Terminal Rage

by Khalifa, A. M.

“Now we wait.”

  “Dad?”

  “Milo?”

  Even before Blackwell had a chance to ponder the request, let alone deny it, Milo was already in begging mode. “Can we play Monopoly? Please, Dad, please?”

  Two hours later, and just like she always did, Calista had wiped the Monopoly board with him and Milo. When she was done gloating, the three of them sat at the edge of the boat, dangling their feet in the cold river as they sipped on chilled root beer.

  Calista dug her soft hair into his chest and started making circles with her big toe in the water.

  “Dad. Can I ask you something but promise you won’t get mad?”

  Blackwell chuckled and kissed her hair.

  “Doesn’t that depend on what you’re going to ask?”

  Calista slapped her hand on his knees hard. “Dad! Don’t start your ‘negotiator’ thing.”

  “All right, all right. Go on then. I promise I won’t get mad.”

  “When Mom comes on Thursday, are you two gonna fight again?”

  Blackwell held her face in his hand and turned her head to look straight into her eyes to determine where this question was coming from.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Like you used to fight before. You hated Mom and that’s why you left us, right?”

  Milo screeched at his sister. “You’re such an idiot! I already explained it, you dimwit.”

  “Now, now, Milo. What did you tell her?”

  Milo glanced at the open water away from Blackwell’s eyes and muttered in a low voice, “It doesn’t matter...”

  Blackwell spread his arms to hug his son. A tiny teardrop was taking its time to run down his soft cheek.

  “It matters to me, son. What did you tell your sister?”

  Milo released a deep sigh and finally peeped at him. “I told her you and Mom won’t fight again ’cause she’s in love with that other guy from her office with the black Porsche. She doesn’t care about you anymore.”

  Blackwell ignored the burning in his chest ignited by Milo’s revelation. He tightened his hug on his son and pulled him closer to kiss him on the temple.

  “Listen carefully, both of you. Mom and I will always love each other, even if we’re not together as husband and wife.”

  Calista put her hand on his face and with her stabbing innocence once again aimed straight for his heart.

  “Why can’t you get back together then, if you love her and she loves you?”

  “We are back together, but as your parents.” He put his root beer down and held both their hands.

  “I know I did and said terrible things to your mom in the past, which I never should have. I understand how much that hurt you. If I got down on my knees right now and begged for your forgiveness for eternity, it’ll probably never be enough.

  “What I can promise with all my heart is that I’ll never behave this way again. Never walk out on you like the last time. Remember, no matter who your mom is seeing in her personal life, these people will always come second after the two of you, there’s no question about that.”

  Milo exploded in tears and he too dug his face in Blackwell’s chest. “I don’t want Mom to have sex with other men! I want her to be married to you!”

  Milo sniffled as his preteen pride worked double shift to halt his tears. Eventually he stopped crying and a long, painful silence followed.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?” Blackwell was terrified of the salt this child was able to pour on their family wounds.

  “If Mom ever said she wanted to be married to you again, would you say yes?”

  He lost himself into his daughter’s brilliant brown eyes. The gentle lapping waves of the river were reflecting in them. All he could see was Melanie in her.

  He missed her.

  He thought hard about the question because he wanted to give his daughter an honest answer. Nothing canned, nothing patronizing. Just the honest truth.

  “I would, Calista. With all my heart.”

  Milo and Calista did a touchdown dance and shouted, “Yes!”

  The glimmer of hope that there was a chance—no matter how slim—he and Melanie could get back together had instantly restored their mood.

  As he pulled out the crab pot, Blackwell was certain it was empty, but with Milo and Calista behind him reveling in the anticipation, he knew better than to ruin the fun.

  “I’ll take your bets, ladies and gentlemen. I say three big blue crabs. You guys?”

  Milo held up his fingers to the sky. “Four, Dad!”

  Calista bit her lips and thought hard about her wager.

  “I say…ummm…seven! Yes, seven, Dad—lock it in.”

  Zero, Blackwell thought.

  All three of them lost. Two shell-shocked baby blue crabs were in the cage.

  Calista cooed as she kneeled to get a better look. “They’re too cute!”

  “That they are. Fortunately for them, cute saves them from being lunch. These little guys have to go back in.”

  Milo had a different future planned for them.

  “Can we keep them?”

  “Afraid not, son.” Before Milo could object, Blackwell threw a diversion at him.

  “Lunch back home, or shall we go to Patty’s Seafood?

  Both kids eyed him with indifference.

  “Ooooh! I’ve never taken you guys there, of course. It’s this awesome place just half a mile upstream in Papermill Pond.”

  Milo’s face turned serious.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do they have popcorn shrimp?”

  “I’m sure they do. If they don’t, let’s show ’em how to make it.”

  Back home, Blackwell tucked his kids in bed and kissed them good night. Despite the twelve bedrooms scattered around the house, they had chosen to sleep in the same room.

  After clearing up the kitchen, he called Melanie with a roundup of the day, leaving out the details of what the kids had told him. He didn’t want to risk her thinking he was trying to extort her emotionally.

  Blackwell slipped on some sports gear and descended to the basement of the house. His parents had configured the basement as a gym and recreational area. When he had returned from Anguilla, he found the original exercise machines were prehistoric by today’s standards. He advertised them on Craigslist, then donated them to the first person to inquire, a lady who ran a women’s shelter in Los Angeles. In their place he purchased brand new commercial-grade elliptical and treadmill machines.

  He switched on Bloomberg News and started running at six miles an hour. A piece on the Eurozone crisis reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had traveled to Rome the previous Wednesday. She’d met with Italian Prime Minister Monti to declare a united front before jetting back to Frankfurt.

  Frankfurt.

  Blackwell jammed hard on the stop button and jumped off the treadmill. He ran up to the ground floor and grabbed the FedEx package and took it to his father’s old study.

  Inside was a manila envelope with no marks or addresses.

  Shit. Anthrax.

  He rushed to the medicine cabinet in the kitchen and pulled out latex gloves and a paper mask, then dashed back to the study better prepared. With the utmost caution, he peeled open the manila envelope.

  No suspicious white powder.

  A printed document written in German, resembling a standard agreement between a company called Mein Platz and himself, Alexander Blackwell.

  His German was good enough for him to figure out the contract was for the rental of a private storage space. A seventy-square-meter room in the Frankfurt location of the company, on 371 Ludwig Landmann. A quick mental calculation converted it to about seven hundred and fifty square feet.

  What the hell is this about?

 
The storage space was rented on February 18, and prepaid in advance for a year.

  He mapped the address of the location on his laptop and within a few seconds was staring at the street view of the entrance of the facility.

  There were more things inside the envelope.

  A small card with a six-digit security access number to get through the main entrance of the facility, from six a.m. until ten p.m., seven days a week.

  A smaller white envelope with two copies of what appeared to be padlock keys.

  And a business-class ticket in his name on Lufthansa from Dulles to Frankfurt at five-ten p.m. on April 16.

  Just nine days from now.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Monday, April 16, 2012—9:18 a.m.

  Bad Homburg, Germany

  The Frankfurt facility of Mein Platz Self Storage in Bockenheim was twenty minutes north of the airport, but this wasn’t where Blackwell was heading.

  He asked the taxi driver to take him further up to the wealthy spa town of Bad Homburg, where he was meeting an old friend at the Café Klatsch on Louisenstrasse.

  Kristof Strauss, a successful, well-connected German security contractor, sat at a table sipping an espresso and nibbling on a slice of chocolate something when Blackwell walked in. Strauss was a former Bundeskriminalamt agent who had quit the service seven years ago. Blackwell had never asked why but assumed it was for the money.

  They first crossed paths in the late nineties on a joint US-German operation against an American neo-Nazi group in Springfield, Missouri. The founder of the group had roots in the former East Germany and suspected ties to the criminal underworld. They nailed him and sent him away for a very long time.

  Blackwell became friends with the tall, blue-eyed German and they remained in touch even after Strauss quit the service to hang out his own shingle. Over the years, they had called on each other when they needed prickly favors in their respective jurisdictions.

  This was one such occasion.

  When Blackwell had received the anonymous package prodding him to travel to Frankfurt, Strauss was the only person he could think of in Germany to call for assistance. Blackwell had decided not to involve the FBI or German authorities. Going inside the storage facility guerilla without protection or backup wasn’t even an option for him. At least not a smart one.

  They patted each other on the back, then did the awkward man-hug thing. The private sector hadn’t softened the German. Still tough-bodied with piercing eyes. Strauss must have been getting close to fifty by now but his face hadn’t been etched by time, and his deep brown hair remained youthful and shiny. And still there.

  He motioned for Blackwell to sit down.

  “You’re hard to keep track of these days, Alex.”

  Although Strauss had surely heard all about it through the grapevine of the fraternity of international federal agents, Blackwell didn’t want to talk about Hermosa Beach and his four years in the wasteland.

  Instead he cracked a rueful smile. “Not if you’re a terrorist or a criminal. Apparently these guys know exactly where to get a hold of me.”

  Strauss caught the waiter’s attention to come for Blackwell’s order.

  “Family okay?”

  “Kids are fine. Melanie and I aren’t.”

  Blackwell knew better than to reciprocate the question. Strauss had never been the type to share, and Blackwell was never the sort to pry. He had no clue if his German friend was married, single, divorced or asexual. Their initial greetings were always to the point, and that seemed to suit both of them just fine.

  “You take it black, right?” He ordered for him in German. “Anything to eat?”

  “No, thanks.” They’d stuffed him quite a bit on the plane.

  Strauss scanned the room for spying eyes and listening ears, as if he had electronic sweeping devices implanted in his body. Two older women at the table next to them were flipping through photo albums of babies, perhaps their grandchildren. At the other end of the room, an attractive Asian girl with razor-straight hair, probably in her twenties, hugged a hot cup of tea and stared at wistful nothingness.

  Strauss lowered his head and spoke in a more discreet voice. “We hacked the security footage from the facility.”

  “And?”

  “There’s nothing, Alex. Whoever did this knew how to avoid the cameras.” His eyes narrowed, and he shot a few glances at the hot Asian girl. Blackwell wasn’t sure if it was out of suspicion or admiration. Or both.

  A waiter deposited a cup of coffee in front of Blackwell and checked again if he wanted anything to eat. The cup was like a soup bowl with rich, black nectar, topped with creamy foam. The smell enticed him to order a slice of Sachertorte to complement the coffee.

  “How many times was the storage space accessed since they rented it?”

  “Only once.”

  “When was that?”

  “Late evening on April second for about forty-seven minutes. Unfortunately, we only see a brief image of a person with a cap pulled low and sunglasses, then, poof, nothing.”

  “What happens?”

  “There’s just one camera in the corridor. Whoever it was, they placed a piece of cardboard or something over it, so there’s nothing to see until they come back to remove it. We have no idea what happened during those forty-seven minutes.”

  Blackwell dropped a brown sugar crystal into his coffee and it made a loud plop, which caught the attention of one of the grandmothers at the table next to them. She glanced at him with narrowed, stern eyes and a tight face.

  Strauss fired his own dirty look back at her that must have imparted he wasn’t the sort of fellow you wanted to piss off in public, or anywhere. Her eyes scurried like little animals back to the photo album.

  “How’d they use my name to sign up?”

  “Cash probably and fake IDs. Do you have any idea who it could be, Alex?”

  “Some theories but nothing conclusive. I’m a little unnerved, but I keep telling myself if they wanted me dead, why fly me here, business class? Cheaper to whack me back home.”

  Strauss just smiled and let it go. He was the sort of subtle friend who was happy to help without the need to satisfy his own curiosity. Whatever dark secrets Blackwell could have been harboring about this whole affair weren’t going to unhinge Strauss’s commitment to stick out for him.

  Blackwell had decided to go into the storage facility commando, but he needed Strauss to take care of security and backup.

  “When can I go in?”

  “We’re going in with you, Alex. Tonight, at nine p.m. Minimal risk of running into anyone at that time. We’ve been staking out the facility for the last week.”

  “I appreciate it.” Strauss coming in with him was a bonus. Blackwell hadn’t counted on his friend for more than some advance intel, a borrowed gun and some sort of backup at the scene just in case it all went belly up.

  “I have a team in place, we’re all set. Need a warm bed and a hot shower until then?”

  “Thanks, I’ve booked a room at the Steigenberger.”

  “Pick you up at eight, then.”

  Blackwell left Strauss at the Café Klatsch and walked to the Kurpark, a large area designed as a traditional English landscape park, with extensive lawns, dense bushes and a lake with a spring. He wanted to stretch his legs from the long flight, get some fresh air to beat the jet lag and think of what lay ahead.

  Except for a few high-class mothers pushing stylish prams, the park was almost empty.

  The Asian girl who had sat next to them at the Café Klatsch was camped under a tree with a book. Blackwell analyzed her and quickly determined she was most likely harmless.

  He made his way to the springs and meandered for a while before he walked back to the hotel. A hot shower then he collapsed in bed.

  Strauss’s BMW 750 was parked on Rossittener Strasse,
parallel to the Mein Platz self-storage facility. The German was carrying a Beretta Cheetah and had given Blackwell a nine-millimeter Colt.

  A white Audi Q7 with five of Strauss’s men was parked about a hundred feet ahead of them. The plan was for two of the men to join Blackwell and Strauss in the facility, and the other three to provide cover on the outside.

  At the entrance of the facility, Blackwell punched in the security access code he had received in the FedEx package. They waited a few seconds before the door unlocked with a series of electronic beeps.

  He poked his head in, then tiptoed inside.

  Strauss and his two guys trailed close behind.

  The corridors of the facility were lit with neon and had numbers along the walls to indicate the location of the storage spaces. They followed the signs until they reached Blackwell’s unit, which had a massive door secured with a man-sized lock.

  Strauss reached out and stopped Blackwell before he tried to unlatch the lock with this key.

  “Wait,” he said, then turned to one of his men called Reinhard.

  “Prüfe ob es irgendeine Spur von Sprengstoff gibt.”

  Reinhard was an ice-cold customer with hardly a sign of trepidation in his eyes. He pulled out a small hand-held device Blackwell recognized as a portable explosives detector. With unique cockiness, he punched a button, turned a few dials, waved the device around briefly, then nodded.

  “Alle rein. Es gibt hier nichts.”

  “All clear. You can open the door now, Alex,” Strauss whispered with relief.

  Blackwell stepped into the pitch-darkness first, then shut the door swiftly when the other guys had trickled in behind him. Running into someone in the corridor would have been nothing short of a nuisance. There was a switch with a night light around it, but Strauss was quick to warn that no one was to flick it and pulled out a flashlight.

  The corrugated aluminum walls made the room feel even colder than it probably was. Reinhard and Strauss’s other operative switched on their own flashlights for Blackwell to scan the space. There was nothing remarkable about this empty room, except for a familiar electric hum coming from the back.

  Strauss tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Do you see that?” He pointed to the back of the room.