Exposure

by Alan Russell

  “Silence.”

  Her shoulder hurt, dammit, and he was telling her to shut up. From the ground, she said, “I told you there’s no one here. I’m tired of these army games—”

  “Shhh.”

  His gun pressed into the back of her neck. She inhaled sharply, sucking down the rest of her words. He scratched the back of her neck with the gun, then withdrew it.

  “We’ll crawl toward that strand of bamboo,” he whispered.

  The bamboo was about fifty yards off. Crawling without the use of her elbows or arms would be difficult at best. She opened her mouth to protest, but he anticipated that and poked the back of her head with the gun. Bastard. She wanted to bite his hand. But instead she crawled on the ground, inching forward with her shoulders and knees. The shrubbery and rocky earth dug into her, shredding her blouse. He stayed at her side, using her as a potential shield until they reached the shelter of the bamboo.

  Her house was now only a stone’s throw away. They had made almost a complete circle from where they had parked, but Jaeger was still cautious. Grabbing Lanie by the elbow and pulling her to her feet, he forced her to run to a window at the side of the house. He took a quick look through the glass, saw nothing, then pulled her along until they reached the entry door. With his body directly behind hers, Jaeger opened the door and pushed her inside. He found a light panel, and extinguished the interior and exterior lights.

  Using Lanie as a shield, he did a rapid search of the three bedrooms. No one was waiting inside.

  He let Lanie drop down on an oversized floor pillow, but didn’t sit himself, choosing instead to go to a corner that was out of sight of the windows. He sat on his haunches. The room was dark, but there was still enough light coming in from the windows to see. He looked around, and seemed amused by what he saw. With a tilt of his head, he pointed toward a brass foo dog.

  “Nice guard dog.”

  “He’s housebroken. Are you?” Lanie hoped he didn’t hear the quaver in her voice.

  “What is this, some kind of a geisha house?”

  “It’s my retreat.”

  “The floor’s all spongy.”

  “Tatami mats.” Lanie kicked off her shoes. “The rule of the house is that you take your shoes off before entering. There are some slippers next to the entry door that might fit you.”

  “You know what they say about rules being made to be broken.”

  “And wisdom being lost on fools. The mats are made of woven rice straw. It’s easy to catch a shoe on the edge and slip. You’ll have to watch your step.”

  “I always do.”

  “My hands hurt,” Lanie said. “How about untying them?”

  “Soon.”

  He was busy doing his visual scouting of the house. It was a simple design, and Lanie loved it all the more for its understated elegance. The posts and beams had been joined using no molding or trim, true old-world workmanship. Japanese wall hangings adorned the rooms, along with dried flower arrangements. There was little in the way of furniture. Instead of chairs there were zabuton cushions with Japanese motifs. In the living room, a hibachi table served the dual purpose of coffee table and tea warmer. There were no cupboards in the kitchen. Instead, there were tansu chests that could be stacked as needed. They served as storage containers, counters, and even a stepladder when the need arose.

  Lanie never looked at the kitchen or the chests. That’s where her gun was, hidden inside a box of green tea. Philosophically, she never liked having a gun in her retreat, but she had reluctantly purchased it for her protection. Better to have it and not need it, she decided, than to need it and not have it. She was afraid to even think about the gun, scared that Jaeger might somehow read her mind. But his interest wasn’t on her.

  “Are those swords the real thing?” he asked.

  They rested on a table in the corner.

  “Yes,” she said. “They’re from the Edo era, about two hundred years old.”

  He left his corner to get a better look. Lanie had thought the swords weren’t in keeping with her retreat, but the designer convinced her to look at them as historical relics and not weapons. “Refined ornamentation,” she called them. Lanie had been won over by their elegance.

  Jaeger removed one of the swords from the rack. He looked at its tsuba—hand guard—and admired the design work depicting dragons. He took off the heavy gold foil habaki and hefted the blade, appreciating its fine balance. It wasn’t as long as a Schläger, but it would do very, very nicely. He cut the air with the sword, enjoying the feel of it in his hands. A true craftsman had created a work of art. Jaeger lightly touched the steel. The blade was still sharp. There were no nicks or chips, no kizu or flaws. Still, it was apparent the sword hadn’t been removed from its scabbard for some time.

  “You should have been tending to the blade,” Jaeger said.

  Her designer had warned her the swords would need regular care. “I’ve been meaning to.”

  Jaeger shook his head in disgust. He carefully returned the sword to its place, then took off the wrappings of the second sword. It looked identical to the other.

  “Another katana,” Jaeger said.

  “Are you a collector?” Lanie asked.

  He attacked the air, doing a passe avant and then a Russian lunge.

  “No,” Jaeger said, the blade stopping just shy of her body. “I’m no collector.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY

  Jaeger was holding a glass of water and two pills. He wanted her cooperation. The autopsy would look better if there were no bruises, and no signs of struggle.

  “If you want your hands untied,” Jaeger said, “you’ll have to take these.”

  “What are they?”

  “Sleeping pills. I understand you have more than a passing familiarity with them.”

  The gun, thought Lanie. She needed to have her hands free to get it.

  “One pill,” said Lanie.

  Jaeger shook his head. “I need some sleep myself. I wouldn’t want you waking up in an hour or two and planting one of those swords in me.”

  Lanie appeared to deliberate before saying: “Okay.”

  One at a time, Jaeger put the pills on Lanie’s tongue and watched her swallow. “Very good,” he said, “save for the fact that the pills are still in your mouth.”

  “I don’t know—”

  He pressed his thumb into the side of her mouth, grinding clockwise into her flesh. It wasn’t enough to leave a bruise, but enough for her to capitulate.

  In obvious pain, she said, “All right.”

  Jaeger looked more satisfied with her second effort. What he hadn’t told her was that the pills were far more potent than over-the-counter prescription barbiturates. She had just taken the equivalent of four times the recommended doses of Valium and Nembutal. Soon, he would have her drink a glass of Everclear. That, and some more pills, would do the job.

  He removed her hand restraints. She started rubbing her wrists, trying to regain her circulation.

  “If you don’t mind,” Lanie said, starting to rise, “I would like to make myself some tea.”

  “I’ll make it for you.”

  “I’m rather particular. And the hibachi is quirky.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  There was no compromise in his voice. “On second thought,” she said, “tea and the pills might not be the best combination. I’ll just get some bottled water in the refrigerator.”

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  Lanie reluctantly dropped back down to her cushion. When he returned with her water, she asked, “How much will my freedom cost me?”

  “We’ll discuss that later.”

  “You said we could talk about it once we got here.”

  “But you’ll soon be asleep. I don’t want you nodding off during our negotiations. There is o
ne thing we need to discuss, though. Where were you headed tonight?”

  There was almost no hesitation in her answer: “I was going on an ice cream run. I had this craving for mocha almond fudge like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Jaeger knew she was lying. The actress hadn’t been disguised, and he knew she had managed to maintain her anonymity in the community. She wouldn’t have exposed herself for a mere craving. From what he could determine, she was planning to return to her retreat, which meant something important motivated her going out.

  “You were either going to meet someone,” he said, “or you left to make, or receive, a telephone call.”

  “You obviously don’t have a thing for ice cream the way I do.”

  “You scream for ice cream.”

  Lanie shuddered. She didn’t like the way he said it.

  Jaeger said, “Had you been making a business call, I assume you would have left earlier in the day. And since you were—what’s the word?—incommunicado today, that means your call, or your meeting, was prearranged.”

  It was almost as if he could read her mind, Lanie thought. And there was one thing she most definitely didn’t want him tuning in on. She tried to make her mind blank.

  “The question is,” Jaeger said, “would your absence have caused any sort of alarm?”

  He stared at her. Lanie met his eyes, or at least appeared to. What she was really doing was staring at his nose. It was an acting trick she used, a way of looking inward instead of outward. The camera, and her fellow actors, never knew that she wasn’t staring directly at them.

  But somehow he did.

  “You’re praying for a visitor tonight, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Beware of what you pray for.”

  Graham’s flight from Newark landed at LA International Airport just after midnight. It was a good time to beat the traffic in Los Angeles, and he managed to catch the California Highway Patrol napping. By breaking every speed law, by going warp speed on the 101, 33, and 150, he made it to Ojai in just under one hundred minutes.

  Lanie had given him an extra controller to the gate, but Graham chose instead to park on the street and trek in. Without a weapon, without a plan, he didn’t want to drive into a potential trap.

  Graham scaled the gate and started running up the road. There was barely enough light for him to make out the path. That was good, he thought. It would make it difficult for anyone to see him coming.

  His breath was ragged. He hadn’t realized how high up Lanie’s retreat was. Every step was harder than the last. He was exhausted, had lived on a diet of stress and caffeine for too long. His legs grew heavier until he couldn’t even pretend he was running. Panting, it was all he could do to just keep going. He wished he had some grand scheme in mind, but he was all out of ideas. Nothing made sense anymore. Getting to Lanie was the only thing he could think about.

  When he caught sight of the retreat’s lights, he stopped to catch his breath. Everything looked quiet and normal. Graham wiped the sweat from his face. Even though there was a chill in the air, he was hot and his body was drenched with perspiration.

  It was possible, he tried to tell himself, that he had just failed to reach her by phone. Or the problem could have been on Lanie’s end. But it had felt wrong, just as it had felt wrong when he called up Ran and there was no answer.

  Graham moved just off the dirt road, keeping low and close to the brush. He stifled his urge to run to the house. Now, more than ever, he needed to exercise caution. Lanie’s bedroom, Graham knew, was in the back of the house. If all was well, she would be sleeping there. Using the bamboo as cover, he moved forward. He froze several times, unnerved by the sounds of the wind chimes coming from her Zen garden, but at last he made it to her window. Afraid of what he might see, Graham cautiously raised his head and looked through the glass. He almost laughed at the sight of Lanie asleep on her futon. A small glow of light highlighted her, making her look like some kind of ethereal being. The camera loved her. And maybe, Graham thought, so do I.

  He exhaled all of his pent-up breath and was still looking at Lanie when he was struck from behind.

  The paparazzo had more lives than a cat, thought Jaeger. “Wake up, Pilgrim. Wake up.”

  Graham felt his nose being tickled. He tried to reach out to scratch it, but he found he couldn’t move his hands.

  “Wake up.”

  His nose was being tickled again. Graham opened his eyes and visibly started, his head bouncing on the mat. A sword was pointed not two inches from his face. Jaeger smiled at his reaction.

  “Have I made my point?”

  Lanie spoke to him over Jaeger’s laughter: “Are you all right?”

  Graham turned to her. Judging by her pale face and glassy eyes, he could have asked that same question of her. But Lanie was staring at him with an intensity that made him realize she wanted to communicate something.

  “My head hurts like hell,” Graham said. “How are you?”

  “She’s all tied up and no place to go,” Jaeger said.

  “He forced me to take some sleeping pills.”

  Almost imperceptibly, her head and eyes tilted toward the kitchen, then returned back to Graham. With Jaeger looking at the two of them, it was the only signal she dared give.

  “This isn’t the time for auld lang syne,” said Jaeger.

  He used his sword as a pointer, tapping Graham on the side of his nose to get him to look up, but not before Lanie got a last signal in. With Jaeger’s attention on Graham, she mouthed the word “gun,” and again tilted her head toward the kitchen. Graham understood what she was trying to tell him. Her gun was still there.

  Jaeger said, “You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you, Pilgrim?” He asked the question with the sword pointed at Graham’s face.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Why don’t you tell me about your travels?”

  “There’s really not much to say.”

  “Refusing to answer is not an option.”

  Jaeger moved the sword from Graham’s sight, but there was no mystery about where it went. As it pricked his finger, Graham cried out.

  “Now that I have your attention,” said Jaeger, “I expect your complete cooperation. Each and every failure to comply will result in your losing a finger. Do you understand?”

  Graham nodded.

  “I thought that you would. Let’s start with your telling me about Paris.”

  “Your man tried to kill me. He didn’t succeed.”

  “And he compounded his failure by helping you fake your death.”

  “He saw the error of his ways.”

  “No, but he will. Where did you go from Paris?”

  “Berlin. Bernd clued me into your dueling scar. I traveled to several universities. In one of them I found an old photo of you.”

  “Clever. And so was your broadcasting my identity as Lanie Byrne’s stalker. But as you can see, it didn’t dissuade me from continuing my mission.”

  “If anything happens to Lanie, you’ll be the prime suspect.”

  “Will I? The poor girl already has a history of suicide attempts.”

  “There’s no point in continuing this thing. This is your opportunity to run. It’s all over.”

  “Nothing is over.”

  “The Thierrys will have contacted the authorities by now.”

  “And said what?”

  “They’ll have told them about their missing Citroën.”

  “Do they have proof of that? All they’ll be able to show is that their so-called missing car is magically back with them now.”

  “They’ll tell how I investigated its disappearance, and how I suspected their real car was involved in the Paris car accident that killed Georges LeMoine and Anne Godwin.”

  “You are a paparazzo. That make
s you as credible as a used car salesman. And that’s before you’ve been examined under a microscope. Something tells me you won’t fare very well under official scrutiny.”

  “Pierre and Odile Thierry are witnesses to Bernd’s attempt to kill me.”

  “Further proof that a former Stasi agent and a questionable paparazzo might have had a falling out over some dubious activity.”

  “Bernd will tell them about you.”

  “He’ll say nothing. Bernd’s left his bloody fingerprints too many places. He has probably slipped away already.”

  “What about you? You’ve been identified as Lanie Byrne’s stalker. You won’t be able to just waltz back to New World Financial.”

  “Why, you have been a busy boy, haven’t you?” Jaeger flicked out with the sword.

  Both Graham and Lanie cried out. Graham tried to crane his neck to look at his hand. His finger hurt like hell.

  “It’s all right,” said Lanie. “It’s only cut.”

  “You bastard,” said Graham, flexing his fingers.

  “How did you learn of my employment at New World Financial?”

  “I talked with one of your fraternity brothers.”

  “And what did you do with that information?”

  “I flew to New York City and found out that the man who runs New World Financial—Jefferson Monroe—is the same man I knew as Smith. Or I should say he was the same man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Good, thought Graham. He didn’t know. He hoped the news would set them free. “Just as I was about to talk to Monroe, he was gunned down on the streets of New York City.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I was standing next to him when it happened.”

  Jaeger started pacing around the room. Instead of demoralizing him, the news seemed to energize him. “So the Gray Man came out of his bunker.”

  The Gray Man. It was a term Europeans often used to refer to intelligence agents.

  “Who is the Gray Man?” asked Graham.

  Jaeger shook his head, offering only a taunting smile.