A few cars passed and then one slowed as it approached him. It was an ugly American car, a late-model Crown Victoria, black, naturally. His employers, whoever they were, watched too many movies. He loved his New Beetle and it was perfect for his work. No one expected a contract killer to arrive in a Beetle. Or wear a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches from L.L. Bean with chinos and argyle socks.
As he watched the black car ooze up, Burr didn't know and didn't want to know who was hiring him, but he was pretty sure it was quasi-official. He'd had a fair amount of that kind of work lately.
The Crown Vic stopped and the smoked window--smoked window!--rolled down. It was the same Asian man he had dealt with before, in a blue suit and sunglasses. Still, he went through the little password charade. "You leaving this space?" he asked.
"Not for another six minutes."
They loved that kind of stuff. In response, a hand extended with a fat manila envelope. Burr took it, opened it, riffled the brick of money, tossed it onto the passenger seat.
"Above all, we want that hard drive," said the man. "We're raising the bonus to two hundred thousand dollars for the drive, intact. You got that?"
"I got it." Burr smiled blandly and waved the car away. The Crown Vic departed with an ostentatious squeal of rubber. Nice, he thought, draw a little attention to yourself, why dontcha?
He slid back into his car and opened the envelope, pouring out its contents: fact sheet, photographs, and money. A lot of it. With far more to come. This was a good job, even an excellent one.
Shoving the money into the glove compartment, he scanned the photographs and perused the assignment letter. He whistled. This was going to be easy. Get a hard drive and kill a geek. There must be something pretty sweet on that hard drive.
He plucked a glossy product photograph of a hard drive out of the batch and gazed at it, shoved it back, sorted through the others, and then scanned the fact sheet. He'd review it more thoroughly tonight, do the research, make the hit tomorrow. He could hardly imagine now what it was like in the days before Google Earth, MapQuest, Facebook, YouTube, reverse white pages, people search, and all the other privacy-busting tools on the Internet. In half an hour he could do what was once a week's worth of research.
Harry Burr laid the papers aside and indulged in a little self-reflection. He was good, and not just because he was prep-school educated and could recite the Latin first declension. He was good because he didn't like killing. It gave him no pleasure. He didn't need to do it, he didn't have to do it, it wasn't like eating or sex. He was good because he felt for his victims. Knowing they were real people, he could put himself in their shoes, look out at the world through their eyes. That made it so much easier to kill them.
And finally, Harry Burr was efficient. Back when he was another person, a snot-nosed, prepped-out prick in Greenwich named Gordie Hill, his father had taught him all about efficiency. He had a store house of quotations he would roll out: if you're going to do it, do it; if you make a lot of money, no one will care how you did it; if you intend to win, one way is as good as another. "The victor will never be asked if he told the truth," was what the old man said when he walked out of the kitchen after shooting his mother. Never to be seen again. A few years later Harry learned his father had been quoting Hitler. Now that was funny.
Harry Burr smiled. He was "damaged," or so he was led to believe by the parade of school psychologists, social workers, counselors, and all the other professional advice-giving-for-one-hundred-dollars-an-hour folks after his mother's murder. So why not make a career of being damaged? He plucked the crumpled cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket. Fishing the last one out, he lit it and put the empty pack back in his pocket. What was it St. Augustine said? "God give me chastity, but not right now." One of these days he'd quit, but not right now.
48
Abbey waited behind Ford as he knocked on the open door of the office of Dr. Charles Chaudry, director of the Mars mission. She felt itchy and hot in the new suit Ford had made her wear, especially in California in June.
The director rose and came around his desk, hand extended.
"My assistant, Abbey Straw."
Abbey shook the cool hand. Chaudry was a handsome man with a lean, chiseled face, dark brown eyes, springy on his feet, athletic, personable. He sported one of those tight little ponytails that seemed endemic to Californians of a certain age.
"Come in, please," said the man, his tenor voice almost musical.
Ford eased his frame into a chair and Abbey followed suit. She tried to hide her nervousness. Part of her was thrilled at the cloak-and-dagger business, the pretense with which they'd gained access. This Ford fellow, who looked so buttoned down and mainstream, was actually a subversive at heart. She liked that.
The office was pleasantly large and spare, with windows looking out over gray-brown mountains that rose abruptly behind the giant parking lot. Two walls of books added to the comfortable, scholarly atmosphere. Everything was as neat as a pin.
"Well now," said Chaudry, folding his hands. "So you're writing a book on our Mars mission."
"That's right," said Ford. "A big, beautiful photography book. They tell me you're the man in charge of mapping and photographing the surface."
Chaudry nodded.
Ford went on to describe the book in enthusiastic detail, the layout, what it would cover, and of course all the beautiful photographs it would contain. Abbey was amazed at the transformation from his usual dry and cool manner to a bubbling enthusiasm. Chaudry listened politely, hands tented in front.
Ford finished up. "I understand that because this is a NASA project, the photographs are in the public domain. I'd like access to all your images, at the highest resolution."
Chaudry unclasped his hands and leaned forward. "You're right that the images are in the public domain--but not at the highest resolution."
"We're going to be running double trucks and gatefolds and we'll need the best resolution we can get."
The director leaned back. "The high-res images are strictly classified, I'm afraid. Don't be concerned--we can get you all the images you need at a resolution more than adequate for a book."
"Why classified?"
"Standard operating procedure. The imaging technology is highly classified and we don't want our enemies knowing just how good that technology is."
"Just how high is the highest resolution?"
"Again, I can't talk about specifics. Generally, from orbit, we can see something on the ground as small as fifty centimeters. And with our SHARAD radar we can look as much as a hundred meters under the surface, too."
Ford whistled. "Seen anything unusual?"
Chaudry smiled, showing very white teeth. "Just about everything we see is unusual. We're like Columbus setting foot in America."
"Anything . . . not strictly natural?"
The smile faded. "And what do you mean by that?" he asked coolly.
"Let's say you were to see something on the surface that wasn't natural--say, an alien spaceship." Ford chuckled lightly. "What would you do then?"
Now the smile was completely gone. "Mr. Ford, please don't even joke about that. We get a lot--and I mean a lot--of nuts in here pushing crazy theories. We've actually had demonstrations in front of the buildings by groups demanding we release pictures of the alien civilizations we've discovered." He paused, and then added: "You are joking, Mr. Ford? Or do you have some specific reason for asking the question?"