Severance Package by James C. Clar

Severance Package by James C. Clar

“Do you know who took that picture?” Liam O’Connor asked the pretty young girl as she handed him his coffee.

He pointed over her shoulder to a framed shot of the Diamond Head Lighthouse hanging above the cash register. The photographer had merged multiple exposures and then “painted” the final composite to striking and original effect.

O’Connor was in a little coffee shop in the basement of an aging hotel on Kaiulani Avenue in the faded heart of Waikiki.  The trade winds had died overnight and even this early in the morning it was obvious that it was going to be an uncommonly hot and humid day.

“Yeah, sure” the barista responded. “We all call him ‘the old man’. Most mornings he’s down the beach near Sans Souci … can’t miss him. He sets up his camera on a tripod. They say he’s been there off and on for almost a decade now.”

Coffee forgotten, Liam mumbled a hurried “thank you” and headed back out to the street.

Son of a bitch, he thought, Higgins. It had to be Dennis Higgins. No one else created work like that. He’d seen hundreds like it while Higgins was the head of the Far Eastern network in Singapore. Dennis spent his free time taking pictures and then processing them with state-of-the-art software on his computer. It was an obsession. He’d say it was the only thing that kept him sane, that it made him feel like ‘un artiste’.

Liam had been quietly searching for his ex-boss for nearly ten years. So, the rumors that Higgins had ultimately washed ashore on Oahu were true after all. The half-hearted hope that he might somehow track down the old scoundrel had been part of the reason that Liam and his wife had chosen Hawaii for a vacation in the first place. But to stumble on to him like this was almost too good to be true.

O’Connor took out his phone and texted Stacy. She had decided to spend the day shopping. He told her that something had come up and not to worry if he wasn’t back in time to meet her for lunch. She’d get the idea. Although Stacy was a “civilian” they’d been married long enough now for her to understand how the Intelligence game worked, and that Liam was never really off the clock … vacation or no vacation. She was also good about not prying. From the start, she accepted the fact that Liam could not talk in any genuine detail about his job. She knew, however vaguely, that her husband was keen to locate an “old friend.” Based on some offhand remarks Liam had made, Stacy had been the one to suggest Hawaii as their destination in the first place. Liam had readily agreed.

The heat and humidity were already building as O’Connor walked toward the ocean and then turned left onto a Kalakaua Avenue already crowded with the fitness conscious as well as jet-lagged visitors out for a stroll or heading for breakfast. Kuhio Beach Park itself was filling up with sun worshippers and locals out to catch some early morning waves.

Ten minutes later he entered the New Otani Hotel and the little open-air restaurant out on the beach to the east of the old Natatorium. He was seated at a small table under a spreading Hau tree overlooking Sans Souci beach. He ordered toast and another cup of coffee. Maybe this time around he’d have a chance to drink it. He scanned the beach in front of him as he began to eat.

Ten minutes or so later, he spotted him; an old man with a beard, tattered shorts and an aloha shirt so faded it was difficult to tell what its original color might have been. He was setting up a camera and a tripod. Liam wasn’t certain but the posture reminded him of Higgins; a Higgins ten years older and gone partially to seed. He doubted if anyone who didn’t know Higgins as well as he did would have recognized the disheveled beachcomber as the former station chief.

Liam threw some money on the table. Leaving yet a second cup of coffee unfinished, he walked back through the lobby and then across the parking area to the beach.

Damn. There was the camera, but the old man was gone.

“Stay right where you are, Liam” a gravelly voice spoke quietly into his ear. “Don’t turn around. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.” O’Connor felt a hand grip the back of his neck with intent.

“Jesus, Dennis. It is you.” Liam chastised himself for his lack of caution.

“It’s me alright. Now what do you want?” The old man’s iron grip didn’t lessen in intensity.

“What do I want,” O’Connor replied. “You’re kidding right? You bring me into the Company; you mentor me, and then you just disappear. You were like a father to me, Dennis. After you left, they gave Tokyo Station to Leighton. I was out in the cold because of my association with you. I don’t think they have ever really trusted me since.”

“So … what is this … payback,” Higgins asked through clenched teeth. “You lead them to me and redeem your career? I did what I had to do, kid. You know you can’t get sentimental in this line of work.”

“Lead them to you? I found you by accident. My wife and I are on vacation. I just wanted to ask you ‘why’? I wanted to see you. Far as I know they rescinded the contract they put out on you a year or so ago, around the time I got married. There aren’t any agents left for you to compromise. All the old networks have been rolled up. Things have changed, Dennis. The game and the rules have changed.”

O’Connor felt the pressure on his neck ease. He turned around slowly and faced his old boss. Age and a decade of hiding in plain sight had taken their toll on the old spy.

“You naïve fool,” Higgins shook his head in resignation. There was another emotion at work in the older man’s expression as well. Liam couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t sadness, exactly; it was more like a deep existential regret.

“They’ve set us both up. I don’t blame you. I don’t. You always did let your heart get in the way of your head. I don’t know, maybe that was your ‘gift’.”

Higgins reached out and put his hand on Liam’s shoulder.

“Didn’t I warn you when you started,” he continued, “that, for people like us, there is no such thing as ‘retirement’. The game never really changes, son. The players and the venues are different, maybe, but the objectives and the tactics always stay the same. No matter what you’ve heard or what you’ve been told, I’m still a ticking time-bomb in their eyes. Something that needs to be defused. That’s just how these things go, it’s how they will always go.”

With that the old man withdrew his hand and took a deliberate step backward. He seemed to be looking at someone or something over Liam’s shoulder. Before Liam had a chance to turn back around, Higgins’s head exploded in a sea of red mist. O’Connor dove for cover behind a trash barrel.

I truly am an idiot, Liam thought. I’m not even armed!

Liam peaked out from behind the barrel, it was utility green emblazoned with the state seal and motto stenciled in white letters: Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Aina i ka Pono, “the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” Sure!

It was becoming chaotic now on the beach. Although unsure of precisely what had just happened, people were nevertheless screaming and diving for whatever cover they could find. Some were even running into the ocean.

Through it all, Liam spotted a flash of tanned leg and a blonde ponytail sprinting across the grass toward the street. Stacy! He felt like vomiting. I should have known, he muttered, I should have known! He ran after her.

Further along Kalakaua near Coconut Avenue, she cut down a narrow access path that ended at a set of worn concrete steps leading right into the pounding surf. It was clearly a public access to a local surf spot. Oahu’s southern shore was dotted with them. Liam followed. Surprisingly, he found it deserted. To the left, Diamond Head shimmered in the sun. Miles to the right, the long sweep of the coastline ended as the Waianae Mountains rose lush and green against the azure sky out beyond the airport. A plane had just taken off and banked over the ocean as it arched its way into the morning sky.

Too late Liam realized his mistake, his second in less than five minutes. He felt the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed tightly against the base of his neck. This was getting very old, very quickly. He smelled his wife’s favorite perfume.

“How long, Stacy, how long have you been playing me? I need to know.”

“I never ‘played’ you, Liam. We had what we had. But this is business. You never could separate your private from your professional life. You’ve been a liability for a long time now. You should have seen this coming, damn you. They knew, I knew, that eventually you’d find Higgins. That was the reason they put me on to you in the first place. This was the chance to remove two inoperable pieces from the board at once.”

The young woman paused as though briefly weighing her options. Mind made up, she continued.

“As inevitable as it was, I am sorry it came to this. But, hey, think of it this way, you always said you wanted to retire somewhere like this.”

Liam was dead before his body tumbled into the warm, amniotic waters of the Pacific.

Stacy O’Connor undid her ponytail and let her hair fall over her shoulders. She stripped quickly out of the shorts and T-shirt she had been wearing to reveal a non-descript blue bikini. She walked carefully and calmly into the water. She reached down and, after wiping it thoroughly with her husband’s shirt, tucked the gun into the waistband of his shorts. He was face down; she didn’t even have to turn him over. That done, she waded further out and began to swim.

She’d head west and come ashore at one of the more congested stretches of Waikiki beach near the Moana or Royal Hawaiian Hotel and lose herself in the crowd. She’d retrieve her go-bag and be off the island by late afternoon. Stacy knew that her days were numbered now too, at least in terms of her current employment arrangement. Luckily, she had some offers from other interested parties. Uncle Sam wasn’t the only game in town for someone with her rather unique skill set. As far as she was concerned, she’d consider the money from this job as her severance package. Only an idiot should expect anything more in this line of work.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright James C. Clar 2024