Tod Goldberg - The End Game

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“Consider it the advantage of working with local businesses,” he said.

“I still need a favor,” I said.

“I still get dinner with Fiona?”

Even though I couldn’t see Fi, her presence, at least mentally, was weighing on me. I tweaked the offer accordingly. “I can guarantee that you will eat in the same room with her,” I said. “Everything else is up to chance.”

“All a man can ask,” he said.

“How much time would you need to get a hold of a couple hundred credit card numbers?”

“How much are you willing to pay?”

“Whatever it takes to get your nana’s legal issues resolved,” I said. “And I’ll pay double if you can get them from Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia-any place with a lot of banks and a lot of regulations.”

“How long would you need them for?”

“About ten minutes,” I said.

“I wasn’t planning on working tonight,” Barry said. “But I guess I could make a couple calls.”

I handed him the bank information again, and this time he took it. “I want you to flood this account with transactions,” I said. “Charges. Cash advances. It doesn’t matter. But max every single card. I want an international banking incident.”

Barry shook his head. “You got maybe fifteen minutes before the banks on both ends freeze all the transactions,” Barry said. “That bank in Myanmar? It doesn’t matter if it’s run by Al Qaeda or the CIA, the computers will still autolock the account, thinking it’s being cracked. You’ll never see a single cent.”

“That’s the idea,” I said. If my hunch was correct, whoever operated the bank account Dinino was transferring money into would be expecting far more money after Gennaro lost. Bonaventura probably wasn’t the only one taking action. But that would be difficult to achieve if their bank account was being investigated by every major credit fraud agency in the world. And if the U.S. government and its allies were monitoring it for money going to terrorists, it would take about thirty seconds for that account to get flagged by the kinds of people who you do not want flagging your accounts. The kinds of people who don’t mind coming across enemy lines to make sure you understand that your banking interests are very, very interesting indeed. By flooding it ten minutes before the race, it ensured me a window of time to confirm Maria and Liz were safe. Once the people who operated it found out Dinino wasn’t going to be able to make due, there was going to be… issues.

“I need to worry about anyone coming after me?”

“Anyone comes near you,” I said, “they’re coming through me first.”

“Really?”

“Really. What are friends for?”

“Is that what we are?”

I had to think about it. “I guess so,” I said.

“Nice to know. And not that I don’t trust you, but soon as they start bouncing back the charges,” Barry said, “Barry bounces out of Miami.”

“I’d recommend that,” I said. “I’ll call you when I want you to start and then lose your phone.”

“And then, what, Fiona catches up to me?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “She’ll be in contact.”

We sat for a few moments longer and watched the trapeze show. The Asian girl who’d fallen earlier was back on the swing now and picking up momentum to perform another trick, her eyes wide open, her face perfectly still, as if she’d completely forgotten that only a few minutes before she fell to earth with a thud.

You spend the majority of your life in the company of spies and you begin to realize certain truths, chief among them that in order to be a good spy, you have to love your job.

Statistically speaking, this is unusual.

Most people hate their jobs.

Most people wish they were doing something more interesting with their lives. So they go home and they watch television shows about people they can never be, or they read books about fantasy worlds they’ll never inhabit, or they get on to the Internet and take on a persona, either on a message board or in a role-playing game, and they while away their free time pretending and then wake up the next day and head back to the cubicle maze.

But when you’re a spy, every day has the potential to be completely unlike the previous day.

That kind of adrenaline is difficult to replace.

I wanted to solve my burn notice and get my job back not merely because I wasn’t overly fond of being manipulated by forces that wanted to use me for their own devices, nor because I found their belief that I’d capitulate to their will-as however many other burned agents had over the years-specifically rude and disrespectful, never mind that it’s never fun being shot at on a regular basis.

No, I wanted to solve my burn notice because I wanted my life back-the life I’d chosen.

Dealing with the mundane was not a job I was uniquely qualified for, nor, I suspected, was it made for Alex Kyle.

Which is why I wasn’t surprised to see him sitting on the hood of my Charger. That Fiona was sitting next to him, eating a Popsicle, was not in the game plan.

They made a rather striking couple, actually.

I’d parked the car in the lot across from the park, the most public spot, so the two of them were sitting beneath the glow of a towering street-light and right next to the cashier’s kiosk.

I reached under the back of my shirt, where my gun was stashed against my back, and clicked off the safety, anyway. My loft might not be in the most public locale, but there is a nightclub beneath it, which makes it sort of an odd place to assassinate someone, but no less odd than a brightly lit parking lot swarming with people.

Better safe than dead.

“So you two have met,” I said. “That’s nice.”

“Alex was just telling me about your performance this afternoon.”

“Vintage work,” Alex said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Fiona? A word?” Fiona slid off the hood of the Charger and I took her by the arm and guided her a few steps away.

I smiled.

It was the only way I could keep from screaming.

“Care to explain?”

“He was trying to break into your car to leave you a message,” she said. “I offered to sit with him instead and we’d wait for you together.”

“That makes perfect sense,” I said.

“He’s off the clock, Michael.”

“A guy like him is never off the clock,” I said.

“Anyway,” Fiona said, “I explained to him that we didn’t appreciate his meddling in our business with Gennaro. It’s not his place, professionally, to get between you and your ability to make a living. I think he respected my honesty. Of course, I had a gun pointed at his midsection at the time.” She licked her Popsicle. “But he was even kind enough to purchase me this lovely frozen treat afterward. He’s been very polite.”

“I’m happy to hear you’ve bonded,” I said.

“He’s very friendly.”

“He threatened to kill Nate today,” I said.

Fiona considered this. “No one is the ideal,” she said. “And anyway, I made him put all of his guns in your trunk. He’s an unarmed man now.”

“How did you manage that?” I said and dangled my keys in front of her.

“I have my own set now,” she said.

“Since when?”

“You have your secrets,” she said, “I have mine.”

We stepped back over to the car, and Fi sat back down on the hood next to Alex.

“Where’s Spock?” Alex said.

“Pardon me?”

“Well,” he said, “you’re the Captain Kirk here, right? And my new friend must be Bones. Where is Spock? Big guy? Drinks a lot? Lost his dog this morning? Because I can only assume that your brother-Slade, is that right? — is not the center of logic in your operation. More like one of those guys in red who beams down and dies first.”