Hidden Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure

by Tom Abrahams

“What do we do with him?” Bella asks. “If we leave him here, he calls the cops.”

  “Please!” He clasps his hands in prayer, “Don’t kill me. Please.”

  “Have him disconnect the security system and give you the hard drive or the tapes, whichever they’re using to record,” I tell her. “We can’t leave that here.”

  “And him?” Bella directs the clerk to his feet and he slowly leads her to the DVR where the security video is stored. “What do we do with him?”

  “Car keys?” I ask.

  “In my pocket,” says the clerk, fishing them out and handing them to Bella.

  “Keys to the store?”

  “On the same ring.”

  “Any other keys?”

  “Just the night manager,” says the clerk. “He’s not here until six o’clock.”

  “That gives us some time,” Bella says. “Close to twelve hours.”

  “Okay,” I nod. “Here’s the deal,” I explain. “We’re locking you in here. You’re not going anywhere until your night manager gets here. And by then, we’ll be in Chicago.”

  Bella directs the clerk to a utility closet in the back of the store. She flips on the light and guides him inside. Apologizing for the inconvenience, she shuts the door and locks him inside.

  I find the main electrical box for the store and flip off the main switch. The store goes dark.

  Bella follows me outside. We lock the double doors and I jog over to the clerk’s car to leave his keys on the front seat.

  Bella tosses the shotgun into the trunk and we lock his car. No need to ruin his day any more than we have already. It’s just before six-thirty in the morning and we have a full tank of gas.

  We should hit Houston by midnight.

  CHAPTER 17

  I remember my first day working for the governor. It was intimidating and exhilarating at the same time. He invited me into his Capitol office. Just him and me.

  “So,” he said, chewing on the temple tip of his reading glasses, “tell me a little bit about yourself, Jackson Quick.”

  The room was comfortable but not overly indulgent. The walls were covered in a pale yellow wallpaper, the wood planked floors hidden with a large blue rug embroidered with the seal of the state of Texas in its center. We were seated at a cherry conference table, the governor seated at one end, and I was next to him, trying to sit up straight in a plush blue chair.

  “What would you like to know?” I asked, willing to tell him anything. “Professional or personal?”

  “I know the professional resume. Shoot, Jackson, everyone in the office knows about your hopscotch of a professional background. You haven’t been much for keeping jobs long.”

  “No sir,” I said. “I just haven’t found the right thing.”

  “It’s not a question of loyalty is it?” He tilted his head as if he knew the answer but wanted to gauge my response. “Loyalty is an important commodity, Jackson.”

  “I agree. And no sir, it wasn’t a lack of loyalty. Rather, if I’m not passionate about something, I’ve found it difficult to give the kind of effort required.”

  A smile wormed across his face, accentuating the laugh lines around his mouth and eyes. He nodded and offered me a cup of coffee.

  “Thank you.”

  The governor stood and walked over to a credenza opposite the wall of windows overlooking the Capitol grounds. He popped in a single-serve pod and slid a mug under the machine, whistling a non-descript tune while it brewed. A minute later he returned with the coffee.

  “Here you go.” He placed the blue mug in front of me. “So tell me some of the personal, Jackson. Are you single?”

  “Yes,” I nodded, admiring the design of the mug. On its front was a geometric shape of some kind. Above it were the words, Richard B. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. At the time, I had no idea what that meant. “I haven’t had a girlfriend for a while. I’ve been too busy working on myself.”

  “Those sound like therapy words,” he said, his eyebrows rising, “No worries,” he said. “I’ve been there.”

  I didn’t know what to say and pulled the coffee mug to my lips.

  “Abraham Maslow said, ‘Therapy is a search for value.’ Are you searching for value, Jackson?”

  I shrugged. “Everyone is always searching for their value. Whether it’s real or perceived, we all want to be valued.”

  “True,” he nodded. “That’s pretty self-aware for a man who hasn’t found his calling. Why were you seeing a therapist?”

  “Well,” I bought a couple of seconds with another sip of bitter coffee. “It wasn’t a search for value, really.”

  “Hmmm,” he sat back in his chair, again measuring me. “You know Abraham Maslow?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. I’d never heard of him. “Should I?”

  “Not necessarily,” said the governor. “He was a psychologist who was known for developing what he called The Hierarchy of Needs.”

  “Which was?”

  “Maslow wanted to know what motivated people beyond simple rewards or unconscious desires.”

  He slipped on his glasses and walked to the coffee maker to brew his own cup of coffee, then turned back toward me, peering over the glasses.

  “He said that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and as they meet each need they move to the next, and the next, and the next.”

  “Simple needs come first?” I ask. “Followed by those which are more complex?”

  “Exactly,” he said, raising the cup of coffee while walking back to his seat. “The highest of those needs is self-realization. Of course, most people never achieve it. They’re too consumed with lower level needs; air, food, sleep, and sex.”

  “I’d never thought of it like that, but it makes sense.”

  “Of course it does,” he looked over the rim of his glasses. “It’s an enlightened few who achieve the higher level of self-awareness, moving past the need for dominance, prestige, and status.”

  “May I ask you a question, Governor?”

  “Of course.” He sipped from his cup and crossed one leg over the other.

  “What level are you?”

  “What level do you think I’ve achieved, Jackson?” He adjusted his cup on the table and thumbed a drop of coffee from its rim.

  “I would have thought you’d achieved the highest level until you asked that question.”

  His eyes narrowed and he tugged on the lapel of his suit jacket, adjusting himself in the chair. With his lips pressed together he licked the front of his teeth. He said nothing, pushing me to elaborate.

  “I mean, if you had achieved the highest level of self-awareness you would not care what I think of you. You’d have moved past the desire for respect.”

  He scratched his nose, considering my reasoning. He removed his glasses, folded them and put them in his breast pocket.

  “Interesting you think that, Jackson,” he said, tilting his head like a curious dog. “But you’re wrong. Just because I asked what you think doesn’t mean I care about what you think. And that, perhaps, is the best first day lesson I could hope to offer.”

  I pulled the mug to my face, hoping to shield my embarrassment. “I’ll remember that.”

  “Good. Then we’ll get along just fine.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Before you go,” he said, hinting our meeting was over, “why Quick?”

  “Sir?”

  “Your real name is Ellsworth. Why did you change it to Quick?”

  “A boarding school teacher.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was a challenging kid. I had a teacher at boarding school who told me my middle name should be Quick because I was quick to answer without consideration, quick to act without thinking, quick to anger without contemplation, quick to judgment witho
ut acceptance.”

  “When did you change it?”

  “When I started my job in television. I wanted to start fresh. New name, new approach, new life.”

  “That smacks of self-awareness,” laughed the governor. “Now get to work. We have a lot going on with the election just around the corner.”

  I stood from the table, shook his hand, and went to work, excited by the prestige, anxious to please, blinded by power, completely unaware of the Faustian deal I’d just entered and that I’d been destined to shake on it from the moment my mother fell in love with my father.

  ***

  The Astrodome is the perfect place to end this journey. It’s an enclosed space with clear lines of sight. Mack suggested it when we discussed how to set up the exchange with Blogis and Sir Spencer. He also employed the help of some friends to make sure everything was prepared to the specifications we’d discussed.

  With his security connections, he gained access to the closed arena to do the needed advance work. We’ll be able to control the environment and if things go bad, we’ll have an escape that won’t put innocent people at risk.

  I’d have preferred an open air, public place. Bella suggested Discovery Green or Memorial Park. But with the non-stop news coverage and our faces plastered everywhere, there’s no way we could get away with it.

  We’re lucky enough to have made it back to Houston without an alert cop between Virginia and Texas spotting us and putting an end to everything.

  Mack and Bella think the plan is good. It’s solid. It’ll work. I’m having my doubts and with what I’ve learned about Liho Blogis, I’m not sure our plan is what it should be. He was loyal to my parents. He tried to save them. He helped me without ever trying to take credit for it. And he killed the governor. Half of me wants to alert him, confess what we have in store and enlist his help. Together we could surely rid ourselves of Sir Spencer.

  “You can’t change the plan,” Bella advises. We’re in the SUV in the hotel parking lot across from NRG Park, the property that houses the Dome, NRG Stadium, and NRG Arena. “Just because you think he was always on your side, doesn’t change the fact that he wants to sell the process to bad guys. It doesn’t change all of the other things you read in that file Mack gave you.”

  “You’re right.”

  He has long affiliated with enemies of the state. After his fall-out with Sir Spencer, Blogis fled to the Soviet Union seeking refuge behind the curtain before it fell.

  The hardliners, those not close to Gorbachev, accepted him with open arms.

  He was there, and well connected, when the Russian mob filled the economic, social, and power vacuum the Kremlin couldn’t control. He, former KGB agents, and military leaders were more than happy to provide support to organized crime.

  More than one hundred different cartels dealing in everything from faulty airplane parts to illicit drugs and money laundering took control of the black market in Eastern Europe. That influence spread west and soon enough those cartels became the greatest security threat to the United States and its allies.

  Wikileaks revealed the close connection between the mafia and the government in 2013. Blogis was a key go-between, often coordinating the dirty work. He organized a gunrunning operation to help the Kurds destabilize Turkey. His connections provided the weapons used in the hijacking of the Arctic Sea cargo ship in 2009.

  In the file, there were photographs of Blogis horseback riding with Vladimir Putin and toasting shots of vodka with Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich is the man the FBI called the most dangerous mobster in the world. He’s Ukrainian-born, ruthless, and closely tied to GazProm, the enormous state-owned Russian energy company. Bella thinks that’s where the process will go. She’s convinced he’ll insist on having the process, regardless of a confession on my part. She thinks he’ll forego any allegiance he has to me and save his own skin. His backers, after all, have given him a lot of money and resources to deliver the process. He’s as desperate as we are.

  I can’t overlook that, no matter how much I want to soften. No matter what the file says he’s done for me, I can’t change course.

  Blogis is not a good man.

  I pull out my burner phone and text Blogis a message with the meeting information.

  in ten hours. n 29 41 5.6868, w 95 24 27.5142

  entrance 2. ask for brad

  Bella texts Sir Spencer at the same time.

  in ten hours. n 29 41 5.5858, w 95 24 27.5142

  entrance 9. ask for vince.

  The trap is set. We have the bait. Hopefully they bite.

  ***

  Waiting is the hardest part.

  Another bead of sweat rolls onto my upper lip. I wipe it with the back of my hand and then run my damp hand through my hair. Bella tugs on the front of her shirt to fan herself.

  It’s ten o’clock at night. It’s dark and humid inside the Dome, which for years has lacked air conditioning. Given our perch high within the decrepit stands, the heat is worse than it would be on the floor.

  “Blogis is at entrance two. Over, ” Mack whispers into my earpiece.

  “And Sir Spencer?”

  “There’s a vehicle approaching entrance nine,” he responds. “We’re good to go. Over.”

  Mack has men stationed at doors on either side of the dome. One of them will escort Blogis to the floor, and another will escort Sir Spencer.

  “Are you ready for this?” Bella whispers to me, her hand on my leg. We’re crouched beneath a row of seats high above the third base line.

  “As ready as I’m going to be. You?”

  “I’m ready to move on with our lives,” she says.

  “Me too.”

  The plan is to get both men on the floor of the dome. They’ll be unarmed and essentially without help.

  They’ll be confused and probably angry, given that both of them thought this was a simple handover.

  Each of them will receive an iPod containing the process. I’ll instruct them how to access it, giving both of them the same coded password. I’ll tell them the papers containing the process were destroyed. The only copies which exist are those on the devices in their hands.

  What they don’t know is that the password is also an activator. The second time it’s entered, it engages a tiny explosive placed inside the iPod.

  PETN is Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, a primary component of SEMTEX, the explosive used to bring down Pan-Am flight 103 in 1988 and is one of the most lethal package explosives available. It’s also used as a treatment for angina, so it’s not difficult to acquire.

  It was Mack’s suggestion we use PETN as our way out. He wanted to implode the Dome. I thought that was a bit excessive.

  The iPod was my idea. Poetic in some small way. It was the iPods I delivered around the globe on behalf of the governor that cemented my involvement with Sir Spencer, my leap into the rabbit hole.

  Mack, an explosives expert, wrapped the PETN inside the iPods. The explosions would be violent and potentially lethal but unlikely to harm innocent bystanders.

  Both men would die or be maimed, and neither could affect our lives or the security of our country ever again.

  “Blogis is entering the Dome. Over,” Mack says. He’s in what used to be an office on the main concourse. Inside the room, he’s installed security surveillance at key points. He’ll also work the other necessary electronics as the night unfolds.

  “Sir Spencer is still in the vehicle,” Mack reports. “He’s through the gate and outside the door. Over.”

  “What’s the hold up?” Bella asks, pressing a button to key her mic so Mack can hear her.

  “I don’t know,” he responds. “There’s no movement. Windows are tinted. Blogis is on the move though. He’s to the floor. Over.”

  “Key the light when he’s there,” I instruct.

  “Even without Sir Spencer
? Over.”

  “Yes.”

  Far below us, on the floor of the Dome, there’s the sound of people approaching from a tunnel. Two of them should be Mack’s mercenaries, their heavy boots echoing against the concrete, beams from their flashlights dancing across the rolled pieces of Astroturf partially covering the floor.

  “Hello?” calls a familiar voice and, on cue, on pops a blinding white spotlight, focusing on Liho Blogis. He instinctively covers his eyes with his forearm.

  “What is this?” he calls out. “Jackson? What are you doing?”

  I resist the urge to answer as the two armed, booted thugs push Liho to the center of the floor. He trips on piece of turf, and one of them catches him.

  “I don’t get this. I was under the impression this was a simple exchange. I lived up to my end of the bargain!” Blogis’s eyes are squeezed to slits, his hands trying to block some of the intense light. He spins around, searching for me in the stands. There’s something pitiful about him, a bewilderment that makes me sympathetic.

  Maybe this is not the right move. Maybe I should let Blogis off the hook.

  “I can tell what you’re thinking, Jackson,” says Bella. “I can see it on your face, even in the dark. Don’t trust him. I don’t care what he’s done for you or what he says. Stay strong.”

  “Jackson,” says Mack, “we’ve got a problem. It’s a big one. Over.”

  ***

  “What do you mean he’s not here?” Bella asks Mack. “I thought you said he was in his vehicle.”

  “We never put eyes on him,” says Mack. “The only people in the vehicle are the driver and a woman in a black hoodie. Over.”

  Corkscrew?

  “What is she saying?”

  “She wants in,” he answers. “Says Sir Spencer sent her here to pick up what’s his.”

  “Let her in.”

  “This changes things,” Bella says. “Are you going to give the iPod to her?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll let it play out before I decide.”

  This isn’t good. Already, it seems we’ve lost control. That’s assuming we ever had any semblance of it in the first place. Sir Spencer, as always, is playing us.