Hunter (9780698158504)

by Carroll, Michael

  “Rookie mistake, McKendrick. Never acknowledge your real identity.”

  “McKendrick?” Lance said. “I’ll see if I can find him for you.”

  “Lance, we’ve met before. Five years ago in Max’s base in Manhattan. I know you remember.”

  “Casey Duval. So. How’ve you been?”

  “I’ve been better, Lance. Some smart-assed kid keeps upsetting my plans. This does not make me happy. You know what I’d like to do to that kid? Crush his skull between my fists and use his brain matter for toothpaste.”

  Lance’s heart was racing, but he forced himself to remain calm. “Just so I know . . . Do you have guns aimed at me right now? Because my dessert is starting to melt.”

  “You listen to me, punk. You have sided with the wrong man. Max Dalton is the single biggest threat to the human race. Do you understand me?”

  “The other you was a lot friendlier,” Lance said. “Before he turned into a psycho, at least. But you wouldn’t remember that. That was a whole different universe. So, are you going to make me an offer to come work for you? Because I have no loyalty to Max. I just can’t seem to get away from him. I’m even willing to come in for an interview. What can you offer me? And before you say it, ‘a quick death’ is not what I’d consider a good negotiation tactic. Spell out your terms. And talk fast, because Max has been eyeing my banana split and I fear for its safety.”

  “Terms?” Duval began. “All right. Let’s pretend you’re serious. First, it’s just you I want, not the rest of the team. You can—”

  Lance gently put down the phone, and quietly said to the receptionist. “Back in a sec. If you could leave that line clear . . . ? Thanks!”

  He had twenty dollars in his pocket, enough for a taxi to the airport.

  THE YEAR FOLLOWING Lance’s departure from Santa Barbara was the most difficult and exhausting of his life. With almost no money and only the clothes he was wearing, he’d arrived at the airport with no idea where he was going to go, or what he would do. All he knew was that he had to get away from Max and all the trouble that came with him, and never look back.

  At the airport he tried to look like a weary traveler as he walked into the baggage claim area and joined the mad scramble for suitcases along with all the genuine passengers.

  The first suitcase, when he opened it in the privacy of the airport’s bathroom, contained clothes that were all far too large for him. He returned the case to the baggage claim area—if anyone had asked, he would have told them he’d mistakenly believed it was his—and picked another one. This one provided him with two new sets of clothes, a pair of shoes that were only one size too small, and sixty dollars in cash.

  That was enough to pay for a bus ride from Santa Barbara to San Jose. After a week in the city he managed to get a day’s work cleaning dishes in a hotel restaurant. At the end of the day, the kitchen manager, Julia, told him, “You work hard, Jeremy”—Lance had told her his name was Jeremy Wingate—“but I’m sorry, there aren’t any full-time jobs available here.”

  She handed him thirty dollars, and Lance put on his best “I’m poor but I’m nice” expression, and she added another five. “All right, come back tomorrow morning. No promises, though.”

  Over the following weeks he washed countless dishes, most days working two eight-hour shifts. Then when one of the waiters called in sick, Julia asked Lance to fill in for him. “You know how to serve food, right?”

  “Sure. Stand at the back and throw it really hard. I’m a pretty good shot. I reckon I can do it.”

  “Very funny. Maybe you’d be better behind the bar. Ever tended bar before?”

  “Nope. But how hard can it be?”

  “You can bus the tables, then. Any breakages—”

  “I know. I have to pay for them. But, just so you know, I’ve already done sixteen hours. I can do another shift, but that means I’m not going to get a bed at the YMCA tonight.”

  “That’s where you’ve been staying?” Julia asked. “I didn’t know. I’ll ask around. Someone might have a spare room.”

  Lance declined the offer. He worked in the restaurant seven days a week, often doing double shifts, for seven months. He stopped shaving, but kept his beard neatly trimmed to comply with the restaurant’s dress code.

  Eventually, Julia took him aside. “This has to end, Jeremy. We can’t keep paying you cash. You’ll have to come full-time onto the payroll. That means we need your Social Security number.”

  “How about you keep me off the books and I’ll do the same amount of work for half the pay?”

  “I’m sorry, no. Restaurants get inspected. If you’re caught here working without a permit, we’d be fined and you’d be deported. Where are you from, anyway?”

  “Somewhere I can’t ever go back to. Seriously, they execute people like me.” He gave her a brave smile. “I’ll move on. And if they ever do catch me, I never even heard of this place. Thanks for giving me a chance.”

  “Well, look, you can’t stay on here, but I know a lot of people. . . . Maybe there’s something I can do for you. My brother’s father-in-law is looking for someone trustworthy.”

  The next afternoon an elderly man in a crisp suit asked Lance, “And you have worked in an art gallery before, Mr. Wingate?”

  “Oh, where do I start? After college I spent a year in Europe. Milan, Amsterdam, Paris, London . . . It was all voluntary work, of course, but so rewarding. To see such masterpieces with my own eyes . . .” He sighed. “If money were not an object, I would spend the rest of my life traveling the world and soaking in the beauty and elegance of the works of the ancient masters.”

  The old man smiled and steepled his fingers as he leaned back in his leather chair. “Ah . . . that is a dream! Tell me: Van Gogh—did you see any . . . ?”

  Lance nodded. “Oh yes, Mr. Gray. I . . . Well, some people would laugh if I told them but I feel that you’ll understand. When I saw the self-portrait in the Musée d’Orsay I was overcome. I actually cried. To think that the master himself had touched that same canvas, with his own hands. It was as though we were separated only by time.”

  In truth, Lance had learned from Julie the night before that Mr. Gray was a huge fan of the works of Vincent van Gogh, so Lance had spent the morning in the local library memorizing facts.

  Mr. Gray said, “Now, this is a private gallery, Jeremy. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Of course. We receive no public financial support. We operate—” Lance cut himself off and did his best to look embarrassed and apologetic. “Please forgive my presumption, Mr. Gray. I mean, you receive no public financial support.” He glanced around the office. “I can see that the funds you do have are spent wisely. Others in your position might be tempted to . . . indulge—if that’s not too sharp a word—in unnecessary luxuries.”

  The old man’s face took on an expression that told Lance he didn’t know whether to be impressed or offended. “Meaning?”

  “Just that some people might use the gallery as a personal piggy bank. Diverting funds here, skimming a little off the top there, perhaps raising the price on a few of the pieces in order to elicit interest from some of the wealthier patrons.” He paused for a moment. “Sadly, there are always going to be people who’ll judge the value of a painting or sculpture by its price tag.”

  Mr. Gray nodded slowly. “And . . . ?”

  “And that’s why I want to work here. Because you care more about the art than the money.”

  Mr. Gray leaned across his desk and shook Lance’s hand. “Welcome aboard, my boy.”

  Work at the small gallery proved to be mind-numbingly dull and not very well paid, but it gave Lance the time he needed to plan his future.

  • • •

  On the first Friday of every month, the gallery in San Jose hosted a small fund-raising evening, where local—and sometimes international—art coll
ectors were plied with aged cheese and expensive spirits and rare wine in the hope that they would be persuaded to buy a painting or two, or make a monetary donation to the gallery.

  On those occasions, Lance’s job as assistant to Mr. Gray involved booking flights, hotel rooms, and restaurants for the collectors, and arranging cars to ferry them around the city. Where possible, Lance made sure to personally travel with the collectors, especially on the return journeys to their hotels, when their often gruff demeanors were sufficiently softened by the copious alcohol and Lance’s enthusiasm and flattery.

  He found his first mark in the fourth month, a twenty-year-old Belgian man called André Decker, the sole heir to a multi-billion-dollar estate. As he and Decker rode in the back of the limousine through San Jose, Lance quickly realized that the young man had no interest in art.

  “Mother thinks that exposure to culture will change me,” Decker told Lance. He was already halfway to being drunk. “‘It’s high time you grew up, André,’ she told me. ‘Your father and I won’t be around forever.’ Hah! They’re both only forty-two, and we’re a long-lived family. By the time they shuffle off this mortal coil I’ll be in my eighties.”

  Lance said nothing; it was always better to allow a potential mark to do the talking in the beginning.

  “Honestly, Wingate, you have no idea what it’s like. If Father’s not trying to get me to run one of his companies, it’s Mother trying to marry me off to some chinless bimbo.” He looked up at Lance. “Are you a free man, Wingate?”

  “I’m currently between broken hearts at the moment, Mr. Decker.”

  “Hah, I like that! So what’s this about, anyway? What pretentious amateur daubings will I be expected to fawn over this evening?”

  “A few local artists are displaying their work. Some of it’s quite good. One or two pieces are exceptional.”

  Decker responded with, “Humph! I suppose we’d better go through with it.”

  Gotcha, Lance thought. From the moment he’d seen Decker at the airport, Lance’s suspicions had been aroused. The man had arrived wearing an Armani suit, a large gold Rolex watch, and expensive-looking shoes, pushing a laden luggage cart into the arrivals hall amid a hundred other passengers. He’s trying too hard to look bored and rich, Lance had thought.

  Lance hit the limousine’s intercom button and said to the driver, “Take us to the nearest police station, please.”

  “As you wish, sir,” the driver replied.

  The young man stared at Lance. “What on earth? What are you doing?”

  “What time is it in Belgium now?” Lance asked.

  Decker glanced at his expensive watch and frowned for a moment. “What? I . . . What are you getting at, Wingate?”

  “How long is the flight from Belgium to San Jose?”

  “Really, Wingate! I have no idea what you’re implying, but I can tell you this—your employer is not going to—”

  “Give it a rest,” Lance said. “I figure you took a local flight from San Francisco that was scheduled to arrive at the same time as the flight from Brussels. You’re a con man hoping to scam the gallery.”

  “What utter nonsense!”

  Lance didn’t tell the man that he’d lifted his boarding pass from his pocket as he was getting into the car. “The watch looks real, though. Where’d you steal it from?”

  “How dare you! I’ve never stolen anything in my life!”

  “Right. I’ll make a deal with you. Hand over the watch and your wallet, and I’ll drop you at the nearest fleabag motel. Or you can keep up the charade and we’ll let the cops check out your credentials.”

  Decker swore under his breath as he reached for his wallet. “How’d you know?”

  “I’ve been trained.”

  Decker’s wallet contained four fake driver’s licenses, three Social Security cards, and eleven hundred dollars in cash. “Only American money,” Lance observed. “If you’re going to fake being from another country, you need to pay more attention to details like that.” He held up the Social Security cards. “These numbers real?”

  Decker nodded. “Yeah. Friend of mine has government contacts. If you know the right people—”

  “I’m keeping these,” Lance said. He handed Decker a fifty-dollar bill. “That’ll get you a night at the Sleep-eezy. After that, you’re on your own. And if I see you prowling around my gallery again, there’ll be consequences.”

  Using Decker’s money, plus his own savings, Lance enrolled in a nighttime locksmithing course. He didn’t bother attending many of the classes—after the first couple he realized that he already knew everything in the course—but took the final exam and earned his certificate.

  With his locksmithing certificate and one of the fake Social Security cards in hand he approached the owner of the high-tech security firm that took care of the art gallery. “I want a job,” Lance told the owner, a balding ex-marine named Raul Marcellino, as he was striding toward the security company’s office one morning.

  Marcellino looked him up and down. “Yer from the gallery, right? What makes you think yer qualified fer . . .” The man stopped with his hand reaching for the door to the office. “Could have sworn I locked this last night.”

  “You did,” Lance said. “I picked the lock.”

  Marcellino laughed. “Yeah, right. I know maybe four people in the world who could pick that lock.”

  “Now you know five.” In truth, Lance had simply stolen Marcellino’s keys a few days earlier and copied them before slipping them back into his pocket. “Hire me as a salesman and I promise I’ll double your profits in a month.”

  “That’s big talk, Wingate. How’d ya propose to do that?”

  In his first week with the security company, Lance spoke to every one of the company’s major clients—mostly small banks and jewelers—and persuaded them to upgrade their alarm systems. “I’m not allowed to say that your current system’s been hacked,” he told them. “I’d be fired if I told you that. I’m also not allowed to tell you that everyone else is upgrading their systems. You don’t want to be the only company left with security that can be easily bypassed, do you?”

  Two months later, with the new incoming profits from the banks and jewelers, Marcellino Incorporated was able to expand, and Lance set up a special division supplying security advice to companies whose property had been damaged or destroyed by superhuman activity. Lance provided consultation on how best to respond to a superhuman threat, and how to deal with the insurance brokers afterward.

  After a further six months, Marcellino Incorporated had earned so much money that Raul Marcellino himself was able to retire. Lance took over the day-to-day running of the company. He sold off most of it, keeping only the consultation division, and gradually withdrew from the public eye, shedding clients as quickly as he replaced the old staff with people he was sure he could trust.

  Through a variety of fake benefactors—all of which he’d established himself—Lance bought and sold the company a dozen times, to ensure that the paper trail was practically impossible to untangle.

  One morning he received a phone call from an untraceable number: “I know what you’re doing, Lance. Or is it Hunter again? Or Jeremy Wingate?”

  “Max. Knew it wouldn’t take you long to find me. So what now? Are you going to try to shut me down?”

  “No.” Max sighed heavily. “We’re not enemies. There’s no reason we should be.”

  “You might want to ask Harland Mayfair about that. Remember him?”

  “Mayfair’s fine. He’s recovered full use of his hand. And he’s found someone else now. He doesn’t even remember Slaughter.”

  “Of course he doesn’t. So if you’re not going to shut me down, what do you want?”

  “I’m going to throw some work your way. It’s something I’ve been asked to do, but you’re a better fit for the job. I’ll send you
the details. If you’re interested, fine. If not, that’s fine too.”

  Three weeks later Lance approached the U.S. government with a simple proposal: “You need somewhere to keep your supervillains. An ordinary prison won’t cut it. I’ve got just the place. I call it The Cloister.”

  The Cloister was a long-abandoned and forgotten Spanish fort that had cost Lance half a million dollars to buy, and twenty times that to upgrade. It was located in a forest, practically undetectable beneath a dense canopy of trees. He reinforced its four-foot-thick stone walls with tempered steel, and turned its rooms into high-tech cells. Once it was completed, his organization sold The Cloister back to the government—for a tidy profit—and Lance then destroyed his “Jeremy Wingate” identity.

  • • •

  The public didn’t know they existed, but many of the world’s governments did.

  When he recruited Cameron Sharkey—now almost eighteen years old and living in the basement of his parents’ house—Lance took him out to a nearby café and told him, “We call ourselves Deliverance. We employ no superhumans, and we never will. There’s just ordinary people, and a few like you and me. We’re funded by certain wealthy interested parties, but I won’t say more than that. I need you on board, Cam. You’ll be paid well and it’s a lot more fun than mopping floors.”

  “Actually, I’m next in line to be the assistant manager,” Cam said.

  “Yeah, sure. What do you say? Are you in or out?”

  “You said we get to travel the world?”

  Lance nodded.

  “And that it’s dangerous?”

  “At times, yeah. It can be.”

  “But you won’t tell me exactly what it is unless I agree. You promise it’s not illegal?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly on the level. Deliverance does have to break a few local laws now and then. Nothing serious. Come on, Cam. This is what you were meant to do. We get to play with lots of cool stuff. Guns, explosives, body armor, night-vision goggles . . . Paragon has been helping to train everyone. You’ll learn unarmed combat, weapons skills, survival, tracking. Everything you’ll need to know.”