The Puppet Master

by John Dalmas

  First we briefed our team on the mission, stressing that anyone could still opt out without prejudice. No one did.

  The sun was barely up, and there was very little traffic when we left in two private vans. Plus Wayne's personal pickup, and the unmarked company car—with the locater off. Everyone but me had Glocks as side arms. In addition, there were eight twelve-gauge pumpguns loaded with buckshot, and two spare box magazines for each. Since they've come out with a good automatic tube loader, shotguns have regained a lot of favor for police work. Actually I couldn't imagine needing to reload—if there was any shooting, it would be brief—but it seemed foolish not to take them. Two men carried car killers—lightweight, 50mm, low-muzzle-energy rocket launchers, only twenty-eight inches long. They'd been designed after the massive civil demonstrations and street fighting during the Great Crash. Wayne brought along a Colt Suppressor, a police version of the old Colt Commando. It's a fully automatic .22 caliber carbine, also only 28 inches long.

  On the road, the weapons were stashed out of sight. As for me, I carried only the Walther in my shoulder holster. I wanted to seem unarmed.

  We didn't want to look like a caravan, so we strung out. I led off, and each vehicle kept only the vehicle ahead of him in sight. It was a short drive to the Golden State Freeway, then north to the Valley Freeway and west out of the city, out of the LAPD's jurisdiction. From there we took a state road north to Fillmore—a small town by southern California standards—where we broke up to eat breakfast in two different restaurants, in three seemingly separate groups. I was the only one of us who went to breakfast armed. If we'd met the SVI there, we'd have been in real trouble. From Fillmore, we drove north a few miles into the Los Padres National Forest, to a picnic area Wayne knew. At that hour, no one was there but two drifters sleeping in the back of their eleven-year-old Ford pickup. It was a beautiful May morning, and I hated to do it, but I hassled them out. I had leverage: the area was posted against camping, I'm built like a wrestler, and there were two other guys in the car with me. Then, consulting with our ex-Ranger and marine noncoms, we decided on our ambush locations. The wooded picnic ground was strung out along a nearly dry creek. We chose the down-road edge; that way, if any early picnickers arrived before things got interesting, they'd be farther up the creek, hopefully out of harm's way.

  By the time all assignments had been made, it was almost 8 o'clock: nearly time to call Joe at the office. I was depending on the phones there being monitored by either the LAPD, or hopefully the SVI. My bet was the SVI, using access provided by the LAPD; their conspiracy had to minimize officer involvement. The more they involved honest cops, the more likely that questions would get asked. Questions without safe and convincing answers. Then someone would call Internal Affairs, and the fat would be in the fire.

  At 8:05 I got back in the company car and keyed the phone. Dalili transferred me to Joe without even checking with him. Obviously he'd told her to expect my call.

  "Joe," I said, "I've had second thoughts since last evening."

  "What do you mean, 'second thoughts,' Seppanen?"

  "Tuuli got back last night. She doesn't want me to go to Mexico. So we're hiding out. We're in a National Forest campground about an hour from town. She's freaked, afraid I'll be killed, scared the SVI will track me down. I know this is a lot to ask, but— Could you send a couple guys out as bodyguards? From the security division? They wouldn't have to be top men; she won't know the difference. I'll pay for them myself if you want."

  Joe put on a testy voice. "Damn it, Seppanen, you're stretching my patience."

  I put a little edge on my own tongue. "Keep in mind what happened to our apartment house."

  Long pause. "I don't know. You're a fugitive . . . How long do you want these guys?"

  "A day or two. Yesterday I recorded a statement from a runaway SVI man, a guy named Robert Myers. It tells all about the SVI abducting and murdering Christman, and fits our earlier information perfectly. I've got it on microcube; it's in my pocket right now. The thing is, I sent a copy to KCBS-TV, via a runner named Hector Duncan. The whole thing ought to be playing on the noon news today—the evening news anyway. I'm surprised it wasn't on yesterday or this morning. I suppose they're doing some checking, to make sure it's not a hoax.

  "After I sent off Myers' statement, he told me the LAPD is involved with the SVI. The SVI's terminated some heavy dons for them, in the Spanish mafia. He didn't know what the payoff was. Not cash, I wouldn't think. Probably privileges and an information pipeline. That's one reason Tuuli's so scared; the LAPD involvement."

  "Huh!" Long pause. "Martti, you'd better not be lying to me. Okay, I'll send three good men. But if it comes to a face-off with the police, they'll have my orders to lay down. You got that? Now, where to?"

  I told him. We were camped at the Rito Oso Picnic Area north of Fillmore, on a spur road off Forest Road 14. There were directional signs. Joe said the guys would get there about 11 o'clock.

  Then we disconnected. He'd done a good job of acting. We both had.

  Wayne had one of the guys drive back to where the spur road met Forest Road 14. The directional sign there had another sign hanging from it that said no camping, which contradicted my story, and we wanted it out of sight when the SVI arrived. Assuming they came. When he got back, we moved all the vehicles but the company sedan to the back end of the picnic area, where they couldn't be seen from the ambush zone. Then I had the men take their positions.

  One of the considerations was that the guys would get sleepy. So Wayne was up the road a ways, hiding in a thicket of chaparral oak, watching. He was an inveterate varmint hunter—he lived in the Simi Valley near the edge of development—and carried a crow hunter's call in his glove compartment. When he saw someone coming, he was to caw three times, pause, then repeat, to alert us so everyone could get prone and ready. The guys were stationed in pairs, responsible for keeping each other awake.

  I sat at the first picnic table, 60 or 70 feet from the road and next to a chimneyed stone fireplace I could duck behind. Then I waited, reading a copy of Sports Afield that Wayne had had in his pickup. Reading a bit and thinking a lot. Any battle plan, even a simple one like ours, is based on assumptions, and battles are famous for not going as planned. Things come up. Things go wrong. Everything goes to hell and confusion. If you've read much history, you know that.

  The SVI might not have heard my talk with Joe, and the LAPD might not get the word to them. Hell, no one might have been monitoring at all; we could have been talking to ourselves. Or Masters might smell a rat and stay away, or send in a whole squad of men. Hopefully he'd come in personally with only two or three guys, and that would be all. But he might arrive with a squad, and send scouts in first, and we'd think the scouts were the whole party. Then we'd have the rest of them down on us after we'd committed ourselves, and the shit would hit the fan.

  That was my biggest worry—that he'd send in scouts first. After all, most of his guys were ex-Rangers or ex-Special Forces, and if he didn't think to send out scouts, they'd remind him.

  But then, if they were only expecting a guy and his wife, why send scouts?

  Unless Masters smelled a rat. Back to that again. The stuff was running in circles through my mind. I'd read a little, then discover I didn't know what I'd been reading—that I was too busy worrying. A time or two I was interrupted in all this by crows cawing, but it was never three caws, then pause, then three more. It was always some other pattern, and answered from somewhere else—genuine conversations among genuine crows. They helped keep everyone more or less alert.

  In my planning, I'd figured the SVI people might come out in ground cars, but I'd allowed for the chance that they'd fly to Fillmore in a floater or maybe two, which would be a lot quicker. Then fly in the rest of the way at near road level, in order to follow the signs. They'd surely have flown to L.A., and Masters no doubt had an LAPD temporary permit to operate out of the city's various shuttle fields.

  At 9:12 by my watch, I
heard Wayne's crow call, and my guts tightened. I was glad I'd taken time to relieve myself at the restaurant. Ten or twelve seconds later, an eight-passenger skyvan floated into sight, just centimeters above the road. I recognized the driver as Masters; this was no scouting party. Steinhorn sat next to him in front—I could see his black eyes—and there were several guys behind them. They saw me almost at once and stopped in the road. Masters gave an order, then got out, leaving Steinhorn in front. I got up slowly, staring as if I'd just then realized who they were. Three guys got out of the back, carrying old AK-47s. Masters himself held a .45 caliber service pistol pointed loosely in my direction.

  The hair bristled on the back of my neck.

  "Mr. Seppanen," Masters said with exaggerated courtesy. "I'm delighted to meet you at last."

  I dropped the pretense. "The feeling is mutual, Masters. Please drop your weapons. My people are all around you, ready to blow . . ."

  That's all I got out. Masters raised his automatic with both hands and I started to throw myself behind the fireplace. There was a lot of gunfire—the boom of the .45, the brief vicious sound of AK-47s, the heavier boom of shotguns, and the swoosh-whump of two car-killers hitting the engine compartment, all of it seeming simultaneous with a stunning pain in my head, a searing pain in my buttocks. Somehow I was still conscious, even though my vision had turned off. Someone was shouting "Jesus Christ, guys, hold your fire! Hold your fire!"

  By that time it had already stopped. Voices called sharply; I don't recall what. Then someone right next to me said "Shit! God damn it! He took one right in the head!"

  It hurt, all right, and my butt felt like someone had run a red-hot poker through it from one side to the other. I couldn't see anything, but for some stupid reason tried to get up. All I accomplished was to nearly pass out.

  "Hey, he moved! He's alive!"

  I wanted to say "Hell yes I'm alive," but didn't. It occurred to me I might vomit, and choke on it.

  The next thing I was aware of, an indeterminate time later, I was on a stretcher, being loaded by paramedics into a floater.

  35

  LEGAL WRAP-UP

  I was more or less conscious in the ambulance at first. I was aware of a paramedic saying, "I don't think his wound is that serious," and then, "Him? We may lose him." And realized vaguely that I wasn't the only casualty in the ambulance. When they were satisfied my skull wasn't fractured, they shot me up with something, after which I didn't remember anything for a while.

  Actually they evacuated four wounded in two ambulances: me and three of the SVI people, while two lay dead back in the campground: Masters and one of his men. We got out of it so cheaply because our men were shooting at seen targets while Masters' men weren't. In fact, only two of Masters' men fired their AK-47s, a short burst each, one apparently while already hit and falling.

  In my case, a .30 caliber slug—technically a 7.62mm from an AK-47—had hit the right side of my head at an angle. It tore its way across the top of my skull beneath the skin, and exited the other side near the top, actually creating a shallow groove in the bone. A weird wound. A doctor told me later it was remarkable I'd remained even semiconscious. I guess he doesn't know Finns, or half-Finns in my case. Another bullet had penetrated both buttocks from the right side, damaging nothing but meat. It seems that the lower half of my body never reached the shelter of the fireplace.

  Joe told me about it in the hospital, after I woke up. He was also the one who told me that Masters was dead. Steinhorn had shot him in the back of the head, and Masters' .45 had kicked out one shot that went God knows where. It turned out that apparently none of Masters' guys had been very eager for this mission, and except for Steinhorn's shot that killed him, the men still in the skyvan hadn't shot at all. They'd come to the conclusion, the last few days, that their boss had gone bonkers. They'd stayed with him as long as they had because of old loyalties, and because they were in so deeply themselves.

  Steinhorn had shot him hoping to prevent a firefight. For his troubles, he took some buckshot through the open door, in the left arm and leg, and in the guts.

  Meanwhile the cube I'd mailed the day before made the KCBS noon news. So did the shoot-out at the Rito Oso Picnic Area, and the apparent LAPD involvement with SVI. Joe posted guards in my hospital room, more than anything else to protect me from possible news cameras. He loves publicity for the firm, but tries to keep his investigators' faces off the tube, for obvious reasons.

  The survivors on Masters' team verified just about all our conjectures, mine and Carlos', and explained some things we'd missed. For example, what the SVI was all about, or had been to start with. While in the OSS, Masters had developed a dedicated hostility toward terrorists. Then he'd inherited investments that would enable him to live more than comfortably without working, so he'd taken an early retirement. But not to play golf. He and Reyes, along with a well-to-do veteran of the Mexican Foreign Service, started SVI as an aberrated expression of idealism, to assassinate and otherwise terrorize terrorists. Masters and Reyes had recruited men they'd known from the Rangers, Special Forces, and OSS.

  It was about the time they'd contracted to abduct Ray Christman that Masters began to change. We got some insight into that because the PEF raided SVI's offices late on the day of the shoot-out, and arrested Aquilo Reyes. Reyes was an American citizen, originally from Casa Grande, Arizona. According to him—and this was validated by computer records of SVI and Security Pacific Bank—Christman's death was contracted for by Alex DeSmet, a retired OSS official, and one-time mentor and patron of Masters in the agency. That's right; that DeSmet. Fred Hamilton's ex-father-in-law.

  According to Reyes, Masters was at first unwilling to even consider the contract, though he pretended to, to avoid offending his old boss. Such a contract was very much at variance with his principles. But it troubled him to refuse the man who'd done so much for him, troubled him enough that he'd talked about it repeatedly to his partner. Masters also said that such a proposal was totally out of character for DeSmet, and wondered if the older man was having psychological problems.

  I'd have wondered too. DeSmet's behavior certainly didn't sound like the man who'd dismayed his wife by refusing to be upset when their daughter joined the Gnosties.

  Then one day, DeSmet flew back down to Ensenada in his private plane. The two of them had played a round of golf, then eaten supper together, and DeSmet made his pitch again. In the morning, Masters agreed. From that day on, according to Reyes, Masters was a different man. The change was mostly subtle, but on occasion it was glaring: He would do and say things that were very unlike him. The mission to stop Prudential's investigation was an example. Reyes had objected vehemently, but Masters had been the managing partner. After Masters and his team had taken off for L.A., Reyes had called Tischenberg-Hinz, and they'd talked about dissolving the partnership.

  I could see Steinhorn's motivation now. His family had been killed by terrorists. He'd been ripe for recruiting. Then things had gone sour, gotten worse and worse, and at the end he'd done what he could toward making it right.

  * * *

  As far as the LAPD connection was concerned, five second- and third-echelon officials had knowingly and deliberately conspired with the SVI to have the three racketeers murdered. In the project to kill the investigation, they'd operated through several lower-ranking officials who were aware that the orders they were carrying out were illegal, but didn't know the details. A total of eleven officials are in prison on assorted convictions of criminal conspiracy, racketeering, and murder.

  Aquilo Reyes, Eustaquio Tischenberg-Hinz, and most of their agents, have been tried and sentenced by the Mexican government on a variety of charges.

  Prudential collected the agreed-upon nominal fee from Lane County, and a sizeable fee from the feds, based on a previous court decision. We got substantial payment from the city of Los Angeles for exposing the criminal activities in the department, and settled for goodwill from the Mexican government, which legally ow
ed us nothing. We also collected the completion fee from Butzburger, who came to the hospital and wished me well.

  Finally we collected headlines galore. Prudential is now, beyond a doubt, the most famous investigation firm in the world. Joe's having to turn down contracts, while he recruits and reorganizes for a larger scale of operations. He's rented another floor in our building, too. I ended up with a promotion to senior investigator, and mixed emotions. For one thing, terrorism, foreign and domestic, is a curse of our times. And while SVI's activities were themselves a kind of terrorism, they may actually have had the effect of reducing terrorism overall. It's hard to honestly know. At any rate, their original impulse was understandable.

  A couple of days after the shoot-out, I had an orderly wheel me in to visit Steinhorn. There was a pair of federal marshals guarding his door. I thanked him for not letting Masters kill me, and he said someone had to do something before things got any worse. After that I apologized for sucker punching him, and he told me to stuff it, that a sucker punch was the least he'd had coming. Then he kind of half grinned, we shook hands, and I left. I couldn't think of anything else to say, and he had stuff on his mind. He's in prison now in Mexico.

  Tuuli got to the hospital on the night of shoot-out day. She'd learned about it not by any psychic route, but on the six o'clock news from Phoenix. The only (possibly) psychic element in it was, she'd never watched the six o'clock news in Arizona before. She "just happened to turn it on that day." When I asked if she'd influenced the psychic photographer, she said, "What psychic photographer?," and made me tell her about it.

  Oh, and DeSmet suicided the evening after the shoot-out—shot himself through the brain. Sad. He'd been an able man, and apparently a good one, a decent one, most of his life. But that's history now. I've got a new case, not as interesting as that one, but nowhere near as dangerous. So. Are we done? . . . Good. Then if you can give me the antidote, I'll get out of here and go to Gold's for a workout. My damn weight's slid up five pounds again.