Die Again to Save the World

by Ramy Vance

  “Ha-lle-lujah.” With an operatic flair, Reuben burst into a rendition of Handel’s Messiah.

  “Sorry.” He cleared his throat at the dirty looks his coworkers were giving him.

  Gina Dwyer. Stephanie’s sister-in-law, married to Tom.

  Reuben laughed. “These people get more and more interesting.”

  Had Julian used Gina’s Uber account to book a ride to Mr. Sudds? Or did Stephanie go with him and book it from her sister’s account? Or did Tom use his wife’s account? Maybe Julian wasn't even actually in New York. The possibilities were endless.

  Regardless, the Uber charge had someone arriving at Mr. Sudds at 3:14 p.m. three days ago. Reuben pulled up the traffic cam on Mr. Sudds at 3:10 p.m. that day. He wanted to make sure he saw as much of the vehicle arriving as possible. He waited for three minutes and then saw a red Camry pull up to the dry cleaners.

  After a minute, the door opened, and Julian Schaeffer stepped out. Stephanie wasn’t with him.

  Reuben’s heart leapt at the sight. Regardless of the method of his investigation, this was the kind of hard evidence that even Sven would jump all over.

  Schaeffer had spiky blond hair, wore a blue flannel shirt and torn jeans, and carried a red backpack over his left shoulder. Reuben couldn’t tell much more about him from the traffic cam. He enhanced the image and noticed that he seemed shifty and kept looking over his shoulder. The Camry waited for a couple more minutes and then left.

  Schaeffer stood on the sidewalk of Mr. Sudds and waited. He kept biting his fingernails and looked nervous. He glanced around, looking for something, someone. He reached into his backpack and pulled out something. Reuben squinted. A pack of cigarettes. Julian lit one and stood outside smoking for a minute. The door to Mr. Sudds opened, but Reuben couldn’t see who was on the other side. Julian turned and said something, and then the door closed again. Julian tossed the cigarette on the ground and went inside. He stayed inside for several minutes.

  Reuben stayed glued to the screen, watching the empty sidewalk.

  “Reuben.” Sven’s voice through the speakerphone made Reuben jump so hard he hit his leg on the underside of the desk.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Can you come in here for a moment?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Reuben paused the footage and scrawled down the time stamp just in case. Then he minimized the window on his screen, locked his computer, and went into Sven’s office.

  Sven leaned back when he saw Reuben and toyed with a gold pen. He motioned to a chair in front of his desk. “Do you know why I called you in here?”

  Reuben gingerly eased into the chair and answered honestly, “I don’t.”

  Life with Sven was a confusing mess of mind games, and Reuben never quite knew how to navigate them. He figured he’d probably failed at all of them, and Sven mostly considered him an affable moron, too harmless to fire.

  Sven tossed the pen on the desk and met Reuben’s gaze. He knew enough of Sven’s games to know he was supposed to win at a staring contest with his boss. It showed something like accountability or honesty, or soul vulnerability, or something like that. But damn, was it unnerving.

  He sat listening to the clock tick on the wall.

  Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

  Reuben tried not to squirm, but now all of this stuff with Schaeffer was burning just under the surface, and it started to bubble up like hot lava in his chest. He couldn’t tell Sven about Schaeffer without telling him how he knew.

  He also knew he wasn’t in trouble, exactly. If Sven were upset about something, he wouldn’t confront him this way. This method of confrontation was simply to do exactly what it was doing to Reuben. To make him spill any kind of secret beans that the agency didn’t know about.

  “What can you tell me about the incident with Mike Fury?” Sven finally asked.

  “Oh, that.” Reuben was relieved it would be about that. “He asked for me to run a report, and I couldn’t do it along with my own work, and he responded.”

  Sven listened and pursed his lips. “You’re not telling me everything.”

  “No, sir.” Reuben surprised himself with his own response. “I'm still figuring out the details. I wouldn't want to waste the agency's time, money, and other resources.”

  Sven’s lip rose in shocked approval. “Agent Peet, how long have you been here?”

  “About two years, sir,” Reuben answered.

  “Two years,” Sven considered. “I’m not sure if you are aware, but Agent Nick Perry has been removed from case #U95643E-1.”

  “I’m not familiar with him. That case number has to do with the Interpol alert, right?”

  “You spoke with Agent Perry during the power outage,” Sven explained with a gesture toward the security screen on his desk. “Correct on the case number. As for Perry, we’re diverting his attention to another case.” Sven spoke with a tone that told Reuben not to ask any questions.

  “Right,” Reuben said. “I wasn’t aware of his name.”

  “In any case,” Sven continued, “I need someone who can replace him on that project. I can’t divert my higher-level agents from their duties at this time, but this alert has persisted past the four-hour mark, so I have to put someone on it. If you can resolve that case with efficiency, we’ll see about putting you on some higher cases.”

  Reuben’s eyes widened. Had he just been put on the Schaeffer case? “Sir, I’d be honored.”

  Sven’s lips twisted in disgust. “Don’t bullshit me, kid. Get your work done, and get it done right.”

  “Yes, sir.” Reuben rose from the chair and left the office. He practically breezed back down the hallway, almost missing Aki. Almost.

  He crashed into her with a loud thud in the hall. “I’m sorry.”

  She smiled and rubbed her head. “You’re fine. Robert, right?”

  “Reuben.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “Thanks for talking to me yesterday, after the… You know…” she trailed off, embarrassed.

  “Yeah.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  Aki shook her head. “Don’t be. It was an accident waiting to happen. You just got caught in the crossfire.”

  He stood in the hallway with her and had so much to say. He opened his mouth, but no sound would come out. She smiled kindly, and with a quick squeeze on the arm, she swished away, leaving a trail of perfume in his memory.

  After she was gone, he leaned against the wall and grimaced. Why couldn’t he say anything? He knew her; he knew her so well. Right then was the moment he had been waiting for, hand-delivered to him. But he couldn’t so much as utter a peep. What was wrong with him?

  He went back to his desk and pulled up the traffic cam at Mr. Sudds again. He tried to put Aki out of his mind. Now that he was officially on the Schaeffer angle, he could devote all his energy to it.

  An alert popped up from Sven. He had been added to the case file.

  He opened the link in the directory. The angle he was supposed to be working on this case was whether Schaeffer stole the bomb. Perfect. This was exactly what he wanted to work on.

  The agency already had his basic profile, and that he was connected to a looming bomb controversy by way of his connections with a handful of conspiracy theorist groups. Reuben snorted. Julian wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, at least not openly enough to warrant government surveillance on that account. He may have had some friends who were, but his posts were about his girlfriend, his skateboarding, and hanging out in bars with friends.

  Besides, the bomb wasn't nuclear. It was an experimental microwave weapon. The radioactive material in the dumpster near Julian's house that had initially gotten the kid on the CIA's radar was probably planted.

  Unfortunately, Reuben shouldn’t officially know any of this. He was days ahead of the CIA in terms of what he knew and they knew. He had to be careful about how he proceeded.

  Reuben clicked back over to the traffic cam to watch the interac
tion with Schaeffer at the dry cleaners. Schaeffer was still inside, and there was no action. Reuben tapped his pen against the desk and started to wonder if they had murdered Schaeffer in the dry cleaners. This would explain why no one could catch him on Valentine’s Day.

  More minutes ticked by, and still no action. What the hell?

  Reuben moved the security cam to the side of the screen and pulled up the case file on his directory. He started filling in everything he knew about the Schaeffer case, keeping the security screen in his periphery. He wanted the CIA to know what they needed to know and when to stop the threat on Valentine's Day. Now that he'd put in the work to hopefully clear Julian's name, the agency could focus on finding who was really behind the threat.

  He linked the credit card documents and the bank statements. He explained what Nick had said about the missing Delta flight. He also scanned in the credit card documents. He knew Angela would burn if that ever went to court. It was illegally obtained evidence. The agency was fine with illegally obtained substantiated evidence, so long as you could use it to get legally obtained evidence before it went to court. With the street cam evidence, they were covered.

  Julian still hadn’t come out of Mr. Sudds.

  Reuben moved the time bar back just to see if he had missed anything. Nope, Julian had gone in and still hadn’t come out. If this went on much longer, he would check police records to see if there was anyone matching his description who showed up in the murder cases. He went back to filling in all of the information he had into the agency files. Hopefully, this would be enough information that when Valentine’s Day came around, Julian wouldn’t be the prime suspect. Reuben included a note about Stephanie Dwyer and her connection to Tom Dwyer, and yes, he connected them to S-Wire and then threw in the reference to BTI and Alister Pout.

  It was dark by the time he finished, and the office was thinning out. Julian was still inside the dry cleaners. It had been three hours. What was he doing inside there for three hours? Finally, Reuben fast-forwarded through to the end of the day. Two workers came out of the dry cleaners, locked up, and disappeared down the sidewalk.

  No Julian. Had they seriously killed the guy?

  Reuben again tracked back to when Julian went in. He watched again to see if there was any clue he was missing. He enhanced the view to find anything moving in the windows. He saw the tiniest glimpse of Julian’s shirt sleeve move in the window, and then it went away. He enhanced the view as high as it would go, not working with much more than pixels. He stared into the window, and then he noticed it again. The blue pixels jumped in the same way, and at such a high enhancement, it became obvious that the blue color on the screen disappeared and reappeared randomly.

  “Are you kidding me?” Reuben gasped.

  The security tape had been looped. What the hell? How had Schaeffer and whomever he had working with been able to doctor the security footage? This stank of Dwyer, or Pout. Or the S-Wire folks.

  With a little bit of hacking, he was able to tap into the signal for the ATM across the street security footage. He scrolled through it—nothing of note.

  Reuben checked to see what was next door to Mr. Sudds. There was a fast food place called Hurley’s Chicken. He clicked a few more times and got into the restaurant’s cameras. There were views of the lobby, the alley, and then finally he found the sidewalk view, with a perfect shot of Mr. Sudds.

  On the Hurley camera, he didn’t see Julian arrive in the red Camry but saw him go inside Mr. Sudds. This view of Julian’s face was a little bit clearer, and he noticed a chin ring. Then, Julian came out minutes later.

  “Shit.” Reuben laughed. This wasn’t in the city footage.

  Julian stood on the sidewalk for a moment, pacing back and forth, biting his lip. He moved in and out of frame several times, and Reuben kept thinking he might have lost him. Finally, a black Mercedes pulled up next to Hurley’s Chicken. The window rolled down, and Julian talked to someone from the sidewalk.

  Reuben couldn’t see who it was, but it wasn’t going so well. Finally, the door opened, and two figures stepped out. One was a man wearing a white hoodie with stripes on the shoulders and the hood pulled up. He turned away from the camera and disappeared down an alley. The other man was—

  “Holy shit!” Reuben exclaimed.

  It was Alister Pout.

  Julian and Alister chatted tersely for about a minute on the street, and Julian looked uncomfortable. Finally, he reached into his backpack and pulled out something. Reuben couldn’t make it out.

  Alister reached out and grabbed it and stuck it in his coat. He shook the kid’s hand and got back in his Mercedes. Alister left, and Julian walked out of frame.

  Reuben backtracked through the footage to look at what had been exchanged. He enhanced the view to see a plastic bag with a Canadian maple leaf on it. That was all he could tell.

  He tried to follow Julian through the streets but couldn’t switch the cameras fast enough. Now that Pout had no doubt compromised the footage, he couldn’t trust it anyway.

  Reuben was stumped. He didn’t know how to follow Julian past leaving Mr. Sudds that day. But he knew someone with the fieldwork and experience that might.

  Aki.

  Chapter Thirty

  Martha—Friday, February 10, 9:17 a.m.

  Martha sank into the chair at her desk and rubbed her temples. It had been the week to end all weeks. Or at least, so she had been told. The whole experience with Reuben and his weird friend Buzz was the strangest thing she had ever been through in her life. She still didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Can I get you anything?” Zach’s perky face popped up over her cubicle wall and made her headache worse. “Coffee? Red Bull?” He held up a silver can toward her.

  Martha grimaced. “Oh, God, no. That’s the last thing either of us needs.”

  “You want to do some talk-throughs?” Zach used the proper police force terminology for the technique of talking through a case, hoping to figure it out. It worked sometimes, but with all the career politics that went on around here, the last thing anyone wanted to do was show all their cards.

  She shot Zach a look, and he sat back down. “Any word on Alister Pout’s schedule?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I mean, you didn’t exactly give me much time, and I still don’t know why we’re looking into him.”

  Martha shot him another look, and Zach backed down. “Well,” he produced a stack of papers two inches thick, “this is what I found.”

  She frowned and grabbed the stack. He had appointments and engagements back from the beginning of the year.

  “This is good work, Zach,” she said. “Where did you get this? And in one night, too.”

  He smiled, cleared his throat, and glanced around the office. “Pout’s assistant.”

  Martha narrowed her eyes. “You just walked up there and asked for it?”

  “Well, no.” He grinned. “I did a bit of research on his staff. Trying to get results as quickly as possible, you know.”

  “Research?”

  “Yeah, Twitter,” he clarified. “It’s like voluntary surveillance. Anyway, I found out some of his staff were having a big birthday party at a bar near their office building. They even tweeted what booth they were in. One of them just recently broke up with her boyfriend and said she needed to find some artsy guy like a painter or writer she could be all sensitive with.”

  “She tweeted that?” Martha raised an eyebrow. She was young, practically a rookie herself. But this Twitter stuff was making her feel old.

  Zach blushed. “Actually, it was on Tinder.”

  Martha held up a hand. “Hold on. You stalking this girl?”

  “No!” Zach denied hotly. “I was researching. I went to the bar with my laptop because I was working on my cop novel.”

  Martha resisted the urge to laugh. “You’re writing a cop novel?”

  Zach shrugged. “Well, my dream is to be James Patterson, but you got to start small. So I just tinker with it. I’v
e been working on it for about four years.”

  “OK…” She pondered that image. It actually worked better than Zach as a cop.

  “So, I’m in the bar, pretending to write, but I’m really watching her. After a while she’s had, like, six drinks, and I introduce myself. I tell her I’m a cop working on my thriller novel and need a femme fatale. I ask if she would be my femme fatale.”

  “And that worked?”

  “Oh yeah.” His voice lowered, and his smile got goofier. “Let me tell you, she’s cute. Long brown hair, huge breasts—”

  “OK, Zach,” Martha cut in. “Spare me the details. Save it for the novel.”

  “Fair enough,” he answered. “We start talking. I’m asking her questions about herself for, you know, the novel. I’m looking for inspiration. At least, that’s what I say. I’m already on chapter thirty-six, and let me tell you, my femme fatale is one—”

  “Zach!” Martha chastised. “Focus!”

  “Yeah, sorry. Anyway, she starts telling me all about how she’s Alister Pout’s assistant. Bingo. She’s working the billionaire assistant angle for my book. That might be the sequel,” he muttered to himself. “She talks about her job, Pout, and then she starts complaining about her boss and how he’s an asshole and he sleeps with everyone and doesn’t even notice her. How she feels so invisible because how could he sleep with half of Manhattan and not even at least want to sleep with her. So, he’s the reason for posting about the artsy type on Tinder. A writer is just about as different as possible from a billionaire…”

  “That’s odd logic,” Martha countered.

  Zach nodded. “Totally agree. James Patterson made close to a hundred million last year.”

  “No,” Martha clarified. “The sleeping around part.”

  “Oh, yeah. I thought so, too. Like I told her that she’s beautiful and sexy and that he’s just an asshole, and then I invited her back to my place, and you know…” He cleared his throat.

  “Right.”

  “But here’s the thing.” He glanced around the office and then back at Martha. “When she left my place this morning, she grabbed her purse. But, she forgot to take this.” He reached backward toward his desk and produced an iPad.