Cold Snap

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "Why did you hit him? Did he threaten you?"

  "He got on my nerves. Do you see any more movement in the trees?"

  "A little bit. Watch yourself."

  "That is my endeavor," said Ari, and hung up. He was surprised the upstanding, almost gentlemanly Ben did not raise more fuss over the assault. Perhaps, having recently been sucker-punched himself, he took secret delight in seeing someone else (presumably a lowlife) get the same treatment.

  Ari patted Turner's coat, then pulled it up to reach his trouser pockets.

  He removed his wallet and flipped it open. Keeping one eye on the woods, he studied the contents. The name and address on Turner's driver's license seemed in order. Without trying, or even meaning to, Turner's address and driver ID number were permanently entered into his mental archives, to remain until he died or when he could no longer remember how to tie his shoelaces.

  The same happened when he ran across a list titled 'emergency phone numbers', two of which instantly drew his scrutiny. That he would have Ethan Wareness's number wasn't unusual. The two men had been coworkers. But why was he on the 'emergency' list? The second number that snagged his attention posed a dilemma. If Ari called that number, it would be answered by a young man with a girlish voice.

  He began flipping through a thick conglomeration of business cards. Frowning at one of them, he took out his phone and called Ben.

  "I forget...is AA a government agency or is it an automobile association?"

  "Neither. It's Alcoholics Anonymous. You know what that is, don't you?"

  "For people who want to drink anonymously?"

  "It's for people who have a problem with drinking," Ben explained.

  "How could someone have a problem with drinking? You mean someone who is injured?" He looked over the unconscious man for signs of a wound that might impede his drinking, noted the bruise already showing on his jaw. "He might have a problem, now."

  "You didn't kill him...?"

  "Not in the least." Ari propped open Turner's eyelid to prove to himself he wasn't lying. "He is very healthy and will soon be conscious."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  Ari held another business card close to his eye, struggling against the growing darkness. "What is 'Avon'?"

  "It's a brand of cosmetics. You mean he's an Avon Lady? Is he wearing a tutu?" There was a pause, then Ben added, "I guess I have to withdraw that comment. They must have Avon Guys by now, too."

  Unenlightened, Ari flipped the card to the back of the pile.

  "Paper Moon Gentleman's Club..."

  "'Gentlemen's clubs' are where men watch naked women," said Ben flatly, unwilling to allow his voice to betray interest.

  "Really? You mean like American football cheerleaders?"

  "Not quite," said Ben over the phone.

  Ari glanced down and found Turner staring at him from the ground.

  "Mr. Turner! I'm so glad you could rejoin me. I was pleased to discover you weren't lying to me. You are, indeed, weaponless."

  "Killer!" Turner shouted.

  "I have no intention of killing—" And then Ari discovered his mistake. 'Killer' was not a noun. It was a name. Ari estimated the pit bull terrier that came raging out of the underbrush to be around sixty pounds of aggressive muscle with a ton of snarling canines superadded.

  "Masher!" Turner yelled.

  Ari had his Glock out and was aiming it at Killer. He still had the phone open in his other hand and could hear Ben Torson yelling:

  "You can't shoot dogs!"

  Whyever not? Ari wondered before realizing Ben had spoken in the plural. He shifted his gaze to another bull terrier, also charging at a pant.

  "Misery! Deep End! Kruger!"

  Each time Turner shouted another vicious mutt charged out of the woods. Killer was getting close.

  Turner was surprised when Ari emitted not a shout of fear or a curse, but a rather tired sigh. He gave the recumbent man his deadliest gaze. "I could kill them all, of course. But my friend seems offended by the idea..." He shifted the gun to Turner's head. "And I'd much rather shoot you."

  A shriek came from the phone. Ari hoped Ben did not take it into his head to wing him. In which case, his desire for a backup would have backfired badly.

  Turner forced himself into a seated position and clapped his hands once, hard. "Blieb!" he bellowed, his eyes wide with newfound conviction. Ari was obviously not the type of man he had thought he was dealing with.

  Ari was getting ready to snap the gun up and take out Killer. But, for the second time in thirty days, he witnessed the abrupt halt of well-trained attack dogs. They stopped in their tracks, gaping at Ari with murderous lust accompanied by a lot of rude saliva. It was truly a marvel. The mastiffs of Iraq tended to tear their target to bits once the lethal command was given, and then look up with innocent eyes.

  You say something about stopping, Master?

  "Are these your cat-killers?" Ari asked, fingering his trigger.

  "Oh hey, don't go postal."

  Ari stared at the man, registered the word for future reference.

  "You speak to them in German?"

  "Just basic commands," Turner slurred, still woozy from the punch. "They seem to understand German better."

  "Ah, the Nazi instinct."

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  "I am your fearless nightmare."

  "Yeah?" Turner frowned in pain and puzzlement.

  "Why do you broadcast rude calls to me? Why are you interested in me at all? I am only the Mackenzies' harmless neighbor."

  Turner snorted. So did the phone. Ari hung up and slid the phone in his coat pocket. He kept his gun trained on Killer, the closest and hungriest-looking. Killer knew that a gun was a bad thing, and that he should rip the arm off anyone holding one. He was no doubt deeply annoyed with Turner for stopping him.

  "What is this obsession with human-devouring canines?" Ari groused.

  "How about your obsession with Ethan Wareness?"

  "He is missing. I am endeavoring to find him."

  "His wife asked you to?"

  "Why are you so interested?" Ari countered. "He is no longer employed by your company."

  There was a growl from one of the dogs. Ari risked a side-glance and saw Ben crossing the field towards them. He was holding the SIG Pro Ari had loaned him to his side. There was another growl.

  "These would not happen to be rehabilitated dogs with an angry past, would they?"

  "I made them what they are," said Turner proudly, rubbing his jaw.

  "Yes, I think I see a resemblance." Ari used the remaining daylight to spy out a canopied pickup truck parked on a narrow utility road that skirted the baseball field before disappearing behind the trees. A tiny gap in Ari's informational map had been filled. As soon as he saw Turner, he had wondered how he had gotten here. There had been no other cars parked on the main park road.

  "You were about to shoot a dog!" Ben complained, coming up.

  "No, I was about to shoot a dog owner," said Ari.

  "Oh, that's better."

  Ari was annoyed. He had hoped Ben would stay next to his truck, out of earshot. Turner seemed mildly relieved by his arrival, which only vexed Ari further.

  "Your friend here's a nutcase," said Turner.

  "Yeah...well, maybe you should tell him what he wants to know. That way no one gets hurt."

  "Wise advice," Ari nodded sagely. "Shooting citizens is immoral and outrageous, and it always upsets my stomach."

  The other two gave him a 'hope that's a joke' look. Turner confirmed this desire with a small laugh.

  "I'm only here to tell you to stop looking for Ethan Wareness."

  "He's fine?"

  "He's fine."

  "Fat and happy on the plains of Honolulu?"

  "I don't know about that. You mean beaches, right?"

  "Then you know where he is?"

  Turner twisted around and looked at his dogs, as though requesting their opinion. Then he turned his head up to Ben. "W
ho are you?"

  "You brought your dogs," Ari interjected. "I brought mine."

  "Hey!" Ben protested.

  "A poor choice of words," Ari said, while thinking they were perfectly apt. "Let's continue on our train of thought. Sayed Technical Solutions no longer has a vested interest in the whereabouts of Mr. Wareness, which makes your presence here very puzzling to me. Are you annoyed that he found employment so readily after your company gave him such a poor reference?"

  "Did Bristol tell you that?" Turner brushed away the question with a wave of his hand. A couple of the dogs mistook this as a command and sprang forward. With a frantic yell, Turner ordered them to stop, which they did with obvious reluctance. Reasonably confident that his dogs would not get him killed, Turner resumed: "We wanted him out of there. I guess they don't operate the same way in Italy. Around here, whenever you want to get rid of someone, you give him a great reference. That way you fob the guy off on another unsuspecting slob."

  "Are you talking about a government job here?" Ben inquired.

  "Well...we have some government contracts, but we're a private company."

  "Then you're talking malarkey," the ex-soldier asserted. "It's government jobs that you have to go through all the rigmarole. In the private sector, you kick them out the door—end of story."

  It was good having an American around to nitpick at the cultural deceptions of other Americans, Ari thought. He smiled at Ben.

  "Your lying to me makes me very nervous," he said, giving his Glock a demonstrative shake. "Perhaps because where I come from, liars have their tongues cut out and I am made queasy by the idea."

  "They do that in Italy?"

  "A very savage land. We invented crucifixion."

  "Hey...that's right..." Turner gave Ben a sour look, as though he had betrayed him to the centurions.

  "Why don't I begin by shooting one dog at a time, until you choose to reveal the truth." Ari shifted his gun to Killer, who was still the closest. "After that, of course..."

  Ben did a poor job of hiding the fact that he would let none of this happen. Fortunately, Turner had refocused on Ari.

  "Begin by telling me about these government contracts you spoke of," Ari prompted.

  "If I told you, and it was found out, we'd lose the contracts and I'd lose my job."

  "Thus joining Ethan in the quiche line."

  "Listen, I only meant this to be a friendly warning."

  "'Friendly' is not informative."

  "If you hadn't clipped me, you'd never have known about the dogs. But...you know...you can't be too careful."

  "Which is precisely what I'm about: being uncareful." Ari paused a moment. Was that correct? "Let me tickle your memory. When you speak of government contracts, you wouldn't happen to mean ISAF, would you?"

  Turner's face dropped.

  "I am delighted," Ari nodded. "The information is spating. And was Ethan not dismissed, but merely transferred to another ISAF operation?"

  He had missed the mark. Ari knew this from the variety of faces Bruce Turner tested all within five seconds.

  "How did you know?" said Turner with great show of despondence.

  "I didn't, as is apparent from your poor thespian skills."

  Turner tried to draw a blank expression, but he found it difficult. Ari had concluded long ago that poker faces were born, not invented.

  "Then you are saying the insurance company is not engaged by ISAF and Ethan was not what you refer to as a 'lateral transfer'?"

  Turner looked bitterly at his dogs, whose presence had so badly boomeranged on him. Instead of helping him, they had become hostages.

  "Central Virginia Group was investigating something ISAF didn't want investigated. Some sort of sting they're operating in the States. That's a guess. Maybe not a sting. But something they want kept secret."

  "Isn't America somewhat beyond their jurisdiction?"

  "I don’t know anything about them being involved with CVG. This is just guesswork. Bristol told me that ISAF was up to something with some importing firm and they wanted to find out how much the insurance dicks knew. Balloons going up, heads rolling...that's probably what was worrying them. But we didn’t put on any show of firing Wareness so the insurance people could hire him. We made a few discreet inquiries…nothing beyond that. If Ethan stuck his nose in that importer’s business, he was on his own."

  "I wouldn't count on it being a rogue operation," Ben interjected. He looked at Ari. "It could be a Homeland Security thing. That was the whole point of its creation. Pull all the operations together, integrate security, become a single team..." He stopped before his words could trail into total sarcasm. It was against the nature of bureaucracies to integrate. Everyone knew that.

  Ari dared not ask the question that most concerned him: had the location of Ari's safe house been chosen because of its proximity to a potential ISAF employee? Bruce wouldn’t know, in any event. ISAF, part of NATO, was headquartered in Kabul, its initial primary task being to secure that city. Interdicting the drug traffic came as a consequence, since the Taliban financed its operations with opium sales totaling in the hundreds of millions. ISAF's connection to Uday Hussein was understandable, since in all probability the Number One Son had had connections to the traffickers as the opium made its way through Iraq. Beyond that, Ari was mystified. How had Uday and ISAF hooked up? The link between Kabul and Cumberland was well-hidden.

  Did ISAF really have the resources to do all this on its own? Wouldn't they need the domestic assistance of the FBI, the DEA and a host of other agencies?

  "What is the name of that importer the insurance company is investigating?" Ari asked.

  "How would I know?" Turner said with a shrug.

  "You have their phone number in your wallet."

  "Aw fuck, you already know? You looked?"

  "The Paper Moon…it filled me with erotic fantasies."

  "Listen, none of us at Sayed gets much from the government in the way of explanations. We mostly sub out for big IT projects, government and private. We'd have to lay off a bunch of folks without those contracts. Truth be told, the private sector could barely exist without the government."

  "And vice versa," scowled the conservative Ben. Still wearing only a thin jacket, he was practically blue from the cold. But Ari did not think the pained look in his eyes was due entirely to the weather.

  "I always wondered about Ethan..." Turner man began. He looked away.

  "Why so?" Ari asked.

  "His work history, first of all. None of it jibed. Banks, shipping companies, accounting firms, others. I know all these geek-types hop from one job to another. IT is IT, right? But this guy's young, just past 30, and he has the work history of an old man. And he acted like a man who wouldn't stick around for long. He put his bare feet on his desk! You don't plan for the long haul doing stuff like that."

  "His feet were very dirty?"

  "Uh, no. That's not the point."

  "He was a world traveler, then?"

  "You mean, did his jobs take him around the world? I don't know. Everything he did was pretty local. He did a stint at some cement distributor in Abingdon and had a job in Durham a few years ago. Some people commute that far, but it's a long haul."

  "Were you his supervisor?" Ben asked.

  "Sort of..." Turner gave the veteran a wary look. "Why?"

  "You seem to know a whole lot about his background. Are you in HR?"

  "Didn't Bristol tell you I was his sysadmin?" Turner said. "OK, Ethan worked directly under me, theoretically, but he mainly reported to Bristol."

  "Did Bristol Turnbridge send you here to warn me?" Ari asked.

  Turner offered a surly frown as an answer.

  "Such behavior leads me to believe he still has an interest in Mr. Wareness. He would only be interested if he was still working for the government agency that subcontracts you."

  "The FBI? He doesn't—" Turner's eyes went wide and he closed his mouth.

  "Oops," said Ben.

&nb
sp; "Indeed," Ari agreed. "I was speaking of ISAF. What other agencies employ you?"

  "I know you're thinking 'big conspiracy' and crap like that. This isn't 'Three Days of the Condor'."

  "But why risk the warning?" Ari's arm grew tired and he lowered his pistol, ready to whip it back up the moment one of the dogs took a step forward. "You've betrayed far more information than you have gathered, as you see."

  "I just do what I'm told."

  "Yes, you would have eaten coq au vin at the Mackenzies had I not rescued you. A fate worse than death."

  Darkness was almost complete. The woods were now an indistinct mass, but the street lights lining the park road had snapped on, illuminating Turner's dismay.

  "We're dealing with a real alphabet soup, here," Ben groused.

  "Yes, a good bowl of soup will warm you up," said Ari. He turned back to Bruce. "I took the liberty of taking one of your business cards from your wallet. We will stay in contact."

  With frequent backward glances, Ari and Ben walked back to the road. Turner seemed to have experienced enough adventure for the evening and did not send his dogs after them.

  "You want your guns back?" Ben asked through chattering teeth.

  "Keep them for now, if you have a secure place."

  "You mean..." A multitude of questions danced across his face, but he was too cold to ask them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As soon as Madame Mumford saw his new furniture and agreed to prepare a royal sit-down for Ari and assorted guests, Ari began assembling his guest list.

  The Mackenzies would no doubt be only too glad not to be invited, seeing as they placed French cooking on a par with insects eaten by soldiers during survival training.

  Howie Nottoway? Not a party animal. Not that this could be deemed a rowdy free-for-all, but Ari anticipated a reasonable degree of noisy conviviality. Howie (and his wife, whom Ari had only seen from a distance) would stare with incomprehension and disgust at whatever floated in foreign broth.

  Rebecca, most certainly. She had shown great gusto as she downed her garlic soup at the Mackenzies. Diane was more problematic, since she had veered away to the cheeseburgers.