Die or Make Die

Copyright © 2021 by Hugh Cameron and Edna Quammie.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 10/04/2021

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CONTENTS

Abstract

Chapter 1 The Painting

Chapter 2 The Meeting

Chapter 3 Romance

Chapter 4 Paris

Chapter 5 The Attack

Chapter 6 The Flight

Chapter 7 Qian

Chapter 8 The Resort

Chapter 9 Relationship

Chapter 10 Panama City

Chapter 11 Planning

Chapter 12 The Shot

Chapter 13 The Escape

Chapter 14 Fox Hunt

Chapter 15 The Mayor

Chapter 16 Lone Wolf

Chapter 17 Aftermath

Chapter 18 What Next?

Chapter 19 Surprise Surprise

Chapter 20 Tenerife

Chapter 21 Touch Not The Cat

Chapter 22 Thinking

Chapter 23 Buenos Aires

Chapter 24 Elimination

Chapter 25 Vancouver

Chapter 26 Secession

Chapter 27 Time Off

Chapter 28 Fox Hunt

Chapter 29 Reconsideration

Chapter 30 Second Wife

Envoi

Acknowledgements

Hugh Cameron is an orthopedic surgeon, scientist, designer of artificial joints and author. Born in Scotland he practices and teaches in Toronto. He was the codeveloper of the technology which anchors most current artificial joints to the bone, so most people with these joints walk on that technology. He was the lead designer of numerous hip and knee joints, and for thirty years travelled the world teaching and demonstrating modern hip and knee replacement surgery. He continues to practice and research, now mainly in the field of pain. He has published more than two hundred scientific articles, two technical books, an autobiography, and numerous novels.

Edna Quammie is an operating room scrub nurse, originally from Connecticut who lives and works in Toronto. They met in Toronto General Hospital in the early seventies, as described in their book, The Big House, recounting the fun and frolic of these heady days following Woodstock. They have worked together off and on for almost fifty years. This is the fourth book they have written together. Their combined extensive medical and varied life experience gives them a unique view of the world.

ABSTRACT

A noir novel of love, intrigue, and violence amid the declining and increasingly chaotic Western world. Lauren, a professional assassin, now married and with a child, attempts to walk away from her previous life. Unfortunately, a series of events forces her to use her old skills, again and again. Qian, leader of a triad based in Hong Kong, one of her previous employers, seeking to separate Vancouver from Canada to create an independent country, like Singapore, forces her to carry out further assignments. Jazz, a Toronto born budding artist was taken prisoner in the UK and forced to be a sex slave in the Middle East. Rescued by Qian’s son, Jazz is now her daughter in law. She finds herself playing an increasing role leading to Vancouver’s independence. The tensions and mistrust among these three women gradually worsens with time. Who will die or make die?

CHAPTER 1

The Painting

Lauren had gone to the basement to check the washing machine. It had almost finished its load. Looking for something to do while she waited for the machine to switch off, she opened the glass doors of an old, seldom used bookcase of her husbands, which stood in a corner, to see if there was anything of interest. At the back of the central shelf she found a square wrapped package. Turning the package over she found a name and an address. It read, ‘For Dr. Buechel, The Orthopedic Hospital’.

She wondered why it had never been delivered. Perhaps the plan had been to hand deliver it, but Al, her late husband, had never got around to doing so. Maybe the address was inadequate and he had meant to send it later, but then it had been lost and forgotten about in the turmoil of the nuclear exchange a couple of years ago.

Those had been chaotic times when the Saudis had smuggled several nuclear devices into the US, which they had successfully exploded in New York, Dallas, and Miami. There was still a fear that there were some unexploded devices hidden somewhere, waiting to be triggered by a Jihadist. In retaliation, the US, misled, intentionally or otherwise, by their own Intelligence Agencies, had obliterated Iran, not Saudi Arabia. It had not been hard to convince the President that Iran was the aggressor, given the constant belligerence and threats from the foolish Mullahs who ran that country. In the nuclear nightmare which followed, many of Iran’s largest cities had been destroyed.

Canada, having been made essentially irrelevant on the world stage by successive Liberal government policies, by destroying the energy sector by preventing pipelines, and blocking the development of any significant ports, escaped the nuclear exchange. But nonetheless, the almost collapse of the food chain, caused by the closure of the US / Canadian border had led to shortages, especially of food, and riots across Canada, mainly in the major cities like Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto.

Lauren had been out of the country at that time, but her husband, Al Campbell, had managed to secure enough food for himself, their little child, and the live-in amah. The rioting in Toronto had been essentially community based and had never reached the quiet enclave where their house stood. In consequence, he never needed to use the weapons she had stored in her gun safes hidden around the house. Just thinking of those times evoked in Lauren a sudden overwhelming sense of loss.

Al, her husband, was gone. A man who had waited patiently and unquestioningly for her. He was the only other man she had ever cared for. He had never replaced Carlos, the man she still dreamed of, dead at her hand all these years ago. Her heart still broke when she thought of Carlos, that bold bad man, who had rescued her from a life of misery, probably drug addiction and prostitution in the barrio of East L.A. where she had been born. The man who had shown her the world and given her everything, paying ultimately for her freedom with his death.

Since Al, the only other man she had loved, had died, the nightmares which she had had for years and had finally almost gone away, had come back. It was always the same. A badly wounded Carlos, sitting, leaning over a table, looking up at her.

It is over! If I try to come with you we will be caught. I will be tortured and killed, and you also, after they have finished raping you. Kill me now and escape. He put his Walther in her hand and pointed to the back of his head. Do it now. We have had a good run. I will love you forever. Vaya con Dios.

Recognizing finally that she had no choice, that he was right, that it was over, their luck had run out, she put the gun to the back of his head and fired. He fell forwards, face down on the table. Trembling with tears she put the barrel of the gun in her mouth, intending to follow him, hand in hand, into whatever future there was.

And then she would wake up, with a half scream, trembling. She was grateful that Campbell had never asked her about that recurring nightmare. When she married Campbell and had a child, that nightmare had gradually retreated. But since Al had died, it had come back, as sharp, and bitter as ever.

Turning the package over in her hands, she thought sadly. ‘They are both gone. The only two men I have ever loved. What the hell do I do now? I guess I should deliver the package in Al’s memory.’

After emptying the laundry machine and filling the dryer, she went upstairs and sat at her computer. She Googled the Orthopedic Hospital and found that there was indeed a Dr. Buechel, an orthopedic surgeon who practiced there. She phoned his office, and a receptionist picked up.

My name is Lauren Chen. My husband Al Campbell, has recently passed away and on going through his things I found a package addressed to Dr Buechel.

The receptionist checked her computer. We never had an Al Campbell registered as a patient. Perhaps he was a friend or acquaintance of Dr. Buechel. The Doctor is in the office just now. Let me transfer you. Stay on the line.

A moment later a male voice with a heavy accent came on the line. Lauren thought it was Irish or Scottish.

Dr Buechel here. A package from Al Campbell? Refresh my memory. Wasn’t he the man whose son got into trouble in England? The boy who was with Jasmine Webster?

Yes. That was him.

Do you know Rose, Jasmine’s mother? I haven’t seen her for some time. She needs a recheck of her knees.

Rose has also passed on, but she left some stuff with us. Maybe the package with your name on it is from her.

It’s not a painting is it?

Lauren squeezed the package, well it is square and it seems to be wrapped in bubble wrap, so maybe.

Then don’t send it through the mail. These useless post office people can destroy anything. I’ll come and pick it up. Where are you in the city?

She gave him her address. He repeated it.

Just off Avenue Road, south of Wilson. I live around there myself. I am going to be finished by about 5.30 today. Maybe I could come around and pick it up, if that is convenient.

About 6 pm today? That would be fine.

Perhaps you could give me your phone number in case something comes up and I am delayed.

She did so, and then went to play with her child for a little while. The amah was preparing some food for herself and the child. It was early and Lauren was not hungry. She had been letting things slide since Campbell’s death and felt out of sorts. Then the iron discipline of physical exercise to which she had been introduced all these years ago by her lover took over, and she went to the basement gym and plugged in the elliptical trainer.

Mounting the machine, she started slowly then cranking it up began to run on it, as she had for years. Initially when she met her lover, she had not been at all interested in physical fitness. She had never known what attracted him to her. As a mixed race, probably mostly Japanese with some Latina, she had the round neotenous face many men like and almond eyes, but she was nothing special, no different from hundreds of other girls. And yet Carlos had seen something in her and had taken her out of the barrio and given her a new wildly exciting life.

That seemed kind of silly, Carlos in love. He never told her he loved her until that final moment. But what he did was enough for her. She was deeply and passionately in love with that slim, strong, violent man. She knew she always would be, in spite of his death years ago. She had found a passage in one of Campbell’s poetry books, which described how she thought she felt.

‘As ere beneath a waning moon was haunted by woman wailing for her demon lover.’

When he died, she took his professional name, Charlotte Corday. It was in her capacity as a high price assassin, who had been hired by Campbell’s former wife Qian, that she had first met Campbell.

When Carlos took her to live with him all these years ago, he insisted she exercise with him, and she grew accustomed to it, the cardio, and the endless pushups and weightlifting, and when they could, the endless shooting practice, live and dry firing. Her mind drifted, and she felt the sorrow, the ineffable loss. And now the other man in her life was gone.

Al was gone. The man she liked and maybe even loved a bit. ‘A good kind man, and a good father to their child.’ The sorrow rose in her and she stopped momentarily, her head bent, as the memory of the day he died came back to her.

It had been a good day. Campbell had flown back from a project in New York where his company was helping with the reconstruction after the nuclear bomb explosion in Manhattan. She had met him at the door as always, alerted by the ‘ding’ from the pressure plate she had had built into the top step. A gun safe was hidden behind a picture on the wall just beside the front door and she swung it open before glancing at the camera.

She always did that because she was afraid Al’s former wife, Qian, would send an assassin to kill her some day, to break the chain of linking her to various violent events better kept hidden. Not only was there a wall safe beside the front door, but there was one in the basement and a gun, which she had kept in a compartment under the bed where she slept. She had removed that gun when the child began to crawl. Every time she opened a gun safe in anticipation of trouble, she thought, ‘Someday I must sneak into Hong Kong and kill Qian. But she will be expecting that.’

The front door camera showed her husband, so she closed the safe door. Al knew of her fear of Qian, which he thought was overblown, but he never criticized her for her precautions. She lifted the front door locking bar, which again Al thought was a bit excessive, opened the deadbolt lock, and the door. They embraced and kissed.

Journey OK?

Pretty good. These airport security measures are ridiculous and so time consuming. We shuffle shoeless through security because of one totally incompetent shoe bomber twenty years ago. You can’t smuggle in a nuclear device in your shoes.

Jobs for the boys I guess. Someone is making big money out of these security contracts. Maybe your ex wife.

That’s an idea. Maybe I should suggest it to her. What’s for dinner.

Whatever you want Al. The amah has made some Filipina food as always, which Sheila likes, but I have trout fillets in the fridge. Maybe that with some arugula and a Greek salad. I knew you were coming back so I got some of the Dauphin potatoes from the store, as I know you like them.

Sounds good. Sheila upstairs with the amah? I’ll go see her then have a drink and decompress in the backyard for a few minutes.

Take your time Al. No hurry.

He had done that, seen their child, who was happy to see him, then poured himself a scotch and soda and gone out to the backyard to wander around as he liked to do, to let the cares of the day wash away. Lauren busied herself with her domestic tasks. To her surprise, after they were married, she had found she quite liked it. Not that she actually did that much. The live-in amah really did most of it.

She had been puttering around, and supper was almost ready. Campbell must have been under a lot of stress as usually he did not spend very long wandering around the backyard, drink in hand. Lauren had a sudden premonition of doom. She stopped what she was doing. There was absolute silence. In a couple of strides she went from the kitchen onto the back deck. She could not see him. Leaning over the deck railing on one side she saw nothing, but when she leaned over the other side, she saw him. He was face down in a flower bed.

He was absolutely still. She had seen death so often she knew he was gone. She ran down the steps to him and flipped him over. There was dirt in his open eyes. She brushed it out. His pupils were wide open. For a second she considered trying chest compressions, but the futility of that was clear. The second man she ever loved was gone. Carlos and now Al.

Her heart breaking, she leaned over and kissed his forehead and gently closed his eyes. She stayed with him a long moment, then got stiffly up, and went into the house to call 911.

CHAPTER 2

The Meeting

Standing on the elliptical trainer, she raised her head. ‘Get a grip woman,’ she thought. ‘At least when Al died it would have been quick. He had had no warning that he had a cardiac condition. He would not have known what was coming. Not like Carlos, when he gave me his gun and pointed to the back of his head. Ah Carlos,’ she thought. ‘Why did we do that last job?’

Angry with herself, she turned the program up to fourteen and began to run on the elliptical machine, working out for an additional fifteen minutes. Then, sweating and slightly tremulous, she switched it off. She went upstairs to the ensuite bathroom, where she showered. She was about to put on a new pair of sweatpants when she checked her watch. The surgeon would be coming in about twenty minutes, so out of habit, she put on a dress, and looking in the mirror, some make up.

She went downstairs and played with her child for a few minutes before the amah took her upstairs again. Lauren sat down with her iPhone to try and get some news of the outside world. She ignored the legacy media as that was never anything but fake news. Briefly she looked at Fox, but that was only US domestic. She flipped on WION which was dealing with the latest China /India clash and the remnants of the civil war when millions of Muslims had been displaced from India into what was left of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The announcer, a tough lady Lauren admired, was crowing over the latest statistics about how India was taking worldwide manufacturing from China.

‘I wonder if Qian is manufacturing in India,’ she thought. ‘For sure she will be in Vietnam, in spite of how much the Viets hate the Chinese. I wonder how her oil wells and tar sands projects are doing in Alberta and Saskatchewan now that idiot running the US has blocked the Keystone pipeline, and another idiot is threatening to block the Enbridge line.

She was flipping through Sky News Australia when the bell from the pressure plate on the top step chimed softly. Flicking open the gun safe at the door, she looked at the image of the visitor. He was unknown to her so she slipped a 22 mm pistol into a pocket.

Yes? she said.

Dr. Buechel here, said the man.

Let me open the door, she said and flipped up the locking bar, then clicked open the deadbolt, and opened the door.

He was not tall, being about five foot eight or nine, but had broad shoulders with a deep chest. Maybe a few pounds overweight. His face was round and his head was shaved.

‘Typical gaijin,’ she thought, ‘nothing special.’ Do come in Doctor.

He came in and she gestured to the seating area in the main room to the right of the door. They did not shake hands. People had dropped that habit during the Wuhan virus disaster. To her surprise, he slipped his shoes off. She was in the habit of doing that herself, as did everyone who visited. There was a lineup of slippers at the door, but she expected to have to ask him.

You take your shoes off? she asked, pointing to the slippers.

Well yes. I spend a fair amount of time teaching in Korea and Japan, and my second wife was Chinese, like yourself.

I am not Chinese, she said. Mostly Japanese.

Oh I am sorry. I thought you said your name was Chen.

It’s complicated and besides it doesn’t matter. Come and have a seat, gesturing to a seating arrangement around a large coffee table. There was a package lying on the table. He sat, picked up the package, noting his name on it and felt it. Bubble wrap, he said. I wonder what it is. I think I can guess."

Oh yes?

I think it is a painting. Maybe not. I’d better open it and see, and he began to tear the wrapping.

I’ll get some scissors. Would you like a drink?

The day’s work is over so that sounds good.

What would you like?

Vodka tonic if you have it, but anything would be good.

She went to the kitchen, found a tray on which she put her kitchen scissors, then opened the fridge and took out a bottle of tonic water. In the freezer compartment she had a forty-ounce bottle of vodka. She shook a tray of ice cubes into a bowl. She carried the tray to the seating area and, putting it down, got a couple of glasses from a tall cabinet beside him. The cabinet and glassware had belonged to her husband. Buechel picked up a glass and looked at it.

Edinburgh crystal, he said approvingly.

Is it? I didn’t know. The glasses were my husbands.

I am sorry for your bereavement, he said. I did not want to bring back bad memories.

That’s OK. I am getting over it. It was just so unexpected. He had a heart attack and dropped dead in the backyard.

Well if you got to go, that’s best. Quick and sudden. Better than a long lingering illness.

I suppose so. Help yourself, she said pointing to the bottles on the tray.

He picked up the vodka bottle. Wow! he said. You must have had this in the freezer.

That’s the way I like it.

Can I make you a drink?

Yes. Not too much vodka, more tonic and two ice cubes.

Her mind went back to the first time she had had a vodka tonic. Before that she had had little other than wine, light beer and various girly drinks. She had been shaking and trembling from the dopamine blast of her first kill. It had only been a bodyguard, protecting the man Carlos was after. She had brushed against him. When he looked down she smiled up at him, put her special handbag concealing her gun up under his jaw and three 22 mm bullets in his head.

She and Carlos were waiting for the flight to take them out of town after that kill, and she was still shaky, so her lover had bought her a double vodka tonic at the bar opposite the departure gate.

She came out of her reverie as the doctor handed her a drink. They toasted each other and had a sip.

Good, he said. Years ago I remember there was a Polish restaurant on Roncesvalles. They had Zubrowka, the Polish vodka with a blade of buffalo grass in it. They had the bottle frozen in a block of ice, so when the drink was poured into a shot glass it was heavy, oily and superb.

Interesting. I have never been to a Polish restaurant.

That one disappeared decades ago. Being Polish the food was fairly primitive, but they had a gypsy band with a strolling violinist who would wander around and play at your table on request. I really liked that.

I have seen that in Mexico, with the Mariachi bands.

I remember once in Spain. It was in Madrid. They took me to a famous suckling pig restaurant. It was deep underground in an old sewer. Groups of students dressed like medieval troubadours playing medieval instruments like lutes and mandolins would wander around playing and singing medieval songs.

That sounds like fun.

What was even better was that each group had colors like blue and yellow. The locals knew who they were by the colors, medical students or engineers from the local universities.

While he was speaking he was opening the package, using the scissors she had given him. He unwrapped the bubble wrap and it was as he had thought, a small, framed painting. He laid it on the table at an angle so she could also see it.

Chenonceau, he said. Catherine de Medici’s chateau.

You recognize it?

Chenonceau is unmistakable. Once you see it you never forget it. It is the most beautiful of the Loire valley chateaux, although maybe Chambord comes close to matching it. I wonder when she painted that?

She?

He pointed to a letter on the lower right-hand corner of the painting. Lauren could make out a letter. It looked like a J.

Jazz, Rose Webster’s daughter probably did this. I wonder if she painted it in France before she was kidnapped. Probably not, as I can’t see how Rose could have got it, as it would have been lost in the turmoil of her abduction and the boy’s arrest. She must have done it after she escaped.

Lauren was stunned. ‘He knew! But how? Rose must have told him. But why?’ Lauren had been the hired shooter in that desperate, violent rescue. Using a sniper’s rifle, a 6.5 mm Creedmoor at extreme range, she had cleared the decks of the Saudi yacht in the harbor in Monaco, allowing Jazz to leap over the side, where Colin, Al and Qian’s son, was waiting for her with a fast boat.

They had kept any knowledge of that exploit quiet, as Lauren had killed a Saudi prince and several of his security people. Jazz had been a Saudi slave, and escaped slaves were pursued, either with recapture, death or having acid thrown on their faces. Jazz now had a new name and identity, had married Al’s son