Rock Killer (6 page)

“Okay,” Mitchel said. “What about Trent?”

Another man on the screen spoke from Washington. “Our people watching her say she met with Syrians last night. We put an ultrasound beam on the windows but all we got was a local radio station.”

“Damn,” Mitchel grumbled. They may be radicals but they weren’t stupid. “What about Damascus?”

Elisa Morgan was the boss at SRI’s Middle Eastern terrestrial information gathering office in Tel Aviv. “Our agents in Damascus have trouble,” she reported. “Syria’s too much a police state. But, we’ve connected with an underling in the Baath party. He’s getting some information to us. A French arms seller, Philippe Thorez, will be visiting Damascus soon. He specializes in space-borne weapons. This isn’t his first visit.”

“Find out why he’s there,” Mitchel ordered crisply. “It may be important.”

Morgan nodded. “I will.”

“Anything else?” Mitchel asked. No one said anything.

“Okay. Let’s get on this. We need to find out what the GA is up to. Rodriguez, stay on. Everyone else, thank you and good-bye.”

The screen cleared and showed the SRI logo. Mitchel turned to the smaller screen on his desk. “Rod,” he said, “I’ll be arriving on the next shuttle. How’s Charlie?”

“Really well, considering,” Rodriguez replied two seconds later, a shade of sadness in his voice. “Anything else?”

“No, not now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

***

Alex held Kirsten’s hand across the table. He’d been home a few days and they finally found time to drive to Denver to his favorite Korean restaurant, the Sai Han Sheik Dong. It was in the lower downtown district near Union Station. Denver had closed its city center to private vehicles so they parked Kirsten’s car in a huge underground parking lot at the edge of town and took a light-rail into the city. The train stopped at Union Station and from there it was a short, albeit cold, walk to the restaurant.

Mr. Pak, the proprietor, and his employees knew Kirsten and Alex well and, after delivering their food, left them alone unless called.

Alex looked at the device on his wrist that was being grossly underutilized by only displaying the time. The security memorial service on the Moon was about to start. It was for the three security people killed: DeWite, Prince, and a kid named Nakamura whom Alex didn’t know. The services for the others killed were being held by their divisions. He’d debated taking time to go. Kirsten would have understood, but would have resented it after making arrangements to spend all her time with him. At least, that’s what Alex decided. That, and he preferred to honor the memory of his friends his way and in private.

Out of one of the multitude of small dishes on the table, Alex used chopsticks to select a slice of kimchee and put it in his mouth. He followed the pickled cabbage with a gob of rice.

“I suppose,” Kirsten chided playfully, “you expect to sleep in the same bed as me after eating that.”

Alex nodded and swallowed. “All you have to do is eat some and we’ll cancel each other out.”

Kirsten made a face. “No thanks, Mr. Chun.” She used a fork to eat a piece of duk-gogi.

“It’s real embarrassing,” Alex teased, “to have a wife that can’t eat with chopsticks.”

“Sorry,” she replied. “I don’t eat Oriental food very much. My friends like Middle Eastern food. About a month ago, Alysia and her husband and I went to this new place in Boulder, on a Monday night, and the place was packed. We almost left but everyone was there. The McConnells, the Kims–you remember Jason Quinn from Aspen?–he was there. We pushed all our tables together and talked and laughed until the owner threw us out–it was two in the morning. I almost fell asleep during a session with one patient the next day. But it was so much fun.”

“Oh,” Alex said simply.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” she said quietly. “But you don’t expect me to pace the widow’s walk the whole time you’re gone?”

Alex shook his head. “No, of course not. It just seems sometimes I’m only a footnote in your life.”

“Well, Alex, you’re only here about six weeks a year. I love you, but I have to have a life. And while you’re here I put everything off. I even send my patients to other therapists; because I want to be with you.”

“I know,” Alex intoned. “And I appreciate that.”

“You could quit SRI,” Kirsten speculated. “Join my life full time. You’ve met most of my friends and get along with most of them. You have enough money in your SRI account we could both retire.”

Alex shook his head. “I can’t. I mean, I can, but I won’t. I owe SRI. They took me and educated me and gave me a job–and kept educating me. Because they require employees to continue their education in order to get promoted, I have the equivalent of a B.S., at least. I’d never have gotten that if I’d stayed in L.A. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college, and you know how it was then. The government was broke and there were no grants or students loans. I’d have worked in my father’s store on Olympic Boulevard forever; if the gangs didn’t get me, too.”

The last sentence was stated with a mixture of anger and pain.

“And,” he continued after a few moments, “I’d have never met you.”

“Joey probably would still be alive if you two hadn’t gone into SRI,” Kirsten noted. “You still call out his name in your sleep.”

“I know,” Alex replied softly. “I usually wake up right afterward. I still dream about that damn rope slipping through my fingers–if only I’d caught it. But Joey would probably be dead if he’d stayed in L.A. I never told you, or, hell, anyone this, but one reason we joined SRI was that there was a gang out to kill him.”

“Why?”

“He refused to join. The courts were so lenient with criminals that the gangs were the
defacto
government in many parts of L.A. They didn’t have to worry about getting caught. You could do two years for murder. If only...”

“If only...” Kirsten repeated. “Let’s stop playing ‘if only’ games. Let’s make the most of the two weeks you have at home. Have you decided whether to go to Frank’s memorial service?”

“Yes,” Alex said with conviction. “I’m not going. It would take four days. I really haven’t seen Frank in years. Besides, it’s starting in about ten minutes.”

“Oh, Alex,” she cried. “You should have gone if you wanted.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“You sure?” Kirsten asked. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Yes,” Alex replied curtly. He picked up a round slice of kimbop. “Want some?”

Kirsten wrinkled up her nose, scrunching together the sparse population of freckles residing there. “No, thanks. Reminds me too much of sushi.”

***

Mitchel didn’t wear his full uniform very often anymore. At SRI headquarters, he wore a suit and if he needed a security uniform, he used one that had its red space-qualified color as its only pretension.

But, standing in front of the briefing room, the same one Frank had lectured in just before he was killed, Mitchel wore the red jumpsuit with the SRI patch on his left shoulder, the SRI Security patch on his other shoulder, and his Head of Security insignia over his heart. A cluster of yellow stars under the security patch represented each trip to the asteroid belt and back. Each silver bar in a row on the right sleeve represented one year in space. The NESA emblem on his right breast showed he worked for SRI back when it was a division of the multi-government agency.

He had eulogized Frank DeWite, speaking of his work and their long friendship. He concluded, “It’s been seven years since Theresa Gold was murdered. Until Frank DeWite, Jimmy Nakamura, and Roger Prince, she was the last member of SRI Security to die because of violence,” he said to the group. He saw Charlie Jones, in the back, staring blankly toward him. “When one of us dies we all feel the pain. When one of us is murdered we all feel the anger.”

Mitchel left the podium. The chaplain gave a generic prayer (just about every religion was represented) and the crowd filed out slowly and solemnly. Mitchel meant to catch Charlie but too many others stopped to talk to him.

***

When Charlie was a young, pre-teenaged girl, just starting to clumsily discover her own sexuality, her maternal grandmother invited her to visit her for a weekend. That wasn’t unusual; Charlie felt close to her grandmother and she often spent weekends in her apartment and they would talk about Africa and her grandmother’s childhood in the Congo. The country was going through one of those occasional spasms of violence that seemed the baptism of many emerging nations. Grandma never talked about the horror she must surely have witnessed.

But that weekend was different. Instead of the plateaus and rain forests of the Congo, Grandma started out by asking about boys.

Charlie flushed. She’d noticed boys and had some idea the big, goofy creatures might have some use after all.

Grandma smiled at Charlie’s perception of the males around her. Then she talked about boys she knew as a young girl. The conversation went on late into the night and continued for almost all waking hours of the weekend.

When Charlie returned to her parents, she’d changed subtly.

And while other girls in her school were having abortions, or worse, babies, Charlie, with a healthy social life, made it to graduation without any biological mishaps: a major accomplishment in her neighborhood.

What Grandma had taught her in that one extraordinary weekend was respect for and responsibility to herself.

Grandma died while Charlie was still in high school. Charlie thought she’d never feel pain like that again. She’d learned that “heartache” is an actual physical discomfort in the chest.

Now, for the second time in her life, she felt heartache.

They’d sent Frank’s body to the NESA farm where it would be broken down into its constituent elements and would give life to the next generation. To Charlie that was much better than a concrete box in the ground like they did to her grandmother.

Rodriguez insisted she not work for her safety and others’. Charlie wondered if he thought she’d be ineffectual without Frank to guide her.

Let’s see
, she thought,
I’ve denied it; I’ve been angry–now it’s time for depression. Or is it bargaining? It sure as hell isn’t acceptance
.

The door to her (and Frank’s) quarters gave its annoying buzz, interrupting Charlie’s self-pitying.

“What is it?” she asked, not really caring.

“It’s Mitchel.”

“Come in; it’s open.”

Mitchel had changed uniforms to a simple red jumpsuit with a security patch. “Hi, Charlie, how are you doing?” As the door closed behind him he held out his arms.

Charlie stood and walked to him. “I’m okay,” she said simply, slipping into his embrace. They held each other a moment.

“Yeah, right,” Mitchel said gently, disengaging himself and holding her at arm’s length. He looked at her. “That scar...”

He fingered her long neck.

“A vein in my neck protruded after the explosive decompression of my suit. The doctors fixed it. As soon as it heals it’ll be barely noticeable.”

Mitchel nodded. “Good. Listen, Charlie, when you feel up to it, come to Tokyo.”

Charlie made a face. “Is this about the asteroid? I don’t want to go.”

“No, it’s something else. Please?” the Head of Security for SRI asked.

“Okay,” Charlie replied noncommittally.

“I’ve got to catch the shuttle; it’s leaving soon. Come on the next one; call Meyoung when you get to headquarters and set up a meeting.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Thanks, Charlie.”

***

“Come in, Mr. Rodriguez,” Helga Moeller said, standing.

Moeller was a middle manager in NESA’s security office.

Rodriguez shook her offered hand and sat in the indicated chair. Moeller was an archetypical blonde, blue-eyed Aryan with a rubenesque build that Rodriguez found attractive despite himself.

“It was a nice service,” Moeller commented.

“Yes, it was,” Rodriguez replied.

“We’ve just about completed our investigation,” she said, sitting behind her desk, indicating it was time to get down to business. “We’re helped by the fact that there are so few people on the Moon.”

“What did you learn?”

“There are five persons unaccounted for in both NESA Facility One and Two. All are from Earth.”

“Do you have names?”

She tapped keys on her desk and a paper-thin screen in front of Rodriguez lit up. It had five passport pictures with data next to each.

“You can see they are all Americans,” Moeller said. “They arrived over a period of a week. Only one, Alan Griffin, had been here before. All their visas were secured with cash deposits at the Japanese embassy in Washington, Columbia.”

“Can I have this?” Rodriguez asked.

“Yes.” She tapped more keys and the device on Rodriguez’s wrist chimed indicating it had received the file. SRI’s main computer was still down and everyone was relying on their personal computers.

“Did you have any luck with the bodies?”

“Yes. The body at your Check Point Alpha was William Fetterly. That was a relatively easy identification. The other two bodies were both male. The bodies were damaged by shotgun wounds, exposure to vacuum, and automatic weapon’s fire to the face.”

“To slow identification?” Rodriguez speculated.

“Yes. But we have fingerprints. The bodies were Hector Balgos and Frank Green. The last may be an alias.”

Rodriguez nodded. “Thank you.”

“If there’s anything else we can do,” Moeller said perfunctorily.

“Thank you,” Rodriguez repeated and stood to leave.