Apex Predator

by S. M. Douglas

  “C’mon.” Ernie shrugged off Owen’s need to joke about everything, “We’ll show you what we’ve got.”

  Cindy scowled as they stood, chairs screeching on the kitchen floor. In spite of appreciating Owen’s openness, she wondered when his immaturity would land Ernie in a situation they wouldn’t be able to overcome.

  Ernie stepped onto the back porch, fumbling with the lock.

  A man stepped from the shadow cast by the neighboring house, hand up, wallet open, the setting sun gleaming off a— “FBI Special Agent Will Brody,” The man said, displaying the Bureau’s distinctive shield. “I have a few questions and could use your help.”

  “Absolutely, special agent…” Cindy offered without batting an eye.

  “Please, call me Brody. Now, how about we talk over dinner?” He clapped his hands together, “I’m hungry as a wolf.”

  Ernie and Cindy exchanged pensive glances.

  “By the way,” Brody said. “Somebody ought to feed the dog. Those scratches on the kitchen door are something else.”

  Owen and Ernie turned to stare.

  Five deep furrows had been carved into the door. The splintered wood freshly exposed against the otherwise dark timbers. It looked as if it had been laid open within the last night.

  “C’mon you guys,” Cindy yelled out, already bounding across the yard.

  “Yea, okay,” Ernie said, his legs trembling ever so slightly.

  The FBI agent was right.

  It must have been a large dog to leave such marks.

  But that was just it.

  Not only didn’t the landlord have a dog, nobody else in Dibrovno seemed to either.

  Chapter 15

  August 2016 – Kiev, The Ukraine

  Brandner sat near the front window, just inside the café. Body almost preternaturally still as he sipped his evening tea and waited for Roberts. Only his eyes moved, cataloging each person entering his field of vision, dismissing some, lingering on one in particular. The café took up the ground floor of a sturdy three story building not far from his unofficial office at the local CIA station. It was one of his favorite places in the Ukrainian capital, though at the moment he was frowning.

  He had seen Roberts coming long before he sat down opposite him. A corpulent man who wore a perpetual scowl, he was impossible to miss. A second man, this one athletic looking, leaned against a wall on the opposite side of the street. He wore a windbreaker in spite of the stifling summer heat. A third and fourth man sat down at a table on the sidewalk just outside the café. Both heavily muscled, one watched the street. The other never took his eyes off those inside.

  “Remember that FBI agent you helped smuggle out east the other day?” Roberts said, looking outside as he spoke.

  “What about him?” Brandner said. He had worked with Roberts on several off-the-books-projects but hardly tolerated the man’s presence. Nevertheless, thanks to Roberts prominent role in Kiev’s recent changing of the guard rumor was that he had the inside track for a high-level job in the new administration.

  “Our friends at the MVS say that not only didn’t he check in yesterday, but he also shook loose his tail.”

  “Is that so?” Brandner remarked, one eyebrow rising ever so slightly. “I didn’t figure him to be the wandering type.”

  “I need you to find him.”

  “And…”

  “Just watch him, for now,” Roberts said, head turning toward the intelligence officer so his cold blue eyes could fix Brandner in his stare. “But you report to me on this one, nobody else. Got it?”

  “Since when did the State Department start tailing FBI agents?”

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “No, I guess it isn’t,” Brandner said. The concept need-to-know had been virtually pounded into him since his first days at Langley, but in this case he couldn’t resist prodding. He had no confidence special agent William Brody would find Karlovic. However, Roberts almost comical concern at the Bureau’s meddling around in what he regarded as State Department turf was too juicy to let go. Then again, and though killing had become second nature to Brandner during a professional career that reached back to the closing days of the Vietnam War, special agent Brody seemed like a nice enough fellow. He would hate to terminate him.

  “Good,” Roberts said, standing. His goons followed as he disappeared up the street as efficiently as he had come.

  ------------------

  August 2016 – New York City, New York

  Graham patted his stomach as he waited for his car. Maybe the pastries had been a bit much.

  The sweating doorman, a tall black man resplendent in his uniform despite the heat outside, stepped inside the crisp climate controlled lobby signaling that Graham’s car was ready.

  Graham marched outside where the driver held open one of the spacious stretch limousine’s back doors. Graham hardly noticed. He ducked inside and slid into the hand-stitched leather seats. His brow furrowed as the door swung shut. Not only wasn’t it his usual driver, but he wasn’t even the same guy that had dropped him off two hours prior.

  The driver smiled as he settled into his seat and looked back toward Graham.

  It was only then when Graham noticed that the driver was staring past him.

  The hair stood on the back of Graham’s tingling neck at the same time a feral musky odor oozed into his nostrils. Something was behind him. He spun around, eyes straining to adjust to the car’s overly dark interior, then widening in shock.

  The driver’s glass partition hummed closed at the exact moment it ripped Graham’s scream from his throat.

  ------------------

  Rupert sniffed in disgust as he turned and walked toward the lobby door. Mr. Graham had ignored him again. You can only walk all over people for so long before—

  A jolt shot through his body. He had served two tours in Iraq and recognized the feeling. Rupert whirled in time to see the limo rock heavily on its shocks, hearing what sounded like a high pitched scream from within cut short.

  He took a step toward the car, but that was it.

  The driver locked onto him, the man’s eyes shining with a malevolent glint that froze Rupert in place. It was a look Rupert had seen once before, during his first tour of duty. His platoon had been waiting on standby security for a team from Delta Force. They were not needed. Later that night the Delta chopper landed and Rupert had wandered out to see six heavily armed Americans marching along the tarmac. Two slightly built Iraqi men stumbled along with them, black hoods over their heads, hands zip-stripped behind them. Rupert made eye contact with the Delta operator bringing up the rear. Though he had heard that combat vets had a “thousand yard stare” what he saw in that man’s expression was not even remotely vacant. It was like staring into the eyes of a panther…

  Rupert snapped back to the present, staring mouth agape at the limo driver whose eyes shimmered with a similar predatory intensity. Then the driver smiled, revealing unusually big teeth.

  Rupert’s sphincter involuntarily tightened.

  The driver wagged a long and crooked finger, its nail strangely curving, extending well past the fingertip.

  Rupert couldn’t move away quick enough, legs weak he staggered against the building, grasping at the door handle. With safety at hand however, and against every instinct of self-preservation he turned back.

  The driver’s face appeared calm, teeth even and normal in size. He tipped his cap, and the tinted window whirred up. The limousine accelerated away from the curb, cut into traffic, and was gone. Rupert leaned against the door, panting. His uniform soaked through with sweat.

  Maybe it was his imagination.

  Then he saw a single drop of crimson blood gleaming on the concrete.

  ------------------

  August 2016 – Dibrovno, Western Ukraine

  Brody followed t
he professors through town, his mind spinning. It had taken him most of the day to shake the Ukrainian police and then make the wearying drive to Dibrovno. A drive that had been made more troublesome yet by a call his boss had opened with the dreaded, “There’s something you should know.”

  “I take it the dead bankers piling up aren’t going over well with the powers that be.”

  “Cut the crap, Brody. You’re on thin ice as it is, if we had anyone else possessing anything close to your Wall Street experience you wouldn’t even be in on this investigation. Besides, things are getting worse back here. Beat cops are still treating black people as target practice. Meanwhile, veterans are getting cashiered from the service with nothing to show for it but the chance to throw out the first pitch at a ball game or maybe shake a senator’s greasy hand. Need I remind you that some of these guys are taking what they learned overseas and trying it out at home?”

  Brody listened, letting Wilson vent.

  “On top of that, left-wing groups are getting outside help from contractors too scared to whistle blow for fear of getting the Snowden or Manning treatment. That’s got players on the left pushing a second amendment response for the first time since we broke that habit back in the 70s. The gun manufacturers are short stroking themselves silly as everybody but the local PTO arms themselves to the fucking teeth.”

  “Annnnddddd…”

  “And smartass, between the resources we’ve diverting to the banker murders and the public’s ambivalence—”

  “The public’s ambivalence? I can’t imagine why these killings aren’t generating greater sympathy.”

  “Find your fucking suspect.”

  Several hours later, and in spite of Dibrovno’s failure to show up on his rental car’s GPS unit Brody walked across the Main Square. The picturesque setting and friendly people made him wonder all the more about the weird looks he had received back in Kiev when he had asked about the town.

  Upon reaching the tavern, Ernie selected a table out back. The river shimmered under the evening sun, the castle looming over them. Ernie ordered for everybody. Dinner came quick, allowing them to do little more than exchange pleasantries, which was fine with Brody as he surreptitiously assessed his companions. Cindy was perhaps the most impressive as a Latino woman in a research field dominated by white men. Ernie would have been a leader anywhere. Then there was Owen. Though book smart the younger man seemed to have a bit of the man on the moon in him.

  Brody watched as Ernie teased Owen regarding his choice of after dinner beverage; hot chocolate done in the Eastern European style - meaning creamy melted cocoa in a cup. Cindy smiled as Ernie playfully suggested to the waitress that his grandson always enjoyed chocolate milk with his meals.

  “A few days ago we found a body in Detroit,” Brody said, quieting the table. “Genetic material from the crime scene led me here. It seems that you’ve uncovered DNA that matches that of our murder suspect.”

  “That can’t be,” Cindy said. “Our sample is seventy years old.”

  Brody shared as much as he could.

  In turn, Cindy and Ernie explained their findings.

  Yet, when it was all done Brody felt no closer to an answer than when he had sat down. He pushed back his chair, “I have a few calls to make. Why don’t we get back together in a few hours, here is fine. I have some more things I want to run by you if I could, and in the meantime maybe you can see if there isn’t something you’ve missed?”

  They nodded their assent.

  “Great,” Brody said, decided to take one more shot at getting a feel for them. “Yesterday I was out by the Russian border. It’s way worse than what the papers are reporting.”

  “What’s happening in the East is hardly a surprise,” Ernie said. “It doesn’t help that some in Kiev are pointing fingers at the ‘degenerate others’ who need to be purged from Europe. On top of that, the IMF is doing its usual damage, pushing austerity and whatnot. If you think everything is going to work out for these people—”

  “It just about never has,” Owen said. “We’re as nasty a species as it gets.”

  “I don’t buy the idea that people are inherently bad,” Brody said, standing. “I can think of plenty of times where I couldn’t have won even a small measure of justice for crime victims without the assistance of regular folks who stepped forward and offered their help.”

  “Justice is a fine notion,” Ernie said. “But in practice it’s a malleable concept, is it not?”

  “What are you talking about?” Brody said, tamping down a surge of irritation.

  “Your belief in the system is admirable, though naïve,” Ernie said. “Historically speaking, crime pays. Most of the Nazi’s responsible for murdering millions got away with it. Given current events, they’re hardly the only ones to do horrible things and walk away clean.”

  Brody turned in disgust and stalked off.

  “Weren’t you a little hard on him?” Cindy said to Ernie as she watched Brody go. She liked him. He had an earnestness that she found refreshing, plus he was handsome.

  Ernie didn’t respond.

  ------------------

  August 2016 – New York City, New York

  Jimmy Donnelly smiled. Regardless of what had been a satisfying if overindulgent lunch he had finally caught up with the hundreds of emails that had stacked up during his recent trip to Europe. Then, just as he was about to leave for the night, several members of his board of directors had burst into his office and whisked him away on a corporate helicopter. Within minutes, he had been deposited on a colleague’s spectacular beachfront estate in the Hamptons, and his surprise sixtieth birthday party.

  Everybody that mattered attended. CEOs, congressmen and senators, the Governor of New York, three former treasury secretaries, the former attorney general, reporters from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, celebrities, and more. All topped off with a special performance by the queen of the Big Apple herself - Beyoncé. Then came his impromptu speech. As a performer, he had been every bit her sweet brown assed equal, delivering a rousing birthday diatribe against regulation capped with a flourishing finish.

  “Only the strongest survive the market.” He had said, perhaps more than a little tipsy on $15,000 a bottle French wine flowing like a river, “For the best the rewards should be the greatest. Should they not? After all, this isn’t the Soviet Union. This is the United States of America. And it’s a Free Fucking Country!”

  The crowd had roared their approval.

  Life was good.

  Fuck that, life was awesome.

  No sooner had he stepped off the stage, shaking hands left and right, than he had snatched a thousand dollar cupcake off a server’s tray and plopped into his seat at the head table. He bit into the cupcake and his mouth exploded with the combined flavors of champagne infused pastry cream, cultured butter from Normandy’s finest farms, hand raked Rhône River delta sea salt, Tahitian vanilla beans, Tuscan Amedei chocolate, New Zealand honey, and 24-karat gold flakes sprinkled across icing topped off with a drizzled limited-edition Courvoisier. Donnelly’s second bite into the delicious confection had nearly melted him into his chair when he frowned, spotting the loathsome Lew Sager heading for his table.

  Lew, a senior vice-president at the bank, had been with him for longer than he cared to remember. Nevertheless, they only talked when there was bad news. He could tell by the dour little man’s stick-up-his-ass-stride that this was going to be a doozy.

  “We got a problem.”

  “Go figure,” Donnelly said, sighing and reluctantly setting down the half-consumed cupcake.

  “The associate attorney general is bragging about our settlement.”

  “Sixty million is nothing, you know that.”

  “That’s not it. The associate AG is stating we admitted to filing fabricated documents in court, allowing us to foreclose on thou
sands of homeowners. To that point the settlement contained no admission of liability.”

  “Let him say whatever the fuck he wants, it’s over.”

  “Look, boss,” Lew said. “You just got back from London and know what’s going on with our commodities guys. We need to let things simmer down.”

  “Simmer down? I’m not—”

  “You hear anything else about the VP that took a roof dive while you were there?” Lew interrupted, “That was some nasty business. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank God for all the Brexit stuff or we would have had even more of a public relations mess to clean up.”

  “Don’t even get me started on the Brexit vote,” Donnelly said, quickly changing the subject.

  “A report came out today,” Lew said. “From the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and it’s getting traction in the media. Suicides are up big time. The authors attribute this to economic reasons.”

  “Like I care if some asshole let us take his house and couldn’t handle being a sucker. Jesus Christ Lew, what’s wrong with you? You ready to start subsidizing the loser’s mortgages or something? What’s happening to this country? The real crime isn’t in taking what’s there to be had; it’s not seizing everything possible. It used to be you sink or swim on your own, and if someone couldn’t hack it then too bad. ”

  “Sink or swim on our own? Without government handouts—”

  “Watch it,” Donnelly said. “I’m goddamn well aware of what we got. We deserved it. You know how much we pay in taxes. But now everyone’s looking for a free ride just because those of us who earned a break got one.”

  “The optics are terrible,” Lew responded. “Talking heads are linking the two stories. The DOJ might even reopen the investigation.”

  “Now hold on—”

  “We’re talking about hundreds of lives ended, and millions ruined,” Lew said.

  “Are you kidding me?” Donnelly said. “What’s wrong with you? My employees are hard-working people. C’mon Lew. Maybe you can explain how far up your ass you reached to pull out that steaming shit pile of an idea that whatever’s on TV might be a concern of ours.”