by Neovictorian
~
Jack passes me the satellite map. “Doctor Zaludi lives at the end of the street, here. As you can see, there are about 200 yards of woods to the north and west, and no other house for a half mile to the east. The woods aren’t real thick, light undergrowth, but they’re pitch black at 2100. I’ll drop you here.” His pen taps a road northeast of the property.
“There’s a wide spot there, a turnout. No street lights and no houses for people to see the car stop for a few seconds. They’re building condos across the road. I drove the route last night, and didn’t see another car. If there’s someone even in distant sight behind us, we’ve got plenty of slack time to just come around and do it again.”
He looks up from the map with a faint smile. “The son of a bitch is getting the CAIR “Champion of Civil Rights” award night after next. I expect he’ll be rolling out by 1800, dinner is listed on the program at 1930 followed by basking in the admiration of the crowd, which is scheduled to include the Mayor of DC and the Congressional Delegate. I figure the thing will start breaking up around 2200, after the obligatory rounds of ass kissing and networking. Then? He might head home, might go to a bar, might make a booty call at some Georgetown coeds’ apartment.”
The smile gets a little broader. “Mrs. Zaludi moved out a year ago. Malik has a thirst for young, thick white girls, and apparently there’s plenty of ‘em, on and off campus, willing to prove their progressive bona fides by fucking him. It can’t be his looks, that’s for sure.”
Jack’s laptop is open to the Georgetown website, Zaludi’s personal page. One of the photos shows him shaking a Senator’s hand. One of the lesbian twins from Minnesota. He’s medium height, balding, hair long in the back, chunky, rumpled suit. He has a very good mustache, though.
“So—you go in across the wooded area, approach the back of the house. Case around there and the concealed side here, where’s there no visual coverage by the neighbors, to make sure there’s no one else home, but there shouldn’t be. There’s a French door there, opens up on to the back deck. I’ve got a mini pry bar that’ll have it cracked, quietly, in five seconds.”
He looks up and at me. “He’s got a security system hooked into a call center. It’s all cellular data based. He can check on his phone, turn it on and off and see any door entries and motion sensor detections remotely. We have to get you in not only without setting off the alarm, but without leaving a record.
“So, here’s the one and only piece of high tech we’ll be using on this op,” he says. He hands me a rubber-cased box, no bigger than a cell phone. “My ex-boss at OSI let me ‘borrow’ it. She’s the only person in the world, besides you and me, who has even a partial picture what’s going on with this thing of ours. So she’s the only link if we’re ever suspected of anything.
“This device spoofs the alarm system—all we needed was the IP address. Turn it on and it takes over for the home system. It uses the company override code. The government has every alarm override in the country. Every single one.” He raises his eyebrows.
“Then you crack the door—no record of entry. Then you wait.”
He looks back down at the satview print.
“After I drop you, I circle back around to here—he points to the forested side of a secondary road. “I’ll be able to see Zaludi’s car approach, see if he’s got a girl, or anyone else, with him. If yes, then two clicks in your earpiece.” He makes a sound with his tongue—click click, “And you’re out. You’ll have plenty of time, to exit, at least three minutes. You just slip out the back door and across the wooded area and I pick you up. I’ll be able to circle back by the time you get to the road. And when we get back here we’ll get started modifying a car and go the sniper route. The door will look like a failed burglary. Given his clandestine activities, I really doubt he’ll call the police.”
He looks at me levelly, calmly. “If he’s alone, you’ll have those minutes to get ready. And you’d better be ready, because things don’t always go according to plan…”
52. Today, Aboard N916F, Enroute to Juneau, Alaska May 27, 4:54 pm
We’re belted in now, always the smart thing to do when the aircraft is descending, even when there are no flight attendants to tell you so. Lisa has her laptop on the table, fingers tapping at the keyboard—updating Anders on our conversations? She’s intent on the screen, not paying attention to me, and I watch the micromovements in her bare biceps as she types, small vibrations that you wouldn’t see unless you were really looking. Unless you were Noticing.
I pick up the copy of Heights from the table; I haven’t read in it for years, but before that I’d read it five times through, slowly, paying attention to the tiniest details, and have almost word perfect memory of parts of it, but I want to see it, see the words on the page and remind myself, reinforce that pattern in my brain:
Page 211
Chapter 17
The Parable of the Hidden Variable
The Old One was a feature of the neighborhood, had been for years. He walked the six blocks to the big Chinese market every morning, returning with a brown paper bag of fresh foods, day after day, leaving at the same time, returning at the same time.
The Old One appeared to be 80 or more, bronze skin wrinkled and spotted but somehow still plump, his fringe of short-cropped hair and goatee snowy white. But no one knew exactly how old he was, and he moved smoothly, even gracefully, without the hint of a stoop or limp, despite the fact that he always used a walking stick almost as tall as he was, a dark knobbly staff made of an unknown wood. The people along his route had seen him with the stick for so long that they had come to assume he limped, such was the power of suggestion and laziness.
In the last year or two the neighborhood had been changing, so little each day that one didn’t notice any change at all, and yet there was more trash on the sidewalks now than before, and indecipherable symbols and stylized words had begun to appear, painted on the walls of the buildings. At first these had been painted over, but after a while the owners of the buildings, who in any case lived in a different part of the city, had given up. A few of the streetlights had gone out, and the bulbs had not been replaced, or perhaps deliberately broken again, and now late at night and into the hour of dawn dark-clad men would meet in the dim, conversing quietly and exchanging things so quickly that no one could clearly see.
A few of the working people with children had moved out, but most of the people of the neighborhood were older and had lived there a long time, and so they stayed.
One morning, with the sun just starting to sift through the slots between the skyscrapers uptown, the Old One set out on his daily walk to the market. He had just rounded the first corner, into a shadowy part of the sidewalk, when a large man came out of a doorway and started walking toward him. As the Old One approached, the large man stopped, blocking the sidewalk, his legs spread, making himself larger.
The Old One might have tried to go around, leave the sidewalk and walk into the street to avoid the large man. But he did not, instead stopped a little way in front of the man, a double arm’s reach, and looked at him, waiting. The large man waited too, as if he expected the Old One to speak first, to ask what was going on, to ask what was required, but when he did not, the large man became impatient, and spoke first.
“Doan come up dis block again, muthafucker. This my turf now and I doan wan my bidness bein interrupted,” he said slowly. “An wall you here, gimme what you got and get yo ass back home.”
The Old One raised his eyes until he seemed to be looking over the large man’s head, somewhere in the sky, as if to catch a ray of the rising sun with his sight. The he lowered them again, looking at the man’s face.
“I have no desire to interrupt your business,” he said slowly, softly, with a faint unknown accent, so that the big man leaned forward to catch the words. “We all must do what we must do. Perhaps you and I can agree: I’ll not bother you, and you will let me pass. We’ll not be friends, but not enemies either. I do believe it would be bes
t.”
The large man seemed puzzled for a moment, then looked sourly at the Old One, and shook his head, No.
His right hand drew back the flap of his unbuttoned jacket, until the butt of a pistol appeared, at his waistband. “Fuck dat shit,” he said. “Gimme all you got and maybe I letch you live.”
It seemed strange to the large man that this little speech had no effect on the small, skinny old man before him—such utterances had almost always worked before, with far tougher customers, and the times that they had not he had responded savagely, instantly, with fists and feet and once with the gun at his waist, but he hesitated this time, because the man was small and old, but in a second he decided he wouldn’t need the gun, a single punch should suffice to disable the Old One and teach the rest of the neighborhood the proper lesson.
He raised his fists, elbows out to make himself even larger and more dangerous looking, and leaned forward into his first step toward the Old One, but still the little old man was not cringing or turning to run away, and some part of the large man’s brain tried to warn him, then there was a blur of something, the Old One was dropping into a crouch, incredibly quickly, and somehow his walking stick was parallel with the ground and the large man’s left foot was perhaps three inches clear of the sidewalk when the backhand strike of the stick smashed into the side of his right knee, the crack of the impact and the crack of bone indistinguishable, and the large man’s leg began to collapse, but before he had fallen even halfway instinct caused his right hand to reach for his pistol, but as the hand descended those few inches the Old One was coming out of his crouch, and it was as if the energy of the rebound of the strike to the knee had been transferred to a two-hand backhand strike to the side of the head, the large man saw nothing but a shadow as the last four inches of the stick hit his ear and jaw, the sound in his head like the Earth cracking open, like the end of the World, and then there was no sound but a strange high whine.
And before the large man’s body had hit the ground the Old One had pivoted, lightly, his right foot coming forward, a subtle dance move, and now the other end of the staff, only the last foot exposed above the hands, drove so hard into the man’s solar plexus that his fall was arrested and he was driven straight back, twisting, his feet both lifting well off the sidewalk, turning in the air and landing face down, his heart so shocked and bruised that it would never beat again, and so he did not hear the Old One say, softly, “I am sorry.”
The Old One took three long, slow breaths, his eyes again raised to the sky, and then he stepped carefully around the body of the man and continued on toward the market.
It took over thirty minutes for someone to call the police, and when they did arrive, no one seemed to have seen anything, anyway.
53. Tomorrow, Juneau, Alaska May 28, 9:02 am
Do nothing. Do nothing and assess.
The best advice I ever heard about what to do at the scene of an accident was profound: Do nothing for one breath. Do nothing, then assess, then take charge.
People who are untrained or unfamiliar with death, injuries and disasters want to do something, right now. They come around a corner in the city and find a guy lying face down and they turn him over—and kill him, he had a fractured skull. Or they tunnel on him and don’t notice the guy who just bashed his head in with a steel pipe—and they become next victim.
Even if someone isn’t breathing, three seconds isn’t going to make a difference in his survival, so take a breath yourself, look around, and do the right thing instead of the instinctive thing.
This comes back to me at an opportune time, now, laying somewhere somewhen on cold rocks in the dark. Don’t do anything yet. I take a deep breath and let it out and a wave of claustrophobia tries to get started in my gut, the walls are closing in they’re going to crush me oh Jesus. And I breathe in and just blow it out, the feeling the tension the nerve cells firing too fast for what’s real, I blow it all out with an exhale and it’s a dark blue color in my mind, a blue mist going out, and I breathe in and the air is yellow, golden, I can feel the gold light slowly filtering down to my toes, and the feeling of being closed in, of being crushed, drains away again.
In fact, what I need to find is, how big is this place? I need to find the walls. I spread my arms out, palms down, and my fingertips don’t touch anything, but under my palms the rock is rough and solid, not stones or pebbles but a hard, uneven floor. I slowly raise my arms upward, reaching. Nothing. Keeping my arms raised I slowly sit up. My fingers touch nothing. Well, at least if I move slowly I won’t rip my scalp open or knock myself out.
Something is binding in my left front pocket, poking the sensitive place where leg meets torso. My phone. I gather my feet under me and keeping my arms raised slowly stand up. Nothing.
There’s probably no cell service in this place whatever it is, but who knows? Then it comes to me, of course, the phone has a light. I slide it out of my pocket, press the button. For an instant I wonder what I’m going to do if nothing happens, but it lights up. Oh hell yes. It seems so bright it almost hurts, and I turn it away until it’s not shining directly in my eyes. The battery’s at 23 percent. Could be better, but it should last quite a while if I just use the screen light. I turn it, raise it and point it ahead. Five or six feet away I can make out a rough rock wall. Solid. I turn left, slowly, scanning. The wall recedes a bit to my left, maybe ten feet away, still solid, I keep turning, I have to shift my feet, it begins to angle back toward me, solid, solid rock, and then when I’ve turned a full 180 there’s a space, a void, a black hole that’s shaped like a doorway.
54. 3 years ago, Chevy Chase, Maryland May 18, 9:14 pm
The chisel end of the bar works its way into the wood just above the door handle. There’s no deadbolt, not that it would matter so much. Push bend push bend, with a mild scraping noise the strike plate begins to ride toward me, push bend and the wood cracks and splinters on the jam, I move the bar below the lock and one good pry and the door is free.
I know the floor plan, I’ve visualized every room, and the first thing is to head toward the kitchen and the garage entry door, where the alarm panel is mounted to the wall—the little magic black box showed a green light indicating the spoof was working and the system was off, but I need to see the green light on the panel. The curtains are open on both the big living room windows, no neighbors there, and enough moonlight is coming through that I can confidently stride the fifteen feet across the living room and around the corner into the kitchen, where it’s darker, but that makes the green glowing button on the wall that much easier to spot. It’s good to go.
I keep the bar in my hand, a comforting cold weight, I’ve got at least an hour, maybe much more to kill, and I switch on the dim little lamp on the elastic band around my head and do what I thought about in the planning stages—I investigate the man who tried to have me killed, who tried to kill me as if with his own hand, though of course he didn’t have the skill and the guts to do it himself.
I head out of the kitchen, turn left down the hallway to the bedrooms, there are three, at the end is the master suite and I go there first. The bathroom is everything the 21st century upper-upper middle class demands: eight-foot wide glass-enclosed shower, jetted “soaking tub,” double sinks set in marble counter tops. I head straight to the medicine cabinet. That’s where the truth lies.
As a proud Mooslim of course Professor Zaludi does not drink alcohol—at least not where anyone who knows who he is can see him. Jihadis, I’ve heard, get special dispensations to drink and gamble and go to strip clubs before they blow themselves up, but of course Zaludi wouldn’t do anything so crass, he’s got a reputation and a sweet, sweet salary and pension plan. Suicide bombings and truck attacks on Christmas shoppers are for lower class schmucks. Zaludi’s share in it is to explain and historically justify and eventually, funnel money and instructions to DC street thugs to snuff out a life.
I suddenly notice that my shoulder is throbbing, worse than it has for days. I realize i
t might have been smart to take some ibuprofen or something. Well, fuck that, let the pain keep me sharp and remind me every minute of what I’m doing here. The important thing is that my left arm is strong enough to do the work.
I let my rubber gloved right hand fall to my belt and caress the handle of the Bowie. Then I reach up with my left and open the medicine cabinet.
There are four dark amber prescription bottles lined up neatly along the top shelf. I take them down one at a time and bend my head forward so the light falls on the labels: Paxil, Vicodin, Wellbutrin and Viagra. Jesus, I wonder what the interactions are? I put the bottles back exactly as they were.
I head out of the bathroom and look around the master bedroom. There’s a dark wood dresser with a mirror above it and as I swing the light around it reflects back at me, faint and yellow with a pale ghost of my face underneath it, bobbing adrift in space because my black nylon turtleneck is invisible. I blink and for an instant I see Zaludi’s face looking at me, with a quizzical expression: What are you doing here? And a jolt runs down my throat and chest, but then it’s gone and it’s only me again, just a trick of light. I remember now, it was the Rosicrucians who taught me that trick, the changing face in the mirror. I blink again, Christ, I’d better get my mind back on the business at hand.
I scan with the light, see something, walk around the bed to the opposite wall. There’s a small photograph hung there, it looks like a much younger Zaludi, the mustache is the same, but there’s a lot more hair on his head, he’s smiling.
On his lap is a little boy, two or three years old, smiling too. A little boy who’s never known any real pain or disappointment or tragedy, not yet. Zaludi doesn’t have children, not in any of the material I read, his wife immigrated from Paki eight years ago, they never had children, is this his son? No probably a nephew, probably at least 15, 16 years old by now judging from Zaludi’s look in the photo. Yes, he’s a human being. A picture builds in my mind, one piece at a time, the bedroom and the dim lights and the woman lying on the bed, moaning and keening, the midwife and the other female relatives gathered round, then there’s the sound of a baby’s cry, a cacophony of a language I don’t understand but it’s obvious what they’re saying, it’s a boy, a beautiful boy and Mother is crying with joy, cheeks glisten, there’s so much hope in the room. It’s a miracle, it’s a life. May he bring honor upon his family.