The Enemy Inside

by Steve Martini

  She looked to the exterior wall of the house and noticed that the lattice fence was freestanding. There was a narrow gap between the post at the end of the fence and the side of the house. She moved quickly.

  The gap was narrow, little more than a foot. But Ana was slight. She passed the bow through the opening, then the bag. She squeezed through, reassembled everything on the other side and moved toward the alcove. She clung to the outer edge of the house for cover.

  When she reached the corner of the alcove she peeked around into the shade. Over the distant whine of the Weedwacker she could hear voices inside. There was a wall of books, shelves, an empty chair behind a desk, and something else that caught her eye. She pulled back around the corner, laid the empty bag on the ground, and took a deep breath. Then she slipped around the corner into the shade of the alcove, the bow gripped in her hand, the nock on the end of the arrow held snug against the string.

  She hugged the inside wall of the recessed area until she reached the corner, the edge of the glass, where the frame of the door and about six inches of wall gave her some cover. Now she could hear louder voices. They were talking. One of them was threatening the other.

  Ana eased one eye over the edge of the wood to the glass pane. Madriani was on the floor in front of the desk. She could see his lower body. She couldn’t tell if he was wounded. But he was moving. She could see his legs. The other man was Ying. She recognized him from the digital photographs sent to her by the Chinese agents. She had seen him through the field glasses while scouting the house. He had the gun, a semiautomatic pistol. She couldn’t tell the caliber, but whatever it was, in terms of lethality, it outclassed the bow.

  She pulled her head back. Ana knew she would get only one shot. She glanced at the handle of the door. It was probably locked, and even if it wasn’t, the second she touched it he would hear her.

  The problem was the glass. An arrow requires distance to build momentum. She would need at least a few feet to stretch out the bow and give the arrow some flight before the tip hit the smooth hard surface. Even then, it was a risk. If the arrow tip skidded before it punched through the glass it would deflect the flight of the arrow.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Sit in the other chair,” he says. He points at it lazily with the pistol as if he might shoot this one next.

  I roll to my side and struggle to get up on one knee. He has half an eye on me. Time is running out.

  He transfers the pistol to his left hand while he works the cell phone with his right. He’s laid the Taser on a small table near the spiral staircase a few feet away. Struggling with his thumb to punch numbers on the phone, calling somewhere for backup.

  He is distracted. I shield what I am about to do with my body, my back to him as I struggle to my feet. It’s now or never. In the time that he looks away, I reach out and grab the solid piece of oak, the hunk of wood with its shattered end that had been the leg of the chair. It’s about eight inches long and heavy. If I could close the distance on him I might have a chance.

  With my other hand I grab the two wires and yank. The pain is excruciating, but the darts come loose. I leave the Taser wires and the two darts on the floor near the broken chair hoping he won’t notice that I’m no longer wired at least long enough for me to make a move. His attention at the moment is directed at the phone.

  He is talking on the phone when something dances off the edge of the desk over the back of my hand and across the floor. Like a fast red moth it covers the distance between us and climbs his leg in less than a second.

  He sees it the same time I do, his back half turned, out of the corner of his eye. He stands. I am on one knee still getting up. We see the same thing, the solid red beam of light streaming across the room. Suddenly his eyes open wide. He spins around looking at the glass doors, the garden outside.

  I turn my head to look. The blinding beam of red light refracted in the glass of the door scatters and then comes back together. A woman, thin as a wisp, outside, Diana the archer.

  I turn back to look at him just as he aligns the pistol left-handed, getting a bead on her. I raise myself up and throw the heavy piece of oak with everything I’ve got. It misses the gun, grazes his hand, and hits him in the head just as he squeezes off the round.

  The sound of the shot shatters the silence. I hear the tinkle of broken glass as it hits the tile behind me, but I don’t turn to look. Instead I launch myself from one knee to my feet and charge him.

  He sees me, drops the phone, and transfers the pistol to his right hand as he moves the muzzle down on me.

  I’m looking up, staring straight down the barrel wondering if he’s true to his word, whether I’ll feel pain as the copper-coated lead enters my brain.

  The bullet went wide. It shattered the glass and snapped past her ear. The vacant pane opened the avenue of flight as Ana pointed the laser at his chest and let the arrow fly. Just as she did, she saw the back of the lawyer rising up. There was nothing she could do but watch the red flare of the arrow.

  Lunging forward, waiting for death, I feel something slice my ear as the red light tracking something yellow lodged itself in the center of his chest. He jerks as he pulls the trigger.

  I hear the bullet slam into something behind me. The fleeting look on his face, something quizzical. His knees buckle before I can reach him. He dissolves to the floor as I sail over the top and land on the tiles behind him. When I roll and look, I see his hand with the pistol still twitching.

  Before I can get to my feet I hear another pane of glass being broken in the door. As I stand up I see the mystery lady drop a rock onto the cement outside. She slips her hand through the open pane and unlocks the door.

  When I look down his hand is still moving. I step over him to try and pry the gun from his hand.

  “Leave it!”

  When I look up she has another arrow in the bow. This one is pointed at me. There’s a large black duffel bag at her feet.

  “I don’t know who you are,” I say. “I don’t particularly care. But you saved my life. And I thank you.” But I don’t pick up the gun.

  “I could say the same of you,” she says. “What was it you threw at him?”

  “A broken leg from the chair.”

  “Under the circumstances I really don’t want to have to do this. But you saw me kill him. You’re a witness. That is something I cannot afford to leave behind. I’m sorry,” and she starts to flex the bow.

  This is my first hint that she is not some Good Samaritan who simply happened by. “Hold on!”

  But she doesn’t. She has the bow fully extended, bringing it down on me. “Before I do, I need to know what your connection is. How do you know this man?”

  “I don’t. Give me a minute and I’ll tell you what I know.” My mind is racing, my heart pounding. I am exhausted, the adrenaline drained from my body. If I’m going to survive the next two minutes I am going to have to give her some reason.

  She looks down at the dying form on the floor. His hand has stopped moving, but it’s still holding the pistol, now in a death grip.

  “First of all, you didn’t commit a crime,” I tell her. Thinking like a lawyer. I do what comes naturally, appeal to reason. Something in her demeanor tells me she is not going to be susceptible to emotion. Otherwise I’d be crying.

  “In this state, defense of other, like self-defense, absolves all criminal intent in a homicide. So there’s no need to worry about what I saw. You have an absolute defense. He was going to kill me and you prevented it. I will testify to that in any court.”

  She backs off a few steps as she relaxes the tension on the bow. Still, she doesn’t seem convinced.

  I take a deep breath, though the arrow is still pointed at me.

  She’s smiling.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “The irony of it. The concept of legal absolution and getting paid for the deed at the same time.”

  “I didn’t need to hear that. I’m not sure I did. And if I did, I alread
y forgot it. If anyone ever needed killing, you’re looking at him right there. If it were up to me I’d give you a medal.”

  I spend the next several minutes bringing her current on how I got involved, along with an abbreviated version of the events of the last two months. I skirt the edges on some of the facts, the details concerning Betz and some of the names of the people involved.

  By the time I’m done, the arrow is at least pointed down, somewhere near my knees. I take this as a sign that maybe I’ll live. But I’m still not sure.

  “That’s all fine,” she says. “But if you’re still around, what are you going to tell the authorities?”

  Lady of few words, she arrives at the pivotal question. It is upon this that I will live or die. “Leave that to me. I’m not going to tell them about you.”

  “Then who killed him?”

  “Who knows? He was a bad man. I’m sure he had his share of enemies.”

  “He had at least one that I know of.”

  “All I know is, I came out to get a signature on a document from someone who wasn’t here, found the door open and a dead body inside. I don’t even know who he is. Never saw the man before. And that’s the truth. The man I met the last time I was here, the one who said he was Mr. Becket, was someone else. Seems you can’t trust anybody anymore.

  “The white lies I am prepared to tell the cops really don’t matter, at least they don’t to me, not under these circumstances. You may have been hired to come here to commit a criminal homicide, but that’s not what you did. There was an intervening force, his attempt on my life. That absolves you of the act. If you hadn’t shown up at the door I would be dead. We have a bond on this.”

  I suspect that some wily prosecutor probably could work up a case against her of conspiracy to commit, but I really don’t care. And I keep the thought to myself. No sense giving her something to worry about.

  She considers it for a few moments. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “What would I have to gain by telling the cops?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Nothing. I don’t even know your name. I don’t want to know.”

  Slowly she lowers the bow, unstrings the arrow with my name on it, and drops them both into the bag at her feet. She leans over the body and starts to unscrew the tip of the arrow that is protruding from his back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I never leave anything behind.”

  “Forget I asked.”

  She kicks the body over and from the front she pulls the arrow out. She snaps the shaft in half and drops all of the parts, including the tip, in a plastic bag, then deposits this in the duffel as well. “Do you want me to take the gun from his hand?” she says.

  “Leave it. It might be better that way. Someone killed him, but at least he put up a fight.”

  She picks up her bag and turns to go out the way she came.

  “Why don’t we use the front door,” I tell her.

  “I have to get my stuff,” she says. She walks around the broken chair to the side of the partner’s desk and grabs the handle on the large metal rolling case, the one I noticed when I first came in.

  “That belongs to you?”

  “Yeah, it’s mine. He stole it from me and used it twice.” She starts to roll it away when something catches her eye. She stops, looks down, and runs her finger along the side of the case. “Damn it!” she says.

  “What’s wrong?” My heart skips a beat.

  “He put a hole in it. A small fortune in cutting-edge auto-electronics, and that ungodly sack of shit goes and shoots it!” She starts cursing in some language I don’t understand, hands in the air, stamping her feet.

  I don’t know where she’s from. I don’t want to know. But if pressed to the wall, I’d have to say she has a Latin temper.

  “After all of this.” She leans over and examines the bullet hole. It is dead center in the middle of the box. “And he turns it into junk.”

  “What’s in the box?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” She gives me a look to kill.

  “Let’s pretend I never asked.”

  As we head for the front door I have visions of Casablanca, Bogart and Rains on a fog-shrouded runway. “Round up the usual suspects, Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  EPILOGUE

  If I had to guess, I would say that whatever was in the large metal box that the lady archer rolled out of Becket’s office that afternoon had something to do with the two fatal auto accidents. It was her use of the words “auto-electronics” to describe what was inside, and the fact that she said he had stolen it and used it twice. This and the research I had done leads me to conclude that whatever was in that box, it was used to kill Serna, Ben, and her boyfriend.

  The panicked expression on the girl’s face, the woman I knew as Ben, and the frantic and futile efforts of her boyfriend to control their car on its way to a fiery hell are engraved in my mind.

  The woman with the arrows disappeared like a wisp in the wind two minutes after we left the house. I waited a respectful period for her to get out of the area. This gave me time to clean up before I called the cops. In the bathroom I washed my face and got rid of the blood. I didn’t use any towels. I used toilet tissues and flushed so there would be no trace of blood in the drain.

  I grabbed my suit coat from the floor in the study to cover my soiled shirt, buttoned it up, straightened my tie, ran a comb through my hair, and called the cops. I told them the same story I’d given to her. The one where I came to the house with documents to be signed and found the dead body.

  The Eagle is dead, but so is Rubin Betz. Fifty-seven days after I walked out of the house in Del Mar, the one I thought was owned by a man named Rufus Becket, who appears not to have existed, Betz finally lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. When he died, I felt as if I had lost a friend. For all of the mystery surrounding the whistleblower in the end, his motives for much of what he had done were simple and to the point. He was protecting his daughter, and to this I can relate. Call it the fraternity of fatherhood.

  In the meantime the world has exploded. Whoever had the documents, wherever they were, they began to surface after Betz died, just as he said they would. Within little more than a week the details of political corruption saturated the media of the world. Heads began to roll.

  In less than forty-five days, indictments were announced. Maya Grimes was charged, along with eight other members of Congress. And these were just the openers. Other names began to surface. It is likely that indictments will continue for at least another year, perhaps longer.

  Many have proclaimed their innocence and vowed to fight, insisting that in the end they will be vindicated. Much of this is disintegrating under their feet even as they and their lawyers dodge the microphones and cameras. New details of foreign money and what it bought seem to surface each day. For some of them, the drip of information is becoming death by a thousand cuts.

  As for Grimes, she and her attorneys are already huddled with federal prosecutors hunting for a deal. Rumor is she has offered to pay more than a billion dollars in fines on her offshore holdings, along with a promise to resign from the Senate. This for some short-term sentence, a rap on the knuckles.

  She would be wise to move quickly before the Senate Ethics Committee and the entire chamber expel her. The rats are not only leaving the ship but are eating their own on the way. The media is asking serious questions as to the source of some of the money and what was sold, talk of possible capital punishment for acts of treason in which lives may have been lost.

  It seems that perhaps what was once called the press, a fourth estate of dogged pursuers, is not in fact dead. It was merely paralyzed by partisan fervor. The news outlets finally found their bearings, remembered first principles, and followed the money. Maybe there is hope after all.

  As for Betz and his estate, there was never any question that the government owed him the mo
ney, the massive whistleblower award. That they ever tried to link it to his continued silence is now being denied at the highest levels within the Justice Department. It wouldn’t have mattered, for in the end they were forced to swallow a survivor’s clause that I slipped into the settlement agreement that freed Betz. Under no circumstances may the government reclaim the money that has now flowed to his daughter within terms of the agreement.

  We had one final conversation just before he died. Rubin realized the only way any of us would have peace was to allow the information to go public. Once all the tainted members were exposed and whoever owned them was out of business, the danger would evaporate. What they say about sunlight is true. It is often the best disinfectant.

  As for the gardener, the man I first thought was Rufus Becket, it turned out that he became my lodestone. Police detained him at the house and questioned him. With his employer dead on the floor, the gardener led them to a storehouse of documents, including transcripts of telephone conversations. Several of these documents established beyond any question why Olinda Serna was murdered and who did it. Alex Ives is free. The duce, an ancient term of California legal art dating from the time that drunk driving was charged under Vehicle Code Section 502, the case that Harry and I inherited as a favor to my daughter, Sarah, is over. But its legacy lives on.

  Harry and I have disclaimed any of the mounting and additional fees now being netted from the politicians who have been caught, and who are now showering the Treasury with cash in bids to stay free. For us, this latter money is tainted. The fact that we counseled Betz in his ultimate decision to allow his hidden bank documents to be exposed, the act that caused the money to pile up, meant that we had a conflict. To take the additional funds would have lined our own pockets and might have muddied the water regarding his daughter’s ability to receive her share of the added portion. A guardian has been appointed and other lawyers are now on the scene to assure that this happens.