Immune by Richard Phillips

Freddy almost didn’t answer the door. Anything someone thought important enough to send to him via a special carrier meant trouble. No doubt one of his ex-wives’ attorneys had found some way to dig deeper into Freddy’s pockets. Legal paperwork was something he expected, things being the way they were.
    There was no avoiding it though. If he didn’t answer the door today, they would just come back the next day and the next, finally resorting to delivery by an officer of the law. Best to just get it over with.
    As he opened the door, the UPS man handed him a package roughly the size of a shoe box before having him sign his name on the computerized clipboard, which would immediately uplink the delivery status to the World Wide Web. The damn attorneys would probably be smiling before the truck was out of his driveway. Wasn’t technology grand?
    Freddy tossed the box on the coffee table in preparation for making his way back upstairs, but it missed. The package caught the edge of the table and then tumbled to the floor. Freddy paused. The sound it made as it bounced off the floor wasn’t right. Certainly not a sound you would expect from a box stuffed with legal forms and documents. And despite that he had been demoted to the role of backwater gossip columnist, Freddy had once been an investigative reporter with instincts second to none. The only thing that had kept him from the acclaim he had thought himself destined to receive was his piss-poor judgment in women. Thrust a couple of nice tits in his face and he thought he was in love. He should have been an ass man.
    When he bent down to retrieve the package, Freddy felt the contents shift. Definitely not packed by any legal office. Eschewing the couch, Freddy moved to the kitchen table where the lighting was better. The box was wrapped in plain brown paper. The “From” label on the shipping slip was so sloppily printed that he couldn’t make it out, although his name and address on the “To” label were clearly legible.
    Freddy turned the box over, carefully examining every crease and fold in the wrapping. Absolutely nothing unusual about it. So why was he suddenly as nervous as a kitten?
    Taking out his pocketknife, Freddy slipped the blade under a fold, slicing a straight, clean cut along the corners of the paper that covered the box. As he pulled the wrapping away, he saw that it did indeed cover a shoe box. Nike. With another couple quick slices, he severed the tape that secured the lid to the shoe box.
    The reason for the rattle became immediately apparent as he lifted the lid. The box contained a sealed envelope and a small locked jewelry box. The packing around the jewelry box was insufficient to keep it from sliding back and forth in the shoe box, at least if dropped on the floor.
    Freddy Hagerman rubbed his chin. Damn odd. The envelope was a white velum of intermediate quality, the type used for thank you cards. Across the seal, two capital letters had been printed: AA. Freddy slit the envelope along the upper edge, extracting the folded card with two fingers. The pre-printed “thank you” was the only writing on the outside of the card.
    His first glance inside startled him so badly that he almost dropped the card. The note was short:
Dear Mr. Hagerman. My name is Abdul Aziz. Since you have received this package, I am already dead.
This means I have failed to deliver my message to the world, so I must rely on you, postmortem. I picked you because you are too talented and have access to too many unusual resources to be where you are today. I need your desperation.
As you are no doubt aware, I have come into some information about the Rho Project. Unfortunately, if I told you what I have learned, you would be obliged to immediately hand over the classified information to your government. Instead, I will provide clues that should allow you to discover the story for yourself.
In the small jewelry case I have placed two items and an address. The first of