by Mike Ryan
“You can go right in,” the secretary said.
Stephenson nodded, not even wanting to talk and give off the appearance of being pleasant when he wasn’t. Stephenson walked into the office, closing the door behind him, noticing Lennick at a bookshelf, his back turned to his visitor. Lennick picked out a book, then opened it, keeping his nose in it as he walked back to his desk, pretending to not even notice his guest had walked in. Stephenson gulped, knowing it was a bad sign. Lennick had a habit of ignoring people he was mad at, even when he had something to discuss with them.
Lennick sat down at his desk, putting his book down as he finally looked up to acknowledge Stephenson was in the room. He motioned to the chair in front of him, wanting Stephenson to take a seat. Stephenson unbuttoned his suit jacket as he sat down.
“So, John, how are things?”
Stephenson licked his lips and looked down at the floor before answering, knowing Lennick didn’t care about anything else besides Porter at the moment. He often wondered why the man bothered to engage in small talk instead of getting right to the point. Lennick was an older man, in his early sixties, with a full head of gray hair. He was tall, standing at six foot three, and well built. He was often an intimidating presence to those who stood on the other side of him with an opposing viewpoint. Combined with his big physical appearance, he could also spew out a big, booming voice to match. He knew he could be a domineering type of figure and certainly didn’t mind using that to his advantage if he needed to.
“You know, always something new popping up,” Stephenson said.
“Any problems or anything?”
“The whole world is a problem, you know that. There’s always a situation that needs attending to.”
“Speaking of situations that need attending to, how’s this thing I keep hearing about,” Lennick said, pretending to be stuck at remembering the name, even though he clearly did. “What’s her name? Porter? Cari Porter?”
It pained Stephenson just to hear her name spoken, so he leaned back and nodded, almost looking arrogant to have to discuss her.
“So this former agent of ours is on the run in South Africa as I understand it?”
Stephenson looked away for a second to scratch his forehead, barely looking at his boss as he answered. “Yes, she’s an agent that’s gone rogue. We’re on top of it.”
“You are, huh?”
“Yes. We’re close to getting her. The situation should be contained soon.”
“Perhaps we have different definitions of the word ‘soon,’ but when I hear about four dead agents, and several crime scenes that are now in the hands of the local police because of us, and the person of interest is still not in our grasp, that doesn’t exactly sound like soon to me.”
Stephenson scratched the side of his nose, trying to stay calm, and hoping Lennick would do the same, as he tried to explain himself. “We’ll take care of it.”
“How many more agents will we lose in the process?”
“None.”
“Can you tell me how this happened?” Lennick asked, clearly growing more agitated, though his voice didn’t really rise. “How did we let an agent get away from us?”
“We don’t know yet why she decided to go rogue. Our efforts have been focused on finding her first.”
“Why has that been an issue? Every agent in that program is supposed to have a tracking chip embedded in them without their knowledge to prevent a situation like this from happening. Did she not have one?”
“She did. It apparently started malfunctioning right around the time she went off the grid. It came back on, and that’s how we located her. We sent two agents to get her, and she took them out.”
“So lure her into another trap.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
Stephenson uncomfortably looked at the floor and squirmed in his seat, sure as snow falls in January that the next bit of news he shared would not go down well at all.
“We don’t know where she is at the moment. But we’ll get her back soon.”
Lennick’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t know where she is? How does that happen?”
“Her chip came back online, that’s how we found her. In one of our encounters, one of our men shot her in the shoulder. We believe she saw a doctor to get the bullet out, and in the process, they found the chip and destroyed it.”
“So we now have no way to track her?”
“It’s only a momentary hiccup,” Stephenson answered. “We’ll get her soon.”
“We have a ten-million-dollar lethal weapon walking around the streets of South Africa, and we have no idea where she’s going or what she’s planning? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Stephenson looked away and scratched the top of his head, not sure what he could say to calm his boss’s seething anger. “We tracked down the doctor she used and eliminated him. We’re closing in.”
“And leaving a trail of crime scenes all across the country, I see.”
“It had to be done.”
“Perhaps you don’t realize or understand the importance of this situation here,” Lennick said, leaning forward to exercise his might. “We cannot risk having one agent out there taking out people left and right. This is a top-secret program that has done a lot of good work over the past three years. You better make sure that doesn’t get thrown away here.”
“It won’t. We will find her.”
“I hope so, for your sake,” Lennick said. “Because if this blows up in our face and she lets out a lot of secrets and exposes our operation, guess whose head is gonna roll?”
Stephenson nodded, the implication clear.
“And if that’s not clear enough, I’ll make it even more so. If there’s a hearing on this or the public finds out, it’s not gonna be my ass in the sling, or the director’s, or the president’s—it’s gonna be yours. You’re the one who will go down for this if it’s not taken care of.”
Stephenson took a deep breath, understanding the ramifications if Porter was not taken out soon. Heads would roll. And his would be the first one on the chopping block.
12
Porter woke up, the sun beaming down and hitting her right in the face. She groggily opened her eyes, batting them quickly as she rubbed the sleep out of them. As her eyes fluttered around the room, she quickly sat up, almost snapping at attention like a drill sergeant had just entered the room. She looked around at the bare walls, then up at the ceiling as she tried to remember where she was. She was sitting on a cold, dirty floor that didn’t even have carpet. It was just dirt. There wasn’t a stitch of furniture in the room. She couldn’t imagine that somebody actually lived there. In truth, nobody had lived there for months. It was basically just a little shack on the edge of a poor neighborhood that she decided to take cover in the night before.
Porter then remembered what happened the previous night. She’d asked someone about where to go, who directed her to the place she was now in. She stood up, looked back down for her bag and grabbed it, then walked out of the small shack. Outside, the sun was shining brightly. With all the people moving about, it seemed like a normal day.
At least she knew she had evaded her pursuers for the time being, otherwise they would’ve gotten her while she was sleeping. Now, she had to think about what to do next. She couldn’t just wander around like she had been doing. She needed a plan. Remembering Nails and the passports, that was her first line of business. As soon as she figured out how to get there.
Porter started walking, trying to stay off the roads in case somebody drove by and recognized her. After about half an hour, she saw a large gathering by the local roadside. Intrigued, she started walking over to it. It appeared to be some type of flea market. There were tables and vendors set up all along the road, each selling different types of goods. There were clothes, food, water, gadgets, just about everything imaginable.
One table in particular caught Porter’s eye, though. She stood at the edge of the road, waiting
for a couple of cars to pass by, then jogged across the street to get to the table that interested her. Once she got there, she looked at a couple of the boxes, picking them up to compare.
“New or used?” she asked.
The owner of the table immediately replied. “Brand new.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred.”
Porter nodded, indicating she thought it was a fair price. “I’ll take it.”
She handed over five hundred rand, equivalent to about thirty-five dollars, and took the small box with her. Porter looked around again, observing a small patch of grass between some tables where she could sit down and unwrap her new toy. It was a prepaid cell phone that had data and internet connection. She figured it would come in handy. She then went back to the table, hoping to get a card to put some minutes on it. Considering she didn’t have a credit card or bank account, she had to do things the old-fashioned way.
“You have a card for this?” Porter asked, holding the phone up.
“Of course,” the man answered, reaching under the table to grab a minutes card.
Porter paid for it, then eagerly grabbed the card to make her new phone operational. Once the phone was working properly, she walked down the street a little further to get near an intersection. Porter then christened it by placing the first phone call. She called a taxi company, wanting to visit Nails and see how he was progressing. Hopefully he was ahead of schedule.
After the taxi dropped Porter off at the hardware store, she looked around and waited a minute before going inside, fearful that her attackers had found this place too already. There was only one other car to the side of the building, and she recognized that from being there the previous day, which she assumed was Nails’s vehicle. Porter went inside, immediately seeing Nails standing behind the counter, reading a magazine. As soon as Nails looked up at his customer, he immediately remembered her.
“Hey, what brings you back so soon?”
“Just wanted to see how things were going,” Porter answered.
“Still gonna be a couple more days.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about Jeso’s stuff if that speeds things up at all.”
“Huh? Why not? He change his mind?”
Nails instantly got worried that the woman in front of him went all crazy and started killing people and thought he might be next on the hit list. He held his arms out in front of him to plead for his safety.
“Listen, I can probably speed things up for you and get you your things tomorrow. But honestly, that’s as quick as I can move. You don’t even have to pay me for the rest. Just don’t kill me. I won’t tell anyone. I swear. You can ask anyone I’ve ever done business with. I’ve never ratted out anyone.”
“Do you always blabber on and on about everything?” Porter asked.
“Well, I’m sure whatever Jeso did, he had coming to him. I’m sure you were completely within your rights.”
“What? I didn’t kill him.”
“Oh, you didn’t?”
Porter contorted her face to look at him strangely, wondering how he jumped to that conclusion. “Of course not.”
“Oh, well, in this business you never can tell about people, so I just usually assume the worst.”
Porter shook her head. “Since you don’t have to worry about Jeso’s stuff anymore, when will mine be ready?”
“Should be tomorrow.”
“I expect the price will be dropped to account for the lesser workload.”
Nails could hear the hardened stance in her voice and wasn’t about to argue with her. Especially since he really wasn’t convinced yet that she hadn’t killed Jeso. She wouldn’t have been the first person to deny doing something that she really did.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Definitely. For sure. Yep.”
“Early tomorrow or late tomorrow?” Porter asked.
“Uh, middle-ish.”
“Late afternoon?”
“Yeah, probably somewhere in there.”
“It better be ready.”
“It will be, it will be. No worries.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Look forward to it,” Nails said, showing an uncomfortable smile. “By the way, how’d you get them cuts on your face? ‘Cause a couple of them look like, you know, the way they’re going, they’re kind of…” Porter’s jaws had clenched tight, and she had a menacing scowl on her face. Nails could see that she was in no mood for dumb questions. “Or you know, no big deal. Just forget I mentioned it.”
Porter turned to leave, and she’d just gotten to the door when Nails let loose with another question, stopping her in her tracks.
“Um, just out of curiosity, how did Jeso die?”
Porter turned around and slowly walked back to the counter. “There are people after me.”
“I assumed that. Most people don’t want false IDs unless someone is.”
“They’re dangerous, dangerous people. They’ll kill anyone they come across in order to get to me. They’ve already killed three people I’ve come into contact with.”
“Three?”
“Yes.”
A lump went down Nails’s throat, worrying that he’d be the next victim. He then slowly turned his head toward the door, getting the uneasy feeling that someone was about to burst through it and start shooting everything in sight, including him. Porter could tell he was worried about being the next casualty.
“Don’t worry. You should be safe.”
“How do you know?” Nails asked.
“Because I lost them at Jeso’s apartment. They don’t know where I am right now.”
That didn’t really make Nails less worried. “You know, I can probably have those documents for you early afternoon tomorrow.” Anything that would get Porter out of his hair sooner, and presumably make him safer, he was willing to do. Even if that meant working through the night to get her stuff done more quickly.
“Why don’t you just give me a call when they’re done?” Porter grabbed a pen and piece of paper off the counter and scribbled her new phone number on it.
Nails picked it up and looked at it, making sure it was legible. Then he put it in his pocket. “Will do.”
“And if I can give you a little advice?”
“Sure.”
“After you call me, I’d burn that number.”
“First thing I do,” Nails replied.
“And then if someone comes in here looking for me, don’t admit to anything. I was never here. Jeso was never here. You don’t know me.”
“Already forgot you.”
Porter then walked out of the store, wondering what she’d do or where she’d go for the next twenty-four hours. She started walking, not wanting to call another taxi. The more taxis she took, the more of a trail she left for someone to find her. The only thing she could do now was lie low for the next day. She had to find some place that she could just disappear in. She thought back to Nails saying he’d already forgotten her. If only it were that easy. If only everyone else could have done the same. That’s all she wanted right now: to be forgotten.
13
Stephenson was sitting in his office, looking at a few file folders, when Myers walked into the room. Stephenson had summoned him as soon as he’d gotten done talking to Director Lennick. They had to come up with a plan to get rid of Porter, as well as getting Lennick off their backs. Myers, having a few folders in his hands himself, sat down across from his boss at his desk.
“You wanted to see me?” Myers asked.
“Director Lennick is applying pressure for us to wrap this up quickly.”
“Well, we’re working on it.”
“I know, but it’s not good enough. What was Porter’s last assignment? The one she didn’t finish.”
“To assassinate those three leaders of that rebel political group.”
“Where do we stand on that?” Stephenson asked.
“Uh, right now, it’s been placed on the back burner until we
get the Porter situation straightened out.”
“Let’s go double barrel on this. We still need to find Porter, but we also can’t just stop all of our other projects in the meantime. Get someone to finish her assignment.”
“I will. Right away.”
“Where do we stand on the other thing? With the forgers?”
“Oh, we started surveillance on a couple of the more well-known guys, but nothing so far. I mean, it’s gonna take a lot of time to identify who she’s using. There are so many for her to choose from. Plus, we don’t have a ton of agents down there. It’s gonna take time for them to go from place to place.”
“Step up the pressure,” Stephenson said. “Start hacking into the known guys’ emails, phone records, let’s see if we can identify any anomalies.”
“We can do that, but at this point, I really doubt Porter’s doing anything that she knows we can track or hack.”
“Well, I would agree, but people make mistakes all the time. Let’s hope she did as well.”
“On it,” Myers said, getting up to leave the room.
As Stephenson watched his lieutenant leave the room, he didn’t have a good feeling about what was transpiring. He was worried. He popped some aspirin in his mouth and downed it with a chug of water. He was usually a confident man. Always assumed they would get their target or succeed with whatever their operation was. But for the first time, knowing he was in the firing line if Porter escaped their clutches, he was genuinely concerned about his own future. He knew it wouldn’t be secure until Porter was dead and buried.
Porter was tossing and turning, visualizing killing the three men that were on her list. It was such a vivid dream that she actually woke up sweating, her face saturated with perspiration. She sat up and wiped her forehead and the sides of her face with her hand. She looked around the room, breathing heavily, the thoughts of killing the men still fresh in her mind. She sat on the edge of the bed, trying to collect herself and calm down.