Laughing, Steve sat next to Mammy’s youngest son. With a nod to Mammy, Alex went into the kitchen. She waited another moment before he arrived.
The man was at least fifty years old and about her height. He wore his white-grey hair in a tight crew cut. His body was rock solid under his gray T-shirt and worn jeans. His eyes were not quite blue and not quite green. His skin was more white than not. He nodded to Alex and she followed him through the house to the back porch. Stepping out the door, he lit a cigarette.
“I thought you gave those up,” Alex said.
“Poor henpecked Benjamin gave them up,” he said. “Not me.”
“Henpecked?” Alex smiled. “Ben told me you talked him into it.”
“Always the detective,” he laughed. “You’re right. I don’t smoke out in the world. Too inconvenient. But at home? I can smoke anywhere but in Mammy’s house. Mammy’s nephew grows the tobacco on the mainland. I’d hate to disappoint her. Would you like a bushel of tobacco or maybe seven?”
“Never had the taste for it,” Alex said.
“All that clean Colorado living,” he said.
“Military,” Alex said. “You can’t advance and smoke or chew.”
The man laughed as if he’d just heard the funniest joke. They started across the small grass yard toward a garage.
“Is that sparkling around you Jesse?” he asked.
“If it is?” Alex said.
“You told Cap he didn’t make it,” he said.
In the way of practiced smokers, he let the cigarette dangle from his mouth. He dug an ancient key out of his pocket and opened the wooden accordion doors to the garage. The doors and the garage were original to the property. For all their obvious disrepair, the hinges swung with silent ease. Alex stepped from the warm sun into the cool, dark garage to find a cherry red 1958 Chrysler 300D convertible.
“You fixed the body,” Alex said. “Nice.”
“Did you bring it?”
“Yes sir,” Alex said.
“Kill anyone to get it?” he asked.
“Not that I’d care to mention,” Alex said.
He laughed.
“I hear your father and Stevie talk about Jesse,” he said. “Benjamin says he heard him in the Paris tunnels. But I don’t believe in ghosts.”
She shook her head at him. Every time they ran into him, the Mister egged Jesse into doing something he didn’t want to do.
“Come on Abreu,” he said. “If you exist, show yourself.”
There was a sound near the 300D and he glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back, Jesse was standing next to Alex. The man’s face broke into a broad smile. His eyes welled with tears.
“Good Lord, it’s good to see you,” he said. “Will you send me a…”
Jesse tossed a tiny electric ball at him. He crumpled over with pain.
“My God that hurts,” he said.
“It’s hard for Jesse to hold this form,” Alex said. “Is it all right if he…?”
“Your dad called, you know, when you were in that room,” he said. “The General said to me, ‘Alex sees Abreu.’ I said, ‘Of course she does. They have a soul connection. He’d stay for her.’ ‘So you think it’s real,’ he said. I told your dad he was an idiot if he didn’t.”
He laughed.
“The General can be such a dick. Thanks Jesse. You can fade.” Without missing a beat, he said, “So, where is it?”
His face held all the longing and lust an alcoholic feels seeing his first drink after a long dry spell. She unzipped her backpack to pull out a heavy metal object wrapped in a red cotton cloth. He took a pull on the cigarette and held out his hand. She placed the package into it. With his eyes on Alex, his cigarette hand opened the cloth. He looked down and gasped.
He held a Bentix “Electroinjector.” Originally installed on the Chrysler 300D, the Bentix “Electroinjector” malfunctioned. The majority were replaced within a year of manufacture. Only fifteen Bentix “Electroinjectors” were known to have survived. This was number sixteen.
“Be still my trembling heart,” he said. “Does it work?”
“She spent a year with a mechanic friend who cleaned and repaired her,” Alex said.
“She?” he asked.
“Something so rare and beautiful can only be a she,” Alex said.
Nodding, his eyes filled with unadulterated love.
“You mind?” He nodded to the vehicle. “We can talk while I put this in.”
“I don’t mind,” Alex said.
She found a lawn chair leaning against the garage. Finding a sunbeam, she opened the chair and took a seat. In almost every major city around the world, this man had a secret compound with an Oldsmobile Delta 88 in the garage. The Delta 88 engine parts were easy to come by, and cheap. He spent his downtime assembling new engines with new parts to the factory specifications. He unraveled the world’s most complex and difficult problems while rebuilding these engines.
On rare occasions, he’d work on other vehicles. Alex’s CJ held one of his engines. Ben had an ancient Oldsmobile with one of his engines in it. But mostly, he worked on one Delta 88 after another. He’d sell them on Craig’s List for the cost of parts when he was done. The next day, he’d buy a new junker and start over.
This Chrysler 300D was a work of love. One night, after too much whiskey and death, he’d told her that his father bought the car on the mainland after winning big at the track. His father loved the car more than his children. The Mister had only taken it to impress a girl in town. But at sixteen, he couldn’t handle the power. He’d wrecked it on the way to town. His father never said a word, but had the tow truck deposit it in this garage and then locked the door. The Mister started restoring the vehicle the day after his father was lost at sea.
“You heard anything from the IRA?” the man’s voice came from under the vehicle.
“No,” Alex said. “Seems like my old friends are politicians or business men now.”
“Since the economy tanked, there is a new surge of interest in the old ways,” he said. “I’ve heard they’re looking for funding like everyone else.”
“My brother-in-law Cian’s been particularly pissy lately,” Alex said. “But he’s often like that in the fall. Some kind of PTSD about the light.”
“Dark in Belfast almost twenty-four hours in the winter. Lots of crazy shit goes down in the dark.” The man’s head popped out from under the car. He lit another cigarette and looked up at her. “You have people on the ground in Shankill.”
“Most of John’s family is still in Belfast proper,” Alex said. “You?”
“Bankers and politicians,” he said. “You’ll let me know?”
“Sure,” Alex said.
He slipped out from under the car and took a pull on his cigarette. He opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else. Instead, he got up and put the cigarette on the radiator of the car with the burning side pointed toward the bumper. He went to the bench where he’d set the Electroinjector. Peering at the part, he sighed with joy.
“Where did you get this?” the man asked.
“Disabled vet; friendly fire.” Alex said. “Used his settlement money to buy an old junkyard. He and his kids make a killing by parting out the rusters on eBay. Every time I talk to him, his ten-year-old has found something cool. The lot had more than a few rusting 300Ds in various conditions. He knew I was in the market for an Electroinjector and owed me a favor.”
“Who doesn’t?” He lit another cigarette and leaned against the bench. “I owe you big for this.”
“Where’s Ben?” Alex asked.
F
CHAPTER seven
“Benjamin is with a group of people who want to lure you to him,” he said. “Last I heard, he told them you would kill every one of them.”
“How do you know?”
“He called me,” the man laughed. “The idiots gave him a phone, thinking he’d call you. He left me a voicemail in Gullah. Then he called Claire to chat in F
rench about details of Gerald’s christening. I called him back and we had a lazy conversation in French about the christening. Are you going?”
“To the christening? I hope so. Depends on this mess,” Alex said. “You?”
“If I can make it,” he said. “I’m definitely going to your father’s retirement party in January. That’s going to be a wild weekend.”
“Ben left you a message in Gullah?” Alex asked. “Original or modern?”
“Original. What the hell is ‘modern’ Gullah?” he laughed. “Do they really not know how this game is played?”
“It’s all computer codes, facts – whatever that means at any given moment – and details,” Alex said. “They’re probably working themselves into a lather trying to decode the Gullah right now.”
“They’d have to find some government-friendly old slave,” he looked around. “I don’t think they exist.”
“You heard about our funding issues?”
“Who hasn’t had funding issues?” he asked.
“They tell me the game has changed.” Alex indicated to her lawn chair. “From where I sit, it’s the same old game with a lot of fluffy technology layers on top like a Cool Whip stain on a homemade ice cream sundae.”
“I never had a taste for Cool Whip,” he said. “Nothing beats Mammy’s whipped cream.”
“Or her Gullah,” Alex laughed. “I keep thinking I should introduce her to Cian. That’s a match made in heaven.”
“I doubt the world would survive such a monumental match,” he laughed. “Maybe next time we’re in Denver, we’ll stop by.”
“Is Ben in trouble?” Alex asked.
“Nah,” he said. “I’d have gotten him if he was.”
He set the Bentix down and tossed his cigarette butt into a rusting coffee can in the corner. He began to whistle a nameless tune and bent over the engine. For the next ten minutes the odor of grease combined with the cigarette smoke to create a backdrop for the rhythm of his socket wrench and tune. He lit another cigarette.
“Glad I still have that rolling machine.” He looked at the end of his cigarette and squinted at Alex. “You’ll have to bring some to Ben.”
“He quit,” Alex said.
“Uh huh,” he laughed. Setting the cigarette down again, he leaned over the car engine. “You remember the little twerp that was hocking computers to JFCOM maybe fifteen years ago?”
“Joint Forces Command? Twerp?” Alex blinked her eyes. “Well I’ve never heard of such treasonous blasphemy.”
He laughed.
“Oh come on,” he said. “You’ve got to remember. They asked you to go head-to-head with his fancy computer program. You whooped his ass. He did an ‘upgrade’ to ‘fix his oversight.’ They asked Max to come in; he finished the problem two hours before the computer.”
“Max and I went in together; separate rooms about a year later,” Alex said. “We both beat the computer by more than an hour.”
“Ninety-six minutes,” he laughed. “It’s one of your father’s favorite stories.”
“They went ahead and bought the computer systems, programs, and a fleet of programmers to go with it,” Alex said. “Spent a fortune. Bought everything the little twerp suggested and set him up as the head of their program. I’d have to ask the last time Max went in to test it. I refused to go after that.”
“It’s an entire division now.” He shrugged. “Gives them something to do.”
“I guess,” Alex said.
He lifted the carburetor off the engine and walked to the bench.
“Why are we talking about the twerp?” Alex asked.
“He’s been promoting hostage retrieval using drones…”
“I know, I know,” Alex raised a hand to block the flow of nonsense. “Cheaper and easier, less damage and drama than a entire team, blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard it all.”
“We live in put-up-or-shut-up times,” he said.
Alex gasped. He nodded. He carried the Electroinjector to the vehicle.
“That’s why Larry and Heath and….” Alex pressed her hand against her heart. “Who else?”
“None of my generation or your father’s,” he said. “Wouldn’t do it. Said it was stupid. But yes, he stacked the deck with people you’ve trained.”
“Where are they?” Alex asked.
“No one seems to know,” he said. “Once they went missing, our twerpish friend disappeared with all the information. JFCOM called in their best people, and they can’t figure out what he did.”
“Why didn’t they just call me?” Alex asked. “I’m on the payroll.”
“Would you have called you?” he laughed. “After you’d stopped laughing and taunting them, you’d have told everyone what’d happened.”
Alex smiled, and he laughed.
“Your father would have had a field day,” he said. “And…”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” Alex said. “How many teams? How many men?”
“In the US? We think eight US military teams of twelve, with an emphasis on ‘we think.’ There may be more. A few of our allies sent a teams – the UK, Spain, India, Italy, Greece, none from the Far East. In fact, it’s kind of weird how some allies sent teams and others didn’t.”
Focusing on his thought, he looked off in the distance and took a drag on his cigarette.
“Dom’s poker buddies,” Alex said.
The man’s eyes shifted to look at her. Dominic Doucet, her uncle, was the head of French Intelligence. His eyes drilled into her.
“Dom hasn’t said anything to me,” Alex said. “I only know Dom’s in a poker game with the heads of a lot of our allies’ intelligence groups. They play poker online a couple of times a month.”
“Who?”
“Uh, Japan, the Philippines, China, South Korea,” Alex said. “Ben and Dom’s dad worked for intelligence in Asia when they were kids.”
“Australia?”
“Sure,” Alex said. “Turkey and a few others. They use the game to keep tabs on each other. There are others and they rotate. We’d have to ask to get the whole list.”
“That would explain it. Dominic Doucet flat out refused to entertain the conversation. He said it was stupid. He caused a big stink. But he was right, of course. If he was in contact with these other countries, he would have told them not to send people.”
For all the previous moment’s cheer, this man’s voice became angry and dangerous.
“It was to be a grand display of the power of the United States Information Systems. They were all to extract on the same day, same hour. Your boy Flagg and that Marine Walker protested but were overruled by Eniac; that’s what the twerp goes by now. Eniac.”
“Eniac?” Alex asked. “Huh.”
Looking up from the engine, he raised his eyebrows expectantly. Seeing that Alex had retreated into thought, he returned to the engine. After years of researching the Electroinjector, he installed it with ease. He leaned back to admire the beautiful symmetry of the engine, just as it was planned and manufactured.
“Would you like to see?” he asked.
Alex jerked at the sound of his voice. He laughed.
“Eniac was one of the men in the group of Fey-haters that formed last year,” Alex said. “I knew every one of them and even had some sense of why they hated me. I could never figure out who he was. I thought the twerp got Lasik.”
“He did.” He lit another cigarette. “He wears those glasses as a kind of disguise. You know, he’s such a spy.”
He and Alex laughed.
“You wanna help find these guys?”
“I don’t think you’ll need it,” he said. “But you better act soon. JFCOM’s pretty desperate.”
“Desperate enough to pay Eniac to find the teams?”
“Anything he asks. And I mean anything.”
“You mean including my disposal,” Alex said.
He gave a curt nod. Alex grimaced.
“But you have to ask yourself...” He tossed another butt into t
he can and lit a fresh cigarette. He added a smoke-filled, “Did Eniac lose the teams so he could find them?”
“You mean rather than finding real hostages, he made up a bunch so that he could find them himself?” Alex shook her head. “How?”
“How would you do it?” he asked. “Start there.”
“That’s why they took Ben,” Alex said.
“It’s a way of calling you without having to pick up the phone,” he said.
“Pick your friends…” Alex started.
“And don’t let them pick you,” he finished. “Shall I start her up?”
Alex nodded. He went around to the driver’s seat and turned the engine over. It took a few tries before the engine caught with a roar. He got out, closed the hood, and returned to the driver’s seat. With a wave to Alex, he drove out of the garage. Alex sat in the sunshine for another minute before walking toward to the house.
Zack was in the vegetable garden chatting with the man who had pretended to have a bum leg. He waved to Alex and followed her into the house. Well-fed and well-amused, she found Trece and Cliff waiting for her in the kitchen. Mammy had prepared a sack of food for them to take on their journey home. She’d even stashed some cigarettes for Mr. Benjamin if Alex should happen to see him.
“You tell your poppa, if he runs out of things to do, Mammy has plenty of work for him,” Mammy laughed.
“I’ll tell him,” Alex said.
“I hear you talked some sense into Becky,” Mammy shook her head. “Nice girl your mom, when she’s not so stuffy.”
Alex smiled and took Raz’s gift for Mammy from her backpack. She placed a notebook-sized package wrapped in brown paper into Mammy’s hands. Mammy’s eyes reviewed Alex’s face and then turned over the package. Mammy gave Alex one more glance before using a kitchen knife to cut the tape holding the brown paper together. The paper fell open to reveal a beautifully framed photograph of Mammy’s mother and father. Dressed as if for a ball, her mother was laughing and leaning into her father. Her father’s arm was draped over her mother’s shoulder. His head was forward as if he had just told a joke. After all these years, the love between them was palpable. Mammy looked from the photo to Alex and then back at the photo. Holding her breath to keep from weeping, Mammy nodded to Alex.
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