The Hidden Throne

by Charlie Cottrell

  Bodewell circled around behind Maya, lightly touching her shoulder in a way that must’ve been Step 1 of How to be a Creepy Villain Delivering a Speech While Threatening a Female Captive.

  Bodewell continued, “Apparently, this little hacker encrypted everything, or Calthus did. I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. She won’t say anything, and we can’t get her computer to decrypt anything without her password, which she also won’t share. So, it’s come down to a threat.” Bodewell came out from behind Maya and walked slowly back to the camera, smiling a bit as though this were all just a big misunderstanding at the Yacht Club about how done his steak was supposed to be. “You know me, Eddie, I’m not real big on threats. But sometimes, you get further with ‘em than with asking politely.” He paused for a moment, letting his words sink in. “So, here’s the threat. Bring me the files from Calthus again, decrypted, or we’re killing the girl. And everyone else we come across as we make our way to his office and take the files for ourselves. It’d be a lot less messy if you got them, that’s for damn sure, but sometimes violence must be perpetrated to achieve one’s goals.” He turned back away from the camera, then stopped. “Y’know, Eddie, I think I must’ve sensed something would go wrong with this heist. Otherwise, how could I have managed to miss every single one of your major organs like that? I must’ve known you’d be needed down the road. Call it fate, or serendipity. Whatever it was, you’re still alive to be useful. It helps that you’re such an easy mark and you’ve got enough skills to get the job done that I need done. Anyway, don’t disappoint me, Eddie. You’ve got until this Friday to deliver the decrypted files, or I take care of it myself.” He tapped a button on the side of his vid window, and a familiar address in Old Town flashed up on my screen. “Be here at 7:00 PM Friday. Alone. Otherwise, she dies anyway.” He pinched shut the vid window and the video ended.

  “What’re you going to do, Eddie?” Miss Typewell asked nervously.

  I frowned, my brow wrinkled in determination and anger. “What do you think I’m gonna do, Ellen?” I replied through gritted teeth. Cajoling doesn’t do much to me. Pleading—at least, coming from someone like Vera—didn’t move me. Threats to my own person were about as effective as trying to squeeze blood from a turnip. But no one plays me for a fool. No one. Especially not John Bodwell.

  He was going to make threats? He was going to talk about serendipity and fate? I was going to show him what happened when you pushed a man too far.

  “I’m gonna get those damn files,” I snarled, “and then I’m gonna kick John Bodewell’s teeth in.”

  XIII.

  I stood outside Arcadia Savings and Loan again the next morning. Under my left arm, the popgun rested in its familiar place, snug in its holster. In my pockets, I had a small handheld computer, my lock pick kit, and a couple of other tricks of the trade. In my left hand, a cane with a couple of tricks of its own. Also, it could help me walk, which was necessary as I was still in pretty rough shape from that damned knife wound. I just counted myself lucky that it was a regular knife and not one made of the alloy, or I’d probably still be bleeding out of my gut.

  I walked right into the lobby with casual determination. The oily doorman came up to me, annoyance on his face. He remembered me, apparently. “Sir, I am sorry to inform you that you are not allowed in this establishment,” he said, raising a finger to wag at me. I flipped the cane around so that I gripped it by the end, hooked the oily man’s foot with the handle, and pulled. He fell in a fashion that would do the greatest prat-falling clown proud. It was spectacular, with arms and legs akimbo, flailing through the air as he landed flat on his back. The air all rushed from his lungs in one big “Whoompf!” As he fell, I slowly knelt down next to him, careful not to strain my stitches. I felt the eyes of bank patrons on me, but didn’t care. Guards would be joining us soon enough, and I had a couple of things to get off my chest before they arrived.

  “You again,” I said casually, as though we were having a conversation about the weather. “What’s your name, good sir?” I asked.

  It took him a moment to be able to reply. “Papper Ogin,” he said, still gasping.

  “Papper,” I said, mulling it over, swirling it around in my mouth, tasting it, “do you mind if I call you Papper?”

  “N-no,” he wheezed. He tried to rise, and I placed the handle of the cane on his chest and pushed him back down. Even with my injury, I’m pretty strong, and this guy couldn’t have weighed more than a buck forty soaking wet.

  “Now, Papper, I’m afraid that the last time I visited your establishment, I was not well-treated,” I said in my conversational tone. There was a hint of something darker lurking behind it, though, and Papper caught on like the prey animal he was.

  “R-really?” he said, radiating disbelief.

  “I know, I was shocked as well,” I continued. “Now, what I would like to have happen is this: I want to take another trip up to Mr. Calthus’s personal office. I have need of some files that are up there, and you’re going to help get me to them.” He tried to speak, but was having trouble because of the pressure from the cane. “Don’t talk,” I said, “just nod.” He nodded vigorously. “Now, I also need to know where I can find Raymond Calthus’s new assistant.” I still didn’t know where Chancel fit into this whole business, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t innocent. No time like the present to stitch up that little hole in the plot.

  I eased the pressure on his chest enough that he could squeak out, “He’s hiding in Old Town, at the Sleep Inn!”

  “Ah,” I said, rising from my squat and releasing the pressure from Mr. Ogin’s chest finally. He gasped in great lungfuls of air and tried to scramble back to his feet with some dignity.

  “You know you’ll never make it up there, right?” he gasped at me as I turned and started for the elevator.

  “Well now, on that point I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree,” I replied without turning back around. “I have every faith in my ability to get up there. Now, whether there will be much of a building left when I get done—” here, I flashed him a quick peek of the small object I now held in my right hand, “—that remains to be seen.”

  “Bomb!” Mr. Ogin screamed, his voice rising an octave. Bank patrons suddenly joined in the scream and made a beeline for the front door. I continued my slow amble to the elevator unperturbed. No one wanted to bump the man carrying a bomb.

  I reached out with my cane to hit the button to call the elevator. While I waited for the lift to arrive, I hummed a spritely tune to myself.

  “I do believe I’m a bit manic,” I said to myself, smiling faintly. “Must be all those wonderful painkillers I’m taking.” No one was left in the lobby.

  The elevator arrived and the doors slid open, welcoming me into the loving arms of three security guards.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, showing them the small bundle in my right hand. It was squarish, with a couple of curled wires sticking out at one point and connecting to a smaller, flat box taped to the top with duct tape. It was fairly innocuous, as packages go, but it had a certain bombishness to it that tended to make ordinary people feel uncomfortable. It had that effect on two of the security guards, who decided they weren’t making nearly enough to risk being exploded, and hightailed it for the lobby door.

  The third guard had more brains, apparently.

  “That’s no bomb,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I replied with a smile. “It’s really just a couple of old computer casings taped together with some curly wires stuck in for effect.”

  “It’s not very well done. You can see where the wires don’t actually go into the boxes, they’re just taped on top,” he pointed out helpfully.

  “Gosh, I hadn’t even seen that,” I said, a look of mock surprise on my face. I looked up at the guard, my head cocked slightly. “Damn, you’re a clever one.” I tossed him the fake bomb, which he caught easily. At the same time, I lashed out with the cane with my left hand, hoping to catch him in the te
mple with the tip of the wooden shaft.

  It was a beautiful plan. Catching him unawares with the distraction, then bring the real instrument of his destruction into play at the same time. Too bad his hand snapped up and caught the cane in a rigid grasp I had no hopes of breaking.

  “Really?” he said, sneering at me. “You think it’s that easy?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, flipping open a small panel in the handle of the cane and pushing a button, “I kinda did.”

  I closed my eyes as the small box in his hand burst in a bright flash, blinding my new friend. He cried out, both of his hands going up to his face much too late to have any effect on his visual condition. I opened my own undamaged eyes again, grinned, and brought the cane down on his head with a resounding crack! He collapsed on the floor of the elevator, unconscious. Reaching down, I dragged his prone form out of the elevator, feeling the effort pull at the stitches in my wound, and grabbed his key card in the process. I made my way back into the elevator, inserted the key card, and pressed the button for Calthus’s office.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The elevator arrived at the floor for Calthus’s private office. As the doors slid open, I took an appreciative glance around the room. In the short time since I’d last been here, Calthus had managed to get the place cleaned up and the damage caused by our midnight raid erased from the marble and exotic wood. You would never know there’d been a shootout here just a week earlier.

  I casually strolled into the anteroom, twirling the cane around my fingers as I walked. I started whistling again. The receptionist, ensconced in her position behind the massive curved desk, watched me approach. She’d closed all the vid windows usually arrayed around her head save one, on which she was frantically dialing 911.

  “It won’t do you any good,” I said, walking up to the desk. “See, I work with the police. This is a criminal investigation, albeit a rather unorthodox one.” I placed the cane on the top of the desk, and the woman stared at me in fear. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Calthus, if you please. Is he in?”

  “H-he’s…” she stammered, unable to form a coherent thought.

  “My dear, perhaps it’s time you made your exit,” I said, not unkindly. The young woman nodded, gathering her coat and purse from under the desk and scrambling for the exit as fast as she could on three-inch heels.

  As her steps echoed across the room, I took up my cane once more and wandered over to the door into Calthus’s private chamber. The door pushed open easily, and I tapped a button on my personal computer as I crossed the threshold. Calthus was seated behind his desk, his hands steepled in front of him, his elbows resting on the surface of the desk. He looked at me expectantly.

  “Ah, Detective Hazzard,” he said, not moving, “how nice of you to drop by. I trust you experienced no trouble in coming up?”

  “None whatsoever, you sleaze,” I replied in a friendly tone.

  “Please, have a seat,” Calthus said, gesturing to the overstuffed chair sitting across the aircraft carrier-sized desk from his own office chair. I wasn’t sure if the chair’s sudden appearance after my last visit meant the man was expecting me or if I’d come by after someone far more important who warranted a chair where I had not, but I took it gratefully, as I was experiencing a bit of fatigue from my adventures so far. I was still recovering from a major wound, after all.

  “So, tell me,” Calthus continued nonchalantly, “what business brings you here today?”

  “I want the files on Project Sabre,” I said, leaning back and fishing a cigarette from the packet. “Anything you’ve got on the alloy and its applications, especially the—what was it called?—the mass accelerator. I also need the decryption key for them.”

  “What good would such information do the likes of you, Detective?” Calthus asked, leaning back in his own chair. “You cannot make use of the alloy. The only prototype of the handheld mass accelerator is now safe in military custody at an army base halfway across the country. You are not the sort to create and utilize weapons that will change the shape and very nature of warfare. Why bother?”

  “It’ll save someone whose life is at risk,” I responded, my jaw set.

  “Ah, altruism,” Calthus said mockingly, “such a useless character trait.” Calthus stood abruptly and began pacing slowly behind his desk. “Do you know with whom I’ve been working on this project for the past six years?” he asked, not looking me.

  “The military, I assumed,” I replied.

  “Yes, they are one of the backers, but by no means are they the only interested party.”

  “What, are you trying to tell me you’re working with foreign powers?” I asked, annoyance rising in me.

  “Oh, heavens no, my dear boy, I am a patriot through and through,” Calthus responded, wounded. “No, I tend to look closer to home. ‘Think globally, act locally,’ as they say.”

  It dawned on me what he was saying. “You’re working with Kirkpatrick, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am,” Calthus replied, turning to gaze out the large bay window that occupied the back wall of the office. “I can see which way the wind blows. He is on the rise, the Organization is in decline, and I stand to make a great deal of money by getting in on this with Kirkpatrick now.”

  “But why have Kirkpatrick send his man in to stage a break-in?” I asked, my wound aching at the thought of Bodewell and his betrayal. “What good does that do you?”

  “All the good in the world,” Calthus replied, turning back to me. “This way, the military thinks the weapon plans were stolen rather than handed over to a dangerous domestic terror group. I gain plausible deniability and still get to keep the rather large check the government cut me. Not to mention no one attempts to convict me of treason. It’s a situation in which I can’t lose.”

  “Now that you’ve gone through all the pretense, why not just send the decrypted files to Kirkpatrick? Why make me jump through all these hoops?” I asked, annoyed.

  “It was Bodewell’s idea, really,” Calthus replied. “He wanted to make a fool of you, get you tied up in the whole bloody business, and then pin the whole damn thing on you. I guess he figures if you don’t end up dead trying to help your little hacker friend, you’ll at least spend the rest of your life tucked away in some dank cell reserved for traitors, terrorists, and the scum they don’t want to ever see the light of day again.” He paused for a moment, thinking, then added, “Plus, I just don’t like you. I thought it was a magnificent idea.”

  “You’re an absolute bastard,” I said, marveling. “A devious, bloody bastard with no concern for human life.”

  “Spare me your sentimentality,” he spat at me, genuine anger flashing across his face. “Did you think the military would have used this new alloy to simply threaten people into submission? No, it was always going to be used as a weapon, it was just a question of who would profit from it.”

  “And you decided it had to be you, huh?” I said, all traces of civility gone by this point. I was getting good and angry, too.

  “Why not?” Calthus retorted, turning back to the window. “Look at this city, ripe for the plucking. The Boss is an idiot. If he weren’t, he’d have found more effective and efficient ways to control distribution and sales of material in Arcadia. He wouldn’t have guys such as myself and Kirkpatrick trying to take over.”

  “Seems like an awfully convenient argument that just so happens to give you justification for the things you want to do,” I said.

  “Isn’t that what all rhetoric is? Finding ways to justify what you were planning on doing anyway?”

  I sighed and stood up, playing up my need for the cane. “Not that this business ethics lecture hasn’t just been fascinating,” I said, “but I’ve got things to do. So if you’d be so kind as to give me what I’m here for…”

  “Of course, of course,” Calthus replied, that reptilian smile of his returning to his face. “Not that it will do you much good, but if you think you just have to have it, who am I to
stop you?” He reached into his desk, pulled out a datachip, and inserted it into his desk console. He tapped a few buttons and quickly transferred the necessary files to the datachip, then ejected it and handed it across the table to be.

  “Thanks,” I said, pocketing the chip.

  “You know the likelihood of you making it back to your office with that chip is remote, and the chances of getting to your final destination with the chip so you can save your friend are almost nonexistent, right?” Calthus said in a measured tone.

  “Yeah, I know,” I replied, tilting my hat back on my head, “but I figure I’ve got nothing to really lose by trying to give guys like you a black eye on my way out.” I paused for a moment. “Which reminds me,” I continued, walking over to Calthus and punching him right in the eye. Calthus went down with a yelp, clutching his face in agony.

  “You’re a dead man, Eddie Hazzard,” Calthus snarled through gritted teeth. “Everything and everyone you ever loved will be dead, and it will be by my hand. I’ll make it last years, make sure you know it’s me who’s making your life a living hell.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, not really paying attention as I walked toward the exit.

  “And when, finally, I’ve killed everyone else you care about, I’ll come for you. I’ll find you in your cell, where the days they torture you will be a slight pleasure if only for the change of the monotony of never moving, never being able to stand up fully, and I’ll personally squeeze the life from your body with my own two hands, and the last thing you’ll see is my spittle as it drops from my lips onto your lifeless eyeball.”

  “Okay, first of all, that’s a pretty good villain speech, congratulations,” I said. “Second, that imagery was rather disgusting, and I’ll thank you to keep your spittle to yourself. Finally,” I reached into my pocket, taking out the computer and clicking a button on it, “I’ve just recorded every single thing you said. Hope you enjoy your time in prison.”

  “You bastard!” Calthus screamed after me, struggling to his feet. “You’ll pay!”