Rise: Luthecker, #2

by Keith Domingue

  Parks showed no reaction.

  Howe waited.

  “What do you want from me?” Parks finally asked.

  James Howe smiled, and Parks noted that the Homeland Security agent’s teeth were perfect.

  Howe pulled a black and white photo from the file. “These people,” he said.

  “Never seen them before,” Parks responded without looking, his eyes never leaving Howe’s.

  Howe sighed, wishing Parks would make this negotiation easier. “I’m going to level with you, Mr. Parks. In our group, you’re actually well respected. You’re what we call a “new order gangster”. Howe again waited for a reaction from Parks and still got nothing. “You were smart enough to learn from the mistakes of your less vertically integrated predecessors such as Pablo Escobar and other men like him. You’re also smart enough to spread your risk through increased diversification. You do this by running a very sophisticated illegal contraband operation that started with drugs, moved to arms, and which now includes everything from pirated movies and software to knock off Gucci purses and Rolex watches. Your base of operations is tied to no specific nation-state; your strength is your infrastructure. You build schools and hospitals in third world countries in order to buy their allegiance and cooperation. Your capital will soon surpass the eleven billion-dollar mark. Hell, you even have a quality control department. And you wash it all with money-laundering schemes that, to be quite honest, we’re still trying to figure out. It’s all very impressive. New order gangsters will soon rival legitimate trade in total market value, and you’re at the front of the line. You’re almost untouchable. And yet…”

  Howe didn’t finish his sentence. He wanted Parks to engage. Parks knew this, and after a moment, decided to play.

  “And yet, what?”

  “And yet all it takes is one little man’s actions to bring it all down.”

  Howe waited for Parks to react. Parks was a stone. Howe pressed on.

  “Which brings us back to Eddie “Dollar” Monday. The low rent street thief who set you up, so he could get a better deal from your competition. We know where he is. And we’ll give him to you.”

  Parks slowly looked down at the black and white photo on the table in front of him.

  “The male in the photo is named Alex Luthecker,” Howe answered before he was asked. “And he’s the leader of a terrorist organization.”

  “Those words get thrown around a lot these days.”

  “They are words that simplify things.”

  Parks examined the photo a moment. A grainy black and white image, the picture appeared to be taken by an in-store surveillance camera, possibly from a 7-Eleven. It showed a young man, white, roughly in his mid-twenties, standing at the counter and buying a bottle of water. Wearing a T-shirt and jeans, he looked like a college student. Standing beside him in the photo was a young woman, also mid-twenties, with dark hair and striking features. Parks noted that the woman appeared to be nervous.

  “And the woman?”

  “Her name is Nicole Ellis. She’s a software designer.”

  “You mean a hacker.”

  “Not yet. But we suspect that’s what’s coming. We want her too. They’re experts at living off the grid. And they could be anywhere in the world.”

  Parks examined the photo again. “They look soft.”

  “I assure you, they are not. On their own, they are each quite dangerous. Together, they are a serious threat to national security.”

  “Another phrase that gets thrown around a lot these days. What exactly did they do?”

  “The same thing to us that Dollar did to you.”

  Parks stifled a laugh.“And if I find them for you?”

  “We’ll give you Dollar. And the freedom to go back to running your business with no interference from the government, so long as you keep the body count to a minimum; at least on U.S. soil.”

  Parks sat back in his chair. He had nothing but contempt for men like Howe. To him, their physical softness betrayed their moral cowardice. With men like Howe, power came from deception and manipulation, actions that Parks did not believe necessary if one had true strength. In Parks’ mind, Howe and his kind hid their cowardice behind righteousness and had others perform the more brutal tasks necessary to wield influence. They were disconnected men who, when confronted with violence directly, tended to show their true colors. Parks also knew that it was this distance from the blood of the battlefield, this lack of hesitation to oversee the deaths of thousands from a distance, that made their brand of hands-off brutality extremely dangerous.

  Parks was not at all surprised he was on Homeland Security’s radar. His footprint on the world was noticed by the authorities of most countries, and Homeland Security as an entity had grown so large and so diversified that nearly every U.S. citizen was monitored in one fashion or another. And with the confluence of the Internet and social networking, it had gotten almost too easy for both men like Parks and the surveillance agency to thrive. Parks was also smart enough to know that any government organization with black budgets as sizable as Home Land Security never let you walk. He knew that Howe was hiding something, and that any deal he cut with Howe would cost him. But now he was curious.

  “You have the best surveillance systems that money can buy. Why not find him yourself? It would be easy for you.”

  “True. But recent events in Los Angeles and the scrutiny they brought upon us require that we take a more hands off, less militaristic approach. In short, we are being watched. Very closely. It was decided that it would be a far more cost effective and efficient strategy if we simply didn’t…blur the lines between the classes. I’m sure you understand.”

  Parks knew exactly what Howe was talking about. Ten months ago, private security soldiers from the largest corporate entity in the world, a firm known as Coalition Properties, had attacked civilians on U.S. soil. A Black Hawk assault helicopter had been stopped just short of firing on an apartment building in Los Angeles in broad daylight. It had caused a considerable stir with the media and public, to say the least. Congress had come under intense pressure to investigate, which led to the formation of the Mason Commission, headed by former Secretary of Defense Alan Mason. The Mason Commission concluded that the incident was caused by the actions of one man, Richard Brown, the then Chairman and CEO of Coalition Properties. Brown was arrested, and the largest corporation in the world was fined a barely noticeable one hundred and fifty million dollars. Shortly after his release, Brown was found dead from a gunshot wound, presumably from the gun of a mugger. Parks knew better. A gang was a gang, and as a member, if your actions threatened the set, the penalty was death, even if the gang endorsed your actions to begin with. Coalition Properties had mounted an aggressive campaign to clean up its image in the eyes of the public ever since.

  “You’re not Homeland; you’re a Coalition guy. Aren’t you?” Parks finally asked.

  “What I am is your ticket out of here. Now do we have a deal?”

  One of the things Lucas Parks prided himself on was his ability to spot opportunity where others could not. He felt it was the single biggest contributor to his success. He tried not to smile as he spoke. “I want Dollar first. As a show of good faith.”

  2

  Tibet

  Alex Luthecker stood at the window of his third story room in the Tibet Gorkha Hotel and carefully watched the people milling about the tourist-friendly streets of Lhasa City below. It was February, the coldest month in the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which made for fewer tourists to this remote part of China than at any other time of year. Still, occasional foreigners could be seen, easily distinguished from the locals based on dress and mannerisms alone. But to Alex the less visible details of these outsiders to the region told a more complete story of what was happening here. The tourists, beyond their bright jackets, sunglasses, and quick erratic movements, also brought a manic and chaotic energy to the high altitude ancient city that, over time, would overwhelm and subdue the
older, more peaceful patterns of the local Tibetan community. And this interference of energy from the outside world would continue until all that was here now would be unrecognizable by its current traditions. The ancient city would rise and fall innumerable more times over the ensuing decades, each cycle taking a piece of the past with it, like the ocean waves against the shore. This process of slow but relentless change was the natural pattern of the universe. The Buddhist concept of “The Impermanence of All Things” was not some mystical process but simply the natural order of life—everything that had a beginning, had an end.

  The phenomenon fascinated Alex, in part because he was sensitive to the larger patterns of history, but mostly because he knew that with individuals, the process for change contrasted considerably with that of nature.

  Compared to the patterns of nature, a person’s life was almost immeasurably brief. And it was this brevity of existence that, in part, made people extremely resistant to change, as they tried desperately to hang on to what was designed by nature to be fluid. It was this behavior that, to Alex, made people act in deeply entrenched patterns that were almost impossible for him to miss. It made any individual life course relatively easy for Alex to predict the outcome. To Alex it wasn’t some mystical process that allowed for his ability; it was resistance to change.

  To the perception of most, the details in a single life were a universe, impossibly enormous in number and complex in association to be interpreted as anything but random. But to Alex it was all a connective weave, an easily visible series of interrelated details that if extrapolated back far enough began long before a person was born.

  Alex did not understand this connective construct of existence early in his life. When he was young, the relentless barrage of information he could cognitively acknowledge (that others could not) had proven overwhelming, causing him to withdraw from others. The foster parents that dotted his childhood had labeled him as autistic or troubled. It wasn’t until he started training in martial arts that he truly began to discipline his abilities. His martial arts instructor, a Chinese-Filipino who went by the name of Master Winn, had gone one step further beyond awareness and control by providing both purpose and responsibility to Alex’s perception. Winn made it clear to Alex after the events in Los Angeles: “You can see the outcome of lives incapable of change. However, in doing so, it’s possible that you can give those lives this exact capability of which they are missing. It is this ability, this awakening of forgotten freedom as a whole that many will see as a threat. It is why those who wish to control all in the world will come for you.”

  Alex turned from the window when he heard the door to his hotel room open.

  “I got you thenthuk soup,” Nicole “Nikki” Ellis told Alex as she entered the quaint but charming double-occupancy room carrying a plastic bag filled with take-out food. She placed the bag on the small table in the corner next to the window.

  “Thank you. I’m starved,” Alex replied as he approached the table, immediately rummaging through the take-out bag, pulling a soup-filled Styrofoam bowl and a plastic spoon free, and sitting on the edge of the bed to eat. “I think I’m finally getting used to the food here,” he continued as he carefully removed the small plastic cover off the bowl.

  Thenthuk was a common Tibetan noodle soup, consisting of wheat noodles, mixed vegetables, and yak meat. Once he got used to the gamey flavor of yak meat, Alex found thenthuk quite to his liking.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “Not hungry.”

  Nikki watched Alex and noticed that his hand trembled slightly as he held the plastic spoon. Alex caught the look and replied before she could ask. “I’m fine.”

  “Alex…”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Nikki sat on the bed next to Alex and took hold of his hand. She could feel him fighting to control the shake.

  Not long after his confrontation with Richard Brown in Los Angeles, Alex began to suffer severe headaches. At first, Alex attributed his migraines to the residual effects of seizures that he had experienced during captivity by the Coalition, but they had continued, at times even during the peaceful moments that were a part of his training. So far, he hadn’t told his friends, including his instructor, but as the pain grew worse, he became increasingly unfocused and withdrawn. His friends and training mates, Yaw Chinomso, Camilla Ramirez, and Chris Aldrich, although wary and watchful, attributed his slide back into himself as Alex just being Alex. Nikki, however, saw something completely different. She hadn’t experienced Alex’s past behavior that the others relied on for comparison. And having her own heightened analytical skills, she immediately knew something was wrong. It was Nikki who first noticed the hand tremors and confronted Alex about them. She had used her connections to arrange for MRI and neurological analysis without feeding the data into the system, effectively keeping Alex off the grid. However, the results all came back negative. With the symptoms getting increasingly worse and no answer in sight, it had been Alex’s decision to make the journey to Tibet to seek a potential solution. That Alex had the idea to come to this remote region of the world in search of answers via an intensely vivid dream was unnerving to the more scientific- and analytical-thinking Nikki; and it simply firmed her resolution to accompany him on the journey.

  “What time do they want to meet?” Nikki asked, as she watched Alex eat the last of his noodle soup.

  “Six o’clock.”

  Nikki checked the clock on the wall. It was 5:40pm.

  “You’re going to be late.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “What are their names again?”

  “Chodak and Choden.”

  “ ‘The Dharma Speaker’ and ‘The One who is Devout.’ Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I still don’t understand why I can’t go with you.”

  “Because you’ve done enough.”Alex saw the anxiety in Nikki’s face. He carefully put aside the small Styrofoam bowl, took her face in his hands, and gave her a gentle kiss. “Thank you.”

  As Alex got up from the bed, Nikki realized that when his hands held her face, they had been rock steady.

  She watched Alex move to the hotel-room closet, pick up his small well-worn backpack, and strap it on. He turned back to Nikki, one last look of acknowledgement before leaving.

  “Which one of them is supposed to be like you?” she asked.

  “Neither. That’s who they are taking me to see.”

  Nikki looked down at Alex’s hands. The tremors were still gone.

  Alex gave Nikki a small, awkward smile. “See? I told you. I’m fine.”

  Nikki got up to give Alex a hug but stopped when Alex unexpectedly pulled back.

  “I’ll be back. As soon as I can,” he said.

  “Good luck.”

  Alex gave Nikki a brief nod before walking to the door and quietly exiting the hotel room.

  Alex scanned the interior of Mayke Ame, the small restaurant on Barkhor Street that had been the agreed upon meeting place. The décor of the small café was warm, with a hand-crafted wooden bar top painted in colorful Tibetan tradition and beautiful Buddhism-influenced designs etched deep into the wood. The half dozen tables in the dining area were decades old and surrounded by heavy wooden chairs covered in dark faded leather. The restaurant itself was nearly empty, and it took only a moment for Alex to spot his two guides seated next to one another at a corner table.

  Chodak and Choden smiled as Alex approached. Alex smiled and nodded in return and took off his backpack before he sat down across from the two small, dark-skinned Nepalese men.

  “Would you like some tea?” Choden asked Alex. His accent was thick.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Chodak pushed a small mug of hot butter tea, a local favorite, toward Alex. Alex picked up the odd shaped ceramic and sipped the sweet drink, the warmth of the liquid causing an unexpected wave of fatigue to wash over him.

  “Mr. Lu…Luthecker,” Choden struggled to pronounce. “Hav
e you enjoyed your…stay in Tibet?”

  “Yes. Yes, I have. It has been very peaceful thus far.”

  Chodak and Choden simultaneously smiled, yellow, crooked tooth smiles of pride in response.

  The men, lean and sinewy and nearly identical in appearance, were brothers, Chodak being the senior of the two by eleven months. The siblings had spent the bulk of their lives as monks at the Potala Palace, the largest Buddhist monastery in the T.A.R. As more and more visitors came to the region, the brothers chose to become tour guides, in part for the extra money, but also in an attempt to protect the legacy of the monks as best they could. It was their deep history with the Potala Palace, and knowledge of its secrets, that had been the main reason Alex had sought them out to begin with.

  “You said in your email that you had some questions,” Alex stated, as he looked over both of the brother’s faces. Then, without thinking about it, Alex automatically began to take note of all the particulars that made up the visage of Chodak and Choden. It started with the complex map of hard lines that crisscrossed the skin, the fingerprint- unique array of wrinkles resultant—not only of age and harsh elements—but also by the difficulties of life on “the Roof of The World” as Tibet was known. The brothers’ struggle for survival since birth was contrasted by their incredible sense of peace, however, and it was this unshakeable sense of peace against the backdrop of a brutal environment that Alex believed was the main thing that had drawn him here.

  The brothers will live for many more years, Alex thought to himself, as his eyes continued to analyze every detail of the two men. His brain instinctively memorized and cataloged every nuance of the two men, from subtle movements to sitting postures to the number and shapes of calluses on their hands. Both men were barely five feet tall, and Alex’s photographic observation skills missed nothing, moving on quickly to distinct smells, then to rhythm of breath, and even the age, style, and wear of the traditional bright-red robes draped across their backs. But it was the lines on Chodak and Choden’s faces that told Alex the most.