The Enemy Inside

FIFTY-SEVEN

It’s been said that a person who acquires the grace to die well has learned much. If that’s the gold standard, I’m an idiot. If I have to die now, I am going out of this world kicking and screaming.

The man of a thousand names has me attached to two electrodes fired like bullets through the fabric of my shirt and planted into the flesh of my chest like industrial staples. I am seated facing him, my hands gripping the wooden arms of the heavy antique chair. With the massive partner’s desk at my back, wired to the Taser and my assailant between me and the door, I have limited options for escape.

I could make a dash for the French doors that lead out into the garden. They are off to my right behind me, about eight feet away. I don’t know if the twin doors are locked or bolted shut, or whether I could bust through them if I launched my body through the small glass panes. But tethered to the Taser I don’t dare try. Any attempt to rise from the chair and he would drop me like a beached flounder and watch me flop around as he sent bolts through me like Zeus.

So far he has hit me with the Taser twice just to let me know how it works, enough voltage to send every muscle in my body into spasms. According to the cops, the official line for those who use them is that Tasers cause little or no pain. Feeling the continued burning sensation from the darts in my chest and the agony of muscle cramps caused by the little devils, I beg to differ. Catch one of the darts in the eye and you will lose your sight.

I settle into the chair and look for opportunities.

“Why don’t you just tell me where he is and we can end this? Or better yet, tell me who has the information on the accounts, the bank records. You’d be saving yourself a lot of pain. If you tell me now, I’ll let you go.”

This is the first time he’s tried that one. He must be getting desperate to think I’d believe it.

We have been over this four or five times already, the whereabouts of Betz and his cache of records. It always ends the same way, with me telling him I don’t know, which in turn is met by a cascade of lethal threats followed by a Taser show as he lights me up. It’s not that I don’t believe him. I’m sure that given half a reason, he would disembowel me on the spot. It’s just that I don’t know what to tell him that will keep me alive. The instant he thinks he’s gotten everything I have, he’ll put a bullet in my head.

He knows that Betz is out, no longer caged at Supermax. I’m guessing he has a source inside. Probably one of the guards. Betz was wise to take out the insurance. He was not untouchable, even there.

Every so often the man of a thousand names waves the muzzle of the large pistol lazily in my direction just to remind me that he has it. When he does this the large bore down the barrel looks like the inky darkness of a deep well. It is old and vintage. It looks like a government-issue, forty-five auto. Something from a past war.

He paces back and forth, as if he were slow-mo moonwalking with the hand cannon in one hand and the Taser in the other. But he keeps a fair distance, about twelve feet between us, so that if I tried to charge him, I doubt if I would get halfway.

He’s in no hurry. He’s feeling safe, as if he has all the time in the world. It makes me think that he’s alone in the house or whoever else is here won’t be troubled if he kills me, hirelings who might well come in and help him or dispose of my body.

In the distance I can hear the sound of a gas-powered garden tool of some kind. It’s not a mower, either a Weedwacker or a leaf blower. A high whine. I can’t tell if the sound of the motor is coming from this property or that of a neighbor.

“Why don’t you tell me now? You know you will before we’re done.”

“Mind if I ask you a question?”

“Sure. I’ll answer yours, you answer mine.”

“What’s your name?” I say.

“Why? You think we’re gonna become friends?”

“No, it’s just if somebody’s gonna kill me, I’d like to know who they are.”

“It’s a fair question. You can call me Ishmael,” he says.

“And I’m the white whale.”

“You asked me. I told you. My turn.”

“How did you get into this line of work?” I cut him off. His questions are beginning to bore me. They’re always the same.

“You mean killing people like you? That comes easy,” he says. “In fact, you keep running your mouth, it’s gonna be a labor of love. And for the record, this isn’t my line of work. It so happens I’m a petroleum engineer.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why? Don’t I look smart enough?”

“Where did you go to school?”

“Why don’t I just give you my Social Security card and a photograph, we can ten-print my fingers when we have coffee later. Why would you care? You’re not going anywhere.”

“You just said you’d let me go if I told you what you wanted to know.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t told me, have you?”

“I’m guessing that at some point you worked for the government. Which agency?”

“You’re just burning up with questions, aren’t you? Well, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. I worked for the government, sure. Long time ago. I worked for an office, I won’t tell you where, but our job was to explore for oil overseas, in remote areas. This was before the age of green zealotry,” he says. “You know the ones, subscribe to global warming or they’ll cut your head off. That crowd.

“One day I came to work and found my desk cleaned out. The division I worked for was gone. They told us we were victims of the peace dividend. Us, along with half of the military and a fair piece of the country’s intelligence apparatus.

“The leaders had all found religion. The concept of war was outdated. The green dogma that passes for enlightenment was sweeping the world. Guns were out and butter was in, enough to grease the welfare skids and keep the entitlement programs humming.

“The lesson I learned was that America had no leaders. What passed for leaders were herd animals. They were out front only because they wanted to be seen. They kept running into trees and off cliffs because they spent all their time looking back trying to figure out where the herd was going next so they could get back out in front.”

“Take it you don’t like politicians.”

“I hate ’em. They come in handy from time to time, if you can pack them in your pocket. Otherwise they’re worthless. They stripped the country bare. Laid waste its intelligence agencies and staked out the position that the United States was invulnerable. Anybody who attacked would have to be out of their minds.

“It took ten years before they discovered half the world was crazy and some of the people in the asylum were fashioning nuclear weapons. As for me, I didn’t care. The experience had opened my eyes to opportunity. I found my niche.”

“Murder Incorporated?”

“You keep running your mouth, I’m going to put a bullet in you. That’s a hobby. I’m talking business. The same people who told us we didn’t need oil were the ones who’d stripped the country and told us there’d never be another war. But when winter rolled in and people started growing frost on their upper lips, they expected the bunker oilman to deliver. I had all those nice detailed maps prepared for the government. Why lock ’em away in some dusty file? So I went into business. Became an entrepreneur.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Say what you want. In the last twenty years I’ve made more money than God. I bought up the offshore oil resources, developed the oil, and sold it on the spot market. It ends up back here at three times the cost of the domestic supply that Washington won’t let anybody drill. The politicians can claim they’re protecting the environment and the taxpaying chumps pay the premium at the pump. It’s a great system,” he says. “Designed for the dull-witted by the corrupt. They say sheep are stupid. They’ve got nothing on the American voter. And they wonder where all their jobs have gone. Maybe they should take a closer look at the people they elect.”

“Maybe they would if they knew you owned them.”

He gives me another look at the business end of the pistol and then pushes the button on the Taser. The voltage hits me like a freight train. In an instant I am stiff as a board, every muscle in my body convulsing, along with a dry metallic taste in my mouth. I rattle around in the chair, banging up against the desk behind me. Visions of shock therapy. There is the taste of blood in my mouth. Suddenly it stops.

I slump over in the chair, breathless, as blood drips from my lip onto the front of my shirt. Somehow I bit my tongue. I think about the cops who use these things for recreation following an arrest. This gives me a whole new perspective.

“How’d that work for you? I can do it again if you’d like. What was it we were talking about? Oh yeah, politicians. I don’t own all of them. There’s always room for growth,” he says.

I look up at him, anger fixed in my eyes. “For a man who seems so bitter, it sounds like you’ve done pretty well.”

“I’m not bitter. I like my work.”

He probably does, but he’s twisted. I would say it out loud, but I don’t want another taste of the Taser from Vlad the Impaler, his own form of aversion therapy. He wants me to talk, but he’s conditioning me to keep my thoughts to myself.

“Of course, I’m not sitting where you are right now. Shall we start again?”

“Do we have to?”

“I’m only gonna ask you one more time. I’m wasting electricity. Guess I’m gonna have to put a bullet in you. Where is Betz, and where are the bank records?” He stands there looking at me, waiting for my answer.

When I don’t say anything he moves a few steps closer. “Listen. I don’t want to have to hurt you anymore.” He lowers the muzzle of the gun half an inch, a measure of his sincerity. “You tell me what I want to know and I’ll make certain there’s no pain. You have my word. I promise.”

“Tell you what. You give me the gun, I’ll give you the same deal. And I won’t even ask you any questions.”

He cocks his head, looks at me. There is something predatory in his eyes.

The flash preceded by a nanosecond the impact of the bullet. It grazed the fabric at my knee and shattered the right front leg of the chair.

I land sprawled on the floor, my head slamming into the desk. The explosion of the round is still vibrating in my ears as the spent metal cartridge bounces and spins like a top on the tile floor ten feet away.

For a moment I’m dazed. A fine dusting of smoke, along with the sweet smell of nitrates from the gunpowder, permeates the air. I look at the shattered leg of the chair, wondering why it isn’t me, if I’m just lucky or if he’s that good.

Slowly I search with my hand along the inside seam of my right pant leg, hoping I won’t feel the wet warmth of blood spreading through the worsted wool.

“Would you like another?” He holds both of the weapons up and says: “Pick your poison.”

“You’re gonna wreck your furniture,” I tell him.

“No, this time I’ll go for the kneecap.”

“I don’t know where the records are,” I tell him.

“But you know where he is.”

I shrug my head, a grudging concession.

“I’m done talking,” he says.

“The government has him!”

“Where?”

“On a military base.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. But I can find out.”

“How?”

“He checks in. He calls me three times a day, my office and my house. He leaves a coded message. If I need to talk to him I pick up, at which point we’d make arrangements to meet.”

He offers a big sigh. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

The fact is, I’m buying time. If I told him that Betz was at Miramar, there’s a chance he’d kill me and try to figure some way to get onto the base himself. The man has connections. That’s clear. This way he needs me to answer the telephone.

“One thing I do know.”

“What’s that?” he says.

“If you kill him, everything he has, all the information, will be released. I don’t know the details. But it’s set up for the broadest possible dissemination. He told me that much. If anything happens to him, the world is gonna know names, dates, deposits, amounts on hand, everything.”

“You’re sure he didn’t tell you where it was?”

“No. He knows if he gives it up, if he loses that, he’s dead.”

I assume the Impaler already knew this, but it sets him to thinking. “Do you know what kind of arrangements they have for security? The military base. How many guards?”

“US Marshals. I don’t know how many. And probably a regiment of military police.”

“What time does Betz call?”

“Ten in the morning and three in the afternoon at the office. Eight o’clock at night at my house.”

“Get up. Get on your feet,” he says. He waves the gun at me, checks his watch. “There’s too many people at your office. Anybody at the house?”

I shake my head.

“Then it looks like you’re going home. We’ll be going as soon as I can get some backup.”

My head is spinning, as I am still on the floor. It takes a second before I process his words. He wants backup. Does that mean he is alone in the house? I can’t be sure. If he is, he won’t be for long. Once he has help, I am dead.