by J. M. Lanham
Claire wasn’t thrilled with the plan, but when she thought about the logic behind it, it did make sense. No point in risking every outlier to obtain whatever documents Sturgis had in mind—especially when they couldn’t be sure whether or not he had the ironclad information they needed to shed light on the CIA’s misdeeds. The whole thing seemed more like a way for the CEO to delay the inevitable. But keeping their best chance at retribution happy was of the utmost importance to all of them.
Well, except maybe for Fenton, who was more than steamed when he stormed back into the kitchen, Sturgis following close behind.
“Would someone please explain to the fossil back here why we’ve already got everything we need to take these bastards down? He wants to go back to his house to grab WHAT WE ALEADY HAVE before he turns himself in?” He turned back to Sturgis. “I mean come on, man. How fucking stupid do you think we are?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think of you,” Sturgis said. “Or, what you think of me. Point being I’ve got a few things I need to get in order before I turn myself in. No telling how long I’ll be away after tomorrow’s press conference, not to mention the authenticated documents I’ll need to hand over to the authorities first thing.”
“Ah, what a crock of shit!” Fenton said. “It doesn’t matter what he comes forward with tomorrow morning; he’ll be out on bail by lunch. He’s just buying time, or fucking with us. Probably hiding something under those starched sleeves of his—”
“All right, that’s enough,” Paul said. “Arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere.” He looked to Sturgis. “You’re dead set on this, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Consider it a condition of my cooperation.” Claire shot him a suspicious look, to which he replied, “What? You don’t honestly expect me to drop everything and turn myself in without getting my affairs in order, do you? Regardless of tomorrow’s outcome, or the next weeks or months or however long it takes for that matter, I don’t plan on spending the rest of my life behind bars, simple as that. And a man like me doesn’t just take off on a whim without preparing for it.” He tugged his collar and adjusted his button-up shirt like a man about to go somewhere. “So, we can head over to my place, or you ladies and gents can wing tomorrow’s press conference without me. Fair enough?”
No, it wasn’t fair enough, Claire thought. But what choice did they have? She nodded in reluctant agreement.
“Good,” Sturgis said. “Paul, you still coming with?”
“Of course,” he said, catching a worrisome side-eye from Claire.
Fenton noticed her concern and piped up. “Maybe I should go, too. The more the merrier, right?”
“Absolutely not,” Sturgis huffed. “I think I’ve had enough of your mouth for one evening.” He turned and walked to the door as the rest of the group exchanged glances. Paul picked up on his discomfort, his instincts steering him toward an on-the-fly change of heart.
“Now wait a second,” Paul said. “There’s four of us here. Makes good sense to split us in two, doesn’t it?”
For a split second, Claire was puzzled. But Paul had always been predictably contrarian, and she was quick on the uptake. She added, “I think so. Fenton’s got Paul’s back. Sarah’s got mine.”
Dismayed, Sturgis turned. “And me?”
“We’re the ones with everything to lose here,” Claire said. “Not you.”
He nodded reluctantly, then went for the door. “Well let’s get a move on then, goddammit. We don’t have all night.”
Fenton slung his laptop bag over his shoulder as he followed Paul to the door. “Sure you need to bring that?” Paul asked.
“Never leave home without it.”
Paul let it slide as Claire grabbed him on the way out, slipping him a smartphone on the sly. She whispered, “Here, Paul. Take this with you. Sarah’s got a line on this device, so make sure you keep it on you at all times. That way we can be with you every step of the way.”
Paul slid the device in his pocket and nodded. “Sure thing, Claire. We’ll be in touch.”
“And Paul? Don’t let the old man know about the phone, okay? Don’t let him get the drop on you.”
Paul nodded, and down the front steps he went, calling out along the way, “All right, you two. You ready to go for a ride?”
***
It was almost one in the morning when Sturgis pulled up to the opulent ironclad gate blocking the long driveway to his multimillion-dollar home in North Atlanta. He put his Mercedes in park as dual beams from the headlights came to rest on the large “GS” that formed at the center of the closed gate. Paul lay across the back seat as Fenton sprawled across the back floorboard; the price of being a scrawny teenager riding with a full-grown adult in the back who also had to keep his head down. Paul leaned up from the leather back seat and asked Sturgis, “This your place?”
“Nope. Must be some other rich guy with the same initials on the gate.”
“Well I can’t exactly see from back here, asshole.”
“Just keep your head down and shut up before someone makes us.” Sturgis punched in the gate code and it emitted a pleasant chime followed by the gate creaking open. It was his place, after all.
A short drive up a steep asphalt driveway followed by a whirl around an ostentatious fountain and soon they were pulling into the four-car garage of Sturgis’ eighteen thousand square-foot estate. Sturgis shut the engine off as the garage doors lowered, and Paul and Fenton arose from the back.
“So far, so good,” Paul said. “Hopefully if anyone’s watching they’ll think it’s just you.”
Sturgis asked, “And how do we know we didn’t pick up a tail when we swapped cars, double-o-zero?”
“We don’t. I told you it was a risk we had to take to make it look like you’re the only one home; that it’s just another night at the Sturgis residence. So, we’ll get in, get what you need, and get out.”
“That easy, huh?”
“No,” Paul said. “Honestly, coming here is stupid as hell. But you’re calling the shots now, aren’t you, George?”
Sturgis snarled as he stepped out and walked inside. (Sturgis hated being called by his first name, and Paul knew it. So, why not poke a little fun at the bastard?) Paul motioned for Fenton to go ahead while he texted Claire a quick update, then slid the phone back in his pocket and followed the two inside.
From the outside, the place looked like any other North Atlanta mansion-turned-masterpiece, the earth-tone brick exterior of the English manor complemented by fieldstone surrounding the windows, doors, and covering the chimneys (there were two that Paul had spotted from the back seat on the way in, and that was just what he could see from the floorboard).
Once inside, Paul and Fenton both realized there was a side of Sturgis that was never portrayed on the fast-talking financial shows or mentioned in company newsletters. No Ming vases or badminton cabinets or grand pianos here. Instead, the vaulted two-story lobby at the forefront of a wide double staircase was decorated like a smaller version of the Museum of Natural History. Large geodes sitting atop granite pedestals to his right. A two-headed calf, stuffed and mounted behind the glass case to his left. And directly ahead, a dinosaur fossil standing on its hind legs, towering over the entrance, mouth open, posed for a ferocious attack. It was clear the man was a full-blown science geek.
One stroll into the lobby and Fenton was like a kid in a candy store, wide-eyed and picking his jaw up off the ground. He pointed to one of the large fossils and asked, “What’s up with Mohawk here?” referencing the fan-like array of bones on its back. “Is this thing for real?”
“Of course it’s real,” Sturgis said. “It’s a Spinosaurus. Mid-to-late Cretaceous period.”
“Cretaceous,” Fenton said, hand on his chin. “That was my first guess.”
“Uh huh,” Sturgis said, skeptical the teen had any clue what he was talking about. “The spinosaurus lived about a hundred million years ago, give or take.” He stopped halfway up the stairs and turned back t
o the lobby. “Look, you two want to take the tour? Be my guests. Just keep your asses down here. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Roger that, dickweed, Paul thought to himself as he turned to amble through the lobby, hands in his pockets, almost forgetting where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. Instead, he was captivated by the array of brightly lit glass cases, each with its own theme and organized along the walls in alphabetical order. Astrology was first, followed by biology, and geology on the left-hand side of the entryway. All interesting in their own right.
“Hey, Paul, you see this one?” Fenton pointed at a glass cube with a wafer-thin metal chip in the center. He read the plaquette on the bottom: “First Microchip, Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments, 1959 … Holy crap, Freeman. You got any idea what this is?”
“Um, the first microchip?”
“Well yeah, obviously,” Fenton said. “But this thing’s worth like half a million bucks easy! I read online where it went up for auction a few years ago. Never realized people like Sturgis were the ones buying this stuff.”
“People like Sturgis are into anything that adds to their net worth while making them seem sophisticated.” The twentieth-century tech display was interesting enough, but a case on the right-hand side of the room labeled PHARMACOLOGY stole Paul’s attention. Longer than the others, it was the length of three cases combined, full of pharmacological history that covered the milestones, discoveries, and anecdotes surrounding the modern study of drugs. Paul skimmed over the assortment of small plaquettes displayed among portraits of pharmacists surrounded by shelves full of antique pharmacy vials and apothecary bottles and newspaper clippings and medicinal memorabilia on full display, until one item in particular stopped him midway through the self-guided tour.
A photo. Black and white, faded, taken of a young boy who couldn’t have been older than nine or ten, with a body that was proportional in every sense of the word to any other kid his age—except for his arms. Paul leaned in for a closer look. Did the kid even have arms? His eyes sharpened as he saw that they were there, all right, but were way too small for a boy that size. An infant, maybe, but the miniature appendages looked more like the arms of a porcelain doll rather than those of a grade-schooler.
Paul squinted as he read the text below the photo when Sturgis piped up from the stairs. “Phocomelia,” he said as he walked back down, files in hand. “A congenital deformity that causes severe underdevelopment of the hands and feet. Was a side effect of the thalidomide trials back in the 1950s. Probably the most disastrous sleeping pill of all time.”
The side effects shown in the photo were profound, and the tragic and lifelong results of something considered at the time to be a harmless medication drew a wince from Paul. “A sleeping pill caused this?”
“Sure did. It’s what happens when pharmacologists rush to meet the demands of a desperate marketplace.”
“I didn’t think sleeping pills were even a thing back then, greatest generation and all.”
“Oh, make no mistake, Freeman. The folks who lived through the Great Depression and fought WWII were the greatest generation, without a doubt. My father was one of them. But you gotta think, by the time the war was over they’d gone through enough shit to give them a lifetime’s worth of nightmares. That’s why anything promising a good night’s sleep was in such high demand. Thalidomide was also a nonbarbiturate, so it appealed to folks who were afraid a little sleeping pill might make ’em feel drunk or loopy.” Sturgis stopped a few feet from Paul and looked into the case. “Helluva sedative, though. Helped with depression, even alleviated morning sickness.”
“So it didn’t do a thing to patients?” Paul asked.
“Nope, just the kids. Took years before anyone realized that thalidomide was causing severe birth defects. By that time, the damage was done. Tens of thousands of babies had already been born and burdened with these deformities for life. It was a wake-up call to an industry that had gone largely unchecked beforehand, and led to tighter regulations and supervision by the FDA that are still in place to this day.”
“If I didn’t know any better, Sturgis, I’d think you had an affinity for the Food and Drug Administration.”
“The way it ran back then? Sure, why not. But an altruistic FDA has gone the way of the dodo. Now it’s corporate lobbyists calling all the shots.”
“And how much did Asteria spend on lobbying under your watch?”
Sturgis was known to ignore comments and promptly change the subject when someone had his number. This time was no different. “You know, Freeman. You’re a lot smarter than Tanner gave you credit for. I’ll give you that.”
Paul arched an eyebrow. “Thanks, I guess?”
“Now I’m being serious here. When all this commotion started I never would have thought you’d make it this far. But look at you now. Holding all the cards. And me? Well, looks like I’m shit outta luck—and a job.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sturgis. You’re still getting something out of all this: vindication. Proof you were strong-armed into taking Tanner’s bribe; proof that Asteria’s been under the thumb of the federal government ever since Tanner discovered Asteria’s financial troubles made the company vulnerable to coercion.”
“You don’t actually believe that,” Sturgis scoffed. Even Fenton balked at the comment from across the room.
“Doesn’t matter what I believe,” Paul said. “What matters now is what the country believes once you go public with the CIA’s involvement in all of this mess. People love a good bad guy, and the spooks at Central Intelligence seem to fit the bill, especially with everyone’s distrust of the government these days.” Paul pointed to the thick manila folder held securely under Sturgis’ arm. “So, you going to hold onto that thing like the Hope Diamond, or are you going to let me take a look at what you’ve got there?”
Sturgis looked down at the folder, then back at Paul. “Oh, I don’t think you need to take a look at this, Mr. Freeman. No point in it now.”
Paul didn’t understand what Sturgis meant until the shouting started.
“FREEZE, FREEMAN! DON’T MOVE! FBI!”
In a matter of seconds a dozen federal agents swarmed in, armed to the teeth with M4s and flak jackets and barking orders at the two outliers to drop to the ground and put their hands behind their heads or else. It only took a split-second for Paul to realize that he was surrounded on all sides. Fenton was thrown to the ground and kissing polished travertine before he could set his laptop bag down.
No point in putting up a fight, thought Paul. Hit the dirt, now. Face to the floor. Don’t give them the satisfaction of doing it for you.
An agent swooped in and thrust his knee into Paul’s back as he lay there helpless, face pressed to the tile, eyes cutting up toward Sturgis who stood by, the unflinching turncoat watching as the obvious leader of the group, Special Agent Charlie Morgan, forcefully zip tied Paul’s hands behind his back.
“Took you guys long enough,” Sturgis said.
“You try rounding up a team on unofficial business at one in the morning,” said Morgan. “Especially on a random tip.”
“Random tip? Is that what you call a tip from someone who covered your country club dues for the last three years now?”
Morgan pressed his lips and his face tightened, urging Sturgis not to utter another word in front of the others. The truth was that the two went way back, partnering up for Atlanta-area golf tournaments for the last fifteen years. It was a partnership that would’ve come to an end after the agent’s nasty divorce. Fortunately, Sturgis had been there to cover a few bills. Now, the federal agent owed him one.
Morgan downplayed Sturgis’ quip and said, “No worries, old man. It’s not every day we get to bag a federal fugitive. Now, let’s take a look.” He grabbed Paul by the chin and turned his head, jaw dropping in disbelief. “This isn’t the guy, George.” Then he looked to Fenton. Obviously not the guy, either.
“What’s the problem?”
“Ford’s no
t here. You told me you had a lock on Ford and to get a team here ASAP. I’ve seen his ugly mug on every wanted poster and television screen for the last months, George, and neither one of these clowns is him.”
Sturgis shoved his hands in his pockets. “Well now, I never actually said he was here. Just that I knew where he was.” He nodded down to Paul. “And this guy right here is going to tell you. Isn’t that right, Mr. Freeman?”
“Who’s Donny Ford?”
Morgan asked, “Who ever said his name was Donny?”
Fuck, thought Paul.
Sturgis grinned. “You see there, Morgan? You worry too much. You’ll be thanking me for the ‘random’ tip by sundown. Just watch.” He turned to Paul. “Now, boys. You ready to cooperate with my friends here?”
Paul didn’t answer this time, but if looks could kill, Sturgis would’ve been dead on the spot. Sturgis walked closer, the toe of his Oxfords an inch from Paul’s face and asked, “Because you didn’t really think I was going to cooperate with a house full of degenerates, did you?”
House full? Shit! The others … Paul desperately needed to warn Claire to get the hell out of Dodge, but the phone in his pocket was now sandwiched between his thigh and the hard tile floor as two more agents put the full weight of their federal authority into his legs and spine. No way he was getting a text out to Claire to warn them that they had been compromised. He just hoped she stuck with the plan.
He peered up at Sturgis. “You know this doesn’t change anything, George. CIA’s still got your number. You won’t last a week.”
Agent Morgan looked at Sturgis, curious eyes sharpened, but Sturgis signaled with a dismissive shake of the head that the fugitive wasn’t worth listening to. He looked down and said, “Oh, I’m not worried about anyone or anything that may or may not come out of Langley. Plus, as you can see, Mr. Freeman”—a wide sweep of his arm referenced the agents in the room—“I’ve got friends in high places, too. And, as you may have already guessed, some of those same friends are on their way to Sarah Fletcher’s place as we speak.”