Patriot Act

by James Phelan

  A couple of minutes passed until the restroom was theirs again, and Fox released his hand from the man’s mouth.

  “Crunch time,” Fox said. He shook the man’s head by a handful of hair, and waited as he gasped in deep breaths of air. “Talk, or this gets nasty.”

  The man spat out a mouthful of blood and water.

  “I’m a private investigator,” he said, face down towards the bloodied toilet bowl. “In ten years, tailing you’s the biggest paycheque I’ve ever seen.”

  “Who’s employing you?” Fox demanded. He let go of the PI, unlocked the cubicle door and walked out backwards.

  “No name, no contact,” the PI replied, getting groggily to his feet. “Just a voice over the phone.”

  Fox grabbed some paper towels and held them to his arm. The cut looked half the length of his forearm and needed stitching. He started to feel light-headed at the sight of the crimson dripping from his fingers.

  “How long?” Fox asked.

  “Not yet twenty-four hours,” the man said, holding a handful of toilet paper to his nose.

  “What are you meant to do? How do you report in?”

  “I’m paid to follow you,” he said, pausing to retch out some blood and toilet water. “Keep you in sight. I have no way of contacting the guy who contracted me. He said he’d contact me.”

  “I’ll double whatever he’s offering you,” Fox said. “Come into my office tomorrow, let us talk some more then.”

  Fox winced as he fought some bile from rising in his throat from the ordeal. Dark blood was streaming down his arm and running off his elbow despite the pressure and elevation.

  There was silence from the PI, as if he were weighing up the pros and cons of this new arrangement.

  “Do it, and you can still stay on me, collect your other paycheque,” Fox said, taking a step forward, up close into the other guy’s face. There was something to be said for overt force, the shock and awe of Fox’s actions sinking in to gain the required outcome. Amazing what people will do to avoid conflict. “Or walk the fuck away—but by God, if I see you again, I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands.”

  “Okay,” the man replied, reaching in to his pocket and taking out a business card. “This is me. Come to my office tomorrow morning.”

  After a moment of cleaning the blood off themselves as best they could, Fox and the PI left the restroom, heading their separate ways out into the hot New York night.

  31

  NEW YORK CITY

  “Well, good evening there, sir,” Gammaldi said, opening the door dressed just in his grey cotton boxers, a decidedly out-of-place experience for the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Park Slope. Fox entered without a word, Gammaldi looking out the door into the deserted streetscape as if there was something sinister lurking out there.

  “What’s up?” Gammaldi said, watching as Fox peered out of a crack in Gammaldi’s blinds at the street outside the brown-stone building. Dim lights and music emanated from other brownstones in the street, the neighbourhood in their own little world outside the circus of Manhattan.

  “There’s—you drunk?” Fox asked, looking at his mate in his jocks, empty beer cans and pizza boxes covering the big square coffee table. He walked back over to the front door and flipped the intrusion lock across.

  “Been watching the game,” Gammaldi said, offering Fox a beer from the bar fridge next to his armchair. A ninety-inch plasma screen took up most of the lounge-room wall.

  “It’s actually starting to make sense,” Gammaldi said, sitting back into his leather recliner and popping a fresh Bud.

  “NFL making sense? Now I know you’re drunk,” Fox responded, looking around the litter on the ground-floor living room. “And you’re drinking Budweiser, sweet Jesus, man. That stuff’s filtered through horse kidneys.”

  “Drink of kings,” Gammaldi replied, raising the can in high salute without taking his eyes off the screen.

  “You got any weapons in this pigsty?” Fox asked. He walked towards the kitchen nursing his forearm.

  “Yeah,” Gammaldi said, taking a big gulp of beer, “I’m packing right here.” He hefted his groin with his free hand, and took another swig of beer, all while still keeping both eyes firmly planted on the TV.

  “How about a first-aid kit?” Fox asked.

  “There are some Band-Aids and stuff under the sink,” Gammaldi said.

  Fox walked into the adjoining kitchen and rummaged through the cupboard. The few loose plasters were not going to help. He wrapped a clean tea towel around his forearm, covering the makeshift pressure bandage he’d made from a sleeve of his shirt.

  “My cell phone’s flat, I’m just gonna use your phone,” Fox said, taking a seat at the kitchen bench and dialling a number.

  “Just not a sex line—I’ve seen Punch Drunk Love!” Gammaldi replied, accentuated with a hiccup. “Hey, make some nachos while you’re in there!”

  Fox returned a couple of minutes later.

  “Sefreid’s coming over,” Fox said, brushing off a chair to sit on. “I’m gonna crash here tonight to lay low for a bit.”

  “Cool, party time,” Gammaldi said, accentuated, this time, with a burp. “Hey, wanna do a Scrubs marathon? Arrested Development? Don’t tell me you’ve still got your grudge against television programs since The West Wing ended. Kevin Smith movies?” Gammaldi held up the seven-hour Evening with Kevin Smith DVD box.

  “Tempting, but I’m not really in the mood for dick and fart jokes,” Fox said, nursing his arm.

  “Hey, the dude makes a decent living from it,” Gammaldi replied. “I know you dig Smith, hell you even like Affleck in his films.”

  “Smith would cast Affleck as the shark in Jaws 5 if he could,” Fox said, playing along with the joke. He switched off the lamp near the front windows and peered out into the street again. “You just go back to your game, mate. I’ll hang here by the window.”

  “Hey, what happened to your arm?” Gammaldi said, looking at Fox properly for the first time.

  “Just a cut, Sefreid’s bringing over a med pack,” Fox replied.

  “You should have a drink.” Gammaldi pushed an unopened beer across the table with his foot.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Fox said, leaving it there and resting in a leather armchair by the window. He settled in and tried not to move too much.

  Twenty minutes later came a knock at the door.

  Gammaldi had flaked out by the end of the game, snoring louder than the expert commentary over the highlight replays.

  Fox looked through the peephole and opened up.

  “Lach,” Sefreid said, walking in with a duffle bag.

  “Thanks for coming, Rick,” Fox said, taking the bag.

  “That’s everything you wanted?” Sefreid said, walking over to the snoring Gammaldi.

  “Yeah, thanks for popping by my place,” Fox said, rifling through the clothes Sefreid had picked up from his houseboat on the way, making sure his SOCOM pistol was tucked in there too.

  “I’ve got Goldsmith and Pepper waiting in a car out the front, they’ll take you two into GSR in the morning,” Sefreid said, poking Gammaldi in the cheek. He didn’t even flinch. “He drunk?”

  “Yeah, a rare sight actually,” Fox said.

  “I’ll say,” Sefreid replied, picking up an empty Bud to inspect the label. “He’s been drinking lights too.”

  “Come check this out, will you,” Fox said, taking the med pack from his bag into the kitchen.

  “Ooh, I guess I’m gonna be the lucky one who gets to stitch that up,” Sefreid said, looking at Fox’s arm oozing blood into the sink from the ten-centimetre-long cut.

  “If you would, that’d be great. It’s a neat and straight one,” Fox said, while he cleaned up the wound in the sink. Fox knew both of them had been on either end of a decent stitching job in the field before, and they knew the task as well as any general practitioner.

  Fox gritted his teeth as Sefreid di
d the job in under a minute, finishing off with a coating of spray-on bandage that sealed the wound.

  “No sign of anything at my place?” Fox asked.

  “Nothing. I’ve actually outsourced the night watch to a couple of ex-secret service guys from a private security firm,” Sefreid said. “When it’s light tomorrow morning, we’ll go in and do a full sweep, top to bottom.”

  “Thanks,” Fox replied, putting on a clean shirt. “I came here thinking it was best to get patched up and rested before having to confront someone as I walked in my front door.”

  “Fair enough, and don’t worry about the security,” Sefreid told him. “You’re not the first reporter at GSR we’ve had to put round-the-clock protection on and I’m sure you won’t be the last.”

  “Perhaps that should be our motto: Pissing people off where no one else dares,” Fox said.

  “Journalists are good at that,” Sefreid replied. “It’s pissing off the wrong people that’s the kicker. But I guess that’s the fun part of the job.”

  “Yeah, laugh a minute,” Fox replied, holding up his arm. “I’m gaining plenty of mementos of those zany times.”

  He walked Sefreid back to the front door.

  “So this PI guy will come in tomorrow?” Sefreid asked. He walked out the door of the brownstone and waited on the tiled landing.

  “How about you go to his office and pick him up,” Fox said, handing over the business card. “He’ll cooperate. Find out everything you can.”

  “I’ll go and get him first thing, before I sweep through your place,” Sefreid said, walking down the few entry stairs to the pavement, and calling out with a wave over his shoulder, “Sleep easy!”

  32

  CLOUDY BAY, NEW ZEALAND

  At the entrance to the fjord, Secher sent his countrymen back to the sub and walked south-west along the beach towards the main road. Dressed in jeans and shirt, he had given all his equipment over to them, pocketing a second USB stick and putting on a small backpack.

  Walking along the highway towards the township of Blenheim, he kicked stones as he went. He still fumed at the blunder in the layout of the station. In those extra seconds he could have hidden the device somehow. Danton had guaranteed the information was up-to-date to the day. Idiot. No wonder Danton had gone nowhere since his planning of the Rainbow Warrior attack. Incompetent fuck.

  He picked up a rock and skipped it along the road, and found the way ahead becoming lighter as a truck rounded the corner behind him. He waved his arm in the air and the big eighteen-wheeler came to a slow halt.

  “Thank you,” Secher said with an American accent. He climbed into the cab and held his backpack on his lap.

  “Backpacking?” the truck driver asked. Secher nodded. “Where you headed?”

  “Christchurch,” Secher said. “A few hours south, right?”

  “Yep, and it’s your lucky night,” the driver said, working up through the gears.

  Perhaps it was. He watched the lush green farmland whoosh by in the big lights of the truck. With any luck the next part of the plan would go off without a hitch. It was his plan, after all.

  Secher unzipped his bag, pulled out a couple of chocolate bars, and the driver took one with thanks. Secher pulled a photo from a side pocket in the bag, looking at it in the dim light of the cabin.

  “Your girl?” the driver said with a grin.

  “Yeah,” Secher replied, looking down at the smiling face of Kate Matthews. He had taken the picture the day he recruited her, on their second liaison. The sun and fun times of Monaco had worked a treat, as expected. “She’s my girl.”

  33

  NEW YORK CITY

  “If you like her so much you should see her again,” Gammaldi said, breaking the silence. Fox and Gammaldi rode into GSR in the back of a Mercedes ML320D, the morning traffic a sea of fury around them. Pepper was in the passenger seat scanning for threats, with Goldsmith behind the wheel.

  “Kate?” Fox queried, getting a nod from his friend. “I’d like to, but she’s already seeing someone.”

  “Oh,” Gammaldi replied, turning his attention elsewhere.

  “I could get used to this!” Gammaldi said to the guys in front, watching the hubbub of early-morning New York come to life.

  “How do you normally get to work?” Goldsmith asked.

  “Train,” Gammaldi said, still watching the traffic.

  “You mean subway?” Goldsmith asked, stopping at the lights.

  “Huh?” Gammaldi replied.

  “The train, it’s called a subway,” Goldsmith told him, taking off in the traffic again.

  “All right,” Gammaldi said, twirling his finger around his temple for Fox’s benefit.

  Fox cracked a smile.

  “Ah, that’s what I haven’t seen all day,” Gammaldi said to Fox.

  “Why are you so chipper?” Fox asked, holding on to the hand grip as Goldsmith took a hard turn down into the under-cover car park of the Seagram Building.

  “Another day in sunny New York,” Gammaldi said. “What’s not to like? We’re raking in the green here at GSR, and you can’t say the work isn’t interesting.”

  “Good for you,” Fox replied, exiting the car. “Thanks boys.”

  The SUV peeled off and Gammaldi followed Fox to the elevator.

  “Seriously,” Gammaldi said, “aside from you fighting off guys in toilets, things are pretty sweet here in the mighty Apple, aren’t they?”

  “It’s the Big Apple, and yeah, they’re sweet,” Fox said, getting into the elevator. “I was being sincere when I said good for you.”

  “Yeah, well, are you being sincere to yourself?”

  “Whaddya mean?” Fox said.

  “Nice New York lingo, but it ain’t gonna get you outta this.”

  “Outta wha’?” Fox asked.

  “Kate, Faith, your minimal fucked-up sleep,” Gammaldi said.

  Fox looked to the floor. “What, my shrink talk to you?”

  “I know you, buddy,” Gammaldi said, looking Fox square in the eye.

  Fox shrugged and presented his eye for the retinal scan. “Access thirty-seven.” A vivid green light waved over his eye and the elevator rose.

  “Okay, I tell you most things…” Fox said, “but how’d you know about Faith?”

  “Like all great investigative reporters,” Gammaldi replied in a theatrical voice that sounded like Russell Crowe’s character in Gladiator, “my sources will never be disclosed.”

  34

  MARLBOROUGH, NEW ZEALAND

  One of the night-shift workers at Waihopai Station went to the computer room before heading home.

  Punching in the alarm code, he opened the steel-framed wire door and walked around to the back of the main supercomputer. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the four small screws and screwdriver. He felt around the top of the computer, a good seven feet high, and retrieved the access cover.

  Sure, using a government supercomputer that was tasked with spying for his own interests on the side had its risks. But he always double-checked he left nothing behind, and always made sure he left things as they were expected to be.

  So what if he used the massive supercomputer to download eighty gig of lesbian porn once a week onto his iPod. In minutes it did the job that would take his home computer, with its so-called ‘high speed broadband’ connection, a month to do.

  And this computer even found the porn for him, or at least the little program he’d inserted did the job for him.

  He knelt down, holding the panel up, and rested the screws on the floor, taking one. While lifting the panel into position, he saw it. An ordinary-looking USB thumb drive.

  “What the…?”

  35

  NEW YORK CITY

  “Hey, Lach,” Sefreid said, coming into Fox’s office, out of breath.

  “What is it?” Fox asked, registering the look.

  “That PI’s de
ad,” Sefreid said. “Murdered.”

  “Fuck!” Fox exclaimed. He stared at Sefreid for a while then shook the surprise from his head. “When?”

  “Some time last night or early this morning.”

  Fox pounded his fist on the table. “Should have seen that coming.”

  “Went to pick him up half an hour ago, the coroner and CSI were already on site,” Sefreid said. “It might not be a hit connected with you, though. In the guy’s line of work, it could have been a pissed-off spouse, some crook or stand-over man…”

  “The timing is far too coincidental,” Fox said. “His employer must have found out that I’d approached him, and is trying to clean things up. Reckon you can find out what the police know?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get Beasley to call some of his old bureau colleagues,” Sefreid said. “As I bugged out a couple of feds showed up, so I thought it best to hightail it before they started asking me questions.”

  Fox leaned forward in his chair, his elbow on the desk, resting his forehead on his hand, his jaw clenched tight.

  “All right, thanks, mate,” Fox said.

  Sefreid left the office and Fox yelled into emptiness, “Fuck!”

  36

  NORTH CAROLINA

  Located outside the sleepy town of Hertford is a slice of DoD property officially known as Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity. In the CIA they aptly called it ‘The Point’. Its purpose: to train the National Clandestine Service personnel in paramilitary skills. It’s where they teach the pointy end of spy-craft, as opposed to the more cerebral activities undertaken in the classes at ‘The Farm’ in Virginia.