Immortal

by Gene Doucette

  “Florida?”

  “Yes, those Keys.”

  “How about Seattle?”

  “Maybe halfway with a tailwind.”

  So, provided Grindel was my man—and he was still in the Seattle area—John had planned a multi-leg trip. He’d probably lined up two or three private flights through other charter companies so no one pilot would know he’d begun the day in Jersey. That’s what I would do. “Did he pay in advance?”

  “Sure did.”

  “How bright of you,” I said.

  “I like to think so.”

  I slipped the gun back into the bag. “As it turns out, I may just need an airplane.”

  Patti looked at me skeptically. “Drugs?”

  “What?” Was she offering me some?

  “Is this about drugs?”

  “Ah. No.”

  “Are we doing something illegal, illicit, or otherwise immoral?”

  “No, no, and I don’t think so.”

  “Yet, if I drove a few hundred yards that way I would find what? A dead guy in a wrecked car?”

  “You just might, yes.”

  “Care to explain that?”

  “I’d love to,” I said, “but I honestly think I don’t have the time right now.”

  She stared at me for several seconds, until it felt like she was the one with the gun and not me. Finally, she said, “Okay, so where are we going?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I could use about an hour. I have my own phone.”

  * * *

  Safely tucked in the corner of Patti’s office—away from the window and in front of the space heater—I reached into my bag and pulled out the one-button mystery phone.

  The display on it read “EN RTE.”

  It occurred to me that Robert Grindel—or whoever would be on the other end of the phone when I used it—had done something extremely foolish. He’d taken the simple task of picking me up and having me delivered, and turned it into a contest. All the soldiers of fortune that had come after me had been working independent of one another and, more to the point, against one another. It was like a Bruce Lee movie, where everyone attacked two or three at a time instead of just bum rushing the guy. And Bruce always came out on top. (When I watch his movies, I wonder what Bruce would have done if he’d faced a Mongol horde. Those guys knew how to use overwhelming force.)

  I checked outside the window. Patti was busy prepping the airplane and had not yet done something unpleasant like contacting the police, so far as I could tell. I could have made her stay in the office where I could keep an eye on her, but something made me think she was trustworthy. Don’t know what, but then I never do. She just didn’t seem like the type. Also, given the circumstances, it must have made more sense to her to be able to claim she was in the air when the man on her private road turned up with a broken neck.

  Enough stalling. I flipped open the phone and hit the button.

  The phone didn’t ring. Instead I was treated to about ten seconds of white noise, followed by a recording of a woman’s voice telling me to “please stand by” followed by another ten seconds of white noise. I remembered how impressed Tchekhy had been when he looked at the device and how I’d been told it was a satellite phone, and that it was probably an encrypted one. I had to remember to send it to Tchekhy when I was done with it so he could check out the insides. He’d probably accept that as full payment for services rendered.

  Finally a man answered.

  “Hello, Adam,” he said. “Or is that not what you’re calling yourself now?”

  “That’ll do,” I said. I shouldn’t have been surprised he knew who was on the other end of the line, but I was. “And you must be Robert Grindel.”

  There was a slight delay on his end of the call. “Touché,” he said. “How is the man I had assigned to bring you here?”

  “Dead. Sorry about that.”

  “Well,” he said. “One in Boston, four in Central Park—plus the one you crippled—and now this. You’re leaving quite a trail of bodies behind you, Adam.”

  You ever talk to someone and think, his voice just isn’t that deep? That was the impression Robert Grindel was giving me.

  “Whose fault is that?” I asked.

  “Mine, I suppose. Can’t guarantee law enforcement will see it that way. Should I call them? Tell them who they should be looking for?”

  “You wouldn’t do that, Robert.”

  “No. I guess I wouldn’t,” he agreed. “Killing the demon was particularly impressive. He’s been quite a mystery for the local coroner.”

  “Has he?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve been reading their files. Nobody protects anything properly any more, you know. The lack of security is really amazing. They say half his body had disintegrated before it even reached their office, and the entire thing dissolved completely overnight. I don’t know about you, but I find that fascinating.”

  Actually it was sort of fascinating. The idea that demons had a self-destruct mechanism would explain how a creature that large could go virtually unnoticed by the modern scientific community. “What do you want, Robert?” I asked, getting back to the point. “Why have you been doing this?”

  He laughed, temporarily straying into a more natural higher octave. “I want you to come visit me.”

  “And this is how you go about asking?”

  “I couldn’t have you saying no,” he said.

  “I might not have,” I argued.

  “Your instinct is to run, Adam. I think that’s been firmly established. Look at what you did to my man in Boston before you even understood what was happening.”

  “I suppose you read that report, too?”

  “I did. And I understand. I really do. Underneath that veneer of modern sophistication, you are still the feral ape man lashing out instinctively when cornered.”

  “Gosh, you make it sound so romantic.”

  “It is,” he said, sounding genuinely impressed. “Your brutality is a marvel. It’s one of the things I admire about you.”

  Zeus, was he going to ask me out on a date, or what? “Look, Robert, let’s skip ahead. Is the girl with you?”

  “Not yet, but I expect her here very soon. I look forward to meeting her.”

  “Great,” I said. “Listen, I probably don’t need to tell you this, but if you hurt her you’re going to get an up-close look at that brutality thing you find so marvelous.”

  “Of course. But I highly recommend haste on your part. I can’t guarantee her safety forever.”

  “Two days,” I said. “And you’d better call off your hunters. I’m coming in on my own.”

  “I’m glad. Once you’re here I’m sure you’ll appreciate what I’m trying to accomplish.”

  I didn’t think so. I was planning on going in, getting the girl, and leaving. “What might that be?”

  “Something historic. But I can’t go into details now. You understand. Now, let me give you the coordinates.”

  He dictated a series of numbers to me, which I dutifully wrote down despite not having a clear idea what they meant. He assured me anyone with a basic understanding of navigation could figure them out. He was kind enough to give me a hint. It was somewhere in Arizona. Guess he’d left Seattle.

  “Don’t be late,” he recommended before hanging up. “I don’t want to hurt her, but… you understand my position.”

  I hung up by pressing the button a second time. As soon as the call was disconnected the digital display blinked out. The phone was a one-use-only device, as I’d thought. Which was okay, because I really didn’t relish another conversation with Mr. Grindel. But I had two days to worry about that.

  Tossing the device back into my bag, I retrieved the cell phone I’d taken from John in the minivan. I checked my watch. It was six in the evening in Zurich. They’d take my call anyway. Money buys lots of things.

  Chapter 23

  The first thing Patti did, when I handed her the coordinates Grindel had given me, was check her map and confirm. “
There’s no airfield at that location.”

  “It’s in Arizona somewhere,” I offered helpfully.

  “I know it’s in Arizona. It’s probably a dried lake bed or something. Not my point.”

  She sat down and made a few calculations and then a few phone calls, and in another twenty minutes, she had the entire itinerary planned out. Patti seemed very competent, which was good. I always look for competence in someone who’s going to be flying me somewhere. I’m still pretty sure man was not meant to fly, so the confidence that the person doing that flying is not also a raving nut job helps me cope. I knew more than a couple of self-professed geniuses in my day who managed to turn glue and some bird feathers into inadvertent suicide.

  The problem with the lack of an airport, as Patti explained to me shortly after takeoff, was refueling. If she wasn’t landing on an airstrip she needed to get to the coordinates with enough fuel to cover a trip to the nearest one. “It changes the dynamics of the flight plan a bit.”

  It turns out it doesn’t take all that long to make it across the United States. This is one of those things I still can’t quite get used to. For most of my life, distances were calculated by how long it would take to walk from one place to the next. Then it was how long a good horse could take you in a day. Now it’s motorized vehicles and planes, and I’ve only had a century to adjust. Flying in general doesn’t bother me so much—as long as I don’t think about it all too long—because it’s conceptually so far removed from any other experience that I have nothing to compare it to. It’s the efficiency that messes me up.

  As Patti pointed out when handing me the itinerary, she could have drawn up a plan to get me there in under a day if I wanted. I didn’t, mainly because as expected, the cell phone I was using couldn’t pick up a signal at thirty-thousand feet. And I had a follow-up phone call or two to place.

  * * *

  We made small talk for most of the flight. Patti was decidedly professional about the whole thing, not once bringing up the gun in my bag or her suspicion that whatever I was involved in, it was in all likelihood illegal.

  Instead, we talked about Patti and her sordid love life. The bulk of her tale lasted about three hours and took us through two states. Which was plenty of time to learn more than anybody who isn’t a priest or a lover should have any right to know about another person. The good news was I hardly had to talk at all. Sure, I could have volunteered something to the conversation—I have learned enough to know that when a woman talks, one should at least nod and grunt appreciatively from time to time—but once she got into a rhythm there was no stopping her.

  “Oh, listen to me!” she said finally, shortly after the amusing tale of Dan, the garbage man who liked to dress in a tutu at night. “I’ve been doing all the talking. Sorry, it’s a nervous thing. I talk a lot when I’m nervous.”

  “I make you nervous?”

  “Not you exactly, no,” she said, without elaboration. She meant the gun. “So what’s your story?”

  “You don’t really want to know, do you?”

  She glanced over at me. “Kinda,” she said. “You just don’t seem the type.”

  “The type for what?”

  “To be involved in… whatever. Crime, I guess. There’s a big black cloud of trouble around your head.”

  “You reading my aura now?”

  She smiled. “Pilots know clouds.”

  I laughed. “So how does a person who is, as you say, involved in crime, act ordinarily?”

  “There’s two types—nervous or way too calm. The nervous ones spend the whole time bouncing up and down and staring at shit on the dashboard and asking stupid questions. I hate that. But the calm ones are worse. They just sit there and don’t move, or talk, or anything. The whole flight is one uncomfortable pause. I hate that.”

  “Okay. Which category do I fit in?”

  She stared at me for a five count, the way someone might if they were attempting to count your eyelashes. “Maybe neither. Except for the cloud, I’d put you somewhere between tourist and businessman,” she concluded.

  “Maybe that’s all I am,” I offered. “A businessman on vacation.”

  “Right,” she said sarcastically.

  She quieted down for a while, checking random dials or whatever one is supposed to check when one flies an airplane. She hadn’t touched the stick in over an hour, which made me wonder how much pilots actually have to do to fly planes. Not like she had to swerve to avoid things. Seemed pretty easy to me.

  “How old are you?” Patti asked, finally.

  “Isn’t that an impolite question?”

  “There are no impolite questions at this altitude.”

  “Okay. How old do I look?”

  She frowned. “You have a habit of answering questions with questions, you know that? Maybe thirty-five.”

  “Okay. Thirty-five, then.”

  “Except you don’t act thirty-five, so that can’t be right.”

  “How should I act?” I was trying not to be too forthcoming, because I’d only recently learned exactly how much trouble it caused when I was. It helped that I was currently sober, and thus less likely to run off at the mouth. Plus, this was sort of interesting.

  “Oh, I know what it is!” she exclaimed. “You’re a vet.”

  “A pet doctor?”

  “Don’t play dumb. What was it? Iraq?”

  That was a tricky one to answer. If I said yes, we might have gotten bogged down in questions about divisions and units, and I didn’t know enough about regular army to lie convincingly. And once you start talking about this stuff, you quickly find the person you’re speaking to knows someone who knows someone you might have served with. But I couldn’t very well tell her that the last time I fought in something that was big enough to come with a name was during the Peloponnesian War.

  “What about me cries out veteran, exactly?”

  “Dunno. But I know a few. There was this World War vet I used to know. He didn’t give a damn about much of anything. Or maybe it was just that he knew nothing that came next would ever be quite so bad. It was a confidence thing. That’s it, that’s the vibe I’m getting.”

  I decided it was time to cut off the conversation entirely. Either that or start talking about the Greeks.

  “You’re wrong,” I said curtly. “I never fought in a war.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

  And then we settled into one of those uncomfortable silences she had been talking about earlier.

  * * *

  Patti had been good enough to set us up at a hotel near the airfield after the first leg of the trip. Separate rooms, of course. As soon as I was alone, I arranged a call to Switzerland.

  As you may have already guessed, I’m sort of terrible about money. I can never really keep decent track of what is, and isn’t, a lot of it, which is just not my fault. Seriously, I remember when I could buy a horse with what a loaf of bread costs now. So when I first called the Swiss bank from Clara’s apartment and gave them the necessary account information, I learned two things. The first was I now had my own private banker, Heintz, whose only job was to kiss up to me. This was because of the second thing. The exact balance in my account. Heintz had to read it to me five times because I’d never heard a number that large before, and I frankly didn’t know what to make of it. “That’s a lot, isn’t it?” was about all I could muster.

  So the money was nice, but far more important was what that money got me, i.e., a Swiss banker who wanted to keep me happy at all times. Which was why I felt comfortable having him look into Robert Grindel’s finances.

  What I learned on my follow-up call from the hotel room was that Clara and I had been correct about at least one thing. Grindel was indeed swimming in venture capital money.

  The question was, what was Grindel offering his current investors? Heintz’s best guess put the project somewhere in the field of medicine, based mainly on the types of projects these investors had previously shown interest in.
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br />   “For us to learn more, we must first show an active interest in investing,” he said. “Would you like for me to make the necessary arrangements?”

  If I were at that moment sitting on a beach in Fiji, I’d have said yes. But as I was about to get the answers I needed on my own, it seemed superfluous. Plus, this was in all likelihood the last chance I would have to speak to Heintz for some time.

  “No,” I said. “But I am interested in how one gets this sort of money from these sorts of people. How fluid is the situation?”

  “I am not sure I understand.”

  “I assume one has to provide the investors with solid evidence that one’s project is worth investing into. How much proof? And what would constitute a breach of contract? What would make the investors decide to ask for their money back?”

  “Ah,” he said. “That varies wildly from circumstance to circumstance. Mostly, it is up to each venture capitalist as regards their personal comfort level in the arena of standards of proof. A person who has shown past success in a particular avenue, and who has a new idea that merely looks good on paper, can do quite well. For others, a prototype, or an experiment proving the viability of a theory. It depends on the hypothetical product. And again, on how stringent the investor’s vetting procedures are.”

  “And breach of contract?”

  “That would take quite a lot. One would need to prove not only did the concept that initially warranted the investment fail to bear fruit, but the party which proposed it was consciously aware the product would not succeed. This is exceedingly difficult to prove. Investors are notoriously skittish for just this reason. Most arrangements involve a gradual influx of funding contingent upon pre-established goals being met along the way. Using this Mr. Grindel as an example, he could have his funding cut quite suddenly from one or all of the investors if at one point he failed to deliver an aspect of the project as promised.”

  “All right,” I said. “I think I understand. Now let me ask you something, Heintz, understanding first that this is an entirely hypothetical question.”