Vertigo

by Wesley Cross

  It’d been a couple of days since she had let Arthur go. By now, he was undoubtedly back at work on the prosthetic arm she’d caught a glimpse of while in his workshop. She should have moved on as well. But what normally should have been just another job—filed, payment received, and promptly forgotten—instead continued to dominate her thoughts. To her surprise, not only had she received full payment on the assignment despite breaking the protocol, but the employer had also given her a sizeable bonus.

  Curiosity in her line of work was both necessary and deadly. Prying into your secretive employers’ business was sure to draw their ire if noticed. That could lead to a range of consequences, from discontinuation of services to a contract on your own head. But it was also essential for self-preservation. Cooper had heard too many stories about people of her profession who took assignments based on payouts alone, never bothering to check whether their employer was going to keep paying them, or would throw them to the wolves the moment they did their job.

  This time, however, she broke her own rules by choosing to work for the mysterious benefactor. The money was the deciding factor when she had been approached for the first time, almost quadruple of her going rate. She did all she could to vet the employer, but the only thing she could find was that the same person, or a group of people who hired her, had hired other professionals in the field and had paid them well.

  She took the gamble and so far, it seemed to be paying off, but now, especially after the last job, Cooper was starting to suspect she was entering some uncharted waters. She had to find out who was paying her and what their agenda was.

  Aaron Zimmer, the person she wanted to see, lived alone in a six-thousand-square-foot monstrosity that looked like an ugly version of the White House and sported two ten-foot-tall crying angel statues in its front yard. The house itself was located in the heart of Dyker Heights, an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood sitting on top of a hill between Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst, but knowing Aaron’s paranoia, Jill had the driver let her go by the entrance to the Dyker Beach golf course about a mile away from the house. Then she covered the remaining few blocks to Zimmer’s residence by foot.

  She’d known Aaron for the last five years, since her previous banker had introduced them before he retired. A banker, of course, was a generous term when it was applied to people like Aaron Zimmer, although he could give a lot of people working for some legit institutions on Wall Street a run for their money. But the term that someone might have used to describe Aaron Zimmer’s services never bothered Cooper or even entered her mind. Her only concern was that he charged a reasonable fee and laundered her money well.

  This time, however, Cooper didn’t need him to launder her illicit earnings. A few days ago, she had given him the details of every money transfer she’d received from her new employer and asked Zimmer if it was possible to trace the origins of that cash.

  “For the right amount of money, everything is possible, darling,” he said at the time. “It’s the right amount of money that is not always possible.”

  The slush around the house wasn’t cleaned, and the path to the house had no footprints on the snow either, but that wasn’t what made Cooper’s alarm bells go off. Aaron was a homebody and sometimes stayed inside the house for days, getting food and entertainment delivered straight to his door.

  What set off the alarm was the steel bar gate leading to the inside of the front yard. The door was ajar, and Cooper couldn’t come up with one good explanation of why a remote-controlled entrance to the lair of such a security-paranoid freak like Aaron would be unlocked. She squeezed through the gap and pushed the door back in place until the lock mechanism engaged. The windows of the house had curtains down, and though she couldn’t sense any movement, Cooper couldn’t help but feel exposed standing in the middle of the open space.

  She threw a quick glance around, making sure that no one was watching, and pulled out a compact HK P30SK. Then, she made her way across the yard and up the stairs. The front door was unlocked as well, and Cooper pushed it with the nozzle of the gun and stepped into the house.

  The sweet, pungent smell hit her like a truck. There was no mistaking that odor with anything else—it was death’s own cologne—a rotting mixture of decaying flesh and human excrements wrapped in one ugly bottle. From the front door, she could see Aaron’s body seated in a chair in the middle of a giant living room, facing away from her. His hands were bound behind him and his ankles tied to the legs of the chair. His head was thrown back and rested at an angle no living person would find comfortable.

  Cooper circled around the body, keeping the pistol at her chest level. She was ready to engage if someone was hiding in the shadows, but the house stayed still. The only sounds bouncing through the empty house were the creaking of the floor planks under her feet and her own ragged breathing.

  Satisfied she wasn’t walking into a trap, she put the gun away and walked to the corpse. The man’s throat was slit. She could see a ghastly laceration going almost all the way from his left ear to the right, but that’s not what caught her eye.

  Attached to Aaron Zimmer’s chest with a safety pin was a small rectangular envelope with three words on it that made her heart skip a bit.

  For Jill Cooper

  40

  October 2007

  New York

  “I’d say we should be extra careful, that’s all,” Eugene said, looking at the screen. “This guy is a little too high up. If he gets something that smells even remotely funny, he’ll kick it down the chain and we’ll be old and gray by the time they decide to make a move on it.”

  “Didn’t we want somebody high up? Someone with enough pull to be able to follow up on this?” Hiroko asked.

  The three of them stared at the picture of the Director of Clandestine Service, as if asking for answers.

  “You might be onto something,” Chen finally said. “Maybe he is too high. It’s like if we went to the president himself to tell him about the corruption in the mayor’s office of some town in the middle of nowhere. It just doesn’t make sense. There’s got to be someone more suitable for the dump of info like that. Still high on the totem pole to make a difference, but not too high to freak out about getting an unauthorized message.”

  “They’ll freak out regardless,” Hiroko said, “even if you send it to their janitor, but okay, I’ll bite. What are our options then?”

  “Can you look up his deputies?” Chen asked. “Or you don’t think you can do it on the fly? Because if that’s the case, I can reach out to some guys who might be able to help.”

  “I find your lack of faith in my abilities disturbing,” Eugene said. “Love, did you hear that?”

  “C’mon, show-off,” Hiroko said. “Do your thing—give us the names.”

  Eugene didn’t answer as he continued to type on the laptop. A minute later, he stopped and moved it back on the table so they could all see his screen.

  There was a page that looked like a scan of a document with four names on it and a small bio underneath each one.

  “My vote goes to this guy in Covert Action.” Eugene pointed to one of the names. “He’s gonna kick some major ass. General Roberts. A two-star general, participated in Desert Storm, a former Marine. I mean, c’mon, it’s not even close. I’d say we send it to him.”

  “I don’t think a military guy is a good choice,” Chen said. “If anyone is going to be more prone to kicking this down the chain, it’s going to be him.”

  “Why? He’s clearly sharp as a whip, and with his military background I’m sure he can think outside of the box.”

  “His military background is exactly the wrong part of his profile for this. I’m sure he’s got a good head on his shoulders, but he’s also trained to follow orders. To do things by the book. I’d say we pick someone else.”

  “All right, you pick, then.”

  “What about this guy?” Chen pointed at another name.

  “Financial crimes?” Eugene shrugged. “I don’t see how a
guy who analyzes financial crimes can help us.”

  “Something just occurred to me.” Hiroko interrupted him. “Narcotics. It’s gotta be narcotics. Think about it.”

  “I’m sorry, love, I’m not sure I follow,” Eugene said. “What about narcotics?”

  “The link,” she said excitedly. “The missing link we couldn’t understand that connected a mobster like Victor Ye and legit businesses like Guardian and Otomo. It all makes sense now. They are not just any businesses that make, let’s say, car parts and door handles. They are pharmaceutical companies and Victor Ye produces high-quality street drugs.”

  “You’re right,” Chen said. “This is a match made in heaven. Or rather, hell. Each party has something unique to bring to the table. He brings the raw product, and they bring the know-how. I bet the profit margins on those street drugs are a magnitude higher than any prescription stuff you can sell to the general public.”

  “He also probably acts as the money launderer, who cleans up the profits for them,” Eugene added. “It would be much more difficult for them to do that part of the business, but for Victor Ye, it’s just another day in the office.”

  “This is precisely why we need the finance guy,” Chen said and pointed at the screen again. “We won’t have to sell it to him as hard as we’d have to for anybody else. He’ll be able to see that connection himself.”

  “Well, if that’s the guy we’re sending the info to, then we don’t need to burn your secret door,” Eugene said. “We can keep that access point for later. He’s got a large footprint outside of the agency. We can contact him through his business, Orion Securities.”

  “Okay.” Chen rubbed her eyes and looked at her friends. “Let’s write the pitch. What have we got?”

  “Torture chambers,” Hiroko and Eugene said simultaneously.

  “Yes, besides that, dummies. Never mind, I’ll write. Give me this.”

  She took the laptop from Eugene and opened a new Word document. She didn’t have to think—it all came to her now: The murder-suicide of her sister’s broker and his mistress. The murder of her sister and the link to Guardian Manufacturing she had found when she’d looked through Mary’s apartment. The suspected connection between Otomo, Guardian, and Victor Ye’s criminal empire. And finally, the Nyctalope program, where someone was using the DOD’s resources to build what appeared to be a prototype of a cyborg.

  When she finished typing, Chen looked up and moved the laptop back to the middle of the table. “There,” she said. “Please critique away.”

  She watched as the two of them read the document—Hiroko with the face of a statue, and Eugene moving his lips like a kid as he read.

  “Wait. It says you want a meeting too. And it doesn’t say anything about how we know all this.” Eugene spoke first. “Although it’s hard to explain without mentioning how you two hacked Guardian’s servers and then the New York Stock Exchange.”

  “Yeah. Let’s keep that information to ourselves. We might be alerting him about some big conspiracy, but I’d imagine this guy still has an obligation to report us if he finds out what we’ve done. But yes, I want to meet him in person. I want to take Victor Ye down. Writing a letter isn’t going to cut it.”

  “Okay. So, where are we sending this?” Eugene asked. “His business email? A package to his house? I’m game, whatever you guys decide.”

  “Email, right?” Hiroko said. “Faster.”

  “Sure,” Chen agreed, “and let’s see if we can monitor this guy. See what he’s up to and if he does anything that looks like he’s acting on this information after he gets the message.”

  “I like it,” Eugene said and ran a search. “Got it. Here’s the email. Who do you want it to come from?”

  “The agency?” Chen said. “Then it’s not going to disappear in the junk folder. Can you do that without using the back door?”

  “I’ll make it look close enough,” Eugene promised. “There you go. A couple of letters are backward, but on first glance, it’ll look like it came from the right place. Are we doing this?”

  Chen looked at Eugene and then at Hiroko and finally gave him a slight nod.

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t think we have any other choice. Wait. Will he be able to reply?”

  “Yes,” Eugene said. “I’ve also set up an alert in case he does. Unless you don’t want him to be able to.”

  “No, let’s keep it open. Do it.”

  Eugene’s slender hand hovered above the keyboard for a second and then his index finger punched the button with a decisive stroke.

  “It’s done.”

  41

  November 2007

  Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

  As she sat at the bar by the lighted pool, sipping on her cold drink, Jill Cooper contemplated her fate. The message she’d found in Aaron Zimmer’s home was without any ambiguity—stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. The envelope that was pinned to his lifeless body had a photograph of a girl on a sunny Mediterranean beach. The photographer caught her mid-jump as she was about to hit a volleyball—her wet hair swinging wildly, her face lit by a smile from ear to ear.

  She looked happy. Of course, Cooper told herself, she wanted her to be happy. Yet, somehow seeing her like that, having a good time in the sun, surrounded by people she saw as friends, hurt Cooper even more.

  The back side of the photograph had instructions for a new banker. Her employer insisted that she was going to have to use their service from now on. That message wasn’t vague either—Cooper’s money wasn’t her money any longer. She only got to use it as long as she played nice and followed instructions. For now, she didn’t see any other choice but to play nice.

  She came to the hotel a full week earlier than her employer had asked her to for a couple of reasons. The first one was professional—she wanted to learn the lay of the land. It never hurt to do some extra homework, and she spent the first two days walking around the hotel and the surrounding grounds, taking mental notes of cleaning crew schedules, deliveries, and garbage pickup times. The second reason was selfish—Cooper was starting to get burned-out. However crazy that sounded, she wanted to mix the job with a small vacation.

  Set on the sugary sands of Arena Gorda Beach, the hotel was a large T-shaped three-story complex. Surrounded with coconut palms and straw cabanas, its long leg stretched perpendicular to the sapphire waters of the Atlantic. A thousand-foot-long pool ran along the entire length of the eastern wall of the hotel and Cooper spent the last four days before her target’s arrival doing what everybody else did—drinking piña coladas in pool bars, eating local food, and flirting with other hotel guests.

  To her dismay, most people staying at the hotel around this time turned out to be families with kids and married couples, which reduced her chances of having a proper “resort experience” to virtually zero. Cooper watched as the silver-haired executive-type American who she was exchanging pleasantries with was joined by his wife, who shot her a suspicious look. Cooper smiled at her with a dumb expression of a friendly tourist and returned her attention to the drink in her hand.

  Cooper was cross, but the picture she’d found in Zimmer’s house wasn’t the only reason for her sour mood. What also made her restless was the way her employer wanted to carry out this assignment. She had made a name for herself creating elaborate false stories around her hits, where assassinations looked like accidents, random acts of violence that had nothing to do with the real reason behind the killings. But even when her employers didn’t need subterfuge, the hits were always professional—clean and quick. Surgical.

  This time, it was different. She was instructed to leave a statement—a break-in, signs of torture, and an execution. A local contact delivered to her a brand-new Glock semiautomatic pistol, a silencer, and a fifteen-round magazine stacked with hollow-points. The target—a Japanese businessman—was scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning with his wife and was supposed to stay at the resort for a week. If he was anything like the patro
ns that Cooper had been observing for the last few days, it would be nearly impossible to separate him from his wife long enough to fulfill the contract.

  That added to Cooper’s frustration. Sometimes collateral damage was inevitable, but it always bothered her when people who had to be eliminated with the target were there for the right reasons. She’d be much less conflicted if the man was traveling alone.

  “Would you like another drink, señorita?” the bartender said, his accented English making him sound like an actor from a telenovela.

  “No. Gracias.” Cooper smiled back, threw a few singles on the counter and got up. “I think I’ll hit the sack.”

  As she headed toward the paved path along the pool, Cooper felt someone’s eyes on her. She paused, pretending to check her purse, and threw a glance back at the direction of the bar. There was a young man sitting at one of the corner tables. His olive skin was smooth and seemed to ripple over hard muscles on his exposed arms. His posture was relaxed, and his eyes fixed on the drink in his hand, but Cooper’s adrenaline surged through the roof.

  He didn’t have to be looking at her or doing anything suspicious. Just like one fox would recognize another inside of a henhouse, Cooper instantly knew that the man sitting across the room was a professional killer.

  She closed her purse and started walking, quietly cursing herself for leaving the pistol in the hotel room. As she reached the doors to the lobby of the hotel, Cooper risked a quick look over her shoulder—the man from the bar was now walking along the paved path heading her way, a small satchel in his hands. There was no time for pretending anymore, and Cooper threw the door open and sprinted down the hallway and past the elevator. A gust of warm air brushed her neck, and the wall next to her exploded in a shower of dust and small debris.

  “Mother fucker,” Cooper exhaled, as she turned the corner and ran up the stairs, taking three steps at a time. Her room was located on the third floor of the hotel and by the time she burst into the hallway, she had a keycard in her hand. Cooper swiped the card and threw herself at the door, diving into the dark room as another bullet bit into the doorframe.