A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  As we walked I took out my smartphone and speed-dialed Natsumi’s panic phone. I let it ring three times, then hung up and put the phone away before the security people decided they should stop me.

  We went through an unmarked door into an area that housed the security detail. Faces looked up from desks as we walked through to a conference room, where Ansell Andersen sat with a laptop computer facing away from him, as if prepared to give a presentation. Which he was.

  They stood behind me while I sat in front of the computer. Ansell looked either jubilant or argumentative, which for him was likely one and the same.

  “Hello, Ansell,” I said to him. “What’s up?”

  “The jig, if you can call it that,” he said.

  He stood up and tapped on the computer’s space bar, typed in the code to unlock it, and up popped a video of Martin Goldman, my old classmate, being interviewed by an Asian woman on what looked like a television newscast. I noticed Marty looked pretty good, and not much like me despite my effort at disguise. I didn’t follow the content of the interview very well, distracted as I was by a nearly overwhelming surge of fight/flight.

  “It seems there’s more than one Martin Goldman with Martin Goldman’s résumé,” said Ansell. “Only, unfortunately for you, this one appears to be the real Magilla.”

  “Appears to be?” I said.

  With some flourish, Ansell took out his smartphone, tapped a few buttons, then put it on the table.

  “For the record, I’m absolutely me and I’m here in Singapore,” said Marty. “I’m about to go out to dinner with some friends who can also vouch for me, and if I’m not me, we’re all in for a big surprise. Hope this is what you need, and tell that other guy I’m flattered. Not every day you get impersonated.”

  I looked up at the security guy on my left.

  “Where’s Jenny?” I asked him.

  “Who?”

  “Jenny Richardson. From HR. You can’t talk to me without HR in the room. If you continue, I can sue all three of your asses and it won’t matter if I’m Santa Claus, I’ll win.”

  Ansell’s face fell a little, but the security people seemed unperturbed. Nonetheless, one of them walked over to a phone and called Jenny.

  “I don’t know what she’s going to do for you,” said Ansell. “You’re fucked no matter what.”

  “Who else have you notified?” I asked one of the security people.

  “Mr. Andalusky was away from his desk. We left a message.”

  The guy checked his watch as if it would tell him when Chuck would be picking up his messages.

  “I don’t know how you thought you’d get away with it,” said Ansell. “You think we’re stupid?”

  “Who’s head of security?” I asked the guys.

  “That’d be me,” said the one who’d called Jenny.

  “So you know you can’t restrain me,” I said, “as long as I’m not behaving in a way that endangers anyone’s safety.”

  “Let’s just wait for Ms. Richardson,” he said.

  “What a bunch of bullshit,” said Ansell. “Why aren’t you calling the cops?”

  “Maybe because they’re doing their job, which is to look after the best interests of the corporation,” I said to him.

  Jenny came into the room with a look of surprise and wonder on her face. The two security guys moved a few steps away from me, as if deferring to the diminutive woman. Ansell muttered under his breath.

  “Can someone please tell me what this is about?” she asked.

  “The guy’s a phony,” said Ansell. “I always thought so. But to please people like you, I got some proof. The real Martin Goldman’s still in Singapore.”

  He reached for his computer, but I stopped him by saying, “Not necessary. I’ll stipulate that it’s true. I’m not Martin Goldman.”

  She bent over me and actually put her hand on my shoulder. The wonder on her face turned to concern.

  “Why?” she asked me.

  “I needed a job,” I said quietly, staring deeply into her eyes. “I was desperate. No one gets hired when they’re unemployed more than six months. I’ve been out for a year. You can’t imagine how hard it can be. The kids love their school. We were going to lose the house and we’d have to move, God knows where.”

  “Jesus Christ, the guy’s a fucking con man,” said Ansell.

  “I’ll leave quietly,” I said, a slight whine creeping into my voice. “There’s no reason to bother Mr. Andalusky. This is embarrassing enough.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ansell nearly shouted. “This is a gross violation of the law. You can’t go around pretending to be other people and taking money and acting like you know what the fuck you’re doing, bullshitting your way into a job you have absolutely no business being anywhere near.”

  He would have gone on, but I put my hand in front of his face, interrupting him. I looked straight at Jenny and spoke so softly she had to lean farther in.

  “As of now, with the exception of Mr. Andalusky, who has a message on his phone, the only people who know about me are in this room. While I’m sure your management will be unhappy to hear how easy it was to get though the human resource hiring process, perform well enough in the job to be promoted into a position within walking distance of the C-suite, I guarantee they’ll be much happier if it isn’t broadcast to the entire world. All you have to do is let me walk out of here and that’ll be the end of it. It’s in no one’s interest, certainly not mine, to let any of this be known.”

  Jenny nodded, thinking about it. She looked up at the head of security.

  “What do you say, Carl. Can we just escort him out of the building?”

  “No,” said Ansell. “No, no, no.”

  He stood up and tried to grab me by the shoulder. As I reared back, Carl got between us and used both oversized hands to move Ansell out of the way.

  “None of that, sir,” said Carl.

  “I can’t fucking believe this,” said Ansell. “Are you people out of your fucking minds?”

  Jenny drew to her full height, even gaining an inch by lifting up on her toes. She pointed a finger at Ansell.

  “Listen. You do not get to make decisions for this corporation. And if you even think about violating confidentiality in this matter or any other relating to human resources, your sorry ass will be out of a job before you can say ‘spit.’ ”

  I thought this was a good time to stand up myself, clutching my briefcase to my chest with pathetic defensiveness.

  “I need to get home to break the news to my family,” I said.

  Jenny’s eyes shot another set of knives at Ansell before guiding me out of the conference room. I led the way to the employee entrance followed by Jenny with Carl bringing up the rear. When we got to the turnstile I handed Carl my ID badge and let him look through my briefcase. He thanked me and took everything but an empty pad of paper.

  “Good luck,” said Jenny, shaking my hand.

  I forced myself to walk to the Jeep like a dejected sad sack and not the adrenaline-addled lunatic I actually was. I was out of the garage and partway down the long, curvy driveway when a security car came racing up behind me with its blue light flashing. I pulled over and watched two uniformed guards in my rear view mirror get out of the car. When he reached my door I gunned the accelerator. In the time it took him to scramble back to his car I was nearly to the guard shack. I could see the driveway blocked by the barrier with two men standing there waiting for me.

  To my right was a field of tall grass. I shoved the Jeep into four-wheel drive and flew into the field. It was a lot lumpier than it looked from the road, which was fine for me as long as the Jeep and I could take the punishment. The same didn’t seem possible for the car driven by security, though they gave it a try.

  I could barely hold the steering wheel as I flopped around in the Jeep’s passenger compartment, with only the seat belt preventing me from smashing into the dashboard or up into the ceiling. The options before me weren’t promis
ing. Another few hundred yards of grassland, a ditch, and a cyclone fence. Beyond that was a public road. Cyclone fences are little impediment for Hollywood, which generally has the stunt driver ripping through the chain-link as if it were cheesecloth, which it isn’t. I took a counterintuitive approach, aiming instead for one of the poles, hoping it would snap off or crimp at the base. But first, I had to clear the ditch.

  There wasn’t much more speed I could get out of the Jeep, even with the accelerator on the floor. The lumpy terrain just wouldn’t allow it. All I could do was hold the wheel in a death grip and try to keep the Jeep perpendicular to the ditch, and subsequently, the fence.

  I guess I was moving better than I thought, because the Jeep actually became airborne at the bank of the ditch, clearing the distance to the fence, which I hit like a ballistic missile.

  The airbags finally had enough, which was a good thing. Cushioned in their rough embrace, I survived the crash with consciousness and all four limbs intact. The Jeep as well, even after whipping around to the right and nearly launching into a roll.

  The bigger problem was regaining freedom of movement from the deflating airbags surrounding me. With one hand on the wheel, I used the other to push the slippery synthetic material out of the way. I still had a stretch of grassy ground to cover, but it was much smoother and the Jeep’s steering and suspension system felt fully operational.

  The hood was crimped toward the front, but a look at the instrument panel showed I still had oil and coolant. Seconds later I was at the roadside, waiting for a few cars to pass before calmly entering the flow of traffic.

  My thinking now moved to the strategic. I couldn’t know why security suddenly reversed their decision to let me go, but my money was on Andalusky picking up their voice message. Security probably decided that, facing demands by a big shot like Andalusky, they were in their legal authority to restrain me while still on corporate property. After that was another matter. I tried to imagine the reaction of a police dispatcher being asked by some corporate hack to please chase down one of their ex-employees for lying on his résumé.

  I turned onto a side street and stopped to look at the GPS on my smartphone. I mapped out a route away from White Plains that avoided most of the main roads and set off. Then I called Natsumi.

  “Have you heard from your mother lately?” I asked.

  “Yes, she’s well, thank you,” said Natsumi, completing the prearranged signal that all was clear.

  “I’m blown at Fontaine,” I said. “Some asshole in Gyawali’s group tracked down the real Marty Goldman. Don’t know if there’s more damage beyond that. They let me go, but then changed their minds and I had to bust my way out of there.”

  I told her my theory of Andalusky picking up his messages and likely grasping implications well beyond the simple fraud.

  “I grabbed our ID supply and your external hard drives, but left everything else at the house,” she said.

  “I gave HR a PO Box connected to a phony address, so Fontaine doesn’t know where we live. As long as I’m not followed, and I’ll make sure of that, there’s no reason to think we’ve lost the house.”

  “Think about that,” she said.

  I knew what she meant. I needed to run through all the possible scenarios, hitches, possible holes in the argument, threats imminent and improbable. Our lives depended on it.

  I told her I’d call her back in an hour or two. I drove a desultory route around the Westchester and Fairfield County area until nightfall, fitting in a couple of errands as I went, since I needed to ditch the Jeep. The security people didn’t need to record my license plate in the midst of a car chase, they just had to go to my employee file and look it up. No matter what, that made the vehicle a big liability.

  So I bought a bottle of cleaner and a roll of paper towels. Then I drove to a parking lot of a big shopping mall, wiped down the interior, locked the doors and left it, smashed-in grill and all.

  I caught a bus that took me to a car rental outlet where I picked up another SUV, this one a Ford Explorer. I’d long ago stripped off the Marty Goldman wig, but I also stopped at a clothing store so I could dump the business casual in favor of a baseball cap, flannel shirt and jeans. Aside from being smart tradecraft, I felt renewed by the look and feel of the clothes, a protective layer against encircling threats.

  “I still think the house is good,” I told Natsumi, when I called her back, adding that I’d switched out my ride and ensemble. “We’re all done with drab corporate drone. The new look is lumberjack.”

  “I’ll work on a hearty meal.”

  I took another long and winding route up to the house in Pound Ridge, watchful as a timid herbivore for any hint of threat, while continuing my endless brooding deliberations and calculations, and plotting alternate futures, searching for paths out of the chaos that was closing in on me.

  CHAPTER 20

  “I’m not going to draw the blinds and cower in a corner,” said Natsumi. “That might be the best survival tactic, but I just can’t.”

  We were in the big basement of the rental, which had a set of comfy, well-used sofas clustered around its own fireplace. It also had my bank of computers and storehouse of munitions and protective gear. When I got home, she met me there, a place with only two small windows high up on the wall and a door leading directly to the garage on the same lower level. Noticing the fortress feel, Natsumi had clearly felt a surge of rebellion.

  “Me neither,” I said. “Why don’t you go get some coffee?”

  “Up there? What’re you crazy?”

  She left anyway and came back later with coffee and lunch. I had a Google search of Albalita Suarez up on the computer from which I was downloading text, photo and video information and storing it on one of my bottomless external hard drives. Natsumi put down the tray and sat next to me.

  “That’s definitely her,” she said.

  Born Albalita Drechsler. Daughter of an Argentine mother and a German immigrant father, also Argentine.

  “Probably a Nazi,” said Natsumi.

  Married to an American, Pedro Suarez, subsequently divorced. BA in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Started at UNICEF, moved through different NGOs till landing the executive director spot at The People Project, headquartered in Zurich. The usual awards, accolades, published articles and honorary degrees. Photos of her drinking tea on the floor of a yurt, loading relief supplies onto flatbed trucks, holding skinny African babies, stalking through a Middle East refugee camp in a calf-length skirt and hiking shoes, standing at a podium pointing her finger at someone out in the audience likely being flattened by a withering retort.

  I switched over to Andalusky’s company e-mail account, but saw nothing current relating to Albalita. Then I looked at the software monitoring his smartphone and saw a call not long after I fled the big building to a number in Zurich, Switzerland. I pulled it up and hit the audio button.

  “Albalita, it’s Chuck.”

  “Odd time to call, Chuck.”

  “We had a security breach this morning at White Plains. I’m not happy about it.”

  “Why’re you telling me?”

  “I think I fucked up.”

  There was silence on the line for a moment. I could imagine Albalita sitting up a little straighter in her chair.

  “How so?” she asked.

  “We hired a guy into my department who slipped in under false pretenses. Thing is, he knew his shit. Really well. But there was something familiar about him. Something I didn’t like. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. You’re going to think I’m nuts, but I think it was him.”

  “Who are you talking about?” she asked, clearly exasperated.

  “Him. The hacker with the Asian woman.”

  There was a longer silence this time.

  “That’s impossible,” she finally said.

  “The hell it is. Those fucking mercs double-crossed us. I never trusted those bastards.”

  “They were your idea,” she
said, in a tone that nearly froze the phone line.

  “You didn’t have anything better,” he shot back, the stress building in his voice.

  “Tell me more about this imposter,” she said evenly, pulling back from the impending argument.

  “He was a researcher Gyawali picked up. I needed someone to run analytics out of this office. So I got this smart son-of-a-bitch, though kind of a loose cannon. He’s the right age, but had this big head of hair and thick glasses. ’Course you have wigs.”

  “Chuck,” she said to him, the way you’d address a defiant teenager, “don’t you remember what our Basque friend said about this guy? He’s a world-class hacker, and he’s been inside your building, on your servers.”

  It was his turn to pause in silence.

  “Shit,” he said. “The phone.”

  “Dammit,” she said, and hung up.

  That was the last call he made. I tried to switch over to his company e-mail account, but it was gone. Not locked up, or defended by a new password. Gone, like it never existed. I switched again, this time to Andalusky’s home computer. Also gone.

  I tried to slip into Fontaine’s servers with Brian’s administrative log-ins, with no luck. I checked the GPS monitors stuck to Chuck and Okayo’s cars, and they were gone. As were the video monitors I’d set up outside their house, though I knew that already, having checked on my circuitous route back home.

  It was as if everything I’d done in the last few weeks was a hallucination. As if I’d been living inside a massive delusion.

  Prompted by such thoughts, I checked in on our finances. The investment accounts were all there, but another two bank accounts had disappeared. About thirty-eight thousand dollars had evaporated.

  “Fuck,” I yelled, slamming the top of the table with my open palm.

  Natsumi, who’d drifted away as I worked at the computer, ran back down the stairs to the basement.

  “What.”