by M. A. Lawson
Fang would burn the document later—after he had dealt with Parker.
“Look,” Parker said. Sweat was beaded on his forehead. “You don’t have to pay me today. Consider this a favor. But like I said, I can really be useful to you, and in the future—”
Fang placed the muzzle of the .38 directly against Parker’s right temple and pulled the trigger.
Being careful not to get Parker’s blood on himself, Fang lowered the driver’s-side window, wrapped Parker’s right hand around the weapon, and fired a second shot out the window so Parker would have gunshot residue on his hand. He then opened the chamber of the revolver, removed the four bullets that had not been fired and the two empty shell casings. He took a handkerchief, wiped his fingerprints off the gun, off all the unfired bullets, and off one of the shell casings. He reloaded the revolver—using the handkerchief again to avoid leaving fingerprints—so it contained five unfired bullets and a single shell casing, and it would appear that only one shot had been fired. Finally, he placed the gun in Parker’s dead hand, inserted Parker’s finger in the trigger guard, and pressed Parker’s finger down on the trigger.
Fang didn’t know Parker’s personal circumstances, but it was logical to assume that the man was desperate for money. Why else would he risk his job and his freedom by contacting them? Whatever the case, staging a suicide was the best Fang could do on such short notice.
Fang needed more information. He got back into his car and picked up Lin Mai, who was still waiting on the access road, holding the empty briefcase in her hand.
“Would the FBI be able to trace the e-mail attachment to Winston if they saw it?” Fang asked her.
“What?” she said.
He looked over at her. She was weeping, thinking about what might happen to her, and not about his question. He backhanded her hard enough to make her head bounce off the passenger-side window. “Pay attention!” he said and repeated the question.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Zytek employs fifteen hundred people and works with numerous outside contractors. But I would think that the number of people who would have access to the source code would be limited. Fifty people, a hundred? I have no way to know. I’d have to ask Winston.”
In China, if they suspected that a group as small as fifty people contained a spy, it would take less than a day to find him. In the United States, however, with its bizarre concerns for the legal rights of criminals, it might be possible for Winston to avoid capture and continue to be a valuable asset. But to determine this, Fang needed to know what Danzinger had done with the attachment.
DAY 1—11 A.M.
Sally Ann had planned to take the e-mail attachment to this Callahan person right after she spoke to Olivia Prescott, but then Latisha reminded her that she had a teleconference at ten a.m. The conference call was about an advertising campaign for Planned Parenthood, one that she was personally funding, and involved an ad agency in New York, a well-known Hollywood actress, and a number of Planned Parenthood people. She thought about rescheduling it, but that would be difficult. Since Olivia wouldn’t pick up the envelope until tomorrow, she didn’t think that a one-hour delay would matter.
Following the teleconference, she had Latisha call her a cab—she didn’t want the hassle of trying to find a parking spot on K Street—and told her that she’d be back soon. When Latisha asked where she was going and if there was anything she could do to help—Latisha was really the sweetest girl—she said that it was just a small problem she needed to deal with personally.
She found the Callahan Group’s office, but when she turned the doorknob to enter, it was locked. She’d noticed a surveillance camera over the door—which seemed odd to her—and wondered if anyone could see her standing in the hall. She rapped on the door and heard the lock click.
Sitting behind a desk in a small foyer was a large, intimidating man. His shoulders were so broad she wondered if he had to turn sideways to pass through doors.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” he asked.
“I need to see Thomas Callahan,” she said.
“May I ask your name, ma’am, and why you want to see him?”
“I’m not going to tell you my name. Just tell Mr. Callahan that I have something very important to give him and that a friend of his asked me to come here.”
“Ma’am, unless you give me your name and show me some ID, you won’t be allowed to see Mr. Callahan.”
Sally Ann hesitated. She finally decided that it didn’t matter if he had her name, but she wasn’t going to tell him anything more. She showed him her driver’s license and then he spent a minute tapping on his laptop. Finally, he picked up his phone and spoke to someone so softly she couldn’t hear what he said. She assumed he was speaking to Callahan or Callahan’s secretary. He concluded the phone call, saying, “Okay, boss, I’ll let her in.”
“I need to wand you for weapons,” he said to her.
“What?” Sally Ann said.
He stood up and she saw an enormous revolver in a holster on his belt—the gun looked big enough to kill an elephant. “Ma’am, I need to wand you,” he said.
Who were these people? She’d glanced at the Callahan Group’s website to find Callahan’s address, and from what she’d seen, it was some sort of lobbying firm. But why on earth was the receptionist armed? And why would he check to see if she was armed? But considering that Callahan was Olivia Prescott’s friend, who knew what sort of activities they might be engaged in?
“Oh, all right,” Sally Ann said. “This seems rather silly, but go ahead.”
He passed two devices over her body. One looked like those gadgets they use at airports when people set off the metal detectors. She didn’t know what the other one did. He led her through a second locked door and down a long corridor, stopping at an office at the end of the corridor. She noticed another surveillance camera over this door. The receptionist knocked, a lock clicked, and the receptionist held the door open for her.
Sitting behind a large mahogany desk was an overweight man with unruly gray hair and a pale face. He was wearing a wrinkled blue shirt and his maroon tie was loosened. His eyes were the same color as his shirt. He smiled at her—he had a charming smile—and said, “Hi. I’m Thomas Callahan. What can I do for you, Mrs. Danzinger?”
“I’m here because Olivia Prescott told me to come. I have—”
“And how’s Olivia doing? I haven’t seen her in quite some time.”
“I don’t know how she’s doing, to tell you the truth,” Sally Ann said. “The last time I saw her was at a college reunion a couple of years ago. At any rate, I have an envelope in my possession and Olivia told me to bring it to you. She said you were to put it in your safe and keep it until she could pick it up.”
Sally Ann glanced over at the large safe mounted in the wall on the right-hand side of Callahan’s desk. The door was partially open but she couldn’t see what was inside. She handed the envelope to Callahan.
“What’s in the envelope?” he asked, still smiling slightly.
“Olivia told me not to tell you, just that she’d pick it up tomorrow when she got back from London.”
“Olivia’s in London?”
“That’s what she said.”
“I see,” Callahan said. He was now tapping the envelope on his desk, studying her. He was rather sneaky looking, Sally Ann thought. She wondered if he would open the envelope after she left, and she wished now that she’d used wax to seal it—but she didn’t have a wax seal.
Callahan got up from his chair with a grunt, put the envelope in his safe, then shut the safe and spun the dial. “Okay. Mission accomplished.”
She rose and said, “Thank you. The only other thing I’ll say is that it’s extremely important that Olivia receives that envelope.”
“Okeydokey,” Callahan said. “This is all very mysterious, but then Olivia has always been a bit o
f a mystery herself.”
As Sally Ann was waiting for a cab, she realized she was hungry. She hadn’t had breakfast and it was almost noon, so she decided to have a bite to eat before she headed back home. As she walked down K Street, she thought about Callahan and was absolutely certain that he was going to open the envelope she’d given him.
DAY 1—11:30 A.M.
Fang decided that he needed to question Danzinger, but he had to be sure the interrogation couldn’t be traced back to the Chinese. He dropped the weeping Lin Mai off near the trade association—glad to be shed of her—and proceeded to an office building on Vermont Avenue.
The building was four stories high and was occupied by a number of small businesses: independent insurance agents, one-man public relations firms, website designers, a travel agency, and a company that employed thirty people who made thousands of cold calls each day trying to sell various products to people who didn’t want to talk to them. Fang had an office adjacent to the cold-call company. Inside his office was a phone, which was listed as belonging to the cold-call company so no one would be able to trace his calls back to the embassy.
Fang’s first call was to his researcher, whom he told to quickly find Danzinger’s address. While he was waiting for the researcher to call back, he went online to learn more about Danzinger.
Five minutes later, the researcher called with the address, which was in a racially mixed, working-class area of D.C. It appeared that Mrs. Danzinger was making some sort of social statement.
Fang’s next call was to Jamal Howard.
Jamal was a gangster. He was only twenty-four years old, but he was intelligent and very accomplished for his age. He ran a string of prostitutes; he sold drugs, weapons, and false identity documents; he stole cars; he robbed people. He was quite the entrepreneur. The .38 that Fang had used to kill James Parker had come from Jamal, and Fang had purchased drugs from him several times when he was entertaining guests from out of town. More to the point, he’d used Jamal twice in the past when he needed a smart, vicious thug. Once, he had Jamal beat a man so badly that he was unable to attend a meeting that Fang didn’t want him at. The second time, he had Jamal kill a man who had accidently seen something he shouldn’t have. Jamal Howard was one of the most ruthless young men Fang had ever met, and Fang was convinced that if Jamal had gotten a decent education, he could have ended up on Wall Street, where the truly amazing American criminals resided.
Fang told Jamal to go to Danzinger’s house immediately, restrain her, and call him back. Then he told Jamal how much he was willing to pay.
“You shittin’ me?” Jamal said.
Fang was fully versed in American slang, but “You’re shittin’ me” was a phrase that had never made sense to him. Nonetheless, he knew the correct response: “I shit you not,” he said. “Go online and find out what she looks like.”
“Okay, but what if she’s not home?” Howard asked.
“Then wait for her.”
“What if the house is alarmed?”
“Then you must find a way to deal with that. Just get her and call me back.” Fang knew that no matter how fast Jamal moved, it would take at least half an hour to capture Danzinger, and that was assuming she was home. But he couldn’t do anything to make things move faster. And if Danzinger had already given the information to someone else, there wasn’t anything he could do about that, either. But either way, he had to know what Danzinger had done with the document so he could decide what to do about Winston.
DAY 1—12:30 P.M.
“She’s not home,” Jamal Howard said.
“Are you in her house?” Fang asked.
“Yeah.”
“So she didn’t have an alarm.”
“She’s got one, but a young bitch let me in.”
“Who is she?”
“Danzinger’s secretary. She lives with her.”
“Do you have people with you?”
“Yeah. Two of my boys.”
“And I’m assuming none of the neighbors saw you.”
“Nah. The house has a bunch of bushes and shit around it and there wasn’t nobody on the street when I knocked. I let my boys in the back door.”
“What’s the status of the secretary?”
“Status?”
“Her physical condition.”
“She’s alive. I had to hit her a little to settle her down, but I didn’t hurt her bad or nothing.”
“Good. Now ask her where Danzinger is.”
Fang heard muffled words and Jamal came back on the line. “She says she doesn’t know. She said Danzinger got a cab about eleven and left the house.”
“Ask her again.”
A moment later, Fang heard the secretary scream, then scream again. Jamal came back on the phone and said, “She still says she don’t know.”
“Do you believe her?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Tie her up and gag her. Wait for Danzinger, and when she arrives, tie her up, too, and call me.”
“Uh, this young bitch,” Jamal said. “While we’re waitin’, can we . . .”
“No. I haven’t decided how I’m going to play this. Just tie her up and wait for Danzinger.”
While Fang waited, he learned more about Danzinger on the Internet. He discovered that she was absurdly wealthy, and although much of her money had been inherited, she and her late husband were also very astute business people; they’d provided the start-up capital for a number of companies that were household names today. She was worth over a billion dollars. When she was about fifty—she was sixty-three now—she shifted her focus from business to politics and charity work.
Her battle against the Layman brothers was well documented, as were the numerous lawsuits she’d filed against them. Danzinger, Fang concluded, was liberal to the point of silliness. Had Fang been an American, he probably would have voted Republican, although he didn’t agree with Republicans on abortion or taxation. Abortion was a necessary tool in controlling population growth and invaluable in keeping the gene pool strong. Insofar as taxation, he felt that the ruling class shouldn’t be taxed too heavily, but the masses should be taxed as much as necessary to support the needs of the state. Well, maybe the Republicans felt the same way.
All the articles described Danzinger as aggressive, unwilling to back down, and uncompromising in her beliefs. An adjective used frequently was fearless. In her youth, she’d skied and sailed boats and even drove a race car for a brief period. We’ll soon see how fearless she truly is, Fang thought.
DAY 1—1 P.M.
Jamal Howard called Fang. “I got her. She’s tied up next to the secretary.”
“Put your phone on speaker so she can hear me.
“Mrs. Danzinger,” Fang said, “this morning you met with a man named James Parker and he gave you a copy of an e-mail attachment. I want to know what you did with the attachment and if you discussed it with anyone.”
“Who are you?” Danzinger asked. She didn’t sound sufficiently frightened to Fang. In fact, she sounded defiant.
“Jamal, ask the secretary what her name is.”
A muffled sound, then, “She’s Latisha Taylor.”
“Jamal, shoot Latisha in the face.”
“Wait!” Danzinger screamed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
She told Fang what he already knew: that Parker had given her a document that proved there was a spy embedded in Zytek Systems, but he had refused to tell her anything else. Then Danzinger said she called a woman named Olivia Prescott who worked at the NSA and told her about the e-mail and her meeting with Parker. “So you’re too late, whoever you are,” Danzinger said, sounding smug.
Fang cursed in Chinese.
“Did you give Prescott Parker’s name?”
“No.”
“What did Prescott tell you to do next?” Fang asked.
<
br /> “She said that she was in London and would pick up the attachment when she returns tomorrow.”
“Where’s the document now?”
“I don’t have it,” Danzinger said. That smug tone was back.
“You didn’t answer my question. Where is it?”
Danzinger didn’t respond. “Jamal, cut off one of Latisha’s fingers. Mrs. Danzinger isn’t being forthcoming with me.”
“No, wait!” Danzinger screamed.
“Go on, Jamal. Do it. The little one on her left hand.”
A few moments passed in silence, then it sounded like two women screaming through gags.
“Okay,” Jamal said. “But the bitch is bleeding like a bitch.”
“If you don’t want Latisha to suffer anymore, Mrs. Danzinger, answer my question. What did you do with the attachment?”
“You bastard,” Danzinger said. “You son of a bitch. You didn’t have to—”
“I don’t have time for this,” Fang said. “Jamal, cut off another finger.”
“No!” Danzinger screamed. “I put it in a sealed envelope and took it to a man named Thomas Callahan.”
She proceeded to tell Fang that Callahan had an office on K Street and he was an old friend of Prescott’s. She said she saw Callahan put the envelope in his safe.
“Did you tell Callahan what was in the envelope?”
“No. Olivia told me not to.”
Fang was beginning to feel a glimmer of hope. Saving Winston might still be possible.
“Now tell me more about Callahan, his office, and the type of building it’s in.”
To Fang’s dismay, Danzinger wasn’t able to provide much in the way of detail; she hadn’t been all that observant. She only remembered that the safe was large and mounted in the wall, but she couldn’t recall the brand. She said there weren’t any security personnel in the building. Fang thought he heard a false note in her voice, but he decided not to pursue it.
Satisfied that she had told him everything, Fang asked Jamal to take him off speaker. “I can’t let Mrs. Danzinger and her companion live,” Fang said.
