The Exterminators

by Bill Fitzhugh

  Whereas the CIA has fewer than five thousand case officers skulking around the globe trying to recruit, bribe, or blackmail locals into poking their noses into sensitive places, they have well over thirty thousand eavesdroppers who generate a staggering pile of transcribed communications, all of which must be reviewed and summarized. Most of these are of no consequence to the security of the United States. But every now and then an analyst stumbles across something that makes the skin crawl.

  It was just after lunch. Agent Parker’s eyes were nappy as he sat staring at his computer screen, his left hand absently spinning the American flag pinned on the lapel of his dark suit. His right hand clicked the mouse, and his eyes moved slowly across the screen. Click, scan, nothing. Click, scan, nothing. Click, scan, huh? The flag was upside down when it stopped spinning. Agent Parker paused for a minute before muttering, “Un-be-leave-able.” He scrolled up and down the screen, taking in all the information, making sure he had it right. Was this possible? His jaw opened slightly before he said, “Jesus.” His head began to move slowly back and forth. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

  “Don’t believe what?” It was Agent Hawkins standing at the entrance to Parker’s cubicle, a manila folder in one hand.

  Parker turned. “How long have you been there?”

  Agent Hawkins shrugged. “I didn’t put a watch on it.” He slapped the folder against his leg and asked again. “Don’t believe what?”

  “See for yourself,” Agent Parker said, nodding at the screen.

  Hawkins stepped into the cubicle and looked. His expression dissolved from mild intrigue to utter disbelief. He turned to look at Agent Parker. “Five hundred sixty thousand?”

  “You believe it? For a damn two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath down near Dumfries.”

  “Dumfries?” Hawkins shook his head. “I wouldn’t pay five-sixty for that piece of crap if it was on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “Roger that.”

  Owing to a combination of his meager salary, poor fiscal discipline, and a housing bubble, Agent Parker was still living in a dismal condo complex in Spotsylvania, Virginia. Every day he was forced to inch up the I-95 corridor at the speed of drying paint to what was known as the Mixing Bowl, a ludicrous array of exits and on-ramps, merges and lane shifts, unfinished bridges and clueless drivers that was the interchange with the Beltway. On average, Agent Parker’s commute was two and a half hours each way. He’d calculated it once, twelve hundred hours a year in his car, crawling to and from a job that had betrayed him. A job he once believed offered him an endless array of possibilities for adventure, advancement, and a better address. A job that now seemed only to limit his possibilities.

  Ten years ago things weren’t so bad. Just as he had swallowed the recruiting pamphlet, Agent Parker had believed the Realtor who told him what a great investment the condo was and how, in a matter of just a few years—thanks to the miracle of equity—he’d be able to move into a fine house of his own in the D.C. metro area. That, it turned out, was the first of many betrayals that had been gnawing lately at Agent Parker’s soul.

  At one end of the spectrum the betrayals seemed minor upon examination. But in the same way that each drop of Chinese water torture is minor, the betrayal of the media with each inaccurate traffic report, and the treachery of his fellow drivers with every unsignaled lane change had a cumulative effect that was beginning to take a toll. Even his hair, once thick and luxuriant, had turned on him with an unfortunate balding pattern that had him considering plugs that he couldn’t even afford.

  At the other end of the spectrum, the betrayal he endured lacked the subtlety of slow torture. From the internal betrayal of Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and others to the external betrayal of his own party with the outing of a covert CIA agent by some vindictive SOB with a partisan agenda—it was enough to make a man rethink where he placed his loyalty.

  Agent Parker gestured at the folder Hawkins was holding. “Is that for me?”

  “Oh, right.” Hawkins opened the envelope and, looking down, said, “Didn’t you work with Mike Wolfe when you entered on duty?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “We picked up some chatter,” Hawkins said. “A couple of cell calls up in Oregon.” He flipped through the file until he found what he was looking for. “Looks like they originated from a D.O.D. phone.”

  “We had a warrant?”

  Hawkins gave him a you-gotta-be-kidding look and said, “What do you think?

  “You don’t want to know what I think.”

  “Fine. Anyway, the recognition software flagged a couple of key words—names, actually—that came up in the conversation.”

  “And one of them was Mike Wolfe?”

  “Actually, no. But the names that did come up were linked to one of Wolfe’s old case files. We figure they were assets he was working.”

  “Okay,” Parker said. “What’re the names?”

  “One was a first-name-only, guy named Klaus. The other one’s kind of funny. It’s Bob Dylan. You know, like the singer.”

  The names triggered enough visceral jolt to blow a twenty-amp fuse, but Agent Parker offered only a blank nod. “Vaguely rings a bell,” he said as he recalled every detail of that night in Queens when he’d gone looking for Mike Wolfe. The lights of the emergency vehicles playing on the smoke and steam rising from the burned out shell of a house. The improbable smell of what turned out to be tens of thousands of roasted insects. The paramedic pulling back the sheet on the gurney to show Parker what looked like a large and badly burned pork roast, which turned out to be part of someone who had been in the house when it exploded.

  Agent Parker feigned indifference as he pointed at the file and said, “So what’s the gist of this conversation?”

  “Something about the D.O.D. offering these two guys a contract.”

  Another jolt. “You don’t say.”

  “Fits their profile, according to Wolfe’s info anyway. So you have to assume they’re talking about a wet job.”

  Parker shrugged. “Any target named?”

  Hawkins shook his head. “I don’t think so. The only other names appear to be the alias I.D.s they used.”

  “Used? What tense are the verbs?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In the conversation,” Parker said. “Maybe they were talking about a contract that was executed years ago. You know, reminiscing about the good old days.”

  Hawkins looked at a few pages of the file. “No. It’s all present tense.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Hawkins saw the gears turning in Parker’s head. “You got a theory about this contract?”

  “Who knows,” Parker said. “Maybe D.O.D. signed Dylan to a recording deal.”

  Agent Hawkins pinched off a sarcastic smile and said, “Yeah, that’s a good place to start your investigation.”

  “What?” Parker looked up, feigning annoyance. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t do me like that. I’m too busy as it is.”

  “What, house-hunting?” Agent Hawkins smiled again and said, “Next stop, Corvallis, Oregon.” He tossed the file onto Parker’s desk and gave him a wink. “You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go.”

  “I don’t believe you. Can’t you dump this somewhere else?”

  “You know the rules,” Hawkins said. “If Wolfe was still around, he’d get it. But since he poofed, and since you were with him when he opened this file, it’s your baby. The D.O. wants to know what these guys are up to.” Hawkins stepped out of the cubicle then turned and said, “Oh, be sure to pack some flannel.” He walked off humming a bar of “Tombstone Blues.”

  Agent Parker stared at the file for a moment. The odds that the names Klaus and Bob Dillon would show up in conversation regarding a contract, on a D.O.D. phone no less, were too slim to believe. It had to
be them. He opened the file, read the transcript. By the time he finished, every one of Parker’s previous assumptions about what had happened six years earlier had flown out the window, leaving open a whole new world of possibilities.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me! I hate you!” Katy stormed from the kitchen, where the family had just finished discussing the pros and cons of Joshua Treadwell’s offer. A moment later, Katy’s door slammed. Then, for good measure, it slammed again.

  This melodrama in one act followed closely on the heels of the list of reasons Mary had given Katy for why she wouldn’t be moving to Los Angeles with her father.

  The list wasn’t based on personal experience or in-depth research so much as it was completely improvised based on things Mary had heard over the years, things that she believed served her current purpose. She began by explaining that the Los Angeles school system was among the worst in the country, that the classrooms were virtually run by gangs. Quality-of-life-wise, she said the air in Southern California was literally brown with carcinogens and the sunshine everybody touted was simply melanoma waiting to happen. And, she continued, if you go to the beach and actually make it to the water without stepping on a used hypodermic, you’re likely to get one of those antibiotic-resistant infections from all the sewage they dump into the ocean.

  Katy stared at her mother, momentarily stunned by the catalogue of horrors flowing from her mouth.

  During the ensuing silence Mary took the opportunity to fabricate statistics about the amount of time people spent stuck in traffic and the number of citizens who died every week during random freeway shootings. She said that the only time traffic seemed to move at all in Los Angeles was during the daily high speed chases resulting from car-jackers and escaping bank robbers, since it was a well established fact that Los Angeles was the bank robbery capital of the U.S.

  Here, Bob added that it was also the nation’s porn capital which brought Mary’s speech to a momentary halt during which Bob explained that it was just a fact he’d heard somewhere and he could be wrong and, just, never mind, forget he’d said anything.

  Mary resumed by saying that the justice system in Southern California was as broken as everything else, ticking off a long list of celebrities who had gotten away with murder, child molestation, and making films like Gigli and Dukes of Hazzard.

  “The people down there are complete idiots,” she said. “For God’s sake, look at who they elected governor. I don’t want you exposed to all that.”

  Katy said, “But you’re letting dad go?”

  “He’ll have Klaus to protect him, sweetie.”

  “Hey, I can hold my own,” Bob said, thinking back on how he’d helped the once famous assassin survive the streets of New York without a gun.

  “Besides,” Mary said, “you don’t want to live in a place where the only cultural advantage is that you can turn right on red.” She held up her hands to forestall any further argument. “That’s it,” she said. “You’re staying here with me.”

  That’s where Katy declared that she would rather be killed in a drive-by shooting than to live in Corvallis, Oregon, for another minute, where she was more likely to die of mold and mildew. She continued by saying that her parents were massively lame for ruining her life and that she hated them and would, like, for the rest of eternity.

  After the door slammed for the second time, Bob looked at Mary and said, “You really think that line from Annie Hall is going to convince her she doesn’t want to move to L.A.?”

  “I had to say something,” Mary said, somewhat agitated. “You certainly weren’t helping.”

  “Hey, I added the porn statistic,” he said. “Besides, until you started with the anti-Chamber-of-Commerce speech, I didn’t know you and Katy weren’t moving with us.”

  “I’m not moving down to that cesspool.”

  “You’ve never even been there.”

  “I know, but it’s…Los Angeles. It’s a big ugly, sprawling mess filled with pretentious, preening, image-obsessed, surgically altered nitwits. And it’s not where I want Katy going to high school. There are too many temptations and she won’t have any friends and that’ll just make it more tempting to do the wrong things to be accepted.” Mary went on to admit that she liked living in Oregon. She loved how green and peaceful it was. Besides, she pointed out, the D.O.D. funding was only for a year at a time. She didn’t want to move down there and then have to move back in a year. “That,” she said, “would be nuts.”

  “What is nuts,” Klaus said. “Is that the two of you do not seem to realize the significance of what has happened. Our covers are no longer viable.”

  “I know,” Bob said. “But Treadwell said they’d provide new ones.”

  “Yes,” Klaus said. “But they will generate paperwork in the process. And someone else will find that paperwork. And it will leak. And they will come looking for us.” After everything that had happened over the past six years, Klaus found it incredible that Bob took at face value the representations of any U.S. government official.

  “Why would anybody believe it?” Mary asked. “Everyone knows you collected the bounty six years ago. There’s nothing in it for anyone anymore.”

  Klaus propped his elbows on the kitchen table, closed his eyes, and began to rub his temples. He could not believe these two. He had been their best friend for the past six years and yet it was as if he had just met them, had no idea how these people thought. He couldn’t believe Bob and Mary had forgotten how easily they had been found and how close they had come to being killed in New York when all the wrong people knew who they were. Apparently six years of calm and prosperity had dulled whatever edge they had honed during those frenzied days when they were targets of some of the world’s best assassins. Finally Klaus put his hands on the table and said, “We must obtain new identities.”

  Mary reached over and patted his hand. “You do whatever you think is best.”

  “Thank you.” Klaus pulled his cell phone and punched in a number. A moment later he said, “Yes. I am having an identity crisis. I was hoping you could help.” Klaus listened for a second before a look of surprise crossed his face. “No kidding?” He put his hand over the phone and looked at Bob. “He has a website now.” He turned his attention back to the call. “It is secure? Yes, PayPal is fine,” he said as he grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil. “All right, www dot what?” A moment later he flipped the phone shut and went to the computer.

  As Bob and Mary resumed their discussion about the move to L.A., Klaus navigated the website. At the low end of the product line was a do-it-yourself option which allowed you to download templates of birth certificates and driver’s licenses from various states. At the other end was the Gold Member option. It was expensive, but the work came with a money-back guarantee. Clicking there, Klaus was taken to a screen where he could choose the number of identities needed, the genders and age of each, and the names. A drop-down menu allowed him to select first from ethnic groups. Thinking about the move to L.A., Klaus selected ‘Hispanic.’ This took him to a second drop-down menu. He scrolled through it then turned to Bob and said, “What do you think? Gonzalez? Recendez? Something like that? Be in the majority?”

  Before Bob could answer, Katy appeared in the doorway holding several pieces of paper. She cleared her throat as if standing in front of a class about to give a report. “Okay, first of all,” she said, “based on per-student spending, Oregon schools aren’t any better than California’s. Second, I’m four times more likely to get addicted to crystal meth living in Oregon.” Flipping to the next page she said, “It’s true that the five counties with the worst air quality in the country are in California, but Los Angeles county isn’t one of them. And according to the Department of Transportation, the average commute time in Los Angeles is twenty-eight minutes, not three and half hours.” She gave
Mary a how-do-you-like-them-apples look before continuing. “You’re right that it’s the bank robbery capital of the world, but 94 percent of the high-speed chases that follow end with no injuries to bystanders.” Katy turned to look at Bob. “Sorry, Dad, but I couldn’t confirm that L.A. is the porn capital.”

  “That’s okay, sweetie, thanks for trying.”

  “But even if it’s true, it’s irrelevant. What is relevant,” Katy said, her accusing eyes turned back to Mary, “is the fact that if Dad moves down there and we stay here, this will be a single-parent household, which quadruples the likelihood of my becoming a pregnant, drug-addicted, high school drop-out.”

  Mary looked at Katy with amused annoyance, and not for the first time.

  “It’s a fact.” Katy waved the sheets of paper. “Children from single-parent homes drop out of school, get pregnant, sniff glue, and become prostitutes at, like, twice the national rate. Do you want to hear the facts about cocaine and heroin use?” She hoped Mary’s answer would be no since most of what she was saying wasn’t supported by her documents, but she figured she’d bluffed her mom before and it was worth a try.

  After taking a moment to absorb Katy’s presentation, Mary said, “Your grades would be so much better if you put this much effort into your school work.” She shook her head. “By the way, where’d you get all that? Some bogus Internet site?” She reached for Katy’s documents.

  Katy refused to hand them over. Instead she said, “Guh. At least I’m not quoting from dumb old Woody Allen movies.”

  All Mary had to say was, “You’re not going.”

  “Katy?” Klaus said. “Sorry to interrupt, but would you prefer to be Liliana, Blanca, or Rosa Martinez?”

  Katy looked at Klaus with all the contempt a sixteen year old could muster. She said, “Guh. You guys are so laaaame.” She rolled her eyes and left.