by Mark Parragh
Crane had to admit, he’d felt less comfortable in the field for Hurricane than he’d thought he would. He didn’t know where the orders were coming from. He didn’t know what the real agenda was.
“Governments are weak,” Josh was saying. “They’re paralyzed. The powers fighting over the world now are beyond them. There’s a whole new Cold War going on, and that’s where we need a good spy.”
A crewman brought a tray with two glasses of champagne. Apparently Josh was confident in his persuasiveness.
“We both want to do good in the world. You’ve got the skills, I’ve got the resources. Seriously, who needs a covert government agency? I’ve got more money, and I make my own rules. Don’t think of it as losing your license to kill.”
“That’s not really a thing,” Crane interrupted.
“Think of it as gaining your very own black budget. Come on, John, what do you say? Want to help me save the world? It’ll be fun.”
Josh took a glass of champagne from the tray. Crane hesitated. He had no doubt this was a key moment in his life. It wasn’t the life he’d planned for himself, but that life had evaporated. There was a huge difference between working for the United States and working for an idealistic Internet billionaire—one who’d apparently watched too many Bond films.
But it wasn’t all bad, he realized. Josh was about as ingenuous as a billionaire could be. And Crane would work directly with him. No long chain of command to conceal the agenda, no shadowy figures stalking the corridors of power. With Josh, he realized he would always know what he was doing and why. The question was whether he could trust Josh, and he realized he did. Josh might not always make the right choices, but he’d never sell Crane out.
The more he thought about it, the more the offer sounded like what he’d wanted from the Hurricane Group all along.
And he could always quit and find a job if it came to that.
He took the other glass from the tray and tapped the rim against Josh’s glass with a clear, crystal sound that rang like a bell. Josh beamed.
“Where did you want to start?” Crane asked.
The End
John Crane will return in Wrecker.
Coming Christmas 2016
Can’t wait? Then enjoy this bonus John Crane short story, I Hate to Die.
Bonus Story
I Hate to Die
Italy, the Adriatic Coast
A green Jaguar F-Type sped south down the SS 16, the old coast highway, carving its way through the road’s long, sweeping curves. To the right was farmland and scattered houses, the fields a rolling backdrop of deep green and tan. To the left, the sea gleamed in the mid-afternoon sun, stretching out to the horizon where it merged with a deep blue, cloudless sky.
In the driver’s seat, John Crane smiled. This was a change he could live with.
Until recently, Crane had been a field asset for the Hurricane Group, a U.S. covert operations team. That was over now. The Hurricane Group’s budget had suddenly been pulled and their operations folded up. Crane didn’t know why. Like all the agents, Crane had been offered a mid-level consulting job at a beltway bandit firm with ties to the intelligence community. It was comfortable money in exchange for letting them put him away safely in a box.
Crane had turned it down. That had been a risky decision at the time, but as he downshifted and floored the accelerator to whip around a battered Fiat, Crane thought the gamble had paid off. He’d been approached a few months later by a 25-year-old Internet billionaire named Josh Sulenski. Crane had handled a security issue for Josh, one that had proven to have larger implications. Josh and Crane were still tracking down leads and considering how to respond.
In the meantime, Josh kept coming up with small tasks for Crane to do, and he supposed it was a real job at this point. Josh had a rare combination of extreme wealth and earnest naiveté. He could come up with some very odd ideas, and he had the means to implement them. But to his surprise, Crane had realized he enjoyed working for Josh.
If nothing else, the Hurricane Group had routinely sent him into blasted, chaotic warzones to risk his life against heavily armed terrorists. Josh had sent him here to meet a vacationing French scientist—presumably an unarmed one—who would pass him a data card. Given the choice, Crane thought, he’d take this.
Crane slowed as he approached the outskirts of Pesaro. He drove past rows of vacation rental houses, then the elegant gardens of the Villa Caprile. He crawled through the town’s crowded commercial district, the streets overflowing with pedestrians and teenagers on bicycles. Soon, however, he passed out of Pesaro again and climbed the large hill to the south of town, the Monte Ardizio.
At the top of the hill, he decelerated into the small parking lot of the Hotel Brunelleschi, the Jaguar’s tires crunching on gravel. It was a small hotel, a couple sun-bleached white stories dotted with black cast iron balcony railings and spots where the plaster had crumbled away. The Brunelleschi still recalled past glories, but it was clearly more down at the heels these days. The tourists had come to prefer the tall luxury hotels in Pesaro with their modern conveniences and better beach access. The Brunelleschi had a great view, but no beach access at all. On the other side of the building was only a steep slope that plunged several hundred feet to the railroad tracks, and then the beach beyond.
Still, Crane decided, he liked the place. It wasn’t crowded, which was to his benefit. It would be quiet, and the cliffside bar would be an excellent place to enjoy a drink and gaze out over the sea. He turned off the engine and got out of the car.
John Crane stood a bit taller than average, his body disciplined and taut. The wind off the sea whipped through his short, dark hair and he stood there a moment, reveling in it. He wore gray Thom Browne chinos and a navy Sunspel polo shirt. He’d had the pants custom tailored to accommodate the Sig Sauer P938 he wore holstered inside his waistband so it vanished beneath his clothes. Crane hung his sunglasses from the placket of his shirt and walked to the main entrance, his motions economical and confident.
He passed through an empty lobby, gave the desk clerk a smile, and nodded toward the glass doors leading out to the patio bar. The clerk wished him a pleasant afternoon.
Outside, Crane could see how tightly the hotel was squeezed between the highway and the edge of the cliff. The bar sat at the end of a path that descended the cliffs some 100 feet. There, the slope leveled out just enough to accommodate a narrow white structure with a red tile roof.
At the bottom of the steps, Crane opened the door and stepped through into a darker space. A small bar was immediately to his right. It wasn’t set up; at this hour they were probably serving from the restaurant bar. To his left, tables stood against a low outer wall giving an open panoramic view of the sea below. Behind them, across the center aisle, a line of booths ran down the rear wall.
There was one person here, sitting in the back corner booth Crane had been hoping to claim for himself. A young man, he realized as his eyes readjusted to the darkness. Indian ancestry, about Crane’s age…and then his stomach seemed to drop out from under him.
It was Chris Parikh.
For a moment Crane stood stunned. Parikh’s face registered the same astonishment. Crane let out a breath and slowly walked over to the booth.
John Crane had only gone on two field missions for the Hurricane Group before the government pulled the plug, and Chris Parikh had been a key part of both of them. He’d been a trusted partner—maybe even a friend, if Hurricane agents had friends. Crane had assumed Parikh had taken the job with the consulting firm in Virginia. Obviously he hadn’t.
Of course Crane would have known that if he’d taken the job himself. He couldn’t fault that decision. But what the hell was Parikh doing here? It couldn’t be coincidence. Would he have to kill him before this was over?
They nodded to each other as Crane eased into the booth. Slowly, subtly, he slipped the Sig Sauer from his waistband and pointed it at Parikh beneath the table. The moment dragged.
“Been a while, John,” said Parikh at last.
“A year, almost. You’re looking good.”
“You too.”
Another uncomfortable silence.
“Christ, we can do better than this,” said Crane. “We spent five days locked up in a safe house in Peshawar with nothing to pass the time but a DVD of The Princess Bride. Surely that kind of shared experience forges a bond between men.”
“You’d think so,” said Parikh. “So why are we sitting here with guns pointed at each other under the table?”
“Because each of us is pretty much the last person the other expected to find here?”
The door opened and a waitress appeared to take their order. Parikh ordered a Campari and soda and Crane followed suit.
“So I guess you didn’t take the consulting job,” Crane said as she left. “Where are you working these days?”
“Not at liberty to say, I’m afraid. You passed on it, and yet here you are.” Parikh shook his head. “And I’m really trying, John, but I can’t think of a single good reason for you being here. Lot of bad ones. But nothing that ends with us sharing a drink and talking about the old days.”
“Well hell, Chris, I’m not going to just sit here and let you shoot me.”
Parikh winced. “Damn it, Crane, tell me you’re not working for the White Eagles. Be convincing.”
Crane had no idea what Parikh was talking about. He tried to remember anything from his Hurricane days about something called the White Eagles, but nothing came to him. “Uh, okay,” he said at last. He held up two fingers in a mock Boy Scout salute. “I’m not working for the White Eagles. Was that convincing enough? I don’t actually know who that is.”
Parikh studied him; Crane could see him wanting to believe him.
“Your turn,” said Crane. “Tell me you’re not here to take out a skinny French guy in a Yankees cap.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Parikh’s confusion seemed genuine, and Crane decided he believed him. “Maybe we should both put some cards on the table. We can always shoot each other later if we decide it’s called for. So who are the White Eagles?”
Parikh thought for a moment. Finally he let out a sigh. “They’re Serbian gangsters. They claim they’re the same paramilitary that fought in the war back in the 90s. But they’re just some thugs trading on the name. They do the usual gang stuff, and they hire out to anybody who’ll pay them. They run drugs and weapons, traffic people, do the occasional hit. We’re interested. Then we picked up some chatter that suggests they’re doing a job here. We don’t know what exactly. But whatever it is, I’m here to make sure it goes badly. Maybe bring one of them home for questioning.”
A job here, at the Brunelleschi. The occasional hit. Crane felt that little thrill he always felt when the pieces finally fell into place. “I get it,” he said. “You’re here for the hounds. I’m here for the fox.”
He let Parikh see the movement as he slipped the Sig Sauer back into his waistband. A moment later, Parikh did the same.
“So you really thought I joined a Serbian militia?” Crane said, letting a bit of irritation slip into his voice.
“Word is they’re working with a spotter,” said Parikh. “A local guide with papers for the cops if they get pulled over, someone to do the advance work and let them stay hidden until they’re ready.”
“Oh,” said Crane, “well then allow me to rephrase. So you really thought I was freelancing for a Serbian militia?”
Parikh gasped in exasperation. “Well why are you here? You’re supposed to be in a bloody cubicle in Northern Virginia doing enterprise operations…something.”
“So are you…wait a minute. You’re still working field ops for the government! What the hell, Chris? Did they fire me and just pretend they were shutting down the whole department so I’d think I didn’t know anything about current operations?”
Parikh started to speak, but fell silent as the waitress returned with their drinks. “Two Campari and soda,” she said as she set down the glasses. “Do you need anything else?”
“No, thank you,” said Crane. “You don’t need to come back down. We can pay the check at the main bar, right?”
“Of course, sir.” Then she left and they were alone again.
They sampled their drinks, then Crane said, “So?”
Parikh sighed. “You don’t know my parents,” he said with a sardonic smile. “They’re already pissed off that I’m not married. Unemployment wasn’t an option, so I took the consulting job. Then a couple months later, somebody else showed up and recruited me back out into fieldwork again. It’s pretty much the same job, really.”
“So they shut down Hurricane and then turned right around and started up another group just like it?”
“You know the government,” Parikh said. “Right hand, meet left hand. I think Hurricane just lost a bureaucratic turf war. Something behind the scenes that we never saw.”
Crane shook his head. “And they picked you up, but not me.”
“You know I didn’t have any say in that.”
That was true enough. But it didn’t mean Crane found it any less irritating. Maybe if he’d taken the damn consulting job they’d have taken him back too. But then he would have missed so much.
“Your turn,” said Parikh. “If you’re not working for the government, who the hell are you working for?”
“You won’t believe me,” Crane said.
“Try me.”
“Okay. I’m doing covert missions for a naïve Internet billionaire with utopian ideals and some serious James Bond fantasies.”
“You’re kidding!”
Crane grinned. “Told you.”
“You’re serious.” Parikh drained his glass and set it down hard on the table. “Jesus, do you have any idea how much trouble you can get in? Are in? They don’t just let private citizens do this stuff!”
Crane shrugged. “You’d be surprised how much legitimacy being a multi-billionaire gets you.”
“Who’s the French guy?”
“Dr. Julian Mesnard,” said Crane. “He works for a Swiss biotech concern. He developed a technology that doesn’t fit into his company’s market strategy. He wants to make sure they don’t bury it.”
“What kind of technology?”
“I don’t know the details. That’s what he’s bringing me. But it pulls carbon dioxide out of the air. A lot of it apparently. And creates a very effective soil fertilizer as a by-product. Assuming it scales to industrial volumes, my employer thinks it could play a big part in fixing the climate.”
“Who would want to kill him for it?”
“Somebody with the connections to hire your Serb gangsters for the dirty work. His employers most likely. The agri-chemical industry. A few others I can think of.”
Parikh considered. “Here’s what I don’t get,” he said at last. “I get the rich guy indulging himself. I get the conspiracy theories and the whole ‘never trust the man’ thing. But I don’t get you getting mixed up with it. You’ve got solid skills, and your head was always screwed on straight. How’d you get involved with this? You could have taken the damn consulting job if you needed the money.”
“What can I say? I like him. And whether your bosses like it or not, it’s a world of non-state actors now. The good news is, they’re not all bad guys.”
Crane conspicuously checked his watch.
“Showtime?”
“Soon now.”
Parikh eased out of the booth. “All right, I’ll do my thing. You and your Frenchman can be my bait. I’ll be in the hotel. When they head down here, I’ll bring up the rear. Be careful coming out that door until we’re finished.”
“Keep the waitress off the field,” said Crane. “People show up, she’ll come down to take their orders. She’ll walk into it.”
Parikh nodded. “Got it under control.” Then he offered his hand and Crane shook it. “I always did like you, Crane. I’ll keep your name out of th
is if I can.”
“Appreciate it.” Crane retrieved a card from his wallet. “This number will get to me if you want to talk sometime.”
Parikh produced his own card and they traded them.
Parikh walked away, then stopped at the door. “If you’re going to do this, for God’s sake stay clear of the U.S. Government, okay?” He slipped into his best Inigo Montoya accent. “You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.”
Crane grinned. “You seem a decent fellow,” he answered. “I hate to die.”
Parikh smiled back; then he was gone.
Crane looked out at the sun on the Adriatic. A boat slewed across the water behind a great arc of white sail. The warm breeze swept gently through the bar. He was just starting to regret sending the waitress away when the door opened. A slightly built, middle-aged man came in and blinked in the sudden darkness. He wore slacks and a t-shirt, with a New York Yankees cap over black hair that was graying at the temples.
Crane rose. “Dr. Mesnard. I’m John Crane.”
Mesnard let Crane settle him into the booth but kept checking the door over his shoulder.
“Something’s wrong,” he said. “They’re following me. They know!”
“Calm down, Doctor.” Crane eased back into his seat. “First things first. You have something for me?”
“I need protection! If I just give it to you, I don’t have any leverage.”
“That’s not true, Doctor. You’re much more important than an SD card. And the men following you are going to get a lot more than they’re expecting.”
Mesnard blanched. “You know about them? Oh god. I hoped I was just being foolish.”
Crane shook his head. “No, you’re being followed. But my job is to protect you. And there’s someone else here whose job is to stop those men.”
He held out his hand and waited until Mesnard took a small datacard from his pocket and handed it over.
“Thank you. Now this is important. Do you have any reason to think the people after you are working for anyone besides your employer? Does anyone else know what you’ve created?”