Lethal Circuit (7 page)

Michael looked at the apothecary chest. It was so covered in foundation dust, it didn’t look like anybody had opened anything for a very long time. Michael counted four drawers in and three down. He pulled the wooden drawer open. It was empty.

“There’s a catch inside the drawer on the top panel. Pull it.”

Michael felt inside the drawer. The wood was rougher in here, unpainted, but his fingers hit something that felt like a metal spring. He pulled it and heard a click.

“Now reach around the back of the chest.”

Michael did as he was instructed. He felt it immediately. A metal box had popped out of the back panel. Placing a hand on either side of the box, Michael was able to remove it, bringing it into the light. The box was dented black metal. About three inches in depth and a little longer than it was wide, it was about the size of a standard Fed Ex parcel.

“Open it.”

The lid was hinged. Michael struggled to undo the hasp, but it was sticky. He had to apply some force, and then, unexpectedly, the hinged side of the lid came open, depositing the box’s contents onto the ground. The first thing Michael saw was a number of passports: Swiss, Canadian, German, British, and at least three others, though Michael couldn’t make out the nationalities from where he stood. There was also currency, a lot of it: bank wrapped packets of euros, pounds, renminbi, dollars. There were what looked like some cosmetic products, some hair dye, contact lenses. And there was a gun. A Browning semi-automatic by the looks of it, its muzzle dug into the dirt.

Kate kicked the Browning aside, hunching down to collect the passports. She opened the British one up first, displaying a photo of Michael’s father. He had black hair and a goatee in the shot, but there was no disputing it was him. She read the name under the photo. “Randal Harris.”

She tossed the passport to Michael, and opened up the next one. It was Swiss. Here Michael’s dad had a shaven head and appeared to be wearing green colored contacts. She read the name under the photo. “Jacob Stringer.” She tossed Michael the Swiss passport and opened the German one. This time Michael’s dad wore a blonde crew cut with a bushy mustache. “Helmuth Heimler.” She tossed the final passport to Michael without opening it.

“You want to play?”

Michael stared down at the passports he now held in hand. There was no denying that the documents were disconcerting, but he wasn’t going to let Kate have the upper hand. Not if he could help it.

“Your father wasn’t the man you thought he was, Michael.”

“There are explanations for this.”

“Name one.”

“He traveled.”

“With a gun?”

“Why not?”

“Unlikely your average foreign shoe salesman would risk bringing a firearm to China.”

“So he picked it up here. For self-defense.”

“This isn’t Texas.”

“No shit.”

Kate shook her head. “Let me guess. He needed a few fake passports too, right? For self-defense.” Kate turned her glance down to the hard packed floor. “Remember your kidnapping back in Peru? Remember the men who did it?”

Michael stiffened. “How do you know about that?”

“Didn’t you find it strange that you were a target?”

“It was opportunistic. They followed us there. For money.”

“You don’t think it had anything to do with who he was?”

Michael felt his blood run cold. “What do you want, lady? Answers? What about you? Who are you? Why do you care about my father?”

Kate lowered her gun, tucking the weapon behind her back. “Your father worked for the CIA. He was an intelligence operative. A spy.”

Michael just laughed. “And how would you know that?”

“Because I was his partner,” she said.

10

PASADENA, CA

M
OBI
S
TEARN
LOVED
chicken. He loved fried chicken, he loved teriyaki chicken, he loved chicken kabob, but most of all he loved Zankou chicken. Zankou was the name of a river in Lebanon, somebody’s dog, and most importantly, six or seven fast food restaurants dishing out the tastiest, tangiest Lebanese style rotisserie chicken in all of Los Angeles County. The chicken was served with Lebanese pickles, tomatoes, hummus, and a tasty garlic paste, all of which Mobi was trying his best to wrap inside an undersized pita when the call came in.

Mobi dropped his whole pita upon the shrill chirp of the phone in fear that one of his supervisors had caught him violating the “no lunch in the lab” policy again. Mobi was a communications engineer in Pasadena, California, a mid-sized city about fifteen miles northeast of Los Angeles. And though Pasadena was best known for the Rose Bowl, the Rose Parade, and associated Rose events, it was also home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the world leader in the robotic exploration of space.

Operated as a civilian space research facility in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL as it was known, was both a cutting edge research facility and Mobi Stearn’s nine to five. Mobi enjoyed the fact that referring to his work as a nine to five was an entirely accurate description providing one heeded the caveat that he actually worked the graveyard shift between the hours of nine p.m. and five a.m. Mobi’s title was Deputy to the Deputy Director of Operations. He had ground his way through the grueling PhD program at Caltech to win the job, but the reality was that most of his duties were deathly dull. His work on the current mission, as all of JPL’s space flights were labeled, was to monitor unmanned spacecraft Polo’s orbit of Jupiter’s moon Io. At a distance of three hundred seventy-two million miles, radio communications from Polo took about fifty-two minutes to reach Earth, so Mobi was fairly certain that another half second spent wiping the grease from his hands wouldn’t add up to any major damage before he answered the phone.

“Stearn,” Mobi said through a mostly empty mouth.

“Mobi? I need you up here right away.”

Mobi immediately recognized the voice on the other end of the line as belonging to his boss, Deputy Director Allison Alvarez. “Is this about the chicken? Because if it’s about the chicken —“

“It’s not about the chicken. Hurry up.”

The line went dead, which Mobi considered odd for the Deputy Director Alvarez who, while ever busy, was always polite. The other thing Mobi considered odd was the fact that she was at still at work at this late hour. Sure she was known to pull overtime during critical missions, but Alvarez had a family to get back to and as far as he knew JPL’s current missions were running well within operational parameters, all of which led Mobi to believe that something had come up. Something that would relieve him from the boredom he too often felt in his evening vigils. And so, his curiosity piqued, Mobi picked up his square frame, wiped the tahini from his chin, and headed upstairs for what he sensed was about to become a very interesting night.

11

W
HEN
M
ICHAEL
TURNED
eight his father taught him how to lie. His real birthday party wasn’t until the next day, but Michael’s grandmother was coming over that night for a pre-birthday dinner. Michael would have to wear the blue suit she had given him. But Michael didn’t like wearing the suit. It made him look like an old man. So when his mom told him to go put it on, Michael procrastinated. He looked at his comic books. Then he played with his Star Wars stuff. And then he found a book of matches. Michael knew he wasn’t supposed to play with matches, but he lit one just the same. Then he lit another one. And somewhere between the fourth and fifth match, his new Fantastic Four began to burn.

Michael didn’t even notice it at first because he was too busy pulling the suit off its hanger. But when he did see the fire, flames licking toward the curtains, he knew what he had to do. He threw his suit jacket onto the pile of comics, smothering the flame. Luckily it went out, but by that time there was a lot of smoke in the room. And his suit was ruined.

After the inevitable relief that he was okay, his parents were upset. His dad told him that he was going to learn a lesson that night. But it wasn’t the lesson about not playing with fire. Instead, his dad told Michael that he was gong to learn how to lie. Telling the truth was always the first choice. But it wasn’t always the best choice. Because some people couldn’t hear the truth. And one of those people was his grandmother. He said it would upset her very much if she found out about the fire and what had happened to the suit. If she asked Michael where it was, Michael’s father asked him to say that it was at the dry cleaners. To not mention the fire. It would only worry her. Michael did as he was told. It was the first time he had lied and from what he could tell, he wasn’t bad at it. He wondered if he would ever have to lie again.

“Y
OU
’
RE
A
SPY
, he’s a spy, I’m a spy too,” Michael said, holding his father’s many passports in hand.

“Give it a rest, Michael,” Kate said.

“No really, you were right the first time. I’m a spy. Went to spy school. Learned some spy stuff. We even had a spy dance. We called it the spy prom. I brought Mata Hari, super spy leader and all round hottie.”

“What I’m saying is serious.”

Michael met Kate’s eyes. They had softened since the cab ride. Since bringing him here. “And I’m not?”

“Your dad’s job,” Kate said. “The way he spent so much time away from home. Did you think that was normal?”

“He traveled for work.”

“But did you ever really ask your dad what exactly he did?”

“We didn’t talk about that stuff.”

“It’s because he didn’t want to lie to you. Not if he didn’t have to.”

“He was a businessman,” Michael said. “He sold sneakers.”

“That was his cover. I’m not saying it wasn’t.”

“So what are you saying then? That the man I knew, that the man who raised me wasn’t who he pretended to be? That he was a spy. That the both of you worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?”

“No. He was CIA. I’m MI6,” Kate said quietly.

“This just keeps getting better. Now you’re telling me you were my dad’s Bond girl?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. I’m a field operative. Your father and I were teamed up on a joint intelligence project.”

“The CIA and MI6. Working together? Back at the Academy we had a name for that kind of thing.”

“Michael!” Kate lowered her voice. “Enough with the bullshit, alright? The CIA and MI6 have collaborated in the past and no doubt will again in the future. It was a loose affiliation. Your father and I traveled in different circles. But we met and updated each other regularly. Shared progress reports.”

“Doesn’t explain your teeth.”

“What about them?” Kate said, running her tongue along them for any sign of stray food.

“They’re too good to be British.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m half British. On my mom’s side. Born in London, raised outside of Chicago. Libertyville. They have dentists there.”

“Where do the Cubs play?”

“Wrigley Field.”

“Where do you go for drinks after the game?”

“I don’t know. Murphy’s? They card at Cubby Bear. At least they did when I was there.”

Michael relented. He hadn’t spent much time in Chicago, but he had been to a game or two and as far as he remembered it, she was right. They did card at Cubby Bear. “Okay, suppose I bite. You’re a spy and he’s a spy. But I’m not him. What do you want with me?”

“Pay attention,” Kate said. “This is where things get interesting.”

•
 
•
 
•

S
EVERAL
THOUSAND
MILES
away, across the Sea of Japan, a sleek black phone rang. A powerfully built Japanese man studied the caller display. His name was Hayakawa and he knew the call was not a good sign. Calls from China were never good news and as such, they could not be ignored. Hayakawa picked up the receiver.

“Hayakawa,” he said gruffly.

The person on the other end of the line took a moment to respond. When he opened his mouth Hayakawa knew it was Chen.

“We had an unwelcome visitor today.”

Hayakawa had expected as much. Already what had started as a pet project had gotten out of hand. He stretched out his five-foot-six frame and stared out the floor to ceiling window of the towering glass building. It was raining in Tokyo, the pedestrians lost in a sea of umbrellas on the street below. Bad tidings often accompanied the rain in Hayakawa’s experience, bad tidings and a whole lot of water. Hayakawa fingered a stray strand of his longish black hair, putting it back into place behind his ear.

“Who?” he asked.

“A man. A Western man. I think it was him.”

“Where is he now?”

“I do not know.”

“Can you find him?”

“I will try.”

There was a long moment of dead air.

“Hayakawa-san, please be patient. I will find him.”

Hayakawa eyed his reflection in the window, straightening the jacket of his impeccably tailored suit. As he had suspected, the news was bad, worse in fact than he would have thought. But that was only part of the problem. The other part, he could hear in Chen’s voice. The man was losing confidence. He was becoming a liability Hayakawa could not afford.

“Thank you,” Hayakawa said. “We will discuss this more thoroughly at another time.”

Hayakawa terminated the connection without another word. He then dialed a second number he knew from memory. He let it ring once, then sat the phone back down in the cradle and waited. He only hoped that he had not already waited too long.

•
 
•
 
•

M
ICHAEL
WATCHED
WITH
interest as Kate pulled an iPhone out of her pocket and jacked it into an Ethernet port that hung loosely from one of the floor joists above. Her Glock was safely reholstered and she made no attempt to gather the Browning off the dirt floor. Michael couldn’t tell if she was trying to foster trust in him, or if she knew the gun wasn’t loaded. It didn’t matter. He had come this far. He was going to listen to what she had to say.