by P. R. Adams
“I haven’t seen them, Heidi.” I tried to act casual as I walked to the kitchen. “What are they saying?”
“An assassin nearly killed Weaver. Would have if not for the intervention of people in the crowd.”
“There were two assassins, but that’s otherwise close.”
“And you just happened to be there again.” Heidi looked down at the glass, shifted it around in her hand. For a second, it looked as if she might hurl it, possibly at me. “Did you intervene?”
“Yes.” There would be video eventually, accurate and untouched on the premium channels, so it was pointless to lie. “What should I have done? They kill her, we get nothing.”
“Dammit, Stefan.” Heidi pulled a hand free of the glass and shakily rubbed her forehead. “You shouldn’t have been close enough to do anything.”
“I nearly poisoned her.” The team looked at me. “Coffee. It was close.”
Danny’s mouth dropped open. “Why?”
“Why didn’t I finish the job?” Why didn’t I? I couldn’t be sure. “It didn’t feel right. Just like these assassins showing up didn’t feel right. None of this does.”
Heidi groaned and drew the glass back but didn’t throw it. “All that needs to feel right is the funds transfer.” She managed to get out of the chair and into the kitchen, where she set the glass down before turning back to me. She held a shaking hand up and curled her fingers into hooks. “You all need to understand what happened. Five million dollars slipped through our fingers. We missed an opportunity that may never return.”
Their eyes were on me. Even Chan had climbed up out of whatever virtual hole normally held a Gridhound’s brain. Danny and Nitin quickly looked away, but Ichi’s eyes locked onto mine uncomfortably long.
I said to Heidi, “There’s a good chance she’ll survive this.”
She frowned. “I’ll send an update to our benefactors.”
The uneven scrape of her sneakers across the carpet was the only sound until the hallway door closed behind her.
I turned to Chan. “Ravi, this guy who’s in charge of her security detail, he’s going to be digging into my background. Gillian said he doesn’t trust me. That means he doesn’t—”
Ichi twisted her head to stare at me again. “Gillian?”
“McFarland. The young woman who’s part of Weaver’s entourage. I was getting to that. She’s Weaver’s daughter. One mystery resolved.”
“You speak to her using her first name?” Ichi’s brow wrinkled.
The others looked at me again, as if I were about to admit to betraying them.
Frustration boiled in my gut. “She’s our way inside security. Or she was. I don’t know what’s going on now. I would imagine they’ll be reconsidering the entire campaign after this latest attack.”
Nitin shot up from his chair, hands stuffed into his pockets. He prowled the kitchen for a moment, then circled back to the living room. “Hey, boss, think about this for a second: What if that’s the intent? What if someone hired these assassins to intimidate her to drop out of the race? I mean, they obviously don’t have the same restrictions we do, not if they’re cutting her throat in front of a couple hundred witnesses. If they were serious, they could have blown her head off by now or detonated a bomb under her vehicle somewhere outside the Green Zone.” He twisted around. “Danny, am I right?”
Danny glanced at me. “They don’t seem to care about collateral damage, so…sure.”
It didn’t sound right. “They came awfully close to killing her tonight. I agree that they could have killed her. Those guns they had were more for terror purposes, but they could have torn her face apart. By the way, Chan, we need to identify those. Flechettes of some sort.”
Chan didn’t look up but said, “Queries are out.”
“What about Ravi Lingam? If I’m going to get in close to Weaver again, I’ll have to keep Ravi thinking I’m legit.”
Chan froze. “Small problem.”
“What, the gun or Ravi?”
“Ravi. Records locked tight.” Chan’s body language was off.
Discomfort? Annoyance? “Is Heidi telling you not to cooperate with me?” I looked at the others. “Is she telling any of you not to work with me? Look, this is my operation. We’re all a team together unless the people who hired me let me go. After what they spent to get me on my feet again, do you really think they’ll do that?”
Chan turned. “Not Heidi. The records are locked. Down.”
Annoyance. I could see it now. Chan the Great had been stumped by something. Typical Gridhound. “So unlock them.”
Chan’s head did a slow shake.
“If he’s former Secret Service, there’s just not that much security—”
“I know security.” Chan’s LED earrings glowed bright. “Locked away. Private Grid. This guy. Has to have a device. Physical device. Only way to access that Grid.”
A physical device, some sort of code generator, probably keyed to biometrics and a password. Shit. This was a wrinkle I didn’t need. It was a wrinkle with a lot of extra wrinkles attached. “So we capture a data stream when he transmits and tear it apart to see what’s in that.”
Chan’s eyes returned to the computer displays. “Won’t work. Need the device.”
“Wait. What about the dead woman’s device? The bodyguard killed at the restaurant? We could break into the police facility, steal her device from evidence, have Abhishek tear it apart, and—what?”
“Not a Montblanc thing.” Chan swiped across a screen, and my data device showed an incoming file. “Not a Secret Service thing.”
Another file.
I pulled my device and poked around. It was the Montblanc security team’s portfolios. Even Ravi’s was there. Secret Service data showed on the former Treasury Department employees. Except for Ravi’s. His Secret Service data was thin, incomplete.
“What is this?” I did some side-by-side comparisons between Ravi’s record and another former Secret Service record. The data content, the format…it was all wrong. “Fake?”
Chan stared at the computer display. “Don’t…know.”
Danny came over to look at the data. “Uh, wouldn’t they know it was fake? Montblanc? They’re legit, right?”
“Seems like it.” I flipped back through Ravi’s earlier history. “Maybe he’s rich and paid to have his records suppressed.” Normally, it was the sort of annoying triviality you wrote off, something you could keep an eye out on. The operation was getting overrun with anomalies and oddities.
Chan powered the computer system down and stood. Along with the LED earrings, there was definitely color in the tattooed cheeks. Jacinto had exhibited similar childish behavior when something inexplicable came up. A tantrum might be imminent.
I stepped in front of Chan’s bedroom door, blocked out the stale, musty smell coming from within. “Wait. I get that you’re pissed off. No one here is judging you. We’re relying on you.”
Chan’s chin and lips quivered.
I glanced at Danny, caught a shrug, and looked back down at Chan. Up close, the strange funk rolling up out of the hoodie wasn’t so subtle. Maybe the frustration was playing a bigger role than the drugs in whatever was going on in the Gridhound’s head. “Don’t get wrapped around the axle over this. Tell us what you need and we’ll get it.”
“Just don’t like mysteries,” Chan said.
“Sure. So treat it as a puzzle.” I stared into those magenta eyes. Time was critical, but there was real fear there, and pushing too hard wasn’t going to change that. “Get yourself cleaned up. We’re going to need your head in this all the way. Take a break and look at it in the morning with fresh eyes.”
The quivering ran through the tattoos. “Yeah.”
I stepped aside; Chan brushed past and slammed the door.
Nitin stared after Chan. “We going to have a problem?”
“Jacinto was almost as bad. They freak out when something proves they aren’t gods.” I settled in the chair Heidi favored and looked at the
three of them. “It’s a good question, though. Are we going to have a problem?”
“With you, boss?” Nitin shook his head. “I get what’s going down. She resents you, and she thinks we’re going to fail. You’re the perfect fall guy. Simple as that.”
Danny shrugged. “Yeah. Too late for anyone to change course, anyway.”
I focused on Ichi. Her arms were crossed, and her shoulders looked tight with tension. “Do I have your trust?”
Ichi considered Chan’s door, then said, “Ravi and Gillian. First names. It seems dangerous. These are people we might have to kill.”
I nodded toward Danny and Nitin. “We’ve had to kill people we were intimate with.”
Her eyes flashed wide for a second. She stood and headed for the hallway door, where she paused, head down. “You will always have my trust, Stefan-san.”
Nitin waited for the door to close behind her, then clapped his hands and smiled. “Damn! Just a little melodrama, I guess.”
I stood. “This is her first time. She has a lot to learn.”
“You don’t have to defend her, boss. I get it.” Nitin held up a fist for Danny to bump with his own. “I’m turning in. Maybe the senator croaks overnight, and we’re all out of a job tomorrow, y’know? That’s when things get to be their worst, isn’t it?”
Nitin headed to the hallway door and Danny followed. He let it close, listened for a bit, then moved to Chan’s door and listened again. After several seconds, Danny crossed to the chair closest to mine.
He pointed at the hallway door. “Uh, why don’t we take a drive. Get some fresh air?”
“Sure.”
We took my rental out, heading into the Canyon, which glowed with the crimson fury of an unconfined fire. A greasy drizzle had slicked the streets, driving most indoors. The wipers struggled to keep the sludge from building up on the window, but it only worsened the neon glare. About halfway through, the car parked and we got out. With so few walking the sidewalks, the anonymity that normally came from being an indistinguishable part of a mass of moving, uncaring bodies was replaced by a sense of isolation.
I leaned in close to Danny and said, “Is it falling apart?”
He blinked rapidly. “Kind of feels like it.”
“Who can we count on?” His eyes said I was one of the ones he considered reliable; that’s what I needed.
We walked for a bit, our shoes making gooey slicks on the sidewalk.
After a quick glance around, Danny said. “I don’t trust Heidi.”
“Probably smart. I don’t trust the people pulling the strings.”
“Those Chamber of Commerce guys?”
“Them either.”
“And this thing with Ravi’s records? A plant? Working for the people who hired us? Working for the other guys?”
I glanced back the way we’d come. “That’s what we need to figure out. You ever heard of a device like the one Chan’s describing.”
“Yeah. At the Agency. Higher-level operative—” It hit him.
“Stovall had one,” I said. “Never let it out of his sight. I palmed it once when he was showering. Just long enough to get a look at it.”
“You’re thinking this guy’s in the Agency?”
“It would make sense in a screwed-up way. They’ve always got things going multiple levels deep. Get one of their guys inside the Secret Service, and when the time comes, they have access. Pull the trigger. No record the guy’s still with the Agency, so you have plausible deniability.”
Danny whistled. “So we really are the fall guys? And rescuing you? That—?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to find any pieces that look remotely like they could fit together. Chan’s description just made me think we might be playing with the wrong puzzle in the first place.”
Danny rubbed at his eyes.
“Danny, any time we take a job like this, the double-cross is always a possibility.” Like Korea. Or maybe this was a continuation. The thought chilled me. I couldn’t go through that sort of torture again, conditioning or not.
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” He shook his head. “So, um…”
“Next move?”
“Yeah.”
“Like I said, we need to get that device. Get it to Abhishek, have him do his thing.” I considered that for a second. “If Ravi’s their guy, maybe he’s there to whack whoever does the job. Or he could be there to do the job and frame someone else.”
“The way these guys demanded the killing looks like an accident?”
“Makes it up close and personal.” I thought back to the coffee and that awkward moment where Weaver had reached out, the sort of hunger and intimacy she’d shown, the proximity and connection that had been made. Was that how she kept her privacy, with the occasional man she suspected might want what she did? Had that been what had gotten to me—that hunger?
“Is that why?”
“I didn’t kill her?” Would that have been Ravi’s moment? Watch her drink and drop, execute me on the spot? “Maybe. I’m still trying to figure all of this out.”
Danny’s eyes reflected the same thoughts running through my head. “You ever think back? To the ones you’ve killed. After you make a connection?”
“All the time.” It left a hole in you that filled with self-loathing. Did you really have it in you to love?
“Me too. I—I feel like I’m getting back…”
“At the one who broke your heart, yeah.” Or the two. “I felt that before.”
Danny dragged his shoe over a puddle top. “Her name was Estelle. Did I…?”
“Nah, not her name.” He needed an ear, and I owed him far more.
“High school. My father told me to stay away from her. Said she was using me. We had a little money at the time, I guess.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see it, y’know? We had a fight. I knocked him out. I didn’t mean to. They were old. I was their late surprise. Mom called me her blessing.” His voice cracked just enough that I knew he needed help.
“Must’ve been a good kid.” Not like me.
“I guess, sure. I left. Joined the Marines. You know. Get away, grow up, prove yourself.”
“This Estelle never reached out.”
“Not once. I was deployed to Bahrain when word came Mom died. They’d run out of money. She developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Ever hear of it?”
“No.”
“Wipes out the brain. Pretty fast, too. Dad died while I was on the flight home for the funeral. So I…I don’t go back anymore. A new life—live it fast, right?”
That sounded right. It was all most of us had, although we were more likely to die fast. “This is between me and Stovall, you know that. If you want out, there’s no hard feelings. I’m good with whatever you need to do.”
“I won’t leave you behind again. I just—” Danny shoved his hands deeper into his jacket.
He wanted answers. He wanted to know what was truth and what was other. We were both survivors, and after what had happened to us, the most important thing we could do was to identify our escape routes.
He patted me on the shoulder. “I got your back.”
“Same. But if it comes to it, you get Ichi out. We owe it to Norimitsu.”
“Yeah.”
We walked for a bit more, each of us pulling our little cocoon of paranoia tighter. I thought back to Jacinto’s claim that he’d braced his hotel room door and Chan’s claim that everyone in the snowcrash thought he was dead. Jacinto’s body might still be out there. He might still be alive in that hellhole in Korea, suffering the way I had.
I shivered and headed back to the car. Danny followed, caught up in his own thoughts. When I got back to the hotel, I locked my door and set a chair against it.
But that couldn’t keep the memories out.
Chapter 14
I parked the car on the eastern side of the Boulware Medical Center, not far from a man-made lake that ran just below that side of the hospital and almost up to a parking garage structure. The sun h
ad burned away a morning fog and left behind a pleasant warmth. I’d spotted the security team’s black SUVs entering the parking garage structure, confirming our suspicions Weaver had been moved to the exclusive facility sometime during the night. The car’s motor hummed, an annoying sound that made it stand out even more than it already did among the more expensive vehicles in the lot.
The musty, metallic smell of the previous night’s rain still clung to the car’s cheap floor carpeting. I tried to wash it away with coffee and almonds while keeping an eye on the north and western entrances.
Shortly after ten, it paid off.
Gillian exited the parking structure and headed toward the western entrance. Against the black of the asphalt, she stood out in light blue jeans and a white jacket—stuffed polyester rather than some sort of stylish wool product. She had her hair pulled back in a bun and no makeup, and that worked fine for her. I waited until she was halfway through the parking lot before heading toward her.
“Gillian!”
She turned, shielded her eyes with her hand. Stopped. When I was a few feet away she asked, “How did you know to come here?”
“I told you, I’m a security consultant. I figured things out.”
People in hospital greens exited the southern doors, caught up in conversations of their own. Gillian watched them for a bit, then turned back to me.
“That’s twice you’ve saved my mother’s life. I guess I should trust you. Ravi says your background’s a real mess to dig into. He doesn’t much care for you as a result.”
“I’d imagine no one in his line of work likes mysteries.”
She smiled. “Why’d you do it? Save my mother.”
“It just didn’t feel right letting some psychos cut her down.” I had the sense I was being watched and wondered if Ravi were nearby, recording our meeting.
Gillian glanced up at the top floor of the building. “Ravi says they’re hired assassins. Professionals. Good ones. The kind you pay big money.” She looked me up and down. “She has very powerful enemies, you know. They warned her not to run. They fear she’s going to shake things up.”
“I’d never really considered politics all that dangerous a career choice. Not in our country.”
