The Unification Chronicles

10: Friends and Enemies

“Why was it good that I left my phone behind?” Susan said as they watched the fea­ture­less con­crete speed past the train windows.

“How do you think they found us?” Daniel said. “Even cheap dis­pos­able phones can be tri­an­gu­lated by law enforce­ment, and fancy smart­phones like yours can do even bet­ter with built in GPS. Once they fig­ured out you were meet­ing me, it was triv­ial for them to find out exactly where you were.”

Susan felt like a grade A stooge, but she reminded her­self that she wasn’t used to this cloak and dag­ger stuff. She was a blog­ger, not an inves­tiga­tive reporter for the Post. “So now what?” she asked.

“Now I guess we find some­where to lie low and plan our next move. Assum­ing you’re still with me.”

“I pretty much have to be at this point, don’t I? I’m your accomplice.”

“Not nec­es­sar­ily,” Daniel said. They were com­ing up on Van Ness-​​UDC, the third sta­tion past Dupont Cir­cle. Seemed like a good place to turn around. “I’m going to switch trains at the next stop and head back into town. By the time I leave the Metro, I should be well away from any­where they’re likely to be look­ing for me. You and I could part com­pany at a hub, say, Metro Cen­ter, and you can tell the cops I coerced you. I kind of did.”

“You dragged me out of the restau­rant, across the street, where men shot a large gun at us,” Susan said as they got off the train and made their way around to the other side. “I have a bet­ter idea,” she said.

She walked over to the banks of fare card machines and paid cash to two cards. Then she handed one to Daniel and they used them to exit the sta­tion. As they rode the esca­la­tor up, Daniel said, “What was that?”

“They’re prob­a­bly look­ing for peo­ple jump­ing the turn­stiles to get out, and they prob­a­bly have mar­shals flood­ing the Metro sys­tem look­ing for you rid­ing around. They don’t know where you’ll exit, but they know where you’ll be com­ing from. So let’s not be there.” Maybe I can do this cloak and dag­ger stuff, Susan thought.

They sur­faced and Susan hailed a cab. “Do you know Bob & Edith’s on Colum­bia Pike?” she asked. The dri­ver nod­ded. “Take us there, then.”

Daniel got into the cab next to her. “Where are we going?”

“You’re still new in town, right?”

“I, uh…”

“Well, we need to find a place far enough from where either of us live to regroup and fig­ure out what to do next, and I know a place that has amaz­ing waf­fles. You owe me. I didn’t get to fin­ish my corned beef.”

The taxi sped away.

#

After their waf­fles, Daniel and Susan got a room at the Days Inn up the street. It was cheap and it was across the street from a McDonald’s, so it seemed like a good place to hole up for a while. Susan was tak­ing a shower after all the run­ning they’d done, and Daniel was sit­ting in on the bed flip­ping through TV news, try­ing to see if there was any­thing about him when he heard a knock at the door. It was a gen­tle knock, not the pound­ing he expected if it were the cops. He’d paid cash for the waf­fles and for the room, so there shouldn’t have been any way to trace them.

He peered through the peep­hole to see a fish­eye view of an elderly man peer­ing back at him, or at least peer­ing at the peep­hole. The man had a scruffy day’s growth of white beard. Seemed harm­less enough. He opened the door.

“Can I help you?” Daniel asked.

“Hey, how ya doin?” the man asked. “I’m Jeff Frankel, got the room next door. You wouldn’t hap­pen to have any soap, would ya? Man­age­ment neglected to give me any, and I think the bas­tards are hid­ing from me now. If they’d answer the damn room phone I wouldn’t have go over there, but what’re ya gonna do, you know?”

Daniel sup­pressed a grin. “My friend’s tak­ing a shower, so I’ll have to wait until she gets out. Come on in.” He watched as the old guy limped in, and Daniel noticed he had a steel left leg from the knee down.

“Friend, huh?” Frankel asked. “Well, don’t let me interrupt — ”

Daniel heard the water turn off in the bath­room. “No, really, it’s not like that. We — ”

“You don’t have to explain to me, son. I’ve had friends before. Not so much now, you under­stand, but I still get friendly every once in a — ”

“Daniel?” Susan said from the bath­room. “Who are you talk­ing to?”

“Just our next door neigh­bor. Do we have an extra bar of soap?”

“Hang on,” she said. She reached a hand out the door and handed Daniel a lit­tle card­board box con­tain­ing a tiny bar of soap.

“Thanks,” Daniel said, and handed the soap to Frankel. “There you go, sir,” Daniel said. “Enjoy the soap.”

“You have no idea.” They both paused. “Well, any­way,” Frankel con­tin­ued, “I’ll be on my way. By the way, didn’t catch your name, friend.”

“I’m Dan. That’s Sue in the bathroom.”

“You Viet Namese?”

“No,” Daniel said. “Korean, actually.”

“Hmm,” Frankel said. “That was before my time. I only ask because like thank­ing Viet Namese folks for my gov­ern­ment pen­sion. Best thing that ever hap­pened to me.”

“Well,” Daniel said, “if I see any, I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

“Heh! I bet you will. Okay, tell your friend I said hi.” He shuf­fled out the door and out into the park­ing lot.

“Who was that?” Susan said. She was wear­ing a bathrobe and tow­el­ing off her hair.

“Said his name was Jeff Frankel. Weird old guy.”

“So,” she said, sit­ting down on the bed. “We’re kind of hosed.”

“What do you mean?” They hadn’t been able to do much plan­ning at the diner, because the place was packed and they didn’t want to be over­heard. Susan had jumped in the shower as soon as they checked in, so this was really the first chance they had to dis­cuss their situation.

“Think about it. We’re cut off. We can’t get online to look for any­thing. We can’t use any­thing but cash, and we can’t hit an ATM to get more cash. I’m down to around forty bucks. You?”

Daniel had been think­ing about this him­self. “Eighty seven fifty.”

“How far are we going to get on a hun­dred and twenty bucks? Damn those waffles!”

“It’s obvi­ous we’re not going to leave the city. At this point, nei­ther of us can even get a car.”

“The key to clear­ing your name is prov­ing that Hen­driks isn’t dead. Whether he was dead or not is inde­ter­mi­nate at this time. But he got out of that car, you saw him walk­ing in that alley. He’s out there some­where, and if we can find him, the FBI won’t be wor­ried about you.”

Daniel thought about this. “I say we head back to Hendriks’s house and try to find some­thing I missed the first time. Evi­dence that he’s not really dead. Any­more. Shit.”

“I know, Daniel. But we’ll find out the truth.”

#

Daniel woke up in a sweat. He’d been dream­ing again, but thank­fully he didn’t remem­ber the dream. He’d dozed off in the chair by the win­dow while Susan snored qui­etly on the bed.

He’d been amaz­ingly lucky to find her, some­one will­ing to go to such lengths to help him find the truth. She had her own rea­sons for doing it, of course, but he didn’t begrudge her a way to advance her career if she did it while help­ing him. He got up and stretched. No more sleep for me, he thought. He thought about going for a run, but the last thing he needed was a beat cop to rec­og­nize him. Plus, he wasn’t famil­iar with Arling­ton and didn’t want to get los—

The hotel room door exploded into the room, clip­ping Daniel on the shoul­der and knock­ing him to the floor. He pushed it off and looked up into the door­way. Even though the man was in sil­hou­ette, Daniel rec­og­nized him instantly. “Hendriks.”

Hen­driks strode into the room as Susan scram­bled off the bed and looked for some­thing to use as a weapon. “You should have left well enough alone, Cho,” Hen­driks said. “All you had to do was for­get you saw me. It’s hap­pened hun­dreds of times. But you didn’t. You went pok­ing around. And I can’t allow that.”

“Peo­ple know we’re here. They’ll come look­ing for us.” Daniel said.

Hen­driks almost, but not quite, smiled. “No, they won’t. No one knows you’re here. If any­one did, you’d be arrested, or worse. By morn­ing, the FBI will think a group of patri­otic hicks found you and ran you out of town. But it won’t mat­ter much to you by then.”

Daniel stood, and posi­tioned him­self between Hen­driks and Susan. “Any why won’t it mat­ter to me?”

“Because you’ll be dead.” Hen­driks struck, blind­ingly fast, and despite Daniel’s best attempt to dodge, con­nected solidly with the same shoul­der that got hit by the door. Daniel felt tin­gling in his left arm, then it went numb.

Not a good way to start a fight, he thought. “Susan, get ready to run!”

Susan held a lamp out in front of her like it was going to bite her. She didn’t seem to know what to do in a fight.

“Miss Richard­son isn’t going any­where,” Hen­driks said. “You’re both going to dis­ap­pear, and the FBI will waste months look­ing for you.”

“I really wish you’d just shut the fuck up,” Daniel said as he lashed out with a snap kick to Hendriks’s head. The kick con­nected, but didn’t seem to phase the man. That should have knocked him out, Daniel thought.

“Good, you have some fight in you. I was wor­ried this wouldn’t be any fun.” Hen­driks spun around and nailed Daniel in the stom­ach with a round­house kick he barely saw com­ing. Daniel crashed through the front win­dow of the hotel room and into the street.

As Daniel was pick­ing him­self up, he noticed the lamp Susan had been hold­ing come sail­ing out the win­dow after him. Shit, no, he thought and vaulted back into the room.

#

Damn those kids! Jeff Frankel thought as he sat up in bed. He’d half expected, this, and damn it, he couldn’t even go over there and tell them to get a room, because, hello, that’s exactly what they did. But still, did every­one in their twen­ties have to have sex like they were try­ing to break the damn fur­ni­ture? He’d been try­ing to avoid the pound­ing and slam­ming sounds, but there was just no get­ting back to sleep—

Crash!

Wait a minute, Jeff thought. That was glass. Big glass, like a win­dow. He was no longer sure what was going on over there, but damn it…

He strapped on his steel leg and threw on his clothes. He didn’t know what was going on over there, but he was going to put a stop it one way or another.

#

Hen­driks grabbed Susan by the arm and flung her at Daniel, with seem­ingly no more effort than toss­ing a pil­low across the room. She smacked into Daniel before she could even shout “look out!” or some­thing sim­i­larly obvi­ous, and it occurred to her than their sit­u­a­tion had def­i­nitely not improved by find­ing the sub­ject of their search.

“Are you okay?” Daniel asked. It struck Susan as funny.

“I — “

“I don’t know about you kids, but I’m hav­ing a blast,” Hen­driks said. “I needed to blow off some steam, and I just can’t think of a bet­ter way to top off the week I’ve had than to make you both dis­ap­pear.” He shook his head back and forth, as if crack­ing it, loos­en­ing up his shoul­ders. Christ, that was before he warmed up?

Susan started edg­ing towards the door, with­out actu­ally get­ting up. Daniel stood and vaulted him­self at Hen­driks in some kind of mar­tial arts move. He looked good, but Hen­driks met him with a per­fectly timed back­hand that redi­rected Daniel in mid-​​air and sent him smash­ing into the wall.

“Susan!” Daniel said, blood gush­ing from his mouth. “Get help!”

Susan felt like an elec­tric shock went through her, and she bolted upright and ran out the door. As she crossed the thresh­old, she heard Hen­driks laugh.

#

Jeff had just walked out his door when the girl from next door plowed into him. Poor thing looked ter­ri­fied. And that Korean kid had seemed so nice, too—

“Please, help us!” the girl said.

Us?

“What in the Sam Hill?” Jeff said.

He heard the sound of a strug­gle com­ing from the open door and shat­tered win­dow of the motel room. “Who the heck is in there?”

“Please, he’s try­ing to kill us!”

Jeff peered in the win­dow. He saw Dan, the Korean kid, fight­ing an older man with sandy hair and a suit. For a guy wear­ing a suit, he was wip­ing the floor with the kid.

Dan got slammed into the wall, then bounced back on the attack. He ducked under a punch from the guy in the suit, then grabbed the man’s wrist and brought the flat of his palm up to snap both bones of the fore­arm. Well, that oughtta do it, Jeff thought.

And then the guy in the suit smiled.

The guy whipped his bro­ken arm out to his side, and Jeff heard a dis­tinct dou­ble pop as the bones snapped back into place. Then the guy ham­mered Dan with wicked hook from an arm that was sup­posed to be broken.

Holy shit, Jeff thought. I know what that—

“Please!” Sue said, tug­ging on his arm.

“Come on,” Jeff said. “I’ll help you.”

#

Well, that explains a lot, Daniel thought. But he’s so fast! He dropped with the punch, try­ing to roll with the impact to rob it of some of its power, and the roll took him down to the floor and across the room. If he’d stood there and tried to just absorb it, it likely would have taken his head off. A punch from a bro­ken arm.

Daniel rolled back to his feet, only to have Hen­driks lay him out again with a round­house kick. “You don’t get it, do you, kid?” Hen­driks said.

“Depends on what you mean,” Daniel said, more blood spilling out of his mouth when he talked than he expected. “I get plenty of vit­a­mins and minerals.”

“It never ceases to amaze me, you know,” Hen­driks went on, throw­ing another punch that Daniel had to leap for the bed to dodge. The guy was just toy­ing with him now, and Daniel knew it, but he wanted to buy as much time for Susan as he could, and that meant keep­ing the guy talk­ing. If he was lucky, he might even learn the man’s secret before he died.

“Com­pound inter­est?” Daniel said. “Yeah, that’s a bitch.”

“The tenac­ity of your race,” Hen­driks said. “Your abil­ity to joke while star­ing at the end of your brief lives. It’s some­thing my peo­ple have never fully understood.”

“And which peo­ple would those be,” Daniel said, shov­ing the dresser out in front of him. “The Vil­lage People?”

Hen­driks lifted the heavy wooden dresser and flung it aside with one hand. Daniel took the oppor­tu­nity to nail him in the side of the head with a spin kick, then jumped away again before he could retaliate.

“This is what I mean. We’ve lost our sense of humor over the mil­len­nia, and I think we’re poorer for it.”

“I think you’re under­selling your­self,” Daniel said, edg­ing around the room. He almost had Hen­driks where he wanted him. “Maybe all you need is a lit­tle prac­tice. I know a com­edy club that has an open mic night.”

“Do you even under­stand, human, what is going on here? The mor­tal peril in which you find your­self?” Hen­driks, cir­cling to keep Daniel in front of him, had just stepped foot in front of the shat­tered window.

“Really,” Daniel said, “I’d just be happy if you’d shut the fuck up.” He launched him­self at Hen­driks in his best foot­ball tackle and the two of them tum­bled out into the park­ing lot. Colum­bia Pike was quiet this early in the morn­ing, but he heard a dis­tant mechan­i­cal rumbling.

Hen­driks brought up one knee into Daniel’s mid­sec­tion, then extended the leg to kick him back­wards. “I sup­pose you’re right,” Hen­driks said as he got up. “It’s time to end this and go find Miss Richardson.”

“Leave her alone!” Daniel launched him­self in a fly­ing kick, but Hen­driks, now appear­ing more bored than ready to fight, reached out, grabbed Daniel’s leg in mid-​​air and slammed him into the wall of the motel. Daniel slumped to the con­crete, then pushed him­self back to his feet, lean­ing against the wall for support.

“It’s over, Cho. All the bravado in the world won’t save you now. You med­dled in the affairs of the gods, and you must pay the price.”

Daniel threw a punch, which Hen­driks again caught.

“One good turn,” Hen­driks said. He brought the flat of his palm across, snap­ping both bones in Daniel’s fore­arm. “Deserves another.”

Daniel started to slide down the wall, but Hen­driks caught him with one hand around Daniel’s neck. He lifted him back up, and Daniel’s bro­ken arm flopped against the wall. The pain was blind­ing, and Daniel saw every­thing going white. “What… what are you?”

“I would have thought it obvi­ous, Cho. I’m a demon. My name is Batarel. And now, you, Cho, are dea — “

The noise and white light drowned out every­thing as Hen­driks — Batarel — dis­ap­peared from Daniel’s vision with a clang­ing thump. He heard Susan’s voice. “Daniel! Get in!”

Soft but strong hands grabbed him by the shoul­ders and he half stepped, half fell through the alu­minum door­way that had sud­denly appeared where Hen­driks used to be. “I’ve got him!” he heard Susan shout. “Hit it!”

Daniel lurched to the side, heard and another loud thump, fol­lowed by a crunch­ing noise and jar­ring bumps that set off new fire­works of pain from his arm. They were mov­ing, he thought. How were they—

And then, mer­ci­fully, Daniel passed out.