by Mike Maden
Time to put it into action. Fake passport, the Cayman accounts, a bug-out bag with important papers, gold coins—
“Are you listening to me, Lawrence?”
“How close are they to closing the net?”
“Twenty-four hours at most. For all I know, they are on the way over to your place right now.”
Fung’s doorbell rang. He nearly jumped out of his skin.
“They’re here!”
“No. I took the liberty of sending over my very best agent. Let her in and follow her instructions to the letter.”
“You’re bringing me to the Chinese embassy, right? I’d be safe there.”
“Federal agents are already there waiting for you.”
“Oh, no, no, no.”
“Do not worry. I anticipated all of this. I have a plan. But you must trust me.”
Fung’s lightning-fast brain made a calculation—another scenario he’d played out if things went sideways. He could testify against CHIBI if he confessed his crimes, even show the government how to defend against men like him. They’d be lenient. Hell, they’d pay him good money to save them billions from cybercrime.
The doorbell rang again.
“Lawrence, now is not the time to improvise. Either let me help you now or face the consequences.”
“How can I be sure you’re not just trying to protect yourself?”
“Lawrence, how can you say that? You are my most important asset and I would never want to lose you. But you are also my friend. You can trust me.”
“I just don’t know what to do.”
“Think about your parents. Think about Torré. How can you help them if you are hanged for treason?”
“Oh, jeez . . .”
Fung took a slow, deep breath. CHIBI was right. Getting arrested would shame his parents, and poor Torré would be utterly lost without him. CHIBI was his best option. His only option.
He headed for the door.
“I’m opening it now.”
“Excellent. Soon your worries will be all over.”
Fung yanked the door open.
A young Chinese woman in dark glasses and a smart suit stood in the doorway, carrying a leather laptop bag and an aluminum attaché case in leather-gloved hands.
“Do exactly as she says,” CHIBI said.
“I will.”
He did.
CIELO SANTO, PERU
Jack slept like the dead in the broken-down hotel bed, anesthetized by copious quantities of Sands’s cheap whiskey and beer.
He dreamed he was falling, until his face smashed against the floor. The sharp pain woke him just in time to feel a boot crash into his ribs. He grunted with the kick and doubled up instinctively. A second kick to the gut drove him to reach out to snag the other foot planted near his face. A sharp blow to his cheek by a heavy fist stopped him short, followed by two other hands pressing his shoulders against the floor and a cloth shoved onto his face until the sharp, sweet acetone smell in his sinuses brought on the dark.
75
Jack forced his eyes open.
His face was smashed against the filthy hotel carpet, head throbbing, ribs stabbing him with every breath. His mind was fogged with whatever had knocked him out.
He climbed to his unsteady feet and sat on the creaky bed. Harsh sunlight kept him blinking, but he could see that his room had been trashed.
What time is it?
He reached for his watch on the near nightstand. It wasn’t there. Neither was his phone—he checked his pockets. Shit.
He stood and scanned the room for his backpack. He didn’t see it.
He flung the closet doors open. Only old wire hangers and someone’s abandoned shirt.
He dropped down on his knees and checked under the bed. Nothing.
He ran to the bathroom. Not there, either.
Gone.
Damn! Everything was in it.
He glanced down at his stocking feet.
The bastards even stole my hiking boots.
He felt for his wallet.
Gone.
Panicked, he clutched at his throat for Cory’s ashes.
Gone!
Rage and nausea flooded him. He grunted through clenched teeth.
Motherfuckers!
The rage turned inward.
Sucker-punched him in the gut.
He had screwed it all up.
Again.
* * *
—
Jack dashed over to the cigarette-burned nightstand on the far side of the bed. An ancient clock with flip numbers read 11:35 a.m. The bus back to Anta would be arriving at any minute.
But what caught his eye was his passport and return bus ticket lying next to the clock.
Message received.
Yankee, go home.
A crumpled ball lay next to the passport. Jack knew what it was before he even opened it. He tried to smooth out the picture of Cory’s dad standing on the top of La Hermana Alta, but it was ruined.
He shoved the wrinkled Polaroid into his pants pocket and stumbled toward the tiny bathroom with its filthy tiles and rusted sink to splash water on his aching face. A clouded, cracked mirror revealed a black eye above a swollen cheek and a fat, split lip, which explained the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.
Jack buried his face in his cupped hands and let the cold water cleanse his skin and clear his mind. Then cupped his hands again and drank until he slaked his searing thirst. He dried his face with a paper-thin towel and smoothed out his matted hair. His bladder ached. He pissed and washed his hands, then rinsed out his mouth with tap water, since his toothbrush had been stolen along with everything else.
His stocking feet were wet from the sink water splashed on the floor. How in the hell was he supposed to get around without any shoes, let alone any money?
He snatched his passport and bus ticket from the nightstand and pulled open the front door. He glanced up and down the hallway—a half-dozen rooms on either side, and a door at the far end. Probably a maid’s closet.
Jack darted as quietly as he could on the stained hallway carpet and flung the door open. It was a closet, for sure. Stacked with towels, tiny wrapped soaps, and 200-grit toilet paper. But there was also a broom, a bucket, a mop, rags, and an old-fashioned push sweeper. He kept rifling around, hoping beyond hope.
There.
A pair of old, battered brown wingtips. He blew the dust off them and raced back to his room, where he fell on the bed and pulled the shoes on over his wet socks. They pinched his feet, but beggars can’t be choosers, he reminded himself. He loosened the laces as far as he could and tied them. That would have to do.
That’s when he realized they had even stolen his jacket.
The numbers on the old digital clock flopped over with a mechanical click.
Time to go.
* * *
—
Jack came down the one flight of stairs and into the empty bar. Sands wasn’t there.
Of course not.
Damn snitch. Worthless drunk.
Sore as hell from the beating and queasy from the booze, Jack stepped out into the light. The sky was cloudy and the air was cool.
At least it wasn’t raining.
The bus from Anta came rolling up into town just then, its groaning engine and crunching leaf springs inching toward the gas station. Another busload of miners. He headed that way.
By the time he got there, the passengers had unloaded and the driver was refueling the bus. Jack queued up behind a half-dozen locals, beaten down, haggard, and filthy, their dreams of golden riches shattered by the harsh reality of this hellish place.
After refueling, the driver paid the gas station owner, climbed aboard, and fired up the engine. Jack’s peripheral vision caught sight of the two men he saw in the
bar last night, watching him and the bus from a distance. No surprise there.
The bus did a one-eighty and headed back down the hill past Sands standing on the last corner of the last street, arms folded and eyes watchful. Jack had half a mind to jump off the bus and beat his drunken ass. But the look on Sands’s face held him back. The ex-Ranger was feeling sorry either for Jack or for himself.
Either way, it didn’t matter now. Sands and his buddies saw that they had won when Jack climbed onto the bus.
Jack hadn’t made it to the top of the mountain and he didn’t have Cory’s ashes to scatter even if he went there now. What should have been a simple, final act of friendship and respect had turned into a bitter failure amplifying Jack’s already outsized sense of guilt over Liliana’s horrific death and the tragic turn of fate now crushing her sweet, orphaned son.
Hurt, tired, and utterly defeated, Jack knew it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.
76
Jack figured ten minutes had passed since the bus left town.
Plenty of time.
He made his way forward and asked the driver in his broken Spanish to pull over. At first, the driver refused. Jack pulled off his last remaining possession, his Georgetown class ring, and handed it to him. The driver flashed a gap-toothed smile that wrinkled the leathery skin around his black eyes. He pocketed the ring, pulled over, and cranked the doors open.
Jack jumped out, his toes smashing into the end of the too-small shoes when he landed. The doors slammed shut behind him and the bus roared away as Jack turned and headed back up the hill toward Cielo Santo.
It was going to be a long damn walk from here to there and then to the top of La Hermana, Jack told himself.
But he was going to do it, come hell or high water. If he couldn’t spread Cory’s ashes on top of the mountain like he had promised, at least he’d still make the trip and bury the photo. He’d stop by Cory’s grave when he got home and explain it all to him and ask his forgiveness for failing. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to apologize for not even trying.
Jack didn’t have much of a plan. Sands and the two assholes that jumped him saw him leave, so they wouldn’t be expecting him to make the trip back up to the town, let alone the mountain. He found the location of the trailhead on an old topo map stapled to a wall in the restaurant where he ate dinner last night, so he didn’t need Sands’s help on that account. If he hurried, he could make the mountain summit by dark, then get the hell off the mountain, climbing down the worst part of it in the twilight. The crescent moon would provide enough light for the rest of the trip, so long as the clouds went away, which they were supposed to. After that, he’d figure out how to get back to Lima, one way or another.
* * *
—
By the time Jack got back to town his feet were already beginning to blister in the cramped shoes. At least Sands had disappeared, and the two thugs were nowhere to be seen. Since he had no idea who else in town was connected to those jokers, Jack did everything he could to stay out of the street and out of eyesight, trying not to draw any attention to himself.
Twenty minutes later Jack was on the edge of town and near the trailhead. He spotted a couple guys with guns on their hips and smoking cigarettes, clearly guarding the entrance and exit to the narrow mountain trail. They were sitting in green plastic chairs and playing cards, laughing and cursing.
A stand of gnarled paperbark trees on one side of the road provided cover. Jack snuck down below the road and around the sentries, and climbed his way back up a steep, crumbling slope, slipping and sliding until he reached the trail a half-mile farther up and out of their eyesight.
Already tired from the short, steep journey and parched by the dry air, Jack pressed on. At least he was out of the running sewer known as Cielo Santo and on the trail toward the giant, flat-headed granite mountain looming high above. The higher peaks around him were capped in blinding white snow. It was as beautiful a sight as he had ever seen, much like the Julian Alps he had witnessed in Slovenia last year.
The top of La Hermana Alta had to be nearly fifteen thousand feet, he reckoned. The thin, cool air had gotten even thinner and cooler since he jumped off the bus. He was already feeling a little light-headed.
At this height he was in danger of altitude sickness, or at least the mild form of it. The good news was that he was already suffering the symptoms of altitude sickness—aching muscles, headache, and nausea—from his hangover and beating.
How much worse could it get?
Jack picked up the pace. He’d be damned lucky to reach the summit in five hours at this point, but even if he didn’t, he wasn’t turning back, even if he had to climb in the dark.
* * *
—
The farther he climbed, the steeper and narrower the trail became, even as the rocks and boulders shouldering it grew in size. Patches of plants with long, green leaves like palm fronds became smaller and less frequent. The twisted, rust-colored paperbark trees had disappeared altogether.
Thirty minutes past the trailhead he felt like he was marching through molasses, his oxygen-starved brain thundering with a vicious headache. This only drove Jack harder, each step a penance for his past failures, each footfall the chance to stomp away the guilt that wracked his soul.
Without water or food and with his bruised ribs aching with every breath, Jack suddenly realized that there was a very real chance he wouldn’t make it to the summit after all.
The sky roared overhead with a crushing boom like an artillery shell, so close he felt the sonic pressure. A spear of jagged lightning tore across the sky.
And then the rain came in cold, chilling sheets.
What little rain gear he had was stolen with the backpack. He was soaked instantly, chilled to the bone.
Jack trudged on.
77
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The NSA’s counterintelligence directorate, the Q Group, was still badly shaken by the Snowden fiasco. They’d chased the traitor all the way to Hong Kong but never did find him, even though he was in a hotel just blocks from the U.S. embassy, spilling his guts to a reporter before escaping to Russia.
The director of Q Group was determined not to let Fung be a repeat.
The call straight from Director Foley to the director of the Q Group rang alarm bells throughout the unit. They tapped their best bloodhound, Lynette Fortson, a month shy of early retirement, to lead the investigation, which could take weeks, months, or even years to resolve. There was no one better in the business, and she wouldn’t quit until Fung was captured and questioned, retirement plans be damned.
She began by filing the necessary documents with a FISA court judge favorably inclined toward national security matters. The documents were based on the data provided by Jesse Benson’s office and Amanda Watson’s sworn statements regarding her strong misgivings about Lawrence Fung.
If Fung were smart enough to compromise the IC Cloud without getting caught, he probably had early-warning safeguards in place to alert him if the NSA—an IC agency—was hot on his heels. Fortson went old-school: phone calls and couriers only.
If she were Fung, her first thought would be to flee to a country without an extradition treaty with the United States. Currently, there were more than seventy such governments, including Russia, which was one reason Snowden went there. The Vatican was an unlikely option, as was China, because it seemed the most obvious. Burkina Faso, Yemen, and a few dozen other hellholes were also on the list. If it were her, she’d head to Andorra, a slice of heaven in the Pyrenees, wedged between Spain and France. There was no way to know which one he’d choose. Alerts were put out with private and public air carriers, as well as with TSA passport control stations deploying facial recognition. She hoped Fung wasn’t monitoring TSA priority alerts, but it was a risk Fortson was willing to take.
She need not have worried.
For
tson got the call from the team in California. Lawrence Fung had been found dead in a Lake Arrowhead cabin, a suicide, according to the note on his laptop, which also contained both a confession and an explanation of how he’d committed his crimes.
A preliminary investigation by the forensic data analyst on scene confirmed that Fung’s laptop contained the necessary links to the comms satellite portal he had gained access to and, subsequently, the details he’d laid out in his confession.
Fortson’s first call would be to Foley to deliver the good news. Closing Fung’s case was a glorious capstone to Fortson’s already remarkable career.
Fortson’s second call would be to her husband to start packing the RV. Their retirement plans were back on track and there was a brand-new grandson in Idaho they were both dying to meet.
ON THE SLOPES OF LA HERMANA ALTA IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES
Jack’s oxygen-deprived brain throbbed with every heartbeat, his lungs gasping for air like a landed carp. Slightly delirious from hyperventilation, his monkey mind went into overdrive, and regrets stabbed his heart like blunt screwdrivers.
The deaths of his cousin Brian Caruso and Sam Driscoll, two of his best friends from The Campus, flooded him with sorrow. He missed those guys every day. Paul Brown’s self-sacrificing death in Singapore brought on another pang of self-loathing. It should’ve been him and not the heavyset forensic accountant who died that night.
But it was the constant flashbacks of Liliana’s drowning that dogged his every step, hearing in his mind her final, desperate cry of her son’s name. He was grateful for the pain wracking his body; each agonizing step dulled his mental anguish. The pain also helped with the growing cold. The clouds blocked what little warmth the sun offered. At least the rain had stopped, though the dark, heavy clouds promised more to come, and soon.
With the sun blocked and without a watch, he could only guess the time. It felt like he’d been marching for two weeks, but it was more likely only two hours, the elevation increasing with each faltering step. The trail now proceeded along a narrow ridge with steep, grassy slopes strewn with boulders that rolled all the way back down to the valley below. He was, by his reckoning, about halfway to his objective. It would be just after sunset when he reached the summit, but that would be okay, especially if the clouds passed and the moon could light his way, if only dimly.
