Season One, Episode Nineteen: Mondeo

Markus and Charlo’ split up again on arrival, just in case some nasties were lying in wait, he said. They didn’t have much luggage so passing through customs was easy, though Markus had some trouble with officers staring at his bare feet. He told them some story about losing a bet with a Chinese fellow passenger on his way to Vegas.
He was finding his way to the parking garage when he noticed the tall black guy staring at him. He came up on him so fast there was no time to avoid him.
‘Welcome home, Mister Bentley,’ the man said. He had cop written all over him.
‘This is not about my shoes, is it?’ Markus asked.
The black guy flashed a badge because he had to, but Markus had no time to read what was on it. The man guided him into a small, bare room. On the wall were the portrait of the new president, hanging slightly askew, and a leftover piece of Christmas decoration nobody had bothered to remove.
‘Merry Christmas,’ said Markus.
The black guy didn’t reply but immediately adjusted the portrait’s angle and sat down at the end of the table in front of the two objects. He pointed out the chair in front of him and waved at a uniformed cop entering the doorway.
‘Give this man a pair of shoes.’
‘Inspector,’ Markus said.
The big black man raised his eyebrows.
‘What is your name?’ Markus asked.
‘Asking for names is my job, not yours.’
‘Shall I call you Larry Fishburne then?’
The big man broke out in a loud laugh.
‘You’re funny for a suspect under investigation for the disappearance of his sister,’ he said.
‘You must be joking,’ Markus said.
‘Crime and jokes don’t go together well. Your sister vanishes. Naturally, we think the suspect must be the boyfriend or the husband or something. But there is no boyfriend or husband. There is only a brother. You. And you vanish to Taiwan or some other pretty distant island. Taking the money to safety?’
‘Taiwan isn’t the Caymans. There is no money. I hadn’t met my sister for ages.’
‘Gambling it all away in Macau because it’s safer than Vegas?’
‘I told you, I don’t have any money. And I’m not a gambling man.’
‘That’s not the information we have. What if we searched you? I mean, really strip searched you?’
‘So what, I have nothing to hide.’
‘Nothing is not what I came here for.’
‘Why do you keep saying my sister disappeared? She was murdered, so you should be looking for her murderers.’
‘If you’re so sure she was murdered, why don’t you show us where the body is, Mister Bentley?’
‘Wasn’t she murdered in the parking lot of her office?’
‘You seem to know a lot about the alleged murder of your sister, Mister Bentley.’
The uniformed officer interrupted the conversation by bringing in a pair of sneakers.
‘Don’t worry, Mister Bentley, we didn’t take it from the airport morgue,’ the inspector grinned.

Charlo’ phoned Riot.
‘They’ve got him,’ she said.
‘Who? Camry?’ Riot asked.
‘A tall African-American guy in a suit. Am I supposed to know him?’
Riot looked over his shoulder. The woman shook her head.
‘Don’t worry, but stay away from him. And let us know what happens to Bentley. If he leaves, follow him but don’t approach him until you’re sure he’s not being followed.’
‘I’ll keep hanging out around the airport, then,’ Charlo’ said.
‘You do that,’ Riot replied before ending the connection and turning round to face the woman. ‘Mondeo’s got him,’ he said.
‘Is he working on his own or for the …,’ she asked.
Riot put his finger on her lips.
‘Is doesn’t matter. It looks like Markus has been compromised. Can we allow him to meet you?’

NEXT: Riot is looking for Markus Bentley in Episode Twenty before April 15.

Season One, Episode Eighteen: The Tile

Markus dropped the knife as his hands were shaking.
‘What’s the matter with you? You want me to continue?’ Charlo’ asked.
‘Just remain silent and watch out for any intruders.’
Charlo’ pursed her lips and turned her back to Bentley.
He doubled his effort, hacking and chipping away at the cement. The tile was coming loose. When Charlo’ heard him stop, she turned around again to watch him rip the tile off the wall. There was a narrow vertical empty space behind it. Or not so empty after all. A reddish, dusty pouch was stuffed inside.
Markus opened it and a key fell into his hands.
‘This is what you came all the way to Macau for?’ Charlo’ asked.
A door creaked below. He put the key in his pocket and pushed the pouch back into the hole in the wall, forcing the tile back in place. Nobody taking more than a cursory glance would be fooled.
‘Let’s go to the back,’ he said, pulling her by the arm.
‘Maybe it’s just the man in the white underwear returning home from the shop,’ she said.
‘Don’t count on it.’
Markus pulled her away, out of the hall, through the back window, on to a rusty emergency stairway stacked full with carton boxes and plastic kid bikes. When Markus found out his shoes made a loud clanging sound on the metal floor, he ditched them.
‘At least, I’ll be quicker through the airport security checks,’ he said.
Charlo’ wasn’t laughing. She was panting. They were just about to pass one window when they saw movement inside. Markus pressed her against the wall to keep her out of view. It worked. They ran and jumped all the way down to the street level.
‘Stick close to the wall,’ he whispered at her as they ran down the street.
A man shouted something short in Cantonese from one of the highest floors. Markus didn’t look back but pulled Charlo’ along with her.
Back on main street, they plunged into the crowds of tourists without apologizing for the bumps and elbows. On the nearest street, they jumped in front of a cab and prevented an old Chinese lady from taking it.
‘To the airport,’ Markus ordered.

Camry watched a news report on TV about a man found dead at a restaurant. He made sure the machine was recording the footage.
‘How much?’ he asked to the man sitting in the couch behind him. ‘A three or a four?’
‘Out of ten?’
‘If I get away with it, it’s a five.’
The cell phone on the coffee table buzzed.
‘So the question is not whether they’re coming back, but what are they bringing back with them?’ Camry asked.
He changed channels when the news about the dead man ended.
‘So they’re still on the wrong track.’
Camry grinned.
‘They don’t have a clue.’

Not wearing any shoes had not speeded up the airport checks. Instead, the Macau customs wanted to check passenger Markus Bentley’s breath for alcohol. They did, and he passed with flying colors.
‘It’s been nice flying out with you. I’ve never traveled around the world with a stranger before. So my mom was right,’ Charlo’ said.
‘About what?’
‘Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.’
He ordered a glass of white wine.
‘So what’s the key for?’ she asked.
He first drank half the glass.
‘There is a place back home where I need to go to, and there I will find the next step.’
‘So you will again wait to tell me what’s going on until after we get there,’ she said.
She took the glass of wine out of his hands and emptied it.
‘I don’t know myself what I will find there. All I know is the location, not what I’ll find there.’
‘Shouldn’t that be ‘what we’ll find there’ or are you going to dump me as soon as we arrive?’
‘I thought you would want to take a rest after all the emotion of our trip.’
She surfed through the movie channels.
‘You saw for yourself that I’m working on a dangerous task,’ he said.
‘Even in Taiwan and in Macau, people are hunting you. Wouldn’t it be safer to stay away, travel to Europe or to some other place where they don’t know you? Retire to some Greek island like the woman in The Bourne Identity?’
‘They’ll find me anywhere.’
‘Because you killed the man by the pool?’
‘Because they killed my sister and now they want to kill me.’
Charlo’ settled on a movie showing a bunch of white men traveling through India by train.
‘I want to know where you came from,’ she said without her eyes leaving the screen. ‘What do you want?’
‘Marzipan and a good life, and right now I’m short of both.’
She grinned.
‘Don’t tell me stories, I’m not a kid waiting to sleep.’
‘You want to know what I want. It’s been pretty obvious from the start. I want to avenge my sister, because she was the only one I had left. My father died years ago in Taiwan, my mother is long gone, so I was raised by nannies.’
‘How far are you prepared to go?’
‘All the way. I still have to find the guy who gave me my sister’s objects, and the guy who brought me the laptop.’
‘What laptop?’
‘Before the Riot guy showed up, there was another one, who just dumped a laptop at my front door. It had a recording of my sister’s murder.’
‘Gross. Sound and pictures? What did he tell you?’
‘He just dumped the computer and left, never said a word, I never got a chance to talk to him.’
‘Are you sure you’re not being manipulated?’ Charlo’ asked.
‘Everything was real. My sister’s death. I tried to call her. The guard I interviewed.’
‘While you had me staying outside.’
‘Was rather convincing,’ Markus finished his sentence.
‘Can we have another one?’ Charlo’ pointed out the empty wine glass to a passing flight attendant.

Camry was overlooking a swimming pool. The professor was leaning over the water with a vial in his hand, while a naked man was standing in the pool with his back toward them, the water up to his shoulders.
‘How long is he staying in there before we see something happen?’ Camry asked the professor.
‘I would expect results within half an hour.’
‘Make him walk around in the pool,’ Camry told the professor, as if the man in the water couldn’t hear him.

NEXT: Markus Bentley is welcomed by an unpleasant surprise in Episode Nineteen before March 31.

Season One, Episode Seventeen: Macau

Camry sat pulling at the collar of his suit shirt on the back seat of the S-class.
‘Drop me off around the next corner and go keep yourself busy until you get my signal,’ he told the driver.
He left the suit jacket inside the car and walked the block back, hoping he wouldn’t be conspicuous among the salary slaves out for lunch.
As he had expected, the restaurant was crowded and he didn’t draw any undue attention sitting down in the middle of the room on his own. He ordered a set meal, soup, main dish, but no dessert.
Halfway through the meal, he noticed a man in a dark suit heading for the restrooms. Just a minute later, a man in his fifties wearing a pink – sorry, salmon – polo shirt also left his place. Camry counted until five and followed them.
Inside, he first brushed water through his hair. When the man in the dark suit left, a dark pall moved over his face. The water rumbled behind the closed door, third from the entrance. The lock was pushed open with a metallic clang. Just as the guy in the polo shirt was putting his foot out, Camry pushed him back in, grabbing him by the throat to drown out the sound. He stabbed his knife through the salmon polo shirt until his target was reclining on the can with blood dripping, Camry came out, softly pulled the door shut so it wouldn’t reopen of its own accord, and went to clean the knife in the sink.
He returned to his meal, slowly finishing the lamb roast with his knife and fork. No rush, no haste. He politely declined coffee, paid cash and walked over to the next block before calling for his driver.

Charlo’ watched as the wet patches of rice fields vanished behind the low clouds. Markus sat next to her on the Air Macau flight from Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport. She turned to him.
‘Glad to be out of that place. So, are you finally ready to give me an explanation? Are the Three Elders history now?’
‘The first one was Lassiter, the second one was Trick’s father. And the third one was my father.’
‘What was their connection?’
‘They all did business together here in Asia at one time.’
‘That’s what Trick told me. What kind of business were they in?’
‘International trade.’
The ‘fasten your seat belts’ sign flooped off and the pilot made an announcement about altitudes and temperatures.
‘Why did his parents choose the name Trick?’
‘They didn’t. He did. Taiwanese only receive a Chinese name at birth. They later pick their own foreign names if they want one. Even then, you get lots of crazy names. Like Apple and Medicare.’
‘Medicare?’ she grinned.
‘Don’t ask. I once met a doctor with that name.’
The flight assistant came round with the headphones. Markus stuffed his in the back of the seat in front of him, Charlo’ unwrapped hers.
‘I thought you wanted to hear my story,’ he said.
‘I was losing hope you would ever get to it,’ she replied. She put the headphones on her lap.
‘This man, Riot, claimed to be a colleague of my sister. I’ve been out of touch with her for years, so I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth. Yet he had my address and he had those things that only I knew my sister had. All presents from our father. The Three Elders told me I had to go back to Taiwan, because that’s where my father had them made. That is where the Three Elders, the real three, lived.’
‘But only one of them is still alive, and he didn’t tell you much, did he?’
‘That’s when Riot’s phone call came in. I don’t know how he could know I was at Trick’s place, but he did, and he told me I was on the wrong track.’
‘So you believe him?’
An elderly Chinese lady stood up behind Charlo’ and pulled hard at her seat. Charlo’ shot her an annoyed look.
‘The only other possibility was this.’
Markus pulled the red faceless doll from his sports bag stowed under the seat in front. He had given the flight attendant who advised him to jam it into the overhead compartment a convincing shake of the head.
‘My father gave this doll to my sister during a vacation in Macau. He had just returned from a trip to Japan, where he bought this thing.’
‘Because he gave it to her in Macau, that’s why we’re going there?’
Markus nodded.
‘You’ll understand when we get there. It’s a clue, a sign.’
‘International man of mystery. Traveling with you is certainly an adventure. Will we be doing a spot of gambling? You know, Vegas of the East, casinos?’
Markus shook his head.
‘That’s not what we’re here for. I want to go in quickly and leave quickly.’
‘Why not enjoy it while we’re here?’
‘I thought you were the one complaining about me taking you everywhere,’ Markus said.
‘Let me think. The doll is from Japan, so that’s where we’ll be heading next.’
‘What’s the matter, don’t you like the jetset life?’
‘It’s just that I don’t like drifting around the world without being told what it is all about.’
Markus tapped his finger on her headphones.
‘Our next destination is home,’ he whispered.
‘Can we get marzipan on this flight?’ she asked.
‘No, and no moaji either.’
The flight attendants came up with the meals. The flight only lasted a mere 90 minutes, so bread, simple combinations of pre-packaged vegetables and fruits, and a miniature pot of yoghurt was all there was. Markus asked for white wine.
‘Will I have to speak Portuguese?’ she asked.
‘Most people here speak Cantonese. The Portuguese is just inscriptions on buildings. So don’t worry. I don’t speak Cantonese either, but we’ll get by in English.’

In Macau, Markus and Charlo’ were following the flow of tourists, heading down Main Street with its Portuguese-era baroque churches and buildings, with ugly casinos looming behind as so many threats of brash modernity against cultured history.
Markus took a sordid alley to the right at the end of the street. A stocky man in boxer shorts and white underwear came out of the doorway, Markus rushed to take the open door from him. He signaled at Charlo’ to follow him inside. A finger across his mouth told her not to speak.
They followed the creaky staircase up to the third floor. Under the stairs leading to the fourth, Markus opened a low door. Inside, a wall covered in tiles. Tiny grey tiles, but also one big blue one, showing a city scene. A church at the end of a crowded narrow street with laundry hanging from the balconies. The words ‘Alfama - Lisboa’ written at the bottom. The tile didn’t really fit in with the rest of the wall.
‘Go get me a knife in there.’ Markus pointed Charlo’ at an open doorway at the end of the hall. ‘It’s a communal kitchen. They won’t eat you.’
He took the knife from her and started hacking at the cement around the blue tile.
‘Why are you damaging that nice wall?’ Charlo’ asked.
‘Once I have what’s in that nice wall of yours, we can all go home.’

NEXT: Markus Bentley uncovers what is behind the tile in Episode Eighteen before March 15.