SIX
Over the next week, I have them out to my house twice. The first time they come together. The next time they come separately. They both say the latter happened accidentally, but I feel they’re trying to feel me out. I don’t mind, I enjoy their company in either form, although I realize it could be a mistake for me to be alone with Matt. The guy has ingredient XYZ—if there is such a thing. He’s so damn sexy! If I didn’t love Teri so much, I’d have already jumped him. Even if he put up a fight, I wouldn’t have cared.
But the trouble is I do care.
The day after I visit with them alone, I check my e-mail and discover that my female FBI agent, Claire Mason, has tracked the van’s license plate number—the van the assassin used to haul his Gatling gun in—and has discovered that a Claudious Ember rented it a week ago from a Hertz in Manhattan. A further examination of his whereabouts shows he flew into Los Angeles the previous week, before flying to New York.
His original point of departure? Zurich, Switzerland.
It probably means nothing, but one of Yaksha’s men, Slim, told me that Yaksha worked out of Switzerland. I tell Claire to fly to Zurich and expand her search. Once more, I warn her to be cautious, to mask her trail, to be wary of strangers.
I only send Claire after Claudious. She made the breakthrough—it’s her right to follow up on it. She knows how well I reward success. Besides, if I sent my other FBI agent to Switzerland, and the two detectives, they would get in each other’s way. Worse, they might call attention to themselves. Claire is the smartest in the group. I trust her to be careful.
Claudious was not careful enough. Whenever I leave the country, I carry several passports and frequently change my ID. Also, he should have removed the license plate on the van, or swapped it with another, and filed down the identification number on the engine. To give the guy his due, he was probably confident he would kill me without much trouble.
It continues to puzzle me why Claudious’s organization sent only one assassin after me. Perhaps they wanted to demonstrate what just one of their people could do. It’s possible it was a test. Perhaps they wanted to see what I could do.
The information on Marko gnaws at me. I hate that he’s out there, especially when Lisa Fetch is still working at IIC. Even if she had quit her job and moved to another city, I would be uneasy about her chances for a long life. Her connection to Randy Clifford is too tight; it was while doing her bidding that he was killed by the hit man. I feel it is only a matter of time before Marko pays Lisa and her boyfriend—the cop, Jeff Stephens—a visit.
I ask myself why I should care. Of course, I have practical reasons to be concerned about IIC. They have a file on me. They know my address. They refer to me as a “person of interest.” Worse, they say I have a “lengthy history.” Does that mean they know I’m a vampire? I don’t know, but I have to find out.
Still, none of this explains my concern about Lisa and Jeff. The truth is, I just like them, and I would hate to see something bad happen to them, especially when I can prevent it. I don’t decide who I care about—I don’t know if anyone does. But I like Lisa and Jeff enough to bump up my visit to meet Marko.
The contract killer lives in Iowa, of all places, in a small town named Fairfield. At least he is centrally located. My source tells me he owns a thousand acres of land outside of town and grows feed corn—for pigs, cows, chickens, not for humans, although people consume it indirectly in the form of corn syrup. He has two residences, one in town, the other out on his land. He sits on the city council and attends church every Sunday. He has a wife and two young children. Talk about a great cover.
I fly to Cedar Rapids. A package is waiting for me at the airport, outside the secure area. In the package is a Glock .45, with two spare clips and a silencer. I’m one of those fortunate billionaires that have set up teams of gofers all over the world, people who are only too happy to deliver to me whatever I want, when I want it.
I rent a car and take a leisurely ninety minutes to reach Fairfield. By now the sun is setting, and I have only to swing by Marko’s farm to know he’s staying there with his family. “Damn,” I swear quietly. I would prefer not to have the wife and kids around—they might cramp my style. But I’m confident I can lure him outside.
For ten minutes, I study the family through an open window. Marko sits with his wife and children, watching a new science fiction TV series. A fire burns under a chestnut mantel and the house smells of roasted turkey and homemade stuffing. There are numerous biblical paintings on the walls. The man himself—who’s known in town as Joe Henderson—is forty-five, thin but wiry. He is six-two, and when he stands to get a cup of coffee for his wife from the kitchen, I notice how fast and smooth his movements are. No doubt he has the reflexes of a cat.
Mrs. Mary Henderson is fifteen years younger, pretty and plump. She wears a tiny gold crucifix, similar to my own, and a cheap store-bought dress that hides her legs. She has a boy and a girl. Both are cute, with red cheeks and bright smiles, and I can tell by their happy faces they don’t have a care in the world.
It’s clear family life suits Mr. Henderson, yet at the same time I note his constant alertness. There’s no question in my mind he was trained by some branch of the military in special ops, and a quick peek inside his mind reveals a cold darkness I have seldom seen in a human being.
But I don’t recoil in disgust. He is a curiosity. On the outside, Mr. Henderson looks like the perfect family man, but if his interior life could be displayed on a poster, it would probably be blank. He’s unlike Danny Boy, the rapist, who took pleasure in taunting his victims. In a sense Marko is a consummate professional—he kills for money, nothing more, and when he’s with his family, he’s able to block his secret life out so well he hardly thinks about it.
He’s like a robot with two sets of hard drives that he uses for memory. Two storage units that seldom connect. The guy would undoubtedly fascinate most psychologists. At some time in the past a switch must have broken inside him and cut him off from his humanity.
He does not appear to mind.
To draw him outside, I use a simple approach. His kids might have better hearing than their father, but it’s Daddy who’s been trained to listen to every tiny noise. Gathering a handful of pebbles, I stand near a window on the other side of the house from the living room and gently toss them at the glass. I throw four stones, each one a minute apart, until I finally hear him rise from his chair.
“Is something wrong, dear?” his wife calls.
“The pigs are squealing,” he calls to her as he climbs the stairs. “I just want to have a look.”
“Should we stop and tape the show?”
“That’s okay, hon. I won’t be gone long.”
Upstairs, I see him move to the window, and I hide by pressing my body against the house wall. He doesn’t turn on the bedroom light, but I know why he’s upstairs. He opens a desk drawer, with the help of a key, and takes out a semiautomatic. I can tell the type of weapon by listening to what follows. He loads it with a clip, screws on a silencer, cocks it, and slips it under the back of his belt.
He’s outside a minute later, standing on the porch, listening to the night. In this respect he is like me—his first line of defense is his hearing. I let him hear my footsteps as I scurry away from the house and into the nearby cornfield. He dashes around the side of the house, but already I’m invisible in the tall stalks. There’s no moon—the night is black as ink. I have to admire his patience, his courage. He knows he has a visitor, and in his line of work he knows that can only mean bad news. But he doesn’t turn on any lights, nor does he run back inside and call the police. He doesn’t want to alarm his family, and he’s confident he can deal with the situation.
I wait and listen as his heartbeat slowly accelerates from ninety beats a minute to a hundred and twenty. Fortunately, I can see as well in the dark as in the daytime, and I’m able to follow his every move. He probably has infrared goggles in his private arsenal, but he did not bring any with him. I understand. How would he explain them to his wife if she stopped him leaving the house? Still, with each passing minute I note the frustration on his face, the tension, the smell of sweat on his skin.
My goal is to lead him deeper into the field, farther away from the house. I don’t want to involve his family any more than he does. After five minutes of sitting, I shake a branch and dash another hundred yards deeper into the corn. He does not hesitate but follows quickly, making almost no noise. He’s an experienced fighter, on all terrains. He has wisely removed his shoes. Any leather shoe or boot, no matter how broken in, makes a faint squeaking sound. I, too, am barefoot.
We play the same game for the next ten minutes, with me pausing to let him catch up, and then dashing away again. I never let him get close enough to hit me with a lucky shot. But I know the game is stressful for him. His heart jumps to a hundred and seventy beats a minute. He has begun to pant, and sweat drips from his forehead. His well-lit house, only a half mile away, must look a lot farther in his eyes.
I crouch low and let him come within twenty yards of my position.
“Had enough, Marko?” I say casually.
He freezes, then scans the area in my direction, his gun held ready.
“My name’s Joe Henderson,” he replies. “What are you doing on my property?”
“Randy Clifford. New York.”
He sighs faintly. He knows now that he’s the contract. It must be a novel feeling for him, to be on the other side of the equation. His heart is a hammer in his chest. He’s scared.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“Information. In exchange for your life and the lives of your wife and children.”
“You’re a professional. You won’t kill them.”
“Not if I leave here with what I want to know. By the way, I have you in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. The scope is infrared. If you reach for a match or cigarette, I’ll shoot.” Although I have no need of a scope at this distance, he’s expecting me to give him these instructions. The flare of a match in an infrared scope would blind the person who’s using it.
“You sound close,” he replies.
“I am.”
“Maybe too close for safety.”
“Be my guest, go ahead and take a shot. Just as long as you know I’ll take a shot of my own and you’ll be missing your right knee.”
He considers this for a moment, then lowers his gun.
“You have the advantage,” he admits.
“Drop your gun. Now, on the ground.”
He drops his gun.
“Kick it away from you.”
He does as he is told.
“Randy Clifford,” I say. “Who hired you?”
“The contract came to me over the Internet. I didn’t ask who was behind it. Like you, I never do.”
“I’m not like you, and your answer is unsatisfactory.”
He speaks quickly. “My broker can be contacted at redsplash1@fastmail.com.”
“That link will just lead to another link. It won’t help me.”
“That’s all I have.”
“I’m warning you, seriously, you don’t want to lie to me again.”
“My broker’s a very private person. We’ve never met.”
“Not true,” I say, and I know this for a fact.
“It is true. There’s no reason for us to meet.”
I shoot his right kneecap with my silenced pistol. A .45 is a powerful round for a handgun, but it cannot compare to the armor-piercing bullets Claudious Ember and I were using a few nights ago. Marko lets out a muffled cry and drops to one knee. His wound isn’t fatal—nor will he lose the leg—but he’s bleeding freely. I speak to him in a sympathetic tone.
“I know what you’re thinking, Marko. It doesn’t matter what you tell me, I’m going to kill you. You’re also thinking that if you hold out a bit, then break down and give me something, anything that’s useful, I might at least spare your family. To be blunt, all of this would ordinarily be true. But you’re wrong to think I’m an assassin and someone has hired me to kill you. I hate professional hit men, and when I cross paths with one, I usually kill them. Also I’ve studied your family, and your wife and children, and they appear to love you, although they would be hurt to know what little love you’re capable of.”
“I care for my family,” he says, breathing heavily. He does think I’m going to kill him.
“Fine. Right now—before your wife gets worried and comes looking for you—I want to talk business. Tell me the name and address of your broker.”
He hesitates. “Rita Centrello. She lives in New Jersey, a small town called Olive. 2112 Oates Drive. She’s an old broad, in her seventies, harmless as a fly.”
“Mafia?”
He shrugs. “It’s not like you think.”
“If you warn her that she’s going to have a visitor, I’ll come back and kill your family. Understood?”
“Sure.”
“IIC. Have you heard of them?”
He hesitates. “Yeah. Before Randy, they gave me a contract for a woman in the Bay Area who worked for them. Michelle Ranker. They’ve given me regular jobs over the last five years. Always paid top dollar. It made Rita and me wonder, you know. To be blunt, Rita doesn’t know anything about them. Believe me if you want, I don’t care. But I asked Michelle what their big secret was.”
“Right before you killed her?”
“Hey, she was in a talkative mood. She told me she’d tell me if I promised not to kill her. What the hell. She didn’t understand how this business works. I told her what she wanted to hear and she swore to me that IIC was working for the Antichrist. That they were preparing the way.”
“How?”
“By making truckloads of money. She said they were spread all over the world, and had controlling shares in more companies on Wall Street than you can imagine. But she said no one knew about them, not really. They were strictly behind the scenes.”
“How do they make their money?”
“I asked her that. She babbled on about something called the Array.”
“What’s the Array?”
“I don’t know. She started crying then, begging me not to kill her. I got impatient and hit her. That was a mistake. She started talking crazy stuff. The kids, she said, she was the one who paid the kids. A hundred bucks a month, that’s all IIC paid them.”
“Who were the kids?”
“Beats me. It sounded like they were a bunch of normal kids. They weren’t psychic, and they knew nothing about the stock market. But Michelle did say they were all from the third world. She acted like she was their mother. She said she made sure they got their checks each month. But then she started sobbing. She said that was her big mistake, that she had talked about them once in public. That’s why they had sent me to kill her. She got real hysterical at the end, I don’t think anything she said was reliable.” He pauses. “You’re not just busting my balls? You really might let me go?”
“You sound like Michelle.”
“Don’t screw with me.”
“Relax. Did you question any of IIC’s other contracts?”
“No.”
“Did you question Randy?”
“I wanted to, but he had a gun. I had to move fast.”
“Was he your last hit?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a contract for another?”
“Yeah. It’s IIC-related. The . . . well . . .” He doesn’t finish.
“You were going to mention the file. I want to see that file.”
He speaks with force. “It’s in a vault in my office. Go in there and you’ll run into my wife or my kids. I can’t risk that.”
“I can be in and out in a minute if you give me the combination to your vault. And I can promise they won’t see me.”
“No one can promise that.”
“See how easily I hid from you? Mr. Marko the Magnificent. Tell me what I want to know. This is a deal breaker.”
He sighs. “The vault’s behind a painting behind my desk. Sixteen right. Nineteen left. Three right. Four left. Then spin the dial clockwise three times to clear it before you try to open it. Otherwise, it will trip an alarm and tip off Rita.”
“You sound like you care for the old broad.”
“She’s been good to me. We’ve been good for each other.”
“Do you work for any other brokers?”
“No. I make enough with Rita.”
“Good. Because Randy was your last job.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“I’m very serious.”
“What if I promise to turn down all IIC jobs from now on?”
“Promise all you want. But know if you leave town in the next thirty years—for any reason whatsoever—I’ll hunt you down and kill you and everyone in your family. If you doubt my sincerity, test me and take a drive to Cedar Rapids next month. Your son will be dead the next day.”
“These conditions are highly unprofessional.”
“I told you, I’m not a professional.”
“You can’t set up a wall around this town.”
“I don’t need a wall, just a few informants. Besides, you saw how easily I found you. It’ll be just as easy to track you.”
He considers. “I was thinking of retiring anyway.”
I hear truth in his words. “The kids?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me what Michelle meant by the Antichrist.”
“How should I know? She was raving. She knew she was about to die.”
I can’t argue. “I’m going to give you two names: Lisa Fetch and Jeff Stephens. If you hear of a contract that’s been put out on them, you’re to alert me immediately.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“A large check.”
“I prefer cash.”
“Fine. Call this number.” I have him memorize a private phone line I keep for such purposes. “Are we clear about everything?” I ask when we’re done.
“I still don’t want you in my house.”
“That’s the least of your worries. You’ll see a light go on in my car when I’m about to leave. It’s parked at the end of your driveway. Don’t speak to your wife until I’m gone.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to let me live.”
“Miracles never cease. Two last points. Did you see any data files Randy had in his possession? Ones that related to IIC?”
“No. But I was given strict instructions to destroy his computers. He had six.”
“What kind of security does Rita keep?”
“She lives with her boys—the three youngest: Mad Max, Slim, Fats. They’re not professional. They catch you and they’ll skin you alive. Please, if they do catch you, don’t . . .”
“Don’t mention your name, I got it. How’s the leg?”
“That’s right. You’ll live in Fairfield until the day you die. Capisce?”
“Capisce,” he agrees. Then he asks, “May I ask a question?”
“Yes.”
“Who the hell are you?”
I stand in the dark and begin to move away.
“Someone you don’t want to meet twice,” I reply.
Back in Cedar Rapids, in the airport parking lot, I study the file I stole from Marko’s house. The contract is on a seventeen-year-old girl from India named Shanti. She was born in Madras but now lives in San Antonio, Texas. There’s a picture of her in the file. That’s what catches my attention first.
Shanti’s face is horribly disfigured.
Apparently she was the victim of a crime that has become all too popular in my home country. Forced into a marriage arrangement when she was but a child, she tried to get out of it two years ago, when she was fifteen. Her suitor-to-be didn’t approve of her decision. Instead of being a gentleman and letting her go, he bought two car batteries, drained the sulfuric acid into a steel cup, and threw the corrosive liquid in her face. Clearly, if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want anyone else to have her.
From the photo, it is obvious Shanti is blind in the right eye, and her file states she has only limited vision in the left. I find it hard to study the picture and not feel sick and angry. Half her face has been melted away. The file contains her street address and a note that says, The mark is helpless, devoid of security of any kind.
Yet the file contains another note. It’s important Shanti be killed as soon as possible. It makes me wonder.
I have suddenly lost interest in Rita and her boys. Inside the airport, I alter my return ticket so that I’ll arrive in Texas in the middle of the night.