by Brett Baker
I opened the door and walked inside. As always a bouquet of two-dozen red roses sat on a small end table next to the large recliner that faced the door. The roses were replaced every few days, supposedly so the otherwise wretched apartment—both in appearance and in ambiance, thanks to the serious nature of its existence—had a singular positive quality.
The roses created just the opposite feeling for me though.
The first time I ever smelled such fragrant roses was as a young girl at my grandmother’s wake. The scent of the numerous sympathy flowers filled the entire room, and ever since then I associated the smell of flowers with death.
Inside the apartment, in addition to the recliner and the roses, were two couches, a fully-furnished kitchen, a small kitchen table, and in the back of the apartment, each of the two bedrooms had a twin bed.
I never encountered anyone else when I went to the Roost, and this time was no different. A window unit air conditioner hummed, but seemed not to spew any chilled air, as the apartment was stifling. I walked to the only window in the living room, and looked down on the street below. Few people passed, and no one seemed suspect. The Roost had always been a safe place for me, and in the countless times I’d used it, I’d never felt threatened. The steel door kept everyone out, and created a welcome oasis in the middle of a chaotic city.
Although I enjoyed the respite that the Roost provided, I was there to take advantage of its main asset: its communication capabilities.
When working for an organization like The Summit, confidential communication can be the difference between life and death. An intercepted phone call can lead to someone’s death. Nothing is more secure than standing right next to someone and talking to them in person, but shadowy geniuses deep within The Summit somehow created a telephone that’s the next best thing.
In the perpetual sprint between criminals and law enforcement to stay ahead of each other, The Summit consistently created devices that outpaced both groups. The telephone inside the Roost provided the ability to communicate without having to worry about anyone intercepting or tracing the call. Not only could neither law enforcement nor the most tech savvy criminals create anything to counteract the anonymous phone located in the Roost, they didn’t even know technology to create such a device existed.
Aviator Man refused to give me answers, so I’d have to come up with my own answers. I’d developed a variety of tactics that have helped to keep me alive, but none had been more important than the ability to find answers. It doesn’t matter what other capabilities I possessed, if I didn’t know the proper channels in which to utilize those capabilities, they were worthless. I could kill ten people, but if none of them were responsible for sending Aviator Man after me then I’d be no safer.
All of my research missions began the same way: with a call to Polestar, the information collecting apparatus of The Summit. If any single entity was necessary to The Summit’s success, it was Polestar. A squirrel monkey in the Amazon can’t pick his nose without Polestar knowing about it.
I learned first-hand about Polestar’s reach early in my career with The Summit. While following a group of Swedish human traffickers from Riga, Latvia to Moscow, I carelessly engaged with a burly, blonde Swedish brute at a gas station in a small town called Ludza. The man spoke English, and asked me for my phone number so he could take me on a date, both of which threw me off guard. As I walked into the small store attached to the station, he held the door for me, smiled and said, “You make me smile, I make you smile.”
I forgot about my mission, due more to the Swedish oaf’s ridiculousness than to any real attraction—although he did have gorgeous green eyes. This temporary lack of focus made me an easy target as I approached the back of the store to grab a bottle of water out of a cooler. But instead of getting the water, I got a nice firm punch at the base of my skull that immediately knocked me out.
I came to about twenty minutes later, and heard an elderly man with an Eastern European accent calling my name repeatedly, “Mia. Mia, my love, wake up. Mia, are you okay? Mia. Mia, are you dead?”
I opened my eyes and the old man smiled, showing only a handful of teeth. “Not dead, Mia. You’re not dead. Such good news! Good news.” He reached down and I grabbed his hand. He helped me sit up and I realized that I’d been lying in a concrete culvert outlet pipe, with water rising around me as thunder boomed above. “Not dead, Mia. Let’s get you inside.”
The old man, who I found out later was ninety-two years old, lived in Ludza all of his life, and ingratiated himself with the Soviets for decades by providing a plentiful supply of fish from Ludza’s many lakes, picked me up and carried me on his shoulders like a firefighter up a rocky embankment, through a thick stand of forest, and into his living room, where a wood-fueled fire had heated the room enough that my wet clothes dried in twenty minutes while I wore them. Over a bowl of sorrel soup and a loaf of dark rye bread called rupjmaize, the old man refused to tell me how he knew I was in the culvert, or how he knew my name.
“No tell,” he said over and over again. “No tell from me.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I might have died there if not for you.”
The old man nodded. “Yes, yes. Would have died. Not dead yet though.” He smiled his toothless smile again, and repeated, “Not dead yet.”
With dry clothes, a full stomach, and an ice pack to keep down the swelling on the back of my head, I returned to my car and continued on the trip to Moscow. Months later, as I sat in a bakery just outside Nashville, sharing a donut and a cup of coffee with an agent I knew from my trafficking mission, I asked her how Polestar could have sent the old man to save me. She took a bite of her donut, washed it down with some coffee, and shook her head. “Mia, some things are unknowable. Just be thankful he was there. If he wasn’t, you’d still be in that culvert, drowned and dead.”
Since then I’d not only come to expect Polestar’s omniscience, but I’ve relied on it more times than I can count. I have many days like those James Bond films where Bond is seconds away from death and it appears as though there’s no way out of his predicament, yet he somehow lives to see another day. It’s Polestar who saves my ass.
So when I dialed my current contact at The Summit from the phone inside the Roost, I expected answers. Someone at Polestar would tell me who was trying to kill me, and I’d track them down and kill them, and the story would be over.
With Polestar, sometimes it was just that easy.
“Is this the fabulous Mia Mathis?” a raspy, weathered, deep voice asked with the slightest southern accent. “Calling from the Roost? Are you in trouble again Mia?”
“Not at the moment,” I said. “But I have to say, when bullets are flying toward my head while I’m on a nice leisurely run, it fucking pisses me off. So don’t think just because I’m not in danger right now that I’m happy about it. I need to know what the fuck is going on.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.” I knew the man on the other end of the phone as Stanley, but as with everyone else I’d known with The Summit, I couldn’t be sure that was his real name. Mia Mathis is my real name, and I think most of the people I’ve worked with use their real name, but I once met a man on the streets of Montreal who identified himself as Lars, apparently forgetting that fifteen months earlier we’d worked together briefly in Valletta, Malta and I’d known him as Victor. Ever since then I’d assumed that real names weren’t important, and I sometimes question the wisdom of using my real name.
“I was running this morning and some fuck face started shooting at me. He put a bullet through my hair. If I were two inches taller I’d be dead right now. I need to know who was shooting at me.”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Stanley said. “You’re supposed to be decommissioned this month. No one should be shooting at you.”
“Yeah, well this guy didn’t get the memo.”
“Where did this happen?”
“Along the lakefront. I was running, heard a shot, felt a tug o
n the bun on top of my head and took cover.”
“And the shooter?”
“Tall, fit. Dark beard. Aviator sunglasses. Slow learner.”
“Where is he now? How did you get away?”
“He’s taking a permanent rest on a grassy hill along the lakefront. I’m sure they’ll find his body soon, but I doubt they’ll realize that I crushed his trachea. Looks like he’s just enjoying the sunshine.”
“Good job,” Stanley said. “I’m sorry this happened. I looked over the briefing for my unit this morning and there was nothing in there about you. In fact, it has you listed as decommissioned. No location, no threats, no agenda.”
“Can you check with Polestar and see what they know? Aviator Man didn’t give me any information before he checked out, so I’m sort of back at square one. I doubt he was a lone wolf. If they have someone else tracking me then I’m fucked if he has better aim. I’d like to know if I should expect more bullets flying my way.”
“I think it’s safe to assume that you haven’t been shot at for the last time. Whoever sent your aviator friend will find out that he’s dead and someone else will trail you. Might be a good idea to lay low in the Roost for a few days. At least make their job a little harder.”
“Fuck that,” I said. “I’m not spending my decommission holed up in this place.”
“But if you go out and hunt for these people then you’re not really decommissioned anyway, so who cares. It’s not like you’re going to go lay on a beach somewhere and take it easy. That’s not the Mia Mathis I know.”
“Just talk to Polestar and see what they know. I’ll wait here until I hear back from you. Tell them to make it quick though. It’s July in Chicago and there’s no air conditioning here. If I have to wait here for too long then Aviator Man’s friends won’t be the only people I’m ready to kill.”
“Okay, Mia. Be patient. Let me see what I can find out. Take care of yourself.”
I hung up the phone and walked to the window. I immediately noticed the man on the motorcycle. He’d squeezed his bike into a narrow space between two cars parked across the street from the Roost, in front of a yogurt shop. His legs straddled the bike, and he sat straight up with his arms folded on his chest. Every thirty seconds or so he looked over his shoulder, as if expecting someone.
After a few minutes a black sedan stopped next to the car in front of the motorcycle, and a man got out of the passenger side door. The man looked across the street toward the alley that led to the Roost, and then to the man on the motorcycle. A slight nod of the head, and then he walked up to Motorcycle Man, said something to him, put something in his hand, and returned to the car. Motorcycle Man nodded, put whatever the man had given him into the front chest pocket of his riding jacket, and folded his arms again. The black sedan drove off, and Motorcycle Man remained on the bike.
I watched him for twenty minutes while I waited for Stanley to call me back. Not once did the man look up at the window of the Roost, or even toward the building or the alley. He seemed entirely focused on the street traffic, and continued to look over his shoulder every few minutes. Had I not seen the other man talk to him and give him something, I wouldn’t have paid Motorcycle Man much attention. But given the interaction between the two men, something seemed suspicious.
The ringing phone interrupted my surveillance, and I reluctantly left the window to answer the phone. I expected to hear Stanley’s voice, but instead an unfamiliar female voice greeted me.
“Mia, are you alone in the Roost?” the woman asked me. She sounded no nonsense, impatient, serious.
“It’s just me inside here,” I said. “I’ve got my eye on some guy across the street who seems a little fishy, but there’s no one in here with me.”
“Good,” the woman said. “My name’s Grace. I’m calling from Polestar. Stanley called us. I just got off the phone with him.”
I thought it unusual that someone from Polestar would call me directly. In fact, Polestar had never called me. The Summit made it clear that if an agent needed guidance from Polestar, the agent had to initiate contact. I wanted to ask Grace if Polestar returned phone calls, or if I received special treatment. Either way, I always felt better after obtaining some information about a project before being immersed in it, and no entity on earth had more reliably supplied information to me than Polestar.
“So he told you about my incident?” I asked. “Or did you already know about it?”
“We didn’t know about it until he told us. And frankly, we’re not happy about it at all. It’s our job to know these things, or at least to anticipate them, and we didn’t have this on our radar at all. We knew of no threats against you, and our daily summary has you listed as decommissioned. Had you asked me a few hours ago I would have said that you’re probably the safest person in The Summit today. But that’s not how things turned out, obviously.”
“I’m on my own then?” I asked.
“No, you’re not on your own. No one in The Summit is ever on their own. That’s why Polestar exists. We have your back.”
I chuckled, and let out a deep sigh. “I don’t mean to be a bitch, but if you miss something like this then I don’t really know why you exist. At least when I’m in the middle of an operation I know that I’m a target. I’m on edge. I’m expecting some action. But it’s always been my understanding that The Summit doesn’t permit anyone to be decommissioned for any period of time if there’s a threat—active or passive—against them. There was obviously a very active threat against me.”
“We fucked up, Mia. There’s no way around that. We didn’t expect this at all, and we have no idea where it came from. You’re the only agent from The Summit in Chicago right now, so it’s not like this is overflow from some other operation. By the way, don’t repeat that information. We hold information about personnel deployment very tightly and I shouldn’t have told you that. But it’s just to emphasize my point. You should have been in the clear.”
“Whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what should have happened, it only matters what did happen. And golly fuck, if I don’t figure out what’s going on then I’m going to go from being the safest person in The Summit to the most endangered.”
“We’re here to help,” Grace said. “Is there any chance that this was a random incident? You wouldn’t be the first person to be gunned down while running along the lakefront. Do you have any reason to believe that you were actually the target?”
“He called me Mia,” I said.
“He called you by name?” Grace asked.
“Yes. He said he’d been looking for me and that he was glad that he found me. Told me that we had some things to sort out, and that it was too late to talk.”
“And he came at you from behind on the trail? Did he say anything to you or just start shooting?”
“He just started shooting. I hid behind a concrete planter until I could subdue him.”
“Did he say anything that might help us figure out who he is?” Grace asked.
“If he’d told me anything I wouldn’t be coming to you,” I said. “I thought you’d already have all of this information. It’s a little disconcerting that I’m the one supplying intelligence to the intelligence apparatus here.”
“I understand you’re frustrated, Mia, but all of our intelligence comes from people like you. It’s the only way we learn anything.”
“I guess you’re not going to learn anything about this then, because I don’t know anything. Some douchebag started shooting at me, and now he’s dead. That’s what I know.”
“Stanley tells me that you can handle yourself. That’s not a surprise. Just be careful out there until we can dig a little deeper. Someone out there knows something. Let me work my contacts in Chicago and see if I can uncover anything. It doesn’t sound like this was just some lunatic with a gun, so there’s got to be some backstory here. We’ll fill in the gaps and I’ll personally let you know what I find out. We’re on this, Mia. We fucking hate surprises, and this
was a complete surprise. It’ll take a few hours or maybe a couple of days, but we’ll figure it out.”
“And in the meantime?” I asked.
Grace hesitated, started to speak, and then stopped. A few seconds of silence passed, and then she said, “In the meantime, don’t get killed.”
3
Chapter 3
The irony of The Summit’s confidential phone is that while it employs technology so advanced that only a handful of people on earth know that it exists, it only works with a corded phone. So as I talked to Grace I was anchored to the phone, able only to walk a six-foot radius around the end table on which the phone sat.
I worried that Motorcycle Man might have disappeared while I was on the phone. He’d piqued my interest by waiting so patiently, and meeting the man in the black sedan. I’d begun to doubt that he was waiting for me, or knew that the Roost existed. He hadn’t looked up at the window or over to the alley at all, and if he were waiting for me, or thinking about breaking into the Roost, it would have been natural for him to monitor both. I wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t up to no good, but it seemed reasonably certain that his no goodness wasn’t related to me.
So when I left the Roost, I decided to walk directly toward him. I exited the alley, scanned the sidewalk and street traffic to make sure no one had a gun pointed at me, and then crossed the street. He saw me as I approached, and sat up a little straighter on his bike. I couldn’t immediately tell if he noticed me because he wanted to kill me or if he noticed me in the same way that seemingly every other man notices me. My long, dark hair always attracts attention, but after being propped up in a sweaty bun for a couple of hours my it was a mess.
I smiled at the man as I walked by, and he looked away from me, obviously trying to avoid eye contact. Again, I couldn’t tell if he didn’t want to look at me because he didn’t want me to know that he was following me, or because I’d intimidated him by smiling. Some men will assume that when a women smiles at them that she’s interested and they should smile back, or even more boldly, say hello. But most men will look away, as if the smile made the woman too real and they’d realized that she wasn’t just something to look at.