Human (33 page)

XXIII.

Bobby pulled out of the mall parking lot and abandoned his car a few blocks away. He tried calling Vakhrusheva again, and he received the message "Your party is either out of the area or on another line."  Either the cell phone or Vakhrusheva himself had been compromised and that made his own cell phone a liability. He carefully wiped his fingerprints off of it and crushed it under the heel of his shoe before kicking it into a storm drain. He walked to a nearby bar, and called a cab from the payphone. He enjoyed a beer while he waited.

The cab dropped him off a half mile from his safehouse. He quickly set himself to the task of deep cleaning the house, making sure there were no fingerprints or traces of DNA-carrying material like hair or fingernails. When he was done, he walked out the back door and locked it behind him. He chose a clean car from the barn and began driving. There was a contact in Ohio for him to report to. After that, he thought, maybe he'd take a little vacation in California before taking another assignment. Vakhrusheva was right, he decided somewhere in Pennsylvania,  ‘Bobby' is a silly name. Next time, I'm going to be ‘Jeff' instead. I like ‘Jeff' better.

Halfway around the world, in a little town outside of Reykjavik, Iceland, a technician threw a switch exactly as he had been instructed by the lead engineer in Mexico. A red light blinked indicating that a connection to the Internet had been established.

Sam Takahashi sat alone near the stage in the Moviestar Topless Bar and Grill waiting for Sylvia to bring him his pitcher of beer. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He looked down at the tiny screen to read the message that had come through, and smiled as he read: "Reykjavik is lovely this time of year."

"Welcome back, old friend," Sam said to his phone, though he knew no one could hear him.

A tiny little listening device that had been affixed to the bottom of Sam's table was triggered by the sound of his voice and his four innocuous words traveled through the airwaves to the basement of a building in Washington, DC.

Moments later another man also had a smile on his face.  Marco Gonzales was glad to hear his red phone ring.
             
             

             
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Robert G. Berke was born in New York City and raised in the Town of Niskayuna, New York in the upstate county of Schenectady.  He currently lives in California with his wife and two daughters.