Everybody Talks ...

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Hamza awakened, or at least he thought he was awake. He was restrained in a sitting position. He could move a little bit but doing so caused some pain. The straps holding him down were very tight.

He couldn't see anything, yet his eyes, as far as he could tell, were not covered. The same went for his hearing, he could hear nothing at all, even though he was sure there was nothing obstructing either ear. He thought to make a sound, then realized that whoever was holding him was also probably listening, he didn't want them to know that he was awake.

He tried to remember how he got here, wherever "here" was. He was groggy and he realized that he'd been drugged. Then bits of memory had began to return. The car slowly pulling off the motorway, steam issuing from under the bonnet, Kishiev looking at the dash, then at the road, confused and trying to figure out if they were in any danger.

Aliev in the back was asking what was happening, Hamza had awakened him moments before something struck their vehicle. Aliev was still half asleep but was alert enough to see something moving outside the vehicle.

The man had muttered "What the Hell ..." in Chechen just before the back passenger window nearest the side of the road shattered and Aliev's head snapped to the right as a nine millimeter slug tore through his brain.

Before Hamza could react, Kishiev's window also shattered and the driver's head had bounced off the steering wheel as a slug from the same weapon had hit him in the back of the head. Both of his Chechen bodyguards were down, obviously dead.

Hamza remembered wishing that he was armed, but then a pair of strong hands had reached through his own, now shattered, window. He turned in time to see the syringe stab into his bicep, he felt the sharp sting of the needle, then he felt nothing.

Until he had awakened, restrained, and apparently blind and deaf. For one of the few times in his life, Ditmir Hamza felt fear, absolute, all-encompassing fear.

Wolf turned from the monitor and addressed MacDonald, "With the drugs we've put into him and his current situation, he'll be ready to talk soon."

"What makes you so sure, Mr. Wolf?"

"He's completely restrained, uncomfortably so I might add, he's seen the two people he relied on to keep him safe violently killed right in front of him, he's been snatched out of his vehicle, drugged, and we've made sure that the room he's in has no light and is totally soundproofed."

"What did you give him?" Gordon asked.

"It's a form of LSD, fairly mild but will give the subject hallucinations and make him very paranoid."

"How do you know he'll talk, some men ..." MacDonald began.

Wolf cut him off, "Everyone talks, it's just a matter of time."

Tan Quanyu listened carefully as the police constable detailed the accident on the M8 which had killed two people and, the police believed, had had a third occupant of the vehicle who was now missing. His contact in the Glasgow police was politically motivated, a sincere believer in Communism, especially the variety espoused by the People's Republic of China.

"It looks like a drug hit, but the sophistication of the attack leads us to believe otherwise. A drug gang would have sprayed the vehicle with automatic weapons fire, this car was hit by a single round which disabled the engine and the two dead occupants were each hit by a single round to the head."

Tan asked, "What about the drugs in the vehicle? What about the currency nailed to the driver's head? This seems like a drug thing to me."

"It might be, and headquarters seems willing to write it off as just that, a squabble between drug gangs. But, the circumstances were interesting enough that I thought you'd be interested."

"Hhmm, it may be a simple police matter, but thank you for bringing it to our attention. I'll be in touch PC¹ Huang."

Tan looked at his watch, he needed to get to the communications room at the Consulate in Edinburgh. Ditmir Hamza was overdue, he had expected the man to contact him over an hour ago.

His man inside the Glasgow police did well to contact him. Jason Huang was a true believer, his parents had emigrated to the UK to open a business, with PRC help, and their son had proven to be an asset of very high value indeed. Now it was his job to try and determine if the incident on the M8 had involved his hireling, Hamza.

The pain began in the sole of his left foot and then had radiated up his leg and into his groin. He gasped at the intensity of it, he felt a brief sense of shame as he realized that he had wet himself. Then he realized, he had heard himself gasp, so he wasn't deaf.

As the pain subsided, Hamza tried to regain control of himself, then the pain began again, this time starting from the sole of his right foot. He cried out and tried to wiggle away from the pain spreading throughout his body, to no avail, the straps cut into his flesh, then the pain stopped and the space he was in was suddenly flooded with very bright light.

He clenched his eyes shut, but the brightness of the light seemed to burn through his eyelids, only to abruptly stop, the room dark again. Then a speaker near his right ear hissed to life and he heard, "Kush është miku yt në Kinë?"²

Hamza said nothing, he knew this for some sort of trick, then the pain began again.

MacDonald shook his head, "Hamza is dead? How?"

Wolf shrugged, "Probably a heart attack, I don't really care. But we got a name from him, a cultural attaché at the Consulate in Edinburgh. A certain Tan Quanyu, he's been at the Consulate for a little under a year. I've got my guys checking on him, see what sort of information we have on this guy. It's a start."

"Shall I pass that along to my superiors? Perhaps they already have some sort of ..." MacDonald asked.

"Sure, if you want the guy to skip town as soon as he hears that he's under suspicion."

"You think that there's a leak in my organization?"

"Until we know otherwise, everything we discover should stay with us. Your team and mine, nobody else."

MacDonald nodded, "Probably a wise move."

Wolf grimaced, "Certainly, not probably."

¹ Police Constable.

² Albanian - "Who is your friend in China?"