Saigon Red

by Gregory C. Randall

  They talked about Cleveland’s hard winters and Texas’s mild ones and discovered their mutual fondness for baseball—Javier was not a big fan of the Indians. He gave her the nickel tour of his family’s history, going back to before Sam Houston. She told him about her family and its origins in hill country near Kraków, Poland. Two families from two very different parts of the troubled world.

  The night and bedsheets tumbled into the morning, and she kissed him goodbye at her hotel room door. Alex watched the man from Waco walk the hall to the elevator. She closed her door after he disappeared and looked out the window and across the rooftops of Washington.

  She sighed. “What the devil have I gotten myself into?”

  “My resignation,” Alex said the first morning back in Cleveland. She handed her captain an envelope. “There’s no way to sugarcoat this, or even try to fight it. I’m a distraction. There are forces at work now that neither of us wants to deal with, and it is unfair to the men and women of the department. It’s effective immediately.”

  “You can fight it,” he said. “I’ll work you through this.”

  “I’ve dealt with this bullshit from Ralph for the past year. Now it’s worse. Someone wants to throw me out. I refuse to give them the satisfaction. You have been great, and most of the department as well. But I’m at the end of this road. If I stay, this will dog me for the rest of my career.”

  “I understand. Don’t like it, but I understand. What are you going to do?”

  “I have an opportunity. Not sure how it will turn out, but it’s worth a shot.” Campbell’s nondisclosure agreement kept her from telling him much more than that.

  “Polonia, you are smart and tough. But be safe.”

  “I’m just going to slip out of here. Bob and I will have lunch, but that’s it—no going-away party, Captain.” She pulled her shield and placed it and the department-issued firearm on his desk. “I’m sure there’s other gear in my locker. I’ll clear it and give it to Bob. He’ll make sure you get it. The last thing I want is someone chasing me over a misplaced set of handcuffs.”

  He gave Alex a hug and wished her well.

  After confirming dinner at her parents’ that evening, she met her former partner, Bob Simmons, at Moriarty’s Pub on Sixth Street.

  “You going to be okay?” Simmons asked.

  “Definitely. I feel better than I have in years. Venice changed everything.”

  “That CIA agent? The guy from Waco?”

  “It’s more than him. I was complacent, going with the flow, and Ralph unintentionally flipped a switch. Bob, it’s a big world out there, bigger than I imagined. During the past month, my world has been turned on its ass. All I can tell you is that this girl was offered a chance to take a big step, and she’s taking it.”

  “Be careful.”

  She smiled and placed her fingers on the back of Simmons’s hand. “Bob, that’s been my problem—being careful. I’m changing that.”

  After dinner, Alex’s dad walked along the sidewalk with his only daughter. A warm front had moved in. The melting snow, piled along the narrow strip between the walk and the curb, left streamlets in the gutter. Their evening walks were a tradition since she’d been a teenager.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked.

  “More than anything.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “A lot safer than taking down meth heads on the east side.”

  “How’s the pay?”

  She smiled. Her father always made sure his children knew what they were getting into and were being paid for their work. “Twice more than Cleveland PD. And the benefits are better.”

  “That means greater risks. Is it in the United States?”

  “Can’t say and honestly don’t know. But Javier recommended them. He’s known the company’s owner for many years.”

  “And what about this Javier fellow? Your mother is concerned.”

  Alex knew that both her mother and father were shocked about what had happened in Venice. They had been right about Ralph, though they’d never bugged her about him until everything went wrong. She was well aware of their dislike for the man. She’d married him on an emotional fling and the fear of getting old. She didn’t remember too much about love. After the last year, she learned two things about her ex-husband: one, he was a certifiable asshole and psychotic, and two, if he was still alive, she would shoot the son of a bitch if she had the chance.

  “I like Javier . . . a lot. It’s complicated—he’s in Milan, probably for the next year. I’ll be going through training for this new job, and we won’t see each other. The future? I just don’t know.”

  “Alex, you’re from a family of cops. You take after your grandfather and your uncle: you see wrong, and you want to make it right. This new job had better give you that satisfaction, or I’ll bet you ten to one you will be right back here. Now tell me more about this guy from Texas.”

  “He’s good for my heart and soul.”

  “Do you love him? I know the difference between affection and love. Your mother and I can’t stand to be apart. When I was young, there were women. I know the ways of the heart, at least a little.”

  Her father had never talked about his life before he married. Alex knew about the Parma, Ohio, high school he attended, his year at Kent State, his being drafted, and Vietnam. Nonetheless, Roger Polonia kept to himself a lot about the years before marrying Alice. The kids never asked; he never volunteered. She remembered the screams at night and her mother’s comforting words.

  “You were in love before Mom?”

  “Now why would you ask that?”

  “I’m a detective. I’m paid to read between the lines.”

  “And a good one,” he said. “Yes, there was someone—I was young, scared, and I fell for her. But it ended. I almost died and then was sent home. I never saw her again.”

  “This was in Vietnam?”

  “In Saigon, yes, but I don’t want to talk about it. There’s still a sharp sting to it.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t the only one, Dad.”

  “Yeah, all of us were young and alone. Too much time on our hands, and death was everywhere. When I got home, I was on the edge of falling apart, and there was a big hole right here.” He pointed to his chest. “Then I met your mother. She understood, and she softened all the sharp edges.”

  They walked a few more blocks, each in their thoughts—she mused about his past and wondered about her future.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Canada

  At the same time that Alex strolled the street with her father, Ralph Cierzinski lounged comfortably in the living room of his home overlooking Lake Simcoe, his computer on his lap. The lake was a frozen expanse of ice and snow. Any warmth of a Canadian spring was more than two months away. A cup of coffee steamed on the small wooden stand next to the recliner, a cigarette smoldered in a nearby ashtray, and a fire crackled and spit in the fireplace.

  His real identity and location were entirely unknown to anyone. His neighbors, such as they were, knew him as Alfred Kandinsky. His mailbox read “Kandinsky,” with the number 10231 hand painted under it. Alfred Kandinsky was on his driver’s license, the deed to this house, and his Canadian passport. A bank in the Cayman Islands wired a set sum of money every month to a bank in Beaverton. He paid for everything with Canadian dollars or wrote a check. When asked, he would tell his neighbors that he lived in Toronto most of the year.

  His nearest neighbors were retirees who spent their winters in Mexico and Costa Rica, and none had returned yet this year. Over the years he had met a few of them, often in passing at the grocery store or as he mowed his lawn. The neighborhood’s sole permanent resident was an elderly woman who lived next door and never left her house. Her children took care of her and dutifully came almost every weekend. They lived in Toronto, more than thirty miles south. At night, he could see her television flicker through the picture window that faced the lake. It appeared that she jus
t watched hockey and game shows.

  After his meticulously planned escape from prison and the brutal trick he’d played on the Ohio troopers and the special response team at his aunt’s now-burnt-down house in Geneva-on-the-Lake, he was content with the week of confusion he’d thrown in their path. The border crossing went as he’d hoped. The car with its registered Canadian plates, his passport and identifications, and the bags from the Buffalo Walmart in the back seat passed through without question. If American and Canadian customs coordinated the cross-checks of the border crossing, all they would find would be a vehicle owned by Edward Wallace from Brampton, Canada. When Ralph arrived at the Lake Simcoe house, he switched out the dash’s vehicle identification number and plates. His immediate goal was simple: stay off the streets for as long as possible. He shopped early, was friendly, made eye contact. The last thing he wanted was to be the questionable character living in the last house on the narrow lane facing the lake.

  He’d owned the Lake Simcoe house for fifteen years, since long before he’d married Alexandra. It was where he went fishing when he told Alex he was getting away. He’d tell her he was going to Sandusky, Ohio, to a cabin shared by friends from the CPD. She had never been there. She didn’t know about the Canadian house; she hated fishing. Like his aunt’s house in Geneva-on-the-Lake, he had prepared it for his eventual, if necessary, escape from prison. He was fatalistic and knew that someday he might get caught. A good drug dealer always needed an escape strategy. The Canadian house was his best backup option.

  The email he’d sent Alex when she was in Venice did its job. She’d acted like he expected a cop to act. It’d given him a few days of cover after his escape from prison. He was sure they had by now discovered the corpse in the cellar of the Geneva-on-the-Lake house. The house that he’d intentionally exploded and burned—with the corpse that was not him. The death of the special response team trooper had been unfortunate; the man should not have been standing at the door when he remotely activated the AR15 rifle.

  C’est la guerre.

  He and Alex had been married for almost nine years when he was arrested. He knew that what he’d put her through was unfair. He told himself that she was tough and obviously knew how to handle herself. Now he was trying to understand what she was up to.

  He lit another cigarette and on his laptop looked at the remote recorded feed from his old house in Cleveland. There was movement. He had hardwired the three matchbox-sized Bluetooth cameras into the power of the smoke alarms a year before his arrest, as an added level of security. If someone busted into his house, he wanted to know who to hunt down. Now, two years later, they still sent their data to a compact server he’d mounted behind the fuse box in the garage. It still transmitted the data through the phone lines. And it still provided him with a window on what his ex-wife was up to. Being a voyeur had its advantages. He wished he’d put one in the bedroom, where he might be able to watch one of the hottest women he’d ever known. Unfortunately for him, the closest camera he could hide was in the smoke alarm in the hallway. The other two were in the garage and the kitchen.

  A few days after his escape, he had watched Alex return to the house, back from her Venice trip. Once he reached Lake Simcoe, he reviewed the video feed again: she had been at the house for several days, then vanished for almost a week before returning.

  Where have you been, baby? Back and forth, here and there. You have been a busy, busy girl.

  Cierzinski fought his desire to email her to find out what was going on in her life. A life that, he had to admit, he’d royally fucked over. And the Cleveland newspaper, the Plain Dealer, hadn’t written kindly about her either.

  I’d have set them straight if they’d asked me.

  He was sorry for what he’d done to her, about her probably losing her job and all, but he had to stick to his plan.

  Through the video feed now, he watched Alex cross the kitchen and put a stack of mail on the counter. A minute later, she set two grocery bags on the opposite counter. For the next few minutes, she separated the letters, junk catalogs, advertisements, and general crap into separate piles. She had sorted the mail in the same spot for more than five years; that’s why he’d set the camera to the angle it was. Its high-definition image, even for a camera the size of a matchbox, was excellent. He could enlarge almost anything that the lens saw. Letter after letter was placed into one stack: some with a bank’s logo on the corner, bills, a handwritten letter—Who writes letters?—and the final envelope, which read “TSD, Ltd.” in the upper-left corner. He made a note on a pad of paper.

  She filled the Keurig’s reservoir with water and clicked the coffee maker on, and as she waited for the water to heat, she began to open the envelopes. She moved the TSD letter off to the side and processed the rest until only a few envelopes and magazines remained. She dropped a coffee pod into the machine. Then bringing the coffee, she took the TSD envelope and the rest of the letter stack and walked out of the frame of the camera.

  He crushed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. He opened a search window and typed in TSD, Ltd. A firearms distributor popped up, then an engineering firm and a builder. It was the fourth URL that caught his eye: Teton Security and Defense. Maybe this was it? He checked out the other sites and decided against them. They were too small or not in Alex’s range of expertise. Teton’s website, now this was different: international security, surveillance, and defense consulting. And the font of TSD’s website matched the letterhead on the envelope.

  Is my Alex spreading her wings?

  She walked back into the camera’s view and set the envelope back on the counter. He took a snapshot with the software. She walked away. He followed her down the hallway, and she disappeared into the back of the house.

  What on earth are you up to, baby?

  CHAPTER 9

  Beijing, China

  Con Ma sat uneasily in the back seat of the Mercedes as it passed along the congested streets that circled the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. An emergency ambulance’s siren could be faintly heard through the bulletproof glass. It quickly passed on the road’s shoulder. The dark, thick, polluted air formed a gray fog that hung above the ancient city. No, gray wasn’t the right description. More like the color of bile and dead frogs—gray green with a touch of burnt sand. How anyone lived here was beyond him. Even surviving day to day was questionable.

  He tapped his fingers on the leather armrest and wondered why his employer had summoned him. They never asked him to come to Beijing, and he preferred it that way. A text message was all he needed. In this city of twenty-one million, the chance of being seen, or exposed, or assassinated left him uncomfortable.

  You will meet with the directors in Beijing next Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., the text message summoning him had read. It is imperative that you not be late. There is much riding on this next operation. I will meet with you before the meeting in my office. Be fully prepared.

  Cryptic to be sure. More questions than answers—typical of Mr. Zheng and the Chairwoman. In eight years and four dozen operations, he had never questioned his orders. His accounts were well satisfied, and if he were to walk away, he would be a wealthy man. He could retreat to the home he’d made on an island in Hangzhou Bay, where, in the distance, the lights of Shanghai would provide a theatrical backdrop to his simple life. He could breathe clean air and smell the ocean for the rest of his days. And with his security devices, he could detect anyone approaching for more than two kilometers.

  Con Ma was certain, however, that if he attempted to retire, he would be hunted. The Chairwoman and the organization would try to seize the money they had paid him. His accounts were well secured in Zurich and Grand Cayman. The Chairwoman had reminded him that management was not happy with these arrangements, but they had relaxed for him the requirement that the money be kept in China. He knew too much, and to force him to do something he did not want to do was to invite serious complications.

  Looking back, other than the wound to his
leg, he felt Saigon had gone well. Better than he had hoped, in fact. It was not his place to know what the data was that he sent via the transmitter. As far as he knew, it performed as expected. He remembered the unit growing warm as he’d placed it in the urn. The two dead men were collateral damage. The price you pay when you’re hired guns working for a corrupt Western business. The Chairwoman said that they didn’t play by the rules established and agreed to. Con Ma did not care for rules, whosever they were.

  The Mercedes stopped at a heavily secured gate at the base of a high-rise office tower that overlooked the Forbidden City and the ornamental lakes that skirted the ancient city’s western boundary and the Palace Museum. The iron gate slid open, and the Mercedes proceeded down a ramp into the underground garage. At the designated parking stall, the driver stopped, left the car, and opened the back seat’s door. Con Ma thanked the driver and proceeded to the glass-enclosed lobby with its three elevator doors.

  At the lobby door, he placed his right hand on a glass panel and lowered his head toward a device that looked like a glass eye in a black circular socket. It briefly flashed, and a few seconds later the door clicked and opened without a touch. Con Ma made his way inside the elevator and pressed its one button. After a few moments, he felt his ears pop from the change in air pressure. He closed his eyes, controlled his breathing, and relaxed. His heart slowed, and calm returned—a warrior’s preparation.

  The elevator door opened upon two men in business suits. They both bowed and turned to their left, and Con Ma followed. If it weren’t for the smog, the windows would have offered magnificent views for kilometers in every direction.

  Reaching an elegant lobby filled with displays of ancient armor, weapons, and antique furniture, his chaperones stopped, stood silently, and waited. He stood behind them. His educated eyes caught at least three treasures from early Chinese dynasties. As a Vietnamese, he saw these items as the remnants of a failed culture that had tried, more than once, to dominate his home country. But he wasn’t angry—the Chinese paid well.