Armed and Dangerous (The IMA) (13 page)

“I want names. Locations.
Facts
.”

“
It was the first meeting. They used aliases.”

“
That means you're just going to have to figure out who's who then, doesn't it?”

“
That could take fucking years.”

“
I don't have fucking years, Michael. And to be frank, neither do you.”

The threats were out in the open now. That was never a good sign. “You told me you needed a leader, not a goddamn miracle worker.”

“Considering what I'm paying you, it would seem that whatever I expect would be well within my rights.”

“
Because you hold me in such high regard. Admit it, you want me to fail, you son of a bitch.”

“
I want you occupied and out of my way. Insubordination requires manipulation, and seeing as how you've got the latter in spades, I'm sure you can figure out a way to speed up the whole procedure.”

“
I was never insubordinate,” I spat. “That was you.”

“
Not according to the official reports.”

“
Which
you
fucking wrote.”

“
Michael, Michael, Michael — let's not be difficult.”

Oh, he'd enjoy that. “Are you threatening me now?”

“Not you personally.”

Fils de putain
.

“
I met with the Sniper today.”

“
He get out of the hospital already?”

“
Funny you should mention that. It just so happens Christina Parker put him back there fairly recently. Sprayed him in the eyes with a can of mace, let's see, not two days ago if memory serves.”

“
Good for her.” I meant it.

“
But bad for you.”

“
I fail to see how her actions concern me.”

“
I think you do. First you take out my shooter, then she disables him further by temporarily blinding him. If that's not grounds for a conspiracy, then I'm the bloody Union Jack. Whose responsibility is she, Michael? Or did you forget why you're working for me in the first place?”

He had me by the short-hairs and we both knew it. I hit the side of the payphone. “I'm not responsible for her behavior. We're not even in contact, for fuck's sake—”

“The Sniper is very eager to see her come to harm. He wants revenge. The hatred he harbors for you and the girl really is quite remarkable. In fact, he offered, unasked, to bring her in to me this very evening.”

What?

“I declined as a matter of principle, of course. I have no place for her here at the moment, bonnie though she may be, and she isn't worth the time or the money that I'd lose breaking her in. Still, a very generous offer on his part, wouldn't you say?”

“
I didn't mace him,” I said. “And I didn't tell her to.”

“
Yes, but didn't you say so yourself that you wanted to kill me earlier? I can't have that. Not when your allegiance is still so dubious. You might say that I'm merely taking out a life-insurance policy, and Christina Parker is the collateral.”

“
What did you do to her?”

“
Nothing yet.”

“
I don't believe you.”

“
I'm the leader of what is fast becoming a global empire, boy. I have more important things to concern myself with than you and your little girlfriend — though that could change. I warn you, don't flatter yourself into thinking that you're indispensable. Difficult to replace perhaps, I'll grant you that, but not irreparably so. You're not nearly as smart as you fancy you are, and you're nowhere near half as strong.

“
As for the girl herself, she is worth nothing to me beyond her ability to keep you in line. Her value equals far less than yours and if she continues to make trouble for me, or if you persist in these petty displays of reckless defiance, that value will hit rock-bottom and I will be forced to dispose of her in any way I see fit.”

“
That wasn't part of the agreement,” I growled. “You don't get to touch her. Not as long as I'm doing what you want—”

“
Exactly, Michael. What I want. So I suggest you find a way to charm the BN as effectively as you did that girl. If you could talk your way into her bed, I'm sure you can figure out a way to get
them
into your address book. Didn't you say that you were halfway to becoming the best of mates already? All actors need their motivation, Michael. I believe I just gave you yours.”

The phone went dead.

Fuck
. I hit the receiver against the side of the box, over and over, until the metal began to dent. “
Mon Christ, c'est completemente
fucked up.” Slam. Slam. Slam. “God-fucking-damn it.” Slam. “
Merde
.”

“
You about done with the phone, Frenchie?”

I shoved the phone at the asshole behind me. He fell into the other booth, full of jeering drunks, as I shouldered my way out of the crowded bar. The man's drunken curses bellowed after me. I only half-heard him. Callaghan had given me my motivation, all right. Just not the kind he'd been bargaining for.

I would see it destroy him.

Back at my hotel room, I grabbed the memo pad and one of the cheap ballpoint pens that had the name of the hotel written on the side in unreadable cursive. I began to compose a list of names of people I had dirt on. Lower-tier
members of the IMA. People Callaghan would be annoyed to lose, but not to such an extent that he would lift a finger to help them. I'd be doing him a fucking favor, pruning the drooping, wilting branches of his mob.

Callaghan had never been sympathetic to weakness. I'd learned that the hard way, and it had almost killed me. That was the problem. I needed to prove I wasn't weak. I was still capable of ruthlessness. I, too, could afford to gamble with human lives and win. Callaghan was sick enough to be impressed by that. It would make him take me seriously.

I couldn't afford him to see me any other way.

An added benefit of my sordid plan was that the BN could potentially use the information I was planning on leaking to them to gather more damning information. Information that could advance their own purposes. Information that I could plead innocent on if interrogated.

Kent wouldn't approve. He would tell me I was mixing fire and gasoline, and urge me to remember that my life was not the only one on the line here. Christina's was in danger, too, and so was his. So were those of all my contacts. I suffered no delusions over my own mortality. I was fully aware of the domino effect my demise would have on those who depended on me.

Trouble was, I was already living on borrowed time. The moment Callaghan decided I wasn't pulling my weight, I'd be dead. But not before he wrung out every single drop of blood and sweat and left me hanging high and dry.

My tolerance for pain is relatively high, but if the IMA really decided to go to town on the torture, I'd eventually collapse like any other human would. It might take a little while longer, but the inevitable would happen. I couldn't wait around for that.

Knowing I was likely being followed — the BN would be doing background checks of their own, it was only to be expected — sharpened my sense of urgency. Over the next couple weeks I'd make a point of installing myself in the public eye, speaking on the phone, visiting people, sending encrypted emails. None of these transactions would hold any real informational value and it would drive the BN bat-shit crazy trying to figure out what kind of scattering software I was using to encrypt my
communiques
.

That's the trick to misdirection. A search for something that's actually there goes a helluva lot faster than a search for something that isn't; it requires a lot of thoroughness to
say “no.” These people were paid to be thorough. It was their strength and now, it would also be their weakness.

Meanwhile, the BN's buzz of activity would keep Callaghan's hands full enough that he wouldn't be able to keep tabs on me quite as relentlessly. Or so I hoped.

Kent tried to dissuade me when I told him of my plan, just as I'd known he would. I could hear his smoker's hack in the background, the rustle of clothing as he shook his head. “You are playing a dangerous game with dangerous men, Michael.”

“
Yes, but unlike them I have nothing to lose.”

“
You have one thing,” he was quick to point out.

“
I also know how it feels to be desperate.
Que c'est q'ca
?”

His response was to sigh. “Your funeral, old boy.”

“No,” I said. “Not mine. His. Theirs.”

My reports to Callaghan continued to be as regular as clockwork. I made sure he had no cause to complain. I'm sure that made him suspicious, but since I was giving him information straight from the horse's mouth he couldn't do a thing about it. As I'd predicted, he was distracted, far too focused on the BN. Everything I told him was useless but it sounded enticing on the surface. I made up facts from what I'd read between the lines from my conversations with the BN operatives during our meetings. This latter, I knew, sounded more convincing still—chiefly because it was.

The BN were even easier to play because they, too, were desperate. Or thought they were. It amounted to pretty much the same thing. They had been having trouble with leaks long before I arrived at the scene, so while I was suspect, I was no more so than any other new recruit. I had taken great pains not to use anything told to me exclusively, assuming correctly that this was a test to gauge my loyalty.

To them, I fed information about Callaghan which I had obtained through contacts not affiliated with the IMA. The BN would never be able to trace that information back to Michael Boutilier. I also let slip a few secrets about the internment bases in both Mexico and Russia, and some of the brutalities that had taken place there. This would carry the most; it was here that they had lost some of their most valued agents.

I knew how to punch their buttons and I was resorting to old tricks. Paranoia, vindication, seductive whispers of justice and revenge; they wanted it all, and I wanted them to want it. I wanted them to do something reckless.

I won't lie. I was enjoying fucking around with the two of them. I'd been feeling close to useless for months—a  lethal mindset in my line of work, as it has the tendency to become self-prophetic—and now I was back, playing hardball with the pros and winning.

It was a headrush.

But I could only keep them hanging for so long. After several weeks, Callaghan grew impatient. He hadn't said so in as many words but I did notice that he had started dropping an increased amount of veiled threats.

The BN were also reaching their patience threshold. The heavily guarded internment bases were out of their reach and posed far too much risk to their limited manpower and resources for them to attack. They wanted an easier, more accessible target. It was starting to look as if I had no choice but to deliver.

“
Let me see what I can dig up,” I told Perry.

“
This is very impressive all the same, Mr. Agnew. You have done some fine work here—though we will have to look over it, of course,” he added, looking up from the printouts I'd spent all night slaving over.

And try to figure out my sources, thereby eliminating the middleman
. I smiled and nodded. “Of course.”

That night, it rained. It sounded an awful lot like the static which now served as a backdrop to my thoughts.

Christina:

The first two weeks of school were tortuous, mortal purgatory. At Holy Trinity I had been able to coast by with a B-average. Actual effort generally got me an easy A. College, on the other hand, did not make allowances for coasters. I found this out the hard way when I received the first D grade I had gotten since middle school.

A D.

I closed my laptop, hiding my online grades from sight. It didn't help much. I knew they were still there, mocking me from cyberspace. What I needed to do was leave the apartment. I was becoming agoraphobic; I was letting my fear make me a prisoner. Even Dad noticed my decline in health when we had last Skyped, asking me if I was eating enough. His go-to question for “are you okay?”

I wasn't okay. Not even close. To be honest, most days I wouldn't have been able to say what I had eaten for
breakfast, not even if somebody held up a gun to my head and demanded it. On at least some of those days I ate nothing at all. My jeans had gotten a lot looser and sometimes I caught myself feeling dangerously faint, at which point I'd usually dash to the SU and buy a coffee, or one of their overpriced pastries.

It wasn't that I was intentionally starving myself, because I wasn't. But getting food required going out, and after that terrifying incident on my way home from psychology I tried to do that during daytime hours only.

There were only so many hours in a day, though, and my class schedule was becoming increasingly unforgiving.