The Phoenix Egg

by Richard Bamberg

  Besides, jumping a man with a loaded gun is always a last resort maneuver. John didn’t like getting shot. He had tried it a couple of times and found it unpleasant at best.

  “Nice penmanship. It shows you have an orderly personality. So you don’t know her, eh?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t know a woman. I said I didn’t have anyone here,” John said.

  “And you don’t know where she’s gone.”

  “Obviously.”

  He didn’t answer. John could feel him moving closer, and the hair on his nape began to tingle. Guns at his back did that.

  “What has she done with it?” he asked.

  “Look, I’m just an employee here. Ms. Maxwell hired me to find out who was after her and nothing more. I don’t know anything about her or her business. That’s the truth.” Well, a half-truth, anyway.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  He didn’t sound like he particularly wanted to.

  “Look, if I was working with her rather than just being a simple employee don’t you think she would have told me where she was going? I put her here for her own safety, and I just came back to find her gone.”

  The guy was irritating, but he was also scary. John had no idea whether he’d shoot him just for the hell of it or let him go. Given a choice, he preferred the latter, but the tingling in his nape was getting worse.

  “I suppose I could give you the benefit of the doubt. One shouldn’t leave too many bodies lying about. It attracts attention.”

  What the hell was he talking about?

  “All right,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ll let you live, but drop her case. You won’t be so lucky the next time I run into you.”

  “Sure thing, anything you say.”

  John didn’t have any trouble sounding relieved, but he had no intention of dropping the case.

  He felt a double pinprick in his back and before he could move fire lanced through him. His muscles locked, snapping his mouth shut and arching his back like a fish floundering on the bottom of a boat. He lost control of his body but was unable to fall away from the electrodes jabbed into his back.

  John didn’t know how long the Frenchman held the trigger of his shocker down, but it was too long.

  ***

  When John came to, he was face down with his nose buried in the dingy brown carpet. Everything, absolutely everything hurt. It felt like he’d been exercising until the muscles locked up. He had pain in places he didn’t even think he had muscles. He tried to move, but his arms and legs didn’t want to respond. Trying again, he finally defeated inertia and pushed away from the floor.

  The outside door was closed, and he was alone in the room. He staggered to the bathroom and leaned against the sink. The image in the mirror looked almost as bad as he felt. Blood still oozed from a nose that stood at a sharp angle to what he considered normal. The old scar glowed red against his face. Its glow echoed his mood. He gritted his teeth, took a firm grip on his nose, and yanked it straight.

  The pain was sharp, but bearable, as fresh blood streamed down across his mustache. He ignored it.

  The shocker was a nasty stun weapon. Its high frequency and high voltage shock locked the voluntary muscles in the body, but when the charge was spent, the muscles relax. Normally, they’d hurt for a couple of days, depending on the physical condition of the victim. In his case, he expected a day would be enough, but it was going to be one hell of a day.

  His left nostril still seeped crimson. He yanked off a foot of toilet tissue, rolled it into a cylinder, and jammed it into his nostril, inflicting almost as much pain as straightening it had.

  He picked up his overnighter from where he’d left it and started for the front door.

  The note he’d written lay crumbled on the floor. He bent to retrieve it and then changed his mind. If Caitlin came back, she would have enough evidence that something was wrong when she saw the pool of blood his nose had left in the carpet. That should cause her to leave without stopping to look for a note. She’d get back in touch with him over the Web or back at The Gleaning Cube.

  He went to the front door and looked out. There were a few people moving about the lot, but there was no sign of his assailant. Just as well, it’d be a few more hours before he was limber enough to handle a fight. He opened the door and walked stiffly to the rear of his car, unlocked the trunk, and tossed in his overnighter.

  John bent and pulled back the carpet. Then he unlatched the hidden compartment in the floor and lifted out a small case. He closed the trunk, went around to the driver’s door, and got in.

  He set the case on the seat next to him and keyed in the combination. Opening the lid revealed his handgun and holster. He took the gun out, checked that there was a round in the chamber and a full magazine, and then set it back down while he strapped on the shoulder holster. It was normally difficult in the front seat of a car, but with his stiff muscles, it took a few minutes. Finally, he got it on and slid the handgun home.

  He didn’t usually pack the gun. Relying on a gun instead of your wits often gets you into more trouble than it’s worth, but once a case starts getting serious, it tends to stay that way. Besides, he and Frenchie had some unfinished business.

  While the case had already been interesting, Frenchie had made it something personal. The next time he saw the Frenchman, things would be different.

  CHAPTER 15

  John pulled onto highway one for the drive back up the coast. He appreciated the usually uncomfortable weight of the handgun. It felt as comforting as a baby’s pacifier. He hadn’t felt the need to carry it in months, and he’d forgotten how safe you feel with a fully loaded Colt ten millimeter strapped to your side.

  Regardless of how good the Colt felt, his gut had grown cold.

  Caitlin had disappeared without a note. The Frenchman had found the hotel and had known she would be there. Had she done something to tip him off? She could have placed a call, either to someone whose phone was tapped by the Frenchman or she could have logged into the Web and left evidence that an efficient Web rider could trace. But if she had, why had she then left without so much as a note?

  Someone else could have traced her signal and gotten to the hotel before the Frenchman. They could have removed her and left no evidence of a struggle, but who? The Japanese? The killer? The Feds? And who was the Frenchman aligned with?

  The only other possibility was just as disturbing. Caitlin could have ignored his instructions and left on her own. He had thought she’d be able to handle instructions, but having no contact with her for over twelve years made her temperament a trait he couldn’t really judge. However, if she were being honest with him, then she would have left a note.

  What was her motive?

  Could she have set him up?

  He didn’t want to think about the possibility, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone had taken advantage of his trust.

  Caitlin was different. Wasn’t she?

  He still had feelings for her, but they were illogical and made no sense, especially now that she had disappeared on him. He didn’t need to be in love with her or anyone else. He didn’t need to trust. What he needed was...

  He didn’t know what he needed unless it was to find Caitlin and the Frenchman. At that moment, the order didn’t matter. But on the chance that someone had taken her, he had to concentrate on finding her first.

  He turned off onto Del Mar and headed across the peninsula toward Palo Alto. It was a faster route than highway one. The road wound past new homes where a decade earlier a Christmas tree farm had provided color and coolness to the landscape. Development continued to spoil what had once been a nice place to live. Not that he had been here then. He’d only moved to the Bay Area about five years ago, but he’d heard it was once nice. He came here for the work, not for the unspoiled beauty of the area.

  It was nearly four when he pulled up to an apartment he maintained in one of the less desirable areas of San Francisco. He circled the block once,
looking for anything out of place. Nothing attracted his attention. He left his car in one of the unmarked spaces behind the building and took the stairs to the third floor. The hallway was empty; at this time of day, most people were either still at work or sleeping if they worked the night shifts. He held his keys in his left hand and kept the right free for action.

  His lock appeared to be a simple deadbolt, but he’d replaced it without asking the landlord for permission. No one, including the landlord, had any business in John’s place. John slipped the key home, twisted it to the left, held it for a full second to disconnect the alarm, and then turned it to the right to unlock the bolt. Anyone picking the lock would usually miss something that simple.

  He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Shatter resistant glass covered the curtainless windows; to his left lay his computer with its associated hardware, books, and software. Next to the computer was the storage vault holding his weapons and a few other high-priced items. A small sofa and entertainment center occupied the middle of the room. The right side of the apartment held a small kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom.

  The computer ran constantly but went into the catnap mode whenever he left the apartment. John walked over to it and tapped the mouse button. The monitor awoke to show his security program.

  “Alarm status?” he asked.

  “All secure.”

  “Full security,” John ordered.

  His apartment’s security had three levels, low, normal, and full. He rarely used low. Normal provided for entry control and automatically summoned the police in case of an attempted break-in or the fire department in case the fire alarm activated.

  Full didn’t call the police. It electrified a series of metal strips bordering the windows and the keyhole on the door with a charge similar to the stunner that had taken him down.

  In addition, it booby trapped the computer so that if someone did get in, the computer and certain other quasi-legal things stored there would be melted down with the generous use of thermite. Of course, the system would summon the fire department simultaneously to prevent the fire from spreading, and no one would gain access to anything he wouldn’t want them to have.

  “Messages?” he asked.

  “Two e-mails.”

  No voice mail and the e-mail could wait.

  He stripped down, tossed his clothing in the hamper, and took a shower. He still didn’t feel clean from the effects of the stunner. Normal stunners have a preset time they discharge, usually less than a second does. The Frenchman’s stunner was either illegally modified or a black-market version. Either of which would explain his severe reaction.

  John toweled dry, pulled on fresh clothes, and added a vest beneath his trench coat. The heavy vest’s multiple layers of Kevlar II were protection from most bullets. It’d also prevent a stunner’s electrodes from reaching his skin.

  John had never been a Boy Scout, but he was a fast learner when it came to being prepared.

  He grabbed a snack out of the fridge and called up the messages on the computer. The monitor displayed a short message concerning some hardware he’d ordered. It was signed simply, T.V.

  T.V. was a good friend in the black market world of electronics. If he couldn’t purchase it somewhere, he could jury-rig it out of a couple of chips and a battery. The man had a genius for gadgets and only his dislike for established corporations and the world, in general, kept him from great wealth.

  He also happened to be one of the few people in the Bay Area John could count on.

  The other message was more confusing. It was encrypted. That someone had taken the trouble to encrypt a message implied they either didn’t trust his account’s integrity or else the Web’s integrity. The return address was a Yahoo account, one of the places you could get an email account in various anonymous names.

  Caitlin had used a different one to send her query to him last night. Could this message be from her?

  Encryption meant he had to have a specific password to decrypt the message. Assuming the message was from Caitlin and since they hadn’t discussed encryption earlier, the password would have to be something they had in common. There was little chance of anyone else knowing they had met before. So it must be something from their past. He had only known her for that brief period twelve years ago, in the canyon...

  He called up a decryption program. He’d used Grand Canyon last night and doubted if she would use the same one, but then.

  He typed in Grand Canyon. The message unraveled.

  “John, I’m sorry I won’t be there when you return, but there was something I had to find out, and I couldn’t do it from the room. I’ll meet you where we met last night at seven tonight. Caitlin.”

  So, that explained her absence or did it? He didn’t like this. His gut instinct was always one of caution. Was Caitlin being honest with him? Could he walk away from this case if she wasn’t?

  No. He couldn’t. It amazed him that people had the ability to develop attachments in so short a period as they had shared during the rafting trip. It was even more amazing that after all these years he still found himself wanting her.

  He checked the clock and did a quick calculation of driving times between the wharf and The Gleaning Cube. He could meet the Japanese businessmen and still make the connection with Caitlin at seven.

  John reset the alarms, locked up and went down the back stairs to his car.

  CHAPTER 16

  In the City by the Bay, taxis, buses, trolleys, and private cars always compete for right of way with thick crowds of pedestrians, especially at rush hour. Twilight stole over the city like some sinister visitor only to be driven off by the bright halogen glow of flickering streetlights. Humanity had feared the dark since it crouched around campfires and shivered at the sounds of beasts prowling the night. Not too long ago some congressman had even suggested placing gigantic reflectors in orbit over cities to provide illumination throughout the night. The suggestion hadn’t shocked John; rather it was the proposal’s defeat. Perhaps homo sapiens were losing their fear of the dark. Then again, perhaps it sounded too much like big brother in space.

  He reached the wharf with a little time to spare. He parked in the multistory parking garage and took the pedestrian walkway across the street. The wharf area never lost its special air. A lot of which came from the fish vendors on the west end of the wharves. Since the breeze usually came from that direction, there was always the aroma of dying fish surrounding the wharf. He didn’t mind the smell and apparently neither did the tourists who had flocked to the area for more than a century.

  He stayed on the elevated wooden walkway of Pier 34 and moved unnoticed through the crowds of tourists examining the myriad shops that hungered for their money.

  Melville’s wasn’t an old bar and had to make up for its newness with an artificial atmosphere. The tourists, however, couldn’t tell the difference. Images of the great whale hunting days of the nineteenth century abounded. Paraphernalia that looked real, but was actually created in a small town in New Hampshire, hung everywhere around the bar. Reproduced photographs showed the struggle of man against the sea. Nowhere did you see the gallons of blood that washed the decks of the whaling ships.

  The bar’s owners were not crazy. Japanese tourists particularly loved the bar. Since MacArthur introduced whale meat to their culture back in the forties, they’ve had a sweet tooth for whale flesh. He asked the Japanese businessmen to meet him here only because it was the first bar that came to mind when he thought of Japan.

  John was a little early. He wanted enough time to check the bar’s clientele for suspicious persons; namely other Japanese businessmen with armpit bulges. He ordered and paid for a draft ale, then slowly cruised the bar; trying to give the impression that he was studying the paraphernalia. After ten minutes, he was fairly certain that the Japanese hadn’t sent ringers in ahead of them.

  He went out onto the deck and took a table by the side railing, away from the main crowd at the railing overlooking the ba
y, old Alcatraz, and the Gate. There was a drop of nearly fifteen feet to the lower deck. It’d be tough on the ankles, but he’d made worse leaps before.

  His schooner of ale was half-gone when the gentlemen he’d come to meet stepped onto the deck. For a minute, they looked around, and then they spotted him.

  They approached with the measured tread of hunters following the track of a wounded leopard. Did they know something or were they just being cautious?

  They stopped a few feet away and the one he knew only as the driver said, “Mr. White?”

  “Yes.”

  He held up the card that John had given him earlier. “The same Mr. White that works for the Blalock Security Agency?”

  He was fishing. John didn’t nibble. “The same.”

  “Curious company, the Blalock Agency. It seems there are several employees listed in the state register, but they are all named John.”

  “What a coincidence,” he said and took a sip from the schooner.

  “There also seems to be no evidence of employees except on the state register. It would seem, to an honest businessman such as myself that the Blalock Agency has something to hide.”

  “Nonsense, the agency is strictly a legitimate enterprise. I am merely ... an honest businessman.”

  The driver stared down at him for a few seconds then made the slightest of bows, nothing more than a tip of his head really. His associate pulled out a chair and sat down.

  The driver continued, “Very well. Let me introduce Mr. Ichiro Hosokawa.”

  Hosokawa’s head tilt was more of a lowering of eyebrows than anything approaching a level of courtesy. No one would have seen it except the person he was facing at close range. If the Japanese still used head bows as a symbol of respect, he wasn’t awarding John much.

  “Please to meet you,” John responded automatically and gave him a slightly deeper eyebrow dip. His driver took it as an insult. At least, that was John’s impression from the man’s low growl. “Have your man sit. He will draw attention if he stands at your side while we talk.”