Chapter 73

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How could Dvora turn herself in without making it a setup for Jack?  She would have to turn herself in far enough away that it would be hard to track her back to him.  She couldn’t get on an airplane without showing good ID.  She could take a bus, but he would almost rather get caught than have her go to the Greyhound station.  If he had that much trouble picturing Dvora Schacter, former Prima Ballerina for the San Francisco Ballet, getting on a Greyhound, maybe the cops would, too?

“I know I need to put some space between us before I turn myself in.  I was thinking the bus station, but the cops watch it so closely for runaways, chickenhawks, dealers and such, that I think not.  What about buying a car and driving out of town?”

Damn she was a smart woman.  What other ways were there?  Amtrak!  They could take BART under the Bay to Emeryville and then get on Amtrak to… They didn’t need to go anywhere.  Dvora needed to go somewhere.

He helped Dvora turn herself back into a girl.  If she stayed in character as a gay man it might give away his disguise to a very smart cop, or an extremely smart cop like Yan.  So they turned her into a slut, which somehow made him even hotter.  Now what they had done didn’t feel excusable.  How could he have had sex with her knowing people were dying, knowing he was in love with another woman?  As she didn’t make eye contact he knew she was asking herself the same thing.

JACK LIKED being alone.  But, when Dvora walked out that door, he felt more alone than he ever wanted to be.  She had paid cash for the room for a week.  That didn’t mean he was safe.  The owner would rat out him out in a microsecond to keep John Law off his back.

He thought about how much he wanted Lee by his side.  He thought about what an asshole he must be to bring the woman he loved into this mess.  He thought about how to contact Bob.  He had the cell phones, but also had more than strict instructions not to use them.  He had the laptop.  Knowing Bob, the IP address was for a Jane Doe in Spokane, Washington and should be safe.  But, Bob said not to use it.

Bob had folded a piece of paper inside the laptop. It had a free webmail address and a password and a note that the present he bought to make Meghan smile would be delivered.  He had memorized the email address and password and burned the piece of paper right after they got into the hotel room.  When he could, he would find a free wireless hub and try to contact Bob. He picked up the laptop, thinking that he needed a saddlebag to carry it in to complete his cowboy outfit, grabbed the old-fashioned key and headed out the door.

He took a roundabout route toward the corner of Waverly and Clay. It was only a few blocks to the Caffeine Central there.  They all provided free Wi-Fi.  He needed his mocha anyway.  He put both the cell phones in the pockets of his leather jacket.  Why hadn’t Bob called? Why hadn’t Lee called?  Did he want her to call?  Hell yes, he wanted her to call.  He wanted her with him, no matter what. He wasn’t going to take her with him on the final assault, but he wanted her with him now.

Why hadn’t they called?  He tried to ignore the locals and stay in character, when what he really wanted to do was run back to the hotel room and tear off the disguise.  The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge certain that only a crazy cop would think that Jack McDonald, slightly overweight ex-paratrooper and fugitive with a price on his head, would try to hide by turning himself into six feet five inch butch cowboy.  It still felt like there was a neon sign over his head saying “Look at me, look at me!” He winked at the occasional pretty boy for practice.  He practiced the walk, wished he had peed before the walk and finally made it to Caffeine Central.

There was the usual line with a mix of tourists, Chinese, and people slumming from Nob Hill.  He flirted with the cashier.  The boy did have very pretty eyes.  The cashier wrote a phone number on the back of the receipt when he slid it across the counter.  He brushed the boy’s hand as he picked up the receipt and waited for a table in the back.

He couldn’t just search for the news he wanted.  He would have to search for a ton of other news and hope the Feds didn’t have the computing power to spot all searches associated with the stocks.  What a silly thought.  The Feds had all the money they needed and more. They had hundreds of thousands of his dollars on a bad year and much more on a good one.  He could do a search from the library, but he knew the bad guys had good thinkers.  They would know what information he was looking for.

There was another way to do it.  That would be to sign in at libraries and Internet café’s around town and look for the information in little pieces.  Shit, he couldn’t use the libraries because he didn’t have an ID! He made a mental note that if by some overwhelming violation of odds he lived through this, he would never live life without a bolt-hole and at least two different rock-solid identities.

The computer found the wireless hub.  He opened the anonymous webmail program.  No mail.  No messages and no way to contact Bob without putting him at risk.  Then there was mail.  From Lee!

My love,

Do not use the cell phones.  Get rid of them after you destroy them.  Hide the pieces well.  Don’t use this laptop again.  There should be a program in your applications to overwrite every part of the hard-drive with ones and zeros. Use it and then destroy the hard drive. Buy a throwaway phone and call 7145551212.

I love you three!

Lee

She loved him three!  Because saying “I love you too” wasn’t enough.  He read the message over and over.  He didn’t bother to delete it.  He knew that until he overwrote the hard drive, the deleted information could still be recovered.  He signed off and left as fast as he could while still appearing to move purposelessly. He wanted to hear Lee’s voice so badly.  He had to stop himself from running.  He slowed down to his cowpoke strut.

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The store had Virgin Mobile and a no-name brand he had never heard of.  He hated standing in front of the security camera buying a phone, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself paying someone to buy the phone for him.  He paid $97 cash for the Virgin phone.  The five blocks back to the hotel felt like five miles.

He let himself into the room, plugged the phone in and set it up as fast as he could.  It still took fifteen long minutes before he could dial Lee’s number.  There were three ordinary rings and then a few clicks and two more rings before he heard:

“This is Joan Bond!”

For some reason it took a couple of tries before he could tell her he was agent Forest Gump. When he did his voice cracked.

He thought they’d lost the connection.  He heard sniffing in the background.

“Do you have a cold, agent Bond?”

She ignored his question and said, “Don’t be an asshole.  And, why is there a catch in your voice, Forest?  Where are you?”

He told her.

“What’s the room number again?”  She asked.

He told her.  There were a few seconds silence.

“Say something, please.  I have to hear your voice.”

She said something. “I should be there in about seven hours.  Don’t worry about me and don’t believe anything you see or hear in the news.  I’m traveling under a different name.  Get rid of the phone you just used.  Buy another one.  If you have to call me, call 212 555-1212, but only if you have to.  Did you memorize the number?”

“I love you three and yes,” he said.

“I miss you so much.  I’ll be there as quickly as is safe.”

She hung up. It was going to be a long seven hours.

JACK WAITED FOR an hour and ten minutes and then bought another phone at a Radio Shack.  He ran the ones and zeros overwrite for the hard drive while sitting at another Caffeine Central.  He dropped bits and pieces of the laptop into various trash bins and sewers on the way to Radio Shack.  He walked to an Internet café before he logged on and scanned the news as fast and as randomly as he could.

The cabal had been pushed off the front page of Bay Area papers and the web by a new serial killer.  He had killed and dismembered three little girls.  At least they had discovered three so far. He had used one of the girl’s hands as fishing bait.  Another little girl’s ear had been discovered, found in a shark’s belly by a sport fisherman.  The story made Jack wish he were still top of the fold.

Jack sauntered back to the hotel and waited a few more years before he checked news on TV.  He had at least three hours to go. He scanned the channels quickly, took off the too tight clothes and did pushups, chair dips, crunches, airplanes, sit-ups, bridges, levitation lunges, doorjamb pull-ups, planks, and burpees.  When finished, he gasped for breath and shook with exhaustion, but he made it through another hour.  He stretched and cooled down for a half hour. After a quick, brown shower, he sat down and brainstormed on paper with a pencil. Only two hours to go.  He flipped the TV on again.

“… Hong Lee.  She was the granddaughter of legendary Hong Lin Pao, Hong Kong businessman and rumored retired head of the Three Dragons Triad.  Friends and enemies alike know Pao as “Uncle Chin.”  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police say she was apparently the victim of a kidnapping gone wrong in a hotel outside the airport in Vancouver, Canada just a few hours ago.  Witnesses say she was abducted.  Her body was then discovered quite by accident in a waste container whose contents were due to be incinerated.  The container was searched because a local art collector’s maid had inadvertently thrown out a priceless piece of modern art she assumed was the art patron’s granddaughter’s crayon drawing.”

“Hong Lee is known to have been involved with Jack McDonald, who is now a fugitive and sought by the police, FBI, and other government agencies for his part in the murder of Donald O’Hare, as well as insider trading, conspiracy and…”

Jack dialed 212 555-1212 as fast as he could.  If Lee were dead he would kill so many of the motherfuckers they would need armies of accountants to count the bodies.

The canned voicemail message told him to leave his number.  He started to leave a message and then stopped and disconnected.  If the love of his life was dead, the cops had the phone and would ID the number.  They would find out where it had been manufactured and then where it was shipped to and, eventually, where it was sold.  They would trace it to a store in San Francisco and see Jack’s picture, the way he looked now, on the security cameras.  Leaving a message would simply tell them he was alive and somewhere with a phone.  He picked up the phone and punched in 212-55…  There was a knock on the door.

He made it to the door in seconds and looked through the peephole.  A shriveled old Asian woman stared in.  In the center of her beautiful brown eye, gold flecks seemed to swim together until they lit up the world.  He nearly tore the door of its hinges opening it, snatched her inside and held her too hard.

“Put me down big, white queer,” she said in an old crone’s voice.  He held her as they watched the news.  She cried as she watched the story of her death on TV.  Then the stream of curses started, first Cantonese, then Mandarin and finally English.

“She was my cousin.  We were best friends when we were little.”

Jack expected her to say more then, but she didn’t.  He held the piece of himself that had been missing for so long as she cried for her cousin.  It was ten minutes before she spoke again.  “They’ll compare her prints to the passport and find out she isn’t me.”

Lee pushed herself away and stood, pulled off the wig, and stretched her back.  He could see the force of will it took to put aside her grief.

“Who did the make-up, Dvora?” she asked as she shed her costume.

He nodded.

“What was the plan?”

He told her.

She looked at him and the stuff that was left from Dvora’s changes in appearance.  “I think it’s a good plan.  Let me get my head straight and then we can get out of the City.”  With that she rested her head against his chest and was asleep in seconds.

DVORA WASN’T the only one with theatrical experience.  When Lee was done with her own makeover she looked so much like a pretty Asian boy it scared him.

“If you hadn’t married that gold-digging bitch, I wouldn’t have had time for theatre at Stanford, you dumb fuck,” she said as she touched up his cowboy outfit.  They were now what was a caricature in the Bay Area, a large Caucasian man and his hot Asian boyfriend.  He took digital pictures of Lee and they headed for the center of China Town, stopping at a CVS to print the pictures.  The weather cooperated and the crowd was heavy.  They sat at the little café on the corner that was rumored to serve decent Cantonese food.

Lee put down a pot sticker and said in a lisping voice, “They used rancid oil when they cooked these.”

Jack practiced his hard-ass act, glaring at everyone who came close to making eye contact, as if he was spoiling for a fight.  It was easy to stare down the tourists, a little tougher with the natives, and toughest of all with the occasional cop.

He’d never noticed this many cops before.  He hadn’t paid much attention to the new community-policing thing.  It was supposed to take the cops out of the station and put them on the streets.  Or, it was paranoia.

Jack finally spotted him. He had the China Town gangster look down, from the aviator sunglasses down to his Gucci loafers and everything in between.  Two different groups approached him.  The first, three Chinese women, handed him a slim envelope. The two Americanized Chinese girls wore all the right labels, but the third wore no-name aerobics shoes, and a sweatshirt from an American university that didn’t exist.  And, she wasn’t as carefully groomed as the other two. The gangster opened the envelope after he turned away from the crowd, turned back to them and holding up a finger and said “One hour!” in Cantonese.

The timeline made it seem like something other than drugs.  If it was a drug deal the gangster would have been holding or send a runner for the goods in a lot less than an hour. With Jack’s command of Cantonese, the gangster could have been saying ‘Thanks for the recipe.’  Why didn’t any of the immigrants from China speak the national language?  He learned Mandarin so he could deal with the world’s biggest economy.  The written language was all the same.  Fortunately Cantonese was Lee’s birth tongue.  He glanced over and she nodded.

JACK AND LEE wandered for a while and then came back to take coffee nearby.  The girls came back in fifty minutes and loitered nervously.  As they walked by with the envelope the one who’d just gotten off the boat snuck a look and said, in good English, “This picture makes me look fat.”

Bingo.  A group of four Hispanic males walked up to the China town gangster and handed him an envelope.  Two looked like they were using heavy.

When the gangster pulled open the envelope, he closed it quick, and tossed it back to them.

“No dinero, no deal.”

The group tried to argue and three huskier, older Chinese men wearing jackets baggy enough to hide rocket launchers, materialized out of the crowd. The Hispanic men left quickly.

Lee watched like a pointer following quail.  They let the gangster calm down for a few minutes.  Jack followed Lee, trying the walk, knowing he hadn’t made a street buy of anything illegal in over twenty years.  Lee pranced up to the gangster hesitantly and spoke to him in lisping Cantonese.  The gangster responded in English.

“Excuse please, I need papers, two sets, license for drive and … She stopped and turned toward him.

He said, “Insurance.”

There was quick Cantonese and the gangster hooked thumbs in his belt and held four fingers down on each hand and said, “Eight hundred dollars each.”

Jack said, “Bullshit!” He grabbed Lee’s arm, pulling her away.

The gangster laughed, then held down three fingers on each hand and said, “six hundred.”

Lee asked, “How much for real license for drive?”

“Not possible.”

“How much?”

“Two thousand. Each.”

Lee said, “Fifteen hundred.”

The gangster looked at his shoes, looked back up, ready to say no, when his attention was lost to the tall blonde teenage hooker smiling at him as she walked by.

“Thirty-five hundred for both.”

They gave him $2000 up front, the picture and the note card with the name spelled out as it was on the credit cards for Jack and Jimmy Yee for her.  The card also had their approximate height and weight and altered hair color and addresses for what passed as middle-class neighborhoods in the Bay Area.

“An hour and a half,” he said, after he’d counted the money.

As they walked away, Jack turned to Lee, not needing to whisper because of the crowd noise. “You have balls the size of basketballs, for a fine sexy woman, that is.”

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Chapter 72

Her Grace’s people in Hong Kong knew they were on the edge of this fight, but they were determined to do their part.  They were especially motivated after the botched hit-and-run. She smiled.  Smiling was one of the things that her failing body would still do.  Her servants in Hong Kong always did the best they could.  They never made excuses.  In all the years she had worked with them the attempted hit-and-run was the only mistake she was aware of them making.

The abomination of a man’s lover was on her way to the United States to help.  This woman was a troublemaker. This was not just because of the woman’s own considerable abilities, but because of the huge financial and informational resources that were part of her family’s empire.

There was another reason.  This man, the brother of the sister who should have been the first on the list, was proving to be very resourceful.  If this woman was as important to him as she appeared to be, a blow against her would weaken him.

It had taken her servants in Hong Kong many years to infiltrate the tight-knit family, but now they had good information.  Hong Lee was flying into Vancouver and picking up forged papers to slip into Seattle.  There was a long enough delay for this woman to have scheduled a short stay at an airport hotel for a few hours rest.

It was good to take action.  Another thorn in their side had been removed.  She smiled as she read the reports.  The lab that had done the independent research for the witch was now discredited.  Her people had convinced three of the workers to swear that the lab had falsified lab results on two other independent tests.  The fire had gutted the building, destroying all data and samples.  The website where the lab thought they had securely backed up information was now compromised.

Her Grace thanked her merciful savior for his help.  Soon the spawn of the devil would be stopped.  It was time to change tactics. Rather than eliminating this Chinese woman and the brother right away, she would use them to replace the income they cost the Church.  A simple abduction, threaten Hong’s life until the brother gave himself up to them.  Ransom them both.  Then kill them.

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Chapter 71

Jack turned into the bathroom and waited in line for a urinal. At first he couldn’t go and then fear emptied his bladder as the shorter cop walked in.  His partner wasn’t with him-probably calling for backup.  The rest of the occupants emptied out.  Two big guys, tatted up in tank tops with shaved heads, loitered by the door, giggling.  Jack shook himself and started to stuff himself back into the too tight pants.

The cop smiled, stared at his crotch and said, “No need to put that away, big boy.”

Now the strange expression made sense.  Any other time, let’s say when he wasn’t fleeing for his life from a global conspiracy with a bounty on his head, he would have known what that expression meant. Should he let the cop blow him?  Take his number and arrange to meet him and not show up?

“I’d really like to slam this down your throat, but I’ve got a screaming case of herpes.”

The cop shrugged and headed into one of the stalls.  Jack washed his hands, curiously not shaking, picked up the bag of food, decided not to push his luck and left. The distance to the ground seeming a lot higher than just the boots could make it.  He wanted to run screaming back to the hotel, but instead practiced the bandy legged walk that went with the outfit.

For some reason the lyrics to the “Streets of Laredo” went through his head.

“I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.”

These words he did say as I slowly passed by.

Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story

For I’m shot in the chest, and today I must die.”

Jack couldn’t remember the rest of the song, but that stupid stanza played over and over in his head as he fought the urge to sprint back to the hotel.

Dvora would flip if he didn’t use the damn code.  He stood in front of the door shifting his weight back and forth from one leg to the other, his feet sore from the boots, having to pee again already. Finally it came to him, two quick knocks, pause, then three quick knocks again.

She opened the door, dragging him in and dropped the Sig on the chair.  Part of him noted automatically that the safety was off.  Good disguises notwithstanding, he was positive management would check if they heard a gunshot.

“I didn’t get it done.”

He told her the story and watched her face.  She sat quiet for a moment and then, with the same concentration he had seen her use for everything she did, asked him questions.

“We need fake I.D. to use the credit cards, buy a car, in case we get pulled over by a cop, right?”

“Right.”

“What groups need and buy them now?” She asked.

“The biggest buyers in the City right now are the Chinese and other Asians, people from south of the border and members of the former Soviet Bloc: Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and Czechs.”

He glanced over her shoulder and tried to figure out why the fire blazing behind the reporter on the TV screen looked so familiar. The fire was where his house used to be.

They had turned the sound down so low that it took a few seconds to turn it up.  What he heard made him forget to take his finger off the volume button, until the sound blasted out of the cheap speaker as noise, “…at approximately one forty-five this afternoon.  The explosion threw masonry from the cinder block house more than a hundred yards.  Known dead are Zelda and Jerome Dalrymple, family friends of the fugitive Jack McDonald, and Margaret Linden-Smith; a nurse employed to care for Meghan McDonald, Jack McDonald’s sister. Miss McDonald would have been in the house recovering from injuries suffered in a robbery three weeks ago, but this reporter has learned Miss McDonald was removed and placed under protective custody at approximately 7:00 PM last night by Captain Yan of the San Francisco Police.”

The reporter paused to press the earpiece into her ear.  She was standing on Paradise Drive with the flames as a backdrop. The wind blew in from the Gate. Her carefully coifed blonde hair stood nearly straight out like a flag in the wind.  She shivered inside the thin red blazer that went perfectly with her white blouse and black skirt.

“…this just in.  A preliminary report by someone close to the Marin County fire department indicates the explosion occurred because of a faulty fitting on a diesel generator that was apparently being tested. We are now returning to the studio where Captain Yan will be interviewed by our Ron Coffman.”

The picture switched to the TV studio.  Ron Coffman was wearing his “Someone has died and I must be appropriately concerned” face.

The reporter turned to face the camera and said.  “There can be very few of our viewers who are not aware of Captain Yan’s exploits. Captain Yan, as a young detective sergeant, led the team that apprehended the ‘Racist Rapist.’  Also early in his career, as a lieutenant in homicide, he led the investigation that snared the infamous ‘Cabbage Patch Killer.’  Not since the Zodiac Killer has a criminal so traumatized the populus of our fair city. He now heads the investigation into the brutal gangland-style execution of Donald O’Hare.”

The Captain wore a conservatively cut suit, a rep tie and a button down shirt so white it looked blue.  The reporter turned more toward Captain Yan and leaned slightly forward as he asked.

“Captain, can you tell us why you placed Miss McDonald into protective custody early this morning, and is there any connection to Donald O’Hare’s murder?”

Captain Yan smiled an apparently gentle smile.  If Jack were the reporter he’d make damn sure he moved out of San Francisco.  Or, the man could obey all speed limits and do no jaywalking or littering for the next twenty years.

“If it is safe to say that watering your lawn, through evaporation and eventual condensation, causes rain, then is safe to say these events are connected. Miss McDonald’s protective custody is a legal necessity because we believe she has quite unknowingly obtained information materially significant to an investigation.”

“Bless you Captain Yan,” Dvora said.

Captain Yan settled back in his chair and, beaming at the correct camera like a kindly uncle, asked, “I believe you asked me here to update the public on the investigation into the murder of Donald O’Hare?”

They watched Yan give answers to questions that weren’t asked and ignore questions he didn’t like until the commercial break.  Then they watched the newshounds interview each other for the next hour, interspersed with shots of the burning wreckage that used to be Jack’s house.  As they watched, Dvora fidgeted, with trips to the bathroom.  He knew what was coming.  After the last trip she stood in front of him, much of her usual confidence gone.  “I want to be, should have been, have to be, with Meghan.  I know, I can’t do anything, but…” She stopped knowing she didn’t have to finish.

But! But, they might not miss next time and Meghan could be dead and if Dvora wasn’t with her she would want to be dead too and blame herself for the rest of her life.  But, his plan was so foolish she had been nuts to come along.  But, Captain Yan was going to catch them anyway, so why not give up?  But.  But.  But.  But, he knew he was going to leave her by the road soon anyway. Having her leave on her own was better, less guilt.

“Okay,” was all he said.

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Chapter 70

Robert E. Lee White kissed Alice Stewart, who he soon hoped would be Alice Stewart-White, on the forehead as she slept and slipped out of the room.  He was going into the office early today to take part in round three of two interviews.  He normally stopped by for Mass two or three mornings a week.  With all he had on his mind, today would be a good day to open his soul.  He didn’t park in the handicapped slot.  Despite the placard he didn’t consider himself handicapped.

He thought about his life.  Heck, his life was way better than the ancient Kings of Israel ever had it.  He was never too warm or too cold and, unless he wanted to be, never hungry.  He had so many good friends that made him laugh and would cover his back.  He’d finally found a darned good woman.

He cringed as he thought about Alice’s mouth.  At least he had convinced her not to take the Lord’s name in vain around him.  In the eyes of the Church they were already committing a sin.  He’d committed quite a few sins in the eyes of the Church lately.  It was finally his turn in the confessional.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned….

Chapter 69

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Jack lunged out of the chair.  “Now wait a minute here.  I am not going to…”

Dvora’s grin said it all.  If he couldn’t picture himself as part of a gay couple, wouldn’t everybody else have the same problem? The tourists would look at them, not really seeing them as individuals.  The cops would look the other way, forced to by the political might of the gay community in San Francisco.  The couple might get some static from Queer Nation types, but probably not.  As accepting as the City was of everything but the Tea Party, people who saw through the disguise would probably think they were a straight couple acting out a fantasy.  Which now that he thought of it…

“Great idea,” he lied as he settled back into their ersatz barber chair.

Once his hair was butchered into a spiky thing, short on the sides and back, fuller on top, Dvora bleached most of the color out of it. Then she pulled out a tube of Preparation H.

“We don’t have to consummate our relationship.”

“Ha, bloody ha!”

“What’s the Preparation H for?”  He asked.

“Preparation H shrinks tissue.  Models use it to make their pores smaller so they look younger.  I want you to look younger and thinner.  I’m going to use Super Glue to tighten up your neck.  If we had more time I would find Botox.  You’ll wear this pair of narrow-wale black corduroy trousers and control-top pantyhose.  We’ll put you into this jacket with very narrow shoulders. Make sure you hang your thumbs in your belt and walk with your shoulders back.  Think of a big rooster, itching for a fight. We’ll make you taller with lifts inside cowboy boots and finish it off with a ten-gallon hat.”

An hour and a half later he stood in front of the lying mirror.  Now he was six feet five, with the heels and lifts, taller still with the black hat.  He looked five years younger, at least.  And, he looked like a complete and total asshole.  She looked up at him with what she said was the look of undisguised lust she was practicing.  Then she walked to the end of the tiny room and back.

Gone was the feminine, muscular walk that still stirred him.  In its place was a male homosexual aggressiveness that made him a little uncomfortable.  He had been accused of being homophobic once or twice, but it wasn’t that. He was uncomfortable with anybody who tried to use their sexual preference to make other people uncomfortable.

“How am I supposed to act?” he asked.

“That’s what is so great.  Just act rude, loud, aggressive, territorial, horny, and like an asshole.  You know, your normal behavior.”

He growled deep in his throat, reached out and grabbed her by the neck with his right hand and forced her to her knees.

“No bitch of mine is going to talk to me like that.”

He didn’t know where it came from.  And, what about the raging hard-on, threatening to break through the pantyhose and tight cords?  When he took enough pressure off her neck for her to look up, her eyes filmed, and her head rolled on her neck.

She reached out and grabbed his butt cheeks, pulling his crotch to her and took him in her teeth through the double layer of fabric. He thrust his hips forward, pulling her head against his bulge.

He fought through the lust, pushed her away, grabbed her by her upper arms, and lifted her up until she was at eye level, feet nearly a foot off the ground.

“What in the hell are we doing?” he asked.

She reached around his back and grabbed him by the shoulder blades, wrapped her legs around his waist and bit into his left earlobe with her strong white teeth.

“Fuck me! Now!”

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HE STROKED HER as she lay curled around him, his left arm under her, her head in the crook of his arm and shoulder.  Her body looked amazing and felt better than it looked, with the layer of girl softness covering the years of dancer’s muscles.  She had been a generous and uninhibited lover, taking as much pleasure from giving as receiving. He had been pleasantly surprised often and shocked just once, by the cesarean scar.

“You didn’t ask.  It’s a cesarean scar.”

“I know,” he said.

“I was in college, my second try. Daddy bribed my way back in to Julliard. One of my fellow students was a model for a figure drawing class.  He seemed nice. We were drinking wine in my apartment.  I felt so strange.  I thought at first it was the pot, and then realized he put something in the wine.  I would have fucked him anyway.”

Her warm tears showered his chest.  “My periods had always been irregular.  I had been dancing hard all along, so my body fat was down to where I wasn’t menstruating regularly.  All he gave me was Chlamydia, although I didn’t even know that until later. That was part of the problem.  I blew off school a little later and headed to Paris to stay with friends.  By the time I was sick enough to check I was four months pregnant.”

Dvora stopped and rolled on top of him.  She rode him like a horse as she told the story.

“I had been using and drinking. While I was trying to dry out, I lost track of time.  By the time I’d decided that I would make the world’s shittiest mother it was too late to get an abortion.  A while later Daddy had me flown home.  On the plane on the way back, something happened. They said later, my weakened state combined with Chlamydia and lack of prenatal care all added to it.  By the time I got off the plane I was hemorrhaging and they took me from the airport in an ambulance.  I was in the hospital for six weeks.  They did everything they could.  He died during the cesarean.”

She sat up enough to slip him inside her.  “He wouldn’t have lived even if he made it to term.  His lungs weren’t formed properly and he only had little flipper things where his arms should have been.  When it was all done and they thought I might want to live, they told me I’d never make more babies.”

That night they used sex as a drug.

IN THE MORNING the promise of the storm was gone.  In its place was a redolent, lazy feel to the air, as if this part of the planet was tired of bracing for the storm that never happened and decided to rest.  Dvora woke up with a case of the Shut up and stay-away-from-me’s.

A glimpse of a mean-looking guy in the mirror made him lunge to his strong side with his hand on the pistol.

Damn good disguise, he thought.  He wanted to go back in and tell her about it,make her smile and laugh.  She had a right to be unhappy if she wanted.  He brushed his teeth and flossed, thinking he kind of liked himself blond. He’d always laughed at men who dyed their hair.  He wondered if looking younger could make you feel younger.  If smiling could make you happy, then maybe a face-lift could make you young.

They watched the local station that interrupted talk shows for anything resembling news.  He reached to switch channels when:

“This reporter has just learned that a couple matching the description of Jack McDonald and Dvora Schacter boarded an Aeroméxico flight to Mexico City within minutes of the brutal gangland-style slaying of Donald O’Hare.  Witnesses say the man was visibly tense and the woman very uncomfortable, crying quietly for much of the short flight.  Local authorities contacted the FBI with information, which was then delivered, through channels, to the authorities in Mexico City.  The couple managed to get off the flight before the Mexican Federal Police were in place.  More developments are expected soon.”

“Bless you, Bob,” he said.

“You think it was Bob’s doing?”

“Sounds like Bob, and our luck is starting to turn.”

JACK RETHOUGHT the operating plan, trying to debug it. The plan had more holes in it than Dvora’s pants.  The next part of the plan was to stop by two different shops to get passport pictures, then buy phony IDs, get out of the City and buy a car, or buy a car and then get out of the City.  He sort of forgot to tell her that once they did, he was going to ditch her.  The plan could fall apart at any step.  Dvora could have already been arrested.  The Feds could be sitting on top of all of Bob’s communications.  Someone could rat them out when they were trying to buy phony IDs, or when they bought the car.

He heard the creak of the stairs this time and was standing by the door waiting as Dvora knocked to come in. She brought her new passport picture and newspapers.  They weren’t top of the fold in the Chronicle.  They were the top story below the fold.

ENTREPRENEUR ASSASSIN

San Francisco, 

Eyewitnesses report that at 5:16 PM yesterday, Donald O’Hare, president and CEO of ReWire, Inc., one of the leading-edge genetic engineering firms in the Bay Area, was brutally executed in gangland fashion by Jack McDonald, senior partner of DealMaker, a private Bay Area investment banking company.  Witnesses also state that Mr. McDonald’s sister’s lover and roommate, Dvora Schacter, was at the scene of the crime and seemed to be Mr. McDonald’s prisoner.

He read the end of the story later.  At the end of the first paragraph there was a sidebar saying to look at the related story in the Street Walker section of the Business Pages.

“Fuck! Those sons-of-bitches,” Dvora shouted. She had read the headline story on the way in and had finished Street Walker.

…DealMaker’s senior partner, Jack McDonald, chief suspect in the murder of Donald O’Hare, president and CEO of ReWire, Inc., is also rumored to be the subject of an insider trading investigation.  It is rumored by sources close to the SEC regional office and the Treasury Department that warrants and subpoenas are forthcoming. …

“What do we do now?” Dvora asked.

“We keep to the plan.  There is no way any of the trades can be traced to us and no one will rat us out.  At most, when this is over, we’ll have to litigate to recover assets.”

He needed to talk to Bob.  He was certain that Bob’s phones would be tapped. Osama Bin Laden was almost killed because he used a satellite phone.  A politician stroking his ego bragged to the press about how the CIA was tracking Osama’s satellite phone.  Osama had continued using it, but only to confuse his enemies. After that he used couriers who didn’t even know they were delivering messages.

Firing up the lap top and emailing Bob would have had the same effect as putting the message on one of those huge billboards the dot.com companies bought before the bubble burst.  People like and want privacy.  Some people just liked it and other people needed it.  Suppose you were an elder in the LDS, but you wanted to look at pictures of naked young men?

The Internet, with cookies and all the databases, was normally like an open book, but there were ways.  Jack needed secure communications wherever he went so he took a roundabout route.  First he encrypted everything he sent. Then he used two different web-based emails, one to sign on to the other.  The most important part of the puzzle was his account with aka.com.  He paid for the service for a year at a time with a money order bought for cash out of state.  This meant, in theory anyway, that he could sign on to the net anonymously.  He didn’t trust the people at aka.com so he used the added arm’s-length of the web-based email accounts and still used a web proxy.

Next time they went out somewhere with free wireless access he would download SPY software.  The guy who’d written the program had been imprisoned for writing it, but it was still available on the web.  It should give them secure communications, except for Carnivore.

He was absolutely sure the FBI would be using Carnivore.  The Feds had boners for the net.  No matter how many lawsuits they had to respond to over the years, they kept sneaking ways to monitor the net.  In the past it had been the excuse of child pornography.  Now it was terrorism.

After thinking it through, he left the laptop where it was.  You defeat high tech with no tech.  When he left with the gun in his pocket, Dvora didn’t look happy.

AS JACK sat for his passport photo at the mailbox and copy store he thought about Proposition 187.  The law had supposedly been designed to make it harder for illegal aliens to take a free ride on the California welfare train. It should have been called the profit multiplier act for forgers and smugglers.  Or, it could have been called the full employment act for bureaucrats and the border patrol.

All 187 had done was to put more profit into phony IDs and run off a few of the weak sisters.  And, there were a lot more illegal aliens prostituting themselves or selling dope or their kids to pay for phony IDs.  The act created another layer of government bureaucracy hired for life, pretending it was a terrible thing to try to sneak into this country.  The government types would catch a few of the low-level people so they could justify bigger budgets each year.  The proposition was found unconstitutional, but Jack was sure all the bureaucrats hired were still on the payroll.

Jack paid cash to print the pictures.  He already had Dvora’s picture from her earlier shopping trip. On the way to the restaurant he looked at his picture and wondered if he’d always look like an asshole and not noticed it.

Mama Ling’s was already busy, despite the early hour.  Busy was good. The more crowded, the better.  He stood just outside the door, scanning the crowd, not eager to test his disguise on anyone he knew.  There was the usual crowd of people three deep at the Dim Sum bar, a group of a dozen or so German tourists in the corner to the right, tables of natives in the middle and two different groups of bikers to the left.  One of the groups was RUBs, and the other the real thing.

The pretend bikers were trying to avoid doing anything to piss off the old outlaws.  The outlaws were acting hard, which meant they weren’t, and talking loudly about gooks.  The leader of the pack had been on local TV some years back, vulgar and vocal about helmet laws.

Jack could hear the asshole all the way across the restaurant as he said, “We should have whipped the gooks ass in Nam, and would have too, if the politicians hadn’t stopped us.”

Jack knew one of the waiters would spit in their food or, hopefully, piss in it.  A spot opened up at the Dim Sum bar and he slid into it, ahead of a Chinese gangbanger who cursed him in Cantonese. He ignored the snickers from the sailors at the end of the bar.  The pants were too damn tight.  That and the pantyhose had him peeing every ten minutes.

Jack turned back toward the bar, thinking the server would be the one to ask about papers, when he heard the gang banger to his left whisper “Cops!” in Cantonese and slide out.  He turned on the stool as naturally as he could.

The smaller cop was staring at him with a strange expression on his face.  About five-nine, one-fifty or so, mid-thirties, extremely short dark hair, very pale, and impeccably dressed in a dark blue suit. The cop turned and said something to his partner who laughed and shook his head.

Jack stood and walked toward the back as casually as he could.  He hoped there was a back way out he didn’t remember from before.  There was one of those curved round mirrors high on the wall right at the turn so waiters could avoid collisions. He glanced at it, catching the heel of his boot on nothing.  The little cop was following.  There was no back way out.

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Chapter 68

Her Grace told the wheelchair to move forward.  The chair confirmed that she wanted to move forward.  It really did help having the flags on the floors so she knew the distances to things.

“Stop,” she said.

The stop command was the only command the chair didn’t question.

She did not watch news or surf the web.  She relied on faith and reports from her people.  She opened her email and ignored the first six new messages.  The seventh was the one she had been waiting for.

“Open message from Joshua,” she said.

“Do you wish me to open message from Joshua?” the computer asked?

“Yes,” she said, as patiently as she could.

The priest had done his work well, as he should if he valued his freedom.  His penchant for little boys had cost the Church time, money, and grief, but he did command loyalty from some of the soldiers of God.  The couple had done their job.  One threat was eliminated and two more would be imprisoned soon.  She might be able to turn McDonald and the Jewess’ capture into an execution.

Her Grace had learned her lesson about the brother and the Jewess abomination and Hong Lee. These people were smart and had influence and resources.  Robert E. Lee White was probably helping them.  He had been an altar boy and had even considered the priesthood in his youth.  How could he possibly be the best friend of an atheist, one whose sister was a lesbian and who worked to suborn their savior’s will?  There still might be a way.  Who was his confessor?  Perhaps she could have him replaced for a while with one of her loyal priests.  For all she knew his priest could be a member of the inner circle of the Church of the Seven Sisters.

She knew that her time was limited and knew that direct action was the key.  It would take the labs another year to help their savior create the Sword of God.  She must act decisively and right now.

“Compose reply.”

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Chapter 67

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Jack heard Dvora’s duck-footed walk.  He listened to the two quick knocks followed by three more quick knocks that was his signal not to kill whatever came through the door.  He still looked through the peephole. She said, “We are in the shit.  They think you kidnapped me and we are all over the news and I am scared.”

They watched TV and filled each other in on what was going on. “Tell me about the plan,” he said, sitting back on the bed as she organized the packages.

“It will be a lot easier to show you.  You know the cops are looking for a man and a woman.  It would be damn hard to turn you into a woman that would convince anybody, so I’m going to turn me into a man.  You can help.”

Jack didn’t tell her that he didn’t think she could pass for a man. She’d been busy.  She pulled out a pair of baggy painter’s pants and a billowy white shirt, with some light pink embroidery of birds on the chest, and a white baseball cap with a long brim and rainbow symbol.  She’d also managed to find white cowboy boots.

Dvora pulled the goodies out of the bag she’d filled at the CVS on the border of Little Italy and China Town.  He recognized a load of make-up, cotton balls, gauze pads, super glue, septic pencil, razor, ace bandages, peroxide and an electric razor with beard and mustache attachment.  She explained as she went.

“First you will help me cut my hair.  Then I’ll bleach it. After that I’ll change the shape of my eyes and lighten my skin with makeup and alter the way I walk-we’ll change everything.  Then we’ll start on you.”

The idea of cutting Dvora’s beautiful hair and bleaching it didn’t appeal to him at all.  “I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before.”

“Good, it’s supposed to look ragged.”

Jack was useless on the haircut. He finally held the little mirror so she could look into the fun house bathroom mirror and do the damage herself.  She had him help her with the peroxide, warning him not to get any on her clothes.  What was left was hair nearly as short as his, sort of a beat generation hair-helmet. As she worked on her eyebrows she talked.

“Most of this is just girl-stuff you learn helping friends kill their hair and do makeup.  There was a time I was too proud to take what I thought of as Daddy’s money. I had just opened the dance-theater troupe in Berkeley.  I painted sets, sewed costumes, did the makeup, choreography, and danced at least one of the major roles in each production.”

He watched her transform the full natural line of her brow into something that somehow said bitch without saying a word.  She used a pot of something she applied with little sponges to change her gorgeous skin to an unhealthy pale.  With a sharp No. 2 pencil and something that looked like what coal dust might look like, if there still was such a thing, she gave herself a convincing five o’clock shadow.

Jack asked her about the Ace bandages.

“I will use them to strap my tits down. They’re not very big, but you know I’m a girl.”

Poor girls, he thought, not saying anything.  She stood, stretched, walked over, and pushed him into the same uncomfortable chair she’d used.

“Now it’s time to start on you.”

“Exactly what do you plan on doing to me?”  He asked.

The grin returned. “I’m going to turn you into a blond as well.  We’ll leave your roots a little dark and lighten your skin. Don’t shave. I’ll want you to keep a rough looking couple of days’ beard stubble.”

She looked closely at the now 11 PM shadow and said, “Oh good, it’s coming in gray and black.  Now I’ll have to show you how to walk and act toward me, but you shouldn’t have too much trouble.”

“What do you mean-teach me how to act toward you?  What’s my disguise?”

With a smile, she said, “Not you dear.  Us.  I’m going to turn us into a gay couple.”

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Chapter 66

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Jack stopped by his office, opened the safe and removed his bribe money and headed for the door. They were almost to the elevator when he remembered the cameras in the lobby.  He and Dvora jogged back the other way.  The service entrance was electronically locked and alarmed like everything else in the building.  He knew the master code and within seconds they were out without setting off the alarms.

They were lost in the crowds of tourists in China Town within minutes.  Every time he looked at his watch thinking they’d better hurry to get there, only a minute or so had passed. He gave Dvora a huge hug and said, “Take care of Meghan.”

“I’m going with you. Bob will protect Meghan better than I ever could.  She wants me to fight this fight,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him further into China Town.  Rather than create a scene people might notice by telling her no, he simply went along.  He would ditch her soon anyway.

“Hold on.  Give me your phone so I can destroy it.”  She looked perplexed for a few seconds and then sad.  The loss of her phone meant severing ties.  She loved her iPhone and texting friends.  Her thousands of twitter followers would have to do without her for a while.  She used her phone for GPS as well so the Feds could follow her. He hated to kill his iPhone, but he had to.  As they headed toward the restaurant he scattered bits and pieces of their phones into grates and trash cans.  They turned the corner to the street that dead-ended at Mama Ling’s.

Jack stood out in a crowd and with Dvora by his side they stood out even more. A group of Korean tourists hurried toward them.  He dodged like a matador to avoid the determined-looking middle-aged lady in the lead.  She hit him like a fullback.  He stutter-stepped to gain his balance, but the difference in mass meant she had to lose.  She dropped her bag to keep from falling.  He apologized in English, not remembering how to say “sorry” in Korean.

The rock-hard woman bowed and handed him the dark blue gym bag, saying, “Sorry.  I knocked your bag down.  I watch where I go next time.”

He took the bag, thanked her, adjusted the strap so it rode a little higher on his shoulder, and followed Dvora deeper into China Town.  They stopped in front of a discount electronics store.  Keeping his body toward the street and his left arm hiding most of the bag, he unzipped it half way.

Bob had been busy. There was the money he had expected, cash in twenties, banded by a bank from the look of it.  He counted fifteen stacks, so $30K.  There was a laptop, with charger, a Mac Air thank goodness, and two pre-paid cell phones, with charger for both car and wall.  It looked like Bob was expecting a shooting war.  He’d dropped in a Sig Sauer and a twin to Jack’s favorite knife, a Gerber Mark I Commando.

He glanced over Dvora’s head through the window of the electronics shop.  The sixty-inch Sony LED TV, with closed-captioning and color picture-in-picture, showed two local news stories.  The big picture showed an aerial scene shot from a helicopter. The crowd of hundreds gathered around a police cordon.  He could barely make out the yellow tapes fluttering in the breeze. The camera zoomed in with lurching abruptness.  The smaller picture showed KGO’s lead reporter, the shrill idiot he didn’t like, doing the on-the-spot.

The big picture flashed to an O’Hare family photo.  His widow was a plain woman who looked like she’d be more at home at an Iowa Republican Wives’ dinner than in DNA Valley.  The teenaged daughter looked like trouble.  She had a pinched, mean look around her eyes, and the tender, mouth-closed look of someone getting used to braces.

The caption below read “…execution style murder of Donald O’Hare, who was president and CEO of ReWire, Inc., one of the cutting-edge genetic engineering firms here in the Bay Area.  This company seems to attract tragedy.  Less than three weeks ago, Meghan Allison McDonald, the company’s chief scientist, was brutally beaten during a robbery and is still in a coma.”

The big screen flashed a picture of Meghan accepting an award at last year’s Bay Area Science Excellence dinner. The picture was one of his favorites.  He wanted to stay and look.  The big screen changed to show a computer generated police sketch.  It looked a lot like Jack, except at least five years older, with jowls.  Then a sketch flashed of a woman who looked like a trashy version of Dvora. The woman looked a few years younger than Dvora.  Life wasn’t fair.  The closed caption scrolled:

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“This just in: The composite pictures you see on screen are of the suspects in the brutal gangland-style murder of Donald O’Hare.  The man is in his late thirties to mid-forties, approximately six feet tall, and very powerfully built, weighing between one hundred ninety and two hundred and ten pounds. …”

At least they’d made him lighter.  He and Dvora started moving, mostly because she grabbed him by the strap on the bag and tugged him into the alley.

She said, “Okay.  Okay.  Walk to the end of this alley and wait.  There is a little hotel called, of all things, Heaven’s Gate.  The service entrance should be on this alley to your right, near the end.  If I don’t find you in fifteen minutes, you are on your own.”

“Do you have cash?”

“Fuck!” she said and smiled a grim smile.  “I was just going to whip out the old Black American Express card. Habits!  I have a couple hundred bucks.  Should be enough for a few days.”

Jack waited, watching the rats root through the garbage behind the bad Dim Sum place backing onto the alley.  They’d be sorry. He’d eaten part of a meal there.  Once.  The rats didn’t look like they were in the mood for conversation.  He counted the money in the bag.  He was wrong on the count.  Two of the stacks were one hundred-dollar bills. That and the loose bills in the bottom took the total up to thirty-six thousand four hundred and seventy-one dollars.  He pictured Bob opening his safe, grabbing his emergency stash, and then throwing in whatever cash he had in his wallet.  Add that to the $25K Jack had in the bribe envelope and they would be fine. There was a little envelope in the bottom that he hadn’t seen with two credit cards and a note.  The cards were on a bank he had never heard of and the signature block on back was blank.  The cards were issued in the names of Mack Reynolds.

Bob’s note said, “The cards each have a ten thousand dollar line and are clean. There is no Mack Reynolds.  I didn’t have time for an ID in that name, but will when we arrange a secure drop.  Do not call anyone!  Don’t use the Mac for email!  I will call you with a secure number.  The cell phones are throwaways, use them twice at most, destroy them, and buy others. Your first contact number is 509-555-1211.  Call at 2200.  Go with God.”

Go with God yourself, good buddy, Jack thought with eyes burning.  It must be the garbage.  He looked down at his watch knowing that at least fifteen minutes had passed, knowing he was going to be arrested any minute.  The timer on his watch said seven minutes had elapsed. He communed with garbage and rats, got to know the pigeons and the cockroaches and only an hour or two later, the rest of the fifteen minutes was over.

Dvora opened the fire door and waved him in.  She’d stuffed her hair up under a Raider’s baseball cap and got rid of her vest and bra.  She wore sandals instead of the heels she’d been wearing before.  Her slacks were cuffed up so they looked like Capri pants or pedal pushers or whatever in the hell they were calling them now.

The bad stucco on the outside of the hotel covered cinder block construction.  All the older buildings in the City had been retrofitted to meet the quake standards, so structurally it was strong.  The stairs were stressed concrete over steel.  There wasn’t as much trash on the landings as he thought there would be, but the place smelled of old puke and new pee.  The security light in its steel cage was burned out on the first floor and missing in the one above that and burning bright on their floor.

Dvora led him to room 316, two away from the stairwell. The door was heavy, a steel, fire door that would take a good amount of kicking in.  She opened the door with a steel key, bolted the door and jumped into his arms.

She quickly pushed him away and said, “I’ve got ideas, but I’ve got to move fast to buy supplies.”

He spluttered, “Hold on, let’s sit down and put together a plan and…”

She interrupted and said, “I trusted you. Now you trust me. I want to move before they broadcast actual pictures of us.  If I’m gone any longer than an hour it means… I’d rather not think about what it means.  The signal to let me in will be two quick knocks, pause then three quick, okay?”

Now she was a secret agent.

“Hold on. Do you have enough cash to pay for your supplies?”

“Damn it!”  The only time in her life she had ever had to be concerned about money was when she made the choice to cut ties to her family.

She smiled and asked, in a high-pitched, whiney voice, “Honey, can I have some money to go shopping?”

The woman was insane.  It took seconds to pull bills from different stacks, crumple them up, and spread them around the floor with their shoes. He let her out the door and locked it behind her.

Their new home was a treat.  New-looking fire sprinkler heads stuck down through the recently sprayed ceiling.  He would bet dollars to rubles there were only enough pipes connected to cover the ass of the inspector they bribed to look the other way.  The bed sagged so bad it looked like the invisible man was having a nap.  The mirror in what passed for the bathroom was like something from a circus fun house.  He always wanted to look that thin.  The toilet was so stained he wouldn’t let his dog drink from it, if he had a dog.

The old TV, surprise, surprise, was missing its remote.  Jack and Dvora were the lead story on every local news channel and most of the nationals.

The first picture of Dvora was as Prima Ballerina for the San Francisco Ballet, next in her role as choreographer and mistress of dance, and then as spokesperson and fund-raiser for the local performing arts community.  The last picture showed her in a black and white outfit much like the one she wore when she walked into his office an hour and seventeen minutes earlier.  Her hair was shorter now.  Wherever she’d been when the picture was taken, she’d worn makeup nearly heavy enough for the stage. The caption below read:

“…Dvora Rebecca Schacter, age thirty-eight, is approximately five feet three inches tall and weighs one hundred and fifteen pounds.  She has dark brown, almost black, hair, which is now approximately chin length.  Her eyes are light brown and she has no visible scars or other distinguishing marks.  It is believed that she is being held against her will by Jack McDonald and that she is not an accessory to the brutal murder of Donald O’Hare…”

More blah, blah, blah and then there were pictures of Jack.  The caption said it was a repeat and instructed the public to pay close attention before listing the 1-888-CRIMEGO phone number to call with information.  The first picture was right after he graduated from Ranger school.

I looked young and stupid! He thought.

The pictures progressed through the years until the last one. It must have been taken by one of the paparazzi outside Meghan’s house on the morning of the attack.  The photographer managed to catch him looking up through his brows as he plowed through the crowd, running to the hospital.  The picture made him look dangerous.  Hell, he was dangerous, and getting more so by the minute.

The story changed again to show the shooting scene and the word MANHUNT appeared.  Words scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

“…Jack McDonald is thirty-nine years old, six feet and one-half inches tall and weighs two hundred and twenty-five pounds.  He has a weathered appearance, dark brown hair worn short, turning gray at the temples.  He has gray eyes and numerous scars on his lower and upper back and back of his legs from war wounds.  He has a black ink tattoo of the Latin Phrase “De oppresso liber” tattooed on his right shoulder…”

The reporter had it wrong.  It wasn’t black ink.  It was graphite lubricant for their weapons, all they had at the time.  The team was shot up.  Offah Neuffi did a great job considering he was lettering the old Samoan way and left-handed.  There wasn’t much left of his right hand.  He’d dip the weighted bamboo needle head into the lubricant and tapped it into the outline he’d drawn onto Jack’s shoulder with a Sharpie.  It hurt like hell, but not enough to block out the pain from the shrapnel in his legs and back.  The team was in a place they couldn’t be in, so they couldn’t call for extraction.

The A-team had learned to live together so it was appropriate they would die together because they couldn’t let themselves be captured… Shit, he’d missed some of the caption.

“…he is thought to be armed with the revolver he is believed to have used to kill Donald O’Hare.  He is an excellent shot with a handgun and is known to have killed many times while in the military.  Jack McDonald is an advanced black belt practitioner of one of the more lethal forms of Judo. He is described as freakishly strong by the students from his dojo and is considered too dangerous for even standard units of our local police to handle. Remember the number to call is 1-888-CRIMEGO. This just in: Mrs. O’Hare, the widow of Donald O’Hare, is offering a reward of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of her husband’s killer or killers.”

Jack was now the target of every law enforcement officer around who needed to prove his manhood or her womanhood.  He wondered if the enemy had a direct connection into Captain Yan’s office.  If they did he might as well take out the Sig and blow the top of his head off.  He was beside the door, locked and loaded before he’d consciously registered the sound of the stairs creaking.  He pushed his ear hard against the door and heard drunken talk in Cantonese from at least three different male voices.  He watched through the peephole as the group stumbled by.

He and Dvora were on every station.  He happened on CNN Headline News just as they ran video. They’d used film of him breaking one of his opponent’s arms in a Judo tournament next to video of Dvora dancing the lead in Romeo and Juliet.  It was Beauty and the Beast, wasn’t it?  Anyone looking at the picture would be sure he was a murderer and kidnapper and Dvora his hostage.

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Chapter 65

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Jack walked over to the stainless steel sink at the wet bar and rinsed his mouth. He walked back to his Mac, and almost casually, scrolled through to the description of his sister’s attack from November 6.

“Meghan McDonald, Chief Scientist of ReWire, Inc., and sister to Bay Area entrepreneur Jack McDonald, was found unconscious this morning brutally beaten after a robbery.”

The red mark on the timeline from the heavy short volume two weeks previous was etched into his mind.  He went back to the database and made one more change.  He pulled out all of the companies using federal money in the form of grants or loans.  Then the causation was basically a straight line.  He should have smelled it before.  All government money came with strings.  It would be simple to guide government-sponsored research down dead end streets.  The enemy’s organization had tentacles everywhere.

Jack picked up the remote control for the vertical blinds and held down the button. Sunset-enflamed storm clouds appeared in front of him. There was a major storm parked just off shore, with enough water to make a dent in the drought. A stubborn high-pressure ridge had let little pieces of storm energy sneak in, with just enough rain to turn some of the wind-blown dust of the Central Valley into mud.  None of the rain made it past the foothills into the Sierras.

Jack felt as if he were at the eye of another storm, waiting, and watching it swirl around him.  He didn’t know when it would hit or where, but he knew he would find a way to be at the center of the storm.  He pulled the stock market numbers up on the Quotron he parked out of the way by the window.  The machine was an anachronism, like him.

Jack typed in RWIR and pushed enter.  Short volume was high on every up-tick.  He turned the lights off in the room and watched the sky.  At first he thought his sister’s attack had been the result of a random act of violence, and then a madman with a misguided, but understandable, motive.  Then he learned the attack was part of a greater plan, a plan that made no sense.  His pain wasn’t lessened or increased by knowing why his sister was at risk.  A long-term, high-level conspiracy to control the price of a few stocks would leave her no more dead than a casual mugging in the Tenderloin.

Now he knew his sister was just one of many victims. They had burned and bombed and planted evidence and gotten away with it-until now. He knelt on the floor in front of the window, the occasional flash of lightning blending with the infrequent glow of emergency vehicle lights below.

He felt a kind of a peace come over him.  He swore to the gods of strong winds and fast water, to the spirits of stark granite cliffs, and tall ocean waves, that he would stop these bastards and take vengeance.

The ringing phone interrupted his promise.

Sir Ian’s strong Scots accent rumbled like thunder over the speakerphone as he said.  “Jack my boy, you have stirred a nest of hornets.  We finally traced one of the trades directly to this church.  The young man who acquired the information is now in the hospital, no apparent hit-and-run this, but a brutal beating.  If our bodyguards had been slower he would ‘na still be alive.  This is not all.  Officials who have been friendly to us are now acting as if they don’t remember their bribes.  Many are actively trying to hinder.  Cargoes are being inspected, permits denied, securities trades questioned, and copies of records requested in very official ways.”

Jack heard the whine of the electric motor as Uncle Chin maneuvered his chair closer to the speakerphone.

“Ayee Ah, we have found a worthy enemy. To be on two strong legs again with an ax in my hand, this is what I want.  Lee is on her way to you.  I could not stop her.”

He started to tell them what he’d discovered when Dvora strode into the room. He pushed the button for speakerphone, making sure the signal scrambler was still on and started his story.  Dvora moved closer as his story went on; toward the end tears streaming unashamedly down her face.

The group went back and forth, trying to hammer out a plan until the alarm chimed, reminding him they were due in Captain Yan’s office in twenty minutes.  He told the old boys to be careful, explaining why he had to go.

Dvora no longer looked like a very young thirty.  She looked as if the last ten years of her life had been waiting, hiding, and suddenly ambushed her.

“When the sorrow is yours, you don’t think past it to see other bigger sorrows.  When Meghan was hurt, all I could think of was her dying and hoping she would live.  Watching her in the coma, all I could think about was her not getting any better.  When she started getting better all I could think of was her being a vegetable, never regaining that whacked-out humor, her mind leaping so fast and far.  Now to discover that she is just a small part of it, that these…” she trailed off unable to think of the word she needed.

Jack headed toward the door.  What she said next stopped him.

“I couldn’t think of a word bad enough. I think it comes from being a Jew, thinking the Holocaust was the worst inhumanity man has ever done to man.  It’s not true.  Stalin’s pogroms, the forced collectivization, killed more. Mao even more millions.  These people, if they succeed, could be responsible for the death of even more millions.  They can’t succeed can they?”

He answered, “These freaks are a pimple on the ass of the world and we are going to pop it.  They will cause more harm.  We will have to piss away more time and money.  They might even kill a few more people, but they are going to lose and lose soon.”  What he didn’t tell her was that she was almost right.  The sabotage by the Church only made sense for two reasons.  One was to make money.  And they had.  The second was to destroy the most promising biotech labs’ capacity to wage war on a virus.  And that only made sense if the Church was planning to…

The phone rang with Bob’s signal.  When Jack answered, Bob said, “Thank God!  I knew it wasn’t you, but he looked so much like you.  One of my operatives went into early labor so I watched Donald O’Hare myself, through binoculars.  He was in that little park by his house just seconds ago.  I watched you and Dvora walk up to him, watched you pull out your .38, and shoot him in the head.  For a minute I thought it could be you.  I just received confirmation on Albert Weise’s deposits.  They came from Donald O’Hare.”

Jack would bet a thousand to one that his .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver was missing from the range.  He would bet another thousand to one that it would be the murder weapon.  The clothes he wore when he shot at the range, including the long sleeve shirt, were sitting in a hamper in the laundry room.  He had washed his hands maybe twenty times in the last two days, so no powder residue on his hands.  Time to stop being the wolf and become the coyote.

“It’s time to put the plan in place.  I didn’t think they’d move this fast.  I need cash and secure communications.  I’m leaving now.”

Bob talked slow and thought fast.  “I’ll have my people meet you in fifteen minutes outside our second favorite Chinese restaurant with a few useful things. You’ll think they are Korean tourists. My prayers are with you.”

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Chapter 64

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The couple knelt in front of the priest.  He placed hands on the man and then the woman. The ancient Latin phrases reverberated through the room.  The room was cold and the air still, dust motes dancing in the light through the stained glass.  When the priest was done he knelt with them and enfolded them in his huge arms.

It took him two tries to find his voice as he said, “I wish I could do something as glorious, as direct, as … meaningful as what you two are about to do.”

The woman said, “Father, you heal and nourish your flock all the time, every day, and have for years and years.  We are simply going to do something that will take a few seconds.  Our few seconds do not compare to the life you have given to God’s work.”

The priest smiled and reached under his hassock for the package.  He kept the cloth folded over the steel.

“Make sure you put on the gloves before you touch it.  Do not wipe it down or clean it in any way.  Wrap it back in this cloth and drop it in the agreed-upon place.”

The priest handed the man the thin cotton gloves that looked so much like empty flesh. The man’s hands trembled as he took them and slid the gloves into the inside pocket of the very good suit he was so uncomfortable wearing.

The woman held her purse open and the priest dropped in the cloth wrapped package. The husky white male with pale skin and graying short brown hair and the thin, athletic, Semitic-looking woman rose.  Both bowed slightly at the waist.

“Go with God, my children!”