by Nick Thacker
He looked over at Gareth once again. “And yes, we are on the same side.”
Gareth nodded, then waited until he handed over the phone. “This is a file, the image of a scan of the list, printed in my boss’ office. She had it organized from largest deposit to smallest.”
“Because that’s what you thought your killer was doing, too,” Gareth said, looking at the file. The phone’s screen was barely large enough to be useful, but he found by pulling his fingers apart after resting them on the screen that he could zoom in and work around the image, reading most of the text clearly. Staring at it for too long would give him a headache, and racing down the freeway at the same time wouldn’t help much.
“Okay, so it’s not organized by deposit amount,” Gareth said. “There are columns here — I’m guessing this is their social security number?”
“Yes, or whatever number the government the client resides in uses. As a security-sensitive organization, we do not even have client names in the database.”
“So you had to pull names out separately, then match them up. Must have been a chore.”
“It took some time, yes,” Roderick said.
“Okay, and I’m guessing it’s not as simple as just working down the names in an alphabetical way — Aaron gets killed before Abdul, for example.”
“We tested that, and you are correct. The woman is killing these clients in another order besides name. First name or surname.”
“Got it. Then the other columns have obviously been tested as well?” Gareth asked. He looked around the file onscreen and saw the different columns of data, all lined up neatly with rows for each entry. A long number — a social security number, he guessed — then a country, then another number, and finally a deposit amount in the last column. “County of origin? I’m guessing that’s where the deposit originated?”
“Close,” Roderick said. “That is the country where that number — the social security number in the first column — lives. Typically it is the location of the client, though it is more accurately the country in which the client does the majority of its business.”
“Okay, right. What’s the other number?”
“That is a phone number for the local branch. Sometimes it is our subsidiary, sometimes it is a referring entity. But it is the number we call to request assistance with that client’s transfer in their local region.”
Gareth moved on from rubbing his temples and squeezing the top of his nose to trying to work the skin between his thumb and forefinger. While holding a phone in one hand, it proved to be more a chore than he liked, so he gave it up.
“You are trying to console yourself,” Roderick said.
“What? No. I’m just stressed. Trying to work out the kinks, you know?”
“It was in your file, that you have this habit. It is not one that will do much good, Mr. Red.”
“Alright, listen pal: how the hell do you know that? And why? What else is in this ‘file’ of yours?”
Roderick stared straight out the windshield as he drove. “As I said, we have ample research on you, Mr. —”
“Why?”
“Why do we have research? Because it is good for business to understand whom we are about to enter into a working relationship —”
“Why me? You told me before that you hired me to kill this person who’s killing your clients. I get that. I saw it with my own eyes, and I intend to stop it from happening again. But why me? You’ve got a steady hand. Why can’t you shoot her?”
“If it comes to that, I will.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Why not just you? You don’t need a second person for this mission, so why hire me in the first place?”
“You are the right man for the job, Mr. Red.”
“Why. Again, why.”
“Because of your past.”
“Because of — hell, man, we’ve all got a past. What is it about mine that piqued your interest? Why did you drag me out of active duty, away from my training, to put me out here and give me a million bucks? I’m untested, I’m probably unqualified, and I —”
“Because you are the right man for the job,” Roderick said again. “I reviewed your file myself, and I told my boss you were the right fit. When it comes time to do what is right, you will know what to do.”
Gareth was frowning, rubbing his temples, and staring at Roderick. “I — I just don’t understand what it was about my past that you saw. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been through some rocky stuff, but that’s all behind me.”
“Our past is never behind us, Mr. Red. It just happened in the past.”
“That’s very zen of you, Rod. Thank you. Why did you hire me?”
Roderick shook his head. “I already told you. You are the right man for the job, because you are qualified. You were available, and you will be able to make the right decision when you need to.”
Gareth nodded. “Fine. I don’t like that answer, but fine. I’m here, and I’m committed.” He paused, touching the phone screen again to bring up the printed database once again. “Now can we get back to figuring this out?”
Before Roderick could answer, Gareth’s phone buzzed, a computerized woman’s voice ringing out with the next directions: exit, take a left, and continue for a mile.
“Let’s hope we beat her here this time,” Gareth muttered.
20
AT FIRST GARETH THOUGHT THEY’D gone to the wrong place. The phone alerted them to their arrival, and Gareth looked out the window only to see trees — a never ending expanse of trees. Green, brown, and white everywhere, snow that had been protected from the sun and hardened into icy piles on the forest floor.
“There’s nothing here,” Gareth said.
“It does appear to be a dead-end,” Roderick confirmed.
“There,” Gareth said, pointing. “A road. Isn’t it?”
Roderick squinted, pulling the Chrysler closer. It was indeed a road — a small, narrow dirt road that ran into the woods.
“Can’t hurt to check it out,” Gareth said. Then he realized what he’d just said. It could absolutely hurt to check it out, he thought. We could get shot, we could get stuck in the snow, or this could be the wrong place entirely, and we’ll miss our opportunity, and someone else will get killed.
Roderick, however, seemed convinced this was the right way. He pulled into the narrow path and started down the trail. Gareth was relieved to discover that the road opened up a bit and was surprisingly straight, with only a few shallow potholes to contend with. The Chrysler wasn’t an off-road vehicle, but it would certainly have enough power to contend with a well-kept dirt road such as this.
“Did you have any way to cross-reference addresses with the client’s home addresses? Make sure we’re at least going to the right places each time?”
Roderick shook his head. “No, we only have one address on file for each client. Most of the time it is a business address, or an office somewhere. Our clients do prefer to keep their personal lives as separate as possible from their business entities.”
“Not a bad idea,” Gareth said. “Considering the downside is getting your head shot off.”
Roderick didn’t say anything to that, but he slowed the car a bit and turned as the road bent slightly to the left. They started up a small hill and crested it, just as a building came into view.
Similar to the building in Oymyakon, this was nothing more than a simple warehouse, blocky and stark black against the backdrop of the forest. Gareth felt slighted suddenly, realizing what a waste it must have been to destroy the forest just for such an ugly piece of property.
The building came fully into view, and as the Chrysler sat atop the small ridge, Gareth saw the buildings behind it. One was a smaller copy of the ugly monstrosity, but the other couldn’t have been more different.
“Wow,” he said. “Does someone live there?”
The building — a house — was like a mountaintop oasis. Surrounded on three sides by dense forest, and one the
front side by the two buildings, the house was like some of the larger estates they had passed on the way here from Vladivostok. This was smaller in scale, but it seemed better put together. It appeared to have been built from high-quality materials, as it had an apparent age yet no sign of serious wear. The roof was sloped steeply in the center section, raised above the other two sides, but the lower sides were shallower. The house itself was brown, matching the color of the trees, as if the architect had the forest in mind and wanted to honor, rather than destroy, the integrity of the area.
“I believe that is the home of our client,” Roderick said. “But I do not know. I have never been here.”
“Do you know these clients?”
“No. We have never met, and we have never planned to. As a private bank, we —”
“Yeah, I know,” Gareth said, interrupting. “You guys are all top-secret and stuff.”
“Our clients prefer discretion.”
“I’m sure they do.”
Roderick drove into the driveway that lined up with the end of the dirt road, the tiny rocks in the gravel popping and crackling as the heavy vehicle rolled over them. He slowed, bringing the Chrysler to a crawl, and Gareth took the opportunity to scope out the property.
The ugly set of buildings had no windows. Built cheaply, the sides were sheet metal, the roof a corrugated version of the same. He imagined a simple 4x4 wood structure beneath it, a bare skeleton holding up the thinnest of skin.
The nearly flat roof was not punctured by any features, just a long, sloping group of sheet metal that had been quickly hammered onto the frame below it. He could see a few of the sheets that had shifted over the years, or had been installed incorrectly.
“Quite a contrast from the house. Seems like two completely different people own these.”
“I would imagine there is but one owner,” Roderick said.
“Why would you imagine that?”
“This property is all owned by our client. All of the land in sight.”
Gareth nodded. “Well in that case, seems like our owner needs to pay a bit more attention to his giant shed and stop spending money on the house.”
“It is a bit incongruent.”
“A bit.”
They rolled past the first building, driving between the two warehouse-looking structures. The smaller was on Gareth’s left, the larger on his right. They were twins, aside from their vast difference in size, and the construction — cheap and quick — was the same for both.
The house loomed over them, directly in front of them. A large, circular driveway opened up, complete with a fountain in the center. No water flowed from the concrete structure, but he could imagine a time during the summer months when this very scene would be quite stunning.
“Are we going inside?” Gareth asked. He had expected Roderick to pull up short of the property, prepare some sort of advance, and the two of them would walk up on foot.
“No,” Roderick said. “But I do want them to know we are here.”
“Why? What if it’s not just your client who’s here?” Gareth was looking out at the tree line surrounding the immediate vicinity. While the house certainly had the high ground, a great vantage point, it would be nearly impossible to spot anyone hiding in the woods.
Or anyone shooting at them from the woods.
“We are not the enemy of our client,” Roderick said,” so there is no reason for putting them on the defensive. If they are home, as I expect they are, they will send for us.”
“You sure about that?”
Just then Gareth saw the door to the great mansion open, a large, thick wooden thing nearly ten feet tall. A man, bundled in a wool coat and scarf, poked his head out.
“Butler?”
“I doubt it. There were no other cars in the garage, and our GPS scans show no room on the back of the house to park.”
Gareth was surprised he had missed that detail. He’d seen the garage, cracked open on the side of the house, but hadn’t registered anything about it. Now, he scanned the image in his mind and realized that Roderick was right. There had been a car inside, based on the set of tires he could see in the open crack, but the opposite side of the two-car garage was empty.
He silently berated himself for missing that crucial detail, but there was something else more pressing.
“You did GPS scans of the area?”
“We do for all of our clients.”
“Is that — legal?”
“No more illegal than using Google Earth,” he answered, a bit gruffly. “We like to have a visual representation of the addresses we have on file, in case a situation like this arises.”
“In case a… what are you talking about?” Gareth asked. “You’ve dealt with situations like this before?”
“Not at all,” Roderick said. “But I prefer to be prepared. My office compiles data like this for each of our clients. They prefer discretion, yet we prefer to know as much as possible about our clientele. They don’t give us names, but we can look them up. They don’t tell us where they live, but most give us their home or business address anyway, as they prefer to keep their money close to their personal lives. The blessing and the curse of having a lot of money is that these people can afford to pay for the highest security and protection, but the very companies they are paying want to know more details about who they are protecting.”
“For their own protection.”
Roderick smiled. The first time Gareth had seen a true, genuine smile from the man. “Precisely.”
The man who had poked his head out the door was frowning at them, squinting across the expanse to try and determine who had made this peculiar house call.
Roderick made the first move, stepping out of the driver’s seat, his hand raised in a friendly wave. The gesture worked, apparently, as the man on the porch straightened up, waved back, then opened the door wider.
The man called out, a deep, ominous voice, in Russian.
Gareth waited, but Roderick answered immediately. In perfect Russian, or what Gareth assumed was perfect Russian.
After a moment of awkward silence, the man smiled, then waved them over.
“What did you tell him?” Gareth asked, impressed.
“I just told him we were on our way to Vladivostok, we got lost, and now we have to use the restroom.”
“That works out here?”
“This is not America, Mr. Red. Most people are not as desperately fearful of everything in the rest of the world as they are in your home country.
Gareth considered this. He had spent a bit of time in Europe when he was younger, and it did seem as though people were more comfortable with one another, even to the point of being stifling.
He shrugged, then got out of the car.
The man had gone back inside, but the door to the mansion was still cracked open.
Gareth took a deep breath, realizing that he was unarmed, unprepared, and completely at the whim of a man he barely knew and one he had never met.
Here goes nothing, he said.
21
“AND WHY DO YOU THINK I am in danger?” the man asked.
He was sitting in a comically large armchair, leather with wooden buttons, that had been placed in the corner of a front living room. Two more armchairs, each different in design yet still matching wonderfully with the father of them all, sat in two other corners, a large couch between them.
Gareth sat at one end of the couch, Roderick in one of the facing armchairs. A fire crackled in a fireplace next to him, set into the wall between him and the owner of the house.
“You are here alone?” Roderick asked. They had switched to English when Roderick introduced his partner, Gareth remembering another interesting feature of his world travels: English was a very popular spoken language throughout the world, especially for the rich.
The man nodded. He was short, heavyset but only from years of atrophied muscle buildup. Gareth had sized him upon meeting him as the type of man who was probably good-looking on
ce, in shape and fit. But he was old. Gareth placed him as mid-seventies, but if the man had in fact taken care of himself, he could have been even older.
Knowing creases gathered in bunches around the sides of his eyes. He wore a large, flowing robe, almost as ridiculous as the chair he was sitting in, but Gareth gave him points for comfort. The robe and the chair looked wonderfully cozy, and to Gareth the only thing missing from the room was a glass of whiskey in each of their hands.
When they’d arrived, Roderick immediately apologized to the man in Russian, then explained that they were with the bank.
The man’s eyes widened, then softened again. Gareth wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was he surprised? Had he been expecting us? Does he know that he is in danger?
Before Gareth could ask any of these questions, the man ushered them into this room, one of three he could see from the entryway. This was the smallest of the three, the room opposite a larger meeting or dining room, judging by the massive oak table that sat in the middle of it. The third room, directly in front of the main entrance, was more of an atrium, a connecting space for the rooms that existed in the rest of the house. A staircase wound from the right side of the room to the left side on the second floor in the atrium, and Gareth caught a quick glimpse of some large portraits hanging on the walls.
He was a history buff, and portraits — and mansions — like this one piqued his interest. In his experience, every one of them had a story behind them. A person, or a place, that meant something to the person who had commissioned or purchased them. He loved hearing those stories, learning from them, filing the information away to be used later.
But he was here, sitting on this couch, for a different reason. As much as he’d wanted to linger, he allowed Roderick and the man in front of him to pull him into this room, to pull him back to the task at hand.
“My wife died many years ago,” the man said. “But I imagine you already knew that.”