Zero Sum, Book One, Kotov Syndrome (20 page)

“So, my friend, is there anything you
want to tell me before we start?”

Overhead loudspeakers blared flight
arrival and departure information in Korean as well as in Japanese,
Chinese, and English. The terminal was congested, even though its
ultra-modern interior was designed specifically to accommodate
heavy traffic, and the din of conversations battling with the
ceaseless announcements created a kind of low-grade pandemonium.
Seoul was a major hub for travel into China and the Far East, and
on any business day there were a lot of busy people with important
places to go, most of whom apparently had to do so while having
animated discussions on their cell phones.

Seung waited restlessly in the
ticketing area, half an hour early for his meeting. Thin,
fashionably mod haircut, and a studied air of disinterest affecting
every mannerism, he was dressed in jeans and leather jacket, in
defiance of the brooding heat outside the airport’s
doors.

Fuck, he hated crowds. Airports were
the worst. The noise and bustle were grating on his already raw
nerves.

Fidgeting with his black briefcase, he
scouted his surroundings and spotted a men’s restroom icon. He
studied the crowd, quickly glanced at his watch, then moved towards
the facilities. Of course there was a line. Forced to wait a few
minutes for a toilet to free up, he passed the time imagining he
was boarding one of the big 747s on the tarmac and flying to Fiji
or Bora Bora. Maybe one day. One day soon.

The end stall vacated and he entered
and locked the little compartment door, exhaling a sigh of relief
to be out of the throng. After confirming the latch was secure and
there was no visibility through the door joints, he pulled a small
zippered wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and carefully
opened it, using his briefcase as an ad hoc table.

He painstakingly emptied half the
contents of a tiny plastic bag into an old metal spoon, and with a
trembling hand clutching his cigarette lighter he melted the powder
in the spoon bowl. Very slowly, he returned the lighter to his
jacket pocket and removed a disposable syringe from the wallet.
Gripping the orange plastic cap with his teeth, he freed the little
needle and sucked the liquid into the syringe.

The tricky part concluded, he replaced
the cap and held the syringe in his mouth while he repacked the
kit, taking care to reseal the bag’s tiny zip-lock top.

Seung rolled up his left jean leg,
exposing a network of bruised discolorations which marred the
larger veins in his ankle. He removed a length of surgical tubing,
tied off just below his calf and slapped at the vein. That one
looked good for another week, then it would collapse like the ones
in his right leg.

Oh well. He’d have to still be alive
next week to care. There were no guarantees.

He popped the cap off the needle again
and slid the metal into his ruined vessel, drawing blood into the
syringe and mixing the amber fluid with the viscous crimson from
his vein. Satisfied, he depressed the plunger, emptying the
contents into his bloodstream. This was only half a hit, really
just a maintenance dose—he didn’t want to nod off on the job. He
released the tubing and felt a warm rush through his entire system,
running up his leg to his heart, then into his throat and up to his
head.

It was heaven.

Even half a hit made life bearable, at
least for now, and he could focus better if he wasn’t jittery and
jonesing. His eyes began to close and it was only with tremendous
effort he kept them open. He drifted, his lids getting heavier,
heavier.

The neighboring stall door slammed and
abruptly jolted him back to full consciousness.

Think. Put your shit away, stand up,
and get busy
.

He looked at his oversized steel watch;
his meeting was in five minutes.
Fuck.
He fumbled, stuffing
the kit and syringe into his breast pocket, then blotted the blood
on his ankle with some toilet paper and slapped himself in the face
several times.

He flushed the toilet, grabbed his
briefcase and exited the stall, flipping on a pair of sunglasses to
lessen the impact of the lights on his dilated pupils as he
approached the ticketing area.

Ah. There was his target, a
fifty-something man with a suit bag draped over his shoulder,
carrying an identical briefcase.

Seung caught his eye, set the briefcase
down on the floor next to his right foot, and pretended to play
with his cell phone. The older man walked over and asked if he had
the correct time, which Seung made a display of providing. He
admired the younger man’s phone, and put his bag and briefcase down
next to the other briefcase, asking to see it. Seung showed him the
most compelling features—it really was unbelievable what they could
do these days with technology.

Smiling, the older man retrieved his
suit bag and the younger man’s briefcase, and thanked him for the
demonstration.

Seung made his way to the terminal exit
while the older man quickly made his way through customs, his
diplomatic passport ensuring he was waved through
security.

He was right on time for his flight:
Korean Air to San Francisco. Settling himself comfortably in the
first class seat, he placed the briefcase in the small dais at the
base of his pod, which reclined into a bed for the long trip over
the Pacific.

As was his custom, he got some water
from the stewardess before take-off and took a small white
pill—Xanax, to ease his nerves during the flight—and closed his
eyes. The hard part, getting his hands on the briefcase, was over.
Now he just had to keep his meeting and he’d be golden, three
hundred thousand dollars richer. Not a bad day’s work.

The stewardess made her final passage
through the cabin, checking to ensure everything was secure, and
within minutes they were hurdling down the worn tarmac and up into
the cold grey sky.

* * * *

<2>

Traffic sucked. It was getting late,
and rush hour started at about three-thirty in downtown New
York.

Tess dodged a cab pulling out of a
space on her right and swerved around a bus offloading its
passengers. She was pedaling hard; she had ten minutes tops to get
to her last stop of the day. Horns honking were just part of the
incessant background music of the city streets. She’d learned to
tune it out to keep her mind on the immediate objective: getting
from point A to point B in as little time as possible without
getting flattened.

Right now, her goal was a building on
West 22nd off Avenue of the Americas, sixth floor, and she’d just
gotten out of the Village—which meant making it by the time the
company had guaranteed delivery was going to be a
stretch.

The last drop had been to a jerk-off
who’d wanted to chat her up. It happened more often than not with
single-partner attorney firms: a powerful, relatively successful,
relatively young guy would see her walk through the door with his
deposition draft, and what should have been a one-minute stop would
often turn into five or six minutes of trying to extricate herself.
And those minutes were her edge on making the next stop on
time.

She really hated the single-partner law
firms.

Tess had been at work since seven that
morning. She always deliberately kept her appearance low-key. No
makeup, loose knee-length cargo shorts, and spandex tank tops with
baggy t-shirts seemed to minimize undesired attention from horny
men in suits. She wasn’t looking for a dating service when she was
on the job. She had packages to deliver; that was the gig, and all
that she wanted to focus on.

And she was way behind
schedule.

She cut across Union Square Park and up
Broadway, figuring she would cruise down West 23rd to Sixth
Avenue—usually an easier run than battling all the way up Sixth—and
with luck she’d be no more than five minutes late. She’d found she
could wiggle about five minutes of leeway out of customers if she
explained it was a traffic issue. If the recipient was female,
she’d tell the truth: the asshole at the last office had drug out
the signing process to flirt, setting her timeline back.

More than five minutes late and
customers didn’t care what the excuse was. They weren’t paying top
dollar for a messenger so things could be late. Her issues weren’t
their problem.

She was almost taken out by a
double-parked van on Broadway that backed up just as she was
swinging around it, and then narrowly missed a roller-blader
shooting out a side street—a bald sixty-year-old man wearing silver
spandex bike shorts and suspenders, bopping along to something
blasting in his headphones.

What a city.

Steam blew out manholes, road crews
worked in the middle of intersections, jaywalkers were fearless and
yellow and red lights were more suggestions than
imperatives.

She never felt more alive than when she
was on the job.

As she rolled onto the sidewalk,
panting from the sprint, she glanced at her watch. One minute to
spare. Damn, she was good. She locked her bike, adjusted the
messenger bag on her shoulder, and ran for the closing elevator
door. A hand shot out and held it. She laughed when she saw who it
was: Paco, another one of the Red Cap crew.

“Whatchu doing here, girl?” Paco
asked.

“606, deposition. One minute to spare.
You?” Tess replied.

“905, drawings. Better late than never.
I got held up by a cop, nabbed me running a red. He let me off, but
that ate ten minutes. Prick.” Paco was clearly annoyed.

“No biggie. What are you doing after
work?” Tess genuinely liked Paco, an impossibly handsome, somewhat
effeminate twenty-two-year-old Puerto Rican man built like
Adonis.

“I’ll probably stop at the Corral for a
beer, then go find myself Mr. Right-Now in the Village. You going
tonight?” The Corral was a dive bar near the messenger depot on
Spring Street.

“Yeah, why not? I’ll probably catch you
there.” The elevator opened at the sixth floor. “Be good,
Paco.”

Paco pursed his lips and gave her a
“yeah, right” look.

Tess approached the reception desk with
the package and sign-off sheet. Two men in their late twenties were
having a discussion by one of the offices. They stopped when they
saw her.

“Delivery from Red Cap. On time for
four o’clock. Please sign here,” she announced to the girl behind
the desk, who dutifully scribbled on the release and dropped the
package into a wire basket. “Is there any way I can get a glass of
water?” Tess asked. “I’m dying here.”

“Sure, just go back by the kitchen
area.”

Tess moved to the water chiller at the
rear of the small suite and filled a small paper cup. She drained
it quickly. Again. And again.

She removed her helmet and shook out
her hair, enjoying the respite from the blistering summer heat.
After blotting her face with a paper towel, she lifted her long
black mane to reveal a tattooed sun at the base of her hairline and
a well sculpted, tanned bicep. She closed her eyes and relished the
air conditioning on her skin. Flashing a smile at the two, she
offered a glimpse of white teeth and a silver tongue
piercing.

Re-hydrated and refreshed, Tess
returned to the front desk and thanked the receptionist before
exiting the office. She was parched at the end of another brutal
day on the streets, and it was a nice gesture to let her cool off
before she went back into the swelter. Not everyone was so
accommodating to messengers.

The two men exchanged a look and shook
their heads. The younger one, an intellectual property attorney,
let out a low whistle.

“Don’t even think about it. She’d chew
you up and spit you out before you knew what hit you,” the taller
man, a litigator, advised.

“Yeah, but what a way to
go.”

Across town a figure stared at the
output of his computer printer, tracking the movements of eight
different currencies, looking for trends. At 46, Gordon Samuels was
at the top of the heap of currency speculators and commodity
traders. Well, almost at the top. He wasn’t George Soros, but he
was wealthy by virtually any standards, closing in on a net worth
of over sixty million dollars. His firm, Meridian Trading,
specialized in currency arbitrage and commodities brokering for
high-net-worth accounts, and he controlled many billions of dollars
for his clients. He had two royal families, an ex-president, and
seven governments as trusted investors, not to mention three of the
Forbes top-ten list.

His phone rang.

“Gordon, there’s been a wrinkle. We
lost control of a test batch—almost perfect, but still with a few
microscopic imperfections. We’re working on location and
containment as we speak.” The caller spoke in a singsong
Asian-accented English, with an almost feminine tone to
it.

“Why are you telling me this? How does
this affect our plan?” Gordon didn’t like surprises.

“We want you apprised. No other reason.
We’re not worried; we believe we are only hours away from solving
the problem.”