Blood Hunt

No Mexicans seemed to work in the CWC building. Even the doorman, the security guard who checked Dulwater’s identity, and the cleaner polishing the brass rails on the wall between the four elevators were all male, all white. Dulwater liked that. That had class. And the air-conditioning pleased him, too. San Diego was warm-to- hot; it was like that all year, except when it got real hot. But there were sea breezes, you had to admit that. It wasn’t a baking or steamy heat. It would’ve been quite pleasant if Dulwater hadn’t been trussed into a blue woollen three-piece with a tie constricting his neck. Damned suit and shirt used to fit-but then he’d added some weight recently, since the injury to his knee stopped his weekly squash torture.

There was a gym in the CWC building. It was one floor below the lobby, and one floor up from parking. Dulwater had never been that far down, but he’d been right to the top, and he was going there again. The security guard came with him to the elevator and turned his key in the lock, pressing the button for the fourteenth floor. You couldn’t simply press the button, you needed the key as well, like in some of the hotels Dulwater had stayed in, the ones with penthouse and executive levels. The doors closed, and he tried to stop seeming nervous. Kosigin wasn’t the biggest fish within the multinational; he was maybe number five or six in the States, which made him seven or eight in the world. But he was young and arrogant with it, and Dulwater didn’t like his attitude. In another life, he’d have punched him out and then given him a sharp-toed kick in the lumbar region for good measure.

But this was business, and Kosigin was king for the duration of the meeting. The doors opened, bringing Dulwater out onto the thick, silent carpeting of the fourteenth floor. There was a reception area, with only three doors leading off. Each door led to an office, and each office covered several hundred square feet, so that they didn’t feel like offices at all; they felt more like temples. The secretary, who was actually known as a “personal assistant,” smiled at him.

“Good morning, Mr. Dulwater.” She still pronounced it dull-water, even though on his first visit he’d corrected it to doo-latter. In truth, the family back in Denver said dull-water, too, but Alfred didn’t like the sound of that, just as he’d hated all the jibes and nicknames at school and college. When he left for Washington, he’d decided to reject dull- water and become doo-latter. He liked doo- latter. It sounded like it had class.

“Mr. Kosigin will be about five minutes. If you’d like to wait inside…”

Dulwater nodded and approached the door to Kosigin’s office, which the secretary unlocked with a button beneath the lip of her desk. Then he walked in.

That was another thing. He’d looked at Kosigin’s name and thought koss-eegin, like the Soviet guy in the fifties-or was it sixties? But the name was pronounced kossigin, rattled off in a single breath, all the letters short and hard. There was a hardness to Kosigin’s office which matched both his name and personality. Even the works of art looked harsh and brutal: the paintings were full of squared-off objects, geometric shapes in dull colors; the sculptures looked like either disfigured people or things that had gotten too close to a heat source. And even the view, which should have been fantastic, was somehow harder, crueler than it merited. You couldn’t quite see the waterfront-there were other, taller buildings in the way. He thought he could see the shiny Marriott through a gap in the downtown buildings, but the way it reflected light it could have been anything.

True to his investigator’s skills, Dulwater didn’t spend much time on the view but walked over to Kosigin’s desk, just to see what was there. The answer as usual was disappointingly little. It was an ornate antique desk, maybe French, with bowed legs that looked like they’d snap if you put any weight on them. It was quite long but narrow, and didn’t seem to square with Kosigin’s chosen chair, a workaday swivel model with red covers and black plastic armrests. Dulwater got the feeling Kosigin did his real work elsewhere. On the desk’s surface were a blotter pad, a tray of pens and stuff, and a small Anglepoise. It could’ve been a student’s desk; it could have been anybody’s desk.

He took stock of the rest of the room. There was a lot of bare parquet floor between himself and the living area. This comprised a sofa and two chairs, all done in black crushed leather; a large and well-stocked liquor cabinet, with empty decanter and crystal glasses on top; and a couple of TV sets, one of which seemed to be switched on permanently. It was showing C-Span with the sound on mute.

Some of the wall space was taken up with tall freestanding wooden cabinets, locked, and never opened in Dulwater’s presence. He didn’t know if they were empty or full, if they contained files or Kosigin’s shoe collection. Hell, maybe they were secret doors to other offices. It didn’t much matter. What mattered was that Kosigin was keeping him waiting. He put his briefcase-rigid, mat-black, almost impossible to open without both keys, official Alliance issue-on the low table next to the working TV and sat himself down on the sofa. There was no remote for the TV that he could see, but he found the control panel on the front of the set, eased its cover aside, and changed channels. There was a Rolling Stones tribute on MTV, so he left it at that and sat back to watch, not bothering with the sound.

He wondered again about the surveillance. Surely a corporation like CWC, one of the globe’s chemical giants, could and would afford its own security operatives. Why hadn’t Kosigin handed the pissant job to them? And why was old man Allerdyce taking such a close interest? It wasn’t as though he was afraid Dulwater would screw up; he’d assured him of that. Why then? What was it about this guy James Reeve, this asshole Anglo with the boring personal habits and the peripatetic job? That wasn’t Dulwater’s concern, just like Mr. Allerdyce had said. What was his phrase? “We are the means, not the end.” It sounded great when he said it, but what the fuck did it mean?

He walked over to one of the windows and looked directly down onto the street below. One block south was an orange-and- green trolley-bus on its tourist route, one of the old city trolleys almost colliding with it. He hoped the tourists would have more sense than to get off in Gaslamp.

“Mr. Dulwater.”

He hadn’t even heard the door opening, but when he turned, Kosigin was already halfway to his desk. He wasn’t looking at Dulwater, though; he was looking over towards the TV and the briefcase. The briefcase wasn’t supposed to leave Dulwater’s hands. It made going to the john an interesting outing, but those were the explicit instructions. Dulwater went over to retrieve the case. By the time he got back to the desk, Kosigin had unlocked a drawer and brought out a remote. He pointed it towards the distant TV and flipped back to its original channel. Dulwater almost apologized, but didn’t. Apologies made you weak. Besides, what had he done wrong?

He sat down opposite Kosigin and watched the man put the remote back in the drawer and relock it with a key he tucked into his vest pocket. For a few seconds, all he had was a view of the top of Kosigin’s head, with its thick salt-and-pepper hair, curling and luxuriant. Maybe he had it dyed like that to look older. When he looked up, Kosigin almost seemed like a teenager, with bright healthy cheeks and sparkling eyes with no wrinkles or creases. His burgundy silk tie shimmered with life. Then he slipped on his metal-rimmed glasses and changed again. He didn’t need to harden his face; the glasses did that for him. And the voice-the voice was pure authority.

“Now then, Mr. Dulwater.”

Which was Dulwater’s cue to unlock the briefcase. He took one key from his jacket pocket and slipped off his left shoe to retrieve the second key from where he had taped it to the heel of his sock. The case was fireproof, bombproof, and tamperproof; if anyone attempted to open it without both keys, a small incendiary wiped out the contents. Dulwater opened the case with ease, Kosigin avoiding eye contact as he waited for the investigator to place the file on his desk. The first time they’d met, Dulwater had held out the file and Kosigin had sat like a dummy until Dulwater realized what was wanted of him: Kosigin didn’t want any contact with the investigator, not so much as linkage by a document folder. So now Dulwater placed the file on the desk, and when he’d taken his hand away, Kosigin slid the file a bit closer and opened it, leafing through the sheets of paper.

It was a thick report this time: further background, biographies of friends, colleagues, family. It had taken hundreds of man-hours to compile, including use of investigators overseas. It was utterly thorough.

“Thank you, Mr. Dulwater.”

And that was it-no small talk, no drink, no eye contact, even. Alfred Dulwater was dismissed.

After the investigator had gone, Kosigin took the file over to one of the leather chairs and made himself comfortable. He glanced up at the TV whenever he turned to a new sheet, but otherwise had eyes only for the report. He didn’t like Dulwater-the man was oversized and slow-witted-but he had to concede that Allerdyce ran an impressive operation.

He reread the report, taking his time. He didn’t want to make the wrong decision, after all, not when it might be such a serious decision. James Reeve the journalist was no longer just a thorn in