Forced Pair Read online

  “Why couldn’t we take the convertible?”

  “Because a Mercedes would stand out here, especially at” — he checked his EB — “3:15 in the morning.”

  He looked ahead, across the lamp lighted street, to the industrial complex with small orange fluorescent lights at the top corners of the light brown stucco building. He watched the figures clad in dark colors as they patrolled the perimeter, checking the street just beyond the heavy rolling gate that was currently closed, presumably locked. The pattern and regularity of their sweeping rounds bespoke of their professionalism. And the few glowing and dying embers of red told Dent that a few of the guards were smoking. Professionals did not smoke during an operation. Unless they were sure their target was nowhere in the vicinity. Exactly as Dent had planned.

  He picked up his phone, tapped in a memorized number, and held it to his left ear as it rang. Once, twice, and then ….

  “Hello,” the male voice said on the other side, making the two-syllable word sound more like one.

  “Charon,” Dent greeted his handler.

  “Yes,” Charon replied.

  From the passenger seat the package leaned over and asked, “Who’s Karen? Your girlfriend?”

  Dent looked over at her and clarified, “No. Charon.”

  From the phone came a clipped, “No, what?”

  From the package a quiet, “Karen?”

  Dent threw up his free hand to silence the package and spoke into the phone, “No, nothing.”

  “Dent?”

  “Yes.” He watched the silhouettes across the street, far too many for a simple drop off.

  “What happened, Dent? There was an incident at the airport. No specifics as of yet but there was a localized power outage. Diverted air traffic for half an hour until they got it back up and running. Is everything okay on your end?”

  Dent knew the specifics of the outage. He was the specifics. But that wasn’t his concern. “My payment was not at the designated location.”

  There was a static hiss from the phone’s speaker and after a moment Charon said, “We had strong intel and decided it wasn’t safe. Good thing, too. That power outage could have meant trouble for you.”

  A lie, Dent knew. He may not be able to create such believable fabrications or even recognize them for what they were, but in this instance he knew the lie for the simple manipulation of facts. There could have been no previous intel on the power outage because he had been the sole reason of that outage.

  And so, the logical procession would be that Charon was hiding something.

  “Dent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have the package?”

  Dent could not lie properly. Instead, he restated, “The money was not at the designated location.”

  “Yes, like I said. We changed plans because of suspected complications at the airport. And it proved to be beneficial that we did. The payment is now at the drop-off point.”

  Dent did not respond. If the former statement was false, then the latter statement was likely as well.

  “Dent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have the package?”

  “Reaffirm, Charon, the location of the drop off.”

  Charon recited the address. Dent glanced at the large black numbers on the brown stucco building across the street. The same.

  “Reaffirm, Charon, hand off will be as agreed upon?”

  “Yes. One vehicle at drop-off location. Only one person, the driver, will be present. This protects the integrity of your identity.”

  As Dent looked ahead, he saw the glint of two shooters atop the building appear as they took up position. Which would mean two more likely on top of the building sharing the same parking lot that he could not see from his current position.

  “Dent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have the package?”

  Dent looked to his right, and the package looked directly back at him. He was unsure if she had followed the conversation. It did not matter. He rolled down his window and dropped the Motorola to the uneven asphalt outside. The phone was still on, still connected with Charon.

  He pulled out of the parking spot, drove around the former party supply store, and exited to the east of his previous location. He drove away, package in tow, and performed a series of mental calculations.

  They did not expect him at the drop-site anytime soon. The lit cigarettes proved that fact. They would likely wait an hour for his arrival. When he did not show, they would undoubtedly search for his phone, to which Charon now had a direct line. With the simple signal splitter installed in the phone, any trace Charon employed would only narrow down its location to a ten-mile radius at best. Possibly thirty minutes of delay. Another fifteen minutes to perform a standard military sweep of the immediate area once the phone was located, to make sure that Dent was not armed and in the vicinity.

  All in all, he calculated two hours of freedom.

  Plenty of time to switch cars, get thirty minutes of rest, and make it to his next stop.

  The package had finally gone quiet after her string of questions went unanswered. He looked over. She’d fallen asleep, her head resting against the window, jostling with every bump in the road, before Dent even hit the 60.

  X

  “Do robots eat?”

  Dent turned left onto the street that would wind up through large houses and well-manicured lawns to the top of the affluent hill. The Mercedes easily took the grade like it was level. He looked over to the package, unsure of what she was asking. Or why.

  She crossed her arms and said, “I don’t know if robots eat, but I do. I’m hungry.”

  He gleaned her meaning and leaned over and opened the temperature controlled glove box. Three power-bars, a compact Glock, and a plastic jar. The package took one of the power-bars and stripped it open with her teeth.

  “What’s the jar for,” she said between mouthfuls.

  He thought of a suitable reply, one that would fit into her scope of understanding, and said, “Robots have to pee.”

  Looking at the jar, her face scrunched up and she took the power-bar from her mouth. “Eww.” She looked at the power-bar again and decided to take another bite. She swallowed and then asked, “So, where are we going?”

  “To visit someone with information.”

  After two more lefts and then a right, they began to approach the apex of the hill.

  “Am I in danger, Dent?”

  “No.”

  She chewed her lower lip and in a hushed tone asked, “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  The package still had her eyes directed his way when they passed the large concrete water tower on the left-hand side. The closest residential buildings were at least half a mile away from the weathered cylindrical structure. Dent parked the ember red Mercedes after making a U-turn a quarter mile up the street and then led the package into the scrub along the hill.

  They had to bypass two waist-high fences, one wooden, the other metal, and found themselves in natural, untended landscape, the only paths carved between cacti and dry brush and into the dirt by local coyote and the occasional deer. Their path took them away from any visual contact from the street and neither wove closer to the water tower to the south nor further away. Less than five minutes on foot led them to a concrete encasement that angled out of the hill with a single recessed metal door that led underground. Ten feet away from the door were precisely placed tiny blue lights atop rusted metal poles.

  Dent almost walked through two of them when he remembered the package. He put his right hand out and the girl ran into it, stopping her advance.

  “What?” she asked.

  He pointed to the lights and said, “Wait.”

  As the two watched, the steady blue lights blinked on and off. Three times, pause, five times, pause, seven times. Then the lights went out. “Now it’s safe,” he explained to the package and led her to the door which had no need of a mechanical lock.


  Dent closed the door behind them and they walked into the relatively cool space and down five steps into a concrete corridor. To the left, after a bend, was a dead end that was crisscrossed with pipes of all sizes. Dent walked to the right and stopped where the corridor doglegged to its right, back towards the street they had just walked from. A small metallic plate was in the wall, not unlike the one in the master bedroom back at his condo.

  He placed his palm to it, felt the expected tingle, saw the green scan-light, and then removed his palm, revealing the backlit ten-key pad. Using the flashing blue lights as a reference, he touched in the appropriate pin.

  3-5-7.

  Nothing happened. But when he led the package back down the corridor, past the steps leading topside, and into the dead end, the pipes were no longer covering the concrete wall behind them. A small gap at the end of the dead end was large enough for Dent to sidestep into and then through. Five sidesteps and it opened up into another concrete corridor that would lead directly to, and below, the water cistern on the surface.

  They walked through the metal door at the end of the corridor and entered a room that was as large and cylindrically shaped as the concrete tower above it. It appeared as if Best Buy, Radio Shack, and a Silicon Valley pawnshop had dumped their overstocked inventory into this one room. The hiss of running machinery, steady whirring of hundreds of cooling fans, and the electrical hum from the more than twenty large screen TVs and computer monitors filled the air.

  Along the southwestern arc, in front of a bulk of the TVs and monitors, an ergonomically designed chair swiveled around to reveal a thirty-something man with dark and perfectly manicured eyebrows.

  “Dent,” the man intoned and then looked to the package and added, “And friend.”

  “Professor Fischer,” Dent responded. “I need information.”

  “And I’m doing just fine, thank you,” Fischer said, rising from his chair and walking over to the pair. The package let out a giggle. The closer Fischer got, the wider his eyes became and the more slack his jaw went. When the techie stopped, he dropped to a squat and stared at the package.

  “Hello, Mister Professor,” she greeted with a slight bend at the waist.

  “Hello,” he replied back, though Dent did not think the man even realized he had replied. Fischer was busy raising a hand toward the package and then dropping it back to his side. Twice his mouth opened and twice nothing came forth.

  The package asked the inarticulate techie, “What is this place?”

  “What are you?” the techie stuttered out.

  She jutted her chin toward Dent and said in an even tone, “I’m not a robot, that’s for sure.”

  “No … No … No you’re not. You’re … You’re ….” Fischer stood up slowly as if his legs could not support him. He continued to look at the package but said to Dent, “Do you know what she is?”

  Dent did not know how to answer so he remained quiet.

  “You’re influencing me, aren’t you?” he asked the package.

  Apparently the package did not know how to answer either and she remained quiet, though her head tilted to the side and looked past the techie to the electronics lining the walls.

  “That’s not possible,” Fischer commented. “I mean, I’ve heard of … but … no.” He looked to Dent and pointed at the package.

  “What?” Dent finally asked.

  “An anomaly. Illegal as all hell, which I’m totally fine with, but … impossible. If I think she is what she is … so many questions!”

  Dent redirected to conversation to what he had come here for. “I need information, Professor.”

  “And I have questions.” The professor acted as if he could not take his eyes from the package. Dent was reminded briefly of the way men and women in lab coats or colorful ties treated him when he was a young boy. “I can’t … wait. Please.” He took a step backwards, stopped and raised a hand forward to the package, and shook his head. “I can’t think like this. Stay here,” he said and walked steadily away to the other side of the circular room where he dug quickly through a variety of tech devices, many of which Dent had no name for and knew were likely to be of illegal use or gain.

  The techie came up with what looked like a standard backpack, minus the whole pack. It had adjustable shoulder straps and where normally would be a canvas or leather pack, there was only a small thin compartment that looked to have been made of eel-skin. It reminded Dent of a standard bulletproof vest without the front protection. Fischer pushed a blue-backlit button on the left strap and an electrical hum issued from the back of the device.

  The techie looked up and let out a sigh. He came back to Dent and the package and said, “That’s better. Now I can think.”

  “What is that?” the girl asked.

  “Think of it as an eBlocker,” Fischer said. It seemed he was able to talk now without any problem. “It used to be used when people wanted to enjoy a night out on the town without falling prey to big corporations and their false emotions. Of course, the big businesses fought to have these devices banned, and even went so far as to buy all the patent rights for the technology, ensuring other companies could not manufacture them.”

  “But why do you need one?” Her voice was pitched higher than normal. Dent looked to the techie to see what his reply would be.

  “Because I couldn’t think around you. I think your curiosity was feeding off mine which in turn made me even more curious ….” He stopped talking when he noticed the girl’s face was as blank as Dent’s. “It’s so I can think clearly. And talk to Dent, here, and determine what has brought him to me, with you at his side.”

  Fischer’s lips parted and curled up on the right side. “A fine pair you two make. One who can’t feel emotion, the other, well …?”

  “Professor,” Dent interjected. “I need information. And perhaps a place to store the package safely. This location serves both purposes.”

  Light brown eyes under manicured brows traveled between the two visitors. “The standard rate will definitely be double than what I would normally charge you, Dent. Agreed?” He held out his hand.

  Dent shook it, sealing the business contract.

  Now that the talk was on business and making money, Fischer focused his attention on only one of his visitors. He asked Dent, “What do you need?”

  “Everything on Grant Chisholme. He is my current employer.”

  Professor Fischer cursed.

  Loudly.

  XI

  Fischer told the girl that she could watch any movie he had on file and pointed her off in the direction of a screen and a chair. That left the adults to congregate before the techie’s main console and pull up the appropriate data regarding Dent’s inquired parameters.

  Fischer plopped back down in his chair and Dent took the offered chair that the techie rolled next to his.

  Cocking his head to the side, Fischer asked, “Do you have any idea what you have there, Dent?”

  “A package.”

  “No. You have more than a package. You have the future of industry. You have a miracle. You have a genie in a bottle¸ a means to have anything you want.”

  “I want information on one Grant Chisholme.”

  “Yes, yes.” Fischer began clicking and clacking away on a keyboard, pulling up multiple screens and databases on multiple monitors. “You’d think hanging around someone like her would have some effect on you.”

  “Grant—”

  “Chisholme. Yes, I know, Dent. I’m working.” His fingertips blurred, eyes flashing left, right, up, right. Information was piling up on the multiple screens. “This is all basic stuff. Court rulings against him, court rulings in his favor. Subsidiaries, foreclosures. I have to say, Dent, I don’t like going up against a guy like this.”

  “Okay. Say it.”

  Fischer turned his head and stopped typing to regard Dent. The corners of his mouth drooped. “Anyway,” he said, the typing resumed. “What area do you want to focus on? Financial? Realty? Hi
gh school GPA?”

  “Yes.”

  Fischer sighed. “I need to narrow it down.”

  “I was hired for a job,” Dent explained. “Grant Chisholme and I agreed upon payment and delivery of a package, but he decided to change the terms of the contract.”

  “How so?”

  Dent thought for a moment and then said, “He made them more unfavorable to me.”

  “Ha! He tried having you killed, didn’t he?”

  “I believe it was him.”

  Fingers flying, the techie said, “Okay, I’ll add in military references as well.”

  After two minutes of flashing data, Fischer looked over and said, “Here’s the meat and potatoes. Has information on his start up, his current home address and satellite images — nice house by the way — his current dealings with eTech — his own company as well as competitors — and ties to corrupt government officials in more than twelve countries.”

  Dent leaned forward. “Wait,” he said. “Which countries?”

  “Let’s see … majority of Eastern Europe, the Russians — wow, that’s impressive … Major Asian players — China, Japan, India. Um … Australia. And … The U.S., of course.”

  “Can you cross-reference American and Japanese sources, regarding Chisholme, HelpTouch, and Takeda Int’l?” Dent had secured the package from a Takeda Int’l facility.

  “Already doing it. I’m also adding in eTech and current laws. Should be ….” Two screens beeped simultaneously. “Not good, Dent.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It seems Chisholme was investigated for monopolizing the market when eTech first left medical and military practices and hit the mainstream economy. He was forced to absolve a contract that would have put Takeda Int’l under his umbrella. After that he butted heads with U.S. politicians over the sudden and quite successful growth of HelpTouch, his parent company. He built HelpTouch up to compete with Takeda Int’l in pushing the newest eTech software into the market. Japanese government wasn’t pleased and put pressure on American officials to curb Chisholme’s growing stake in the industry. U.S. government sided with Japan. I guess it was a matter of ‘Do we piss off a whole country or just one person?’ But even so, it looks like Chisholme still has backers in the U.S. government.”