Wrecker: A John Crane Adventure

by Mark Parragh

  Malcolm took it from her. “A million of these things lying around,” he said, “but apparently this one’s special. It’ll be breezy down by the water, John. You got a jacket?”

  “In the car.”

  Malcolm said something to the woman and headed for the door, Molly dancing excitedly at his side. Crane followed, and the woman watched him go with the same dour expression.

  Outside, Crane grabbed his Billy Reid pea coat from the passenger seat and buttoned it up. It was indeed cold here—a wet, persistent chill that would soak into the bones.

  “I don’t think your friend likes me,” Crane said.

  “Pari? She just doesn’t like my old life popping in for a visit. She’ll warm up to you.”

  They struck off on a trail that led down a grassy slope toward the sea. Molly ran into the grass, scaring up birds. Below them, the beach was a long, flat arc of sand and whitecaps. Offshore weathered stone fingers jutted up from the water.

  “So what the hell happened at Hurricane, John?” Malcolm asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell me! They yanked me out of the field, fired me, and then offered me a desk job in McLean.”

  “Which you turned down.”

  “Yeah. You know the funny part? I ran into Chris Parikh a while ago. He’s back in the field. Someone came around to McLean a few months later, scooped up all those old Hurricane agents and built a whole new operation.”

  Malcolm nodded. “Different sign on the door, different people at the top, but the same business at the end of the day. It happens. You could have been there, if you’d stuck it out.”

  “I’m happy with how things turned out,” Crane said. The trail deposited them on the beach, and they strolled near the tide line. Malcolm threw Molly’s stick, and she gleefully took off after it, her paws churning up damp sand.

  “You’re not the only one,” Malcolm said with a grin. “I heard from Alexey. He thanked me profusely for sending you his way. I gather you were the gunrunner’s version of a Black Friday sale.”

  “So you heard what happened?”

  “You burned down a vineyard,” Malcolm said as Molly dragged her stick back again. “Take care of that, would you, John? And you wiped out half the Czech underworld. People notice that.”

  Crane hurled the stick down the beach, and Molly took off after it.

  “Blowback?”

  Malcolm shook his head. “Nobody knows who you are. Lot of rumors. But at the end of the day, nobody was all that upset to see Branislav Skala gone. And life goes on.”

  They stopped and looked out at the rocks and the white water swirling around them. Molly came back with her stick and was content to collapse at their feet and chew on it.

  “So what the hell were you doing over there, John? Who are you working for?”

  Crane knew the question was coming. And he knew he’d come here in part because he wanted Malcolm’s approval. But he still didn’t relish explaining Josh Sulenski and his one-man covert agency.

  “A high-net-worth individual,” he said at last. “The thing with Skala came up because it involved one of his charitable interests.”

  “Right,” said Malcolm. “So that’s why you had no support but plenty of money to throw around. So are you done?”

  “I don’t think I am,” said Crane. “This is starting to look like a long-term deal.”

  “Okay. We’ll take the part about how the government deals with loose cannons as read. You already know that. So what’s this guy’s agenda? What’s the mission?”

  Crane considered the question as Molly wandered off to investigate a group of plovers. He didn’t see a pattern in the things he’d done for Josh so far, if that was what Malcolm was asking. “He wasn’t always rich. Now he’s got power, and I think he just wants to do some good with it.”

  Malcolm snorted. “That’s not an agenda. That’s a character trait. Vague one, at that. Everyone thinks they’re doing good. What’s that mean to him? What’s the vision, John? If you’re going to serve it, you’ve got to know.”

  Crane fumbled for an answer. “Help me,” he said at last. “What vision were you serving at Hurricane?”

  “Molly, leave those damn birds alone!” Malcolm shouted. Molly trotted back, with a last glance back at the agitated plovers.

  “By the end, I didn’t know anymore,” he said. “That’s why I retired. But when it began, I knew exactly what it was about—keeping the Cold War hitting on all cylinders. Fixing the bits that got out of joint. Making sure we got everything there was to get out of it.”

  “You make it sound like a machine.”

  “It was a machine. Damn good one, too. You knew the sides, who was in charge, who worked for who, what they wanted. Power got channeled to useful ends. The money moved like you needed it to move. People had jobs that mattered. We went to the freaking moon! We had the world running like a Swiss watch in the Cold War. Until the idiots had to go and win the damn thing. Look at us now. It’s chaos.”

  Molly whined and leaned in against Malcolm’s leg. He stopped and reached down to ruffle the back of her neck. “It’s all right, girl.”

  He smiled at Crane. “We had it easier in our day, I guess. You’ve got to chart your own path. But there better be more to it than running around getting cats out of trees. That feels good, but it won’t get you far in the end. That’s my advice. If you’re going to do this, figure out what the vision is and make sure it’s one you’re okay with.”

  They wandered back toward the inn, Molly alongside, dragging her stick. Crane wasn’t sure Josh had any overriding vision. He trusted Josh’s motives, but ideas flew off him in all directions at once. And Malcolm was right that that wouldn’t get them anywhere in the long run. It was something he’d have to take some time to consider.

  Molly barked. “Come here, girl,” Crane replied, bending down and grabbing at the stick. “Give me that.”

  After a bit of tugging and negotiation, Crane secured the stick and tossed it down the beach ahead of them. Molly took off after it once more. But she was tired now, and Crane noticed her gait seemed a bit off.

  “Is Molly doing okay?” he asked.

  Malcolm smiled. “Well, she doesn’t run quite as fast as she used to,” he said. “But then, I don’t throw the stick quite as far as I used to, either. It all works out, John. Come on, let’s see what Pari’s got for lunch.”

  After he’d gotten Crane settled, Malcolm did his evening sweep of the property, with Molly at his heels. Lunch had given way to dinner, and then they’d holed up in the study and finished the last of the 2012 Seven Springs Pinot and gossiped about the old days.

  Pari had gone to bed early. Malcolm had noticed that she hadn’t spoken a word of English to him all day, a sure sign that she was angry. She’d get over it, and it was worth it. Crane was sort of like the son he’d never had. He knew he’d been something of a father figure during Crane’s early days at Hurricane. Crane’s relationship with his own father was complicated.

  Like mine with Chloe, he thought suddenly. Then he corrected himself. No, his relationship with his daughter was its own unique kind of complicated. But both he and Crane got something they needed from their friendship.

  Malcolm finished his circuit of the building and started up the stairs, Molly clicking her way up the hardwood steps in front of him. He noticed the aging crown moldings were starting to separate in the corner of the front hall. That would need attention soon.

  Place was a goddamn money pit.

  Halfway up the stairs, his phone rang. He checked the screen and saw “Chloe.” He answered with a smile. “Hi, honey. How are you?”

  Then he stopped.

  “Honey … Chloe, slow down. What? Wait, you what? Well, I don’t think … Chloe, start from the beginning. What happened?”

  He let out a long, slow breath as he listened. Oh, shit …

  CHAPTER 3

  Crane lay in bed, thinking about what Malcolm had said on the beach, when he heard a soft knock at his d
oor.

  “John, you awake?”

  Crane got up and pulled on the robe he’d found in the wardrobe. He opened the door and realized something was wrong the moment he saw Malcolm’s expression.

  “Saw the light under the door,” Malcolm said.

  “I was just thinking about your advice,” said Crane. “Come in.”

  Malcolm chuckled without any real humor. “Yeah. Two sides to that coin.”

  He sat in a wingback chair beside an arts and crafts side table by the window. “All that talk about it not being enough to go around getting cats out of trees? Feels different when it’s your cat.”

  Crane sat on the edge of the bed. “What’s going on, Malcolm?”

  “I got a call from Chloe,” Malcolm said. “She’s all right,” he quickly added, “but she’s …”

  “She’s Chloe,” said Crane.

  When Crane had known Chloe, she’d been seventeen with a well-earned reputation for trouble. She’d been the sort of girl who stalked high-school boys’ dreams and their parents’ nightmares.

  Crane didn’t know the details, but there had been some kind of incident when she was around twelve, one that made it obvious exactly what her father’s real job was and what he was capable of when his family was threatened. She hadn’t reacted with post-traumatic stress or angry betrayal. Instead, she’d taken it as a life lesson. The rules were for those without the skill, wits, and audacity to break them. The proper response to any challenge was quick, decisive action. Adrenaline was the best high in the world.

  “She wants me to blow up a yacht,” said Malcolm.

  Okay, that’s different, Crane thought.

  “Um … any yacht, or does she have one in mind?”

  “Crap,” said Malcolm. “I’m doing just what she did. Let me back up. I told you she graduated UCLA back in the spring. Her mother went. That’s okay. I got last summer and Christmas.”

  Malcolm’s wife hadn’t reacted to the truth about him the same way Chloe had, and Crane knew how much the end of the marriage had hurt him. He could still hear it in Malcolm’s voice.

  “She’s been down in Baja,” Malcolm was saying, “saving the ocean with some shoestring non-profit down there. There’s this guy who hangs around. He keeps a boat anchored in the bay, and I guess he’s got a reputation for creeping on the girls. So someone Chloe knows went missing, and she’s convinced this guy took her. She thinks he’s part of a trafficking ring.”

  “Did she go to the police?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Malcolm. “They’re incompetent, or they’re corrupt, or maybe both. Either way, she’s decided it’s up to her. She wants the guy’s boat blown up, and she knows I know people who can do it. If I don’t deal with it, she says she’ll do it herself.”

  So if Malcolm didn’t want Chloe putting herself in harm’s way, his only option was to keep her out of it by doing what she wanted done himself. It was a tactic she’d used before, and Malcolm had learned the hard way that Chloe wasn’t bluffing.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m just worried she’ll get in trouble,” said Malcolm. “She’s not in the States, and she’s not a minor. She’s not going to get two hundred hours of driving old people to the doctor this time.”

  “I can check in on her,” said Crane.

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  Of course, that was exactly what Malcolm was doing. He was just deeply uncomfortable with it.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’ll fly down and see if there’s anything to it. That should calm her down, right? You sent someone like she wanted. And I’ll make sure she doesn’t do anything crazy.”

  Malcolm let out a relieved sigh. “Thank you, John,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what to do with her anymore.”

  “Mind you, I’m not blowing up some guy’s yacht for her.”

  Malcolm rolled his eyes. “Of course not. That’s what you say now.”

  “She still as good at getting her way as she used to be?”

  This time, Malcolm’s chuckle was genuine. “What do you think? She’s a thousand miles away, and look at us.”

  “Go to bed, Malcolm,” said Crane. “Toss me my phone, will you? I’ll see if I can get a flight out of Portland in the morning.”

  Malcolm pitched him his phone and then stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Thank you, John,” he said. “I owe you.”

  “Put it on my account.” Crane smiled. “Come on, Malcolm, this is what we do for each other.”

  Of course, he would have some stern words for Chloe when he got to Baja, he told himself after Malcolm had left.

  Not that they’d ever worked before.

  Palo Alto, California

  The Myria Group campus had been built by a dialup Internet service provider that drew venture capital like bees to honey back in the nineties. With so much cash, decadence set in. Their new headquarters covered what had once been several lots. They started by filling it with artificial hills to hide the cityscape. By the time they finished, the site looked like a piece of national park dropped into the middle of Palo Alto. All parking was underground. The buildings were glass fronts built into earth berms, or gleaming curves wrapped around the shore of a man-made lake.

  The interior was equally extravagant, from the lobby’s stone towers and waterfalls to the restaurant on the roof. The cavernous room Josh Sulenski sat in had been some kind of recreational facility. Josh had heard gossip around the office that suggested it had once held an ice-skating rink. Josh wasn’t sure about that, but he knew the back wall had been an indoor climbing wall. It was full of holes for attaching movable holds. It must have been quite a party until the bubble burst.

  Josh sat at a lone desk and looked up from his spreadsheets. For a moment, he imagined a sound system blaring out Pearl Jam while programmers climbed the wall, and the marketing department did the Jane Fonda workout on the floor.

  Jane Fonda? That’s more eighties. Where did that come from? Oh yeah, Rollover.

  Josh liked end-of-the-world movies; he enjoyed the catharsis. A few weeks ago, he’d watched Rollover, from 1981. It wasn’t a great movie, by any means. But it was fun to take a break from zombies, super flu, and rogue asteroids and have the world end through financial chicanery for once.

  The Saudis murder Fonda’s husband because he learns some big secret about their bank accounts. So she starts investigating, and she finds the big secret too. The Saudis try to kill her, but it doesn't work, so they panic and end up pulling down the global economy. By the end, people are rioting in the streets and burning their useless dollars.

  But what struck him was something a minor character had said.

  Hume Cronyn.

  He played one of those obscure powerful people pulling the world’s financial levers. Josh knew people like that in real life now. He knew better than to trust them.

  Everything’s spinning out of control, and he's freaking out. Before he kills himself, he tells Fonda, “Money has a life of its own. It's a force of nature like gravity, like the oceans. It flows where it wants to flow.”

  That was what had been coming back to Josh recently. He was digging through SEC filings, reading 10-Qs and 144As and 15-12Gs until he saw numbers in his sleep. And this was the easy part. Most of the companies on his radar were privately held and didn’t have to file anything. He knew huge amounts of money were moving around Silicon Valley. And whether it was going where it wanted to go, or clever people were steering it, it was doing things it shouldn’t be doing. But Josh was in way over his head. He needed a forensic accountant to go through all this. He needed cybersecurity people to sift through e-mail headers and untangle spoofed IP addresses. He needed …

  A ragtag bunch of misfit geniuses who solve mysteries and have adventures together!

  He rolled the chair back across the floor in disgust. This was stupid. He scrolled through the contacts on his watch until he found Maggie Nguyen in HR. She’d been working on it until he’d giv
en up a few weeks ago.

  A general cattle call? Hey, who wants to work on a special project side by side with the billionaire founder of the company? What did you think was going to happen?

  “Yeah, Josh?” Maggie said through his watch.

  “Hey, remember that Special Projects thing I had you work up a while ago? Did you trash all those résumés?”

  He heard her scoff, and then, “No, I categorized them by skill set, and then within each category, I ranked them by how likely you were to want to talk to them.”

  “Really? Based on what?”

  “On a year and a half of you barging into my office unannounced with some totally new project that’s like nothing we’ve ever done, but that you want stood up by the end of the month.”

  “Wow, okay,” he said. “I guess that’s why I pay you the big bucks.”

  “You pay me medium bucks.”

  Josh paused. “Really?”

  “My salary’s in the fifty-sixth percentile nationally for HR professionals with my experience and level of responsibility.”

  “Huh. Okay, well, when we finish this, bump yourself up to seventy. Can you shoot the résumés to my tablet? Wait. Maybe just the top … three? From each category?”

  “You got it, boss.” And she hung up.

  She really gets you. You should ask her out.

  I can’t do that. I’m her boss. That’s creepy. Besides, I need her doing what she does.

  He heard his tablet in the leather messenger bag beside his desk chime as it downloaded the résumés he’d asked for. Josh looked back at the monitors with their tables full of third-quarter terminations of registrations of classes of securities under Section 12(b) and amendments thereto.

  Just shoot me now.

  He spun through his watch contacts again and punched “Tim.”

  “Can you bring the car around, please?” he said.

  “Sure thing,” Tim answered.

  Josh shut down the computers and collected his bag. His footsteps echoed in the large, empty space.

  “Good night, war room,” he said as he switched off the lights.