Romeo's Tell (A disappearance mystery turned international thriller)

by William Neubauer

  “He was causing difficulties for their asset on the inside, Montjoy.”

  “Montjoy,” Samir repeated, unconvinced.

  “Yes, it’s one of the names they use.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows. Swan knows him I’m sure, but not as Montjoy, and they know him only as Montjoy.”

  “So?”

  “So, they set him up—Swan. They first tried to kill him by messing up his car, but his wife got killed instead. So they set him up to look like he was selling secrets to the Chinese.”

  “Who? Who set him up?”

  “Them,” Ahmad said emphatically. “The Conclave.”

  Samir rolled his eyes at hearing the repeated reference to the Conclave. He shook his head. “Not good enough.” He tipped the chair back on its rear legs and started dragging it again.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Ahmad shouted. “There’s a leak. A leak in the company of your friends.”

  This got Samir’s attention. He roughly set the chair upright again. “What friends?”

  “Your American friends. Who else?”

  “What kind of leak? To where?”

  “To the Conclave,” Ahmad hissed, vehemently enough to prevent Samir from rolling his eyes again. “They have a man in the CIA.”

  “What man? Who?”

  “Who? I don’t know who. I don’t know anything else. I barely know what I just told you. I am not one of them. They just use me for little things. I don’t know why the things are done or who does them.”

  Samir was not certain that this partial information about a CIA mole and story about some obscure American being set up as a patsy would bring the kind of payment he was hoping for. However, money was the last thing he should have been worrying about.

  He jerked his head in the direction of a sharp sound, up by the middle of the three high windows. There was now a small hole in the window pane. At virtually the same instant, he sensed Ahmad jerk and then slump and looked down in horror to see a much larger hole in Ahmad’s head. What? An impossible angle for a shot.

  The door burst open. Military. Special Services Group from the looks of it. Samir suddenly felt deathly sickened.

  Samir’s hands went up instinctively. Four members of the SSG quickly performed the simple task of securing the room. One of the two who remained by the door shouted to the outside, “Room secure, Lieutenant.”

  The Lieutenant entered briskly, looked around to confirm, then spoke into his radio. “Ready for you, General.”

  A man dressed more like a businessman than a soldier entered, presumably the General. And indeed he was. A two-star General, in fact, although within the Conclave, he was known simply as Claudius.

  The two men walked up to Samir, whose hands were still raised. The Lieutenant glanced around the room, eyeing the waterboarding table suspiciously, then addressed Samir with two words, meant as both a question and a command. “Recording device.”

  Samir looked down and tipped his head in the direction of the recorder’s location. “Under the table.”

  The Lieutenant motioned to one of the two soldiers in the main part of the room. A few seconds later, he was holding the tape bearing the information Ahmad had spewed just minutes earlier.

  “General, should we take the recorder as well.”

  “No, leave it to further frustrate his American friends when they find him.”

  Samir’s innards were ripped away by the wave of terror he felt on hearing the last few of Claudius’ words—words that told him he was about to die. The feeling was indescribable, but brief.

  * * *

  Hours later, Samir’s CIA contact found him, as Claudius had expected. Scanning the scene, it didn’t take long for the agent to make the decision to get the hell out of there. He took a quick look around, checked the empty recorder for a tape, and hastily headed for the door.

  As he made his exit, a vague and fleeting sadness surfaced. Samir hadn’t been a bad guy really, just in a bad business. Jumbled thoughts of Samir the Resourceful flashed through the agent’s mind for the few seconds it took him to get to the exit. Just before opening the door to the outside, he froze dead in his tracks, suddenly hit with the memory of Samir’s backup digital recorder.

  He hastened over to the lifeless body, hoping those who had taken Samir out of the game had missed it. And indeed they had.

  Chapter 58

  Jill’s note had led Chad inexorably to one individual: Michael Murdoch. Chad had been watching the traffic on the only road leading to Murdoch Vineyards for over an hour. It had been quiet except for a single black SUV, clearly marked as an FBI vehicle. About twenty minutes after it passed, heading in the direction of the Vineyard, it passed again, this time heading in the other direction. Whatever the visit was about (possibly him?), it had been brief.

  The vehicle Chad was really watching for was one that would be carrying Michael Murdoch to the bogus meeting with Angel Cruz. Chad was just beginning to wonder if Michael had decided to ditch the meeting, when, through the thin strip of pines separating him from the main road, he saw a black Mercedes—Michael had always had a thing for them—heading out into the unsuspecting world. Chad waited five minutes, then made his way in.

  The vineyard entrance was only about a mile from where Chad had been lurking. From there, a private gravel road would take him the rest of the way. At the start of the gravel road, a faded, dreary-looking sign halfheartedly bid welcome to Murdoch Vineyards.

  About a quarter mile in, the private road forked. Chad had been here before and remembered the setup. The road on the right led to an open section of the property where a small crew did virtually all of the work. Chad took the left tine of the fork, which led to a more secluded area of the property where the main house stood along with two outbuildings used primarily for warehousing and aging red wines—or so everyone believed.

  He started up a steep rise that ended in a sharp turn before descending to a more heavily wooded area. The breathtakingly beautiful view of Seneca Lake from the top of the rise belied the evils that had been performed in this place for almost a quarter century.

  At the point where the road started to level out again, it narrowed to a single lane and the woods became much thicker. With less than two feet to spare on either side, it felt as if the BMW were squeezing its way through the dense pines. Eventually, car and driver arrived at a large clearing, the site of the main residence.

  The narrow road continued on beyond the house and Chad followed it, wanting first to check the outbuildings, neither of which was visible from the house, despite the fact that one of them was relatively close to it. He soon came to the first outbuilding and drove past it as well, thinking the building farther from the house was the most likely place to start his search. A search that he realized, with no small measure of concern, would be considerably easier if he knew what he was looking for.

  He pulled over to the small gravel parking area next the second outbuilding, shut off the engine, and stepped out of the BMW. The crunching of the gravel beneath his feet was the only sound.

  Before casing the building, he took a minute to set his watch to issue an alarm signal in four hours, which would be just after 7:00 PM. Although Angel had said he could keep Michael busy for five hours, Chad had no desire to cut it close.

  He shifted his focus to the building. The entry door would not be a problem, but it was apparent there was a security system to deal with. He could see where the conduit-encased phone line left the building and realized he would have to disable it to avoid the security monitoring service being alerted to his activities. Not a problem. He had the tools for it.

  Just ten minutes later, Chad had the phone line disabled and was ready for the next step: wireless jamming. Since a wireless communication capability was possible as a backup to the now-disabled landline, he had to take out cell phone capabilities in the vicinity as well. He pulled a battery operated cell phone signal jammer from his bag of tricks and activated it.


  A quick test using his own mobile phone confirmed that the jammer was doing its job. At this point, he was good to go as far as the alarm system was concerned. One potential pitfall he could do nothing about was the possibility of a local alarm. Other than checking the outside of the building for sirens and bells, there was little else he could do about this. It was simply a risk, acceptable or not, that he was going to have to take.

  Satisfied that he had taken all the precautions he could reasonably take, he turned his attention to the door.

  Two minutes later, he swung it open.

  Chapter 59

  As he sat pretending to study the menu at the Conesus Steakhouse, Angel Cruz couldn’t help but wrestle with a bit of nervousness. It was one thing to plan to act as if you were someone else, but quite another to actually do it—particularly when there was reason to believe the mark might be a dangerous nut job.

  The fact that Michael Murdoch was now ten minutes late didn’t help. Nor the fact that, for the past hour, Angel had needed to take a wicked whiz. He’d run to the men’s room right now if it weren’t for the risk of missing Murdoch’s arrival. Instead, he tried some seriously positive self-talk. Piece of cake, Angel. You got this!

  Angel’s affirmations were cut short by the arrival of a joyless-looking man carrying two bottles of wine. “Mr. Morales?” the man said.

  Angel slid back his chair and stood, preparing to only half-knowingly shake the hand of evil incarnate. “Diego,” he said, speaking his cover name. “Please call me Diego.”

  The man looked at Angel’s outstretched hand then slowly and deliberately placed the bottles on the table so he and Angel could shake hands. His every movement seemed evaluated, measured. He showed no emotion. “Michael Murdoch,” was all he said.

  “Pleased to meet you, Michael.” Michael only nodded, prompting Angel to uneasily continue the one-sided conversation.

  Angel gestured toward the two bottles. “I see you brought a couple of samples of the new products for me to take back. Good idea. That will help our case, I think.”

  This is when Michael picked up on one of Angel’s two serious blunders—one potentially fatal, the other potentially life-saving. He hadn’t really registered any of what Angel had said past about the word samples. His deviant wheels had become too busy spinning over what he noticed on Angel’s right hand—a small tattoo of a scorpion, which appeared to perfectly match the description he had been given of Chad Swan’s accomplice’s tattoo less than two hours earlier. Although Michael wasn’t really listening, his social autopilot was top notch. He performed a little affirmative nod and gestured that he and Angel should take their seats.

  As Angel droned on with some details to add texture to his contrived cover story, Michael Murdoch began planning how to get rid of him. Michael knew he needed to get back to Murdoch Vineyards as soon as possible, since Chad Swan was likely tossing the place as they spoke. He wondered if Chad was alone. No matter. All that really mattered was that Michael had to deal with this situation alone—as he did everything else. He would just be what he was—cold, calculating, decisive, and ruthless.

  His opening actually came sooner than expected, before they had even ordered. Angel suddenly rose to his feet. “Please excuse me, Michael, but I need to see a man about a horse,” he said with a smile. “Be right back.”

  In characteristic form, Michael said nothing. He simply motioned with his hand in a way that suggested, “Be my guest.”

  As soon as Angel had left the table, Michael discreetly began his preparations. He felt in his pocket for his portable jet injector, a state of the art, needle-free, pocket-sized injection system. Right now, the injector was filled with a lethal agent—the only way to be truly prepared when traveling.

  Michael started making his way to the men’s room, barely a minute behind Angel. When he arrived, he found Angel exactly as he had hoped, alone and facing one of the four urinals. He waited just a moment for Angel to finish up (no need to risk getting pissed on) then walked up directly behind Angel, before he began to turn around.

  He pressed the jet injector to the meat on the side of Angel’s shoulder, knowing that the stream of speeding venom would easily pass through the thin fabric of the dress shirt Angel was wearing. Without hesitation, Michael sent the jet of death into Angel’s body.

  The sting was minimal, but of course shocking to Angel, who jumped back, his fly zipped up only halfway. “Michael! What—”

  “We probably should sit you down, Diego, or whatever you’re real name is. Angel, if I remember correctly.” He grabbed Angel by the shoulders just as Angel’s knees began to buckle, providing just enough stability to prevent him from crashing to the cold tile floor. They shuffled back a few feet and pushed through the door to the middle of three stalls. Michael swung Angel around and sat him down on the toilet as Angel mumbled some unintelligible protest.

  Angel was still conscious and able to sit, but that would be changing in a matter of seconds. Michael took a six-foot length of clothes line from his right jacket pocket—every true and well prepared monster carries one—and with the roping skill of a seasoned mariner, swiftly pulled a hangman’s noose around Angel’s midsection and fastened him to the pipes behind.

  He latched the lock on the stall door, slid under it, and exited the men’s room less than one minute after having entering it, knowing that, without treatment, Angel Cruz would be dead in less than fifteen minutes.

  He swung by the table quickly on his way out to pick up the two bottles of Murdoch Vineyards wine. Michael Murdoch just didn’t make careless mistakes.

  Chapter 60

  Barrels. And more barrels. After having searched for almost an hour, Chad still didn’t see much else in the first of the two outbuildings he was determined to search from top to bottom.

  Although he still had plenty of time, Chad was now more sorely aware than ever that he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He was still hopeful, however, that he would know when he found it.

  He checked his watch. Fifty-eight minutes gone. Time to leave this building behind and get to the other one. If he found nothing there, he would also have to search the main house, but he really hoped it didn’t come to that, particularly from the time standpoint.

  He did not stop to reconnect the phone line, not now. He would do that last and only if there was sufficient time after completing his search.

  He went on as swiftly as possible to the other outbuilding, the gravel of the narrow roadway sliding and crunching beneath his feet. He had to go through the same disabling scenario with the phone line and had a little more difficulty this time because the conduit through which the line ran was made of heavier material than that on the other building. The cell phone jammer was still operating, so once he had taken out the phone line, he was ready to go.

  The lock on the entry door was as easy to defeat as the one on the other building had been. Just a few minutes after starting on the door, he was inside.

  This building also appeared to harbor only a vast, solid sea of barrels. As in the other building, there was just enough ambient light from the building’s skylights to see a similar mass of barrels loaded into ten-foot-high racks, completely obstructing the view throughout the structure. But as he worked his way toward the other end of the building, a small gap in the wall of barrel racks gave him reason to believe that the barrel sea in this building was not so solid.

  The gap led to a kind of maze of paths between the hundreds of barrels. It took about ten minutes for him to determine that this maze had only dead ends, fourteen of them to be exact. Chad came to the disappointing realization that the gaps and paths must simply have been the result of random, inefficient placement of the barrel racks. He started to work his way out again, frustrated and realizing that he was going to have to risk searching the house as well.

  Just as he approached the point where he had entered the barrel maze, he noticed a shiny metallic label on one of the barrels. It wasn’t what the label said
that got his attention; it was seeing the reflection of other barrels in the polished stainless steel of the label. He stopped dead in his tracks, remembering Michael Murdoch’s strange affinity for “house of mirrors” type attractions. No, it couldn’t be. Could it? It was clearly a long-shot. But in the immortal words of Dr. Emmett Brown, Chad figured what the hell.

  He turned around and went back into the maze, rechecking every dead end, this time actually touching the barrels at the end of each path. He had just finished checking number eleven when he began thinking how foolish this double-checking effort actually was. Hey, it was a shot, right? As expected, he found that number twelve was a legitimate dead end too. No harm in trying. Might as well double-check the last two.

  He turned a corner and clearly saw the dead end of the thirteenth path. But this one was a long corridor and he hadn’t gone to the end on the first check. Human nature. You see the same thing occur on twelve previous attempts, the thirteenth looks the same, so you assume it must be the same. He walked to the end of the path and, just for jollies, put his hand out to touch the barrels that blocked it.

  Clunk. A mirror! A tall mirror, exactly the same height as the barrel racks. Angled, just enough to slip past and enter the continuation of the path, where another angled mirror provided an askew reflection of barrels on the opposite side, which when reflected back to the first angled mirror, looked exactly like a stack of barrels completely blocking the path. Ingenious.

  As he worked his way through the remaining turns of the hidden path, a vague hint of a chemical odor turned gradually but relentlessly into a distinct, acrid nasal attack. After completing the last turn, he could see it, the dreadful “room” created by a lack of barrels.

  A room where his questions would be answered with horrifying particulars.

  Chapter 61

  Rookie officer Pete Silks pulled off East Lake Road into the parking lot across the street from the Conesus Steakhouse. He would be celebrating tonight with some of his comrades who had also recently completed their first year of public service.