The Enemy Inside

by Steve Martini

  I snap around to look at him. Connor is standing there ten feet away.

  “What do you mean?” I shake my head as if I don’t understand. I could tell him I didn’t see anything, but I’m holding the evidence in my hand. My brain is racing, trying to figure some way to get out of the room, out of the house, and back to my car.

  “Foolish mistake on my part,” said Connor.

  “I don’t understand. I’m sorry. I knocked the cards onto the floor. Here, let me get them.” I start to go down onto one knee.

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  When I look up at him again he is pointing a pistol at me, something big and black, semiautomatic, with a bore the size of a railroad tunnel.

  “I mean, here I go to all the trouble, dye my hair, and what do I do? I end up leaving Ying’s business cards right there in plain view on the corner of the desk. I’m getting as bad as some of my help. Or maybe I’m just getting too old. That’s the problem when you have too many names,” he says. “It’s hard to keep them straight.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Pick a name,” he says.

  I could throw the brass cardholder at him and run, but he’d put a hole in me before I got three feet. So instead I stand there like a statue and ask another stupid question. “Where’s Mr. Becket?”

  “Who? Ah, you mean the short fat guy? The one you met the last time you were here?”

  I nod.

  “That was Nick, my gardener. Man’s a frustrated actor. He does some summer stock at the community theater. But still, he did a pretty good job on short notice, don’t you think?”

  “Fooled me.”

  “You want to know the truth? You scared the crap out of us that day. Showing up at the door like that unannounced. You should have seen us scrambling. By the way, how do you like the hair?” he says. “Since I did it for you I’d like to know what you think.” He absently runs the fingers of his left hand through the dark locks while he holds the pistol trained on me in his right.

  “It’s OK, except I wouldn’t go swimming.” I show him my dirty right palm.

  He checks his left hand. There is nothing. Then he shifts the gun and checks the other one. “You’re right.”

  From where I’m standing I can see a stain like motor oil on his fingers and the heel of his right palm as he looks at it. “You transferred it when we shook hands.”

  “OK, so I’ve made a few mistakes today. I’ll have to read the directions on the bottle next time. See how long it takes to dry. I wasn’t sure how detailed the description was you got from the girl. I didn’t want you to turn and run the minute I opened the front door. As it turns out, I should have saved myself the trouble and dropped you out on the front stoop the second you rang the bell.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Don’t go all giddy on me,” he says. “It’s not gonna change the outcome. I hope you like fish, cuz you’re gonna be sleeping with them tonight.” He takes the horn-rimmed spectacles off as he continues to point the pistol at me. He folds them up one-handed against his chest and slips them into his pocket. “Just windowpane. I don’t wear glasses. Don’t need ’em.”

  “Bully for you,” I tell him.

  “Tell me, was she good?”

  “Who?”

  “The girl. You know. Ben? Did you get any?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “Yeah, but I can still get it up. I figure you and your Afro friend were in there for a while. You must have gotten something?”

  “She was there with her boyfriend.”

  “I figured he probably watched.”

  “We were looking for information.”

  “Well, excuse me. What did she do, tell you to take a cold shower?”

  I don’t answer him.

  “So you were looking for information. How much did she remember? About her meeting with me?”

  “She remembered the name Becket.”

  “Yeah, I knew that was gonna be a problem. For a woman who was so gifted in the area of female charms, she had a quick mind to go with that great body, and educated too. All in all, a dangerous package, if you know what I mean. Here I go looking for some bubble brain in a brothel. Somebody who won’t remember their own name next morning, and what do I draw? The bride of Einstein. The minute I gave her the name Becket, she says, ‘Oh, that’s easy to remember. Just like the Archbishop of Canterbury.’ If the club hadn’t been so crowded that night, I’d have shot her on the spot. I knew she’d remember it. And to make matters worse, Becket is the name on the title to the house here, so it couldn’t be changed. That was my fault. But then how was I supposed to know anybody would ever find her? By the way, how did you do that?”

  “Name association, a lot of shoe leather, and a tattoo.”

  “I suppose you could tell me all about it, if we had the time. But we don’t.”

  “You know we gave everything to the police,” I lie. “And my office knows I’m here.”

  “Don’t screw with me,” he says. “It’s only gonna make it worse. No one knows where you are right now. Your partner is off somewhere up by Mission Bay. We can go watch him on television if you like. Your secretary believes you’re going to be back by three, but you didn’t tell her where you were going. Not according to the transcript I saw. And even if you did tell her it wouldn’t matter, because you never arrived here. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  “You bugged our office?”

  “Seven ways from Sunday,” he says.

  “We had it swept.”

  “They have these little devices now with switches so you can turn ’em off when the man with the R.F. detector comes around. Turn them back on again when he leaves. You can do it remotely. They don’t find a thing. You gotta get with the times if you’re going to do this shit. If I were you, I’d ask for my money back from the company that swept the place.”

  “Why don’t I go do that?” I shift my eyes and shoot a quick glance at the door.

  “I’d feel more comfortable if you sat down,” he says. “Put the cardholder on the desk, along with the file folder.”

  I do it.

  “Now you can turn that chair around to face me.”

  I do what he says.

  “Take your coat off and drop it on the floor.”

  “I don’t have any weapons.”

  “Do it!”

  I take the coat off and drop it on the floor next to the chair.

  Then he motions me into the chair with the muzzle of the pistol.

  I sit.

  “Eyes down,” he says.

  I look at the floor. A few seconds later I feel a hot burning sensation in the center of my chest as if a snake has sunk its fangs into me. When I look up I can trace two wires running from my upper torso to a bright yellow pistol-like device in his hand. Ten feet of hot conductor wire connect from the darts in my chest to the Taser gun in his hand. The darts are held in place by sharp jagged barbs.

  “We’re gonna be here just a few minutes while you answer some questions. How painful it gets is up to you,” he says. “So why don’t we just make it quick and easy?”

  FIFTY-SIX

  Three days earlier, just after five in the morning, Ana had been roused from a deep sleep by a signal from her cell phone. One of the lawyers, Hinds, was on the move. It woke her and caught her attention because it was so early.

  She waited for him to break the geo fence surrounding the law office, but this didn’t happen. Instead he crossed the other fence, the one surrounding Madriani’s house. The two of them were meeting. They were headed somewhere.

  Ana threw on her clothes and ran for the car. In less than seven minutes she was parked down the street from Madriani’s house. She was just in time to watch as an official-looking dark blue sedan pulled into the lawyer’s driveway.

  Through the field glasses she tried to read what was printed on the driver’s door. All she could read, in small white letters, was GOVERNMENT VEHICLE, OFFICIAL USE ONLY.
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  The two lawyers gave each other a quick hug. Madriani got in the backseat of the car and a second later it backed out of the driveway and drove in the other direction. Ana waited for Hinds to turn and walk toward the house before she pulled from the curb and followed the car.

  Forty minutes later she watched as it disappeared down the same rabbit hole used by the Dumpster diver and his driver a month earlier—the guardhouse at the entrance to the Marine Corps Air Station at Miramar.

  She couldn’t follow him, but it set off alarm bells. The instant she got back to her hotel she set another geo fence around the Miramar Air Station. It wouldn’t do any good in terms of tracking Madriani because he was in another car. But it would give her a signal if either of the lawyers went out there again in their own vehicles.

  It made Ana wonder what was going on at Miramar. Maybe the lawyer was into this thing deeper than she thought. Was it possible? Could the lawyers be in collusion with the people who had the French auto-nav system? It didn’t seem to make sense, since their own client was involved in the accident. But then who knows. Maybe they were on the take.

  The next day and a half Ana spent scoping out the location of her new client’s contracted hit, the job she had been delaying. She had been watching the place on and off over the last several days. She wanted to be able to move the instant she recovered the equipment. That is, if she could find it. She was prepared to wait two days, no more. If by then she didn’t have it, she would grab one of the lawyers, probably Madriani, and subject him to enough pain that he would tell her everything he knew.

  If after that she still couldn’t find it, Ana would have no other choice. She would have to perform the new contract and disappear back to Europe and home.

  She could pray that no one would find the navigational computer, trace it back to its French designers and from them to her. But Ana didn’t like to leave such matters to fate. If they did find it and made the connection, everything in her life would unravel. Authorities would start linking passport pictures and fingerprints, aliases, and travel records to jobs she had performed on two continents over nearly a decade.

  Interpol, the FBI, and every state intelligence service in the Western world would descend on the picturesque villa in southern France. They would find her grandmother and her aunt and destroy their refuge from the world.

  This morning she was back, tracking after the lawyers. She was getting ready to snag one of them. At the moment it looked like it might be the older one, Hinds.

  He was driving north on I-5 when he took the interchange at I-8. He went a few miles and got off on Mission Bay Drive. Ana was just about to take the off-ramp when the signal on her cell phone told her that Madriani was now also on the move. His car had broken the geo fence around the law office.

  Ana let Hinds go. She shot past the off-ramp and drove west toward the ocean. She turned off on Nimitz Boulevard and pulled into a parking lot in front of a motel to check her phone.

  The tracker on the little Spark Nano under the fender of Madriani’s Jeep was set to report its location at intervals of five minutes. It took three intervals, a full fifteen minutes, before she could confirm that he was headed north on I-5 and had passed the interchange at I-8. He was driving fast, approaching the 805, running north, out of the area.

  Ana tossed her cell phone on the passenger seat, started the engine, and took up the chase. Every few minutes she glanced over at the phone to see if the GPS had updated his position. She was afraid he might turn off the highway at some point and she would fly past him.

  When she looked over to check the phone, she realized it had timed itself out and gone dark.

  “Damn.” She kept her eyes on the road, reached over, and picked up the phone. It took a few seconds looking back and forth between the highway and the phone to key in the four-digit code to unlock it.

  Seconds later the GPS showed Madriani moving west toward the ocean on what appeared to be a major thoroughfare off the highway. From the small map on the cell Ana couldn’t identify the turnoff. She wanted to look more closely in order to study the phone, but she didn’t dare. Traffic was moving too fast. If she took her eyes off the road to look at the small screen, she could end up like the charred occupants of the car at the gas station.

  Ahead she saw a sign, a broad overpass with a long straight exit on her side of the divided freeway. There was a large curving cloverleaf on the other side. Whatever road it was it ran east and west, a major thoroughfare. She decided to take it.

  At the top of the overpass Ana stopped at the signal and checked the phone once more. Distance was hard to calibrate on the small map.

  She saw the flashing marker on the map noting Madriani’s last position. He’d obviously moved on since then. She wouldn’t get another GPS reading on him until the next timed interval.

  She pinched the screen in an effort to zoom in, trying to read the street names on the map. Ana had no clue as to where she was or whether she and Madriani had even taken the same exit from the freeway.

  If she could identify the street where the GPS marker was located she could look for signs along the way to see if they were on the same road.

  The light turned green and traffic started to move. Ana laid the phone back down on the seat and took a left. She went west over the top of the freeway toward the ocean.

  The road was good, two lanes in each direction and few stops. The traffic moved quickly, no congestion. She glanced down at the phone and noticed that the marker had moved.

  She touched the screen quickly in order to keep it alive. Madriani was now moving on some side street off to her right, assuming he had used the same road she was on.

  From the rapid glimpse she got at the small screen, the narrow thread he was traveling on looked like it snaked its way through a canyon. It was either that or the top of a ridge. She couldn’t tell which. It was almost impossible to make out any details squinting at the small display from four feet away.

  Ana almost reached over to touch the screen one more time and instead closed the leather cover and gave up on it. She decided she would move toward the ocean, stop, and park somewhere until she could check the map thoroughly and get her bearings.

  By then Madriani would be farther along. But she could still find him, thanks to the GPS.

  She passed through a residential area, large houses with late model luxury cars parked out front. There was a traffic signal ahead. It looked like a major intersection.

  She touched the brake just as the GPS signal toned on her phone and began to play. Hinds was back home. He had tripped one of the geo fences, either at his apartment, Madriani’s house, or the office. Ana was beginning to feel comfortable with the system. She wished she had gotten it earlier.

  Before she could come to a complete stop, the light changed. She drove through the intersection, pulled to the right, and parked at the curb. She left the motor running, air conditioner humming, as she checked her phone.

  Ana lifted the flip leather cover and punched in the code. The map came up along with the circled geo fence. As Ana looked at it she realized that the signal wasn’t coming from the law office, Hinds’s apartment, or Madriani’s house, the three areas she had fenced off. Instead the signal being emitted by the sensor on Madriani’s car was coming from somewhere else.

  As she looked at it she realized what it was. It was the electronic fence she had set up the day before. The one she put near the large oak tree in front of the gauche American knockoff of a French provincial estate house in the hills above Del Mar. The house was owned by the pigeon, her next victim, the new contract Ana was being paid to pluck by some high-ranking Chinese general.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  It’s been said that a person who acquires the grace to die well has learned much. If that’s the gold standard, I’m an idiot. If I have to die now, I am going out of this world kicking and screaming.

  The man of a thousand names has me attached to two electrodes fired like bullets through the fabric of my shirt
and planted into the flesh of my chest like industrial staples. I am seated facing him, my hands gripping the wooden arms of the heavy antique chair. With the massive partner’s desk at my back, wired to the Taser and my assailant between me and the door, I have limited options for escape.

  I could make a dash for the French doors that lead out into the garden. They are off to my right behind me, about eight feet away. I don’t know if the twin doors are locked or bolted shut, or whether I could bust through them if I launched my body through the small glass panes. But tethered to the Taser I don’t dare try. Any attempt to rise from the chair and he would drop me like a beached flounder and watch me flop around as he sent bolts through me like Zeus.

  So far he has hit me with the Taser twice just to let me know how it works, enough voltage to send every muscle in my body into spasms. According to the cops, the official line for those who use them is that Tasers cause little or no pain. Feeling the continued burning sensation from the darts in my chest and the agony of muscle cramps caused by the little devils, I beg to differ. Catch one of the darts in the eye and you will lose your sight.

  I settle into the chair and look for opportunities.

  “Why don’t you just tell me where he is and we can end this? Or better yet, tell me who has the information on the accounts, the bank records. You’d be saving yourself a lot of pain. If you tell me now, I’ll let you go.”

  This is the first time he’s tried that one. He must be getting desperate to think I’d believe it.

  We have been over this four or five times already, the whereabouts of Betz and his cache of records. It always ends the same way, with me telling him I don’t know, which in turn is met by a cascade of lethal threats followed by a Taser show as he lights me up. It’s not that I don’t believe him. I’m sure that given half a reason, he would disembowel me on the spot. It’s just that I don’t know what to tell him that will keep me alive. The instant he thinks he’s gotten everything I have, he’ll put a bullet in my head.

  He knows that Betz is out, no longer caged at Supermax. I’m guessing he has a source inside. Probably one of the guards. Betz was wise to take out the insurance. He was not untouchable, even there.