The Bad Beat

15

You spend your entire life pretending to be someone else and it’s sometimes hard to remember exactly who you are. You take on false identities, change your past, your future, your present, and end up telling a series of lies that compound into other lies, until you’re defined by your ability to keep all of your fictions straight long enough to get out of whatever horrible situation you’re in. It’s both a survival technique and the bread and butter of being a covert operative: Being a spy means being a professional liar with a gun, over and over and over again.

So you put on your costumes.

You get your backstory in order.

You examine your exit strategies, you ponder collateral damage and you wonder: If things go wrong, will anyone actually know who I really am? Will anyone pick up my body. It is a life made of repetition, but it is a life that you choose and that chooses you.

And if one day you pick up a telephone in a foreign country hoping to broker a deal and find out you’ve been burned, that all of your backup is gone, that you’re still a spy, because that’s who you are, but that you don’t have anyone to spy for, and then for the next few years you find out that everything you thought about being a spy might be entirely wrong, that it’s all one elaborate game… what do you do? What do you do with your skills?

Sometimes you help people with their problems.

Sometimes you unwind the conspiracies surrounding your life, only to find out that the more you unwind, the darker and more complex the forces at work in your life are, that your burn notice isn’t just an unkind way of saying you’re fired, but a way of saying you now work for a new master altogether.

And then sometimes, well, you find out that you’re going to get to put on a tuxedo and play James Bond.

In this case, you and four other people.

And Sugar.

“I don’t see why I don’t get to rock the penguin,” Sugar said. We were all in my loft getting dressed for the evening, and since Sugar would be waiting in the car, Fiona, who was in charge of acquiring the black-tie attire for our job, apparently didn’t think he needed to be dressed as nicely as the rest of us, since she provided him with only a chauffeur’s hat.

“Because I couldn’t find a tuxedo made of nylon,” Fiona said. “I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“You won’t be seen, Sugar,” I said. “But if you were to be, if things go so wrong that you need to escape, you don’t want to be wearing something easily identifiable. You just want to look like you.”

Sugar tried to make sense of that. “So what you’re saying is, you want me to look like I’m maybe a guy who stole a Navigator, not a guy taking part in some high-intrigue espionage shit?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Cool,” Sugar said. “I’m like undercover by being exactly who I am.”

“Right,” I said.

Sugar gave me a fist bump. “I’m with it.”

On the other side of the room, Sam was attempting to tie Brent’s bow tie and was failing mightily, so Fiona went over to help. It looked positively domestic… apart from the fact that Barry was only a few feet away, busily forging the documents we’d need to give back to my girlfriend Reva.

“How’s it coming, Barry?”

“Anytime I get to use information stolen from Halliburton, I view that as a win,” he said.

“Are you ready to be Henry?”

Barry looked over at Brent and then back at me. “He’s a nice kid, Mike,” Barry said. “He told me about his dad. It’s a sad story.” He lowered his voice. “But he really doesn’t want the money?”

“Nope,” I said. “Just wants his father’s debts paid and he’ll take the education. Everything else is off the table for him. So we’ll move the money to his account and there it will stay.”

“So… ”

“The government will get the money,” I said. “That would be my guess. They’ll seize it eventually if this all goes as planned.”

“Seems like a waste.”

“He made his choice,” I said. “He wants to earn it himself. He’ll get the chance.”

“Just so we’re clear,” Barry said, “if some of that money were to be diverted to, say, accounts of a third party, would you have any issues?”

“I’d be discreet.”

“I’m always discreet.”

“And then I’d fortify your home against shoulder-launched rockets,” I said. “Get some Cipro, too, in case you accidentally ingest anthrax. You know how the Russians love to poison people.”

There was a knock at my front door then. I wasn’t expecting anyone, what with Big Lumpy dead, and solicitors generally avoided my neighborhood.

“You expecting someone, Mikey?” Sam said.

“No,” I said.

There was another knock, this time harder. I looked out the window and could only see that there were two men dressed all in black on the landing holding something long and white. I couldn’t tell what it was from the angle of the window and from the darkness. Usually, ninjas tend to dress just like normal people, but maybe these two didn’t get the memo about the modernization. Or maybe they were mimes. Either way, I wasn’t going to take any risks.

“Brent,” I said, “get upstairs. Fiona, go with him.”

I went beneath my sink and pulled out three guns, for me, Sam, and Barry, who handled his gun like it was made of kryptonite and he had recently begun wearing red capes.

“What about me, boss?” Sugar said.

“If they get past us,” I said, “I want you to act as a human shield.”

There was another pound on the door, and before the person was even finished knocking, I’d yanked the door open and pushed the muzzle of my gun into the forehead of…

“Is that a vampire?” Sam asked.

… Brent’s Goth pal King Thomas, who, after he realized there was a gun pressed to his head, began screaming, as did his friend, but his friend managed to scream and run at the same time, dropping his end of a very large fake check in his wake.

“Calm down,” I said to Thomas. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

“Then why do you have a gun pointed at my head?” It was a good question. I put my gun down and picked up the other side of the check so it wouldn’t get dirty on the ground.

“I take it Brent asked you to make this?”

Thomas nodded. “Is he okay?”

“He’s not here,” I said.

“But he said he was going to be here,” Thomas said.

I stepped out on the landing and gazed down toward the street. Thomas’ friend was nowhere to be found. That or he’d already turned back into a bat. “Thomas,” I said, “it’s not safe here. Brent will get in contact with you tomorrow. Until then, you don’t know where he is and you haven’t seen him in days. Do you understand?”

Thomas nodded.

“And tell your friend the same thing, okay?” I took a look at the check. It was very well done. “Nice work here, Thomas,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“I could have done more if I had more time,” he said. “It folds so that you can put it in a briefcase. That was my idea. I’m good with thinking ahead about how someone might, you know, carry things in such a way as to conceal them.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Like, I could make smaller checks, too, is all I’m saying,” he said.

“I get it. Now go.” I went back inside and closed the door. “Was someone going to tell me about this delivery?” I asked.

Brent looked over the railing from upstairs. “Oh, sorry. Barry was like, you know, we need a big check and I was like, I know a guy who is really good with arts and Barry was like, okay, and I was like, okay, and so I called him and…”

Fiona covered Brent’s mouth with her hand. “Say you’re sorry,” she said to him and then removed her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Brent said.

“The vampire lord almost ate a bullet,” I said. “We have to be on our game tonight and that includes you, Brent. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“Okay,” I said. “Now get your tie right and let’s go. We have ten minutes, people.”

Brent didn’t shrug, he didn’t say anything was like anything else, he just stepped away from the railing and did what he was told.

Fiona came down the stairs a few moments later, just as I was tying my own bow tie. She stood in front of me and straightened my collar, then wiped lint from my shoulders. “You look very handsome,” she said quietly. She looked pretty good, too, in a simple black evening gown that was part Audrey Hepburn, but all Fiona.

“Everyone looks good in a tuxedo,” I said.

“Take the compliment,” she said.

“Thank you, Fiona,” I said.

“Things get close in there tonight,” she said, her voice still quiet, “you protect Brent first and foremost.”

“Fiona,” I began, but she put a finger to my mouth.

“I can take care of myself. Sam can take care of Barry.”

I didn’t say anything. I just nodded once. But when she walked away, I said, “Where do you have a gun hidden in that dress?”

“Be good and maybe I’ll show you,” she said.

Normally, when shaking down an organized-crime figure, I prefer not to have three crisscrossing searchlights pinpointing my location, but when we were still a mile from the consulate and I could see the sky was lit like the blitz on London, I knew things weren’t going to be exactly like my past experiences.

The street in front of the consulate was nearly empty of traffic at this hour, save for the slow trickle of cars pulling into the valet station. It was seven fifteen and the event wasn’t to start until eight o’clock, which meant the fashionable and the powerful wouldn’t arrive until eight thirty. Sugar drove the Navigator past the valet station and there, directly in front of the consulate, and directly next to Mr. Sigal’s empty spot, was a sign that said NO PARKING-RESERVED FOR DR. BENNINGTON. Reva had done well.

There was a short line of people waiting to get into the consulate, which was surprising this early until I saw the reason why. There was a man standing out front in a yellow PRIVATE EVENT STAFF jacket with a metal-detecting wand in his hand scanning each person as he or she walked in. I watched him go over a few people and noticed he tended to take more time on the women, which wasn’t much of a surprise. You make eight bucks an hour, you find your thrills where you can.

“That’s a problem,” I said.

“Mikey,” Sam said, “we get caught bringing guns into that place, it’s basically an act of war.”

Sam was right, but we weren’t going to go into a meeting with Yuri with only our wits and the laptop computer Big Lumpy gave us.

“I’m happy to hide more guns on my body,” Fiona said, which made everyone but me turn to look at her in the backseat.

“That would be bad,” I said, “since Officer Friendly there seems to prefer the ladies.”

“You leave your piece with me, Mike, and then you just give me a sign and I’ll blow a hole in the sky,” Sugar said. “Word is bond on that.”

“Let me take that under consideration,” I said.

Getting past a metal detector isn’t easy. At an airport, it’s nearly impossible because of the kind of metal detectors they use, which are full-body scanners tweaked high enough to pick up a bit of tinfoil stuck to the bottom of your shoe. The wands they use at the airport are also the highest grade possible and can’t be purchased commercially, lest a terrorist be able to figure out how to jam their signal.

So if you want to defeat a metal-detecting wand, you have to hope that the one being used is commercial grade, the kind they hand to guys in yellow jackets outside concerts and sell to private security companies. The kind that are used to provide the idea of security, if not a total assurance of the same.

You can attempt to cloak the metal by surrounding it in gelatin or even slow-drying concrete, neither of which I had in the car. Or you can disrupt the wand’s ability to “read” the metal by creating an electromagnetic field around the gun. To do this you need a strong magnet and the ability to conduct electricity around it.

The magnets on your refrigerator will not suffice for this, and if you don’t have easy access to a storage container filled with neodymium magnets and a good pair of a safety goggles, you need to improvise.

“We need to rip the speakers out of this car,” I said. “And I need everyone’s BlackBerrys and iPhones.”

Speakers contain both electromagnets and permanent magnets, which essentially cause the speaker to function like a piston by virtue of the constant tug and release of the magnetic field. The sound waves come through a coil, and as the magnets piston away, the air in front of the coil vibrates, creating the sound. The bigger the speaker, the larger the magnets.

Commercial metal detectors generally use VLF technology, which is just a fancy way of saying “very low frequency.” The metal detector sends out an electromagnetic wave of its own so that when it hits upon a metal object a current is sent back to the device… and that’s when the beeping begins. To disrupt the metal detector, the same basic principle is at work, except that the field created by the magnets disperses the reading into unreadable garble, provided the field you’ve created is strong enough.

Which is where the cell phones came in. We’d attach the magnets using the voice coils from the speakers into the cell phones. A smartphone like a BlackBerry or an iPhone runs a one-gigahertz microprocessor, more than enough to create the disturbance we’d need. If I’d had a blowtorch and time, I could have made sure of this. As it was, I’d just have to hope it would work.

There were twelve speakers in the Navigator, but four were buried inside the dash, which meant we’d need to do complex surgery to remove those, so instead we’d need to get to work on the speakers in the doors, which required only that their screens be popped off and then the magnets could be easily cut from the coils.

It was 7:17. We had thirteen minutes to make this happen. I didn’t want to make Brent nervous, but I also knew that we had to get this to happen or we’d be walking into a gunfight with not even a knife in hand, just a laptop computer.

Fortunately, Sam and Fiona knew exactly what I was aiming for and got to work quickly on the speakers. And fortunately Sugar had stolen plenty of stereo systems in his life, too, which came in handy.

And by 7:28, Sam, Fiona and I each had our own electromagnetic field surrounding our guns. Not that we’d want to keep these fields for long, since spending too much time in an increased electromagnetic field can cause nausea, vomiting and fainting. Never mind that it wasn’t very fashion forward.

“What do we do if things start beeping?” Brent asked.

“That won’t happen,” I said.

“But how do you know?” he asked.

“Brent,” I said, “I’m a spy.”

At this, Brent and Sugar fist-bumped and both let out a yelp.

“I love that shit, dog,” Sugar said.

“It is so cool,” Brent said. “One day, I’m going to be able to MacGyver stuff like you and be all ‘I’m a spy,’ and people will be all ‘Whoa.’ It’ll be awesome.”

Barry actually groaned, which was my cue to get out of the car. “Keep it running, Sugar,” I said.

“On it,” he said.

From the street, I could see directly into the consulate, and even from the street, I could see bulky-looking men lingering near the entrance to the ballroom, their eyes darting to every person who walked in. I had an idea they weren’t there to watch out for people stealing prime rib.

Sam got out of the Navigator and slung a satchel over his shoulder that contained both the laptop Big Lumpy had prepared for him and our large check. He also put on a pair of eyeglasses.

“Nice touch,” I said.

“I thought it would make me look smarter,” he said.

“You have everything?”

“What I don’t have in here”-Sam pointed at his head-“I’ve got on the computer. I’m pretty much an expert now, Mikey.”

“Where are the death certificates?”

“Right here,” Sam said and patted his breast pocket.

“Let’s try not to generate any more of them, fake or not,” I said.

Barry stood nervously beside Brent, and though they weren’t related, they both had the look of people who didn’t quite know how they’d found themselves in this situation. Fiona stepped between them. “Let’s go, men,” she said.

Just as we moved toward the short line of people, Captain Timmons came out the door. “No waiting for Dr. Bennington,” he said and gave me a wink. He took the wand from the security guard and started over me with just a cursory wave, and then did the same over Sam, Brent and Barry with not a beep to be found.

When Fiona stepped up, he frowned slightly. “I’m sorry I have to do this, ma’am,” he said.

“I’d rather be safe,” she said.

He wanded down her back without incident and over her purse, where her gun was, but when he came across her front side, the wand began to squawk.

“Ma’am, do you have something metal there?” Timmons had the wand just over her right breast.

“Brass knuckles,” she said.

Captain Timmons gave a great laugh and then stepped aside. “You have a nice evening, Dr. Bennington,” he said.

I took Fiona lightly by the arm and walked in beside her. “What do you have there?” I asked without moving my lips.

“Brass knuckles,” she said. “If I see that Gina woman again, I intend to punch her in the mouth with them.”

“This is for the lipstick?”

“This is for the lipstick.”

I led our group to the reception table, where Reva stood with a phalanx of helpers who checked us in. “Ms. Lohr,” I said. “A pleasure to see you so soon.” I took her hand and kissed it again.

“You, too, Dr. Bennington,” she said. “Your salon is just down the hall. Mr. Drubich is waiting inside. He said you are aware of this, yes? Or that, uh, Mr., uh, Lumpy is, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s correct. I wanted to meet him before our little surprise. It will be more gratifying if I understand personally how important this is.”

“You will be very impressed by him,” she said.

“Would you be so kind,” Sam said, “as to put this on our table?” He reached into his bag and pulled out the oversized check. “Don’t unfold it and ruin the secret.”

“Of course, of course,” she said. Reva handed the check to one of her lackeys. “Place this on table two, if you please. And perhaps we put a cover over it? Would that be good, Dr. Bennington?”

“Please,” I said, “and call me Liam.”

Fiona let out the slightest grunt of exasperation behind me. Just loud enough for my pleasure, it seemed.

“I hate to ask,” Reva said, “but the paperwork? Do you have it?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Mr. Grayson has it.” I turned to Barry but he just stared back at me. “Mr. Grayson, do you have the paperwork?”

Nothing.

“Mr. Grayson?”

Barry actually looked over his shoulder to see who I was speaking to.

“Barry,” I said.

“Oh, yes, sorry,” he said and pulled the envelope of documents from his pocket and gave it to Reva.

She gave the pages a cursory glance. “They’re all here,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Any problems with the check?” Barry asked.

Reva looked at Barry and then back at me. “Should there be?”

“No,” I said. “Mr. Grayson, ever the accountant. He’s the man who has assured InterMacron’s financial security.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “You gave me a start.”

“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I don’t want to keep Mr. Drubich waiting on his big night.”

Reva showed us to the other side of the ballroom doors, past two men with earpieces who immediately began speaking in Russian when we passed. “End of the hall and to the right,” she said.

I thanked her but opted not to kiss her hand again, lest Fiona decide to try out the brass knuckles early. The hallway was filled with service people moving about in something approaching a frenzy as they neared the doors to a large service kitchen, from which the sounds of shouting chefs, clanging cutlery and the intermittent bleat of music erupted every few seconds. If there was a shooting, it probably wouldn’t be noticed until the event was over for the evening.

Particularly since no one seemed to pay any attention to the three men standing in front of the doorway at the end of the hall. All three had shaved heads and wore matching black suits and had Bluetooth devices in their ears, making them look like bouncers at the worst Russian disco ever.

As we walked closer they began to advance toward us. They had the slow gaits of men used to scaring other men. No use learning to move quickly when your victims tended to ball up in the fetal position at the very sight of you.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Fiona said.

“Easy,” I said to Fiona.

“On which one?” she asked.

“All of them,” I said. “We don’t need to be hiding bodies tonight.”

“Tell that to Sam,” she said, “in case I forget.”

Sam was beside me, but I could tell he was paying more attention to Brent and Barry, which was supposed to be my job.

“Everyone,” I said, “remember that we’re in charge of this situation. Brent, Barry, whatever I do, you just fall behind and do it, too.”

We kept walking, our pace nice and slow, and the men kept advancing until there were only twenty feet between us, which was when we stopped.

“If you come any closer,” I said, “my coworker Fiona is going to break one of your noses. You can choose ahead of time which of you would like the honor, or you can just let us keep going down the hall to meet with your boss. The choice is yours.”

The three men looked at one another and then back at me without much in the way of comprehension, so I repeated myself, this time in Russian. This got them to laugh, which gave Fiona enough time to put her brass knuckles on and to pick her victim. She opted for the one in the middle. He saw her coming and just kept laughing, because surely the idea was ridiculous, a tiny woman walking up to a hulk of a man with anything approaching malice. He was so tall, anyway, that it would be impossible for Fiona to punch him in the face, a fact he sadly realized too late, when Fiona punched him in the sternum instead, collapsing him to the ground in a heap.

If you feel like you’re the physically weaker person in a fight, the sternum is one of the best places to attack. It’s difficult to defend, it’s easy to break if you know where to punch (just beneath the notch in the clavicle) and no one ever expects to be punched in the chest.

Breaking your sternum is not recommended for those with a low pain tolerance, since it feels like you’re having a heart attack and, with all the blood you spit up, gives the impression you might have a collapsed lung, too. Unless you pass out from the pain, in which case those would be the things you’d feel once you woke up in intensive care.

When the other two men tried to advance on Fiona, it was already too late. She punched the one on the right in the center of his thigh, breaking the long bone there with an easy crunch, which is a break that requires surgery to fix. He’d probably have metal pins in his leg for the rest of his life. Maybe even a slight limp. All things he would also learn once he woke up in ICU.

Fiona swung around and caught the man on the left in the center of his pelvis. Another satisfying crunch. He would find walking difficult for about three to six months. Sex would be painful for about a year, if it ever felt right again.

Unlike his friends, the one with the broken pelvis didn’t pass out. Which was too bad, because he would actually remember the pain far more than his friends would.

The door at the end of the hallway opened and Yuri Drubich stepped out, shook his head and said, “Idiots.” Two men came out from behind him with guns pulled, but Yuri told them to put them down and drag their comrades out of the hallway before someone stepped on them.

“Which of you is Big Lumpy?” he asked.

“I am the one known as Big Lumpy,” Sam said, except he gave himself a strange-sounding voice. Not quite like Big Lumpy’s, not quite like Sam’s and not quite like any other human’s.

Yuri appraised Sam and then shrugged. “And you are the boy?” He pointed at Brent.

“It’s okay,” I said to Brent.

“I am,” he said.

Yuri shrugged again. He and Brent had that in common, apparently. “Come, all of you, my family is here and I am being honored. If I am to have you all killed, I’d like to know sooner than later.” He shook his head solemnly and pointed at Fiona with his broken arm. “They weren’t going to hurt you, but I understand that the appearances weren’t good. You made your point earlier. I deal with you aboveboard.”

He disappeared back into the room and the two men behind him came to gather up Fiona’s damage while we waited for the path to clear.

“That was weird,” Sam said.

“Not as weird as your voice just was,” I said.

“I should just play it straight?”

“That would be my call,” I said.

“What did he mean about the killing part?” Barry asked.

“Language barrier,” I said. “Nothing to be worried about.”

“He’s actually very polite,” Fiona said. She didn’t bother to wait for the last guy to be dragged off and instead stepped over the man with the crushed chest plate and headed down the hall toward the door Yuri left open. The rest of us did the only thing left to do: We followed her.