The Arcturus Man

  that Siemels was eliminated was on everyone’s song sheet. I never bought the BS the

  Russians were spewing that they wanted to wack Siemels because they were afraid the

  U.S. would be breeding superhuman clones. At the time knowing why wasn’t that relevant, but now we need to find out what their real agenda is. I assume it’s all about Siemels’ weapons detection invention.”

  “We have the resources of the CIA and the FBI at our disposal. Surely, we can

  ensure that Zhidov is eliminated before he has a chance to implicate us,” said Anderson. “That’s not a problem as long as we get to him before the RCMP does. It is not a

  coincidence that fucking Dudley Doright was a Mountie.”

  “You crude idiot,” thought Anderson.

  “You don’t seem to be bothered that much about breaking one of the Ten Commandments about killing. Don’t let the girl die. Kill the Russian. What is it with you

  John?” asked Reisinger.

  “The 6th Commandment, ‘thou shalt not murder’. It does not say kill. We have

  not murdered. The Lord God does not murder. We are doing God’s Work. I will pray for

  the souls that are lost.”

  “Right! Wasn’t it Al Capone who supposedly said that you can accomplish more

  with a prayer and a gun than you can with a prayer?”

  “Don’t blaspheme, Franklin. Don’t you blaspheme!”

  Reisinger was concerned. John was getting really screwy. It was all the pressure.

  Reisinger was built to handle it. John was not. Soon he would crack under the strain. “When are you supposed to be at the White House?” asked Reisinger. “Right now. My driver should be waiting for me on Pennsylvania Avenue.” “Keep your cool John,” He stubbed out his cigarette and walked out of Anderson’s office without looking back. Reisinger always prided himself on being an Ops

  Man who worked his way up from the bottom. He missed the cowboy days at the Agency when guns were fairly common, or at least in the field. Today, unless you were in a

  conflict area like Afghanistan, guns were very rare. At Langley they were absolutely forbidden. Anderson was definitely not an Ops Man. He was a Today Man. Reisinger left the building and flagged down a taxi, but then waved him off. He

  changed his mind. He needed to walk and clear his head. He missed the old days. He

  started to walk to Northwest. Nostalgia wafted over him as he walked. He remembered

  when Justice seized a property near the old FBI building and then ran it for almost two

  years. It was a topless and bottomless club. It was God damned bottomless. If you went

  in there almost any lunch time half the guys watching the girls were Bureau and the other

  half were Agency. You could smoke, right there in the club. Then there was Good Guys

  on Wisconsin right across from the Soviet Embassy. That was a great place and the Russians were fun to watch. The Vice President’s residence was right there. If you went out

  on the fire escape with one of the girls, you often could see the Vice President jogging by

  or playing tennis. There were no Jersey barriers. No one worried about car bombs. It

  was great.

  Archibald’s on K Street was grand too. They had the best looking girls. Then

  there was the place on Connecticut…or was it on Delaware…where the girls weren’t ever

  naked. They only wore underwear. What was the name of that place? He couldn’t remember. Maybe it was the Board Room? Or was it the Conference Room? He wasn’t

  sure. Classy place. Heck, 14th Street south of K was all a fun place back then. Now it’s

  boring. He did a lot of his training as a newly minted CIA case officer in that part of

  town—before they finally sent him to the Farm. He practiced agent meetings, discrete

  surveillance, dead drops, quick passes, and unloads under the watchful and suspicious

  eyes of pimps, whores, and derelicts in that part of town. It was great. It was so great.

  There was one place that even had a girl on a swing, but this time he couldn’t remember

  what the name of the bar was. It was too long ago.

  He was required to break into a building without leaving a sign that he had been

  there and he had to provide proof he did it before he could graduate from the Farm. He shoplifted all over Northern Virginia for practice. Usually it was small, inexpensive stuff, like a package of bacon, or something. They even gave him a get-out-of-jail-free telephone number in case he was ever picked up. He never needed it. Reisinger was very good at being a spy. Above all, he considered himself to be a patriot. He was a true patriot. It was no accident that the statue they have at Langley isn’t of Dulles or Donovan, but of Nathan Hale. Reisinger was Nathan Hale. If he had to die for his country, he

  would. He was confident that he would.

  He thought about his favorite hang out, O’Toole’s in McLean. There weren’t any

  girls in O’Toole’s. Almost all of the patrons were men. Women weren’t welcomed by

  the CIA back then. They were there, sure enough, but they sat in the back of the bus.

  O’Toole’s was an honest-to-God male drinking bar. It was one of only three or four standup drinking bars left in all of Virginia. O’Toole had grandfathered his bar when Virginia passed all kind of laws to close down the neighborhood bars. Virginia was a holy roller

  state back then. It was the favorite hangout of CIA people for years until they finally

  closed it too. Reisinger knew that he was an anachronism as well. It was only a matter of

  time when the righteous ass holes like Anderson closed ol’ Reisinger down just like they

  did O’Toole’s. Only a matter of time. He wasn’t going to stand around like an ass hole

  waiting for it to happen. If it was going to happen, he was going to fucking do it himself. He pushed open the doors of Red Lips on L Street. It took a few minutes for his

  eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were only about five or six nervous looking guys in

  cheap suits and white shirts sitting around the stage. A few had chains around their necks

  and some kind of badge tucked into their breast pockets. One was eating a hamburger.

  Some guys needed that option as an excuse for coming into a titty bar. Reisinger slid into

  a booth next to the small stage. How sad, he thought. Back in the seventies you would

  probably have to stand, it was that packed. A tired waitress came by and he ordered a

  beer. He glanced at the girl on the stage. She looked tired too. She also looked bored

  but wore a forced smile. She wasn’t beautiful. Not at all! Her tits were very small. Reisinger was trained to pay attention to details. He could never shut it off. It was now a

  part of his DNA.

  It was pathetic. Reisinger paid for his drink but left the beer untouched. He

  walked out. The old days were gone and would never return no matter how much he

  wished they would.

  Anderson would crack. He had no doubt about that. He wasn’t old school. It

  was only a matter of time. Reisinger never cared a whit about Anderson or his psychotic

  obsession with Siemels. Many things changed after 9/11. Homeland Security grabbed up agencies by the truckload. The Director of Central Intelligence was no longer the director of central intelligence. Now the DCI worked for someone higher up who was the director of central intelligence. He guessed Congress never bothered to read the CIA’s

  charter. Many of the top guys were military now. He hated that.

  Yes, so many things have changed but one immutable truth still remained. The

  CIA and the FBI could not work together. Those rivalries persisted despite all the new

  bureaucracy. Reisinger needed someone to back him up whenever there was a problem

  with the Bureau and who better to do that t
han a Deputy U.S. Attorney General. If that

  meant offing this guy Siemels, that would have been a small thing. But Siemels was dead

  and, suddenly, John was a liability. He had to slough this albatross off somehow. These walks always cleared his head. He now understood that Anderson was the

  problem…the only problem. He was close to retirement and he was not going to let a

  Bible-thumping moron like John ruin it for him. He bled in the trenches for his country.

  He would have died for it. He was owed.

  He knew he made the right decision in not telling Anderson everything he knew

  about Siemels. He had been truthful in telling Anderson that someone had been flipped,

  but the moron would never guess that he was the one who flipped. Cute! Reisinger

  pulled out his cell phone and called his secretary to get him a seat on the next flight to

  Portland. It was imperative. His survival depended on it.

  Ottawa

  The Mounties came through. The Bureau almost took it for granted that they would. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are outstanding, forced to live up to almost impossible mythology about their exploits since 1873. Understaffed, underfunded, and spread thin, the myths are made real from time to time by a dedicated team of men and women who came to believe the folk lore and began to live it, generation after generation.

  Through extraordinary diligence and hours of interviews in towns from Toronto to Montreal, and beyond, they found an auto rental office in Québec that rented an RV to a heavy-set, short man that fit the description of Sami Zhidov that was provided by the CIA. There were no photographs, but the description was good enough. Fortunately, Zhidov’s description was sufficiently bizarre to make him easy to identify.

  They combed the records of every international entry point in eastern Canada but they were not able to confirm the identity that Zhidov used to enter Canada. They did boil down the list of persons from various Russian and East European places of birth to about thirty suspects who had entered Canada in the last month. The Canadian Intelligence Service is one of the best in the world but very few people know that, even among Canadians—especially among the Canadians. Usually ham strung by wacky national politics, they have a bad rap for not being able to control their immigration. It is a small miracle that they have a reasonably good handle on it considering the obstacles they face, but through no fault of their own, people do occasionally slip through the cracks. The RCMP began the tedious process of searching for every person on the list. Most of the interviewees reported hotels as their temporary residence in Canada. That part went easily and narrowed the list to nine persons. Those remaining suspects reported addresses of Canadian residents. If Zhidov was as cunning as the CIA reported him to be, he was probably in the last of nine, unless they had missed him entirely. All possibilities were pursued.

  The Mounties painstakingly reviewed digital video recordings for the past month of all border crossing points into Maine. The hard work paid off. The rented RV was positively identified crossing into Fort Kent, Maine, from Clair, Quebec, five days ago. The passed all of the information they gathered to the FBI as soon as the information was verified. They even shared some conjecture.

  The RCMP sent a liaison officer to the Maine side to coordinate with the Bureau. Interviews in Fort Kent also paid off. The RV had stopped in Fort Kent for fuel and some groceries. People remembered the RV. They learned that the RV had driven south on Route 161. A young man in a convenience store sold the short fat man a gallon of vanilla ice cream.

  They searched all afternoon and well into the night. A few FBI agents kept searching until the next morning, especially Agent Cabet. About midmorning, they got lucky again. They found the RV camped on the banks of Daigle Pond on Martin Road off of Caribou Road, Route 161. There were clear signs that the suspect and the captive had been there. Most of the kidnap victim’s clothes were found in bushes around the camp site. Tire tracks were found near the cabin. They were new. The FBI data base in Quantico identified that the tires were from a Land Rover. This information was instantly linked to a local police report of a black Land Rover being stolen in Portland about two days earlier. The license number and description of the Land Rover were disseminated to all law enforcement agencies in Maine and Québec. More interviews were conducted, but none of the locals remembered seeing a black SUV. The Land Rover was too expensive for most of the people living in the region. It was odd that no one recalled seeing one, but that happens some times. They were getting close, but time was running out. Jenny would die in the next few hours if they couldn’t find her.

  Kelly Brook Mountain, Northern Maine

  Sami drove through Fort Kent holding his knife in Jenny’s side. It was a small town with a population of barely 4,000. He finally let down his guard when he crossed the outskirts heading west. He followed Route 161 toward Dickey, crossing the St. John River west of the town. The Maine-Canadian border was bounded by the St. Francis and St. John Rivers for many miles but it was an open land border west of Dickey. Sami pushed further west arriving at Kelly Brook Mountain in less than an hour after they left the camp site. There were very few cars on the road. Sami was certain now that he was safe. The border into Quebec was only twenty miles west. He would be going off-road for most of the way, following fire breaks and old logging roads, and some places cross country. It would take well over an hour, perhaps two to go twenty miles. Although he had never been here before, the route was carefully mapped by the Colombians several months before they made the disastrous assault on Eagle’s Head Island and Jared’s home.

  He kept pushing his face into the wind shield as he drove, looking into the sky. He was short and his lard belly made it difficult to see up. He was driving much too fast while he was doing this. At first Jenny couldn’t figure out what he was doing, but then it dawned on her. He was worried about helicopters…police helicopters. They were looking for him. She had a chance. She tried to look up but didn’t see anything. If she spotted what looked like a police helicopter, she vowed that she would jump from the vehicle…no matter how fast he was going…no matter the chains on her ankles or not. She might break a leg or an arm…maybe get a concussion, but whatever the damage, it was better than being dead. And even if the jump killed her, at least it would be by her own doing. She watched the skies, praying for a helicopter.

  Sami always gave the enemy the benefit of the doubt. It was better to give the enemy too much credit than not enough. He assumed from the outset that the stolen Land Rover would be tied to him sooner or later and that they would be searching for it. The counties in this part of Maine are huge—some of the largest counties in all of the United States. Sami counted on law enforcement being spread so thin in northern Maine that the odds of running into them were too low to worry about. Air surveillance, on the other hand, was a different matter. He was very concerned about being spotted while he was on a regular highway. If he could get into the old dirt trail, he was home free. The tree canopy covered the roads almost totally.

  Jenny watched and watched. Nothing! Now she understood the bass boat and red tarp. From the air the Land Rover didn’t look like a Land Rover. It looked like a large boat on a red tarp. The little slime stole Jared’s trick when Jared did the same thing to change the appearance of StarWind. The little creep copied Jared.

  Using Canadian intermediaries, the Colombians purchased a small parcel of land near the mountain that had a small shack. Sami stopped from time to time to check his maps and compare them to a GPS unit he had in the Rover. As he went further west, the roads were first rough and then little more than wider dirt paths. The Land Rover shook violently. Logging trucks had turned all of the slightly improved dirt roads in this area into wash boards.

  They both heard the helicopter. Sami drove into a more heavily wooded area. They couldn’t see the Land Rover through the trees but he was worried about infrared sensors. They might be able to spot the intense heat coming from the engine. It
had been raining on and off for two days and the leaves were still wet. The heavy cover and the water on the leaves would make it difficult to spot the heat signature. Sami had done his homework. He was a pig, but he was a very smart pig. Jenny thought about jumping out but it would be futile if the chopper didn’t see her. With her legs shackled he would run her down in minutes. She had to play for time. The whopping sounds of the rotary blades died away. It was gone again.

  He checked his GPS display and finally arrived at the shack. Sami pulled the Land Rover up to the shack and parked. The locals called it a summer camp. Sami thought that was amusing. It was a large pig sty as far as he was concerned.

  Jenny remained silent the entire trip. She decided that she was going to die fighting. She was going to make a desperate break for freedom if any kind of opportunity presented itself, but a helicopter would be her best chance. She tried to calm herself. She also had to be patient. She had to wait for just the right moment if she was to have any chance at all. She was resigned to the fact that her chances were very slim. She could accept being killed...if that had to be…but she was not going to be slaughtered.

  Sami opened the passenger door and yanked her out. Jenny sprawled to the ground.

  “Get up Pretty Lady. We walk,”

  He was taking her into the forest to kill her. She was certain of that. Maybe he had plans to make it last for a while. He would do horrible things to her. Fear ran up her spine. It was cold fear and it was paralyzing. She slowly rose to her hands and knees. She couldn’t stop her legs from trembling. Sami yanked on the chain, pulling her feet out from under her. The chain cut deep into her ankles again. He thought it was funny. Her face was ground into the dirt, cutting her chin on top of the bruises from where he hit her earlier.

  “GET UP! GET UP! You piss yourself. You dog lady.” He laughed again. He grabbed at her, yanking off her stocking cap. Her hair spilled out. Urine was running down her legs. She couldn’t help it. She was no longer a person. She was a thing.