by Kenneth Zink
The President scoffed. “No.”
“He couldn’t kidnap a cookie from an open jar,” Robin said.
“Ouch,” Tim said.
“Media?” Robin asked.
“In the dark until we find out what’s going on,” the President said.
“Contact with the kidnappers?”
“None so far. They’ll reach out eventually. If they wanted to kill her they’d have done it then and there, on the street.”
“This was yesterday’s shooting?” Forrest asked.
“Yes,” the President said.
“What’s the damage?”
“Nine dead Secret Service agents. One in critical condition.”
“Will he make it?” Robin asked.
“Yes. Three bullets, two in the legs, one in the stomach, but he’ll make it.”
“Surprised he’s alive.”
“So am I,” the President said.
“So this agent, he saw what happened. Who took her. Lyla.”
The President flinched when Robin said the name. “Yes, he saw them. Animals. Nothing to identify them visually, but he said he heard them speaking Mandarin.”
“So that’s why I’m here,” Tim said.
“Why?” Robin asked.
“Zhōngwén,” Tim said.
“What?”
“I speak Mandarin. Learned it back at A-Cad. Something something, know thy enemy.
“Your man, the agent, he’s sure it was Mandarin?” Robin asked the President.
“He was stationed for three years in Vietnam, on the border of China. He knows the language.”
“China,” Forrest said. “It makes sense. Kidnapping the granddaughter of the Commander in Chief. That’s leverage. It’s bold, but it could be exactly what Lu’s been looking for. A way to end the so called Warless War.”
Lu Huang, President of the People’s Republic of China. He and Molly Walker were roughly the same age. Both spent their lives working their way through their governments, now playing political chess head to head. Lu was unnervingly calm and smart, wise even, going back decades, when he hadn’t been much older than Tim. To Robin he’d always seemed like he had something to prove, as if being the leader of the only country to challenge American supremacy in a hundred years wasn’t enough. He wanted more. Needed it. Quiet but ravenous.
“We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” the President said. Robin was surprised by her stoicism. She searched her face for some trace of emotion but found none.
“Mandarin doesn’t mean China,” Robin said. “That’s not much to go on.”
“Not on its own,” the President said, grabbing a folder from the Resolute Desk. “You’re the one who turned in the laptop that belonged to Sahil Khatri.”
“Yes.” Robin tried not to flinch when she heard the name.
“Forensics found emails corresponding with government addresses in Beijing, as well as traces of a hack that slipped through our systems and extracted the logistics of my granddaughter’s security detail.” The President dropped the folder down on the table between the two couches.
Robin paged through the report on the laptop. Fingerprints that matched Sahil Khatri. Data analysis that recovered any and all digital activity. Ones and zeroes and a whole lot else she didn’t understand. She skipped ahead to the end and read the conclusion. It checked out. Emails from Sahil Khatri to government addresses in Beijing, culminating in a hack that extracted the logistics of Lyla Walker’s security detail.
“Doesn’t add up,” Robin said. “Sahil was working for the FLF.”
“Maybe he got greedy,” the President said, running her hand along the Resolute desk. “Money greases many things.”
Robin wasn’t sure, but two pieces of evidence corroborating the same story were enough crumbs to start building a loaf. “So why do the CIA and the FBI both think it’s the FLF?”
“They have different intel,” the President said. “That’s all I can say.”
“Sounds shady,” Tim said.
“They’re the intelligence community of the United States of America. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“Then why are we here?” Robin asked.
“Because they already have frags chasing down the FLF lead.”
“You want us to find her?” Forrest said. “Follow the China lead and see where it goes?”
The President looked at Robin. “Your record is perfect.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Robin dug her hands deeper into her pockets. It was true, her record was perfect. Technically. She’d solved every case she’d ever been assigned. But she’d also grown apathetic. Suddenly a bullet meant for a shoulder instead ripped open a chest. A day earlier she might have memorialized the compliment as the apex of her career, but things had changed.
Sahil Khatri, dead. Brain cancer, hers. Lyla Walker, kidnapped. A girl that didn’t look all that different from Robin when she’d been young, before Erodium.
“You’re the best frag we’ve got,” the President said.
“I see where this is headed.” Robin stood from the couch and headed for the door.
“I’m not asking.”
“I don’t do kids.”
“Bullshit,” the President said.
“I don’t. They—”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Robin shifted in place. “I told you, I don’t do kids.
“And I told you to tell me the truth.”
“The truth is I’m done. I handed in my letter of resignation this morning.”
“That’s not true,” Forrest said.
“There are other frags out there,” Robin said. “I can give you some recs.”
“Objectively, you’re the best,” the President said, “and I need the best on this. I can’t afford to take any risks.”
“I’m the definition of a risk,” Robin said.
Liquor. Apathy. Cancer.
“Your record says otherwise,” the President said. “You’ll make more money on this case than you’ve ever earned in your entire life.”
“It’s not about money,” Robin said. The words felt strange coming out of her mouth. It had always been about money. From the moment she’d solved her first case and earned her first commission, money was the star she looked to in the sky to ensure she was headed in the right direction. It was the whole point of the job. Reaping a check that assured her that what she was doing was right.
“If this was about more than just money, you’d have signed on the moment I offered you the opportunity to find a little girl before she’s murdered,” the President said.
Robin tried but failed to shake the image of her empty apartment. It wasn’t empty of things but of things that mattered. Barren. No family, no friends, no lovers, at least none that stayed beyond a single night. Her life had been her career, and her career had been her life. This was all she’d ever known, being a fragment detective, trudging through mysteries, asking questions until she found answers. And now she was turning down the case of her career. One last chance to do something good.
To her surprise she suddenly found herself standing by the windows behind the Resolute desk. Wandered there without realizing it.
Atop one of the two endtables along the wall of windows was a picture of the President and Lyla Walker. They were picking worms, their overalls smeared, fishing poles on the ground beside them, the girl focused on the dirt, smiling, a few teeth missing, the woman staring with an expression Robin couldn’t decipher. A cabin in the background. Trees all around. Green and brown dotting the landscape that sat below a clear blue sky and a pack of pure white clouds. Like a finger painting. Everything simple.
“This her?” Robin asked, her eyes unable to look away.
“Yes,” the President said. “You can pick it up if you like.”
Robin twitched, almost slipped her hands out of her pockets. The granddaughter looked so much like herself, the way she’d looked way back when. Before Erodium. In the few photos she had of hersel
f from that time. Curly hair, puffy cheeks, a few missing teeth.
“You read the news, I assume,” the President said.
“Yes.” Robin remained where she was, her back to the President, the photo on the table within her grasp.
“Then you know how much my granddaughter has been through.”
“I know enough.” Robin knew about the girl but also knew the President was suffering her own living hell. Losing her daughter to drugs, now potentially losing her granddaughter to terrorists, the last living piece of her daughter. A tragic loop.
“Then I am asking you, one last time, to take this case,” the President said. “Maybe the intelligence agencies are right but I don’t buy it. There’s something else going on here. I won’t ask again.”
Robin closed her eyes.
She was a little girl. Weeks spent under the twisted reign of the Erodium mutation. Alone and hurt at all times, feeling like a freak that no one could ever love again. Her parents shouting late into the night. The same revolving argument about how to fix her. Her father only used that word once, fix, but she’d never forgotten it. And then came the day her life pivoted on. In the morning they told her they had a surprise, driving far out into the woods, down highways, then unmarked roads, then dirt roads, until they pulled in front of the A-Cad, an estate an hour away from any sign of society, her mother sobbing when they left her, her father dry eyed but holding her for what felt like an eon, the pair of them telling her over and over again that nothing would change, it wouldn’t, nothing would change, it wouldn’t, nothing would—
Money. She could tell herself she was taking the case for the money. Believe the lie long enough for it to become the truth.
“How much?” Robin asked, turning to face the President. One last job and then she’d be done. Find the girl and then fly off to some beach far from the rest of the world, sizzle away her remaining months, drinking, drugging, forgetting all that came before, so that when her death finally came she would be nothing more than a husk that knew nothing but the endless pleasure it had steeped itself in.
Robin expected the President to be shocked but she looked exactly as she had before. Stoic, face etched with fine lines that looked like they had been engraved by a machine. The woman strode to the desk.
“A million.”
Tim laughed.
Forrest shook his head. “Madam President, I’m sure Detective Wray, now understanding the gravity of the situation, would be willing to do it for—”
“Deal,” Robin said.
“Deal,” the President said. “I’ll have my people email you the contract.”
For a moment so brief she wasn’t sure it was real, Robin read beyond her stoicism and found a contortion of absolute pain behind her mask of absolute power. The woman looked like her daughter might have looked if she’d grown old.
The President, standing in front of the desk while Robin stood behind the desk, their positions of power flipped, stretched her hand over the embalmed wood that had brokered bills, treaties, wars.
Robin shook her hand and hoped she wasn’t making a mistake.
“Your man, the agent in the hospital,” she said. “The one who was there when the girl was taken. Where is he?”
“George Washington University Hospital,” the President said.
Robin turned to Tim. “Let’s go kid.”
Tim shot off the couch like a rocket, and Forrest stood and buttoned his blazer.
“Grab my number on your way out,” the President said. “Keep in touch.”
“Will do,” Robin said.
“And Detective?”
“Yes, Madam President?”
Suddenly, the woman had the look of a quiet killer. “She’s out there. And she’s all alone.”
6
The last person to see Lyla Walker alive was a Secret Service agent nicknamed Mac. On their way out of the White House, Robin and Tim swapped numbers, signed some case contracts, and picked up a classified file on the kidnapping and everyone involved. She read it in the autocab, after they stopped at her place so she could run inside and chug some vodka before filling her flask and stowing it in her coat.
Cormac Barnes. Enlisted at nineteen. Served two tours in Iran, one in Saudi Arabia, three in Vietnam. Worked a decade in private security. Hired by Representative Molly Walker for security. Bumped up to Secret Service when Walker was nominated for President. Four years of that and then Lyla Walker was kidnapped. Robin paused when she got to the appearance of the kidnappers, or lack thereof. Jackets, pants, motorcycle helmets, even gloves. A layman might think the gloves meant the kidnappers were frags, which meant they belonged to the FLF, but the FLF didn’t wear gloves. Said they were a symbol of institutional slavery.
She’d always found that absurd. It wasn’t wrong for the government to subsidize the device now wedged in her brain.
But it was wrong for the government to put radioactive material in her brain and shrink the fact into a footnote in her NIF contract.
But without that contract she would have been lost, without purpose, driven down deep into despair until the pain of living was so immense she had no choice but to shoot herself in the head or down a bottle of pills or crash her car into a tree.
But the government could have subsidized the device without asking for anything in return.
She reached for the flask in her coat but stopped. Drinking on the job meant drinking in front of Tim. She couldn’t do it. Felt like she was under a spotlight the size of the sun, searing away her outer layers until there was nothing left but who she really was, a woman who was still a girl, strategizing how and when to sneak drinks, fallible and stupid and fucked up from the start.
The case the case the case. The only thing that always brought her back to earth.
When the CIA debriefed Mac he said the terrorists who took Lyla Walker spoke Mandarin. They masked their bodies but not their voices. Why? A mistake maybe, an assumption that they’d leave no witnesses, and if they did, that the survivors wouldn’t know Mandarin. But for people who were smart enough to cover every inch of their own skin, letting their voices float out in the open didn’t add up. Not yet.
Tim laughed, staring out the cab window.
“What’s so funny?” Robin asked.
“Just the fact that my first job is for the President of the United States.”
“Remember what you learned back at A-Cad and you’ll be fine.” She felt like she was lying but wasn’t sure why.
“Oh I know. Still, what are the chances?”
“A lot of chance going around if you ask me.”
“Meaning?” Tim asked.
“Meaning something doesn’t add up. No one has a good enough motive to kidnap the girl. Not the FLF, not China.”
“Well the fact is these fuckers spoke Mandarin.”
“Fact,” Robin said. The word had meant something once.
Robin finished the report and skimmed it again, lodging the narrative in her head, filing away her questions before tossing the report on the seat between them. “Read it.”
Tim grabbed the file. “So you were one of the first to go, right? To A-Cad.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Just guessing.”
“Guessing my age.”
“Sorry.” He looked away and for some stupid goddamn reason she felt bad.
“I was the fourth kid,” she said. “Technically at least. I was the first one to graduate though, to put boots on the ground.”
“What happened to the others? Burn out?”
“You want the truth or something else?”
“What do you think?” he asked.
“First two offed themselves during training. Third ran away. Never saw her again.”
“Right,” he said, no surprise, no shock, like he knew what she was talking about. He probably did. She doubted anything had changed at A-Cad, where they’d clawed out the kid she’d been before she arrived and filled the husk that was left with what she needed
to be a fragment detective. In the beginning it was normal stuff. History, math, economics. As she matured so did the subjects they taught her, until, when she was twelve, her teacher handed her a gun. Then it was martial arts, weapons handling, reconnaissance training. The worst of it, the stuff no one talked about, not even her, was the Erodium program itself. From age six to eighteen, psychologists drilled emotion out of her soul and filled the cavity with nothing but information. A means to minimize the toll that fragging took. She remembered flashes but that was it. White rooms, bright lights, photos of crime scenes, footage of war, complex moral situations that were presented on paper, then on a computer, then in real life. But she didn’t have to remember the specifics to feel the wounds. That part of her, the part of being human that hurt but had a pulse, had been chiseled away, year after year.
When the cab pulled up to the hospital Robin got out and Tim stuffed the report in his coat and followed. Past a telephone pole carved with the symbol for the FLF. Through the lobby. Into an elevator. Up to room 237. She opened the door and he followed her inside.
Mac. Asleep. Looking like a chunk of meat that made the bed seem small and ready to collapse. Head the size of a watermelon, face notched with lines and craters, tattoo of a penciled line of soldiers walking down his forearm. Tubes in his nose and wrists. Legs wrapped in bandages, same as his stomach. When the door clicked shut behind them his eyes opened.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mac asked. His voice was low and hoarse, like he was drunk and drugged at the same time, angry but dazed. “I’ll give you bozos the first clue for free. The girl’s not here, she’s out there!” He swung his arm toward the sun stained window.
“We’re with the President,” Robin said.
He looked at the gloves covering her hands. “I got nothing more to give.”
“The President hired us to find the girl. I’m Detective Wray and this is Detective Avery.”
“Partners,” Tim said. “Howdy.”
Partner. What a stupid word.
“Listen, can we get out of here?” Mac asked. “There’s a joint down the street, Barr’s Bar, favorite of mine. Run by a lawyer if you can believe it. Disbarred. I think he thought it was funny.”
