The Enemy Inside

by Steve Martini

  Every so often the man of a thousand names waves the muzzle of the large pistol lazily in my direction just to remind me that he has it. When he does this the large bore down the barrel looks like the inky darkness of a deep well. It is old and vintage. It looks like a government-issue, forty-five auto. Something from a past war.

  He paces back and forth, as if he were slow-mo moonwalking with the hand cannon in one hand and the Taser in the other. But he keeps a fair distance, about twelve feet between us, so that if I tried to charge him, I doubt if I would get halfway.

  He’s in no hurry. He’s feeling safe, as if he has all the time in the world. It makes me think that he’s alone in the house or whoever else is here won’t be troubled if he kills me, hirelings who might well come in and help him or dispose of my body.

  In the distance I can hear the sound of a gas-powered garden tool of some kind. It’s not a mower, either a Weedwacker or a leaf blower. A high whine. I can’t tell if the sound of the motor is coming from this property or that of a neighbor.

  “Why don’t you tell me now? You know you will before we’re done.”

  “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Sure. I’ll answer yours, you answer mine.”

  “What’s your name?” I say.

  “Why? You think we’re gonna become friends?”

  “No, it’s just if somebody’s gonna kill me, I’d like to know who they are.”

  “It’s a fair question. You can call me Ishmael,” he says.

  “And I’m the white whale.”

  “You asked me. I told you. My turn.”

  “How did you get into this line of work?” I cut him off. His questions are beginning to bore me. They’re always the same.

  “You mean killing people like you? That comes easy,” he says. “In fact, you keep running your mouth, it’s gonna be a labor of love. And for the record, this isn’t my line of work. It so happens I’m a petroleum engineer.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why? Don’t I look smart enough?”

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “Why don’t I just give you my Social Security card and a photograph, we can ten-print my fingers when we have coffee later. Why would you care? You’re not going anywhere.”

  “You just said you’d let me go if I told you what you wanted to know.”

  “Yeah, but you haven’t told me, have you?”

  “I’m guessing that at some point you worked for the government. Which agency?”

  “You’re just burning up with questions, aren’t you? Well, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. I worked for the government, sure. Long time ago. I worked for an office, I won’t tell you where, but our job was to explore for oil overseas, in remote areas. This was before the age of green zealotry,” he says. “You know the ones, subscribe to global warming or they’ll cut your head off. That crowd.

  “One day I came to work and found my desk cleaned out. The division I worked for was gone. They told us we were victims of the peace dividend. Us, along with half of the military and a fair piece of the country’s intelligence apparatus.

  “The leaders had all found religion. The concept of war was outdated. The green dogma that passes for enlightenment was sweeping the world. Guns were out and butter was in, enough to grease the welfare skids and keep the entitlement programs humming.

  “The lesson I learned was that America had no leaders. What passed for leaders were herd animals. They were out front only because they wanted to be seen. They kept running into trees and off cliffs because they spent all their time looking back trying to figure out where the herd was going next so they could get back out in front.”

  “Take it you don’t like politicians.”

  “I hate ’em. They come in handy from time to time, if you can pack them in your pocket. Otherwise they’re worthless. They stripped the country bare. Laid waste its intelligence agencies and staked out the position that the United States was invulnerable. Anybody who attacked would have to be out of their minds.

  “It took ten years before they discovered half the world was crazy and some of the people in the asylum were fashioning nuclear weapons. As for me, I didn’t care. The experience had opened my eyes to opportunity. I found my niche.”

  “Murder Incorporated?”

  “You keep running your mouth, I’m going to put a bullet in you. That’s a hobby. I’m talking business. The same people who told us we didn’t need oil were the ones who’d stripped the country and told us there’d never be another war. But when winter rolled in and people started growing frost on their upper lips, they expected the bunker oilman to deliver. I had all those nice detailed maps prepared for the government. Why lock ’em away in some dusty file? So I went into business. Became an entrepreneur.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “Say what you want. In the last twenty years I’ve made more money than God. I bought up the offshore oil resources, developed the oil, and sold it on the spot market. It ends up back here at three times the cost of the domestic supply that Washington won’t let anybody drill. The politicians can claim they’re protecting the environment and the taxpaying chumps pay the premium at the pump. It’s a great system,” he says. “Designed for the dull-witted by the corrupt. They say sheep are stupid. They’ve got nothing on the American voter. And they wonder where all their jobs have gone. Maybe they should take a closer look at the people they elect.”

  “Maybe they would if they knew you owned them.”

  He gives me another look at the business end of the pistol and then pushes the button on the Taser. The voltage hits me like a freight train. In an instant I am stiff as a board, every muscle in my body convulsing, along with a dry metallic taste in my mouth. I rattle around in the chair, banging up against the desk behind me. Visions of shock therapy. There is the taste of blood in my mouth. Suddenly it stops.

  I slump over in the chair, breathless, as blood drips from my lip onto the front of my shirt. Somehow I bit my tongue. I think about the cops who use these things for recreation following an arrest. This gives me a whole new perspective.

  “How’d that work for you? I can do it again if you’d like. What was it we were talking about? Oh yeah, politicians. I don’t own all of them. There’s always room for growth,” he says.

  I look up at him, anger fixed in my eyes. “For a man who seems so bitter, it sounds like you’ve done pretty well.”

  “I’m not bitter. I like my work.”

  He probably does, but he’s twisted. I would say it out loud, but I don’t want another taste of the Taser from Vlad the Impaler, his own form of aversion therapy. He wants me to talk, but he’s conditioning me to keep my thoughts to myself.

  “Of course, I’m not sitting where you are right now. Shall we start again?”

  “Do we have to?”

  “I’m only gonna ask you one more time. I’m wasting electricity. Guess I’m gonna have to put a bullet in you. Where is Betz, and where are the bank records?” He stands there looking at me, waiting for my answer.

  When I don’t say anything he moves a few steps closer. “Listen. I don’t want to have to hurt you anymore.” He lowers the muzzle of the gun half an inch, a measure of his sincerity. “You tell me what I want to know and I’ll make certain there’s no pain. You have my word. I promise.”

  “Tell you what. You give me the gun, I’ll give you the same deal. And I won’t even ask you any questions.”

  He cocks his head, looks at me. There is something predatory in his eyes.

  The flash preceded by a nanosecond the impact of the bullet. It grazed the fabric at my knee and shattered the right front leg of the chair.

  I land sprawled on the floor, my head slamming into the desk. The explosion of the round is still vibrating in my ears as the spent metal cartridge bounces and spins like a top on the tile floor ten feet away.

  For a moment I’m dazed. A fine dusting of smoke, along with the sweet smell of nitrates
from the gunpowder, permeates the air. I look at the shattered leg of the chair, wondering why it isn’t me, if I’m just lucky or if he’s that good.

  Slowly I search with my hand along the inside seam of my right pant leg, hoping I won’t feel the wet warmth of blood spreading through the worsted wool.

  “Would you like another?” He holds both of the weapons up and says: “Pick your poison.”

  “You’re gonna wreck your furniture,” I tell him.

  “No, this time I’ll go for the kneecap.”

  “I don’t know where the records are,” I tell him.

  “But you know where he is.”

  I shrug my head, a grudging concession.

  “I’m done talking,” he says.

  “The government has him!”

  “Where?”

  “On a military base.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. But I can find out.”

  “How?”

  “He checks in. He calls me three times a day, my office and my house. He leaves a coded message. If I need to talk to him I pick up, at which point we’d make arrangements to meet.”

  He offers a big sigh. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  The fact is, I’m buying time. If I told him that Betz was at Miramar, there’s a chance he’d kill me and try to figure some way to get onto the base himself. The man has connections. That’s clear. This way he needs me to answer the telephone.

  “One thing I do know.”

  “What’s that?” he says.

  “If you kill him, everything he has, all the information, will be released. I don’t know the details. But it’s set up for the broadest possible dissemination. He told me that much. If anything happens to him, the world is gonna know names, dates, deposits, amounts on hand, everything.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t tell you where it was?”

  “No. He knows if he gives it up, if he loses that, he’s dead.”

  I assume the Impaler already knew this, but it sets him to thinking. “Do you know what kind of arrangements they have for security? The military base. How many guards?”

  “US Marshals. I don’t know how many. And probably a regiment of military police.”

  “What time does Betz call?”

  “Ten in the morning and three in the afternoon at the office. Eight o’clock at night at my house.”

  “Get up. Get on your feet,” he says. He waves the gun at me, checks his watch. “There’s too many people at your office. Anybody at the house?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then it looks like you’re going home. We’ll be going as soon as I can get some backup.”

  My head is spinning, as I am still on the floor. It takes a second before I process his words. He wants backup. Does that mean he is alone in the house? I can’t be sure. If he is, he won’t be for long. Once he has help, I am dead.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  She had cased the house and its surroundings for the better part of two days, so that by the time Ana arrived at the mansion and saw Madriani’s Jeep parked across the street, she already knew the layout.

  She was also familiar with the household schedule. During the period that she had watched the place only three people came and went, a housekeeper who doubled as a cook, a groundskeeper, and the man himself. She recognized him from the picture sent to her by the Asian agents who hired her.

  His name was Ying. Though he didn’t look Asian, the contacts told her not to be confused. He was the one.

  The housekeeper, a woman who appeared to be in her sixties, lived in. She had a room at the back of the house off the laundry. She went shopping each morning about eleven for food—probably perishables, fresh fruit, and vegetables. The one item Ana could confirm was the fresh baguette of French bread sticking out of the top of the bag each day. She never returned before one. She drove her own car that she parked at the side of the house. This afternoon the car was already gone. There was only the owner’s Bentley parked in the circular drive.

  The groundskeeper she could hear, well off in the distance. He was over the rise in the deepest part of the yard. From where she sat in the car he was at least a hundred and fifty meters away. He did not live in the house. He came each morning about seven and left around five.

  As she peered from inside the car Ana could make out the man’s head and part of his shoulders through the field glasses every so often when he straightened up. He was wearing a face mesh shield and hearing protectors as he whacked weeds with a gas-powered cutter.

  Ana stepped out of the car and moved quickly to the trunk. She popped the lid with the car key and grabbed her bag. It was a fair-sized black tactical duffel with a strong wide strap made of webbing. Inside was the compound bow already strung and five laser-tipped broad-head arrows. She slung the strap over her shoulder, closed the car’s trunk, and checked her watch. The hands were just touching noon.

  She stopped for a moment, thought about what she was doing, and then headed across the street, under the massive oak tree. She kept her ear tuned for any change in noise coming from the Weedwacker. When she reached the edge of the circular drive where it curved toward the front door, she stepped up over the curb and onto the grass.

  From here Ana moved quickly just outside the edge of a flowerbed that flanked the side of the house. She was careful to keep her feet out of the soft planting soil. Instead she stayed on the tough Bermuda grass where she knew she would leave no shoe prints.

  When she reached the back of the house she checked one more time, glancing in the direction of the noise, which was now much louder. The groundskeeper was perhaps fifty meters away.

  She had seen him through the glasses when staking out the house. He looked to be about fifty, short and squat; he didn’t appear to represent dangerous brawn. Of course, if he was armed, that would be a different matter.

  She laid the duffel on the ground, zipped it open, and uncased the bow with its mounted quiver of five arrows. She was going to hate to lose this equipment. But she would replace it when she got home. The fact that she was going to use the bow and arrows on one more job in the same area dictated that she dispose of it all where no one would find it before she headed for the airport and home. She would not take the chance that a medical examiner might connect the two cases and start looking for records of anyone traveling with such equipment. It was how you stayed alive in her line of work.

  She donned the shooting gloves that covered the tips of her fingers. Then she unclipped one of the arrows and carefully laid the shaft on the bow’s arrow rest while fitting the taut bowstring into the grooved nock of the fletched end of the arrow.

  Ana was not surprised that for a large, expensive residence, there appeared to be no surveillance cameras or other security detection devices. She had seen this before on regular occasion, usually when the targets were underworld figures, drug dealers, and worse. They wanted no record of their own movements or activities on a memory bank somewhere. Especially if this was being piped to some outside security company. If you weren’t careful you could end up exhibit number one on your own incriminating video.

  She grabbed the duffel and slung it over her back. With the arrow threaded on the bow, she moved quickly along the back of the house. She passed under the kitchen windows and carefully skirted the covered patio with its hooded fire pit and chimney.

  Here the lawn ended and changed to a concrete walkway. She stayed close to the house to avoid being seen from the second-story windows above. Other than the fact that they were inside Ana couldn’t be sure where the lawyer and the man named Ying were situated.

  The midday sun bore down. She could feel it on the back of her neck. Her dark clothing absorbed the heat and made her sweat as her mind chewed on all the various possibilities. What troubled her was how everything had suddenly converged. How did they know each other? What did the California lawyer have to do with the man a Chinese general wanted dead? She would be sure to ask him the instant she had him cornered
under the point of an arrow.

  Ana walked quickly, in a combat crouch, one hand on the bow, the other fingering the fletch end of the arrow. She was poised to pull and release on reflex, if she had to. She glanced down and saw her moving shadow etched by the noonday sun on the cement beneath her feet. This was a novelty she didn’t like. With dark clothes you could disappear into the inky blackness of the night. But not here.

  Ahead she could see a high-latticed fence harboring an esplanade of interwoven flowering vines. It separated the garden from the large oval swimming pool on the other side.

  Five feet from the fence a sudden loud report froze Ana’s feet to the concrete. It might have been a bowling ball dropped from a great height onto hardwood, except there was no bounce. She knew what it was. It came from somewhere inside the house, muffled by the interior walls. She had been around enough pistol ranges to recognize the stifled, flat report of indoor gunfire.

  She turned and looked in the direction of the noisy Weedwacker. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear the continuing ragged whine of his machine. Between the noise of the gas engine and the earmuffs, the gardener hadn’t heard the shot.

  Ana turned back to the mansion. The sound of the shot was close and directly in front of her. Her gaze settled on the area just beyond the latticed fence, a shaded alcove at the side of the house and a set of French doors just beyond.

  For a moment she thought about retreating, going back to the car, leaving and returning later when it was dark. That was her plan. The matchup between Madriani and Ying had changed it. Now she wondered if one of them was dead. The possibility, however remote, that it might be Ying forced her to find out. She had already lost one contract. She couldn’t afford to lose another.

  She steeled herself and moved forward, but the sound of the shot set her on edge. The bow was no match for a handgun. If she somehow lost the element of surprise, Ana would suddenly find herself on a suicide mission.

  The instant she approached the arbor opening in the fence she knew she had a problem. The bright sunlight overhead and the shaded interior of the house made it impossible for Ana to see anything through the glass doors. Until she reached the shade of the alcove all she’d see was her own reflection in the glass. By then anyone inside with a gun could empty a clip into her head.