Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

I have one eye on the drunk, who finally manages to get up. He is looking around on the floor as if maybe he’s dropped his wallet before he realizes it’s in his hand. He turns in a complete circle and very nearly returns to his chair before he remembers why he got up in the first place. He stands there staring at my table, a monument to drunk indignation, then takes a couple of tentative steps. From the look of it, his legs are not entirely sure they each have the same destination.

“What would you like to drink?” The waiter looks first to her. He has excellent peripheral vision. He sees the man stumbling this way. Before she can speak, the waiter raises one hand and flashes a bright laser pointer toward the mirror behind the bar. He flashes it one more time and instantly two guys in black T-shirts, heavy-chested bouncers, come out from an area behind the bar. Like heat-seeking missiles they home in on the drunk staggering this way.

The girl says something to the waiter, but I don’t hear it. I assume she’s ordered a drink. She may have ordered the club’s entire inventory of liquor for all I know. At the moment, my attention is drawn to the action on the other side of the room. The stumbling inebriate is scooped off his feet from behind. From the look of astonishment on his face, he seems to be questioning how it is that he can suddenly fly. He is carried like a stack of straw overhead and then soundlessly and within seconds disappears through a dark door that, for all I know, could lead to a coal bin on the other side of the room. For a moment I wonder if he might show up in Shanghai in a few months working cargo on some hobo-ridden, rusted-out freighter. I make a mental note not to find out.

None of this is lost on the Solemn Order of Head Ties, who suddenly temper their volume. A guy with his pants down quickly pulls them up, his gaze still fixed on the dark door of doom.

“And you, sir?” The waiter looks at me.

“What?”

“Would you like another drink?”

“Oh, ah, I’ll just have another club soda-make that with a twist of lime this time,” I tell him. “Oh, and a little something for you,” I say. I palm him a scrunched-up hundred-dollar bill.

“Oh, thank you, sir! Much appreciated.”

The move is not wasted on the girl, who takes in every detail and seems to smell the money from the scent still on my hand. “What is it that you do for a living?” she asks.

“I’m in business. I live in Omaha and I own a company that manufactures fertilizer.” And at the moment I’m just full of bullshit. “My name is Warren. . ”

“I thought you said your name was Paul?”

“Oh, ah, Paul Warren,” I tell her. One thing is clear. She’s going to need a lot more to drink if this is going to work. And I will have to insist on full rations, nothing watered down.

Ben, Crystal, whatever her name is, is absolutely knock-’em-dead gorgeous. Even if I stay sober, she is going to be a challenge. Alex was right. She is ether in the flesh, the stuff of which young men’s dreams are made. She flashes a smile that is deadly, so stunningly beautiful that I want to stare, but I don’t allow myself. I exercise restraint. I am here on business. I avert my eyes, look at something else, the candle on the table, the naked woman on the stage. I pretend to be cool. Suddenly I find myself sneaking a glance. She turns and catches me and I blush. What is worse, she knows it and it doesn’t faze her. This should not surprise me. She has no doubt lived her entire life with this affliction. The usual dazed reaction from every paralyzed male she meets. She sizes me up from across the table.

“What brings you here tonight?” she asks.

“You do.” My first truthful statement.

“Now I know you’re lying.” She issues a smile, generating enough heat to melt the male ego. “How did you find out about this place?”

“A friend told me.”

“First time here?”

“First time.”

“Bet it won’t be your last.”

“I’m not a gambler,” I tell her. “But if I were, I’d never be fool enough to let you take my money on that wager.”

“How sweet. You speak well, and so quickly,” she says. “Words seem to come easily to you. Is that an essential skill in the fertilizer business?”

“Only if you want to sell it,” I tell her.

The waiter brings our drinks, mine in a tumbler, hers in a mini cocktail glass not much bigger than a thimble. We tap the glass rims and two seconds later hers is gone. I can hear the cash register ringing over at the bar.

“Might I suggest a bottle of champagne?” says the waiter. “We have some excellent vintages.” He smells a sucker on a roll.

“I’ll bet you do,” I tell him. “Why not? And two big glasses this time.”

Ana Agirre stepped off the plane, cleared immigration and customs, collected her bags along with a rental car, and was on her way headed south from LAX in less than an hour. She took a reading from her laptop before leaving the rental car lot using a portable hot spot she purchased at the airport. It worked off a 4G cellular signal and gave her access to portable Wi-Fi while she was in the States.

Once she located what she was looking for, she tuned the car’s GPS to home in on an address just south of Mission Bay, a place called Ocean Beach. This was the location where the signal was coming from. They had moved a few miles since the earlier reading she had taken just before leaving Amsterdam on her connecting flight across the Atlantic. They were up to something. She didn’t know what.

Each time they turned on the small satellite antenna connected to Ana’s laptop, the one they were supposedly field-testing, it sent an encrypted signal from the antenna to the desired navigation satellite high in the sky overhead. It was like an electronic handshake between the computer’s software and the navigation system. The software not only unlocked the vehicle’s navigation and computer systems but also left data at a little-used online site operated by the French military to which Ana had access. It was former French military technicians turned high-tech mercenaries who had designed and built the system for her who had told her about this. The online data allowed her to track the location of the antenna on the ground through GPS coordinates. She could then track this with precision using Google Earth.

They had used her software in the desert east of town three weeks earlier. Ana knew this not only because she had read the news accounts, but because she had the tracking data to prove it. Now she was getting antsy. She wanted to know why the equipment hadn’t been returned to the makers. She called the number the man had given her over the phone only to be told via recording that the number was disconnected. She wanted her stuff back and she wanted it now. She had a contract to complete. Her clients were getting nervous.

Twelve hundred dollars and two bottles of champagne later she isn’t even showing signs of mild inebriation, while the end of my nose feels like it belongs to somebody else. Built like a bird weighing maybe a hundred and ten pounds, the girl who calls herself Crystal on the job and Ben on the street is showing all the signs of being able to drink me under the table. So I cut to the chase.

“You know, I was wondering if you might be up to a private party tonight?”

“And I was wondering if you were ever going to ask?” she says. “We can have them send another bottle of champagne upstairs.”

“Oh, not here,” I tell her. “I was thinking we could do it back at my hotel where we can relax.”

“You were, were you?”

I nod and smile.

“Aren’t you the fast worker? I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she says. “If we’re going to party in private, it would have to be here. It’s perfectly safe.”