Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

“Lucky bastards. Me, I got this intercepted e-mail from this researcher, she’s working with a big-time drug dealer who cooks up his own poison. I don’t know where the e-mail came from. May have been leaked from another agency. The CIA does shit like that all the time, right?” Scagnelli gave Goatbreeder a conspiratorial nudge to the elbow, glancing around. The parking lot was empty except for a man sitting in a Lexus with a cell phone clamped to his ear.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Goatbreeder said. “Like I said, we’re on vacation.”

“Yeah, I understand. But I thought it might have been you guys, because somebody broke into the researcher’s lab. They didn’t find anything except for a laptop that had some copies of brain scans. And then those get leaked. The only agency I know that would deliberately let stuff get out is the CIA. Hell, even the Justice Department runs a tighter ship, and we all know how screwed they are.”

Goatbreeder bristled a little at the criticism, but apparently he was well trained in restraining himself. Baby bin Laden, though, fidgeted, moving his weight from one foot to the other.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Scagnelli said. “Why would the CIA want the Bureau to know about this particular researcher? I mean, we have different missions, right? Help me on this.”

“I don’t know,” Baby bin Laden said. “All I’m thinking about right now is Whitehurst.”

“Whitehurst?” Scagnelli said. “What the fuck is Whitehurst?”

“The golf course.”

“You mean Pinehurst? Where they hold PGA events?” Scagnelli couldn’t believe they let fucking foreigners traipse about on American soil like this, supposed defenders of democracy who hadn’t even bothered to get their cover stories straight.

“He’s newly assigned,” Goatbreeder said, as if that was an excuse for being a stupid Arabian shitheel.

“Here’s the weird part. My sources say it was two guys who raided the lab, and they were suspected terrorists. We all know what that means, right?”

Goatbreeder and Baby bin Laden looked at one another.

“I got nothing against people of any color or nationality, but even here in a college town, people have their preconceptions. I mean, they get cable here, right? Fox News? Brown people go boom boom?”

“What the hell do you want, Scagnelli?” Goatbreeder said. He didn’t have much of a Greek accent anymore. He sounded like a college kid, like the waiter.

Damn. I’m really getting too old for this. Time to buy myself a compound in Montana and be done with it.

“I want what we all want,” Scagnelli said. “Answers. The truth.”

He had to bite the tip of his tongue to keep from snickering. He shouldn’t have popped that second hit of speed. He was a little too buzzed for a job that required subtlety.

“The truth is a moving target,” Baby bin Laden said.

“Then let’s get moving.” Scagnelli had his gun out before either of them noticed, yet more proof of their incompetence. He’d added a suppressor to the Glock’s threaded barrel, which made it much longer and more difficult to conceal, but at least the agents would understand he meant business.

A couple had entered the parking lot and the woman was laughing like a sloppy prom date. Somebody was going to get lucky tonight.

Somebody including me.

“I need that laptop,” Scagnelli said. “And I need to know who’s pushing your buttons.”

Goatbreeder kept on a diplomatic tack, his voice low. “If the Bureau is in on this, it means big politics. We can’t compromise our mission of serving the president’s policy objectives.”

“Cut the rah-rah shit,” Scagnelli said. “Where’s the laptop?”

“You’re not seriously going to shoot two innocent bystanders in public, are you?”

“Don’t worry. No one will ever know. Or do you really think your regional director wouldn’t bury you? I mean, you’d be a terrible embarrassment to the agency.”

“Give him the laptop,” Baby bin Laden said, barely hiding his nervousness.

Scagnelli wasn’t surprised. He’d always figured Arabians had no grit, despite all the sand they’d eaten.

Scagnelli followed them to their car, already positive it was the silver Honda Civic, a car so painfully ordinary that it stood out even in a typical, middle-class parking lot. True to their nature, the agents had parked in the corner that was farthest from any streetlights.

He didn’t know which one would go for a gun first. He figured neither. These guys were foreigners. No way would they put their lives on the line for the good old red, white, and blue.

Goatbreeder was the driver, which wasn’t surprising. He slowly fished the keys out and was about to slide them into the driver’s-side door when Scagnelli said, “The trunk.”

Baby bin Laden waited without emotion while Goatbreeder opened the trunk. The laptop was lying there, along with a leather satchel bag.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Scagnelli said. “You guys had orders to leak the information. But it wasn’t leaked to me. I intercepted it fair and square. What I need to know is who you were trying to leak it to on purpose.”

They looked at one another. A car started, probably the laughing couple’s, and it backed out and exited the lot. The man with the cell phone was still in his car, not a big concern. The back door to the restaurant opened and a kid came out wheeling a gray trashcan, an orange dot marking the tip of his cigarette.

“We leak nothing,” said Baby bin Laden, accent reverting toward his native tongue in his anxiety.

“Ah, crap, we didn’t have to play it this way. But you’re leaking one way or another.”

When the restaurant worker banged open the Dumpster, Scagnelli squeezed the trigger twice. The agents slumped together for a moment before Goatbreeder slid against the side of the car and down to the cracked asphalt. Baby bin Laden flopped forward.

The restaurant worker wrestled with the garbage while Scagnelli flipped Goatbreeder into the small trunk. Baby bin Laden was a little less cooperative, still clinging to a faint pulse. There was no way to finesse a corpse into a trunk while out in public, so Scagnelli just shoved and rolled and folded, hoping he didn’t get any bloodstains on his suit.

“Enjoy the ride,” Scagnelli said, removing the laptop and satchel and slamming the trunk closed.

The man in the car with the cell phone must have heard the trunk’s closing, because he turned but didn’t pause in his conversation. Scagnelli ignored him, walking with purpose toward the restaurant as if he were a professor headed for a late martini. He continued down the sidewalk to his car parked along the street.

He was pleased to see in the glow of the streetlights that his suit was stain free. He popped a hit of speed in celebration. He felt like dancing, but on the sidewalks of the proud and free America, you didn’t dare show any hint of joy. These days, happiness brought suspicion.

But at least you still own what happens in your head, right?

He walked faster.

At least for now.

Alexis had only been to Darrell Silver’s lab once, when the hedonistic young chemist showed her his plan for refining Halcyon. He’d offered her a beer, which she declined, and he proceeded to pop one himself as he escorted her into the hidden recess where he’d installed his state-of-the-art equipment. Now, as she entered the former gas station, the greasy and musty aroma evoked memories of Sebastian Briggs’s Monkey House.

“Darrell?” she called as she entered. The front door had been unlocked and she figured he would be waiting in the residential portion of the structure. She tried the light switch and the room stayed as dark as the falling dusk beyond it.