Heaven, INC: Chapter 72: FAISAL

Big big ol' jet airliner
Don't carry me too far away.
Oh, oh, big ol' jet airliner
Cause it's here that I've got to stay.
— Jet Airliner,

STEVE MILLER BAND

CRUISING AT 30,000 FEET,
SOMEWHERE OVER NEW MEXICO
6:15 PM CDT

MICK SIPPED A GIN-AND-TONIC as the guy settled in the seat across from him, guy with an accent Mick placed as educated Middle-Easterner and who carried himself like he was some kind of a big deal. He’d introduced himself as Faisal when Mick got on the private jet, offered a drink and then disappeared into the rear cabin prior to take-off. Only now, an hour deep into the flight, had he reappeared, pouring himself water and getting Mick another drink.

Now, as Faisal sat sipping water from a fancy wine-glass, Mick noticed he wore the same black-stone-set-with-strange-cross deal as Gilchrist. Some kind of fraternity brothers or something, Oxford or Cambridge maybe, kind of place where silver spoon pussies with accents hung out playing lacrosse and crewing. A distinctly un-San Diego State kind of place.

Fuck em.

Faisal studied Mick— Mick would put the guy late-20s, early-30s—with this intense look, for a young guy at least, before asking a lame question.

“Ever been to Dallas?”

“No. Why? Am I missing something?”

“Not really, no. It is an ugly city. The great architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was once approached by an oil company about designing their new corporate headquarters in Dallas. Mr. Wright initially declined by suggesting this would be akin to building the Taj Majal in a cow pasture.”

This Arab douche talking about Dallas that way stirred up something patriotic in Mick’s breast, which was ironic, given the fact he hated the city on account of the Cowboys and Mavericks and, in general, all things Texas, starting with that asshole in the White House, Tom Collins. “Yeah, like the goat-herders in Islamistanibad are so much more sophisticated than our cowboys. Yeah, Big D’s got big ugly buildings, but at least they aren’t living in fucking tents. Plus,” Mick added, “Big D’s got cheerleaders.”

Faisal shrugged, probably annoyed to be making small talk with the ‘little people’ . . .

Hey, pal, you brought it up.

. . . as Mick sipped his gin-and-tonic and said, “Look, this guy I’m hitting, you wanna tell me who he is? His name for starters?”

“As Sir Reginald told you, it is in your own best interests to know as little as possible.”

That caught Mick a little, not the information but the name. “Who?”

“Sir Reginald Gilchrist, the man with whom you met.”

“That douchebag’s a knight? You have got to be kidding me.”

“On the contrary, Sir Reginald is distinguished by a legacy of daring exploits and I can assure, he is not a man with whom you wish to trifle.”

Like Mick was supposed to fear the old fart with the little girl’s gun.

Sir Reggie . . . The big deal . . . Whatever.

Mick skipped it, figuring he’d deal with Reggie if and when it happened and hoping it would. In the meantime, he asked, “So what’s this poor SOB done to earn the hook?”

Faisal tilted his head. “Suffice it to say the occupant’s interests do not coincide with that of the people whom I represent and negotiations have reached an insurmountable impasse.”

Like that clarified it. Mick was sorry he’d asked.

You’re a snotty little fella, aren’tcha? Guess that silver spoon’s a little tight up your ass.

Faisal sipped water and said, “Your target lives alone, so there is no need to worry about complications with other family members.” He handed over a piece of paper with three sequences of numbers, a combination and a phone-number. Upon the paper were taped two keys, one smaller than the other. “The first code will allow you onto the property and the second into the house. But, prior to entering the house, you must call that phone number. When the person answers ‘Red Shield Security’, you respond, ‘Sorry, I was trying to reach Mr. Merriweather, I must have the wrong number,’ and hang up. Wait one minute, until our contact temporarily disarms the security system, before you enter the house by the side-door into the servants’ quarters using the larger key. You will then finish disabling the security system using the second pass-code. When that is done, type that string of numbers into the security unit— this will overwrite the system’s archiving function and make it appear as though the system was never set.”

“What about guards?”

“We have ensured that they will not be at their stations.”

“Unh-hunh. What about dogs?”

“No, the gentleman hates animals. Now this,” Faisal said, handing Mick a folder, “contains a layout of the home. It’s a rather large residence so you’ll want to memorize the lay-out— bumbling around in the dark will only serve to get you into trouble. You’ll also find a map from Love Field to the residence and, upon our arrival, you’ll be given a car. It won’t be much of a car but it will also not be traceable should someone see it.”

Mick studied the map of Dallas. The house was located in an area called Highland Park. “How long from the airport to the house?”

“Less than fifteen minutes. We will be on the ground before eight, putting you on the property just after dark. You will neutralize him using the weapon we provide. I understand Mr. Gilchrist has informed you what he wishes done following neutralization?”

What a word for killing . . . Neutralization . . . Fucking amateurs.

“You want it staged to look like a break-in.”

“Yes. In the trunk of the car you will find two pillowcases, one black, one white, along with the unregistered pistol, a pair of latex gloves and a set of lock-picks.”

“Why do I need picks when I’ve got keys?”

Faisal smiled. “You will use the picks to scratch the side-door lock as well as the lock on the display case from which you will remove the man’s extremely rare collection of handguns— the guns are something that a repairman could notice and report to someone else and provide a plausible reason for the break-in. Put the guns in the black pillow-case. Into the white one, place the contents of the safe lin the back of a Sub-Zero freezer located in the wine-cellar using the combination we’ve provided to gain entry. Return the freezer to the way it was and complete the staged break-in. When you return to the car, put the latex gloves, pistol and lock-picks in the black pillow-case and both pillow-cases in the trunk. You will meet a man driving a black Mercedes in the parking lot of a bar called The Loon, where you will hand over the bags for verification. When that is complete, return to Love Field for your flight home. Any questions?”

“When do I get the tape?”

“When we are in the air on the return home. And the money as well. Good, yes?”

“How about you show me that tape again, make sure you have it.”

“You’re a most cautious man, Mr. Smithidopolous.”

“Whatever, dude. I don’t trust you for shit.”

A smile played across Faisal’s face—

Oh, you’re a sneaky little prick, aren’tcha? Well so am I, bub.

— before he went into the rear-cabin. When he returned, he had a brief-case containing the original Bivo tape, along with Tonya’s boob-job money. “Satisfied now?

Mick shrugged. “Not entirely. I can’t figure out, you guys being so slick and all, why you need me to do your dirty work. I don’t follow Lord Bletchly and Gilchrist doesn’t pull me over, none of this is available to you. It doesn’t make sense. Frankly, neither does however you got hold of Bivo’s tape.”

Faisal smiled. “Mr. Smithidopolous, surely it is because Allah wills it.”

Heaven, INC: Chapter 71: EDUCATING MONA

From infancy, we are all spies. The shame is not this
but that the secrets are so paltry and few.
—JOHN UPDIKE

126 TERRA DEL NOVA,
CLAIREMONT MESA
4:02 PM PDT

MONA HAD ALWAYS TRIED to practice empathy, because the world is a difficult place and the winds of fate bend each of us as it capriciously will . . . but this was plainly ridiculous. With time running short, it was absolutely, unequivocally dangerous. And for what? What?

A woman . . . Another woman. . . . Number . . . Oh, who cares, you over-gelled kulak? You are a gluttonous pig who cannot satisfy one trollop before he is off to the next . . . Perhaps you would not have this problem if you focused on quality over quantity . . . If you stopped consuming women and vodka like a drunken Cossack!

The thing with Mona was, you’d look at her and you’d never even see it. From the outside, Mona kept her emotions in check, the mask of the perfect chess or poker player revealing nothing they wish to hide. Even with that, her annoyance with Sergei grew . . .

Over-indulgant, under-educated, middle-aged Ukranian pig-farmer!

. . . the longer Sergei remained in the house with Mandy or Brandy, frankly, Mona no
longer gave a damn, she just wanted to leave before it was too late, the X-3's vaunted cloaking device or not. In fact, Sergei’s one intelligent move was taking the keys, because if he hadn’t, you can bet Mona woulda been gone. Boom. Straight out the door. And sure, some would say maybe not the best idea, and certainly not when an the entire alphabet soup of intelligence apparatus is hunting you— FBI, CIA, DNS, MI5, KGB, to name a few—but then you weren’t on Girl #4 and forced to listen to Sade croon about a smooth operator. . .

Which you, Sergei Andreivich Zukov, most assuredly are not.

. . . or any of the three-dozen stations broadcasting the weepy, over-analyzed rise and fall of Bobby Falcône, the newly bared a homosexual to the celebrity-obsessed American culture in a great fit of great shock.

Amazing that these people never knew what was so clearly obvious . . . Such a naive and foolish people . . . Sheep.

Essentially, at the moment, sitting in the cloaked X-3— Mona was unsure of Sergei’s latest incantation of the vehicle, though he tended towards brashly disguising it as a red Ferrari, especially since every one Sergei’s prostitutes begged him for rides and on half the occasions, chased him back to the X-3, which put the illusionary powers of the cloak to its ultimate test, human touch— at that moment, Mona was just extraordinarily angry with Russian men and the American people in general; both were disgustingly over-indulgent, something Mona truly despised, and nothing was more indulgent than unplanned and hence wasted time. For low-born lust.

Plus, Mona was mad at herself . . .

How is it possible you have in that bag . . .

The black bag at her foot, Ducroix’s bag.

. . . the most important state secret since the atomic bomb which you smuggle out under the noses of the most elaborate security net since Stalin and yet you forgot even a single tampon? Sometimes, Mona Alexhovna, you are a foolish woman . . . FOOLISH!

Of course, outside the car looking in you wouldn’t see an angry woman cursing herself, her spy partner and the American people in general, you’d see a composed, dark-haired woman with an assertive bearing and clear violet eyes that could look right through you or call you hither, whichever she pleased. Well, that is, if you could see into the car, which you could not, because it was the X-3 and cloaked and very much not a Ferrari.

At least it had solar-powered air-conditioning. And a top-notch stereo system, even if not leather interior, at least Vladivostok Station had got that part right. The rest of it, beginning with the idea of Mona Alexhovna Romanokova dancing at a topless nightclub, which she found particularly repugnant, was well, simply absurd.

Unfortunately, if you knew the modern Vladivostok Station, you’d understand.


IT STARTED A YEAR AGO, when Mona was called into the office of the university commissar, in fact, called directly from a lecture she had found most intriguing, on stem cell engineering. A second man sat in the corner, smoking British cigarettes and looking mysteriously important in half shadow, not speaking.

“When you graduate, Mona Romanokova, what do you wish to do? What is your dream?”

Mona had been hesitant, since she’d never spoken to the commissar in three years of university work, let alone this man smoking the expensive foreign cigarettes. Dreams are not something told to strangers.

“I wish to teach at university.”

“Where?”

“Moscow. Their genetic engineering department is on the cutting edge.”

“Ah yes,” the university commissar said. “And do you know the department chair?”

“Only by name.”

The commissar smiled. “Well I do. And I can guarantee a teaching position there, at the minimum, if you are successful in a task for Mr. Kolov here. Mr. Kolov works for KosmoGen. In Research and Development. You would intern for him.”

In a pinstripe suit and wreathed by smoke, Kolov did not look one bit R&D. Mona thought he might look better with guns and knives, maybe the odd garrotte. He was dapper, dangerous and relaxed. It was Oskar who would lure— sorry, recruit— Mona into the Service. Her training was a group project.


THEY TRAINED IN AN AREA sequestered away from the Lubyanka’s general population— those housed in grim, first-floor cells— and were shuttled from classroom to classroom within the confines of the prison’s baroque exterior. It was a large, squat building, and though only four stories tall, the old joke held that the Lubyanka was the tallest building in the Soviet Union for, from its basement interrogation rooms, one could see Siberia; on more than one occasion, Mona was haunted by the thought that somewhere within the Lubyanka’s walls, the KGB had tortured her father to confess his ‘crimes’, and that she might, at some point, be trained in one of the very basement rooms where her father had died.

Of course, by the time of Mona’s own indoctrination into the world of spies, the KGB and the Soviet Union itself were long gone, but she was certain, based upon their grizzled looks and cold eyes, more than a few were old hands of the KGB. Whether they were present at her father’s interrogation, Mona would never know, but the intensity of their training in the trade-craft of spying was nothing short of arduous. Course in eavesdropping, clandestine messaging, evasion, weapon skills, disguise, hand-to-hand combat and other such disciplines were standard fare, but Mona was also trained in more esoteric skills like extortion and seduction, of which the latter Mona’s instructor proclaimed her a natural.

The nature of the mission centered on that last skill, and Mona’s own background in bio-engineering. Through some manner she was never made privy to, Moscow Centre learned the revolutionary nature of Dominic Ducroix’s research and the implications of America’s ability to dole out its beneficence to compliant entities, in addition to the sheer lucre the discovery would deliver to the organization that brought the product to market.

For a number of reasons, Dominic Ducroix was generally shielded by a light but effective security bubble, one which Mona often wondered was to protect Ducroix or reign him in. Regardless, the man had an insatiably misogynistic attraction to exotic dancers; strippers in the American parlance and, to Mona’s mind, a throughly disgusting avocation centered on mutual exploitation and pathologically infantile indulgence. It was for this world, Moscow Centre trained Mona to attract the attentions of Ducroix, an eager patron of the ‘gentlemen’s club’— for men who were in no way ‘gentlemen’— Kiss-N-Tails; there, Mona was infiltrated into the club for the purpose of getting inside Ducroix’s security bubble for reasons of seduction and possible extortion. Despite Mona’s remarkable distaste for the man, she was required to treat him as the ‘light of her life’, as Oskar stated it, and to charm him with her beauty and bio-engineering knowledge, as she was simultaneously posing as a university biology student dancing to pay the bills. To the positive, the money was quite good from the dancing alone. Add in what Moscow Centre was paying, and Boris and Lydia got a healthy dose of money every month.

In fact, the entire assignment could have been, grudgingly passable, given Mona’s ability to focus on a task at hand, had she not met her target’s son in the most coincidental of circumstances and had she not, against all logic, reason and sensibility, fallen for this young American with the patient grey eyes.

Perhaps, had she been better at her trade craft or Dominic a little less obsessive, the nature of her relationship with Chris would have remained unknown to both men. Alas, fate had chosen for them a different course.

Heaven, INC: Chapter 70: THE COST OF FREEDOM

I might like you better if we slept together,
but there’s something in your eyes that says maybe.
That’s never. Never say never.
—Never Say Never,
ROMEO VOID

COUSIN FRANKIE’S TRAILER,
SLEEPYTIME MANOR PARK ESTATES,
4:01 PM PDT

IT’S A FUNNY THING how time passes when you’re tied to a bed with duct tape across your mouth and awaiting the return of someone who just might kill you if they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Not that Jimmy thought it would necessarily go that way, but it makes a guy think, and tied to the bed by rope that bit into his wrists whenever he tried breaking free, Jimmy’s mind skipped like a needle across a scratched record, digging into the groove containing a ditty about somebody covering up for Ducroix’s killing Evie . . .

Evie.

. . . and now, in and around wrenching at the rope binding his wrists and ankles, thinking if he could draw it close enough, maybe he could gnaw through it like a rat . . . Nope, nothing, not a goddamn thing . . . he was confronted by what to do now as it related to tonight and the chasing of a dream he’d shared with Evie for so many years so many lonely years ago.

The rope was nylon cording that would not give.

Through the trailer’s thin, aluminum skin, Jimmy could hear Doris’ T.V. , tuned to an old re-run of Family Feud and Richard Dawson saying, “And the survey says!” Then the ding and one family clapping. Jimmy knew the Feud wouldn’t last long, Doris being a chronic channel-changer.

Jimmy tried rocking the bed a little bit, see if he could maybe get some slack in the rope, some way to get at the knots, just a little something something . . . and got a big fat nada. The frigging bed was secured to floor somehow, hell, it might be attached to the trailer’s frame for all Jimmy knew, and it wasn’t budging an inch.

His captor, Uncle Martin, while apparently never having sampled Pizza George’s delicious fare, did have access to Pizza George’s level of intel. Notably, that there was a carpet cleaning van floating around Norcestor and Imperial last night at the same time Ducroix vanished.

Uncle Martin had tortured him some more, see if Jimmy would change his story. Best part was when he said, all seriousness, “I want you to know this hurts me more than you. I respect the arts, I really do.”

Priceless stuff.

Then bent Jimmy’s fingers back some more, asking, “Where’s Ducroix?” That and, “What about a bag? Did he have his bag?”

Apparently, at some point, Ducroix had some black bag with something Uncle Martin thought was very important. Where the bag was, Jimmy had no idea. It was only a matter of convincing Uncle Martin in a very boring conversation, if you wanted to know the truth; frankly, torturous questions about douche-bags is both tedious and time-consuming, especially with a show tonight.
Finally, after a while, Uncle Martin had left, saying he was gonna check up at the studio, see if Jimmy was lying.

Such a trusting guy.

Now, Jimmy listened to a car coming up the lane and clinched up a little until he recognized the sound of the Widow Dennison’s ‘74 Skylark.

Laying there, strapped to the bed, he had time to wonder who the guy really was. One thing Jimmy notice, whole time he’s in the trailer, he’s careful about fingerprints, even to the extent of taking the time to wipe down his prints with a paper-towel and taking it with him. Why he hadn’t worn gloves if he was so concerned, Jimmy didn’t know, but Jimmy watched the whole thing from the bed and noticed one thing: the guy hadn’t wiped the duct tape across Jimmy’s mouth.

Jimmy got to thinking again about the little tweaker who kept the van out over night, one Evil Roscoe hired two days ago, his first day on the job and he doesn’t return the van and from the first moment he’d seen him, Jimmy knew he was straight out of prison, that look in his eyes that comes from constantly trying to see out the back of your head.

Maybe he went down Norcestor to buy drugs, maybe he —

Jimmy heard the door-knob turning, thinking maybe Uncle Martin was back to give his fingers another go at the bendable Olympics, thinking this as the trailer shifted with somebody taking a step and then another . . .

It wasn’t Uncle Martin. It was Doris, wearing a silk half-robe and her lips rouged in red.

Doriz gazed fondly at Jimmy tied tightly to the bed — Jimmy tried telling her to untie him before Uncle Martin returned but the duct-tape made communication impossible — before a broad smile spread across her lonesome, craggy face.

The last thing Jimmy allowed himself to remember was Doris opening her robe to those sagging elderly breasts . . .

Behind duct-tape, no one can hear you scream.