Part Two: Action Heroes
1
November 8th, 2018.
Matt Burke:
Almost a hundred degrees in November. How the fuck did he live here?
I cross the non-existent border from Phoenix into Tempe—part of the endless Phoenix-Metro sprawl that hosts the University—and follow the GPS map through two hours of road-rage traffic to get to the run-down student-housing neighborhoods.
A few of the campus info sites I checked affectionately call this particular neighborhood “Sin City.” Somehow it makes perfect sense that this is where he’s got a closet of a studio (even though he finally finished his degree last spring, after stretching it out for twice as long as it should have taken—records say he took “breaks” and changed his major at least three times).
And the studio is still his, despite being gone with no contact for a month. His parents apparently went ahead and paid this month’s rent for him when he didn’t come home—probably out of a mix of hope and not wanting to move his stuff. I’d like to think it’s more of the former, especially since the “news” broke, though from the pretty sad profile of his family dynamic that Datascan put together, I’m not betting on it.
The only nice thing I discover about the dry broiling weather is how little the local coeds wear—they’re still young and stupid enough to dare this sun on their skin. Compared to them, I expect I must look like an old man in this neighborhood, me now pushing the big three-zero. And busted:
I still have to nurse my perforated arm as I pry my sweat-sticky butt out of the rental hybrid, then dig for coin left-handed. Thankfully, the parking meters here still take something less traceable than plastic—not that my “handlers” won’t figure out I’ve been here some other way.
At least my face is looking better, the dart wounds fading to something that looks like I got bit in the cheek by a largish dog. Since I shaved off the beard (had to, after it got patches shaved out of it by the surgical team that worked on my face), I figure it makes me look at least a few years younger. Or not.
The apartment complex isn’t any nicer than the dorms I passed half-a-mile back: steel frame and dingy stucco and cast concrete, garnished with coarse gravel and a few palm trees as an excuse for low-maintenance landscaping.
My shirt is sticking to me. I use my issue lockbreaker to get myself through the battered steel door and into his unit. The complex has communal AC, but I figure they keep it up hotter than I could reasonably stand to save on their power bill. That, and the place being shut up for almost a month, makes it stale and tight. And dark: he’s got thick blinds on the windows.
I get lazy and go for the light switch.
It’s a shrine.
Sort of. It’s got this altar-looking shelf dominating the largest wall, with a green stone female Buddha-thing and some authentic-looking Chinese brush-calligraphy and half-burned candles. The centerpiece is a black lacquer rack of Japanese swords—no cheap junk; they look old. The walls are done in the same theme: Zen ink paintings that give the place a monochrome décor that flash me back to the whole Grayman style.
It gets worse when I turn around and see that he’s got a coat-tree behind the door hanging thick with various long coats and big hats. This strikes me as a serious fashion commitment considering how hot it is here most of the year.
The studio is otherwise pretty efficient. A futon sofa, a big black exec-type chair at a little industrial computer desk, a compact media center, racks of old disks and a scattered assortment of flashware. And paper books: old worn copies of philosophies from the other half of the world.
I open the closet. His wardrobe is as monochrome as I expected: this guy just doesn’t do bright and colorful. But half-hidden behind the clothing: more weapons. Swords and sticks and chain-things like I’ve stumbled into a D-grade kung fu movie. And a safe the size of a small fridge.
It’s got an old-style tumbler—no fancy electronics. It takes some work to break it with the gear I brought, but I need to feed my curiosity.
Sweating worse than when I came in, I eventually get what I want.
Guns.
He’s got an old 1911 .45 I’d give a month’s pay for, tricked out for combat with an action like butter. And a gorgeous blue Colt Python that looks mint even though I know it’s a decade or two older than me. And a friggin’ space-cannon: stainless steel, long vent-rib barrel, as big as my forearm. I can barely lift it with one hand, and the grip is so fat I feel like I’m holding a brick. The shells I find for it look like cut-down elephant loads. And knives: a collection of the best-of Spec-Ops knives going back sixty years, including two early Gerber Mark II’s. The collection must be worth at least as much as the car I parked outside.
That’s when I realize I’m not alone.
Spinning, I nearly scare the crap out of the thin silhouette in the doorway. I try to look casual about what I’m doing.
“Hey…” That wasn’t very official-sounding. I try again, but she cuts me off.
“Who are you?”
“Burke,” I tell her automatically, then thinking maybe I should have given her an alias. “Matt Burke.” I do leave off the “Captain.”
“FBI? CIA? What are you?” she demands. I realize she could probably see the gun in my pants when I was bent over the safe.
“JIC,” I lie half-assed. I haven’t officially been working this op since Joint Intel took their prize in Athens and shipped me homeland (with barely a good-bye, much less a “good job”). I’m here on my own shit, but I can’t tell her that. I do get the satisfaction of seeing the look on her face go from edgy to the standard eye-roll you get when you mention the Joint Intelligence Commission in public. “You are?”
But I know: dark hair, sharp-boned, deep eyes, pale skin. She’s him, only younger and female.
“Laura Palmeri,” she confirms with a defiant bite.
“Christian’s sister?” I ask officially anyway.
“Michael,” she corrects. “He goes by his middle name. He hated Christian. Hates…”
I watch her beat herself up about the past-tense slip.
“Does this mean there’s any new news…?” But she doesn’t want to know.
“No. Nothing since the one video hit. That’s not even confirmed.”
They made it fuzzy on purpose—you can’t really make out his face. Apparently they wanted to keep their options open. Just a flash of an “unidentified American hostage” held at gunpoint by anonymous masks, uploaded to the news nets from somewhere in the European Union. I guess that means they don’t know what the fuck they’re going to do with him yet, our poor crazy Christian Michael Palmeri, but at least wanted to establish an “alibi” of sorts with the Wabs, try to keep them from making the connection that Palmeri is—or was—Grayman. If that happens, the angry-scared young woman I’m talking to could be dead in a week, along with the rest of his family.
She doesn’t say anything for a few—maybe doesn’t know where to go with this.
“Not prying,” I start gently, “but were you staking out the place or what? How’d you know I was in here?”
“You opened the door,” she tells me like I’m stupid, pointing to the discreet security panel by the lockset. “I had the alarm forwarded to my cell, and I was close by. I pass by every day on my way back from work—it’s only half-a-mile out of the way. I work out at the Chandler Intel plant.”
“Manufacturing?”
“R&D. I’m an engineer.” Only a little snippy about my assumption that female engineers are still not exactly common.
“Hmmm. Any chance you know a Scott Becker?” Small talk, but I realize I’m stepping into potentially classified territory. She thinks about it.
“Think I did a seminar with him. Whiz-kid—the kind they make movies about if they were actually interesting. One of Carter Davis’ protégés. McCain Foundation? Bleeding edge AI. Flaky government contracts, but he’s hot in the journals. How do you know him?”
Not sure if she’s suspicio
us or incredulous. And I’m not sure but I think I am dancing on Top Secret. “Friend of a friend.”
“Do you know how he’s coming with his AI project?” she just blurts out.
“Datascan?” I step over the line a bit, but it sounds like her circle is reasonably informed anyway. She probably has better clearance than I do. Still, I keep up the plausible deniability. “No idea. Lame name for a military/intel AI, don’t you think?”
“I think that’s the point,” she tells me, soothed somewhat by the chat. “They didn’t want to scare people by giving it some scifi Hal name like Colossus or SkyNet or something. So they make it sound like some innocent file-server instead of... Should we be talking about this?” She taps her ear like she expects I’m linked. I suppose she couldn’t imagine why someone with the JIC checking the place wouldn’t be online and recording. The sharp-thing must run in the family.
I shrug as innocently as I can get away with. She starts getting edgy again and I can almost hear her teeth grind as she walks over and stares at the sword altar. Then I see her eyes get wet.
“This is why I worry…” she manages to bite it back.
“You think he’ll do something stupid,” I offer, trying to convincingly hide that I know that he already has, and I’ve seen all the bodies to prove it.
“Or did… I don’t know. If someone tried anything, he’d put up a fight. He’s good. There are some files of him doing demos and teaching if you want to check it. The guns, too: he taught me to shoot. But what scares me more is that I don’t think he cares what happens to him right now.”
“You’re talking about the ex-girlfriend…”
“Margaret,” she says it with unveiled distain. “He loved her. Talking marriage and the whole thing. Four years they were together, and he was actually happy, looking forward to the real estate and two-point-five kids dream. Then she shits on him. Wanted something else, I guess. Calls him and tells him she doesn’t need him anymore—just like that. Two weeks later she’s getting married to someone twice her age—I think it was her high school teacher or something equally sad—and off to Hawaii for the honeymoon. That’s when he decided to take his own trip.”
“Why Germany?”
“He had some students, from his martial arts. They were Lufthansa pilots, training at the local secure flight school. Left him an open invite to come visit when they finally went back home. I met them once: Armin and Peter. Great guys. Bad accents. But they played guitar and sang damn good Country after a few beers.”
I let her sit with that a bit, hoping the memory of a couple of Germans singing Grand Ol’ Opry (which I can’t even picture myself) lifts her.
“He’s been gone a month.” I have to ask. “When did you start worrying?”
“When he didn’t make rent, the manager did some calling. It’s not like him—he’s obsessive about paying his bills. Then the FBI called us when his passport came up stolen in Frankfurt. And now there’s that video on the news. I know they say it’s not conclusive, that they can’t confirm who’s in it, but… I… He’s my brother. I just know…”
“And he hasn’t been in touch since he left?” Small talk. I already know. She shakes her head.
“Not unusual,” she admits with a quiet frown. “He never was much for family. Never fit with his step-father—some bad nights there. Kind of drove him away from our mom in the process. Moved out as soon as he could. Just became a habit not to hear from him for months at a time. Years, once…”
“Years?”
“Well, maybe a year and a half. After a particularly loud one with dad. He just stopped calling and taking calls.”
“Where was he? In town or…?”
“I think he was here. Pretty sure. Not much money to travel. I suppose you checked his tax records and all. He had partial grants and student loans and did some odd service work, but mostly played the local cash and barter economy until he graduated. Mostly teaching…”
“The martial arts stuff?”
“He had maybe a dozen students on and off. He was really good, though. Not some screaming vein-popping board-breaker in pajamas. He was into the old art and philosophy stuff. Could do most anything. Made it look easy.”
“Where did he learn?” This being the biggest hole in his active file—same reason I wanted to know if he’d ever been unaccounted for, at least long enough to get pro training.
“Not sure. He dabbled in a lot of schools. Did a lot of seminars and research—he was really into it. Obsessive—there’s that word again, but it’s him. I think he had one specific teacher he always came back to, though. Don’t remember the name. Sounded like some kind of Zen-hippie living off the underground economy.”
I don’t push it, afraid it would get to leading. But it reinforces what keeps eating at me: I just don’t buy the official story: Grayman—Michael (because he hates his given first name)—wipes out half of Euro-Wabia single handedly because he’s been geeking on neo-ninja crap while he otherwise slacks his life away dragging through college (he scored the Dean’s List by the time he got his Bachelor’s paper, but still: it took him eight years to do it). The sister’s prediction is the one that would make sense: that he’d stupidly try to kung-fu an experienced terror-cell and they’d just shoot his ass. Instead, he does a fantastic impression of Freddie Krueger playing James Bond. It doesn’t add.
“If you want, you can see him in action,” she offers again, poking through some of the flashware on the desk.
“Yeah… I’d like that. Thanks.”
I accept a pair of flashkeys (knowing the real JIC has probably already copied and poured through every file he has) and go for the smooth exit.
“We’ll… let you know… if we hear…”
She almost manages to say thank-you but has to turn away. Cold bastard (or just having no idea how to do the comfort-thing in a situation like this), I leave her in the black-and-white room and go out and face the heat again.
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 18
