Into the Fire

by Gregg Hurwitz

  The main switchboard for the West Wing and the means to get directly through to the Oval Office.

  Evan was not a friend to the Oval Office, nor was it a friend to him.

  Especially recently.

  He looked at Vera II. “What do you think?”

  She exuded oxygen and an air of skepticism.

  He said, “Me, too.”

  He wondered why the hell President Donahue-Carr would want to talk to him and concluded it was not for anything good. He just hoped that whatever complications arose wouldn’t get between him and his retirement. One thing was certain: He needed to find out as soon as possible.

  He dug a Pelican case from the corner of the Vault and headed to the parking level beneath the building.

  Joey had returned his Ford F-150 pickup to his spot beneath Castle Heights. When he opened the driver’s door, In-N-Out wrappers dribbled out onto his boot, a booby trap too perfectly aggravating not to have been devised.

  He ensconced himself behind the wheel and dug for the RoamZone in the center console. The screen showed he’d missed a call.

  An international number starting with 54, the country code of Argentina.

  No message.

  Puzzled, Evan stared at the screen. Twice before he’d received wrong-number calls, consumers looking to purchase refill vacuum bags. But perhaps the Oval Office had managed to run down this number and used it to attempt a second outreach. Had this been an attempted contact routed through a U.S. embassy? That didn’t seem to make sense.

  He hit REDIAL.

  The call dumped straight into voice mail. A feminine voice, slightly throaty, one he didn’t recognize. A mature woman, late fifties, maybe sixty. She spoke unaccented English: You’ve reached my voice mail. Leave a message, or call back later, or do whatever else you’d like to do.

  She sounded more like a seeker of vacuum bags than a trained operative. Wrong number, then.

  He hung up. Examined the RoamZone.

  It was loaded with a preposterous amount of encryption, but if he was going to reach out to 1600 Penn, he’d have to take measures beyond the merely paranoid.

  He slid the SIM card out, snapped it in two, and slotted in a virgin one. Pairing his laptop with his phone for a secure Internet connection, he hopped online and moved the phone service where he parked the number from a company in Reykjavík to one in Maracay.

  Then he drove up the ramp, through the porte cochere, and got on the 60 Freeway heading east.

  For two hours and forty-three minutes, he beelined it into the platter of the Mojave. At one point the throbbing in his head intensified to the point where he thought he might have to pull over, but then it subsided. He forged on, finally veering off at a random spot just shy of the Joshua Tree National Park. His window was down, the cool air slicing through his shirt. The headlight beams swept across stunted trees and jutting slabs of stone, a postapocalyptic landscape. He cut the engine, grabbed the Pelican case, and climbed out.

  The moon was shining in force, caught in a haze of stars. A cicada buzz filled the air.

  Evan took a knee over the Pelican case, ignoring the brief spell of dizziness. From the top he slid up a yagi directional antenna and aimed it at a distant cell tower. Then he accordioned out a small tripod and attached it to the case top, using an SMA connector and a small omni stubby antenna. He waited, crouched over the tight assemblage of equipment as if it were a campfire. The tiny makeshift GSM base station dodged all authentication between itself and the nearest cell tower, but it was now participating fully in the network.

  His own personal rogue cell site.

  Completely untraceable.

  Only now did he thumb on his RoamZone’s Wi-Fi hot spot, joining the LTE network.

  He dialed.

  When the switchboard operator picked up, he said, “Dark Road.”

  Then he punched in the extension.

  He waited, the old-fashioned ring loud in his ear.

  A moment later the president of the United States picked up.

  Silence crackled over the line. A tarantula lumbered by, brushing the toe of Evan’s boot.

  At last she said, “X?”

  Victoria Donahue-Carr had ascended to the throne after Evan had removed her predecessor in creative fashion. He’d always thought that she seemed principled, or at least as principled as a politician might be.

  He waited. The RoamZone’s sound filters would drown out the cicadas along with any background noise. He fed her the silence some more.

  She said, “I’m interested in a face-to-face.”

  He said, “No.”

  “At a minimum I require a live video feed. Audio can be replicated, synthesized. How am I supposed to know you’re you?”

  He said, “You’re not.”

  “We’d need to discuss terms, of course, but I’m confident we can reach an arrangement.”

  “I don’t respond to euphemisms.”

  “An informal pardon,” she said quickly. “I assume you don’t want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.”

  Her words caught him completely by surprise. Here he was on the verge of walking away from the demands of being the Nowhere Man, and the offer had materialized out of the thin desert air, his deepest wish made manifest. How surreal that hours ago he’d been locked inside 121 B-Pod of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, and now here he was conversing with the leader of the free world about his future. He took a moment to gather himself. He had to get to Max and close out the mission. Then he’d be ready to walk away.

  “I’m not looking over my shoulder,” he said. “Are you?”

  The silence lasted a bit longer this time.

  “Think about it,” she said. “You know how to reach me.”

  He cut the connection. Broke down the gear and nestled it back into the black foam of the Pelican case. Removed the chip from his RoamZone, crushed it under his heel, and slid in a new one.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, he fired up his laptop once more and moved the phone-number hosting service from Maracay to an outfit in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

  Paranoia was an Orphan’s best friend.

  He rubbed his eyes, trying to take in the turn of events that had for once proved fortuitous.

  An informal pardon from the president of the United States. A quiet life tending his living wall, sipping chilled vodka, and meditating. Maybe at some point, he could even see about rehabilitating his relationship with Mia. And Peter.

  He was all clear. Nothing ahead but the unbroken horizon, the faintest outline of shapes to be colored in. Nothing between him and freedom but wrapping up the mission with Max and bringing his old life to a close.

  The truck bounced across the cracked earth of the desert for a time before rumbling onto a paved road. Several kilometers later he merged onto the freeway and blended into the river of lights flowing toward Los Angeles, just another guy in another truck beneath the endless night sky.

  50

  Contingency Plans to Our Contingency Plans

  Even though the meeting took place in the dead center of the night, the Steel Woman had prepared juice and bagels. They were closer to breakfast than dinner, and besides, there were scant etiquette guidelines on what to offer at this hour.

  She waited for the small talk of golf handicaps and country-club gossip to die down. “Tea?” she asked. “Coffee?”

  The public-works director and the city administrative officer indicated their preferences, and a few others followed suit. She served them, as always enjoying the confusion elicited by her mixed role—hostess and iron-fisted leader. Men preferred their women to be more readily categorized. But she’d learned that power lay in contradiction.

  She gave her best smile to those who had demurred. “Water? Sparkling or flat?”

  “Flat,” the city comptroller said. “No garnish.” And then, quickly, “Please. Thank you, Stella.”

  She obliged him and then proffered the silver plate of bagels
.

  “Oh, God, no, Stella,” Councilman Edwards said, patting his belly. “I’m off carbs again.”

  This sparked a volley of workout talk.

  She sat quietly and watched them. The boys rimmed the table, hands resting on the walnut slab, gamblers tucked into a high-stakes poker game.

  Which—in a manner—this was.

  Now they were at it with the usual banter.

  “I can pull three hundo out of Child-Protective Services,” one of them said. “Bury it in the overhead assessment.”

  “I’ll see your three hundred,” the man across from him said, “and raise you a cool mil from Veterans’ Affairs.”

  They were frustratingly myopic, yes, but that was why she had selected them. They kept their heads down, squirreling away in their little domains. She alone was able to stand back and assess the whole playing board.

  The trick was to target line items so vast and shapeless that they verged on being unknowable. One hundred and forty-five million for a building and safety-enterprise fund. Twenty-three and change for a sidewalk-repair allocation. Six for a neighborhood-empowerment reserve. If you put Aging and Animal Services together, you had nearly thirty million. Street lighting came in a tick higher at thirty-one. Police Services tipped the scales at nearly one and a half billion.

  That’s how you did it.

  You nibbled.

  Building inspections would be less stringent by 3 percent. The cupboards of battered-women’s shelters would grow a touch more bare. Police officers would patrol with last year’s model of Kevlar vest. Everyone would still get by.

  But she and her team would get by a little easier than everyone else.

  Unfortunately, the time for business as usual had passed. The game had changed.

  “Gentlemen,” she said.

  The men muted as if she’d punched a button on a remote.

  “Benjamin Bedrosov was killed earlier tonight,” she said.

  They sagged in their chairs, dread tugging them downward. After they caught their breath, speculation erupted. “What’s that mean about our holdings?”

  “How are we gonna keep the operation together?”

  “Did the same guy off him?”

  “Not inside Twin Towers.”

  “Must’ve paid someone off.”

  “What’s this guy’s fucking reach?”

  The Steel Woman lifted a manicured hand. The boys silenced once more.

  “Our contingency plans?” she asked, eyeing the heavyset gentleman in his usual seat halfway down the left side of the table.

  Fitz registered her look. She’d anticipated as much. As an assistant officer in charge at LAPD’s Criminal Investigation Division, he would have attuned himself to nonverbal signals.

  He also had access to all order of disgraced former operators and off-the-books weaponry.

  He nodded, tugged at the sallow folds of his jowls. “I have a new team in place,” he said, sounding a bit ragged. “And we’re moving on it.”

  “And the contingency plans to our contingency plans?”

  At the mention of this, nervousness stirred the room.

  Fitz said, “I wanted to talk to you about that—”

  “We don’t have to do anything,” she said soothingly. “Not now and probably not ever. It’s a last resort. We just need to lay the theoretical groundwork.”

  Like so many, he required encouragement to do what was difficult but necessary.

  He rubbed his forehead, clearly agitated. “Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll look into it myself.”

  “We’re decided, then.” She clapped her hands together, a rare show of cheer. Now she had to refocus their lizard brains from risk to reward. “I’ve begun the process of making inquiries for Bedrosov’s replacement,” she said, moving breezily to the next action item. “Which means that our affairs call for a bit of restructuring.” She reached for the blocky phone and tapped the intercom button to the side of the keypad. “Rolando. We’re ready.”

  Rolando entered in a waft of cologne, a steel briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.

  The handcuff was of course absurd, a bit of testosterone-intensive stage direction she included for the men.

  She’d assembled the papers herself as always and locked them into the briefcase prior to the meeting. For all Rolando knew, they were take-out menus.

  She extracted a set of keys from her pocket, freed her daft assistant from the manacles, and waited for him to exit. The door sucked closed behind him with a certain heft, completing the soundproof seal.

  Only then did she unlock the briefcase and click open the titanium snaps. She distributed the latest operating agreements to the appropriate parties around the table.

  They sipped coffee, tea, and sparkling water.

  And they signed.

  51

  A Troubled Son of a Bitch

  Evan drove through the thin light of earliest dawn back to Max Merriweather. As he drew up on the Lincoln Heights house, he noted a creamy white Jaguar parked in the driveway and a dose of adrenaline hit his weary bloodstream. The car’s door was open, and as Evan eased past to park out of sight, he noted a silver-haired man in a Fila velour tracksuit prowling across the front lawn, lifting his tennis shoes high with each step to free them from the sucking mud.

  In the man’s other hand was a gun.

  Leaving the truck, Evan jogged up behind the man, who stood scraping the bottoms of his shoes on the lip of the cracked concrete porch. He held the gun uncomfortably away from his body, as if concerned it might nip him. He smelled powerfully of Bengay and gave off no aggressive energy that Evan could discern.

  Before Evan could address him, the man rapped on the door and shouted, “Whoever’s in there, I’m giving you fair warning to desert the premises.”

  Evan said, “Excuse me.”

  The man swung around, an uncocked Smith & Wesson .44 Special flopping in his loose grip. Evan could see through the frame into the empty chambers of the cylinder. An orange tint of surface rust on the decades-old revolver said it was a sock-drawer gun.

  “Don’t point that at me.” Evan’s headache was gnawing on his skull with a vengeance, and it was all he could do to keep the undercurrent of rage from his voice.

  “This is my property,” the man said. He had a Bluetooth wireless bud in his right ear, turned off.

  “I understand,” Evan said. “But you don’t want to point a gun at me. Even if it is unloaded.”

  The man looked at the gun, sighed, and lowered it. “I hate this thing anyway.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  The man drew himself upright. “That’s the precise question I’ll need you to answer. I’m the owner of this property.”

  Behind him the front door hinged open unevenly. The early-morning light hit Max’s face at a diagonal, splitting it in half. “Oh,” he said. “Damn.”

  The man took him in. “Well, this just keeps getting better.”

  When Max looked at Evan, his face wore the weight of years of exhaustion. “Meet Clark McKenna.” Max shifted the bag on his shoulder. “Violet’s dad.”

  “Max Merriweather,” Clark said. “It was my understanding that I’d never have to see you again.” He scratched the side of his nose with the hand holding the Smith & Wesson.

  “Why don’t you put the gun away?” Evan said.

  Sheepishly Clark complied. “I saw that the water meter was moving. And it shouldn’t be. We set up alerts for all the properties. We get a lot of squatters.” He said the last word pointedly, hoisting one shaggy eyebrow.

  “Violet helped me out,” Max said. “I was in a bit of trouble.”

  “Now, why don’t I find that shocking?” Clark said.

  Max looked down at the porch stair and stepped around his ex-father-in-law.

  Clark grabbed him by the arm as he passed. “I’ll need to inspect inside,” he said. “If there’s any damage, you’ll be held accountable.”

  “Damage?” Max laughed, shaking his arm
free. “You’ll have to inspect for anything that’s not damaged.”

  Evan said, “Why don’t I handle the walk-through?”

  As Max moved away, Clark grimaced. “You can’t acquire a sense of honor,” he proclaimed, stepping inside. “You either have it or you don’t.”

  Evan followed him through the dank interior. The revolver hung weightily in Clark’s sweatpants pocket, flapping around.

  “—racked up twenty dollars on the water bill,” Clark was saying. “Who’s supposed to pay for that? It’s not the money. It’s the entitlement.” He shook his head. “Six in the morning, and I’m out here overseeing my own business personally.”

  He looked fit and healthy, a vibrant seventy-something. The kind of man who was superb at caring for himself. Organic food and facial peels and a weekly massage at the racket club. The kind of man who marveled at why others couldn’t just keep their heads above water like he did, who didn’t understand that if you don’t have any boots, you can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

  Evan found few things more grating than a man who believed he had the answers to life.

  Clark kept on. “Do you think I need to be here? No. But do you think if I wasn’t the type of person willing to drive from my house in Pasadena to Lincoln Heights to make sure things are right, I’d be where I am in life?”

  Evan asked, “Where are you in life?”

  Clark came up short, blinked a few times. It was as though he’d never considered the question. “Who are you to Max again? You’re a…?”

  “Friend.”

  Clark frowned at that, toed a patch of rotting floorboard. “Doesn’t surprise me he landed in a mess. He’s a troubled son of a bitch. I’ll give him this, though. He keeps his word. Never thought he’d honor the deal.” He moved to the trash bag taped over the window. “Was this like this before?”

  “Yes,” Evan said. “Wait. What deal?”

  Clark just looked at him. Then headed out. “Have a good day, Mr.…”

  Evan let the ellipses ride.

  Clark high-stomped across the muddy front yard, removed his shoes, and put them in the trunk of his Jaguar. As he got in the driver’s seat, Evan tugged open the passenger door and sat beside him.