True Faith and Allegiance

Their fears proved unfounded fifteen minutes later when Felix appeared at the hood of the van, carrying a backpack and scratching his beard, looking around at the street and wondering where his new friends had gone.

Chavez appeared inches behind him, startling him with his words. “Everything go okay?”

Felix jumped in surprise, and then laughed as he walked around to the driver’s side. “No problems. They even threw in this shitty backpack for free, although they didn’t cut us the best deal on the pistols. They were one thousand each, with all the trimmings.”

Chavez was unfazed. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers, and if it turns out we need them, it will have been money well spent.”

Felix passed out the pistols to Midas, Jack, and Ding. As the van rolled through central Bucharest the three men function-checked their new sidearms, loaded their primary and spare magazines, and stowed the guns in their waistbands.

While this was all going on, Gavin Biery sat in the very back and pouted.

He wanted a pistol like the other guys.

53

It is extremely rare that a prisoner, once freed, returns to the prison where he served, and to date Alexandru Dalca had proved to be no exception to this rule. He had not been back to Jilava since that day he walked through its gates, and until early this morning, when he woke up panicked that Chinese intelligence officers were circling him, he’d had no immediate plans to do so. But as soon as visiting hours began today he stood waiting at the visitor admittance, signing the book to request a meeting with a current inhabitant of the drab facility.

He’d texted Dragomir Vasilescu and told him he needed some personal time before coming to work because he had to visit a friend in the hospital. Dragomir had replied with “You have a friend?” and Dalca ignored this. He had no intention of ever returning to ARTD, and that would become clear soon enough to his boss. No sense in continuing with any pretense that he liked or even gave a damn about his boss or his company.

Once through the first set of gates at Jilava, Dalca was thoroughly searched, and his phone, wallet, and car keys were removed. He was handled a bit more roughly than the average visitor, he was certain, because the guards doing the frisking remembered him as a former resident, and they extended him neither courtesy nor respect for now residing outside the prison’s walls.

He was escorted into a gymnasium-sized room and told to wait at a table. This was a familiar place to him. He didn’t have family or friends visit him here during his nearly six years of confinement, but his attorneys had sometimes met with him at these tables. Often it had been crowded, standing room only, as all convicts allowed visitors from the outside did so right here.

But this morning, other than a pair of bored guards in the corner and out of earshot, the room was empty.

After five minutes a barred door opened and Luca Gabor strolled in with his hands in the pockets of his prison-issued tracksuit. He seemed mildly surprised to see Dalca, and not particularly pleased about it. Nevertheless, he walked over to the table with a half shrug, though there was no sense of excitement or urgency.

Gabor had been Alexandru’s mentor in prison. A former intelligence officer, he’d left government service to work as a con man, a thief, and a fraudster, rising to the ranks of the most wanted nonviolent criminals in Europe. He’d been arrested in France, then deported to his homeland of Romania, where he was charged and convicted of espionage and treason.

And he was now ten years into a sixteen-year sentence.

Gabor and Dalca had been constant companions, if not friends, in prison; the older man had taught the younger everything he knew, with the promise the younger man would look after Gabor’s family for the years he was on the outside while Gabor languished in here. But Dalca had done no such thing; he broke his promise as soon as he departed through the prison gates, so he wasn’t surprised that Luca Gabor didn’t seem happy to see him when the older man sat down in front of him at the small plastic table in the center of the otherwise empty common area.

Dalca knew Gabor was about fifty, but he looked much older, with his thin white hair, the gray skin of a man who saw little natural light, and deep-set wrinkles.

Gabor lit a cigarette. “I guessed you missed me so bad you came back after sixteen months.”

“And I guess you missed me so bad you’ve calculated the precise time since I left this shitty place.”

Gabor blew smoke. “I knew you’d need something from me someday. I had a running bet with myself that it would be inside two years.”

“You win, as usual, Luca.”

The older man motioned to the walls of the prison around him. “Yeah, I’m a big winner.” He then said, “I won’t ask what you want, at first. I’ll ask what you will give me for whatever it is you want.”