Season One, Episode Eleven: Goodbye Speedokiniland

‘Look, professor, I want you to see something down there that's more fun watching than your water.’
Camry was standing inside the window in room 615. Wearing a suit, tugging at the shirt collar. The professor was a thirtyish sandy-haired man wearing a white lab coat. He came out of the bathroom looking miffed.
Camry waved outside.
‘Down there, by the pool.’
The professor looked taken aback, but Camry grinned.
‘The guy down there, with his brain splattered all over the lounge chair, is Moskvitch. A nasty bugger if there ever was one, professor.’
Camry's smile faded to threat mode.

A man fired a handgun at the surface of the pool, kicked a woman out of the way, nearly tripped over one of his own dead colleagues.
Under water, Markus Bentley held Charlo' tighter as he saw a bullet pierce its way to the bottom of the pool. He shot another thug swimming toward him like a shark approaching its prey.
Charlo' surfaced first, looking right into the bodyguard's gun barrel. She screamed. Bentley was next, his hand with the Glock in front of him, firing. The man fired back, but missed.
‘Run out of here, but not with me,’ Bentley shouted at Charlo' as they climbed out of the pool, which was gradually coloring red with the blood of the dead swimmer.
Bentley didn't look back but ran away between the palms. On bare feet, the Glock and his swimming trunks his only possessions.
He tripped over a root. Landed with his face in the grass. Looked around him. The barman from the pool was behind him. Bentley could outrun him, so he wouldn’t have to kill anybody anymore.
He was approaching the front of the hotel. He came round the corner, saw the valet handling the car keys.

‘So there they go. Another exciting day at the Brother Hotel, don't you think, professor?’
The professor mumbled something and returned to the bathroom, while Camry picked a brandy from the refrigerator.
‘Seeing blood and water makes me thirsty,’ he said to no one in particular.

Markus rammed the valet and grabbed a set of keys at random. They showed the blue and white squares of the Bavarian flag. He ran around the parking lot pushing the remote. The lights flashed. On an X7X, a heavy dark SUV. Behind him, the barman also picked up some keys from the pavement.
Bentley screeched out of the parking lot, into the two-lane street in front of the hotel. Heading north like he'd planned.
As he was passing the intersection, he saw the car behind him. A Chevrolet Ganache. The women's version of the Corvette. Low, sexy, red, convertible. Top down, a good target if he wanted to have a go at his pursuer. The barman.
Markus felt silly driving a heavy vehicle wearing nothing but a pair of downsized swimming trunks, but hey, this situation was out of the ordinary. The barman wasn't exactly dressed for a hot pursuit either.
Bentley saw the guy swerving to the left and coming past him as they careened across an intersection. Bad idea. Bentley went left himself, hitting the sports car. The barman slowed down but stuck close.
Markus looked at the Glock on his dashboard, but thought it would be a bad idea to handle it while driving. Don't Glock and drive.
Instead, he tensed and watched the road ahead. There it was, the pedestrian crossing from the hotel zone to the beach.
Just as the lights turned red, he braked, turned the car left and went right on to the beachfront walk amid screams from the tourists. The barman was still chasing him.
Bentley turned on his headlights and honked like it was snowing in hell. The tourists dispersed alright, but not all of them as fast as he had expected. Scared parents pulled their kids into the sand, skaters went right into the boardwalk café and rammed the waiters, sending the hamburger and pizza plates shattering around.
Markus suddenly braked, forcing his pursuer into a maze of fruit stalls, paintings, fitness equipment and musical instruments left behind by buskers on the run.
The stuff was flying around, but Bentley wasn't watching, he was hurrying to get some distance between the barman in the red convertible and him.
The next pedestrian crossing over the main road was coming up. Markus picked up speed and saw the surprise on the face of the truck driver who was going parallel with him on the main road.
Bentley honked at the family ready to cross the beach path. They moved into the sand, good for them. He pulled the SUV to the right, left the path with just inches left, saw a bus coming but drove across the road to put himself short in front of the truck.
The barman followed him but he wasn't fast enough. The truck smashed him in the side. He careened back across the road and hit the bus. The red convertible was propelled onto the beach, but the barman was already flying through the air with the life out of him. Not wearing seat belts in a convertible. Bad idea.
Markus saw the wreckage in his rearview mirror. He would do anything to avenge his sister. Even shoot a thug like Moskvitch in a crowded swimming pool. Camry was right about that. But now he had to do things for himself.
‘Charlo', are you safe?’
‘As safe as things go.’
‘Are you still with me on Taiwan?’

NEXT: Markus Bentley recovers from the kill in Season One, Episode Twelve before January 12.

Season One, Episode Ten: The Kill

‘Taiwan? Why would you want me to go there?’
Markus and Charlo' were sitting on a bench in the oceanside park.
‘Forget it, it's just something that guy said.’
‘That guy you killed at the hotel?’
‘I didn't kill him, remember? They shot him from a helicopter.’
‘From a helicopter? Are you serious?’
Markus nodded. He offered her a ball of marzipan before he dropped one in his mouth himself.
‘Why did you run away then? If the guy got shot from a helicopter, they'll know it wasn't you who did him,’ Charlo' said.
‘Still, I don't want to be around when someone gets shot. And I might have been the next one.’
‘Who are you?’ Charlo' asked in a lower tone of voice.
‘They killed my sister.’
Markus looked at the ground. She touched his arm.
‘I'm sorry to hear that. Who did it?’
‘Does the name Moskvitch mean anything to you?’
‘Sounds like Russian to me.’
‘I still don't understand all the details, but I know he's the one responsible for her death. I have to do something about it.’
‘Why don't you go to the police?’
Markus looked at the two male joggers passing by.
‘This is a problem the police cannot solve. Unless I do it myself, it will never get solved.’
Charlo' looked at the ground.
‘Can I call you Bent?’
‘I don't really like that, though you can call me anything you like.’
A panhandler was approaching, but Bentley's stare made sure he changed his itinerary.
‘Do you have any reason why you would to return to the Brother Hotel?’ he asked.
‘I've got friends who go there for the weekly Wednesday brunch and hang around the pool and the beach and the bar, anywhere young people hang.’
Markus nodded.
‘Wednesday. That's tomorrow.’
‘What are you planning?’ she asked.
‘I want to avenge my sister,’ he said.

Markus Bentley left his clothes in the car two miles away, at a safe distance from today's event, so it wouldn't be located as a suspect vehicle once the deed was done. He was only wearing tiny swimming trunks and carrying a towel and a bottle of suntan lotion. He walked over along the beach, lied down on the towel for half an hour. When he left without picking up the lotion, a gray-haired man with a straw hat shouted after him to complain. Markus pulled up his shoulders and picked up the plastic bottle only to deposit it further on a low wall between the path to the pool and the palm trees.
He wound his way through the palm trees. The deep house music told him which direction the pool was in. The mood was very different from his previous visit.
Bentley saw the young women on the left of the pool, but pretended not to notice. He let his eyes drift to the company across the water, on the right, a bunch of dark tan men with women swooning around them. Two retired couples at the far end of the pool, obviously trying to stay away as far as possible from the deep house drifting out of the pool bar, on his right before he hit the pool. Always put the pool bar at the front, so you get first choice of the arriving customers. Two middle-aged men were waiting for their orders right now.
Markus stuck to the left edge of the pool and the obviously predictable happened.
‘Hi, Bent,’ Charlo' called out from the bunch of young women.
‘Ola, chica.’
He wished she had remembered not to mention names. With a bit of luck, the sound of his name was drowned out by the house music and nobody would remember after the panic.
‘Bent.’
There, she did it again. He wanted to show off that little finger as a friendly warning, but he was worried he would drop that thing he was holding under the towel.
Bentley crouched next to the three young ladies and one young man in the group. He nodded vigorously at the end of a question. One of the women started talking. Bentley smiled at her and looked at the pool bar. One customer was staying on, the other one was wading across to this side. Not good. Bentley smiled back at the speaker and looked again. The guy with the pinacolada or whatever was sticking to the side of the pool like a jellyfish. Not good.
‘Bent, do you think they'll make a good couple?’
Charlo' was pointing at the young dude and the brunette sitting on his chair. Bentley nodded.
‘You're beautiful people. Sure.’
A brutally loud laugh resounded from behind them, from the other side of the pool. A perfect excuse for Bentley to turn his body half around and look at the source of the commotion.
The guy with the dark mustache and the gold-framed shades was having the time of his life, slapping the bikini babes and the shady guys crowded around him like shoppers around a market stall. Moskvitch. He was recognizable from the picture the Chinese man had given him in room 714.
Bentley counted three bodyguards around the man. One guy swimming down there in the pool could also be a member of their entourage. But Markus had no time to wait. Moskvitch was fondling one of his lady friends, gross.
Bentley turned to Charlo'.
‘Too bad but this is where my vacation ends, now I have to start working.’
He took hold of her, gently but convincingly. As he turned her around to face the opposite side of the pool, the towel slipped out of his hands. To reveal the Glock he had been holding awkwardly underneath.
The young people in his group screamed as they saw what he was doing. But he had no time for them.
He raised his arms around Charlo', pointing the gun straight at Moskvitch across the water. Fired as he stood still for a long second. Then pushed her forward. Fired some more as he saw the bodyguards around Moskvitch reach for the towels on their chairs. Where they had been hiding their own firepower.
Bentley pushed Charlo' forward as he kept firing at the men. Only the men, not the women, please. Those men treated them as decoration, so he didn't want to harm them. Around the pool, pinacoladas and other pseudotropical juice clattered against the ground.
Bentley held on to Charlo' while they jumped into the pool, still firing at Moskvitch and his men.

NEXT: Markus Bentley finishes off the kill in Season One, Episode Eleven before January 2, 2009

Season One, Episode Nine: Room 714

The Chinese man picked up his chopsticks and brought a white dumpling to his mouth without his eyes leaving Bentley's face.
‘Is that what he told you? That I would have a name for you?’ the man said in fluent English, without any trace of an Asian accent.
Markus nodded.
‘I have a lot more than that.’
‘What's your name?’
‘Didn't he tell you you're not supposed to ask that? You can call me Cadillac, for all I care. But I wouldn't drive any of the bleeding wrecks.’
He drank a cup of green tea.
Markus noticed the table had several plates on it. One with half a dozen of dumplings and soy sauce, one with a tuna sandwich and two with pieces of fruit. Pineapple, apple, watermelon. Fresh and symmetrical.
He walked over to the table.
‘Can I get some of your fruit?’ Markus asked.
‘Cadillac,’ as he called himself, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do whatever you please.’
Markus used a toothpick to stab at a piece of pineapple. There were two cups of green tea.
‘Were you expecting me?’ Markus asked.
‘Cadillac’ looked out the window, at the beach.
‘Do you own a gun?’
‘You have one for me?’ asked Markus.
The Chinese man looked around before stepping to a corner chair below which a thick envelope was lying.
‘Everything you need to know is in here,’ he said while handing him the envelope.
It felt really heavy, but Markus didn't want to look inside in this man's presence.
‘Cadillac’ kept his eyes darting around, making him feel uncomfortable.

Riot left room 725 and walked toward the elevator, away from room 714. He went down to the underground car park and walked around looking for the vehicle. He drew a deep breath when he saw the dark BMW X7X.
‘I'm glad you made it out on time,’ he said to the woman behind the wheel.

‘Do you have the three elders?’ the Chinese man asked.
‘My sister gave them to me.’
‘You know the answer is in Taiwan,’ the man said.
‘But what is the question?’ Markus asked.
‘Cadillac’ paced near the window.
Markus recognized the noise, the vibration of the windows.
A helicopter flew past the hotel, doors sliding open. A man in a jumpsuit and goggles appeared, aiming a machinegun. At room 714.
Markus didn't remember who was the first to shout ‘Down,’ but the glass was already flying. He clutched the envelope and ran off into the hallway. The elevator was ten floors below. Markus rushed for the emergency exit, running down the stairway like there was a monster on his heels.
It took him a while to realize the sound was his cell ringing.
‘I'll meet you at the shopping mall downstairs,’ he told Charlo'.
‘Fine. There's a reception desk with some kind of silver Christmas tree on. I'll be waiting,’ she said.
He wiped the sweat off his face just before pushing open the door to the underground mall. He didn't want to look too flustered, just in case.
He found the silver tree but she was nowhere in sight. The tap on his shoulder made him jump. The envelope fell to the floor with a heavy thump.
‘What's wrong with you?’ Charlo’ asked.
‘I met a contact up there and he got himself killed.’
‘You killed him?’
‘No, of course not, but they might think I did, so we need to get out of here yesterday.’
He pulled her away by the arm.
‘Let's find your car, Charlo'. Are you up for a trip to Taiwan?’

NEXT: Markus Bentley goes for the kill in Episode Ten before December 25.

Season One, Episode Eight: Room Service

Markus Bentley first walked over to the beach like a customer worried about the temperature of the sea water. He just stopped from dipping his toe in the water.
He wandered around the gardens before entering the lobby. There wasn't much movement here that early, but still he hoped he wouldn't be noticed too much.
He descended to the underground shopping mall, had a look through the windows of the upscale boutiques selling bags from Fendi and Prada, watches, jewelry. Most of them weren't even open yet at his hour. There was warm lighting and cream white sofas inviting him to stay longer. This was not his environment.
Purely on a hunch, he took the elevator up. You needed an electronic room card to give the thing a destination, but he was in with a Japanese couple up to the eighth floor. He mumbled something about also having a room on the 8th and they smiled. He let them out first and turned in the opposite direction. They went left so he turned right. Luckily the hotel didn't have the system from communist countries like China and the Soviet Union where you had a babushka on every floor checking the comings and goings, Markus thought.
He didn't really care about the 8th floor. He just wanted to understand the lay of the land. At the end of the hall was the emergency exit. Markus pulled the door open with some difficulty and peered inside. Hardly any lighting in there, a good place to hide or to move about relatively unnoticed.
The 7th floor, the guard at his sister's office building had said. Markus let the door bang shut behind him and hoped there was a way out one floor lower.
There was. He shoved the door from the inside with some difficulty, but it worked. He was in the hallway of the seventh. Straight ahead, he saw the cart the room service people used to take breakfast to the rooms. He hadn't counted on that. He had thought about the cleaning crew going round the rooms to do the sheets, but that would happen much later, once the guests had been expected to complete breakfast and go out to whatever they were staying here for, meet local business people or lounge out at the pool or beach. Markus wasn't expecting anybody out in the hallways at this time.
His eyes were jumping from door to door. This was room 738 but he was looking for 714.
The breakfast cart was standing five rooms away from him when he heard the voice saying ‘You're welcome, sir.’ He jumped aside into a doorway just as the waiter came out into the hall to push his cart away. Markus pressed himself flat against the door of room 728.
The room service guy, a young Asian man, continued to what had to be room 724, Markus estimated. He looked out from his hiding place in short bursts, but didn't dare to move until the hotel employee had rung the bell at a door and moved inside with the mushroom omelet.
He advanced to 726, but he couldn't well move beyond the breakfast cart without getting himself noticed.
Fact is, he already was. Across the hallway, inside room 725, a man was watching him. Riot stepped back to what he saw as a safe distance from the door to make his phone call without Markus Bentley hearing him.
‘He's approaching your room. Get out of there, now.’
The room service guy was on the move again. Judging from his cart, he had about three more rooms to service.
Each time he entered a room, Markus slid a few doorways forward.
Room 714 had ordered breakfast too.
Saves me from having to knock, Markus thought. He waited until he heard the end of the conversation and rushed forward. With a smile, he brushed his way past the waiter and entered the room.
A middle-aged Chinese man who was losing his hair fast stood in the middle of the room with luggage at the ready. He looked queasy when he saw the intruder.
‘Do you have a name for me?’ Markus asked.

NEXT: Markus Bentley continues his quest for his sister's killers in Episode Nine, online before December 14.