“If she has, they’re taking their sweet time.”
“We have to assume, at least, that whoever it is has her on twenty-four/seven surveillance rotations.”
“Definitely. She opened the juice can this time.”
“Yeah. More competition for me. Makes it interesting. How’s business otherwise?”
“Popping. We always got gigs, but they feel like B-list marks. Come with a lot of low-life clients, which makes her paranoia even worse.”
“What about Alice? What’s she working on?”
“She’s kept it pretty close to the vest, but I dug into it just to make sure she wasn’t driving the bus off the edge of a cliff again, you know?”
“I don’t blame you. I should have never agreed to the FBI job. I did it to placate her and ignored my instincts. Love . . . guaranteed to transform you into a complete dumbass by the second date.”
“Won’t argue with you there.”
“What’s she got cooking that’s so top secret?”
“Looks like a cupcake. Chinese guy named Zhen. He’s the CEO of some company I’ve never heard of called CIS, Inc. HQ is in Midtown.”
“When’s she going to initiate?”
“I think she already has. I haven’t seen her as much in the office lately, thank God. Before, she was up our asses daily. I figure she’s got to be working.”
“How long you think?” I asked.
“Maybe a couple of weeks. I’ll look into it some more, if you want.”
“I want.”
“Whatever you need, JL. I’m with you.”
“Are you?”
“Hell yeah—”
“This is my fight, Sue. And it’s going to get ugly. You can stand on the sidelines and feed me some intel and stay out of the fray. I don’t expect you to take any bullets for me.”
“You’re my ticket out of this, JL. As long as Alice is taking up space, this gig is nothing but a black bag. Like you with Bob. Fuck that, man. Nobody owns me. Especially not some uptight white bitch with a loose screw. Whatever you got going, put me in the game.”
“Thanks, Sue. I’m glad to hear you say that because, to tell you the truth, there’s no way I could do it without you.” I laughed.
We shook on it. Sue passed me another beer.
“So, where the hell you been anyway?” he asked.
“Church camp. I’ve seen the light.”
“You look like you’ve been rode hard, put away wet, and burned up in the barn. Your damn hands look like beef jerky. Where the hell’ve you been? I thought you were dead for sure.”
“I am.”
“Why you got to lay all this cryptic nonsense on me?”
“The less you know about it, the better. I made some fairly serious enemies in my recent travels, people that will be looking to put my head on a spike at the town gates. I figure it’s a matter of time before they track me down. Plus, I don’t want you to know anything Alice could beat out of you.”
“You’ll buy me a shot and beer and regale me with your adventures when all this is under our belts?”
“Kid, when this is under our belts, you can have front-row tickets to John Lago, the Mexicali fucking musical.”
“Let’s do this. What do you need from me?” Sue asked.
“Just keep me fat on Alice intel until I can get her into a corner and give her a proper divorce.”
“I’m on it.”
* * *
While Sue worked on getting under Alice’s skin, I gathered intel on her assignment, Fang Zhen. Definitely not a cupcake. Not even close. CIS, Inc., or Chinese Industrial Solutions, was a front for a global corporate and industrial espionage ring with ties to the Chinese government. Zhen was the CEO, but his real job was as a Ministry of State Security operative. The MSS is the arm of Chinese intelligence with an expanding global network of “nonprofessional” operatives. These operatives are businesspeople, intellectuals, teachers, doctors, engineers, and other field experts assigned to blend into foreign societies for the purpose of gathering information in those fields. Because of their legitimate qualifications, and because they aren’t associated with anything political, they are rarely scrutinized as potential spies and can go for years gathering intel completely undetected.
Even though an MSS operative is not necessarily a professional, it’s prudent to assume they are surrounded by them. Beijing tends to go to great lengths to protect their investments because, like with Zhen, the intel that MSS operatives provide is worth billions. Which is why it didn’t surprise me that security at CIS headquarters was as tight as any modern military installation. Zhen rarely left the building, and when he did, an armored Chinese military helicopter disguised as a private helicopter service picked him up from the roof and transferred him to secret ground pickup locations that were part of an intricate network of commercial vehicles, including NYPD squad cars.
Sue and I met to compare notes, and he was already hitting it out of the park. He had put a tracking device on Alice’s mobile phone, along with a wireless mic and transmitter like the NSA uses to turn our iPhones into 24/ 7 surveillance devices. As it turned out, Alice had already initiated her infiltration of CIS about a week before I arrived back in Manhattan. The more I found out about it, the more the whole thing seemed almost too good to be true. Because of the heavy security at Zhen’s building, Alice would not have her usual doom squad there to protect her. They wouldn’t even be able to monitor her with visual surveillance. And forget about weapons. Every employee was subject to a millimeter wave scan—just like at the airport—so she would be hard-pressed to get a nail clipper past the lobby. It was the exact scenario I needed to get to her. She was completely exposed. The only problem was, I would be too.
Sue and I got to work immediately on the difficult task of getting me access to the building. I no longer had HR behind me, so I couldn’t gain placement through the usual back channels. There was really no other course of action than to go completely analog on their asses. So, I put on my best bright eyes and bushy tail and marched right into CIS, résumé firmly in hand. It took nearly two weeks of calling, dropping by, and general ass kissing before they decided to give me a shot. I’m sure the way they saw it was, here’s this Harvard kid (hey, I went big) wanting to come get coffee and do grunt work for free. Guy won’t take no for an answer, so he’s a real go-getter. And his father has been part of the diplomatic corps in China for over a decade (nice touch). The bottom line is I got a foot in the door the old-fashioned way: I bullshitted my way in.
As I walked to the CIS building in Midtown Manhattan—a part of New York that could disappear tomorrow and only the tourists would miss it—I was invigorated by the fact that Alice and I would be on an even playing field. The prospect of having to mow down layers of security in order to get to her, like some geek playing a first-person shooter game, was not appealing. Also, that would have ruined all the fun. In my mind, meeting her face-to-face in our natural corporate habitat was the only honorable way to end our relationship. So, like the knights of old, I suited up in my trusty intern armor—brownish-green suit, sensible cap-toed oxfords, white button-down, and omnipresent LensCrafters glasses. If I wasn’t able to shoot her, I could probably bore her to death.
28
One of my briefest, but most eventful, foster home placements was with a minister and his wife in Kilgore, Arkansas, a grease spot of a town with a main street so short you could spit the length of it. The only excitement we had were the junior high fights that went down at the flagpole after school. Pretty much every day you could count on fisticuffs—dudes duking it out, catfights, girlfriends beating up boyfriends, boyfriends beating up their girlfriend’s other boyfriend, boyfriends scrapping with girlfriends’ dads . . . It was a regular bare-knuckle cockfight with milk money and all manner of pocket collateral on the line. I’ll tell you one thing, with the exception of my time with Gr
iner, Kilgore was the place where I really learned to fight.
Every few months, we’d get treated to a bout between our own local Ali-Frazier combo, Russ and Travis. With their beards and bricklayer builds, these guys looked more like grown men than junior high school boys. They hated each other like poison and they were first cousins. I guess their dads were brothers with a blood feud and Russ and Travis carried on the tradition with dumb animal loyalty. Something would happen on the field or in the locker room or in class, one of them would start talking smack, and next thing you knew, everyone in school was whispering, “Russ and Travis at the flagpole, place your bets.”
Half the school was ringside by three-thirty, making it rain with fistfuls of dollars. And those boys wouldn’t disappoint. They’d fight like gladiators—brutal, grisly, and without mercy. With other fights, the principal usually only had to yell from his office window to break it up. Not with Russ and Travis. The sheriff had to be called. Large men working at the local pig slaughterhouse had to pry them apart. And the ground was covered in so much blood and hair you’d think it was the Roman Colosseum. Neither would yield. Their pride and family name were at stake. So, it was always the bloodiest draw you’ve ever seen and no one ever made a dime.
Until one afternoon in the spring of their final year before moving on to high school. Russ had missed a week of school with the flu. When he got back, he looked like death warmed over—pale, drawn, and weak. Travis smelled blood and wouldn’t stop taunting Russ. He was like a stronger wolf pup trying to kill the runt. Russ was understandably reluctant to fight. He was still having trouble holding down his lunch and even passed out during gym class. When Travis heard about all of that, he turned up the asshole dial and pushed Russ as hard as he could to get him to fight. Word had it he even tried to pull Russ’s girlfriend in the parking lot of the Tastee Freez. That was the last straw for Russ.
The fight was set for Friday afternoon and you could smell the confidence coming out of Travis like cheap cologne. Russ was looking like he regretted the decision and his girlfriend was trying to get him to just go home. Russ pushed her away and the two goons started circling each other. Travis took the first swing and connected with Russ’s nose. Russ went down hard but got back up again, blood streaming into his mouth and onto his Motörhead shirt. Russ was wavering and seemed unsteady on his feet. Travis saw this and moved in for the kill. He started pummeling Russ and Russ just covered up and took the beating. That’s when I noticed the look on Russ’s face. He was waiting for Travis to tire himself out. Muhammad Ali called it the rope-a-dope, and that’s what Russ was doing. The more Russ made it seem like he couldn’t fight back, the harder Travis punched. But his punches were just hitting Russ in the arms and hands. Finally, Travis backed off, huffing and wheezing like an old man, yelling at Russ to stop being such a pussy. Russ called him a faggot and Travis came at him.
But before Travis could land a punch, Russ hauled off and hit him with a right cross to the jaw. You could hear the jawbone snap, and suddenly there was metal raining out of Russ’s hand. He had just hit Travis with a roll of quarters—poor man’s brass knuckles. Travis hit the pavement hard, smashing the back of his skull. The impact knocked him unconscious and he started going into convulsions. That’s when Russ really went to work on him, kicking and snapping every rib and even curbing his ankle until it snapped and hung like a ragged L in the gutter. Travis never recovered. He spent his first year of high school in a wheelchair and dropped out later due to decreased mental capacity. Russ was never charged with anything because they were under eighteen, and because of the beating Travis gave him, they said Russ acted in self-defense.
The beauty of it was that Russ never even had the flu. All of that, and even the girlfriend thing, was part of the plan to make Travis vulnerable, and it worked like a charm. Ali had the rope-a-dope and Russ had the Bullshit Express.
The reason I bring this up is because even though it may seem like two people are evenly matched in a conflict, there is always room for an advantage. And that comes from one opponent being willing to do whatever is necessary to get it. There is nothing fair about a fight. A sense of honor and fairness is the invention of someone who never had a fight. A fight is very black and white. Winning is everything and you only win if you are willing to make the kind of sacrifices your opponent is not willing to make. Look at Vietnam. The Vietcong were willing to do anything to win, and they did it while the American war machine stood by, appalled by an enemy that they deemed to have no honor. Honor, my ass. There’s nothing honorable about human beings slaughtering one another. It goes back to the animal in us. We are predators and our only objective is to bag our prey. Alice had made me the prey before, due to a sense of honor I had for her, but when I walked into the lobby of CIS, Inc., the tables had turned. And the one thing that was not going to happen was a draw.
The place looked like one of those office buildings in The Matrix—marble, metal, and glass with a high price tag and no soul. And, also like The Matrix, the place was crawling with guys in black suits and sunglasses with crew cuts and hardware bulges in their sports jackets. I checked in with the front desk and was escorted to the elevator by a man who never said a word to me, even when I asked him a question. I toyed with the idea of crushing his lower spine with a side kick and watching him crumple to the ground like a wounded gazelle, but it was my first day of work and I wanted to make a good impression. Mr. Nothing took me up the elevator and walked me to a windowless, wood-paneled conference room that reeked of bad takeout and worse coffee. It was empty. I sat down at the conference table and he quickly left the room.
To be honest, I was actually a little nervous. I hadn’t had a real job in a while and I was eager to prove to myself that I could still perform at the same level as before.
I just needed some inspiration.
And then I got it—a dumpy, fast-food-poisoned office manager wearing what appeared to be a wool herringbone muumuu entered the room and sat across from me.
“I take it you’re John,” the muumuu said without looking up from her notepad.
“Yes. Hello.”
“My name is Marjorie.”
“Nice to meet—”
“Congratulations on being selected for our intern program. I’m sure you’re aware of just how difficult it is to sit where you’re sitting.”
Marjorie looked at me for a nanosecond, deciding whether or not she should send my sorry ass packing right then and there. I respectfully lowered my gaze to show her she was in control. This seemed to satisfy her for the moment.
“I’ll need you to fill out this paperwork.”
She slapped down a thick pile of forms and a cheap ballpoint.
The door opened and another person sat down across from me.
“John, this is Alice.”
I looked up, smiling. Alice looked at me, her face completely white. We shook hands. And the earth stood still. That was a great moment. Alice is a know-it-all and she gets physically ill if she is surprised by something she feels she should have anticipated. And this was the king of all surprises. I hung on to her hand for a bit too long just to annoy her.
“Pleasure.”
“Hi,” she muttered, jerking her hand back.
“Alice has been here a few weeks, so she’ll show you the ropes,” muumuu Marjorie chimed in. “If you have questions, please ask her and don’t bother any of the salaried employees.”
She slapped more forms down in front of me.
“New York State now requires that all interns are paid,” she said sardonically. “Please fill these out so you may receive your gross weekly stipend of three hundred dollars.”
Paying your dues for a price, I thought to myself. The entitled generation is going to run this country into the ground.
“As the only two interns here, I expect you both to conduct yourselves in a professional manner . . .”
While she dro
ned through her intern orientation gibberish, Alice and I clocked each other, assessing, evaluating. Alice was wearing a designer suit. So much for subtlety. She made sore thumbs look anonymous.
“. . . finally, we are in full compliance with the new Manhattan intern laws,” muumuu Marjorie continued. “If you feel like your rights as an intern have been violated in some way, or you’d like to know your rights as an intern, please call the intern hotline. Eight hundred number is on this card.”
Slap.
The intern hotline? I had to stifle so much laughter that I thought I was going to give myself a brain bleed.
“Any questions?”
“Not at the moment,” I said. “If I do I’ll be sure to direct them to . . . I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Alice,” she said quietly.
“Right. I’ll go ask Alice.”
“Welcome to CIS,” muumuu Marjorie said as she unceremoniously shuffled out of the room.
Alice and I just sat there, barely drawing breath, never taking our eyes off each other. There we were, interns again—professionals disguised as coffee jockeys at Zhen’s military industrial complex outpost disguised as a nerd farm. Back in our natural habitat.
“John, how’ve you been?”
“Not so good, Alice. You?”
“Great.”
“So I see. I like your suit. DKNY?”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“I don’t plan to. Not anymore.”
“You look different, John.”
“So do you.”
“How so?”
“In this light your true colors make you look like a corpse rotting from the inside out.”
“I was going to say the same about you, you fucking traitor,” she said with a straight face.
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself. I was starting to believe I overestimated her intelligence, or sanity. She felt my mocking rattling her bones and tensed, as if she was going to make a move. This made me laugh harder.