[I’ll set up a mirroring system in Latvia for the site, so it’s not obvious Costa Rica is the new home. Send me the password and the code for the domain and I’ll move the pointers to Latvia. Bounce it to Costa Rica. Pogo]
The Group was certainly up for this, Steven realized; actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. That figured. A legitimate, real intrigue was just what they’d been hoping for. He knew he was fortunate to have access to them, and that they collectively represented a powerful force to contend with. Maybe he had a better than running chance after all.
[Remember to use the IP mask at all times. Proxy servers are your friend. Change the IPs hourly and use offshore addresses. I’ll e-mail you a utility that will do it automatically. Pogo]
Steven acknowledged their input and thanked them for helping. He signed off as Bowman and closed the computer, leaving it charging while he sipped another cup of coffee.
He thought about what to do next, but came up blank. He wasn’t processing particularly well, so he decided to go back to the motel.
Steven parked down the hill and walked up to the room with his bags. The news of Peter’s death threatened to overwhelm him with despondency – he felt immobilized, impotent, frozen. He didn’t really want to do anything but go to sleep and make it all go away, but he realized that wouldn’t do any good; he had to keep pressing forward.
Considering his options, he decided he should exercise to clear his head and get some adrenaline going. He ran for forty-five minutes, returned to the motel and showered, before spending half an hour working through his Kung Fu sequences. He was blindingly fast when he needed to be, but for him the enjoyment came from the flow and grace of the execution; the speed was a byproduct of intent coupled with proficiency. He performed his strikes and his isometric upper body exercises with his shirt off, and noted his muscle tone hadn’t suffered over the years.
Exercise concluded, he lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Peter and how unfair it all was. It was doing him no good at all.
He walked down to the restaurant and called Stan from the pay phone, using the calling card.
Stan was to the point. “I need you to get four, color, one-and-a-half by two-inch passport photos to me as soon as possible tomorrow. I need to overnight them to my contact. You’ll be receiving a spanking new passport from Romania within a week. Cost is $65,000. It’s being issued by their passport agency as a favor to their consul general here, who’s one of my golfing buddies. You’ll be using your middle name as your last name on the passport, so get used to being addressed as Mr. Cross. Steven Cross,” Stan said.
Stan had come through for him. Romania, huh?
Stan continued. “I first looked at having you adopted by an El Salvadoran family, and applying for a passport under their flag in order to visit the dying patriarch of the clan, but figured you might have some problems given that many folks speak Spanish, and as far as I recall, yours is limited to high school vocabulary and ordering margaritas. Plus that would have been $50,000 and no EU access. So I pulled some strings and got the Romanians to find you irresistible.”
“I always wanted to go to Romania,” Steven said.
“Don’t. Unless you speak fluent Romanian, you really don’t want to be answering a lot of questions.” Stan’s sense of humor had taken a little vacation.
“Something else has come up you need to know about, Stan.”
Steven told him about Peter’s murder, and the Anguilla angle. The possible organized crime aspect. The article about the CIA and the brokerage connection, high net worth clients, possible foreknowledge of 9/11 and using it to turn a profit.
He sensed that Stan was unnerved. He was an attorney, not a black ops commando, and there were limits to what he could handle.
Stan succinctly cut to the chase. “People are being murdered for looking into Griffen, and helping you with the site? And you think it’s possible the CIA is somehow involved?”
“That’s the way it looks right now. There’s so much new information coming at me it’s getting complicated to figure out. Thank goodness I’m dead for the time being.”
“Do you believe there’s any danger to me? I had my friend call HS, but he hasn’t heard back. Probably because they believe you’re dead, so why continue with an investigation on a dead man...” Stan was thinking out loud.
“I think you’re safe. They got to Peter through my laptop. I’ve never sent you any e-mails. There’s no connection, other than our past involvement, and that's untraceable.” Steven reassured him. All his past work with Stan had gone through a California licensed affiliate firm, and Stan's name wasn't on any of the paperwork.
“Homeland Security can’t be involved in the killings. That’s too way out. But if you’re right about an organized crime element, then you may have bigger problems than the government.”
“That occurred to me.”
“What do you plan to do next? I’ll have the credit card for you in the next couple of days, and the passport in about a week, assuming you get me the photos early tomorrow,” Stan reminded him.
“I’m not sure. You’ll be the first person to know when something dawns on me.”
Steven hadn’t quite figured what came next.
Focal Point: Chapter 2
Halfway across the country, Spyder pushed back from the computer desk, pinching the bridge of his nose to dispel the residual tension. This was ugly, and getting worse. Setting up a debunking site against the likes of Griffen meant Bowman would need to be extremely careful, and require a lot of coaching. If he was up against professionals he didn’t stand much of a chance, although he was a quick learner and did have the military background…which was something.
He rolled over to his small kitchen; sparse, simple, meticulously clean. His powerful arms effortlessly drove the wheels on either side of his chair, a tribute to forty-five minutes of morning weights and isometric exercise, every day of the year. The notion of being an invalid or a burden had driven him to construct an existence where he was wholly self-sufficient, able to fend for himself in every way, with his upper body compensating for the wasted lower appendages that served as a harsh reminder of how quickly things could go wrong in the field.
It had been a while since Spyder had been out of ‘the world’; the inside term for clandestine operations used by those in the business. His last gig as an operative had ended poorly, with him narrowly escaping termination at the hands of some angry arms dealers in Nigeria. Eighteen years without any significant wounds, and then, bam, the walls fall in. The wrong local contact had leaked the wrong info in the wrong bar, and unbeknownst to him, alarm bells had gone off and a decision had been made to be safe rather than sorry.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t considered the very real danger element of the job. Hell, that had been a big draw for him. When he wasn’t doing deep cover, he went stir crazy; normal life being a tedious imitation of his covert existence.
He’d been like that since his teens; an adrenaline junky and a loner. In the quiet periods he would wonder if the job had been made for him, or he’d been made for the job. In the end it was all the same. Spyder did things nobody else wanted to do, in places nobody wanted to go, with the handy excuse for virtually any behavior that he was doing it for his country. It had started out of college, when he’d been recruited by a ‘talent scout’ tipped off by one of his professors. He’d never even considered saying no.
Of course there’d been sacrifices, but nothing he wasn’t prepared for. No woman in her right mind wanted to be with a guy who disappeared for six months at a time with no explanation or warning, so he never had any great stabilizing force to keep him grounded. His parents had long since passed away, so he was the ideal, no-strings-attached asset; smart, savvy, clinically efficient, possessed of a photographic memory, and with zero encumbrances.
Some would think being an agent had taken a huge toll on his personal life, but that had been a trade-off he’d long been comfortable with, and
worth the price paid. Then again, he’d never envisioned himself taking two slugs in the back as his car raced away from a blown meeting in the jungle. The embassy had gotten him out on a private plane in the dead of night, a staff doctor having stabilized his shock and temporarily stemmed the blood loss. Three operations had failed to restore his mobility, even though they’d employed the latest techniques. Those were the breaks. Sometimes your number was just up. At least he was alive, albeit a casualty of a silent war nobody knew or cared about.
Now his existence was limited to his condo, his consulting work for several large corporate espionage companies, and cursory interplay with his fellow man via his screen and keyboard. He’d come to a compromise with the planet, taking a generous retirement package that allowed him the freedom to exist as he liked; which happened to be alone, save for an old parrot named Rusty, and surrounded by bookcases filled with arcane tomes on obscure topics like encryption, financial fraud, forensics and cryptography. His housekeeper came in once a week, his groceries were delivered twice a week. He kept things basic.
It worked for him.
Spyder had enjoyed his involvement in the Group, finding the intellectual titillation a welcome diversion from mundane vocational chores involving corporate surveillance, background checks, and white collar larceny. It was hokey, but they were a sort of extended family; a support group of sorts for what he recognized was his stint as an obsessive-compulsive shut-in.
This Bowman’s drama had blown his carefully crafted veneer of disinterested control apart. He was back in the world, even if it was only from the sidelines this time around. But most importantly, the game was afoot, and he felt his mind darting automatically down a checklist of survival tactics, his breath quickening in anticipation of the thrill of the chase to come.
He could keep Bowman ahead of whatever was heading his way. Shit, he’d been one of the best. The least he could do was to steer Bowman clear of rookie mistakes that could cost him any thin advantage he might still have.
He opened his fridge, and reaching for a soda, realized his hand was shaking almost imperceptibly. But the tremor was there.
Spyder closed the door, cracked the pull tab, and took a deep breath.
For the first time in four years he felt energized, in play again. Vital.
Focal Point: Chapter 3
7:30 p.m.. Long day, but time was wasting. There were a lot of things that needed doing, and Steven’s appearance remained a problem. Once they figured out he wasn’t dead, he had to assume they’d put the full court press on locating him. He would have to use the slender lead he had to maximum advantage.
Time for a haircut. He drove down PCH into Solano beach, where the atmosphere was considerably more animated and less genteel than Carlsbad. Tattoo parlors, surf shops and counter-culture apparel stores abounded. The area had the ambiance of an MTV video, with hosts of wannabe gangsta suburban kids with elaborate piercings and full sleeve tattoos skateboarding down the sidewalks.
Jockeying for somewhere to leave the little Mazda truck, he spotted an opening on the street adjacent to a group of questionable looking retail stores. Fortuitously, he parked in front of a hair salon; Ripped Curl, which featured a tribal art icon of a breaking wave being surfed by a dreadlocked stick figure wielding scissors. Steven figured that was probably as good as any. He went in. A cacophony of angry-sounding rock music blared from speakers mounted in each corner of the small reception area, and a flat screen TV on the wall featured footage of motorcycles doing aerial gymnastics. A knockout receptionist with a pierced nose looked up from her college textbook.
“Hi.”
Steven smiled into her deep, green eyes. “Hi.”
“Can I help you with something?” Tongue pierced, too.
“Yes,” Steven said. “I wanted to get a haircut, maybe some color.”
“You want a trim or something radical?” she asked.
“Radical. I’m sick of this look.”
“Whatever. I know the feeling. Let me see if Ricky’s still here.” She got up and walked into the back of the salon. Steven noted how her baby-blue miniskirt barely covered her perfectly sculpted buttocks.
Eight percent body fat. Six-inch high black foam flip-flops. Very tanned, very long, very smooth legs – going all the way up to the top. A thong. A tattoo of barbed wire around one ankle, no doubt symbolizing the extraordinarily oppressive life she’d been forced to lead by her dictatorially repressive parents in her brief sojourn on the planet.
She returned with a tall man with ebony-cum-purple hair wearing all black. Thumb rings. Eyebrow ring.
Ricky, no doubt – he went on to quasi sing-song, in effeminate tones: “Well, hello. I’m Ricky; call me Rico, like rico suave. Melanie says you want to get funky, no?” Ricky clearly got funky early and often. Ah well, as young Melanie said – whatever…
“I want to go short, and maybe go darker.”
Ricky clapped his hands in approval. “You come on back, then, and I’ll hook you up. Mel, girl, could you rinse him while I clean up my station?”
“Whatever.”
They walked to the back of the salon, where ‘Mel’ washed his hair in an absentminded way. She was probably high as a kite on something. Smelled good, though; like vanilla, the ocean, and puppies. He noted her baby doll T-shirt was unconstrained by any bra or other old-fashioned contrivance. Mel was a modern girl. And it was a little cold. Brrrr. Smoking hot Mel being wasted here... Let me take you away from all this...I have a wildly economical and practical mini-truck. A room with orange shag carpet and daily maid service. Run away with me...
Ricky, on the other hand, was all about hair. “Okay, handsome, how short is short? You have thick hair, so we don’t have any problems there. Maybe a surfer buzz? That might be kind of rad.”
Steven resisted uttering a token ‘whatever’.
Barely.
“Maybe a half an inch long – surfer cut’s fine. Also go dark…” Steven supposed he didn’t much care what Ricky did. With his hair. Within reason.
“Dark brown?”
“Yeah.”
“I would have said bleach it if you really want to do something fun. Or maybe dye it black. But if it’s dark brown you want, you got it.” Ricky studied his face for a few moments. “So why the big change? That’s a pretty different look.” Ricky was somewhat chatty.
“Time for things to change, is all.” Steven was not somewhat chatty.
Ricky took the hint and worked in flamboyant silence. The cut took only a few minutes, the color almost an hour. The end result looked back at him from the mirror. He almost didn’t recognize himself. He resembled a mid-thirties surf punk. Except the goatee growing in made him look a little older, or rather harder.
“Ricky, you’re a genius. How much do I owe you?”
“$30 for the cut, $70 for the dye, hundred even. Pay Mel on the way out.” Ricky was obviously interested in getting out of there. It was after nine p.m.. Places to go.
At the front of the shop, Steven gave Melanie $130.
“Thirty’s for Ricky.”
“Yeah. I got that.” Charming Melanie. A people person.
She cocked her head and studied his new persona. “You look good. Ricky did a great job. It’s a cool look for you.”
Surprise, surprise. Fair Melanie was a young lady of many layers, apparently. Or buzzed out of her mind on Dilaudid. Either way, he’d take the compliment. It was always nice to be flirted with by a scantily clad hottie half your age.
“Thanks. See you around.” He left the store. Were he ten years younger, he’d probably have been stupid enough to find out more about young Mel, maybe take her out for a drink. She looked like she could teach him a trick or three. But he had other things he needed to attend to. Couldn’t be spending his time chasing the local surf ghetto chicks, now, could he? Still, that thong...
He got into his little Mazda truck, inspected himself in the rear view mirror, and laughed out loud for the first time in a week.
&n
bsp; Focal Point: Chapter 4
The next morning, Steven’s first chore was to get the passport photos, which he did after checking the market. Thirty minutes later, and thirty dollars lighter, he had them – so he made a call and arranged to meet Stan at a fast food restaurant down the street from Stan’s house.
Steven arrived first and sat in one of the booths facing the door. Stan got there a few minutes later. He looked around the place, eyes passing over Steven and looking elsewhere, and then returning to him slowly, narrowing...
“Steven?”
“Call me Vlad,” Steven joked.
“That’s an amazing transformation. Really unbelievable. Oh, I’ve got a present for you.” Stan handed him a box. The latest model Blackberry. “I hooked it up to a service provider using the company account. All the bells and whistles.”
“That’ll come in handy,” Steven said. “Appreciate it.”
Stan shrugged. “No worries.” He paused, studying Steven carefully. “I just can’t get over the new you. What a transformation.”
“That’s the whole idea. Here are the photos, color. Four of them, as requested.” Steven handed him the small envelope.
They discussed the events of the prior day, and after several cups of coffee both were fidgety and anxious to leave. There wasn’t a lot left to discuss that hadn’t already been covered.
Next checklist item was the watch.
Zero Sum Page 14