John Locke - Lethal Experiment

“Makes sense to me,” I said. “But why do you have to quit your job?”

“The house I want isn’t in New York.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s in Virginia.”

“Virginia.”

“We’re going to move to Virginia.”

“Virginia,” I said. “Why?”

“To be near you, silly!”

She was beaming.

“Well, say something,” she said. “Are you surprised?”

To say the least.

At that precise moment, my cell phone rang. Darwin.

Darwin said, “How’s it shakin’, Cosmo?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your traveling name. Cosmo Burlap.” He laughed. “You like it?”

I covered the mouthpiece and whispered “business call, be right back” to Kathleen. I hurried away from the table and found a semi-quiet corner outside the bar.

“You’re catching a commercial flight from Denver to Dallas.”

“What? When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s no good for me. I’ve got some things going.”

“Don’t even start with me, Creed. You haven’t had a fucking assignment since I can’t remember when. But you need a staff of geeks for one of your ridiculous research projects, or a chopper in West Bumfuck to take you to a hospital? Who’s the guy you call?”

I sighed. “You.”

“Who always comes through for you? Say it!”

“You do.”

“Damn right I do. You need a drone to drive your car? You need your non-Homeland crime scene sterilized by midnight? You need a fucking Hummer-mounted, pulsed energy weapon flown to California on two hours’ notice?”

“You made your point,” I said.

“Goddamn right I did. You want to keep your cushy lifestyle?”

“I think ‘cushy’ might be a stretch.”

“Get your ass to Denver tonight!”

“Can I use the Gulfstream?”

“Lear 60.”

“Nice equipment,” I said. “What’s with the Cosmo?”

“Cosmo Burlap. The name you’re flying under in first class.”

“That your idea of a joke?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Pretty sad, you ask me.”

“Hey, you want to switch jobs? Any fucking day, my friend. How about this: I fuck the accountant and you deal with Donovan Creed, the nut job. The day we switch jobs you get to make up the funny names.”

“Uh huh.”

“This a bad time for you? Interferes with your love life? Prevents you from making an extra million bucks? Gee, that’s too bad. Fuck you !”

It was a bad time. Callie was counting on me to track down Tara Siegel in Boston, something I’d planned to do tomorrow after getting a good night’s sleep. I’d had a long day, what with the funeral, Kimberly, the rainstorm, the flights, the late dinner with Kathleen. Last thing I felt like doing tonight was pulling a four-hour flight to Denver with a turn-around to Dallas.

I said, “What do you mean, ‘fuck the accountant’?”

Chapter 26

The girl sitting next to me kept glancing at my jewelry. We’d just gotten settled into our seats when—there, she did it again.

“Business or pleasure?” I said.

The corners of her mouth turned slightly upward. Not a smile, exactly, but not a frown either.

“Business, I’m afraid. You?”

“The same. By the way, I’m Cosmo.”

She gave up a quick laugh that made her eyelids crinkle at the corners. Then looked up and saw me not laughing. “Oh,” she said. “You’re serious.”

I showed her a wan smile. “I curse my parents daily. How about you?”

She giggled. “I don’t even know your parents,” she said.

I shared the smile. “Good one.”

“Thanks. I’m Alison. Alison Cilice.”

“Cilice with an “S?”

“With a C,” she said, and spelled it for me.

It never ceases to amaze me how much personal information total strangers reveal about themselves in casual conversations on an airplane. In less than three minutes I can get almost anyone to tell me where, when and how to kill them.

“Nice to meet you, Alison. What sort of work do you do?”

“Oh, Gawd. It’s so boring!”

I laughed. “Try me!”

“Okay. You know the Park ‘N Fly’s?”

“The parking lots by the airports? That’s you?”

She laughed. “How old do I look? No, I don’t own them. I’m their internal auditor.”

Alison was about thirty, had an easy manner with men. Darwin probably had all the sexual details in a file on his desk.

“You must travel a lot,” I said.

“Every other week.”

“How many locations?”

“We’ve got nineteen lots across the country,” she said, “so I stay pretty busy.”

“I bet a lot of managers hate to see you coming.”

“Serves them right if they do,” she said.

“Do you always find irregularities?”

“Always.”

“That means you’re good at what you do.”

She smiled.

I looked away a moment and stretched my hands in front of me so she could get a closer look at my sparkles.

“Nice jewelry,” she said.

I looked back and watched her eyes take it all in: the Presidential Rolex on my left wrist, the four-carat diamond ring on my right hand, the lack of jewelry on my left ring finger.

I said, “Let me guess: the company parks you at one of the airport hotels, and expects you to stay put the whole week.”

She looked surprised. “How’d you guess?”

“We’re living the same life. This is my first trip to Dallas, so naturally they’ve stuck me at the Airport Marriott.”

“For real? Me too!” she said.

“Not such a huge coincidence. The pilots and flight attendants will probably be there too, along with half the salesmen on the plane.”

She thought a minute. “Now that you mention it, I have seen a lot of the same people where I stay.”

Alison had great hair, a pretty face, and a flirtatious personality. She dressed well enough to hide most of the extra thirty pounds she carried, though her use of jewelry was a bit over-the-top. She wore rings on her fingers, numerous bracelets on each wrist, diamond studs in her ears—and probably elsewhere. I wondered how long it took to get all that shit off before going through the metal detector.

Neither of us spoke until we were wheels-up and had to answer the flight attendant about our drink orders. I asked for a cabernet, Alison wanted a Diet Coke.

“You ever get to see much of the cities you visit?” I said.

“I’m usually too tired for night life,” she said. “But I might hit the hotel bar for a quick drink once in awhile.”

“Let me guess: mojito?”

She laughed. “Yuk, no. I’m a cosmo girl all the way.”

I gave her a look. “Are you making fun of me?”

She put it together. “Oh, Gawd no!” she said, giggling. “But your name and my favorite drink: now there’s a coincidence!”

This had been no coincidence. Darwin hadn’t just saddled me with a ridiculous name out of spite or boredom. He’d been showing off , trying to impress me with the depth of his preparation. I wondered about the surname he’d given me: Burlap. I slipped my credit card into the slot and waited for an internet connection. It took me a couple tries to make it work, but when it did I plugged in my phone and typed “burlap” into the search engine. I learned that burlap is a breathable fabric made from jute and vegetable fibers. I learned that its resistance to condensation protects its contents from spoilage. I read a little further and discovered that burlap is sometimes used in a religious ceremony called “mortification of the flesh,” during which believers wear an abrasive shirt called a cilice.

As in Alison Cilice.

For the hundredth time I made a mental note never to fuck with Darwin.

Alison said, “You doing some research?”

“Part of the job,” I said.

“Which is?”

“I’m a jewelry salesman.”

“For Rolex?” she said, drawing out the word.

“Among other top brands,” I said.

I slid my watch off my wrist and handed it to her and wondered if she could tell it was the real thing. Judging by her eyes, my guess was she could.

“It’s really heavy,” she said.

“Much bulkier than the Piaget in my case,” I said. Her smile grew wider than I would have thought possible. Her eyes took on a dreamy glaze and she held the tip of her tongue against the bottom of her upper lip and tapped it in a way that seemed sexually suggestive.

“I wonder if we’ll run into each other in the bar one night this week,” she said.

Completely in love with Kathleen, I had no intention of bedding this plus-sized jewelry whore. Still, I had a part to play on behalf of national security.

“I’m positive we’ll not only meet, but share a drink as well,” I said.

“You’re that sure of yourself?” she said, holding that same wide-mouth smile.

“I am. Or my name isn’t Cosmo Burlap.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh Gawd!” she said. “You poor man! Tell me you’re lying.”

Chapter 27

Here’s the story on Alison Cilice:

Several days before I shared a flight with her to Dallas, Alison Cilice’s image was captured by a Denver Airport parking lot surveillance camera in the company of a suspected terrorist named Adnan Afaya. This, according to Darwin.

“And guess who Afaya has been linked to?” Darwin said.

At the time I was in a hurry to get back to my dinner with Kathleen at The Spotted Pig. I said, “Just tell me, okay?”

“Fathi.”

That got my attention. “Father or son?” I said. The father, being the UAE diplomat, was virtually untouchable. The son, on the other hand…”

“Abdulazi,” he said. “The son.”

“I’m on it.”

“Thought you might be.”

Last Valentine’s Day, Callie and I thought we’d killed a woman named Monica Childers by giving her a lethal dose of botulinam toxin. This was a contract hit ordered by Victor. As it turned out, Victor had two reasons for killing Monica: first, he wanted to test his army’s ability to divert a spy satellite, which he used to view the hit, and second, he wanted to see if his antidote for botulinam toxin would work. His people found Monica’s body and managed to resuscitate her. Then, having no further use for Monica, Victor sold her to the Fathis, to be, as he put it—their sex slave. I asked Victor if Monica was still in country and he basically said that the Fathis had fucked her to death.

And that has stuck in my craw ever since.

I can just imagine my psychiatrist, Ms. Nadine Crouch, asking, “Since you tried to kill her, why do you care how she died?”

It would be a good question, and I’m not sure I’d be able to supply a credible answer. But for whatever reason, it pisses me off . Maybe it’s because I’m a counter-terrorist and I don’t like the idea of terrorists raping American women to death. Maybe it’s because I felt used by Victor, or because Monica turned out to be a decent person who didn’t deserve to die that way. In the final analysis my subconscious reasons aren’t important. What’s important is that I made a decision to punish the Fathis, father and son, for what they did to Monica. And maybe this link to Alison Cilice could put me in a position to do just that.

Of course, Darwin wasn’t interested in punishing the Fathis. He’s all about destroying terror cells before they have a chance to mount attacks on domestic soil. Not that he’d shed a tear if I managed to kill either or both of the Fathis. At any rate, Darwin believed Alison and Afaya were having an affair, and that Afaya was planning to use Alison to infiltrate some of the Park ‘N Flys.