Orphan X Read online

  “You handled the esteemed assemblyman?” he asked.

  “Excessively,” Candy said.

  Ten blocks later, when Slatcher parked at one of the seedy tourist motels off the 101 near Universal Studios, she emerged from the car a new woman. She wore clunky espadrilles, a shapeless skirt pulled too high at the waist, and a loose blouse with fussy ruffles to hide her va-va-voom figure.

  Slatcher unfolded himself from the car. He was quite tall at six-three, but that didn’t account for his size—it was more his breadth. He wasn’t athlete-stacked but rather pear-shaped, bulky like the outermost Russian nesting doll. His capacious midsection always surprised Candy, and yet there was no flab, just firm mass and muscle, a rock-hard gut billowing beneath a checkered taupe golf shirt. His true-blue jeans, pleated, served as another nod to out-of-towner aesthetics, as did the Oakley wraparounds worn backward on his head to rest at the bulge in his neck.

  He hoisted three ballistic nylon Victorinox suitcases from the auto-opening trunk and set them down. Brusquely, he handed her a floppy sunhat, which she set gently atop her Farrah Fawcett wig. The brim wobbled expansively around her head, every tourist’s bad beach-fashion statement.

  Telescoping one Victorinox handle up, she tilted the case onto its embedded wheels, feeling the weight of the contents as they clanked. Side by side, like mismatched flight attendants, she and Slatcher headed for the tiny reception office.

  Their entrance was heralded when the opening door knocked a bell—actually cheery jingle bells—affixed above the frame. A wattle-necked woman looked up from a paperback. “Welcome to Starry Dreams Motel,” she said.

  “Heavens to Betsy,” Candy said, arming sweat off the band of brow exposed somewhere between her big shades, the feathery Farrah hair, and the straw brim that shielded much of her face. “Such a dry heat.”

  “Where you folks in from?”

  “Charleston,” she said. “Checking in under Miller.”

  “Ah, yes,” the woman said. “I have you in Room Eight.”

  “Will you please put hypoallergenic pillows in our room?” Slatcher asked.

  “I’m afraid we don’t have hypoallergenic pillows here.”

  Candy rested an elbow on the counter. “You know what they say. They just don’t make men like they used to.”

  Slatcher gave an annoyed marital grunt.

  The woman processed two key cards and handed them across.

  “What time does breakfast open?” Slatcher asked. “We’re heading early to Universal Studios.”

  “There’ll be coffee and Danish out from six A.M.”

  “Bless my stars,” Candy said. “We’d better not be waking up that early.”

  “It’s three hours later for us,” Slatcher said. “That’s nine.”

  “Look at that,” Candy said, grabbing her suitcase and heading for the door. “He can add, too.”

  The minute they entered their room, Candy yanked the sunhat off, Frisbeed it onto one of the queen beds, and tugged her head free of the wig. She scratched at her hair. “Fuck me,” she said. “That shit is hot.”

  They unzipped the suitcases, laying out pistols, magazines, and boxes of ammo on the floral bedspread. Candy inspected the barrel chamber and bore of a Walther P22. “So this broad. Katrin White. What’s our leverage?”

  They’d spoken briefly on the phone on her way down the mountain.

  “Our leverage is Sam.”

  “Who we have a bead on.”

  “Sam,” Slatcher said, “is under control.”

  “Then why’d Ms. White drop off the radar?”

  “Because he took control of the situation.”

  “The Man with No Name?”

  “That is correct. He killed one of my freelancers.”

  “Kane?”

  “Ostrowski.”

  “Huh,” she said. She’d never liked Ostrowski.

  “I’ve brought in a field team for us,” Slatcher said. “Former Blackwater.”

  “Hoo-rah.”

  “This guy’s very dangerous.”

  “I assumed as much.”

  “He does not want to be found.”

  Candy unzipped her duffel bag. “Well,” she said, hoisting out a jug of hydrofluoric acid, “then let’s make his dream come true.”

  15

  Tick, Tick, Tick

  It all checked out.

  Katrin White, the divorce from Adam Hamuel, the dead mom, the father in Vegas, even the byzantine contortion of family trusts into which her ex-husband’s money had vanished.

  What didn’t check out was the direct-dial number Katrin had for the kidnappers. Camped out in the Vault, chewing a tart Granny Smith apple, Evan traced the eleven digits through various electronic switchboards as they ping-ponged around the globe and then vanished into the Internet ether in a manner he found frustratingly familiar.

  They wouldn’t be backtraced any more than he would.

  Time was key. There was no point in chasing his tail around Las Vegas searching for an itinerant backroom poker game. Evan had to be in touch with the sniper and his people soon. He didn’t want their vexation to simmer, turn to rage, then desperation.

  He ran his hands over his face, gave Vera a look. She looked back from her nest of cobalt blue pebbles, offering nothing. At the base of his brain, he felt the tick, tick, tick of paranoia. His gaze moved from the little plant to the RoamZone phone beside it. He removed the SIM card, crushed it under his heel, and replaced it with a new one. Then he jumped online and moved the phone service from the outfit in Jiangsu to one in Bangalore.

  Earlier he’d lifted Katrin’s fingerprints from the passenger-side door handle of the Chrysler sedan, which he’d wiped clean before approaching her in Chinatown. From the databases he knew that she was who she said she was, her story literally battle-tested. Nonetheless, in honor of the First Commandment he went back through everything again, plumbing her Social Security records and bank accounts, looking for the slightest hiccup or red flag.

  Nothing.

  Though she’d been stoic when he’d left her in the hotel room, he could read the fear in her eyes. He’d returned to bring her food, some toiletries, and new clothes of various sizes, which she seemed to find vaguely amusing. Then he’d driven back to Chinatown.

  At least ten police units had been on-site, lights flashing, as well as multiple unmarked sedans. The shattered windows of Lotus Dim Sum gaped, a row of jagged mouths, and shards still littered the sidewalk. Across the street from Central Plaza, cops swarmed the apartment building. Slowing as he drove along Broadway, Evan picked out a solemn congregation of detectives on the balcony of the third-floor apartment, centered almost precisely on the spot he’d picked up the glint of the scope. Getting a look at the crime scene would have to wait. Evan had coasted by, then switched out cars at the safe house and driven home.

  In the Vault now, he took one more bite of apple and tossed the core toward the trash bin in the corner. He bricked the shot, the remains bouncing wetly onto the concrete. He stared at the disobedient apple core, his jaw tense. Then he rose, picked it up, and wiped the floor clean.

  As he dropped back into his chair, his eye caught on a rugged gray-haired man peeking out from the clutter of open windows on his computer desktop. With a click of the mouse, he brought the DMV photo to the forefront.

  Sam White. Katrin’s father.

  Held hostage this very minute by men unafraid to fire into a crowded restaurant in broad daylight.

  Sam wore a half smile that crinkled his eyes, his skin toughened from sun exposure. He’d worked as a construction manager and looked the part. A guy you’d want to share a beer with, watch a game. Someone to teach you to play poker.

  Evan had put Katrin through the paces—changing the location, a bus ride, leaving her car behind, switching her chair at the table. A pattern of movement designed to keep her off balance and himself safe. But one that clearly had aroused the interest of the sniper or the men behind him.

  Any meeting
that carefully orchestrated obviously went against their wishes and directives.

  Katrin’s words returned with a sting: Me calling you? That could’ve killed my father.

  A pulse beat in Evan’s temple. The walls of the Vault retained a bit of dampness, enough that he could feel moisture in his lungs on the inhale. Through the vent he could smell tar from the roof. For a time he sat there, that picture of Katrin’s father staring back at him. He thought of the false-bottomed drawer in his bureau and what it contained.

  Never make it personal.

  Just make it right.

  Tomorrow he’d call Sam’s captors. He’d give everyone a night’s sleep to settle down, then engage under the light of a new day. In one fashion or another, he would engage.

  Exiting through the shower and walking back to the big room, he sat to meditate, setting his pistol on the area rug beside him. Crossing his legs, he relaxed into his flesh, felt the tug of his bones, the weight of himself against the floor. His eyelids half closed, and beyond the blinds the city lights streaked into comets of yellow and orange.

  He inventoried the minor aches from the day, starting with his feet and moving up his body. A slice on his calf carved by a shard from the blown-out window. A bruise on his left hip. Some joint tenderness around the shoulder.

  The pain flickered in these spots, warm, pulsing. He focused on the hot points, breathed into them, smoothing them out with each exhalation as if beneath a rolling pin. And then they were gone, everything gone but the rise and fall of his chest, the coolness at his nostrils.

  The breath was his anchor.

  There was nothing else but his body and the chill air moving through it, feeding the blood in his veins, centering him here in this instant, his life measured one breath at a time. For a while he drifted across a blank slate, mindful and aware and yet without thought.

  And then, as if stumbling, he lost the thread of the present, spinning back twenty-five years.

  16

  The Two Wolves

  On the drive home from the dark Virginia barn, Jack lays out some facts, serving them to Evan like a well-earned meal. “You are part of what is called the Orphan Program. You are exceptionally well adjusted and even-tempered in the face of the unknown, selected for the program precisely for these qualities. There are others like you. You will never meet them.” His blocky hands command the steering wheel, the vehicle, the road. “You will be trained impeccably for your profession.”

  “What’s my profession?”

  “Weapon,” Jack says.

  The truck thrums across some railroad tracks. The vinyl seat has grown hot beneath Evan’s legs. His head goes swimmy, like he’s in a dream. But it’s not a bad dream.

  Finally Evan asks, “A weapon for what?”

  “For solo, offline covert operations.”

  Jack seems to forget that Evan is a kid. Or perhaps he speaks to him that way, the vocabulary just out of reach, making Evan stretch, stretch. Evan thinks for a time, piecing together what that might mean.

  “Like a spy?”

  Jack’s chin dips, his version of a nod. “Like a spy. But you’ll be different from other assaulters.”

  Assaulters. Evan likes the word.

  “You’ll be a cutout man,” Jack continues. “Fully expendable. You’ll know only your silo. Nothing damaging. If you’re caught, you’re on your own. They will torture you to pieces, and you can give up all the information you have, because none of it is useful. You will go places you are not allowed to go and do things you are not allowed to do. Everyone at every level will deny any knowledge of you, and this will not be entirely false. Your very existence is illegal.”

  “An Orphan,” Evan says.

  “That’s right. This is your last chance to pull the ripcord, so consider carefully. If you die, you will die alone and no one will know of your sacrifice. No one but me. There will be no greater glory, no parades, no name on a monument wall. That is the choice before you.”

  Evan thinks about where he came from—secondhand shoes, food out of cans, low ceilings and cramped walls. Jack Johns seems like a portal to a vast, wide-open world, a world Evan had always imagined existed somewhere beyond reach. Now maybe there could be a place out there even for someone like him.

  Evan pokes at the cut in his palm bestowed by the hooked blade. “Sounds good,” he says.

  Jack looks over at him. Back at the road. “There is only me. I’m your handler. I am the only person who will ever know who you are. I will protect you. No matter what.” The trees scroll by behind that rough-hewn profile. “You and I are all we have. Do you understand?”

  Evan watches the foliage whip by. “I think so.”

  “Equivocal answers aren’t answers, Evan.”

  “Yes. I understand.” Evan looks down at his arms, dotted with puncture marks. “So I’m gonna do more training? With that guy?”

  “Him and others. Under no circumstance are you to reveal to them your name. They will know you only as ‘Orphan X.’”

  “X as in the letter or the number ten?”

  Jack appears pleased with this question. “Alphabet.”

  “So there were twenty-three Orphans before me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happens when you run out of letters?”

  Jack laughs. It is the first time Evan has heard him do so. It’s a rich laugh, aged in his chest. “Then I suppose they’ll go to numbers.” He veers around a wood-paneled station wagon, a family out for a Sunday drive. “I will only interject one instructor at a time into your life. At the beginning of your training, you will never be alone with an instructor. I will always be there. Like today.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll never be as good at handling pain as that guy.”

  Jack pulls a thoughtful frown. Then he says, “You don’t have to. You just have to do better than you did last time.” Jack looks across at him. “You know the two best words in the English language?” he asks.

  Evan is at a loss.

  “‘Next time,’” Jack says.

  Evan feels unconvinced.

  Jack says, “You’ve read the Odyssey, right?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll change that soon enough.” Jack takes a moment to look displeased. Then: “Odysseus is not as skilled a fighter as Achilles. Not as great an archer as Apollo. Not as fast as Hermes. In fact, he’s not the best at anything. And yet overall? He is unrivaled. ‘Man of many wiles.’” Jack’s eyes move from the rearview to one side mirror, then the other. “Your job is to learn a little bit about everything from people who know everything about something.”

  Evan’s next years are spent doing precisely that.

  He is taught hand-to-hand from a Japanese master who is maddeningly calm, even as he delivers devastating attacks. There are no belts, no dojos, no special white pajamas; it is junk martial arts, the most effective destructions, a little of the best from each form. In Jack’s sweaty garage, Evan spans the globe in a single fight, finding himself on the receiving end of an around-the-world offensive. A muay thai teep-kick interception of his right cross leads to a wing chun bil jee finger jab to the eye that sends him reeling. Before he can restore his equilibrium, an Indonesian pencak silat open-hand slap to the ear leaves his nervous system ringing. Half blinded by static, he swings, but the master delivers an upward elbow Filipino kali gunting combined with a hand trap, smashing Evan’s fist against the tip of the ulna. Evan sits on the floor, hard, the collective wisdom of four cultures distilled into a single ass-kicking.

  He doesn’t know which part of himself to check first.

  The master bows to him respectfully.

  Evan swipes blood from his lips. “This guy ever lose his temper?”

  In a beach chair to the side, from behind a tattered copy of Vidal’s Lincoln, Jack says, “He doesn’t have to.”

  Evan dips his head, drools blood into the cup of his palm.

  “Next time,” Jack says, and gets up to go into the house.

  Evenings
they spend in the study with its towering bookshelves and mallard green walls, where Jack conducts what he calls “Area and Cultural Studies.” Evan learns rules, etiquette, history, sensitivities. How to respond if he accidentally steps on someone’s foot in the Moscow subway. What Armenians think of Turks. The proper way to proffer your business card in China. How to sink the French r in his throat. There are elocution lessons as well, eradicating every last trace of East Baltimore until Evan’s accent is as nonspecific as that of a midwestern newscaster. Soon enough when he speaks, he offers no information beyond what he chooses to divulge with his words.

  As the seasons pass, he grows accustomed to the forty-five-minute drive to Fort Meade. Jack always enters through a back gate, the guard station left conspicuously empty for their approach. Most of the activities take place in and around a clandestine set of hangars at the foresty rear of the base. A half-crazy battalion captain with an angry snarl of scar tissue for a chin runs Evan ragged, teaching him how to move under live fire. He uses concealment to head toward cover, zigzagging through tree trunks as rounds bite chunks of bark overhead. The captain’s gleeful bellowing stalks him ghostlike through the boughs: “School’s in session, X! Lock in that muscle memory. How you train is how you play!”

  One day, frustrated with Evan’s evasive movements, the battalion captain smacks him across the back of the head. Jack morphs out of thin air, standing nose to nose with the man. “Hurt him all you want if you’re training him. But if you lay a hand on him again in anger, I will make the rest of your face match your chin. Do you understand me?”

  The battalion captain’s eyes achieve a sudden clarity. “Yes, sir,” he says.

  Driving home, Evan says, “Thanks.”

  Jack nods. The truck rattles across potholes. The dashboard vent blows hot and steady. Jack seems to be working up to something. Finally he says, “I know that details of your background are … hazy. If it’s important to you, we can run a genetic test, find out your ancestry, who you are.”