by Rick Acker
He wasn’t expecting her back until tomorrow, but she had finished up at Bjornsen a day early and had been able to change her tickets. She had told her parents, but decided to surprise David. She smiled at the thought of how he’d react when he opened his door and saw her standing there.
The traffic finally started moving, and half an hour later she was parked outside David’s building. She reached into the backseat and grabbed David’s gifts: a Chicago Cubs shirt and a large box of Fannie May Mint Meltaways. She spotted his battered Impala as she got out of her car and smiled. At this hour, he should be back from work, but it was good to see proof.
She went up to his apartment and pushed the doorbell. She could hear the chimes faintly inside, followed a few seconds later by David’s voice calling, “Just a second.”
A moment later, she heard approaching footsteps and David opened the door. Kim was surprised at how much of a difference a few months had made in his appearance. She could tell that he had been working out, which was a welcome change. The long, slightly messy hair she remembered had been trimmed and gelled into a professional-looking cut. The biggest change was in his face, though—there was a light in his eyes that was both exciting and a little disconcerting.
He stared at her for a second and she beamed back at him. Then he let out a happy whoop, yelled “Kim!” and swept her up in a passionate kiss. The candy and T-shirt she had been holding dropped to the floor and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She heard a couple of doors open and close as David’s neighbors looked out to see what was causing the commotion.
He finally came up for air nearly a minute later. “Wow, you missed me!” said Kim as she picked up her packages. “I don’t think you’ve ever kissed me like that before.”
“Really? I should have,” he replied. “It’s great to see you. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
“I know. I thought I’d surprise you.” She bent down and picked up the mints and T-shirt and handed them to him. “Here are a couple of souvenirs from Chi-Town.”
“Thanks, these are terrific. Come on in. I’ve got a couple of good bottles of wine I picked up at a new little winery last weekend. What do you say we get a couple of glasses and open one?”
“Actually, I’m starved. How about going out for some dinner?”
“We could order some pizza,” he countered.
“I’ve had pizza like four or five times a week all summer,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Let’s do something else. What about that little French place with the romantic candlelight?”
His face clouded and his eyes flashed. For a moment, she was afraid he would get mad, but then he smiled. “Sure, babe. Whatever you say. It’s your first night back in town. Just give me a few minutes to get ready.”
He turned and walked back into his apartment as she trailed behind. “Okay, I’ll just wait in the living room,” she said as he disappeared into the bedroom. As she started to sit down on the sofa, however, she realized that an hour and a half on the freeway had left her with an uncomfortably full bladder. She went into the bathroom, but saw an empty roll on the toilet-paper holder. There weren’t any other rolls visible, so she turned to the small cabinet under the sink.
When she opened the doors, she immediately forgot about her bladder. Crammed in among the bathroom supplies was a cardboard box full of pills. The pills weren’t labeled, but Kim didn’t need labels to recognize them. She gingerly picked up a capsule and emptied it onto her palm. The yellow granules looked all too familiar. She sniffed them. As she suspected and feared, they had a woody, faintly bitter smell that she knew well from trips to the production floor at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals.
She stood up slowly, threw the empty capsule in the toilet, flushed it, and washed her hands. Then she walked back out to the living room. She thought about just leaving, and took a step toward the door, but then she stopped. No, I need to talk to him first. She sat down stiffly on the sofa and waited for David to come out of the bedroom. At last, the door opened and he emerged wearing a white polo shirt and crisply creased khaki slacks—both new additions to his wardrobe since the beginning of the summer. “So, how do I look?” he asked with an expectant grin.
“You look great,” she replied. “But, uh, David, I went into the bathroom while you were getting ready. There wasn’t any toilet paper so I, well, I looked under the sink and—”
“What were you doing going through my stuff?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry. I had to go to the bathroom and I didn’t think you’d mind.”
David glared at her. “I mind you digging around in my cabinets!”
She dropped her eyes from his. “David, there was Neurostim in there, lots of it. It’s totally illegal for you to have that.”
“What I keep under the sink in my bathroom is my own business,” he snapped. “I didn’t get it from you, so why do you care? I didn’t steal it or kill anybody, so leave me alone!”
“How did you get it?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Yes, it is!” she shot back. “You got that from the company I worked for, and if anyone ever finds out—”
He strode over to the sofa and stared down at her. “No one is going to find out! Just drop it, okay? You’re not back five minutes and you’re already spying on me and trying to control my life!”
“David, this is serious!” she persisted. “I can’t just—”
He grabbed both her arms, lifted her from the sofa, and shook her like a rag doll. “I said drop it!” he shouted.
He dropped her and she collapsed back onto the sofa. She gasped and stared at him dumbly for several seconds. “I’d better go,” she said softly.
She started toward the door, but David got there ahead of her and put his hand on it. “I’m sorry, Kimmy. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been so stressed and under so much pressure because of med school and everything, and I just snapped. Can we just go out for dinner and pretend this never happened? We’ll go wherever you want.”
She looked up at him and saw the old David. The rage was gone from his eyes and voice, and he really did seem sorry. But how would he react if she said no? She forced herself to smile. “That’s okay. You’re sure you don’t mind the French place?”
He smiled back. “Not at all. Maybe some romantic candlelight isn’t such a bad idea.”
At seven o’clock the next morning, Pyotr Korovin glanced at his watch as he waited in his van at the Yuragorsk dock. Then he looked again at slip nineteen, which should have held the Agnes Larsen. Instead it contained only oily black water and strands of a hardy brown-green seaweed that managed to survive in the polluted waters of the harbor. Captain Kjeldaas was late again, and it would cost him. Apparently, a one-thousand-dollar penalty wasn’t enough to keep him on schedule, so this time it would be two thousand. He took the extra bills out of the envelope and slipped them into his pocket.
He wouldn’t even try to keep any of the extra money this time. He was still trying to get back into George’s good graces after partially botching the job in Oslo. The fire had gone as planned, but George had been furious to learn that Pyotr hadn’t managed to kill any of the witnesses he’d found in the building.
Pyotr scanned the harbor and saw Kjeldaas’s little ship chugging through a fleet of fishing boats on their way out to hunt cod and king crab. He got out of the truck and stood with his heavily tattooed arms folded across his chest as he watched the Agnes Larsen make its way to the dock. Kjeldaas was at the wheel, and a man Pyotr didn’t recognize was on deck, ready to toss the bowline. The stranger was a big man in late middle age with dark-brown hair that was unnaturally free of gray. Pyotr assumed the man was a member of the crew, though he didn’t have the weather-beaten look of a veteran fisherman or sailor.
Pyotr waited until Kjeldaas and the other man had finished loading the boxes into the truck. Then he handed the captain the envelope of cash. The Norwegian started to count it. “You were late again. You are lucky I pay any
thing, but I give you five thousand dollars.”
“The agreed payment was seven thousand,” protested Kjeldaas’s companion.
“Who is this?” Pyotr asked the captain without looking at the other man.
“This is Dag,” said Kjeldaas. “He is my new business partner.”
“Instruct him how business works,” Pyotr said. “When you are late, you lose money.”
Dag’s pale-gray eyes flashed. “I will instruct you on how business works with me! You pay the agreed-upon price, even if your shipment is an hour or two late. If we don’t agree in advance on late penalties, there are no late penalties.”
Pyotr smiled at the man’s naïveté. “Maybe you would like to instruct this to my boss, George?”
“Yes, I would like that,” replied Dag. “Let’s go see him.”
Pyotr laughed. “Of course.” He ostentatiously opened the door to the truck’s cab. “Please get in. I drive you.” Dag got in and shut the door. Pyotr walked around to the driver’s side. Before he got in, he grinned at Captain Kjeldaas and said, “Maybe you need a new partner soon.”
It was nine in the morning when George Kulish parked his black Porsche Cayman S in the Cleverlad.ru parking lot. He usually arrived by eight, but Pyotr had called at seven thirty to say that one of their smugglers had a complaint about the price he’d been paid for a late shipment and wanted to meet with George to talk about it. George enjoyed these “meetings” on a visceral level, but he knew he really didn’t have time to attend them from start to finish. Besides, he usually wound up with blood and sweat on his clothes by the time they were over. So he decided to work from his apartment for an hour. He told Pyotr that he would be in by nine and that the smuggler should be “adequately prepared” by then.
George walked up to the main door and waved a magnetic key card over a sensor panel. The door clicked and he pulled it open. He walked into an empty hallway that had locked doors with their own security panels on either side. At the end of the hall was an elevator door. Instead of a magnetically keyed lock, the elevator had a state-of-the-art biometric lock that measured dozens of points on a person’s face and allowed access only to individuals whom it recognized. At present, that was a very select group: George, Pyotr, and the warehouse foreman. The sensor was backed up by a fingerprint reader, installed just to the right of the elevator door.
George pressed the elevator button, stepped to the side, and positioned himself in front of the biometric system’s camera. He pressed his right forefinger against the glass of the print reader. The linoleum floor tiles in the hallway were dark gray and grimy, so George did not notice the fresh, black-red drip marks. Even if he had, he would not have been alarmed—but he would have made a mental note to remind Pyotr to clean up after his “guests.”
After several seconds, the elevator door chimed and opened. George got in and rode up to his office, his mind absently running through the various things he’d need to take care of that morning after he finished with Pyotr’s smuggler.
When George stepped out of the elevator and started walking toward his desk, he heard an oddly familiar male voice behind him. “Hello, George.”
He whirled around and saw a man standing between him and the elevator. He must have been standing just to the side of the door when it had opened.
The man was in his late fifties or older and did not appear to be armed, but neither was George. Also, the man was much bigger than George and his arms were thicker than George’s legs. George stared at him for several seconds. “Bjornsen?” he said at last. “Karl Bjornsen?”
The man smiled. “Very good.” He gestured toward the desk. “Please, have a seat. And remember to keep your hands where I can see them.”
“What are you doing here?” George demanded. “How did you get in?”
“We had a meeting scheduled for this morning, but maybe your friend at the dock forgot to tell you. We’re both here, though, so it doesn’t matter. Please sit down. We have a lot of ground to cover.”
George stared, openmouthed, for several seconds and then laughed. “Yes. Yes, we do.” He walked over to his desk and sat down. “In fact, I’ve been meaning to call you for several days. I understand there was a fire and shooting at your Norwegian facility.”
“Yes, and we both know who’s responsible.”
“It’s interesting you should say that. When the police watch the surveillance videos, they’ll see a man enter and leave the building, and one camera will have captured a good picture of his face. They’ll run him through their database and realize he’s a German hit man who was recently released from prison. He’ll deny any involvement, of course, but he won’t have an alibi.”
“How unfortunate for him,” Karl said.
“Yes, very.” George relaxed some as he talked, but he had been badly rattled by finding Karl Bjornsen here. No one had ever beaten a Kulish-designed system before, especially one he had designed for himself. He resisted the temptation to ask Karl how he had done it. “The police will want to know who hired him, but he won’t be able to tell them. They will check his bank records, and I was thinking they would find a fifty-thousand-dollar wire transfer from you. But once I found out that you were in Europe and had taken a suitcase full of cash with you, I had a better idea. Here, watch.”
He opened a window on his computer and a grainy black-and-white video appeared. It showed Karl standing on a deserted sidewalk handing a briefcase to another man. A newspaper rack behind them displayed a copy of Die Welt. “I didn’t realize you had dyed your hair, so I may want to darken it a little in the video, but then, I’m a perfectionist. There’s also a different version of this video, showing the hit man talking to a well-known wholesaler of undocumented pharmaceuticals.”
“A competitor of yours, no doubt.”
“You’re a perceptive man, Mr. Bjornsen.” George shifted slightly in his chair and smiled. “Right now, there are only two copies of each video, one on this computer and another on videocassettes of the type used in a typical German security camera.”
“And those cassettes are where?” asked Karl.
George’s smile broadened. “I thought you might want to know. They’re in a safe place, and they will stay there until either I’m convinced that you and I can find a way to do business together without you trying to cheat me, or I’m convinced that we can’t. Once I make up my mind, one of those videos will find its way to the proper authorities.”
Karl sighed and shook his head. “George, you should know by now that blackmail doesn’t work with me—though, unfortunately, it seems to have worked on one of my employees. She gave you confidential documents. I need those back. I also need you to tell the truth about what happened at my company’s Norwegian office.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small video camera, and set it on the desk facing George. The red light was glowing. “I’ve taped our conversation thus far, but the sound quality probably isn’t very good. Besides, you might argue that the voice wasn’t yours. That will be harder to do with video.”
George stared at Karl for several seconds. “Are you crazy? Turn that thing off and give it to me!”
“No.”
George reached for the camera, but Karl batted his hand away. George’s eyes turned to steel. “Give it to me, or you will not leave this building alive.”
Karl set his mouth in a hard line. “Start talking, or you will not leave this room alive.”
George looked into the unblinking eye of the camera for several seconds, thinking furiously. “I think there has been a serious misunderstanding. The person you really need to talk to about these things is Pyotr. He handles all interactions with our, ah, Norwegian affiliates. I will call him in here.” To his surprise, Karl didn’t object as he picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. He looked at the wall and saw that the phone wire had been ripped out of its jack.
“Pyotr and I have already had a conversation,” Karl said calmly. “I want to talk to you. You’re the one who can tell me everything I n
eed to know—and I want to emphasize that you will need to be completely open and honest. No more lies, no more plots. Just the truth.”
“All right. Okay. But before we do that, let me give you my entire file on your company. I do not believe I have confidential documents, but if I do, I want to return them, of course.” As he spoke, he opened a large drawer in his desk and reached for the gun he kept there for emergencies.
“Of course,” said Karl with a sardonic smile. George was no longer looking at him, however. He was staring into the drawer. His searching fingers had encountered not a gun, but something cold, round, and sticky. He looked down and found Pyotr’s lifeless, blood-smeared face staring back at him. Rolling around the back of the drawer was a severed finger. He jerked his hand back and sucked in his breath. The bloody smell of new death filled his lungs and he threw up. As he vomited, the analytical part of his brain realized how Bjornsen had beaten the biometric locks.
Karl waited until he was done before speaking. “As my Viking ancestors used to say, ‘The severed head no longer plots.’ I warned you once not to cross me. I will not warn you again. There were no files in that drawer; only this.” George looked up and saw his gun in Karl’s hand. “If you lie again, I will use it.” He paused and put the gun into his waistband. “On second thought, I won’t. The noise might attract attention.” He held out his large, muscular hands. “If you lie, you will die the way your friend did. Now, are you ready to answer my questions?”
George sucked in a short, ragged breath and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He stared at Karl’s hands. “Okay.”
Kim was in bed, but not asleep. For the two weeks between the end of her internship and the beginning of fall semester, she was staying with her parents in the room she had occupied since she was six. The Japanese manga posters she had loved during her teen years still adorned the walls. Yearbooks, journals, and the cheesy romance novels she used to read filled the bookshelf in the hutch on her desk. Even her old gym uniforms were still there, neatly folded in her sock drawer.
