Harbinger

by S L Shelton

  As I burst through the side door, the sedan, still parked in front of the other building, lurched toward me. I sprinted down the sidewalk and across traffic, attempting to lose him.

  When I looked back over my shoulder to measure the sedan’s progress, I noticed movement on the roofline; the two men who had followed me were still in pursuit but apparently weren’t as enthusiastic about swinging through the broken window as I had been. Wimps.

  I turned down the next street just as they dropped down to the next building. I could feel a warm trickle down my shoulder blade and took a quick look backward to make sure I wasn’t leaving a blood trail. No blood on the street, but judging by the throbbing in my back, I was carrying souvenirs from the window I had crashed through.

  “It’s a stolen wallet,” I muttered to my pursuers. “Why would you—?”

  I stopped mid-complaint before pulling the stolen wallet from my hoodie pocket. As I flipped through the contents with my gloved fingers, I discovered the “why” of the courier’s pursuit—there, among the credit cards, photo IDs, and a substantial stack of euros, was a folded piece of cardstock with neatly handwritten account numbers and pin codes.

  “Mother lode!” I exclaimed, dodging through the door of another building before the others had a line of sight on me. The door I had entered was the side door of a restaurant. I slowed my pace as I headed toward the back, drawing suspicious glares from the staff. After entering the kitchen, I paused to look through the swinging door. An angry chef came up behind me and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.

  “Dégage d'ici!” he yelled as he spun me around.

  I just put my hands up and quickly pushed myself free. I wasn’t terribly familiar with French slang, but the tone sounded a bit like “get out of here.” So I did.

  Confused glances from the kitchen staff greeted me as I continued past them to the rear exit. I continued to thumb through the contents of the wallet before exiting the kitchen into the back alley.

  Once outside, I looked both ways before tucking myself behind the small dumpster.

  “Storc is going to be so happy to see these,” I muttered. Not only would he be able to stop searching the encrypted passwords for account patterns, but now he’d be able to do an actual ID search on the courier.

  I began photographing each item in the wallet with my phone. I was beginning to think I had made a clean getaway when I heard the screech of tires at the top of the street. As I peeked around the dumpster, the two couriers jogged up next to the sedan before looking down the alleyway toward me.

  I tucked myself back into my nook and quickly photographed the last few items before sticking everything back the way it had been.

  Let’s see how professional you guys are, I thought as I pulled the man’s money from his wallet. Stuffing the cash into my pocket, I bolted from my hiding place, making sure they saw me.

  “Arrêt!” one of them yelled again. I tossed the wallet over my shoulder as I ran. Having left everything inside except for the money, there would be no reason for the hired men to continue their pursuit except for pride—I was gambling that they were too professional to let that happen.

  As I reached the end of the street, the footsteps behind me stopped.

  “Ta mere suce le penis d'animaux pour l'argent,” the man yelled as I looked over my shoulder. I recognized the words for mother, penis, and animal, but missed the rest. I pieced together that it was some sort of profane jab at my mother.

  He stooped to pick up his wallet before quickly opening it to check its contents. As soon as he discovered his money missing, he lurched toward me again—Not so professional after all.

  Fortunately, his partner had a more practical outlook on the matter and grabbed his friend by the arm before he took the first stride in my direction.

  Way to go, levelheaded guy.

  I dashed around the corner before checking over my shoulder once more. They weren’t following. It was several blocks before I slowed my pace and looked back again. Satisfied I was clear, I made my way back to my car.

  I dialed Storc as soon as I was inside the Audi.

  “What happened?” he asked without a hello.

  “I’m sending you some more pictures,” I said as I bundled the images of the wallet contents and sent them to Storc’s proxy server.

  “Did you get better pictures of the courier?” Storc asked.

  “Better.”

  I heard keyboard clicking in the background.

  “Better how?” he asked, but before I had time to answer, “You’ve got to be shitting me!”

  “Think you can use those?” I asked as an involuntary grin slid across my face.

  “How the hell did you get his wallet?” Storc asked.

  “Merane.”

  “What? Who’s Merane?”

  “A girl I met,” I replied, nonchalant.

  “A gir—” Storc choked over his laughter. “Dude, you’re a god.”

  “You can stop searching courier deposit patterns as soon as you get the data on these accounts,” I said, accepting his praise without comment. “I need to know who he works for, I need to know if it’s a legitimate or a front company, and I need to know how many of those account numbers aren’t on your list.”

  “You da man,” Storc exclaimed excitedly, this time sincere. “I’m already loading them.”

  “Cool. Let me know when you have something.”

  “Will do,” he replied. Then after a beat or two, “What did she look like?”

  “She was pretty hot,” I replied. “A bit tall for me, but…”

  “I like tall girls,” he said.

  “I’ll let her know that if I see her again.”

  “Did she—?”

  “Later. Did you already send the pictures of the courier to Ruth?” I asked.

  “Yeah…do you want me to take them down?”

  “Down? How’d you send them to her?” I asked as panic seized me.

  “I bundled them and put them on the Langley delivery drive at work,” he replied, somewhat defensively.

  “Storc! No data from this project on TravTech Servers!”

  “Dude…” Storc snapped, an edge of bitterness slipping into his tone. “How would you suggest I send them to her—e-mail?”

  I shook my head. Shit! I should have thought of that.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “You’re right.”

  There was a long pause, and I imagined Storc second-guessing me about everything…and rightfully so.

  “They’re down,” he said after a moment. “And I checked the log. They weren’t accessed by anyone.”

  “Thank you,” I said, contrite.

  “Are you alright, Scott?” Storc asked with a tone of sincere worry that I felt through my headset.

  I suddenly wished I had told him months ago about my artificially altered—and now damaged—brain. I honestly didn’t know if my mental faculties were diminishing or if I was just noticing it more now that I was under stress and needing them more. Regardless, broaching the subject now would only make Storc worry more and make him question my ability to get the job done—this was no time to be creating doubt.

  “I’m flying solo over here, pal…and it’s not like the first time when all I needed to do was follow a phone signal,” I said, trying to paint a milder excuse for my lapse in operational awareness. “I’m not hitting on all cylinders.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up too bad,” Storc replied. “I should have asked if you meant you wanted them up on the server.”

  “Thanks for that, but I need to keep it together.”

  “I’m just worried about you… A lot of things have changed in the last few months,” he said more quietly. “I’m amazed, in fact, at everything that’s changed. Dude—look at what you’re doing.”

  I smiled. He was right; in less than a year, I had gone from programmer/rock climber to investigator/spy…and it felt completely natural.

  “Just do me a favor and mention stuff that seems questionabl
e,” I replied. “I’ve got a lot on my plate. Something is bound to slip my mind.”

  “That’s what worries me. Nothing ever used to slip your mind,” he replied. “But, will do.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How do you want me to handle getting stuff to Langley?”

  I closed my eyes to envision a clean path to CIA headquarters in Langley from Storc’s basement without the benefit of my mental flowcharting. “Set up a blind proxy server with multilayer encryption,” I said. “But you’ll have to hand deliver the encryption keys.”

  “Deliver to who?”

  “Nick,” I replied, followed by silence from Storc. “Is there a problem with that?”

  “Ummm…”

  “What?” I asked.

  “He’s scary as shit,” Storc said finally. “Can I give it to Ruth instead?”

  “Nope,” I replied firmly. “Nick is running the section. If there’s going to be a data point for the investigation outside of channels, it needs to go through him.”

  More silence at the other end.

  “He’s a pussycat once you get to know him,” I added.

  “Easy for you to say… You can jump tall buildings in a single bound.”

  I chuckled. “Not lately, I can’t.”

  “Okay…I’ll take care of it.”

  “Once you get the proxy built, call him from your secure link, not the office’s, and tell him I left my travel bag at the office,” I said as I started the engine. “He’ll get the meaning.”

  “Okay,” he replied, still sounding hesitant.

  “Thanks. Let me know about those accounts and the courier as soon as you get anything.”

  “Will do. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Later.”

  I sat back in my seat and released a deep breath as I thumbed through the bills I had pulled from the courier’s wallet. I had actually ended up with more than I’d left Antwerp with.

  “A net gain. Better than a day at the track.”

  After tucking the money back into my pocket, I backed out and casually entered traffic before beginning the two-hour drive back to Antwerp.

  **

  Several hours later—Antwerp, Belgium

  “Have you been waiting long?” Kathrin asked as she turned the corner and found me sitting on the dark stoop of her building.

  I looked at my watch and then back at her, smiling. “A bit,” I replied, minimizing the significance of my frosty sojourn on the cold concrete steps—it had been nearly two hours.

  She smiled as she took my hand to help me up.

  “Your hands are freezing!” she said as a worried crinkle slipped on her lovely brow.

  I shrugged as she hurried to unlock the front door on the corner entryway of the pre-war, three-story apartment building. The cast iron hinges on the heavy oak door squeaked their noisy protest, looking and sounding more like an entry for an ancient castle than an apartment building. I looked up at the furniture hoist, embedded into the rafters of the attic. It was a common trait among old European buildings, but the shiny new block and tackle that was hanging from the protruding timber told me it had been used fairly recently.

  “Didn’t you have a black coat when you left this morning?” Kathrin asked as she tugged at my hand, breaking my observation of her building. I followed her inside to the darkened entry.

  I looked down at the brown, heavy winter hoodie that had belonged to the pickpocket. “Oh yeah,” I mused, feigning confusion. “Where did that come from?”

  She stopped at the base of the stairs before leaning over and sniffing the garment. One eyebrow shot up as accusation shaped her expression. “Perfume?”

  I hooked my thumb under the zippered opening and then pulled it up to my nose. “Hmmm?” I muttered. “That’s odd.”

  The grin on my face hadn’t even begun to spread before she whacked my shoulder with the back of her hand.

  “Schwachsinn, Freundchen,” she muttered and continued up the darkened stairs ahead of me. I wasn’t sure of the meaning, but the tone suggested something to the effect of “bullshit”.

  “I had to switch coats with someone,” I said as we reached the well-lit second floor landing where her apartment was located.

  She looked over her shoulder at me after slipping her key into the deadbolt. Her expression changed quickly to mouth-gaping shock as she got a good look at me in the light of the hallway. “What happened? You’re wounded!”

  I looked down at my hands and pants, realizing I looked as if a dog had mauled me. Blood was seeping through the khaki-colored pants on the backs and sides of my legs—a consequence of smashing through the upstairs window as I’d tried to escape the couriers.

  “Inside,” I whispered, not feeling comfortable going into detail while lingering in the hallway. Not that it would have made any difference; Kathrin had explained she was the sole inhabitant of her uncle’s building while it underwent renovation. To me, it seemed like an awful lot of wasted space. Either her uncle wasn’t a very good businessman or Kathrin wasn’t being completely honest with me—I was leaning toward the latter, which is why I was becoming less and less forthcoming with her.

  Once inside, she dropped her pack and grocery bag before spinning me around backward for a closer look at my wounds.

  She tugged at my collar and looked beneath. “Bathroom,” she said sternly before giving me a shove in that direction.

  She went into the kitchen and began digging in the cabinets as I disappeared into the bathroom. I felt a piece of glass dislodge from my shoulder as I took off my sweatshirt and T-shirt. A trickle of fresh blood dribbled down my back.

  “Oh!” Kathrin exclaimed as she stepped into the room before quickly pulling a towel from the rack by the door. She tossed it to the tile floor at my feet. “Stand on that.”

  I complied and turned so that my back was to her.

  “This one is deep,” she said quietly as she began poking around the shoulder wound.

  “Ouch!”

  “Be still,” she said, unmoved by my discomfort.

  She began swabbing the laceration before pinching it closed with her fingers. After a few seconds of painful wound irrigation, I could hear her pulling tape from a roll. I looked back to see her ripping it with her teeth.

  “That doesn’t seem hygienic,” I muttered as I looked forward again to hide the grin that had formed.

  “Hush,” she said. But when I looked back, there was a smile on her face. “Pants.”

  I obeyed and slipped my pants off; a frustrated sigh escaped from Kathrin.

  “What happened?” she asked as she busied herself with the cuts on my legs.

  “I fell through a window,” I replied.

  “Trying to get your coat back?”

  I looked at her again and saw the amused bend of a suppressed smile.

  “Running from a guy who wanted his stolen wallet back,” I replied, my expression matching hers.

  She looked up at me with a sideways glare. “You stole someone’s wallet?” she asked before returning her attention back to her doctoring. “If you needed money, you could have asked me… I would have lent it to you.”

  I chuckled.

  “There,” she said, pushing me down to sit on the edge of the tub. “Good as new.”

  She turned to leave, but I grabbed her waist and pulled her close. She smiled down at me, and I felt my suspicions about her melt away again. My hand moved as if of its own volition to her cheek, touching it gently with the backs of my fingers. She bent her head, letting her loose curls curtain our faces as she pressed her lips to mine.

  When our lips parted, she stared at me with lust in her eyes. But for the briefest flicker of a heartbeat, I saw…something else. I wasn’t sure what it was, but my chest tightened in anticipation.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said in a husky whisper.

  And the suspicion returned.

  “Okay,” I said with a crooked grin as I pushed her away gently. “Let’s have dinner and yo
u can tell me what you did today. Then, I’ll tell you what happened to me.”

  Disappointment swept over her soft features as she leaned in again.

  “I’m so glad you came to see me,” she whispered into my ear.

  She kissed my ear and without another word, took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

  Am I sleeping with a criminal? Or something worse? I thought as I followed her. Please, Kathrin…please don’t be something worse.

  **

  5:55 p.m.—National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland

  MATHEW BURGESS, Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Services, walked into the rehab center. On the far end of the gym-like room, John Temple was on his back on a pile of foam mats. A young woman was standing in front of Temple with one of his feet pressed into her stomach. She was leaning forward, pressing his leg into a bend.

  John looked up as Burgess approached. “They’ll let anyone in here,” John said with a grin.

  “So this is what we’ve been paying for?” Burgess replied with a matching smile before looking at the woman. “I’m sorry, dear, but you are far too pretty to be doing this with him… He’s enjoying it too much.”

  John chuckled before looking down his leg to his therapist. “Pam, can I have a minute?”

  She nodded before releasing his foot and helped him sit up. As soon as she was out of earshot, Burgess sat down on the stack of mats next to John.

  “I’m surprised to see you up,” he said. “The last time I was here, you couldn’t even sit up in bed.”

  John shook his head. “The sweatpants make it look like it’s more than it is,” he replied quietly. “They just don’t want me to get bed sores, and I needed a change of scenery.”

  Burgess nodded in somber understanding.

  “What’s up?” John asked, obviously changing the subject to make Burgess less uncomfortable.

  “Penny Rhodes,” he replied.

  “Ah,” John said and nodded. “You aren’t sure about her.”

  Burgess turned to look at John more squarely. “We’ve discreetly recertified her,” he said. “And combed through her background.”