Hidden Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Page 5

  “I get that.”

  “By the time we connected, by the time I trusted you, I didn’t think it necessary to tell you of my earlier doubts.”

  “I get that, too.” She brings her cup to her lips, sipping from the small opening on the plastic lid. “I just wondered about it. It seems like a million years ago, like a different lifetime.”

  “It was a different life. I feel like I’ve lived eight lives already.”

  “Why eight?” she asks, tilting her head.

  “Because cats only get nine,” I say. The burner cell vibrates against the small stainless table holding our coffee. We both look at the phone before I pick it up.

  “George?”

  “Not quite, Jackson,” the familiar British voice intones.

  “Sir Spencer,” I reply without hinting at my surprise. Bella, however, almost spits out her coffee and suppresses a cough to keep it down. I hand her a napkin.

  “How’s your chest?” he asks, referring to gunshots wounds I sustained in Germany. I touch the larger of two scars just below my collarbone. Two centimeters to the right and I’d have bled out through the hole now covered in shiny, numb skin.

  “Better, thank you.”

  I didn’t foresee this. Every time I think I’m a step ahead, I find I’m actually behind. Not being a spy, not having had years of training in the tradecraft, I make a lot of mistakes. I assume too much. One of these days, I’ll use that ninth life and take Bella down with me. However, I can’t let her, or the pompous ass on the other end of the line, know what I’m thinking. I nod reassuringly to Bella, praying that she can’t read my mind.

  “I understand you’re looking for me,” Sir Spencer says.

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “I’m in our nation’s capital. There’s never a shortage of business here. Ever been to the Hay Adams? Wonderful views of Lafayette Park and The White House.”

  “No. I’ve never been.”

  “So then,” he says, “how may I be of service to you and young Bella Francesca?”

  “Actually, I can be of service to you.”

  “You are impressive.” In the background, I hear the ubiquitous sound of ice clinking against the side of a crystal tumbler. “You never cease to amaze me with your resourcefulness, your zest for life, and your inability to mince words.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “What makes you think that you have anything I need?”

  “I just do.”

  “Suppose that is the case,” he allows. “Why do you want all of the pieces together again?”

  “I just do.”

  “Come on now, Jackson,” Sir Spencer chides. “Give a little, get a little.”

  Bella’s trying to read my face, hoping to figure out where I’m headed with this, if I really know what I’m doing. I don’t want to disappoint her. So I dive in, headfirst.

  “I want to sell you the neutrino process.”

  Now he’s the one sitting in stunned silence.

  Bella mouths, “What are you doing?” I hold up my hand, pretending I’m in control.

  “I was warned long ago to beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn,” I say, quoting from one of my favorite films. I imagine it’s lost on Sir Spencer. “Blogis wants me dead. So does the governor. I could barely handle one person trying to kill me. Now I’ve got two.”

  “At least,” he mutters.

  “I want my freedom. You promised it to me if I could get all of the pieces of the process together.”

  “And…?”

  “And nothing,” I snap. “I get you the process and you get me a new life.”

  “I’m not sure I follow your logic, Cornelius,” he lectures with a keen reference to Planet of the Apes. Apparently he did get my reference. “You don’t trust me. I’ve proven to be beyond a worthy adversary and more than a turncoat of a partner. I’d say you’ve gone bananas, to play out our cinematic metaphor.”

  “A deal is a deal,” I shrug. “I didn’t deliver the process as promised, so you had no obligation to grant me my walking papers. I don’t blame you. You’ve got buyers. I know you do. Syria is a mess, Gaza is about to implode, Eastern Ukraine is a war zone. Between Israel’s nukes, those in Russia, and ISIS’s desire to destroy the western world, you might have a bidding war on your hands.”

  Sir Spencer gulps down a swig of whatever expensive scotch he’s poured and exhales.

  “Speaking of apes and their evolution,” he opines, “Charles Darwin once said, ‘It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.’”

  “He also said, ‘A man who dares waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.’ So get on with it.”

  “Touché. How do you suggest we go about getting the process put back together?”

  “Liho Blogis.”

  “Come again?”

  “I want you to help me find Liho Blogis. He knows where the pieces are. I beat him once. I can beat him again.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with—”

  “Find him,” I snap. “And don’t call me again. I’ll call you.” Click.

  ***

  George probably didn’t expect to see us standing in the lobby of his television station for the second time in a few hours. He was already disavowing knowledge of my phone conversation with Sir Spencer before either Bella or I had said a word, waving us off like we’d missed a field goal.

  “Don’t even!” Bella interrupts. She is getting good at playing the bad cop with George. “Are you that thick?”

  “What do you mean?” George asks with feigned ignorance. Despite his seven regional Emmy wins, he is not a good actor. He checks his watch, on which I notice is a pricy Tag Heuer Link.

  “Let’s not talk here,” I suggest. “Where’s your car, George?”

  “I…uh…I…”

  “C’mon, George,” I say just above a whisper. “Let’s take a ride.”

  He nods at us and then trudges like an angry child to the front doors of the building. Bella and I exchange glances and follow him into the parking lot, where we find him aiming a remote at a silver Mercedes sedan.

  “What happened to the Lexus SUV?”

  “We crashed it, remember?”

  “Oh, I blocked it out,” I say. I’d momentarily forgotten that the day we met, just after I’d told him I was mixed up in some sort of political conspiracy at the prompting of my boss at the time, the Governor of Texas, and we’d been chased and t-boned by some contracted information extractors.

  For most people, a violent collision with people trying to kill you would stick. It’d be at the most accessible part of the cortex, screaming to be recalled above birthdays and first dates, weddings and vacations. Not me.

  For me it’s among the first of a non-stop string of near-death experiences shaping my life over the course of the last couple of years. I’ve seen my life flash before me so many times that it doesn’t even feel like my life anymore. It’s the past of someone distant, a stranger, who maybe enjoyed Sundays falling asleep on the sofa listening to Jim Nantz call the Masters, or sitting poolside while flipping the pages of a great political thriller. That person could sling back a beer and jump in the mosh pit at a Linkin Park concert.

  Not me. Not anymore.

  I open the front passenger door for Bella, close it behind her, and hop into the back seat.

  “The car still smells new,” I say, whiffing that intoxicating odor everyone loves. I smell it for what it is, the off-gassing of the volatile organic compounds in the plastic and laminated foam in the cabin of his luxury German car.

  “It is new,” George glances in the rear view mirror. “When Sir Spencer’s promises didn’t come through, I signed a new contract here in Houston.”

  “Must be a nice new contract.” Bella runs
her hand along the dash like a model from The Price Is Right. She so doesn’t like him.

  “Good enough,” he says, moving the car into traffic and shifting the subject. “You haven’t said where we’re going.”

  “Let’s go to your place.” I pat his shoulder and sit back against the black leather, sinking into it.

  He flips a turn signal and slides into the right lane, just ahead of an older model Mazda. I’d expected him to protest, but maybe he knows better.

  “Why did you give Sir Spencer our phone number?” Bella asks. “Why didn’t you just do what Jackson asked you to do?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Why is that?” Bella presses, turning her body toward George.

  “It’s just…” he glances at me in the rearview, tightens his grip on the steering wheel, and exhales. “I mean…”

  “What’s your relationship with Sir Spencer?” I ask.

  George’s eyebrows press together. He accelerates past a landscaping truck and trailer to our left, cranks the air conditioning a notch.

  “I don’t follow what you’re saying, Jackson.” He shakes his head. “What are you accusing me of?” He slows the car to a stop at the intersection of Allen Parkway and Shepherd. He’s about to make a right into River Oaks, some of the highest priced real estate in the city.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m saying that you claim Sir Spencer didn’t help you out with a network job, despite his promise to do so. But the first thing you do after we visit and ask for your help is call him? I don’t follow that.”

  George makes the right turn into River Oaks, where Allen Parkway turns into Kirby Drive. The thick umbrella of oaks that lines the streets delivers a permanent shade to the street and its wide, root-mangled sidewalks. The mansions that line Kirby to either side are at once gothic and modern. They sit majestically behind high iron fences and meticulously trimmed hedges, the numbered addresses boasted in etched granite or polished brass plates at the curbs.

  This is oil money.

  No matter how many times I’ve driven past them, it’s hard not to stare and wonder what it would be like to live in one of them. They’re like the distraction of a lottery ticket before the numbers are pulled.

  This time, however, it’s not the houses that catch my attention. It’s the Mazda that was behind us when we left the television station. It too makes the turn on Kirby. It’s two cars back and I’m pretty certain the driver is following us.

  Bella squeezes my knee, bringing me back to the conversation inside the car. “Jackson, George was talking to you. What’s wrong?”

  “We’re being followed. That Mazda a couple of cars back. I’m pretty sure he’s a tail. Turn up here to the right, George.”

  “Why do you th—”

  “Please!” I snap. “Just turn.”

  George brakes hard and takes the right, a little too quickly, burning some of the rubber off his expensive low profile tires. He winces with the squeal of it.

  After another quick left, the road makes a slow looping curve to the left, back toward Kirby Drive. George slows at the intersection.

  “Wait,” I whisper.

  “Why are you whispering?” Bella whispers louder.

  “I don’t know. Seems like I should.”

  She manages a smile in the midst of what is likely another pain of a situation for us. I love her.

  “Should I go now?” George asks, his hand on the rearview mirror.

  “Just another few seconds,” I say. “Bella, check your side view.”

  “Nothing,” she reports.

  “All right,” I nod. “George, go ahead. Guess I was just being paranoi—”

  “Wait!” Bella says. “I see the Mazda.”

  “Holy crap!” George takes his hand off of the mirror and returns it to the wheel, where he rubs it back and forth as though he’s trying to rev the throttle. “You were right.”

  “Go ahead and turn,” I tell him and pull Bella’s nine millimeter from the small of my back.

  “Whoa!” George exclaims. “We’re not about to open fire in River Oaks, are we?” He eases the car onto Kirby and accelerates into the traffic.

  “You’ve got my gun?” Bella asks, wide-eyed. “What happened to yours?”

  “What are you two?” George says. “Bonnie and Clyde?”

  “Bonnie and Clyde were wanted by the FBI,” Bella says. I shoot her a look that questions her reasoning. “Okay, bad example. Other than that and the guns, though, the comparison isn’t fair, George.”

  “Other than that,” I add, “the guns, that we both met in Texas, that we’ve killed, stolen, and kidnap—”

  “Who’d we kidnap?” Bella snaps.

  “Me,” George raises his hand while checking the rearview.

  “All right,” she concedes. “Call me Bonnie.”

  “How can you be so nonchalant about this?” George revs the wheel again. I’ve forgotten how high-strung he can be.

  “It’s a coping mechanism, George.” I check the back window; the Mazda is three cars behind us, one lane over.

  “Whatever. What do you want me to do? Do you think it’s the Pickle People?”

  “I don’t know.” I try to get a better look at the driver. The “Pickle People” were contract workers for F. Pickle Security Consultants, a large private holding company providing off-the-books help to a variety of corporations and individuals. Based out of Dallas, it employs a large number of former CIA operatives. It makes the group of spooks who worked at Enron in the late 1990s look like Keystone Cops.

  The governor has sent out teams of them, one after another, since my cooperation with authorities and George’s reporting put him behind bars. I’m ninety-nine percent certain that the “boaters” Cydney and Cliff were FPSC.

  They’re almost always in teams of two, which is why the Mazda has me confused. I spot a driver and nobody else. Then, as traffic slows ahead of us and the Mazda rolls within twenty feet of us, I know who’s tailing us.

  “On second thought, George,” I say, “I’m pretty sure this isn’t Pickle.”

  “Why do you say that?” Bella asks.

  “The driver’s alone. Find the next side street and then park.”

  “Why?” George asks.

  “I know who he is.”

  ***

  The last time I saw Mack Mahoney, he tried to kill me. We were in an empty medieval castle in Heidelberg, Germany. I’d just destroyed what I figured was Sir Spencer’s chance at owning the complete process by which, for the first time since Leo Szilard conceived of the atomic bomb, someone could secretly destroy a nuclear arsenal.

  “The Process,” as we called it, was a heretofore previously unattainable recipe for firing beams of solar neutrinos at a nuclear weapon, rendering it inert. The beam could be fired from anywhere, through the Earth, and, in the wrong hands, could be a real problem.

  The final parts were on a hard drive. I’d shot a hole through it. Mack got angry and put a hole through me. Sir Spencer returned the favor, for some reason, and nearly killed Mack. Both of us survived. And here we are again. Face to face.

  “Losing a step, Mack?” I glance down at his prosthetic leg, aware of my discourtesy as he walks toward me. He’s parked parallel to the curb behind George’s Mercedes. I’m leaning against the rear of the car, the nine millimeter returned to the small of my back.

  “Amputee joke, Jackson?” He stops a step short of normal conversational distance.

  I purse my lips and shake my head. “Not at all. A commentary on your tailing technique.”

  “I wanted you to spot me,” he says, licking his lips. They’re devoid of color, a reminder of the slow spread of his vitiligo, a virus that robs his skin of its pigment in random patches.

  “You succeeded.”

  “Hmmmph,” he grunts. He�
��s thinner than I remember him. His shoulders are still as broad, his forearms as thick with muscle, though he’s lost some of his girth. His neck is thinner and bears the scar of a tracheotomy tube. His hair is close cropped, in keeping with his military training.

  Mack glances past me and into the car. I sense Bella looking at us from behind the rear windshield. I didn’t want her confronting him until I knew we’d be okay. She’d known him most of her life and there was too much emotion there.

  “I’m surprised you stopped,” he says. “I tried to kill you once already.”

  “There are security cameras everywhere,” I say, without glancing at the three elevated cameras within immediate sight of our curbside location. Rich people like cameras.

  “Video doesn’t keep me from killing you,” he says. “Security is the illusion of safety, Jackson. You know this as well as anyone.”

  “I also know that if you wanted me dead, you wouldn’t be following me so as to be seen, right?”

  He takes a step forward, offering his meat hook of a hand. I take it, firmly shake it, and look into his eyes. Both of us grip past the point of comfort.

  “What do you want?” I ask him, still squeezing his hand, locked on his eyes. There’s something missing in them, like they’re dimmer than before.

  “I want to help you,” he says with a hint of a smile, releasing my hand.

  “Help me what?”

  “Get your life back.”

  A zillion questions zap through my mind, nearly every single one of them ending with, “Why?”

  “I owe you.”

  My eyes still locked onto his, I rap on the trunk with my knuckles and Bella opens the front passenger door. Mack double blinks at the sight of her, his shoulders hunching forward.

  “Hello, Bella.”

  “Mack.” No hint of emotion. She’s hiding it well as she slides next to me at the back of the car. George is still in the driver’s seat, his hands gripped on the wheel.

  “Mack was just telling me that he wants to help me get my life back,” I say.

  Bella looks at Mack and takes a deep breath but doesn’t say anything.