Cold Snap (27 page)

Turner was surprised when Ari emitted not a
shout of fear or a curse, but a rather tired sigh. He gave the
recumbent man his deadliest gaze. "I could kill them all, of
course. But my friend seems offended by the idea..." He shifted the
gun to Turner's head. "And I'd much rather shoot you."

A shriek came from the phone. Ari hoped Ben
did not take it into his head to wing him. In which case, his
desire for a backup would have backfired badly.

Turner forced himself into a seated position
and clapped his hands once, hard. "Blieb!" he bellowed, his eyes
wide with newfound conviction. Ari was obviously not the type of
man he had thought he was dealing with.

Ari was getting ready to snap the gun up and
take out Killer. But, for the second time in thirty days, he
witnessed the abrupt halt of well-trained attack dogs. They stopped
in their tracks, gaping at Ari with murderous lust accompanied by a
lot of rude saliva. It was truly a marvel. The mastiffs of Iraq
tended to tear their target to bits once the lethal command was
given, and then look up with innocent eyes.

You say something about stopping, Master?

"Are these your cat-killers?" Ari asked,
fingering his trigger.

"Oh hey, don't go postal."

Ari stared at the man, registered the word
for future reference.

"You speak to them in German?"

"Just basic commands," Turner slurred, still
woozy from the punch. "They seem to understand German better."

"Ah, the Nazi instinct."

"Who the fuck are you?"

"I am your fearless nightmare."

"Yeah?" Turner frowned in pain and
puzzlement.

"Why do you broadcast rude calls to me? Why
are you interested in me at all? I am only the Mackenzies' harmless
neighbor."

Turner snorted. So did the phone. Ari hung up
and slid the phone in his coat pocket. He kept his gun trained on
Killer, the closest and hungriest-looking. Killer knew that a gun
was a bad thing, and that he should rip the arm off anyone holding
one. He was no doubt deeply annoyed with Turner for stopping
him.

"What is this obsession with human-devouring
canines?" Ari groused.

"How about your obsession with Ethan
Wareness?"

"He is missing. I am endeavoring to find
him."

"His wife asked you to?"

"Why are you so interested?" Ari countered.
"He is no longer employed by your company."

There was a growl from one of the dogs. Ari
risked a side-glance and saw Ben crossing the field towards them.
He was holding the SIG Pro Ari had loaned him to his side. There
was another growl.

"These would not happen to be rehabilitated
dogs with an angry past, would they?"

"I made them what they are," said Turner
proudly, rubbing his jaw.

"Yes, I think I see a resemblance." Ari used
the remaining daylight to spy out a canopied pickup truck parked on
a narrow utility road that skirted the baseball field before
disappearing behind the trees. A tiny gap in Ari's informational
map had been filled. As soon as he saw Turner, he had wondered how
he had gotten here. There had been no other cars parked on the main
park road.

"You were about to shoot a dog!" Ben
complained, coming up.

"No, I was about to shoot a dog owner," said
Ari.

"Oh, that's better."

Ari was annoyed. He had hoped Ben would stay
next to his truck, out of earshot. Turner seemed mildly relieved by
his arrival, which only vexed Ari further.

"Your friend here's a nutcase," said
Turner.

"Yeah...well, maybe you should tell him what
he wants to know. That way no one gets hurt."

"Wise advice," Ari nodded sagely. "Shooting
citizens is immoral and outrageous, and it always upsets my
stomach."

The other two gave him a 'hope that's a joke'
look. Turner confirmed this desire with a small laugh.

"I'm only here to tell you to stop looking
for Ethan Wareness."

"He's fine?"

"He's fine."

"Fat and happy on the plains of
Honolulu?"

"I don't know about that. You mean beaches,
right?"

"Then you know where he is?"

Turner twisted around and looked at his dogs,
as though requesting their opinion. Then he turned his head up to
Ben. "Who are you?"

"You brought your dogs," Ari interjected. "I
brought mine."

"Hey!" Ben protested.

"A poor choice of words," Ari said, while
thinking they were perfectly apt. "Let's continue on our train of
thought. Sayed Technical Solutions no longer has a vested interest
in the whereabouts of Mr. Wareness, which makes your presence here
very puzzling to me. Are you annoyed that he found employment so
readily after your company gave him such a poor reference?"

"Did Bristol tell you that?" Turner brushed
away the question with a wave of his hand. A couple of the dogs
mistook this as a command and sprang forward. With a frantic yell,
Turner ordered them to stop, which they did with obvious
reluctance. Reasonably confident that his dogs would not get him
killed, Turner resumed: "We wanted him out of there. I guess they
don't operate the same way in Italy. Around here, whenever you want
to get rid of someone, you give him a great reference. That way you
fob the guy off on another unsuspecting slob."

"Are you talking about a government job
here?" Ben inquired.

"Well...we have some government contracts,
but we're a private company."

"Then you're talking malarkey," the
ex-soldier asserted. "It's government jobs that you have to go
through all the rigmarole. In the private sector, you kick them out
the door—end of story."

It was good having an American around to
nitpick at the cultural deceptions of other Americans, Ari thought.
He smiled at Ben.

"Your lying to me makes me very nervous," he
said, giving his Glock a demonstrative shake. "Perhaps because
where I come from, liars have their tongues cut out and I am made
queasy by the idea."

"They do that in Italy?"

"A very savage land. We invented
crucifixion."

"Hey...that's right..." Turner gave Ben a
sour look, as though he had betrayed him to the centurions.

"Why don't I begin by shooting one dog at a
time, until you choose to reveal the truth." Ari shifted his gun to
Killer, who was still the closest. "After that, of course..."

Ben did a poor job of hiding the fact that he
would let none of this happen. Fortunately, Turner had refocused on
Ari.

"Begin by telling me about these government
contracts you spoke of," Ari prompted.

"If I told you, and it was found out, we'd
lose the contracts and I'd lose my job."

"Thus joining Ethan in the quiche line."

"Listen, I only meant this to be a friendly
warning."

"'Friendly' is not informative."

"If you hadn't clipped me, you'd never have
known about the dogs. But...you know...you can't be too
careful."

"Which is precisely what I'm about: being
uncareful." Ari paused a moment. Was that correct? "Let me tickle
your memory. When you speak of government contracts, you wouldn't
happen to mean ISAF, would you?"

Turner's face dropped.

"I am delighted," Ari nodded. "The
information is spating. And was Ethan not dismissed, but merely
transferred to another ISAF operation?"

He had missed the mark. Ari knew this from
the variety of faces Bruce Turner tested all within five
seconds.

"How did you know?" said Turner with great
show of despondence.

"I didn't, as is apparent from your poor
thespian skills."

Turner tried to draw a blank expression, but
he found it difficult. Ari had concluded long ago that poker faces
were born, not invented.

"Then you are saying the insurance company is
not engaged by ISAF and Ethan was not what you refer to as a
'lateral transfer'?"

Turner looked bitterly at his dogs, whose
presence had so badly boomeranged on him. Instead of helping him,
they had become hostages.

"Central Virginia Group was investigating
something ISAF didn't want investigated. Some sort of sting they're
operating in the States. That's a guess. Maybe not a sting. But
something they want kept secret."

"Isn't America somewhat beyond their
jurisdiction?"

"I don’t know anything about them being
involved with CVG. This is just guesswork. Bristol told me that
ISAF was up to something with some importing firm and they wanted
to find out how much the insurance dicks knew. Balloons going up,
heads rolling...that's probably what was worrying them. But we
didn’t put on any show of firing Wareness so the insurance people
could hire him. We made a few discreet inquiries…nothing beyond
that. If Ethan stuck his nose in that importer’s business, he was
on his own."

"I wouldn't count on it being a rogue
operation," Ben interjected. He looked at Ari. "It could be a
Homeland Security thing. That was the whole point of its creation.
Pull all the operations together, integrate security, become a
single team..." He stopped before his words could trail into total
sarcasm. It was against the nature of bureaucracies to integrate.
Everyone knew that.

Ari dared not ask the question that most
concerned him: had the location of Ari's safe house been chosen
because of its proximity to a potential ISAF employee? Bruce
wouldn’t know, in any event. ISAF, part of NATO, was headquartered
in Kabul, its initial primary task being to secure that city.
Interdicting the drug traffic came as a consequence, since the
Taliban financed its operations with opium sales totaling in the
hundreds of millions. ISAF's connection to Uday Hussein was
understandable, since in all probability the Number One Son had had
connections to the traffickers as the opium made its way through
Iraq. Beyond that, Ari was mystified. How had Uday and ISAF hooked
up? The link between Kabul and Cumberland was well-hidden.

Did ISAF really have the resources to do all
this on its own? Wouldn't they need the domestic assistance of the
FBI, the DEA and a host of other agencies?

"What is the name of that importer the
insurance company is investigating?" Ari asked.

"How would I know?" Turner said with a
shrug.

"You have their phone number in your
wallet."

"Aw fuck, you already know? You looked?"

"The Paper Moon…it filled me with erotic
fantasies."

"Listen, none of us at Sayed gets much from
the government in the way of explanations. We mostly sub out for
big IT projects, government and private. We'd have to lay off a
bunch of folks without those contracts. Truth be told, the private
sector could barely exist without the government."

"And vice versa," scowled the conservative
Ben. Still wearing only a thin jacket, he was practically blue from
the cold. But Ari did not think the pained look in his eyes was due
entirely to the weather.

"I always wondered about Ethan..." Turner man
began. He looked away.

"Why so?" Ari asked.

"His work history, first of all. None of it
jibed. Banks, shipping companies, accounting firms, others. I know
all these geek-types hop from one job to another. IT is IT, right?
But this guy's young, just past 30, and he has the work history of
an old man. And he acted like a man who wouldn't stick around for
long. He put his bare feet on his desk! You don't plan for the long
haul doing stuff like that."

"His feet were very dirty?"

"Uh, no. That's not the point."

"He was a world traveler, then?"

"You mean, did his jobs take him around the
world? I don't know. Everything he did was pretty local. He did a
stint at some cement distributor in Abingdon and had a job in
Durham a few years ago. Some people commute that far, but it's a
long haul."

"Were you his supervisor?" Ben asked.

"Sort of..." Turner gave the veteran a wary
look. "Why?"

"You seem to know a whole lot about his
background. Are you in HR?"

"Didn't Bristol tell you I was his sysadmin?"
Turner said. "OK, Ethan worked directly under me, theoretically,
but he mainly reported to Bristol."

"Did Bristol Turnbridge send you here to warn
me?" Ari asked.

Turner offered a surly frown as an
answer.

"Such behavior leads me to believe he still
has an interest in Mr. Wareness. He would only be interested if he
was still working for the government agency that subcontracts
you."

"The FBI? He doesn't—" Turner's eyes went
wide and he closed his mouth.

"Oops," said Ben.

"Indeed," Ari agreed. "I was speaking of
ISAF. What other agencies employ you?"

"I know you're thinking 'big conspiracy' and
crap like that. This isn't 'Three Days of the Condor'."

"But why risk the warning?" Ari's arm grew
tired and he lowered his pistol, ready to whip it back up the
moment one of the dogs took a step forward. "You've betrayed far
more information than you have gathered, as you see."

"I just do what I'm told."

"Yes, you would have eaten coq au vin at the
Mackenzies had I not rescued you. A fate worse than death."

Darkness was almost complete. The woods were
now an indistinct mass, but the street lights lining the park road
had snapped on, illuminating Turner's dismay.

"We're dealing with a real alphabet soup,
here," Ben groused.

"Yes, a good bowl of soup will warm you up,"
said Ari. He turned back to Bruce. "I took the liberty of taking
one of your business cards from your wallet. We will stay in
contact."

With frequent backward glances, Ari and Ben
walked back to the road. Turner seemed to have experienced enough
adventure for the evening and did not send his dogs after them.

"You want your guns back?" Ben asked through
chattering teeth.

"Keep them for now, if you have a secure
place."

"You mean..." A multitude of questions danced
across his face, but he was too cold to ask them.