The Power of Three

by J C Ryan

  Calmly, Rex picked up one of the guards’ weapons, an ancient AK-47, and pointed it at the last guard, the one who was still trying to keep Digger away from his throat.

  “Leave it,” he said to Digger.

  Digger retreated. Rex stepped forward and kicked the man in the face, breaking his jaw, which sent him to dreamland.

  The guard who Rex had tackled was sitting on the ground moaning, his arm broken at the elbow.

  Rex told Digger to guard the man. He went to retrieve the keys to both vehicles, gathered up the guards’ weapons, and put them in the back seat of his SUV.

  “This is your lucky night,” Rex said. “You’re all alive. You could have taken my first offer, and you could’ve walked out of here with no injuries and a handy sum of money.” He went around to all of them and cuffed them with their own handcuffs.

  The fight had taken thirty seconds. The cleanup, maybe five minutes. He was still on schedule, and the moon had risen enough for him to see where he was going. He and Digger got into their own SUV and drove off over the border unhindered.

  Now he was looking for the glow of a town of any size to navigate the back roads that no map showed. He’d make for the town, figure out where he was, and then head for New Delhi. Another night of no sleep, but the end was in sight. Soon he’d be safe, and with a new identity provided by a man he knew in the city, he’d start a new life.

  He’d never thought it would be as a dog owner. Or maybe he wasn’t a dog owner at all, because at times he felt like the dog controlled him. Nevertheless, Digger represented a layer of complexity that Rex had never had to worry about before. All countries required quarantines of animals entering. He couldn’t be tied down, so Digger would need some kind of forged papers, too. Rex was also certain that Digger’s diet of the past few days wasn’t what he should be eating. The stench emanating from Diggers side of the cabin every now and then attested to that. But India, despite its Third World status, surely had decent veterinarians and doctors. He knew Indian doctors were among the best in the world, at least those who were practicing in the US.

  After a bit more thought, Rex realized he really had no idea about either. He’d have to ask, but he could do so easily in New Delhi, where he didn’t have to pretend to be a native to get along, although he spoke Urdu and Hindi, the native languages of seventy million, and two-hundred and sixty million Indian people respectively. What he needed was at least a week in the country to get his new documents, learn something more about dogs, decide on a destination, and craft a plan for his new life. The newfound luxury of time, and to decide for himself what he’d do next, was going to require a conscious effort from him to get used to.

  Not since he’d vowed revenge on the terrorist bombers who’d killed his family in 2004 had he let go of his anger. Over the years, it had grown, in fact, to include drug traffickers and people who exploited other people with evil intent of any kind. Had he done enough against terrorists? The first question was, what would be enough? And by whose definition?

  Rex found he couldn’t answer those questions unequivocally. Logic told him he’d done a lot. It also argued that he’d been given skills and talents that obligated him to use them, and they were most suited to the life he’d lived for the past ten years. Emotion told him he just wanted some peace for a change, and to find himself again. The self that he used to be, before the bombs at Atocha Station, Madrid, Spain, on March 11, 2004 changed his life.

  As he drove through the early morning hours toward a future that might afford him that peace and inner fulfillment, he decided that it would be best to start by learning to take life one day at a time.

  He’d start by getting rid of the SUV, which was now too hot to be seen in. In leaving those border guards alive, he’d made the vehicle a target, along with himself and Digger. He doubted it would be soon, but eventually the Pakistanis might decide the affront was too much to let pass and would notify Indian authorities.

  By the time that happened, Rex would want to have a new vehicle and a new appearance, maybe even a new identity.

  Still, he didn’t regret leaving the guards alive. He could justify killing anyone involved with terrorism or drug trafficking. He couldn’t justify killing law enforcement personnel, even slightly crooked ones that would have taken everything he needed to continue to survive.

  Then he realized the first thing he had to do now was to find a suitable spot where he could pull off the road and get rid of the arsenal of weapons and ammunition he had with him.

  31

  Langley, Virginia, June 25, 11:49 p.m.

  BRUCE CARSON PREENED in his full-length mirror. Dressed for a night at his club, he thought he made a dashing figure. His hair, once a rich chestnut brown, had been softened since he’d turned fifty by a few silver hairs shot throughout and especially at the temples. His blue eyes had charmed many a woman, including his wife, who lay sleeping in the bed behind him.

  His body was still trim, no sign of softness around his middle like so many men of his age. He eschewed beer, drank only straight vodka when he indulged at all. He’d never have that unappealing round belly. The truth was, his peculiar sexual appetites meant that he’d keep himself in outwardly healthy shape as long as he could.

  He walked softly to the bed and checked that his wife was still deep in her Ambien-induced sleep, though he knew she was. She wouldn’t wake for hours, probably not until he was in his office the next morning. Miranda was a beautiful woman, and he was proud to have her at his side when the occasion was formal. No one needed to know that she was useless to him as a woman, and that she preferred it that way. They provided each other with what each needed. He provided her a respectable life of luxury and didn’t demand children, or sex for that matter. She would have found either an imposition. She provided him with camouflage. The arrangement worked well for them.

  The club in question was also camouflage of a sort. A venerable gentlemen’s club, it had been in existence since before the Civil War, though its present location was modern. Current members included Senators and members of Congress, high-ranking officials of government, wealthy businessmen, and three token women. No one could say that the club was not moving into the modern world, since its strictly male membership had relaxed the gender rules and admitted women.

  The first floor housed a world-class restaurant, a billiards room, a gaming room, and a bar designed with its members’ privacy in mind. Above, meeting rooms of various sizes were available for members’ use, and on the third floor, ten suites for overnight use could be reserved by any member. Most members assumed the basement was for the use of the staff that kept the rest of the club running smoothly, and they would be right.

  However, below that basement was a secret warren of other levels. Dedicated to debauchery of every kind, from the distasteful to the frankly illegal, it was known only to a select few of the club’s membership, the platinum members. Carson was one of them.

  When Carson left his home that night, he was accompanied by only two of his security team. The same two went with him to his club three or four times a week. Because of its membership, it had been checked regularly for security problems, but no agency had discovered the secret door that led to the lowest levels. Carson’s detail didn’t find it necessary to usher him into the club. His driver let him out at the curb, and then the two agents went to a more prosaic evening’s entertainment until he called them. As far as they knew, he was meeting with cronies, perhaps enjoying a billiards game or a bit of harmless gambling.

  The shadow who saw Carson and his detail exit his home that night waited until the car had pulled away, and then keyed his coms link. “He’s on the way.”

  Carson had no skills in counter surveillance. He wouldn’t even had known if someone had blatantly followed him. His detail would have, if the tail hadn’t been skilled, but this tail wasn’t behind them at all. It hadn’t taken long to discover Carson’s frequent patterns. The combination of social media, a prominent Washington gossip rag, an
d old-fashioned footwork had given the Old Timers the most likely spot for Carson to practice any habit that could give Brandt leverage.

  One of them was the homeless woman on the corner of the block where the club was located. When Carson arrived, she confirmed it. They had their first clue to follow. It might lead nowhere. In the days and potentially weeks to come, if there was dirt, they’d dig it up. If not, then other means of persuading Carson to tell the truth about the ambush on Rex Dalton and his team might have to be found. Usually, it didn’t take weeks.

  These men and women knew as well as Brandt did that there were few people on earth whose souls and consciences were so pure that there was nothing they wouldn’t want known publicly. Everyone had a secret. Most could be used as tools to pry out the truth.

  MEN IN POSITIONS of power know that ordinary vices – alcohol, paid escorts, minor drug use, or gambling that ordinary men are forgiven – can destroy a political, military, or corporate career. That doesn’t mean they don’t have these vices and those that are out of the ordinary as well. It only means that they use their wealth and influence to hide them even as they practice them.

  What Hathaway had known about his pet Senator all those years ago was that the Senator preferred young boys to his proper Southern wife. What the Senator knew about Carson was that he enjoyed being humiliated and dominated by beautiful women. These pleasures and more were available to them in absolute secrecy in their club-within-a-club. As everyone whose appetites become obsessions know, caution only goes so far. Eventually, the physical evidence shows up. Overeaters, even when they eat in secret, get fat. Drug users can’t hide the tracks on their arms or the hollow eyes and skeletal thinness forever.

  Some vices take longer to become known, as the Senator could have attested. His had surfaced only once, and the result was to enslave him to Hathaway forever. Because he’d convinced himself it was only an unnecessarily Puritan society that forbade his habits, he could present a serene and saintly countenance to the congregation when he showed up at church on Sunday mornings. Carson, however, had made no such peace with his vice.

  Buried deeply within his own psyche, Carson nursed a preference for men. He’d adored his cold father and concluded the man didn’t love him because he wasn’t good enough. By the time he reached high school and knew what he was, he had formed a hatred for others like him along with a shame of his nature that required punishment. He was in his thirties before he found what he needed to suppress what he considered his depravity, the latent homosexuality he could not indulge for reasons of his career as well as his upbringing.

  Equally shameful was the form his punishment took, and lately it had created a nightmarish loop in which he’d go to the club to be punished for craving a man’s touch and then back again for having indulged in the punishment in the first place. It was beginning to take its toll when his mind had been taken off it by the Senator’s demand that he intervene in the problem in Afghanistan.

  Brandt’s not very well veiled hints had given him such anxiety that he required punishment for not setting it up more cleverly to avoid suspicion. Carson was intelligent enough to know that he was making any excuse he could for ‘going to the club’. He was well-practiced in hiding his motivations from even himself.

  In truth, Carson was aware that public opinion was no longer openly hostile to gays, even those in public service. Nevertheless, a lifetime of habits in thought and deed prevented him from the breakthrough he would have needed to be true to his nature. Furthermore, his wife would have seen to it that he was left in relative poverty if he’d humiliated her by coming out of the closet. He considered himself trapped in the life he’d created, but at the same time he was grateful it was available to him and he could afford it. So, any time his mind went into the loop of self-awareness, he put on a thicker coat of arrogance and continued like a hamster on a wheel – doing what he did and pretending to enjoy it.

  When he exited his club at precisely 2:00 a.m., the homeless woman was gone, but an equally disreputable-looking man sat at a window table of an all-night coffee shop down the street.

  “On his way back,” the man mumbled into his coffee.

  At the Director’s home, the shadow in the bushes clicked an acknowledgement. Twenty minutes later, he was relieved by the second woman of the team, who would watch until the sky brightened enough that she’d be discovered if she didn’t leave.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, Brandt received a report. His team had come through, and the report was explosive. He had Carson over a barrel now, though the man didn’t know it yet. In addition, he had the dirt on several other targets. He considered the implications. He could take the lot of them down and cause the biggest scandal in the history of Washington DC. Bigger than Watergate. Bigger than Monica Lewinski. This was the kind of stuff that could bring a presidency down.

  In doing so, he could rescue a few victims, but he’d likely lose the leverage he needed to get to the bottom of what was beginning to look like a major conspiracy. He weighed the handful of victims against the greater good and reluctantly concluded they’d have to wait. Chances were they were irreparably damaged already. He wasn’t proud of the decision. It was one of those awful moral dilemmas with no right answers, only expedient ones.

  Once he’d made the decision to trap Carson first and rescue victims later, he made a call to one of his agents who was, in her way, as effective as Rex Dalton was in his.

  “Marissa, I have an assignment for you.”

  He listened to her answer, and then continued.

  “No, this one’s in DC. No, not a politician, a highly-placed government employee. You aren’t going to like it, but you’re the best agent I have for the job, and I have every confidence you can pull it off.”

  Another question from his agent, and another answer from Brandt: “No, I don’t think it will be particularly dangerous, and I know you prefer a challenge. Trust me, this will be a challenge even though I don’t anticipate danger. You’d better pay me a visit as quickly as you can get here, and I’ll explain further.” He explained that he was in the city for an extended visit and reminded her of the address.

  When she agreed, he stared out the window at the Senate office building. That sweet-faced, white-haired, old Southern gentleman. Brandt shook his head. If the reports were true, he was going to have to start believing everything he heard, because he’d have never believed that.

  32

  New Delhi, India June 27, 2:15 p.m.

  REX HAD DRIVEN to Phagwara the previous morning, intending to push on to New Delhi, when he realized there was no reason to hurry. India was relatively safe, but his clothing wouldn’t exactly fit in with the locals. He needed a shave or at least have his beard trimmed in a shape more in line with fashion in India.

  So, he’d decided to stop there and take care of the superficial changes he’d need, before he arrived in the city where he would stay long enough to obtain false papers for himself and Digger. When he got decent online access, he had a few inquiries to make, as well.

  He hadn’t paid much attention to local customs and prejudices regarding dogs until he met Trevor and Digger and they became part of his operational team. He had his own prejudices, of course, but he was aware that most Americans almost worshipped their furry companions. Even those who didn’t keep their own pets usually didn’t fear dogs. It had been a different story in Afghanistan, where Digger’s size and color brought to the front the locals’ natural distaste for canines. Pakistan was no different, and fortunately he didn’t have to spend much time there.

  But Rex didn’t know about the Indians’ attitudes toward dogs.

  Would he be able to have Digger with him if he wanted?

  Rex was used to blending in with locals all over the world, but he was usually on his own and had at least a few days to investigate how to do so. Those were also short-term missions, from a few days to a week or a month at most. This time, he’d been immersed in Afghan culture for just over a year. It had been six years
since he’d been in Mumbai for only a few hours and then chased terrorists into Pakistan.

  Although it was a bit disorienting, he was up to it. He had to be. And despite the initial misgivings he’d felt about having responsibility for Digger thrust on him, he’d grown used to the dog and felt there was already a bond growing between them, and he was overcoming his phobia of dogs. He fully intended to keep his promise to Trevor, and in honor of Trevor’s memory he would make the necessary adjustments to accommodate his new best friend.

  Through the course of the day in Phagwara, Rex had transformed himself from a Muslim man in man-jammies into a modern-looking mixed-ethnicity British-Indian. He sported a clean-shaved lower jaw, an impressive mustache, and the latest in middle-class clothing — a pair of khaki-colored pants and a loose, short-sleeve, button-up white shirt.

  Digger had a new leash and a vest that said ‘service dog’ in English and Sanskrit.

  On a visit to an Internet café, Rex had found a number of websites that gave detailed instructions for training and feeding a service dog along with several commands that service dogs needed. He’d printed the pages so he could study it more carefully at his leisure.

  His ‘disability’, for now, would be PTSD, he decided. Digger already knew many of the commands he’d need. Having the dog on a leash would hopefully appease the locals, many of whom were afraid of dogs because of the ownerless wild dog populations in the cities.

  He had also traded in the SUV for a less conspicuous model. He wanted a van type vehicle so that he could take the back seats out and convert it into sleeping space for him and Digger, if need be. He found a used, five-seater, previous-year model Maruti Suzuki Omni that suited his purposes. He tried his level best to haggle expertly. But this was not this dealer’s first rodeo. He was an experienced businessman and taught Rex a few valuable, but expensive lessons about cutting a deal.