Arch Enemy

by Leo J. Maloney

  With a deferential bow, Morgan stood up and walked away, followed by Yolande. The children, a gaggle of about a dozen assorted girls and boys who had been watching the meeting from a distance, resumed following them.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  Yolande was impassive. “He is a dreamer and a fool. They will be massacred.”

  “This is your chance to leave. I can have my people contact Jakande and send someone for you.”

  “I do not run from a battle.” She broke away from him. “I am going to go find a cigarette.”

  Morgan found a quiet corner by a grove where he sat in the shade of a palm tree, waving flies away from his face. The children, still on his tail, peeked at him from behind a tent.

  Morgan turned on the sat phone. “Zeta, this is Cobra. Come in. Over.” He gave it a few seconds and tried again.

  “Cobra, this is Zeta.” Diana Bloch, relief breaking through even her stony timbre. “We thought we’d lost you.”

  He related the events since the ambush, telling her about Dimka and his militia. “They’re attacking Madaki’s camp in the morning,” he said. “I’m going with them and try to make my way to White. It’s going to be tricky. I need tactical support for extraction.”

  “General Jakande has secured air transportation and weapons for Bishop and the others. This is an in-and-out mission.”

  “Understood,” said Morgan.

  “I mean it,” said Bloch. “You owe no allegiance to these people. You do not have to fight their war for them.”

  Morgan looked out into the busy camp, the displaced families, fighting for their land, for their lives. “They’re a means to an end. They’ll serve as a distraction while I get to White. That’s all.”

  “Good. I’ll alert Bishop to have the tactical team on alert. Keep me updated.”

  Morgan terminated the call. As he reclined against the tree trunk, he heard rustling from a nearby bush. He looked, expecting to see a child, but instead, it was Yolande, close enough to have heard every word. She was now turning her back on him.

  “Hey,” Morgan, standing. “Hey! Yolande!”

  But she didn’t turn around as she stomped away from him, digging her heels into the muddy ground.

  Chapter 36

  Lisa Frieze walked into the FBI field office regretting the night before. She screwed up her eyes to block out the stray images of sloppy drunken make outs with Bryce Vickery that wafted through her mind, but she was finding it hard to focus on anything.

  “What truck hit you on the way to work?” Gus Loyola asked her as she walked in.

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  She sat in her cubicle with the papers she had gotten from the university the day before, wondering what to make of it.

  She had a list of what person held each keycard, identified by a code. She also had a series of maps that showed the code for each of the doors, which she figured out were a combination of four letters or numbers designating the building plus three more designating the particular door.

  She wasn’t sure whether the subchief of security had given her a printout rather than digital documents out of spite or incompetence. If it had been spite, well, then, kudos to him. He had succeeded in making her life difficult.

  She marked the doors that led into the steam tunnels, which inconveniently all had different building codes, with a dot at the end of the row of data. Then she went through each of the people who had accessed any of those doors, highlighting each with a different color.

  Her phone beeped. A text message from Conley, finally.

  Can we meet?

  She texted back.

  Half an hour, outside FBI offices.

  She returned to her work. It was stupid busywork, but sometimes that was what investigations consisted of.

  She was barely a quarter done when Chambers poked his head out of his office. He asked Gus, “Is Frieze in yet?”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “My office. Now.”

  “Oof,” said Gus as she walked past him. “In trouble?”

  She exhaled. “Good it ain’t.”

  “Lotsa luck.”

  Frieze knocked and entered Chambers’s office.

  “Close the door,” he said.

  She did, and sat across from him. He steepled his fingers against his mouth, his chair turned 90 degrees away from her, as if he were reflecting on what he was going to say. Maybe it was his way of torturing her.

  “I got a call from someone at an elevator company of all places,” said Chambers. “Do you know what they told me? That you’ve been harassing their people about an accident that happened last Friday.”

  “I’ve hardly been harassing anyone. I just had an informal talk with a—”

  “Tell me something, Frieze. Did you use your capacity as an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to gain undue access to a case you were not assigned to?”

  “I might have mentioned that I was an agent.”

  “Might have? Cut the weasel words, Frieze. Did you or didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Would this informal talk have anything to do with a certain accountant with a tongue-twister name?”

  “No, sir. I was just following up on a lead, sir.”

  “A lead about the case you’re working?”

  “No, sir.”

  He banged on his desk. “Then tell me, Frieze. What in the hell were you doing there?”

  “Chambers, this wasn’t just an accident. Dominic Watson was murdered.”

  “The local police, who actually have jurisdiction over this case, disagree.”

  “They don’t have the full picture. The circumstances are extremely suspicious.”

  “An elevator crashed. End of story!” Chambers yelled.

  “A technician came for a service visit that the elevator company has no record of one week before Watson’s death. And the camera feeds are just coincidentally missing for that day.”

  “We are done talking about this,” said Chambers. “I don’t want you near this elevator case. You’re on thin ice. Do your job. That’s an order.”

  Frieze walked out of the elevator to meet Conley, who was waiting for her in the lobby. She was angry. She was determined. The bitch would not get away with it, and Frieze would prove Chambers wrong.

  “I wanted to show you something I found on—”

  “Never mind,” she said through gritted teeth. “Let’s go find out what Nina Cotter is hiding.”

  “Now?”

  Frieze was in the mood to lash out. No better candidate than the bitch who had caused the mess. “Yes, now.”

  In her car, Frieze decided she’d come clean. “She called my boss.”

  “What?”

  “Nina Cotter. She called my goddamn boss. Gave him some bull that we were harassing her.”

  “And so the plan is to go back and actually harass her?”

  “More or less.”

  “I don’t want to be the one to point out the obvious, but what if she calls your boss again?”

  “I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll put the fear of God into her, that’s how.”

  Frieze pulled into the parking space outside the building that housed the Hornig offices, tires squealing, and pressed ahead as Conley stayed behind to put change in the meter.

  He caught up with her in the lobby, where she was already flashing her badge to the receptionist.

  “FBI. I’m here to see Nina Cotter.”

  “Hold on just a minute, ma’am,” she said. In no mood, Frieze jumped over the turnstile next to the reception desk.

  “Ma’am. Ma’am! Hey!” the receptionist shouted after her. “You can’t do that!”

  “Stop me,” she yelled back, pressing the elevator button. She looked back to see that Conley was doing the same. He exchanged a few words with the girl and jogged over to her.

  “I think she’s dialing security,” said
Conley.

  “I just need enough time to get to Cotter. She won’t dare call security on me then.”

  The doors slid open, and Frieze led the way into the elevator. She pressed the button for six, and the doors closed before security could reach them.

  “So, got anything in terms of specifics on the plan?” he asked. “You know, just so I can play along.”

  “No.” She was furious beyond self-doubt. “I’m winging it.”

  “Oh,” said Conley. “Good to know.”

  She held on to her righteous energy, trying not to let it deflate. A cartoon carrot played on the elevator’s video screen. Some kind of ad for toothpaste or something.

  The elevator reached the sixth floor, went straight past it, and the display marked 7. The car showed no sign of slowing down.

  “What the—” said Frieze. She pressed the button for the sixth floor again, but the elevator kept going up, now at the eighth floor.

  The name Dominic Watson played vaguely in her mind about half a second before the words came on the screen, black on white.

  HELLO, LISA FRIEZE.

  Chapter 37

  Faced with the screen that was now addressing her, the reality hit Frieze. This was a trap, a trap like the one that killed Dominic Watson. She felt like the elevator walls were closing in around her.

  “What the—” said Conley.

  She looked around. She had to think fast. She tried the emergency button.

  The reader changed from 9 to 10.

  “How many floors on this building?” she said frantically as she pulled out the receiver on the elevator emergency phone. It was dead.

  “The buttons,” said Conley. “19.”

  Then the screen read:

  YOU TWO HAVE BEEN VERY INQUISITIVE.

  She shut the text out of her mind and focused.

  “What do we know about what happened to Watson?” she asked, and then, answering her own question: “The elevator went all the way to the top floor and the motor kept going until the cables snapped with the force.”

  NOW THE GAME IS OVER.

  Adrenaline pumped into her veins. Her body buzzed with energy. Time slowed down.

  She looked at the elevator doors. No. No way to get the door open, no way to get out even if they could.

  The reader said 13, then 14, as the elevator continued to rise.

  “Shepard,” Conley was saying. “Shepard, come in, Goddamn it!”

  There was no time to call anyone. Frieze looked up at the ceiling. Six panels, each with its own light fixture. And above that—every elevator had a service hatch.

  “Conley. Help me out here.”

  He gave her a boost and she put one foot on the railing below the mirror. She laid her hand on the crossbeam for the panels, testing its strength. It would hold.

  THIS IS THE END FOR YOU.

  She then pushed up the panel on the right back corner. It wasn’t screwed on and opened easily to reveal a mass of wires and smooth metal above. Wrong side.

  She looked at the reader. It read 17.

  She climbed down and motioned for Conley to help her up on the other back corner. He pulled her up again and she pushed up the panel to find exactly what she was looking for.

  There was the service hatch. She reached for it, but the handle was beyond her reach by inches.

  “Push me up farther!” she said.

  With a grunt, Conley lifted her another foot. She grabbed the handle and released the lock on the hatch. She pushed it open, then held onto the sides as she strained her biceps to pull herself up with Conley’s help until she was sitting on top of the elevator.

  The whirring of the motor echoed, closer and closer. She looked up and saw a fast-approaching girder. On instinct, she lay supine, flat against the elevator.

  The car crashed into the side beams, a din of metal against metal. Frieze was in the gap above the car, her nose inches from the crossbeam that held the motor. It was roaring, straining the cables. Metal groaned as it bent, practically in her ear.

  “Conley!” she yelled out. “Come on!”

  She didn’t have to tell him. He was already lifting himself onto the railing in the elevator car.

  The first cable snapped, swinging back against the metal roof of the elevator like a whip.

  She moved over in the cramped space under the girder to give Conley room to come out.

  Then the second cable snapped. This time its edge sliced into her left arm.

  “Augh!”

  She didn’t even look at the wound. No time for that now.

  “This is not going to hold!” she yelled over the motor. “Grab onto something!”

  Conley held onto a supporting beam. She reached out for another, but her arms weren’t long enough. She inched her body along the surface as the elevator jerked. She smelled the burning of the engine.

  The last cable gave out.

  As the elevator let loose, Frieze reached out and grabbed the crossbeam. The car plummeted, leaving her legs loose and kicking in air, a sudden weight on her arms.

  A roaring wind filled the tunnel in the wake of the plunging box. There was a crash, and Frieze flashed on the image of her body down there, crushed by twisted metal.

  She turned to look for Conley and was relieved to find him hanging beside her.

  “How you doing there?” she asked, breathless.

  “I’d rather be somewhere else.”

  They clambered along the central I-beam. Frieze, being closer, reached for the service ladder, and once she had a firm hold, activated the door-opening mechanism. It slid open to reveal a carpeted office on the nineteenth floor.

  Frieze eased off the ladder onto the floor and Conley followed close behind. She checked the gash on her arm. It was deep, but she’d survive.

  Then she turned her attention to the office into which they had emerged.

  The scene had frozen at the moment they had stepped out. Every single person was staring at them. A secretary, phone in hand, mid-dial, a man with a coffee mug half-raised for a sip. All eyes were on them.

  “I suggest we get out of here,” Conley whispered to her.

  “Okay,” she said. “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s take the stairs.”

  Chapter 38

  “Problems,” was the first word out of Lincoln Shepard’s mouth.

  Lily swore to herself that she’d make him regret it. “What is it this time?”

  The heat was still suffocating, even in her black tank top. Shepard was reclining deep in his chair, resting his red All Stars on the War Room table. Lily wondered that Bloch never gave him an earful about treating Zeta headquarters like his bloody living room.

  “This guy is more paranoid than we thought,” he said. “Our device has been disabled. Given the patterns of its final transmission—the data went all screwy—I’d say he ran his clothes through an electromagnetic field generator. Fries any electronics stuck in there.”

  She sat across from him, legs crossed. “Do you think he knows?”

  “My guess is he does this every day. A preventive measure to fry any bugs that might have been put there. Paranoid bugger.”

  “This is going to make things hard.”

  “Which is why I have something new for you.” He swung his feet off the table and laid out two pieces of equipment he pulled from his pocket. It was a matching set in black plastic—one about the size of a pack of cards, and the other one tiny, squarish, about the size of a dime and with a protuberance that connected to the data slot on a cell phone.

  “You still have to get your hands on the phone,” he said. “But you don’t have to have it for as long. Thirty seconds is all it takes. And all you have to do is attach the tiny bit to the data jack. Just the transmitter. The real work is done by this little baby here.” He patted the card-sized device. “They connect wirelessly. Instead of a full data dump, which is what we were going for before, it’ll install a little bug that’ll reroute t
he phone’s backup to us.”

  She palmed the devices and examined them.

  “Think you can do that?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  She called him from her Porsche as she drove out into the evening traffic.

  Chapter 39

  Simon and Alex were sitting up against opposite sides of his bed in his room, with pillows against the hard frame, legs overlapping in the middle. They were immersed in their online search. Alex had at least ten tabs open on her browser.

  “Here he is,” said Simon. “Adam Groener. Assistant football coach at the university. There’s not much about him online, but he’s been at the university for a long time, it seems. I found an article from when he was hired . . . twelve years ago.”

  “I’m looking for the guy from last night,” Alex said.

  “I didn’t get a good look at him,” said Simon.

  “Well, I did,” said Alex. “I’m not always the best with faces, but I’ve been learning to force myself to pay attention to the particular features. He had a square face, with a forward-jutting chin and deep-set eyes. His cheekbones were wide and just a bit salient. His brow ridge was pretty heavy, which makes him look just a little like a Neanderthal, but his eyebrows are not particularly thick. Light brown hair, hazel eyes.”

  “That,” said Simon, “is pretty specific for someone who’s not the best with faces.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a smirk. “I try.” She scrolled through photographs from the football team website and found a group photo. She then scrutinized each of the faces until she found what she was looking for. “Look,” she said. “This is him, there near the middle.” She swiveled her computer on her lap and showed him the photograph.

  “Are you kidding me?” said Simon. “You don’t mean Matt Klingensmith, do you?”

  “Who?”

  “Star cornerback on the team.” He typed something on his computer. “Everyone thinks he’s a shoo-in for the NFL when he graduates.” He turned the screen for her to see a feature article about him entitled Springhaven’s Football Wunderkind. “Alex, this guy is a big deal on the team. I mean, if even I’ve heard of him . . .”