The Gift of the Dragon

by Michael Murray

  Wondering how the voice in her head knew a detail like that, Alice said, “That’s expensive gear for bear hunting. And who were you talking to on this?” Her foot nudged the man’s headset where it lay on the ground.

  The big man’s craggy face turned petulant. “All right, look, you got me. You have something that my boss wants. Give it to me, and the people I was talkin’ to won’t go mess up your friends in that commune.” Alice raised the gun.

  “My friends can take care of themselves. Meanwhile, I’ve got a big rifle pointed at you. Now, you must be asking yourself, does the little woman know how to shoot my rifle? Does she know what the safety is, and did she take it off?” Alice stared at the man. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. So it’s your move. Do you feel lucky?” I hope the bluff works! She didn’t know whether she had ever shot someone before. She did know she would not start shooting now unless the man made a threatening move. Maybe not even then.

  The man looked worried. “Look, I’m just out here trying to recover my boss’s property. I don’t know how you came by it or even if you have it. I’m looking for a necklace—a lot like the one you have there.” He pointed at her chest, where the necklace lay against the skin, revealed by the V-neck of her shirt.

  “What did he want you to do with it if you got it from me?”

  “Bring it to him. That’s really all I know about it.”

  “Where did he want you to bring it?”

  He looked around as if someone were watching him. “I don’t want to tell you that.”

  Alice poked the rifle at him. “I will use this! I’ll shoot you here.” She pointed the gun at his knee. “I’ll shoot your knees out and leave you for that bear you were looking for!”

  “Let’s be careful where you point that!” He moved his right hand toward his shirt.

  “Keep your hands up!”

  “I have the address… in my shirt pocket.”

  “Get it very slowly.” Then Alice looked around. “Drop it there, and back away from it.” Nightfall neared completion. The three-quarter moon shone down, casting long shadows from the trees above them. A wind picked up and set the leaves rustling along the banks of Mansfield Creek. Alice watched closely as the man pulled a piece of paper from his shirt and let it flutter to the ground by his feet.

  “Back up.”

  The man backed up a few feet and then stopped at the edge of the stump. He waved his upraised hands. “I’m sorry, this is as far back as I can go.”

  Alice bent down and grabbed the paper, keeping one eye out for him to make a move. She also grabbed his goggles. She wanted to put them on to make sure there was something useful written on the paper from the man’s pocket, but she thought that it would take too long to figure them out.

  “Stay here. Don’t try to follow me. I’ll have these.” She shook the goggles. “If I hear a noise behind me, I’ll shoot first and then see what it is.”

  “Hey, no worries. I’m totally through for the night. If you let me go, I’ll tell my boss I never saw you. I swear.” She thought the man might be smiling at her, but in the darkness she could not be sure. Alice jumped down off the stump with her gun and her goggles and her paper and jogged up the creek.

  Chapter 5, A Dangerous Woman

  John

  Angelica Martinan knocked on John Stoddard’s door and then rushed in, somehow bearing a wave of the latest perfume before her. Orpheus—or Opium—some name like that. “Assistant Director Price sent me to keep this out of the e-mail,” she said. Despite himself, he found her almost beautiful, in an older Vogue reader sort of way. However, her technical skills were challenged by attaching files to e-mail messages, which she frequently forgot to do.

  “Why didn't Harry come himself?” John asked, looking down at a sheaf of paper in his hand, studiously trying to avoid her heavily made-up eyes. They had shared a night together, long in the past. The memory still made him uncomfortable.

  “Assistant Director Price is coming shortly, but he wanted to get you the news as soon as possible. Alice… Alice Sangerman has been spotted.” She stopped to draw a breath. “Alive.”

  “Alive?” He slammed the desk with his fist. “How? Where?”

  Angelica’s eyes opened wide, and she rocked back on her heels. She handed him the stapled sheets of paper held straight, as if she held a shield.

  Time seemed to stop for John then. The room whirled a bit, and without thinking, he walked out, brushing past the startled woman, marching to Price's office. Busy or not, the Interim Executive Assistant Director for National Security would explain how this happened. John's teeth ground together. The explanation had better be a good one, revealing no incompetence on Price's part. Ten years of service together in some of America’s dirtiest holes or not, Price’s head would join the many that John had tossed out of 935 Pennsylvania Avenue in the past few months. Price’s door stood partly open. John slammed it into the wire doorstop hard enough to make the spring whine as he barged in.

  “How can you send that perfumed dingbat with this kind of news?”

  “Sorry, sir, I just triple-confirmed it with the DI. No change in status, sir.”

  “Sheesh, it’d better not have changed! This paper—” John realized he spat flecks across the room when he said the word, and he had to slow down. He took a breath. “This has freaking ruined my morning. If it's less than one hundred percent, you can take a long walk today—and the rest of your life off.”

  Price pulled a photo out of a file and tossed it on the desk between them. “Alice Sangerman entering the domestic terminal at PDX. Uh, Portland Airport…”

  “I know what PDX stands for, Price.”

  “Right, yes, sir. Of course. We still don't know where she came in from. We're checking other terminal cameras.”

  This made John furious. Not because he hated the Sangerman girl but because he believed her to be dead; he had closed the file on her, told other people about it. John hated many things. He hated most for anyone to find out he could be wrong. Be wrong too often, and people thought you had lost your touch. They laughed at you. No one laughs at John Stoddard!

  Some people would be very disappointed with John when they found this out. One in particular. I will not eat crow on this, dammit, not if the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation can do anything about it!

  “Price, that girl… that woman… she’s bad news. Deadly. We need to get the word out to the field. Armed and dangerous. Most wanted. Whatever it takes.”

  “Yes, sir—yes, her file is… impressive. Shouldn’t we tell her family?”

  “Her family is dead. She should be too. She is the last of them. Doesn't fucking matter now, Price. She went rogue, stole a great deal of cash—money that we needed for evidence! Two federal agents died during that operation, and it's quite possible she killed them herself. I told people she died! We need to find her. Now.”

  “Yes, sir, I'll alert the field.”

  “We need to do more than that, Price. Who is our operative in the region?”

  “Sir, you think this calls for…”

  “Yes, I do, Price. You lost your ears? Do you have a better use for the man? Tell me it's a man. I'm fed up with women today.”

  “In Seattle, we have York, sir. But he may not be best for Alice.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “He's a bit of a choirboy, sir, a family man, and Sangerman—well, she has been persuasive…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What she did for us, for the FBI, a big part of it involved recruiting confidential informants. She turned several foreign agents to our side as well. She can be very convincing…”

  “You have another suggestion?”

  “Well, yes, our man in Los Angeles is, well, less influenceable.”

  “How the hell do we have ‘influenceable’ operatives?”

  “Many of the best ones are motivated by a moral calling: God, country, honor, all that. Operatives have to be highly intelligent, and the job doesn't pa
y all that well, not for the risk.”

  “I see. They do fine when the target is a terrorist or a drug dealer but maybe less so when the target is a ‘very convincing’ psychopath who may have killed her father and several federal agents?”

  “Yes, that is well put, sir. Los Angeles’s personality tests out differently—he likes the job because he likes to kill. It’s simple to him—legal murder. He led a fire team in Iraq, the one that got caught using civilians for target practice. We gave him a choice between serving his country in a more discreet fashion or a long stretch in jail.”

  “He's under control now?”

  “Under control and much better trained.”

  John liked that. “A hawk we set on a hare. Simple. Perfect, Price. You may yet redeem yourself today. Get him on it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have Los Angeles understand, I want Sangerman delivered here if at all possible. We should question her. Find out what happened to her, how did she disappear, and all that. Termination is only authorized if there is no other option. Either way, I want the body this time, understand? Mess this up and I have a post in Pembina for you. Know where Pembina is, Price?”

  “North Dakota, sir, on the Canadian border.”

  “Exactly. Make this work.”

  Franklin

  Franklin put the phone down on the large oaken desk at Apple Creek’s corporate headquarters in Washington, DC. He leaned back in his tall black leather chair, a Recaro knockoff he had found at a steep bargain. His frugality drove his sons crazy. Recently he had realized he played up being cheap to try to teach them some degree of humility, especially Ian, who reveled in being born wealthy and blessed. He sighed. The realization worried him some. What does it mean that I suddenly understand this about myself? Two of his oldest friends had lost their minds as they reached a certain age, and he spent a good deal of time thinking about that happening to him. Sometimes change is not good.

  The desk stood in the penthouse office of the Washington, DC headquarters of Apple Creek at Pennsylvania and 11th Street. The four-story red-brick building was modest by Apple Creek standards, but it made up for that in proximity to Capitol Hill. Franklin’s business required many in-person meetings, making the expensive location quite worthwhile.

  “Why the sigh, Father?”

  Franklin looked at his younger son. Born without functioning legs and confined to a wheelchair, Trevor still had his place. Despite his usual frugality, Franklin did not begrudge his son the expensive wheelchair. The electrically powered chair’s Segway technology enabled it to stand up on two wheels. Right now Trevor rolled on all fours, coming from the bar with a glass of the ridiculously expensive tequila he favored and a Dewar’s for Franklin.

  “A sip of your devil’s water costs more than an entire bottle of mine. I worry that I have not taught you the value of money.”

  “Why, you should be proud that you’ve bequeathed me good taste! They say every father dreams of seeing his son outdo him.”

  “Gaining the ability to consume overpriced liquor is not what that saying means by ‘outdo.’”

  “Ha, I guess you’re right. Shall we race? Perhaps I can beat you in the quarter mile.”

  “Your chair is limited to eight miles per hour. I can beat that even at my age.”

  “Well, the chair came from the factory with that limit. I didn’t like that, so I had the governor removed. I’m not even sure how fast it can go now. Would you like to see?”

  “I would rather see the resume I asked for.”

  “I’ll let you off this time.” Trevor pulled a folder from a leather document case attached to the side of the chair. “This is the one I suggest we try first.”

  Franklin looked over the papers and the photo within. “Good looking woman. Why her?”

  “Faith has the skills, and she fits the profile. I’m hoping she is Callan’s type.”

  “She does look a bit like Sara.”

  “Right. What’s the plan?”

  “It's an idea Laird and I have, to try to recover Peter Moore’s tablet. If she gets it back, then no need to worry, but if she can not find it, and Callan finds out who hired her, he will go after Northwin, who will be ready for him. Laird would be up here now to hire her himself, but he has things that need taking care of in Miami. She has no idea what Laird looks like. Trevor, that bodyguard of yours, Ned Blunt? He has a similar build to Laird. Ask him to put some gray in his hair and play Northwin.”

  “I can ask him when he gets back from Oregon. Ned’s getting good at playing characters in your charades. Pretty soon I might have to start paying him Screen Actors Guild wages! He’ll want a bonus if he has to put on makeup this time. What’s on that tablet?”

  “Too much, which is the problem. Moore spied on us, working with someone that I have not identified yet. We think he put together a fairly complete description of what we did with Mishari—as well as other things the public should not know about Apple Creek.”

  “You mean about Sangerman and his children?”

  “That, and maybe the whole program, Guardians, and the rest.”

  “Well, he’d already know about all that. What would Moore gain by putting it on a tablet?”

  “We think—Laird and I—that Moore planned on a public release of some kind.”

  Trevor coughed, spilling some of the amber liquid from his glass.

  “And now Callan has the tablet…”

  “Yes, but he can not read it, not yet, not without the key.”

  “We have the key?”

  “We know where it is. But the key doesn’t matter if we can destroy the tablet and what it contains. We have to find it to do that, though.” Franklin stood up. “Ned met with Sangerman?”

  “Yeah. That mission was a surprise. I thought your pet assassin reported that he redacted her years ago.”

  “It appears Grant did not finish the job,” Franklin said.

  He pulled an envelope of photos from his jacket pocket and slid them over the table to Trevor. “These are the photos Callan sent us to show that he killed Sara Moore.” Trevor dumped out the photos and fanned them on the table.

  “How’d he get these pictures?”

  “He is an electronics freak. He had a camera attached to his gun. He knows I like to see proof before I pay!” Franklin pointed at one of the pictures. “The second girl he shot is Sangerman.”

  Trevor looked at the enhanced photo that his father pointed to. In the green hues of an infrared camera, it showed a woman with her head bleeding from a bullet wound as she fell into the river below. “That sure looks as if it hurt.”

  “Too bad it was less than fatal.” Franklin handed him a second stack of pictures.

  “Where did these photos come from?” Trevor said.

  “We sent a few people to look for her after we got the pictures from Callan. Last week, one of them heard a rumor about a woman with a head wound at some hippie retreat in Oregon. A place with hot springs where everyone goes naked and does yoga.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Your chair would short out, and you would need a forklift to get it back on dry land,” Franklin said and snorted. “These are the photos our contact sent us. She has a nasty scar but otherwise looks fine. They said she seems to have lost her memory. That is why I asked you to send Ned to meet her, find out if she still has her wits. And the key.”

  “He said she seemed sharp enough but a little out of it. Not the old Alice who could scratch diamonds with her claws.” Trevor refilled his glass. “Ned saw she had the key. He could have taken it, but you told him to give her an address instead.”

  “Right. Part of the plan. The address will lead her to Guzman. Callan is watching Guzman. So is Northwin. When she shows up, she will draw Callan out, and then we will have him.” The lie about an alliance between Northwin and McAlister came easy.

  Franklin sighed, imagining what would happen when his sentimental son learned Laird Northwin’s actual role in the plan.

 
; Three birds with one stone.

  “Her being alive will mess things up. The courts were told all Sangerman’s children died,” Trevor said. He held up the second photo. “If her memory’s gone, she may have brain damage too.”

  Franklin tapped his head with two fingers. “I can not see how she would be awarded a claim in any court. With that kind of wound, it should be easy for our lawyers to convince a judge that she is incompetent. She is better off dead.”

  “Well, speaking for the damaged, I disagree. Death is final while, with life, there are more… possibilities. I hope Alice Sangerman is still in there somewhere. I’d like to talk to her again.”

  “Trevor, son, sometimes I wonder what side you are on.”

  “Father, that hurts. I love my family and all that we stand for.”

  Franklin looked him in the eye. “Callan tried to kill her once. He will not want her to survive.”

  “She’s innocent, Father. She had nothing to do with Sangerman's madness.”

  “Well, that matters little. She is supposed to be dead. If she stays alive, there will be a great deal of explaining to do. About things we do not want to explain. Understand?”

  “Alice Sangerman must die?”

  “This we must do if we are to have the prize.”

  “You mean keep our current positions?”

  Franklin McAlister rested his chin on his hand. “Right. To keep things as they should be.”

  “But if she doesn’t remember who she is?”

  “That may well be temporary. I will not depend on her real or feigned memory loss. There is too much at stake!”

  “Why didn’t we just have Ned kill her, then? Then we’d have the key.”

  Franklin finished off his own drink. “I have a great deal of respect for your Ned, but Alice Sangerman is quite capable of taking him apart with either her ‘diamond claws,’ as you put it, or her big blue eyes. Anyway, my plan will get us both Grant with his tablet and the last Sangerman with her dragon key. If we can get Alice on Laird’s boat, Callan will not be able to stay away. He wants that key. And he wants to finish off Alice—his reputation is a great deal of his wealth. Laird and I are putting together a trap for both of them.”