(For Eric and Kris Stowe)


The first time I saw Rick, he was breaking bricks--with his bare hands. You wouldn¡¯t ordinarily think of this as a useful skill, but Rick managed to make a living at it...almost. You might think, as you looked at the stack of fourteen bricks on the Hamden High School Stage that he was the Guiness Book of Records Champion at brick breaking. Certainly he could have been, but in his soft-spoken way, Rick seemed to prefer to stay out of the limelight. He had trained three of the last four national breaking champions in karate, and that was how I originally came to know of him. One of those guys, a jumped up cokehead mercenary had gotten into trouble with the law and wound up in Federal prison. Now this guy was tough, and in his own words, he ¡°didn¡¯t take any shit from anybody.¡± This is not a helpful attitude to have in prison. On the other hand, prison is not, by its very nature, a very helpful place.
Apparently this guy spent a lot of time in lockdown. No sooner would he come out than someone from one of the various rival gangs--Aryan Brotherhood, Black Muslims, Wah Hop To, you name it--would try to start banging on him and he¡¯d either cripple or kill the guy, and it was back into the hole (¡°I dunno, he fell...)
One day, it seems, this guy just gets tired of the hole, tired of prison and decides to leave. So he kicks the door off its hinges and walks out. The official explanation was that he had smuggled a shaped charge explosive device into the prison (mercenaries do tend to know about this sort of thing). But the materials lab guys found no traces of explosives, and an independent lab (who had no idea of what they were looking at) suggested heavy machinery, since the stress fractures in the metal had parallel tears and the door had been as much ¡°ripped¡± from its hinges as it had been blasted.
At the time, I had been assigned to Jack Jones¡¯ special behavioral forensics unit in Quantico, and when the Bureau was called in, I was on the team that went after this guy. He led us a merry chase through the Kentucky hills and into the West Virginia countryside, but eventually we managed to catch up with him, and we brought him down with sleep darts--like about a hundred of them. We ran him back to Virginia on a very heavy Versed IV drip, since we didn¡¯t want him waking up and stealing our ¡®copter. Then we borrowed an interrogation facility from a friendly Federal Agency in which to hold our debriefing. The early part of the debriefing was carried out personally by Jones, who in thirty years had seen so much, that he knew exactly what to expect. At first it was all non-cooperation. Threats, curses, and sullen silences. But we had the guy in what was literally an A-Bomb proof shelter, and what ever he had done to get out of lockdown, he wasn¡¯t going to do it here. Of course, on the off chance that he did, the whole room was wired (audio, video, voice stress analyzers, the works) in any case. At least we would get to see how it was done. But Jack never had any doubts.
¡°Oh sure he¡¯s a hard case¡± Jack would say, ¡°Let¡¯s just let him wait 24 or 48 or 72 hours, and whenever the stuff he¡¯s on starts wearing off, he¡¯ll want his shot, or his pill or whatever, and then we¡¯ll be able to talk.¡±
Well, it turned out that Jack was only half right. First, it didn¡¯t take 48 or 72 hours, but 73 days. And even then, it wasn¡¯t pills or shots that the guy wanted. He wanted to deal. Of course, we couldn¡¯t know it then, but whatever he was on, was being manufactured continuously by his own body. He didn¡¯t need a shot or a pill to get whatever powered those mad adrenaline rushes which had let him outrun a Bureau jeep in rough terrain. No, what this guy was starting to worry about, after two and a half months of hostile interrogation, (well you could hardly call it friendly, although we didn¡¯t do anything to abridge the suspect¡¯s civil rights) was that we might keep him there forever, our isolation, in essence, was succeeding where the prison system had failed.
So in exchange for a few simple medical tests and a name, we let him go. Well, more or less. It seems that this same friendly agency which had loaned us the interrogation facility had a little conflict in Central Africa which they wanted settled in a very particular fashion. Since our boy wanted nothing so much as to get back into combat fatigues and the bush, it wasn¡¯t hard to work out a deal. After all, ¡°if you can¡¯t beat ¡®em, join ¡®em¡± right? And so, not only did this guy get out of Federal Prison, but he got to go back to doing what he liked doing best, which was killing people. Only now he was doing it for Uncle Sam, which made him a hero rather than a criminal. Oh well, it¡¯s a strange world we live in. Me, I¡¯d have turned him loose on the Colombians, but that¡¯s another story altogether.
The name he had given us was Rick Waters of New Haven, Connecticut. Who was Rick Waters? A nobody. Some guy who had dropped out of molecular biology and biochemistry in his fourth year to do manual labor in Southern Connecticut. What kind of life did he lead? The most pedestrian possible. He owned a small house, owned a couple of late model cars and paid his taxes regularly. A couple of misdemeanor arrests, mostly connected to trivial incidents, but nothing you would call criminal. I remember one was a sixth degree misdemeanor. Sixth degree? Only in Connecticut. Something about removing somebody¡¯s sign at the train station. The judge threw it out for lack of probable cause. I mean, what kind of goons were running the New Haven police department anyway? I was half afraid that if I went in to liase with their chief, I might be arrested for illegal possession of chewing gum!
Anyway, the only thing which distinguished this Rick Waters was that his father had been a professor of biochemistry at Yale. ¡°The son must be a real fuck-up,¡± I thought, to have flunked out of his father¡¯s own department; oh well, it takes all kinds. So Rick Waters had retired from the potentially promising career of research scientist, in order to break bricks in front of high school kids in an effort to recruit them for some goofball oriental martial arts class. Except that one of the goofballs had broken out of a maximum security federal prison with his bare hands.
So there I stood, obscured, in the back of the auditorium watching Rick¡¯s demonstration. It was so good that it almost looked fake (except that I knew from our lab reports that there wasn¡¯t the slightest thing fake about it). The first thing which struck me as more than a little bit odd was the casualness with which Rick approached the various stunts he performed. One involved breaking a stack of boards with a spinning heel kick. Nothing particularly unusual about that, except that he did it blindfolded, starting from fifteen feet away and he had to kick between two razor sharp Samurai swords to do it. Another involved what Rick called Chi Kung, or concentrating your internal energy. This is very popular with some of the health food types back in California. Except that Rick had some guy put a pair of regulation police handcuffs on him, behind his back, and then after closing his eyes for a minute he just snapped them right off. Now, I had heard about something like this once before, some Egyptian guy, who held the cuffs in front of himself. However, I had also heard that the guy was very big and brawny, heavily into power lifting, and took nearly an hour of concentrating to do it. Rick did it from the back, which is simply not possible. There¡¯s just no way in that position that you can get enough leverage or enough torque to have a hope in hell of doing anything with a real set of cuffs. That¡¯s why we cuff suspects in the first place.
But here I was (Jack Jones had said ¡°Sharon, you¡¯re into all this ¡®New Age¡¯ crap, why don¡¯t you go have a look at this guy¡±) seeing it done right before my eyes. Not only seeing it done, but seeing it done casually, that¡¯s what was so astonishing. I think that¡¯s when I first started to sense the real danger of the case. But then again, danger has always excited me (in more ways than one), and so I was going to follow this very dangerous, very good looking man into his Tai Chi school and try to get to the bottom of this.
It turned out that Rick was renting space in another dojo, owned by some guy Tom Luehrman, who taught a combination of aikido and karate. When I first came in and asked to speak to Rick, he asked me about my martial arts background, and why I wanted to join his class. I told him that I had done some internal energy work at Esalen in Big Sur, and some Transpersonal Psychology in San Francisco, and even a little bit of restraint work in dealing with autistic children. I told him that I wanted to get into Tai Chi to continue working on my internal energy and maybe learn something which I could use to defend myself if the need ever arose. Rick kept saying ¡°Why don¡¯t you talk to Sensei¡±. ¡°Sensei¡± or teacher, in Japanese, is how these martial arts guys always refer to their instructors and sometimes towards seniors in other styles for whom they feel a particular degree of respect. I know Rick had always called Luehrman ¡°Sensei¡± and never addressed him as ¡°Tom¡± or ¡°Mr. Luehrman¡±, although occasionally he might slip a bit and say ¡°Luehrman Sensei¡±, which I gathered was still quite proper.
Anyway, the more I pushed at joining Rick¡¯s Tai Chi class, the more he tried to funnel me off into aikido. He told me how aikido was so much more practical for self defense and how it was suited towards women because it didn¡¯t rely on strength. When I tried to press him, he finally just shrugged and said ¡°Well, you can come on Saturday, if you really want.¡±
Saturday¡¯s class was actually pretty unexciting. Rick led us through stretching and basic conditioning exercises for almost two hours. Then he led us through forms. Finally he taught us a few simple applications from the forms and we practiced some simple throws and takedowns. This was a little exciting, and I felt a strange sensation when Rick encircled me with his arms preparatory to a hip throw I was to do. But before I knew it, Rick was shouting, ¡°OK everybody, Four O¡¯clock, time to wrap things up. Sensei wants us out of here by 4:30.¡± And just like that it was done. Rick and the guys put away some equipment and he turned to me and said ¡°Well, Sharon, how¡¯d you like it? Does this look like what you really want to be doing?¡±
I had to come up with an answer fast, one that would keep me in the class and still sound plausible, so I said ¡°Well, it¡¯s a little bit different than what I expected, but my girlfriend who does Tai Chi in California says it takes some time to learn.¡±
¡°Well everything takes time to learn,¡± Rick replied. ¡°The real question¡¯s going to be whether you have enough stamina or not. Most people just aren¡¯t cut out for Tai Chi,¡± he finished.
I found this remark rather strange, since despite the fact that we had done a fair amount of push-ups, sit-ups, stretches and crunches, there really was nothing particularly strenuous about Rick¡¯s workout. Later when I reviewed the tapes of his conversation in the changing room (of course we had the whole building wired by now) I heard one of the other guys ask ¡°So who¡¯s the blonde, Rick?¡±
¡°How should I know,¡± he answered. ¡°She¡¯s probably from the DEA or the FBI come to spy on us as far as I can tell.¡± They all seemed to get a good laugh out of this. Our guys got a laugh out of it as well. ¡°Real smooth job Sharon,¡± one of them said. ¡°You sure pulled the wool over their eyes,¡± said another. ¡°Shut up you guys,¡± I answered, ¡°I¡¯m trying to listen to the god-damned tape.¡±
But the tape yielded nothing more that we had already surmised. Whatever these guys were doing, they weren¡¯t doing it out of Luehrman¡¯s dojo, that was for sure. Since these guys weren¡¯t actually criminals and didn¡¯t seem to be breaking any laws, we just sort of laid back and ran surveillance, with me continuing to attend Rick¡¯s class.
After a while I began to get pretty good at the basics of Tai Chi. One weekend, Rick invited me to stay after class. I didn¡¯t know if he was just showing a healthy interest of if he planned to do me in. On the off chance that I would be in physical danger, I had a coded safeword with the surveillance team which would send three guys crashing through Rick¡¯s door firing modified MAC-10¡¯s, loaded with sleep darts (we weren¡¯t taking any chances after what we¡¯d seen from his mercenary student.) We¡¯d also encrypted an iterative feedback loop, so that if they went for more than five minutes without hearing the proper codeword phrase from me, that¡¯d send them crashing in too. I was not entirely pleased with the choice of words since it had me saying ¡°you know¡± and ¡°really¡± and ¡°for real¡± and ¡°I mean¡± way too often. I think Rick must have thought I was a total airhead, ¡°Like, you know one of those bimbo blondes from California, the ones that really just live for the beach, I mean how can they be for real?¡± I hated the code, but then again, it¡¯s that extra layer of protection which may save your life.
Anyway, as it turned out, Rick really was just showing a little healthy interest, and as physically robust as he was, I couldn¡¯t help but respond even though it¡¯s a cardinal rule never to get involved with a suspect. The next Monday I got called into Jack Jones¡¯ office and raked heartily over the coals. ¡°Agent Swan, do you have any idea how many regulations you have just broken?¡± he said with a glare in his eye that not many could face.
¡°I suppose I do, I answered.¡±
¡°Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn¡¯t bust you out of this organization right now, or reassign you to Juneau, Alaska for the rest of your career?¡± he continued.
¡°As a matter of fact, I can,¡± I replied.
¡°Well, I¡¯m listening,¡± Jack answered, which was more than I¡¯d expect from the man who had the reputation of being the toughest Assistant Director we¡¯d ever had.
¡°The reason you shouldn¡¯t fire me, or transfer me, the reason you shouldn¡¯t do anything is that I¡¯m the only person who has more than a snowball¡¯s chance in hell of cracking this case.¡±
¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡± he asked.
¡°Simply speaking, Sir, it means that the suspect trusts me,¡± I went on, ¡°in fact, he trusts me now in the only way I think a man can truly trust a woman. He thinks he owns me, and as long as he has that proprietary air about him, I¡¯m his and he can¡¯t imagine me doing this--investigating him.¡±
¡°And what¡¯s to keep us replacing you with someone else, Agent Swan?¡± Jones asked.
¡°Simple. He¡¯d never believe it. This guy is so spooky that from day one he¡¯s suspected me of belonging to the bureau or the DEA or even the CIA,¡± I said.
¡°CIA?¡± queried Jones. ¡°What the hell do they have to do with it?¡±
¡°Well, it seems this guy, Waters, is big into conspiracy theories. I don¡¯t know what he¡¯s really doing yet, but he¡¯s terribly afraid, way beyond paranoid, about the CIA, that somehow that they¡¯re going to get involved, or horn in on his little dojo operation.¡±
¡°That¡¯s crazy,¡± Jones remarked.
¡°I know, sir, but these guys have all seen too many Hollywood conspiracy movies. One of them even tried to tell me how he thinks it¡¯s OK to do drugs because the CIA is the biggest drug smuggler in America. These guys might be able to bend steel bars in their bare hands, but they have only the most rudimentary grasp of politics and bureaucratic organizations,¡± I concluded.
¡°So what does all this have to do with you, Swan?¡± Jones began pushing again.
¡°Like I said, sir, I¡¯m getting close to him. We know that these guys go off together after their workouts and at least once they vanished somewhere into the Kline biology tower. Now we can¡¯t really track them inside the tower, because there¡¯s too much scientific equipment which would register our surveillance. So if we ever really want to find out what they¡¯re doing, particularly without making a big scene, or bringing half of Yale Law School and the Yale Corporation crashing down around our heads, someone has to get close enough to him, you know, get in on their little shindig and really find out what¡¯s happening in there, I mean like get to see the real thing,¡± I said, indulging myself for a moment in an attempt to throw in a bit of humor.
¡°That isn¡¯t funny, Swan,¡± Jones replied. Of course, I had known that in a case like this, even though he was letting it run from the field, he would have been following all of the operational procedures and reading each and every one of the surveillance transcripts. In fact, I was counting on it, when I formulated my argument. Your average Special Supervisory Agent in Charge, would have sacked me without a second thought for sleeping with the suspect (well actually we didn¡¯t really sleep all that much). But Jack Jones wasn¡¯t your average supervisor. He was very much a second thought, and even a third thought kind of guy. And I was sure that on reflection he¡¯d agree with me, that sooner or later this really was going to be the only way to make any headway in the case--better the devil you know, and all that. So in the end I talked my way out of discharge, suspension, reprimand and even transfer and Jones sent me back to beautiful New Haven, where the Great Depression is still alive and healthy.
Not much new happened for the next couple of months, and eventually, I began getting pressure from Jones to show some results. A couple of times he suggested simply bringing Rick in, and then getting him into a biolab facility where we could run some tests. But I knew it would never be that simple. I¡¯d seen Rick pulverize a golf ball with one hand, calmly reducing it to a rubbery powder. Once in a while he¡¯d show me other spooky stuff too, like jumping into the choppy winter surf at Lighthouse Park and not coming up for twenty minutes (I had almost thought that Jones wasn¡¯t going to need to arrest Rick to give him a physical examination--he could do it at the autopsy). After a while, I wasn¡¯t sure that we could take him in at all, even if we tried. Rick loved to quote Oriental philosophy during the Tai Chi class, and one of his favorite sayings was ¡°in time water wears away the hardest stone.¡± This was done to encourage us to use more softness in our technique, which seemed doubly strange since Rick was capable of so much power. But, strange as it seemed, the soft approach was probably the only way we were going to get to break this case, because it was rock hard in every way imaginable.
One night Rick woke me up at 3:00 in the morning.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, honey?¡± I asked.
¡°Nothing¡¯s wrong just get up and get dressed,¡± he replied.
¡°But it¡¯s three in the morning,¡± I answered. ¡°I have to go to work tomorrow,¡± I groaned. Part of the cover which Jones had set up for me was a job as a counselor in a shelter for battered women run, in part, by Yale and in part by the city of New Haven under a Federal grant.
¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± he said, ¡°you¡¯ll be fine for work in the morning, just get up and follow me now.¡±
¡°Rick, where are we going?¡± I asked.
¡°You¡¯ll see,¡± he said. ¡°Just think of this as a kind of special Tai Chi workout.¡±
Not surprisingly, he took me to the Kline Biology Tower.
¡°Rick,¡± I asked groggily, ¡°what are we doing in front of Kline at three in the morning? You know I hate morning workouts, and it¡¯s cold up here.¡±
¡°Hold on,¡± he said, fumbling for his keys. ¡°Just let me get the door open and you¡¯ll be plenty warm once we get inside.
Sure enough, Rick fished out a key to the door (University Security would have had a fit) and took me inside. Once in, we rode the elevator up to the 9th floor labs, where, fishing in his pocket for another set of keys, he unlocked large, dark laboratory.
¡°This is what I call my cold storage,¡± he said. ¡°Actually the place used to be my Dad¡¯s laboratory, but he moved a long time ago and nobody ever really bothered to clean up some of his stuff. Hell, he probably doesn¡¯t even know some of this stuff is here. Anyway, it turned out to be a convenient place to store my Korean ginseng.¡±
¡°Korean ginseng??¡± I asked.
¡°Well, it¡¯s not really ginseng.¡± Rick replied, ¡°I just didn¡¯t know what else to call it. I mean it looks like liquefied ginseng root, and it has this absolutely awful taste, so the nearest thing I could think of really, was ginseng root.¡±
¡°But what is it, Rick?¡± I inquired.
¡°I don¡¯t know. One of my Dad¡¯s students made it up years ago in an experimental batch. He was a Korean graduate student in biochemistry at Yale and I asked him if he could whip me up some kind of vitamin supplement to help me with my workouts and maybe strengthen my immune system,¡± he explained.
Rick went on, ¡°You remember when the aids virus was first discovered and university research scientists were all going crazy to map the genome and find a cure, don¡¯t you?¡±
I nodded.
¡°Well it seems that this guy, Kim, started out in immunobiology but figured out early on that this was nothing but a dead end to his scientific research career. Anyway, we were all scared like crazy that we would lose our immunity to this strange disease, so I persuaded him to take this immune booster that he had been working on and put it into my vitamin formula. What none of us counted on is that Kim, who came from an old family of Korean herbalists would incorporate some other stuff that none of us had ever heard about. And since he didn¡¯t want to end up brewing up a batch of this stuff for us every time we ran low, he just gene-spliced the whole thing. Well what that meant was that once he had inoculated us with the first shot, our own bodies would continue producing this stuff internally for the rest of our lives.¡±
¡°Rick,¡± I said, ¡°that¡¯s a pretty weird story, and it¡¯s also incredibly illegal, don¡¯t you know that.¡±
¡°I know it now,¡± he replied. ¡°Hell, back then, we just thought we were getting vitamin shots. We didn¡¯t know that this was some magic formula supposed to turn us into supermen.¡±
¡°So this is where you keep it?¡± I asked. ¡°Well actually,¡± he said, fumbling around inside the refrigerator, ¡°this is the last dose. Kim got killed in a car crash before he ever had time to give us the formula, and I don¡¯t even think he even kept any lab notebooks. I had already tried it, and when I found out what it did, I gave out a dose to each one of my best friends or best students at the dojo until we ran out.¡±
¡°So this is how you do all those incredible stunts?¡± I asked.
Rick nodded. ¡°That¡¯s about it, although the ten years I spent in karate class gave me some ideas for how to apply it, but yeah, mostly it¡¯s just Kim¡¯s formula and whatever I¡¯ve been able to think up on my own.¡±
¡°Wait a minute,¡± I interjected. ¡°How many of you are there?¡±
¡°Nine or ten,¡± he said, ¡°what¡¯s the difference?¡±
¡°Well the difference is,¡± I said, ¡°that if this is the last dose, how is science ever supposed to use this for mankind¡¯s benefit?¡±
¡°I dunno,¡± he answered ¡°I just kind of figured that eventually they¡¯d either rediscover it or they wouldn¡¯t--doesn¡¯t really have a lot to do with me.¡±
¡°Rick,¡± I pleaded ¡°it has everything to do with you. What...you want to give me this last dose so that I can be like you? I hate to tell you this, but Rick, I don¡¯t really care about the martial arts.¡±
¡°You will,¡± he said grabbing me in that iron grip of his and shoving the needle into the side of my neck.
¡°Sorry about not swabbing first,¡± he apologized, ¡°but in a about fifteen minutes you¡¯re never going to have to worry about disease or infection for the rest of your life, which may turn out to be a very very long time.¡±
And that¡¯s the last I remember before the change began. At first it was just a rushing sound in my ears. I felt a little giddy, almost as if I were about to faint, when suddenly it was as if I had been plugged into a live wire. Immediately, as I felt new strength rushing into my limbs, the world around me began to glow with a preternatural clarity as if I had been sleepwalking all my life and was just now, in a frenzied moment of overwhelming new knowledge, waking up. I looked at Rick and I could see that he knew.
¡°Uh, Rick, you can let go now,¡± I said, and he did. ¡°I think, uh, that there¡¯s a little confession I have to make.¡±
¡°Go on,¡± he said.
¡°Well about my job, you know, at the Women¡¯s¡¯ Shelter, it isn¡¯t exactly the only thing I do.¡±
¡°I know,¡± he said with perfect calm.
¡°You know!¡± I shouted, ¡°What do you mean you know!¡±, I¡¯m afraid that the drug was causing me to over-react a bit. Rick had seen this before, so he knew what to expect.
¡°Actually, I knew the first day you walked into my studio. Hell, I knew even before that when I saw you watching me at the demonstration. I bet you thought I didn¡¯t notice you there in the back of the crowd. Hell, all you Feds have a way of holding yourselves, the way you stand, the way you move, even the way you ask seemingly innocent questions. It¡¯s a dead giveaway. I don¡¯t know why you think all the rest of us are so stupid, but we¡¯re not, you know.¡±
With my new heightened perception, I could easily understand how obvious I must have appeared to him.
¡°But why didn¡¯t you say anything?¡± I asked.
¡°Don¡¯t you remember?¡± he answered, ¡°I did. Why do you think I kept telling you to take Sensei¡¯s class instead of mine?¡±
¡°He¡¯s one of them too, I mean one of us, isn¡¯t he?¡± I asked.
¡°Of course he is,¡± Rick replied. ¡°How many times have you seen a guy rip three phone books in half or throw off thirteen people with a shrug of his shoulders from a seated position?¡± Rick asked. ¡°It¡¯s just that he¡¯s a lot older than I am, and he¡¯s had a lot more experience. It¡¯s always easier for Sensei to handle the weird ones, or the government types than it is for me.¡±
¡°But why did you let me stay if you knew?¡± I asked.
He smiled, ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious?¡± he said, stroking my hair.
¡°But I could have hurt you, or gotten you arrested, at the very least you would have had all sorts of problems.¡±
¡°Nahh,¡± he replied. ¡°I could tell you weren¡¯t like that. You just needed a little time to get used to us, that¡¯s all¡± he said, with a grin.
¡°OK, Rick, so you win. Now what? You don¡¯t think my bosses are going to have this all figured out by tomorrow?¡± I asked.
¡°Tomorrow?¡± he inquired. ¡°Tomorrow is a million years away. Look I know this little chapel in Vermont that does roadside weddings, and the way I figure it, we¡¯ve got enough gas in the car that we could be there by morning.¡±
¡°What the hell,¡± I replied, ¡°at least they can¡¯t force a wife to testify against her husband.