A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  I was putting the finishing touches on that order when Natsumi came up behind me smelling like soap and moisturizing lotion.

  “You shouldn’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Your feelings of vulnerability are expressing themselves through your credit card.”

  I kept reviewing the order.

  “Apparently you can’t buy grenades on the open market.”

  “Do you actually know how to shoot an assault rifle?”

  “No. But you can learn online.”

  “Don’t forget food. We’ll need some of that, too.”

  The last thing I did that night was send the names and images of the FBI people who knocked on our door in Cambridge to Shelly Gross. I didn’t know if Shelly would help us, protective as he was toward his former employer, no matter what they did to him. Though I knew these feelings were complicated and emotionally convoluted, thus worth testing.

  Natsumi talked me into getting a few hours sleep before we went to drop off the rental and pick up the new cars. Since the house had no bedding, we slept on the couch in the basement, the electric heat turned up to compensate for the lack of blankets. Neither of us cared. In fact, we nearly slept through the next day and had to hustle to get our vehicles sorted out and home supplies secured before all the stores closed.

  That night we slept in a master bedroom that was bigger than the apartment I grew up in over the storefront in Stamford. It actually echoed. But we were too tired to move and quickly fell into about nine hours of oblivion.

  CHAPTER 14

  It took the better part of two days to install the video array around the property, load the software and set up the monitors, including an alarm app on my smartphone. In between, I checked on our bank accounts and searched for Alberta using applications that hummed away in the background. We also took a short road trip up to Danbury to pick up our survival gear.

  Given the nature of the shipment, having it delivered to the logistics company added an attractive layer of security. It reduced unwanted attention on our new rental and the people who worked there were so robotic the boxes could have been labeled “Parts for Quick Assembly Thermonuclear Device” without raising much curiosity.

  I’d contracted with the place during the first few months off the grid, using an exclusive identity now the oldest in my repertoire. In one of their temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouses I’d stored several hundred thousand dollars worth of vintage guitars—my untraceable, easily liquidated source of backup funding. I left the cache undisturbed on that trip, though I made a mental note to establish current value by checking the inventory against advertised comparables. I did learn, however, when thinking out loud about this, that Natsumi knew how to play acoustic guitar.

  “Not like a professional or anything, but I can get through Alice’s Restaurant and most of the John Fahey oeuvre,” she said.

  “I don’t play a note, though I studied the math behind intervals and harmonics in high school.”

  “Of course you did.”

  We filled the Jeep to capacity and then some, having to strap several boxes to the roof rack, supporting Natsumi’s claim that I’d overbought.

  “You know the old story,” I said, “for want of a nail . . .”

  “Let’s drive really carefully.”

  The oversized finished basement of the house was ideal for uncrating and assembling the equipment. We stored everything in a locked closet in the utility room next door, except a black jumpsuit and a set of night vision goggles that I used that evening to case the Andalusky residence.

  It was part of a development of like homes, sited on a large property, but easily visible from the street. Natsumi was behind the wheel. We made one slow pass, then turned around and went back the other way, stopping at the edge of the woods across from the house. I got out of the Jeep and walked a few steps into the woods, where I placed a fake pine tree with a video camera and transmitter hidden inside. The camera, used by scientists to track wild animals, only flicked on when detecting movement, like a passing coyote or automobile.

  Before heading back to the rental, I checked the video app on my smartphone and felt reasonably happy with the camera’s placement. Software would store and organize the recordings, with a resolution high enough to ascertain Chuck’s shaving skills.

  The next morning I had the license plate numbers for Chuck’s Lexus sedan and his wife’s Prius. We drove our own Toyota over to where Okayo practiced dermatology and stuck a GPS tracker to her car’s chassis. Chuck was a bigger challenge, since Fontaine’s offices were in a huge suburban complex outside White Plains. We drove over to reconnoiter the location, determining there were only two entrances and exits, neither guarded. There also were a hell of a lot of cars.

  What followed were five days tailing him with both the Jeep and the Toyota, picking up the trail at different points along the route as we learned it. On the fifth day, I used another rented Honda to pick him up less than a mile to the complex, and then follow him into the parking garage. It was a staggering expense of time and tedious effort, but the information gained was invaluable.

  Also, partway through that tedium we got an e-mail from Captain Perry. It was sent from a Gmail account, and simply said, “They’re ours,” obviously referring to the photos of the FBI agents who’d chased us out of Cambridge.

  “Shelly’s last friend?” Natsumi asked.

  “Most likely.”

  “How traceable is our address?”

  “That one’s pretty elusive, even for the FBI. It travels through thousands of IPs every hour. Even if they crack the provider, who’s in Kazakhstan, they’re still light years from connecting to us.”

  “Can we trust Captain Perry?” she asked.

  “No way to tell. For now, I’m assuming yes, at least on the reported facts.”

  “So MacPhail had a line into the FBI. He could have also warned Andalusky.”

  “We have to assume he did,” I said. “Though where’s the precaution? I don’t see it.”

  “Maybe they’re watching him,” she said.

  “Or watching us watch him.”

  “Kafka lived too early.”

  We settled in and became familiarized with the Andaluskys’ routines. Of greatest potential were their gym memberships, in two different gyms. That was an easy division of labor.

  “You’ll need a good disguise,” said Natsumi. “He got a long, close look at you.”

  “At you, too. Don’t let Okayo snap your photo.”

  The characters of our missions were also different. Natsumi would try to connect with Okayo, perhaps establish a social relationship. And steal her cell phone so we could load in monitoring software. My only job was to get to Chuck’s phone as quickly as possible and leave it at that.

  In my old life, the last thing I considered doing was voluntary exercise, and I’d had the bulging gut to show for it. And with the exception of a one-year membership I used for a single day at Shelly’s gym, for the sole purpose of having a chat, I’d never been inside one. So I was unprepared for what I found at the Universal Health and Fitness Club of Pound Ridge.

  The lobby was twice the size of Shelly’s gym, with an assortment of seating areas with fine leather couches, off of which were juice bars, broadband kiosks, a delicatessen, three different types of massage, a clothing store and an actual bar serving what any other bar would serve. At least it didn’t open until four in the afternoon. Might be tough to work off a few martinis in the middle of the day.

  The membership lady’s fitness was well displayed by her form-fitting exercise wear—which for some might encourage a type of exercise not explicitly offered by the club. I was lucky, it turned out, that she could provide a week’s free trial if I agreed to sign up for three months.

  “How’s that first week free, then?” I asked. “Or for that matter, a trial?”

  “You only pay for twelve weeks. And, after that you can retire your
membership with zero penalty.”

  “Otherwise?”

  “It’s a year. Plus, we offer direct withdrawal from the bank account of your choice.”

  “At least I get to choose,” I said.

  I took my gym bag and fresh membership card into the locker room where I fiddled around changing into shorts and T-shirt, examining my face—with the fake nose and eyebrows, and full head of dark hair—in the mirror, checking my smartphone and generally wasting time until Chuck showed up right on schedule.

  Though prepared with my appearance, I was totally unprepared to be in close proximity with a person who had essentially tortured me, then tried to have me killed. It made me a little dizzy, so I sat down while I sneaked looks at him changing clothes and securing his belongings with a combination lock.

  It isn’t often you see a person in the nude who ordered you killed. Andalusky looked in good shape, with maybe ten extra pounds around his waist and another ten distributed elsewhere. His gym clothes looked well-worn, in particular his shoes. A true gym rat.

  I followed him out to a small herd of stationary bikes and took one behind him. I had to get one of the club’s young staff to show me how to work the thing. He suggested I start out on a weak setting and I gave no argument.

  Thus only moderately taxed, I was able to watch Andalusky ride his fixed bike with focused intensity, his whole body seemingly engaged in moving the pedals. I also saw him pause once to take his smartphone out of a pocket in his shorts and check the screen. Within feet of me, yet as remote as Mars.

  Barely breaking a sweat after half an hour, Andalusky finally dismounted and went back into the locker room. I waited what I hoped was an unnoticeable stretch of time, then followed. He was already stripped down, his gym clothes piled on the bench. Three lockers down from me, I could think of no way to snag the phone undetected.

  I spotted a scale several feet past Andalusky’s locker. I took off my shoes and walked toward it, dropping my towel on his pile of clothes as I went by. I was on the scale moving the weights around when he came up to me and said, “Excuse me, sir, you dropped your towel.”

  “Oh, geez, thanks.”

  “No prob.”

  Brilliant, I thought, on my way back to my locker. By now Andalusky was in the shower and all his stuff either in the locker or his gym bag. Men were moving around as they busied themselves stripping, dressing, toweling off or preening in the rough, offhand way men do around other men.

  I willed myself to stop thinking about the phone and went to the showers, giving up for the day. And thus a routine started, repeated throughout the week. Natsumi had no better luck.

  “Okayo is very much unto herself,” she said. “Indifferent to my social entreaties, if you can believe that. Though she does have the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen.”

  “I wish there was a better way, but I have to have physical possession of Chuck’s phone for at least five minutes,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose you could simply ask him for it.”

  Back in the gym the next day, I walked up to where he was riding the stationary bike and said, “Excuse me, I was wondering what you thought of your phone. It looks like the latest release.”

  “What are you on?” he asked.

  I told him the version, three behind his.

  “Oh, yeah, this is a big improvement. Lots faster, better interface.”

  “Mind if I look?” I asked. He handed it to me. “The biggest thing for me is browser speed. You don’t mind if I test that out? Take a minute.”

  “All I’m doing is running my butt into the ground,” he said, increasing pedal speed to emphasize the point.

  “Thanks,” I said, as I called up the monitoring software, hit download and watched, occasionally moving my finger over the screen as if working the controls. As promised by the developer, the download took about three minutes, and if their other claims were true, left no trace of the infection. I handed him back the phone.

  “You’re right. I’m getting one.”

  “You might wait another month,” he said. “An even better version’s on the way, if you believe the bullshit.”

  “Sure. I’m a sucker for better bullshit.”

  We nodded knowingly, grizzled veterans of the digital age. I left him and took a shower, got dressed and beat it out of there. I hoped for the last time.

  At home, I shared the good news with Natsumi.

  “How did you do it?”

  “I asked him for it.”

  “Brilliant.”

  WHILE EVERY call, e-mail, text message and Internet connection Andalusky made on his cell phone was being recorded and analyzed, I was busy breaking into his house. Natsumi waited in the Toyota with our sneaky GPS monitors displayed on an iPad, assuring that Okayo was at work, and Chuck as well, assuming his phone was in his pocket and his car in the company garage. I approached the house from the woods and went straight to a rear porch, which was open, leading to a back door, which was locked.

  Aside from wearing a pair of surgical gloves, I decided there was no advantage in making this an invisible B&E, given the vastly more complicated requirements. In fact, I talked myself into thinking a break-in might help the cause by putting a little stress on the family dynamic. So instead of carefully picking the lock, I used a cordless drill with a carbide bit to put a big hole in the dead bolt. I’d seen no evidence of a dog or an alarm system, though there was still a chance of either. So after I opened the door, I held a can of pepper spray while studying the doorjamb and searching for a keypad, finding nothing.

  The house was a little smaller than our rental, and older, maybe by twenty years. It was cool inside, the result of a timer on the thermostat. The décor was a balanced mix of contemporary American, Caribbean and African motifs. The rooms were clean, but you wouldn’t call the Andaluskys neat freaks.

  I searched for computers and found a desktop in a home office on the second floor. The appointments in the office indicated the computer was most likely Chuck’s. I turned it on just long enough to install another monitoring application, this one powerful enough to collect every scrap of data and control all functions, including keystrokes, which was the simplest way to capture user names and passwords.

  Now, aside from strapping a heart monitor to his chest and jacking an fMRI directly into his brain, there wasn’t much more I could do to open a window onto Chuck Andalusky’s intimate daily existence. In real time.

  In fact, I’d decided against bugging his landlines or sticking surveillance cameras around the inside of the house. I hardly cared about their privacy; I’d learned in other situations the danger of clogging up the analytical software with too much inconsequential information.

  I searched his desk and found only a few paper files, seemingly innocent in their corporate blandness, though I knew too little to tell either way. I left it all.

  On the way out, I took some of Okayo’s jewelry and a Blu-Ray player, and cut an important-looking oil painting out of the frame, rolled it up and stuck it in my bag. I portrayed a pretty unambitious thief, admittedly, but it was enough to lay down a crude cover.

  I walked back through the woods, signaling Natsumi along the way. She picked me up when I reached the road. I sat in the car, took off my rubber boots and tossed them by the side of the road. I could almost feel the cop’s excitement when he or she discovered the clue.

  We went back to the rental where Natsumi continued to turn the arid suburban ark into something resembling a home and I hunkered down for my study of Charles Andalusky, husband, corporate economic development professional, torturer and killer.

  ONE OF my great loves is the iterative nature of research. Starting with minimum information, nibbling around the edges, poking the data with a stick, stacking up knowns in place of unknowns, until patterns begin to emerge. As ignorance clears before careful search and discovery, knowledge accumulates in waves, building exponentially. Facts organize into systems of information and concepts either disintegrate or coale
sce into solid learning.

  The picture that formed of Andalusky was of an intelligent man whose public congeniality was well supported by his private correspondence. He eschewed typical sins of character and morality, confining his private web searches to car enthusiast and outdoorsman websites. No porn, gambling or even computer games. He hated golf, apparently, while extolling a nearly poetical love of fly-fishing.

  He was nuts about Okayo, whom he’d met in the wake of the Haitian earthquake, him in his official duties as Fontaine’s development lead, her as a board member of a nongovernmental organization called The People Project, committed to providing microloans to individuals in developing countries, notably Haiti.

  He pushed his company hard, just within the boundaries of propriety, to fund various social welfare projects in his wife’s native country, despite Fontaine’s minimal business interests there. So the Haitian operations received a large measure of Fontaine’s corporate largesse, though relatively insignificant compared to its global investments. It still resulted in a grateful group of NGOs, an equally grateful wife, and good works for people in constant, desperate need.

  As Andalusky tirelessly acknowledged, Fontaine’s core enterprise was building things. Big things—petrochemical plants, refineries, gas pipelines, automated manufacturing, roads, bridges, dams, airports and casino resort hotels. Projects on this scale could only happen in cooperation with governments, national and local, official, ostensible and covert. For this, Fontaine needed a way to sweeten deals, provide political cover to local officials and grease the gears with the US State Department, which was another inevitable player in every project and transaction.