by Jeff Kirvin
Contrary to what his superiors thought, these were not the old days. Cho and his cronies had access to the world media, the Internet, to any number of ways to get word out quickly and globally. They had to be stopped. It was clear to Batarel that if left up to his superiors, their organization would be exposed and the angels would be able to use the humans to destroy them. If he stayed quiet, if he accepted his reassignment, they were all doomed.
Cho had to be stopped, and it was up to him.
Pumped full of resolve, Batarel disappeared into the D.C. rush hour.
A New Lead
What the hell is this?” Jeff stared incredulously at his fender as Susan and Daniel walked out of the clinic, Daniel sporting a new fiberglass cast.
“What are you yelling about?” Daniel asked.
“This! What the hell is this?” Jeff pointed at several long, thin gashes in his right front fender. Daniel crouched down to get a better look and came to the easy conclusion.
“Rockport.”
“You mean he—”
“Dug his hands into your fender. Yup, that’s it.”
Jeff stood and sputtered, eyes riveted on the gouges in the metal.
“Come on, guys,” Susan said, stepping into the Winnebago. “We’ve got work to do. Providing,” she said to Jeff, “you’re still in on this.”
“You kidding?” Jeff said as he ushered Daniel inside before joining them. “Bastards messed up my home. There’s hell to pay now.”
They all sat down at the table, Susan already booting up her laptop. Daniel was in much better spirits now that his arm was fully immobilized up to the elbow. He was most relieved that getting it reset and casted wasn’t a big deal. They got it done, paid their bill and left. They didn’t even need insurance.
“Before our little disturbance last night,” Susan began, “I was telling Daniel that I tracked the number Steve was supposed to call to a Richard Birchmere, an assistant director of the Social Security Administration. What we don’t know is why he’d care about Daniel. There’s no obvious connection.”
“Could we tail him and find out who he talks to?” Daniel asked. “Maybe he’s just a middle man.”
“Not easily,” Susan said. “He might notice a Winnebago following him around everywhere he goes.”
“Tap his phone?” Jeff suggested.
“With what?” Susan asked. “It’s not going to be easy digging up dirt on this guy. As long as I’m underground, I can’t even rely on my usual contacts.”
“So what can we do?” Daniel asked. He started to worry that his search was over before it began.
Susan thought for a moment, then grinned sheepishly. “Well, there is something, but I haven’t done it since college, and it’s a little weird…”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Daniel said. He and Susan were crouched in the bushes outside Richard Birchmere’s house, a beautiful split-level in Friendship Heights, an upscale suburb of Washington. Jeff was across the street in the Winnebago, acting as lookout.
“I know it sounds weird,” Susan said, “but you can learn a lot about a person by looking through his garbage.” She gestured to Jeff, who gave them the thumbs up.
“The coast is clear,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Daniel followed Susan around to the back of the house. Birchmere’s lawn was neatly trimmed and immaculate with a small wooden tool shed in the far corner. Near the back door was a small bin with one white kitchen trash bag, the kind with drawstrings, tied neatly. Daniel and Susan walked over to it.
As Susan grabbed the bag, she heard a low, menacing growl. She froze and slowly turned her head to the right. Next to the tool shed stood the biggest Rottweiler she had ever seen, staring at her intensely. “Daniel?”
Daniel had seen the dog too, and was slowly edging his way in front of Susan. “Nice dog,” he said in the most soothing tone of voice he could muster. “We’ll be out of your yard very soon.”
“What are we going to do?” Susan asked, her hand still frozen to the trash bag.
The dog snarled and took a few steps towards them.
“How should I know?” Daniel said. “Just remove your hand very slowly from the bag, and we’ll see what he does.”
The instant Susan moved her hand, the dog snarled and snapped at her, as well as taking a few more steps forward.
“That’s not going to work,” Susan hissed.
Daniel came up with an idea. He thought it was Grade-A stupid, but it was all he had. “Okay, then here’s the plan. You grab the bag and run like hell for the Winnebago. I’ll distract the dog and follow you.”
“What? Are you insane? He’ll rip you to shreds!”
“I don’t think so,” Daniel said, rapping his knuckles on his cast and eliciting another snarl from the dog.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Susan said, tightening her grip on the bag.
“Yeah, me too,” Daniel said. “On three, you run and I’ll hold him off.
“One.” The dog snarled.
“Two.” Sensing something was going on, the dog crouched and prepared to leap.
“Three!” Susan snatched the bag and bolted for the Winnebago as fast as she could. Daniel inhaled sharply and stepped into the dog’s leap, holding his casted forearm out in front of him. As expected, the dog’s jaws locked onto the plaster and fiberglass and shook violently. Bright waves of pain shot up Daniel’s arm, blurring his vision.
As soon as Susan was out of sight, Daniel brought his left fist up and slugged the dog across the head. The animal grunted, but hung on. Raising his arm and the dog higher in the air, Daniel let loose a swift kick to the animal’s underside. There was a yelp, and the dog released his grip.
Daniel lost no time making good his retreat. He ran as fast as he could around the house and towards the Winnebago, the dog close on his heels.
“Go!” he shouted at Jeff and Susan. As the vehicle started moving, Susan threw the side door open and Daniel jumped for it. Susan pulled him in and slammed the door shut just as the dog made its leap. There was a thud against the side of the Winnebago, then Jeff accelerated around the corner and they were gone.
After they drove a safe distance from the house, Jeff pulled into a grocery store parking lot. Daniel popped some more Tylenol to deal with the shake the dog had given his arm, and Susan prepared to empty the bag onto the table.
“Gentlemen, prepare for an in depth look at the life of Richard Birchmere,” she said.
“I just hope this doesn’t stink up the place,” Jeff said.
Susan opened the bag and emptied its contents. The first thing they noticed was that it didn’t stink at all. The pile consisted almost entirely of dry refuse: crumpled typing paper, take-out menus, junk mail, magazines, newspapers, etc. There were no food wrappers, no waste leftovers, not even a plastic milk jug. Susan mentioned as much.
“Yeah, I noticed that too,” Daniel said. “When I went to Rockport’s apartment, the kitchen was positively barren. No food, no dishes even. Think there’s a connection?”
“Maybe. For all we know, though, they could both just be extreme bachelors that eat out every meal.”
“Boy, this guy sure does throw out a lot of magazines,” Jeff observed.
Susan had noticed that as well. Along with the standard Post Weekend and television listings, Birchmere had a wide array of reading material. Local interest stuff like Washington Weekly, national news magazines like Time and Newsweek, several more specific political and religious titles. Conspicuously absent was any actual leisure reading. No sports, no special interest hobby magazines, no entertainment gossip rags. The guy obviously read a great deal, but only about current events, politics and religion.
“We may be dealing with the world’s most boring human,” she quipped.
Daniel just looked at her with a somber expression. “Assuming he’s human,” he said.
Susan’s smirk vanished, and she fought off a shudder as she remembered the events of the previous night. �
��Yeah,” she said, “if.”
“Hey guys,” Jeff said, “look at this!” He handed them a slip of paper with a date and time, as well as a hand written address in Old Town Alexandria. “What do think it means?” he asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Susan said, committing the information to memory. “We’ve got until tomorrow night to find out. Until then, let’s find out what else we have here.”
Both Jeff and Daniel visibly deflated, but they kept sifting through the pile.
As soon as Richard Birchmere arrived home, he felt something was amiss. He’d been on edge all day after dealing with Batarel, but this was different. He went over a mental list of his surroundings, trying to figure out what was different. Then he had it.
The dog was missing. Normally his guard dog was at the door to greet him. It wasn’t like Conan to wander off. What could have happened?
Birchmere walked into the kitchen. No, the dog wasn’t there either. He looked at the dog door connecting the kitchen to the back yard and decided to check outside.
The dog was there, sitting patiently beside the rubbish bin. When he saw his master, the dog let out a single bark of greeting, then waited for Birchmere to come look.
When Birchmere got there, he realized the bin was empty. He knew he had put some trash out, but the collectors didn’t come until the end of the week. “Where did it go?” he mused aloud. The dog obviously couldn’t answer the question, but it had posed it. With the question posed, Birchmere knew where to look for the answer.
He walked back inside the house and up to the study. The room was reminiscent of the plushly appointed parlor he and his associates used to discipline the arrogant upstart Batarel. In the corner was a television screen and a sophisticated control panel. He sat down.
The television connected to a network of security cameras spread throughout and outside of the house. Birchmere switched to the camera monitoring the back yard. He stopped the tape and started running it backwards at high speed.
There.
He froze the tape and stared, amazed, at the image captured there. Perhaps Batarel wasn’t quite as incompetent as he appeared. On the screen was a crystal clear image of Daniel Cho and his reporter friend, raiding the rubbish bin. Birchmere didn’t think they’d garner anything useful, but the fact that they’d been there at all made it clear he’d underestimated Cho by a fair margin.
He would have to be certain not to make that mistake again.
Preparations
The address in Old Town was a warehouse. Jeff parked the Winnebago and let Daniel and Susan out to look it over while it was still light out. They had no idea when Birchmere and company would be there the next day to set up, so they all figured it best to reconnoiter while they could.
It was a large gray building with metal siding. Railroad tracks ran right past it, and a metal staircase led up to the roof.
“What a dump,” Daniel said.
“I wonder what they do,” Susan asked, “that they’d need a building this big?”
“Who knows? I guess we find out tomorrow night. How do you want to work this?”
Susan walked over to the front doors and peeked inside the small plexiglass windows. “Figure we break in tonight, hide behind one of those crates and wait for them to show. A lot of investigative reporting is waiting, and—”
Susan looked up and noticed that Daniel wasn’t listening any more. In fact, he wasn’t even anywhere near her. He was walking briskly over the staircase on the side of the building.
“No good,” he called over his shoulder. “After what you’ve seen so far, you don’t think they’ll secure the area? Whatever Birchmere, Rockport and their buddies have in the works, I don’t think they want anyone to know about it.”
He looked over at the ladder on the side of the building. “Hang on.”
Daniel walked over to the ladder and started to climb. When he got to the top, he found exactly what he was looking for. Roughly in the center of the roof was a skylight, about two feet square. “There’s a skylight up here,” he shouted down to Susan as he descended the ladder. “I can go up on the roof and listen in.”
“With a broken arm? You’re out of your mind!”
“Who better? I have experience climbing around buildings, and besides, you need to be in the van with Jeff in case something happens.”
Susan would have none of it, and got in Daniel’s face, arms akimbo. “Says who?”
“Look at it this way,” Daniel said, smiling nervously. “If anything happens to me, you can still get the story out. We’ll get some walkie-talkies and I’ll relay everything I see and hear down to you in the van. First sign of trouble, you guys get the hell out of here. Don’t worry about me,” he grinned, “I’ve dealt with these things before.”
“And the last one broke your arm and almost killed you!” Susan shouted. “If you think I’m going to just sit in the van and let you—”
“Uh, kids?” Jeff called from the Winnebago. “Can we continue this somewhere a little less public?”
Daniel and Susan stared at each other in silence for a moment.
“He’s right,” Daniel said. “We’ve got a lot to do in the next twenty-four hours, and we can continue this discussion later. Just keep in mind what we’ve seen those things do before you rush in to confront them, okay?”
Susan answered by turning brusquely on her heel and striding for the Winnebago. Daniel shrugged his shoulders and followed her.
Batarel wasn’t stupid. He was well aware of the meeting coming up, a meeting every demon in the mid-Atlantic region was expected to attend. He also knew that if he attended it openly, he’d be captured and punished for disobeying his order to relocate.
Just the same, he had to go. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. If he was to truly help his people, raise them out of the bureaucratic stalemate they were in, he had to know what was going on. Intelligence gathering was the crucial key to any victory. Even though it meant risking capture, even if it meant putting his search for Cho and that reporter aside for the moment (truth to tell, he had no idea where they were anyway), he had to be at that meeting.
He had to go.
“You’re out of your freaking mind!” Susan shouted.
She, Daniel and Jeff were in a motel room for the night on Jeff’s credit card. She was still trying to talk some sense into Daniel, but it wasn’t doing any good.
And Jeff wasn’t helping. “He’s right, Susan, you know he is. You have to be down in the Winnebago with me. If we do learn anything about what these things are, you’re the only one anybody’s gonna believe.”
“It’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it? You two think that this is some sort of boy’s club—”
“No, Susan,” Daniel said quietly. “It’s because you’re a reporter.”
Susan glared at him, but it was a softer glare than a moment before.
“Jeff’s right. If we get a story out of this, you’re the one to tell it. You’re too valuable to risk. I’ll be at the skylight with the walkie-talkies, and you’ll take down every word. You won’t miss out on any of the fun.”
“Fun? Was breaking your arm fun? Think about what they’ve done to you Daniel. Think hard. Do you really think you’re up to this? Have you considered what will happen if you get caught?”
Daniel was silent for a long moment. “Yes. That’s why I have to do this. I have to find out what they are, why they’re doing this to me. I have to, not have someone else tell me. I thought you’d understand that.”
Susan stood speechless and her face softened. So that was it. “Yes, Daniel, I understand.” She took a deep breath. “But if you see the first sign of trouble—”
“I’m outta there.”
As Jeff sat silent but grinning smugly at them, Susan breathed an inner sigh of relief. She was concerned about Daniel’s safety, but she had another reason to hope this went off without a hitch. She had no real proof, but she knew she was knocking on the door of the biggest story of her c
areer.
She wanted to make sure they all lived long enough to report it.
Birchmere stormed into his outer office at the Social Security Administration, then through the door to his inner office without a word, his attitude knocking his secretary back in her seat. She’d seen him like this on occasion, and she knew better than to say anything. Her boss wasn’t the easiest guy in the world to get along with. Lately his moods had gotten even worse, even though his workload hadn’t changed significantly. He never talked about his personal life, so she had no idea what the problem was.
In the seclusion of his inner office, Zagam, the demon going by the human identity of Richard Birchmere, was furious.
Batarel hadn’t reported in to his new assignment. With everything that was going on, the last thing he needed was some reckless rogue mucking up the works. Zagam fell heavily into the plush chair behind his desk. He glanced absently at the paperwork on his desk, then dismissed it. He would have plenty of time for the affairs of humans later. For now, he had more important things to attend to. He reached for the phone, his secure line.
Daniel, Jeff and Susan sat around the table in the Winnebago as Susan explained her plan for the use of the electronic equipment in front of her.
“Daniel had a good idea about the walkie-talkies,” she said, “but I think this will work even better.”
She picked up an expensive video camera. “I got this from a friend at WDCA. It’s lightweight, so Daniel shouldn’t have any trouble using it one handed. It sends the signal to this receiver, here,” she said, holding up a small black box. “It then feeds into this VCR so we get everything on tape and can view it real-time. We might even get the chance to identify some of the ones we haven’t seen yet.”
“How many of these critters you figure there’ll be?” Jeff asked.