Firebolt

by R. M. Galloway

  Guru Ja Lama is a bad man. Just Google the name!!! Why would a teacher of the Dharma call himself such a name?! But I’ll tell you this. His real name is Khünbish Chinbat. Look it up and don’t trust false teacher!!

  I looked it up. All I found was a brief reference in an English-language newspaper from Hong Kong, which mentioned that a Mongolian monk named Chinbat had been defrocked by his religious order for involvement in heroin trafficking in connection with the notorious Big Circle Boys organized crime syndicate.

  Question answered. The Ja Lama was not a Buddhist monk at all anymore, he was a mobster turned con artist. And the Quod Corporation’s start-up capital had originally come from the Chinese Triads, smuggling heroin from the Golden Triangle to the United States.

  Chapter 26

  Frank was hungover and sleep-deprived the next day, whereas I was only about half as bad because I was twice the drunk Frank would ever be. We flew up to Maine, but we didn’t want to go over to Peaks Island in our usual outfits because it greatly increased the risk that someone would remember us. We had to avoid being seen or remembered by anyone if we possibly could, so we changed into different outfits in the airport restroom – T-shirts, baseball caps, shades, and sneakers from our carry-on bags. We got a cab into town, then took a ferry boat over to the island along with about a hundred other people. We got off at the dock, and Frank looked around in open disgust.

  “This place is dead,” he said.

  “It’s just a small town in Maine,” I said. “What did you expect it to look like?”

  I kid you not, there were lobster traps. Lobster traps and empty rowboats caked with dry sand. Like a postcard.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Coney Island?”

  It didn’t look anything like Coney Island. The road from the dock went up a hill, with a restaurant and a little café on the left and an inn called “The Inn” at the top.

  “You know you’re in the middle of nowhere when the local inn is just called The Inn,” said Frank.

  “Don’t draw too much attention to yourself,” I said. “There’s a cop up there.”

  A police vehicle was parked about halfway up the hill. The cop seemed to be looking at us.

  “Why would they need a cop on this island?” he asked me wearily, but at least he started putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Drunks coming in from the old port,” said an old man walking by with a sandy-colored dog. He had shoulder-length gray hair and a hint of a Scottish accent. Just the sort of person who would retire on an island in Maine.

  “Oh fuck, a civilian,” said Frank. “My head hurts. It’s too early in the day to talk with civilians.”

  “It’s already nine.”

  “Too early.”

  We reached the top of the hill, and I looked both ways to get the lay of the land. A shop that sold T-shirts and ice cream cones, and… what was that?

  “Kill me now,” said Frank. “It would be a mercy.”

  “Is that really a museum of umbrella covers?” I asked, confused. Why would anyone even create a museum of umbrella covers?

  “That’s why I want you to kill me,” said Frank. “Or better yet, let’s find these DuBar assholes and kill them instead. Best hangover cure there is.”

  “We can’t kill them until after nightfall,” I said. “We’re on an island. We need all the help we can get if we want to get away from here.”

  “And what exactly are we supposed to do on this shithole of an island for eight hours?”

  “I think it’s quite pretty here,” I said. “Relaxing.” I started walking, selecting the road to the right. “It’ll be more like ten. Or even later, really. We don’t want to be firing guns off at dinner time.”

  “We don’t even have our guns with us in the first place. I was gonna strangle ‘em.”

  “That’s your call,” I said. “But they’ll probably scream. We need something fast and quiet.”

  “We’ll tie them up and cut their throats with one of their own kitchen knives.”

  “Okay, that’s a plan. But after dark.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “But I hate waiting.”

  Wet Work Frank was a real charmer. The road we were on curved around the island, taking us past abandoned summer homes and a Civil War museum.

  “Makes more sense than an umbrella-cover museum,” I said.

  “Still boring,” said Frank.

  We came to the ocean, crashing dramatically against a boulder-strewn beach. I stopped to look at it, but Frank complained that he wanted to sit down and rest. I didn’t want to stop, so I kept on walking. The road continued to curve around toward the back of the island.

  The houses were fewer here, but more grandiose and aristocratic in that nouveau riche way. Except for the few that looked like repurposed bunkers from the Second World War. I had no doubt they were just as expensive as the mansions, though. We’re talking ocean-front real estate here.

  “What’s that up there?” asked Frank. He pointed up to the left, at the hulking ruins of some massive concrete structure that loomed over the road like Dracula’s Castle. You could see the gun slits, indicating that this was most likely a gun battery from World War II, probably built to defend against U-boats.

  “I don’t know what it is,” I said. “But it’s a good spot to hide until sunset.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “Really?”

  “Nobody’s going to be in there. It’s perfect. Come on.”

  We left the road, and walked up to the ruined structure. It was an impressive place, a concrete fairyland of colorful graffiti and pools of dark cold water, high ceilings and low dark rooms and ghosts dead for decades.

  “This place is creepy,” said Frank. He was walking ahead of me, shaking his head at the silent ruins.

  “I think it’s interesting,” I replied. “Just imagine all the people who must have worked here when it was operational. Hundreds of soldiers, hundreds of sailors, guarding the city from a German invasion. Working together and joking and fighting. So many lives.” I fell behind a little, letting Frank drift just a little ahead.

  “Wouldn’t have been hundreds,” he said. “And who gives a fuck anyway?”

  “I’ve always been interested in history,” I said.

  “Not me. I’m interested in cash and coke and pussy. Holy crap, that’s dark.”

  “It’s a tunnel,” I said.

  “No shit,” he replied, staring at the blackness of the tunnel’s mouth. “We could drop their bodies in here when we’re done, then they won’t be found for about a hundred years. Since you’re nervous about getting off the island safely, I mean.”

  He stepped into the darkness a little, cautious but not cautious enough. He must have been checking for good spots to drop the bodies of the DuBars.

  “They’d be found much quicker than that,” I said. “Teenagers come here to drink all the time.”

  “How do you know tha…?”

  He couldn’t finish his sentence, because I had dropped an arm across his windpipe and locked in my choke hold, bracing his body against my own as he flopped frantically from side to side. There’s not much you can do when the blood-flow to your brain has been cut off.

  “I looked it up on the Internet last night,” I said before he stopped struggling and went limp. No need to leave him frustrated.

  Chapter 27

  The rest of the day was long and complicated. I had to tie Frank’s wrists up behind his back, using the duct tape he had in his carry-on bag. Then I tied his ankles together and duct-taped his mouth shut, so he wouldn’t start whining at me when he woke up. Then I left him in the tunnel and went up to the DuBar’s house to explain the situation as well as I could, which eventually involved a visit from the FBI’s local office on the mainland, and finally a call to Emily Alvin from that same office hours later.

  “This should do it, right?” I asked her. “I mean, he keeps asking me to kill people. That’s a crime, right?”

  “Of course it
’s a crime, Holder. That’s not the issue.”

  “Well, what’s the issue then?”

  “You are. And to be fair, Frank Hill is too. The celebrity brother of Senator Kohl is arrested and charged with soliciting murder. Okay, well, the man can certainly afford the very best in legal representation, right?”

  “No question about that,” I said.

  “So how do you suppose it’s going to look, when we reveal that the two witnesses we have to this whole thing are Gavin Holder and Frank Hill? A disgraced former FBI agent linked to the Hennington incident, and a mobbed-up cop whose street name was Wet Work Frank?”

  “I see your point,” I conceded. I didn’t see this ending with Kohl in handcuffs anyway. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We need to find out what’s he doing, get something absolutely unambiguous on him. Something no lawyer can raise any issue with. When you have it, let us know. We’ll stage a raid, and catch Vitalius Kohl with his pants down. Then you’ll be done.”

  “I guess it’s back to the coal mines,” I said, and that was that. The DuBars disappeared, waiting for their chance to testify against Kohl someday. The FBI leaked the story of the missing DuBars to the Portland Press Herald later, so the local mystery would back up my version of events if anyone checked. I returned to Reno, where Jesse Spindrift and Barbara McCoy picked me up at the airport the next day.

  “Where’s Frank?” asked Jesse.

  “Frank didn’t make it,” I said.

  “Kohl won’t like that.”

  “He’ll love it when I tell him why.”

  His eyes narrowed in response, but he didn’t say anything. We drove out to the desert, and a few minutes later I was standing in Kohl’s office trying to lie to the best liar in the world.

  “I got it done,” I said. “But it was touch and go. The plan was originally for me to knock on the door and tell whoever answered it that I got lost trying to find my way back to the ferry. From there we’d improvise, but the basic idea was to tie them up and cut their throats. Didn’t work out that way.”

  “And why is that, Gavin?”

  Kohl spoke quietly, but he sounded rather less than completely convinced. He wasn’t even sitting down. Instead he was pacing back and forth behind his desk with his hands folded behind his back.

  “Well, for one thing, the door wasn’t even locked. I pushed on it and it swung right open, so I just went in. Frank came in behind me as we’d agreed, but just when we were about to get the DuBars tied up, the asshole dropped a loop of the rope around my neck from behind and tried to garrote me. Any idea why, boss?”

  This was part of my plan. Accuse the accuser, act indignant. Don’t let him get his balance, don’t let him think.

  “If I had decided to have you killed, do you really think I would fly you to some island in Maine first?” he asked me.

  “I suppose not. But then it doesn’t make sense. Why would Frank Hill try to kill me?”

  “Had you interviewed him yet?”

  “For the spy hunt? No. I was planning to do it when we got back, but I figured the trip would be a good way to get a sense of him informally.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Frank Hill was a professional hitman who used to be a cop. That’s all he was.”

  “Was, you say? You mean you killed him?”

  “What would you have done?”

  “Gavin, it’s extraordinarily difficult to survive a garroting attack. So what did you do?”

  “It’s called the Flying Mare. Old wrestling move. I flipped him over my shoulder and cracked his head. You should have heard the DuBars screaming.”

  “I have heard the DuBars screaming. Believe me. If they can be as loud as I remember them being over a simple boundary dispute, they would surely have been much louder than that when a murder was being committed right in front of them. Someone would have heard them yelling.”

  “The island was practically deserted,” I said. “Must be summer houses mostly.”

  “That was lucky for you. So what happened next?”

  “Shelly Dubar tried to hit me with a frying pan,” I said.

  This bit of improvisation was her idea. When I first told her who I was, she had actually picked up a frying pan and threatened to hit me with it. The essence of good lying is to stay as close to the truth as possible.

  “That sounds like something she would do,” he acknowledged. “And then?”

  “I got it away from her,” I shrugged. “The rest of it is messy.”

  “You left a mess behind you?”

  “No, of course not. I left the three of them in one of the old World War II pillboxes on the island. It will be a little while before anyone finds them.”

  “Frank Hill was a hitman…” he said thoughtfully. “Okay. Perhaps he was a hitman for this organization that has been trying to infiltrate us. Perhaps. It’s a lucky stroke, though, isn’t it?”

  “If you call being garroted a stroke of luck…”

  He glanced over at my neck, and I was suddenly thankful I had thought to attend to this point. There was a visible red line there where there ought to be, courtesy of one of the FBI agents in the Portland residential agency.

  “It’s a lucky stroke,” he said confidently. “Too lucky? Perhaps. You needed to find a spy to ensure your own safety. But if you gave up a loyal man to save yourself, the truth would come out when he was questioned. What could possibly be better than to kill him yourself, preventing any possibility that the man would ever be questioned?”

  “If he was a spy he wouldn’t have tried to kill me,” I said. “He would have kept on spying.”

  “Unless he was afraid you’d expose him when you interrogated him and he was just trying to take his opportunity to escape. Your story could be true, Holder. I’m not saying it isn’t. But you’re on very thin ice here.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that your employees are your greatest resource?” I said.

  He blinked at me as if he couldn’t process that, then broke out into a grin.

  “You have ice for blood, Gavin. I’ll give you that. Now go away and let me think.”

  Chapter 28

  Another game of chess with Kumar, another glass of spiced rum. The chess was really just to give him something to do so he wouldn’t simply melt down from anxiety. The rum did the same for me. Outwitting a sociopathic hitman and covering up my betrayal of my employer had taken a lot out of me. After I succeeded in bluffing my way through the debriefing with Kohl, I could have simply gone back to my room and collapsed shaking on my bed. My blood wasn’t always as icy as it might seem to others. But I decided to go get drunk with Kumar instead. Now I was slightly giddy, feeling larger than life because all my lies kept working. Working better than my chess strategies anyway.

  “We should make some grog,” I said.

  “Why’s that?” asked Kumar.

  “We’re outlaws.” I took his knight with my rook and he took my rook with his queen. “We’re like pirates, you know? Roguish adventurers who acknowledge no law.”

  “You should be paying attention to the game instead of making jokes. And anyway, grog was more of a Royal Navy thing, they invented it to keep the sailors from hoarding their rum rations and getting blasted. Real pirates drank bumbo,” he said.

  “Bumbo? What the hell is that?” It sounded like a stupid thing to call a pirate drink.

  “Like grog, but with more nutmeg. But pause the game for a minute. I have something for you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “The satellite project is getting weird. We’re supposed to be calculating how to carry tungsten. Huge, huge quantities of tungsten.”

  “Tungsten the chemical?”

  “Yes, that’s right, but it’s a metal. It can appear in either crystalline or metallic form, but this is specifically tungsten the metal we’re talking about here.”

  “Is it some kind of… satellite component?” I asked.

  “No, it isn’t. There is literally no goo
d reason to be carrying around massive amounts of tungsten by satellite. It makes no sense.”

  “Well, what is tungsten used for?”

  “I’d have to run through everything I know about it to even guess. Let me see... Its symbol is W; it’s also known as wolfram. Atomic number 74. Highest known melting point of any element, the stuff won’t melt until you hit a temperature of 3422 Celsius.”

  “What’s that in real temperatures?”

  He grinned derisively.

  “You mean in Fahrenheit? 6192. To a scientist, ‘real temperatures’ means Celsius.”

  “Okay. Go on,” I said.

  “Where was I?”

  “Tungsten doesn’t melt.”

  “Not easily anyway. But that’s not the point, this is. You can use the stuff as a component in incandescent lightbulbs. You can use it as the filament in an X-ray tube. You can use it in electrodes or super-alloys or radiation shields. But not in these quantities. Tungsten has no practical use in these quantities.”

  “Well, what kind of quantities are we talking about here?” I asked.

  “Something like eight thousand kilograms. They keep having us recalculate it for different amounts, the lowest was more like a hundred kilograms but eight thousand was the top.”

  “And all this tungsten is being built into the satellite somehow?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m just in charge of the guidance systems, but they’re asking me to make calculations based on a payload of tungsten. It could possibly be for an experiment of some kind, but if that’s the case then they’ve been lying that it’s all for the Quod Glasses project. They’re doing something with all that tungsten, but it has nothing to do with virtual reality. Or rather, the satellite has something to do with virtual reality… but it also carries tungsten around.”

  “And you have no idea why that would be? It sounds like some sort of sci-fi thing.”