The Dragon With One Ruby Eye Read online

  THE DRAGON WITH ONE RUBY EYE

  International Thriller by Paul Moomaw

  Kindle: 978-1-58124-296-6

  ePub: 978-1-58124-550-9

  ©2012 by Paul Moomaw

  Published 2012 by The Fiction Works

  http://www.fictionworks.com

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  An underpowered wall unit labored to chill the air in Room 248, but the afternoon heat got through, accompanied by the filtered sounds of five fat old men who called themselves the Duwamish Jazz Band, and who played four horns and a banjo no better than they had to in the desert community of Richland, Washington. They stood at the edge of the swimming pool, just below the room, honking and plunking at a Dixieland arrangement of “Midnight in Moscow.”

  A naked man lay on the bed, half covered by a sheet. One of his hands burrowed under the pillow. The other, encased in a white, cotton glove, rested on his thigh. The man groaned and turned, and clenched the hand into a fist that left the glove’s empty middle finger extended limply on the sheet.

  The telephone rang. The man rolled off the bed, stepped to the table against the opposite wall. He started to reach for the telephone with his right hand, noticed that it had no glove, and reached with his left instead.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s seven o’clock, Mr. Lopez.”

  The man grunted and hung up. He stretched and yawned, then slouched back to the bed. He reached under the pillow, retrieved the other glove, and slipped it on. Nobody would give a damn about someone named Raymond Lopez; but the man was sure that a fine set of nine fingerprints under his own name, Facundo Hesse, took up space in the files of more than one federal agency.

  Hesse stretched again and strode into the bathroom, scratching the thatch of dark blond hair on his chest. He was large, a couple of inches over six feet, with powerful, hairy arms and meaty hands. The legs didn’t fit the rest of him. They were pale, hairless, almost skinny.

  His right hand, the one with all its fingers, squeezed absently at the beginning of a fat roll around his middle, then dropped and stroked the old scar that ran up his thigh to a lopsided scrotum that held only one testicle, mute testimony to Hesse’s youthful infatuation with fighting bulls. He examined himself with pale, almost colorless eyes—a legacy from his Austrian father—and gave the fat roll another squeeze. Then he squared his shoulders and nodded at the reflection with a satisfied grunt.

  “Not bad, considering the miles.” His voice was high and thin. A woman had laughed at him about his voice, once. “It goes with your legs,” she had said. He had broken her nose for that, and had been briefly under arrest. His father had bailed him out that time, as he had many times.

  Hesse set the shower as hot as he could stand it. He pulled his gloves off and jumped in, soaped himself rapidly and rinsed, then twisted the control to cold and stood flinching under the water, “To close the pores.” It was a thing someone, probably one of his father’s mistresses, had told him when he was a young boy who still believed what women said to him. It was the sort of thing a mother might say, but hadn’t; Hesse’s mother was only a dim memory of soft Spanish, dark hair and perfume. She had walked out of his life when he was four.

  Hesse jumped out of the shower and toweled himself dry. He pulled a can of shaving foam out of his kit and pressed the button. Nothing happened. He shook the can and tried again. Still nothing. With a muttered curse Hesse crumpled the can in his hand and threw it into the trash basket so hard that the basket fell over on its side. He left it that way, and lathered his face with hotel soap.

  He had packed everything the night before, except for the shaving kit, and the charcoal jacket, trousers and gray sports shirt he planned to wear. He dressed slowly, almost fussily, and examined himself in the mirror when he was done. He rearranged the handkerchief in his breast pocket two or three times before he was satisfied. Then he shoved the wet gloves into the shaving kit and slipped the kit into his suitcase. He picked up the suitcase, took a last look around the room, and walked out, leaving the door open, and most of the lights in the room on.

  * * *

  The sun had dropped behind the low, barren mountains west of town, and the breeze coming off the river next to the motel was already cooling down. In another hour, Hesse knew, it would be chilly, giving him an excuse to put on the cashmere vest a girlfriend had given him a couple of months before. He couldn’t remember which girlfriend, but he loved the vest. He loved all soft things.

  The jazz band was packing its gear away as Hesse walked past the pool toward the lobby. A few people still sat outside in the October dusk, warmed by sunburns, and by the drinks they nursed. A teenage girl walked past Hesse, wearing shorts and a blue T-shirt with the word “Bombers” printed in white across her breast, superimposed over a stylized mushroom cloud. The girl looked at Hesse appraisingly, meeting his eye with a challenging stare, then glancing deliberately at his crotch. Hesse could tell the moment she noticed his missing finger; she made a small face and looked away with a toss of her head. He felt his ears burn, and had a momentary impulse to grab her, throw her down onto one of the deck chairs which surrounded the pool, and show her what a real man could do to a foolish bitch. He shook the impulse off and walked on with a laugh. At home, in Buenos Aires, he might have acted on an impulse like that, protected from the consequences by money and family connections. Here, he thought, money didn’t count as much; too many people had it.

  A man, more a boy, stood behind the registration desk, dressed a little too perfectly, and wearing a discrete but noticeable touch of green eye shadow. He smiled and gave Hesse a look not that different from the one the girl had initially thrown him. Hesse felt his stomach recoil.

  “Room 248,” he said. “The key’s on the dresser.”

  He swiveled around, walked across the
small lobby to a newspaper stand and read the headlines, tapping the fingers of his good hand impatiently against his thigh. He had trained himself long ago to keep the other hand quiet, hidden away. People sometimes met him several times before they realized he had a finger missing.

  He glanced back at the registration desk. The clerk was staring at him and smiling. Hesse looked quickly away, embarrassed to be attractive to the man. Damned faggots, he thought. He knew what he would like to do to all of them. Faggots and Jews. There was no difference.

  The clerk pushed the credit card slip toward him. Hesse walked stiffly back to the desk, signed it, ripped off the hotel copy and shoved the rest into his pocket, carbons and all.

  * * *

  A gray van with U.S. Government plates waited in the parking lot. Next to it stood a larger, black Dodge van, its windows tinted a smoky gray that hid the interior. Hesse slipped on a pair of black driving gloves and climbed into the government van. A window in the other vehicle lowered, and a head poked out, heavy-jawed, black hair cropped so close to the skull that it appeared shaved.

  “You ready, Mr. Lopez?”

  “I need to eat.”

  “Okay. Me, too. I’ll follow you.”

  Hesse nodded and started the van, bemused by the fate that provided him with such assistants. He knew this one only as Nick, no last name known or necessary—one of the skinhead clones who sprouted in clusters at Hayden Lake, strutting around the headquarters of the Aryan Nation, preening in their pseudo-Nazi uniforms and glaring at passersby.

  “The final hope of the great white race.” Hesse shook his head and laughed. Nick was an animal, violent and dull, a good beast of burden Hesse could use and toss away, but difficult at times, because he also had the impulse control of an animal.

  Hesse pulled the van into the drive-through of a brightly lit McDonald’s and ordered a fish sandwich and coffee. When the food came in its plastic packaging and greasy paper sack, Hesse put it on the seat beside him, turned onto George Washington Way, and headed slowly north. Vehicles filled the street—mostly pickup trucks and vans with custom paint jobs and their rear ends jacked up high, like cats in heat, and a few convertibles with their tops down despite the dropping temperature—all moving about fifteen miles an hour, and all filled with teenagers who eyed each other and shouted back and forth. Hesse felt a flare of irritation, then reminded himself that there was no hurry. It wasn’t dark yet, at any rate, and he would need darkness. He relaxed, stretched, and amused himself watching the ritual parade.

  A horn honked loudly at Hesse’s rear. He glanced in the mirror and saw headlights weaving back and forth. They caught up, and then Nick’s black Dodge screamed past him. Two pickups in front of Hesse closed ranks and slowed to a crawl as their drivers became aware of Nick’s van. Nick flashed his lights at them and honked again. One of the teenagers turned, grinned through the rear window of his pickup, and shot Nick the finger. Nick started to pass on the left, and the inside truck veered over, blocking his way.

  Hesse sighed, then gasped as Nick shot over to the right and passed the trucks on the sidewalk, horn blaring.

  “Que baboso,” Hesse muttered. What a fool. All they needed was for the silly asshole to get himself arrested. He shrugged. Another few hours and he would no longer have to worry about Nick.

  The traffic had thinned out by the time Hesse reached the north edge of town. He saw no sign of Nick, but hadn’t seen any police lights flashing either. No sense worrying at this point, he thought. The road split ahead of him, the branch to the right marked by a large, lighted sign signaling the public entrance to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Hesse turned left, onto State Road 243, and picked up speed. The lights of town dwindled in his mirror, and soon he was surrounded by empty land. His headlights caught the reflection of road markers, an occasional sagebrush, and nothing else. Hesse had timed everything to come when there would be no moon. He finished the fish sandwich, chewing slowly, absently, and took a last swallow of coffee. Then he slipped the cup and sandwich container back into their paper sack, rolled down the window of the van, and threw the sack out.

  The van’s headlights caught a green and white mileage sign. “Mile twenty-four,” Hesse muttered, and slowed the van down. “And there he is. Silly piece of shit did something right.” The black van sat obediently in the dirt off the shoulder of the road, pointing north. As Hesse passed, there was a loud honk, and the black van’s headlights suddenly came on and flashed three times.

  “Jesus Christ.” Hesse slapped his forehead, then pounded the steering wheel. He pulled off the road, turned off his own headlights, and waited. Soon he heard footsteps in the gravel, and the passenger door of the van opened. Nick slid inside and closed the door.

  Hesse backhanded the younger man in the mouth. “What the hell do you have inside your head instead of brains?”

  Nick yelped like a surprised puppy and fingered his mouth. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

  Hesse started the van. “If I didn’t absolutely need you, I would kill you with my bare hands, right now. Why don’t you just drive up to the entrance and honk? Or maybe you could play a bugle call.”

  “All right! So I’m sorry. I didn’t think you saw me, is all.”

  “Don’t think. You’re not equipped for it, and I’m not paying you for it.” Hesse speeded up. He knew the entrance, the Yakima Barrier to the Hanford Reservation, should be near. Then he saw it, a low gate house off to the right, its gray cinder blocks floodlit. The only sign, a small one a few yards in front of the building, offered the bare message that persons approaching should be prepared to be searched.

  Hesse pulled up to the guardhouse. One man stood inside the brightly lit enclosure, dressed in the gray and slate blue of a Hanford guard. He and Hesse looked at each other. Hesse cocked an eyebrow. The guard nodded.

  “Everything’s ready,” he said.

  “You’re sure you’ll be alone?”

  “You bet. I did a friend a favor and took this shift for him so he could step out on his wife.” He laughed. “Told him I needed the hours, so I could afford to step out on mine. And after midnight is my shift anyway. We have the place to ourselves until breakfast.”

  “Very well. Direct me.”

  The guard pointed into the night. “Go down this road for three-quarters of a mile. You’ll see a dirt road leading off to the left. Take it and drive until you reach railroad tracks. Cross them, go another thousand yards, and wait.”

  Hesse nodded. “I’ll be back.”

  “You bet,” the guard said with a smile. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Hesse put the van in gear and moved cautiously down the road, driving by his parking lights.

  “I thought this place was closed,” Nick said.

  “The old N Reactor, the one they used to produce plutonium for the military, is closed. Everything else is running, including the Purex Plant. That’s where they purify old fuel, reprocess it into plutonium oxide. That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Not bombs?”

  Hesse laughed. “Not bombs. Pretty black powder in steel bottles. You could make a bomb from it, I guess, with some work.”

  “I don’t want nothing to do with no bombs,” Nick muttered.

  The dirt road was where the guard had said it would be.

  “You sure you can trust that guy?” Nick asked, as Hesse turned. Hesse gazed briefly at Nick, and Nick looked away.

  “I don’t trust anybody,” Hesse said. “I don’t trust you. But I don’t have to trust. I buy. I bought you, and I bought him. His name is Leonard, and his wife is a shrew. He wants out very badly. He wants to start a new life. And he wants a lot of money, enough to start his new life in style.”

  The van reached the tracks, crossed them, and Hesse drove on for what he hoped was another thousand yards. A low wooden building came into view, and he pulled up next to it, then extinguished the van’s parking lights. Nick pulled out cigarettes and a lighter.

  “Put them away,” Hesse
said.

  “I want a smoke.”

  “Smoke later. You’re going to be busy. Anyway, I don’t like the stink.”

  “Jeezus, Mr. Clean.”

  As Nick put the cigarettes back in his pocket, Hesse heard the sound of an engine. A vehicle approached, its parking lights barely illuminating the dirt track in front of it. Hesse made out a gray van similar to his, but with the blue triangle of Hanford Security on its door.

  A man in a guard’s uniform got out of the other vehicle and approached Hesse, who rolled his window down.

  “How many of you?” the man asked. Hesse held up two fingers.

  “Good enough,” the man said. “Lets get this shit into your van. Where the shit you get a government van, anyway?”

  “None of your business.”

  The security guard spread his palms and smiled. “Right you are, just so long as you brought what I need.”

  Hesse pulled a small key from his pocket. “It’s here. And I brought you a little extra something, as well.”

  The guard reached for the key. Hesse jerked it away and dropped it back into his pocket.

  “When the job is finished,” he said.

  The man shrugged and returned to his van. He slid the side door open disappeared into the dark interior, then reappeared holding a slender, steel bottle.

  “Here it is, man.” He stepped down from the van and approached Hesse, who felt himself tense. “Plutonium oxide powder, the very finest the Purex Plant has to offer. And there’s twelve more in the van. A baker’s dozen. How’s that for a bargain? More than 50 pounds. And any kid with a good chemistry set can refine it into enough weapons grade plutonium for a very nice little bomb, with some left over to make mud pies.”