“I don’t know why I give a shit anymore,” he said. “This country is finished. Washed up. Weak in the knees and damp in the panties. Genetically diluted by millions of illegal aliens, all squalling for their ‘rights,’ for God’s sake. Distracted by video games, talk shows, and prancing heiresses’ crotch shots. Half of the population looks like it just graduated from a Chicago feedlot. America deserves what’s coming.”
“There are men and women fighting overseas right now who’d argue with you,” I said.
“Those are the legions on the frontiers of the empire,” he said, warming to what had to be his favorite subject. “Most of them choose to stay out there among the barbarians because they’re disgusted by what’s going on back at the ripening core. A do-nothing, tax-and-spend government, sweaty, sticky-fingered politicians, usurping judges, thoroughly corrupt political parties, elected pedophiles prowling the United States Capitol—shee-it! The new pope got it right: Islam is a religion of blood and iron, but most Americans are happily focused on money, food, sex, and the latest Xbox video game.”
Yee-haw, I thought. Ari had warned me, too. I wanted to argue with him, but I recognized a zealot when I saw one. Besides, I thought he had a point: For a country at war, life in America sure looked like business as usual. I let him babble on, nodding and going along, because I still didn’t know why we were meeting. Finally he began to run down.
“You really a herpetologist?” I asked, trying to steer us out of all the political foaming at the mouth.
“Not in the practicing sense,” he replied. “I studied snakes because I admire them. Elemental creatures with an unusually perfect predation design.”
“Keep them as pets?”
He laughed. “No. Snakes can’t really be pets. They’re reptiles. Primitive animals. A pet implies an emotional quotient, like your shepherd there. Snakes hunt, eat, digest, doze off, sometimes for weeks, and then they hunt again. Kind of like the falcons in days of yore—they were never hunting for their so-called falconer. They were hunting because they were starving. That’s how you train a falcon to hunt, by the way. You capture it, and then you starve it. When it’s just about ready to fall off its perch, you take it hunting.”
“I’ve been reading about people turning pythons loose in the Everglades,” I said. “That’s kind of a scary thought.”
“That will be interesting, over time,” he said. “Depending on the species, they never stop growing.”
“A threat to a human?”
“Not in the sense that a python can eat a fully grown human. But a big one can surely kill you if you happen to encounter him in or near the water. They prey on monkeys a lot. Catch one drinking from a pond or a stream, grab its face and pull its nose underwater. Then they wait.”
“How big is big?”
“A Burmese can be six to seven meters,” he said. “A hundred fifty kilos, maybe more. They have prehensile tails—always attached to something. Their teeth are an inch long and they slant backwards, so if they achieve a solid bite, you’re not going anywhere. With both ends secured, they throw coils around you. That much weight, you can’t stand up. Once down, they just lie there. When you inhale, they do nothing. Every time you exhale, though, they squeeze. Pretty soon you can’t inhale. Like one of those goddamned seat belts in the backseat—the ones made for baby seats? Every time you lean back, it tightens and locks? Just like that.”
“Lovely thought.”
“Yeah, well, a primitive being can be scary. You know, it’s an artifact from the Pleistocene. And then it moves. You’re wondering why I called you.”
“Yup,” I said, glad to get off the subject of snakes. I don’t much care for snakes.
“Ms. Luscious behind me turned in the badges and TLDs for your two sidekicks, which tells me two things: They’re smarter than you are, and they’ve probably gone back to West Bumfuck, North Carolina.”
“That’s Triboro to the inhabitants,” I said.
“But you’re still here.”
“So I am.”
“Which means Quartermain’s got you doing some shit.”
I didn’t respond. He seemed to have all the answers so far. He leaned back in his chair. Samantha was looking bored, but I noticed she’d changed chairs, which put her one foot closer to us, either for some protection against all the barroom cowboys or to hear better over the jukebox. Trask was obviously waiting for me to say something.
“He does,” I said. “But I have to do it solo, without any help from anyone at Helios. If it’s any comfort, I do not intend to come creeping around the perimeter at night with fence cutters and a bag of grenades.”
“So you said,” he replied. “Too bad—we do grenades.” Then he was serious again. “Okay, here it is,” he said. “You’re on my radar. I’m pretty sure you’re not a bad guy, so I’m not here to tell you how bad things could go for you or any of my usual horseshit. But know this: There may be other players in whatever game Quartermain has going. I’m guessing he wants to use you as a Red Team. Private PI as agent provocateur. If that’s the case, you would do well to have me as an ally.”
“Unless you’re the subject,” I replied, just to throw some shit of my own into the discussion.
He was startled. “The subject?” he asked.
“As in, subject of interest. The target of an investigation. The objective of some kind of play. The individual under surveillance. It’s a law enforcement term.”
He blinked at that. He’d supposedly done tours with the military police. He had to know the usage of that word, so his question had been a stall for time. I decided to press him a little.
“As to other players in the game,” I continued, “I have to assume the feds have at least one agent under, if only because Quartermain would want to cover all his bets and his ass. You know, the Roman emperor’s wistful question: Who guards the guards?”
I waited, but he just sat there, staring at me.
“Actually, though,” I continued, “that’s not my real problem.”
“What is your real problem, then?”
“I think some evil fuck killed one of my people,” I said.
“That was probably a coincidence.”
“There are no coincidences,” I said. “First rule of homicide.”
He looked away, ostensibly taking in the dance floor scene, but thinking now. He still hadn’t even so much as said hello to Samantha, a woman he knew and probably the most attractive female in the town that night. Suddenly I thought I understood—Samantha’s being there was no coincidence, either. I heard noises out there in the woods.
“There’s one more thing,” he said finally. “Billy.”
“Oh, dear. Billy.”
“Yeah, well, he was a holdover from the previous security director. Cousin of somebody’s mama, I think. Local Southport boy. Once I started bringing my people in, he sort of stood out, and not in a good way. I told you he wouldn’t be a problem, but I may have been wrong about that.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
He smiled. “I guess I expected you to say, Bring it on. I can handle that young punk, et cetera, et cetera.”
“I can handle Billy if I see him coming,” I said. “I can’t handle Billy if he’s a long-gun kinda guy.”
He nodded. “That is very good thinking,” he said. “The good news is that he’s not a shoot-from-the-weeds kinda guy, in my opinion. The bad news is that he’s been running his mouth, and he said if he couldn’t get to you, he’d get to your furry friends. So be careful out there, okay?”
My new best friend, I thought. “Thanks again for the warning.”
“Warnings,” he said. “As in plural.”
“I’ll give you this much, Colonel. If I detect a clear and present danger to your vital area, I will most definitely let you know.”
He nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “Back at you.”
He finished his drink, dropped some cash on the table, gathered his jacket, and got up. This
time he did acknowledge Samantha, and she waved back at him over the shoulder of a large man who was sporting a half-dozen dangling Helios badges and trying to score a dance. I decided this was a great time to make my creep before one of the hefties at the back of the bar asked me to dance. I rehooked Frick, went over to the bar, and settled up. Then we left.
I let Frick run around for a minute in the parking lot and then jumped her into the back of the Suburban, fired it up, and drove out of the lot. I went slowly around the block, drove back into the lot, and parked in a dark corner where I could watch Harry’s front door. I dropped the windows and settled in to wait. Sure enough, about two minutes later, out came Samantha. She was still clutching that purse in her left hand like a football and talking on a cell phone. She looked around the parking lot, as if checking for lurking muggers or rapists.
I didn’t move, and I didn’t think she’d seen me. She then walked over to a plain vanilla Ford and got in. The phone conversation went on for a few minutes, and then she signed off. She pulled the rearview mirror over, checked her makeup, then lit the car off, backed out of her parking space, and drove directly over to where I was parked and pulled in, nose to tail. She smiled at me as she rolled down her window.
“It was the purse, wasn’t it,” she said.
I nodded. I’d seen too many just like it under the arm of just about every female FBI agent I’d ever met. Compact, hard leather, big, easily accessible snap, and perfect for a concealed weapon. Some of them even had springloaded pouches, so all she had to do was unsnap the purse, hit the butt of the weapon with her open hand, and go to town.
“You think Trask knows?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s too busy trying to pretend he doesn’t notice that glorious bod of yours. It’s a military thing, I think—if the troops are all salivating and acting like teenagers, the colonel should remain aloof.”
She rolled her eyes, but at least had the grace not to protest about sexist comments and such. She was a genuine beauty, and it was tough not to just look at her. Which is why, when Frick suddenly barked, I realized I’d been well and truly had. Three large men in dark clothes and sporting what looked like H&K MP5s were standing on the other side of my Suburban. One of them presented his FBI credentials through the passenger side window. As I took the situation onboard, a black Suburban rolled up behind us and stopped. I looked back over at Samantha.
She gave me a wistful smile. “Sorry about this,” she said. “Nothing personal.” Then she rolled up her window, backed out, and drove away.
They were actually polite. No cuffs, no perp walk, no reading of rights in the headlights or anything like that. They let me take the dogs back to the house and put them inside. They told me to leave my cell phone and any weapons I might be carrying, which I did. Then I was escorted to the black Suburban and settled into the backseat with one of the agents. Two more got in the front seat, and a fourth took my car keys and followed us in my Suburban. We were a regular parade.
They were acting like this was just a normal office call among professionals, but still, I didn’t even think about resisting or giving them any lip. I sat there in the backseat with my seat belt fastened and both hands clearly visible in my lap as we drove north toward the lights of Wilmington, up over the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, down into town, and then east toward the container port, which is where I thought we were going.
Wrong. We turned north onto Shipyard Drive, away from the port, and went several blocks north before turning right into a cluster of two-story brick buildings. We drove around to the back of one of them, which was right next to a fitness center, and parked. They took me through a cipher-locked back door and into what I assumed was the FBI’s resident agent’s office in Wilmington. I was escorted down a hallway to a conference room. There was a cardboard box on the conference table. The agent who seemed to be in charge told me that it would be just a few minutes.
“What will be just a few minutes?” I asked.
“Your ride.”
An hour later my “ride” drove through the gates of what looked like a state hospital for the mentally challenged. There were grim, twenty-foot-high brick walls along the front, an ornate if presently unguarded wrought-iron gateway, and a central paved road pointing toward a large, five-story brick building in the distance. Alongside the road were low, boarded-up white structures that looked like vintage World War II Tempo buildings.
I was now wearing a set of bright orange nylon overalls, courtesy of the cardboard box in the conference room. My ankles were connected by eighteen inches of thin stainless steel wire, and my wrists were similarly constrained. When we pulled up in front of the Victorian-looking main building, one of my escorts in the front seat asked me to lean forward so he could drop the hood over my head. Throughout the entire process, I hadn’t said a word, and I didn’t say anything when the cotton hood was draped over my head and neck. There were no eyeholes, so I was now totally dependent on the two escorts to shuffle me out of the car and into the building, with quiet instructions about steps, the door, turn right, turn left, turn around, okay, sit down. I was physically larger than either of them, but the restraints and now the hood reduced me to something very small indeed. I could see light and blurred shapes through the hood, but nothing else. Every time I inhaled, the hood flattened against my face. It smelled of industrial-strength laundry soap.
I sat on what felt like a park bench in what I assumed was a hallway. I could hear voices coming from another room nearby, but there was no alarm or excitement, just the casual conversation I remembered when doing a routine booking. Some low laughter, a phone ringing and being answered, someone stirring a coffee mug, football talk, and the shuffle of papers. The hallway smelled of institutional disinfectant and stale coffee in equal proportions.
There’d been no drama at the RA’s office, either. A walk down the hall to the bathroom, where I was asked to strip down to my underwear, given a cursory examination for weapons, and then handed my new costume. Then back to the conference room to wait. Being an ex-cop, I knew that my best move at this point was to keep my mouth shut, which I did. I didn’t know what charges, if any, were being filed, or if I was really even under formal arrest, although the orange jumpsuit had not been an encouraging development. No one came in to ask questions, and the people who were handling me had obviously not been interested in idle chitchat.
Hands appeared at my elbows, and I stood up. Turn left, the sounds of an electronically controlled door, walk straight ahead, turn right, stop. Elevator sounds. Step in, turn around, stop. Doors closing. Elevator movement, with four dings indicating that we were going to the fifth floor. Doors opening. Step out, turn right, walk straight ahead. A firm hand on each elbow, but no antagonistic pressure holds. I’d seen pictures of the Al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo, and wondered why their heads always hung down. Now I knew: The only things I could see were the tops of my feet.
Finally, stop here. The sounds of another electronic door. Turn right, step through the door, that’s good, now three more steps, turn around, sit down. Elbows free. Good. The hood came off. And there was Creeps, stretching out his long, awkward frame in a too-small metal chair across the room. My two hallway helpers stood by the door, within reach. They were dressed in Marine combat fatigues and had distinctive military haircuts. One of them crumpled up my hood in his large hands.
The room was about twelve by fifteen feet square. I’d been expecting a cell, but it wasn’t like that. There were two windows, dark now, of course, a normal single bed with a night table and a reading lamp, a small desk and chair, and two other armchairs. There was a door that I hoped led to a bathroom. The walls were painted a muted green, and the floors were polished linoleum. The only thing that indicated I was in a cell was the fact that there was no doorknob on the inside, just a card reader.
Creeps watched me take it all in before speaking. “Mr. Richter,” he said.
“Special Agent,” I replied. If they’d expected
me to protest or otherwise spout off, I meant to disappoint them. For the moment.
“I apologize for the hood,” he said, “but it’s become standard procedure for military detention facilities these days. Tends to take the piss and vinegar out of prospective rebels, you understand. That said, there is a plus side: Nobody sees who’s being admitted to the facility, either.”
He waited for a response; I remained silent. I knew full well that every interaction between a prisoner and his guards of whatever stripe was part and parcel of an interrogation record. I hadn’t been Mirandized, but then again, he had just mentioned the term “military detention facility.” When he realized there wasn’t going to be a reaction, he leaned forward.
“Right,” he said. “Let me explain why you’re here. Were you and your associates present at the scene of a radioactive material spill at the container port yesterday?”
I nodded. I’d looked for a video camera, but hadn’t seen one.
“Were you present when the trailer in question disgorged several illegal aliens into the container stack area?”
I said yes.
“Were you warned by me, personally, not to get involved in the matter of a previous radioactive material incident involving one of your associates?”
“Sort of,” I said.
He looked down that long bony nose. “Sort of?”
“I’m an investigator for hire, Special Agent. Until I spoke in detail with Dr. Quartermain, I could not know that what he wanted me to do involved either incident.”
“Do you remember what I said as I was leaving your rented house?”
“Interfere and disappear.”
“Yes, indeed. Guess what?”
“I give up.”
“You will be detained at this facility until further notice. You will be allowed no contact with the outside world until further notice. If you cooperate with the established regimen of detention, you will be given certain privileges, such as an operating television, this room instead of a rubber room in the psychotic isolation cells down in the basement, access to library materials, unfettered exercise outdoors within the confines of the grounds and the rules, and even some choices of meals. The converse to all that is also true.”
Cam - 03 - The Moonpool Page 12