“Statler.”
“Whatever. If we find him, and your tip is good, we might have saved the president.”
That’s all well and good, but I wanted to save myself. It wasn’t like I had a vice-me that could take over in the event of my untimely death. “Fabulous.”
“Thanks again, Dave.” She cocked her head slightly, listening to her earpiece. “Were you followed?”
Probably. “I don’t think so.”
She ran for her car. I ran for mine. She was a better driver than I was. She spun her wheel and was screaming for the exit by the time I put my car into reverse.
Mina snorted, sleepy. “What’s going on?”
“I hope nothing,” I said. I wheeled the car around and hit the gas. “But, you know, keep your head down, just in case.”
My handler was far ahead of me, a little over a full branch of the garage. I spun around the corner. Mina swore. My handler headed right toward the exit.
That’s when the gunfire started. And not a single pistol shooting a couple times. This was Sonny-at-the-toll-booth. This was Frank Nitti taking out Sean Connery. This was Rambo against the NVA. My handler’s car sprouted silver holes. The engine let out a stream of white smoke. The windshield pocked and turned to sugar.
Now I swore. “We need another way out of here.”
“Who is it?” Mina was screaming.
I flipped the car around. There was a good chance my handler was nothing more than an insurance claim now. I gunned the engine and went up another level and parked.
“Come on! We’re ditching the car!”
I jumped out; Mina followed. Her eyes were big. There had been something surreal about before, about being threatened by a Muslim fanatic armed with a broken vase, chased by a possible closet-case Templar, clubbing a man armed with a weapon Cain would have considered cutting-edge. But this… this was gunfire. This was real.
I ran for the corner stairs, diagonally opposite from the entrance below, where my handler had been caught in the gunfire. If we got lucky, they were just watching her car bleed. If we were really lucky, they were only after her. In other news, I’d just won the lottery, been struck by lightning, and fucked a real live unicorn on the hood of my Batmobile.
I threw open the fire door. It was a pretty good garage; the stairwell only barely smelled like piss. “Jonah…” Mina said.
I turned back and gave her what was hopefully an encouraging nod. Of course, my eyes were like ping-pong balls with a berserk thyroid, so I might have done more harm than good.
I led the way down the stairs. Two flights to the bottom. Then, either a lead rain or a balls-out run to safety, if safety was anywhere close by.
I turned. The fire door at the bottom of the staircase was in view. It opened. I whirled around, ran into Mina, physically pushed her backward to hustle her back up the stairs. I heard hushed voices, the near-monotones of spooks talking into their throat mikes.
I didn’t bother to hide my footsteps. I just wanted Mina to run. She wasn’t the fastest woman on the planet, and these guys probably had some kind of government-sponsored fitness program. Wonderful. As we passed the door to the second floor, where the car was, Mina stopped. I grabbed her hand and kept running. The spooks, or whoever they were, were only one flight behind us, and it was a lead-pipe cinch they knew where we were.
Third floor. I burst through the fire door. Gunfire. I flinched.
It was at the bottom of the parking garage—sounded like right about where my handler had been shot. I hoped she was giving them a little bit of hell, or at least her friends were. She was closer to a good person than a bad one.
There were a few cars up here, a couple a quick run away. That would have to do. One SUV, one sedan. Might work as a hiding place. The alternative was sticking where I was and fighting a couple of trained spooks who probably knew some kind of martial art that involved beating me about the head with my own kidneys. Yeah, no fighting today.
I ran for the cars. We were behind the SUV when the fire door slammed open. I peeked. Two guys.
The SUV had a blinking alarm. The sedan didn’t. I picked its door open. Good hands. “Get in.” I followed Mina.
I waited. The spooks were walking slower when they came out of the door. They were being cautious.
At street level, the chattering of the machine guns was joined by the car-backfire sound of a shotgun.
I started to play with wires. I started thinking about those yellow-and-blue-make-green bags. I was wondering if my life was flashing before my eyes, and all that was coming was awkwardness and commercials. Hell of a life.
Five. Four. Three.
I twisted the wires together. I had a new car. “Head down,” I said.
I hit the gas, roaring around the SUV. There’s nothing more wonderful than a look of surprise on the face of someone who’s used to being in control. The spooks were giving me that look now. They fired pistols, but were too busy getting the hell out of the way to aim and hit anything important. I roared up the ramp onto the roof. The sky was beginning to change colors over the hills to the east. The moon was still high in the sky. The sounds: gunfire, surf.
I went to the top of the garage, turned the car around, and left it running when I got out.
Confused, Mina asked, “Where are you going?”
I needed a distraction, and a big one. There would be weather damage on the roof. The concrete markers would be worn up here. Hopefully worn enough. First one, cracked but not too bad. Second one looked new. Third was broken. Below, I saw the agents running upward. I kicked the third concrete barrier. Kicked it again. My foot hurt from where I landed on it at Medieval Castle. I kept kicking.
A chunk came loose. I picked it up. Weight the gas, let the car hit the side, maybe break through, we’d buy a little bit of time. Maybe even enough.
I ran back for the car. “Mina! Get out!”
Gunshots cracked behind me. The car sprouted two new holes. Mina ducked down in the back. I dove between two parked cars. The agents were advancing slowly, guns leveled at both of us. To my right: the fire door that would lead all the way down. In front: the car. To my left: the spooks. I crouched between the cars. I had a rock now, and in fairness, that had been enough for Diaz. Then again, Diaz failed. Twice. And his rock was bigger than mine.
I heard the fire door open.
The agents shouted and fired.
The early morning turned into high noon.
I looked up.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a UFO. I’d seen the American-built ones that liked to buzz the Nevada desert. I’d seen the old Nazi prototypes that kept order in Pinochet’s Chile. I’d even seen the real thing once.
This was the real thing. Not a perfect disk, but a triangle: one side of a pyramid, to be more accurate. It looked like it was formed from quicksilver, at least the part I could see. In the center, a single blinding light, like an eye. The heat was unbearable, and I felt my hair turning to a crisp. Great, I’d live through the guns only to die from prostate cancer because of some joyriding Zetas.
I half-stood. Mina was in the car, looking around, terrified. She caught my eye, opened her mouth to scream…
…and was gone.
I blinked. Fuck. I took one step toward the car, and the white light engulfed my vision, and there was nothing at all.
-TWELVE-
There’s one string of facts that grabs every nascent conspiracy buff. Everyone who had an email address in 1999 probably got this forward. It’s the synchronicities between the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. It goes like this.
Lincoln has seven letters. Kennedy has seven letters.
They were elected to Congress one hundred years apart: Lincoln in 1846, Kennedy in 1946. They were elected president one hundred years apart: 1860 and 1960.
Both men won their elections partly on the strength of highly publicized debates: Lincoln/Douglas, Kennedy/Nixon. Both were stuck in unpopular wars: the Civil War and Vietnam (both of which began in
earnest just after their inaugurations). Both were known for championing the civil rights of blacks and were highly unpopular in the South for doing so. Both men lost a son while in office.
Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who warned him not to go to the theatre that night. Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who warned him not to go to Dallas. Both men had premonitions of their deaths.
John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both have fifteen-letter names. They were born a hundred years apart (1839 and 1939, respectively). Booth and Oswald were both Southerners.
Lincoln and Kennedy were both shot in the head on a Friday while sitting next to their wives. Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln, which is made by Ford. Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theatre. Both Lincoln and Kennedy were sitting by men with eight-letter names (Rathbone and Connally). Both Rathbone and Connally were injured in the assassination, while both first ladies escaped unharmed. Oswald and Booth were both killed before they could stand trial.
Lincoln and Kennedy were both succeeded by Southerners named Johnson. Both Johnsons were born one hundred years apart (1808 and 1908). Both men were known for drinking and crude behavior. Both have thirteen-letter names.
There is of course, the favorite one to end with: a month before he was killed, Lincoln was in Monroe, Maryland. A month before he was killed, Kennedy was in Marilyn Monroe.
That last one is bullshit. Kennedy died in November 1963, and Marilyn in August of ’62. At least, I hope it’s bullshit.
But that’s the whole point. This sort of thing is donuts and coffee for conspiracy nuts. But what possible reason for the synchronicities could there be? Was there really a shadow agency that made sure that everyone had the same number of letters in their names? No, the lesson of the whole thing is this: sometimes a coincidence is just a cigar.
Other times, though…
My head felt like a five-pound bag trying to hold onto ten pounds of cotton, all of which was soaked in cayenne pepper and on fire. I tried to move. Couldn’t. I looked down.
I was taped to a fucking chair.
How was that for instant karma? Coincidence or conspiracy? At my level, all that mattered was that I was the one with the splitting headache, flypapered to furniture.
I looked up. The world lurched and I immediately regretted that decision. I saw a shape, probably a man, moving away from me, toward a door. It looked like I was in a bomb shelter. The door closed. I blinked, trying to keep what little food I had in my belly where it was. The walls were concrete and had some nice graffiti over them. Hidden amongst the tags were the equivalent of hobo signs for the information underground. I saw messages that gave me an approximate location, and other marks claiming this place for the ONI, the CIA, the Knights of Malta, and the Vors V Zakonye. The room was rectangular, maybe fifteen by fifteen. There was a ratty blanket in a corner; someone had slept here. Illumination was two worklights strung up at angles, plugged into a small generator, and the feeling that I’d been there before. The door was steel, rusted, and had an eye spray-painted at chest level. It was watching me.
I looked down again, and regretted that action too, but less so. My head was clearing, and there was just a dull ache back there now. I pictured the worst: a skull cracked like a good loaf of French bread, only this loaf was stuffed with gray jelly. The chair I was in looked like cutting-edge office furniture from 1945. It was solid wood, and appeared to have new rollers on the bottom. My arms were securely duct-taped to its arms, legs to the little column. It was like they’d studied my chair-taping technique. I hoped it just looked like that. Otherwise this would get creepier than it was, and I was already feeling like the third-billed actor in an Eli Roth movie.
I really hoped that moisture on my neck was sweat and not blood.
The door opened. I wasn’t really prepared for what came through it.
The first man, and I knew he was first because I saw swaying shadows behind him, had a black suit that screamed “spook,” topped off with sunglasses. He was nearly six feet tall, thin as a reed, with skin that could charitably be called pasty. His short blond hair was slightly tousled, and he’d grown a wispy mustache over his thin lips. He stared at me, or appeared to, the reflections of the worklights in his shades giving the illusion of eyes. It clicked in my head: I didn’t know this man, but I knew who he was.
Vassily “the Whale” Zhukovsky was next, getting through the door without the aid of a shoehorn, a crowbar, or lubricant. That was impressive. The Russian lumbered forward, his flipper-hands clasped together like he was crushing mice in them. He had a look on his face that made me think the rest of my life was going to be measured in minutes. So that was two of the conspirators in Mina’s assassination in one place—the Fed who ordered it and the Russian gangster who took the job.
Next was a man I didn’t recognize, but who was smiling openly at me, his eyes behind Tom-Cruise-in-Risky-Business shades. He wore a black suit one size too small, a starched white shirt, black tie, and black fedora. Under the hat, I was pretty sure he was bald as an egg, unless he had some weird Whoville topknot. His facial features were large; he looked like a flesh-and-blood cartoon of a man. The grayish skin didn’t help, either. He looked like he might want to shake my hand. That worried me more than Vassily’s glare.
Following him: Oana Constantinescu, V.E.N.U.S.’s dirty tricks specialist. Two people who wanted Mina dead and one that wanted the same for me.
I recognized the last man, and he looked serious, but he wouldn’t look right at me. It was Neil Greene, my Mason contact, the man who was trying to see if Stan Brizendine wanted me dead. Still possible Stan did and Neil had retained these two to make it happen. Instead of his usual cube-rat clothes, Neil was dressed like the Unabomber.
The blond man spoke first, in a raspy whisper. “So what do we call you? David Antonucci? Colin Reznick? Jonah Bailey?”
At least they’d left out a few. “Any one of those is fine.”
Vassily tapped the top of my head with a finger that felt like a ball-peen hammer. “You want me to hit you again?”
“That was you? What’d you use, a brick?”
Vassily brandished a watermelon-sized fist.
“Right, a brick,” I said.
Neil spoke up, looking at me for the first time. “Wherever you go, bad things happen. You’ve been at the center of gunfights, a couple of assassination attempts. Something happens, we go check it out and look, there’s ‘Colin.’” He even made the quotes around Colin with his hands. Were his feelings hurt?
“Not all of that is my fault.”
The grinning man asked, “Who’s trying to give you the dirt nap, see?” If I hadn’t been sure about who he worked for before, I was now.
“You’re assuming it’s just one person. You’ve obviously pooled some notes here. You know the names; you know I’m a—what, quintuple agent? So someone else figures it out and targets me.” I was fishing, sure, but it was better than getting fished with. We were close to the water, and Vassily was in the mob, after all.
They exchanged looks. I was calming down. As long as they wanted information, I could stay alive, which is right where I wanted to be.
“Humbug,” said the grinning man.
“My colleague is correct,” said the blond man. “You’re after something. Some artifact went missing, you sniffed after it, someone found you.”
I was impressed. That was partly true, even. I said, “That’s crazy.”
“You’re sweating,” Oana said.
“I’m bleeding,” I said to her.
She touched the back of my head. There was a little red, but not as much as I was afraid of. She showed her hand to Vassily, who beamed a genuine smile.
“Is it an assassination?” said Neil.
“What, other than mine?”
“Who are you trying to kill?” the blond man said.
“No one currently.”
; “Well, David,” the blond man said, “we have as long as you like. You can stay here until you decide to talk to us. Until then, sit and wait.”
And with that, they filed out. And I sat. And waited.
It was tough to tell how long I sat there. I wasn’t still. I wiggled my arms to see if I could get the tape to give. I couldn’t. I strained my legs to get them on the ground. I couldn’t. There was a knot in my left thigh and I kind of had to piss. This was not a good beginning.
The door opened. It was a tentative kind of opening. Maybe the person on the other side thought I was dressing and had forgotten they’d taped me to a goddamn chair. Then the door opened all the way and Vassily squeezed in. It was not unlike watching toothpaste come out of a tube, only more homicidal. He shut the door behind him and leaned on it. This was it. Maybe if I was really lucky, he wouldn’t eat me. He broke into a broad grin. That made it worse. The light shone off his bald head and his semi-reflective suit.
He said, “How are you feeling, Nicky? Hungry?”
“I’ve been better.” It was the honest answer.
“Oh, sorry about that. Had to bring you in, and there were men in suits with guns.”
“Right. So what happens now?”
He waved one finger at me. I was pretty sure it was bigger than my entire hand. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you? Thought you’d go above my head. Maybe you think you get stripes.”
There is only one thing worse than being taped to a chair alone in a room with a Russian hitman, and that’s being taped to a chair alone in a room with a crazy Russian hitman. There’s only one option: play along.
I laughed. “Yeah, you caught me. You know how much I’ve been wanting my stripes. I understand they’re slimming.”
He nodded. “If you told me, I wouldn’t have had to hit you.”
“I should have told you, then.”
“Yes!” He glanced at the door, suddenly worried. Then, quieter: “The others don’t know I’m in here with you. They know you snitch for us, but that’s all. They think you know things.”
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