“I want to go on the road trip with you and give it some thought. Lately, there’s been too many bodies. It’s not like I thought you were actually James Bond. It’s that you seem to have a lot of Hannibal Lecter in you. Do you know what questions you’re going to ask Fahid?”
“Hannibal, huh?” Nick rubbed his chin. “I don’t eat anyone, so I find your comparison both rude and repulsive. That was very hurtful, Gus. Anyway… I’m going to call Carol, and ask her what she wants to do since we plucked Fahid so neatly. Things may have changed as to her wanting him dead, but not for me. I will allow some questions of her own choosing though if she’s polite.”
“She’ll be happy anyway since you have the ‘Hack Chip’.”
“You don’t know Carol. It will be tricky. Once she knows we have Fahid alive, she won’t care that he had Shane tortured to death. In her mind the ‘Hack Chip’ and Fahid will be like the Holy Grail of possibilities. She won’t know where we are, and I’ll make sure to go through the drop box so she doesn’t find out. Carol can text me the questions she wants answered at my drop.”
Nick paused for a moment to sip his coffee, and gather his thoughts. He knew Gus needed to know this part. “I don’t take any chances with her, and I never did, even though she recruited me. When I went into private contracting with Frank’s group before he lost his mind, and decided I should die because of the Tanus affair, he and I had a good thing going. Carol sent a team after me, because she figured I knew too much. They were friends of mine from time at the Company. I alluded them, and Carol awoke one night with me by her side. I spent three days with her, because I needed someone in her position with the Company. It was a bad three days for Carol. She decided she wanted to live, and that it was extremely stupid thinking to send people to sanction me. When we reached that understanding, I offered to keep her in the loop when Frank’s operation went rogue, which I did. She called off the hunting party.”
Suddenly, a lot of things became clear to Gus. It showed on his face when he turned toward Nick. “You know we’re in a possible shooting gallery at any time. The only thing stopping the people who wouldn’t mind seeing you dead is the fact if they miss, it will be hell on earth for them. That’s why they haven’t tried for Rachel or Jean to use them against you. They know you. Threats won’t work. You would simply kill until no one on earth was alive or you were dead. Good Lord. Do I want to know what you did to Carol?”
The Terminator met his glance in the red hazy light of the bridge, and Gus looked away. “No Gus, you don’t. When I say Carol would never send Brody after anything having to do with me, I mean she would never, ever do it. I don’t have make believe legends speculating what I’m capable of at the Company. The people who know me there know the legends don’t cover what I’m capable of.”
“I think I finally get it now,” Gus replied. “One misstep or incidence of you not following through on any threat, and you, Rachel, and Jean would be dead.”
“Worse than that, Gus. If they could get us all, there are people in government and private sector positions who would torture Rachel and Jean to death right in front of me. Then, they would go to work on me. I’m not much of a worrier. I don’t want you thinking I don’t feel anything. It’s simply a matter of my being in a position after what I’ve done over the course of my life that I can’t go back. I enjoy what I have. In truth, you didn’t nag me out of retirement. I started back into the life because if I didn’t, the sixth sense that has kept me alive all these years would get so rusty as to be useless. I’ve built a network of people I can depend on here and abroad. I stay in touch with them. When I do a job like we did over in the UAE for the now deceased Gil Montrose, I contact the people I have there, and send a retainer fee. I had to go to ground earlier in my career. It gets messy.”
“I can sure see why you’re so good at living in the moment. Most folks take for granted that everything they have one day will be there the next. With you, it’s the other way around.”
“Exactly. One day we were running for our lives across continents, and the next sitting in beach chairs on the Point with Irish coffees. Last night, we were sightseeing, and killing zombies in a full screen video game, with the night ending in my killing three men on the same Pier. I doubt I could do things differently like in a permanent retirement, because someone would find me, and I’d be too dull to make a stand. Rachel and Jean are on borrowed time. Without me, they would have been dead in days. Tanus would have hired someone else to kill them. Rachel knows it, and I suspect it colors Jean’s thoughts in regard to her future. I believe that’s where Jean the Assassin came from.”
“You live within a complicated universe, my friend.”
“Actually, it’s an old simple universe with old simple rules – kill or be killed.”
“Do you ever think you’ll be able to drop your guard, and disappear somewhere no one could find you?
“What the hell kind of fun would that be, Guster?”