The Gift of the Dragon (8 page)

 
“Well, speaking for the damaged, I disagree. Death is final while, with life, there are more… possibilities. I hope Alice Sangerman is still in there somewhere. I’d like to talk to her again.”
 

“Trevor, son, sometimes I wonder what side you are on.”
 

“Father, that hurts. I love my family and all that we stand for.”
 

Franklin looked him in the eye. “Callan tried to kill her once. He will not want her to survive.”
 

“She’s innocent, Father. She had nothing to do with Sangerman's madness.”
 

“Well, that matters little. She is supposed to be dead. If she stays alive, there will be a great deal of explaining to do. About things we do not want to explain. Understand?”
 

“Alice Sangerman must die?”
 

“This we must do if we are to have the prize.”
 

“You mean keep our current positions?”
 

Franklin McAlister rested his chin on his hand. “Right. To keep things as they should be.”

“But if she doesn’t remember who she is?”

“That may well be temporary. I will not depend on her real or feigned memory loss. There is too much at stake!”

“Why didn’t we just have Ned kill her, then? Then we’d have the key.”

Franklin finished off his own drink. “I have a great deal of respect for your Ned, but Alice Sangerman is quite capable of taking him apart with either her ‘diamond claws,’ as you put it, or her big blue eyes. Anyway, my plan will get us both Grant with his tablet and the last Sangerman with her dragon key. If we can get Alice on Laird’s boat, Callan will not be able to stay away. He wants that key. And he wants to finish off Alice—his reputation is a great deal of his wealth.
Laird and I are putting together a trap for both of them.”

“It’s good to see you working with Northwin again, father. I thought you two had an issue with him blaming us for Sam’s death? I’m glad to see we’re getting past that.”

We will all be past it soon enough.
 

“Yes, it is important for Laird and I to see things the same way. Fortunately, we are getting to that place.”

“Does the plan end with Grant’s and Sangerman’s deaths?”

“Grant’s, certainly. We can’t have someone who works for us get away with theft.” Franklin refilled both glasses. “Alice’s—we will see. Maybe I will let you question her.”

Chapter 6, White Sails in the Moonlight

Jake

Jake Hannover got the assignment from Price on Friday, and Saturday he flew to Tampa from Los Angeles. On the flight, he read over the reports on his assignment. One report was on Alice Sangerman, the daughter of a rich man. A dead man now. Before his death, Sam Sangerman had held the title of CEO of one of the world's largest landholding companies, Apple Creek Corporation. The amount of land the report said the company owned around the world surprised Jake, but Alice rejected her father's money and entered the US military as a combat medic just when the Army started letting women fill that role.

Jake snorted at the idea. He'd seen his men fuss and worry over the two women in his Ranger platoon. It cut down on the entire unit's effectiveness. He remembered how he felt about it. He would put his life on the line for an American woman, as would most of his guys. That made the whole thing more dangerous as he would find his men rushing to protect the girls, leaving the unit’s flanks unprotected.

The report went on about Sangerman’s mastery of a little known martial art known as eddu. It seemed to be a blend of western anatomy and physiology knowledge with karate.
So… sort of a Systema for girls.
She also liked to shoot targets. After the Army, her record simply read “FBI Adjunct Staff.”
 

On the secure line, Price told him that she worked undercover for several years. Corporate crime stuff. Soon after her father died in a mysterious accident, she disappeared, and a great deal of cash that belonged to the FBI went missing with her. Jake wrinkled his nose. The profile stank. For one thing, there seemed to be a lot more experience on her sheet than the story her picture told. On paper, she sounded like a grizzled fifty-year-old battle-ax, but in her picture she looked no more than thirty. And why would Miss Richie Rich need to steal government money? Seemed as though she should be able to whine to daddy when she needed a million or ten.
 

He shrugged and let the thoughts go. Jake specialized in taking care of problems, not sorting out the reasons for them.
That is a nice way of thinking about it. Really, I am a garbage man—one who has been told to put little Alice into the round file for good.

Price had as much as said that there had been several earlier attempts to bring her in. He had told Jake to bring her in alive if possible, to use lethal force only as a last resort.

Jake’s silenced carbine lay safe in his luggage—wrapped in federal tape to keep the TSA's grubby paws off it.
The last resort might be a good place to start.
 

Jake thought Sangerman got fortunate daughter treatment, given honorable-sounding posts without actually being put in danger. The daughters of the wealthy simply do not enlist in combat roles in the army; it doesn’t happen. Still, she must be somewhat dangerous or very lucky to have avoided capture this long—one year added up to about a lifetime when you pocketed the Bureau’s money. She had been in the wind for almost a decade!

Jake thought back on his own military service, cut short by idiotic bureaucrats with no idea how to fight a war. Sure, his team sported a higher “civilian” kill rate—by several orders—than others, and that rat Hobbes had turned him in for executing that old Haji and a couple of kids. Probably shouldn't have posted the videos on YouTube.
 

The vids had not shown his face, but Hobbes had pointed out to the base commander visiting from REMF-land that the size-twelve boots in one video were nonstandard-issue Salomon Explorers with the same scuff marks as Jake's.

Maybe the kid in that dusty field hadn’t owned that AK-47 Jake left on the body, but he would have used it on Jake's team if he had. When you got an opportunity to trample on a scorpion before it got a chance to sting, you took it! However, the sad state of the US Army had left it more concerned with fitting the “rules of engagement” on a little card than with winning the war!
 

His favorite line read,
“Patrol only in areas where you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force."
He remembered Jacobs saying he guessed he couldn't go home now because the ROE wouldn't let him walk around Detroit. He had said as much to the colonel when they had hauled him in to answer Hobbes’s claims. The little weasel! Just because Jake had confiscated the kid's hash and smoked it with Jacobs and Marks, he suddenly got all squeamish!
 

The colonel had given Jake a choice then: court martial and probably twenty-five years behind bars—or a talk with a man who had a job for him. Jake had taken the second choice.
 

Just then he heard the captain say the plane was about to land in Tampa. Out the window, he could see the purple pyramid on the top of the SunTrust tower and the western light shining from the fat old sun reflecting red and orange off the glass towers of downtown.
 

Jake discreetly checked his satellite phone. Disguised to look like a normal smartphone but powered by a military-grade chip, it had no problem staying connected during the flight.
Won't crash the plane, either.
 

He saw a new text from Price. Alice’s flight followed about a half hour behind him, coming in from Portland. He would get a car at Alamo and camp out on the access road. Price's people would pick up the feed from the airport surveillance cameras and let him know what car she had when she came out.
The TSA idiots might not have access to these, but Price surely did!
 

Jake got off the flight, picked up his luggage, and headed for the rental bus with a positive spring in his step, looking forward to some action. His orders to bring in Ms. Alice Sangerman, “preferably alive,” gave him a lot of leeway, and in the photos they'd sent him, she looked just his type: trim, blond, and spunky!
And nowhere near fifty!

Alice

Alice flew into Tampa on a glorious evening, with the evening sun casting the Skyway and city buildings in a beautiful orange glow, and then the plane turned back west to land, and she caught a glimpse of the sun setting, huge and fiery over the Gulf of Mexico, with streamers of clouds making it look like a great dragon’s mouth breathing fire.
 

The paper from the man in the forest had gotten wet when the bear-hunting stormtrooper had dropped it, leaving the address unreadable. She could still make out a phone number, though, and she thought she had a plan for how to locate Moore’s last residence.
 

While waiting for her plane at Portland, she asked her wonderful new friend Ami how she could learn to communicate with her better and learn to use the Droid smartphone she existed on. Ami told her about a site with millions of books, one of them called “Speaking Droid for Idiots,” a book with many good reviews. While boarding the plane, Alice followed Ami’s instructions and installed something called Kindle and then pushed some buttons that put the book on her phone. Alice spent the plane ride reading it thoroughly, except for the times when stewards on the plane told her to turn it off because it might interfere with the plane’s instruments.
Great, I am flying across the country on a plane that could be brought down by someone turning on a phone,
she thought.
No wonder I didn’t travel all those years!

When the stewardess said she could turn on her cell phone again, she whispered to Ami, “How do I find an address from a cell phone number?” Ami told her there were several services on the Internet that could do this for her but she would need a credit card. “I only have cash, Ami.”
 

Ami told her she could buy a credit card with cash, and Alice found this worked at a store in the airport. Seeing the food and the drinks in the shop, she suddenly realized she felt starved and thirsty, and she bought some bags of nuts and a large can of Red Bull. She and Jenny loved to eat nuts together, and Alice knew they made her mouth dry. Jenny frowned on Red Bull, but Alice loved the taste of it, especially with nuts.

She tried a couple of the phone number search services Ami showed her, joining with the false identity in her bag, Lillie Valero, and paying with her new card. Three of the sites all gave one address for the phone number, a business: Moore and Moore Legal.
 

She tried to rent a car from the first desk she came to with Lillie’s license, but she found she could not do that with cash or a purchased credit card. She almost asked whether she could
buy
a car when she thought of checking with Ami.

 
“I can rent a car for you from Hertz, and they can charge it to this phone’s bill.” She followed Ami’s instructions, got the car without a problem, and asked Ami to take her to the address.

She followed the robot voice's directions like a zombie, scarcely seeing the other cars and street signs, lost in thought.
 

Her goal turned out to be near the University of Tampa, on Cleveland Street, in a business park designed to look like a Spanish compound, with round tile roofs and whitewashed walls. The sun had finished setting by the time she located a suite of offices with Moore and Moore on the sign in front. The windows were dark. She walked around the building but could detect no sign of life. She made short work of the lock on the front door, using the tools in the bag Jenny said were hers.

The body remembers.
 

Alice entered a waiting room, and suddenly the lights came on. She froze. Nothing more happened. No alarm.
Motion sensing lights,
her inner voice said. The room revealed by the lights appeared modern and classy, with glass and curved-steel accent tables and comfortable-looking brown couches. Past the waiting room, she saw a hallway with several doors. She stopped in front of what looked like the main office, a door with a brass plate with words on it.

Dr. Peter Moore.
 

She turned then and placed her empty can of Red Bull on the doorknob of the closed front door.

Alice went through the door with Moore’s name on it. The office seemed huge inside, with a large, dark wooden desk and tall leather chair behind it that shouted strength and confidence. However, there were delicate candleholders and more of the swirly accent tables as well. Behind the desk hid a very neat and clean bathroom, again with candles, piles of towels on more curved-steel tables, and a blooming orchid hanging over a large Jacuzzi tub. She thought it much different from the rough-hewn wooden showers and outhouses at Willamette Springs.
 

 
If this is an office, why is there such a pleasant bathroom?
She opened the cabinet and noticed there were toothbrushes, shampoo, and… perfumes? Makeup?
Something odd is going on here.
Why would the man in the forest want to bring the necklace to this place?