Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

“How do you mean?”

“Remember what Korff said about the PEPs, politically exposed persons? He said they presented special problems because they were susceptible to extortion, which in turn leads to violence.”

“That’s an axiom,” says Harry. “You blackmail somebody, especially if they see no way out, no end in sight, there’s a fair chance they will try to kill you. Either that or commit suicide.”

“Variation on the theme,” I tell him. “What Graves said. The Hoover Effect, remember? J. Edgar and his card catalogue of dirt. The dark secrets of the rich and powerful. As the story goes, Hoover used the information to advance the bureau and to protect himself. Stayed in office for forty years.

“Let’s say someone in one of the government agencies found out that a few members of Congress were on the take. They had undisclosed offshore accounts. Let’s say they were taking money overseas because it was easier and safer there than here. There’re fewer FBI agents in Portugal than Poughkeepsie. Uncle Sam’s reach may be long, but his resources aren’t unlimited. Who knows that better than members of Congress who control the budget? They would even know the best places to do this. Let’s say some of them have a field day. They start racking up money in foreign accounts. But someone finds out. Now the offenders are susceptible to extortion. They become PEPs. Whoever’s doing it starts squeezing them for votes on bills, maybe information if they’re on sensitive committees that meet behind closed doors.

“But then this person sees the possibilities. Why have just a few members in your pocket when you can have many? And why wait for them to be seduced by random events when you can orchestrate the seduction? Let’s say they take the venture private, leave government, and turn political corruption into a growth industry. Now they’ve really got something.

“They also have an investment to protect. If you have some dirty politician by the collar, you don’t want him taken out in the next election by some reform candidate. Let’s assume somebody starts poking around, a nosy reporter, for example.”

“Alex,” says Harry.

“And Graves. Or worse, some competitor who finds out about some of the sins of one of your wayward members and tries to horn in on your action. What do you do? Unless you want to sit around and wait hoping they get struck by lightning, you go into the accident formation business.”

“You think Serna was trying to squeeze somebody in Congress?”

“She was a lobbyist and the soul of ambition. If the opportunity availed itself, why not? Let’s say she found some dirt, decided to put it to use, only to find herself standing in line behind some really nasty people. She turns up dead in a burned-out car.”

“And Ives?”

“Why waste a good accident? Whoever’s pulling Grimes’s strings is probably an environmentalist. If they could, they would probably have put the whole lot of us on a bus and run it in front of a train. Save energy.

“Grimes could have gotten any lawyer she wanted to represent Betz if all they wanted was to spring him so they could kill him. But no, she wants me to do it. Why? Probably so they can line me up behind Betz and do us both with the same bullet.”

“So what are you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna go meet Mr. Betz. The man is still breathing because he’s smart.”

“He’s alive because he has insurance,” says Harry.

“And if we want to stay alive we better get a piece of his policy.”

Ana was trying to read his lips. She could only see one of them, Madriani. Something about members in your pocket. . seduced by random events. She had him in her field glasses sitting in her car across the street from his house. She would have killed to know what they were talking about. For a moment she actually thought about the possibility in order to extract whatever they knew. Some clue, perhaps, as to who had the equipment. She didn’t consider it hers any longer, because she no longer had a use for it.

Ana had lost the contract on the corporate executive in Europe, and with it a very large commission. It was too late. They had hired someone else. She was too busy trying to protect herself, due to her connection with the French electronics, that she couldn’t take care of business. This hurt her reputation, and that made her angry.

The people who had the equipment were the ones using the lawyers, and they were being used; they were being followed. Ana knew this because of the Dumpster diver and the man she killed in Switzerland.

On her return from Europe Ana decided it was time for some technical assistance. She was alone, she was tired, and she needed sleep. At the same time she wanted to keep half an eye on the lawyers and where they went. She purchased four small devices known as Spark Nanos. Each about the size of a small cell phone, these were GPS trackers designed to allow parents to keep track of their children. What made the devices unusual was their battery life. The rechargeable lithium batteries could last for hundreds of hours on a single charge, depending on how the tracker was set.

Ana attached powerful magnets to the back of two of the devices. While the lawyers were inside the house talking, she slipped one of the trackers under the fender of each of their cars.

Using her laptop and linking her phone she had already set up geo fences. These are circular perimeters drawn on the Spark Nano’s GPS maps. She put fences around their law office, Madriani’s home, Hinds’s apartment, and a few other strategic areas, including the airport.

Whenever either of the vehicles crossed one of the fences Ana would get a signal on her cell phone. By setting the device to search every five minutes she gained two hundred hours of battery life. Whenever they moved she would know it. She could then track their movement on the GPS. In a week she could swap out the devices with fresh recharged ones and still have spare time on the batteries.

She couldn’t see Madriani’s partner in the house across the street. He was down low in the room somewhere below the opening, the pass-through to the kitchen. If she didn’t get a break soon, her hand would be forced. She would have to move on one or both of the lawyers.

The good news was she had picked up a client, a referral from some mutual acquaintances, a job in the area. At least her travel and her time would be paid for. The bad news was they were pressing her to get the job done. So far she had stalled them. But she knew she couldn’t delay much longer. She didn’t want to lose another job.

The problem was, if she used the same method to fulfill the new contract, having used an arrow in the San Diego area once already, authorities would connect the medical forensics in the two cases. A single arrow wound and one victim, a pathologist might classify merely as sharp force trauma. But a second victim with the same kind of wound in the same county crime lab, they would begin to see a pattern. With that they would start asking questions. It wouldn’t take them long to realize they were dealing with a bow and broad-head arrows.

Ana would have to dump all of her weapons, the compound takedown bow, the smaller crossbow, and all of the supplies for assembling arrows and bolts. She certainly couldn’t take the chance of carrying them through the airport. And keeping them in her possession was a risk if for any reason she was stopped and the police searched her car.

She would be bare, alone, and in a foreign country. She wanted to put some distance between herself and San Diego the minute she completed the new contract, so that by the time authorities went looking for sharp pointy objects she would be long gone. By then the alias she was traveling under would be smoke.