A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  I forgive everyone who calls me lucky. They aren’t wrong, in that I lived, and the aftereffects, while devastating, could have been much worse. Most head trauma of that severity leaves partial amnesia, especially about the trauma itself. Another bit of luck, good or bad, depending on your point of view, is I remembered everything that happened.

  I also remembered what I was like in my old life. I knew that person well, and I will never stop envying the extraordinarily blessed life he lived. Blessed most certainly in his innocence, which more than anything was obliterated by the assassin’s bullet.

  It would be inconceivable that the blissfully innocent Arthur Cathcart could kill another human being. Not true of Arthur Cathcart’s successors. I’d proven that more than once.

  “But you’re not bringing us back to the States,” said Natsumi.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet anyway. Captain Perry wants to have a conversation before all that stuff becomes necessary.”

  As I listened to Jersey, I wondered how difficult it would be to injure him badly enough to escape the coffee shop and make a run for it. He was at least ten years older than me, but far bigger, and as a career FBI field agent, not an easy opponent, even if I got in the first shot.

  And with what, my fists? I hadn’t successfully hit anyone since high school, and then I had the element of surprise. No one back then thought a nerd like me would ever throw a punch. I needed more of an advantage, so I ordered a draft beer, which I’d seen served to a nearby table in a heavy glass mug. Without missing a beat, Natsumi ordered herself a glass of red wine.

  Jersey looked at his watch.

  “A little early, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “We might be a bit nervous,” said Natsumi.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Captain Mitchell,” said Natsumi, “I understand the value of both holding and showing your cards. As you pointed out, I’m a professional blackjack dealer. But it’s very hard for the opposite player to know what to do when so many of your cards are face down. In this game, you have the greater advantage. We’ve turned over quite a bit. In good faith. It’s your turn.”

  He liked that.

  “I wouldn’t need your file to know you’re a psychologist,” he said.

  He took a moment to gather his thoughts.

  “In order to lighten the mountain of shit that was falling on him, our friend Joselito was more than eager to sell out anybody and everybody he might have helped in their illegal enterprise,” he said. “It was quite a treasure trove of material, and the FBI and the Justice Department are still happily working their way through some very promising opportunities. The stickler, however, was Joselito fingering Chuck Andalusky, which was a little like saying the Sisters of Mercy have been selling orphans to McDonald’s to make into cheeseburgers.”

  “They haven’t?” said Natsumi.

  “By one estimate, The Société Commerciale Fontaine has managed, or been the fiduciary for, about thirty billion dollars in taxpayer money,” said Jersey. “A big piece of this has flowed through Chuck Andalusky’s office in White Plains. Do you think maybe some people in Washington might be just a leetle bit concerned to hear that Mr. Andalusky might have been engaged in even a leetle hanky-panky?”

  “And what are we supposed to know about this?” Natsumi asked.

  “He hasn’t told you?” Jersey asked, looking over at me. “You two should talk more often.”

  Natsumi kept her eyes on Jersey.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “Where did Arthur go after they chased him out of Fontaine?” he asked her.

  “He came home.”

  “Directly?” he asked. She sat silent. “My guess is no. Andalusky was gunned down less than an hour after those bozos in security let Arthur drive away. I’m betting an hour after that Arthur shows up in a new ride. We have the Jeep, by the way. Nice job cleaning up, though you left behind a partial and enough DNA to make a match with the guy we’ve decided is you. What’s really interesting is that Andalusky’s next-door neighbor saw the same Jeep parked outside their house that same morning. Arthur doesn’t happen to own an automatic pistol, does he Natsumi? Fitted with a suppressor?”

  I finished off the last of my beer, looking down into the mug the way I’d seen people do who needed a beer far more often than me. Gripping the handle, I tested the balance and calculated the weight, and ballistic potential.

  “If you really believe what you’re saying, why aren’t we in custody?” Natsumi asked.

  “You’re the psychologist,” he said to her. “Do you really know who you’ve been living with?”

  “Please, Mr. Mitchell,” said Natsumi. “Don’t insult me with the oldest trick in the book.”

  “Arthur’s a smart guy, but I’ve spent my whole life with guys like him. He cons everyone he knows. Why would you be different? Because you’re sleeping with him? Since when does that matter? Sorry, but it never does. Sure, he’s probably pretty good to you, if you ignore making you an accessory to enough shit to put you away for the rest of your life. I like you, Natsumi, but frankly, I don’t care what you think. You’re going to find out soon enough, as soon as the stakes get so high that even you move into the liability column. Right Arthur?”

  She didn’t let him move her gaze on to me. Instead, she said to him, “I think the stakes are already as high as they can get.”

  “Really?” said Jersey. “Why do you think Andalusky grabbed you off your boat in the Caribbean?”

  This time I tried to make eye contact with Natsumi, but she stayed fixed on Jersey.

  “They wanted something from us,” she said.

  “What.”

  “Information.”

  “About what.”

  “Money,” she said.

  “Ah, money,” said Jersey. “It always gets back to money, doesn’t it Arthur?”

  “Not always,” I said.

  “It does when you’re talking about a really, really big pile of money. Big enough that the gravitational pull starts to warp and bend and everything in its path, including the hearts and minds of otherwise decent, honorable people.”

  “Ostensibly decent and honorable,” I said.

  Jersey nodded, as if conceding the point.

  “Fair enough,” he said, “but let me ask you, Natsumi, how much money are we talking about here? Did Arthur tell you?”

  I’d never mentioned to Natsumi that Albalita, then Alberta, had told me the only thing she wanted to discuss with me was a billion, with a B.

  “A considerable amount,” said Natsumi. “I’d rather not share the exact number.”

  Jersey gave the top of the table a light smack.

  “God, I miss talking to liars,” he said. “The good ones, I mean. With all due respect.”

  Natsumi maintained her stillness and poise.

  “Maybe you should share your version of the truth,” I said to Jersey.

  He liked that, too.

  “There’s only one that matters, Arthur. The FBI’s. And our truth is that about a billion dollars of taxpayer money has been stolen and we want it back. The only thing left to decide is whether you correct the situation or disappear into some anonymous hole in the wall somewhere where you might as well be dead, this time for real.”

  “And how do you think we could possibly help, as you say, correct the situation?” Natsumi asked.

  “Another question for Arthur,” he said. “Geez, I feel like a marriage counselor. Maybe I should go into that. When I’m all the way retired.”

  Natsumi finally broke eye contact with Jersey and looked at me, though revealing nothing in her gaze. I made it easy for her.

  “He thinks I know where it is,” I said.

  “Why does he think that?” she asked, this time not rhetorically.

  “Because he took it,” said Jersey, as he reached across the table and gently took the heavy beer mug out of my hand.

  IT TOOK a few hours involving multiple cab rides, back-door exi
ts and even a quick trip to an outlying town, but eventually we made it back to our hotel. I didn’t know if we’d managed to evade the tails, if there were any, but just going through the motions felt like a meaningful thing to do.

  The room had a tight little seating area, a reasonably comfortable place for us to sit and try to plan out the remainder of our lives.

  Jersey had left us with a phone number and a deadline. Two weeks to hand over whatever would allow retrieval of the money—account numbers, routing codes, stock certificates, Krugerrands, treasure map—he didn’t care as long as it happened. After that, the government would decide what to do with us. So there was no clear quid pro quo. We returned the money or else, and even when we did, further consequences were impending.

  “Why did he let us go?” asked Natsumi.

  “They think we can get the money more easily if we’re free to move around.”

  “I don’t see how, but even so, it shows they’re confident they can capture us again if they want to. When they want to.”

  “It does.”

  “Do you think that confidence is warranted?” she asked.

  “Probably. They know too much and we know too little about what they know. Though I think we can take him at his word about the two weeks. That’s our window.”

  “To do what?”

  “Get the money.”

  She closed her eyes and let her head fall slightly forward.

  “And you know where it is?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She opened her eyes again.

  “Maybe this is something you could share with me.”

  “I don’t know exactly, but I know where to look.”

  “That’s an important distinction,” she said.

  “We need a car, ski masks, leather gloves and duct tape.”

  “Roger that.”

  IF YOU drive south from Zurich along the lake shore you come to an area called the Gold Coast, ostensibly because sunsets turn the hills amber, though the real reason is the same as the Gold Coast of Connecticut—bucolic suburbs in close proximity to an international financial center.

  This was where Albalita Suarez lived alone in a house behind a high white wall with a locked gate, with the second floor likely affording a good view of the lake, as suggested by the 360-degree street view on Google Maps.

  Employing basic precautions as we worked through the preparations and secured supplies, we were ready in the little grey Audi hatchback driving down Route 17 toward the Gold Coast village of Küsnacht. It was two o’clock in the morning, a time when even dynamic cities like Zurich were tucked in for the night, yet with plenty of darkness left to carry out the mission.

  We had a simple plan, one familiar to anyone who’d seen any run-of-the-mill television drama. Beginning with our outfits, all in black.

  “You really look like a ninja warrior,” I told her. “It’s kind of hot.”

  “Stereotyping won’t get you anywhere with me.”

  She didn’t argue when I said I looked more like a ninja accountant.

  Before reaching the village, we exited the highway and drove up into the hills, following the GPS instructions until we reached the red dot pinned to Albalita’s villa. Even in the darkness, partially relieved by a single streetlight, the property was easily matched to the street-view image captured on my iPad. We drove by and turned off onto a side street.

  We took our black knapsacks and carrier vests out of the back of the Audi and put on the ski masks. Underneath were headpieces linked together via mobile phone connections, another simple expedient.

  “Okay,” I said, in a whisper over the phone, “let’s do it.”

  We walked back to the house and turned down the neighbor’s driveway, which paralleled the white wall on the south side. Halfway down, we stopped and I hoisted Natsumi up to the top of the wall. She jumped down on the other side and secured a rope to the base of a big ornamental bush. I pulled myself up with the rope, an approach that’s far more difficult than it looks on TV. Natsumi did her best to help drag me over the top and we both landed more noisily than hoped for on another clutch of shrubbery.

  We moved on to clear ground where we lay on our stomachs and listened for unwanted sounds, like a barking dog or burglar alarm. It stayed quiet long enough to encourage us to move toward the house. I looked through a pair of night vision goggles pulled from my pack, scanning for security cameras, but saw nothing, not even outdoor flood lighting. It didn’t surprise me, Switzerland being such a safe country, Albalita’s white wall more a matter of privacy than defense.

  On the other hand, a lot of people in Switzerland owned guns.

  At the side of the house, we stood to either side of a set of tall casement windows. I looked through the uncovered, single-pane glass and over a kitchen counter. I used the night vision goggles to scan the ceiling and saw that both corners within view were free of motion detectors.

  I took a pair of suction cups and a diamond-tipped glass cutter out of my pack. I cut a hole large enough for me to fit through and used the suction cups to pull the cutout free of the window. The smell of cooking and cigarette smoke spilled out into the clear night air.

  In a brief moment of indignity for Natsumi, I stepped on her back and wormed my way through the hole in the window. She fed our backpacks through, then followed. It was a tricky enough maneuver under any circumstances, though performing it soundlessly consumed most of the physical effort. Frequently pausing to listen for sounds inside the house, it took a painfully long time for both of us to be crouched up against the kitchen cabinets.

  From there, we moved off into the house, praying for the kind of sturdy, squeak-free floor construction you’d expect from the Swiss.

  The staircase was in the sitting room near the front door. I led the way up to the second floor. When we were in the hallway at the top of the stairs a cat stepped out of a bedroom door and let off a guttural meow that sounded as if it were amplified through a PA system. We both froze.

  “Bernicia! Tranquilo, calma! ” came a muffled woman’s voice from inside the bedroom.

  Bernicia moved toward us, her tail waving whip-like above arched haunches. She yowled again.

  “Bernicia!” Albalita yelled, this time more clearly.

  I moved past the cat, who swatted at my pant leg, and walked into the bedroom. Albalita was in a bed directly across the room, lying on her back. I took two long steps to cover the distance and jumped on top of her.

  She didn’t scream so much as make a wet animal sound not unlike her cat’s. I sat hard on her stomach, my knees pinning her arms to the bed, and grabbed her by the throat, squeezing until her skinny but sinewy body stopped thrashing about.

  I let the pressure off her throat. Natsumi came up and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. I took off the night goggles and looked down at the blurry image of Albalita as she also struggled to adjust to the incandescent light. Though not for long.

  “You,” she said, her panicked eyes fixed on mine.

  “Hello, Albalita,” I said. “You remember Natsumi?”

  “Hello,” said Natsumi.

  “You can’t be doing this,” said Albalita.

  “We need to have a candid conversation,” I said. “I don’t want to waste a lot of time debating. And I’m sure there’re things you’d rather be doing. Like going back to sleep.”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “To know why you tried to kill us. Why not just let us go?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Because we saw your faces? That’s what I think. We could identify you. You knew we could, and would. Pretty cold.”

  “You’ll go to prison for this,” she said.

  “Did you know Chuck Andalusky was shot through the head?”

  She stiffened underneath me.

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Don’t you wonder why? Unless you’re the one who ordered the hit.”

  “That’s nonsense.”<
br />
  “You thought you’d murdered us,” I said. “What’s another dead body?”

  “Get off of me.”

  Instead I took my hands from her throat and gripped her head, with my thumbs pressed into her cheeks.

  “Why did you capture us in the first place?”

  “That was all Chuck’s idea.”

  “Don’t forget we were there,” said Natsumi. “You were a willing participant.”

  She wiggled some more under my weight, to little avail. I tightened my grip on her head.

  “Why,” I repeated.

  “You took something from us.”

  “How could I do that?” I asked. “I don’t even know you.”

  Her eyes darted over to Natsumi.

  “Is that what he told you?” she asked her.

  “You haven’t answered the question,” said Natsumi.

  “Tu sabes la respuesta, El Timador.”

  You know the answer, she said, calling me by the alias I’d used back when I was confronting the Basque terrorists. I moved my thumbs up from her cheeks to her eyes, which she involuntarily flicked closed. I put the pads of my thumbs on her eyelids.

  “Say it,” I told her, applying slight pressure to her eyes. With surprising strength, she tried to wrench her head to the side, but I held her firm. “After your eyeballs burst like a pair of ripe grapes, I will keep pushing until my thumbs penetrate the most human part of your brain.” I pushed a little harder. “And from there, I’ll just see how far I can get.”

  Her body writhed in fury as she absurdly tried to bite my hands. Gurgling noises came out of her throat, the precursor of an anguished scream. I put a little more pressure on her eyes.

  “Bastante! Por el amor de Dios!” Enough, for the love of God.

  I let up some of the pressure.

  “Tell me.”

  “You took it from Joselito. You betrayed him,” she said. “Why are you making me say this?”

  I took my thumbs off her eyelids and her eyes snapped open, wide enough to show circles of white.

  “How much did he take?” Natsumi asked.

  I still had Albalita’s head in my grasp, but her eyes looked over at Natsumi.