Unacceptable Risk

by David Dun

  The house that actually contained reflections of his life, aside from his now-ruined mountain cabin, stood just across the street from the ocean. The mask he wore wouldn't fool anyone within ten feet into thinking it was natural skin and a real beard, but then he never stopped outside the garage and he had never met his neighbors. They had taken to peering out their windows in curiosity, but that was about it. He was in the place at most two or three nights a week, a function of traveling and the fact that there was a sleep room at the office. No one but his closest family members and Jill, his ex-lover and office manager, and the occasional maintenance man that she hired had ever been inside this house.

  The condo known to Anna was tastefully decorated by a professional and it took some doing to make it appear lived in, but it really contained nothing of himself. Walking through, a person could learn only about the fictitious man the decorator had in mind. Sam felt slightly guilty that Anna had never seen his real home, though she knew his real name and had regularly been inside his offices—something few people had done. The current focal point of their relationship was his insistence on anonymity. Whenever they went someplace together in pubic, which was rare, he played the contract security man, an Anna Wade bodyguard, and seldom looked much like himself. The secrecy his work required was becoming a serious irritation for Anna, but Sam didn't have a ready solution.

  At the heavy metal front door to his house Sam placed his finger on a small opaque window and his eyeball before another. It was the same security he had at the office. With a slight buzzing sound heavy bolts opened and he entered his house. When he was inside, he repeated the process to reset the alarm to the "stay" mode.

  Indoors it was the usual 68 degrees Fahrenheit, cool enough to work out. He waved at Jill through the closed-circuit TV monitor in his living room, then turned it off. The place was comfortable but decidedly male. The furniture was soft leather with the exception of one embroidered rocker with a handwoven outdoor scene.

  A stand with seven pipes stood on a small coffee table between two chairs and one cigar humidor. Once in a while he filled a pipe but usually preferred cigars.

  A wooden case the size of two large refrigerators held photos, mostly of his late son, Bud. One showed Bud alive and athletic and triumphant on the face of a mountain of rock known as El Capitan in Yosemite; others were of him climbing at Castle Crags, parasailing in Mexico, and taking part in quieter activities, many with Sam. Most of Sam's past girlfriends were there, including Suzanne, now also dead, and Jill. The shots of Jill and him were hugging-and-giggling shots that told of a different day and a different relationship. But Jill was still important to him, so he left the photos in their place, figuring that they didn't need to go in a box until a permanent companion came along—an event that probably wasn't too far off. The tough decision would be whether to leave them in their place the first time he brought Anna Wade here.

  But there were some photos that would definitely remain. They included photos of Chet, Jill's high-school boy, whose father was her ex and was now dead from alcoholism. Chet had suffered from a nerve disease, but aside from an impediment to running, the boy was all there. Chet was smart and an encyclopedia when it came to weapons. Sam wasn't much interested in guns except as an occupational necessity, but he was interested in the boy.

  Sam picked up the portable phone and pushed memory.

  "Hey, Chet, how's it goin'?"

  "Sam."

  "You haven't told anybody about me, have you?"

  "You ask me that every time. Of course I haven't."

  "I'm obsessed. You wanna go shooting on Christmas break?"

  "Yeah. I wanna try the Desert Eagle Fifty caliber."

  "Huh?"

  "It's all in the grips. You said so yourself. I can do it."

  "What are we gonna do? Tie you to a refrigerator?"

  "It has ports to reduce the kick."

  "My arms are an inch shorter since I shot that. You want arms an inch shorter?"

  "I've already got short legs, might as well have arms to match."

  Sam laughed.

  "Okay. But if I go shooting, you gotta promise to go fishing."

  "Fishing? You mean it?"

  "Absolutely. And we'll invite the girl next door."

  "Oh no. That would be too embarrassing."

  "Hey, I can't turn her down now. I already told her that your mom and I would take her fishing when I take you. Man, was she excited."

  "Are you kidding me? You never talked to her. You wouldn't do that."

  "Well, I looked about seventy years old at the time—with a beard. I'm your new god-grandfather for this trip. That's like a godfather, only old."

  "Can I call you Sam so I don't forget like before?"

  "You bet. Sam the god-grandfather. Absolutely."

  "Sheees."

  "How's the homework?"

  "Good. Real good."

  After a little more chit chat, Sam hung up, smiling at the boy's zest for life.

  Off the living area was a hall to the two bedrooms and a large kitchen. Sam cooked slowly and with great deliberation. For him cooking was art and he liked to replicate things he'd seen in restaurants, but with his own twist. Cooking with a woman in this kitchen, for the first time, would be like making love on his bed.

  Suzanne had been only the second woman he'd loved to the point of commitment, but they'd been together in France and the relationship had been cut short by her death. Rachel, his first and only wife, had long preceded Sam's purchase of this house. He sat down in his leather chair and called Anna on her cell. No answer. She was no doubt in the shower at his showplace condo. Sometimes she liked long showers.

  Sam knew he was crazy and that most normal people came out of their inner shell in their late teens. He told his close friends that this terrible aloofness didn't worry him, although lately he was beginning to feel a bit like a middle-aged woman whose biological clock was ticking. From day to day his feelings seemed to change on the subject of fatherhood, and if Sam had a source of conflict that wasn't associated with the mess of his father's suicide, then this was it.

  Built-in cherry bookcases contained Sam's personal book collection, weighted toward true-life exploration and adventures of all sorts, including the classics like Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. Sam liked reading about presidents. He didn't want the job but had plenty of books on the subject. His favorite topic was Indian history and that was evident both in the books and the storage cabinets on the other wall. Along that wall, also in cherry, were numerous drawers of the sort that one would use to store large nautical charts or maps that one wished to keep unfolded and flat In Sam's case they contained maps and parchments of historic and modern Native American villages and ceremonial sites along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Mexico and inland throughout the western states. It was one of the best private collections in existence.

  Everywhere hung Native American memorabilia. One of Grandfather's ceremonial headdresses hung in the corner. There was the Cherokee blessing on the wall and likewise the Tilok blessing. He had all manner of ceremonial peace pipes and pictures of famous Native American leaders, from Chief Seattle to Geronimo.

  Near the coffee table lay Grandfather's favorite moccasins. Sam's mother, Keyatchker, aka Spring, teared up every time she saw them. Sam's regular and favorite chair was a big leather affair with an ottoman sitting under a massive lamp whose base was made of carved oak. Grandfather had carved it on one of his pilgrimages to the caverns in the mountains. Sam cherished it because so much of his grandfather was in the wood that had been held in his hands and molded by his knife. It was an eagle with its wings spread. Sam's Indian name was Kalok, which meant "eagle."

  Sam sat in his chair and Harry promptly jumped in his lap and settled in. On the coffee table was a baseball mitt that had belonged to his son, Bud. Some days Sam would pick it up and put his hand in it. Today he studied the old leather mitt and noticed that it needed oil. There was still an ache in him that felt like it would sp
lit him open when he thought about Bud. It had been four years. Today he would not put on the glove and feel the leather that his son had touched. It seemed unholy to mix love with the rage he felt at Gaudet. Attachments were hard because the world carried no guarantees of their permanence. Bud was gone, Grandfather was gone, and Suzanne was gone—and now Paul as well, one of his best friends.

  Sam also kept memorabilia from the period before he had learned that he was a Tilok. There were pictures of him with his father in Alaska, a long-ago life that ended with Sam's discovery at age twenty-one that he was half Tilok with a living mother he had never met. All his life he'd been told that his mother was a mestizo, a whore, a drunk, and dead.

  The phone rang, the display indicating it was Jill.

  "You know he loves it so much when you call."

  "What? Have you got that boy's phone bugged?"

  "He calls me all excited."

  "How are things with Anna?"

  "I think you lead a charmed life. Right at the moment of truth with Anna, the CIA calls. First they say nothing all week. Now they demand we take the French as a client on the Gaudet case."

  "As in, France?"

  "Yep. And you'll never guess who the French have hired to represent their interests in this matter?"

  "I suppose Figgy wants to meet immediately."

  "You're a mind reader."

  "Tell Anna I'll meet her at Forbes for dinner." He wondered if the subject of his house would come up at dinner. Actually, he wondered whether the world would be the same by dinner.

  Grady Wade sat at her desk with a stack of Michael Bowden's books and a letter from his publisher. Her half-full coffee mug read: if it's not outrageous, it's boring. From what she'd read—and she'd now read all of Michael Bowden's books—he seemed anything but outrageous, but far from boring. A welcome surprise for a young woman who found little in life that invigorated her.

  At the end of her career as a stripper, Grady had told Sam that the major problem in dancing naked for a living had been the truth in the coffee mug inscription. In the end that had been what frightened her most. Perhaps a life of kids and family and an old oak tree in the backyard would leave her listless and drive her to constant excess. The irony, of course, was that her cure, working for Sam's organization, was undoubtedly more outrageous than dancing naked. Actually, Grady did two things at this desk: work for Sam and study for college, and which activity received her attention depended on the demands of each.

  Anna Wade, Grady's aunt, had a profound need for Grady to become "self-actualized"—a normal person would say "succeed"—and Sam did his best to play godfather to Grady, determined that she make herself into something that she would eventually approve of. The catch there was that Sam claimed unique insight into what it was that Grady should approve. Many days she felt like a social-conditioning project, but even that felt better than working in a strip club and coming down from a coke addiction. And so Grady studied, worked, slept a bit, and had little time for boys. Perhaps she had overloaded on men in her former occupation. For a time she had dated a man named Clint, who had fallen overwhelmingly in love with her and wanted to marry. The free spirit in Grady just couldn't do it. Not at age twenty-one. Now she saw Clint only on occasion; like most men, he wanted to see her more often.

  To top off her complicated life, she lived with Jill, her immediate boss.

  Researching scientist/author Michael Bowden came as a blessed relief from her normal work and schoolwork. In just a couple of days Grady had made copious notes on Bowden and the Amazon jungle, and in doing so had made one promise to herself: when Sam went to the Amazon to find Michael Bowden, she would use her best moves to ensure she boarded the plane with him—Devan Gaudet notwithstanding.

  Her work area was in a large room with over twenty cubicles, each with at least an eighteen-inch computer screen, some with two or even three. Most of one wall was glass and beyond the glass was a large array of computer equipment. In addition, the complex held a large conference room, a lunch-room complete with cooking facilities, and a dorm-like sleeping room.

  The place was a self-contained fortress. Indeed, all the office's perimeter walls were lined with Kevlar beneath studs laid over a heavy concrete wall. The windows in the outer walls—small openings above head height—were covered over with a so-called bulletproof plastic material. The place didn't have a true name; the people who worked there just called it "work" or "the office."

  It secretly pleased Grady that Harry often picked the corner of her cubicle as a parking spot when Sam was in the office. He'd returned less than an hour ago, and she'd not seen him yet.

  Her phone rang. That would be Sam, ready to be briefed on Bowden.

  "We have some people coming in and I want you to brief them."

  "Really? Nobody ever comes here."

  "Sometimes the CIA does. Scotland Yard does."

  "Sheesh. When?"

  There was a long silence.

  "I know. It's a secret and it'll happen when it happens."

  * * *

  The sound of cell doors slamming had become commonplace for Benoit Moreau. She did not live in squalor or misery, but the modern, antiseptic prison felt desolate. On her cell walls she'd hung art torn from magazines: photos of the Swiss Alps, the Pyrenees, and a picture of the Tour de France. There was also a picture of herself so that she would not forget what she was supposed to look like.

  Benoit mostly lived in her mind and not in her cell. She had an exceptional ability to visualize what was not, but what might be, and consequently she never gave up. In the words of a writer of the New Testament, with which she had become familiar as a child, she knew both how to be abased and how to abound. It was a tribute to her otherwise questionable character that she did not allow the trampling of her personal pride to dismantle her psyche. She had thought long and hard about how she'd gotten here, and she dwelled particularly on the men she had bedded and duped along the way. Of them, she was really interested in only one, and she determined that she would find her way back to him. Life, she decided, was the sum total of many small choices and she had made many bad ones to get to this place.

  Before her life with DuShane Chellis and his company, Grace Technologies, she had been a rising executive, before that a student with many honors, including being named prenier, graduating avec mention particuliere du jury, and having her examination paper published in Le Monde. A series of jobs in the computer industry and related medical applications had resulted in her rapid rise. She had acquired a reputation as a smart, aggressive young woman who could get things done. Born Bernice, she called herself Benoit, a man's name.

  On a bright full-moon night in December she met DuShane Chellis at a party. Attending the event had been an afterthought, and when she arrived, there was a buzz—people were talking about the consummate executive who was building a conglomerate faster than any businessman in French history. Some called him a savage because of his corporate takeover practices, but to Benoit, on that first evening, he was a charming savage. At the party, the first time he saw her, he kept his eyes on her. People noticed and opened a small path so that he could make his way to her. His attention and intensity were infectious; after a few minutes all those around him were glancing at her.

  Within a few days she was hired as his assistant and within months a vice president. In six months the relationship became personal.

  Benoit remembered him in the early years as uncompromising, determined, passionate, and seemingly without weakness. He could always concentrate and was never distracted, or so it seemed. He was a large man in every way, and when he walked into a room, he seemed to fill it. He knew how to relate to the man on the street and a prime minister. He seemed to Benoit to be the perfect corporate personality.

  Like others who have lost control of their ego, as Chellis's success increased, he changed, became self-absorbed, abusive, and paranoid. For Benoit the day came when the thought of being near his power was replaced by the thought of taking it.


  That day did not start out bad. Reports from Malaysia regarding the genetic technology—vector technology it was called—were never more optimistic. A brilliant young French scientist by the name of Georges Raval had discovered something amazing. He had taken two macaque monkeys and traded their hearts in simultaneous heart transplant surgeries. Both monkeys accepted the new heart without rejection and without the use of immunosuppressants. They had reprogrammed the immune systems of the two monkeys using a process familiarly known as "Chaperone." They expected that it would work on humans as well and would allow doctors to alter a patient's cells genetically in ways that made the expressed protein fundamentally different, and then allow the immune system to accept the altered tissue that resulted from the gene therapy—a genuine medical miracle.

  She had walked into DuShane's office with two of the staffers that helped her administer the program. He was alone but on the phone yelling at a banker. He was in fair condition for age fifty-two, and he kept his salt-and-pepper gray hair impeccably groomed, swept back with natural waves. His face was unrounded by fat, more distinguished than pleasant. With his serious, dark eyes and the flat line of his mouth, he appeared to be a man who counted his conquests, a predator.

  "I can always go across town. Don't ever forget that. And don't you dare ask me for more fees again." He slammed down the phone and looked at Benoit, then at her assistants.

  "I have some very good news from Malaysia," Benoit began.

  "Have you received Boudreaux's budget yet? The costs over there are out of sight."

  "I mentioned that the budget will be here day after tomorrow. You agreed."

  "I ask for a simple thing and I can't get it!"

  "Well, we wanted to share with you the great news concerning the research of Georges Raval, a young scientist."

  "I already know about it. You were supposed to have those reports. I ask for things around here and people pay no attention."

  "We discussed it and you agreed...."