Brevet Wedge: The Charlemagne Files

By K.A. Bachus

"I've never known Mack to make a threat he was not prepared to carry out," I said carefully. "He doesn't bluff."

 

Frank Cardova provides logistic support for a highly effective team of deadly operatives known as Charlemagne, the premier freelance specialist team used by western governments for black operations conducted without fingerprints. Mack, the team's knife-wielding leader, and his son Charlie arrive on Frank's doorstep bringing chaos, terror and violence with them.

 

The last thing Frank ever wants to see is Louis, the volatile marksman of the team, anywhere near his home, let along sitting at the kitchen table drinking a martini meant for him and flirting with his wife. For Frank, the men of Charlemagne have become the ultimate houseguests from hell.

 

Mack offers Frank's subordinate, Steve Donovan, a chance to join the team after the fallout of a recent disaster puts his young family at risk. As Frank watches Steve turn into a killer and his own wife and daughter discover what his thirty-year career has been all about, he helps the team save the lives of Steve's family while dreading the danger to his own.

 

Can Frank trust anyone in his immediate circle?

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.A. Bachus
• Release date: Oct 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9798223229636

K.A. Bachus

K.A. Bachus is acquainted with the world of Cold War secrets. A Chicago-born granddaughter of Lithuanian immigrants who fled Hitler and Stalin, she began adult life during the last year of the Vietnam era by enlisting in the United States Air Force where she typed aircrew intelligence briefings and ran a large claissifed library in a special operations unit. After receiving her commission, she served in England and Japan. As a lawyer, she practiced criminal defense law in Texas before retiring and moving eventually to Maine, USA.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

He wanted to kill her.

Nick tapped the ash from the end of his cigarette into an ashtray on the bedside table. He looked at the straw-colored head lying on the pillow next to him. The blankets were none too clean, the sheets a dingy grey in the morning light, but the motel constituted pure luxury for a thief from the Soviet Gulag. He had come far, but this vile woman made the killers he had known seem like saints. They were all hot, vicious, and effective. She epitomized the cold, thoughtless and selfish. He would rather die by the hand of the first than live with the second.

You're not still mad at me, are you Nick? She yawned and stretched bare arms, awakened by the intensity of his stare.

He had a glimpse of one surgically enhanced breast. It was irresponsible, he said.

I know. But I did it so we could be together. You'll see. We'll have the insurance money and can go anywhere we want. David will be in college and it'll be just us.

The people you hired are dead, he told her, snubbing one cigarette and lighting another.

She reached for the one he had started, so he lit yet another for himself.

I didn't hire anybody, she said after a long drag.

The ones you manipulated your husband into hiring.

Oh.

He wanted to tell her all of it, scream it into her face. He clamped his jaw shut lest he lose control.

She blew the smoke through pursed lips and turned to look at him. Did they get the guy? Ricky's enemy, I mean. Did they get him before they died? Do you think their friends will go after Ricky now, or should I tip off the FBI to make sure?

Her single-minded ruthlessness took his breath away. He could not explain to her that her actions would not only kill her husband, which was her desired outcome, but also put him in jeopardy. He presumed it was not what she wanted, but he couldn't be certain.

Why the Chinese? he asked.

My uncle … I thought you would be proud of me.

Proud of her? Admiring of her cutthroat proclivities, her inventive, though imbecile, means of achieving her ends? And those ends were directly contrary to anything that might be good for him. He wanted to tell her about the man whose throat had been cut and also what it meant.

I needed Ricky alive.

But you said last night that they failed. So he is alive. You're confusing me.

Six men are dead, Linda. The people who killed them will come for Ricky. They are smart people.

You know who they are?

Yes.

Maybe you can get them to finish the job, Nick.

It was a germ of an idea, emanating from an evil source, but if he could entice them to rid him of her as well, it would be worth it.

ONE

As a senior intelligence officer, I can't not make a record, no matter what Mack says. I will lock this up at my bank rather than at work since I now know how unsecure all secret systems are. All the caveats and classifications apply. This is WEDGE material. I'm taping it so I can truthfully say I didn't write anything down.

It began as I enjoyed a brief rapturous moment pulling into my driveway on Friday evening before a long holiday weekend and the beginning of an entire week off.

Oh, wondrous release from the politics (and by God, my job has developed some political strains), the nagging worries, the inanities, the constant battering I receive from above and below. Goodbye, dungeon-like, windowless office. Hello doting, half-dotty, but loving wife, who holds my martini, shaken, not stirred, ready for my imbibing. Sigh.

Sharp intake of breath.

A car with two blond men in it sat parked in front of my house. It was not the usual black Mercedes, but I know Mack when I see him, and I never wanted to see the cutthroat son of a bitch at my house. He did not acknowledge me, though he was frankly watching me. So was his son.

I marched through my front door with my hand on my Walther PPK, ready to do hopeless battle against the missing Frenchman. I'm sorry about what happened, you assholes, but my family is fucking off limits and dear God, I was beginning to sound like Steve and I was ready to fight like him, too, in whatever way my short, round body would allow it.

I was prepared to take the Frenchman apart. He grinned at me from the corner seat at the kitchen table with what I knew had to be my martini sitting in front of him. Steve stood at the kitchen sink drying a crystal glass for my wife Maryann, because she won't let such things go in the dishwasher. She bustled over to the refrigerator, pulled out the shaker, and poured the remains of a batch into a fresh martini glass. It was already in my hand when she added the olive. I stood quivering and my shaking hand threatened to spill the over-full drink, so I threw some of it down my throat to preserve it.

Only the Frenchman, sometimes called Louis, appreciated the state I was in. I could tell by the way he grinned at me. His black eyes twinkled with that mixture of merry madness that always made me shudder. He had grey hair mixed in the dark brown at his temples. It reminded me that the little bit I still have is even more grey. Maryann and Steve joked and jabbered away as usual, the same way they did when we had the Donovans over for barbecue on the happy day of my granddaughter's baptism.

Louis sat in the corner, leaning back and spreading his jacket open so the leather straps of his shoulder rig, the stock of his gun, and the cases of extra magazines on his belt, all advertised themselves directly to my eyes. Yes, he was saying to me, you are right to worry. But don't be stupid.

Leo, said my wife, Sally and little Danny are coming to stay for the weekend. Isn't that lovely? Maryann did not know my game name was Frank Cardova. She didn't know I had a game name. She was overall ignorant of the game I was in.

Maryann thinks all babies are lovely.

I turned up the corners of my mouth. It was expected of me.

I have to go get her, Maryann said and turned to Steve. Are you sure she'll come with me?

There was always that doubt about Sally.

Maryann went to change into something that would make her look less pudgy as if pudginess would thwart her purpose with Sally, and as if there exists an outfit capable of transforming a pudgy body into a supermodel. I followed her into our bedroom.

Steve is different, you know, was the first thing she said to me.

She wiggled into the new gabardine slacks with the special tummy control panel in front.

No, I didn't know. Listen, Maryann …

I think they want you for the whole weekend. Louis said …

Louis! You call him Louis?

That's what he said to call him. She giggled. He kissed my hand. Isn't he precious?

He's a killer, Maryann. There's nothing precious about him.

She stuck a round, magenta earring into her earlobe. It matched some of the flowers printed on her blouse.

I know he's probably dangerous, she said. But it's hard to imagine. He's so charming. It seems Sally and Danny are in some kind of trouble. They're helping to protect them. Isn't that sweet?

By bringing them here? By having you bring them here?

How sweet.

Steve says they must not touch their minivan, you know, the silver one. He says there is information that there may be a car bomb. I had no idea Steve had such terrible enemies. Why do you suppose that is?

I had not told her about the airliner he shot down as an Air Force fighter pilot. I told her now.

How horrible! She shook her head, deploring the world as it is. When I answered the door, she continued, Steve pushed his way in and Louis was right behind him. You will help, won't you Leo? Louis said they will need you to stay at the safe house. He will give you the address.

She put on her mascara by holding the wand steady and blinking her eyelashes down across it. Next came lipstick. She puckered up and put some of it on my cheek on her way out.

The Frenchman chuckled when I gave a last longing look at the half martini still in my glass. He swallowed the rest of his before he left my kitchen and my home. Then Steve and I had a little talk in the laundry room and he told me the score. As with everything else in Steve's life, it began with a fight.

TWO

Steve Donovan is a pretty medium sort of guy. He's medium height and medium weight, with medium brown hair, maybe too much of that, or am I just jealous? Anyway, he has a lot of brown hair that he doesn't always keep well-trimmed and more than medium brown eyes with eyelashes almost like a girl's. This combination earned him the Section nickname Bear.

The token Woman in The Section, which I run, dubbed him that, and gave him a lot of her attention, as women generally do with Steve. He hates the name, but I don't think he minds the attention.

The point is that you wouldn't expect this middle-roader to be a black belt, multiple degrees, in several different styles of martial arts, but he is. He spends much of his free time at it, as he was on the day off I gave him that Friday. He told me he was attending a class in what he called the dojang that morning, having a normal workout, probably beating up one of those big bags that hang from the ceiling, bags that look soft and moveable but are deceptively filled with cement.

Steve turned on instinct when two men came in through the office and sat down in the spectator section. He didn't hear them, he told me, he felt them. They were, of course, Mack and Louis (the Frenchman). They wore suits with ties that were not out of place in a political town like this but did not belong in a karate studio.

The dobok and black belt Charlie wore when he came in did belong, though, and Steve introduced him to his sensei. Everybody was polite. The sensei asked Charlie who his teacher was. Vasily Sobieski, Charlie replied. The instructor didn't think he knew the name. Would he and Steve like to spar?

Sure, Charlie said.

What did you say? I asked Steve when he told me this.

What the fuck was I supposed to say? No, thank you, it looks like you're here to kill me? Or how about, no, I'd rather have your father over there spectating quietly slit my throat. Shit, Frank. I said sure. Just like Charlie said.

You thought they were there to take you out?

It crossed my mind. They don't make social calls, do they? My mind ran a fast search through the list of The Families trying to find one that might be able to afford to commission them.

The Families was Steve's name for the relatives and friends of people on the airliner he shot down who had sworn vengeance. Steve had been dodging a few handy accidents lately.

And? I asked him. Could any of them afford Charlemagne?

No. He shrugged. Besides, I beat the shit out of Charlie.

I was surprised. You mean he's not very good?

He's fucking great. I'm just better. That's all.

But that wasn't all. I could tell by his tone. I waited.

Charlie made me look good, he said finally. In front of the other two. It's a kind of test, Frank, and I've passed the preliminaries.

I looked at him standing there in my laundry room that Friday evening. It was one of our few opportunities to talk privately. He pressed buttons on the washing machine, punched them like they were the enemy. He knew then and I knew then that death is not the only dramatic change that can occur in a life.

How do you know you passed? I asked him.

He smiled. Mack told me I fight like Vasily.

THREE

I checked my back as I drove to the