing the game, but everything I see shows the contrary.’

  ‘You train me.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You see what I go through on a daily basis.’

  ‘That’s a small part of your day.’

  ‘You see anyone else working like that?’

  ‘Only professional fighters.’

  ‘I only drill striking with you,’ King said. ‘I’m a third-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I train every day at a Gracie gym near here. Then there’s strength and conditioning. Then work at the nearest shooting range. Then every other avenue imaginable to hone my body — meditation, cryotherapy, infrared saunas, photobiomodulation therapy. It’s a permanent relationship with suffering, and then a marathon journey to recover from that suffering. You spend long enough with that sort of routine and all this socialite-style posturing seems exactly like the farce it is. I guess I take part in it. But I’m detached from it.’

  Rory took a swig of his beer and wiped foam off his upper lip.

  King said, ‘Does that answer your question?’

  ‘It gives me a better idea of what you do for a living.’

  ‘I think you already know.’

  ‘Is that why we’re here?’

  ‘We’re coworkers getting a drink after work.’

  Rory shook his head. ‘We’re not coworkers. You’re in a whole different league.’

  ‘Depends what you mean by “league.”’

  ‘Are you a hitman? For powerful people? People who pay top dollar for human weapons?’

  ‘In a roundabout way, yeah.’

  Rory said nothing.

  King said, ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Without details — uneasy.’

  ‘Would you like details?’

  ‘If I asked for them, would you tell the truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I trust you.’

  ‘You don’t know me well enough.’

  ‘I think I do,’ King said. ‘Sure, we don’t talk much. But I don’t talk much to anyone. There’s more to trust than conversation.’

  Rory said, ‘Continue.’

  ‘You’ve seen me broken by fatigue. You’ve seen how hard I push my body. You’ve never tried to one-up me, or been too hard on me. You’re the perfect blend of stern yet accommodating. I can tell you’re an honourable man outside of our training. I don’t need to interrogate you verbally to know that.’

  ‘If martial arts hadn’t humbled me,’ Rory said, ‘then I wouldn’t be where I am today.’

  ‘So ask away.’

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘The government.’

  ‘Military?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  6

  Slater stood solemn and quiet, surrounded by hedonism.

  His head was swimming from the booze, but he hadn’t lost control. Either he hadn’t consumed as much top-shelf alcohol as he remembered, or he was just getting tolerant to these sorts of quantities.

  He hoped it was the former.

  So in a rare moment of clarity he shuffled his way out of the booth for a moment to himself. He crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed the dance floor, but he wasn’t really paying attention to the throngs of gyrating socialites. He was thinking. And, for the first time in a long time, he was content. He figured he was the perfect level of drunk. Not messy enough to spiral out of control, but far detached from the sordid state that was his usual sober self. Here he could go deep into his own head, unobstructed and unafraid. So he did, and he didn’t find many demons lying there dormant. Maybe he was more drunk than he thought. Maybe he wouldn’t even remember this in the morning.

  Then someone deliberately ran into him from behind.

  He felt the brush of a shoulder against his back before the assailant committed their full weight to the charge. When it came down to reaction speed, there was a staggering difference between himself and 99.9% of the general population. So he understood what was happening in a millisecond and tensed up like a coiled spring, rooting himself in place. The shoulder became forceful as someone tried to shove him off the platform, but now he sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.

  He felt the force reverberate back into the guy’s shoulder, sending the assailant stumbling backward.

  Slater turned around.

  Saw a young good-looking kid, probably only a hair older than twenty, his eyes clouded with drink, his lips spread in an ugly smirk. He was everything Slater hated about New York. Not from the city, just visiting, treating Manhattan as a plaything to use and discard. Probably had a rich dad back home — wherever home was. The lighting was dark and pulsating, but Slater guessed he was Mexican.

  Before Slater could use rational thinking to remember who the richest people in Mexico were, he reached out and snatched the guy by the throat and wiped the smirk right off his face.

  Slater dug his fingers into the trachea, making him gasp for air. The kid’s long eyelashes batted several times over as he gasped and clawed at Slater’s muscled forearm.

  But it was like slapping wet putty against concrete.

  Slater had never seen a reaction quite like what came next. At least five men in suits poured out of the booth next to Slater’s like they’d been electrocuted. They were all in various states of panic. Wide-eyed, tight-lipped, cold-gazed. Hard cruel men, the lot of them. Slater instantly recognised their kind.

  Then he made the connection, and released his grip on what he imagined was the son of a powerful cartel kingpin across the border.

  The music boomed and thrummed through the space, drowning out any conversation that wasn’t shouted, so the scene played out before him like a silent movie. They surrounded the kid, who was pale and shaky and had red marks on his neck from Slater’s grip. They hustled him back toward the booth and then squared up to Slater in a tight procession, all equally angry.

  Slater knew a single moment of weakness could get him mobbed in a situation like this, especially when alcohol was involved. Genetic reflexes meant nothing when he was curled up under five bodies, getting the living shit kicked out of him.

  So he moved like he’d been electrocuted too.

  Jerked forward with fast-twitch muscle fibres of a pro football player.

  He shoved the closest guy so hard that the man came off his feet instantly, as if he’d been hit by a car. The guy toppled back into two of his buddies, who had to use all their attention to catch him and keep him upright. Slater used the next half-second to lunge sideways and seize hold of the fourth man, grabbing him by the lapels with a level of intensity he probably hadn’t felt in a long time. Slater used the moment of hesitation to push him backward, even harder than the first shove. The guy went sideways, crashed into the fifth man, and both of them went down in a heap.

  Slater immediately turned back to the original trio, who were still scrambling for balance. He came within half a foot of them and then stopped short before they had fully righted themselves.

  Above the roar of the music he yelled, ‘Let’s cool it.’

  They didn’t react.

  But they didn’t try to fight him.

  He’d demonstrated a level of power they weren’t accustomed to.

  ‘I respect who you are,’ Slater yelled. ‘You should respect me. You saw what the kid did. I was well within my rights to react.’

  No resp
onse from the suits.

  Just the steady flow of drunk patrons all around them, and the deep vibrations of the bass thumping through the club. Sure, there’d been a sudden altercation right near the VIP booths, but it had happened fast. And it hadn’t escalated. This wasn’t a drunken brawl. It was a tense negotiation between two parties well-accustomed to violence. Not a group of inebriated finance yuppies swinging haymakers at each other because their day jobs didn’t let them channel their cooped-up aggression into something productive.

  Slater stepped in closer and said, ‘How do you want this to go?’

  ‘We need to set an example,’ the first guy he’d shoved said. ‘We can’t be made to look like that. Not here.’

  ‘But you can tell I’m going to be a problem. Or you would have tried something already.’

  ‘It’s better for everyone if we don’t start a brawl.’

  ‘Then go babysit your child,’ Slater said. ‘Pleasure doing business with you.’

  Reluctantly, the group of five trickled back toward their booth. It didn’t happen all at once — there was too much unaddressed machismo in the air. These men were enforcers for a drug lord. That carried certain expectations in and of itself. But Slater had ample experience with the cartels, and he wouldn’t be shy if it came to conflict. There wasn’t a bone in his body that would waver, even if it meant waging war with the entire faction out of a simple inability to back down.

  And they could sense that.

  So they backed down first.

  Then the kid with the long hair and the ugly smirk shouldered past all five of them, drew a Colt M1911 from a holster underneath his suit jacket, and pointed it square between Slater’s eyes.

  7

  Rory said, ‘Off the books?’

  King said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Black operations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you ever in the military?’

  ‘A long, long time ago.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was pulled out of the traditional military structure only a few years into my twenties. People far smarter than me identified certain talents in me. I’m genetically gifted.’