by Michael Todd
The lawyer shook his head with a soft sigh. “The client has grown impatient with your wishy-washy attitude regarding her investment. Remember, she’s the one who keeps you nice and comfortable in a prison that has the kind of amenities most resorts lack. She can take it away too. It’s something you might want to keep in mind.”
“I don’t think you’ve heard me,” the other man said and narrowed his eyes as Banks began to collect his papers. “What I’m saying is that I’ve met our client. I’ve also met Savage, or Johnson, or whatever we call him now. I’ll take my chances with the client. Did you not hear me when I told you what kind of bastard he is?”
“I tried to ignore you, honestly,” Banks said. “If you want to go against the client, believe me, it will be your funeral. For my part, I’ll continue to work to move your ass out of here, although whether it will be for you to continue your work or for the client to kill you with her own two hands remains to be seen.”
He placed the last of the documents in his briefcase and wondered why he had wasted so much time to set them up. It was a little ritual of his that helped to establish himself as a pro to the people he met with but honestly, he didn’t think the man was worth the trouble. He certainly wasn’t worth the trouble he’d been put through to save the bastard, but he was paid to do it for someone who had a bigger vision. He was merely a puppet, and she pulled the strings.
When he reached his car, he muttered a few exasperated curses and tossed his briefcase into the back seat while his mind tried to decide what he would do. Despite the fact that the ex-CEO was a spineless freak, Banks still knew the man had a point. The plan to eliminate someone like Johnson meant they only had one opportunity to succeed. To give him the chance to retaliate would put him in a similar situation as the other man had found himself in. Banks really didn’t want to have his knees capped.
And again, Carlson was right when he assumed Johnson had gone easy on him because it had been someone else’s family. His actions had been a lesson, not a rampage. It wasn’t rocket science to correctly assume the retribution would be considerably more intense the more personal it became.
But it wasn’t like he intended to try to kill the family either. They merely did this to draw the operative out into the open, not to plan an assassination. The plan was simply to hold them, keep them alive, and threaten their lives until Daddy came in to rescue them and walked directly into a killing zone that gave them all the advantages. Banks wasn’t sure what would happen to the family afterward, of course. The client wasn’t the kind to leave witnesses alive. Which meant…yeah, they would probably die anyway.
Savage had to know that—or Johnson, rather. Dammit, it would be hard to switch them around. The name Savage was already well and truly stuck in his head.
He debated the topic with himself in the car all the way back to New York. Sometimes, he actually talked to himself on the highway when the car assumed the responsibility of driving. It wasn’t an easy debate. Having Savage earmark him for vengeance wasn’t something he wanted for himself, but there would be enough time to deal with that once—if—he actually found himself in that situation. The client would want him to be creative and precise about this.
When he reached his office, he told his assistant to make sure to clear his schedule for the rest of the day, settled at his desk, and pulled the phone up to open a comm line.
“Banks, how was your visit to Carlson’s prison?” The woman’s voice was chillingly familiar, hardly surprising since it had been a part of his life for the past six years or so.
“Well, he didn’t like the plan to involve Savage’s family,” he replied and scowled because there was no face to face contact with the woman on the other side of the comm link. “He said he won’t leave the prison until we’ve dealt with Savage. I think he was really broken.”
“Well, I have my doubts about him being our man anymore anyway,” she replied. The distinctive sound of screaming echoed in the background. He couldn’t tell if it was fun or pain that caused the screams, and he had no desire to ask. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. It would be much easier to kill a free man than an FBI prisoner. That doesn’t alter the fact that we need to eliminate Savage. Get it done, Banks.”
With that peremptory command, the line cut out. He shook his head. Unlike Carlson, he hadn’t met Savage, but he had met the client. It wasn’t part of his agenda to risk pissing her off. With that in mind, he started dialing another number rather hastily.
Chapter Eight
It wasn’t the longest drive Savage had ever made. There were upsides to having a car that lacked most of the modern conveniences, especially for someone in his particular profession and involved in what he intended to do. A car no one could track would enable him to slide through the country off the radar while he traveled with a small arsenal in his trunk. If he stuck to the speed limit, he would avoid the attention of the local cops—and, he suspected, they didn’t like to pull a car like his over anyway.
But there were downsides as well, he realized. While the cruise control maintained the correct speed and some motion sensors prevented him off from tailgating someone a little too closely, the electronics were considered ancient by current standards. There were no auto-driving features, which meant he needed to keep his hand on the wheel at all times, and no auto braking features either. The radio he used was an old FM/AM radio with a screen but no access to the newer bands that shared TV programs.
All this made for a very, very long three-hour drive from Philly to Washington. Anja wasn’t around for most of it. The adrenaline from the rest of the night had begun to fade, and he struggled to keep his eyes open as the hours wound up from midnight.
By the time he could see the lights of the city brighten the evening sky ahead, he decided it was time to call it a night. Anja clearly didn’t have anything for him yet or she would have contacted him to warn him to stay loose and ready. While that irked him, he also acknowledged that he would need to sleep at some point. A couple of motels were advertised around the entrance into the city, and he decided against using any of them.
There was no GPS in his car but there was one in his phone, so he found a safe place to pull off and quickly called the nearest three star-hotel that accepted cash and didn’t ask any questions. He was directed to an establishment barely inside the city that was exactly what he needed. Cash for the night and a little money discretely added on top of that persuaded the late-night clerk to write him in as a returning customer by the name of John Doe.
He didn’t exactly have money to burn, but it was better to have a somewhat respectable place to spend the night instead of having to check the bedroom for insects. Worse was the strong possibility that he would come away from the night’s sleep with an aching back because the bed itself had seen better days. He’d experienced too many of those to even consider the prospect.
Despite his weariness and the hour, he still needed help getting to sleep. The problem with someone as smart as him was that his mind wasn’t something he could simply turn off. Inevitably, he’d be stuck in a situation where he would replay the same worst-case scenarios over and over in his head, try to find some way to change them that would make everything better, and fail most of the time.
Thankfully, there was a solution to that particular problem, Savage found as he paced the room at about four in the morning. A small fridge in the corner of his room provided his medication of choice in convenient tiny bottle form. He started with only a nightcap, and as the pain in his side and shoulder worsened, he kept going until he dropped onto the bed, still vaguely conscious but not for long.
What dreams he might have had erased themselves rapidly from his head as he slipped in a semi-drunken stupor. The hours passed until he was dragged into consciousness when something buzzed in his ear. He slapped at the side of his face in an effort to shoo the bug away and waved his hand to make sure the tent door was still intact.
When his hands found nothing but cotton sheets, h
is eyes opened. He wasn’t in the middle of a jungle, nor was he sleeping in a tight and uncomfortably cramped recon tent. His gaze focused to confirm that he was actually in a hotel bed—albeit laying across it, which explained why his right leg hung over one of the sides.
He grimaced and rubbed his eyes. His mouth tasted like shit, and his head pounded in protest when he pulled himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He yawned, shook his head, and immediately regretted it. Clearly, he wasn’t ready for that shit yet.
“Good morning, Savage,” Anja said softly. “I’m sorry for buzzing in your ear, but I tried to call you like a regular person and you weren’t up yet.”
Savage nodded even though he knew she couldn’t see him. He didn’t much care anyway. It was unlikely he would be able to force any reliable words out of his mouth with the way it tasted.
“Well, you had a long night, I guess, so I actually wondered if I should let you sleep,” the hacker said apologetically. “Which I did by not waking you every time I had an update. But some are more important than others, and this is definitely a top of the list important one.”
He found a tiny bottle of complimentary mouthwash in the bathroom and gargled quickly. She suddenly fell silent and remained so for the full minute he needed to complete the process and spit it out.
“If you could refrain from doing that to me…forever,” she grumbled, “I’d really appreciate it. I don’t like having to listen to your nasty ass making whatever nasty-ass sounds you choose to. I do have some sensibilities and as of right now, I feel the need to hurl.”
Savage sucked in a deep breath and tried not to lose his temper. She had to know he was a little hung over, and he suspected this was some kind of revenge or payment she exacted from him for her letting him sleep in. If that was the case, he was more than thankful for the rest he’d been allowed and decided to let the other ride. A hasty glance at his watch told him it was already a quarter past one in the afternoon. It had been a late night and a fairly traumatic one, and he had definitely needed the rest.
“Do you know I had to listen to you snoring all morning?” Anja asked and sounded like she tried to push his buttons. “I had to simply listen in and hear you go on like a damn chainsaw. I didn’t have to listen to it all morning, of course, since I can turn your feed on and off as I choose, but I still like to stay in contact with the people I’m handling from afar. So, yes, that pissed me off.”
“Was there a point to all this?” he asked and now regretted not having brought the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for him at the hospital. Too late, he now remembered they were in the cabinet in the bathroom at his apartment.
“Oh, right, did I forget to mention something?” The hacker chuckled ironically. “Damn, now what was it? Ah, now I remember. I found the source for the leak. Jer, remember how that’s what we’re here for?”
“I remember,” Savage muttered acidly. There weren’t any painkillers in the cabinet above the sink. He’d hoped for an aspirin or maybe a acetaminophen but it seemed he would have to deal with a pounding headache for most of the day. Or until he could get to the nearest drugstore, which immediately became a priority.
“Check your phone. I emailed you all the info on the man we’re looking at as the source of the leak.” She waited patiently while he limped over to where he’d left his phone on the nightstand the night before. The battery was still good, although he would probably have to charge it in the car.
Sure enough, a message waited in his inbox. Anja’s chair squeaked irritatingly as he opened the file she had sent.
“Congressman Alfred Jenkins?” he asked and dropped on the bed again. He suppressed a groan and held his head to reduce the pain the movement had triggered.
“Yep,” she replied. “A twenty-year veteran of the House and member of a handful of Committees, including the House Intelligence Committee as well as the House Armed Services Committee.”
“Which explains how he accessed my file, I assume. The dumbasses in those committees are given all kinds of leeway in the intelligence and military communities. People seem to think that because they have a say in how those branches are run, they actually care about the people who are caught in the middle of what they do.”
“Right.” The Russian slid past that comment as she sent him another two files. “There isn’t much to say about the people who did the dirty work for him, although I’m not sure why he didn’t simply go through the regular channels to access the paperwork himself. He didn’t have to go through all the channels he used.”
“Elected officials always look for ways to cover their asses,” Savage explained absently. He leaned against the headboard and read the files, even though the process made his eyes hurt. “If he hasn’t gone through the regular channels, it means he’s tried to cover up what he’s done so it can’t be traced back to him if something bad comes out of it. Which in turn means he’s anticipating something bad will come out of it. The bottom line is that he knows what he’s done can have negative blowback.”
“And the fact that he’s had a difficult reelection campaign against a popular up-and-comer might have something to do with it too,” Anja pointed out with a chuckle. “I’ve run checks on the campaign to see if there are any trails in there for us to follow.”
“You have good instincts, but I doubt there will be anything there for you to find.” He rubbed some feeling back into his eyes before he turned his attention to the files again. “It’s ridiculously easy to bribe elected officials through anonymous donations to their campaigns. While it might be a little more difficult for the politicians in question to use the money for anything other than their campaign, if that’s all the guy wants the money for, it’s not really an issue.”
“It sounds like an issue to me,” she protested. “It’s more a matter of principle, although the fact that they don’t have anything to track properly does sound like it could be a problem.”
“Don’t I know it.” Savage chuckled and shook his head, then immediately winced. “But that’s a problem for another day. The real issue is if we can’t find a way to find the actual people who want the information on me, we’ll have to extract it from the man himself. And, for what it’s worth, I won’t be nice about it, either.”
“Wait, wait. Hold up,” Anja said and laughed nervously. “Are you really talking about putting the screws to an elected official? Of the United States?”
“The guy put my family in danger,” Savage reminded her, amazed at how he could say that without a tremble in his voice at all. Even his hands held the phone firmly and lacked any of the tremors that had plagued them the night before. “He’s lucky that all I’ll do here is pay him a visit in search of information.”
“That’s fair.” Her voice sounded soft and tentative. “We’ve never actually talked about your family before. I think you mentioned having one at some point, but you never volunteered any information beyond that.”
“For someone in the kind of position I find myself in, you have to understand that much of the information about my personal life will be shared on a need to know basis.” He dropped his phone beside him, his mind already working on what needed to happen. First, he would need to do recon and actual surveillance on the man himself. Second, he’d have to familiarize himself with his security. An infiltration was a complicated situation, especially if you did it in a populated area where any random grandmother who couldn’t sleep could see him climb over a fence and call the cops. That, simply put, was all it would take to guarantee failure. There was no way to plan for something like that. It was a variable, something beyond his control.
He needed to find a way to limit the variables, though. His objective was to find a way to reach the man without being detected. Considering the number of people and cameras that surrounded elected officials these days, it definitely wouldn’t be easy.
“You do know I can simply look into the records myself and find out, right?” Anja asked to break the silence. “I don’t eve
n need to go through the government files. I already know your real name, so all I have to do is run a couple of nation-wide searches. Nothing’s hidden in the world anymore. You know that better than most.”
“I know,” Savage said and stared blankly at the ceiling above him. “But there is a chance that this has nothing to do with them. A chance that this is only about me and might pose no danger to them whatsoever. After everything I’ve put them through, they deserve the chance to remain uninvolved in my life. So I’m asking you as a friend—please leave them out of this for as long as possible.”
It was important to have a small amount of hope. There was a chance that this had nothing to do with either of them and he wouldn’t destroy that by being overly paranoid. The regular amount of paranoia would do right now.
“Damn it, not as a friend.” She groaned and must have leaned back because her seat squeaked in protest. He could almost hear her roll her eyes. “Okay, fine, but if I do this as a friend, you can expect that I’ll take it out on you later.”
“As long as I’m the only one you take it out on.” Savage chuckled. He knew someone who was as privacy-conscious as she was wouldn’t mind letting him keep his for as long as was necessary, but that didn’t mean she would be nice to him about it. He could take her punishment.
“Okay, can I assume you’ve started to work on a plan for how to reach this elected official of ours?” she asked. “I’m already digging into the plans of where he’s living, as well as the various security he has, but considering the location I see here, you might actually have to head out there to eyeball the place in person. Do you think you can do that, wasted as you are?”
“I’m hungover,” he protested and pushed himself slowly from his prone position on the bed. “Wasted is what I was last night. So yes, I think I can do it, as long as I have coffee and aspirin in me.”