Within: Chapter 6

       There was a metallic briefcase laying on its side on the dining room table when I went into Kyrie's room.  The case was a size bigger than the usual case and weighed three times more.  I tapped at the casing.  It was solid.  I studied the locking mechanism - a standard four-number combination lock.  

    This can't be this easy....

    But it was.  It took me three minutes to click through the four-number sequence after listening to the lock tumbler.  The inside of the case was leather lined.  Four thick stacks of papers were clipped into four different piles.  I sorted through them.  Two stacks were estate papers on the clubs and businesses in Japan.  The other two were the paperwork for the businesses Kanryu had owned in Europe and North America.  Asides from a leather pouch that held four silver pens, there were nothing else in the case.  I tapped at the bottom of the briefcase.  There was not even a false bottom where a small weapon could be found.  

    I sighed and closed the case back up.  I left the room baffled and without much information I could work with.  I could only hope that Hauser's plan would work.  I've exhausted my guesses on what Aoshi had planned.  Perhaps everything was as it was meant to be and there were no plan.  The papers were placed with the hotel safe and the key mailed to Kyrie as an insurance and bargaining chip for him to get out in case he had failed his aim.  Perhaps.

    I returned to my room annoyed.  It would take half a bottle of Jack Daniels to put me back in an amiable mood.  It took another half of bottle for me to fall into the first blissful sleep I've had in nearly a month.

    Kyrie and muscle boy, or Andrei Sviatoslav, spent half of the next day in their room.  Sviatoslav, from what Hauser told me, was one of Ushakov's nephews.  We sat in my room and drank coffee as we waited for the word from the agent who was assigned to intercept calls coming to and from Kyrie's room.  Ava sat next to him, one hand doodling clouds in the margins of the notebook splayed open in front of her, as she translated.  She sounded bored.

    "He's an idiot," Hauser said.  He kept on pouring the cream into his coffee until it was nearly white.  "Ushakov knew that but probably kept him on the payroll because his mother's Ushakov's sister.  He usually took care of details that Ushakov himself can't be bothered with, but somehow was important enough to trust a family to see to it."

    "It's always good to keep the business in the family."

    "Wish we had more time," Hauser said.  He took a careful sip of his coffee and he nodded himself approvingly before he took another drink from it.  "He'd be a perfect stooge for us to work through and nail the Satan himself."

    I shrugged.

    "Kyrie picked up the outfit," Ava suddenly said and looked up from her drawing, then back down at it.  "I told him to wear it when he was given the cue to leave the hotel."

    "And we follow the signal...and?"

    "We just follow," Hauser said.  "There's a duress button built into the cufflink of the jacket he will be wearing.  He was instructed to break the seal on it and press it, when we are needed storm the site."

    "What if he does not have that opportunity?"

    "I guess he's fucked then," Hauser said as matter-of-factly.  

    "Nicely put."

    He smiled and got up, taking his coffee cup to the living room where he sat and watched television.  I read the ordered Japanese newspaper that was delivered with the coffee.  Ava filled more pages with fluffy clouds.  The room would have been awkward if it weren't for the television's insanely loud sports broadcast.  He was watching something that resembled soccer but it wasn't.

    I read through half of the paper when Hauser's cell phone rang.  He turned down the volume and answered it.  Ava leaned over and said that she thinks Kyrie and Sviatoslav were given the order to move.  After Hauser hung up, he confirmed it.  The call did not come in through the hotel phone, however.  Sviatoslav was seen to have made a call at a public phone booth three miles away from the hotel with Kyrie waiting in a hired car.  Half an hour after they returned, Kyrie had changed into the Prada outfit Ava had sold him and they had checked out.  When the agent at the front desk called Hauser, Kyrie and Sviatoslav had gotten back into the hired car and driven off.  

    "You having them followed?" I said and slipped on my jacket.

    "Cautiously," he said, placing his emptied coffee cup on top of the television.  "We don't want to lose the signal."

    "How long are you going to chase the signal?"

    He put on his jacket and adjusted his shoulder holster beneath it.

    "For as long as we can," he said.  "We are hoping it will get us into the hornet's nest.  Or at least, up until Kyrie gives us the signal."

    We rode in a non-descript white van that was the mobile headquarters built into the main body of the vehicle.  An operator worked the computer that did the tracking.  His partner sat beside him and gave instructions through the head-set to the drivers and unknown number of agents in their own vehicles that was part of the convoy.  Hauser sat behind the computer operator and watched the screen with his arms folded.  For nearly two and half hours, the only person who spoke was the dispatcher.

    Then I felt the van slow down and eventually stopped.  Ava leaned over and explained that the signals had stopped.  All vehicles froze their movements.

    "Just in case they are doing a sweep of tails," Ava said.  "We wait until they start to move again."

    I nodded.

    After ten minutes, Hauser went up to the front of the van and got out from the passenger side.  After he assessed the area, he opened the rear doors of the van and let me and Ava out.  We were at an abandoned rest stop.  We had parked in front of a bare gas station with its windows broken.  There had been other buildings that stood along side the gas station but their identities were long gone - its signs stripped and doors nailed shut.  It was depressing to be there.

    "Economy had been bad for the last few years," Hauser said and offered me a cigarette.  I took one and he lit it for me.  He pressed one to the corner of his mouth and put the nearly empty pack into his pocket.  "Kanryu was part of what did this."

    I raised one eye brow at him.  He nodded.

    "His money put many people who have no business in politics, into politics."

    "Didn't these people get voted into their offices by the people?"

    "Who do you vote for? If there's only one candidate?"

    I chewed on the cigarette for a bit and decided that I was too tired to argue politics through an interpreter.  I agreed with him and walked through the emptied buildings with Ava.  She explained the mechanics of German's economics and politics and its rise and fall.  I gave her a practiced attentive look that I had perfected from many meetings.  Politics and economy's the last thing on my mind.

    He kept his eyes on the dull scenery rolling by, ignoring Sviatoslav's hand that was on his knee.  They had switched out their rental car somewhere along the autobahn, after they had entered the former East Germany.  Their rental left at the side of the road while two men met with them with a late model SUV.  He was pressed into the backseat with Sviatoslav.  The two men said nothing and got into the front seats.

    "Does he understand Russian?" The driver said, after they had entered the highway.  

    "Some," Sviatoslav said.  "Nothing to be concerned about."

    A squeeze of the knee.  Kyrie shifted away toward the door, wishing he could make himself even smaller.

    "You checked him?"

    "Very thoroughly."

    The men laughed.  Kyrie grimaced - forcing himself not to speak.  He focused on the horizon that inched by slowly, as they hurried along the lonely autobahn.  His thumb slid over the duress button that was sewn into his right sleeve's cuff.  The only thing that separated himself from the world he knew.  The pad of his finger stroked it - reminding himself to ignore the men's remarks and read the signs, etching the names of the towns  they passed into his mind.

    It was nearly 6 PM when they entered the town of Dresden.  Kyrie became more apprehensive as their SUV left the paved road and rolled through an uneven rocky dirt path.  Even more so when Sviatoslav inquired about their destination.

    "An added pre-caution," the driver said.  "Another check point before we head on home."

    "He still doesn't trust me," Sviatoslav said.  "A waste of my time."

    "We have to be careful," the passenger said.  "We are not dealing with average people."

    "I've been without a proper meal for nearly 12 hours," Sviatoslav said, throwing his hands up.  "If I'd known if we are making another stop --"

    "It's a quick stop, Andrei," the passenger said and glanced over his shoulder to look at them.  He was visibly annoyed.  "Then it's all over and you may return to your routines."

    Sviatoslav cursed and sank back in his seat.

    The SUV rolled to a stop in front of a dilapidated church that had been marked with age and neglect.  It's roof had collapsed and all of its windows broken.  The once-white painted panels had chipped or fallen away.  The front double doors were already torn off its hinges and laying on the dirt beside the broken wooden steps.

    "What are we waiting for?" Sviatoslav said.

    "Inside," the passenger said and got out.  He retrieved the metal briefcase from the trunk and walked ahead into the church.

    The driver let Kyrie out and held to him by his forearm.  Sviatoslav yawned and sulked out, following them into the building.  Before he was shoved up the broken steps and into the church, Kyrie saw a Mercedes parked behind the patch of unkempt shrubbery twenty feet away.  The persons from the Mercedes were already inside the destroyed building - two of them studied the metal briefcase with a scanner.

    "Nice outfit," an aged bald man said.  "It looks expensive."

    "You don't need to make him change out of it, Ivan," Sviatoslav said.  "I was there when he got it."

    Ivan shrugged and nudged at the brown paper bag at his feet and pushed it toward Kyrie.

    "Rules are rules," Ivan said sweetly.  "My apologies if this might be the wrong size."

    Sviatoslav rolled his eyes and walked over the three men working over the locked briefcase.

    "Please do hurry," Ivan said in English. "We are already running a little bit behind."

    "You expect me to change here?"

    "You don't have to be so modest," Ivan said and took a step forward, closing the already close gap between them.  "Unless you would like for me to help -- "

    Kyrie slapped away the hand that reached forward.  Ivan laughed and held his hands up in a mock surrender.  Kyrie picked up the bag and distanced himself before he started to undress in a quick, furious movements.

   It was after four hours of waiting that Hauser instructed all of the agents to close with caution in at the last location where the signal made the stop.  The duress button had not been pressed.  But then, that meant nothing.  Kyrie could have been easily murdered for the contents of the metal briefcase if they did manage to open it and had him sign the papers right there and then.

    We were still en route to the location when a transmission came from the first agent on site.

    "No findings."

    Hauser gnashed his teeth and instructed the other men to fan out in nearby locations to look for anything.  For a long while, there were silence in the van.  Ava checked the magazines in her gun and Hauser leaned in closer to the monitor, staring hard at the blinking blips on the screen.  I made myself as comfortable as I could in the cargo-strap style seat and entertained the question of who will have me murdered first --  the former German cop or an old British politician.  By the time the van had come to a stop, I had concluded that St. James would be the more likely be the one to kill me.  He could probably make my body disappear.

    "I'm sorry," Ava said softly and touched my hand.  The others had already disembarked from the vehicle.

    "No need to apologize," I said.  "Too early to cry over spilt milk."

    And it was.  There were no sign of struggle inside a dilapidated church where the signal had been steadily pulsating.  The only cue anyone would have that someone had been there recently were the new clothes that had been discarded into an unkempt pile at the foot of the altar.  

    "That's -- " Ava said.  She walked forward and leaned down to look at the clothing closer.  When she looked up at Hauser and I, she only nodded sadly.

    "This is bad..." Hauser said.  "This is very bad."

    He appeared to be frazzled and frustrated suddenly.  He ran his hands through his hair and let out a long sigh.  I walked over and examined the clothing myself.

    "The tracer is sewn in where?" I asked Ava.

    "It's threaded through the hem of the left sleeve on the coat," she said.

    "There's no damage on the clothing," I said.

    "So?"

    "It looked like he took them off himself.  Probably something Ushakov set up earlier.  I don't think they know he has a tracer on."

    "But we still don't have him anymore," Hauser said, trying to keep irritation out of his voice and failing.  "We got shit."

    I picked up the coat and dusted if off.

    "Ye o' little faith," I said and tossed the coat at Hauser.  He caught it.  I tapped at my right wrist.  He looked at the coat's right sleeve and broke into a smile, then into a hearty laugh.

    "That little brat's not too dumb after all," he said and held up the sleeve for Ava to see.  It took Ava a few seconds to notice the duress button sewn down there had been ripped out - only a piece of torn thread that had held the cufflink was there.

    "Well, if he's within 50 miles, we can pick it up..." Ava said.

    "It'll be," Hauser said.  "The border ends in about 20 miles.  I am quite sure Ushakov's still in the country."

    "Then there's an issue of whether or not he will have an opportunity to press it..." Ava said.

    Hauser shrugged.

    "I will take slim chances to none," he said and slung the coat over his forearm.  "I hope that will all both of them needs."

    "More than enough," I said.

   ~Narcissus  27072004