Callsign: King II- Underworld

Sokoloff’s heart had begun hammering in his chest. He had not felt such fear, such a sense of imminent danger, in so long, his body had lost its immunity to adrenaline. For a moment, he had considered hurling the phone into the pool. Before he could act on that impulse however, the phone shivered in his hands.



Exactly sixty seconds from the receipt of this message, international law enforcement agencies will be notified of your location and supplied with the identification numbers for all six of your bank accounts. Your assets will be frozen immediately.



Another message arrived even as the first was driving through his head like a railroad spike.



There is a 63.2% probability that your arrest and/or termination will follow within 24 hours. To prevent this, please confirm receipt of $1,000,000 US as retainer for your services. You now have approximately 45 seconds.



With trembling hands, Sokoloff had pounded out a terse reply:



>>>Who teh hell is ths?



The answer had come almost immediately.



Automatic notification of law enforcement agencies suspended for the moment. Please confirm deposit to your bank account.



The money had been there, as promised, and even though he had more than enough to last him the rest of his life, he still goggled in disbelief at the updated account balance. No sooner had he logged off from the bank than another message arrived.



Your services are required. Upon fulfillment of the contract, you will receive $10,000,000 (US).



>>>You obviously know who I am, but I am retired. I don’t do that anymore.



Your unique skill set and high degree of personal motivation, in conjunction with the resources that will be made available to you, ensures the highest degree of probability for successful fulfillment of the contract. A secure communication device will arrive shortly. Stand by for further instructions.



An hour later, he had signed for a parcel delivery. The package had contained only an ordinary looking smart phone, sent from an address in France two days earlier. As soon as he had powered it up, the electronic conversation had begun in earnest.

The target was a man named Jack Sigler, but his employer chose to utilize the code name “King.” King, he was told, was in all likelihood, a covert special operations soldier for the US Army. A concerted effort had been made to erase all evidence of Sigler from the public record. The only picture of him that Sokoloff’s anonymous new employer could provide was from a courthouse video surveillance camera—King had participated in a child custody hearing and his image had been captured as he left the building. Nothing was known about his current whereabouts, but Sokoloff’s contact had amassed a great deal of unofficial information about the man, including King’s close friendship with an archaeologist named George Pierce.

Pierce, Sokoloff realized, would be the key to executing the contract, and unlike King, the archaeologist’s life was an open book.

It had taken nearly three weeks to put all the pieces in place. Pierce’s drug-addicted brother had been located in New York City, and it hadn’t been too difficult to arrange for his arrest on a completely valid charge of petty larceny, or to subsequently see that he was sent to a court-ordered stay at a rehabilitation facility. Sokoloff knew that Micah Pierce would reach out to his brother, and the elder Pierce would probably make contact with Sigler. Sokoloff had been right on both counts. Shortly after the call from his brother, Pierce had made an untraceable phone call to someone in the United States, and thereafter booked a flight from Athens to New York.

Armed only with a grainy picture of the target, Sokoloff had stationed himself at the reception area of La Guardia Airport, awaiting the arrival of Pierce’s plane. King had been there as well.