After Death(48)

SAFE HOUSE




This particular property in the ISA portfolio is a safe mansion rather than a safe house, on an acre of land behind a gated estate wall, in a gated community of multimillion-dollar residences. The architecture is Tuscan, as the community’s design committee imagines that to be, though they seem to have in mind a different Italy from the one in Europe. It has seven bedrooms, ten baths, a home theater, as well as indoor and outdoor swimming pools, among other amenities.

Calaphas puts down the window of his sedan and gets his hand wet as he enters his nine-digit agent-ID number in the keypad. The handsome gate rolls open as he puts up the window. He follows the driveway to the portico at the front entrance.

Several dangerous people of interest to the agency have been interrogated in this residence for days or even weeks at a time, without being charged with crimes and without the interference of attorneys. They generally are brought here in a state of sedation, in the trunk of a car, and are kept in a windowless basement room. Once vital information has been extracted from them and their guilt has been confirmed, they are processed by a PowerPak cremation system that reduces them to ashes and bits of stubborn bone, humble remains that are more easily disposed of than awkward corpses.

The primary purpose of the place, however, is to temporarily house people—often entire families—from other countries, people who serve the New Truth movement and whom the agency wants in the United States without informing immigration officials about the backgrounds of these individuals. Here, they are assigned new names, given life histories to memorize, supplied with documents to support their new identities, and put on the agency payroll. In a few cases, they are provided with the services of a superb plastic surgeon.

Leaving his sedan in the protection of the portico, Calaphas climbs four steps and enters his nine-digit agent ID in a keypad by the front door. The electronic lock disengages a trio of deadbolts, and the door swings open, and he steps inside.

The safe house is overseen by Bob and Joy Klink, who have an apartment here. Having been made aware of his arrival when he passed through the front gate, they are waiting to greet him in the foyer. They know Calaphas, but Bob examines his agency ID anyway, and Joy requires him to submit to a retinal scan with a handheld device.

“Buzz us if you need anything,” says Bob, and they depart.

Calaphas proceeds to an office for visiting agents. He needs a workstation programmed to provide, with minimal keystrokes, access to all computer systems in which the ISA installed undetectable rootkits. That is every system of significance in federal, state, and local government, as well as those in the private sector.

He withdraws Woodbine’s smartphone from a jacket pocket and switches it on and enters the pass code. He activates the link to the transponder that the attorney planted with his run-for-it money, and a map of the current vicinity appears on the screen, but nothing further occurs. Maybe the transponder is dead.

As he puts his iPhone on the desk to prepare it, he realizes that Mace, with his extraordinary abilities, might have learned the name of the agent assigned to find him. If he has Calaphas’s phone number, he’ll be able to track its transponder. Using the intercom, Calaphas buzzes Bob Klink to request a new iPhone from the safe-house supply, specifying that it must not be registered to him.

Bob is remarkably efficient. He produces the phone in five minutes, along with a refreshing bottle of Calaphas’s favorite ale.

“I also must have a car from your motor pool, one with a disabled navigation system, so it can’t be tracked. You’ll need to keep my agency car here until I return for it.”

Using the computer, Calaphas enters a Department of Defense satellite system that can track any registered transponder, and he inputs the number he got from Woodbine. In a minute, the screen fills with a map. A blinking red dot puts the vehicle—and Michael Mace—in south Orange County, speeding toward San Diego County, as if he’s heading for Mexico. The transponder is active, after all; the glitch was with the app linking it to Woodbine’s phone or with the phone itself. Even as Calaphas watches, the Bentley exits the interstate and proceeds inland on a state highway, which isn’t what Mace would do if his destination was the border.

The DOD system can continuously track a few thousand vehicles simultaneously. Calaphas instructs it to stay on the Bentley and to link with his new agency iPhone until further notice. The map on the computer now appears on the smaller screen of that phone, the red signifier blinking. He backs out of the Department of Defense system and shuts off the computer. He pockets both his new phone and Carter Woodbine’s, which he’ll plant on Mace’s corpse.

In the basement, the safe-house armory lies behind a steel door. Access is granted when he enters his agency ID number in the keypad. The forty-foot-square room is a wonderland of weaponry. He selects a prepacked carrying case that contains an AR-15 and four loaded magazines with twenty rounds each, all snugged in a formed-foam lining for rattle-free transport. A pair of state-of-the-art night-vision glasses might prove useful, as might a police lock-release device. Although he avoids negative thinking, he takes a lunchbox-size medical kit that contains prescription painkillers, antibiotics, antinausea medicine, wound-site coagulants to slow bleeding, and other items that might be useful in a time of stress.

His replacement car is waiting in the portico. It’s dark gray rather than black, but otherwise identical to his previous vehicle. He puts his requisitions on the floor in back. Behind the wheel, he starts the engine. He props his phone in a cup holder, so that he can see the screen with the map and the blinking signifier. The game is on, the end game in sight.