Alpha (6 page)

This man whose name you will never know, he has reach, the Uzbek said, and his reach is increasing. He has a vision and a plan, and someone like you would be welcome within it. Follow instructions, do as you’re told, keep being smart, and it will pay dividends, big dividends. It will make Odessa a memory, and will pave your future with gold.

“What do I have to do?” Matias asked.

“You have to go to school,” the Uzbek said.

It was almost a year later that he arrived in Los Angeles. He traveled under a false name, he couldn’t even remember it now if he tried, because as soon as he arrived, it was done, literally burned. The Uzbek had arranged a condo for him, and a car, and he was enrolled in the community college, and his name was Gabriel Fuller, and he was an American, though his mother had been from Ukraine. He had a bank account and a stipend and papers for everything, and the instructions were simple enough, as they were with Pooch.

One, he was to stay clean. No drugs, no guns, nothing that would make the law look at him twice. Be clean and stay clean, no record, and this was vital, the Uzbek said. No speeding tickets, nothing.

Second, get that language, and get rid of that accent. Know your American, so you can be American.

Third, take the courses at the college, meet the people, blend in. Take whatever you want, but if maybe some sciences are in there, that wouldn’t be bad, you know? Maybe some math and some physics, too, because the more you know, the more useful to us you become, and the more useful, the more respect, the more the reward.

The day his papers said he’d turned eighteen, he received an e-mail from the Uzbek. In truth, Matias had celebrated—a poor word for letting the day pass without note—what he suspected was the date almost six months prior. But on Gabriel Fuller’s eighteenth birthday, at least, there came this e-mail, sent through the anonymous account Matias checked every day, which, for almost a year, had remained empty. So it took him by surprise when he saw the letter, read it, and it was so simple, and he began to truly understand what they were after.

He went with the army, signed on for the 4YO, four-year obligation, took the training and the pay, regular infantry, learned the weapons and the tactics and found himself in Afghanistan once again, and there were times during that deployment that he wondered if this had been a good idea or not. Moments when his unit was taking fire, when his friends died. They were his friends, truly, because he was Gabriel Fuller, and even if he had only been pretending, those bastards trying to kill them sure as hell were using real bullets and rockets and grenades.

He was Gabriel Fuller, and he was a soldier in the army of the United States of America, and he didn’t need the Uzbek to tell him why he was doing this. Free training from the most advanced, best fighting force anywhere in the world.

He could see how that might be useful.

He was out after his second tour, had made himself a specialist before departing, and the army wanted him to stay. But the Uzbek, who had been silent since wishing him happy birthday so long ago, reached out again, and said that was enough. Perhaps he might want to explore what the GI Bill had to offer?

Perhaps he might like to pursue a degree in engineering, in fact? Or economics? Or chemistry?

His fifth semester at UCLA, he and some friends had gone to the movies in Westwood, seen a film about this chick who was wrongly accused of being a spy. He hadn’t been paying much attention to the movie, because among the friends was this girl, Dana, and he thought maybe she liked him the way he liked her, and about minute forty he discovered that she did. So he missed most of the film, instead tasting her mouth and letting her taste his, and it wasn’t really until the next morning, when they parted and he was heading to class, that he found himself thinking at all about what he’d seen, what he’d heard while lost in the taste and touch and feel of Dana.

A sleeper agent, someone on the screen had said. A long-term sleeper agent, placed and forgotten, known to no one. Until the day comes, the call arrives, and the sleeper is activated. Until the sleeper awakens.

It stopped him, standing just outside of Royce Hall, and he felt like a fucking idiot.

That’s me,
he thought
. I’m a sleeper, and I don’t know who for, or why, or what, or when I’m going to wake up.

And it occurred to him then that if this was his dream, if he was asleep, as sweet as this dream had become, it would end. He would wake. When the time came, he would wake, and he wouldn’t have a choice in the matter.

He would wake, whether he wanted to or not.

The Uzbek contacted him in late winter, the same way he had every time before.

Dana was studying special education, working with the developmentally and physically disabled, and she was making summer plans along those lines. But she wanted them to spend the summer together, and so she asked what he was going to do, and even though Gabriel knew he shouldn’t, he told her the truth.

“I’m working at WilsonVille,” he said. He had applied immediately after the Uzbek’s visit, as instructed, had already received word that his security screening had been approved. He was due to attend his first orientation and training seminar that weekend.

She laughed, then, thought he was joking. Saw from his look that he wasn’t. “Seriously?”

“Already applied and was accepted.”

“To do what?”

“Whatever they’ll let me.” He shrugged. “Probably picking up garbage. What about you?”

“I was thinking about going home. There’s this camp for the deaf I used to volunteer at, I was going to work there.” Her family was from Illinois, outside of Chicago someplace. They were talking in her dorm room, and she looked at him thoughtfully for a couple of seconds after saying that. Then reached over to the foot of her bed. A small collection of stuffed animals resided there, would inevitably end up on the floor whenever they made love. She picked up one of them, a sweet-looking gazelle.

“But now I’m thinking maybe not,” Dana said. She was still holding the animal, one index finger slowly stroking its breast up and down as she looked at him. The curl of her lip formed a slight smile as she met his eyes, and the gesture had nothing to do with the little gazelle in her hands. The thrill it gave Gabriel took him by surprise, made him want her right then and right there.

“We could get our own place,” she said. “Just for the summer, you and me.”

And despite everything the Uzbek had said, despite everything he already knew and everything he was beginning to suspect, Gabriel Fuller nodded. The Uzbek would give him hell when he found out, of course. The Uzbek wouldn’t like it.

But the Uzbek, Gabriel Fuller thought, had never been in love.

“I’d like that,” he said.

EACH DAY
starts much the same for Bell. He pulls himself out of his rack at five to five in the morning, coasting on autopilot, at least until he’s outside and stretching. Then he starts his run. He’s living in a condo now, a barely furnished open-plan space with a great view of the ocean, and it’s less than half a mile from his front door to the beach. He runs alongside the surf, early morning mist eager to burn away to a fresh summer day. It takes him roughly forty-five minutes to hit his seven miles, and then it’s a shower, dressing, drinking a hell of a lot of water and a little orange juice.

Then he takes his weapon, checks and loads it, then settles it in the holster just behind his right hip. No-weapons policy in the park be damned; he’s carried a Colt M1911 .45 since one was put into his hands after he’d cleared selection. He can still remember Sergeant Mordino, call sign Icestorm, handing it to him.

“Go big or go home,” he’d said.

Mordino had been one of the first on the ground when they went into Afghanistan, had died on a ridgeline in Tora Bora. Their guides had fed them bullshit, left them high and dry in a mortar storm, and Mordino had been out in the open. One of many warriors who lived on in Bell’s memory.

He pauses before heading out the door to stuff two pieces of fruit into his pockets. He’s been enjoying apples lately, but the summer stone fruits are a treat, and the last week, he’s been going with plums, eating them in the car on the way to work, licking spilled juice from the side of his hand as he drives.

It’s six fifteen when he’s pulling out in a leased BMW coupe and his phone starts to ring. Every morning, same time, on the nose. This is the morning briefing, a quick call organized by his superior, the director of park and resort safety, Eric Porter. Bell and Porter are joined by two others, a man named Wallford, who serves as Porter’s assistant, and by Matthew Marcelin. Marcelin normally keeps his silence on these calls, his presence simply there so that he can stay informed, and sometimes Bell wonders if he’s even awake. It’s Wallford who does most of the talking, and the calls are pretty much all the same, a quick rundown on any intelligence they’ve received from sources within government or law enforcement, any warnings, advisories, and so on. If there’s a big group coming to the park, or VIPs visiting, and if so, what manner of VIP they might be. WilsonVille is a favorite stop for foreign dignitaries and their families, and they come to the park so regularly that there is a Secret Service liaison whose job it is to coordinate with park security.

So they go over all these things, and anything else that might matter, and the call normally doesn’t last longer than fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, five days a week, for almost three weeks now, and that’s been more than enough time for Bell to decide that he doesn’t much like Eric Porter and that the jury is still out on his man Jerome Wallford. More than enough time for Bell to be certain that they don’t much like him, either. Maybe it’s a vestigial interservice cock-swinging contest, maybe it’s just bad chemistry among all involved. But Bell wonders if maybe it’s not something else, something more.

It started early, too, started the moment he met them, the day after Marcelin had hired him. Wallford escorting Bell into Porter’s office, then remaining in the room with them, standing just behind and off to the left, the position deliberate, in the periphery. You are watched, Mr. Bell, you are being evaluated. To prove the point, he wasn’t offered a seat, and Porter remained behind his desk, absorbed in whatever was on his monitor for fully half a minute before bothering to acknowledge Bell’s presence.

“Marcelin should’ve consulted with me before hiring you,” was the first thing Porter said.

“I guess I made a good impression.”

“He says you were army.”

It wasn’t a question, but Bell decided to treat it as one. “Little under twenty years.”

“Doing what?”

“Little of this, little of that.”

“You being coy with me, Mr. Bell?”

“Not my intent, Mr. Porter.”

Wallford, just outside his periphery, said, “You know we can find out.”

Again, it hadn’t been a question, but this time Bell didn’t feel the need to answer.

“Your job is to keep the park safe,” Porter said. “That’s all it is. Keep the park safe, keep the kids under control, keep the breakage to a minimum. You’re not pounding ground here. We have the whole, you have a piece, understand? If the matter goes outside the gates, it’s outside your purview. You understand? If it’s outside the gates, you refer it to Wallford, he brings it to me.”

“Sure.”

“We clear on this? Do you understand, Mr. Bell?”

“Sure.”

The look Bell got told him that his answer lacked something, perhaps enthusiasm, perhaps the requisite sincerity or obsequiousness that Porter felt was his due. The look Bell got told him that Porter didn’t have much faith in the ability of soldiers to follow orders, and if Porter thought
that,
he probably didn’t think much of soldiers in the first place.

Bell had held hands with the CIA enough in the past to recognize it for what it was: typical Company bullshit.

Less than a week later, during the morning call, things got worse. The Secret Service liaison, a woman named Linda Jovanovic, was on the line with them, going over details for a dignitary visit, and Bell had been holding his tongue, letting Wallford take the lead on Porter’s behalf. They’d proceeded to the issue of coverage while in the park, the close detail work, and Bell finally offered that he’d had some experience in that department, and that Jovanovic’s people could rely on his discretion and aid.

“Jad?” Linda Jovanovic said. “Jad Bell, is that you?”

“How you doing, Linda?”

“I think my blood pressure just dropped ten points, that’s how I am. Fucking relieved is how I am. Give me your number; I’ll have my detail leader contact you directly.”

They’d wrapped the call, and Bell had been parking the BMW, making his way into the park, when his phone rang again. Porter on the line, all indignation and insult.

“You do not overstep, you do not make us look bad,” Porter said. “You fucking do not do that ever again, understand?”

“We’re all on the same side,” Bell said. “Aren’t we, Eric?”

Three weeks, then, Bell feels he’s got his legs under him. It’s not an easy job, not by any stretch, but mostly it’s managing details, and that’s something he’s learned to do very well indeed in the last twenty years. And like the army, WilsonVille has trained its people, and Bell is surrounded by men and women who know their jobs.

One of them, a woman named Shoshana Nuri, has proven very helpful. He met her the start of his second week, found her waiting outside his office with a list of the various group tours that would be hitting the park that day. There were some two dozen, including a couple of graduating high school classes making late celebratory trips, and another smattering of special-needs and developmentally disabled groups. WilsonVille maintains a database of its employees, marks those with supplementary or secondary skills of use, those who can work as translators or interpreters and the like, and Nuri had already prepared a short list of Friends to call upon should extra assistance be required for any of the guests. One family reunion; three church outings; a kid from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, dying from terminal lymphoma.

Nuri handed him the sheet, and Bell wasn’t sure what to do with it at first, mostly because he was staring at her. Shockingly pretty, short coal-black hair and hazel eyes, vaguely Persian features, but that wasn’t why he stared. He’d seen her before, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember where or when.

“The high school kids don’t tend to be a problem,” Shoshana Nuri told him. “They get noisy, rambunctious, sometimes they try to sneak booze into the park, but we tend to catch that during the bag check.”

“You changed your hair,” Bell said abruptly.

She reappraised him. “It was a wig.”

“So I’d guessed.”

“I’m impressed. Most people can’t recognize me outside of costume.”

“It took a while for the penny to drop.”

She kept the same expression, the pun either ignored or disregarded. “Like I said, I think it’s the wig. Throws people off.”

“That must be it,” said Bell, certain that her form-fitting Penny Starr flight suit was a factor as well.

He’s working six days a week. Fridays, during his routine walkabout of the park, he completes the drop from Chaindragger at Terra Space. Isaiah offers him the latest Clip Flashman comic, and Bell takes it, and back in his office he opens it and reads the note that’s been enclosed, always the same. NSTR. Nothing significant to report. He tucks the note away to be burned later, sends an e-mail to Brickyard via an anonymous account, passing it along.

Mondays he takes off, the quietest day in the park. Those days, Bell tries to sleep late and fails, spends a chunk of it reading, catching up on the news. His languages are getting a little rusty from disuse, and chasing newspapers online is a good way to refresh his Arabic, his Russian, his Pashto. There’s a shooting club as well, and he spends an hour on the range, pounding out rounds. Does his laundry, does his shopping, and by the time that’s done, he’s thinking about cooking himself dinner and maybe going to see a movie, which he never does. Doesn’t matter how much he wants to see something in the theater, he can’t bring himself to sit in the dark alone.

His third Monday in, his third official day off, late in the afternoon, he heads to a brew pub he’s been hearing about, place called the Yard House, on one edge of an outdoor mall in Irvine. He finds Colonel Ruiz there, as expected; out of uniform, blue jeans, a black T-shirt, waiting in a booth off to the side when Bell arrives. The colonel is apparently watching three different ball games play out on three different televisions at the same time, and Bell has a sense memory, triggered in the way Ruiz’s eyes flick from one screen to the next, remembering the TOC. For a fraction of a second, he can hear the voices, see the satellite imagery, smell the electronics, the recycled air, the stale coffee of the Tactical Operations Center.

It’s gone as quickly as it comes. Bell takes a seat. The selection of beers available can only be described as overwhelming. He finally settles for an IPA out of San Francisco. The noise in the space is consistent, just shy of loud, with so many people alcohol-lubricated that the volume steals attention. It’s a good place to talk.

“How’s the job?” Ruiz sips from his own glass, eyes flicking from one game to another. This is their first face-to-face since Bell’s placement within WilsonVille. Ruiz speaks casually, conversational volume. Whispering draws suspicion, after all.

“Like any other.” Bell pulls the latest comic book acquired from Chaindragger from his jacket pocket, sends it across the table. Same message as every time before. “Always an adventure.”

Ruiz takes the comic, cracks a grin, flips through it until he finds Chain’s report. He closes the comic again, moves it to rest beside him on his seat. “Tell me.”

“I’m light.” Bell goes silent as the waiter sets his drink on the table, saunters off. “I’m tasked for four. You promised me four. Rest of my team.”

“You may have heard, there’s a war on.”

“Old news. I’ve got Chain.”

“You’ve got Chain plus one.”

“I don’t know my plus one, my plus one wasn’t picked by me, my plus one is a variable and untested and therefore I do not include my plus one.”

“Your plus one checks out.”

“I didn’t do the check. She’s Company. I’m still light.”

“There are a lot of parks to cover, Master Sergeant. I had to put Board and Bone in play elsewhere.”

“Am I getting any more?”

Ruiz shakes his head so slightly it’d be easy to miss, except Bell knew it was coming.

“No change?” Bell asks. “Nothing new?”

“NSTR. Action as before.” Ruiz takes another drink, glances over at him. “Anything you want to share?”

“Vesques.”

“What about him?”

“He was moved before he was murdered.”

“That was our conclusion as well.”

“Moved out of the park.”

“What I’d do.”

“What I’d do, too, if it came to that. But if you had to move him out of the park, that means you initially neutralized him
in
the park. Which means you had a reason to do it. Which means it’s an internal threat, not an external one.”

“Find the reason he was moved.”

Bell uses his chin to indicate where Ruiz has set the comic. “Chain’s been looking, been looking six weeks now, almost. Negative result so far. If there’s something hidden inside the park, neither of us can find it.”

“Find the reason.”

“I’m light.”

“Yes, you are.”

“But you’re moving people elsewhere. This is the lead. Vesques is the lead. But you’re moving people elsewhere. Unless you’re telling me there’s something hard that’s come up elsewhere.”

“There is not. What there is, Jad, is over five hundred theme parks in this country. Did you know that? Over five hundred theme parks in the United States alone. Add the politics and the interservice bullshit and you’re lucky you’re not working this alone with your dick in your hands.”

“This is the lead. If this goes down, it’ll be on a big park, not on fucking Happy Oaks in Peoria or wherever. Everyone thinks you hit these places from outside, it makes sense, I know that. Wear a vest, take a walk, ruin everybody’s day who’s buying a ticket. I know that. But Vesques was killed
inside
. This is something else, this is not looking like the playbook scenario. This is the lead.”

Ruiz empties his glass, sets it on the table, rocks it back and forth between his palms. He’s stopped watching the game, brown eyes on Bell. His age is starting to show, the hard living beginning to present its bill. Mostly, it shows around his eyes, crow’s-feet that never go away, a slight sagging of flesh at his cheeks.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Soon.”

“Soon.” The glass stops dancing between his hands. “Anything else?”