Dragon Head

by James Houston Turner

  “Money, mostly, and political crap. Emily thinks socialism is great, and, well, you can imagine what Zak thinks about that.”

  “Yeah, that the only people who think it’s great are those who have never lived under it.”

  “Word for word. I mean, Emily keeps giving away all kinds of freebies to strangers, but splits a seam when Zak helps Kai. She’s, like, this super hypocrite, and Zak needs to grow a pair and stand up to her. But he’s first got to quit saying the kind of stuff he’s been saying. Otherwise, we get sent away. So, please, talk to Zak.”

  Before Talanov could reply, a cry of panic erupted from the office.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” Amina began shouting. Her attention was on her computer and she was hurriedly entering commands. She then jumped up and began grabbing her hair, not knowing what to do.

  “Talk to him!” Jingfei said a final time before running into the office, where she eased Amina aside and slipped into her chair.

  “What happened?” asked Jingfei.

  “Everything just . . . froze. Some government office – or so I thought – sent a notice of some money we supposedly owed. They said an invoice was attached . . . that this was their final notice before turning it over for collection.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Jingfei, entering a flurry of commands.

  “I’m really sorry,” said Amina.

  “Seriously, it’s okay. They’re sneaky, the assholes who send out this kind of shit.”

  “Wow, I’ve never heard you swear like that.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just get so . . . angry at people who do this kind of thing.”

  “Gee, I never would have guessed.”

  Jingfei laughed and kept working the keyboard.

  “How do you know what to do?” asked Amina.

  “My dad was, like, this king of the computer nerds and he homeschooled me in everything he knew.”

  “Dude, that is so cool that you were homeschooled by your dad.”

  “Not so cool that somebody killed him.”

  By now, Talanov and Ginie were standing behind Jingfei, watching her work the keyboard like a seasoned professional.

  “You were homeschooled by your dad?” asked Talanov.

  “Dad and Mom, both,” answered Jingfei. “Mom taught us to cook and sew and haggle with fishermen down at the wharves. She was the practical one. She even taught us how to change a car tire. Dad loved video games, computers, and how the internet was being used to monitor the masses. My dad was a white hat who could hack any system in the world.”

  “You said he was killed. What happened?”

  “We were living in New Jersey, in this small town due west of New York, when they were killed in a car crash in rural Pennsylvania. The cops said it was an accident but I don’t think it was. Anyway, me and Kai and Su Yin were placed in the system and got shuffled around a lot. Nobody wanted three Asian kids, especially ones as old as me and Kai, so when the social workers began talking about splitting us up, we took off and ended up here.”

  “Are the cops, like, looking for you now?” asked Amina.

  “Zak pulled some strings, so we’re okay.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” said Amina.

  “Me, too,” responded Jingfei, bridging three keys with her fingers, tapping Enter, then entering another command, then using another bridge command before tapping Enter a final time. “Done,” she said, leaning back.

  “I’m, like, so impressed,” said Amina, “but I have no idea what you did.”

  “I first had to find the rootkit, then locate and remove the executable file.”

  Jingfei looked up at Amina and knew by her blank stare that she had not understood a single word.

  “Never mind,” Jingfei said, giving Amina back her chair. “It’s gone. You’re good.”

  The door to Emily’s office slammed and everyone looked to see Kai storm across the foyer and into the gym.

  “Kai, wait!” shouted Jingfei, running after him.

  After Jingfei pulled open the double doors and entered the gym, Talanov looked across the foyer at Emily lecturing Zak in her office. She was waving her arms angrily while Zak listened patiently, his muscular arms folded in front of him.

  “Maybe we should cancel our pizza,” suggested Ginie.

  “From the looks of it,” said Talanov, “I think pizza is just what we need.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Talanov knew he was not much of a diplomat, so he simply walked into Emily’s office and told Zak and Emily to go upstairs and get ready, that they were all going out for pizza. After a variety of excuses and protests, which Talanov refused to entertain, Zak and Emily grudgingly went upstairs to shower and change clothes.

  An hour later, they returned. Emily, who was focused on her phone, was dressed in a long maroon cardigan over an ill-fitting floral dress. With her graying hair pinned back in a loose bun, she looked more hippie than lawyer. Zak was wearing ironed cargo jeans and a black-and-white striped shirt that made him look like a football referee.

  Talanov and Ginie were standing near the front door with Jingfei when Zak and Emily approached. Talanov was wearing jeans and a bulky sweater. Ginie was wearing a blue denim vest over a lightweight summer dress. The dress was emerald green and her black hair was hanging loose across her shoulders. Jingfei was in her usual black tights and a white cotton work shirt, with the tails tied in a knot near one hip.

  Over the echoes of a basketball game being played in the gym, Emily looked up from her phone when she heard Kai laughing with Amina in the front office. They were pointing at something on Amina’s monitor while Su Yin flicked a feather duster across the keyboards at other desks.

  “What is he doing?” Emily demanded. She pointed at Kai with her phone.

  “Taking a break,” Jingfei replied.

  Emily then noticed the canister vacuum on the floor in her office. “My office door is open!”

  “And I will make sure it gets locked once Kai is finished.”

  “I want that floor spotless by the time we get back.”

  A text message chimed and Emily looked back at her phone.

  Jingfei took a calming breath and with a smile looked at Zak. “I brought the van around,” she said, tossing Zak the keys before noticing his referee shirt had been tucked into his cargos, which had been carefully ironed with a crease down the front. “Ironed cargoes? Seriously? No way am I letting you walk out the door looking like that.” With a growl of disgust, she pulled out his shirttail and smoothed out the wrinkles.

  When Jingfei was finished, Zak began rocking his hips back and forth while pumping his fists up and down in the air.

  Jingfei grabbed Zak by the arm and physically stopped him. “What are you doing?”

  “The happy dance,” Zak replied. “Su Yin taught me. ’Cause we are going out for pizza and I am looking good.”

  “Do not ever do that again. Anywhere. Ever. Are we clear?”

  Zak laughed and kissed Jingfei on the forehead.

  “Get out of here,” Jingfei said, pushing Zak toward the door.

  Zak motioned for Emily, who stopped abruptly when her cell phone chimed again. “Something’s come up,” she said, reading a text message on her screen. “One of my undocumented clients is worried about losing her benefits. I need to hang back and take care of this.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Jingfei said, snatching the phone from Emily’s hand.

  “Hey!” cried Emily. She reached for her phone but Jingfei blocked her.

  “When was the last time you went out with your husband?” Jingfei asked.

  Emily tried grabbing her phone again but Jingfei blocked her again.

  “Jingfei! Give me my phone,” demanded Emily.

  “No,” Jingfei replied.

  “Jingfei, it’s all right,” said Zak.

  “No, Zak, it’s not all right. You guys never go out. You’re always stressed. Some things are more important than work.”

  “That’s because someone ar
ound here needs to keep making money,” snapped Emily. “Now, give me my phone.”

  “Not going to happen,” answered Jingfei. “You’re going out for pizza with your husband and you’re going to enjoy it.”

  “You are the child here, Jingfei, and you will do what I tell you.”

  “Actually, I’m nineteen and legally an adult, so you can be mad at me all you want because I am not giving you this phone. That’s because you don’t know when to switch it off and pay attention to the one person who matters more than all of your stupid clients.”

  “Jingfei!” said Zak. “That’s enough.”

  “It’s true, Zak. She’ll spend fourteen hours a day helping welfare recipients – i.e., total strangers – but won’t take an hour away from her beloved phone to go out and eat pizza with her husband.” To Emily: “It’s a stupid phone, Emily. You’ll survive. So will your clients.”

  “My phone has sensitive information on it – private information – so I am not about to go out and leave it with a teenager in an unsecured location.”

  “All right, then, give me your keys.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Your keys. So I can lock it up.”

  “Give me my phone.”

  “No.”

  “Jingfei!”

  Jingfei folded her arms and stood firm. “I am not surrendering this phone, so you might as well hand me your keys so that I can lock it up safely in your desk.”

  The two women glared at one another for nearly a full minute, with neither one backing down until Emily finally slapped her keys into Jingfei’s outstretched hand and Jingfei took them into Emily’s inner office, unlocked her desk drawer, slipped the phone inside the drawer, locked it again, then brought the keys back to Emily.

  “Safe and sound,” said Jingfei with a smile.

  “I will deal with you later,” hissed Emily, storming past Zak and out the front door.

  Avoiding eye contact with the others, Zak silently followed.

  “He looks tired, and beaten,” observed Ginie.

  “He is,” Talanov replied.

  “We’ll be at the Sour Dough Pizza Parlor,” announced Ginie.

  “Dude, I love that place!” Ramona called out from behind her desk in the front office. “Doggy bag. Don’t forget!”

  “Have you ever known me to walk out of there with a doggy bag?”

  Ramona laughed.

  “See you in a couple of hours,” said Ginie, nodding for Talanov to follow as she, too, pushed open the heavy, blue front door and stepped out into the night.

  The Sour Dough Pizza Parlor was not that far from the community center, although there was no easy way to get there because streets in this part of town twisted, turned, and zigzagged all over the place. Not only that, the location of the restaurant was beyond the crisscrossing lanes of Interstate 280 and Highway 101.

  Sandwiched between a corner grocery store and an office supply, the Sour Dough Pizza Parlor had an awning that looked the Italian flag, with wide stripes of red, white, and green. In the window was a neon sign that lit up the night with its name.

  Zak parked across the street in a lot that was already full of cars. Squeezing his van into a no-parking zone, he switched off the engine and everyone climbed out. The evening was cool and the establishment was full of chatting couples.

  “That awning has the same national colors as Ingushetia,” Talanov said while they were crossing the street.

  “Ingu-what?” asked Ginie.

  “Ingushetia.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “Geography, for two hundred,” proclaimed Talanov. “And the answer is: what is the name of Russia’s tiniest republic, which lies north of Georgia, between the Caspian and Black Seas?”

  “Do not tell me you watched Jeopardy in Russia.”

  “At KGB headquarters,” said Talanov. “At first, recordings had to be smuggled in, since TV shows from our corrupt, capitalist enemy were forbidden. I convinced them to relax the ban by arguing how Jeopardy was actually a good source of American trivia, which would be extremely useful for a spy. Among the agents and guards, we’d have contests to see who was smartest. I was grand champion, of course.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Ginie with a shake of her head.

  “Don’t encourage him,” said Zak, pulling open the front door.

  Inside, Ginie bypassed a line of waiting people and approached the front counter, where a voluptuous Italian hostess had a phone wedged between her shoulder and ear. Without interrupting her conversation, the hostess signaled them to the back of a line. Ginie looked into the restaurant and caught the eye of a thin man with dark curly hair, who hurried toward them when he recognized Ginie.

  “Ginie, how lovely to see you!” the thin man gushed. He kissed her on each cheek, then snapped his fingers for some menus, which the hostess handed to him.

  “Everyone, this is Marcelo, the owner,” said Ginie, presenting Marcelo to the others. “He makes the best sourdough

  pizza in all of California.”

  Marcelo beamed proudly and bowed.

  “What’s the difference between sourdough and normal?” asked Talanov. “What makes this one so great?”

  Ginie leaned toward Marcelo. “As you can tell, dear Alex is a sourdough pizza virgin.”

  “A virgin?” asked Marcelo with a nod, his eyebrows arched with delight.

  “That’s right. His first sourdough pizza ever.”

  “Then you have brought him to the right place,” Marcelo replied. “Come, your table is waiting.” He led them through the crowded restaurant toward a circular booth in the far corner of the restaurant.

  “Your bathrooms are where?” Talanov asked Marcelo before reaching the table.

  “Front counter, turn right, down the hall.”

  Talanov thanked Marcelo and made his way back to the front counter just as the hostess laid the receiver crossways on the cradle and updated her reservation seating chart.

  “Keeps it from ringing when we already have a waiting line two hours long,” the hostess explained. “How can I help?”

  Talanov handed the hostess his American Express card. “The people I’m with are going to insist on paying for our meal. I’d like you to make sure that doesn’t happen. Run a tab using my card. No one at my table sees a check.” He took out a fifty-dollar bill and slipped it to the hostess. “For the extra trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” the hostess replied with a flirtatious smile. She stuffed the cash into her bra, then processed Talanov’s card and handed it back. “Anything else, you let me know.”

  With a polite smile, Talanov accepted his card, thanked her, then turned toward the bathroom at the same moment two brown Suburbans took the exit ramp off the 101. They were following a GPS map on a small screen on the dashboard. Their destination: the Hilltop Community Center.

  CHAPTER 21

  The CIA Gulfstream parked in front of the Asia Pacific Global Enterprises hangar, which the CIA owned and used as their San Francisco port of entry. The hangar was a large rectangular metal shed with an office at one end. Above the door was a lighted sign that made it look like a legitimate business. In truth it was anything but that, with domestic and international secrets shuttled in and out of the hangar every single day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

  Wilcox peered out the window of the Gulfstream into the darkness. For a man who spent most of his career operating in the shadows, he had never felt comfortable living that way. It was simply a requirement for the career he had chosen.

  That choice had been a costly one. Three ex-wives and a drinking problem – according to some people, anyway – not that he agreed, although, admittedly, it was not something he could entirely deny.

  Then there was Danny, his estranged son for over a decade until Talanov brought them back together again. In fact, apart from Talanov and Gustaves, he had no friends. How pathetic was that? And yet, strangely, he knew his work with the CIA had accounted for something, eve
n if his accomplishments were small in the grand scheme of world politics. Simply put: he had chosen this job because it was the right thing to do, just as Danny had joined the Marines because it was the right thing to do.

  Maybe he had done something right, after all, in spite of everything his ex-wives had said about him, not that he could entirely deny those ugly truths, either.

  When the engines began to whine down, Wilcox retrieved his carry-on case and wheeled it toward the front of the craft. Close behind were the poultry delegates, who were grumbling about having had their flight rerouted to San Francisco.

  “See you next trip,” Wilcox told Stephanie, who was standing by the door.

  “Can’t wait,” Stephanie replied.

  When Wilcox narrowed his eyes, Stephanie playfully shoved him out the door.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Wilcox angled across the tarmac toward a nondescript gray sedan, where a young man was holding a placard with Wilcox’s name on it. Sporting a trendy haircut and dressed in a tailored blue suit, he looked fresh out of an Ivy League school. Twenty feet away was a minibus toward which everyone else was walking.

  Wilcox approached the young man. “I’m Wilcox,” he said.

  “And I’m Bradford,” the young man replied. “I’ll be your driver tonight.”

  “Is that your first name or your last?”

  “First. My last name is Tambling-Humphreys.”

  “Of course it is. Well, Bradford, you’re off the hook. I won’t be needing a driver.”

  “But I was given specific instructions.”

  “And I’m canceling those instructions. Give me your keys.”

  “I need to call this in.”

  “If you don’t hand me your keys, as in right now, you’re in for a big career change. Are we clear?”

  Bradford reluctantly handed Wilcox the keys.

  “Smart lad,” said Wilcox, pushing a button on the fob that opened the trunk, where he placed his carry-on suitcase.

  “Can I at least grab a ride back to the rental agency?” Bradford asked, watching Wilcox slide behind the wheel.