by D S Kane
He heard a knock on his office door, looked up, and said, “Enter.” He pointed to the couch and McDougal sank into the empty space next to the coat.
“Mark, I have a special project for you. If we still had Sashakovich, I’d ask you to assign this to her. It’s right up her alley, but, well, that isn’t possible any more. I think your best move without her is to obtain several subcontractors and assign each to do a piece of the work. Make sure none of them has enough of the pieces to guess the nature of the deliverable.” He looked straight at McDougal as he spoke.
Greenfield preferred avoiding NOCs—contractors without official cover—for any assignment unless it could be done in pieces and reassembled into its final version. That way, none of the NOCs could understand the finished product. He stared back at Greenfield, waiting for the mission to be outlined.
Greenfield said, “The West Wing has requested a global funds transfer network, with very specific endpoints. It’s urgent.” He looked at his computer screen. “We need a team working on this by the end of next week.” Greenfield pressed the mouse button and pointed to his printer. “Read it and leave it.”
McDougal reached and removed three printed pages. As he scanned them his mouth fell open. “Sir, it’ll be hard to keep any who see this from understanding. Are you sure there isn’t one of ours inside who can handle this.”
“I’ve just reviewed the staff roster. There’s no one. No one we can train fast enough. The three of Ainsley’s staff who know the slightest bits of banking aren’t in the same league as what we need. And no one who’s in Sashakovich’s league.” He grimaced. “Damn her. And damn those budget cuts. Well, at least it can be buried in our subcontracting budget.”
Greenfield watched as McDougal examined the short report again. McDougal said, “The available subcontractors don’t have enough horsepower. But there might be one, a one new independent contractor who might be good for this job. I’ll take care of it.”
Greenfield nodded. “Good.” He held his hand out and McDougal handed back the pages. As his subordinate left, the director mumbled to himself. “Damn. Project SafePay will be a bitch.”
* * *
Cassie found the return trip on the freighter more tedious than her trip over, For over a week, pregnancy made her sick every morning. Often she became dizzy from vomiting. The ship rocked violently as it neared the Pacific coast.
San Francisco was close enough to San Jose to make delivery of her report a local email rather than 3,000 miles away from where she lived. She knew her client’s data processing function could determine the “send” point for her email and didn’t want them to know where she lived. And there were other reasons why she needed to be here. Using an abortion clinic here would further dilute the clues as to where she lived. And finally, she wanted the assassin’s fetus gone from her as soon as possible.
Rolling through the mid-morning fog, the freighter neared the California coastline. She recognized the tiny peaks of the Farallon Islands close to Half Moon Bay where she’d grown up. She knew sharks congregated to feast on sea lions sunning themselves on the rocky shoals. Not a good idea to exit here.
Cassie felt an ache in her heart passing so close to where her parents lived. It was likely the agency kept a watch on them and so might the people hunting her. But she stared at the cliffs of Devil’s Slide, filled with a painful longing.
She readied herself to disembark the boat as it passed under the Golden Gate Bridge into the Bay near the Marin Headlands. These cold turbulent waters were still warmer than outside the Bay. She wished she’d brought a wetsuit, but it would have been too bulky and heavy for her to sneak aboard, toting it under her arm. She needed to get to shore within five or six minutes or she’d freeze to death.
As they approached Alcatraz Island and closed to within two hundred yards of shore, she cabled the raft to her wrist and dove with it into the frigid water. It was broad daylight but no one noticed; the crew was either busy preparing for the cable of a tugboat or viewing the coastline off the starboard side of the boat. She mounted the raft as it inflated and paddled south toward the city as fast as she could to generate body heat. The tide was pushing her out toward the ocean, and she paddled harder to make shore. No boats nearby. No help available. She was out of breath and her muscles ached as she fought the sea.
Cassie landed just west of Seacliff onto China Beach, at a row of exclusive mansions rimming the ocean cliffs above.
Emerging from the water, soaking wet and freezing in her ill-fitting tiny black bikini, she shook her arms and then huddled to warm herself. After deflating the raft, she dropped it into the plastic waterproof bag containing her attaché case. Now Cassie needed to find somewhere to change into street clothes.
People strolled close down the path leading to the beach, tourists with cameras admiring the bay. One of them—an older, tall, blond-haired man—noticed her shivering as she walked by them. He yelled at her, “It’s a dumb idea to swim in 55-degree water when the air temperature isn’t any warmer.” The man smiled.
Cassie smiled back. “Yeah. Well I just found that out. Big mistake.” She shivered. “It sure is cold.” Cassie pulled some clothing from the plastic waterproof bag. The restrooms contained showers inside. But she had no soap. She washed and dressed in a blouse and skirt, tossing her still-wet bikini into the trash, along with the raft. She removed her cash from the bag and tossed that, too.
The fog—the “marine layer” as the locals called it—was slowly disappearing, leaving the coast warmer. Wearing clothing, she was happier. Sniffing the air, Cassie noticed a foul stench. She was in serious need of a real cleaning. The shower had done little to wash free the week-old reek of her body odors.
Cassie grabbed her attaché case and walked until she found a bus stop. She boarded a MUNI bus and took it to a BART station in downtown San Francisco. Her next step was to find an abortion clinic. There were many in the city, but she wanted one far away, to avoid being seen by someone at the agency’s San Francisco regional office.
She found a pay phone at the Hyatt on Market Street and the phone book there led her to an obstetrics practice. She spoke with them, begged them, assured them that she wasn’t an anti-abortion group leader, made desperate noises, and they finally offered her the phone number of an abortion clinic in San Mateo. She rented a car at the Hyatt and drove a half-hour south.
By the time she’d arrived in San Mateo, Cassie was exhausted and sleepy. She found the Howard Johnson Express, a cheap hotel on South El Camino Real, a one-mile walk from her intended destination on Ellsworth Street, near the Mills Peninsula Hospital. She showered and slept in the hotel until the middle of the next morning.
Walking north on El Camino Real, Cassie saw San Mateo hadn’t changed since she left graduate school. It was still a museum piece from the 1950s.
She was starved and it was just after 11:30 a.m. Her favorite sushi bar on Third Avenue—Sushi Sam’s Edomata—opened for lunch as she arrived. She said “Hi” to Sam. He looked up, knife in hand, but no longer recognized her. One of the staff walked her to a table and she ordered her favorite, the “Chili Dog,” a tiny slab of maguro bordered by seaweed salad and chili bits, coated with a few drops of sesame oil, and wrapped with rice in crispy seaweed. Sam was a perfectionist, with a perfect life full of routine.
She marveled how he made more inventive and tasty sushi dishes than any sushi bar she’d been in west of the Mississippi and east of Hawaii. The quality remained unchanged from her days at Stanford. Cassie filled her belly. Scallop salad in mayonnaise with tobiko, a “California Special,” more chili dogs, amaebi, and deep-fried shrimp heads. Delicious! She was calm. When she left, it was just after 2 p.m.
As she walked toward the clinic, she passed a young woman pushing a baby carriage. The woman appeared to be in a state of bliss cooing to her infant.
Cassie stared at them, triggering a sudden shift in her determination to abort the baby. A wall of guilt built up around her.
But she
also felt anger, because there was no way she could ever hope to enjoy bringing up her own child, given her struggle just to stay alive. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes. She felt droplets of milk leak from her breasts. Her face scrunched as she cried. She looked for a place to sit. A bench, right by the Post Office. She sat there in the bright sun, wailing uncontrollably. What could she do?
While she wept, her mind spit up a vision of her, older, with a man who looked like a more mature Evan and a teenaged daughter whose face was obscured. The young woman’s face in her vision took form. Dirty-blond hair, the girl seemed somehow very familiar to her.
As the vision ended, she rose and walked up Third Avenue toward the corner of San Mateo Drive. She stopped, feeling revulsion at herself, impregnated by a man assigned to kill her, a man she’d murdered.
She steeled herself, making the final decision to murder her unborn child. It was the only choice if she wanted to survive. What have I become?
She continued walking, dragging herself toward the place where she could kill her baby.
As she approached the door she found an angry pair of pro-life demonstrators directly in front of her on the walkway into the abortion clinic. She pushed past them, noting their surprise she could force them off the path where they stood. One of them, female, called her a whore, and Cassie flipped her middle finger back at the woman.
Inside it was quiet, as if no one knew what was happening outside. Cassie waited. She mused that it was illegal to demonstrate at an abortion clinic but that wasn’t stopping those people.
When her turn came, she ignored her feelings and fell into role.
“How are you paying?” the receptionist asked through a wad of chewing gum.
She pulled a stack of counterfeit bills from her purse. “My boyfriend doesn’t want to let there be a record it might have been his, but at least he gave me the cash.”
The clerk looked a bit incredulous, and Cassie smiled. “He thinks it was his cousin Wally did this, and I really don’t care which one of them it was. I just want it gone.” She pointed to her belly with a throwing-away gesture.
The clerk bore an expression of embarrassment and looked away from her, processing the paperwork without another word.
The office smelled of antiseptic. Once reseated in the waiting area outside a string of examining rooms, a tall, thin, butt-ugly doctor who looked to be younger than she was walked toward her. He smiled through crooked teeth. “Emily Fishcallow?” Cassie nodded and followed him and a nurse into an examining room. As he closed the door, she said, “Yup, I am. And I can’t wait for this to end.” She pointed again to her belly. “Can we do this today, I mean, right now?”
The doctor stopped smiling. “First things first. I’ll need to examine you. How long since you were impregnated?”
“About three weeks,” Cassie lied, clicking her chewing gum. He told her to strip and mount the examining table.
After a painful exam, where the stream of embarrassing questions seemed endless, the doctor said, “Well, Ms. Fishcallow, it looks more like nine or ten weeks to me, but you’re still okay for us to proceed.” He stared straight through her. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Cassie nodded. “Absolutely.” But hiding her feelings couldn’t keep her from knowing she had other desires.
“Wouldn’t a clinic closer to where you live be better?”
Cassie had chosen the Fishcallow identity from the several northern California identities she’d crafted. Her driver’s license for the visit showed her as a working class woman from Morgan Hill, sixty miles south of San Mateo. Cassie’s guilt forced her to explain herself, in role. “It’s a small town, and I’m a waitress. Letting everyone there know wouldn’t be good for me. You know, gossip.”
But her feelings had her reeling.
The doctor nodded and looked at his watch. “I can do it today, and I’ll have time just before the clinic closes.”
She returned to the waiting room, guilt stalking her. At around 4 p.m., she found herself climbing back onto another examining table. This time she faced a different nurse whose face was stern and foreboding. The nurse said nothing while she prepped Cassie. When the doctor arrived, he smiled at her and said, “Relax. This won’t take long and you won’t feel much of anything until long after you leave.” She watched him pick up a hypodermic syringe. He began sounding the crook of her elbow, searching for a vein. “We use a very strong local, but you won’t be unconscious. Okay?” She nodded. He continued to speak to her as the room swirled, but she didn’t remember anything he said.
Cassie became alert, but remained dazed. The doctor told her, “You might bleed just a little. Don’t worry unless it’s more than a few drops.” Then his voice took on a more personal tone. He said, “I noticed your breasts are producing milk. It’s a rare but normal event, and it’ll probably stop within a few days.”
He said, “Ah, and, as I told you when we were prepping you for the procedure, there was some scarring. So there’s a chance you might not be able to bear children as a result of this abortion.”
Cassie thought two things rapidly in succession. Like I’ll live long enough for this to be an issue. But if I can manage to survive long enough for it to become one, and I can’t get pregnant, I might someday be able to adopt.
“As for your health right now, limit your movement for the next twenty-four hours, to reduce the likelihood you’ll bleed. Take it easy for a few days.”
She assured the doctor. “I’ll remain in bed as much as possible for a day or two.” When she tried to get off the examining table, Cassie staggered, her movements stiff. She dressed, noting pain in her belly and crotch, and fierce throbbing as she walked toward the clinic’s exit. But what was more alarming was the feeling she had done something wrong, something evil. I’m no better than those hunting me.
CHAPTER 10
July 27, 8:11 p.m.
Women’s Gynecological Service,
San Mateo Drive,
San Mateo, California
It was the end of the day and the lights were being turned off in the outer office. A night watchman opened the door to the outside. She blinked at the dimming dusk streaming toward her as she staggered out. Cassie trailed behind all but the clinic’s last staff member.
They all emerged into a nightmare of demonstrators and television cameras. Mistaken for a clinic staff member, demonstrators called her names and threatened her life. She knew that these demonstrations were illegal, but there they were.
Shocked by her unintended visibility, Cassie looked around, found herself staring right into the lens of a television camera.
To her utter surprise and dismay, she saw herself recorded by a national network, their labeled van visible just fifty feet away.
Her safety in San Mateo had vanished in a flash of camera light bulbs. Time to run! She didn’t bother checking out of the hotel in San Mateo.
Cassie walked slowly, painfully to her rental car. She sat there until the pain subsided. The view out the windshield seemed to spin. Driving would be dangerous, but sitting here wasn’t an option.
She pulled out from the parking space and drove down Highway 101 toward San Jose, where she’d be closer to her client’s headquarters and closer still to their competitor’s regional office. Rush-hour traffic was heavy. She rolled along bumper-to-bumper for well over an hour before she found a cheap hotel in San Jose off Brokaw Road very near the San Jose International Airport. She used the name “Elaine Teman,” one of her other backup identities.
Once in the room Cassie destroyed her “Emily Fishcallow” documents. She tried to rest, but her stomach growled. The pain in her belly wasn’t all from the procedure. Ravenous.
Cassie used the free wireless connection provided by the hotel, deciding to go out for her dinner to a familiar microbrewery. Grimacing in pain, she drove to the Gordon Biersch pub. She’d eaten the food there when it was one of her hangouts in graduate school at Stanford. It was still satisfying. The doctor hadn
’t mentioned avoiding alcohol, so Cassie relaxed over a glass of ale. The dish she chose, a roast loin of pork in ancho chili cherry sauce, would complement the beer. She savored the flavors.
Her imagination drifted as she watched a succession of men pick up women at the bar. She fantasized for a moment about leading a normal life, looking forward to a husband, children, a house, and maybe even a pet. It depressed her, watching normal people do normal things. She was sure she’d never again sit at a bar and get picked up by a man. She frowned, seeing her plain face and her small bust line reflected in one of the restaurant’s windows. Then she remembered, and plucked the photo of Ann from her pocket. She wondered how the teen was faring.
Cassie drove back to the hotel and turned on the news just in time to see the report on the pro-life demonstration in San Mateo, and to her horror, glimpsed a full five seconds of her face, both far away and then close-up.
A talking head on the television said, “Here you see one of the clinic’s staff marching off into the parking lot. She seems quite angry.” It was lucky, she thought, they identified her as one of the clinic’s staff. However, the news broadcast immediately turned dangerous for her. “And here,” said the TV commentator, “just a few hours later, you see the clinic building set on fire by the protestors. The night watchman and one fireman died in the blaze.”
It was worse than she could have imagined. People died, left their families without fathers and mothers. Definitely national news.
Someone at the agency would see the news report, and might recognize her despite the plastic surgery. They had software to match facial characteristics and account for plastic surgery. Would they care? Could the assassins figure out this was her? Would the person who blew her cover find out and tell them?
She imagined the faces of almost a dozen agency staff and managers who might have sold her cover identity, and then several client governments who could have bought it. She had no idea who had given her up. Northern California wasn’t safe anymore. Best to prepare for the worst.
