Headhunters (9 page)

I could hear sirens approaching from outside the window and
I began to run back into the building.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. The thought of my kids,
of Alaina asleep in their beds made me want to cry, to be home with them, to
cuddle them, to protect them. I tried not to let it carry in my voice.

“This is your last contribution to the enduring safety of
this country,” Kendrick said. “Take it like a man.”

With that, my phone went dead. I stopped and tried to dial
out, but it wasn’t working. My phone was being electronically jammed. I picked
up a desk phone and tried to dial out. I got a recording of a female voice
saying, “All circuits are busy…” I hung up and looked for my next course of
action.

I heard the elevator signal that it had arrived on my floor,
followed by the sounds of corporate security. I pushed open the door to the
stairs and ran.

I’d seen the lights from the police cars outside so I knew
that going out the ground floor wasn’t an option. I had to find another way. I
ran up to seven and stepped over Chris’ body. There was nothing I could do
there. He deserved better than to be left in a stairwell, but he’d be better
served if I caught his killer than if I were apprehended trying to tend to his
lifeless body.

I ran to my office and opened my door. Five years ago or so,
I’d been in a meeting and an analyst spilled their coffee on me, ruining my
dress shirt. Since then, I’d taken to keeping an extra suit and change of
clothes in closet at work. My clothes were covered in blood and grime and I had
to get out of them. I needed to change, to hide and there was only one place
that I could do both of those things. I retrieved my suit from my office and
headed for Max’s office.

Max was a reader. He liked literature and he and I had
shared booklists and preferences and opinions from time to time. Because of the
nature of our business, Max had mentioned his affection for George Orwell’s
book 1984. Max’s key code combination for his office was also four digits. I
knew from experience what the first two digits were, having seen him open up
his office before. I had to wager that he used the book’s title as his pass
code.

I keyed in the numbers and the door opened. I ducked inside
and closed the door behind me. I let the office stay dark and looked out
through the blinds. The elevator sounded and security personnel flooded onto
the floor. Their flashlights swept through the entire floor, searching me out.
I crept back further into the office, until I knelt behind the desk. I could
hear them looking, clearing areas, moving on to the next. They spent a fair
amount of time in my office next door, after all, that’s where I belonged. They
seemed perplexed that I wasn’t there. I shouldn’t have had access to Max’s
office, so aside from rattling the door handle, they passed by the office
without concern. Soon they were moving on. I knew that when they didn’t find me
elsewhere, they would be back.

I closed the blinds to Max’s office and sat at his desk. I
tried his phone, but got the same message as before. I turned on his PC and
logged in using Jess’ passcode. I feared that mine would trip an alarm in the
system so I used hers. I had gotten it when she’d asked me to check mail for
her one day when she was out sick with a stomach bug. I knew I’d have to
remember to thank her later.

The system booted up and I hit the Internet. When trying to
recruit software people, a good headhunter will use any means at their disposal
to contact a consultant. We had started using online instant messaging services
as a means of getting messages to consultants so as not to disturb them when
they’re at work. I accessed the site and typed a quick message to Alaina and
hit ‘send’. I waited for her to reply. After what seemed like five minutes, she
finally responded, asking me where I was. I immediately regretted the use of
the format. Text messaging someone about blackmail and the safety of the nation
is hardly compatible. I did my best and told Alaina to take the kids, get out
of the house and to go to a storage facility on the way out of town. I gave her
the access code for the gate and the lock combination on the door of the
storage locker. Inside would be clothes, supplies and money to get her and the
kids as far away as possible. I’d contact her later. She tried to ask me what
had happened and words failed me. Tell the kids I love them, I said and signed
off.

I checked my watch and realized that the office would open
in an hour. I’d have to move quickly. I had no way of contacting Jessie. She
turned off her cell at night when she went to bed.

I grabbed my clothes and went into Max’s private bathroom. I
hung up my suit and turned to the mirror. I remembered the night that I’d gone
to tell Kendrick about my resignation from Blackthorn. The night that set all
of this into motion. I’d taken the Glock with me that night and it had made me
sick to think that I could have used it. Now, my hands didn’t tremble. And that
scared me even more.

I pulled off my clothes and scrubbed my face and hands to
get the blood off. It was a difficult job, but I made a fair effort at it. I
dressed in my suit and tie and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked
respectable. I looked like me before everything had gone to hell. I shook my
head and picked up the gun.

Max’s bathroom was big enough to contain a stall with a
toilet separate from the rest of the bathroom. I knew Max’s first stop in the
morning would be to his office and then right to his private bathroom with the
morning paper.

I hid in the private stall, stashing my dirty clothes behind
the toilet and out of the way. I checked my watch and prepared to wait.

It was just after 6:30 that Max arrived in his office. He
keyed in his code, walked in the door, dropped his files on his desk. He was
whistling as if that day was a happy day. I was about to convince him
otherwise.

He entered the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror,
examining a shaving nick under his chin. I’d been sitting, perched on the edge
of the toilet, feet under me so I couldn’t be seen. I lowered one foot, then
the other. I peeked through the crack of the door and saw Max at the sink.

I centered the front sight of the 9mm pistol on the back of
Max’s head and pushed the stall door open…

Chapter Nine

Three years ago I had to use my
government-issued sidearm for the first time. I was in a bathroom in a train
terminal. It was a bathroom that was very different from the private washroom
adjoining Max Donovan’s executive office. But in that moment, holding the Glock
in my hand, I flashed back to that first time…

Randall Kendrick and I had been the tightest of comrades. We
were working at the peak of our time at Blackthorn. Our project was to track a
terrorist cell on the west coast. The intel we uncovered through unofficial
phone taps indicated that a group of extremists intended to launch an attack in
Los Angeles. It was to be the counterpart, the bookend to the 9/11 attacks.

I recruited specialists to crack bank records and we
followed money transfers from overseas to two individuals domestically. From
there, we hacked into their private systems and discovered the location of the
planned attack. It would be a rail line in Los Angeles. They were using an
encryption on their communications and the exact time and place was encoded.

We didn’t have enough to go through official channels yet,
so we took the project on ourselves. We’d track the suspects, disrupt their
communications as well as radio signals they might send to explosives and the
like. When we had independent confirmation, we could call in the LA SWAT team.
Our purpose was the deepest depth of clandestine ops. We were the lowest of the
low. We operated as our own terrorist cell to wreck havoc on the terrorists. To
disrupt and destroy and leave them in shambles. Exactly what they had done to
us.

I coordinated the teams operations at the train terminal. I
had a full technical team monitoring mobile phone conversations, radio
frequencies, any kind of electronic crosstalk that could be uncovered. We had a
team of specialists on the perimeter working. I sat in the middle of the
station, in what could very well be the epicenter of the attack. I was the man on
the ground.

Before long, we caught the communication via cell phone.
They were closing in. Two men with a biological agent that could be spread
through the train cars. Using GPS satellite tracking, we could target the men
down to a two meter area and track them as they moved on foot. We called the
LAPD and the local FBI field office and the men were quickly taken into
custody. Because of the state of the nation at the time and fear of growing
public panic, the situation was never released to the media or the general
population.

I thought the situation was over and got up to leave my post
when I saw the third man. His features were dark, but I wouldn’t necessarily
have picked him out as Middle Eastern. He would have passed as Latino or even
African American. He stood silently watching the arrests, then turned his
attention to me. He was watching me, watching them. And somehow in that moment,
he knew. He knew I had a hand in it.

I turned and walked away. I crossed the train platform and
walked up the stairs. I could see in the rounded mirror in the upper corner of
the stairwell that the man was following me. I picked up my pace and walked
onto the upper level. There were several exits, and I knew he’d anticipate that
I’d take one. Instead when I was out of his line of sight, I ducked into a men’s
room, hoping to lose him.

I walked past the first two stalls and entered the one at
the end. I stepped up onto the toilet and crouched. I hid my feet from view but
to my distress, realized that the door had no lock. For that matter, it had no
latch. Some industrious vandal had removed the hardware leaving the door to
swing freely open or closed with no stop in between. I was contemplating my
options, whether I should move or stay when I heard the door open.

It was the man from the train station. At first I didn’t
know how I knew, but I knew. In retrospect, I recognized the sounds of his
shoes, new and not yet broken in, purchased for the purpose of being used for
the train incident. The footsteps were coming closer. I heard them stop, then
squeak, then start again. The second time I heard the shoes squeak I realized
that the man was looking under the stall doors, squatting down, looking for me,
trying to see my feet.

The footsteps stopped and I could imagine him crouching to
see my feet in front of the last stall. I tottered on the toilet, feet tucked
under me, trying not to be seen, holding the door shut with one hand in what
seemed like the most ridiculous act of a charlatan that anyone could ever
imagine. My ruse wouldn’t last. There was nowhere else I could have gone.

I launched myself forward and put my shoulder to the door,
slamming it backwards into the man, sandwiching him between the door and the
wall. His head made a resounding smack as it hit and I tried to run. My feet
slid under me on the bathroom tile. I scrambled, trying to regain my balance,
but I felt his hand grab for me. I managed a step, then two, then he was on me
and we fell to the floor.

I had no advantage. The man was five inches taller and fifty
pounds heavier than me. I tried to squirm away, but he’d fallen on me, sitting
on me like a big brother wrestling with his younger sibling, only this man
wasn’t playing. He swung a fist at me and I managed to curl my arm up to
protect my head, elbow by my temple and his fist only struck my bicep. I tried
to break free, but there was no chance. He tried to hit me again, but I covered
up. I had to get away or he’d find an opening and I’d be finished.

I saw him shift then, reaching back for something. I seized
the opportunity and reached into my belt for my Glock 26, the mini 9mm pistol
Kendrick had made me carry. I pulled the gun out at the same time I saw what
the man was reaching for… it was a wicked looking blade of Damascus steel, grey
and black and insanely sharp. He was bringing it down toward my heart when I
fired the Glock. The gun was so close to the man that the muzzle flash scorched
his shirt and the flesh under his chin. The bullet struck him under his jaw and
exited through the top of his head. I was covered in blood spatter and for a
moment, the man sat still, his face frozen in anger, his body stiff in shock as
his life left him. And then he fell, not backwards as I had hoped, but
forwards, collapsing his weight onto me. It was literally dead weight and I had
never come to appreciate the term until just then. I struggled beneath him,
covered in his gore, smelling his stench of death, the body odor of days he
must have spent in some ramshackle apartment assembling the biological agent
he’d intended to use, but hadn’t gotten the chance.

I managed to reach my radio eventually and call my team. It
was twenty minutes before they found me. Twenty minutes I’d spent in that room,
with that man. Afterwards, I had gone to therapy during office hours, but I’d
never been able to share what had happened with Claire. I couldn’t explain away
the nightmares and waking up screaming and why I couldn’t watch the television
shows I had once enjoyed. And so it became a rift between us. Not because of
those things in particular, but because I’d begun to shut her out. I had to
condition myself to lie to her and somehow, at some level, she knew.

So, in that day that I hid in Max Donovan’s private
washroom, holding the Glock in my hand, I found that I was less than inclined
to use it. Feared what would happen if I did. So, I pocketed the pistol and
stepped out of the bathroom stall to confront him.

Max was looking in the mirror when I first spoke and you
would have thought he’d just been contacted by a spirit from the great beyond.

“Max.”

He jumped and spun toward me, eyes wide with shock.

“Holy shit…” he wheezed. “You scared the hell out of me.
What are you doing in here?”

This last part was said with a twist of anger. Max had
seemed to be a decent man. Or so I thought. But there were areas that you dared
not tread. You didn’t read his private files and apparently you weren’t
supposed to hide in his private bathroom. At least now I knew.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked, leveling a glare at him.

“What are you—?”

“Do you know me?” I asked, my voice hard.

“N-no, what—?”

“I work for a covert, domestic anti-terror unit,” I said.
“We hunt down the traitors within our borders who would sell our country’s
secrets. People like you…”

I let the statement hang in the air between us for a moment
before I continued. I took a step closer, hands in my pockets. I was at ease,
this was what I did. Negotiation was my forte. I was no field agent. I was a
headhunter and I knew how to talk to people.

“I work for Blackthorn, Inc.” I said. “And Randall Kendrick
is looking to burn your ass.”

“Randall Kendrick?” Max said. He was trying to regain his
footing. “Randall Kendrick is a—“

He didn’t quite know how to finish the sentence so I helped
him.

“A liar, a con man and an employee of the federal government
even though they’d deny it,” I said. “He posed as a buyer for the DHS files.
Files you were more than willing to sell to him. I know. I have the
documentation.”

Max sputtered, looking for a place to land, safe ground.

“No… no! That can’t be. My dealings with him have been…” Max
began.

“Your dealings have all been digitally recorded for the
court proceedings. There are records and videotapes and audiotapes of your
dealings with Kendrick. We know everything,” I said. I didn’t know if I was
lying or not, but suspected that Kendrick had records of everything he had
done, so why not this? Records could always disappear if Kendrick decided to
pin the DHS breach on me or Max or both.

“Kendrick is just an information broker,” Max said. “I
checked him out.”

“Randall Kendrick is an employee of the National Security
Agency,” I shot back. This wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t entirely false
either and I didn’t think Max would be able to split the hair to find the truth
inside. Then to cap it off, “I work for him. I’ve been collecting information
on you for the past two years.”

Max was stunned.

“What do you want from me?” Max asked. “I assume if this
were an official visit you would have brought in the Feds and I’d have agents
raiding my files right now…”

“There’s a situation internally…” I said. I was trying to be
cryptic for Max’s benefit. “We’re sorting it out.”

“What kind of situation?” Max asked.

“Kendrick overstepped bounds. He handled the questioning of
witnesses. Specifically Chris Swenson. Chris was a friend of mine. There’s some
concern about Kendrick’s methods. Torture… intimidation… Those concerns carry
over to his investigation of you and your dealings,” I said.

“So, what are you saying?” Max asked.

“I’m saying cover your ass. Watch your six. Beware of what’s
going on behind your back. Kendrick is not a friend to you. For that matter,
he’s no friend to me either.”

I was trying to point suspicion over Chris’ death back in
Kendrick’s direction. Moreover, if I could separate Max and Kendrick and turn
them against each other, I might be able to slip out of the middle, rather than
having them both after me.

“What do you want me to do?” Max asked.

“Lock everything down,” I said. “Get your files to a safe
location before Kendrick comes after them. Make sure you have everything and
that nothing’s missing, because when the time comes, Kendrick’s going to point
fingers at you whether you’re guilty or not.”

Max was nodding, absorbing what I was telling him.

“What about you?” he asked finally. “What are you going to
do?”

“I’m going to talk to the Director of the NSA,” I said. “I’m
going to get this sorted out. I’m your only chance to make sure that Kendrick
doesn’t railroad you on this under the Patriot Act. He will try to absolutely
crucify you.”

In truth, Max deserved to be crucified. In the public square
preferably. He had taken government secrets and tried to sell them to a private
buyer. That was a breach of national security. But if I could make Max believe
that I was on his side, that Kendrick was the threat and not me, I might have a
chance.

Max stepped back, leaving me a path to his door.

“I understand,” He said. “Will you be in touch?”

“You can reach me on my cell phone,” I replied. “I’m going
to contact the Director today.”

I strode past Max, making a line for the door.

“Thank you for coming to me about this,” Max said behind me.
I turned back. “You didn’t have to… Thank you for that.”

I nodded and walked out of his office.

I’d have to move quickly and that meant I needed to find
Jessica. She had begun to take after me and come into the office early. I
checked my watch. She could arrive anytime. I made my way to the company lunch
room. As I had suspected, she was making coffee. Not that she drank coffee. She
drank tea. But I drank coffee and she made it for me. This had been our thing.
She took care of me in her ways and I took care of her in mine. A week ago
she’d been dying for a little chocolate. I happened to have a box of Belgian
truffles in my drawer. She practically blushed when I gave it to her.

I walked into the small kitchen and said ‘hi’. She smiled
warmly and not for the first time, I wanted to kiss her right there, at the
office. I didn’t of course. But I would have. I stepped around her and stood so
that I could see the door.

“I need to tell you something,” I began.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Jessica asked. She took so much in
stride, never seeming to be rattled by anything.

“Remember that file you found?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me, her green eyes open, probing
mine.

“The DHS files?” she asked. I nodded.

“This is all confidential,” I said. “Max is being
investigated for stealing DHS secrets. He used Chris Swenson to do it and he
was planning on selling the secrets, but he picked the wrong guy to sell them
to. Now Chris has been murdered.”