The Nano-Thief: A Lenny D. Novel (Lenny. D. Novels Book 1)

by Michael Lieberman

  "You mean, we are under house arrest," M2 says.

  "Something like that," Lenny grumbles.

  "Let's try protective custody. Here's a compromise. Let me talk to my boss. I'll see if I can cut a deal that if you'll agree to stay put, I'll get him to send some guys by to check it out. Trust me, dad, they are going to be better at this than we are."

  When Barry contacts his boss, he gets a sarcastic stonewall: "Like I'm supposed to help your old man track down a crazy barista from Fresno?"

  "Like, yes, you are. Like I'm going to tell you why. This guy killed, intentionally or not, Edie and my son, and I'm valuable to you. And like you really are, because he set us up, and I mean UVL too. He lured us to Navasota so that whoever he works with could go through my dad's place, where I was living. They've been through my laptop. And if they don't know what Amputation is, they know the name."

  "You've got a point."

  "Do you think they went through my father's place to find out what his utility bills are or if he has a living will? What they wanted, and I'm sure they got, was a piece of me, and if they got anything about me, they got something about you and UVL. So I suggest you sent a posse over there pronto and check it out."

  "Roger, that."

  The two white panel trucks bore DPW markings. And so when they made their way to Nardath Road, they were invisible to tradesmen and residents. One stopped at one end and shunted traffic to the next street. The other made its way down the street stopping and inspecting light stanchions and telephone poles. When a young mother pushing twins in a BOB stroller inquired, a guy in white coveralls explained that it was a routine inspection. It was routine for the UVL team, but that was beside the point.

  It took only minutes for two guys to complete their installation at 1427: small day/night vision cameras and transponders mounted on telephone poles at either end of the property and a more powerful one trained on the front door from an artificial bird's nest placed in a leafless crape myrtle. They drove around the corner onto the same street from which Sammy had called the Yellow Cab and waited. They watched the video feed for an hour. Nothing. A late model gray Toyota with a signal-boosting relay system in its trunk pulled up and parked nearby. Once they were all sure the system was working, a woman exited the car, locked it, and got into one of the white panel trucks.

  Nothing to do but monitor the video feed at UVL headquarters and wait.

  "Okay, Barry, we're up and running with video. The house is quiet. Nothing to report, not even rabbit droppings. No sign of Omar Sharif or his Taurus. You old enough to remember Dr. Zhivago? Either he's out and about or it's parked in the three car. If we find something, we'll call. If we get pictures, we'll send them."

  Around dusk the boss gets a hold of Barry. "There's some activity from Nardath. Some guy is at the door, maybe nothing. I'm having a tech pass you through the real time feed and then, eventually, the earlier imaging. Maybe this will help your dad. We can't get enough detail for facial recognition software to do us much good."

  Lenny and Portia along with Barry and M2 look at the screen. It's almost dark and the scenes are not crisp. There's a middle-aged man, perhaps fifty or so they guess, who is walking away from the front door. He's bald and his coat is open, revealing a developing paunch. He turns back and knocks on the front door. They guess this is a repeat attempt to get the attention of whoever is inside. When he has no luck, he presses the doorbell and paces back and forth. He takes out a phone and seems to be making a call. It ends up being short. He must be leaving a voice mail or he can't reach whoever is inside and he hangs up. Then the guy turns back to the street and starts walking toward the sidewalk. He gets closer to the bird's nest camera…. There is no doubt now.

  Simultaneously, Lenny and Portia say, "N.K."

  "Holy shit, that's our neighbor from the Israeli Consulate. N.K. Ben David, the guy whose wife was buying from Sammy." He's clarifying a bit, just in case for M2.

  They try out a number of hypotheses on each other. N.K. has found out where the guy who hooked his wife on angel dust lives and wants to settle a score. N.K. himself is a user and Sammy is still in business. The Egyptians and the Israelis are doing some sort of deal, and Houston is far from the Middle East and a good place to conduct face-to-face business. N.K wants to buy whatever Sammy is trying to lift from the NAFRA project at the university. Sammy somehow already has what N.K. wants and he's coming to pick it up and maybe pay. With the information they have, there is no way to distinguish among these.

  Barry calls the boss back. "It's not Sammy, the guy Lenny was looking for. Get this, it's a guy from the Israeli Consulate named N.K. Ben David."

  Barry's boss is low key. He's not giving away any hunches of his own. "Okay, let me check it out and I'll get back to you."

  He calls Barry back in an hour. He's checked with his sources. "Ben David works for Mossad," he tells them on speakerphone. "He runs Israeli intelligence in the Houston/Southeast Texas region and is embedded in the consulate for cover. Their publicity says he holds a B.A. in political science from Tel Aviv University, but actually he has a Ph.D. in CS from Teknion, Israel's MIT. My source's best guess is that Sammy works for him. Ben David is the top dog, and Sammy has a piece of something or maybe a separate project. Exactly how Mossad recruited an Egyptian to work for them isn't clear, but stranger things have happened."

  "So why's he visiting Sammy on any old day in January?" Lenny wants to know.

  "That's for them to know and us to find out," the boss says.

  30.

  The four of them sit around the UVL safe house sifting through the events of the last two hours. The two men have different concerns. Barry needs to bring Operation Amputation to a successful close. His quickening relationship with M2 has turned his attention toward the future and makes revenge for Edie's death seem less pressing.

  Although he has no proof, he's next to certain that the Israelis have some stake in the Amputation project. For some reason, they want to foil the transfer of funds from the Chinese to their subsidiary. They are formidable opponents, master strategists. When it was a ground game, they trapped Eichmann and slipped him out of Argentina. Their raid on Entebbe was masterful, even if they lost Col. Jonathan Netanyahu.

  And when the game moved to cyberspace, they were equally good. Their cyber-prowess is harder to document, but one small window is the way they hacked Iran's uranium-enriching centrifuges and shut them down.

  "My boss and I have to work out a careful plan," he tells the group. "We have to assume, true or not, that the Israelis knew everything and go from there."

  Lenny's focus is Sammy and NAFRA. Lenny is in it for the thrill. It is less about evening the score for Portia's abduction than about the chase. He wants a second act after the high wire of securities trading, and right under his nose at Starbucks, opportunity has appeared.

  If he has a flaw, it is that Lenny underestimates Sammy's desperation and his ruthless undercurrent. Perhaps because Portia was doped and cannot convey Sammy's depravity or his mood swings, Lenny does not see Sammy as a blend: the cyber-operative he gets, but the old-fashioned, cloak-and-dagger spy is less apparent to him. His problem is that Sammy, the Egyptian Israeli agent, is off the grid. It reminds him of the old stories about Vietnam, how the Vietcong would melt away into the jungle. Under what rock is Sammy hiding and when will he show?

  Portia is reading a frothy Donna Leon mystery on her Kindle. She pauses for a moment and shakes her head. She can't believe she is reading a mystery while two others—the Ben David affair and Sammy the disappearing artist—are unfolding together in real time right in front of her.

  M2 is engrossed in a cyber conversation with someone. UVL has asked them all to keep low profiles just in case, but she is sure she is undetectable online anyway. Her forehead is furrowed in deep-think mode. Whatever she is involved in, it is not a discussion of a sale at Nordstrom's. When Barry looks up from his own preoccupation and sees her, he recognizes the look. He has been there. Everybody in hi
s business has been there. He makes a mental note to ask her about it.

  A few hours later, Barry's boss calls. "I'm sending you the live feed from the three cameras. Take a look and then we'll have a discussion."

  Lenny couldn't believe what he was seeing. The bird's nest camera was almost completely obstructed by the side of a fire truck. ENGINE Co. 2 was painted on a side panel, below which was a step. To the left, a hose fitting projected from the truck. Someone had leaned a fire axe against the side. Helmeted firefighters in full gear walked back and forth between the truck and the camera. Then two guys came by and fitted a hose to the port. Feeds from the two peripheral cameras showed 1427 Nardath Road burning fiercely. Firemen were busy spraying the roof and the sides and then wetting down the neighboring houses. Suddenly the entire right side of the house collapsed showering the house next door with fiery debris and sending a rain of sparks everywhere.

  Lenny said what was on everyone's mind. "1427 is going to be a total loss. Did they pull anybody out?"

  They called the boss. He answered the question without being asked. "So far, as best we can tell from our pictures and the fire department, they have not found anybody. It's early stages, but…well, we'll have to wait and see."

  "What happened?" Barry asked. "What does the earlier feed show?"

  "Funny you should ask. I'm going to pull it up for you, the relevant part."

  Nardath Road is quiet. You can make out the house easily. No lights are on. A man walks by in a jacket. He's got a pair of what look like black labs. And then nothing, until there is something. A very significant something. Two men in ski masks make their way forward. They carry five-gallon cans and begin to circle the perimeter, dousing the foundation as they go. It's a brick structure, so they linger at the doors and the garage door. They leave and return to the view field in less than thirty seconds. Again they carry five-gallon cans. One moves right toward the living room picture window, the other toward the dining room window. They break the windows and throw the open cans inside. They throw two lighted flares in. Both rooms burst into flames. They light the perimeter gasoline. The last imagine is of them walking toward the camera and out of view.

  "Well, it's got to be Ben David's boys, for sure," Lenny says. "You think they got Sammy? Or maybe a better question is, why would they want to get him?"

  "Maybe he's a liability or because he is no longer useful to Mossad. They have what they want," Barry says.

  M2 puts in her two cents. "Or Sammy is out. It's part of a coordinated plan to destroy evidence."

  "So what's the take home?" Lenny wants to know.

  "First, we still don't know whether Sammy is dead or alive. Second, we know Ben David can't have gotten what he wants from UVL. That's impossible." Barry doesn't elaborate. "Mostly, I guess that Ben David is thorough. He doesn't want to leave his tracks behind. My guess is that's it. There are more efficient ways to kill someone than burning down a building down, especially since the Fire Department is likely to know it's arson."

  There was nothing that night on local TV about the fire, but one station covered the fire late the next morning—and that was picked up by the online news sites. Normally, a simple house fire at a residence in Piney Point would never make the cut—even with a twenty-four-hour news cycle. But for the hell of it, a student intern at a local station checked into the blaze. She was curious to know who lived there. The intern's boss, like so many people who supervised interns, didn't know what to do with her and was only too happy that she could occupy herself. It turned out that a B.Z. Cohen-Freunde owned the place. The name intrigued her. Mr. or Ms. Cohen-Freunde worked for the Israeli Consulate. It was a few minutes work to get the phone numbers of neighbors on Nardath Road. She caught three people still at home the morning after the fire. None of them had ever seen Mr. or Ms. B.Z. Cohen-Freunde. Thus the lead became "Israeli mystery house burns in Piney Point." The story noted that no bodies had been recovered.

  N.K. Ben David's reaction: "Of all the shit luck. Not that it matters, but why is it that Israel always takes it on the chin?"

  M2 spoke for the others: "Good detective work. Kudos to whoever put this together. It will set Ben David back on his heels a bit."

  Lenny got it: the game was still on. Sammy has not been incinerated like Edie or his grandson. He was on the loose and fair game.

  31.

  The report of the fire scared the bejesus out of Sammy. Why did Biggie want to take him out before he could deliver the goods? Simple, he reasoned, he's got bigger fish to fry with the Amputation deal, and he doesn't want any collateral damage from his foray into drugs and from Portia's unprofessional abduction. Or was it a matter of simple tidiness? Biggie didn't want loose ends.

  The good news was Sammy didn't think N.K.—he resolved to stop calling him Biggie—had the faintest idea where he was. And neither did Barry or Lenny. The bad news was they would hunt him down for different reasons. He was stymied: he couldn't function without access to the FDU website, which, one way or another, would lead to his detection. But he had a plan if only he could stick to it.

  Raw fear stiffened his resolve. Sammy was alone, without resources or allies. Fareed was dead. His context at Starbucks had dried up. He had no friends to speak of. He couldn't hang out in bars like Ferndale's. Where was the profit in that? Mrs. Babcock was in the Israeli gulag, and he was suspect in the eyes of his superior. He needed someplace to go, to hang out, something to ground him, give him context. His good sense told him to keep his cool and stick to the plan. It would all be okay. His emotional needs said, Visit Fresno. Go home. Ground yourself.

  New plan, an intermittent plan, he told himself. First he stopped at the gun store. The background check of Spencer Altwater was fine. And why not? He had hardly bought a movie ticket. In no time he walked out with a tiny Beretta Pico. On the way home he bought a few more T-shirts and some briefs and went into a quick copy place and had them print some business cards. He was now Spencer Altwater, Ph.D., Instructor, Department of Political Science, Farro-Drake University. If he had to, he could talk about Vladivostok in the Soviet era, the Sea of Japan, growing Chinese might in the area. He'll wing it and sling it.

  Careful, be careful, keep your cool. But he's off the reservation and he knows it. He took all but $9,500 from the briefcase and stuffed it in the clothing store bag, which he put, of all places, between the two air mattresses he slept on. He replaced the cash with the T-shirts and briefs and prepared a script in case he was stopped at airport security: his uncle owned Altwater Plumbing in Humble. His dad had asked him to bring the cash out west to him. He took the ketamine and syringes out of his computer case. Did he really want to explain why he had a controlled substance with him? Likewise, the six shot Beretta he had just purchased. He'd not get through security with the little avenger, no way. Ditto the pliers and the screwdriver he'd used to put on the Missouri plates. He'd retrieve them when he returned and reactivated his original plan. He paused. A timeout. He reconsidered, upended the mattress, pulled out another five hundred bucks from the bag, and stuffed it in the pocket of his jeans.

  At Hobby Airport, he parked the fading red Kia with the Missouri plates in long-term parking—his car was as good as invisible there. At the ticket counter, Spencer showed his driver's license and a Visa card and bought a ticket with cash. No problem. He would end up a middle seat in the back of the plane, bummer, but LA was not that far away.

  Again, no problem when he showed TSA his license and boarding pass. He took a deep breath, pulled his laptop from the case, and sent them both down the conveyer, followed by his briefcase with the dough-re-me. Then his shoes. So far so good. No one wanted to know what he taught at FDU or anything about his uncle's plumbing business. He was home free until he walked through the metal detector and it beeped. What now? "Sir, your belt. Take it off and try again." Jesus, he spooked easily. Keep your cool. Spin it and win it.

  His middle seat was almost to the bathroom and the rear galley, wedged between a guy on the aisle wear
ing expensive headphones (good, he thought) and a nun in modern dress (not so good). She wore a plain gray top and skirt and a matching habit. A simple crucifix hung from her neck. He looked at her and wished she had been a Carmelite. Their famed silence would be most welcome.

  When he looked more closely, he saw that she was young, hardly more than a schoolgirl, who might have grown up in Des Moines or Omaha. One thing led to another and soon, against his will, he found himself drawn into conversation. She had been raised in a not very affiliated Catholic family and had imagined becoming a teacher. One summer she went to Bible camp with some of her Methodist friends and that had set her course in motion.

  And him, she wanted to know. Oh, a Muslim. She had great respect for Muslims and had read sections of the Quran. Was he religious? Did he imagine one day he would make the Hajj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca? He wasn't sure. How long was this going to go on? He chafed. Had he read any version of the Christian Bible? What did he think about Jesus? He was surprised at how persistent she was. He had imagined she would soon revert to her Bible and that would be that. Did he believe in an afterlife, and what would he do to enter paradise?

  Just for the hell of it, he considered saying that he might become a suicide bomber— and see if she'd report him, and if the pilot would declare an emergency and divert the plane. Stay on message, he told himself. And he almost did. He decided to ignore the second half of the question about ensuring an entry ticket to heaven. As for an afterlife, yes, he believed in one, and he was very much looking forward to paradise and enjoying the multitude of virgins there. The rest of the flight into LA was uneventful.