by Abbott, Jeff
‘No. We slept on the plane.’
A soft, low, patient laugh. ‘Yes, you like to sleep on planes.’ She risked opening her eyes again. ‘I almost believe you when you say you don’t know where Luke will run. But I don’t.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
A long pause. ‘Let’s talk about Eric. He was going to give us information.’
‘Information?’
‘Tell me about this Night Road.’
She wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Eric just told me the name … extremists, a bunch of different causes. He kept it all secret from me. We broke up,’ she added. She felt woozy. The bed gave a slight lurch and she became aware that the heavy droning noise wasn’t a rattling in her head, waking up from a drug-addled daze. The white noise sounded like jet engines. She blinked again at the unadorned, curved metal ceiling and she thought: This is a plane. I am on a plane again. Where are they taking me?
‘Wise of you.’ He stared at her. In the dim glow she could see the ice in his gaze. A person stripped of every decent feeling, she thought. She tried to remember if he had been one of the men in New York who grabbed her. She thought not. He stood. He wore black slacks, a navy shirt, and she saw a bit of silver chain peeking out from under the shirt. ‘You’re going to help me find Luke Dantry.’
‘I don’t know where he is. Or where he’ll go.’
‘Let’s call him and let him know you’re still alive.’
‘Oh, God, please don’t kill me. Don’t hurt me.’ She hated the begging in her voice but the fear surged and her heart swelled in her chest, as though the muscle would explode.
‘We’re going to call Luke. Tell him that you’re alive.’ He unfolded a cell phone, dialed, and then listened. After what seemed like a century he closed the phone.
‘Didn’t he have Eric’s phone?’
‘He broke it.’
Without another word the man turned and walked away from her cot.
She raised her head. It looked like she was in a cargo plane or transport of some sort. At the other end of the cabin she could see the man issuing orders to a younger man who sat at a desk, a set of computer screens before him. The young man answered in a French accent she could barely make out. The boss and the Frenchman, she named them in her head. The Frenchman glanced back at her and she saw an ugly half-circle scar on his cheek.
French. Paris? Were they taking her to Paris, as Frankie Wu had mentioned back in Chicago?
It didn’t make sense. Why were they were taking her and leaving Luke behind?
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why?’ She wanted to know. She held her breath.
The boss glanced back at her, came back to the bed. ‘How much do you mean to him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will he try and find you or keep running?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why did he run?’
‘I don’t know. He said he had to run.’ Aubrey didn’t want to say that they knew Quicksilver had funded the cabin where they were held. She was afraid of what would happen.
The boss looked at her for the longest ten seconds of her life.
‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘You’re safe now.’
Aubrey didn’t believe him. She didn’t believe him at all. But she closed her eyes, and she pretended to sleep, and she tried to listen to every sound, every word, anything that would help her figure out where she was and how she could escape.
36
The address for Quicksilver Risk was a twelve story building a few blocks from Washington Square. The tower glittered glass and chrome, more modern than its surrounding fellows. It did not carry the purple flag of NYU, like other structures in the area, and Luke did not see students gathered around its entrance. In the fifteen minutes he’d stood sentinel he did not see anyone leave or arrive.
He’d checked in the phone book - no listing for Quicksilver Risk. A company that didn’t bother to be in the phone book, in a building that no one entered or left.
Luke stood on a corner down from the building. He slowly read a Times he’d salvaged from the trash, glancing now and then at his watch.
So now what? Saunter in and see what happened to him? He could be walking into a trap. If Frankie Wu noticed the charge manifest was missing from the galley, or if they’d made Aubrey talk, they’d know Luke learned this address. They’d be waiting for him.
Maybe Aubrey was here. Inside. In trouble.
But he needed help. He needed a way to break into that encrypted file. If Quicksilver wanted this fifty million from the terrorists, he’d strike a deal with them. Trade them the file for Aubrey. Of course there was nothing to prevent them from just taking the drive from him and killing him and Aubrey.
Luke made his decision. The lion’s den had to be braved. Luke folded the paper and walked toward the building. At the front door, Luke could see a doorman through the heavy glass. He was an imposing sort, barrel-chested, thick hands peeking from the cuffs of the navy wool uniform. Everything about him was hard and he looked like he could deck Luke into a hospital bed with one punch. Was he one of the men at the airport? Luke didn’t recognize him.
Luke tapped at the glass. Thicker than normal glass, he noticed.
‘Good day, sir,’ the doorman said. He stood beyond the locked door, hands behind his back, but he didn’t open it. ‘Who are you here to see?’
Not just a doorman. A guard.
‘Mr Drummond.’ He remembered the name from the email to Eric about the flight from Chicago, and mentioned by Henry. ‘I’m Luke Dantry. He’s expecting me.’
The doorman stepped inside after holding the door for Luke. The entryway was cool, tiled, with a massive desk, with a large raised counter around it, the kind that concealed monitors. No building directory - no tenants. The lobby was small, with two doors behind the desk. Both were heavy steel. No decor.
The air felt very still. The soft hum in the walls seemed to be made by machinery, not people moving and talking in offices beyond. Luke had the oddest sense of entering a bunker, a hideaway, like an old comic book hero’s lair. The doorman kept a polite gaze on Luke as he keyed in a message onto a keyboard. Apparently phones weren’t good enough. Or he didn’t want Luke to hear the message he was communicating.
Luke glanced up at the camera perched in the corner. Let it read his face.
‘Mr Drummond will see you.’ The doorman moved his hand to another part of the desk. The locks on the front door engaged with a soft click.
He was locked in.
‘Follow me, please,’ the doorman said.
Apparently the front door was not to be left unattended. A fortress in Manhattan. An elevator door slid open and the doorman gestured Luke inside.
They rose in stately silence. It was the quietest elevator that Luke had ever ridden. The car stopped, suddenly, with a soft shrill whistle. The doorman pulled out a huge gun from under his jacket and pressed it against Luke’s skull.
‘You have weapons on you. Spare us both the indignity of a search.’
‘A gun in the back of my pants. But it’s unloaded.’ He tried a provocation. ‘Your buddy Frankie Wu took my ammo clip.’
The doorman stripped the gun from his back. ‘At least Frankie did something right before he flew back to Chicago.’
Luke glanced up at the elevator ceiling. ‘Metal detector?’
‘Nothing so primitive.’ The doorman entered in a key on a pad and the elevator resumed its ascent. The doorman lowered the gun away from Luke’s face and Luke remembered to breathe again.
‘This building is, um, unusual. Prime real estate but unoccupied.’
‘Mr Drummond can explain it to you. If he chooses.’
A soft ping as they reached the top floor. The doors slid open onto a hallway. It had a spare, wooden floor and an elegant Persian rug running down its stretch. A doorway stood at the end.
They stepped into the hallway and the far door opened.
‘He had a weapon, sir. The scans show h
im now as clear,’ the doorman said.
At the end of the hall stood a man in a dark turtleneck and jeans, salt-and-pepper hair, broad shoulders. Not tall but heavily muscled. He had a pugnacious face that looked like it had been battered over the years. His eyes were slightly pinched; it made Luke think of a reader who spent a great deal of time peering through books he found disagreeable. ‘A weapon. I blush with pride. Hello, Luke.’ He didn’t smile.
‘Hi, Mr Drummond,’ Luke said. He wondered if Drummond knew Eric was dead? He must know. This man looks like he knows everything. ‘May we talk?’
‘I have dreamed of the day.’ Drummond raised an eyebrow. He seemed to survey Luke’s face, as though it were a map he’d seen once before but that had been redrawn over time.
The doorman turned and left.
Drummond watched him. A slight smile crept onto his face.
Luke decided to play his card. ‘Is Aubrey Perrault here?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Yes, I do, and she’s safe.’
‘I doubt that. Your people shot at us last night.’
‘Rubber bullets. They hurt but they don’t kill unless you don’t know what you’re doing.’
He remembered the bullets spraying up the grass at their feet. They could have shot him and Aubrey in the legs, but they didn’t.
‘You gave everyone a fright running into traffic. You could have gotten yourself killed, Luke.’
‘You look at me like you think you know me.’
‘I know who you were, Luke. I’m more interested,’ Drummond said, ‘in who you’re going to be.’
37
The apartment had the most disturbing walls Luke had ever seen. Giant photos covered them like wallpaper. One image per wall, each a massive enlargement. One picture was a young girl, huddling in the bombed ruins of a stone cabin. Her face looked like a surprised ghost. Another photo showed people in a Middle Eastern bazaar, expressions contorted in naked fear as they looked over their shoulders at an unbidden and dawning threat. A gunman, a car bomb? Who knew? The terror and the resignation on their faces was a timeless stamp. Another photo of a man Luke recognized, a former senator, clearly staggered by loss, leaning against a porch railing.
‘That senator. His son died. I remember it in the papers. Shot to death by a terrorist in Japan while studying abroad,’ Luke said. ‘You have odd decor.’
‘I am an odd man,’ Drummond said. ‘After all, I am welcoming you into my office and you had a hand in my friend’s death.’
‘You kidnapped my friend last night.’
‘Your friend is perfectly safe. My friend is dead.’
‘I had nothing to do with Allen Clifford’s death. I was kidnapped, forced to drive at gunpoint. Then chained up in a cabin your company paid for.’
Drummond raised an eyebrow. ‘We financed a cabin. You being taken there was not our doing. But you killed Allen Clifford …’
‘I didn’t kill Allen Clifford. I know who did.’
‘Who?’
‘Eric Lindoe. Operating under orders from a British woman named Jane, who kidnapped Eric’s girlfriend. Kidnapping me and killing your friend was Jane’s ransom demand for Aubrey’s safety.’
‘Convenient to blame him since he’s not here to defend himself.’
‘He’s dead. Back in Chicago. He kidnapped me in Austin to force information from my stepfather.’ He thought it would be better to hold off on mentioning the fifty million; it would take over the conversation and he wanted to know more first.
‘Tell me everything,’ Drummond said. ‘I think to get to the truth, we must trust each other. We’ve been pitted against each other, Luke, and we should not be enemies. You must think the same, or you wouldn’t have come here after running from us.’ Drummond gestured at a large glass table. ‘Sit.’
Luke sat down and Drummond sat across from him.
Drummond’s faint smile inched wider, went crooked. ‘Like Eric, you wish to make a deal. Tell me everything and I’ll give you something in exchange.’
‘I ask, then you ask, we can hammer out a deal.’
‘All right. You first, you’re the guest,’ Drummond said. ‘I’ll judge whether or not to trust you further by the intelligence you show in what you ask.’
If he failed - if he asked the wrong questions - he might never learn the truth. Or Drummond could be playing him. He wasn’t ready to offer the encrypted file yet; he wanted to see what he could learn first. Drummond studied him, a cat easing on its haunches before the mouse hole.
‘First question. Is Quicksilver behind my kidnapping?’
‘No. The cabin had been rented in advance, to be used by Clifford for an interrogation of a suspect. The man he was meeting - a loser named Bridger, who ran when you and Eric approached - was selling information on a domestic terrorist network to Clifford. I suspect that he was killed, and the cabin used, to make your stepfather and the Night Road aware of Quicksilver’s existence since Clifford and the cabin point back to Quicksilver. Someone wanted the Night Road to know Quicksilver is chasing them. To put us in each other’s sights.’
‘You know about the Night Road?’
‘I didn’t know the name until Eric mentioned it two days ago. We know it’s a loose affiliation of extremist groups, turning toward violence, working together to share resources, tactics, and information. And I suspect the Road’s hand in the Ripley attack, and the attacks over the past week.’
‘Attacks?’
‘E. coli infecting a food plant in Tennessee. Pipeline bomb in Canada. Attempted bombing of a pipeline in Alaska. And last night, a bombing at a high school football game in Kansas City, eight dead, a hundred injured. And one of our leading thinkers in counter-terrorism was slaughtered with his family while leaving a restaurant in Los Angeles.’
‘Oh, God, no. You should know I found these people.’
‘You found all these people for who? Henry?’ When he said Henry’s name his mouth made a curl of distaste.
‘Under the false pretense of doing psychological profiling for his think-tank. I gave him thousands of names. He whittled it down to the most committed and dangerous. My role is a pawn who got played.’
‘Henry used you. And you’re a pawn who’s pissed off about it,’ Drummond said.
‘Yes. What is Quicksilver?’
It was as if Drummond did not hear the question. ‘I can offer you what I offered Eric. Get you out of the country, hide you under another name. You’ll be safe. You give me all the information you have on the Night Road. That’s the deal.’
‘No. I don’t want to be stashed away. I want my life back. My good name. I want to be cleared of Clifford’s death, and the officer in Chicago. And I want to help stop the Night Road.’
‘Noble of you, but unnecessary,’ Drummond said. ‘My offer is what it is. You’re not part of this battle, Luke, and I think it best you hide until the danger’s passed. Know that you’re helping us by telling us everything about the Night Road. That’s your contribution.’
‘It’s not enough. Please. I helped build that network. I want to help destroy it. I can’t just sit someplace safe while Henry runs a terror cell.’
Drummond studied him. ‘Why did Henry use you?’
‘I don’t know; I was handy, I guess. What is Quicksilver? Are you CIA? FBI? A black ops group? What?’ He took a breath. ‘Are you like the Book Club?’
‘How did you know about the Book Club?’
‘Henry. He was desperate that I not see you.’
‘Oh, I’ll bet he was.’
‘Did you know my dad? Did you work with him in the government? What did he do?’
‘I said no more on Quicksilver.’
They stared at each other. Luke tried a different tack. Drummond wouldn’t answer his questions but oddly, he seemed to want to hear what Luke wanted to ask. ‘What are all these pictures?’
‘My many failures.’
Luke turned away from the portrai
ts of suffering. ‘What, you screwed over all these people yourself?’
‘Consider them salt in the wound. I failed in these instances, so these people suffered. I remember them. Every day. I have no choice.’
‘The Book Club tried to help people?’
‘Mostly succeeding but not always. Good doesn’t always win out.’
‘You could take the pictures down.’
‘I would still see their faces. It’s easier to see them on the walls than in my dreams.’
‘I don’t understand why you would help Eric get out of Chicago when he killed your friend.’
‘Because stopping the Night Road is more important than revenge. Eric made a bad choice, under tremendous pressure, and then when it all unraveled he was ready to betray the Night Road. I didn’t like him but I do what’s necessary to save lives.’
‘I will trade everything I know for Aubrey’s release and information about Quicksilver. Otherwise, we have no deal.’
‘You assume that we would hurt Aubrey. We won’t. We’re the good guys,’ Drummond said.
‘Then please, tell me what I need to know.’
‘I can’t. I need you to trust me, entirely. I need you to tell me everything, Luke, and to please, please ask me no questions. I need you, for the sake of your country, to cooperate fully and to let me hide you some place where you’ll be safe.’
‘Why should I trust you when you won’t trust me?’ Luke said.
Drummond sighed. He reached under his turtleneck and lifted up a piece of silver from under the sweater’s black weight. A Saint Michael’s medal, an exact duplicate of the one that Luke wore. The archangel stood tall, sword in one hand, shield in the other, wings of steel spread.
Luke’s eyes widened. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘An old friend gave it to me, a few weeks before he died.’
‘An old friend,’ Luke echoed.
‘Your father. One of my closest friends. Now. Knowing that, will you trust me?’