Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

Interpol, the FBI, and every state intelligence service in the Western world would descend on the picturesque villa in southern France. They would find her grandmother and her aunt and destroy their refuge from the world.

This morning she was back, tracking after the lawyers. She was getting ready to snag one of them. At the moment it looked like it might be the older one, Hinds.

He was driving north on I-5 when he took the interchange at I-8. He went a few miles and got off on Mission Bay Drive. Ana was just about to take the off-ramp when the signal on her cell phone told her that Madriani was now also on the move. His car had broken the geo fence around the law office.

Ana let Hinds go. She shot past the off-ramp and drove west toward the ocean. She turned off on Nimitz Boulevard and pulled into a parking lot in front of a motel to check her phone.

The tracker on the little Spark Nano under the fender of Madriani’s Jeep was set to report its location at intervals of five minutes. It took three intervals, a full fifteen minutes, before she could confirm that he was headed north on I-5 and had passed the interchange at I-8. He was driving fast, approaching the 805, running north, out of the area.

Ana tossed her cell phone on the passenger seat, started the engine, and took up the chase. Every few minutes she glanced over at the phone to see if the GPS had updated his position. She was afraid he might turn off the highway at some point and she would fly past him.

When she looked over to check the phone, she realized it had timed itself out and gone dark.

“Damn.” She kept her eyes on the road, reached over, and picked up the phone. It took a few seconds looking back and forth between the highway and the phone to key in the four-digit code to unlock it.

Seconds later the GPS showed Madriani moving west toward the ocean on what appeared to be a major thoroughfare off the highway. From the small map on the cell Ana couldn’t identify the turnoff. She wanted to look more closely in order to study the phone, but she didn’t dare. Traffic was moving too fast. If she took her eyes off the road to look at the small screen, she could end up like the charred occupants of the car at the gas station.

Ahead she saw a sign, a broad overpass with a long straight exit on her side of the divided freeway. There was a large curving cloverleaf on the other side. Whatever road it was it ran east and west, a major thoroughfare. She decided to take it.

At the top of the overpass Ana stopped at the signal and checked the phone once more. Distance was hard to calibrate on the small map.

She saw the flashing marker on the map noting Madriani’s last position. He’d obviously moved on since then. She wouldn’t get another GPS reading on him until the next timed interval.

She pinched the screen in an effort to zoom in, trying to read the street names on the map. Ana had no clue as to where she was or whether she and Madriani had even taken the same exit from the freeway.

If she could identify the street where the GPS marker was located she could look for signs along the way to see if they were on the same road.

The light turned green and traffic started to move. Ana laid the phone back down on the seat and took a left. She went west over the top of the freeway toward the ocean.

The road was good, two lanes in each direction and few stops. The traffic moved quickly, no congestion. She glanced down at the phone and noticed that the marker had moved.

She touched the screen quickly in order to keep it alive. Madriani was now moving on some side street off to her right, assuming he had used the same road she was on.

From the rapid glimpse she got at the small screen, the narrow thread he was traveling on looked like it snaked its way through a canyon. It was either that or the top of a ridge. She couldn’t tell which. It was almost impossible to make out any details squinting at the small display from four feet away.

Ana almost reached over to touch the screen one more time and instead closed the leather cover and gave up on it. She decided she would move toward the ocean, stop, and park somewhere until she could check the map thoroughly and get her bearings.

By then Madriani would be farther along. But she could still find him, thanks to the GPS.

She passed through a residential area, large houses with late model luxury cars parked out front. There was a traffic signal ahead. It looked like a major intersection.

She touched the brake just as the GPS signal toned on her phone and began to play. Hinds was back home. He had tripped one of the geo fences, either at his apartment, Madriani’s house, or the office. Ana was beginning to feel comfortable with the system. She wished she had gotten it earlier.

Before she could come to a complete stop, the light changed. She drove through the intersection, pulled to the right, and parked at the curb. She left the motor running, air conditioner humming, as she checked her phone.

Ana lifted the flip leather cover and punched in the code. The map came up along with the circled geo fence. As Ana looked at it she realized that the signal wasn’t coming from the law office, Hinds’s apartment, or Madriani’s house, the three areas she had fenced off. Instead the signal being emitted by the sensor on Madriani’s car was coming from somewhere else.

As she looked at it she realized what it was. It was the electronic fence she had set up the day before. The one she put near the large oak tree in front of the gauche American knockoff of a French provincial estate house in the hills above Del Mar. The house was owned by the pigeon, her next victim, the new contract Ana was being paid to pluck by some high-ranking Chinese general.

It’s been said that a person who acquires the grace to die well has learned much. If that’s the gold standard, I’m an idiot. If I have to die now, I am going out of this world kicking and screaming.

The man of a thousand names has me attached to two electrodes fired like bullets through the fabric of my shirt and planted into the flesh of my chest like industrial staples. I am seated facing him, my hands gripping the wooden arms of the heavy antique chair. With the massive partner’s desk at my back, wired to the Taser and my assailant between me and the door, I have limited options for escape.

I could make a dash for the French doors that lead out into the garden. They are off to my right behind me, about eight feet away. I don’t know if the twin doors are locked or bolted shut, or whether I could bust through them if I launched my body through the small glass panes. But tethered to the Taser I don’t dare try. Any attempt to rise from the chair and he would drop me like a beached flounder and watch me flop around as he sent bolts through me like Zeus.

So far he has hit me with the Taser twice just to let me know how it works, enough voltage to send every muscle in my body into spasms. According to the cops, the official line for those who use them is that Tasers cause little or no pain. Feeling the continued burning sensation from the darts in my chest and the agony of muscle cramps caused by the little devils, I beg to differ. Catch one of the darts in the eye and you will lose your sight.

I settle into the chair and look for opportunities.

“Why don’t you just tell me where he is and we can end this? Or better yet, tell me who has the information on the accounts, the bank records. You’d be saving yourself a lot of pain. If you tell me now, I’ll let you go.”

This is the first time he’s tried that one. He must be getting desperate to think I’d believe it.

We have been over this four or five times already, the whereabouts of Betz and his cache of records. It always ends the same way, with me telling him I don’t know, which in turn is met by a cascade of lethal threats followed by a Taser show as he lights me up. It’s not that I don’t believe him. I’m sure that given half a reason, he would disembowel me on the spot. It’s just that I don’t know what to tell him that will keep me alive. The instant he thinks he’s gotten everything I have, he’ll put a bullet in my head.