“A bit dramatic, isn’t it?”
“I have my reasons. Got the number?”
“Yes.”
The call terminated with a click. Seconds later there was dial tone, and Eric punched his phone off. A recording, or was someone else listening to their conversation? The number Gil had called from looked like a landline. Unsecured? The Gil Eric knew didn’t do sloppy things like that without a reason.
Dinner was quick, the cleanup quicker. Eric hated mealtimes, had hated them since his long-ago divorce. It was the one time he didn’t like being alone. He washed his few dishes in the sink, and put them away, and sat down in a living room chair to read a magazine.
The kitchen telephone rang, and he picked it up on the second ring. It was Leon.
“Coulter just called me. He said he was amused by your act, but I think he was checking to be sure it was an act. I took responsibility for everything, told him I hadn’t let you know his client was the party the aircraft was stolen from, that you thought you were dealing with some corporate technology thief. I said we’d talked, I’d explained everything, and you were okay with it.”
“I am?”
“Oh, yes. He wants some ideas on how that aircraft might be returned to its lawful owner. Better start thinking about it. Coulter’s going out of town, wants to meet with both of us in a week.”
“Okay,” said Eric.
“You busy right now?” Leon’s voice was suddenly back in friendly mode.
“Reading a magazine.”
“Want to do something interesting?”
“Like what?”
“A little work with the handguns. I’m itching to shoot something.”
“You have an extra gun for me?”
“Sure, but cut the crap and bring along whatever you have. I don’t know about you, but recent events encourage me to polish my hardware skills. Besides, I want to see what you shoot.”
“Right now?”
“Sure. Come through the tunnel. The door’s unlocked, and cookies will be served. Coming?”
“Yes,” said Eric, and hung up. What the hell. He retrieved the Colt Modified and three extra magazines from a closet shelf, the Walther holstered in its usual place at his ankle. He left the room lights on, and went through the long tunnel to Leon’s basement, the holstered Colt dangling from his hand. He knocked once, the door opened, and Leon was standing there in a white robe. He wore yellow-tinted shooting glasses, and held a small spotting scope with tripod in one hand. His eyes went instantly to the Colt Modified, and he smiled.
“No gun, huh? What is it?”
“Long slide Colt, Harris trigger and bushing, rubber grips.”
“Nice. I prefer the Smith .41. My hands are small.” Leon led him to the two metal conduits that were his shooting range. A long, black semi-auto lay on a table there. Eric put his Colt on the other table. Downrange, a bull’s-eye target was brightly illuminated fifty feet away.
“What’s your barrel?” asked Leon.
“Four-five-one. I shoot standard hardball. Four magazines, here.”
“Won’t be enough,” said Leon. “I’ll get what you need.” He went to a cabinet behind them, came back with a box of fifty full-load cartridges, and smiled. “Five rounds load and lock. At your leisure, sir.”
Both men inserted earplugs and then put on cushioned muffs. The bull’s-eye of the target was a black dot that didn’t even cover the front blade of his pistol’s sight, and Eric was used to shooting at silhouette targets. He squeezed off five shots slow-fire. Leon fired five times in ten seconds, waited for Eric to finish, and turned on a motor that brought both targets back to them.
Not bad, thought Eric: two nines, a ten and two X’s. He looked at Leon’s target, saw two tens and three X’s.
Leon saw his look, peered at Eric’s target. “Pretty good for an analyst who doesn’t carry a gun. Let’s do it again, rapid fire, and I like match pressure. How about a quarter a target?”
They went through a dozen targets each, five shots in ten seconds. By the end of the session, Eric was putting nearly everything in the ten and X rings, but Leon had beaten him every time.
“I think you were actually trying there towards the end,” said Leon.
“It’s one thing to punch holes in paper,” said Eric, “and another thing to kill a man.”
Leon looked at him coldly. “I know it is.”
“I bet you do,” said Eric. And both men knew at that instant their relationship had suddenly changed.
They finished the evening with decaf and cookies, did not talk about private things. Eric didn’t even mention his outing with Nataly. There was some small talk about new artists in town, until both men were yawning. It was only nine when Eric went back to his own house. He read for a while, spent half an hour staring mindlessly at the television, and then went to bed.
Sleep came slowly. For a while he was again focused on the black dot of the bull’s-eye target, the sights aligning, the gentle squeeze of the trigger, the recoil pressure traveling along a rigid arm to the shoulder, the sights realigning without conscious effort. He drifted away finally to a place of dreams unremembered, while hundreds of yards from him Leon was visiting the golden being that was the higher manifestation of him.
Near midnight there was a click from the basement, but Eric was sleeping deeply. A stairway squeaked, and shortly afterwards a shadow filled the doorway to the bedroom. The shadow moved to Eric’s bed, and took form. It was a man, his face shrouded with a hooded mask. He took a bottle from his pocket, sprayed a gentle mist over Eric’s face, and waited a moment for the rhythm of Eric’s breathing to slow. Satisfied, he attached three wires to Eric’s forehead, and turned on a palm-sized device in his hand. The device glowed with flickering points of light on its face, and then went dark. The man detached the wires from Eric’s head, and left the room.
By the time he reached the doorway, the man was once again a formless shadow.
It was two hours past her usual time for sleep, but Nataly sat mesmerized by what she saw on the computer screen as the long, violent history of Eric Price scrolled past her view. No wonder he was divorced, she thought. He was never home. This much was obvious, even from the incomplete NSA file that had been hacked for her. Several pieces were missing, each covering periods of six months to a year, missions so black they were not included in the general file.
She picked up the telephone, punched in seven numbers.
“Nataly. The file has several gaps in it. Can you fill those in for me?”
She listened a few seconds, then, “How long, then? We’re moving ahead with this tomorrow, and I need to know everything I can get about him.”
Nataly rolled her eyes at the reply. “That’s not funny, Vasyl. You know what I mean. Get back to me tomorrow, even if you haven’t found anything. Okay. Bye.”
She hung up, and immediately felt a movement of cool air that washed over her face and bare arms. She tensed, but kept her eyes on the computer screen, not reading.
The cold went away, but she felt the presence somewhere behind her by the balcony of her bedroom that overlooked the pool. She forced her mind away from Eric’s file, focused on what she’d read about Leon several weeks before, and what little, useful intelligence she’d been able to get on Davis.
The presence was moving behind her, right to left, coming off the balcony and inching towards the darkened corner of the room beyond her bed, all the while probing at her mind.
This was not good. She really needed to study Eric’s file in private, and without interruption, and then get to bed.