A Knife Edge (15 page)

“You want coffee?” he asked.

“That depends. Is it any better than the mystery fluid they serve at the Pentagon?”

“No.”

“Then I'll just watch you have one,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he replied. “Can you fire this up while I go get it?”

He pulled a laptop out of the briefcase tucked under an arm and set it on the table before making his way to the counter. He
returned with a Styrofoam cup containing what looked like muddy rainwater just in time to have his thumbprint scanned by the computer's inbuilt security program.

“So what are we doing?” I inquired.

“This case we're getting you to work, the investigating special agent came down with acute appendicitis and was hospitalized. With the stuff going on on the West Coast, we had no one available to take the guy's place, so I put in a special request for you.”

“Really.
You
did that?” I asked. “Had me pulled off the Tanaka case?”

“Whoa, buddy! I just put in a request. I didn't think it'd be acted on.”

I wouldn't have believed so either, unless it fitted in with someone else's plans. “And here I was, wondering whether there might have been darker forces at work. Why me? I'm sure I'm not the only special agent on this planet, although it is true that I'd have to be one of the best.”

“If not
the
best,” said Arlen.

“Well, you know, modesty forbids …”

“Since when?” he asked.

I cracked a smile, the first in a while.

“Vin, you've been moaning for months what a drag it is at the DoD filling in forms.”

“Correction,” I said. “Correcting forms
other
people had incorrectly filled in.”

“Whatever. I just thought I could do you a favor, you know? And I also had a case but no one to work it, so there was that, too.”

I could have been angry. I didn't like being manipulated, even if the intentions were honorable, but the reality was that the Tanaka/Boyle case was out of my hands anyway, removed by powers far above Arlen's head.

“So where do you want to start?” he asked.

“With the MPEG I sent you.”

A
rlen ran through it a couple of times. “So what do you think's going on here?” he asked as the air-con in the security footage shut down.

“Beats me. I thought it might have been a power failure.”

“Yeah, I ran down that angle too. There were no cuts and no blackouts reported in the Palo Alto area on the day in question. And, also, a company like this would have its own generators, wouldn't it?”

“You'd think,” I said.

“I haven't had much time to do anything too interesting with the clip, given everyone has an Orange up their butt,” he said, referring to the fact that the Homeland Security Advisory level had been raised to High, orange, lower only than Severe, which was red. “And I'm not so sure you want this thing passed around, right?”

I nodded. “Right.” No one specifically asked me not to make copies. Chip Schaeffer said he hoped I hadn't made copies, not whether I
had.
After six months in the DoD, I was a master of fine print.

“But I have had time to sort out the back end, as you requested.”

Arlen replayed the disk. We watched Boyle baking his cake, the computers shutting down, followed by the desk lights and the aircon.
The picture went black and then came back to life in the elevator. Arlen stopped the show. “I've had this last scene separated into individual frames, and the last dozen or so computer-enhanced.” He ran the frames one at a time. I studied the way the passengers' bodies jerked in the elevator, indicating that it had come to an abrupt stop. The lights flickered and the water-cooler guy became agitated, pounding the doors. The woman stood rooted to the spot for quite a few frames before suddenly turning toward the camera. Now, because of the computer-enhancement work, I could make out who it was.

“You know this woman?” Arlen asked.

“Yeah.”

“Who is she?”

“The CEO of Moreton Genetics—Dr. Freddie Spears.”

“You want to clue me in here?” asked Arlen.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

Arlen examined my face. “Probably best I don't, right?”

“Probably,” I said. “But thanks for helping out.”

Arlen sipped his coffee. I knew him well enough to know that he wanted to ask me a question, and I could guess what it was. “I'm not going to pursue this,” I told him. “I'm off the case.”

“Yeah, right,” he said.

“Really. I'm done.”

“So you're not at all interested in knowing what this footage is all about?”

“OK, I would like to know that.”

“So you're not done with it?”

“I can't help my curiosity, but I'm off it now, out of the loop. I'm not going to get any more clues coming my way. A Tommy Hilfiger model freelancing for the CIA is handling it from here on.”

Arlen frowned. “Who?”

“Never mind—not important. So what's the new case about?”

Arlen looked at me dubiously. He knew me too well. He gave up trying to extract any further assurances and said, “Another accident.” He used his fingers to indicate I could put quote
marks around the word
accident.
“The coroner down there is not convinced.”

“Down where?”

“How do you feel about Florida?”

“Can I take a train?”

*   *   *

I went back to my apartment to pack the essentials, such as my one and only Hawaiian shirt. I knew the victim, the one the coroner wasn't convinced about. (He was convinced the victim was dead, just not how he came to be that way.) We'd served together in Afghanistan when I was in the CCTs—the Air Force's elite combat controllers squadron. His name was Ruben Wright, or Wrong Way or Dubya-Dubya, as we called him, and he was a master sergeant, which, being pretty high in the echelons of the noncom positions, meant the guy knew what he was doing.

Last I heard, Wrong Way had been offered an officer's commission to keep him interested in hanging around. I also heard he'd declined, because the only thing that interested him was combat, and officers, he figured, didn't like to get their hands dirty.

Wrong Way, despite his nickname, never did anything wrong. He was the perfect combat airman—committed, brave, sometimes foolhardy, but with nerves of steel and a resolve that was unshakable. After serving with him, I was real pleased he was on my team and not the enemy's. In hand-to-hand combat, I'd once seen him break a man in two over his knee like he was making a length of wood more manageable for the campfire. The enemy deserved it, though—the guy had made the mistake of firing a pistol at Wrong Way, not that that was the problem. The issue, as far as I could tell, was not that the bullet had dragged through the muscle in Wright's thigh, missing his testicles by less than an inch, but that basically the raghead had failed to kill him. “Well, he ain't never gonna make that mistake again, is he?” I remembered him saying as he staunched the blood flow with a compression bandage.

So I was pretty surprised to hear that Master Sergeant Ruben
Wright was dead. I thought the guy was invincible. But then I'd learned the specifics of how he'd died: His parachute harness had malfunctioned and he'd hit the State of Florida at around a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Wright was tough, but not that tough.

Both The 38th Parallel and Summer Love, the vegan joint, were closed till the New Year. I grabbed my mail and edited the pile into things to read and things to send to landfill. I was amazed at how much my box had accumulated in just a few days. Mostly, I'd been bombarded by leaflets from other fast-food joints in the vicinity eager to muscle in on Kim's territory while the guy's back was turned. There were a few love letters from the phone and electricity companies, as well as three Christmas cards. My popularity never ceased to amaze me.

I dropped the cards and bills on a table and went to the fridge. The shelves revealed that I was on an air, mold, and beer diet. I extracted a Bud and went back to the living room. The window on the answering machine was glowing with one call. I stabbed the play button and went into the bedroom to pack.

“Vin. Just calling to wish you Merry Christmas…”

It was Anna. A deep pit opened up inside.

“… But you ‘re not in… well, call you later.”

“Bah, humbug,” I said to the four pairs of socks as I pulled them from the top drawer and dropped them into my bag.

I gave the Bud another tilt and walked out of the bedroom. And then the phone rang. I changed course and answered it. “Hello?”

“Vin?”

Yeah, last time I looked. “Hello,” I said. The call had a hollow, faraway sound and it took a moment to register the voice.

“Hey, you're home. How you doing?” It was Anna again, only this time we were going live. “I called earlier,” she said.

“I know. Just got home ten minutes ago and switched on the machine. I see you've sent me a card—haven't had a chance to open it.” The envelope was pink. I picked it up off the table, turned it over, and tore off a corner.

“It's just a dumb card,” she said.

I wasn't sure what to say. I hadn't sent Anna anything, unless waves of disappointment dispatched through the ether counted for anything. I looked at the card. It was a cartoon of a man and a woman in bed. On the floor was a trail of red clothes, boots, and so on. One of Santa's large-breasted helpers was on top of the man, naked. The guy's wife was lying beside them and she was pissed, saying,
“But I've been
better
than he has…!”
Inside, the printed caption read,
“Have a Merry Christmas—share it with a friend.”
Beneath this was hand-written,
“Have a Merry Christmas, Vin. Love, Anna.”
There was a photo of Anna wearing red felt reindeer antlers blowing me a kiss.

“Nice,” I said. “You must have sent this almost the day you arrived back in Germany.”

“Yeah. You have no idea how hard it is finding a decent Christmas card in this country,” she said. “Where's mine?”

“Coming,” I said.

“Should I hold my breath?”

“Best not.”

“I thought so.”

One of our pauses followed.

“Hey, thanks for the card,” I said, breaking in on it. “I'll put it on the mantelpiece

“You don't have a mantelpiece.”

“Okay, then beside the toaster.”

“I just spoke to Arlen, Vin. He told me you were out at the Transamerica mess.”

“Yeah.”

“How was it?”

“A mess.”

“Do they know who or what or why?”

“If they do, they're not telling me.”

“Are you seeing anyone?” she said, jumping around like she was walking on hot beach sand. Was this the question she really wanted an answer to?

“Don't let's do this, Anna. I might get the wrong idea.”

“What idea is that?”

“The one you don't want me to get—that you might actually give a shit.”

“That's unfair, Vin.”

“Look, Anna, we're either together or we're not. And it seems to me we're not.”

“Can't we be—”

“I have to go,” I said.

“Vin, I—”

“Unless you're gonna say I'll see you at arrivals at Dulles tomorrow, save it. Thanks again for the card, and the calls.”

“Okay, Vin… I'll see you.” The line went dead.

Gee, that went well, I told myself. I sat on a chair and chugged down the rest of the Bud.

T
he temperature at the bus terminal at Panama City was barely sixty-five degrees—tropical compared with D.C. I changed into my Hawaiian shirt in the terminal's bathroom. I liked the pattern—a woman in a bright green grass skirt with long black hair and a flower lei that covered her ample bosom. She was smiling as she played a ukulele against a backdrop of yellow and orange hibiscuses. If I couldn't have a vacation, at least I could look like I was having one.

There were buses from Panama City to Hurlburt Field, but I'd had enough of buses. I took a cab.

The road from Panama City to Fort Walton Beach, my destination, more or less followed the curve of the Gulf of Mexico. Although they got a lot of sun down here, even in winter, today the clouds moving toward the beach from out over the Gulf were heavily pregnant, and any moment their waters threatened to break. I had the windows down anyway, the windblast ruffling the women on my Hawaiian shirt so that they danced the hula. I kept my eyes on the scenery, though it passed without me really taking it in.

The cab pulled off the highway into Hurlburt Field, which was the home of the Air Force Special Operations Command as well my old squadron, the CCTs—the Combat Air Controllers.

I paid the driver and got out, hoisting my bag off the backseat. A civilian security guy accompanied by a couple of armed airmen
approached and motioned to see my credentials. I handed them over and they passed the black leather folder back and forth between them, examining the fine print while one of the airmen scowled at me and massaged the butt of his M16. Maybe it was my shirt that bothered them. The civilian guard eventually handed back my shield and waved me on.

I walked the block to the OSI building, the wheels on my suitcase squealing as I pulled it along.

Like a bedroom kept for a child long since grown to adulthood and departed, nothing had changed since I'd left here eight years ago. Hurlburt Field was no different from any other U.S. military base on the planet in that it was pretty much indistinguishable from all other U.S. bases. The buildings were the same, the uniforms the same, the attitude the same, and even many of the on-base street names were the same. U.S. bases reminded me of McDonald's or Burger King. You could go to just about any one on the globe and feel pretty much like you never left home. The only real difference was the people you shot at when you stepped outside the gates.

Hurlburt Field was part of the sprawling Eglin Air Force Base, the largest military base in the Western world, covering over seven hundred miles of swamp, hill, forest, and sea. It was so big, they live tested missiles here—fired ‘em off at one end and collected ‘em at the other. You could get lost here, and people did. You could also get killed here, like my old pal Ruben Wright.