THE SWISS AUTHORITIES, STUNNED from their somnambulism by the bio-attack, had begun focusing their abundant resources toward a covert search for Kalil. But while the taxi driver had provided the details that pointed to Kalil, the one detail he could not give was a surname.
“That should not pose too great a problem,” the director of the Swiss Aliens Police reported to his FBI counterpart. “There cannot be that many student applications from Ethiopia, particularly with the given name Kalil.” Under normal circumstances his assessment of the challenge would have been dead-on. But a teenaged hacker in Moscow chose that moment at random to disable Switzerland’s computer databases, forcing the director to confess that his small unit would have to conduct a hand search of the visas. “Regrettably, that will take time.”
One hour later a personal call from the Under Secretary of State to her opposite number in Switzerland resulted in a shift of personnel, and a torrent of help flooded the Aliens Police headquarters. The Swiss also began searching innumerable bank records, since student visa applicants must establish accounts to provide for their financial needs. Even the university computers had been affected. The Swiss were still carrying out the hand search when someone observed that Kalil might have claimed citizenship from Eritrea or Djibouti. Or Somalia. Or Saudi Arabia. They began their search all over.
Heath Baker had caught up with Tucker’s split earlier that morning and they met at Rindermarkt in the heart of Zurich Center. The climbing and descending cobblestone walkways were almost empty of people on this chilly afternoon, and those who had ventured out wore dark heavy clothing and kept their heads down. Even the food vendors were lackluster, with only a scattering of bratwurst, sausage and sauerkraut stalls open, their odors permeating a still air. The team ducked into a café of gray fieldstone nestled within the lee of a three-story building. The interior was dark and the ceiling was supported by timbers the color of railroad ties.
After they ordered coffees Monica exclaimed, “Zurich’s so clean.”
Baker pointed out the window at a four-story home across the narrow pedestrian thoroughfare. “Check the date on the front. 1642. And still in use. Imagine.”
Tucker looked over his shoulder. “Almost as old as you.” The waiter set their coffees out and Tucker took a sip. “You’ve all seen our friend’s tape, and the Swiss computers are still belly-up, so Justice is sending a covert team to supplement ours.”
Sawyer groaned. “We can’t have a bunch of teams floating around. Kalil might pick up the scent.”
“Agreed. It’s a tough call but I made it. All we know is that he’s a waiter. We don’t know where and we don’t have a lot of time, so we’re gonna pair up.”
They finished their coffees. Tucker and Monica left for the Seller Graben area. They would work their way west as they checked each restaurant.
Baker and Sawyer headed for the terminal and began working their way east, glancing at waiters inside every fine-dining establishment they came across. As they left the fifth one Sawyer said in his slight Bahamian accent, “I’ve noticed a lot of gay bars.”
Baker nodded. “Good call. They often feature great dancing, and Kalil likes to impress his girlfriends. We don’t want to miss anything. Better check them, too.” He sniffed at the sharpness of the chill air. “I can’t wait to see Levi’s progress report.”
11
It was dark and getting cold when Levi throttled back and leaned into the turn. Jackson’s battered pickup left the paved road ahead of him and lumbered down a straight dirt trail, its headlights bouncing crazily with every bump. Levi knew the route from the recon photos and hung back to avoid Jackson’s dust as he checked his odometer. At the one mile point he noted a large boulder to the right where Dentz had planted the SAT phone. After another mile they topped a small rise and the compound loomed ahead.
A huge floodlit U.S. flag flanked by Nazi and Confederate flags, all on gleaming fifty-foot tall aluminum poles, fluttered next to a massive steel gate. Jackson stopped and two armed sentries approached. The tattooed men bore Swastikas on their foreheads and had rings and studs in their lips and noses. After a brief conversation a sentry turned to the gatehouse and nodded. The gate opened and they drove into a forty acre compound enclosed at precise angles by a high chain-link fence topped by razor wire. There were a dozen buildings of various dimensions along the fence, and a large two-story building at the far end. That would be the women’s dorm. All else was sand and scrub.
Jackson parked in front of a small gray cinder block building and led the way into a sparse office. The floors were unfinished wood and smelled of creosote. A metal file cabinet stood against the far corner. There were maps of the local area on one wall, a world map on another and a well-ordered bulletin board on a third. A large mahogany desk sat precisely in the middle of the room and a dour man was seated behind it. He was shorter than Levi, with cold rattlesnake beads for eyes. He wore a meticulously pressed khaki shirt and similar pants but lacked a facial expression of any kind. “This is Eric Briggs,” Jackson announced.
Levi’s hair was a mass of tangles after the motorcycle ride and he held his head at a slight angle as he extended his hand to the glaring man.
Brent Kruger ignored it. “What the hell do you want?”
Kruger would want team players, not lone wolves. Levi would now establish himself as a sociopathic personality who nonetheless socialized with others. He would also pepper his replies with details that lent credibility to a biography that had been lived as opposed to invented. Unzipping his black leather jacket, he began. “Heard this was the place to see during my sight-seein’ trip through the Wild West.”
“A smart ass,” Kruger said. “Who told you this?”
“Dunno. Here an’ there.”
“You had better knock off the crap and tell me.”
“I heard some talk at a couple a bars around Hemet.” Hemet, California, was a desert town populated by off-the-grid types.
“You’re a long way from Hemet.” He regarded Levi shrewdly. “Why here?”
“I’m looking for a place to call home.”
Kruger scowled. “Another drifter.” He sniffed the air and narrowed his eyes. “You smell of cannabis. Are you a stoner as well?”
“I won’t lie. I like my ganj—an’ hash when I got the cash.”
“How often do you smoke?”
“Not every day.”
“Not. Every. Day. How nice.”
“Couple a times a week.”
“Cocaine?”
“Of course.”
“Clarify.”
“You go to parties, you do blow. Did some lines ’bout a month ago.”
“Keep going.”
“Drop acid now an’ then. Use ‘X’ sometimes.” He paused. “Ecstasy, ya know?”
“Yes.”
“Never did meth or crack. Done my share a junk, though.”
“Heroin, huh? Describe your ‘share.’ Begin with how you got started.”
“There was this judge’s daughter. We was in ninth grade. One day she asked me to smoke some with her. It got to be a reg’lar thing. She’d come to the trailer and...”
“Why did she come to your...trailer?”
“‘Cause she liked to slum. Plus my ma let me bang my babes there...so she’d know where I was at least? Anyway, we’d get it on, get high—get it on again. Well, we did till I knocked her up.” He shrugged. “Heard she adopted it out. But yeah, she turned me onto it. Then later me an’ some friends started slammin’.”
Kruger arched his eyebrows. “You injected?”
Levi shuffled his feet. A floorboard creaked. “Billy’s folks was never home, see? So we’d go there to smoke junk. But we started ’sperimentin’. Ended up slammin’.”
“You realize the risks associated with such reckless behavior?”
Levi rolled his eyes. “We used clean needles an’ never shared. I mean, we was kids but we wasn’t stupid. An’ I ain’t never had no HIV or VD.”
“How
many times a day do you mainline?”
“Two, maybe three times. But that’s a month. Or it was; I’m off junk now.”
“Really? How long? A day? A week?”
“Stopped usin’ reg’lar the day I turned seventeen.” He squinted. “Done some a few times since, but it’s been awhile—maybe a year. An’ no, I ain’t doin’ no Oxy.”
“Hmm. What motivated you to...quell your usage? The law?”
“Nah. Junk’s okay an’ I won’t say I don’t still got a taste for it. But it ain’t that good.” He made a sound. “Plus I got tired a carrying tracks all the time.”
“Tracks?”
“Track marks. The stuff we used? Low grade skag. Had to cut it with lemon juice. You jam that kinda junk up a vein, you get tracks. Babes would see my smack tracks an’ back the hell off.” He cocked a hip. “Well, at first. But I’d still get ’em into bed.”
“Oh? Tell me more.” Kruger shifted in his chair and waited expectantly.
“What’s to say? Lotta babes like havin’ sex with bad boys.” He sniffed, making his nostrils flare. “’Specially them college babes. They was the best. Nice an’ juicy. Mmm…Yeah, did a bunch a threesomes with ’em. Put a kid in this one babe.” He studied Kruger. Hell, this guy acts like he’s getting off on all this talk of girls and dope. What’s with him?
Kruger stroked his chin. “I value your candor. You’ve owned up to your drug use and you didn’t become addicted. Addicts are weak and I do not tolerate weakness.”
Jackson jerked a thumb at Levi. “He’s not weak. You should’ve seen him kick ass today. Some black abba-dabba tried storming the Sunset. Eric thumped him good.”
Kruger stared at Jackson, his eyes obsidian black. “Big deal.”
“But the son of a bitch pulled a gun and started shooting. And Eric kept coming.” Jackson turned to Levi. “Show him your shoe.” Then he said to Kruger, “The bullet went right through his shoe but he still went after him.”
Kruger ran a forefinger along his jawbone and regarded Levi with new interest. “Kept coming, huh? Okay, what else brings you here?”
Levi affected the relaxed attitude of a man who doesn’t know the danger he faces and said amiably, “I need a place to work on my bike?” He licked his wind-chapped lips.
“I told you before. Get rid of the wise-ass attitude or I’ll make you wish you had.”
“I’m here ’cause white men can’t get decent jobs no more. This is a white man’s country. We got enough mongrels, an’ now we’re getting all them Asians.”
Kruger’s upper lip curled. “You mean coons, spics and chinks, don’t you?”
Levi stared back through half-lidded eyes. “I got no issue with them personally. But they don’t belong here, an’ they shouldn’t be mixin’ their blood with ours.”
“Hmm. Tell me, how many children have you fathered?”
“Dunno exactly. Six for sure but I’m thinking eleven. Probably more. Whatever.”
“How characteristic of your kind, to breed so prodigiously.”
Furrows erupted across Levi’s forehead. “What’s that mean?”
“Never mind.”
“No, I get it. You’re wonderin’ if the junk I did messed up my chrome zones. But you don’t gotta worry.” He showed a touch of pride. “The kids I did see was all healthy. An’ other babes I juicedup? The ones I know ended up with one a my kids? I never heard a any problems with them kids, either.”
Kruger stared straight ahead, then picked up the phone and dialed an extension. Seconds later he said, “Mr. Potts. Please find Doc Stewart and join me here. Have Gail report as well. Yes, thank you.” He put down the phone. “We’ll wait.”
The door opened five minutes later and a tall thin man in his late forties and dressed like Kruger walked inside. He had a combover, a pinched face, pockmarked cheeks and tobacco-stained fingers. A second man followed; mid-sixties, blue sport jacket, green polyester trousers. His face was a blank slate and he avoided Kruger’s eye.
Kruger gestured at the tall, balding one. “This is Mr. Potts, our chief of security.” He looked at the older man. “Dr. Stewart, obstetrics and gynecology.”
Levi nodded in their direction. There was nothing in the Bureau’s report on this Potts character. Nothing on the doctor either. This wasn’t good.
“Eric,” Kruger began as if he had bitten into a lemon, “wants to join us.” He told both men all that he had learned about Eric Briggs, then turned to Levi. “Mr. Potts will conduct a thorough background check.” He dropped his voice. “He’ll check everything. High school yearbook photos, social security; where your dog Fido is buried. Nothing is left to chance. If you choose to leave then do so now. If you stay and he discovers you’re not who you claim to be—or worse, that you’re a government agent—you will die a most horrible death.”
He opened a desk drawer and produced a knife with a long wicked blade. “This is a flensing knife. If you’re a cop, we will take you to the Mexican border and skin you alive. Then we’ll stake you out, slather you with honey and cover you with fire ants. Rest assured, you will still be conscious while they feast. We will then douse your legs with raw kerosene and set them ablaze. The rest of you will remain alive. For a while. If authorities come asking, we’ll explain that you were sent with our men to safeguard our borders from illegal aliens. This will not strike them as odd. Vigilante groups are often in the news, are they not? How unfortunate for us that a group of Mexican drug-runners came across you and—well, how sad indeed.” He reached back into the drawer and pulled out a dozen eight-by-eleven glossy photos. Turning them over one by one he watched Levi’s face. “Here’s a gentleman that I skinned alive.”
“Cop?”
“No. We caught him looking at another man in a most unhealthy way.” He sniffed. “We weren’t going to wait until he revealed his tendencies any further.”
Levi saw photos of a fortyish man with a hefty beer gut. The first photo showed him bound to a fence post, eyes wide, lips drawn back and mouth open in what could only be a primal scream. Each successive photo revealed ever-larger patches of raw tissue and muscle as his skin was peeled away. Kruger appeared in four of the photos, slicing away with knife in hand. The last ones showed the guy’s lower torso aflame while his denuded biceps strained against the ropes that bound him to the post. Levi recalled the DEA agent’s report alleging that Kruger had sliced a man and burned him alive. Oh my God. But he showed no emotion as he stared at Kruger. “I got nothin’ to hide.”
Potts spoke for the first time in a soft, even feminine voice. “Then you shall have nothing to fear.”
Kruger gave Levi another once-over. “Reddish brown hair. Blue eyes. Fair skin. Fine. You’re white.” He asked tauntingly, “But how do we know you’re not a Jew?”
Levi let out a coarse laugh. “Guess I could drop my britches an’ prove it.”
“Is that so? Then do it.” Kruger watched Levi undo his pants. After they fell to his ankles, Kruger frowned and shook his head. “Christ, no underwear.”
“Yeah. I go commando. Less stuff to wash. Why, that a problem?”
“Jesus.” Kruger looked at Doc Stewart. “Proceed.”
Stewart retrieved a latex exam glove from a jacket pocket and pulled it on, giving the cuff a snap against his wrist. Going to Levi, he conducted a brief examination. When he was done he pulled off the glove, flung it into a plastic-lined wastebasket and intoned in a clinical voice, “Adult male; uncircumcised; foreskin presents with ridged band, intact frenulum and mucosal inner lining. There’s no sign of grafting or suturing. It’s real.”
“So,” Kruger began as Levi hoisted his pants, “you’re clearly from the lower social strata, but then you also possess an Aryan feature. More to the point you’re not another Zionist agent with a fake foreskin. See? We are very thorough.”
Levi nodded. And very nutso if you’re this paranoid.
Kruger traded glances with Potts. “There’s still time. Walk through the door.” When Levi shook his h
ead doggedly Kruger said, “Okay. You’re white and you’re not Jewish. How do we know you’re not homosexual?”
Levi opened his mouth but Jackson blurted, “He’s not. He’s been trying to move in on Brenda—that new bartender I told you about? With the bodacious tits?”
Kruger turned on Jackson with a finger pointed like a pistol. “Open your mouth again and I’ll personally cut out your tongue.” Jackson gulped and slinked away while Kruger snapped at Potts, “Where’s Gail?” Before Potts could reply there was a tentative knock at the door. Kruger called out, “Enter.”
The door opened and a young girl with blue eyes, golden hair and a simple blouse and jeans walked inside. Kruger told Levi, “As you can clearly see, Gail is pre-pubescent. She’s going to have intercourse with you, while we take photos.” He turned to the child. “Gail? You know what to do.”
Levi felt a chill run through him as she approached. It was standard gang ritual to make prospective members have sex with one or more of the gang’s women and he’d prepared himself for that. He could separate the physical chore from his emotions. But some gangs now used young girls to flush out covert agents. No agent would consent to doing it and the gang would reject him—or worse. But if an overzealous agent ever did, the photos would ruin his credibility in court. Kruger was evidently ruthless enough to use a child to protect his own interests and Levi saw but one way out, although it could backfire if they called his bluff. But his instincts told him that Kruger was simply taking his measure, so he folded his arms across his chest. “I ain’t screwin’ no kid. But get me a woman and I’ll rock her world for her right here, right now.”
Kruger held a hand up and Gail stopped in her tracks. “Good response. You don’t scare easily and you have a value system...of sorts.” He opened his arms wide and Gail went to him at once and kissed his cheek. He gave her an affectionate hug and sent her back to the dorm, and after she left he glanced at Levi. “Gail was not going to have sex with you. I love children and you’ve demonstrated similar feelings. That is to your credit. Had you not protested, I would’ve thrown you out.”
Cobra Clearance Page 12