Chapter 13
Back in the Saddle Again
Jake was glad the winter was behind him.
The last few months had been a whirlwind of activity. He could barely remember the assignments, the locales, the faces of the men who deserved the justice he provided.
Justice. What a funny word to call murder, he thought. He reasoned that his conscience would spit the word “murder” out like bad sushi, or choke on it like a foreign object lodged in his throat. In order to better swallow the reality that was his profession, Jake had created the fantasy that he was secretly protecting something dear to his heart. The truth was, he felt like his heart was as empty as a politician’s promise. What compelled him to cling to the moral high ground? What impelled him to continue to come to work every day?
He pondered these weighty things while standing in line awaiting his daily joe. He stared at the menu board, wondering if he should deviate from his normal fare. He was proud of his ability to be unpredictable, but he seemed to have one habit of bespoken familiarity. He ordered the same thing every weekday. It just seemed to fit.
Once he had his caramel macchiato and strawberry cream cheese Danish in hand, he made his way to the elevator queue. Members of his old team were already there.
“So, I told her that next time, she would have to do better than just the two tickets to the Brooklyn Nets,” Gary was saying. Violet stood next to him, pretending to be interested. Gary was really just showing off for the new girl. She stood, smirking and sipping her coffee.
Violet glanced at him. He could see the hatred in her eyes. He had not seen her in over three weeks. With the sudden change of venue, Jake had almost forgotten her. He wished that he could erase the feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The images that ran through his mind were a dragon, a fiery-headed Gorgon, and an alien with deep black pupils. He fought the urge to turn back to the lobby. Instead, he gave the obligatory lifting of the chin and a slight smile.
Nothing untoward has happened between us. You do not intimidate me. These were the messages he hoped he was sending. I bested you, he tried to say with his eyes. Of course, she would take it as a challenge. Or worse, an allurement.
She looked at him fully and licked her finger.
“You ready for another round? Sergei says you have been avoiding training,” Violet challenged.
“I don’t have time. They are keeping me pretty busy on the 55th floor,” Jake countered.
Her eyes floated from his knees to his eyes slowly. Meaningfully.
“That is what everyone is saying. Remember, it won’t be the same next time. The longer you put it off, the more likely it is that you will be broken when we are done,” Violet offered.
She made pain sound so…sensuous. Jake was afraid she might like it a bit too much.
“Well, they don’t call me Humpty for nothing. I will see when I can clear my schedule and shoot you an email,”
The new girl leaned into Gary and whispered something to him. Gary smiled and turned away from Jake. Jake did not fail to notice.
The elevator doors opened and Jake watched as Gary held it open for the new girl. She brushed close to Gary while glancing back at him. Something in her eyes seemed familiar. Or maybe it was her nose. Gary winked at him and slipped into the stuffed elevator. Jake sighed and sipped his coffee as the door closed. He could see Violet’s head bobbing in the middle of the press in the elevator and decided he would wait. His stomach could use a break. Soon, he was making his way to the floor he had called his home since he had returned from Los Angeles in January.
The office was bustling with agents, support staff, and management engaged in activity already. Some appeared to have been there all night. Ties were loosened, coffee cups littered trash cans, and the tension and surliness were in full force. Management barked orders. He heard one staffer, Melissa, he remembered, talking aggressively to someone on the phone.
It is seven-fifteen, for Pete’s sake. Don’t they know it is too early for this?
Jake was used to a leisurely morning routine: a coffee, a chat, and maybe some gentle ribbing of his team, before getting called into meet with his new boss, Alexandre Bumont. This much activity and fluster meant that either an assignment went awry or one was at critical mass. It wasn’t his department or he would have been called in. He only had four emails this morning and all were junk mail.
Jake sipped his drink. He may not get the chance to enjoy it if this 911 spilled over.
Director Dumont was head of the Galbraith Foreign Security Crisis Team. The FSCT was instrumental in maintaining the balance of world order by exacting judgment upon those nations who demonstrated clumsy grasping of power. If a Somali war chief got involved in civil rights atrocities, he would have a dagger in his back within a week. If a Colombian cartel drug lord executed a government official or raped and pillaged a small village, he would end up dead from poisoning. In essence, Dumont was responsible for upholding the Galbraith mission statement.
“Good morning, Mr. Monday,” Jill chimed.
“Good morning, Jill,” he said brightly. He was more cheery than he actually felt. The life of an assassin required an undue amount of charm. Many folk were taken more unawares if he seemed jovial, humorous and likeable. The famous scowling, brooding, overconfident, braggadocious, and intimidating assassins seemed to have a short shelf life. Jake wanted to be more of a Twinkie than a banana.
Of course, he thought, Twinkies may be extinct soon, too.
“Deputy Director Smith would like to see you in her office,” she said, a smile somehow still on her face.
It was not necessarily that she was pronouncing doom upon him. The Deputy Director had a demeanor akin to Anjelica Houston in When in Rome or Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. She was severe, unforgiving, and supremely intelligent.
Jake could not imagine why he would have any business with Deputy Director Smith.
“Thank you. You want a Danish? Lynn hates it when people eat in her office,” he said, offering Jill his strawberry Danish with the thumbprint and wax paper wrapping.
“Sure,” she said. She took it gingerly and dropped it into the trash as he turned. Jill was one of the few people in the office that could see through his farce. She gave him the same back. He knew she was as miserable as him.
When Jill had threatened to blow the whistle on Galbraith’s illegal activities, someone had threatened her family. She was still working under protest and hid her derision for the other staff with a plastic smile and a syrupy sweet deportment. Jill was a short-termer. They shared that common trait, perhaps and so he forgave her before he even set foot into the well-lit offices of the Deputy Director.
“Good morning, Mr. Monday,” Deputy Director Lynn said. She offered him a chair.
Lynn Smith had hair the color of straw. It was cut short like her personality. She was tall, in her forties, and had deep lines on either side of her mouth. Not laugh lines, for sure, he thought. More likely, she smoked. Her fingers were smooth and not yellowed, but he thought she was as discreet and polished in her smoking habit as she was fastidious about her personal space.
Everything in the office was at right angles. It was all hard, straight lines. Pictures were aligned perfectly, papers on her desk were arranged neatly. Her desk top was completely uncluttered except for a closed laptop. The windows looking out across the Hudson gave him a good view of the hazy clouds of the morning spring skyline. He imagined himself out on the Sound again. Or better yet, back in the Pacific.
“Thank you, Director Smith. To what do I owe the honor of accompanying you this fine morning?”
“Stow it, Monday. We have a situation and we need you immediately.”
“We?”
“Yes.” She sat, her mouth pulling down, her eyes sad and…scared. “We have had communications from our cell in Tokyo. A Chinese diplomat was held for ransom last week.”
“Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zhou Yonglin, you mean?”
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“Yes. Him. He is dead. Beijing is on a head hunt.”
“How are we involved?” Galbraith rarely participated in political kidnappings. They were rarely worth it. Assassination paid better and had greater significance in controlling the balance of world affairs. Chaos for balance sake was the unwritten mission of Mr. Galbraith.
“We were protecting him. The situation got out of hand. He had ties to several of our clients. Zhou Yonglin held relationships that are key to maintaining our standing in that community. Over forty percent of our revenue is derived from China.”
She seemed nervous.
“What are you not telling me?”
She hesitated. Her face was stone. She had been beautiful once, he noted. Now, she seemed too hard, too many edges to be attractive. She was unlove-able. Unloved. He could tell by her spartan lifestyle, her gruff demeanor, and her unflagging work ethic. She was a workaholic, a true patriot, conservative to a fault, and obstinate as a camel.
“Your team will fill in the details.”
“That is not an answer. Why am I here?” He dropped the charm act long enough for her to understand that he was serious. It could be costly, but he needed an answer. She was making him nervous. Anything that involved scaring Deputy Director Lynn Smith would be high on his fear scale.
She sighed.
“You are being followed. We have evidence that, unbeknownst to you, someone is interested in your actions.”
He shrugged.
“I am never alone. Cameras are everywhere. Adoring fans. I even have a stalker, it seems.”
She smiled without humor.
“I have been briefed that your involvement in a recent extracurricular assignment off the official channels may have put you in direct contact with a young woman aboard your flight from New York to Los Angeles.”
“The woman with the twisted ankle?” He remembered her; he had not given her a thought. Red hair. Slim, pretty ankles. Freckles at her nose.
VANITY. Silver locket. He had forgotten that. What did I do with it?
“Yes. Her. We investigated it and—“
“Why?” He was still puzzled over his lack of memory.
The locket was small and light in his hand. He remembered holding it on the plane, the sun filtering through the clouds and reflecting off the locket as it twisted from the chain in his hand. So familiar yet the memory was muffled, like a person talking through a door, like voices in another room. Why did it seem he knew of this in another life?
“We need information. Information is the key to our control of economic, social, and political balance. Our data tells us this lady was not listed on the passenger manifest. Some of our researchers feel that she was a government agent.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You think I am being followed by the CIA or FBI?”
“It is very likely. Your activity of late has been…formidable. Your workload has been daunting and we are worried that perhaps it has drawn the eye of the American government.”
“Nice to know I am so popular,” Jake quipped.
She ignored him.
“We plan to use your services for this assignment in hopes that you are followed.”
He suppressed the urge to groan. He hated China. He had completed an assignment in Guangzhou a month ago and the smog was stifling. Then there was the sour taste of Sinegem.
“So I go to China to find the man who killed Yonglin?” Jake liked the sound of that. It smacked of justice.
“Not right away, no. We have an international incident on our hands here. There is enough blood here to implicate our whole organization. We cannot risk retaliating just yet. It would be too predictable. We are not the al Qaeda.”
Jake did not need the reminder of who Galbraith truly was at that moment. He was still basking in the possibility that he could play the role of the good guy.
“So what do you have in mind?”
“First, we have to send you to Atlanta. Your team will brief you.”
“Atlanta? I thought this was an international incident,” Jake said.
“It is. Several of our contacts will be there for an economic summit. It will be a high-security event. We want your presence there to be extremely visible.”
“I don’t know how comfortable I am with extremely visible. I prefer the Casper the Ghost impressions over Donald Trump’s hair piece.”
“It is a strategic assignment. It is necessary. You will do this, Mr. Monday,” she said. She set her hands on the desk with a finality that Jake understood meant that the matter was settled. “Which leads me to one last thing before I send you back to Alexandre. I just wanted to ask you one more time about your experience with this woman on the trip to Los Angeles,” Deputy Director Smith said, her lips set in a grim line.
Jake thought all these questions about the woman were odd. They barely asked him any questions concerning Giselle. Jake had been assured that his performance regarding their largest client was completely within the parameters of their expectations. Not once had his superiors mentioned why they had felt it necessary to “test” him. This unanswered question left a burning ache in his head similar to the one that was conjured by the image of the spinning silver locket and VANITY.
“What more do you want to know?”
“For starters, would you recognize her if you saw her again?”
He thought about that before answering. His memory could be unreliable. He understood this and feared it. When Jake Monday feared something, his defense mechanism was to either fight it or ignore it. His memory of the lady who had tripped was that she had pretty ankles and a spray of freckles around her nose. Is that the sum total of his memory? What about the locket? Hadn’t she given it to him? He was proud of his ability to note details and deduct people’s life stories, sort of an amateur profiler. What was her dialect? Her level of education? The fabric of her clothes? The style of her hair? What did she smell like? What did her eyes tell him? Had she flirted with him, or had she been scared?
Jake knew if he concentrated, he would recall these things. They were important because they were details that kept him alive. However, he knew with the recollection would come immense pain. Dredging up memories of his past and accounting for gaps in time had become a value proposition. Was it worth the effort and misery? The answer was usually, no.
“Yes. I am sure I would recognize her,” he said with confidence.
“Good. You may see her again. You must be ready.”
“Am I bait for a trap?”
“No. You are the trap.”