Intrusion (A Chris Bruen Novel Book 2)

by Reece Hirsch

  Chris had only had a moment or two in the alley to get a look at the man with the gun, but he would have no trouble recognizing him. He had a round face with bland, even features and black hair that was neatly cut but still fell down over his forehead. The man wouldn’t have been memorable at all but for the grim set of his mouth into a tiny slot. It was the expression of concentration that someone might make while taking aim through the scope of a rifle.

  Chris took Zoey by the elbow and steered her down the steps of the nearby Embarcadero BART station.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Someplace safer than here.”

  31

  As Chris drove into Marin County with Zoey, he was struck, as he always was, by the sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. Whoever had decided to paint the bridge orange vermilion had known what they were doing. Even after all his years in the city, it was still dazzling to see the “International Orange” spires against the backdrop of the blue of the bay and the browns and greens of the Marin Headlands.

  “I hope your friend was right about the key to that place in Stinson Beach,” Chris said.

  “Should be where she said it is.”

  “I just wish that we had a copy of that flash drive,” Chris said. “It’s the one thing that might have actually given us some leverage in this situation.”

  “Even if you had the flash drive, what would you do with it? Threaten to disclose classified materials? Sure, I didn’t have a problem with it, but I don’t see you going all Edward Snowden.”

  “If my government isn’t willing to protect me from a hit man, then I’m no longer all that concerned about embarrassing my government.”

  “Now you’re talking,” she said.

  “I just can’t believe that they would leave us twisting in the wind like that,” Chris said. “They understand what we’re up against.”

  “It’s all about plausible deniability. It doesn’t mean they won’t do anything about it. They just won’t acknowledge us.”

  “Right.” Chris nodded. “So who else can we turn to? The law firm can’t help us. Not with this.”

  “What about Zapper?”

  “We can try to reach out to Saperstein and Zapper, but I think they’re on the same page with the State Department now. I’m not sure they’d be willing to acknowledge our story either.”

  “But Saperstein has the resources to help, and they don’t have to issue a press release about it. Our lives are in danger because you completed the assignment that he sent you on. You’ve been his trusted adviser for years. He should step up.”

  “Maybe he would if I asked,” Chris said. “But think about the hackers we’re up against—what they’ve done already. The more people we try to involve in hiding us, the more danger we’re in.”

  “Probably right,” said Zoey. “If Zapper can’t protect its most precious corporate secrets, then how are they going to protect the location of our hideout?”

  Chris slipped a Bach CD into the dashboard player, and the small space filled with the mellifluous groan of Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major as performed by Yo-Yo Ma. Even when the world seemed to be spinning off its axis, Bach’s compositions restored the illusion that there was some kind of order to life, some perfect equipoise between thought and feeling, contemplation and action.

  “That’s nice,” Zoey said. “But in a half hour I’m going to want to hear some Buzzcocks.”

  Chris pulled onto Highway 1, and soon they were on the narrow, winding road through canyons and gulches that led to Stinson. Outside the passenger window, the vine-laced cliffs raced by so fast and close that the eye could not focus.

  They came over a crest and looked down on a long, verdant canyon that tumbled to the Pacific, which was pocked like pebbled glass under a low and cloudy sky. The road began to slowly wind downward in a queasy roller-coaster ride. Each roadside sign warning of turns ahead was more twisted and contorted than the last.

  “Have you ever been to this place before?” Chris asked.

  “The house? No, but I’ve heard Krissa talk about it so much that I feel like I have. She loves it out here. She liked to come here when she was in a dark mood.”

  “I can see why,” Chris said.

  They were on the main drag of Stinson Beach, which consisted of about a dozen funky mom-and-pop businesses just a hundred yards away from the beach and the relentlessly crashing waves. They rolled through the town and, before they even had time to comment on how small it was, had reached the other side.

  “Here,” Zoey said, pointing at a dirt path.

  They followed the rutted road through the pines and up the hill to a clapboard cabin. It once had been white, but the paint was coming off.

  He parked the car, and Zoey led him around to an overgrown garden in the back. She went directly to a large gray stone in a patch of begonias that was engraved with the words “Give Up,” mocking the vapid positivity of New Agey Zen garden stones. A tabby slunk away into the undergrowth at their approach.

  She lifted up one edge of the stone and reached underneath. She came up with a key and smiled.

  They returned to the front of the house and stepped onto the creaking front porch. Chris looked back down the path to see if anyone was observing them entering, but he saw no one, just the pines and eucalyptus trees swaying in the gusting wind. Over the treetops, past the main road, he could see that the sky had turned nearly black on the horizon, and the rain was falling far away, evidenced only as faint, pale etchings on the darkness.

  The key turned in the lock, and Zoey led the way.

  The air in the cabin was stale and still. The interior was nicer than he would have guessed from outside. There were a few worn but comfortable-looking pieces of furniture, two bedrooms, and a small flat-screen TV. A stone fireplace blackened by smoke stains occupied most of the rear wall. A kitchen window in the back looked out on the pleasant overgrown garden, the kind that appeared to have been consciously cultivated to look wild and unkempt.

  Chris went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and was greeted by a pungent smell.

  “We’re going to need some provisions,” he said. “And we’ll have to clean this thing out.”

  “Krissa’s not much of a housekeeper,” Zoey said.

  Chris removed his Glock 19 pistol from his computer bag, loaded it, and laid it on the kitchen table.

  “I didn’t realize that you were carrying that,” Zoey said.

  “Does it make you feel better or worse that I have it?”

  “I’ll think about that and get back to you. What are you going to do with a gun anyway?”

  “For someone who has put as many people in jail as I did at the DOJ, it’s pretty much mandatory. I have a permit for it.” Chris stood in the living room and turned in a circle. “As a place to hide out, this is pretty good.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But I’ve been thinking about something you said.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “You were probably right that Zapper couldn’t hide the location of this place even if they knew it. The PLA no doubt has a team of hackers supporting this hit man, and they are highly skilled. With the PLA’s sophistication and unlimited resources, they can get whatever they want.”

  “Right. So?”

  “To hide, we’d have to stay entirely off the grid, and that’s not an easy thing to do for an extended period.”

  “So what are you saying? We’re no match for a professional killer backed by the resources of the PLA, so let’s give up?”

  “No, I’m saying that maybe we don’t wait for him to find us. Maybe we lead him here.”

  “And do what, then? Kill him?”

  Chris didn’t respond.

  “Even if we did, wouldn’t they just send another hired killer after us?”

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  “You know how y
ou’re sounding?”

  Chris looked at the pistol, then back to her. “Right now it’s him or us, so how about if we make it him?”

  Zoey flashed a nervous smile. “Sometimes I forget that you are a badass, Chris Bruen.” She paused, a thoughtful look crossing her face. “You said you thought we couldn’t go completely off the grid. What if we could?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know someone who’s been living off the grid for years. From an electronic-surveillance perspective, he’s a ghost. And I know how we could join him if we wanted to.”

  “Who is this person?”

  “Damien Hull.”

  “Damien Hull! We convicted him under the ECPA when I was at Justice. He’s been on the lam for—what?—three years?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You really expect me to leave my life and career behind and go underground like a fugitive?”

  “At least you’d have a life. And when things have settled down and the Chinese have stopped sending hit men to take us out, maybe we could come back.”

  Chris was silent for a while, stalking about the house and getting his head around their limited options. Finally, he said, “If we were to go off the grid, how would we go about it?”

  “It takes time to reach Damien and for him to respond. Maybe a week, ten days.”

  “If we stop this guy who’s coming for us, it might buy us that much time before the PLA could send someone else.”

  “I’ll reach out to Damien, start the process,” Zoey said.

  “I reserve the right not to go.”

  “Damien won’t like it if you back out.”

  “I can live with that,” Chris said. “But if we draw that hit man out here to Stinson Beach, you need to leave,” Chris said. “I’m the primary target. You don’t have to be here.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before,” Zoey said. “And you remember how it ended, right? I’m not leaving you to face this alone. We’re better as a team.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m sure. Remember he killed a friend of mine. It’s on me that I brought that flash drive to Geist’s apartment. I have to help make this right the only way that I know how.”

  “This man is a professional, and we’re not. This will probably not end well.”

  “All the more reason for me to stay. At least there will be two of us. And if I left you to face him alone, I don’t think I could live with myself. So there’s really nothing to talk about, is there?”

  “I guess not,” Chris said with a sigh. “Sometimes I forget that you’re a badass too.”

  32

  Chris walked down the long dirt driveway to the main road and then back into the town of Stinson Beach. The air was humid and moist, a harbinger of a coming storm. Lightning ripped the sky in the distance, and he could detect the ozone in the air, like cordite after a gunshot. He hoped that he could make it back to the cabin before the rain swept in.

  In a community this small, people noticed visitors who were not tourists. That was okay, because Chris wanted to be seen and remembered. He passed a surf shop with a longboard leaning against a sign that bore the outline of a shark with a bar drawn through it: no sharks. He had once known an attorney who had kept a sticker with that same logo on his office computer. Since they were both working at one of the world’s largest law firms, Chris had always considered it a bit of wishful thinking.

  After passing an ice-cream shop and a gas station, Chris arrived at a place called Dallesandro’s, which looked like a country store. An elderly man with a thick mane of white hair sat on a stool behind the register. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a richly colored flannel shirt. He looked up from the crossword puzzle book that he was working and gave Chris a nod that seemed to say, You’re not a local.

  Chris stocked up on provisions for the cabin—soda, cold cuts, cheese, bread, and beer. While he and Zoey did need all of those things, the main point of the visit was to use his debit card for the purchase—the equivalent of a homing beacon for PLA hackers. The State Department as well . . . if they were interested in knowing where he’d gone. And if that wasn’t enough, Chris had also put the SIM card back in his cell phone.

  “Looks like a big storm coming,” Chris said to the man behind the counter.

  “We’re used to ’em.” As he rang up the last of the groceries, he added, “You look like you’re settling in for a while.”

  “Yeah. My friend and I are staying up the road. The cabin off that dirt road just outside of town.”

  “Oh, you must be in the Jackson place. Is the girl there? The one with all the tattoos?”

  “You mean Krissa?”

  “Right, Krissa.”

  “No, she loaned us the place.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “My apologies, mister. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that Krissa knows that I like Westerns, but I don’t know the new movies. She gives me recommendations. Last time she recommended The Proposition.”

  “That’s a good one.”

  “I thought so too.” The old man studied him for a moment, gauging whether he was the sort to put the question to. “You got any Westerns that you’d recommend? Don’t bother with anything by Ford, Hawkes, or Peckinpah. I got the classics covered.”

  This was not the conversation Chris was expecting, but he gave it some thought. “Have you ever seen Barbarosa?”

  “Who’s in it?”

  “Willie Nelson. And Gary Busey.”

  “Willie Nelson, huh? Can he act?”

  “Well enough. Give it a try. It’s Australian. Like The Proposition.”

  “Those Aussies do seem to get Westerns, don’t they? Must be the landscape down there or something.”

  “Probably right,” Chris said. “And if you like the really old Westerns, you might like Hearts of the West. It’s about the making of the old Western serials in Gower Gulch in the nineteen twenties.”

  “And who’s in that?”

  “Andy Griffith and Jeff Bridges, when he was just a kid. Not the typical Andy Griffith role, but that’s all I’m going to say about that.”

  The old man scribbled on a pad. “Sounds interesting. I think I’m going to like having you here. But don’t tell Krissa that you gave me recommendations. Don’t want her to think that what we have ain’t special.”

  Chris nodded sagely. “She’ll never know.”

  Raindrops began to patter on his jacket as he trudged slowly back up the dirt road to the cabin. The ground was already growing slick and muddy from the rain. Chris was still thinking about the classic Westerns. He was starting to feel like a character in one of those stories. There was a two-bit town. There was a lawman of sorts who was woefully outgunned and unprepared. And there was a bad man coming.

  33

  Tao’s burner phone buzzed. The text message read simply, “Your package is ready.” That was the signal from Ms. Wan that there was something waiting for him at the designated dead-drop site.

  He drove to Washington Square Park in North Beach and sat down at the bench closest to the bustle and traffic of Columbus Avenue under a sky that looked like a science experiment, dark clouds roiling against sunny sky like two warring chemical compounds. Across the park climbed the white Gothic spires of Sts. Peter and Paul Churches, crowded on one side by a pale-blue Victorian that seemed to remind, This isn’t Europe; this is San Francisco.

  Tao had absorbed enough American popular culture to know that northern California was supposed to be a place where people were “mellow” and relaxed, but they certainly didn’t seem that way to him. The locals stretched out on blankets, reading or listening to iPhones, on the green expanse of the park were among the few he’d seen in the Bay Area who weren’t moving at high velocity. Even when they were at rest, these Americans se
emed to vibrate with intensity and caffeine.

  Tao resisted the urge to immediately reach for the package, spending a few minutes taking in his surroundings. He watched the tourists who filled the narrow sidewalks of North Beach, which were further narrowed by the café tables of the neighborhood’s famous Italian restaurants. He surveyed the other park benches, the dog walkers, and the Frisbee throwers, looking for someone to make eye contact, someone who was there to observe him. There was no need to hurry.

  He watched a pretty young American girl walk by in shorts, hauling a backpack. Her long hair was blond and shone in the sun. He smiled to himself, imagined the blood pulsing beneath that perfect, unblemished skin and what it would look like if he were covered in it. A part of him was repelled by these thoughts, but they crowded his mind with increasing persistence. He was changing, and it made him uncomfortable, but how could you despise something that revealed your true self?

  Once he had convinced himself that the park scene was as normal as it appeared, he reached under the bench and found a manila envelope secured there with adhesive putty. He pried it free and slid the envelope into his copy of the San Francisco Chronicle and then placed the newspaper inside his satchel. After a few more minutes watching a group of young men playing some leaping game that involved a Frisbee, Tao rose and walked away.

  He walked up Columbus for a couple of blocks, took a left, and sat down at a sidewalk table at Café Tosca, where he could study both passersby and those inside. With its red-and-black-checked floor tiles, weathered wooden bar, and yellowed, turn-of-the-previous-century framed portraits, the café seemed to celebrate its past, wearing its history—or what passed for history in the US—on its sleeve.

  He enjoyed the rain-scented breeze on his face for a moment, then tore open the tab of the envelope. Inside, there was a short file on Zoey Doucet, information that might be useful in tracking the pair. Some of it would have been easy to obtain, such as the home address. Other information would have been more difficult to come by, such as her full work history and her most recent debit card statement, which was effectively a map of her movements for the past month.